This fight in particular has been irritating me, mainly because I don't get why we're having so much trouble with it, so I've been doing a lot of reading up on it.

Something I've read is that people should wear pieces of frost resist gear (some say only melee, some say the entire raid) as it DRASTICALLY reduces all-around raid damage and somewhat trivializes the fight. Apparently people can take upwards of 18-20 stacks of Mystic Buffet and still survive instead of having to try to drop it so frequently, and so it gives a lot more time to DPS her down in phase 3.

It seems like a lot of people are having trouble dropping debuff stacks, so maybe this would be an option...?

Another option could be only the tanks in frost resist.


Regarding the "go back to the stairs in between ice blocks" tactic we're currently using for phase 3, I'm reading that it's possible for ranged/healers to just stay behind the ice tombs at ALL TIMES and go back and forth to always keep low stacks, and have the boss always in LOS and still heal the raid, rather than try to run up and down the stairs. (Unless we already tried that when I wasn't here.) The only issue is, obviously, not to panic during Blistering Cold, and get back in position.

For those classes without a run speed boost (or similar escape ability) via talents/spells, Enchant Boots - Tuskarr's Vitality is also strongly recommended. I myself use to get hit by half the Blistering Colds from not being able to get outside the 25yd range of the blast in time.

Conveniently, Boots is one of the slots wherein Frost Resist gear is available, so if you need the run speed boost and use a different enchant on your current boots, you can get frost resist boots crafted and enchanted with Tuskarr's.

Edit: And the Wowhead Mouseover script's not working. I'll have to look into that when I update software tomorrow…

Another thing I read....

Most people are suggesting that Phase 3 should be strict burn and just DPS the crap out of her, aside from ranged taking out the ice blocks in between, and that's definitely not how we've been handling it. (Read: completely IGNORE the debuff stacks and just heal through it, which is probably viable if we keep using 3 healers. The whole line of sighting in the end supposedly is only really for the 25-man strat.) I think this is similar to what Don had us try tonight but with certain people assigned to the blocks. Did we even have a Blood Lust in P3?

It seemed like the positioning was better at least, as far as people getting out of the damn nova. Now if only Pac's connection wasn't being so godawful =P

Other question: Were we using 2 tanks? Because it says we should only ever have one, the other spot should be extra DPS because it's needed in the last phase.

It is possible to do it with 1 tank, but done with two to not stress the healers.. 30 stacks can be very painful, it can still be done, and about not getting off your stacks, it isnt a good idea because if your stacks are over 10 you can be one shotted be the ice block if it targets you, especially as a clothy.. heh

We didnt have a bloodlust because pac couldnt stay connected longer then five seconds and that also threw our chances out the window by alot.

"Just heal through it" is not usually a valid strategy for progression content. We're a guild of 10-man healers who only really have had access to 10-man and Emblem of Frost gear. Out of our 4 current healers - myself, Fracturehorn, Rashee, and Wattage - Fracturehorn's the only to have PUGged 25.

As Don pointed out, Ice Tomb hits on average for 15k before resistance is applied. Mystic Buffet increases magical damage taken by 10% per application, applied every 6 seconds. Thus, by about 10 stacks, an Ice Tomb would hit the person being frozen by 30k before resistance. This is while other magic effects - Permeating Chill for melee, Unchained Magic for casters, and Frost Aura affecting everyone - are still active as well. That's a lot to "just heal through."

Or more to the point: if you think that such can be healed through, you're welcome to bring your priest in to show us how its done. I'll be happy to go shadow and dps while you do so.

Ah, understandable, that makes sense. And I figured that happened with Pac. XD I just honestly couldn't remember whether he managed to get one off or not because yeah, that might have helped a lot.



No reason to get snippy, I was just trying to help. And no I'm not saying I could do it; you guys are far more experienced than me. It just feels to me like we should try every possible thing at this point to find something that actually works and I'm trying to throw in every possible strategy suggestion I ever find and read out there.

Seems I forgot the emoticon in that last paragraph to indicate I was joking. Sorry.

We did have Bloodlust twice last night, on attempts 2 and 3. Breakdown as follows:

Only attempts which have lasted 6 minutes or longer are listed

7/15 Try 1 (9:24): 7,729,062 (30.7%)(13,704dps) +
7/15 Try 2 (8:36): 7,894,621 (29.2%)(15,299dps) +*
7/15 Try 5 (7:56): 8,783,792 (21.2%)(18,453dps) *
7/15 Try 6 (7:56): 9,248,063 (17.1%)(19,428dps) *


7/22 Try 1 (6:57): 8,020,185 (28.1%)(19,233dps)
7/22 Try 3 (6:47): 8,008,575 (28.2%)(19,677dps)


7/29 Try 2 (6:49): 9,225,959 (17.3%)(22,557dps) *
7/29 Try 4 (6:47): 8,983,070 (19.4%)(22,071dps) *
7/29 Try 5 (7:45): 10,030,951 (10.0%)(21,572dps) *
7/29 Try 6 (6:32): 8,900,843 (20.2%)(22,706dps) *


8/19 Try 1 (7:39): 7,080,483 (36.5%)(15,392dps) +
8/19 Try 2 (8:18): 8,571,892 (23.2%)(17,247dps) +*
8/19 Try 3 (8:27): 9,088,107 (18.5%)(17,855dps) +*


damage and dps numbers relate to damage done directly to Sindragosa and not to the Ice Tombs.

