MOMiTs Gone Wild!

Deathbringer Saurfang - Fourth Boss in ICC

HP

Enrage/ expected length of fight

estimated raid DPS, if applicable

What to expect:

This is a fairly technical fight that require a lot of precision from everyone. This is one of those fights where one little mistake truly can wipe the raid.

The idea behind the fight is to kill Saurfang before he gains too much Blood Power. He will gain blood power from a number of different sources (which I will expand on below), and when he reaches 100, he will  place a mark on a random raid member. This mark causes that raid member to take damage from any attack Saurfang makes on the tanks. If the raid member dies while the mark is applied to them, Saurfang is healed by 5%.

Saurfang will also Frenzy at 30%, attacking much more quickly, and putting a much larger strain on the healers trying to keep marked targets alive. This is essentially the burn phase, and the part of the fight to blow any cooldowns you have.

To complicate matters, throughout the fight Saurfang will summon 4 Bloodbeasts which need to be kited and killed. Anytime they deal melee damage, Saurfang gains blood power, so it is important to keep them away from melee and tanks. Also through the encounter, Saurfang will cast Boiling Blood on 3 random raid members which is a dot that transfers blood power every time it deals damage. He will also cast Blood Nova which is an AoE targetted on one player that will hit anyone within 12 yards. This transfers blood power for every person it hits.

Key Abilities:

• Boiling Blood - Places a DoT on the target that does damage and transfers blood power to Saurfang. 
• Blood Nova - Targets one player and hits anyone within 12 yards, Saurfang gains 1 blood power for every player damaged.
• Call of the Blood Beasts - Summons 4 Blood Beasts
• Mark of the Fallen Champion - Places a mark on the target that inflicts damage every time Saurfang does melee damage. If the target dies, it heals Saurfang for 5%. This persists through death.
• Rune of Blood - He will intermittently place a mark on the tank that allows him to gain blood power every time he hits that target, as well as healing himself for many time the damage done.

So What Do We Do?

Before this fight starts, we will have ranged DPS and healers spread out around the room (using /range 12). Space is limited enough that you will most likely have to stack up with a buddy, but never be in range of more than 1 other person. Tanks and melee will ignore the range rule, and for this most part, this is a tank and spank fight for them.

When Saurfang is engaged the raid gets a little while to just burn him down as much as possible. If you class has 2-3 minute cooldowns it is usually safe to use them right off the bat, as they should be back up for the burn phase. A little while in the first Boiling Blood will go out. This is just healed through. A little while after that the first blood beasts will be spawned right next to him... this is where it starts to get tricky.

The Blood Beasts start with an empty aggro table, so anything that generates aggro on them will get their attention. Because of this, it is vitally important that Tanks and Melee DPS are not using any sort of AoE ability when the beasts spawn. Divine Storm, DK Diseases, Consecration, Sweeping Strikes, and any other ability that hits more than just Saurfang need to be avoided at all costs. The most common cause of wipes on this boss is a Blood Beast getting sucked in to Melee and swinging away.

Once the beasts spawn ranged will begin targetting them in a pre-arranged order and burning them down while kiting if necessary. Any type of snare, stun, or root will work on them, so things like frost traps, earthbind totem, roots, chains of ice, etc. are all very helpful.

Once all the beasts are dead, Ranged DPS goes back to focusing on the boss until the next set are spawned, then they repeat the previous step. At some point, Saurfang will reach 100 Blood Power and will place a Mark of the Fallen Champion on a random raid member. This raid member will now take damage every time Saurfang deals melee damage, so heals need to be on their toes when these start going out. Generally we run light on healers on this fight, so anything beyond 4 marks at the frenzy becomes a very touchy ordeal.

At 30%, Saurfang will frenzy and we will pop heroism. Now is the time for DPS to burn all their cooldowns. At this point it becomes a race to see if we can kill him before any of the marked targets die. Be aware though, all of the tricky parts of the encounter still take place, Saurfang is just hitting fast and placing a lot more pressure on the healers.

DPS Specific Tips

• Melee, I don’t care how tempting it is, or how much it would help your DPS, no NOT use any AoE abilities if there is even a remote chance it will tag a blood beast.
• Ranged, make sure you understand your targeting assignments as far as the beasts go. Targeting the wrong one could be a bad idea.
• Keep an eye on the Blood Beast spawn timer and place any traps or totems accordingly.

Healer Specific Tips

• Be very careful when the Blood Beasts spawn. Your heals will immediately grab aggro on any untapped ones, so stay on your toes and be ready to move.
• The damage in this fight is generally very light until 2-3 marks go out, then it starts to get a little scary. Once Saurfang frenzies, look out!
• The Marks deal physical damage, so it will hit a lot harder on a mage than it will on a warrior.
• Prioritize your heals. Tanks of course are your first priority, Marked DPS are second, other healers are third, and anyone else is a distant fourth.

