Sindragosa 10 Help/suggestions

[Brackit]

Alright the 30% buff has been out for awhile...the guild I am in is a 10 man strict guild. But we still cant down sindragosa..the first few phases go pretty flawless, then we get to phase 3. I was looking for suggestions on how we can help this..as of right now I suggest we place the Ice blocks to the left and right.

First iceblock go towards the head general area, the 2nd go towards the hind legs. But they wasnt working, so now the guild master just suggested all Iceblocks go left...just dps em down. I also should add we had G1(minus tank if they were on boss) goto the first iceblock, and g2 goto the 2nd (to clear stacks) but we have also attempted it just all going. Were failing at that too...

some wipes happen just because people dont get out of the group, but other times its just general we suck. Ill give you our raid makeup

Tanks: Pally/Warrior(sometimes plays a pally)
MDps:Rogue/Dk/Dk/Fury warrior
RDPS:Lock/Mage
Heals: disc priest/resto druid

I have suggested taking less melee, but due to one of the DKs(the lower dps one) being the husband of the GM its not an option.

TLDR: We suck at the last phase iceblocks. HALP :P

[Juu]

Yeah, less melee would certainly help. My guild runs a 2 tank, 2 melee, 2 heals, 4 range set up for this fight (well, when we were progressing). Now we can take more melee since we've got practice on the tactics. Alright, let's see if I can explain...
Oh, I play paladin tank, and the other person plays paladin tank as well. So that's our tank set up. We've heard a pali/warrior set up would work better, but this works for us. We use our divine sacrifice on blistering colds, by the way. And then when that's on cooldown, use hand of sacrifice on key players that have problems with damage.

3rd phase:
range and healers stack at top middle of stairs. Sindragosa is at the bottom of the stairs, head facing to the right, looking down the stairs. There is probably a good consecration length between the bottom of the stairs and where the melee stand.
1 tank takes it first (just like the majority of the fight) and the other stands with melee.
our first ice block goes to the left, facing down the stairs. This isn't random choice, it has to do with this being the easiest way to tank switch.
this first iceblock is the one everyone uses to drop their stacks. wait a few seconds, then dps it down. Heals/range return to top middle, melee return to sitting on Sin's butt.
second ice block goes to the right. (alternate every single ice block no matter what). call out your iceblocks. have one person call them out. this iceblock is dps'd right away. if you can drop your stack, great, but not as much need if your healers are good. use the left iceblock to drop stacks.
i was always the second tank, the one who started in the melee zone. i would participate in 2 iceblocks, then usually we would switch. So I'd do left, then go back to melee, right (drop stacks too), and take over as tank. Other tank would get ready to go to the left iceblock and drop their stacks, then go melee, and do the right iceblock. He and I could go 3 or 4 iceblocks without switching, but I'm not sure what the gear level would be comparatively.

honestly, the key to this fight is having someone call out, at least til people get into the habit and muscle memory of the fight. Took us a while, but it's really fun when you get it!

It's kinda like the safety dance. People just need to know where to go, and when to go.

I hope that helps, and I hope I didn't forget anything.

[Brackit]

We have not attempted the stair method, normally we tank her in the middle. Im gonna suggest we try your method hopefully it works. Ty

[Juu]

Unfortunately, looking through all these Sindragosa 10 videos all over the internet... can't find a dang one that uses the stairs. I'm fairly sure we got the strat from a video though, somewhere... Or some post.

Anyways, I know it works. We've downed her tons of times with that strat. Every other strat was fail for us. It may have been a great strat for us in the beginning because we are range-heavy, but now it works just fine with melee as well.

I think your warrior can also 1-tank it. I'm not familiar with warriors or the strat, but it's something to do with spell reflect to drop the stacks. Make the other tank go dps offspec or heals and then have a healer go dps off spec, just to make it work. (This is for future reference; I strongly recommend going with 2 tanks though)

Good luck!

[Fledern]

There are quite a few guides on how to kill Sindragosa and 99% of them are minor variations of the same stuff. It really doesnt matter where you place your blocks, etc. As long as people know where stuff will go and can react to the unexpected during the fight, it's all the same.

