Holy

November 13, 2013

Heroic Norushen

Norushen is another relatively straightforward fight with not much changed in terms of fight mechanics between heroic and normal.  Heroic Norushen got nerfed earlier in the raid cycle therefore, a reasonably difficult boss with a tight DPS timer became a fairly simple fight.  As in normal, the raid encounter consists of fighting an add called the Amalgam of Corruption and the raid having a source of energy called corruption.  Several mechanics in the fight force players to gain Corruption and getting to 100 Corruption doesn’t necessarily kill you.  However, any DPS essentially becomes useless as your dps scales with the amount of corruption that you have.  The strategy to the heroic version is very straight forward.

Recommended Talents and Glyphs

Tier 1 – there’s very little movement involved in this fight, perhaps you can use Speed of Light to quickly get around death ray but this tier is relatively inconsequential to the encounter
Fist of the Justice – helping to stun the adds, especially the smaller mobs
Eternal Flame – oldie but goodie
Unbreakable Spirit – would recommend getting Unbreakable Spirit for this fight to quickly heal up NPCs in the “Look Within” phase
Holy Avenger – certain phases of the fight, especially when the larger manifestations come out, have higher raid damage so it would be good to have HA to help you out
Light’s Hammer – would recommend going Light’s Hammer on this fight since stacking up doesn’t really cause harm

Beacon of Light – swapping beacon
Hand of Sacrifice – for whatever
Divinity – because there’s really no other helpful glyphs

Raid Makeup: 2 healers, 2 Tanks, 6 DPS, the fight is no longer a tight DPS race however, the damage on this fight is not too high and it’s more important to kill the adds and boss quickly so I’d recommend taking an extra DPS

General Spells

The fight begins with the spawning of an Amalgam of Corruption and each player’s Corruption Level at 50 in heroic.  To become purified or remove all corruption, player must click on yellow balls which spawn around the room and enter a role-specific test.  Completing that test purifies and removes all the corruption from a player.  On heroic, it’s better to have your tanks and healers gain corruption so that your DPS do not have their DPS penalized by gaining corruption.  Purification also provides a role-specific buff, increasing healing, reducing damage taken and increasing damage done which lasts until you start to gain corruption again.  Certain mechanics of the fight involve spawning of one medium sized mob which should be tanked called the Manifestation of Corruption and a smaller mob called an Essence of Corrupt which is stationary and doesn’t need to be tanked.

Amalgam of Corruption

  • Unleashed Anger – inflicts 400,000 -> 520,000 (Physical) damage to the target
    • Self Doubt – increases damage of next Unleashed Anger by 40% -> 50%
  • Blind Hatred – this is the beam of rotating dark lines which slowly turns around the room, it can choose either directions, players standing in this beam receive 150,000 -> 400,000 (Shadow) damage every second
  • Icy Fear – AOE attack the Amalgam inflicts on everyone in the room for 75,000 -> 100,000 (Frost) damage every 3 seconds for the entire fight, damage increases as the Amalgam loses health
  • At 50% health, and every increment of 10% under that the Amalgam will release a Manifestation of Corruption

Look Within (Test of Reliance, Serenity, and Confidence)

