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icenymph

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re: sindragosa strats and tactics

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Phase 1

During the whole fight she deals stacking debuffs to the whole raid. When melee attacks her, there's a 20% chance per hit on the boss to gain the Permeating Chill stacking debuff which inflicts 1,000 Frost damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, per stack. For casters, she periodically debuffs mana users with Unchained Magic, which for 15 seconds causes its victims to gain a stack of Instability every time they cast a spell (including things like Healthstones or Trinkets). Instability expires after 5 sec (unless refreshed by casting another spell). Expiration is unavoidable after Unchained Magic fades. Upon expiration, Instability deals 2k damage per stack.

During Phase 1 these debuff stacks don't hurt a lot (it's safe to take up to 8 stacks), but in Phase 2 they become dangerous (players should try to stay below 4 stacks). For this reason it's a good idea to practise keeping them low even in Phase 1. Managing these debuffs (and the additional one in Phase 2) is the heart of the fight. Players may get used to stopping their attacks/casts when their stacks get high.

In regular intervals, she pulls the whole raid on top of herself (Icy Grip) and then starts a 5 sec cast of Blistering Cold, which deals 35k Frost damage to everyone within 25 yards of her (with enough HP or resistance this is survivable). This means that the raid has 5 seconds to get 25 yards away from her. Players should mouse-turn while flying through the air and immediately run away on touchdown. Hunters can use Aspect of the Pack, the frost aura does not cause the daze effect. After everyone is out of range, it must be switched off immediately. As a last resort it is possible to slow her cast time (Curse of Tongues or maybe Mind Numbing Poison), but this may decrease Melee's DPS output because they have to wait longer before running back.
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In Flight

At 85% and every 1:50 minutes thereafter, Sindragosa takes off, freezes 2/5 (10/25 player) raid members with Ice Tomb and drops four Frost Bombs (one after the other, on random spots). Players who are in line of sight of one of the bomb explosions take ~24k damage, therefore the raid should hide behind the Ice Tombs. After the fourth Bomb she lands and continues with another Phase 1.

Sindragosa puts a Frost Beacon on the Ice Tomb targets about 5 seconds before they get entombed. Since Ice Tombs not only damage their targets, but also everyone else in a 10 yard radius, it's important for the ice tomb targets to move away from all non-targets and from each other. After 20 seconds, she's dropped all her bombs, lands and resumes Phase 1. At this point, the entombed players start to take damage from asphyxiation. Players are freed from the Ice Tombs by destroying them (~450k HP). They should be damaged to about 10% while she drops the bombs, and quickly destroyed after the fourth bomb has exploded.
10 player

In 10 player, the raid can stay on the stairs at all times, tanking her right in front of the stairs. The raid initially groups on her hind legs. The players with Frost Beacon run to where her front legs were (one higher up the other lower down the stairs). When she Frost Beacons the next set of players, they again run to the other side (where her hind legs were), after the Tombs have materialized the raid follows. This movement pattern closely resembles the one used in Phase 2.
25 player

The 10 player technique cannot be used with 25, because it requires very high precision in positioning with 5 frost tombs plus the raid on the stairs. It's simpler to tank her some distance (about 20") away from the stairs. When the Frost Beacons come up, only the beaconed players run up the stairs and distribute, using the whole space on the stairs. As soon as the tombs start to materialize, the raid follows and hides. In 25 player, the rear tombs (furthest up the stairs) can be destroyed even before she lands (but be careful not to destroy a tomb just before a bomb lands).
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Phase 2

At 35% health, Phase 2 starts. Phase 1 doesn't take place anymore. She retains all her Phase 1 abilities except flight, and also continues to cast Frost Beacons and Ice Tombs, but no Frost Bombs. Instead the Ice Tombs must be used to control her new ability, Mystic Buffet. One stack of this debuff is gained by all players in her line of sight every 6 seconds. Each stack increases magical damage taken by 10%/15% (10/25 player).

Control of Mystic buffet and the other debuffs is crucial, Phase 2 is not a DPS race. Mystic Buffet expires after 8 seconds, she refeshes it after 6 (that is with 2 seconds left on the debuff). In effect it's enough to hide behind the Ice Block for just the crucial few seconds when she refeshes it.

The 10 player Ice Block routine can be used for both raid sizes in this phase - Frost Beaconed players run to the other side, raid follows, hides and destroys the Ice Blocks after they have materialized. With two tanks, it's a good idea to switch tanks at this moment too.
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Heroic Difficulty

The most important change is that Instability (Unchained Magic's backlash) not only hits the affected player, but also everyone else within 20 yards.

Air phase Frost Bomb damage is increased to 200,000, and in 25m (10m stays at 2 players) six players are Frost Beaconed instead of five.
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Tips and Tricks
In normal mode, up to 8 stacks of Mystic Buffet can be tolerated. Therefore, it's safe to ignore every other Ice Block. It's still important to nuke the Ice Blocks to free the entombed players. Don't try this on heroic difficulty where even a few stacks are already dangerous.
Wearing some frost resist gear increases survivability and may be very useful for learning the fight.
During Phase 2, Healers can try to find a place behind an Ice Tomb where they have no LOS to the boss, but can see and heal the tank.


