Just a quick update here about live raiding. My guild finally got heroic Professor Putricide down on 25-man.
It was a guild first and I am so very proud of them and pleased that I could help at all. We beat our heads against this guy for a long time, but we finally did it.
I haven’t killed Putricide on heroic since May.
It felt really good to be part of a guild’s first, even though it was my… fifth? Sixth?
So we turn from Putricide to heroic Sindragosa as our progression boss.
I know damn near everything there is to know about heroic Sindragosa. I am a champ at that fight. I know how to play through it from any perspective, even though I’ve only ever healed it. This is the fight in ICC that is *mine*.
It’s a killer fight, though. Even with the buff, there is SO much coordination that makes Sindragosa more difficult than Putricide in many ways. Putricide is more “okay, pop quiz, hotshot!” and Sindragosa is more “and everyone in perfect sync, go left! Go right! Run around like a tool!”.
It’s like Putricide is so random with the plague and the ooze target and the gas target that you really just have to be able to react instantly. More to the point, you need to know what to do given some very specific circumstances. Example:
Someone next to you has had the plague for 8 seconds. You already have the plague debuff. No one else is in range. The plague has at least another 20 seconds of duration on it.
What do you do? Do you let your raid mate die? Do you grab the plague and ferry it to someone else? Do you grab it and die yourself?
I vote for ferrying, but that’s something I would only do in very specific circumstances. (It’s on a healer, it’s on a tank, we don’t have SSes or BRs left.)
Sindragosa is a very deliberate dance with a bit of randomness inserted, but no more randomness than your regularly scheduled encounter. In fact, because you KNOW that 3 healers and 3 casters will get Unchained Magic, it’s less random. If it were to be six healers at once, that would be unworkable, if hilarious. So they made sure that only 3 healers and only 3 casters get it at once. That’s a good portion of randomness gone. So you deal with 3 of your heals with it and you can count on that. You deal with six ice tombs in air phases and you all line up according to a pattern you’ve pre-determined.
You know when her Icy Grip is off cooldown, so you can be ready.
It’s really not a fight about dealing with the random elements. It’s a fight about being coordinated enough as a group to deal with the mechanics.
Putricide was super easy for my last guild. A couple of nights of attempts and then a kill. Sindragosa is who gave us trouble.
It’d be nice for my guild to get through Sindragosa. I really like that I’ve been able to help them out and help their strats and stuff. Just my presence helped get Dreamwalker saved for the first time on heroic. I helped out with heroic LDW strats. I’ve had a LOT to say about Putricide. And I’ve already written an essay’s worth of words on Sindragosa in various posts on our forums.
In related news, I’m actually on standby for the first time ever tomorrow night. I’m actually excited about this, but I’m not sure how I’m going to spend three hours on standby. Fishing? haha.
Hmmmm my guild is the opposite way around – Putricide makes us look like idiots (even now, to this day) and Sindragosa is pretty much easy peesy (assuming, of course, that I continue to yell at people “DONT CAST WITH UNCHAINED MAGIC” at the start of phase 3).
Actually with the buff at 30% – or whatever it is now – I think you’ll be surprised by H Sindragosa.
Perhaps your new guild is like mine and will cope better with Sindragosa :D (we got her the 2nd night of attempts after killing H PP).
Cassandri – Oh, how I love your optimism. ;) Sadly, we’ve played with heroic Sindragosa (albeit not altogether focused on her) ever since I joined the guild, back in June, I think it was. It’s a coordination and/or not understanding the mechanics problem.
Ice blocks are dying early.
Ice blocks are frequently chained.
A single person did a million friendly-fire damage to the entire raid through Backlash on a single night of attempts (maybe 10?).
I mean, these are things the buff can’t really compensate for. 30% extra DPS actually harms us on the ice blocks that die early. 30% extra healing still can’t heal someone through a frost bomb or blistering cold.
It’s a good guild with good people, but there’s just something about Sindragosa that people are having trouble with. And it’s frustrating to me, which affects my play, too. :/ Alas!
Glad your guild breezed through Sindragosa, though. That must feel AWESOME. :)