WoW.com's Guide to Deathbringer Saurfang
Saurfang is (more or less) a single-phase fight with only a couple of twists. Since Saurfang is a death knight, the encounter is flavored with lots of "close to death knight" abilities. One of these abilities are blood points. The more that Saurfang succeeds at certain abilities, the more he gains blood points. When he has 100 blood points, he gets to do special tricks. We'll go into more detail, but this introduction is a high-level overview.
The other thing to keep an eye out for are Blood Beasts. These adds spawn periodically through the fight. They don't hit hard, really. However, each time they do manage to land a blow, Saurfang gets blood points. This is the fastest way for Saurfang to ramp up from "relatively weaksauce batting average" to "hits like a tanker truck on jet fuel." In order to handle Blood Beasts, you need to ranged kite them and focus-fire kill them as quickly as possible.
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Composition
You need two tanks and four to six healers in 25-man, while you will need two tanks and two or three healers in 10-man. The advanced bubbling of a discipline priest is super helpful in this fight. The rule of thumb, though, is two tanks.
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General strategy
Your two tanks will stand opposite one another, with Saurfang in the center. This is so that they have a little easier time coordinating. There's no mechanical reason they can't stand on top of each other. This is how the fight goes.
Everyone who is not melee or tank should be spread out (usually in a roughly horseshoe shape) so that they are 12 yards from one another, nullifying the area effect of Blood Nova. This will also allow your ranged DPS to more easily kite Blood Beasts.
When the fight starts, the first tank will pick up Saurfang. When the first tank is afflicted by Rune of Blood, the second tank should taunt Saurfang. When the second tank then gets his Rune of Blood, the first tank should taunt Saurfang back, since his own Rune will have dropped. And so on. That's it. That's what the tanks do here.
Saurfang will occasionally summon Blood Beasts. These mobs are nearly immune to area of effect damage, so you must single-target kill them. If a Blood Beast hits someone, Saurfang gains Blood Power. (He also gets blood points if he hits people himself, but there's not really any way to stop that.) When Saurfang hits 100 blood points, someone becomes the unlucky target of Mark of the Fallen Champion. Therefore, someone must kite the Blood Beasts until they die, so as not to give Saurfang Blood points.
Saurfang will gain Frenzy at 30%, which makes it a good time to use Heroism.
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Abilities
Deathbringer Saurfang
Blood Link Provides Saurfang Blood Power. He also gains 1% damage for every blood point he possesses.
Mark of the Fallen Champion The recipient of Mark of the Fallen Champion takes damage from the same attacks landing on the tank. Additionally, if the recipient dies, Saurfang heals 5% of his life. Mark is cast when Saurfang has 100 blood points.
Boiling Blood A DoT placed on a random target, doing damage every 3 seconds for 24 seconds. Each tick is worth 5,000 physical damage in all modes, but will be placed on three targets in 25-man modes.
Blood Nova A targetted nuke that hits a random player, doing damage to that player and everyone within 12 yards. Blood Nova does around 8,000 physical damage in 10-man normal and heroic and 10,000 in 25-man modes.
Rune of Blood A debuff cast on the person with the highest threat on Saurfang. If Saurfang hits the person with the debuff, Saurfang deals damage to the target and heals for 10 times that amount. The damage dealt is around 6,000 in 10-man and around 10,000 in 25-man (both normal and heroic).
Summon Blood Beast Saurfang summons two Blood Beasts in 10-man modes and five Blood Beasts in 25-man modes. Blood Beasts have Resilient Skin and gain the Scent of Blood in heroic mode.
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Tank strategy
There's two of you on Saurfang. If the other tank has Rune of Blood, taunt the boss off of him. If you have Rune of Blood, encourage the other tank to taunt off of you. Other than that, try not to hit the Blood Beasts as they head toward the DPS.
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DPS strategy
Stay 12 yards away from everyone else, if you can at all humanly manage it.
You'll have two possible jobs when fighting Saurfang. The first one is "blow up the boss." If your only role is to raw DPS, then your kill order is Blood Beast, then boss. Most raids let melee stay on Saurfang, though, since you don't want the Blood Beasts actually hitting people.
If your job is to control the Blood Beasts, there are two things you could be doing. First, you may be snaring the Blood Beasts, slowing them down to give their kiters more time to react. Boomkin with roots do an especially good job at this role. Second, if you're kiting the Blood Beast, your job is to not get hit. Only hit the mob hard enough to keep it from losing aggro, and then run the hell away from it. Scent of Blood makes kiting the Blood Beasts darn near impossible in heroic mode, however, so really your best bet is to have all of your DPS focus down and kill the Blood Beasts right away.
Your raid's DPS should be sufficiently banging, however, that you won't have to kite for long.
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Healer strategy
Saurfang seems to be a relatively straightforward healing fight. However, bubbles (such as Power Word: Shield) are extremely helpful because they keep Saurfang from generating so much blood power. It is almost impossible to do heroic Saurfang without at least a few Marks of the Fallen Champion, so have pre-assigned healers ready to babysit those affected by the Mark.
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Other resources
Tankspot's written guide to Deathbringer Saurfang
The Light and How to Swing It's guide to holy paladin healing heroic Saurfang
Druid healing strats for Saurfang from Shifting Perspectives
Rogue tips for Saurfang from Encrypted Text
