Dragon Slaying 101: Healing Sindragosa 10

A few days ago I posted all the tips and tricks I’d heard for killing Sindy on 10 man and some of you then recommended other things I’d not thought of. Thanks for sharing! Some good tips there – feel free to keep adding on the comments – post is here – if you think of anything more.

So we know how to kill the dragon. But how to heal through her onslaught?

She’s got a bit of a grudge against people like you, wandering in and slaughtering her brood. She’s just landed and wants to turn your band of adventurers into a band of red goo on the floor. You’re meant to be healing them through it. What to do? Read on, though I’m going to assume you’ve read the general guide from last week so I’m not going to spell things out: this is purely about healing.

Let’s start at the beginning. Phase 1, where the healing is easy. Why? Quite simply – you won’t be doing much healing.

This might make you wonder whether three healers is too many. I’d recommend having three until your group is really comfortable with the fight. You healers might not have much to do in phase 1 but later on it’s chaotic and there’ll usually be at least one healer unable to heal for a few seconds. Having three healers available makes the chaos a bit more comfortable.

Ground phase critical info:

  • Unavoidable damage: There’s not much. Your main tank will take some damage from Sindy’s physical attacks and Frost Breath. Your raid will constantly take damage from Sindy’s raid-wide Frost Aura. Heal them through it. If you’ve met Lana’thel then compare and be reassured: the damage in Sindy’s encounter will feel a lot less threatening.
    • Class specific tips: most healing classes can make it even less threatening. Shaman, you’ve got frost resistance totem. Paladins, you’ve got Frost Resistance Aura. And Druids – make sure Gift of the Wild is up to give the general boost to resistances.
  • Avoidable damage: There are several colourful ways in which your raiders can get themselves turned into red goo, or at least badly hurt. These things probably won’t happen too often but be ready to heal mistakes.
    • If a player lets their stacking debuffs get too high, they’ll take a chunk of damage. It’s usually heal-able but if it occurs at the same time as another chunk of damage or even a tick of Frost Aura it might be enough to kill them. If you’re a raid leader you could raid warn them to move using a mouse-over-macro (or Vent of course)
    • If people don’t run out of Blistering Cold quick enough they’ll likely be one-shotted or on low health – watch Grid/Healbot as you run from it and be ready to heal anyone who’s a bit slow
    • If DPS don’t watch their aggro as the tank’s threat can be slightly lower here, they’ll die. They’ll also spin the dragon of fortune, possibly killing other people in the process
      • Class specific tip: Discy priests – If a DPS is aggro happy don’t hesitate to pop Pain Suppression on them to give your main tank some breathing space. Likewise – Paladins – if someone’s really going aggro crazy, slap a Hand of Salvation on them.
  • When to heal: If Sindy casts Unchained Magic on you immediately stop casting until the debuff goes away. Your other healers need to cover healing without you until then. You need to do the same for them if they get Unchained Magic. DBM does tell you and place markers on the people who get Unchained Magic but I also recommend letting the other healers know yourself. My healers and I just typed “UM” in party chat if we get the debuff. Then train your dagger or mace skill – the debuff feels like it takes an age to drop.
  • Nothing to do. In the ground phase you may find that no-one needs healing quite often. If that’s the case – and you don’t have Unchained Magic – then perhaps you could DPS a little. I don’t advocate healers DPSing that often but in this case it’s helpful – ideally your group needs to get Sindy to 35% health/phase 2 before a fourth air phases. So throw in a bit of DPS to help get her there, but only if you’re safe to do so.

Air phase healing:

There shouldn’t be any healing in an air phase except at the very beginning and end but people will take damage if they don’t line of sight the ice swirls behind icetombs. Likewise, multiple people may take damage if tombs are broken before all four ice swirls are done. It’s generally easily heal-able. It’s even easier for Paladins who are specced for either Divine Guardian or Aura Mastery.

Be ready to heal people up as they come out of icetombs. The longer they’ve been entombed the more healing they’ll need. Be aware of who’s entombed, too – if it’s the other healers then healing’s solely your task until they’re freed. This makes it doubly important to remain aware of the ice swirls and not get too wrapped up in healing.

Tip: Make sure that players about to be entombed are fully healed: heal them up as they are about to be iced. Shamans’ riptide, Druids’ HoTs and Priests’ Renew should top off their health and keep it there for the first few seconds of air phase.

