Damnable Sapphiron

[Strendarr]

Hardest fight in the game for my guild.

For the guilds that get him down on a regular basis without too much trouble, what strats do you use? How much frost resist per person?

This guy is seriously like 200x harder than Malygos for us, and harder than Heroic Thaddius and Patchwerk.

what is the DEAL with this guy? lol

[nicolax]

no special deal, we kill him without any piece of frost resist gear on any player since day 1.

and we kill him with less than 100 frost resist on anyone since our 2nd kill.

tactic is easy :

- tank at west, raid north/south in p1, decurse, move away from blizzard

- p2 : the whole raid gather on east side, and stay spread out, hide behind the ice tombed players to avoid frost blast.

rince, repeat.

we usually have a set-up oscillating between 3-4 tanks total, 6-7 or 8 healers), depending on the sign-ups. It's very flexible for that fight. Maybe you don't have enough raid healers ?

[Claydon]

We dont use any FR gear, just aura.


quick de-cursing is needed

try and assign shamans to chain heal certain groups of people.

make sure people stand in the correct position while DPS'ing

move out of blizzards

dont all run together after the first iceblock, wait for the second

remind the healers they still have to heal during saph's air phase

healers keeping the raid topped it main prio

have healers assigned to the tank as he will take quite a bit of spikey damage.

[Rehlachs-]

erm.. no resistance required, maybe FrR aura, if you haven't got enough healers with you.

what are your problems with that encounter? tank dying? melee DPS dying? fight taking too long? people dying in air phase? people dying in it's cleave? more detailed specifications would be helpful.

[Nick7]

First and foremost you need people who can pay attention -> avoid blizzards, decurse fast, do not stack up after first ice cube.
Other than that, frost resist aura/totem is generally enough, but any extra on DPS makes fight just easier.

However, when we first time go to Sapphiron (10-man) in start it was really bad wipefests... now it's one-shot. So don't get bad about it, people need to learn encounter

[Wolvar]

Max FR will help you learn the encounter faster. This fight is mainly about your healers and their gear level. If they can't keep up, make your raid wear resist stuffs.

[towelliee]

I just tank him with my head pointed to KT's room, and the rest of the melee healers along the left side of the room spread out...

We dont use FR but it is nice to use it to learn the fight.

[gummyrabbit]

Hardest fight in the game for my guild.

For the guilds that get him down on a regular basis without too much trouble, what strats do you use? How much frost resist per person?

This guy is seriously like 200x harder than Malygos for us, and harder than Heroic Thaddius and Patchwerk.

what is the DEAL with this guy? lol

We could give you better advice if you tell us exactly what's happening to the raid that's causing the wipes. Tank dying? Assign better healers. Melee dying? Tell them to position themselves better. Tell people to avoid the blizzard. Also, he's got a HUGE cleave area so everyone needs to stay away from his front or they get one shotted.

[Pallypete]

We've one-shot him every attempt we've ever done, and we're not a hardcore raiding guild. You're definitely doing something wrong, he's not hard at all. Maybe people have their spell graphics turned down so low after doing Thaddius that they can't see the blizzards?

[Nalyn]

Hardest fight in the game for my guild.

For the guilds that get him down on a regular basis without too much trouble, what strats do you use? How much frost resist per person?

This guy is seriously like 200x harder than Malygos for us, and harder than Heroic Thaddius and Patchwerk.

what is the DEAL with this guy? lol

Ya, tank him facing towards KT's room. Everyone on his south side of the room, melee group up, and move out of blizzard, assign a healer to watch the melee. Ranged and healers need to spread out, but not TOO spread out, if you're too close, the blizzard is going to hit too many people, if you're too far, ae heals are much less effective and decursing is a lot harder.

Other tricks, people need to spread out as he's going up in the air, DON'T clump up before the first ice block, let the second ice block go off before people start heading to their safe spot for the frost breath.

But...that's about it, we two shotted the 25 man version the first time around, 1 shot each time thereafter, we had a lot more trouble with thaddius, patchwerk and KT, than we did Sapphiron.

[Belloc]

Tank him facing KT's hallway. Raid should be positioned on one side of the room. It's fine to be spread out, but only on one side. Melee should back out (or move in) from Blizzards. It's better for them to stop DPS than to die.

If you're on heroic, you should have at least 6 healers.