+: encounters 3 healers were used
*: encounters Bloodlust was used


Not that, to do 11,156,000 damage to Sindragosa before the 10-minute Berserk timer, we have to be averaging 18,600dps or higher directly to the boss.

Damn I forgot about that time we got her to 10%. Man what a kick in the nuts.......

In general, would you say 2 or 3 healers seems to work better for us? Maybe we should try the new formation we used last night with 2, with an added DPS boost (and lack of Pac's DCs) I really feel like we might have had it. I could also try switching to Arcane to help since it tends to do better on movement intensive fights, but with Unchained Magic I'm not sure it would do all that much. Think I'll do it next time just to see.

We're about 1k dps shy with 3 healers. So we have four choices:

1.) 6 dps, 2 tanks, 2 healers (susceptible to "bad luck" when a healer is Ice Blocked and the other has Unchained Magic, or similar)

2.) 6 dps, 1 tank, 3 healers (Can get hairy if dragon doesn't die before tank's Mystic Buffet stacks get too high)

3.) Hand pick our top 5 dps, run 2 tanks and 3 healers (not the ideal solution)

4.) 5 dps, 2 tanks, 2 healers, 1 hybrid - a healer that does dps, or a dps that heals. Healing requirements during the first phase is rather light; its not until Sindy goes into Phase 2 that healing starts getting tricky.


I'm thinking #4 might give us the best shot; doesn't really matter who (Rashee and myself both pushed out about 1500dps on Saurfang on Wednesday, Fracture's should be about the same) but it might also harder to coordinate.





The time we hit 10%, that was when Zaziel was still with us. He was Arcane at the time with 65% of his damage coming from Arcane Blast, and 29% from Arcane Missiles. In case that that info helps you any on figuring out if Arcane might be more effective for you.

Nah, those two spells are just the main Arcane rotation, so it doesn't help any. In fights like Marrowgar, I would average between 2-4k more going Arcane. In fights where I'm mostly standing still like Saurfang, I can either equal or surpass it with Fire, depending on the stream of random number generation I get.

I think the issue with Fire in movement fights is the longer cast time on Fireball vs. the stacking buff from Arcane Blast. That .5 seconds makes a huge difference when you're running around avoiding stuff, plus it's easier to try to throw off a few ABs while you're on the move and gain that big bonus damage % to your next one than wait to have enough Fireball spam for Pyroblast to actually proc.

Back when my gear was worse I always did higher DPS in Arcane regardless; now that I've gotten a few better pieces there's times where I'm often capable of doing more in Fire. It all comes down to the fact that Arcane is a far more consistantly even spec right now and Fire is too dependant on the luck you get with crits.


Summary and tl;dr, I probably should have using Arcane all along for Sindy, but I blame my horrible bias.

Bias towards one spec isn't necessarily a bad thing. You seem to know the strengths and weaknesses of your preferred spec (as far as raiding goes) rather well because of it.

HA, actually #3 is the perfect solution.. it just doesn't happen

Not necessarily, the ones with the highest numbers on the charts might not be the ones with the best ability to actually survive

Well if you are referring to yourself then yea hehe, honestly i don't believe any 2 healer strategies are gonna work to well, because survivability becomes very low if one of them gets frozen.. as it does when we hit phase 2 and people dropped like flies in ALL our previous 2 healer scenarios, 3 is the best.. 2 would probably only work if we got really lucky... and as for dps yea it is an issue there to.. but on our second to last try we where right on par with the timer and where her hp should be.. as long as people pay attention that should be fine, even ralph mentioned to me the dps was okay.. generally every one minute should represent 10% of her health, so by 7 minutes we should have her at 70% hp and so on, that is the best way to tell if you are on par.

Ideally, yes, but dps slows a bit in Phase 2. Hense why I made the 4th suggestion of having healers do damage - Out of our 8½ minute wipes when we have 3 healers, we spend the first 6 in Phase 1 where we're fine with 2 healers. So if, for example, I'm Smiting the dragon in P1 while Rashee and Fracture heal, that could be an extra 1.5-2k dps during the first 5 minutes. Get us to P2 a little sooner, and give us a little more time buffer to work with in P2 when we'd likely have all 3 healers healing.

For illustrate the dps difference on the phases, Try3 on Thursday we averaged 17,855dps directly on Sindragosa. Zooming into the time range between 21:16:54 (start of Mystic Buffet) and 21:18:32 (first P2 death), we had 14,582dps. Direct to Sindy before 21:16:54 was about 19,245dps.



Bleh... need to style the Code block still...