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2 tanks
6-7 healers
Nice even mix of DPS
WHOA but we didn't finish the trash?
Once you clear out the last trash pack on her ledge thing, Sindragosa will immediately fly down and engage you. Be ready and prepared for that!
Phase 1
Tank Sindragosa where she lands (in the middle of the middle circle). It is a good idea to turn her to the left or right by 90 degrees so that melee can avoid being hit. In other words, have the tank turn her so as to expose her flank to the stairs. For the love of the light, do not stand near her face, unless you are a tank, or you will die a horrible death from halitosis or just from her swiping at you. To make matters worse, she also has a tail swipe that will hit you for six if you get too near to her rear end. Remembering these two things (dont stand near face, dont stand near tail) is really important for phase 3. So, burn them into your brain right now.
Now that you know where not to stand, let's look at where TO stand. Melee should stack right up on her middle (much like sapphiron) and range should be directly behind melee at max spell casting range. The two groups should be stacked to assist healers with the cold aura sindragosa will inflict on everyone.
Every so often, Sindragosa will drag everyone to her then start casting an aoe spell that will kill you if you are caught in it. So, here is how you get out of it. Mouse turn immediately and piss bolt for the stairs. If you are a keyboard turner, now is the time to repent! You simply do not have enough time to keyboard turn and still be able to run 26 yards to avoid the aoe blast. Trust me on this, I am a keyboard turner, and I am now mouse turning for this event. Keyboard turning is simply not fast enough. I also recommend getting the boot speed increase enchant if you are struggling. You must run with the pack, or you may struggle with the cold aura and general dying from being out of range of heals. There is no reason to be dying to this event if you do all of the above things. Believe me, if you die on this more than once, your RL will be raging at you (if you are an RL, you should not be taking any excuses for people stuffing this up)
What are these debuffs I am getting?
There are 2 debuffs that sindragosa puts on the raid. One for hitting sindragosa and one applied randomly to casters for casting spells. Your favourite boss mod will tell you who gets stricken with the caster one and when. Unchained magic will drop off after a period of time and you can cast freely again. Permeating Chill is a permanent effect on sindragosa, but it has a chance of application per hit. It is about 20% from what I read.
These both cause a DoT debuff (hitting / casting) to be applied to the person which cannot be dispelled. However, the stacks drop off after 8s. If you are hitting sindragosa in anyway, you need to make sure you manage the hitting debuff. If you are casting, you need to manage the casting one. If you are a caster DPS, you may need to manage both. It is your responsibility to not get too many stacks. If you are hitting sindragosa, that means stop hitting her for 8s. If you are casting, that means stop casting for 8s. Each time you get a stack, it refreshes the timer back to 8s. It is really important to understand that. You actually have to STOP for 8s for ALL the stacks to drop off. Most people will have about 6-8 stacks before letting them drop off, but this will depend on what your healers are capable of.
Phase 2
When Sindragosa hits 85% (and then every 1:50 after that time) she will flap into the air, much like sapphiron. Everyone needs to run to the bottom of the stairs at this point.
5 players will be marked with a little blue down arrow on their heads. Your fave boss mod will probably also mark them with raid markers (if it doesn't, I strongly recommend that you find one that does).
If you are NOT marked, you need to get the hell away from anyone that is marked, and by away, I mean away not just sort of away.
If you ARE marked, you have a very special job to do (and this really isn't easy, and will require practise as you only have 7 seconds to get into the right place). Each person should have a raid marker on their head - be aware as lag might play a factor in this. Now, at the bottom of the stairs (and we choose this position to minimise the area in which things can go wrong) you 5 people need to make a pattern. That pattern should be something similar to what you can find on tankspot in their project marmot vids. 2 people in front, 3 in back, like a pyramid without the top point. What is important is that you make sure you very clearly assign your raid markers to a position in that arrangement so everyone knows exactly where they are moving to. RLs, it is a good idea to have a macro reminding people of their positions for the first few attempts until people learn it. Putting down flares to mark out the positions is also a good learning tool.