Phase 2 critical info:

When Sindy hits 35% health she’ll start stacking Mystic Buffet on everyone, which increases their magical damage taken by 20% per stack. Ideally everyone in the raid will reset their stacks by line of sighting Sindy behind an ice tomb – including heparty chat trimmedalers and tank.

First thing’s first. Set up a stack-reset rotation amongst you and the other healers. That is, every time there’s an icetomb two of you should reset Mystic Buffet stacks and heal the raid, and the third healer should stay out to heal the tank, as they will be taking a lot more damage and line of sighting Sindy behind an icetomb also means line of sighting your tank. See the diagram for how my healers organise the rotation.

This rotation can be messed up by a healer being icetombed. If that happens just skip their step and fill in appropriately: for example, if Bob is meant to be healing the tank this turn and Carla next turn, but Bob gets icetombed, Carla stays out this turn to cover tank healing in Bob’s stead.

Your group needs to have only one icetomb up at any point. Be aware where icetomb people are standing before they’re entombed. If they’re standing within 10 yards of you you will also be icetombed. Stop what you’re doing and move away. If you’ve time, yell a warning that they’re standing close to raid members.

Class specific tips:

  • Paladins, you can make this phase easier for your whole healing team. Beacon of Light isn’t affected by line of sight. (Paladins, this is not applicable. Thanks for the correction here folks!)
  • Shaman – this may seem counter-intuitive when the healing’s heavy but if the fight’s got messy and Sindy’s on low health, remember to drop Flame Elemental totem. It’ll help on DPS and you can focus on healing. Likewise, Bloodlust/Heroism should always be in phase 2. The later the better: find the fine line between the fight not being chaotic enough and half the raid being dead.
  • Druids – keep HoTs up on the tanks. Also, practice getting precise on range to icetombs. Ideally be no more than 10 yards away from people about to be entombed, to reduce running time
  • Priests – bubble as many people as you can. Priesties of the holy variety – throw guardian spirit up on the tank. If things are really going down the drain then you might buy some extra time by dying, healing for free and without ouchies as Spirit of Redemption, then popping back up with a soulstone or combat res. Discies – consider throwing Pain Suppression up on the tank if there are no threat issues.

 

That’s it, doc. This is one of those odd fights in which there seems little to do, then suddenly a flurry of mad button pressing. I hope some of these tips have given you a heads up or helped you go the extra seven leagues. I don’t play all of the healing classes inside ICC so feel free to share your expertise in the comments; let’s make these two guides all that dragon slayers could ever need inside Ieccrown Citadel!

What do you think? Have you any tips to add? Do you enjoy healing this fight or do you find it boring? Do you think it’s highly luck based or only skill and awareness based? Do you get annoyed if your teammates turn themselves into red goo and you know you stood no chance of healing it?

This is an article by Mimetir, an owl (and resto shaman) of a raid leader on The Venture Co. (EU) You can find my twtitter feed here.

14 thoughts on “Dragon Slaying 101: Healing Sindragosa 10”

  1. I like to use bloodlust somewhere around the 35% mark, either just going into the second phase or a few seconds before. This seems to be the time where all your dps is on the boss before they have to start moving around and let’s you knock out a good chunk of her health before things start to get chaotic.
    .-= James´s last blog ..Tanks Are Not All Bad =-.

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  2. Is BoL really unaffected by LoS? We tested this before we pulled Sin using a wall, with the BoL on the tank and me healing myself – none of the healing went to the tank. I’ve also noticed them not getting the heals when I’m dropping my stacks – though I’ll certainly try it again.
    .-= Adgamorix´s last blog ..That epic feeling is still there =-.

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  3. Interesting. I did some reading around BoL/LoS and the consensus seemed to be that LoS wasn’t a problem… but do let us know the resutls of your tests! Meanwhile I’ll do some further reading. I’ll correct the info if needed. Thanks for querying it, Adga 🙂

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  4. It is most definitely affected by LoS. We had to set up a rotation to remove stacks since Beacon was useless behind the block.

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  5. Just a helpful hint, it is possible to reset your stacks behind a block while still maintaining LoS on the tanks. LoS on Sind is seemingly calculated from the middle of her body, so because the tanks are situated at her head, positioning to the back left of the iceblock (provided you place them in line with her nose and her midsection) will enable you to still heal the tank while LoS-ing Buffet. We’ve had multiple groups get the achievement while doing hardmode in large part due to this particular nuance; it completely negates having a “reset” rotation.

