Sinestra (tactics)

Sinestra is a heroic-mode only boss in the Bastion of Twilight, described as similar to Algalon the Observer in Ulduar. She is only accessible after Cho'gall is defeated.

Adventure Guide
''Originally Deathwing's prime consort, Sinestra created the first twilight dragons, but was later obliterated by one of her terrifying creations. Now a ravaged husk reanimated by insidious magic, Sinestra oversees the creation of new twilight clutches.''

Stage One: I Will Deal With You Myself!
At the outset of the battle, Sinestra is weakened from past battles and from nurturing the Twilight brood. She begins with only 60% of her maximum health, and her damage dealt is reduced by by 40%.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.

Stage Two: I Tire of This!
When Sinestra is brought to 30% health, she draws upon ambient energy to restore her power and erects a shield to protect herself.
 * Pulsing Twilight Egg – Sinestra has stored vast reserves of twilight energy in these massive eggs.
 * Twilight Spitecaller – These twilight dragonkin periodically stream into the room during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Twilight Drake – Twilight Drakes swoop in from the sides of the cavern during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Pulsing Twilight Egg – Sinestra has stored vast reserves of twilight energy in these massive eggs.
 * Twilight Spitecaller – These twilight dragonkin periodically stream into the room during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Twilight Drake – Twilight Drakes swoop in from the sides of the cavern during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Twilight Drake – Twilight Drakes swoop in from the sides of the cavern during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Twilight Drake – Twilight Drakes swoop in from the sides of the cavern during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.
 * Twilight Drake – Twilight Drakes swoop in from the sides of the cavern during the clash between Calen and Sinestra.

Stage Three: Now Die!
Once the players destroy the Pulsing Twilight Eggs, Sinestra brings her magical duel with Calen to an end and attacks the players with her full fury. Empowered by the twilight eggs from which she reclaims her siphoned energy, Sinestra no longer deals reduced damage.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.
 * Twilight Whelps – Sinestra periodically calls forth a set of five Twilight Whelps to attack intruders.

Phase 1
The entire fight is a severe dps check, but phase 1 may be the most important. The boss has a somewhat significant aggro radius and you’ll want to have your whole raid within about 10 or 15 yards of the boss. Have your tank give a 5 second countdown while the raid times their most powerful spells and abilities to hit the boss simultaneously. You’ll need to do all you can to maximize your raid’s dps in this phase. Use raid wide movement increase buffs like Stampeding Roar to help DPSers move in close to the boss faster after the pull. The raid should maintain an even spread in front of the boss without being too stacked up. Do not stand too close to the boss, but try to stay within 10 or 15 yards. You’ll want to assign your healing as follows:

1 healer for the main tank as well as a beacon if available.

1 healer for the offtank as well as a second beacon if available.

3 healers with Wrack > Raid > Tanks priority. This means that these healers make sure to top of players with the Wrack debuff first, then other non-tanks, then tanks.

You’ll need to train a primary and secondary dispeller for wrack as well. The primary dispeller should be a dps class like a shadow priest. The secondary or backup dispeller can be a healer. The general rule of thumb for wrack is that it should be dispelled after being on its target for 10 seconds. If wrack is on a player for longer than 10 seconds, the player risks being killed by the damage. If it is dispelled long before 10 seconds, the raid may end up with too many wracks out at one time and being overwhelmed. The easiest and best way to gain an advantage on wrack, is to extend the duration or time of the first application of wrack each time it goes out. This means if Sinestra casts wrack on a warrior, at around 10 seconds that warrior should use shield wall to keep the debuff longer. This will result in a much easier time dispelling the wrack when it has split multiple times. This goes for any class with abilities that will lower the damage for wrack. It is additionally helpful to have holy priests guardian spirit the first wrack victim so that they can hold the debuff for even one more tick. Raid healers should make sure to keep players with Wrack topped off as much as possible. The number one ability players need to keep their eyes open for are the Twilight Orbs. When these spawn, it is important that players don’t immediately panic and scatter away from them. A small purple beam will form between the orb and player it is fixated on. Recognizing which player is fixated is key to reacting properly to these orbs. Players who are not targeted by the orb must not only get away from the orb, but also make sure they are not between the two orbs. There is around a 3 second grace period between when the beam forms and when the Orbs begin to pulse and slicer between them forms. The players who are fixated should run away from the raid and kite the orbs to the back of the room. In order to increase dps these players should kite around each other halfway through their path and begin returning to the raid. When done properly the orbs will despawn before coming back into the raid and the players can start dpsing again quickly. The whelps that spawn in this phase should be picked up by the offtank and held in the raid. It is ok to dps these, but do not kill them yet. Healers should stand closer to the offtank so that the whelps are easier to pick up and keep off of the healers. The goal of phase 1 is to bring Sinestra to 30% health and start phase 2 before a third set of whelps and before a second Wrack debuff go out. This may require a bit of practice to achieve, but will soon become easily repeatable.

Phase 2
Phase 2 is an add phase. Start it off by having the raid move to the back of the room. This is where Calen will spawn his Fiery Barrier and the raid must be underneath it to survive Twilight Extinction. The offtank should bring the whelps to the very back of the shield.

Once under the bubble, ranged DPS should begin to attack Sinestra. She will be invulnerable to damage, but attacking her is necessary to bring down the Twilight Carapace buff on the Pulsing Twilight Eggs. While ranged are doing this, Melee should be AoEing down the Twilight Whelps in one pile. Each time a Twilight Whelp dies, it will turn into a pool of Twilight Essence. If a whelp dies in another whelp’s Twilight Essence, both will respawn. Because of this, all of the whelps that you AoE here will respawn later, but that will not be an issue. The raid will need to split up during this phase and it’s important for each player to know where they need to be.

