Deathbringer Saurfang

Deathbringer Saurfang is the fourth boss in the Icecrown Citadel raid. He is described as being the Lich King's most powerful death knight. It's mainly a DPS race with an interesting twist (Blood Power).

After falling to Frostmourne at the Battle of Angrathar the Wrathgate, Dranosh Saurfang was raised in undeath by the Lich King and brought to Icecrown Citadel. Imbued with the power of the Scourge, the Deathbringer bars the way of any attackers trying to enter the Upper Spire.

Reset
This fight can be reset by running back on the gunship while it's still there - it despawns after some time.

Strategy
The fight has only one phase. Saurfang does hard enrage after 8 minutes. At 30% there's a soft enrage (Frenzy), DPS cooldowns are normally saved for that point (although some raids have success using them early, and thus delaying the first Mark as long as possible).

Blood Power
Saurfang starts with 0 Blood Power. He can accumulate up to 100 in his Energy bar (akin to death knights). He gains Blood Power whenever one of his special attacks hits or ticks. When Blood Power reaches 100, he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random raid member, resetting his Blood Power to 0.

Each active Mark increases the rate at which he gains Blood Power. For this reason, it's imperative to limit the amount of Blood Power he gains. Saurfang should be at 60% or lower before he casts the first Mark.

Tanking
Saurfang should be tanked right where he spawns, his melee damage is not high. Tanks must pay attention though that Saurfang doesn't gain Blood Power from. If a tank gets it, another tank must quickly taunt and take over. The debuff lasts 20 seconds.

Positioning
The melee should stand right on Saurfang. Ranged damage dealers can stand closer to the boss, while healers should be furthest away. Healers need to be well spread out, so that all raid members are in range of several healers.

All non-melee raid members must stay at least 12 yards away from each other to avoid activating, else Saurfang receives extra Blood Power.

Blood Beasts
Saurfang summons Blood Beasts every 35 seconds. In:
 * 10-player – two are summoned: one left, one right.
 * 25-player – five are summoned: one in front of him, two at his sides, and two behind (pentagon shape).

Saurfang gains Blood Power whenever a Blood Beast deals melee damage, thus they must be slowed and kited, and killed by ranged DPS. Since Blood Beasts are resistant to AoE it's pointless to use such abilities. Melee in particular should avoid using any multi-target abilities (such as Heart Strike, Seal of Command, Improved Revenge, Hammer of the Righteous, or Divine Storm) in order to avoid drawing aggro. The Blood Beasts must leave the platform ASAP (in hard mode they're also likely to one-shot melee).

Blood Beasts are immune to crowd-control. They are susceptible to root, snare, slow and stun. Be careful not to root them within melee range of anybody. Classes with a root, snare, or stun ability should use this macro whenever the Blood Beasts spawn: /tar Blood /cast (Name of ability) /tar Death This immediately uses the ability on the closest Blood Beast and then targets Saurfang.
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The Beasts normally aggro healers after some time, therefore healers should stand away from the boss. Alternately, healers can stand on the platform among the melee. Initially the Beasts can be pulled away by the DPS pretty easily, later on they move back towards the platform when they aggro a healer. At this point, it helps a lot if the healer can temporarily reduce aggro, such as a priest using Fade.

Ranged DPS should target the beast furthest away, and as soon as the beast gains aggro, switch away to another one. Ping-ponged between different ranged DPS prevents anyone from being hit in melee. Melee players (or the tank) can help by taunting Beasts that are far away from them. If a Beast gets close to its target, that target must run away and start kiting — do not let them hit anyone.

If the raid is too melee-heavy, it is possible to stunlock one Beast and kill it with melee, while the other beasts are kited by ranged.

Class-specific tactics
These abilities are particularly helpful for slowing down Blood Beasts:


