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Deathbringer Saurfang is the final boss of The Lower Spire of Icecrown Citadel. This is the orc you once knew as Dranosh Saurfang. It turns out that the orc affectionately known as “Little Cleave” didn’t simply die at Wrathgate. Instead, while we weren’t looking, some ill-mannered Scourge grabbed the body of Dranosh Saurfang and spirited away. We probably assumed that his body had been burned to ash when the red dragons torched the place. Still, however it happened, you’ve now ascended to the opening of the Plagueworks, and now have to show down with Deathbringer Saurfang.

The Saurfang fight is pretty interesting, actually. There’s a lot of moving parts and abilities to try and monitor, but the actual flow of the fight isn’t too bad. From a tank’s perspective, you stand there and taunt every so often. From a healer’s perspective, you’re healing . . . and then healing some more. It’s the DPS players who really need to be on their game. There’s adds that show up which they have to kite and kill in short order, or really horrible things start happening to the raid.

Let’s take a look behind the cut and start talking about all the horrible things that could happen.

Like I said, the basic flow of the fight is pretty simple. You’ll want your tanks to stand up by the dais where Saurfang starts out. He’ll chat and blab for a little while, giving your raid ample time to stand there. And stand there. And stand there some more. Maybe knit a scarf or something while the two Saurfangs chat it out.

If you’ve got some Death Knights who’re jonesing to bust out an Army of the Dead at the opening, have them do it when Saurfang unleashes his Force Choke — using that a timing point, the Army ghouls will probably die before Blood Beasts start showing up. You definitely want them gone before the Blood Beasts, but we’ll explain why in a moment.

You want two tanks hanging out on opposite sides of Saurfang. This is because Saurfang will hit each tank with an ability called Rune of Blood. That ability will heal Saurfang every time he hits a tank who has that debuff, so it’s important that the two tanks rotate turns on the boss. The person without Rune of Blood should be the one getting hit by Saurfang. The other guy can continue doing DPS when he’s not the target of attacks.

If that’s all there were to this fight, then Deathbringer Saurfang would obviously be too simple. So, Saurfang has friends who occasionally come out to make your raid’s life miserable. These critters are called Blood Beasts, and they look like a priests’s Shadowfiend. The Blood Beasts summon immediately to Saurfang’s side, and will instantly start moving to the source of whatever aggro happens first. If your melee and tanks are good about controlling their area effect powers, the means the Blood Beasts will make a straight-line for your healers. (That’s where the “healers as bait” thing comes in during this fight.) Ranged DPS can pick them up along their route to healers for better kiting.

While it’s probably a no-brainer that you don’t want to let the Blood Beasts eat your healers, you can’t simply tank these adds. That’s because of Saurfang’s ability called Blood Link. Every time the Blood Beasts hit somebody (anybody), Saurfang gets a point of Blood Power. So, that’s bad in and of itself, since it will slowly grow the damage Saurfang is doing to your tanks. Most tanks can probably handle that damage, but there’s another problem.

If Saurfang reaches 100 energy (thanks to those Blood Beasts hitting people), he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion. Whoever is the target of Mark will take a chunk of physical damage based on the power of Saurfang’s melee attacks. That’s an immense amount of damage getting cleaved out into your raid, especially if Saurfang is stacking on the Blood Power. If the person afflicted by Mark of the Fallen Champion dies while under its effect, Saurfang is healed for 5% of his total health. As a note, simply dying doesn’t necessarily remove the Mark, so be careful how you hurl those battle rezzes around.

Therefore, it’s important for you control the Blood Beasts when they spawn. It’s not as easy as you might imagine, because they have a couple abilities to help them be a real threat. First, the Blood Beasts will use Scent of Blood, which will severely slow any melee that happens to be around the Beast at the time. Second, the Blood Beasts have fairly Resistant Skin, which minimizes how much damage they take from AE and diseases. I actually consider this ability a blessing in disguise. Reducing the amount of damage the Beasts take from area effect means that they’re not as likely to attack whoever had the misfortune to drop a Whirlwind at the time of summoning.