  • Test of Reliance (Healer) – players must heal up allied mowbs defeating a mob called the Greater Corruption, if you fail, a Manifestation of Corruption will enter the normal realm
    • Disheartening Laugh – debuff that lasts 6 seconds inflicting 50,000 -> 75,000 (Shadow) damage every 2 sec for 6 sec
    • Pit of Despair – inflicts 100,000 -> 135,000 (Shadow) damage every second to all enemies within the zone
    • Lingering Corruption – deals 400,000 -> 500,000 (Shadow) damage after 10 seconds if not dispelled
  • Test of Serenity (DPS) – DPS players must kill one large Manifestation of Corruption which follows the player around and 4 small Essences of Corruption
    • Essence of Corruption – repeatedly cast Expel Corruption which fires a ball of shadow in a straight line dealing 100,000 -> 130,000 (Shadow) damage
    • Manifestation of Corruption – repeatedly cast Tear Reality which does 200% -> 300% (Shadow) weapon damage in a cone in front of the mob after 3 seconds
  • Test of Confidence (Tank) – tanks must survive for 60 seconds in this zone against a mob called the Titanic Corruption
    • Titanic Smash – deals 1,000,000 -> 1,500,000 (Shadow) damage in a cone after 2 seconds
    • Corruption – each melee adds a stack which does 17,000 -> 25,000 (Shadow) damage every second each stack for 12 seconds
    • Hurl Corruption – hurls a ball of corruption dealing 750,000 -> 1,000,000 (Shadow) damage, this can be interrupted
    • Burst of Corruption – deals 300,000 -> 500,000 (Shadow) damage to everyone in the area
    • Piercing Corruption – deals 600,000 -> 800,000 (Shadow) damage to ots current target, can not be absorbed, can be dodge/parried

Extra Adds

  • Unleashed Corruption – any Manifestation of Corruption defeated in the Test of Serenity (DPS) is released to the normal realm, all adds in the Test of Serenity share health with the Amalgam
  • Manifestation of Corruption
    • Burst of Anger – inflicts 50,000 -> 75,000 (Shadow) damage to all players in the Amalgam zone
    • Residual Corruption – upon death, the Manifestation drops an orb which pulses for 90,000 -> 120,000 (Shadow) damage to all players every 3 seconds until it is picked up, gives 25 Corruption to the player picking it up, in heroic, this spell inflicts 5 pride each time it pulses
  • Essence of Corruption
    • Expel Corruption – sends out bolts (similar spell to the ones the same mobs use in the Test of Serenity which deal 100,000 -> 130,000 (Shadow) damage to players standing in a line, every Expel Corruption that hits the boss increases his damage by 5% for 15 seconds -> 8% for 20 seconds

Specific Tips

I’ll first talk about some DPS or Tank related issues because I’ve gone Ret for this fight before.  This fight is essentially a DPS race.  There are a few movement related issues such as not standing between the Essences and the Amalgam or moving out of the beam of death, but if you’re raiding heroics those should already be second nature to you.  Other movement related issues occur in the DPS Test of Serenity. Other than this, rest of this fight depends mostly on strategy, DPS and healing.  For tanks it’s vital that you quickly pick up the Residual Corruption after killing the Manifestations before it pulses with the Burst of Anger.  You have 3 seconds to do this.  Any DPS should make sure for the whole fight not to get any extra Corruption.  Ideally, all DPS should be sitting at zero after getting purified.  The two tanks should be mainly in charge of rotating soaking this, using a healer as backup if necessary.  You should begin sending in your DPS as soon as possible.  Also, depending on how much damage your raid can take, you should probably not spawn more than two Manifestations from two DPS going in to the test because the pulsing damage while it is alive is very damaging.  The typical rotation for the first few sets of orbs is to send in Tank + DPS then Tank + DPS then Healer + DPS then Healer + DPS and then the rest of your DPS one by one in.  This limits the Manifestations spawns to 1 from the Test. DPS who have not been purified can opt to focus on the adds until they do get purified.

Apart from those other concerns, healing is slightly strenuous on this fight.  The Manifestation is doing a lot of pulsing damage when it is out and sometimes near the end of the fight you may have more than one to fight.  The good thing is that most of the raid can stack around the same area and only move from the beam.  The raid should not stand near the Manifestations when they die and stand between the Essences.  The tank shouldn’t be taking a huge amount of damage, most of it will be in raid wide AOE and only comes out when the Manifestations are out.  Your raid should save Bloodlust for after 50% or at least until all of your DPS have been purified.  The last 50% will be the hardest part of the fight with a lot of pulsing damage going out.  In addition to this, your tanks and healers must have enough empty Corruption to soak all of the remaining 5 Manifestations (125 Corruption).  I’m not sure as a Holy Paladin how to make the Test of Reliance easier since we have very poor DPS.  You shouldn’t need to help the NPCs kill the add but it will help if nothing needs healing to use some of your DPS skills.  Make sure to continue using holy shock.  Keep up on your dispels and this phase shouldn’t be hard at all.  I can’t really think of any thing else related to healing on this fight but if you guys have any questions, feel free to comment below.  This shouldn’t be a very hard for us in terms of healing.

