Yeah I dunno what it is about Deathwhisper. The breakthrough we had last week was easily repeated this week and I feel like we shouldn't ever wipe on her again outside of random stupid stuff. Just up and went from 99% impossible to pretty darn easy and safe.
All raids are different, but we run 2 melee/2 ranged on right, and supposedly (would have to check!) 3 melee/1 ranged on left. Had our 2 enhancement shaman (our unassigned melee) on the boss since their damage is pretty well split between physical and spell, which not only is relevant for the Reanimated adds but also for that damned spell reflect shield thing. Find it a lot safer on the melee this way. Definitely keep the purer physical damage melee on adds. For what it's worth, we don't really have that many physical-heavy dps at all, now that we lost one of our combat rogues.
Fanatic add in the back would get pulled towards the group of adds on the right for easier killing. Adherents don't much cooperate with being moved so there isn't terribly much you can do with them. Certainly not with a Druid as your 3rd tank.
With a DK or something you can probably move that to the left side adds.
1 healer on each tank, a Pally healing both left and right tank via beacon, and 2 raid healers. 1 decurser assigned to each group. All ranged in the raid turn to kill Reanimated Fanatics and the zombie troll things ASAP.
It's not really that different from what we were trying initially with the boss, so my only guess is that we failed with similar strategies cause it was new to us in the beginning, then swapped strats for something we thought would work better. During this time we figured out all the details about how to run the fight, then when we went back to a similar strat it clicked nicely. Such is my guess.
We actually had an awesome night tonight, and surprisingly one-shot everything. Turns out Saurfang is SO SO SO MUCH EASIER if you let the first 2 people die to Mark of the Fallen Champion. We accidently let the first 3 die, in fact. :p We failed pretty hardcore last week trying to just heal it as intended, only getting Saurfang to about 25-30% by the time 5 Marks were up. I don't think we ever got him lower than 20% that way, and that last 20% is a loooooong way in this fight that gets so exponentially harder as it goes on. Tonight it was pretty solidly one shot with time to spare. We even did pretty badly this time on the Blood Beasts, which hit people over 50 times (+50 Blood Power) over the course of the fight, where most good guilds get like 10. Highly recommend this strat for anyone having trouble with him... though it sure won't work for hard mode later on. And I'd not be too surprised if Blizzard does something to "fix" this, though for now it's perfectly legitimate.