Icecrown Deathbringer Saurfang Hard

[Ciderhelm]

You can find a guide to the normal version of this encounter here!

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Icecrown Citadel Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll cover everything you need to know about the heroic mode 10-man version of the Deathbringer Saurfang encounter. I will assume that you're familiar with the normal version of this encounter. If you're not, I suggest first watching our guide to the 10-man normal mode to learn about Saurfang's base abilities.

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In his heroic version, Saurfang has approximately 13 million health as opposed to his 9 million in normal mode. Naturally, he also hits harder, but his base abilities stay the same. The simple fact that he has 35% more health than before however results in a longer fight, which in turn results in more Marks of the Fallen Champion, which will put a strain on your healers towards the end of the battle.

We used a setup of 2 tanks, 2 healers and 6 DPS, since we figured the faster we kill him, the less marks we have to deal with. If your healers have a ton of trouble you may be better off with a setup of 3 healers, though. You cannot let a raid member with Mark of the Fallen Champion die at all costs. Should this happen, Saurfang will instantly be healed for 20% of his max health, which can easily mean a raid wipe.

What really sets this encounter apart from its normal mode is a change made to the blood beasts, the adds Saurfang spawns occasionally. For one, they move a lot faster than they do in the normal encounter. Secondly, they gain a buff called Scent of Blood, which makes the Blood Beasts deal 300% more damage for 10 seconds - IE, they one shot just about any non-tank - and it reduces nearby players' movement speed by 80%.

This means you need to figure out a reliable way to snare every blood beast as well as have the ranged raid members that are killing the beasts break their own snares so they don't risk getting hit.

Any snare break will work - improved fade, blink, hand of freedom, etc. What we did was to have our death knight chains of ice one of them while our ranged team killed the other one. Mind Flay helped a lot to keep them slowed. Other options would be frost trap, slow, frost shock, earthbind totems, etc. To reiterate - should a Blood Beast reach its target, it will most likely one-shot it, so avoid this at all costs.

Once you have a tactic figured out that works for your raid setup, the fight is pretty much the same as its normal mode, with more marks going out and slightly higher tank damage.

The damage done by Blood Nova, Boiling Blood and Mark of the Fallen remains the same.

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[Frazzle]

Thanks for the guide. We tried this encounter for a while this weekend and found it very tough, although a bit random. Best attempts (with 2 healers) we would get the first Mark at 50-55% and worst attempt 70-75%, with no real reason we could see for the disparity in timing. Additionally, a mark on a clothie was a real issue as the damage got quite huge sometimes.

We did wonder if anyone has succesfully tried a 3 healer set-up and if the DPS managed to get the kill before the enrage.

[squats]

We bring a pally healer, and a pally tank. We hand of protection the first 2 blood boils and it holds off the marks for a very long time. Our kill tonight only had 2 marks up when he died.

[Prinnyraid]

This may sound a bit silly but bringing an active prot warr as tank can be a great help with the adds here. Usually what I do is when I notice a side is a bit slow with the adds I just shockwave 1 add side when they come up, if ranged DPS is active you should have no aggro issues. If I happen to have the blood on me and the other tank is tanking then I actually charge/stun adds wich is a great help for the ranged dps since they can nuke the adds down way faster en move to the boss. I also found that the tank that starts the event can help on adds most since of the blood/blood beast timing.

[stoebz]

I have noticed that your tanks having Glyph of Taunt or Glyph of Righteous Defense really helps you manage the BP for this encounter on hardmode. Also, like the above poster we used a paladin tank and a warrior tank and had them take turns on stunning the blood beast that the dps would be killing second.

[Gnurken]

We had problems with this boss, with no shaman so no bloodlust we had to make up for the dps loss. HoP's / bubbles / iceblocks to prevent him gaining bloodpower. We also used a pally healer to solo heal most of the fight so 7 dps, 2 tank 1 healer setup. At 2nd mark, the shadowpriest and moonkin went support healing. Tankswaps have to be instant, he attack really fast so even if you taunt asap he can still sometimes gain 5bp.

For the adds we had a mage cast slow on them, one got nuked, the other was punted away from melee by a moonkin that was among the melee so it wasn't getting stuck by consecration/dnd and then rooted to sit there waiting for the mage to cast slow on it too.

Before we swapped out a healer for the 7th dps we had problems with getting the 3rd mark and soon after a marked death, so by adding a dps we avoided the 3rd mark and got the kill.

