[All you can eat!] Zerg Strategy?

[Tiolith]

3 weeks in a row failing the zerg tactic
This week we'll go with druid healer, druid tank and 8 dps

Limit melee, last week we had 3 just die from high Chilled to the Bone stacks
Have melee who get the iceblock run through the boss so they can continue doing damage from the other side of the boss
We usually stopped dps at 40% and waited for airphase, zerg after that, always getting suck in at 3%, receiving 6th stack, calling dps stop, her dying from DoTs

What's going to change though is we'll stop at 40%, airphase, wait for Icy Grip and Blistering Cold, then going berserk, hopefully we'll get it, if not I'm switching to resetting stacks tactic

[frester]

just do it normal way imho, if you killed hc you shouldn't have too much problem with normal mode all you can eat, my guild did it couple times now, just make sure everyone stays cool and make sure both tanks drop stacks behind first block then call out that it should be destroyed, and from that point you can go with dropping behind every other one, easy as pie

[Brael]

Get a 2nd air phase, when she comes down after that, get her to 38%, wait for a blistering cold, once people are back in position after blistering, lust it and zerg her, is easily doable with 264 gear.

[Nangz]

You can do this achievement easily with 30% active. Heres how.

Get 1 tank (any tank will do really although death knights are reccomended for reasons down below)
Get 1 healer (any will do for the most part but druids are probably best since hots can tick even while out of commission)
Get 8 dps who can pull 13k+ dps.

You basically just do sindy on normal 10 as you usually would and at around 40% you stop dps untill you have plenty of time to flip her into phase 3.

When she is flipped at 37% (i think 37%) Pop hero and go straight burn. Your healer should have massive hots going and your tank should roll cooldowns. Your healer should start nuking aswell. Bear in mind that the 13k dps is a single target dps burn under heroism. Most classes can hit 20k+ under hero at sub 35% and many can hit much higher(especially classes with hasteable executes like warlocks and fire mages).

When the first block goes out that person must run to max range away from others to be blocked and die. If it is the healer have them through hots out like mad as they are running and you must pray. This is where resto druids and dk tanks come in handy as hots plus dk self heals are amazing.

Just keep burning and you should get it just fine.

[Brael]

The times I've done the zerg strategy on Sind we found a paladin healer to be best for it, remember to make sure your dps are just casting through unstable thing, and you would be best waiting at 37% like you said, but for a blistering not an air phase, just to make sure you aren't going to get one during the burn.

[TecPontificates]

I know math doesn't lie, but I have helped my guildmates do this achievement using the zerg strategy twice now and I can certainly tell you that they are not 16000 DPS quality players, even in 25 man. Not sure if there was a single 6k GS in the group except me. The last time we did it, I even had one of our two tanks switch to his (very bad) DPS spec. We used 1 healer, 1 tank, and, because of the offspec, 7.5 DPS. We got the achievement without a problem.

Don't be intimidated by the numbers. If you're not terrible, you'll make it.

I should note however that both times I did this, our group had 3 mages who saved images for the zerg. Mage images are possibly the best burst DPS in a raid, so stacking them may have been the key to our success.

Also, the first time - didn't time the air phase, didn't break blocks, got it.
Second time - did time the air phase, did break block #1, got it (but it was closer).

[AuthurDent]

^ What he said

We recently did this with 2 heals, 1 tank.

First 2 phases like normal... then take her to 39% and stop dots... 37% and stop DPS.. having 1 person slowly take her down to under 36%. Waiting for the Icy Grip.

Everyone runs out, Hero/Lust is popped and everyone has saved CD's for this moment. Burn, burn, burn.

whoever gets first Ice Tomb takes it JUST out of range of the raid and keeps DPSing til last second. She will die before the second tomb is cast.

Even if it's a DPS tombed... it's an easy burn. Unless you have one really strong DPS you are counting on... then wipe it if they are tombed... (prob a mage)
Win - loot. Most of our raid is about half and half 264/277 geared.