Now, that last bit is the most important: reacting to the unexpected. It WILL happen, that's what makes this boss hard. People panic or dont communicate effectively.

Going with 2 healers could be a major problem on P3. And the fight is all about P3, the previous bit is just warmup. Unchained magic is designed so that it will hit one healer & one magic dps at least. You're going with 2 healers and you can be sure that one of your healers will have Unchained magic and will have to stop healing frequently to let his stacks drop off. Now if the other healer gets targeted for ice tomb, your tanks are pretty much screwed. Can it be done? yes, with a really really good healing team, perfect cooldown rotations and good frost resist gear from tanks, super duper dps, etc. But it's not something i'd want to try while working on my first kill.


Phase 3 is about making sure you have a healer out to heal the tank. Tanks should be using cooldowns intelligently to handle tank changes. Tanks need to use abilities to get to ice tombs fast & clear their stacks. Both tanks & healers should be communicating well with what they're doing

How are you handling breaking the tombs? Better to put just the one rogue on the job. This way he wont stack unnecessary chilled to the bone while controlling the tomb breaking speed, allowing people to clear their stacks but also breaking out people fast enough.

[Juu]

This is true. It can be a very hard fight to heal, especially if your second healer is a disc priest. For progression purposes it would be beneficial to have a 3rd healer.

[Goros]

We run a 3rd healer just to faceroll through her quickly on the way to LK. Our dps all drop over 8k (when she's on the ground) so it's not a big deal.

You can't allow there to be 2 iceblocks at the same time in p3, and you can't use any tanking ability to drop the stacks. All you can do is use cooldown management to mitigate her harder hits once you get above 15 stacks as a tank. I've done this on my DK, but don't know if a warrior (or any other tank besides a DK) can do it. Key to solo tanking is to make sure your dps can burn her down from 35%-0% before you get above 25 stacks. Squishyness is just too high, even with 72k health and 35k armor, and your CD's are on cooldown when she gets ready to hit you hard again.

Melee or Ranged DPS shouldn't matter much in this fight as long as everyone knows what they are doing. We tank her in front of the stairs, facing the right side. One iceblock goes at the head (out of cleave/breath range), one goes at her feet (out of tail slap range). When the first person gets the mark for the iceblock, they call it out and call out which position they are going to (1 or 2). Once they get there, everyone switches and downs it. If you are tank swapping, the offtank takes the boss and the main tank wipes his debuff on this part. When the second mark hits, he calls it and moves, rinse & repeat (tanks swap every third block). Our dps is so high that the blocks drop fast, but not fast enough to prevent stack wipes, and people can still dps on the boss.
It's not hard, but if your team has positioning issues, use some smoke grenades to mark where you want the tombs.

[klausi]

15 Stacks? I guess that's a typo, you wear some frost resitance gear or you hardly overgear that encounter.

We just downed her tonight after ~ 25 Wipes while learning the fight over the past three weeks. We added a third healer - due to low dps that's a third air phase for us - but that didn't matter, the enrage timer is no problem at all. We also used the stair stretegy, first tomb to the head, second to the tail and so on. 3 ranged brought icetombs low (around 20%), tanks called for the destruction after clearing their stacks.

Communication is key. We also used a Warrior and a Paladin (have him keep judgement of light on her!), taunted at 4-6 stacks depending on the walking route. Melees have to watch out to not get accidently into another tomb and have your ranged camp and healers always run back to a meeting point at the stairs after destroying the tombs.

[Roana]

Ice tomb positioning really doesn't matter much, as long as you don't drop it on other people. Get HudMap installed if that's a problem.

You're running with two healers. That's going to be a serious problem no matter how you handle ice tombs; one will always have unchained magic, while the other may be stuck in an ice tomb. With two healers, you're relying very much on the RNG working in your favor and even then are probably stressing them out a whole lot.

If you insist on running with two healers, frost resistance gear for tanks and healers is strongly recommended. For tanks because it reduces damage, for healers, because they may not be able to always drop Mystic Buffet (where they'd lose LOS on the tank). If you're running with two healers, you also want to drop Mystic Buffet as often as possible.

