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Comment by smcn

This is the penultimate boss of Naxxramas, and can only be fought once all 4 wings are cleared. More information can be found at http://www.wowwiki.com/Sapphiron.

Comment by 913

Some of the items not listed on Sapphiron:

The Restrained Essence of Sapphiron
https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/item=23046

Claw of the Frost Wyrm
https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/item=23242

Sapphiron's Left Eye
https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/item=23049

Comment by 3118

The basic premise is FrR and LoS. Hands down, he has the coolest spawn graphic in the game.

He drops a ton of loot. Enchants, items, ego.

Comment by 4922

Having only 1.3 mil is a bit weak though.

Comment by 6569

Set-Up!:
FROST RESISTANCE. Setup the raid for a balanced fight, but with FROST RESISTANCE. LOTS OF FROST RESISTANCE. Oh, and cold protection potions and of course consumables. FROST RESISTANCE. If you can see the theme here, Frost Resistance is very important in this encounter.

Skills:
Frost Immunity: Frost spells do no damage or have any affect on Sapphiron.

Flight:
He will fly in the air after 35 seconds of fighting to do five Icebolts and one ice breath then land for seventy seconds before doing it again.

Icebolt: Does 2625-3375ish damage with a moderate splash. The attack will stun you for three seconds. It can proc an Ice Block like affect putting you in a protective block of ice for 22 seconds but keeping you from moving or attacking.

Frost Breath: A slow moving attack launched from the air (before Sapphiron lands) that is aimed towards the middle of the room. The attack will hit the ground then “splash” outward. Those who are Ice Blocked from his Icebolt are immune along with anyone hiding behind them (being effectively out of LoS).

Frost Aura: Does 600 frost damage every second or so. Can be partially resisted.

Life Drain: Drains life and heals Sapphiron, simply remove the curse to prevent this.

Blizzard: A beefed up Mage’s Blizzard, simply stand out of it to be safe. It will slow you down.

Tactics:
This is like an Onyxia fight, except well instead of Onyxia you have a giant Frostwyrm who wants to rain ice down upon you. Tactics for this fight will differ and only the knowledge of combat with this beast can lead to its defeat. The best suggestion to start out with is to try tanking Sapphiron until he flys then have your raid stand behind anyone who is Ice Blocked to keep safe from his Frost Breath.

Comment by AWRyder

According to a database i have here, this are some details i have about sapphiron, but, they might not be correct!

Entry ID: 15989
Model ID: 16033
Rank: 3 ( Boss )
Type: 6 ( too lazy to check but should be either dragonlike or giant xD, ill edit this later ) Edit: Ermm, i guess it was undead after all. =/

Level: 63
Faction: 14
Health: 2907132
Mana: 75693
Scale: 2.2 of the normal scale, being 1 = normal.
Damage: 2550 - 2800 with 1480 miliseconds of delay.
Ranged damage: 965.517 - 879.31 with 1700 miliseconds of delay.
Armor and resistances: Null

Once again, this data might not be correct but should be near the real ones :)

Comment by 82522

Massive FR needed for this fight farmed off other bosses in naxx.

Comment by zdravko

this guy doesn't eat his vegetables :D

Comment by 116381

He has 4 million hp

Comment by loragheta

there was frost resistance gear.... it comes from naxx

Comment by Thottbot

what % did u wipe at? lol i know hes REALLY hard but just curious BTW what realm are u on>?

Comment by Thottbot

U killed him! nice man well if u can send a SS of Kel'Thuzzad

Comment by Thottbot

pls m8 tell me on what server u are , im migrating ASAP ! gl with kel

Comment by Thottbot

http://www.wowwiki.com/images/c/cf/Kelthuzad3dz.jpg
Kel'Thuzad

Comment by Thottbot

death and taxes just downed him today. first worldwide to down four horsemen and sapphiron..

gg

Comment by Thottbot

Awe. He's just Arthas's pet Frost Wyrm.... Why would you want to kill him? That's like kicking your dog, you just don't do it.

=( Poor Frosty.