Common Reasons for Wipes and Solutions

  • Players did not complete their tests and did not get purified – read up and watch videos of how to do these phases, this is literally the hardest part of the fight
  • DPS Race Lost – don’t stand between Essences and the Amalgam, don’t get any extra corruption by soaking residual energy
  • Too many Manifestations out – what is it from? too many DPS doing Test of Serenity? send one less, under 50%? you’ll just have to deal with this, you shouldn’t have DPS going in to the Test during this last phase
  • Die to beam – …

Wish you good luck on getting this guy down!

November 13, 2013

Heroic Fallen Protectors

Heroic Fallen Protectors to healers, is not a drastically different fight from normal.  The fight still consists of 3 bosses with separate health pools who enter special phases at certain percentages of health.  You must still kill the three within 15 seconds of each other.  Apart from everything hitting harder, there are a few mechanics changes and that’s it.  The majority of this fight is heal as much as you can and keep an eye on your mana return spells because this was one fight where I went OOM towards the end.  Currently I’m sitting at around 15,000 spirit with the Shado-Pan trinket and the Spirits of the Sun Heroic upgraded twice so if you have any kind of SoO spirit trinket or Horridon’s Last Gasp, you shouldn’t worry about this.  Anyways, lets move on to the guide!

Recommended Talents and Glyphs

Speed of Light – it’s not imperative to get this on this fight but this will help you get places you want to be or out of brew quicker
Tier 2 – nothing’s going to help you on this tier for this fight
Eternal Flame – no SH not your turn yet
Clemency – would recommend going this for the double sac and double hand of protector for garrote on healers or DPS
Holy Avenger – on-use healing cooldowns are helpful for large damage phases such as Sun’s Desperate Measures
Tier 6 – depending on your raid’s strategy, you can choose either LH or HP, I chose HP for this fight since our raid plans to stack loosely for most of the fight, I could see HP being a viable alternative

Hand of Sacrifice – for a helpful CD
Divinity – because there’s really no other helpful glyphs
I would tend to recommend Beacon for the last slot but you likely won’t be doing too much beacon swapping during this fight, this last glyph is up to you.

Raid Makeup: 3 healers, 2 Tanks, 5 DPS, you can do this of course with 2 healers but 3 makes it more safe and the DPS requirement is not too high

General Spells

In heroic, the two bosses who are not visible continue doing their special attacks, including Desperate Measures if they get pushed.  Special attacks include Clash-Rook, Master Poisoner (2 poison attacks)-He and Calamity-Sun. If you do not kill all three Protectors within 15 seconds of each other, they will heal for 20% -> 30%.

Rook Stonetoe

  • Vengeful Strikes – stuns current target, then influcts 180,000 -> 300,000 (Physical) damage every 0.5 secs for 3 secs
  • Corrupted Brew – targets a random raid member and throws a keg doing 125,000 – 425,000 (Shadow) damage in a 5 yard radius and slows for 50% -> 65% for 15 sec, in heroic, the cast time of this spell decreases by 0.5 seconds every 2 casts, this effect resets when Rook enters his desperate measures
  • Clash – similar to the Brewmaster spell which causes the targetted player to meet him halfway
    • Corruption Kick – after meeting the target, Rook will be rooted in place do a spinning crane kick-like spell that deals 120,000 -> 162,000 (Physical) damage to everyone in 10 yards every 1 sec for 4 sec  and applies a DoT that does 75,000 ->  101,250 (Shadow) damage every 2 seconds for 6 seconds
  • Desperate Measures (occurs at 66% and 33% health)
    3 adds spawn in the room.  In heroic, the three adds have a shared health pool:

    • Embodied Mistery: Does a knockback dealing 350,000 -> 472,499 (Physical) damage and places a void zone on the ground dealing 100,000 -> 150,000 (Shadow) damage every second to enemies in it
    • Embodied Sorrow: Casts Inferno Strike on a random player dealing 1,200,000 (Fire) damage split among all players within 8 yards of the target
    • Embodied Gloom: Deals 150,000 -> 325,000 (Nature) damage to random enemies and anyone within 4 yards of them

He Softfoot

  • Garrote – a bleed that He periodically places on random raid members dealing 80,000 -> 108,000 (Physical) damage every 2 seconds for an unlimited amount of time, all Garrote disappear when He enters his Desperate Measures
  • Gouge – an attack which incapacitates his current target for 6 ->8 secs and switches to a random raid member, by turning your back to He when he does this, you prevent the incapacitate and target switch and simply get knocked back a short distances
  • Master Poisoner: Two self-buffs:
    • Noxious Poison – causes his melee attacks to leave poison pools on the ground dealing 85,000 -> 150,000 (Nature) damage every second to everyone standing in them, 3 second internal cooldown, all pools are removed when He enters Desperate Measures
    • Instant Poison – causes his melee attacks to deal additional 75,000 -> 150,000 (Nature) damage
  • Desperate Measures (occurs at 66% and 33% health)
    An Embodied Anguish add is spawned. This mob casts “Mark of Anguish” on a random player in the raid.  This ability roots them in place and deals ~101,250 shadow damage every second.  The Embodied Anguish will melee players and with every hit applies a stack of “Shadow Weakness”.  As far as I can tell from logs, this additional damage is around 12% per stack.  This of course increases the damage they take from Mark of Anguish.  Players with Mark of Anguish in addition gain a debuff which decreases their armor by 50% for 2 minutes -> 80% for 4 minutes.  Finally, passing the Mark of Anguish will cause 1 stack of Shadow Weakness to be applied to everyone in the raid.

Sun Tenderheart

  • Sha Sear – the tooltip for this spell is a bit misleading, in heroic, the spell is scaled up from the original 25,650 shadow damage to ~45,000 shadow damage on the first tick, after this each tick increases damage by 75% of the original 25,650 or ~19,200, going by this logic, the damage ticks are 45,000-64,000-83,000-102,600-121,8000-141,000 for a total of 6 ticks, overall this spell does ~600,000 (Shadow) damage, this spell hits a random target in the raid and everyone standing within 5 yards of them
  • Shadow Word: Bane – DoT that Sun places on 2 members at once in 10M, each with a “stack” of 2 meaning it can jump to 2 other players, the debuff will only jump if it ticks so if it can be dispelled within 3 seconds of application, then it wont jump, deals 100,000 -> 135,000 (Shadow) damage every 3 seconds for 18 seconds, if it jumps once, the same theory applies to the 1 “stack”, a total of 6 people can be affected
  • Calamity – periodically cast, does 30 -> 30% + increasing by 10% each cast of everyone’s health, removes all Shadow Word: Bane spells, the +10% resets when Sun enters Desperate Measures
  • Desperate Measures (occurs at 66% and 33% health)
    Spawns two adds, Embodied Despair and Embodied Desperation along with smaller spawns of Despair and Desperation which have a shared health pool with the associated larger mob.  The adds don’t have any abilities but must be killed for Sun to appear.  During this time, a field in the middle of the room called the Meditative Field spawns which reduces damage from Dark Meditation by 50% -> 35%, otherwise outside of this field, players take 44,000 -> 54,000 (Shadow) damage.