So, in order to control the Blood Beast, you’ll need to have ranged DPS characters draw their aggro. It’s best to root one of the Beasts with something like Entangling Roots so that your raid can focus on killing the uncontrolled Beast. Each Blood Beast has a limited number of hit points, so your raid should be able to burn them down fairly quickly. It’s mostly going to be a test of your raid’s ability to get all DPS on the Beasts immediately. Think of it as a reflex test, not an output test.

The last thing that’s important to this fight is Saurfang’s occasional raid attacks. He’ll drop Boiling Blood and Blood Nova out on random raid members as the encounter progresses. For this reason, you will need some raid healing, even if you manage to control the Blood Beasts with awesomely perfect precision. The Blood Nova splashes out to everyone around the afflicted raid member within 12 yards. That’s a little annoying since most proximity alarms are set to warn raiders that they’re too close within 10 yards, but I suspect most of your team will be able to eyeball those couple extra yards.

In summary, then, this is how the fight goes. Two tanks hold Saurfang up at the dais. They will taunt off one another so that Saurfang is never attacking the tank that has Rune of Blood. Blood Beasts will appear, which must be kited and controlled so that they never actually hit anyone. If the Blood Beasts do score melee attacks on someone, it could end up with a raid member getting the Mark of the Fallen Champion — that person will need to be healed through Saurfang’s melee attacks just like a tank. Blood Nova and Blood Boil will still do raid damage, so you’ll have to keep an eye out on it. When Saurfang gets to 25%, he starts a Frenzy, and you’ll have to really pour on the power. Rinse, repeat, control, and win.

Good luck hunting out there, folks.

1. Don’t run in a circle around the room

The tanks rupture in a random pattern, with the only constant being that a quadrant won’t flood twice before the other three flood once. Kiting counter clockwise around the room isn’t going to cut it. Clockwise, neither. You need to half kite; then, once a quadrant clears, bee line for it.

2. Don’t stop moving when kiting the big ooze

The big ooze moves slowly, but not so slowly you can RP walk away from it. You do not want to ever be in melee range of the big ooze, so don’t come to a halt letting someone catch up to you. The room is a circle, your raiders should be smart enough to run a straight line from where they were to where you will be, not try to follow you as you run around the room.

3. Don’t run through a tank spill unless your Hand of Freedom is off cooldown

The spill will eventually slow your movement speed by 50%. You don’t want to run through it unless HoF is available. Otherwise the ooze will significantly catch up to you.

4. Don’t run in front of the slime spray cone

When you see that slime spray emote or DBM warns you it’s coming, check your position and make sure you’re not directly in the line of fire.

5. Triage the dangers of the fight correctly

In terms of deadliness: big ooze melee > running big ooze through raid > running over the tank spill. When presented with the necessity to quickly get across the room and one of those three has to happen, always choose running over the spill if (like said above) your HoF is off cooldown. If not, then skirt the edge of the spill (yes, giving aoe damage to the raid closest to the big ooze, though it won’t hurt that much) until you are safe.

Rotface is a rough fight, fraught with perils galore. As the offtank, yours is the hardest job of the fight–all the responsibility of the raid’s success rests on your plated shoulders. And if you’re the MT, I hate you. Enjoy your sammich!

Lady Deathwhisper – Phase 1

* Mana Barrier – Absorbs all damage done to Lady Deathwhisper, draining her mana instead. This is the key ability to phase one. Once you’ve destroyed the Mana Barrier, you go into phase two.
* Shadow Bolt – Inflicts Shadow damage to the current target.
* Death and Decay – Inflicts Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies within the area of the spell. The spell lasts 10 seconds. You can tell it by a bubbling green area on the ground.
* Dominate Mind – Mind Controls 1 player, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. Lasts 12 seconds. (This is another call back to old Kel’Thuzad.) This effect only occurs in 25 man.
* Dark Empowerment – Empowers a random Adherent or Fanatic, causing them to deal area damage with spells. Also makes the target immune to interrupts.

