Shifting Perspectives: Druid healing strats for Icecrown Citadel, part 2
by Allison Robert 
Jan 19th 2010 at 4:00PM
Deathbringer Saurfang
Allie: This guy's a lot smaller than I expected.
Hunter officer: Don't worry, Allie, he gets bigger.
Half the raid (in unison): That's what she said!
General strategy: TankSpot has a very good guide here.
Placement: Specific placement doesn't matter too much as long as: a). you are at least 12 yards away from everyone else, because one of Saurfang's attacks (Blood Nova) can chain to nearby players, and: b). you can reach everyone in the raid (or almost everyone, assuming the people you can't reach have healer coverage). In other words, spread out, but make sure the heal team is scattered for even coverage of the raid.
Boiling Blood: A debuff cast on 1 (in 10-man) or 3 (in 25-man) players that does damage and gives Blood Power to Saurfang every 3 seconds. This isn't particularly tough to heal.
Blood Beasts: How your raid handles these (and Mark, below) will make or break the encounter, but it's your DPS who has to worry about them (usually by way of Frost Traps, Earthbind Totem, and knockbacks). However, you should be prepared in the event that one aggros you. This is a distinct possibility as you're likely to be running HoTs on Boiling Blood targets and the tanks. If all else fails and one's crawling your way, Entangling Roots will prevent Saurfang from gaining Blood Power off your unlucky hide. Because DPS will be focusing the little beasts down (and thus damaging them way beyond what Roots will hold), chain-cast Roots until it's dead.
Mark of the Fallen Champion: Saurfang will cast this upon a player after reaching 100 blood power, and the damage is intense; essentially, he's chaining a portion of his melee damage to a player who's not a tank. Plan on running full HoTs on the person in question, and even then, you're going to need some help at present levels of gear unless you can devote all of your attention to that one person.
However, it's very common for raids to deliberately allow the first Marked player to die, and DPS through the 5% heal that will subsequently occur to Saurfang. It's usually worth it, because Saurfang will cease gaining Blood Power from a Marked player who's died, and -- assuming a competent raid -- only gains Blood Power slowly from other sources. If you're going after I've Gone and Made a Mess, this is the way to do it. Sensible management of the Blood Beasts and good DPS will typically result in a kill before (or shortly after) the third Mark.
Whatever else you do, do not battle-rez anyone who dies to a Mark. They will only resurrect with the Mark still on them, almost invariably die to the next tick of damage (unless you've spent a major glyph slot on Glyph of Rebirth), and then heal Saurfang for another 5%. Assuming that your heal team is half-awake, no one in the raid is in any real danger of dying to anything else on this encounter, and you will not need either the DPS or healing output of the first Marked player. Subsequent Marked players will need massive heals, however, and the increasing difficulty of keeping up multiple Marked players becomes a sort of soft enrage on top of Saurfang's hard enrage at 8 minutes.
Is this a good fight for trees?: It's not so much a bad fight for trees as it's an amazing fight for Discipline priests. A good Disc priest can singlehandedly cripple Saurfang's ability to generate Blood Power through smart shielding. Otherwise, there's really not a lot of damage to worry about here. The encounter is really about your DPS' ability to handle the Blood Beasts while maintaining high raid DPS overall.
Every week, Shifting Perspectives treks across Azeroth in pursuit of truth, beauty, and insight concerning the druid class. Sometimes it finds the latter, or something good enough for government work. Whether you're a Bear, Cat, Moonkin, Tree, or stuck in caster form, we've got the skinny on druid changes in patch 3.3, a look at the disappearance of the bear tank, and thoughts on why you should be playing the class (or why not).Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, Features, Raiding, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Fletcher Jan 19th 2010 5:12PM
My druid is only a lowly level 15 and has been marooned in Auberdine for months, but on behalf of my rogue, and DPS in PUGs everywhere, I have to say; OH GOD NOT CATBEAR SPEC. I see far too many cat druids in heroics who've decided to list as tank to get faster queues despite being specced as cat, and they cannot tank for peanuts. It's painful for everyone.
