ICC - Sindragosa (Normal)

ShowXdown · 02/06/10, 3:35 PM

Hey Guys

We are having some troubles on downing Sindragosa (10 Players). We downed 10/12 with 20 Trys left but pretty much fucked up on Sindragosa even after seeing some Killvids and reading strats.

The problem ofcourse is P3

The debuff + Iceblock Combo is what's fucking up our raid. And I am feeling, we missed something out.

What we tried, was bursting with 1 Tank 2 Heal and 8 dds. However we realized that our dps was a bit too low for that, even we are 253~ Ilvl.

We then changed our strat as the DPS strat is also much RNG.

2 Tanks
3 Heal
5 Dps

We put the first Iceblock onto the height of the tank, everyone except 1 Heal resets stacks. OT will now spot Sindragosa and 2nd Iceblock will be placed were the melee Camp was. MT + Full raid except 1 Heal resets.

However, the iceblocks are pretty fast spawning, and we often need to wait for the tanks with slow debuff. So we loose our time to DPS the boss (we don't have DOT classes in our setup (no moonkin, shadow, warlock, dk). And oufcourse many times just our tanks died.

Did we make same mistakes, or is it just better execution? What were your strats to down Sindragosa? As i often read, it's one of the easier fights in Icc.

PsiVen · 02/07/10, 3:07 AM

It sounds like you're trying to sync up tank transitions with the rest of the raid resetting their debuffs. There's no reason to do that, and it will only slow you down. Let the tanks rotate on their own time, with whatever ice block is available. That will result in the fastest debuff resets for everyone.

sp00n · 02/07/10, 6:15 AM

Also I think you've given yourself an answer. If you reset everybody's debuff except 1 healer, and then the tank dies, you're clearly having not enough heal on him during that time.
Also, do you keep up that rotation during the whole fight, e.g. resetting the debuff on every Ice Tomb? Seems a bit overkill for me, especially for the melee classes (who would be running from Ice Tomb to Ice Tomb this way).

Sindragosa certainly wasn't an easy fight for us. Our Ice Tomb spots were 1) on height of the tank and 2) on height of (and behind!) the melee camp. We basically spit up our raid in two halves, one resetting it on the first and the other on the second. At least that was the rough plan, in the end every player had to get a feeling how much he can really take.

Valerian · 02/07/10, 9:22 AM

One thing that we found worked was that the iceblocks can be placed in a way that allows the healers to reset their stacks but also still heal the tank. Remember you don't need to be right next to the iceblock, you just need to use it to block LOS. Depending how far apart you put them it may not work for both, but you can do it pretty easily for at least one of them, which makes the tank healing less tricky.

Sh4d0wfury · 02/07/10, 2:06 PM

It's very helpfull on 10man to have the tanks get Frost resist.With something along 300-400 you can resist 1/4 of the breath, or even full resist (I can't explain why, but it's possible). Since Sindragosa melee damage on 10 man is very low, not many tank pieces are needed.

klüger · 02/07/10, 5:19 PM

Just chiming in with a bug that hit us. After a time of wiping (and after killing the whelps when they respawned) we found ourselves unable to aggro the two frost-wyrms who had respawned as well (thus being unable to spawn sindragosa). We reckon its fixable by a soft reset, but haven't tested it.

dr_AllCOM3 · 02/07/10, 5:23 PM

Originally Posted by klüger

Just chiming in with a bug that hit us. After a time of wiping (and after killing the whelps when they respawned) we found ourselves unable to aggro the two frost-wyrms who had respawned as well (thus being unable to spawn sindragosa). We reckon its fixable by a soft reset, but haven't tested it.

You have to wait for a full thrash respawn.

sp00n · 02/07/10, 6:44 PM

Happened to us too, and a soft reset does fix it.

More specifically, you'll have to wait until both dragons have respawned before engaging the whelp packs. The dragons are triggered to land by the whelp handler's death, and if you kill a whelp handler before a dragon has respawned, the dragon never receives the "command" to land and thus is stuck in the air.

MrMacca · 02/07/10, 8:30 PM

The 2 dragons became bugged for us also. We had severe server lag caused by a group of German players from the Bluddurst server who were spamming all channels. This meant that our attempts were interrupted and we decided to go on the other remaining bosses that did not have the shared attempts.

On returning, the 2 dragons were flying in the air but would not land. As it was late in the night, we decided to attempt to dps them. We switched most people to ranged dps and we slowly but surely managed to dps them down, taking off 7% of their health each time that they past.

So if this bug occurs, there's an alternative to dps them down within a few minutes to get Sindragosa to repop.

♦ Blacksen · 02/07/10, 10:48 PM

Probably the most infuriating thing about the encounter is having to go through 65% to get to the actual encounter. It feels like Kael'Thas all over again.

We also had a similar problem as the original poster, but started getting a system together in which healers were always in LoS of the tanks. As mentioned several times in this thread, you can position the Ice Blocks in a way that tanks don't get LoS'd. In regards to the caster debuff, we eventually just took on the mindset that we were 8-manning the boss and that the two casters were simply out of the fight.

