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Even Deathbringers have fathers

Saurfang_-_25_medium

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As the Skybreaker made "port", TDC came face to face with the only remaining obstacle in Icecrown's Lower Citadel: Deathbringer Saurfang. Despite his initial discounting of dwarves (and their allies), Saurfang quickly learned to sing a different tune.

The Saurfang encounter fits the mold of many new encounters in WotLK, focusing on a soft enrage mechanic that limits the effective ability of a raid to down him by increasing his ability to deal damage over time. This is based on his ability, driven by blood power gained over the course of the fight, to mark individual raid members and gain a buff if they are kept alive. This makes for a very effective time and execution challenge for the raid.

The mechanics of the fight are challenging as well; Saurfang is tanked on his platform, with two tanks alternating in order to manage a debuff. Melee is arrayed around him, and allowed to go to town as long as they are careful about AoE/multiple target attacks. The reason for this is that periodically Saurfang spawns 5 blood beasts, control of which is the key component of the encounter. The blood beasts must be pulled and kited by ranged, since they do damage (and provide blood power to Saurfang) whenever they're near raid members. We set up a frost trap in the center of the room, and kited them back and forth through this as necessary, as well as using stun/snare/knockback effects to keep them at range. Once we mastered this process, as well as making quick decisions about whether or not to let a marked individual die, Saurfang was no match for the Dwarvish Smackdown we brought to bear on him (and oh, yeah, there were some night elves that helped...).

To top off the encounter, there was an excellent bit of lore, as Saurfang the Elder arrived to retrieve the corpse of his son, previously lost during the Battle of the Wrathgate. Well done Blizzard, this was a great end to the Lower Citadel, and whet our appetite for more. On to The PlagueWorks!

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