But, seriously, this fight is mainly about staying out of the AOE. When he flies up, everyone stays spread out a bit until the ice blocks start appearing. At that point, run to them and use them to break Line of Sight with Sapphiron. If a Blizzard is on top of an ice block, just back up a bit. As long as the ice block is directly between you and sapph, it will work.


A very small amount of frost resist gear can be alright (no more than 2 pieces, and even that is a lot). You should definitely have the aura up on progression kills. Too much frost resistance, however, will gimp your DPS and healing. This is an endurance fight -- if your healers are running out of mana, you're going to wipe. Frost resistance gear can make that problem worse, so be careful.


What it boils down to, again, is staying out of the AOE. If you can do that, you can kill him. Oh, and Judgment of Light is amazing healing on this fight

[Wolvar]

Why do you guys turn him to face KT's room? I take off to the right and tank him facing about 45 degrees right of entrance. Ranged then only have to move straight in and a short distance to begin dps. Never had a problem doing it that way. Less movement for the entire raid seems a better plan to me.

[Agergadin]

Like most people, I tank him facing KT's room. Any direction works, though, as long as no one goes in front or behind him. The fight is really really simple, though relatively healing intensive. Big points:

1) Cleave is a massive range. If anyone suddenly dies when they were full health, they most likley ate a cleave.
2) Tail whip/swipe/whatever it's called also has a pretty big range.
3) Because of 1 and 2, melee have a pretty small area to dps.
4) Decursing == dps since it stops him draining life. If your boomkins and mages are too proud to decurse, find new mages and boomkins.
5) Stay out of blizzard.
6) When he goes in the air, spread out, but not too far. The frostbolt does spalsh dmg when it hits. Once all 3 blocks are down, get one between you and him.
7) Healers still need to heal when he's in the air.

Since 1-3 are really all one point, that's basically 5 points that if followed, the fight is pretty easy.

We use the everyone on 1 side approach. We only do 6 healers with 2.5 on me (3, with one also popping some raid heals), the MT. The other 3 are raid healing. If your healers are still a bit undergeared, a 7th isn't a bad idea to save up on mana.

One thing that makes a HUGE difference is making sure your melee (all dps, really..melee just tend to think they are exempt) run out of blizzard. If they switch sides, chances are they can't be healed. If they move forward, they'll get cleaved. If they move backward, hit by the tail. Drive it into their head you'd rather them do no dps for a while than die and do no dps the rest of the fight.

[gummyrabbit]

One thing that makes a HUGE difference is making sure your melee (all dps, really..melee just tend to think they are exempt) run out of blizzard. If they switch sides, chances are they can't be healed. If they move forward, they'll get cleaved. If they move backward, hit by the tail. Drive it into their head you'd rather them do no dps for a while than die and do no dps the rest of the fight.

We put a mark on one melee who knows where to position and we have the rest of the melee stand on him and follow him when the Blizzard hits.

[Nalyn]

One thing that makes a HUGE difference is making sure your melee (all dps, really..melee just tend to think they are exempt) run out of blizzard. If they switch sides, chances are they can't be healed. If they move forward, they'll get cleaved. If they move backward, hit by the tail.

Honestly, he's got a HUGE hit box, if your melee (and tank for that matter) are smart enough, they will either sit right on the edge of his hit box, or WAY in close to him, this way if a blizzard comes through, it doesnt come right through the middle, and you can move to the opposite position, still be on the same side, still be able to hit him, but be out of the blizzard.

And as far as why we tank him facing KT's room...I think that relates back to when we were learning him in the 10 man, we wiped a few times, and he agro's just about the moment that you step off the little ramp from the port in, so the quickest way to get the cleave away from everyone else that's following the tank in...is to just run through him, which has the side effect of facing him towards KT's room, and we just kept that positioning on future clears. It also gives the raid a good point of reference of "this is where the bad end is going to be" when coming out of the air phases, so you can avoid needless deaths/insta-gibs.

Drive it into their head you'd rather them do no dps for a while than die and do no dps the rest of the fight.

This is one of my pet peeves, it's not nearly so bad now, nearly every piece of raid gear has 40 to 60 stam on it, regardless of what class/spec its for, but it was HORRID in BC, with LOTS of glass cannon type pices for healers and all dps, but espicially casters. People totally fixiated on their offensive or healing stats, to the total exclusion of stamina, even with nearly EVERY fight, from T4 on, had some element of AE damage. It doesn't matter if you're capable of doing 10k dps, if you die 30 seconds into the fight, from the first time you take damage, you'll do zero for the next 5 minutes, cause you're tanking the floor.