My casual 10-man guild is working on normal Sindragosa. We can get her
to 35% pretty consistently, but then things go south. Best we've done
is 17%.
We've tried having everyone dps the tombs and we've tried having melee
dps odd tombs and ranged dps evens. I think either strategy will
eventually work, we just have to work out the kinks. Running out from
the explosion and getting hung up on a tomb doesn't help either.
Anyone have tips to share?
You need to 3 heal this fight. It is almost impossible to 2 heal this
fight, even when you completely over gear it, just due to the fight
mechanics. Why is that the case you say?
1 healer always gets a casting debuff, which means they cannot heal,
and is just hiding behind an ice tomb doing nothing.
1 healer stands outside healing the tank, accumulating frost stacks.
1 healer stands behind an ice block, getting rid of their frost
stacks, healing the raid.
Since 1 healer *always* gets a casting debuff, it means that in a 2
healer scenario, you won't have both a raid healer and a tank healer,
at the same time. You'll get one or the other, which means people
start dying.
Note that the healers are constantly swapping roles, as you can never
tell who gets the casting debuff, and since healers are constantly
gaining and losing frost stacks. If they aren't used to doing this on
the fly, they need to communicate with each other.
As for the ice tombs, the melee pretty much stay on the ice tombs all
the time. The trick to the ice tombs is that the tank has to call out
when to break the tomb. An early break means that the tank didn't get
enough time to remove his frost stacks, which means your tank is going
to die, and it's the dps's fault, because they were too aggressive on
killing the tomb.
I want to reiterate that point, because it's important. The tank calls
out when the tomb dies. If the tomb dies before the tank calls it out,
it's probably a wipe. You need to crack down hard on overeager dps to
prevent tombs from dying early.
The ranged dps fall into two categories:
1. Has less than 6 frost stacks. A ranged with less than 6 frost
stacks should be attacking the dragon.
2. Has 6 or more frost stacks. At 6 or more stacks, the ranged dps
should be hiding behind an ice tomb, helping dps the ice tomb.
The caveat to that is the casting debuff. Do not let the casting
debuff go higher than 3. Yes, just 3. If the casting debuff reaches 3,
stop casting until it wears off. The reason is that the frost stacks
you are getting increase the damage the casting debuff does to you, so
you've got to keep the casting debuff stacks lower during the 35%
phase.
At 35%, it becomes a slow and steady fight. It is not a dps race. You
should have used bloodlust earlier in the fight, in order to reduce
the number of times the dragon goes up in the air. If you can remove
just one air phase, that is effectively 1 more minute to dps the
dragon.
Finally, your raid make up is really, really bad for Sindragosa.
You're too melee heavy. Plus, rogues are the worst melee to have
attacking Sindragosa, as they stack the melee debuff too quickly,
since they dual wield fast weapons. You could have one pretend to be a
caster (with all the restrictions that entails), using slow weapons,
but the melee should understand that no one will be healing him, so he
needs to be extra careful about his stacks, and his health. No one is
healing him, because the raid healer is hiding behind an ice tomb, out
of line of sight, and the other healer will be focused on tank
healing, because the tank gets hit too hard for the tank healer to
worry about anyone else.
--
// T.Hsu