Tank Specific Tips

• As soon as you get the Rune of Blood, call for a taunt. The longer you are still tanking with that on, the more healing Saurfang gets.
• Be very careful about using AoE abilities near a Blood Beast spawn (I am looking at you pallies). Generally ranged DPS can pull a Blood Beast off of a Melee DPS, but if it is on you, it is pretty much stuck there.
• Save your CDs for the burn phase. Depending on the number of marks out there, your healers may be stretched very thin, and may be a tad cranky.

The Gunship Battle - Third "boss" in ICC

No enrage

No real chance of failure

2 Tanks, 3 or more healers

What to expect:

This is one of the more unique fights in ICC, as well as perhaps the easiest one. Essentially what happens is the raid is standing on one gunship, when an enemy gunship approaches. You will witness the least effective “evasive maneuvers” the world has ever seen, then battle will begin. The way to win the fight is to use the cannons on our ship to blow up the enemy ship before their rocketeers blow up ours.

This is slightly complicated by the enemies use of Battle Mages to channel a freeze on our cannons that take them out of action for as long as the mage is alive. The only way to kill the mage is to use your rocket pack (which you are generously provided free of cost by the goblin on our ship) to jump to the enemy ship and blast her down. Once the mage is dead, you can either immediately jump back to the “home” ship, or you can stay on the enemy ship and kill the rocketeers hanging out in the back.

While all of this is happening, a portal is opened on our ship and adds stream out of it. Generally they are just tanked in place and AoEd down.

Rinse and repeat until the fight is over. 

Abilities to look out for:

Battle Fury - Saurfang will gain a stacking buff every time he hits someone (hopefully just the tank). The longer the tank has to stay on the enemy ship, the higher the damage will stack.

So what do we do?

Roles on this fight are generally broken in to 5 categories: Tanks, Healers, Melee DPS, Ranged DPS, and Cannon people.

One tank will permanently stay on the home boat, tanking the adds that spawn from the portal overhead. Ranged DPS will AoE down these adds, then focus their attention on the Axe Throwers on the enemy ship (no need to jump across, your spells will reach).

The second tank will twiddle their thumbs until the first Battle Mage spawns and freezes our cannons. At this point the second tank will hop over to the enemy ship (calling it out in vent as they do) and begin tanking Saurfang. This allows the Melee DPS to jump over and deal with the Battle Mage (who is so intent on keeping the cannons frozen that she will not even fight back). Depending on how Saurfangs stacks look when the Mage is dead, melee then moves to the back of the ship to kill the rocketeers. Once those are all dead, the second tank will call out that they are jumping back to the home ship soon... this is melee’s cue to GTFO. You really do not want to be left alone on the enemy ship with a fully buffed Saurfang.

The fight will progress like this for 3-5 Battle Mages and then you win.

DPS Specific Tips

• If you are on the enemy ship and do not have time to run all the way across the deck to then jump to our ship, just throw yourself off the nearest edge. You will be ported right back to our ship.
• The adds that spawn on our ship have a tendency to Whirlwind, so let the ranged take care of them.

Healer Specific Tips

• This may be the most boring fight for you in all of ICC... position yourself near the edge of our ship so you can reach the tank on the enemy ship and start the game of who-can-snipe-what-heal-from-who.
• We usually run very light on healers here since damage is so low, so you may well find yourself on cannon duty

Tank Specific Tips

• There is no set number of stacks that you should be watching for on Saurfang, it is entirely up to you and your healers how long you feel comfortable being beaten on. Just be sure to give melee a heads up and a little time before you jump back home.
• Tank Saurfang at the near edge of the enemy ship, this way your healers  can reach you from the home ship and do not waste time jumping back and forth.

Cannon Tips

• Your job is to press “1” until your energy/mana/rage/heat (whatever you want to call it) bar reaches between 90-100... then press “2.”
• If you allow your heat to build past 100, your cannon will overheat and shutdown briefly... this is bad.
• DBM has timers for the Battle Mages that appear, but they are slightly off. When the timer reaches 0 you still have a couple seconds to build your stacks. The Battle Mage will not actually lock you out until she reaches the center of the enemy ship, so watch where she is, and get your heat as high as possible before hitting 2 at the last second.

Miscellaneous Notes

• The rocketeers will launch rockets at our ship that do damage to anyone in the area when they land. You can see where they will land because it is marked with a rune. As usual, try not to stand there (although the damage is so low that this is really just about best practices rather than a wipe-inducing mistake).