    Also it’s worth noting that the farther away you are from Sind when she does the pull, the longer it will take you to get to her (she pulls everyone in at the same speed, so those people at greater distances have more travel time). The increased travel time to her means you have less time to run out of Blistering Cold, so healers should take care not to be at or beyond max range because it can easily translate to death.
    .-= Vixsin´s last blog ..Lessons from an Alt: the Disc Priest =-.

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  6. Great, thanks for the clarification on Beacon and line of sight folks. I’ll correct the post quicksmart tomorrow and also my aforementioned previous sources!

    @Vixsin – great tips, both of them. The first sounds like it would take some practice but I can see how it would be doable once it clicks. Good brainwave on the Blistering Cold distance.

    Keep em coming folks – I’m finding this useful and interesting meself, and I hope it is for other raiders out there too 🙂

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  7. Sometimes I find myself having to heal with unchained magic on me. For instance, you’re in P2, with one healer in an ice tomb ,and you just got the debuff- you’re probably going to need to heal through this.

    One way to do it is to just blow yourself up.

    Heal your butt off, then pop all your cooldowns on yourself right before the big nuke, and watch the fireworks! Holy priests can just GS themselves. Pallies bubble, etc.

    It’s a fun and creative use of game mechanics. =)

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  8. We tested the BoL LoS too and yes it is doesn’t work. 🙂

    I have my priests ensure they have PoM on cooldown at all times and remind them throughout the fight in case they forget – 2 piece tier 9 helps out with the raid dmg as well especially if your dps is nuking themselves with their stacks. Letting it bounce around the raid works wonders,

    We also have 2 groups of tank healers, while the first group is getting their stacks to drop the other 2 pick up the healing of the tank. 2 druids stay on the raid and HoT it up at all times.
    .-= Napps´s last blog ..On my Downtime =-.

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  9. Thanks for the article Mimetir. My guild just smashed up against Sindragosa for the first time this week and it’s good to read though some solid tips, especially how to coordinate between 3 healers.

    @Vixsin – Ahhhhhhh! Both tips are gold, but the Blistering Cold pull distance is probably the key to why my guild’s Resto Druid can never seem to run out in time. Definitely gonna pass that on to the guild. Thanks.
    .-= Ferahga´s last blog ..Monday Matinée: The Chair =-.

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  10. A few hints for trees. Going for 7 stacks of instability is no problem. put a rej and lb on yourself. Time the lb cast so that it will proc 1 sec after the instability runs out. that way you will be low on heal only for 1 sec. With the icc buff i am around 31k life and with barksin you can tank 14 stacks of instability. But do not forget barksin is a cast too.
    Use regrowth on the players who will become ice blocks in the air phase. We use a line setup for the blocks. Melees kill the blocks from left to right, range dds from right to left. When the air phase starts i put a regrowth on the player in the middle who will be in the ice the longest.
    Healing rotation is quite static. If the healers outside have some mb stacks AND get unchained they can not cast much. That is why we went without a rotation.

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  11. “Paladins, you can make this phase easier for your whole healing team. Beacon of Light isn’t affected by line of sight.” — oh yes it is affected by Line of Sight. It is affected like hell. It’s just a bit confusing to some people because people that you heal have to be in line of sight of your beacon target, not you. But it is affected by LoS for a while now.

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  12. We just started on Sindy last night – had a holy priest who NEVER made it away from the Blistering Cold alive. Needless to say – they were PEAVED.
    Any suggestions?
    Just could not seem to get away fast enough.
    btw – we’re tanking her w/head facing stage right and all range on the stairs.
    Thanks for the great tips everyone – and Mimetir for the write-up!

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  13. To jannines – what we ended up doing is having the healers stand right near the dragon for phase 1.. because you’re so close – you just leg it as soon as you can.. and you make it out successful. It was a little confusing being turned around – as we were trying to run back up the stairs.. so I went with the “run in whatever direction I’m facing” as it was either up the stairs or over to the other side.. and could hot myself and the tank as I was running. I think we had pretty much everyone really close to the dragon’s side 🙂 (so the stairs are to the dragon’s side)

    I’m still unsure of the whole healer rotation in phase 3 part.. when does the healers behind the ice blocks jump out to heal the tank again?? ie. when does the switch happen? Is it doable to have 2 healers out and 1 hiding.. as there seems to be a ton of damage on the tank.. or do you need the 2 healers on the raid??

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