Once twilight extinction has gone out and the whelps are mostly AoE’d down, the tank should move to the middle of the room and prepare to pick up Twilight Drakes. Melee will stay in the back of the room and prepare to dps and stun Twilight Spitecallers. Ranged will split into two groups and move to the walkways to DPS the Pulsing Twilight Eggs. Make sure the split is even so that ranged can hopefully kill each egg in one add wave. Place a healer with each ranged group in case Unleash Essence is cast on the raid. The rest of the healers should be in the back of the room healing melee, the tank, and Calen. If Calen is being healed and Sinestra is being DPSed, the eggs will lose their Twilight Carapace buff for 30 seconds. With very good DPS, the ranged groups can kill both eggs in this time. If successful, phase 3 will begin and the raid can move into positions. If unsuccessful in killing both eggs, ranged should begin DPSing Sinestra again while the raid contends with more adds and waits for the Twilight Carapace buff to fall again.

During this phase the Twilight Drakes can simply be tanked, but the Spitecallers in the back have an extremely harmful ability called Unleash Essence that must not be allowed to cast. Melee will need to set up a stun rotation to keep these mobs from using this ability. However, normal stuns will cause the Spitecallers to regain control by unleashing a very painful ability called Indomitable. Rogues take note: Kick and Stun should absolutely not be used; however, Gouge (with the Glyph of Gouge active) works excellently. Death Grip, Hibernate, Ring of Frost, Typhoon, and Scatter Shot also work. If Indomitable does go off, rogues can shiv it or hunters can use tranquilizing shot to remove it. Additionally, paladins tanking the Spitecallers should make sure not to have Glyph of Holy Wrath active, as it will also trigger Indomitable. If a Spitecaller's cast is about to go off and it is almost dead, a stun or kick can be used without wiping the raid. Be warned, Spitecallers can spawn quite fast, making it difficult to keep up with killing them if DPS is low.

Once both Twilight Eggs have been killed, there will be a 30 second grace period to finish killing any adds left alive before phase 3 starts. Use this time to quickly kill off the remaining Spitecallers and Twilight Drakes. Remember that the whelps will respawn and must be picked up by the offtank again.

Phase 3
Phase 3 is identical to phase 1, but much longer. The raid will begin this phase by being granted with the Essence of the Red buff, which is important because Sinestra will heal back to 100% health at the start of the phase. This will increase all haste by 100% and give casters infinite mana. The buff is necessary to heal through the damage in this phase and to meet the soft enrage timer. At the start of phase 3, have the raid move back into their phase 1 positions. Wrack, Orbs, and Flame Breath should all be handled just as they were in phase 1. The whelps however, will be treated differently. The offtank will pick these up and tank them in the back of the room. In order to keep the whelps from being killed on top of each other and resurrecting in this phase, they will be pulled off the tank by pre-assigned dpsers and killed off solo in their own areas. Ideally, the whelps should be killed in as compact an area as possible. This is because the void zones that the whelps create upon death will grow indefinitely throughout the fight. Eventually, this can severely limit the safe size of the room and make it quite difficult to move with Twilight Orbs. After three minutes, the Essence of the Red buff will fade and your raid will want to have the boss as low as possible when this happens. The last few percent of the fight without the buff will be extremely brutal. Make sure to use raid cooldowns such as Aura Mastery or Barrier for Flame Breath as healing after it will be difficult. Set up a Tranquility and Hymn rotation to top the raid off after each Flame Breath. It is a good idea to offtank the last two set of whelps in order to maximize dps on the boss. Unless the offtank is a pally, and can bubble off debuffs, they will likely have very high Twilight Spit stacks. Between the third and fourth wave of whelps, the Offtank should taunt Sinestra off of the maintank and allow the maintank to pick up the rest of the Twilight Whelps. Simply hold these in melee range while the raid focuses on burning down the boss.

This fight will not be easy. The damage is high, the coordination is rigid, and the mechanics are very unforgiving. It’s no wonder Sinestra was tough enough to survive Deathwing. It may take your raid quite some time to down this boss, but don’t let frustration get the better of you. It is overall a fun fight that will really test your skills.

Solo strategy
Start the encounter normally and make sure to get within melee range of her, but save cooldowns for later. Once she gets to 30% health, she'll pop her Mana Shield and recover her health and mana. Pop CDs now to eat through her mana. When the shield on the eggs is removed, break off and destroy both eggs. Use any movement speed buffs to get from one to the other so they both die in the 30-second window.

Once she runs out of mana, she will take damage normally. Finish her off.

Related Achievements

 * Heroic: Sinestra
 * Heroic: Sinestra Guild Run
 * I Can't Hear You Over the Sound of How Awesome I Am
 * Realm First! Sinestra

Quotes

 * Aggro
 * yell


 * Summoning Adds
 * yell


 * Phase 2
 * yell
 * yell


 * As Calen battles Sintharia
 * yell


 * Winning
 * yell
 * yell


 * Losing
 * yell


 * Calen dies prematurely
 * yell


 * Phase 3
 * yell
 * yell


 * Killing a player
 * yell
 * yell


 * Death
 * yell


 * Unused quotes
 * Calen: Flame of life, burn within me and renew my vigor!
 * Sinestra: Come forth, children of twilight!
 * Sinestra: Your mother calls!
 * Sinestra: The energy infuse within my clutch is mine to reclaim!
 * Sinestra: SUFFER!
 * Sinestra: FEEL MY HATRED!
 * Sinestra: This will be your tomb as well as theirs!
 * Sinestra: My brood will feast upon your essence!

Trivia

 * She uses the same animation set as Kil'jaeden.
 * World first heroic kill on 25-man achieved 20.1.2011 by DREAM Paragon of Lightning's Blade Europe.
 * Sinestra is voiced by Danielle Rayne.