Blood Beast Control on Saurfang 25H
Hello everyone. Anafielle takes over the blog yet again, inflicting yet another novel of a post upon Rhidach’s unsuspecting readers! Ha ha! The ursurper tank strikes again! So let’s talk about Saurfang 25H, a fight that’s been very much on my mind lately, even though Enveloping Shadows has supposedly had it on farm for weeks.
Flashback to the First Kill: July 27th
Our first Hard Mode Saurfang kill occured about a month ago, when Rhidach was gone, an odd week when I found myself main tanking a raid I was still getting to know. Without Rhidach there, I was hoping to very quietly main tank while someone else Raid Led – after all, the main tank doesn’t have to be the raid leader, right? Yet I reluctantly found myself in the driver’s seat. Saurfang was, at that time, progression. I had taught two separate 10 mans how to do this fight on Heroic, so I was without a doubt the resident expert. I also have more than my fair share of “Well, if no one else is going to do it, I sure as hell will” in my personality.
So when we got to Saurfang, I took the lead. We killed him, and it was a point of pride for me that we progressed without Rhi. Many gloating messages and kill screenshots were text messaged to him that night. I do so enjoy misusing peoples’ phone numbers.
Rhidach eventually got his revenge. Somehow Saurfang has remained my job regardless of whether Rhidach is there. My illustrious cotank leads the entire rest of the raid, but when we get to Saurfang, he just waits for me to step up. I envision him sitting back and relaxing when we get to that 4th boss, cracking a beer and calling for his girlfriend to bring him a sandwitch while he lets his overworked and underpaid offtank do all the work for a moment.
I guess part of raid leading is delegating, and Saurfang gets delegated to me! Well, I’m not complaining. Much.
Blood Beast Blues
We’ve killed Saurfang every week since that first kill without too much trouble. So, technically, he’s on “farm.”
However, every kill is messy – and I mean 6 or 7 marks messy. We’ve even wiped a few times. This is the least “farm” fight of any of our farm fights, and that includes more recent kills.
This is totally unacceptable to the relentless perfectionist in me. Beasts are not being CC’d enough and they are not dying quickly enough – leading to dead ranged and thus Blood Power, or ranged who have to kite towards other people, which leads to Blood Nova, which leads to Blood Power.
So, I sat down this week to overhaul my strategy. This meant pulling out my Raid Leading notebook (yes, I keep a notebook next to my desk) and taking a good look at my list of Blood Beast Control Methods – a list of stuns, slows, snares, immobilizations, and general tactics to keep those beasts away from the ranged.
Blood Beast Control: A List
If something on this list is wrong, for god’s sake, comment and let me know. I don’t have every single stun, snare, slow, or tactic for this fight memorized. A great deal of thanks goes to my twitter feed for helping me out with tactics I didn’t know of & clarifying things for me. The idea is to build a useful list for everyone, and here’s my start. I’ll edit as people comment.
Knockbacks
- Boomkin: Typhoon
- Ele Shaman: Thunderstorm, if de-glyphed (every other spawn)
- Fire Mage: Blast Wave, if specced
Slows
- Mage: Slow, if specced (single target)
- Shadow Priest: Mind Flay (single target)
- Shaman: Frost Shock (single target)
- Hunter: Concussive Shot (single target)
- Frost DK: Chillblains, if specced (AoE)
- Hunter: Frost Trap (AoE)
- Shaman: Earthbind Totem (AoE; can be specced to immobilize)
- Fury Warrior: Piercing Howl, if specced (AoE)
Stuns / Ways to Immobilize
- Desto Lock: Shadowfury (AoE)
- Prot Warrior: Shockwave (AoE)
- Prot Warrior: Concussion Blow
- Paladin: Hammer of Justice (every other spawn)
- DK: Chains of Ice
- Fire Mage: Dragon’s Breath (AoE)
- Druid: Roots
- Frost Mage: Frost Nova (AoE)
- Tailoring Nets
Random Other Stuff
- Melee can taunt beasts back towards them.
- Hunters on two sides can trade Distracting Shot.
- Rogues can stick a crippling poison on a weapon, trade it in and Fan of Knives.
- Warriors, Feral Druids and Demo Locks with Felguards can do a difficult-to-pull-off intercept-type stun.
Our Strategy
In general, I like to assign 1-2 knockbacks per spawn, some way to AE slow them all (plus as many single target slows as I’ve got), and lots of stuns to keep them immobilized. A new tip I’ve learned from Matticus: Ranged DPS on the right side should prioritize the left beasts, and vice-versa, so the beasts have a little bit further to run.