 * Death Knight – Desecration(Unholy), Chains of Ice
 * Druid – Entangling Roots; Balance druids can also use Typhoon (without )
 * Hunter – Frost Trap (without Entrapment), which causes a Blood Beast to change targets and attacked the nearest player
 * Mage – Frost Nova. Slow(Arcane)
 * Paladin
 * Hammer of Justice – specced for Improved Hammer of Justice, a Protection-specced Paladin can use Hammer of Justice on one Blood Beast every time they spawn since the cooldown matches the spawn time.
 * Righteous Fury – Holy Paladins can stand in the back center and activate this to gain initial aggro on the Blood Beasts, allowing ranged DPS to pick them up as the Beasts move off of the platform.
 * Priest (Shadow) – Mind Flay. Priests can quickly cast Vampiric Touch and Shadow Word: Pain on a Beast as soon as it spawns, then begin flaying.
 * Rogue – Feint can greatly reduce the damage they take from Mark of the Fallen Champion, which is considered AoE damage.
 * Shaman
 * Thunderstorm without
 * Chain Lightning does not count as AoE versus Blood Beasts, so an elemental shaman can pull up to four of the beasts with one cast.
 * Earthbind Totem – with talents, this ability can root several beasts at once.
 * Warlock (Destruction) – Shadowfury, Conflagrate with Aftermath
 * Warrior
 * Piercing Howl dazes anything around the warrior.
 * Intercept stuns the targeted beast for 3 seconds. Can be used for each summon. Heroic Fury is also an option for Fury warriors to stun 2 beasts in a row.

Boiling Blood
Saurfang casts on random raid members. This can easily be healed through. Every tick grants Blood Power. Blessing of Protection removes it, though that should only be needed in Hard Mode on a player afflicted with.

Mark of the Fallen Champion
Whenever Saurfang gains 100 Blood Power, he casts on a random raid member. This debuff inflicts heavy damage (about 6,000 per second in 25 player) and yields a lot of Blood Power to the boss. When a player with a Mark dies, this heals Saurfang about 5%. The Mark persists through death—do not combat rez a player that dies from it.

A good healer can handle about two active Marks if focusing exclusively on the Mark targets. Two active Marks in 10 player usually lead to a wipe, in 25 players the limit is about 8 Marks.

It may be a viable tactic to let the Mark of the Fallen Champion victims die. It's much easier to deal an extra 5% damage to Saurfang than to heal the Mark victim and deal with the increased frequency of future Marks. There are diminishing returns however, as living DPS are required to take down the Blood Beasts.

Heroic Mode
The primary differences of Heroic mode are a shorter enrage timer (6 minutes), Blood Beasts catching 5 seconds after spawning, reducing the movement speed of the entire raid by 80% for 10 seconds, and Saurfang healing for 20% HP upon a mark of the fallen champion death. His blood power gain is also much faster compared to normal. Blood Beasts also hit hard enough to one shot any non tank.

On a first kill, prepare for at least two marks on 10-man and six marks on 25-man. Assign one dedicated healer per mark. If healers are struggling towards the end of the fight, they can stop healing one of the tanks because of the mechanics of.

Quotes

 * Intro as Alliance
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 * Deathbringer Saurfang immobilises Muradin and his guards.


 * Intro as Horde
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 * Aggro
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 * Casting Mark of the Fallen Champion
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 * Summoning Blood Beasts
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 * Killing a player
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 * Berserk
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 * Death
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 * Outro as Alliance
 * emote
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 * A Horde Zeppelin flies up to the rise
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 * The Zeppelin docks, and High Overlord Saurfang hops out, confronting the Alliance soldiers and Muradin
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 * A mage portal from Stormwind appears between the two and Varian Wrynn and Jaina Proudmoore emerge
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 * High Overlord Saurfang walks over to his son and kneels before his son's body.
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 * Higher Overlord Saurfang picks up the body of his son and walks over towards Varian
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 * Outro as Horde
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10-player Normal encounter
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 * Lost Society, text-in-video guide.
 * Tremor's Strategy, narrated video guide.

10-player Heroic encounter
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 * Lost Society, text-in-video guide.

25-player Normal encounter
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 * Tankspot, narrated guide.
 * Tofu Council, text-in-video guide.

25-player Heroic encounter
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 * Lost Society (Shattered Halls-Eu) 25-player heroic, text-in-video guide with audible vent
 * Learn2playwow, narrated guide.

Trivia

 * The Horde Intro is reminiscent of the famous Star Wars dialogue between Luke and Darth Vader, except that the roles of the evil father and the good son are reversed.
 * His berserk quote is reminiscent of the infamous "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." This passage from the Bhagavad Gita (Hindu scriptures), was most famously quoted by Robert Oppenheimer, designer of the nuclear bomb, when the bomb was detonated in its first successful test.
 * Deathbringer Saurfang is voiced by Chris Metzen, who voices Algalon the Observer, Nefarian, Varian, Thrall and Ragnaros.