CaribaLd: Patch 5.0.4 is just around the corner, naturally it was about time to try if the things I had been wondering about were possible. Sindragosa heroic was one of those things. I knew her Ice Blasts hit very hard in heroic, but not that they hit THAT hard. I had already taken 4 turtles with me so I could intervene each one, but even that wasn’t enough. Prismatic Elixir removed that problem though. Sometimes I still took damage from the Ice Blasts, but it was greatly reduced.
Then came an unforeseen problem: The high amount of damage you take in phase 2. I got her to 23% on the first attempt with Prismatic Elixir and wiped due to pet not scaling fast enough, so I could probably have gotten her even lower.
A later attempt I got her to 10% and then I really doubted if it was possible. I was streaming at the time and apparently people were interested in watching! I believe I had about 300 viewers while streaming heroic Sindragosa attempt, and for that I am grateful. They kept telling me “you can do it”, so I kept trying, even though I was almost ready to set it to normal and kill her and The Lich King and be over with ICC for the reset.
Then I got a 4% attempt where I actually screwed up – I should have kept nuking her instead of trying to swap pets. I’m not sure it would have been a kill anyway, but it would have been very close. I didn’t actually realize my mistake at the time, but I realized I could respec my pets into Culling the Herd (and muttered something about a heroic Vishanka that never dropped for me). Stream viewers also reminded me about getting the absorption belt tinker from Engineering. With those things changed and another realization about how I could decrease damage taken in phase 2, I got the kill.
Special thanks to all those who watched my stream last Thursday. I am impressed with how many actually tuned in, and it’s a great motivational factor, so thank you!!!
A bit more details about the strategy:
I only Mend Pet once in each ground phase in phase 1. I do that on the first global when she pulls me in with Blistering Cold, since I can’t shoot in there anyway. I keep the pet alive until then with Shell Shield and Cower.
To avoid Ice Tombs, you must take a melee hit once in a while. When you take a melee hit, you basically have a hidden buff that marks you as a tank for 30 seconds, and tanks can’t be Ice Tombed. It can be problematic in phase 2 with a 25 second Feign Death cooldown and her not meleeing while casting Blistering Cold. This actually happens once or twice in the kill – you will notice I run as close as I can to her immediately after her cast, hoping she would melee me before casting an Ice Tomb.
In phase 2, if you swap pets to get aggro every time you need to get hit, you’re gonna have a bad time. Since you need to wait for each new pet to scale before you can Feign in order to prevent it from being oneshot, you are going to get meleed more than once. I got around this some of the time by simply overaggroing when FD was almost ready. That way you just take the hit and feign, and you don’t even need to worry about using globals on Misdirection. This meant, however, that I had to use some Mend Pet in phase 2, but I probably would have anyway, as the only thing that changed my pet’s survivability was losing one point in Silverback.
If you have any other questions about the strategy or anything else, feel free to drop a comment below.
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Music:
Wrath of the Lich King OST – Arthas, my son
Two Steps from Hell – Power of Darkness
Two Steps From Hell – United We Stand, Divided We Fall
Two Steps From Hell – Run Like Hell (loot and outro)
CaribaLd’s stream channel: http://www.twitch.tv/aRRoSC2
YouTube: CaribaLd, Hunter Soloist
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For more hunter soloing guides and videos for the WotLK encounters see Hunter Soloing Guides: Wrath of the Lich King.
