Sang Grail

Some aspects of the Saurfang fight are not very well documented. I spent time trying to research how he gains Blood Power and then compared the information to what I was seeing in the logs. Just as I thought I was figuring it out, I realized that the numbers were NOT adding up. So, I continued my quest for knowledge and finally found a couple of posts in the WOW forums that confirmed there were changes in Patch 3.3.2 that were not included in the patch notes.

Items to note:

• Damage absorbed from priest shields no longer prevents Saurfang from gaining Blood Power.
• Ticks from the Mark of the Fallen Champion no longer generates Blood Power.
• The amount of Blood Power gained from the different abilities has be updated. It is not specifically documented anywhere, but it looks like each ability provides 1 Blood Power in 10 man and possibly 2 in 25 man.
• There is a frenzy at 25% of Saurfang’s health. This isn’t a recent change, but something I had not personally understood. This may be the best time for heroism to prevent us from stalling. As his speed increases during the frenzy, the heals from Rune of Blood may increase and it will get harder to keep up with making progress on his health. The speed increase will also make it harder to keep the players with the marks alive as this damage will increase.

The following abilities generate Blood Power:

• Saurfang’s melee swings on a target (Tank) with the Rune of Blood debuff. This is controlled by having the tanks taunt off the tank currently inflicted with the debuff. While the priest shields will not control the Blood Power with this ability, the absorbs will still lessen the healing resulting from a successful hit.
• Blood Nova, which is cast randomly on a range player and will hit any other targets within 12 yards of the player. This can not be prevented; however, if we spread out more we can make it so only one person is hit per cast. NOTE: if there are less than 4 players at range, it will start to hit melee. This would be bad as it would likely hit all melee at once.
• Boiling Blood, which is cast randomly on any player and will tick five times on that player. This can not be controlled.
• Melee swing from the Blood Beasts. This is often controlled by kiting the mobs. Our general strategy is to kite one and burn the first one down quickly.

Continue reading see information specific to our recent logs and to see the link and quotes from the WOW forums.

Recent Saurfang Fights

Other items to note / think about based on our recent logs for this fight:

• In addition to the Blood Power gained when Saurfang hits a target (Tank) with the Rune of Blood debuff, Saurfang is healed for 10 times the damage of the hit. This equates to an average of 40K heals to the boss every time he hits someone with this debuff, which adds about another 1.5 - 2 seconds to the fight to account for the extra damage needed. Looking at our recent logs, we could have cut over a minute off our dps time if we eliminated all of these heals. NOTE: this may not be that simple to do, but it is still something to strive for.
• Looking at our current logs, the range were not standing 12 yards apart. Therefore, we should be able to cut down on over 20 additional Blood Power points during the course of the fight if we simply stand further apart.
• We should continue to dps the Blood Beasts down as fast as we can.
• More DPS will definitely make the fight faster and easier.
• We may want to save heroism for the final 25% (during frenzy)
• I am personally trying to decide if Discipline is still the best spec for me on this. I may be switching back to Holy for this fight.
• When we get a second mark, we may want to have the the two players stand closer together so that the shaman chain heal can hit both at once. This may be hard to do with the 12 yard rule. However, if we still have 4 players at range, they could simply stand up with the melee. Now that I think of it, the first mark, if ranged, may want to join the melee (assuming we still have 4 ranged) to avoid the Blood Nova’s that hit pretty hard.
• Each tick of Blood Power gives Saurfang and extra 1% damage. Therefore, healing is pretty easy when he’s low on Blood Power (it resets after it goes back to 0 after the first mark) and it gets progressively worse as it gets closer to 100. I think we that can use this to our advantage at the beginning to tone down the healing and save mana early during the fight. For example, we might want to have primarily just one healer healing the fight early on until it starts to ramp up. If the other healer has any non-mana based DPS they can join in until the extra healing is necessary. Hopefully with this approach, only one healer will be close to running out of mana in the end and innervate can be saved for this player. (just an idea).

WOW Forum Quotes

Click here to see the forum discussion.

Page 6 - Daelo - Blizzard Poster (02/03/2010 01:22:15 PM PST): “We did make some changes to the fight to make the “Just let people with Marks die” strategy not something you want to do, but it was not our intention to make the fight drastically more difficult. We’re currently looking over his abilities to see what’s happening. ”

Page 13 - Daelo - Blizzard Poster (02/03/2010 07:10:49 PM PST): “We’ve just deployed a hotfix that reduces Saurfang’s blood power gain from ability damage back to 3.3.0 values. There was also a minor visual range issue with Blood Nova that was fixed. ”

Page 15 - Daelo - Blizzard Poster (02/04/2010 04:59:31 PM PST): “Absorbs such as Power Word: Shield no longer prevent Blood Power from being gained when damage is dealt by Saurfang. Casting Power Word: Shield is not a bad thing to do as the ability will absorb the damage dealt. This was an intentional 3.3.2 change. We also removed the ability to knockback the Blood Beasts off the platform and the removed of Blood Power gain from Mark of the Fallen Champion damage. We unfortunately missed getting these changes into the patch notes. ”