Comment by Thottbot

Sapphiron was a mighty dragon that king Arthas and Anub´arak killed in Northrend... Sapphiron had something mighty that they could use against the blood elfes and Illdan that stood in their way for defending the frozen throne

Comment by Thottbot

true, but he joined them afterwards...they sent him back at the entrance of the...what are they?... catacombs?

Comment by Thottbot

can anyone post a screenshot of Sapphi?

Comment by Thottbot

Sapphiron is immune to frost spells.
Berserker enrage after 15 mins, making his Frost Aura do 600% damage.
Sapphiron will first take to the air 45 secs after engaging, then fire 5 Icebolts and 1 Frost Breath and land. After that, it will stay on the ground for 67 secs before flying up again and repeating the process.
Cleave - Your basic Frontal cleave, keep him faced away from the group.
Icebolt - Deals 2625-3375 frost damage, 10 yard splash radius, 25 second duration, stuns chosen target for 3 sec. Only occurs when Sapphiron is in the air. Appears to induce an iceblock-like effect with the functionality of the Mage's Ice Block spell; ie. you cannot take any action but are immune to attacks for the duration. Ice Bolt last for 22 secs.
Frost Breath - Slow-moving, wide-range "ice bomb" AoE attack. Sapphiron will "take a deep breath" after 5 Icebolts in the air. It can be resisted. Only happens when Sapphiron is in the air - he breathes a cloud of frost which floats slowly to the ground and explodes when it touches the ground, doing 75000-125000 damage in a 70 yard radius. Sapphiron will land after Frost Breath. It takes about 5-6 seconds to land. Its target is the middle of the room, not a specific person. Anyone who has been frozen by Icebolt will be immune to this. This attack cancels the Ice Block. Raid members can stand behind the Iceblocked individuals and will be considered out of LoS of the Frost Breath.
Frost Aura - Frost-damage DoT-type attack. 100 yard radius, damages afflicted targets for 600 frost damage every two seconds. Keeps applying. (Can be partially resisted)
Life Drain - 12 second duration, 100 yard range, curse-type. Drains 1750 to 2250 health and heals Sapphiron for 3500 to 4500 every 3 sec. Used every 24 secs as well.
Blizzard - Much denser and larger than normal Blizzard. Deals 3063 to 3937 damage every 2 sec. Slows movement speed by 65%, 15 sec duration. Drifts in directions very much like green outdoor dragon sleep cloud. (Binary spell - the damage can be resisted completely or not at all)

Note that once Sapphiron goes below 10% health, he will not fly back up into the air. This is almost certainly to prevent any error with a corpse in the air that may be unlootable. However, he will life drain below 10% health, and if you have him at 10% health, it is likely you'll kill him anyway.

Comment by Thottbot

The fist weapon he drops Frost fist of the Wyrm its a Off hand right because search it and it shows a guy holding 2

Comment by Thottbot

Sapphiron is not hard if you know the tactic. I made a group of 13people(all lvl60-62, only the tank 65)and we killed him and Kel'thuzad. This is how we made it:
-Tank was lvl65 paladin
-there were 4 healers(Priest 61, druid 60 , paladin 60 and shaman 61)
-we had no rogue, but we had hunter(that was me), 2warlocks and mage 3 retri paladins and DPS shaman
-in the same group were the 4 healers and the tank
-priest was healing rly good, and when he came out of mana he uses potion, or a druid gives him innervate.
-the druid was healing all the time with regrowth-rejuvenation
-the paladin use SEAL OF WIDSOM and than JUDGEDMENT so when the shaman(healer) attacks gain mana by attacking
-the shaman put his mana totems and attack(gain mana) and heals
-all DPS players were doing as much damage as they could
-The tank was healing him self few times(using shield)

There shouldn't be any problems if you do this Tactic :)

Best Wishes Kostadin

Comment by Allakhazam

.

Edited, Dec 10th 2007 5:05pm by anthrt

Comment by Allakhazam

this guy will hit like a truck if you dont have good enough frost resistance, i bet he will do something like shadow flame but with frost damage instead.

Comment by Allakhazam

So thats where the drape comes from...