[Tibbs]

I can't find any info on how much Blood Power he gains from different abilites.
But the increase in BP gains seem alot higher on heroic.
The Blood Beasts seem to generate 5 or 10 BP on each melee hit they do.
But how much does Blood Nova, Boiling Blood and Rune of Blood generate?

[chinoquezada]

Mark of the Fallen Champion damage is proportional to Saurfang's AP.
If you have Demo Shout or Demo Roar up, you are golden.
If you use Vindication for AP Debuff, there are some RNG problems that might hit as Prot Vindication uptime is around 85% and Ret's Vindication uptime is around 95-98%.
Any double dot (Mark + Blood Boil) just as Vindication fades will hit very hard on cloth targets.

On my guild's recent Saurfang 25 HM Kill, we had a very luck 95% vindication uptime. In the future we will be switching to either Prot AND Ret specced into vindication (almost ensuring 100%) or just plain ol' Demo Shout.


Not sure on tankspot's policy for outside links but there is a 3page thread on this issue at maintankadin going on atm.

[Kazeyonoma]

Mark of the Fallen Champion damage is proportional to Saurfang's AP.
If you have Demo Shout or Demo Roar up, you are golden.
If you use Vindication for AP Debuff, there are some RNG problems that might hit as Prot Vindication uptime is around 85% and Ret's Vindication uptime is around 95-98%.
Any double dot (Mark + Blood Boil) just as Vindication fades will hit very hard on cloth targets.

On my guild's recent Saurfang 25 HM Kill, we had a very luck 95% vindication uptime. In the future we will be switching to either Prot AND Ret specced into vindication (almost ensuring 100%) or just plain ol' Demo Shout.

Not sure on tankspot's policy for outside links but there is a 3page thread on this issue at maintankadin going on atm.

Good to know, glad I'm always spec'd into improved demo =P

[Mcfobos]

10 hc - tanks are swapping as fast as they can: they both have Glyph of Taunt and Glyph of Righteous Defense, they watch for aggro etc. but it seems that Rune of Blood heals him for 1.5-2 mil. in total and in the end we have enrage problem. Our setup is: holy paladin, resto druid, disc priest, prot warr, prot paladin, two hunters, mage, warlock, fury warr;

Any idea or suggestion except changing the setup

[Trexokor]

If you can manage to 2-heal the encounter, you'll find hard enrage won't be an issue at all. Even the soft enrage doesn't become terrible with good BP management.

I'm not sure why he'd be healing that much though, he may get a single hit off after each Rune of Blood if you're unlucky but it shouldn't be that much.

Also, you may be able to squeeze more DPS out of your 4 ranged depending on how you handle the adds. Even fast target switching is still a loss in DPS compared to full time on a single target. If, for example, you can handle both adds with 3 ranged instead of using all 4, you may be able to get more out of the 4th.

[Rennadrel]

Mark of the Fallen Champion damage is proportional to Saurfang's AP.
If you have Demo Shout or Demo Roar up, you are golden.
If you use Vindication for AP Debuff, there are some RNG problems that might hit as Prot Vindication uptime is around 85% and Ret's Vindication uptime is around 95-98%.
Any double dot (Mark + Blood Boil) just as Vindication fades will hit very hard on cloth targets.

On my guild's recent Saurfang 25 HM Kill, we had a very luck 95% vindication uptime. In the future we will be switching to either Prot AND Ret specced into vindication (almost ensuring 100%) or just plain ol' Demo Shout.


Not sure on tankspot's policy for outside links but there is a 3page thread on this issue at maintankadin going on atm.

The Retribution debuff is 100% uptime as far as I can tell, it stays at 5 stacks and the timer never gets down more than a quarter way before resetting, since it is based on Holy damage no matter what spell you happen to cast as a paladin, it is Holy damage.

[Rennadrel]

10 hc - tanks are swapping as fast as they can: they both have Glyph of Taunt and Glyph of Righteous Defense, they watch for aggro etc. but it seems that Rune of Blood heals him for 1.5-2 mil. in total and in the end we have enrage problem. Our setup is: holy paladin, resto druid, disc priest, prot warr, prot paladin, two hunters, mage, warlock, fury warr;

Any idea or suggestion except changing the setup

My opinion would be that you have too many ranged for this situation. In 10 man I always carry 2 melee DPS, two tanks, 2 healers and 3 ranged, the ranged are generally a mage, boomkin druid with healing off spec and a hunter. Ranged can pretty much just trash the adds as they spawn and then return to boss, warlocks are a pain because their damage is so heavily based around DoT effects while a mage can just throw spells that crit left and right, making add control easier. Having two melee also makes it easier to consistently deal damage to the boss instead of just having 1 melee DPS on the boss full time plus tanks.