[Saltypoison]

We just used a hunter pet to tank it. Got rid of all the crap with tank switches and iceblock placement so tanks could clear stacks. Also, much less RNG than the zerg tactic.



Had some weird lag the first air phase, but otherwise it really wasn't too bad. She does a few odd things with a pet tank but nothing drastic.

[Leylin]

Doing it normally with just moving out and not messing up , is the best way , There is no need to zerg it as that achievement is all about keeping control of the fight , Just do it normally imo

[kneeo]

Also note that sometimes you get lucky with the 6th stack. The first time I did it, the 6th stack hit about a second or two before she died and we still all got the achievement. I've heard this happening to other groups as well.

This is what happened when my group got it. We hit the 6th stack RIGHT as she died, and we still ended up with the achieve.

[Jon]

3 weeks in a row failing the zerg tactic
This week we'll go with druid healer, druid tank and 8 dps

Facepalm.

Have you considered learning to play, and instead of doing it with a risky zerg strategy killing Sindra the old fashioned way.

[Vook]

Doing the achievement normally isn't hard, you just need people who aren't retards, and tanks who know how to quickly switch.

[Umbrokill]

My guild did this with the 10% buff, we did it the normal way. And did it after around 5 wipes, the hard part is the tankswitching, but after what ive seen so far in this thread it is far easier to just do that, 2 tanks 3 healers and 5 good dps
especially the one dude (Tiolith). If you have wiped now for 3 weeks trying to zerg it is alot easier to just do it the Old-Fashioned Way

edit: atleast i think it was 10%, but it may have been 15%

[Zeuq]

When my 10-man was working on that achievement, we tried zerging a few times, and all it takes is a small mistake and you often can't stop DPS in time (we'd often fail around 1-2% and DoTs would kill her), and you have to wait another week. Yes, it's doable with decent gear and a decent raid composition, but it really is a lot easier to do it the way it's intended.

The thing is, no one but the tanks should ever get close to failing. If they are, they're either taking unnecessary risk for a little extra DPS or they don't know how to LOS. The only hard part about the achievement is the tank time, which isn't bad with good tomb placement and prompt taunts. If they still have problems, just bring a third in to speed up the rotation, and thus increase margin for error, or try the pet tank method, and you should be able to get it within a few tries.

Honestly, once we stopped trying to zerg it in 10-man, we got it in three tries. Even funnier, just a week or so later, we did it on our first attempt in 25-man, and half the raid hadn't even tried it in 10-man. It really just depends on competent tanks.

[Leylin]

When my 10-man was working on that achievement, we tried zerging a few times, and all it takes is a small mistake and you often can't stop DPS in time (we'd often fail around 1-2% and DoTs would kill her), and you have to wait another week. Yes, it's doable with decent gear and a decent raid composition, but it really is a lot easier to do it the way it's intended.

The thing is, no one but the tanks should ever get close to failing. If they are, they're either taking unnecessary risk for a little extra DPS or they don't know how to LOS. The only hard part about the achievement is the tank time, which isn't bad with good tomb placement and prompt taunts. If they still have problems, just bring a third in to speed up the rotation, and thus increase margin for error, or try the pet tank method, and you should be able to get it within a few tries.

Honestly, once we stopped trying to zerg it in 10-man, we got it in three tries. Even funnier, just a week or so later, we did it on our first attempt in 25-man, and half the raid hadn't even tried it in 10-man. It really just depends on competent tanks.

This.

[Herbnosis]

I love the folks here saying the regular strategy is just fine, while others say the zerg strategy is cake too. Can each group do it the other way? Probably, it's just funny.

My group did the zerg method on Tuesday, and just barely got it. You can't have idiots... or you can have idiots if you have a mage pulling 26k dps during Bloodlust, like we did. I was second with 16k (read: the only other person pulling my weight, but just barely, right?), and it just went downhill from there.

Give it a shot if you want to. You'll either be within reach or you're fall dramatically short, but you should be able to tell pretty quickly.

Oh, the one possibly useful thing I wanted to add: we had two ranged DPS break out the first block, but we ignored the second. This worked for us, give it a try.