[Roana]

15 Stacks? I guess that's a typo, you wear some frost resitance gear or you hardly overgear that encounter.

It's probably not a typo. Frost resistance gear is the optimal gear choice for that fight, unless you have threat issues or don't want to spend the money. Wearing regular physical mitigation gear for Sindragosa 10 is like wearing DPS gear when tanking Festergut; it'll maximize your threat, but you lose a chunk of survivability. Tank damage in P3 without resistance gear tends be around 70% frost, 30% physical, and her melee is very weak in 10-player mode. That you may not need frost resistance gear with the 30% buff doesn't make it less optimal for survivability.

That doesn't mean you want to run Mystic Buffet up to 15 stacks, but it's perfectly survivable in that gear if needed. I've seen tanks survive much more in full resistance gear.

[Fledern]

I've run up to 20 stacks of Mystic buffet with 2 pieces of frost resist gear and no flasks. 10man normal mode is easy to survive with a well geared tank using cooldowns properly.

[Brackit]

Wow a nice morning read. Well Our tanks dont use frost resist gear...I suggested it and they brushed it off cause the 30% buff. Hopefully I can get another healer to come along, or a dps to OS heals. Maybe it is just the fact we only use two healers.

[Goros]

15 Stacks? I guess that's a typo,

No, I solo tank it on my DK with my regular tank gear (no frost resist anything) and just use cooldown management from 15 stacks - 25 stacks. After 25 stacks all my stuff is on CD and I can't mitigate her next breath - but usually she's dead by the time I hit 25 stacks so it doesn't matter.

3 heals (pally, tree, holy priest) with an ele sham for heroism as soon as 35% hits and she drops around 21-22 stacks or so. With only 1 tank your offtank can go DPS and replace that healer that switched.

Like I said above, I'm not sure that anything BUT a DK could do it that way...but I know from personal experience it works and you don't get squishy/dead till around 25 stacks - this is assuming you are over 72k health and 35k armor buffed at the pull.

Also note this doesn't work on HM's or when you're doing the achievement...

[Fledern]

They CAN brush it off and rely on the 30% buff. But that's conditional on the healer team playing properly. But if you're running with 2 healers and not getting the last phase down you need the extra edge.

What frost resist does is it turns the frost breath and the frost aura tick damage to a laughably low number. Those abilities dont do much on their own but when you start stacking up high, you get to a point where spike damage suddenly goes beyond the capability of a single healer to heal. Now if you were running with 3 healers and/or your healer team was rotating the healing properly, tanks were all clearing their stacks before it goes to 6 stacks, sure, you could do away with the frost resist and nobody, including the healers would notice much. As it is, i'd say you need it. 2 pieces (i'd suggest belt & boots) and the lesser resistance flask should put your tanks in the higher resist quartile and ease up the healing a lot.

Just a tip on how much difference it makes: If i go with no resist gear, healers start getting strained (not impossible but they start yelling & panicking about clearing their stacks, they feel they cant let go of healing to go clear stacks) at about 6-7 stacks. If i wear frost gear, i got up to 20 stacks at which point the frost breath becomes a one-shot.

[Brackit]

I am actually one of the healers for this fight, the disc priest. :P I do find it rough at some points, but mainly after I get iceblocked/high stacks. Im hoping we can finally get her down after months...not joking, months of trying.

[Roana]

Wow a nice morning read. Well Our tanks dont use frost resist gear...I suggested it and they brushed it off cause the 30% buff. Hopefully I can get another healer to come along, or a dps to OS heals. Maybe it is just the fact we only use two healers.

Running with two healers only is definitely asking for trouble. To repeat the mechanics again: At any given time when Unchained Magic is up, it will affect one healer and one DPS. That means essentially that in P3 one healer is almost solo-healing the raid and the tank unless the other healer (the one with Unchained Magic) is willing to take some serious risks. Furthermore, with only one healer unaffected by unchained magic, that healer will not be able to drop stacks of Mystic Buffet regularly (because by doing so you lose LOS on the tank). That doesn't mean that it's impossible to two-heal this part, just that you're cutting seriously into your margin of error.

