Suffer, Mortals, as Horrible Voice Acting Betrays You!

Only one thing stands between HT and the LK: Ms. Garrett Sindragosa!  Since everytime I put up a post about a boss they seem to die the next day, I thought I’d do it for ol’ Sindy today.

Before the Battle

Turn of your in-game sound.  No seriously, do it.

Phase 1

The raid’s going to want to stack on the right side of her.  Whoever is MT will tank her so that she is facing the stairs.  At this point in the fight, there is no reason to spread out, so feel free to huddle together.  The OT has to be careful not to pull aggro, so it might be best to drop whatever stance/buff you have that modifies threat.  In this phase (as well as phase 3) she will be emitting a Frost Aura.  A paladin or shammy’s Frost Resist should be used to help mitigate this as well as the Frost Breaths she’ll be casting on the tanks.  I’ve read that it might be a good idea for tanks to wear some frost resist gear (especially for P3), but so far all of our wipes have been due to a lack of coordination and not tank death.

Melee/Physical DPS

She has a big hit box (she has a big hit box) so melee needs to make sure they back off her a bit or else you will get mysteriously tail swiped.  Regardless of what Syck or Sally may tell you, they object of this encounter is not to accrue the most “fails.”  The encounter is not a DPS race per se, but rather a coordination and survival fight.  There are specific mechanics that will keep you from doing your normal numbers and it will be completely on your shoulders to figure ways to work around them and keep yourself alive.  The mechanic for physical DPS is Permeating Chill.  Classes such that use both magical and physical attacks will have an easier time with this, but everyone must be mindful of it as it can stack extremely fast if you run into a string of bad RNG.  I was only able to play around for a few wipes on Sakuraba, but I found it best to just try to slow down my rotation ever so slightly in hopes that the stacks would fall before reaching 5.  If you do get up to five stacks, it’s best to stop attacking completely.  A rogue’s CloS and a Paladin’s bubble will clear these stacks.

Casters

You folks in the back will be dealing with a different mechanic called Unchained Magic.  Every so often, Sindy will pick two casters and place this debuff on them which will last for 30 seconds.  Every time you cast a spell you will gain a stack of Instability, which after 5 seconds will go off causing 2000 arcane damage to you.  Instability stacks and each stack resets its timer.  This leaves you with a few choices.  One option is to play the old “5 second rule” game to keep your stacks low.  Another option is to cast until you are around 5-7 stacks and prompt a healer that it’s about to go off.  You have to be careful about this, though, as you will still be taking damage from the Frost Aura, one of the healers might have Unchained Magic, or Sindy could cast Blistering Cold which can distract the healers from getting you back up (more on this in a second).  The final way is to use one of your “outs” i.e. Ice Block, Dispersion, etc.  To do this you’ll want to continuously cast, stacking Instability as high as you can within the next 30 seconds and hitting your get-out-of-death-free card right before it clears.  Once again, it’s up to you to not get yourself killed, so don’t be a hero.

Blistering Cold

Throughout P1 & P3, Sindragosa will cast Icy Grip which she’ll follow up by channeling Blistering Cold.  Everyone must run away or die.  A Hunter’s Aspect of the Pack can be extremely helpful here.  The best way to deal with this is to rotate your camera when you get pulled and immediately start running away.  Because of a certain raid member’s lag issues when he turns the camera quickly *cough*Morgan*cough*, we’ll sometimes run through her instead.  This poses a few problems, though.  Sometimes Icy Grip won’t actually pull you in.  If this happens (not sure if it’s intended or a bug) and we’re running through, then wait until she’s done casting and truck on through.  The other issue is that the run through method will not work for P3.

Phase 2

This is the double-edged easy phase:  easy to do successfully and easy to wipe the raid.  When she takes to the air she’ll mark two people with a Frost Beacon.  Those marked will need to move up to the outside of the circle on the ground while still remaining 10 yards apart from each other.  Everyone else will need to back away from them; healers should make sure they are topped off, if not shielded and HoT’d up.  After a few seconds the beaconed toons will be imprisoned within an Ice Tomb at which point you can stand up and stretch for 20 seconds.  Everyone else will need to split up and start DPSing the tombs slowly.  And when I say slow I mean fucking slow! Sindy will cast a total of 4 Frost Bombs which need to be LoS’d using the tombs.  It’s a similar mechanic to the one that Saphirion uses in Naxx, with one major twist:  she’ll cast them at random spots on the ground, so all those not entombed will have to keep their eyes open and move accordingly.  Getting hit by one bomb won’t kill you, but it can add unneeded stress.  DPS will won’t to bring down the tombs to just below 10% until the last bomb drops and then bust them open.

Sindy will jump back and forth between these two phases until she hits 35%.  It’s often stated that you’ll want no more than two air phases to allow ample time in P3 to beat the enrage timer with ease, but we have yet to do that let alone actual survive long enough for her to enrage . . .

Phase 3

This one is a doozie.  When she hit’s 35%, Sindragosa will no longer take flight but will begin stacking Mystic Buffet.  This is kind of a big deal and is half the reason why we keep wiping here.  As your stacks go up, you’ll take increased damage from her constant Frost Aura as well as from Permeating Chill and Instability.  The combination of these abilities can insta-gib you if you’re not careful.  The only way to drop your stacks is to LoS Sindy.  Luckily (sorta), she’ll choose a target and cast Frost Beacon, thus creating an object to LoS her with.

Here’s where it gets tricky.  The raid needs to split into two groups.  On the first Ice Tomb, group 1 uses it to lose their stacks; on tomb #2, group two uses it.  Sounds easy but it ain’t.  Part of the problem is the Frost Beacon is placed on someone randomly (including the OT) which will cause some confusion as that person has to make their way toward Sindy’s front leg while maintaining 10 yards away from the rest of the raid as to not chain the entombing.  The DPS who’s turn it is to hide must also break this person out of the tomb before they die from Asphyxiation or another person is beaconed, but not before the tank has a chance to drop his stacks.  A couple of strats I’ve read suggest alternating where the tombs are dropped just in case there is an overlap, but we’ve had mixed results in attempting this.  The idea behind it is that one group would drop the tomb back by her tail while the other group drops it by her head (out of swipe and cleave range, of course).  This makes it easier to deal with any over-lapping as well as giving a visual cue as to which tomb you should be behind.  The tanks would swap whenever the front tomb was up.

Oh, did I mention that she’ll also do Blistering Cold during this phase?  Good times, good times.

Conclusion

I know without a doubt we can get this fight before we get a 10% buff to the raid.  The past couple times we tried her we would get Phase 1 & 2 down quite well before everything went to hell in P3.  The biggest thing is that everyone knows what they are doing and is watching their own timers as well as the raid warnings: there is no time for accountabil-a-buddies or hand-holding during this encounter.  So bring your A-game and let’s shut this broad’s pie-hole once and for all.