Lady Deathwhisper – Phase 2
Many of the abilities are the same as in Phase 1, but get turned up a notch.

* Frostbolt – Inflicts Frost damage to the current target. Can be interrupted. This spell is a tank killer, and should absolutely be interrupted.
* Death and Decay – Inflicts Shadow damage every 1 second to enemies within the area of the spell. The entire spell lasts 10 seconds. Again, this is the bubbling green color on the ground. This is fire that you shouldn’t stand in.
* Dominate Mind – Mind Controls 3 players, increasing their damage by 200% and healing by 500%. Lasts 12 seconds. The effect is the same as in phase one, except now it can grab up to three players. It’s best to crowd control them, so that you don’t lose allies by killing them.
* Touch of Insignificance – Reduces the target’s threat generation by 20% per application. Stacks up to 5 times. This is the big gimmick of the second phase, which we’ll discuss in depth later. Suffice it to say that the Touch of Insignificance insures you’ll need two tanks.
* Summon Vengeful Shade – Summons a Vengeful Shade from the body of a dead Adherent or Fanatic. There are angry angry ghosts! If they catch up to their target, they explode in a Vengeful Blast!

Summary
Phase one of the Lady Deathwhisper fight is a practice in add management, and your raid’s ability to coordinate which type of DPS attacks which kind of add. There are two kinds of adds, who will spawn in separate sides of the room. You have Adherents and Fanatics. Burn them down and blow them up, as a general rule. In and of themselves, they don’t have many hitpoints, and they’ll die pretty quickly.

However, Lady Deatwhisper has inherited the ability to raise the Adherents and Fanatics from the dead. When that happens, they gain resistance to either magic or physical damage. While it’s technically 99% resistance, I think it’s easiest simply to say “Pull out, Wedge! There’s no good you can do back there!” There’s really not much damage you’re going to do them if you’re trying to damage the wrong type. Essentially, when the adds are reanimated from the dead, physical cannot effectively damage the Fanatics, and magic can not damage the Adherents. So your physical damage should be attacking the Adherants, and spell damage should be attacking the Fanatics. You’ll especially want to kite the Deformed Fanatics, since they’ll explode when they die.

If you can balance the damage to the two types of adds, and still keep damage on Lady Deathwhisper’s mana shield, you’ll be doing great. Keep blowing up that shield until you enter Phase Two.

Phase two is high paced, but a little easier to coordinate. First, make sure that you keep your interrupts handy, and knock down that Frostbolt. Don’t let her get it off. While most tanks in contemporary gear levels could live through it, they’d need to be fully topped off in health and ready to take the blow. And any other damage would pretty quickly kill them.

The mind control issue is a real one, especially if it snags your healers. However, if you’re rocking a fight against Lady Deathwhisper, you should already be familiar with this dynamic from Kel’Thuzad. If someone gets mind controlled, do not kill them. Use some form of crowd control to keep the enslaved person from wrecking your raid. The effect only lasts 12 seconds, so you should be able to handle it.

Lastly, Vengeful Shades will continually spawn from the dead bodies of the Adherents and the Fanatics. Simply run away from them. It might help to have a raid spotter keep an eye out for the ghosts, and shout out warning when they get near someone.

This fight will feel intimidating, but it’s a coordination check. Once you get the dance steps down, you shouldn’t have much trouble. Good hunting!

via HTFTMFW

Here’s a quick rundown of the first four encounters of ICC.  Keep in mind that:

a) We’ve now cleared all 4 of them, but are still figuring out some things.

b) This is not a comprehensive rundown, just a quick overview.

c)  Good luck.  We’re all counting on you.

Lord Marrowgar

This dude is big, has four heads and doesn’t afraid of anything.  He has two distinct phases.  During the first phase, the tanks will need to stack on each other to share the damage of Saber Lash. He will perform this after 10 seconds of being engaged (or 10 secs after P2 ends).  He has a huge hit box, so melee needs to be sure they are well behind him.  During P1 he will cast Bonespike Graveyard.  Everyone needs to make sure they stay spread out; ranged dps must switch to the spike and burn it down.  Throughout both phases, Marrowgar will cast Coldflame.  It is of the utmost importance to stop what you are doing and dodge these.  Even in P2, avoiding the Coldflames is more important then worrying about Bone Storm.