Comment by Allakhazam

Is Sapphiron a boss ? if so has he been downed ?

Comment by Allakhazam

This was a very fun and challenging fight, requiring consumables (on top of a >300 FfR) and people to know what they are doing. With Saph's HP pool it was also very dependent on gear (aside from heavy FfR items) and skill in conserving mana for efficiency.

Comment by Allakhazam

Grats Lost Anarchy for downing Sapphiron!

Comment by Allakhazam

Sapphiron and Kel'thuzad were killed on the test realms using a stat glitch. Check www.worldofraids.com

Comment by Allakhazam

Hasn't been legitimately killed yet. Two guilds are on him, though:

Death & Takes - US alliance
Nihilum - EU horde

Comment by Allakhazam

Yes hes a boss. No he hasnt been downed yet :)

Comment by Allakhazam

LOL guys look up! hes drop epic and normaly boss.es drop epics! think about that.

Comment by Allakhazam

DnT downed him world first

Comment by Allakhazam

- Frost damage aura: ticks for 600 frost damage every 2 seconds on everyone in the raid all the time. Partially resistable (with 315 FrR you will usually take 150 damage per tick). This is the primary mechanism by which he does damage to the raid and it's also why everyone needs to have resists coming out of their wazoo. 300+ FrR on dps is advisable (healers can get by with a little less).
- Roaming blizzard: while Sapphiron is in combat two blizzards will roam the room (a bit like the sleep clouds on green dragons). Suffer ~2.5k frost damage every 2 seconds and movement slowed by 50% when in range of blizzard.
- Cleave: can oneshot cloth casters. Never chain cleave off the MT.
- Tailwhip: this is pretty much standard.
- Drain Life: A very nasty curse. He will curse 5 random targets. The afflicted people suffer 2k shadow damage every 2 seconds (which also heals Sapphiron). Must be dispelled ASAP.

Sapphiron will melee the tank for 70 seconds and then take flight. While in air he will start firing Icebolts.
- Icebolt: ~3k aoe frost damage, 10 yds around the target. Encases the target in an ice block which is very similar to the mage version (invulnerable but unable to act).

Sapphiron will fire 5 Icebolts and then cast an Ice Bomb. He breathes a cloud of frost which slowly floats down to the floor and then explodes.
- Ice Bomb: 100,000 frost damage to everyone in the room who is NOT standing behind an ice block. In short, everyone must hide behind one of the ice blocks caused by earlier Icebolts. Ice Bomb cannot be resisted. This also dispels all ice blocks.

Once Ice Bomb explodes, Sapphiron will land and melee the MT for another 70 seconds, etc., etc.

Sapphiron has ~3,200,000 hp.

Have fun. :)

Comment by Allakhazam

Sapphiron was a blue dragon that Arthas turned undead. You get to use him in WC3:TFT when Arthas goes back to Northrend to defend the Lich King along with Anub'Arak. Arthas and Sapphiron even had some dialogue before they started fighting.

Edited, Jul 29th 2006 at 9:33pm EDT by Eaglebite

Comment by Allakhazam

death&taxes gave it a shot tho :E

Comment by Allakhazam

hard #$%^& imo, with worldbuffs with no retards pretty ok.

Comment by Allakhazam

I just haven't figured out how to actually get to Frostwyrm Lair. There's no information online about it. Anyone?

Comment by Allakhazam

I heard he gives an alternate form of reputation upon killing him, Confirm/deny? if so, which one? (I know he hasn't been killed yet)

Comment by Allakhazam

Here lies a victim of TBC. Looking at the loot table who would bother disturbing him now....

Comment by Allakhazam

ZOMG Admin We Need Teh Pick of teh Drag0n!

Comment by Allakhazam

i was wondering what his cold resistance is?

and how many people it would take to reflect his damage to kill him?

Enjoy the free 100,000 damage to your pool to :)

Comment by Allakhazam

Sapphiron down!

http://66.250.45.101/~dtguild/

Comment by Allakhazam

Only 2 guilds have reached him to what i know at this moment in time.

