Sang Grail

Last week I posted some information on Saurfang that helped explain the encounter and what we needed to do to manage the healing and runic power in order to defeat him more easily.

While we have downed him several times, I think I have just found a piece of information that may make him really easy for us in the future.

We had previously identified the two areas where we could impact the fight most (other than the obvious: DPS a lot and heal a lot):

• Rune of Blood - make sure the tanks switch as soon as this debuff is cast on the tank. This reduces the amount of healing on Saurfang and reduces the Blood Power gained from melee swings on the tank with this debuff.
• Blood Beasts - kill them quickly or kite them to reduce the number of times they hit a player, which generate Blood Power.

In our last run, our tanks worked hard at switching as soon as Rune of Blood was cast. We ran into a couple of cases where the taunts were missing on some of our failed attempts. However, on our successful kill, we cut the number of heals in half and the fight went very smoothly.

And now to unveil the new information that will make this fight a piece of cake…

The exciting new information (new for me…I’m a little slow) is that several classes have effects that reduce healing that can be utilized on this fight:

• Mortal Strike - Warrior
• Wound Poison IV - Rogue
• Aimed Shot - Hunter
• Improved Mind Blast (Mind Trauma) - Shadow Priest talent

Let’s see how the numbers work out using our last 2 Saurfang fights as an example.

Attempt #3 (6 min 49 sec):
Saurfang’s health = approx 9 million
Heals from Rune of blood = 31 * 45K = 1.4 Million
Heals from Mark (due to death) = 439,000

Attempt #4 - Success! (6 min 1 sec):
Saurfang’s health = approx 9 million
Heals from Rune of blood = 17 * 50K = 850,000

Attempt #4 - What could have been:
Saurfang’s health = approx 9 million
Heals from Rune of blood = 17 * 50K * 50% = 425,000

This illustrates a couple of things:
1. DPS kills the boss much faster if his healing is reduced (success was 48 seconds faster than previous defeat).
2. We have a better chance to keep the person with the mark alive if we get the boss down faster.
3. If we were able to reduce his healing by 50%, we could have downed him another 14 seconds faster (assuming 30K DPS).
4. Healers have a much better chance of not running out of mana if we can shorten the fight.

So, let’s keep up the great work and see if we can blow him away even faster next time!

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.
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