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icenymph

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re: sindragosa strats and tactics

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Abilites


Sindragosa has a 10 minute enrage timer.

Phase One
Cleave — Inflicts normal damage plus 50 to an enemy and its nearest allies, affecting up to 10 targets.
Tail Smash — Inflicts 11,250 to 18,750 damage on enemies in a cone behind the caster, knocking them back.
Frost Aura — Deals 4,500 Frost damage to all nearby enemies every 3 seconds.
Frost Breath — Inflicts 37,000 to 43,000 Frost damage to enemies in a 60 yards cone in front of the caster. In addition, the targets' attack speed is decreased by 50% and movement decreased by 15% for 1 min.
Icy Grip — Extend tendrils of frigid wind to pull all nearby enemies to the caster. After she uses this, she will follow it up with a Blistering Cold.
Blistering Cold — Deals 35,000 Frost damage to enemies within 25 yards.
Unchained Magic — Inflicts an arcane malediction on the target, causing any spells cast to result in a backlash of Arcane power after 8 seconds. Multiple spellcasts by the afflicted target will intensify the backlash.
Instability — Using magic while afflicted with Unchained Magic will build up unstable energy, dealing 2,000 Arcane damage to the caster per spell cast, 5 seconds after spellcasting ends. Stacks 99 times.
Permeating Chill — Physical attacks against Sindragosa have 20% chance to debuff the attacker with Chilled to the Bone, inflicting 1,000 Frost damage every 2 seconds for 8 seconds, per application.

While in Flight

(this part is on a recurrent timer during phase 1 and therefore is not a separate phase)
Frost Beacon — Marks a target for imprisonment in an Ice Tomb.
Ice Tomb — Entombs the targeted foe and all enemies within 10 yards in ice. She targets five random players (two in 10-player mode) after taking off and casts this on them. They are then trapped in a tomb with 454,000 HP which must be killed. These tombs also block line of sight on Frost Bomb, but anyone inside the tomb has Asphyxiation placed on them after 20 seconds in the tomb.
Asphyxiation — Suffocation due to lack of air. Deals 8% of total health in damage each second.
Frost Bomb — Deals 23,563 to 26,437 Frost damage to all nearby targets. You need to hide behind Ice Tombs to avoid this damage. Sindragosa will target locations in the room while flying and cast it there. After she uses this 4 times she lands.
Phase Two

All Phase One abilities, except Flight and Frost Bomb.
Mystic Buffet — Buffets all foes within 200 yards with arcane energy, increasing all magic damage taken by 10% per application for 8 seconds. Stacks 99 times.


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icenymph

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re: sindragosa strats and tactics

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Sindragosa is no pushover when it comes to 10-man raiding (gear). She is very much a dps race and awareness test for your entire raid. The following is the strategy that worked best for us, and earned our first kill.

MAKE UP:

1 MT (we used a prot warrior with frost resist gear)
1 OT (recommended; feral druids work best as they are uncrittable in dps gear)
3 healers
5 DPS

The MT will be tanking for the majority of the fight. In cases of higher gear levels, you can probably get away with no offtanks (by burning her quickly), but for progression attempts for 10-strict guilds I do recommend going with an offtank. Now, to maximize DPS, this offtank really works best as a cat-spec feral druid: they are inherently uncrittable (defense capped) by talents and gain a chunk of health with bearform, and have both barkskin and survival instincts (if specced). This offtank will only be taking Sindy for 10-20 seconds at a time.

The first 65% may make you feel like you can get away with two healers. While this is accurate for that first 65%, phase 3 (starting at 35%) will take up half of the fight length and will require 3 healers: one healer will always have the unchained magic debuff, and if another gets iceblocked (which is very likely), then you will be down two healers until that block is broken.

THE PULL:
Now, this is very, very important. Sindragosa will aggro immediately after you kill Rimefang, and as she arrives, she will block off the ramps and upper platform at the top of the stairs. Any players caught up there will be out of LoS and unable to contribute to the fight. Do not stand at the top of the stairs when Sindragosa aggros!

Below is the way we (generally) arranged ourselves for phase 1: tanking her facing away from the raid, with melee arranged along her side and ranged clustering together within aoe heal range and heal range of the tank, but out of the front cone of her breaths. She has a decently sized hit box.

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ABILITIES:
Besides the usual "cleave, tail whip" dragon abilities, Sindragosa has a raid-wide frost damage aura, as well as these other tricks:

Casters:
Unchained Magic: this debuff will always cast on one magical dps, and one healer. If you have no magical dps, then it will just cast on one healer. Whenever a player has this debuff, any spell they cast (including heals) will stack Instability on them. When the Instability stack falls off, it will deal magical damage to that player. 6-7 stacks is fine for P1/P2; in P3, I recommend reducing that by at least one for every stack of Mystic Buffet you have on you (since that increases the damage you will take).

