Sindragosa (10 Player)

[Luskan]

Similar to Putricide and Lana'thiel, Sindragosa is a limited-attempt encounter who shares attempts with the other end-wing bosses. Sindragosa is a three-phase encounter. The first two phases alternate periodically, until Phase III begins at 35% health. She will land and engauge the raid as soon as the second frostwyrm trash boss is killed.

Sindragosa's Phase I abilities are fairly straightforward. She has all the staple dragon abilities: a cleave, a tail smash, and a breath attack. The front and the back of the dragon are, as a result, ill advised gathering locations for those pursuing a career in healing or damage output. Similar to Sapphiron, Sindragosa also generates an aura of minor frost damage, which cannot be avoided in any way during Phase I.

Sindragosa uses two debuffs which must be managed on a player-by-player level. The first is "Chilled to the Bone," which has a 20% chance to be applied by physical attacks against the dragon. The debuff deals 1000 frost damage every two seconds, lasts eight seconds, and can stack with itself. Melee, hunters, and tanks will have to throttle their attacks to prevent the debuff from stacking over about five.
The second debuff used is Unchained Magic, which stacks up an Arcane Instability effect every time the afflicted player completes a cast. Eight seconds after the last spell is finished, the Instability will deal 2,000 damage per spell cast. Healers and casting damage will need to allow the backlash damage to occur around seven or eight stacks, though damage reductions such as dispersion can be used to inflate the survivable damage. Longer spell casts such as Arcane Missiles can also be used to fill space with a lower loss in total damage.

The only other skills used in Phase I are Icy Grip and Blistering Cold. These are used together to summon the raid to her, then begin a five second cast which will deal heavy damage to all players within 25 yards. This is easily handled by simply running toward the stairs after being pulled into Sindragosa. Shortly after Blistering Cold completes its cast, Sindragosa will fly into the air and begin Phase II. Due to the Ice Tomb mechanic there, any players who have Unchained Magic should avoid casting at all after the Blistering Cold; the backlash damage combined with an Ice Tomb can lead to a death which will be difficult to prevent.

The Sindragosa Air Phase is very reminiscent of Sapphiron's Air Phase. Five players will be marked to be imprisoned in Ice Tombs. They have roughly eight seconds to find a position clear of the raid and each other; if they are too close to a non-marked raid member, then the non-marked player will be frozen as well. If they are too close to each other, then splash damage from being frozen will kill the ice tombed players outright.

After the Ice Tombs have been cast, Sindragosa will cast four Frost Bombs at a random location on the platform. The destinations for the bombs are marked with a white swirling graphic. Any player standing in line of sight of a frost bomb when it detonates will take roughly 25k frost damage - which while survivable, can be easily avoided by staying behind an Ice Tomb.

Unlike the Sapphiron encounter, Ice Tombs will not fade on their own. Each tomb has 454k health, which the raid will need to burn through to free the victim. When the fourth Frost Bomb lands, players still within Ice Tombs will begin to suffocate, losing a percentage of their health each second. They will need to be freed quickly after Sindragosa lands.

Before the encounter, we used flares to arrange the specific points Tombed players will stand on during Phase II. The formation of three tombs in front and two in back was chosen to simplify the damage priority of killing Ice Tombs, and the location near the stairs was chosen as Sindragosa does not cast frost bombs on the staircase. In this way, we are able to focus burn down the back two ice tombs while still using the front three to block line of sight on Frost Bombs. Splash damage while killing the back two Tombs also left the front three at a reasonably low health, to allow us to free the last three players quickly.

The ground and air phases alternate until Sindragosa's health drops to 35%. At this point, Phase III will begin. From here on, she will no longer fly into the air, and all the mechanics from Phase I will persist. Additionally, Sindragosa will begin to emit an Arcane Buffet every six seconds. This debuff increases magic damage taken by 10%, lasts eight seconds, and stacks with itself. It is applied to everyone within line of sight of Sindragosa.

Sindragosa will also summon an Ice Tomb on a single player about every 15 seconds. The effect is exactly the same as in Phase II - providing a block of ice which can be used to block Line of Sight to Sindragosa, and can be destroyed by sufficient damage. Remember that players within 10 yards of the marked player will also be frozen.

This phase is an endurance check - while it may eventually be possible to damage zerg Sindragosa and simply ignore the mechanics, it is better handled first as a sustained encounter. Be sure everyone is watching their debuffs, both for backlash and for arcane buffet. A second tank is needed during this phase to allow arcane buffet resets - otherwise you will have to use cooldown rotations to mitigate increasingly large Frost Breath hits.

We placed the Ice Tomb players in two locations - one generally in front of the ranged group, and one a safe distance away in case the previous Ice Tomb wasn't broken in time. Ranged damage, as well as any melee who needed to reset their Arcane Buffet, are responsible for breaking down the Ice Tombs as quickly as possible. As long as the Tomb lasts long enough to block one pulse of Arcane Buffet, it will allow the debuff to reset. Everyone is responsible for keeping their own debuff in check - resetting at least every other Ice Tomb was ideal.

- Have fun (Hard fight!!!)