What’s up it’s Jimfro from Ready, Check, Pull and this is our official boss guide for Sylvanas Windrunner on normal and heroic.
First off, a quick overview of the fight. This fight has three very different phases.
In phase one, you fight Sylvanas by herself in this huge room until 80%.
In phase two, you work your way down these huge chains, fighting a bunch of different kinds of adds.
And in phase three, you fight Sylvanas by herself again as she destroys the four platforms you have to stand on.
Now let’s get into phase one.
Phase 1
- Players randomly get stacks of a debuff called Barbed Arrow. It does a ton of DoT damage and it can only be removed in a very specific way, so everyone needs to be aware if they have this debuff or not.
The way to remove this DoT is through the main mechanic of the phase, Domination Chains. When Sylvanas casts this, everyone should quickly run away from all of the big swirlies on the ground. Some of the swirlies will leave a Domination Arrow add that attaches a chain to the player closest to it. Any players that have Barbed Arrow should move so that they are the closest to one of the arrows, while players without stacks stay away, because getting chained removes your debuff entirely.
However, the chain also pulls you toward the arrow and one-shots you on heroic if you get too close to it. So everyone needs to help kill all of the arrows quickly to keep everyone alive.
The tanks have a couple things to worry about in this phase:
- First off, the current tank needs to use a defensive cooldown once Sylvanas gets three stacks of Ranger’s Heartseeker and channels into the tank, because it does a crazy amount of physical and magic damage and applies a heavy DoT.
There also needs to be a taunt swap every time this happens.
- The current tank needs to run away from the rest of the raid when they get this purple mark on their head from Wailing Arrow, and there needs to be a taunt swap every time this happens.
Running away reduces the damage it does to the raid. Other than that, everyone needs to dodge other swirlies on the ground, run out of the big darkness circle, and healers need to focus heal random players who get the Shadow Dagger debuff, because it does a ton of DoT damage.
Also, Sylvanas moves around a lot when casting some of her regular abilities, while her actual hitbox stays where she started casting them...so good luck getting used to that.
At 80% health remaining, Sylvanas starts a short intermission where she doesn’t take any damage.
She spawns a ton of those Domination Arrows and throws some big rocks around that one-shot you, so quickly kill all of the arrows and of course dodge the lines on the ground.
Once all the arrows are dead, she casts Banshee Wail, which everyone just needs to spread out for, and she starts phase two.
Phase 2
The goal is to get Jaina and Thrall to move a few links down the chains to where Jaina can take you to phase three.
You do this by following the path that they make for you with ice and rocks, while doing some damage to Sylvanas, and killing a ton of adds.
- Dodge the dark waves from Sylvanas while she’s in her banshee form, because they do a ridiculous amount of DoT damage.
- Interrupt Sylvanas’s occasional Ruin cast at all costs, because it instantly wipes the raid.
While Sylvanas is active, she uses some of her basic phase one abilities, which you already know
how to deal with. But also spread out and try to be high health when she casts Banshee Wail.
This cast does a lot of damage and also interrupts you for 6 seconds, so be careful of that.
While fighting the adds, there are way too many small mechanics to mention, so we’ll focus on the things that really matter.
First of all, there are 5 different kinds of adds, but on each platform you only need to kill the two big ones to progress.
The big ones can be Mawforged Souljudges, Summoners, or Goliaths, so focus them down.
- With a Souljudge, dispel the Crushing Dread debuff it puts on random players as much as possible. And on heroic, tanks taunt swap after every Lashing Strike.
- With a Goliath, taunt swap as often as possible to keep its stacks low.
- With a Summoner, quickly kill the orbs that it spawns. And on heroic, decurse the Curse of Lethargy that goes on random players as soon as possible.
The other adds just hit the tanks and do random raid damage, no big deal.
Once you get to the last platform, a crazy amount of adds spawn, but Jaina teleports you out of there to phase three.
Phase 3
You fight Sylvanas on these four platforms that you can jump between, but she slowly destroys
them one by one until you’ve got nowhere left to go, which makes this phase a big DPS check so save Bloodlust for this phase.
When Sylvanas puts these pools on the ground, the offtank should quickly run through them all, move to a corner of the platform and get dispelled.
This moves all of the pools to the same spot out of the way of the raid.
When Sylvanas channels Banshee’s Heartseeker into the tank after getting 3 stacks, that tank should use a defensive cooldown, the offtank should taunt, and the previous tank should move to a corner of the platform and get dispelled.
This drops more pools out of the way of the raid.
Spread out when everyone gets a circle around them from Banshee Scream, and try to make sure everyone is high health because it does more damage at lower health and silences everyone for a couple seconds.
If you get marked with this purple arrow, jump to another platform toward the end of the marking debuff, get hit by the Wailing Arrow, and quickly jump back.
This reduces the raid damage, and prevents you from being close to other players with the mark.
And finally, jump to another platform before Sylvanas finishes casting Raze, which effectively destroys the platform she’s on.
And that’s pretty much it!
Here’s a quick recap of the fight for you to review or screenshot for later.
You can find our written version of this guide on Icy Veins, linked below, thanks again to all of our supporters on Patreon for making this guide possible!
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