Sindragosa
Why do you not die?
I really hate you.
Sindragosa is the bane of HFC’s existance. Getting stuck on Marrowgar pales in comparison to this. The thing that sucks the most is that we have phase 1 and 2 down cold…it’s rare that someone dies before then. But when she hits that final phase, we’re just not able to last. We can handle a few tombs before things just go pear shaped and something goes wrong (blistering cold+frost tomb=bad). Though we did nothing but wipe to her last night, we may have hit on something towards the end that we’ll try next time we want to wail on her. We got her to 18%, which is a slight improvement (but an *improvement*)….usually we get her to about 25-22%. *sigh*
At this point, for me and I think a few others, it’s not even about the loot, it’s somewhat, but not entirely about bragging rights…it’s revenge. It’s sheer stubbornness. I want that dragon dead and I wish we could figure out what we’re doing wrong or what we could do better to get that done. Or to turn it on myself, I wish I knew what I was doing that I need to change or tweak. Time the use of my Divine Sacrifice better, so I can use it in Phase 3, will work on it. Bacon myself in Phase 3? Maybe I should try that. But I men, HFC, we’re a smart and capable crew….we downed the Blood Queen on our 4th attempt EVER. It didn’t take us terribly long to figure out Blood Princes. We’ve had our sticking points in the past, but in time we get things down. Sindy is just not wanting to die for us.
HATE. THAT. DRAGON.
(Un)holy Randomness 
Dancing
The only way to the
Throne of the King
I need to take dancing lessons. >.>
I think at this point, we’re just changing it up in an effort to find what works and that can be confusing. We’ve maybe hit on a strat that looks promising, but by the time we tried it, it was late in the evening and we were already ‘wipe weary’ so I have hope going into the next round of attempts.
Dragon of pale bone,
buffets frost, screams of betrayal.
Shadowgarde got you.
Maybe it’s different for your crew, but the biggest holdup for our raid group on Sindragosa was convincing the DPS that yes, indeed, you really do need to drop your Mystic Buffet stacks. And unless you’re running up hard against the enrage timer, the last phase isn’t really a serious DPS race. It’s a juggling act in which one ball is the tank-swap, one ball is the block placement, and the third throught sixth balls are the coordination of block-killing, dragon-killing, stack-dropping, and tank-healing. Even with the zone-wide buff, everyone needs to keep calm and keep doing that iceblock shuffle. 🙂
Oh, Sindragosa
The reason we want you dead
Is so you’ll shut up
Yeah, I think it’s all the stuff you have to juggle in phase 3 that does us in. Positioning is something we struggle with and are constantly tweaking and trying to perfect. Where to put ourselves, where to drop frost tombs, where to tank the dragon…. I’m hoping the new way we were trying it towards the end will bear fruit. We were using the whole stair area to place ice tombs and the dragon was being tanked at the foot of the stairs, facing away from us and unless someone got tombed (or was melee or the tank), we stayed as clumped up as we can.
It’s hard, even with a really good group! I’m sure it will click for you soon. Also, in case it helps, Vidyala drew a really helpful diagram of what I think of as being the “conventional” Sindragosa strategy—I can’t seem to find a link to it right now, but I bet if you ask her, she might forward it to you.
What usually winds up killing you? Are you running up against the enrage, or are tanks dying, or are people getting multiple tombs, or something else?
It’s typically the tombs, we either get too many, or I or the other healer get tombed (me and a shammie are the only regular healers, we sometimes get a priest or shammie to go heals for various fights that need them) and one person dies, then 3 people get tombed at once and then…splat. We’re lasting longer than we used to in the last phase. We can usually get past a few tombs before the $%# hits the fan. I don’t think we’ve hit her enrage timer yet…I only recall seeing the warning that it’s a few minutes away once or twice.
I’ll have to poke Vidyala sometime (or dig around her blog if it’s hiding on there). I’m so desperate, I’ll try anything. 🙂
Yeah, bad tomb randomness can really hurt! If it were up to me, I’d recommend you plan on doing that fight with three dedicated healers, so that you can be sure you’ve always got at least one free (in general, it’s probably a wipe if you ever have more than two tombs up at a time—as the second tomb goes up, you want the first one to be ALMOST dead, leave it just long enough for the tank to swap and drop her stacks then kill it).
We were thinking of doing that very thing, actually. That was one of the comments our intrepid RL made at the end when we were trying to figure out what we could do different. We hate to lose the DPS, but since we’re not running into the enrage timer, perhaps we could (and should) spare it for extra healz.
Did I mention our team has no druids for battle rezzes and no locks to utilize soulstones? At least we have 2 shammies who can self rez, but except for that, when you die, you die. Doesn’t help when you’re trying to learn a boss and need all the help you can get…oh well, it just makes us work extra hard!
Well, if you truly can’t spare the dps, you might be able to get away with having someone off-heal during bad iceblocks. We tried that with our Elemental shaman at one point, and it was rough, but it did work (though not on heroic). The important thing, though, is that nobody gets tunnel vision and misses being blocked, or stands too close to the block position, or builds up too many stacks, or what have you. On some fights, you can just have someone call the moves—but we found that on Sindragosa, that wasn’t enough. Everyone had to watch their own bars. For people who use Grid, I think it’s worth adding Mystic Buffet and the frost tomb debuff to the display.
We did find it helpful to have someone call the block positions, I’m not sure if that would help?
14% last night – WOOT! We are steadily moving into the right direction, we will get her in the end even if we have to saw her with a plastic spoon very very slowly. I always have fun wiping on Sindy, since it is so freaking hard to kill her. Having the 3rd healer helped, but we are still loosing occasional players to random things like blistering cold, because they get turned around, and get out of range, or frost tombs in the 3rd phase, when we have players running in all directions, and forget to break them out in time. But the real problem is when we have several people frozen at one time, that is the real killer. There are few very important things to watch out for, and everyone has to keep watch for them, that is the key. We have such excellent healers and DPS, we have it in us to kill her.
I don’t care if she drops pink pantaloons of the bear, just want her DOWN!
Yes, Monday was real progress for once! We’ve been stuck so long at the same point that I was getting a bit demoralized. I think a few more attempts, and some tweaks and we really will get her down. And then we’ll all parade naked in Dalaran! Or at least I will. And Damorg will follow along drooling….
Definitely helped having that third healer, just as insurance for when bad things happen (2 healers getting tombed in the air phase or both getting tombed in the last phase because we were too close to each other at the wrong moment). One weakness of mine is running out of blistering cold. Yes, I use my keyboard to move. Using the mouse is well and good, but in the heat of the moment, it’s easy to overturn and lose your way. BUT I am happy that I managed to bacon myself in the last phase and use my bubble at the right time to at least help out some. I’ll hop on one foot if it will help. I’ll do ANYTHING.