Honestly I'd like to see the cat and bear roles split off into different specs entirely, but that'd mean four talent trees for druids and thus the chance of it occurring is approximately zero.
John Jan 19th 2010 5:22PM
Nice article!
I can't wait for the next installments for my resto tree friend on Rotface and Putricide
Sean Jan 19th 2010 5:26PM
My Resto Druid is pretty much completely Emblem geared now, so hopefully I'll be able to find a guild sometime soon and I can start raiding this. Maybe I'll have to go do ToC for a bit to get some other pieces first, but the sooner I get in a raiding guild the better. The Lich King will be coming out "soon".
Dragontamer Jan 19th 2010 6:03PM
I find it helpful to dps until the first mark drops. The healing isn't very intensive until then so a fewer number of healers are needed and the extra dps can help a group get ahead of the soft enrage.
Mehrik Jan 19th 2010 6:44PM
I do the same thing with my tree. For other ICC fights we like to have three healers in our ten-man, but for this one our discipline priest and pally healer have no trouble keeping up. I switch to ranged dps, meager as my numbers are. Hey, it's fun to do something different once in a while, too.
Carcus06 Jan 19th 2010 6:25PM
For 25 man Saurfang I let the ranged know that I will root the closest Blood Beast everytime they spawn (make sure that nothing is in melee range if you do this, as the beast will just attack anything that it can regardless of its aggro table). This gives the DPS time to get the others down without having to worry about kiting this one. It might be a bit overkill for your guild but it just makes it easier for everyone, and its not like they need my heals until
Chris M Jan 19th 2010 7:05PM
Allison, I love you. I love your column and I don't even have a druid.
Just fawning. :P
Saix Jan 19th 2010 7:16PM
"Seriously, what the hell." Made this all worth reading.
Miatela Jan 19th 2010 10:21PM
Normally I really enjoy reading posts concerning the druid class. They tend to be well written with just the correct sprinkle of humour in amongst the valuable and well explained points. That said, I am rather concerned with the weighting you seem to be applying towards Ring of Maddening Whispers.
Many impressionable players are likely to read your column and take advice and guidance from it and as such, many trees will end up needing or lusting after the Ring of Maddening Whisper because "WoW.com told me too". At this point it is worth pointing out just how abysmal a stat crit has become for Restoration Druids; previously it was worth stacking crit when the haste soft cap was (and I am using my 3am memory) approximately 364 haste, a figure easily obtainable with weapons and tier pieces, and when a druid was using 4 pieces of T9.
Now, in 3.3 the haste soft cap was changed to approximately 734 with Celestial Focus or upwards of 800 without 18 talent points in balance, a figure that is relatively difficult to obtain for the majority of restoration druids. As such, idolising an item that is relatively far poorer for trees does not set a strong example.
Secondly, with the better stats available on Tier 10 this will be an upgrade that all druids will fall into at some point, at this point their scalability of their staple spell with crit is totally removed and they have a ring that is of far less, especially with the additional haste scaling Glyph of Rapid Rejuvenation brings past the soft cap. Quicker rejuvenations should also mean, on average, more procs of the 4T10 set bonus - something that crit will in no way aid.
In short, why even mention an item that is total guff for a restoration druid?
Allison Robert Jan 19th 2010 11:35PM
"In short, why even mention an item that is total guff for a restoration druid?"
Because it's better than what I've got. :)
I'll be doing a post on Restoration gear in ICC before too long, and you're 100% right that +crit has been devalued (more than it already was) in the wake of the Gift of the Earthmother changes, etc. But an upgrade's an upgrade, and it's just meant to be a throwaway joke at the expense of both my terrible luck with loot and the relative lack of pieces that were initially available from ICC-25 anyway.
Miatela Jan 22nd 2010 12:21PM
Ahh, in such a light (and when I am not half asleep) the humour becomes far more apparent, apologies if my comment seemed overly harsh in any regards!
I look forward to your post on the new weighting towards haste and crit for trees.