Specific Tips

This fight requires less positioning than Heroic Immerseus but it’s still important to designate some things before starting.  First off, your tanks should be tanking far enough away from each other and the raid such that Rook and He’s abilities will not be hitting people in the raid.  He doesn’t have any direct damage abilities to the rest of the raid, but the pools of poison he drops on the ground do a lot of damage and are rather hard to see.  Therefore, he should be tanked outside of the center of the room as much as possible because this is where Sun’s Meditative Field spawns (and really good luck on seeing the poison pools during Dark Meditation).  The raid can be roughly stacked for this fight since most of the abilities don’t hit for that much and have a rather short radius of 5 yards or so.  Don’t clump on each other, but you can roughly stay in the same quarter/third of the room.  Three things you should watch out for on the ground are corrupted brew which looks like a light blue/brown swirling thing, any poison puddles that He might have dropped and sha sear which looks just like the shadow priest version.  The player with sha sear should move slightly out such that they are the only person taking damage from it, remember that this does increasing damage with each tick.  For the rest of the fight, you should basically stick in the conformation in the image below.  In the second image below, on the right, is the positioning during Sun’s Desperate Measures.  If Rook is the skull, then the raid should be stacked in the field closest to the skull.  This is because Rook will continue to do his Clash followed up with Corruption Kick during Sun’ Desperate Measures on Heroic and if you are targeted and standing somewhere on the far side, he will charge to you and do his Corruption Kick in the field which will likely wipe your raid.  Apart from this, there is one other thing you raid will have to watch out for and that’s inferno strike during Rook’s desperate measures. Make sure that you have enough people standing in this orange circle to soak the damage.  You’ll need to watch out for Sha Sear during this and move if you get it so you aren’t hitting all the people stacking for inferno strike.

positioning

In terms of DPS, we actually hit the enrage timer the first time we got to this boss due to whatever reason (bad, no gear qq).  We found that if we let the bosses stack for a few seconds, or at least until He started pooping out the poison, it helped a lot with the DPS since they could be cleaved for a while.  This was also when we popped blood lust.  Since the bosses don’t have a shared health pool, it is beneficial to cleave them whenever you can but it’s important to know the order in which they should be pushed in to their Desperate measures.  The way we did it and probably a common way of doing it is to do Rook -> He -> Sun.  This is so that the Garrotes can be dropped from the raid before Sun’s Dark Meditation which does a lot of AOE raid damage.  You can probably do all kinds of different combinations but I think this is one of the easier sequences.  When any adds have spawned, they should be first priority.  When the Embodied Anguish comes out, we tossed it to the He tank since He is not active during this phase.  Despite the increased potency of the debuff, we didn’t find this to be a problem.  For the last few seconds or so of the debuff or when the tank felt like he was going to die, we passed it to a player with immunities such as a Warlock or Hunter or Paladin.  Finally, push all bosses to near dead together, simple.

As I mentioned above, there’s a a lot of damaging AOE damage going on in this fight.  The tanks are taking moderate damage even when the bosses have their special abilities up.  The raid may be taking spiky damage but most of that damage is avoidable.  In a perfect world, no one would be taking nukes from the Keg Toss or extra people taking damage from Sha Sear.  All of the unavoidable damage in this fight is from DoTs from magical or physical sources.  One thing that you must keep your eye on is Shadow Word: Bane.  You should have a boss timer for this application and assign players to dispel in order.  For example, if I go first, I will immediately dispel one person, then the other person will dispel the person left over.  If you have 3 healers it may be easier to keep this DoT off the raid because if one person is slow and the buff jumps, you can have the backup dispeller dispel the stack of 2 that jumped before it jumps one last time.  If you have two healers, you should have your eye on this very closely since there wont be anyone to back you up.  Also if you don’t get one of the dispels off, make sure you don’t try to dispell it befoer the new Shadow Word: Bane comes out, otherwise your Dispel cooldown won’t be up.  The most damage occurs mainly during two parts of the fight.  The first is the Dark Meditation.  This is mostly due to the increased damage on Heroic, nothing much you can do to avoid it.  It’s not by any means unhealable but will be noticeably higher than normal.  The second part is during Rook’s Desperate Measures.  Especially for the arc between 66% and 33%.  This is because from 100% to 66%, all of the bosses have been whittled down quite a bit from the initial bloodlust. However you will basically be going between 66-33% with regular cooldowns.  During this, there will be one part where Rook does his Desperate Measures and Inferno Strikes are appearing on people while Sun is doing her Calamity.  Especially towards the end of the phase where Sun will be doing harder and harder hitting Calamities, you should pull out your CDs for this.