Speaking of which, P2 occurs every 30 seconds and consists of Marrowgar going about the room, willy-nilly, Bone Storming away.  This is an AoE attack, so any talents or abilities that mitigate damage from AoEs will work here.  Try to avoid him if you can, but really focus on staying out of the Coldflames he’ll be throwing around randomly.  After P2 is over, he will reset aggro, so a hunter’s misdirect is king.  Otherwise, dps needs to wait for the tanks to get him into position and grab a nice lead on aggro.  A rogue’s Tricks of the Trade can be dangerous as it just might result in them being the victim of a Saber Lash.

Lady Deathwhisper

There are also two phases to this fight, though they don’t rinse and repeat like Marrowgar.  In the first phase, Lady Deathwhisper will have a Mana Barrier up which will need to be burned through.  During this phase she has no aggro table and will remain stationary.  Once the Mana Barrier is down, she will become tankable and will need to be picked up by one of the tanks.  The other tank must be ready to pick her up as she will placing Touch of Insignificance on her target.   We normally swap at 3 stacks.  At this point in the fight, everyone will be on Deathwhisper, interrupting her Frostbolts, staying out of Death and Decay and avoiding the the Vengeful Shades that she summons (they do Vengeful Blast when in melee range).  Sounds easy, right?  Not so much, because P1 requires one of the most difficult things to ask for in an encounter:  coordinated dps.

Throughout P1, LD will be summoning 3 adds at a time consisting of Cult Adherents and Cult Fanatics.  When spawning from the left side, there will be two Fanatics and one Adherent.  From the right side it will be two Adherents and one Fanatic.  All physical dps must focus on Cult Adherents (the casters) and all magical dps on the Fanatics.  Sometimes when near death, the Cultist will cast Dark Martyrdom.  This will cause them to explode and turn into skeletons which will be rezzed by LD moments after.  The reanimated version will become 99% immune to physical or magical damage (fanatics and adherents, respectively), so it’s important that each type of dps stay focused on their targets.  Another thing that can happen to the Cultists is they may get empowered by LD.  She will call it out when she is doing so.  The Adherents become Empowered Adherents (looks like shadowform) and gain the ability to cast Shroud of the Occult and Deathchill Blast.  Physical dps must focus fire them immediately.  Shroud of the Occult will cause them to absorb your damage, but just keeping wailing away at them and you’ll burn through it.  The Fanatics will be turned into Transformed Fanatics (looks like a mutant).  These guys must be kited by a tank and/or hunter and burned down by magical dps.  Mages can spellsteal Vampiric Might from them as well.

Throughout this, those that can decurse should be on a lookout for Curse of Torpor, which is cast by the Adherents, as it can really fuck up just about anyones rotation.

Gunship Battle

This next fight is very different from any other encounter.  To be honest, it is not difficult at all and we would have downed it on our second attempt if I wasn’t so clumsy and hadn’t fallen off the boat to my doom.  Basically, this fight involves the raid to split into two teams:  attacking and defending.  Each team needs a tank and a healer.  Any melee should be on the attacking team.  The fight will be broken up into two repeating phases: we’ll call it the bombardment phase and the lockdown phase.

Before the battle begins, everyone will receive a rocketpack which fits in your shirt socket.  Feel free to take a few minutes to play around with them.  Be careful to not rocket yourself off the edge of the boat or get yourself stuck in the smokestacks.

Defending Team

During the bombardment phase, 2 of you will man the guns.  The guns have two abilities.  The first one does some minor damage and generates 6 to 10 “heat.”  The second button cause massive damage based of the amount of “heat” generated.  If your gun reaches 100 heat it will lock up.  So basically, you spam “1? until you are at or over 90 “heat” then hit “2.”  That’s about it.  Once enough damage is done to the other gunship, an ally mage will freeze the guns and start the lockdown phase.  You’ll here the Muradin Bronzebeard call for the mage to freeze the cannons.

