P3 (sub-35%) strategy:

One tank on the left, the other on the right. They will swap with every ice block. Ice blocks should always be positioned near Sindragosa's neck (i.e. close to the current tank.) Whenever an ice block occurs, the tanks swap, and the tank near the ice block uses it to drop his stacks.

This gets tricky because it's necessary to avoid her tail, so the tank who is currently not tanking has to stand in the melee zone until the iceblock is formed, then immidiately run to her tail and taunt. The current tank should wait for the off-tank to taunt before going behind the ice block to reset his stacks.

Assuming 3 healers, the healers should have a tight where for any given ice block, two healers will drop their stacks while the third stays in the center position healing the tank. (This strategy ensures the center always has a clear LoS to the current tank.) This rotation has to be somewhat dynamic because the healer with unchained magic cannot be the one who stays out and heals. So good communication is a must.

How to drop your stacks: mystic buffet pulses every 6 seconds and lasts for 8 seconds. If at any time you have 2 seconds or less remaining, you've successfully reset the debuff. You must LoS her CENTER not her head. The air phases are really just practice for this.

Ouch.

Read this ^. Understand this ^. Execute this ^.

Another night of great attempts on this boss! 12%. So close!

Ouch.

Read this ^. Understand this ^. Execute this ^.

Another night of great attempts on this boss! 12%. So close!

Possible Strategy Options:
Does the dragon need to flip?
Seen videos of people killing the dragon without 'flipping' on tank swap. This means Tank-2 steps on Tank-1, taunts, and then Tank-1 moves away.
Advantages:
* May mean less movement/turning of the boss
* No chance of Tail Whip
Disadvantages:
* Both tanks may get cleaved or breathed on during swap.
Relevant info:
* Cleave 5-8k on well geared tank
* Frost Breath 24k-50k depending on 'Mystical buffet' stacks
* Tail Smash Knockback + 5k on well geared tank

Cleave doesn't really hurt the tanks much. Frost Breath does, so if it seems to be on some sort of cooldown the tank swap could just occur after a Breath.

One Location, kill it faster?
Saw Videos/Strategies designate only ONE Frost Beacon > Frost Tomb location. Everyone would move away after they killed the frost tomb except the next Frost Beacon target. They were killing the Tombs very fast so this may not be practical for us, I think I would prefer swapping between two locations.

Frost Resist Gear
Consider wearing Frost resist gear on the Tanks. Of the damage done to the Tanks, roughly 80% is Frost and 20% is Physical.

Raid Mark the Boss
I think Raid Icon usually goes in the centre of the Mob so it might help people line up the Frost Tomb Spire with the centre of the dragon for LOS purposes.

Tank Strat / Raid Strat
More of an abstract thing...
We were tieing the raid movement strategy to the tank swapping strategy ("run to the head') to drop the tombs near the tanking tank. If there's any way to 'separate' it, I think it will be easier for both DPS and tanks. It's still going to be damn hard for healers though. Think Saurfang, where the DPS are largely oblivious to the tank swaps and the Tanks don't need to do much with Blood beasts (if all goes well).

Yeah I second Vort's idea of not spinning her. I know on at least one attempt that was going pretty well Malory and I were both killed by a breathe while we we're standing on the stairs.

I think our healers sort of had our little P3 LOS rotation figured out, we just need slightly better communication amongst ourselves as well as the tanks about swaps.


I've been trying to look around to see if there is any sort of reliable time between her Icy Grips and haven't been able to find anything. The only thing I noticed is that she seems to do one about 10 seconds into P3. I think that was throwing a lot of people off as making that transition is pretty hectic.

I also think it might be beneficial to have our Ice Tomb position in P3 to be exactly between where our tombs are in P2. Ideally this would place it right at her midsection, so it might help people position themselves better for LOS.

We have never executed a successful tank swap without using the multiple sides thing. It might sound simpler to have every ice block go to the same place, but what happens when you get blistering cold while a block is still up and then another person is targeted before the first one is destroyed?

Getting breathed on isn't an issue with the strategy it was a problem with the tanks not being in the right position after running out for blistering cold. This would occur regardless of whether we swapped sides.

The first night we tried the both tanks on the same side and one spot for ice blocks strategy and did not execute a single ice block correctly, wiping almost immediately in p3 on every attempt. Last night we had several minutes of perfect execution during p3 until blistering cold knocked people out of position, so we just need to work on repositioning quickly after the pull.

Swapping sides is important for two reasons: it ensures the each ice block will end up far away from anyone else (since everyone will be on the other side of where it lands) and it facilitates much easier and more regular tank swaps.

Well, just saying some people are definitely killing her different ways:
* flipping vs not flipping
* tanks eating blistering cold, some getting out.
* 2 frost tomb locations, 1 'main' frost tomb location

And then there are of course largely irrelevant strategies which I think leverage Huge dps or Luck (like 1tanking or not breaking every Frost Tomb).


Blistering Cold wasn't effecting my dps in phase3 because I was nearly always behind the existing Ice Tomb when she cast it. Hopefully as we all get better at this Blistering Cold won't be a big problem. As I said before I agreed having 2 locations is probably better than 1 but I've watched a couple videos now where they only have 1 location and they just kill it fast.

Many people have mentioned annoying/erratic movements after Blistering Cold though so that part may remain frustrating.

My shaman just scored a Sindragosa kill with an Impulse run and I thought I would share what I have learned from their strat while I still remember why I think it's better ;)

They do essentially what we do -- ranged on the stairs, Ice Tombs in the corners of the T decoration during air phase, alternating right and left positions of the ice blocks in phase 3. The only difference comes in the handling of tank swapping in phase 3.

What UD does

Just to recap -- we have, say, Alphalaxer tank the boss until the first ice block pops. Then Snuf taunts while Alpha runs over to the ice block and tries to drop his stacks. This means Alpha has to move really fast -and- Snuf has to not be the first guy to get the ice block. And if anything goes wrong on the taunt, Alpha doesn't get to drop his stacks yet. After Alpha drops his stacks, he runs back into position and waits for the second ice block to pop, at which time he taunts and Snuf runs over to the new ice block to drop his stacks, ad infinitum.

What Impulse does

Alphalaxer is tanking the boss. When the first ice block pops, Snuf goes behind the ice block and drops any existing stacks, while Alpha continues tanking. Once Snuf's stacks are gone -- which may be before the ice block has died and well before the second frost beacon comes out -- he runs out to the tail and taunts. Alpha now has heaps of time to get into place to drop his stacks behind the second ice block. Once his stacks are dropped, he runs back into position and taunts. Snuf now has plenty of time to get into place to drop his stacks behind the third ice block, ad infinitum.

I think this is better because the taunt isn't happening at the same time as the ice block; the tanks can be behind the ice block as soon as it spawns, meaning they will have more time to ensure their stacks drop. If Snuf gets the ice block first it is not as big of a deal as it is with our current strat.

Also, we had only half the raid drop their stacks each time; it was something like "group 1 drop your stacks when the ice block is to the left, group 2 drop your stacks when the ice block is to the right." That seemed to allow us to dps down the ice blocks faster (since half the raid wasn't moving) and also get back onto the boss much sooner in the brief time between ice blocks. There was always a healer out and we only swapped this around if the healer who would remain out also had unchained magic.

The group I was with were alts, and they were doing about the same DPS and in the same gear as our group (if not less/worse) -- maybe our druid tank outgeared the encounter, but our off-tank was not very geared, we had some undergeared dps, and a fair few people who had never seen the fight before. So I think that our group, which is better geared and more experienced, should have no problem once we iron out these last few wrinkles :)