deathbringer-saurfang
Latest
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. Table of contents Composition General strategy Abilities Tank strategy DPS strategy Healing strategy Other resources
The Light and How to Swing It: Healing through heroic Deathbringer Saurfang
Every Sunday, Chase Christian of The Light and How to Swing It invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. This week, we discuss how to handle healing as holy paladin on the heroic Deathbringer Saurfang encounter in Icecrown Citadel. When we first meet him in Nagrand, his name is Saurfang the Younger. When he is found in an image projected by the brain of the old god Yogg-Saron, he is called a Turned Champion. When we see prophecy fulfilled in Icecrown Citadel, we learn that his father named him Dranosh, which means "heart of Draenor." When we finally confront him face to face, his name is only Deathbringer; he is no longer our ally or even his father's son, but the Lich King's most powerful death knight. The Deathbringer Saurfang encounter is one of the easier fights in the normal version of ICC, due to Saurfang's position in the first wing of the citadel. The heroic version, however, proves to be much more difficult than the three preceding bosses. Due to his item table containing our first shot at ilvl 264 or 277 tier tokens, he has been tuned with the strength necessary to guard such valuable loot. While a fight like Valithria may showcase how powerful holy paladin healing has become, Saurfang on heroic difficulty is an example of an encounter that is nearly impossible without an appropriate number of holy paladins to keep everyone alive.
In-Game Fixes for March 4th, 2010
Bornakk has announced a handful of in-game hot fixes on the official forums today. They're pretty much all Icecrown Citadel boss ability nerfs and tweaks, and should fixes a few annoyances with some battles, stretching from Marrowgar to Sindragosa. The full list is after the break.
Spiritual Guidance: Raiding Icecrown Citadel (Part 1), Page 2
The gunship encounter is unlike any other in Icecrown Citadel. Before the battle begins, be sure to talk to the goblin on your ship and pick up a rocket pack. Your main attack is the Cannon Blast (the "1" key), which does siege damage to the enemy ship and that ship's defenders, if you have good aim.
It's a trap! Traps are back in Icecrown Citadel
By now, those of you that have slowly progressed throughout the initial part of Icecrown have witnessed (or at least triggered) various traps. Some traps seem to show up after your group has cleared out a room or killed certain mobs or met some other condition like the ones before Lord Marrowgar. But wait, there are more of them! Dinaer at Forever a Noob demonstrates that there are more traps as you progress through the levels of Icecrown Citadel. Spirit alarm: Trip these to bring in the big skeletons. Great for reputation. There are four of these in the two chambers leading up to Lord Marrowgar. Mist trap: Not exactly a trap per se, but it can catch the unwitting raider off guard if they run into it. Either have a rogue disable it on the side, or activate the teleporter on the other side and beam in. You'll run into it after you've downed the Deathbringer and zone in behind him. Geist trap: You'll find these littered in the hallways of the Plagueworks. Have a tank behind the raid to intercept them as they appear. I wonder what other traps we'll see in the remaining parts of Icecrown. I can't remember the last instance that had traps on the scale of Icecrown.
Lichborne: Icecrown Citadel - Lower Spire loot for death knights
Welcome to Lichborne, where your host is still figuring out the perfect roleplay celebration macro for when he downs the Lich King -- when he's not writing about death knights, of course. With Icecrown Citadel now properly breached, hopefully even some of the less uber among us are making our way into the breach to say hello to the father of all death knights, the Lich King himself. Of course, as we start upon the final leg of the journey that started so long ago at Light's Hope Chapel, as we trudge ever closer to our destiny to the fight that will bring our story full circle, that may lead to our damnation or to a brighter new destiny, there's certainly a question that's on everyone's minds: What about the loot? It's a good question. Let's take a look at the loot from the first few bosses up in the citadel. Before we do, though, it's a good idea to take a quicker refresher course in why we choose what we choose:
Shifting Perspectives: Druid healing strats for Icecrown Citadel
Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we look at Grid and realize that the dumb buggers are dropping like flies again. Before I write anything else, I want to send a shout-out to Kalon, who is ending the influential feral theorycraft blog ThinkTank. Like many of you, I've been reading ThinkTank for a while and fell in love with both Kalon's analysis and the theorycrafting that he made understandable even to Luddites like myself. To this day I've been experimenting with an idea he suggested concerning Bear DPS (no, really) that I've been planning to devote a column towards for a while, and I now regret not doing it earlier. So, to my druidic colleague -- /hug and /salute. Kalon, you will be greatly missed. For strategy articles, I've gotten into the habit of trying to describe all four roles, and have arrived at the conclusion that it's more efficient to take matters one spec at a time. With all of the Icecrown raid content clocking in at a little more than a month old under the best of circumstances, I'm better off describing the roles I've done personally therein (tanking and healing). Because we've already covered Lord Marrowgar, we're going to take the rest of the bosses necessary for the Storming the Citadel achievement, and cover them from a restoration point of view.