Throughout the fight,  you will be assaulted by adds boarding your boat via a portal (imo would have been cooler if they had jetpacks, too).  The defending tank should tank these away from everyone else as they do a nasty whirlwind.  They will also be placing a healing debuff on the tank.  One Major Note: The longer any add is alive, the more “experienced” they become and the more damage they do, so this creates a sort of kill order for all mobs on either boat.

Attacking Team

The attacking team will wait until the lockdown phase begins before boarding the ally ship.  The tank will want to go over first and leave last as s/he will be picking up Muradin; but dps shouldn’t bother with him.  Muradin will be stacking a buff on himself with each hit which will increase the damage he does, therefore a high avoidance tank is suggested.  All the dps should be on the mage.  Once the mage is dead, everyone GTFO.

During the bombardment phase, any range dps can take down the rifleman while they wait for the lockdown phase to begin.

Healers can heal the attacking team from their home ship if they stand near the edge, but they should be wary of the rockets shot by the (duh) rocketeers.  There will be a circle on the deck for where rockets are going to land.  The attacking team tank should drag Muradin close to the edge, just be aware of your fellow teammates as he could cleave them.

Deathbringer Saurfang

This is a fight where everyone must pay attention to their specific job.  The main gimmick of this encounter is the Blood Power that Deathbringer Saurfang will be stacking via Blood Link.  The stacks will appear as a Pink Runic Power/Rage/Mana/Energy bar (I think you get the point . . .).  It is crucial that all range find a position that is in range of DS but not closer than 12 yards to anyone else.  You’ll also want to set it up so that you have people that can slow movement on either side.  When we downed him we had Holden and Kwyj on the outsides of our setup so they could each cast slow a Blood Beast (more on that later).  The tanks will tank DS at the top of his landing with DS’s back to the raid.  Melee will stay on DS the entire time.  Range dps will spread out as far back away from DS as possible with the healers somewhere between them and the tanks, but once again not closer than 12 yards from anyone else.  Throughout the fight, whichever tank has threat will gain the Rune of Blood debuff.  It is imperative that the other tank taunts immediately as DS will heal himself with each hit on a tank afflcited with Rune of Blood.

Keep in mind that every ability DS uses will cause his Blood Power to stack.  You’ll see a red balls floating from people hit to DS with each stack.  When he hits 100 stacks, he will cast Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random raid member.  Survival cds must be used on those affected as well as massive heals until DS is dead.  Once Mark of the Fallen Champion has been cast, DS’s Blood Power will reset and he’ll return to normal size and strength.  If the marked person dies, DS will be healed, so that ain’t good.  We had a glitch occur after a wipe that caused Brewer to still have the mark when he rezzed.  Disregarding Holden’s suggestion the Brewer commit seppuku, we attempted to try him with the thought that it might reset when the fight started, but alas it did not and we wiped.  Live and learn . . .

Every so often he will use Call Blood Beast.  Because each melee hit the get off gives DS Blood Power, these bastards must be kited and killed immediately by the range dps.  Tanks will need to watch their AoE threat when these jerks spawn as having one of these nomming on your leg starts to rack up  the Blood Power. The idea is to have one person on each side aggro them and pull them back while everyone chains whatever slows and snares they might have.  If you have one of these baddies getting into range of you it is crucial to stop what you are doing and move.  Once they are down you can go back to your position.  They cannot be AoE’d due to Resistant Skin, which doesn’t matter much for 10 man as there are only 2 of them.

DS will also cast Boiling Blood, which should be just healed through, and Blood Nova which is the whole reason everyone needs to stay spread out.  At 25%, he will go into a Frenzy.  This is where things get interesting.  At this point it is a straight up dps race as you’ll have at the very least one person with Mark of the Fallen Champion and DS will be stacking Blood Power rather quickly.  Whichever tank isn’t holding aggro at the moment should be staring at the other tanks portrait, ready to taunt the second that Rune of Blood is applied.   The Blood Beast will continue to spawn and must be handled accordingly.