Smores over Felfire

After a 30-minute wait to find a 3rd healer (because, surprise surprise, we were down one again), red team once again standing at the double doors outside of Deathbringer Saurfang’s home.

Sidenote: did anyone else find it strange that even though most bosses are given a 25%-50% increase in physical size (to differentiate them from the PCs), Deathbringer got no such buff? Perhaps that’s to show that, even while empowered by the Lich King, Saurfang Sr. is still to be feared more than Saurfang Jr.

It took us about an hour and a half of wiping, but after a slight alteration to our raid makeup (ie, dropping a healer for a dps) we were able to drop Deathbringer and pick up our much-needed lootz. While I was thrilled to get the achievements for beating Deathbringer AND the one for getting less than 3 Marks of the Fallen Champion, I can’t help but think “how can you beat Deathbringer when you DO have 3 marks?” We were having issues getting the DPS required to drop the guy in 8 minutes… but you’re telling me there are groups who have the ability to pull that kind of dps AND have 3+ marks on their raid? In 10 man? Give them their own achievement for that called [Bloody Noses for All!]

‘Cause you get the marks for “blood” points… get it?
No?
Too lame?

Regardless, Deathbringer is a punk. But the blood points can be managed very well if you have a stun or two from the tanks. How we had it set up was thusly:

1) Tanks face the boss toward the doors, so the blood beasts pop up on the left and right of the boss.
2) The blood beast on the left (as we’re facing the boss) gets blasted first, we usually have a ranged dps on each side of the room and one in the center, so it gets pulled around fairly effectively. The other blood beast gets pulled away from the melee (healer agg) and rooted by the kibby.
3) If possible, a thundershock/Hammer of Justice stuns the beasts during their initial spawn, which give the ranged/healers time to take agg away from the melee.

More times than not, and especially when we got the 3rd healer replaced with a dps for the fight, the beasts died so fast they only handed Deathbringer 4-5 points, so we were at 30% before the first Mark. It’s a rough fight, one that could be made much MUCH easier with better gear so we can keep the 3rd healer, but as the frost badge gear is so prohibitively expensive… we’ll just have to abuse the hell out of the 5-day-weekly-raid-quest “bug” and gear as quickly as we can.

In other news: I finally hit honored with the Ashen Verdict! Which means not only do I get an upgraded ring, but I finally get to spend my 6 primordial saronite that I’ve been saving on my various 80s! 2 upgrades (complete with gems and enchants) which means hopefully I’ll be able to break faces more efficiently than before!

Furthermore, hopefully we’ll drop Festergut and Rotface this Wednesday so we can join the rest of the WoW community in the vampire wing.

Also: is anyone else getting sick of the constant parade of vampires these past few years have been shoving in our faces? Twilight, True Blood, WoW, Underworld, why so much love for the bloodsuckers?