Lady Deathwhisper - 2nd boss in ICC

14 Million Mana + 13.5 Million HP

4-5 Minute fight

2 Tanks, 5-7 Healers

What to Expect

This is another two phase fight, but unlike Marrowgar each phase only occurs once. The key to this fight is add control and proper allocation of DPS. The objective of phase 1 is to DPS down Lady Deathwhisper’s mana shield, while keeping control of the adds that spawn each minute. Once the shield drops, phase 2 begins and the fight becomes a tank and spank.

Phase 1 Abilities

• Death and Decay - This is displayed as a giant green rune on the ground... Don’t stand in it, it hurts a lot!
• Mind Control - Every so often she will MC a random raid member... Be kind to your guildies and just CC them rather than killing them.
• Curse of Torpor - This is a nasty little curse that increases the cooldown of all abilities that you use (while affected by it) by 15 seconds, this includes abilities that have no CD. No matter what your roll, you will almost always be better waiting for this to be decursed than ignoring it.
• Shadowbolt - Her standard single target attack on a random raid member. It does decent damage, but can’t be stopped so just heal through it.
• Summon Aide - She will summon 7 adds every minute, each add does something a little different that I will explain later.

Phase 2 Abilities

• Death and Decay - Same as phase 1
• Mind Control - Same as phase 1
• Frostbolt Volley - An interruptible AoE that hits the entire raid for a sizable portion.
• Vengeful Shade - She will summon ghosts randomly that will close on a raid member and explode for A LOT of damage... stay away from them.
• Touch of Insignificance - A stacking debuff on the tanks that reduces threat generation by 20% per stack.

So What Do We Do?

This fight is pretty difficult to explain, and even more difficult to understand until you really see it. I will do my best, but don’t get discouraged if you feel completely lost your first couple times seeing it. 

When you enter Lady Deathwhisper’s (hence forth referred to as LD) room, you will notice that she is on a platform at the back of the room (where she will remain for the whole fight). On the right and left walls, you will notice 3 alcoves; these are where the adds spawn in phase 1. There is also a seventh add that will spawn on the staircase that you descended when entering her room.

The most important part of this fight takes place before the pull. This is when the raid leader will assign each member a specific side of the room. You are responsible for ensuring that the adds on your side die in a timely manner. Phase 1 starts when someone engages LD. The raid has about 5-10 seconds to stack whatever debuffs and DoTs on her before the first set of adds are spawned. Tanks should be waiting on their assigned sides to pick these adds up immediately.

The left side of the room will spawn 2 Fanatics and 1 Adherent, while the right side spawns 2 Adherents and 1 Fanatic. Because of this, the left side will often be slightly heavier on casters, and the right side slightly heavier on melee. The spawn on the stairs is random, and usually the MT will grab this.

The tricky part is that LD will intermittently reanimate an add, returning it to life and making it more powerful. I am not going to go in to all the nitty gritty about what happens here, there are sites listed below that can help with that. The important thing to know is that if it looks like a skeleton Melee needs to kill it ASAP, and if it looks like a zombie on steroids, the casters need to take care of it.

Your reward for successfully killing all the adds on your side is DPS time on the boss. The only way to move in to phase 2 is to DPS through LD’s 14 Million mana. It is important to not bring her in to phase 2 while adds are still alive, otherwise raid damage may become unhealable. 

Once you have entered phase 2, the fight becomes much more simple. Your only job is to kill the boss without dying. This is somewhat complicated by the Vengeful Shades that spawn and chase around random raid members. These guys hit like a truck, so if you see one coming for you, run away! The second trick is a Frostbolt Volley that LD casts. This is interruptible, and should be whenever possible. The last trick is a stacking debuff on the tanks (I know, what a concept!). This debuff reduces the amount of threat they are able to put out, so if you are DPS you need to be very careful about your threat levels here.

There you have it, an excessively long yet very simplified version of this fight. Once again, you almost certainly will need to see this fight a couple times before you get the hang of it... don’t be discouraged.

DPS Specific Tips

• Melee - DPS from behind the adds... the Fanatics have a Shadow Cleave that could very well kill you.
• Casters - Reanimated and Mutated Fanatics need to be kited by someone, if you do not want to be that someone, watch your threat. If you turn in to that someone, kite or die.
• If you get Curse of Torpor either stop DPS entirely until it is off you or use abilities that you generally don’t (fireblast, insect swarm, smite, etc.)
• DON’T kill mind controlled allies, CC them instead!

Healer Specific Tips

• Range on this fight can be a bit tricky... trust in your fellow healers and stick to healing your side of the room.
• In phase 2, if someone gets hit by a shade try to heal them to full ASAP. A poorly timed and uninterrupted Frost Volley will kill careless or unlucky DPS.