Comment by Allakhazam

Sapphiron's loot:

http://www.worldofraids.com/?page=Nboss&wing=frost&mob=14

Comment by Allakhazam

someone please post a screenie :P

Comment by Allakhazam

Death and taxes have indeed killed Sapphiron world first.

http://66.250.45.101/~dtguild/

Comment by Jossex

Please consider updating this page to a Classic-friendly version. Sapphiron does not drop any items that unlocks zones, and Commander Eligor Dawnbringer is not in Classic.
"Sapphiron is a gigantic undead frost wyrm who guards the entrance to Kel'Thuzad's inner sanctum in Naxxramas.
Sapphiron drops (Item #44569), and (Item #44577), which unlock 10 Player and 25 Player difficulty for (Zone #4500) respectively.

(NPC #27784) says about him:"

Comment by Rothia

DON'T NERF SAPPHIRON
Posted by Pazorax | WoW Developer | Blizzard Forums | 2020-11-11

Hey everybody!

We recently completed testing Naxxramas on the PTR. A big thank you goes out to everyone who helped us find bugs or exploits we could fix before release. We often get questions about how we decide what counts as a bug, and what’s worth changing, so I thought you might enjoy a deep dive into our investigation of Sapphiron’s Frost Aura.

TLDR for anyone who only wants to know the conclusion: We’re changing the spell to tick every 2 seconds consistently.

When Sapphiron is engaged, the entire raid is affected by a Frost Aura which reads: “Deals Frost Damage every second”, but many players reported that it should be every 2 seconds. Our first thought was, “that was the Wrath of The Lich King version,” but we know that in a game as complicated as WoW, there can be surprising and unexpected interactions, and a lot has changed over the last 15 years. When a current behavior doesn’t match players’ or developers’ memories, it always makes us a little suspicious. Sometimes it turns out our memories are wrong, but we’ve also seen it lead to the uncovering of an unexpected interaction, so, it’s usually worth a look, and that was certainly the case here.

We looked at many old videos, and though some were from the wrong expansion, we were able to find videos that showed the original fight. The videos actually had evidence of both tick rates within the same fight. The Frost Aura seemed to mostly tick every 2 seconds, but occasionally tick once per second for a bit, before returning to ticking every 2 seconds. We also checked in our reference server, and the behavior was the same as we saw in the videos: mostly 2 second ticks, but occasionally a brief streak of 1 second ticks, before returning to 2 second ticks.

Perhaps the most useful clue was this post from WoW game designer Daelo in 2009, in which he describes fixing Sapphiron’s Frost Aura so that it does “the damage that was seen previous to the 3.0.8 patch”:

"We just hotfixed Sapphiron's Frost Aura so it should do the damage that was seen previous to the 3.0.8 patch regardless of the size of the raid or your server's performance. This should be 1200 every 2 seconds in Normal, and 1600 every 2 seconds in Heroic. You'll notice that the Frost Aura debuff you have no longer has a duration that refreshes. The tooltip also incorrectly lists the damage as occurring every second. The tooltip error will be fixed the next time we make a client patch available."

This certainly suggests that it was doing damage every 2 seconds prior to the 3.0.8 patch, but this was a hotfix to the Wrath of The Lich King version of Naxxramas. We’ve already found other differences between the original and Wrath of The Lich King versions of Naxxramas, so while this post was helpful, it wasn’t enough to satisfy us on its own. It contained an important clue about the debuff duration refreshing, which led us to suspect the DoT refresh might be clipping the damage tick. In WoW Classic, when you refresh a DoT, it resets the timer on the periodic damage, and can cause you to miss ticks, and since the Frost Aura has a 5 second duration that gets reset throughout the fight. It was a good bet that the damage timer was getting reset then too. Of course, we already reproduced that behavior in WoW Classic, so that still didn’t explain the discrepancy between the two.

At that point, we dug further into the game code and found the difference in the way Sapphiron re-applies the Aura. In both reference and WoW Classic, the aura re-application was done as part of an Action Trigger which fires every 2 seconds. However, in the original code, action triggers share a timer with periodic spell ticks, and action triggers were always processed first. In modern code, they run on independent timers, so a long-running action script won’t delay a spell tick.

