So was looking into how to make Saurfang a little more healable, and what a lot of guilds are doing is the following:

"When the first mark comes, if that is a melee target (or a shadowpriest), we give it to the paladin. If it's a cloth like a mage or a lock, we give it to the dpriest. We have found a paladin is fine on a shadowpriest, because of the shadowform damage reduction. The druid, like the priest, is a flexible healer who can heal any mark target well. Paladins are less flexible, and I think you want their beacon to work on a higher hp target, like a melee class. Shamans are are better on melee targets. So the 'nasty' job goes to resto druids and disc priests, who get the fun of healing lower hp targets; this can be a bit of a rollercoaster if the mark gets boiling blood. At that moment, a paladin could bop the target with boiling blood, or if it's your target use pain suppression"

I read this strat from quite a few guilds using it. So rather than assigning marks as 1, 2, 3, etc... we could assign them based on low hp/armor targets. The reason a disc priest is nice on the low hp/armor despite their kinda low hps is due to DA and shields it makes their effective health quite a bit bigger. And I will focus completely on the clothies as well and only keep renews on the high hp targets till my mark comes out (though I dont think we even will get a 6th mark by the looks of it).

And boiling blood + mark is the real killer here, making it from very hard to heal to nearly or definitely unhealable. So I think bops should be back up (I know there aren't a lot of global cooldowns to spare, but the ret pallies could definitely be doing this), or a PS/GS, etc.

Also being sure to call for mana cooldowns when you need them will also help (mana tide, hymn, innervate especially). I know I'm not really having any mana issues spamming heals the entire time so I'm usually saving hymn till the end, if someone needs it early be sure to call for it, better than having someone die from going oom. Especially when there are 2-3 innervates going unused each attempt, no reason not to use them.

We were doing well on the mark rate though, our attempts were a good minute or even longer than a lot of the guilds that are downing him (with an extra 10%~ish percent left too.. probably another 30sec or 2min~ish as BL is wearing off), with only 5 marks too.

Thanks for a good post Janya ;p

Another thing that was an issue is dps active time. Our best attempts were ~5:07 long and if you look at parses from other guilds that have killed it, their fights are around 4:09. Our dps active time is like 85-90% and it should be 98%+

http://worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-c9onmi8atdrrzdjy/sum/damageDone/?s=9108&e=9415

Awesome. I spent a little time to go look through logs as well and yes, you both bring up good points. Lily's post about active dps time is a huge deal. 5 marks is already a big deal, but a 6th is just insane.

I'll try to not fail tonight D:

Also another thing to watch out for is his Blood Power rate.

When his blood power is at 50+ he's dealing considerably more dmg. Tanks should be timing their cooldowns with this. As well as people with marks, because a bad blood nova on a mark will hit for quite a bit as well with lots of blood power. I believe we had a couple mark deaths due to this in our attempts.

I think something like this might work well:

Tanks use their cooldowns at 60 or so blood power, but making sure to have their cooldowns come back up at the 30% enrage. Pop a cooldown each time he's at 60 or 70 (whatever makes it so your cooldown is just wearing off when he's at 100)... hopefully with two tanks and all their cooldowns up it'll be enough to have a cooldown every time he's high.. dunno if this was happening or not though (The times Nasi was getting almost one shotted I think the boss must have been at about 80-90 blood power to be hitting that hard).

And also after enrage the people with marks should be saving their cooldowns not just popping them right off the bat. That way we can time them with either a bad blood boil on them or when Saurfang is at 70ish to prevent a blood nova from killing them (I believe mark is a flat rate dmg, meaning its not increased by his blood power so thats not a problem, however blood nova is increased by his blood power and can hit for a considerable amount randomly... I imagine blood boil is also increased.) Either way mark targets should have all defensive cooldowns up when he enrages, because thats the part when all hell breaks loose.

And since most dps classes only have one CD its kinda RNG hoping a mark doesnt get blood nova, especially in his enrage because thats pretty much a guaranteed death... Blood boil is a little more healable because we can see in advanced and have healers put CD's on them though.

Hopefully in that case is when we utilize BoP?

Especially during < 30%, holy pally's can't afford the GCD for bop...

However, I believe that both ret's have the short BOP and should be doing it.
We called for it a LOT last week, even though there were lots of bops, many were after half the duration of Blood Boil which is too late.

Yea after 30% anyone who is healing a mark should do NOTHING else except heal the mark. If you take 1 second to even look around your mark will most likely be dead. (And besides everyone else is taken care of, all marks are assigned, tanks are covered by both holy paladins, and raid is covered by me)

Thats why its important that all healers going into enrage phase are 100% mana (or whatever mana you need to be at so you don't go oom, spamming heals constantly without using pots/cds). Do all of this before 30%.

After 30% ret pallies bops should be back up I would think? And they should definitely be used, though I think we should use them on people with marks + blood, and not waste them on people with just blood to get it off earlier. The only way a holy pally could bop is if they're bopping they're own target since the mark is physical.

Other cooldowns that should be used in 30% phase (preferably when Saurfang is at 60+ blood power): Divine Sacrifice (though I dont think the rets have this and might fuck up the holy's mark targets..), Aura master devo aura, Divine Hymn (think I'll be the only one to be able to spare this, or Blk as well, since it also increases healing done by 10%), BoPs, all personal cooldowns (iceblock, bubble, icebound, etc)... and probably missing some others as well.

Also its important to note that even if you dont have mark and you get blood boil in enrage phase, use your personal cooldowns as well. Even if it doesnt get rid of it like BoP, reducing the dmg will help out the very strained healers.



Edit: Also I just relized that the fight times and DPS active times are probably slightly skewed (takes about 20 seconds or so to wipe, with most people just sitting there not dpsing so it probably reflects in that as well?) Though I do agree even with that in consideration we are still a good minute+ behind guilds who kill this.

Unlike a lot of bosses in ICC this is definitely a DPS race and DPS should be doing everything to maximize dps, Pots included (I'm not sure and its completely a hunch but I would think that a lot of people are not potting?) and even double potting should be used by everyone.

Ya... pot and CD usage was kind of pathetic for a lot of people... I am going to make a post on it when I get home.

Ret Paladins need to add this to grid or track it in some way. Calling it out takes too much time; they need to be throwing out HoPs on their own.