Sindragosa, raid boss of Icecrown Citadel

Hey guys, remember the time when you decided to quit WoW for good, and they released that incredible Wrath of the Lich King trailer? The one with Arthas driving his runeblade into the floor and out flew Sindragosa. For me, that cinematic was what made me go back to playing World of Warcraft. Now that Sindragosa had been tested on the PTR, I am so relieved I had quit WoW before Icecrown Citadel was released. Sindragosa, the Queen of Frostbrood was supposed to be an epic encounter, considering the fact that it played such an important role in the trailer. However, when I looked at the youtube video of the fight this morning I was sorely disappointed. Take a look for yourself.

To me, the air phase seems to be a rehash of Sapphiron’s air phase. The everybody-get-behind-an-iceblock-and-pray-hard-everyone-makes-it kind of strategy. Except this time round, you have to move around in circles to move away from her frost breath. Seriously? Other then that from what I can see, as long as people move out from the rest of the raid when they are marked by DBM of Bigwigs, the fight is pretty much easy mode. Of course one can argue that you probably need good gear and skill rotations to destroy the iceblock things in time, but then again, to a seasoned raider this should not pose too much of a problem. I remember the days when it took the world more than a month to kill the Four Horsemen back in Vanilla WoW. Sindragosa’s fight on the PTR definitely seems doable for a good raiding guild within a week.

There has been a lot of talks about WoW being too casual nowadays, and I cannot help but agree after watching the video. Trial of the Crusader was basically a joke where raiders could go in and clear the 5 bosses in ilvl 200 gear. True, Blizzard wanted more people to step into Icecrown Citadel when it was released, but did you have to make an instance with zero thrash, and bosses that could be killed while eating lunch and playing with only one hand on the keyboard? I think the fact that Blizz seems to favour casual players more and more has resulted in many of my hardcore raider friends to burn out from the game. Because the question on everyone’s mind is, “What’s the point of working so hard, if welfare epics could be bought by running Heroic Dailies everyday?”

R.I.P World of Warcraft. I miss the Vanilla days.

[Picture courtesy of MMO Champs]