Some very helpful but not THAT obvious tips: (I'll assume you have a strategy for slowing/killing adds)

You need to keep damage down on all possible fronts, and the earlier you avoid it, the better: (The buffing of the boss will increase exponentially)

1. If you us hand of protection on the person getting the blood dot, it won't tick on him, and the boss won't get buffed. Divine Shield and Ice Block works as well, but obviously only if the right person gets the debuff.

2. Let the fist marked person die. It sound unethical and unorthodox, but this way you postpone the second mark significantly. This is of course only feasible if you CAN do without that person.

3. Disc priest. Every time his shield absorbs an ENTIRE hit, be it from dot or melee etc. The boss misses a buff. Pure win! :)

Btw, we are at the queen... Dunno if they downed her this week. (Eu)

One thing that helped our guild to beat his enrage by a hair is Wound Poison. It only affects healing he receives from his Rune of Blood, doesn't help with the Mark heals, but that still saves us 400-500k damage that needs to be done to take him down.

One thing that helped our guild to beat his enrage by a hair is Wound Poison. It only affects healing he receives from his Rune of Blood, doesn't help with the Mark heals, but that still saves us 400-500k damage per fight.

The absorb thing is no longer true, at least it wasn't last night. He seemed to be generating 5x the normal power, and absorbs were still generating power.

@curtisrutland

The fight is currently bugged (at least on 25 man, haven't done 10 man this week), saurfang is on heroic mode settings even when you've got the raid set to normal. It's already been reported countless times on the forums.

@curtis --

That might explain the rolling restarts this morning -- we'll find out how he is tonight when we had back in.

As for the answer to the post: we're stuck in the Plagueworks. We can mostly one-shot up to Festergut (though we sometimes still have trouble with Marrowgar, of all things). We've only killed Fester once so far. On Monday we had all night to down him and found our dps just a little short for some reason.

About Saurfang 10: we have a Disco priest and Holy Paladin healing. Between the Disco bubbles and Sacred Shield on Boiling Blood targets we can get him pretty easily with no Marks being cast at all. It also helps that our ranged dps have gotten really good at controlling the Beasts.

We were able to clear him last night (with heroic mode settings), but he was crazy difficult. We usually use the "let the first mark die" tactic, but last night we just kept everyone up and our healers went balls-to-the-wall, and burned him to hell. The keys to this fight are a) kiting the adds, so that they hit ABSOLUTELY NO ONE, b) mitigating Boiling Blood by range checking, and c) minimizing Mark by using shields, Ice Block, etc. A Disc Priest is a good idea here.

Tips that my guild uses for 10-man:

We tank the boss just by the skybreaker/orgrimms hammer (don't go too close to the ship though, he will reset if the adds go ontop of it). When the adds spawn, we will have the ranged dps that stands to the right take the left add, and the ones standing to the left take the right add. They will then cross each others paths, and the MT warrior can stun them with Shockwave. Even if you don't have a warrior to stun them, it's still a pretty good tactic, if you have something to slow the adds.

If you have a Elemental shaman/Moonkin/Fire mage in your raid, make sure that they haven't glyphed away their knockback. It's very useful to knock the adds back to give more time to kill them when they get close to you. A Moonkin should be able to do it every time. A mage MIGHT be able to, since they spawn every 30 seconds, and the CD is the same time. A shaman will be able to do it every other time, since the CD is 45 sec on thunderstorm.

All of the ranged should use some sort of slowing effect on their respective add. Shamans use Frost Shock, SPriests use mind flay, see if your arcane mage can spec slow, hunters lay out frost trap. If you use frost trap, the tactic where you make the adds cross each others path is really good to make sure that they both get slowed.

Make sure that the adds don't hit you. If the tanks are taking aggro on them when they spawn, see to it that they don't use aoe attacks when they spawn.

When the first Mark of the Fallen Champion drops, have your healing paladin (if there is one) put Beacon of Light on that person. On the second one, you can have your druid focus a lot of hots on that person.

2 Healers and 6 dps is really good to have on this boss. I am usually speccing Elemental just for Deathbringer, so that we can get him down faster, and get less marks of the fallen champion.

My guild somehow managed to one shot him last night, with the bug, with only 2 marks going out... which is scary because that's better than we usually do.
We don't use a holy pally or disc priest.

I'm not 100% sure about the "heroic" settings, considering his health was the same as it usually was. Perhaps a partial set of the settings, like the energy generation. I do realize that it is bugged though, first thing we did was see if everyone else had similar problems on the forums.

We still got him, but with many more marks than usual.

On ten man I think our best group (we have two) is working on Rotface now, but in 25 we're still hung up on Saurfang.

One thing is for sure, we will NOT be using the knockback method any more. We tried it last week using two mages with blastwave to blow the beasts over the wall. Yes it got rid of them, but it didn't despawn them, and somehow they were able to attack our tanks from under the platform.

It also caused some other weird glitches in the fight, like occasionally one member of the raid would suddenly be knocked over the edge to their death. That's how we found out the beasts were still attacking, the dead people saw them at the bottom of the tower.

Saurfang is easy. just split up your ranged dps among the adds. if you're heavy on melee, make sure the ranged get initial aggro, and that the melee watch theirs. they should be able to damage the beasts as well.

arcane mages don't really need to spec into slow, a PoM FFB will provide a comparable slowing effect.

Well that explains why it was such a PITA to heal last night...I heard they changed some parts of the encounter, but that was a huge difference in difficulty (going from having zero marks on the raid, to just barely eeking out with two marks and someone still alive).

Here's a tip for your Saurfang woes...

As of last week, a Boomkin plays a pivotal role in that fight. AFAIK it hasn't been hotfixed yet.