Everyone should have a range finder on their screen - when those marked people turn into Ice Tombs, they will inflict aoe damage on everyone within 10 yards. If you are within 10 yards of a marked/tombed person you are doing something wrong. If you are marked and are within 10 yards, it is quite likely that you will DIE HORRIBLY and everyone will mock you. If you are not marked and within 10 yards of a marked person, not only will you cop damage, but you will also become tombed. This is a Bad Thing, as you will see in a minute.
Now let's assume everyone did that perfectly (which, is actually pretty unlikely). The raid is on the stairs, and the ice tombs are between the raid and sindragosa. You all remember Hodir from Ulduar? and getting the frozen guys out of the ice blocks? Yep, here we go again guys! It's a smoosh of Hodir and Sapphiron.
So the raid needs to be doing 2 things. The first is that they need to DPS their team mates out of the tombs before they Die Horribly unable to breathe. Second, is that the raid needs to make sure they line of sight the Frost bombs Sindragosa will randomly drop on the ground. Now you will see why the bottom of the stairs was chosen! There will be 4 frost bombs dropped in Phase 2, and each bomb will have a target on the ground for you to line up with the tombs.
So, get behind the back 3 tombs and smash them down while staying out of line of sight of the bombs! Easy right? Not so much. The front 2 tombs you need to get down to about 20% and keep them there until the last bomb drops. If you smash everything out too quickly, you will have nothing to hide behind! After the 4th bomb is dropped, free the last two people and get back into phase 1.
Healers!
You will have LoS issues in this phase, if it becomes too much of an issue discuss with your RL where to position the raid to help you out. Also, make sure the marked people are topped up to full before they become tombed, and make sure they are quickly healed up after they are released. It does happen that a tombed person gets released just in time to cop a frost bomb to the face and die. Be really aware of that, and call out to slow/stop DPS or be ready with a CD to save that person if necessary.
Phase 3
Ok so you managed to transition from phase 1 to phase 2 enough times to hurt sindragosa enough that she now has 35% health. Stay in your positions (melee on her flank, and ranged behind melee at max casting distance) and get ready for the REAL fight.
In addition to ALL the abilities you previously have known and loved (the face cleave and halitosis, the tail swipe, the melee and caster debuffs, the sucking you in, and you running on out with a mouse turn) she has a new ability called mystical buffay, and we are back to having to LoS it to drop it off! Well, what a coincidence, Sindragosa is conveniently iceblocking people in P3 as well for you to hide behind!
So, everything else is the same... how do we add in the iceblocks and LoSing?
The first thing you need to do is split your raid into 2 teams, with even distribution of melee and ranged and healers in each. Each team will be allocated a "side" (generally left and right).
The first person to cop the Ice tomb needs to run away from the pack, and stand as close to sindragosa's front leg as they can without getting the face cleave and halitosis. Then the team for that side, needs to run over, stand with the iceblock inbetween them and sindragosa, then dps down the block.
Here is the trick: do not free the iceblocked person until the next iceblock is ready.
The next iceblock should be ready, and that person should dash to the back leg, again stand as close to sindragosa as possible without hopping the tail swipe. As soon as that iceblock is up, the first iceblock should be destroyed, that team head back to DPSing sindragosa, and the other team should be LoSing Sindragosa on the second iceblock.
Again, wait until the next iceblock is ready before releasing the person then run back into DPSing sindragosa positions.
Up until this point you could single tank Sindragosa... but no more! You will need to swap tanks as the tanks will also need to line of sight her behind an iceblock to remove the stacks of debuff. If a tank gets too many stacks they will be oneshot and die horribly, so make sure your tanks are watching their debuffs and cooldowns and calling tank changes for the healers.
And that is phase 3. It's much more complicated than it sounds to get right. Positioning is everything, and something that people are inherantly bad at. Just make sure everyone has their range checkers on for spreading out the ice blocks, that they mouse turn the sucking in thing and remember where they are supposed to be when and after some practise, you should be able to kill this undead beastie.
Good luck!
