10 Man Setup for Deathbringer Saurfang

My job ate my time today. I wrote half of an angry post, then just worked myself up into a frenzy because I was so angry at work and at what I was writing about that I think it degenerated into something poor and beneath me.  Maybe.  I might finish it and post it at a later time too, who knows?  I mean, how poor and base does an article have to be to be below a warlock?  Six feet under?  Twelve?  Below a Mage dancing gaily with Hunter?

In any case, I turned my efforts from the right brain to the left brain, or whichever one houses my creative side, and decided to dabble around in MS Paint.  My ICC raid group has now successfully gotten through the first three bosses in ICC and we are starting to learn Deathbringer Saurfang.  Or D$money.  Whichever you prefer.  When we first attempted the bugger, none of us had really prepared ourselves for the fight, as we weren't expecting to be so successful on the Gunships (I believe we two or three shot the jetpack bonanza).  Therefore, we just sort of "winged it".  Chaos ensued.  Massive warlock kiting was done by yours truly, along with much squishing of said warlock.

Afterward, Fuu and I decided to remedy our illness with a healthy dose of tankspot videos.  From that intense study, I came up with the following placement diagram for our group.

 

As you can see, we have three healers, three ranged, and two melee.  That's our normal learning composition.  Crucial to our success is having at least one hunter who can frost trap in the "slow" area.  Myself and a mage usually round out the ranged corps.  Our tanks tend to stand on opposite sides of the boss so they can easily tell when a taunt has worked, which puts our melee to the back and side of the boss.  The key to this battle is controlling the pair of adds spawned at the boss in regular 35s intervals.

Previously, we had stuck our healers a bit closer and left the back around for the ranged to try and run around and kite the things.  This didn't work so well.  Not only did we usually fail in DPSing while kiting, but it was difficult to get them off healers quickly enough to prevent them from having to kite.  Thus, we ended up with all of us running around like idiots and not enough real work being done.   Even so, we managed to get the bastard to around 40% before losing some folks and at that point he'd begin healing again.

This setup solves many problems.  First of all, it can be difficult for a hunter to lay a frost trap in the right space unless they can anticipate the path of the adds.  Putting the healers at center and back does just this.  They're going to have initial aggro (provided the tanks and melee kept their stabby stabby to themselves, your frat boys you), so that should bring both goombas right down the middle.  Lay a frost trap there and now they're slowed.  Our shammy healer could also put down an earthbind totem if they make it past the frosted area.

This gives the ranged plenty of time to open up on first one, and then the other add, eventually pulling them each off the healers and killing them slightly before they reaches the battalion.  It might be a bit tricky to stay spread out, but this minimizes movement and maximizes DPS potential.  From the video, it also looks like you're going to have to grow a couple of kahunas to be able to stand there and stare down the baddie for it to die at your feet.  Play chicken well, my friends, because if you lose and get nommed on, you're probably gonna die in one or two hits.

In any case, it's a terrible picture with terrible implications.  You can always sub a ranged DPS for the extra healer and put him/her on the unbalanced side.  Otherwise, feel free to mock me and my clip art.  Angry wizard is angry.