Spiritual Guidance: Disciplined raid healing
Every Sunday Spiritual Guidance offers Holy and Discipline priests advice on how to wield the holy light and groove to the disco night. Your hostess Dawn Moore will provide the music. I decided to take a break from gems this week to discuss a style of priest healing that is becoming popular among raiders: discipline raid healing. Though the concepts behind it are extremely simple to understand and execute, this style of play seems to have slipped under the radar of many players despite its amazing potential. Tag along with me after the jump and I'll fill you in on the basics and benefits of disc raid healing. Holy priests, I'm talking to you, too.
The Light and How to Swing It: Looting Icecrown's lower spire
With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown. Sometimes, you just have that maddening compulsion to make your wish list of various things you want to acquire. I've got one on Amazon for a woodworking shop and another of things I want on WoW (which does happen to include a pony, Ghostcrawler). However, with the last of the loot being divvied up in these final days of Wrath, let's go through Icecrown Citadel and make a shopping list of gear we'd kill for.
Encrypted Text: Knowing your stats
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss how a few stats interact with various rogue specs. Have you ever had a problem finding a group as a rogue? My own rogue isn't immune to this issue, and I sometimes find myself without a raid group on a Saturday night. The rogue population has been steadily growing since its sharp decline right after the launch of Wrath, and that means increased competition for the coveted melee DPS raid slots. With the plentiful bounty of Death Knights and Ret Paladins vying for the three different two-hand weapons that drop from just the first 4 bosses of ICC10 and ICC25, it can be tough finding your place. However, with hard work and good performance, most raid leaders will see the value in bringing back quality DPS. To ensure that you're on the reinvite list, doing as much damage as possible will leave the most tangible evidence of your efforts (as well as being your overarching goal). Sometimes this means doing more with less, and using the gear you have to its highest potential before you're able to reap the benefits of the great 251/264 epics that you're working towards.
The Daily Quest: Icecrown, tunnelvision, and something more
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Tales of a Priest discusses tunnevlsion for healers, and how to prevent it with better mod placement. World of Matticus's Lodur brings is more PUG tales, this time detailing the Val'anyr curse. Gray Matter asks, was Chill of the Throne enough to keep WoW raiding under control until Cataclysm? Should it have impacted DPS, too? Forever a Noob keeps the great rogue advice coming. Deathbringer Saurfang is your next target. This is our last link of the day, but it's the most important. Vigilance, a new warrior blog, honors the memory of a fallen guildmate. Rest well, Revanx. A word to the author, from me personally, is that you guys are not alone. Hang in there. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
The Daily Quest: Mountain o' mounts
We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. OutDPS teaches you how to hunt Deathbringer Saurfang, and also has an episode of the Hunting Party Podcast you may have missed over the holiday. NoStockUI features an addon that every mount collector may be interested in. Oh gosh, whatever is a rogue to do with this bountiful mountain of Frost Emblems? Who will tell us their purpose!? Affliction warlocks and death knights, Killing 'em Slowly has a great enchantment guide for your raid gear. Click here to submit a link to TDQ
Further explanation for Icecrown's delayed gating
Most everyone was a bit perturbed when we discovered that it would be 28 whole days before the new wing of Icecrown opens up (though we've since learned it's just going to open whenever Blizzard flips the switch.) Even the explanation from Blizzard that only the first gate will be this long of a wait due to the holidays didn't calm everyone down. Raiders have been waiting a long time for this! We weathered Trial of the (Grand) Crusader for long enough, right? And this showdown has been a decade in the making! You can't just give us the first wing and cut us off like that. You're a tease of the worst sort, Blizzard! Personally, it wasn't until I noticed there was an in-game, story-based reason for this extra long delay that I came to accept it. At least, there's justification if you play Alliance. Admittedly, I don't know the Horde side of this. But regardless, if you've beaten Deathbringer Saurfang or read the linked post above, you might remember this line from Muradin: "I've brought in the best gnomes we've got to get those doors open." Now, you might be expecting a "teehee gnomes" joke out of me here, but no. This goes far deeper than that. If you stick around long enough to see the Alliance take command over the Deathbringer's Rise, you might notice that there's actually only one gnome that shows up. Yes, it's that determined grimace up above, wearing a stylish vest and wielding an oddly shaped frying pan with two dimensional fried eggs glued to it. That is, apparently, Muradin's best gnome. It is his only gnome. He only brought one. It is up to frying pan man to get us through that huge saronite door. I think the ol' dwarf is being optimistic when he says 28 days, which might be why the counter hasn't gone down since the day patch 3.3 launched.