Tank Specific Tips

• Decide amongst yourselves who is going to handle the add from the stairs. Missing this add can often lead to early deaths.
• One tank needs to be ready to immediately pick up LD upon entering phase 2.
• In phase 2 make sure you keep an eye on each others debuff. At 4 stacks you will only be putting out 20% of your normal threat, and at 5 stacks you will not be generating threat at all.

Miscellaneous Notes

• Frost and Shadow resists can be helpful for this fight
• DPS may be able to purchase the coveted “Full-Time-On-Boss” position with their hard earned DKP. Speak to your raid leader before the fight if you are interested in this!

Lord Marrowgar - First Boss in ICC

23.7 Million HP

4-5 minute fight

2 Tanks, 5-7 Healers

What to Expect

This fight is one of the more straight forward fights in ICC, as you would expect from the first boss. The fight consists of two repeating phases, each one you will likely see 2-3 times before he is killed. 

Phase 1 Abilities

• Saber Lash - This is a hard hitting attack that splits its damage between the tank and up to 2 other targets near the tank.
• Bone Spike Graveyard - This will impale 3 raid members, locking them out of the fight until they are freed by killing the spike.
• Coldflame - This is a line of blue fire that extends from Marrowgar towards a targeted player, it is easily dodged.

Phase 2 Abilities

• Bonestorm - Marrowgar begins spinning and randomly bouncing around the raid. There is a raid-wide damage aura, as well as extra damage on those near him.
• Coldflame - The same as in Phase 1, but instead of casting 1 at a time, he casts 4

How we Handle This

The first thing you will notice about Marrowgar’s room upon entering it, is that it is huge. Don’t be fooled in to thinking that you need to use all that space. While it is important to stay spread out enough that Coldflame does not hit the entire raid at once, you also want to stay close enough that if you get Spiked others can free you quickly. 6 yards is plenty of spread here, and that is really just a general guideline.

When Marrowgar is engaged, he will immediately start Saber Lashing. This means two things:

1. Tanks will immediately be taking a lot of damage, especially if one is not in range of the first few Saber Lashes.
2. DPS needs to be careful about engaging Marrowgar before he is positioned. If you charge in too soon, you are at risk of eating a Saber Lash (which will almost certainly kill you).

Once Marrowgar is positioned and the fight is underway, phase 1 pretty much consists of dodging Coldflame, and killing spikes. The faster you free the spiked people, the more DPS gets poured in to Marrowgar and the faster he will die.

Eventually Marrowgar will shout “Bonestorm,” which signals the onset of phase 2. He will begin spinning (very much like a warrior Bladestorming) and will pick random raid members to attack. During this phase, the raid pretty much does what little DPS it can while dodging all the Coldflames, and trying to stay away from Marrowgar. Try not to get too far from everyone, because if you outrange your healers, you are on your own.

The most dangerous part of phase 2 is when it is ending. As soon as it is over, Marrowgar does a complete Aggro reset, and the tanks need to pick him up again. It is very important to know that he is taunt immune, so MDs and ToTs can be helpful here, but the most important thing to do is just stay out of his way. The tanks will be repositioning him to the center of the room, and just like the start of the fight, if you are in the way you risk getting Saber Lashed.

Once you have gotten through phase 2, the rest of the fight is just rinse and repeat.

DPS Specific Tips

• Don’t attack before Marrowgar is positioned (especially Melee!).
• A target macro for the Bone Spikes can be very helpful (/tar bone).
• Don’t stand in fire.

Healer Specific Tips

• Watch out for initial spike damage on the tanks (both starting the fight and coming out of phase 2).
• Spiked players will take a fair amount of damage and can’t move, so keep your eyes peeled for someone who gets spiked in Coldflame - they will die quick.
• Try to stay evenly spread around the room so that we have full coverage during phase 2.

Tank Specific Tips

• Stick together at all times - you do not want to eat too many Saber Lashes on your own.
• When starting the fight or coming out of Phase 2, be ready to pop a CD if you notice you are the only one taking the Lash, or if your healers are out of range for some reason.
• As phase 2 is coming to an end, you want to be right in Marrowgar’s face to be able to pick him up quickly. With your massive health pools, it is fine to eat the little bit of extra damage from Bonestorm.

Miscellaneous Notes

• The Coldflames in this fight do Frostfire damage. This means they take the lowest resist of either frost or fire, and use that to calculate damage done. For this reason we want both Frost and Fire resists out (either auras or totems).
• We sometimes use an alternate strategy for phase 1, where everyone stands inside Marrowgar’s hit box. This allows for very fast freeing of spiked people, and also causes Marrowgar to only cast Coldflame on the tanks (who can safely eat the damage). During this strat, phase 2 remains unchanged.