This meant that when Sapphiron re-applied the Frost Aura in reference, it was guaranteed to clip the damage tick that was about to happen, leading to every other tick getting skipped. In modern code, the damage tick and the reapplication are both scheduled to occur at the same time, but are controlled by two separate timers, so either one might happen first. It just so happens that in this encounter, the reapplication generally happens after the DoT tick on the same second, so that players got the full damage on every tick, instead of every other tick.

But this mystery isn’t solved yet. What about those occasional one second ticks we saw in the original videos and in the reference server. They were rare, but if the reference code is guaranteed to do the refresh before the damage tick, how were they ever ticking at once a second? It turns out that the Frost Aura application didn’t always succeed, and if it failed, the existing DoT happily ticked away doing damage once per second until the next refresh attempt 2 seconds later, like this:

Time (seconds)	Event	Damage
0	Aura #1 Applied	0
1	Aura #1 ticks	600
2	Aura #2 Applied (clips Aura #1)	0
3	Aura #2 ticks	600
4	Aura #3 fails (Aura #2 ticks)	600
5	Aura #2 ticks	600
6	Aura #4 Applied (clips Aura #2)	0
7	Aura #4 ticks	600

Since Sapphiron is 3 levels higher than the player, the spell can only miss 1% of the time, but that’s what explained the occasionally 1 second ticks we saw in the videos, and with our reference.

We also reached out to the original designer, who still works at Blizzard, on a different game team. After we described our findings, he agreed that the intended behavior was for the damage to be every second, and the fact that the reapplication of the aura was clipping a tick of the DoT was a bug that wasn’t noticed or fixed until Wrath of The Lich King.

So where do we go from here? We often must carefully consider a conflict between original intent and original behavior. There’s no one right answer in all cases, but for this case, the original behavior is the correct decision, and we plan to fix this in much the same way Daelo did in Wrath of The Lich King. In modern code, we have a way to reliably apply an aura that deals damage every 2 seconds as long as the boss is alive, and we’ll re-write this ability to use that method, just as Daelo did in Wrath of The Lich King.

While the behavior that led to it originally occurring every 2 seconds instead of every 1 second was a bug, it was consistent enough as to be indistinguishable from a text bug in the Aura description. Choosing to go with the original intent would result in almost twice as much damage as players experienced in 2006, so in the end that makes this decision pretty clear.

I hope you enjoyed that trip through our development process. See you in Azeroth!

DON'T NERF SAPPHIRON
Posted by Pazorax | WoW Developer | Blizzard Forums | 2020-11-12

Hey everybody,

I wanted to drop in and give one more update. Astute readers of my earlier post may have noticed that the original implementation had a 1% to do an extra tick of damage, and while that’s pretty minor on average, taking an extra tick of 600 damage can create a dangerous streak that can make the fight significantly harder, especially if you don’t have much Frost Resistance.

I’m really happy to share with you that after I made my post, our newest team member added an effect that exactly reproduces the 1% chance to have an extra tick of frost damage, so you’ll have something even more true to the original difficulty.

Watch out for those damage streaks! It’s cold in there!

Blizzard: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/dont-nerf-sapphiron/709636/48
Wowhead: https://www.wowhead.com/tbc/news=319065/wow-classic-deep-dive-into-sapphirons-frost-aura-frost-damage-dealt-every-2-seco

Comment by Rothia

TRACKING THE FIRST WOW CLASSIC NAXXRAMAS KILLS
Posted by Kaivax | Community Manager | Blizzard Forums | 2020-12-04

We’ve really enjoyed following along as the first guilds in the world completed each wing of Naxxramas, and then the final bosses.
Here’s what we’ve seen so far:

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Guild	Realm	Region	Time

The Plague Wing: Loatheb
1.	Rise	Netherwind	Americas	(2:13:39 PM PST)
2.	Bunnings Warehouse	Arugal	Oceania	(2:14:13 PM PST)
3.	gusy	Golemagg	EU	(2:14:14 PM PST)
4.	Risen	Whitemane	Americas	(2:15:01 PM PST)
5.	Quasar	Noggenfogger	EU	(2:16:36 PM PST)