I could not imagine doing this without a boomkin – preferably, more than one boomkin – for Typhoon. Ele shammies usually glyph out of Thunderstorm’s knockback; they should reglyph for this fight. Ellies will also only be able to knock back every other spawn; Boomkins can handle every wave.
There are a number of ways to AE slow all the beasts, which is critical. Our Frost DK has a Chillblains offspec and uses it on this fight to slow every beast by 50%. We raid with a shadow priest and 2-3 mages, and I also assign each of them a specific beast to slow.
Pally stuns are excellent, although pallies will have to trade off. Generally Rhidach and I get one beast, and our two DPS pallies stun another beast. Chains of Ice is also great, although it’s a bigger DPS loss, especially for a frost DK. Obviously having beasts snared is far more important than DPS, but I like to keep these things in mind.
Very important: stuns are safe in melee range; snares which immobilize are not. If the beast is unable to move yet active, it will eat a melee regardless of who is at the top of its threat table. Pally stuns and Prot warrior stuns are safe, and Chains of Ice is safe too because it’s just a glorified slow. But nets, Druid Roots, and talented Earthbind Totem are not safe in melee. You can still use them, but use them outside of melee range.
Taunts should be used effectively. Hunters can Distracting Shot a beast that’s far away, and melee & tanks can taunt a beast getting too close to some ranged. I end up taunting a fair bit, which occasionally bites me on the ass if the beast makes it all the way back to me without dying.
Tonight
We’re changing things up tonight. One of our healers is going boomkin, and everyone has decided not to move near as much to keep that vital 12 yard separation between the ranged. This means those beasts are just going to have to be flawlessly knocked back, stunned, slowed, and killed before they get to a single ranged or healer. I have faith it can happen, especially considering we are working under a 30% buff. And damn the haters, I don’t care if we wipe until it’s right.
I’ve gotten a little bit of flak for complaining about a farm fight, but I don’t care – even a farm fight should be done correctly.
Armory Feed
@Rilgon
24 August 2010 at 3:56 pm #
You go through a list of AoE stuns and don’t mention Shadowfury?
Our Warlocks kept a second spec just with Shadowfury in it when we were learning H-Saurfang 25 (around 5%-ish).
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@Anafielle
24 August 2010 at 4:08 pm #
It’s there, in my list. Someone on twitter pointed it out to me the other day.
The most convenient slow or stun changes from raid to raid. In our raid, the most convenient one by far is Chillblains, and our Frost DK keeps a Chillblains spec for this purpose. For you, clearly, it’s the lock spell. We don’t have a lock who has specced into this – in fact, we sometimes don’t have a lock at all!
@Anafielle
24 August 2010 at 5:25 pm #
You were right; I had it on my list but in the wrong place. It’s fixed now, thanks!
@hazmacewillraid
24 August 2010 at 3:59 pm #
“Somehow Saurfang has remained my job irregardless of whether Rhidach is there.”
Just going to put that… right… here.
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@Anafielle
24 August 2010 at 4:09 pm #
I hate you so much. :)
@Rhidach
25 August 2010 at 9:07 am #
Noting this for future use… right here…
Hunters can also stun the beasts for 4 seconds via the Frost Trap if specced into Entrapment (Tier 2 Survival, a hunter would trade two points from Survival Instincts).
As a Holy Paladin, I oftentimes end up taunting a beat from across the room if they get too close to a dps. The problem with taunting is that they can get to you very, very quickly if they have the Scent of Blood Buff (300% movement speed buff for the flesh horrors).
Entrapment is a root, not a stun. Moving 2 points from SI to Entrapment would be a dps decrease AND a damage taken increase just to root the adds (which is not ideal) = bad.
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Ah, my bad for the incorrect word and, as Nellea also points out below, the root can be detrimental for nearby melee (which is a trait shared by a couple other roots on Ana’s list).
It is not an ideal means of cc, but most of the abilities listed tend to fall into the utility vs. dps bucket. I could see the ability being more situationally useful (with a rather bad raid composition) in a H 10, but not in 25.
It’s destro warlock that has Shadowfury and it is a stun not a slow… The stun is rather short but it is good to use when the beast are first spawning as to allow others to get their targeting straight. Also most destro will also have their conflagrate which applies a slow, also a vey short amount of time which generally a warlock will use in conjunction of their teleport to get out of the way of the charging beast.
Also, it should be noted that the boomkin should not glyph their Typhoon, since we had one who didn’t realize the push back was the important feature we wanted. /facepalm
Also forgot… prot warrior’s Shockwave, stun.