Some other mechanic tidbits that we've noticed in the 10man:
- The caster debuff seems to ALWAYS hit 1 healer and 1 DPS. Originally we went with 3 melee, 1 hunter, 1 warlock, and 3 healers (I'm the warlock). I got hit by the caster debuff every single time, without a doubt. The healer debuff *seemed* random in terms of which of the 3 healers got it. However, every single time the debuff went out, I would get it along with 1 healer. When we brought in a shadow priest in exchange for one of the melee, the shadow priest and I alternated having it.
- Rogues (and I'd imagine other dual-wielding classes) are notoriously bad in this fight. Even when I was the only caster and thus always getting the caster debuff, I was consistently beating our rogue (normally a 10k+ melee). While I hope that Blizzard reconsiders how they do the melee debuff, for now you simply shouldn't bring a fast-swinging melee.
- Casters are kings here. The melee debuff can always hit the melee, while the caster dps debuff is limited to 1 person. If you had a raid full of caster DPS, you can easily zerg through phase 3. It enables you to have 7 dps that can go "all-out" for the entire encounter.

Point is, if you're looking for an "easy way" through this encounter just so that you can get to the Lich King and start on heroics, take 2 healers, 1 tank, and 7 casting DPS. You can easily zerg down the final 35% with strong caster DPS.

gcbirzan · 02/08/10, 1:10 AM

Originally Posted by Blacksen

Some other mechanic tidbits that we've noticed in the 10man:
- The caster debuff seems to ALWAYS hit 1 healer and 1 DPS. Originally we went with 3 melee, 1 hunter, 1 warlock, and 3 healers (I'm the warlock). I got hit by the caster debuff every single time, without a doubt. The healer debuff *seemed* random in terms of which of the 3 healers got it. However, every single time the debuff went out, I would get it along with 1 healer. When we brought in a shadow priest in exchange for one of the melee, the shadow priest and I alternated having it.
- Rogues (and I'd imagine other dual-wielding classes) are notoriously bad in this fight. Even when I was the only caster and thus always getting the caster debuff, I was consistently beating our rogue (normally a 10k+ melee). While I hope that Blizzard reconsiders how they do the melee debuff, for now you simply shouldn't bring a fast-swinging melee.
- Casters are kings here. The melee debuff can always hit the melee, while the caster dps debuff is limited to 1 person. If you had a raid full of caster DPS, you can easily zerg through phase 3. It enables you to have 7 dps that can go "all-out" for the entire encounter.

While it never hit our melee (including an enhancement shaman), all of our casters got it (including an elemental shaman), sometimes two DPS, sometimes two healers, sometimes one of each. The ratio was also quite weird, I git it three times less frequently than our elemental shaman, who also got it way more frequently than our other two healers. I don't know how it decides who is a valid target, but one of our other 10 man groups said it's not based on range (had one healer stand in melee range, he still got it) and having the melee debuff doesn't make you immune to getting the caster one (I had both in a couple of tries, due to judging).

We had melee go all out in phase 1, since there is no raid healing to be done, you can just spam heal the rogues taking 15 stacks and won't really have any problems. We also had them DPSing ice blocks in phase 3, so they weren't completely useless.

Nisall · 02/08/10, 2:26 AM

Last night we ran with 3 healers, lock, hunter, fury, rogue, ret, bear and prot warr. The lock would get the caster debuff every single time and one of the 3 healers the 2nd caster debuff.

I agree that single weapon melee or casters are king on this fight. As ret I would rarely get above 5 stacks usually dropping them around 3 stacks. We did 8 tries and I only had to stop attacking 3 times.

ciopo · 02/08/10, 3:13 AM

I disagree on the fast melee getting the shaft here, and it comes from a cat which arguabily is one of the faster swinger.
On 10man I was cat during P1 and switched to offtanking in P3, I watched carefully the debuff and at most I lost 1-2 seconds of autoattack every 20-25seconds or so, the trick is to never stop unless you see the debuff is fading out on it's own.
There is a natural break on the air phase and on the mass death grip anyway, outside of that, if the debuff is "almost out on it's own", it's sufficent to stop these 1-2 seconds it would take to it to fade, instead of risking stacking up more stacks.

This come from a 0.77sec swing-time cat.

Furion · 02/08/10, 4:13 AM

In 25 man I had more trouble as cat. It's true that sometimes you can get rid of the debuff by using /stopattack at the right moment but rng can screw you pretty bad when the debuff refreshes too fast (also depending on how many stacks you are allowed to get) and it does make the encounter more challenging/annoying for fast hitting melees. In the end I wouldn't be surprised if the mechanic was normalized eventually as I don't think it would make much sense having to bench good players for hardmode just because they are attacking too fast.

sp00n · 02/08/10, 4:37 AM

Rogues can make use if Cloak of Shadows and Feint to actually lessen the strain on the healers. While Feint will not reduce the damage taken of the Chilled to the Bone melee debuff, it will reduce the Frost Aura ticks, which is especially helpful in phase 3 with the damage increasing Mystic Buffet.

And CloS can easily be used in a rotation to never let the CttB debuff stack above 8. Use it as soon as have around that mark (and if it wouldn't be dropping in 1-2 seconds anyway, in this case just stop attacking as already mentioned), and the time she casts her Icy Grip, you'll have to stop attacking anyway and the debuff has time to drop again.

In phase 3 you'll have to be careful of course, but CloS basically enables you to skip one Ice Tomb and Feint helps when you're beginning to have high stacks.