The Spider Wing: Maexxna
1.	Innuendo	Razorgore	EU	(2:20:53 PM PST)
2.	APES	Gehennas	EU	(2:21:34 PM PST)
3.	Storm	Herod	Americas	(2:22:20 PM PST)
4.	JP	Firemaw	EU	(2:23:23 PM PST)
5.	举杯邀月	Dagger Hills	China	(2:24:29 PM PST)


The Abomination Wing: Thaddius
1.	Progress	Firemaw	EU	(2:21:32 PM PST)
2.	Onslaught	Skeram	Americas	(2:21:49 PM PST)
3.	Fully Rested	Pagle	Americas	(2:23:53 PM PST)
4.	Noobs	Huhuran	China	(2:24:38 PM PST)
4.	Эксодус	Chromie	Russia	(2:24:38 PM PST)


The Deathknight Wing: The Four Horsemen
1.	Rampage	Fairbanks	Americas	(2:42:37 PM PST)
2.	Progress	Firemaw	EU	(2:43:39 PM PST)
3.	《韶光》	Ouro	China	(3:02:39 PM PST)
4.	Rise	Netherwind	Americas	(3:02:51 PM PST)
5.	oWN	Arugal	Oceania	(3:11:06 PM PST)


Frostwyrm Lair: Sapphiron
1.	Progress	Firemaw	EU	(3:16:34 PM PST)
2.	Tribe	Sulfuron	EU	(3:42:00 PM PST)
3.	Onslaught	Skeram	Americas	(3:45:20 PM PST)


Frostwyrm Lair: Kel'Thuzad
1.	Progress	Firemaw	EU	(3:26:49 PM PST)
2.	Tribe	Sulfuron	EU	(3:53:34 PM PST)
3.	Onslaught	Skeram	Americas	(3:55:41 PM PST)

Well done!

BLIZZARD POST: https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/wow/t/tracking-the-first-wow-classic-naxxramas-kills/754613

Comment by krikcrack

not shown here is an item that drops from this boss called fists of the unrelenting that dropped only after TBC prepatch went live

Fists of the Unrelenting

View in 3D Links

Sapphiron

NaxxramasSpider WingAnub'RekhanGrand Widow FaerlinaMaexxnaAbomination WingPatchwerkGrobbulusGluthThaddiusDeathknight WingInstructor RazuviousGothik the HarvesterThe Four HorsemenPlague WingNoth the PlaguebringerHeigan the UncleanLoathebFrostwyrm LairSapphironKel'ThuzadSapphironKel'Thuzad'sNaxxramasBackgroundAbilities

Icebolt: Deals 2,625 - 3,375 frost damage, 10 yard splash radius, 25 second duration, stuns chosen target for 3 sec. Only occurs when Sapphiron is in the air. Induces an effect similar to Ice Block on the target, lasting for 22 secs.

Frost Breath: Slow-moving, wide-range "ice bomb" AoE attack. Sapphiron will "take a deep breath" after 5 Icebolts in the air. Resistable. Does 75,000 - 125,000 frost damage in a 70 yard radius.

Frost Aura: Frost damage DoT-type attack. 100 yard radius, damages afflicted targets for 600 frost damage every two seconds. Keeps applying. (Can be partially resisted)

Life Drain: Curses target, 12 second duration, 100 yard range. Drains 1,750 to 2,250 health and heals Sapphiron for 3,500 to 4,500 every 3 seconds. Used every 24 seconds.

Chill: A larger and denser version of . Deals 3,063 to 3,937 damage every 2 seconds. Slows movement speed by 65%, 15 second duration. Drifts in directions.)

Frost Immunity: Sapphiron is immune to frost spells.

Enrage: Berserker enrage after 15 minutes, making his Frost Aura do 600% damage.

Strategy

Gains

After killing this NPC you will gain:

500 reputation with Argent Dawn

Sapphiron

Gains

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