[Fetzie]

The Retribution debuff is 100% uptime as far as I can tell, it stays at 5 stacks and the timer never gets down more than a quarter way before resetting, since it is based on Holy damage no matter what spell you happen to cast as a paladin, it is Holy damage.

Talking about vindication, not blood corruption

On the topic of his melee damage on tanks, one of our 10 man groups reported insane tank damage, to the point that a 60k raidbuffed warrior was getting globalled. I personally find this hard to believe, has anyone got the approximate melee damage of the swing when at zero BP and close to 100 BP? my group isn't happening tonight so I can't check myself :/

[Kazeyonoma]

he definitely can nearly global people during enrage phase. the other tank and I were rotating cd's as we were taunting (gotta love 2 minute cds) post 30% because he does hit very hard after a while (probably due to BP gains). I didn't see any 60k hits though, but he definite hit me for 75% of my life at least twice. and I'm at around 55k buffed.

[Akeber]

We've been finding this encounter a little tricky. There is some RNG fun in who gets picked for marks, and if marked ppl are targeted for boiling blood as well, the combination is about 12K dps if he's soft enraged.

Our ten man group's healing makeup is a disc priest, holy priest, and a resto shammy. Since most of the healing is single target, what seems to work best for us is to have both priests go disc, and our resto shammy go elemental in mostly resto gear. The shammy DPSes until we get the second mark, and switches to healing the second mark when it's put up. We blow heroism at 30-35%, right after a set of beasts are killed.

10 hc - tanks are swapping as fast as they can: they both have Glyph of Taunt and Glyph of Righteous Defense, they watch for aggro etc. but it seems that Rune of Blood heals him for 1.5-2 mil. in total and in the end we have enrage problem. Our setup is: holy paladin, resto druid, disc priest, prot warr, prot paladin, two hunters, mage, warlock, fury warr;
Any idea or suggestion except changing the setup

Your tanks just aren't taunting fast enough. For example, on our ten man kill this weekend he received 460,955 in heals from a mere 5 hits on tanks with the debuff on a kill that took 4 minutes and 29 seconds. That's 92K per hit, so fast taunts are necessary. Those numbers are also with a 20% healing debuff up (spriest with imp MB). Heals are about 120K per melee attack if there is no healing debuff on saurfang. Mortal strike, aimed shot, wound poison, etc., any kind of healing debuff will help.

I'd suggest having holy pally and disc priest two-heal it. If necessary, have the druid go boomkin and pick up on heals when the second mark comes out if your priest and pally are having trouble.

[Kazeyonoma]

yeah the timing on it is exactly as the debuff falls off, so basically the moment your debuff reaches 0, get ready to hit taunt within 1 second, cuz he applies it on the other tank almost immediately at this point.

[Puutumi]

zzHello! Last tuesday we downed Lich King on 10man and today we moved on to heroics. Cleared Marrowgar and Gunship and we started training on Saurfang. Took a lot wipes (+20) and on last try something terrible happened to me:

-1.46 -(Health: 1 (0%)) Deathbringer Saurfang Boiling Blood (DoT) Mulkvisti Tick -8633 (Physical)
-0.46 -(Health: 5703 (20%)) Deathbringer Saurfang Blood Nova Mulkvisti Hit -15356 (Physical)
-0.20 -(Health: 1 (0%)) Deathbringer Saurfang Boiling Blood (DoT) Mulkvisti Tick -8633 (Physical)
[00:13:33] [RL] [80:****:1]: +0.00 - (Health: 0 (0%)) Mulkvisti dies.

So, he hitted me 15k with boiling blood and instantly after that, he hitted again with 8.6k. I was just wondering, that does this work as intented, or was this bugging?

Also, the beasts gained somekind of charge after their slowing effect went off.

Just wanted to ask, that is this normal and is there any way to prevent these from happening?

[MellvarTank]

The beast gain a speed boost on Hardmode. Makes it incredibly difficult, while speed boosted they also do 300% more damage. It's all in the tankspot strat.

[Kazeyonoma]

but yes it's possible to be hit by a boiling blood tick and teh blood nova consecutively, it's important for healers to be on top of things, and ideally if you have a discipline priest to throw up a bubble on boiling blood targets.