Physical/Tanks:
Frost Breath: cone breath attack, slows the tank. We had our tank wearing frost resist gear (the crafted stuff) for this reason. If you are not the tank, you need to avoid standing in her front cone, even if you are out of cleave range!
Chilled to the Bone: where casters have instability, this is what physical dps get stacking on them. It has a chance to stack on each melee attack. 3-4 stacks is fine; once you get up to 5-6 stacks, however, pull back and hold off on attacks until your stacks drop.

All:
Icy Grip: Sindragosa will pull the whole raid (and sometimes the totems too) on top of her. IMMEDIATELY run away from her. If you're lagging, have a holy priest cast the speed-bubble on you (if specced!) or some sort of life-saving buff! Otherwise her Blistering Cold attack will one-shot you. You have 5 seconds to get more than 25 yards away from her. RUN.
She will use these abilities throughout both P1 (100-35% while grounded) and P3 (35-0%).

PHASE 2 :
At 85% health (and every 1:50 afterwards) Sindy will fly up into the air and cast Frost Beacon (good debuff to add to your raid frames) on two random targets. At this point, your raid will want to run to a predetermined location (we chose the corner by the stairs) and gather up. The two players who are marked with frost beacon need to spread out nearby (more than 10 yards away from others): healers should pump the beaconed players full of HoTs and then, when the beacon wears off, the two marked players will become ice tombed.
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Sindy will begin firing explosive frost bombs around the room: she will cast four of them before landing again. Everyone will need to use the ice tombs to LoS the explosions. DPS down the frost tombs a little bit at a time as she sends down the bombs; the fourth bomb goes off, break the tombs and run back in to repeat Phase 1. If you take too long to break an ice tomb, the player inside will begin to suffocate.
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Important: you need to LoS the bombs, NOT Sindragosa herself. There will be little blue frost runes on the floor marking where her next bomb will land. This is what you need to LoS.
Use bloodlust/heroism if available right after she lands from an air phase. You will want to push her past 35% before she enters a 4th air phase, due to the enrage timer. Remember, the last 35% of this fight will take as long or longer than the rest of it, and you want to push through the early phases as quickly as possible.

PHASE 3 :
At 35% health, Sindy stops hopping into the air, but she will begin casting ice tombs (via frost beacons) one by one on the raid and pulse out mystic buffet on everyone in LoS of her. You will use the ice tombs to drop your mystic buffet stacks as often as possible.

The key to ice tomb positioning is keeping them close enough to the tank for healers to be able to LoS the buffet, but still be able to see the tank to heal them. Your raid will use these ice tombs to drop their mystic buffet stacks via LoS.
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If your MT is using frost resist gear, they will want to drop their own mystic buffet stacks after about 9-11 stacks (assuming their OT isn't in an ice tomb). Coordinate a swap after a frost breath to limit the likelihood of the OT needing to tank through a frost breath of their own. Equipping the OT with frost protection pots will help in a pinch, if you are using a dps-geared feral druid. Our OT was getting 4 stacks at most. If you are using a warrior, they can use intervene to quickly rush themselves to an ice tomb to drop their stacks, or use it to get back to the offtank. When the tanks are swapping, avoid having both tanks standing together in the same frost breath.

This phase is all about controlling yourselves, as a raid.
Melee should focus on killing ice tombs, as it gives them plenty of opportunity to drop their own stacks without gaining stacks of Chilled to the Bone (from attacking Sindy herself). We had our three melee, including the OT, focus entirely on killing these blocks. One of the melee took charge on vent to coordinate ice tombs: which to kill, when, and to verbally alert who had the next beacon. If any players looked to be standing too close to the next beaconed player, he'd also call out warning.
Ranged DPS should try to drop their mystic buffet stacks behind every other ice tomb, while spending the rest of the time killing Sindragosa. It is very important that they pay attention to their instability and mystic buffet stacks, as they can easily kill themselves in this phase.
Healers should try their best to keep the tanks and raid alive around ice tombs and instability. Do your best to LoS the mystic buffet at all times without loosing LoS on the tank. If you have unchained magic, limit how many stacks of instability you gain with your mystic buffet stacks, as it is very easy to kill yourself.
Position your ice tombs carefully, and stay away from players who have frost beacon. Chaining ice tombs can easily wipe your raid. If you do chain an extra ice tomb or two, direct your ranged dps to quickly kill the extra tomb(s) before returning to what they were doing before.

We did have a few attempts where we did everything perfectly, but came up against the enrage timer. It is for this reason that we used a dps-spec offtank, since she was able to pour out full DPS when she wasn't tanking, and a frost-resist maintank, since he could take far more stacks in P3 than he could without it.


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"One bright day in the middle of the night, two dead boys got up to fight. Back to back they faced one another, drew their swords and shot each other."
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