A frosty reception
We got Sindragosa to 25% last night, for the first real night of attempts on her.
Had a solid hour and a half to work on her and we made some serious progress. People learned the ice blocks, towards the end I don’t think we were losing anyone to Blistering Cold, and the idea of Phase 3 was starting to form itself in everyone’s heads. Good ol’ fashioned progression. I love it.
Next week we’re basically dedicating Wednesday to Sindragosa. I expect the following day I’ll be gracing this blog with a kill shot.
As for the fight itself, it didn’t seem too rough from a tanking perspective. The hardest part, I guess, was positioning. Picking up Sindra initially and turning her in a way that her side is perpendicular to the stairs, and avoiding cleaves right off the bat.
I also decided to go with wearing 2 pieces of Frost Resist gear, which in hindsight seemed a bit overkill. Having 313 FR was great for neutering the Frost Breaths, but I don’t think I needed that much. I wish I had run a log of the fight (I accidentally turned it off after BQL) last night so I could check damage from breaths vs melees and see if I was taking more physical damage than necessary to mitigate the frost damage. More dataz are needed!
I’m curious how much, if any, FR you all run for Sindragosa-25?
Overall I’m very optimistic about our chances in this fight. I think ES will be seeing Arthas sooner than later.
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@Rilgon
22 April 2010 at 1:46 pm #
Our tanks rock upwards of 400 FrR with Aura, mainly because of situations where one tank may be forced to stay out for more Mystic Buffet stacks than they normally would (ideal is switching before 6, one time we had a DK who had to sit out there for 19 stacks before a brez came up). Her melee damage really isn’t that impressive, even on heroic, and high FrR really eases the spike damage.
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We didn’t use FR gear for our attempts but we did use FR aura and have a disc priest to munch a lot of the damage. GL for getting her down!
@Pugtor
22 April 2010 at 1:50 pm #
We tank her with 2 pieces of FR on each tank; we started trying 1 piece but had the same issue as Rilgon: if we had anything go wrong, once Buffet got above 8-9 the healers would start freaking out. Just to save the healers from losing their hair we stay at 2 pieces.
With 300-something FR I’ve tanked her with up to 17 stacks of Mystic Buffet after the other tank DC’d; it never felt out of control.
@Rhidach
22 April 2010 at 1:56 pm #
Thanks for the comments guys, I’m glad I wasn’t overdoing FR like I originally feared. Some hard numbers from my logs would make me feel a bit better, but I’ll take real-world experience in lieu!
@Pugtor
22 April 2010 at 2:01 pm #
Incidentally, Corpse Tongue Coin has maximum uptime for this fight. If you have it, in phase 3 practically every breath will trigger Thick Skin, and 5000 armor for the next melee hit is wicked.
@Rhidach
22 April 2010 at 2:17 pm #
@Rogatien: Interesting, that would make sense with all the incidental damage piling up in that phase. I’m not sure if the 5k armor mitigating that swipe would be worth it when stacking health seems more worth while. Being a big magic damage fight my first inclination is to gear to mitigate the damage done by the biggest source of pain, the Breath, and create the highest health ceiling I can so each Breath doesn’t knock me down too far.
@Jasyla: Is that for 10man? We don’t use Frost Resist gear there either. 25man seems to require it for tanks, the Frost Breaths with just the FR of aura+GoW seem to do about 25k damage, give or take. Follow that up with a quick 12k swipe and you’re looking to be a floor stain in short order.
No one in my raid wears any frost resist. We just have a Frost Resist Aura.
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Regular 10/25 – no FR. Heroic 10, 530 FR.
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@Pugtor
22 April 2010 at 2:31 pm #
Wearing the FR gear I do, my avoidance and armor takes a substantial hit while I still have a stupidly large health pool to work with. At that point 5000 armor in a nearly guaranteed fashion plus another ~1.5% dodge looks rather good to me.
I look at these burst damage fights from the same perspective as Wrathy, that once I can survive the burst damage and two subsequent melee hits without a heal, I should stop stacking further health in favor of avoidance.
For me, the regular “bad” case in phase 3 is a breath with 4-5 stacks of Buffet (~30k) and two melee hits (~14k each), which is 58,000 hp. With the 10% health buff I reach that without straining and then start swapping trinkets around. Your mileage may vary! :)
Both 10 and 25.
Jasyla’s last blog ..Recycled Post – How Not to Die
@AvengingWrathy
22 April 2010 at 4:58 pm #
Last night I used no frost resist gear on 25 man normal and was fine, 10 man is also ok with none. In 25 man the breaths were hitting for about 20k and the melees for 13-14k, easily healable.
On hard mode when you get there, I disagree with rilgon, I died constantly to te 22k melée swings and not te breath. I tank hm in 270-370 Fr depending on the gear setup
So what 2 pieces of FrR do you use? I’m certain the boots are one just about everyone takes, but what else? The belt or the chest? Or even a ring? I’m hoping to find something that gets my FrR up decently high for Sindragosa but doesn’t make me lose too much armor for those swipes either.
As standard practice both myself and our main tank wear three pieces of Frost Resistance gear (belt, chest, boots) plus a resistance aura. I’ve forgotten to swap before and was fine on 25 man (on our first kill, even), however the fight is insanely healing intensive in phase three and the resistance gear trivializes most of the damage during that phase, easing the healers jobs immesely. You’ll still be see-sawing a fair bit, but the healers will have time to focus on someone other than you and your off-tank.
As far as the encounter itself, phase 1 is a cakewalk. Being able to do it is the easy part of the fight; phase 2 is where everyone needs to wake up and do things quickly. Lots of coordination is needed. Make sure to make it expressely clear to your raiders that this fight is not about damage: we’ve actaully had phase 2 take as long as phase 1 before because we made people worry about doing things right and not about big numbers. Get them used to this as 25 Lich King is more of the same.