[Haxdelesriot]

The zerg strat is acually pretty easy if you have dps that doesnt suck. My 10man group did this back in 15% buff and we also go it at 30% buff on accident with our alts.

You can also still get credit for the achievement even if you kill him a second or two after you get your 6th stack.

[Fortunamax]

I'm just wondering how viable the zerg strategy(1tank 1heal and 8DPS) would be for a group mainly geared with 264 and a couple peices of 277 here and there. I can't seem to find any definitive answers on what the DPS requirement or even anyone who has tried this strat on my server. ><

Also, what is the ideal timing to push Sindy into phase 2?

My guild did this after we had trouble doing the sindragosa heroic strategy (head, tail tombs, reset on every one) for this achievement. None of us were in full 264 gear at the time, so it is definitely do-able with 264+ geared people. We attempted it a few times with 1 tank 1 healer and 8 dps, but often we were a second or two off, and didn't want to risk downing her without getting credit for the achievement that week. We ended up using 1 tank and 9 dps.

Raid comp:
Tank: What we ended up doing was run with our 1 tank (prot. paladin) in full frost resist gear and +resistance flask (I believe he had around 260-300 frost resistance) mainly to avoid sudden death from breaths for the 30 seconds we required to burn in 35% -> 0% phase.
Healer: We ended up using our resto druid as a healer in boomkin spec and gear. He was healing 100% -> 36% and then at 40% we called a dps halt to wait for Blistering Cold (this was also after the 1st or 2nd air phase, I can't recall which) after which he was able to get a full range of hots on the tank and some of the raid.
DPS: After our healer was satisfied he had enough heals out, he would call out a dps continuation, at which point we dps'd to 37%, then hit hero and haste pots and everything of that nature.
DPS composition:
Shadow Priest
Balance Druid (offspec)
Assassination Rogue
Elemental Shaman (offspec)
Destruction Warlock
Fire Mage
Fury Warrior (myself)
Fury Warrior (our 2nd tank's offspec)

I don't have DPS numbers since this was some weeks ago and we were so relieved to have it finished that we didn't even consider recording data or anything (not like it hadn't been done before anyways).

Ideal timing for phase 2: I think waiting for the blistering cold after the air phase at 40% helped if you get an air phase at 45%-50%. Otherwise, if you dps fast enough, skip waiting and burn to 37% for heroism and blistering cold timer will reset to (30? 40?) seconds upon phase 2 start. Pushing the phase will also save your healer having to renew all his/her hots if you use a druid for this purpose.

If you have a healer with no dps offspec, minimal healing is required and people only need to survive for 30 seconds more or less (most every class has a defensive cooldown they can use and still maintain dps), so your healer can cast offensive spells through most of that phase even if he/she does not have a real dps spec.

We finished at 25 seconds if I recall, so we had some time to spare.

One more thing, also factor in that you are going to get one ice tomb, so people need to still be aware of that and move accordingly.

If your group is experienced with the actual fight mechanics, it can be easier to do it as normal (los every tomb), but one person not resetting correctly can screw it all up.

In any case, I also agree with Synthaxx above me where he says you need someone to be vocal about timers and tombs. A silent Vent will ruin this achievement. We had at least 3 people including myself calling out who was tombed, time left, % left and other relevant data. We had a breakpoint of something similar to "If she is at more than 500k at 30 seconds [5th stack of arcane buffet], call off dps and die."

[Tiolith]

For those of you that care

Feral tank
Pala healer
Mage
Warlock
Shadow Priest
Rogue
Ret pala
Feral dps
Fury Warrior
Enhancement shaman

4 stacks of Mystic Buffet, 10 sec left on Heroism, if you have the proper dps, this is so much easier
37%, wait for Blistering Cold and then watch her health drop
as you can see Melee move through the boss and continue their dps if blocked, 2nd block didn't even hit

[Whiskra]

Well gz on wasting 3 weeks on trying to trivilize an already trivial achivement.