Encrypted Text: Rogue tips for raiding Icecrown Citadel, part 1
Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Icecrown Citadel. With patch 3.3's release last week, we saw a brand new tier of raid content released. Our mission to assassinate Arthas while he sits upon his throne has reached its conclusion. After dealing with the immediate threat of Yogg-saron's corruption and proving ourselves in the Argent Tournament, we've been selected as the agents of the Lich King's demise. We haven't come this far to fail now! Before we can walk in and show Frostmourne and company what's up, we have to cut our teeth on Arthas' doorkeepers first. The first four bosses of Icecrown Citadel are now available to tackle, and provide some of the most interesting and innovative mechanics that we've seen in a boss fight yet. Considering that you'll be facing these same 4 bosses for the new few weeks, it provides a great opportunity to really learn the fights and capitalize on any tricks that will keep you alive. Read on for my analysis of the first wing of ICC from a rogue's perspective, with specific tips and tricks for assassins only!
First impressions: Icecrown Citadel raid and 5-mans
Patch 3.3 has been out for two days now, and we're starting to see lots of reactions to the various new encounters pour in. Drawing from bloggers' posts, forum threads, and the reactions of a random sampling of players I've pugged with (the new LFG system is great), this is a short gloss on what I'm seeing so far: Forge of Souls is the easiest of the new 5-mans. The most common gripe is that group members don't pay attention to their raid warnings and move in as necessary for Bronjahm, or stop DPS on Devourer of Souls if they get Mirrored Soul. Pit of Saron is pretty cool, though quite sad at the end (at least if you're Horde). The trash pulls full of casters are on the tough side if people aren't good about interrupting or moving out of Hellfire on heroic. Also, don't bank on getting Don't Look Up in a pug.
Patch 3.3 Icecrown Citadel raid boss information and resources
Patch 3.3 is out! With the release of Icecrown, WoW.com aims to help prepare you with the long journey through the Frozen Throne. In this post, you'll find general information about the various bosses along with the strategies to take them down. There are 13 bosses in Icecrown. The first four bosses in the Lower Spire will be accessible the moment the patch goes live. The rest of the instance will gradually open up later on. Certain encounters will have limited attempts, but you won't have to worry about them later on. Lastly, attunements are not required to enter Icecrown Citadel on normal mode.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Deathbringer Saurfang impressions
I hate this fight with a passion. I really hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate, hate it. Words cannot express the frustration. We're talking keyboard smashing levels here. With regards to the other bosses I've participated in up to this point, this is the only encounter so far where I felt absolutely helpless and at a loss as to what to do. With more time on the other encounters, I'm confident that we would've been able to get those ones down. But Saurfang? Not only did it feel like I was beating my head on a wall repeatedly, we weren't making much head way with the different tactics we were trying. It's like running up an escalator that's going down. Sure you feel like you're working and exerting effort, but you're not going anywhere fast. In an effort to lighten the tone of today's patch 3.3 PTR impressions, I will list some facts that we discovered about Saurfang. Just for fun, of course. %Gallery-76227%
