The Secret to Healing Sindragosa as a Paladin

I wasn’t going to write this post. When I got back from vacation and thought about post writing and stuff, I told myself, naaaah, no one wants to read about Sindragosa anymore. At least not normal mode Sindragosa, not with all those shiny hard mode guides everwhere. But after talking with other paladins, I discovered that some are still deprived from the Secret. The Secret to healing Sindragosa as a paladin.

Ok, so you know phase 3? The one where the tanks play hot potato with the boss? And you’re TRYING to keep your beacon on the right tank while not dying and not getting too many stacks of everything? Yeah, that phase.

The closest thing I had to a Sindragosa screenshot

Oh, but before I reveal the Secret, here are some other tricks to healing Sindragosa:

1- If you have trouble running from Blistering Cold, you might be standing too far away. You don’t want to be in melee range (you’ll get mana back as you melee but you’ll also take Chilled to the Bone damage), yet you don’t want to be at max range either. The further you are, the more time you waste getting pulled in.

2- When I’m affected by Unchained Magic, I rack up 5 stacks of Instability by casting Holy Light, then count down from 5 before starting over. Everyone has their own strategy, but that’s the one that works for me. 5 stacks means I get decent healing out before having to pause, but there’s still some leeway in case I need to make an emergency cast.

3- On the last phase, when she’s throwing Frost Beacons around and getting poor, good-willing, innocent holy paladins caught in misplaced Frost Tombs, you can get out of the way by getting slightly closer to her. Don’t melee her (you don’t want to be Chilled to the Bone), but snuggling up will keep you out of the path of wayward Frost Beacons who can’t run fast enough dropping their tombs on your face.

As for the Secret…

On the last phase, as the tanks take turns holding Sindy’s interest, as everyone is out of line of sight all the time and as you take tons, oh tons of damage…beacon yourself. Just beacon yourself. Direct heal whichever tank is currently hanging on to the boss and bask in the redirected heals.

(Edit: Only do this on the last phase, when the constant switching of beacon targets becomes a waste of GCDs and mana. For the rest of the fight, just beacon whoever is tanking the boss.)

Suddenly your life becomes so much easier. The constant influx of heals on yourself means you don’t have to drop your stacks as often, you don’t have to blame the raid healers for not healing you, you can just focus on what you do best: delivering ginormous, blissful, toe-curling tank heals.

And, that, friends, is the secret to getting those scary, epic Sindragosa kills that end with only you and the tanks alive, and the rest of the raid groveling in admiration at your feet.

Valithria Dreamwalker: Who to Beacon?

EDIT: Made some clarifications for non-holy paladins who might be reading this. I have this bad habit of assuming our lingo makes sense to everyone. I’ll dig up the focus macro when I get home tonight, for those who might want it.

When my guild first came upon our friend Valithria, I got into an argument with a few people. I wanted to place my Beacon of Light on Valithria and spam heal whoever happened to be in range.

(My reasoning for that, though, was mistaken: it seemed like my heals wouldn’t transfer to a beaconed raid member, but would transfer from a raid member to a beaconed Valithria. Either my sense of observation failed me or this was a bug that was hotfixed, because my heals now transfer, regardless of who is beaconed.)

I can’t remember exactly why they didn’t want us pallies beaconing the boss. The only argument I accepted was that I wasn’t sure if the heals transferred from Beacon would be affected by Guardian Spirit. (I still need to test that.) Still, is a buff that up for 10 seconds every minute worth worrying about? After all, I could just switch to the boss during those 10 seconds.

After the raid, we looked up the stats of guilds who had successfully killed Valithria. This was right when the fight first opened, before the duration of Emerald Vigor (you know, THE buff, the orb buff) and of the Twisted Nightmare had been increased and certainly before the 5% buff had been put in. So there weren’t many guilds who’d won the fight yet.

At that time, all the paladins who had successfully completed the fight had been direct healing the boss.

From then on, I’ve been Beaconing a tank and direct healing the boss. I’m sure the outside healer appreciated the gesture. (As a side note, I also don’t shy away from spending a global cooldown on a well-placed Hand of Protection.)

However, after reading more and more about the fight, I’m now noticing that the trend is actually to Beacon Valithria. Beacon Valithria and heal a target within 8 yards of her (most likely yourslef) to take advantage of the juicy Glyph of Holy Light procs that would splash extra heals onto her. Since I’m always hot on the latest trends, I pulled up the Holy Paladin rankings on WoL for Normal modes 10 man and 25 man.

As you can see for yourself, it’s unanimous, Beaconing Valithria is the way to go.

While I was at it, I looked up the heroic rankings on the fight and, again, all the holy paladins are using Beacon on Valithria.

Of course, “just because everyone is doing it” doesn’t mean that it’s the only or the best way, but the Glyph of Seal of the Light splash is worthwhile – 10% of a 20k to 60k heal is SEXY. The constant extra heals from the Glyph on the boss can make a pretty big difference, according to some of the stats I pulled up, it can account for up to 40% a paladin’s effective heals. It’s not as helpful to the raid healers as beaconning a tank, but this is really a question of communicating with them and seeing if they need the help.

Other tidbits about the fight

In case anyone reading this is interested, here’s some other tips and tidbits about the fight.

– On 25 man, we run with 7 healers, 3 enter the Dream (two pallys and a druid), 4 heal outside. The guilds ranked on WoL use 5 or 6 healers, total.

– On 10 man, we run with 3 healers, 2 enter the Dream (we’ve done it twice, first time it was pally and shaman, second time it was pally and holy,I think, priest). It seems like the fight can easily be done with 2 healers, a pally entering the Dream and the other healer staying outside.

– As a paladin, use your spell power trickets, your Libram of Veracity, Glyph of Seal of Light (and unlike me, don’t forget to switch your seal to Seal of Light).

– Pop your cooldowns! First at the beginning of the fight, then right after the Dream, if they’re available.

– Pick a portal as soon as they spawn and stand near it.

– Putting an icon over the healers taking portals helps avoid “portal stealing”.

– Flying around the Dream world in a tight group and having everyone gather the buff from the popped orbs is ideal, but doesn’t work well for my guild. If you’re like us, assign each healer a region to avoid “orb stealing”. (Example: I take the left side, our druid takes the back and our pally takes the right.)

– Wait until the end of your last Dream phase (ie. the moment where you have the most stacks) and hit Lay on Hands. Squeal with glee. (The squealing part is very important.)

– I’ve read on Plus Heal that Crusader Aura helps you move faster in the Dream. I have yet to try it, but it seems interesting.

Conclusion

The standard, cookie-cutter approach to this fight is to Beacon Valithria and spam heal yourself or someone near Valithria to really milk your Glyph of Holy Light.

That said, I had been cluelessly Beaconning a tank and spamming Valithria the whole time and, from a healing perspective, since the buff and hotfixes, it’s still loldragonhealing.

Still, from now on, I’ll be putting my Beacon on Valithria.

EDIT: For those who like macros, this is a focus/cast Beacon one from the Plus Heal paladin forum:
/tar Valithria
/focus
/cast [target=focus] Beacon of Light