She is the General Vezax to Yogg-Saron. Never has such an encounter led me to curl up in my chair and cry. The margin of error is so small and so minute (my-noot?). There are so many things that can cause failures. It contains of 6 minutes of sheer endurance before you get to the final phase. Anyone with a compromised computer or a laptop or a bad connection will not even do well. On other encounters, you can get away with a disconnect or a death. Here? Not so much. So here I’ve compiled the ultimate list of things that can go wrong when taking down Sindragosa.
- Guild leader’s WoW crashes during ground phase (True story, happened to me last night, and miraculously didn’t get pulled in)
- Raider inability to run out when Sindragosa chain pulls everyone (I specced into Body and Soul so I could hit the players who had the most difficulty)
- Raider inability to mouse turn when pulled into Sindragosa and go in the wrong direction.
- Raider runs out to the wrong side when pulled in and happens to be the target of a Frost Beacon in phase 3 thereby getting caught on the wrong side leading to insane stacks of Mystic Buffet resulting in a wipe.
- Inability to use own judgment to spread out on the bottom of the stairs when hit with frost beacons. We don’t need 4 guys on one side. It’s 2 left, 2 right, and 1 middle.
- People cheating too close to Frost Beacons before they hit resulting in more Frost Tombs.
- Melee building up too many debuffs and having to run out when pulled in and not getting a heal because the healers go one way and they go the other.
- Healers dying to Backlash because we’re too busy tunnel visioning the raid (I am guilty of this). Fixed it by setting Power Auras to show Instability in big flashing letters, 100% opacity, and 300% size. Manage to cut down the deaths some. It still happens.
- Mystic Buffet not clearing because we mis-time our ability to run behind a block and shake off the buff.
- Raiders cheating up the stairs instead of staying on the bottom as specifically instructed to before Frost Beacons are hit and then having to run back down and look for an open spot. God this pisses me off so much. I don’t know why people have to cheat up the stairs. I don’t know why waiting at the bottom of the stairs is so difficult to do.
- Thunderstorms knocking out internet connections.
- People who don’t have the Frost Beacon stand where people with Frost Beacons are supposed to run to resulting in a double tomb or a death on phase 3.
- People who are too slow and don’t get into position in time.
- Instability on half the healers leading to temporarily reduced healing on the raid, leading to more deaths due to insufficient heals. Like the Backlash problem I had earlier? It’s me getting people up to the survivability levels without realizing I have that stuff.
All I can say is, thank goodness we managed to take her down last week. It’s just unfortunate to have players who have computers or connections that just can’t seem to handle the stress of the encounter. The expansion is also winding down now even though we have Ruby Sanctum coming up and it’s getting a little harder to find raiders.
If we get her down again, I’m tempted to simply extend the lockout so we can focus exclusively on the Lich king.
You should empower your raiders more. Empower them to live in a state of constant fear by creating an environment of irrational, random terror.
=)
.-= Xeonio´s last blog ..Rez of the Week – Patch Notes (3.3.3) =-.
I wish you numbered them because more than half of those happen all the time in my raid.
.-= Nappa´s last blog ..PUGs and ICC =-.
Grats on the kill; hopefully Lich will be next!
But oh the delights in store for you when you reach the wonder of hardmode Sindragosa …
.-= Vixsin´s last blog ..Raiders’ Answer Bag =-.
Nappa: Fixed. Just for you ^^.
Unfortunately LK makes sindragosa look easy. All the problems with raider attentiveness, responsilbility, and connections are eaisly doubled or tripled on lk. In fact, it only takes one person to wipe the raid because they stood in defile.
Don’t know if its happening to any other guilds but for us… Shadow priests using dispersions makes it hard to see if they are the ones that are being Frost Tombed D:
We have a SS of 20 icetombs at the top of the stairs ><
We're having more trouble with connection issues than anything at the moment 🙁
People can't stay online for Sindragosa or Lich King
You left off having the MT d/c shortly into the fight.
And, my favorite so far, an over eager caster dps that pulls aggro as the fight is getting started and Sindragosa’s breath ability instantly kills half the raid. You can’t help but laugh to see such a sight.
We found that when you get sucked into her belly to just keep running through to the other side instead of the slight delay of turning around and running. Of course you should be go out the other side of the belly instead of by her mouth or tail.
Matt, don’t forget to add: MT runs into taunt, but is on the tail side and gets tail whipped. Sindragosa then runs across the room keeping everyone in line of sight.
Double points if she grips shortly after.
Also,for air phase tombs we set up specific positions for the DBM assigned raid markers. That way everyone always knew where to run. Some people need a monitor mounted post-it, but it got the job done.
.-= Borsk´s last blog ..HHM: Attendancegut =-.
@Borsk: I think it’s time to create the Sindragosa drinking game. Or bingo.
We also assigned locations for people marked by DBM. We have an engineer drop some flares on the spots we want people to stand and generally go with 3 people at the base of the stairs and two a little way up them.
We havent downed her yet but are pushing regularly into phase 3.
/rw {triangle} {skull}
/rw {moon} {square} {cross}
Put it in a macro and spam it on air phases. This one is three in front two in the back, adjust to your liking. (edit: comment system ruined the spacing so you’ll have to fix that.)
@Tankette: You have more than enough time to turn while in midair. People that fail at this are either drunk or disconnected, and you’re probably better off without them in your raid.
Hey Matt,
Here’s a couple tips for your Pally Healers that can really help on that fight:
1) Attentive Pallies can heal the entire time they have Unchained Magic up, the key is to never stop healing until the Unchained Magic debuff is gone and then Raid Wall (or bubble if they’re bad and went down the Ret tree) so they don’t get blown up by the 15-20 stacks of Instability they have. I have found that the extra healing you can do by handling the mechanic this way can be pivotal to success.
2) Pally healers can stack Mystic Buffet higher than most without needing to clear if they beacon themselves and make sure they have a steady diet of Holy Lights going out (and thereby coming in). Since the tanks are swapping any way, I have found beaconing myself to be the best place for it in Phase 3 since it lets me do more healing and less moving/clearing.
PS – Don’t try either of these for Heroic… especially #1
My guild has down 25 man Sindragosa but in no way is she on farm. She is still uber frustrating! I can definitely relate =T
ICC isn’t finished on the Lich King. You still have hardmodes. And it’s a even bigger test on raiders computers and connections. We are wiping on Festergut and Saurfang HM at the moment. And I can just see you cursing Festergut for the same reasons above. We seem to constantly fail on dodging Malleable Goos and grouping up on spores. I didn’t know it was possible, but it’s harder than Valkyr + Defile on Lich King.
And we also assigned positions for air phase frost tombs using marks from DBM. 3 at the bottom of the stairs, another two slightly higher up.
Good luck on LK, btw.
I hate Instability. HATE it.
Dispersion is an issue, since the graphical effect (purple aura and lowered alpha) gets applied to the raid icon and arrow mark over your head. We require all raiders to use raidframes that show icons, and to check those raidframes to determine their level of impending icy doom. This helps non-shadow-priests as well, since it can be hard to tell from just looking at the character models exactly which ones have marks when you are all in a dog pile at the bottom of the stairs.
If you have a Mage and get unchained magic just keep casting as fast as you can and when UM is no longer on you and instability is about to expire, just ice block! Can only do once every 4 mins but is a good way to keep the dps goin early on in the fight, especially if you just popped valuable dps cooldowns and get UM.