@Anafielle
24 August 2010 at 5:19 pm #
Thanks! Yes, I totally had it categorized wrong – I will update my list.
So shockwave is safe for a warrior tank to do without pulling? I’ll add it to my list, too.
@Feisttherogue
24 August 2010 at 6:37 pm #
Honestly, I feel like you’re overthinking the CC aspect of this almost. Remember, most of these CC tools have DR’s, and are significant DPS losses. The Beasts don’t have that much health – tools like stuns and roots are fantastic for when something goes wrong, but in general, you’ll get more results with consistent slows and high DPS.
What We Do: Every Beast has 2 ranged DPS assigned to it, and all of our ranged DPS have assigned positions around the room. Whenever possible, the 2 DPS assigned to each beast are at least 90 degrees away from each other around the arc of the room, to maximize beast travel time between them. Similarly, we (when we put significant effort into the fight, admittedly, it kinda gets auto-piloted now), tried to make sure that at least half of each pair has a taunt or aggro-dump, even if it’s a temporary one like Fade or Shadowmeld.
At that point, it’s just a case of letting the pairs nuke their beasts down, switching to help other teams once their own beast dies. All the beasts should be snared, either by Piercing Howl, or Chillblains, or a Mutilate Rogue w/ Deadly Brew hitting Fan of Knives, or by single target slows, or whatever. In pairs where only one member has a threat dump, the other half of the pair should let his partner get a threat lead, and said partner should dump aggro when the beast gets close, allowing for the beast to be ‘juggled’.
A well placed Typhoon helps tons as well, obvs.
But really, 99.99999% of fixing Saurfang issues can be solved by telling your ranged DPS to tunnelvision less, DPS adds faster and harder, and dropping a few healers to allow you to bring more ranged DPS to kill more beasts more faster (since if you get fewer marks, you won’t need as much healing. If you’re getting 6 or 7 marks, you must be what, 8 healing the fight?)
“Hunters can also stun the beasts for 4 seconds via the Frost Trap if specced into Entrapment (Tier 2 Survival, a hunter would trade two points from Survival Instincts). ”
Actually, entrapment is a root, and as such would be most detrimental to your melee. Regardless, atleast one of our hunters drops a frost trap on Saurfang, which we follow up with a typhoon, chains and the occasional stun or taunt. Doing it this way we never really have problems, save when a few of the ehm, less gifted ranged try to hog front row spots and end up being unable to cope with aggro or anything of the sort. Although I have to say we run with a reasonable chunk of ranged, not entirely sure about your raid composition.
Don’t know about 25s but it’s funny how hard this fight is on 10 with 3 healers and now easy it is with 2.
Last night, even 1 really messy add phase where an add swung on the tanks a couple of times, we killed him on the 2nd pull with 2nd mark going out around 23% and he died before the 3rd mark.
With 3 healers, it seems just impossible.
We had a Warlock and SPriest on one and a Druid and another SPriest of the other. Paladins were trading stuns if things looked like they might get messy.
Easy mode. I imagine 25 man is significantly more complicated.
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I see a lot of people miss this. Nets. Tailors can make Frostweave Nets that work great. I use them on my lock all the time. Everyone can use them.
Frostweave Net has 60 sec cooldown and Blood Beasts spawn every 40 sec (10 man), so you have net available for every second wave.
Also, the effect is not instant, the net flies for a second : you might want to take that into consideration before you root a beast at your favorite healer’s feet.
You reference Paladin’s Hammer of Justice several times, and how the cooldown is too long. It really is worth speccing Improved Hammer, I find. Certainly useful for Saurfang, Lich King and Valithria. I should note that in my case, this is in reference to 10-man; we’ve not tried Saurfang 25-H yet; but it does come in handy for LK25.
In my case, it costs me 2 points in Crusader – a loss of perhaps 200 DPS when I’m on top form.
That’s really not much considering that Hammer is the most powerful player controlled Stun in the game – being omni directional, 10 yards, 6s, and instant.
@Anafielle
26 August 2010 at 4:22 pm #
You know, I have always considered speccing into that. In fact I discussed it with Rhidach when we were still working on LK Normal 25.
I totally agree, our pally stun is one of the most powerful stuns in the game, considering its length and the fact that you can stun things behind you. I love the utility of it. If you’re not having trouble with threat, and most of us are not, I think it would be reasonable to move 1 or 2 points over to the improved stun.
In the end, I don’t remember why, I opted to keep my spec the same and we killed LK 25 anyways. /shrug
You make some really excellent points.