Sylvanas Windrunner Strategy Guide for Sanctum of Domination

In Phase One:

• Run away from the big swirlies that spawn arrow adds ( Domination Chains). If you have a Barbed Arrow debuff, move close to an arrow until you get chained and then, on heroic, run away from it. If you do not have a Barbed Arrow debuff, stay away from the arrows until the chains go out. Everyone should quickly kill these arrows to keep everyone alive.
• Tanks taunt swap after the current tank gets marked with Wailing Arrow or gets hit by Ranger's Heartseeker. The marked tank needs to move away from the raid until the mark ends.
• Dodge swirlies and big dark circles ( Veil of Darkness), and focus heal players with the Shadow Dagger debuff.

In the intermission:

• Quickly kill all of the arrows, dodge the lines on the ground ( Rive), and spread out when Sylvanas casts Banshee Wail.

In Phase Two:

• Dodge the dark waves from Sylvanas when she is in banshee form ( Haunting Wave), and interrupt her Ruin cast at all costs.
• Deal with more Phase One abilities from Sylvanas when she is not in banshee form.
• Focus kill the Mawsworm Souljudge, Goliath, and Summoner adds to progress through the phase. Frequently dispel the Crushing Dread debuff from Souljudges. Frequently taunt swap on the Goliaths ( Fury). Quickly kill the orbs spawned by the Summoners ( Detonation), and decurse their Curse of Lethargy as soon as possible on heroic. The other adds are not important.

In Phase Three:

• The off-tank should run over the pools on the ground, move to a corner of the platform, and get dispelled in order to drop them in a better place ( Banshee's Bane).
• Tanks taunt swap after every Banshee's Heartseeker, and the previous tank should move to a corner of the platform and get dispelled, dropping more pools out of the way.
• Spread out and try to be at high health when everyone gets circles around them from Banshee Scream.
• If you get marked with a purple arrow, jump to another platform, let it expire, and then quickly jump back ( Wailing Arrow).
• And jump to another platform before Sylvanas finishes casting Raze, which destroys the platform she is on.

This fight has 3 very different phases. In Phase One, you fight Sylvanas by herself in a huge room until 83% health. In Phase Two, you work your way down some 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, until you defeat her at 50% health.

• 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 ( Calamity). So everyone needs to help kill all of the arrows quickly to keep the chained players 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.
  • And second, the current tank needs to run away from the rest of the raid when they get a purple mark on their head from Wailing Arrow, and there needs to be a taunt swap every time this happens as well. 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 ( Veil of Darkness), 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 83% health remaining, Sylvanas starts a short intermission where she does not take any damage ( Banshee Shroud). She spawns a ton of those Domination Arrows and throws some big rocks around that one-shot you ( Rive), 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.

• 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 bunch of adds.
• Dodge the dark waves from Sylvanas while she is in her banshee form, because they do a ridiculous amount of DoT damage ( Haunting Wave).
• 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 detail out, so here are the things that really matter:
  • First of all, there are five 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 those 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 of Fury low.
  • With a Summoner, quickly kill the orbs that it spawns ( Detonation). 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.
• Once you get to the last platform, a crazy amount of adds spawn, but Jaina teleports you out of there to Phase Three.

• You fight Sylvanas on four platforms that you can jump between, but she slowly destroys them one by one until you have nowhere left to go, which makes this phase a big DPS check. So save Bloodlust/ Heroism for this phase.
• When Sylvanas puts dark pools on the ground ( Banshee's Bane), the off-tank 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 three stacks, that tank should use a defensive cooldown, the off-tank 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 a 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 is currently on.

Sylvanas drops some notable loot including a Legendary Hunter Bow, a trinket referencing Saurfang, a Hunter quiver, and a Mythic mount. We cover all that on a separate page dedicated to her loot table.

Sylvanas Windrunner's encounter features an optional achievement: This World is a Prism. Completing this achievement and every other optional achievement found within the Sanctum of Domination's encounters will reward you with the Glory of the Dominant Raider meta-achievement, along with the Bracer of Hrestimorak to teach you the unique Hand of Hrestimorak mount. To learn more about how to complete this encounter's achievement or any of the others in the raid, please visit our meta-achievement guide below.

We have encounter journal pages for each of the four difficulties, which you can access by clicking the links below.