As to tanks not wearing frost resist gear -- technically, they're right. It's not necessary. On the other hand, when one has serious problems with beating an encounter, then one tries to get every reasonable edge. It's also not necessary to flask. It's also not necessary to wear epics for ICC 10 normal. It's not necessary to keep Demoralizing Shout/Roar up. Heck, for many fights it's not even necessary to be crit-immune. It's not necessary to bring 10 people to ICC 10 normal, either. That it's not necessary doesn't mean it's not smart, though.

[Juu]

Well we ran 2 heals 2 tanks, no resist gear at 20% buff to beat her down. We did have some good dps, but they weren't all fantastic. As I was saying above, if you execute and coordinate correctly (Like the Safety Dance!), you can get away with no resist gear and the 2 heals. We were also running 2 paladin tanks though, so that may have helped. We usually ran Shaman healer, druid healer, but sometimes went Disc heals, Druid heals.

Occasionally we have 3 healed it if we were carrying some others, and that's usually an OS pali healer.

One tanking with a bunch of stacks can work, but if you're not comfortable with it, try 2 tanks, 3 heals, with good dps and a good execution. But stair strategy for the win. It's a lot more useful to use a visually-effective strategy.

And.... heals communicate in vent all the time. If a healer gets iced, get them out asap, even if there are stacks to drop.

[Loganisis]

Brackit,

We finally got our first Sind10 kill last night on our 4th attempt last night (same boat, too many attempts too many nights spent at her), but unlike other nights, it didn't feel like a mistake to get her below 10% (in the past it seemed more like dumb luck). Here's a few things that helped:

1. We place the first tomb by her rear legs (when she shouts to start P3 melee rotates to the left to allow room, range is up on the stairs out of tombing range), then the second by her head and that's the one tanks use to clear, swapping every other head tomb. The key though was the range staying up, almost in a triangle spot from where to the two ice tombs are placed, that way they didn't have to move/shift off of Sindragosa until the 2nd ice tomb.

2. If we get multiple people tombed (happened 2x in our kill attempt) ALL DPS switches to tombs. In the past we didn't do this and it lead to a cascading series of events. Basically, if someone screws up in P3 it takes a raid to get them out.

Now as to your specific case with 4 melee, which like every other ICC fight, is not ideal, you probably should pair your DPS up. Maybe DK/DK and Rogue/Fury. Then use some sort of rotation, such as:
Tomb 1: All melee clears (as CttB is likely to have stacked and melee needs to keep it low in this phase). After tomb 1 is down, DKs go to Sindragosa, Rogue/Fury head to Tomb 2.
Tomb 2: Rogue/Fury kill, then return to Sindragosa
Tomb 3: DKs kill, then return to Sindragosa
Tomb 4: Rogue/Fury kill then return to Sindragosa

The idea here would be to keep Mystic Buffet low on melee so when the inevitable stacks of CttB come, they're not getting killed at 3 stacks for being unhealable. The 4 melee is going to put extra burden on your healers though, no way around it.

We barely had any melee at all though in ours - Just me (Fury) with the DPS being a Hunter, Lock, and 2 mages to go with 2 tanks and 3 healers.

[iJax]

I agree your team is melee heavy. With your current make up try assigning players to tomb duty. Its their job to break people out. See if the two ranged can do it alone. First tomb to her hind leg, break it at the same time as OT uses it to clear stacks, then second tomb goes near head, allowing MT to LOS and clear stacks, then keep rotating. OT taunts from hind leg swinging boss to OT. It should be very rare a cleave / tail hits the two ranged players during tank swap. melee stays at belly. If Ranged gets tombs melee needs to know to break them out.

[Amethystine]

My guild and I discovered a pair of class-specific notices during the Sindragosa encounter involving the Unchained Magic debuff.

Shadow Priests, your Mind Flay, as of this post, does -not- start building Instability, so you're able to safely and easily continue some DPS while you have the debuff. Boomkins, on the other hand... every single star of your Starfall can and will build stacks on Instability, so unless an Unchained Magic went out just before, you're probably better off not casting it at all this fight.