As a Holy Paladin, I would recommend saving your Devotion Aura for the latter Calamity casts rather than to use during Dark Meditation.  You may also be able to line it up to apply for both an Inferno Strike and a Calamity.  I specced Holy Avenger on this fight and just used it basically on cooldown or if I saw it was coming off cooldown soon before Dark Meditation, I would save it for that.  Otherwise, the raid will be taking consistent damage throughout so it would be useful almost any time.  Your other cooldowns you can use as you see fit.  Keep an eye on your mana return and Divine Plea cooldowns because this is one of the more mana intensive fights, despite not being really hard to heal.  In my experience, the He tank takes more damage than the Rook tank so for the majority of the fight I had my Beacon on him.  If you spec Light’s Hammer, try to line it up at least with the Dark Meditation phase.  Also, you can Hand of Protection players who have Garrote whenever you see the damage going up. On thing I forgot to mention above is another source of damage is when the Mark of Anguish comes out.  Depending on how you have the debuff rotation set up, if you do put it on a tank, they will take a significant amount of damage.  I would highly recommend using a Hand of Sacrifice on him/her for this.

Common Reasons for Wipes and Solutions

  • Shadow Word: Bane damage is killing players – assign a dispel rotation, me first, then you
  • Inferno Strike + Calamity = Death – assign a cooldown for each of these later Inferno Strikes
  • Garrote, too much damage – you can opt to push He before Sun, HoP off the debuff
  • Poison Puddle/Sha Sear/Corrupted Brew death – don’t stand in shit
  • Rook uses Corruption Kick in the middle of the Meditative Field, it is super effective! – stand on the side of the field closest to Rook and run to the other side when he uses it
  • OOM – watch your mana cooldowns

This fight in my opinion was easier than Immerseus.  The whole fight comes down basically to knowing where to stand, knowing what not to stand in and having enough mana for the duration.  A few attempts should be enough for a kill.  Good luck!

November 11, 2013

Heroic Immerseus

Heroic Immerseus is a relatively simple fight if your group has good planning on where players stand and knowledge of the boss’s few simple additional mechanics.  On Heroic, Immerseus’s spells hit a great deal harder and there are a few mechanics which make the phases where Immerseus is active slightly different from normal.

Recommended Talents and Glyphs

Speed of Light – the room’s quite large, at times you may need to run quickly from one end of the room to another during split phases and this will help you get there quickly; also, moving away from an incoming swirl
Fist of the Justice – helping to stun the adds especially towards the earlier split phases is helpful to DPS
Eternal Flame – there are a few fights where Selfless Healer may now be taken over EF but this is not one of them
Unbreakable Spirit – would recommend this for a double use of LoH on a Contaminated Puddle
Holy Avenger – on-use healing cooldowns are especially helpful towards the later split phases
Holy Prism – since the room is quite large, and Immerseus’s hitbox is enormous, this spell will basically hit any 5 people in the room no matter where they’re spread, alternatively you could take Light’s Hammer for 25M since a majority of the raid will still be in once place and also Light’s Hammer has a snare which could be helpful in the early split phases

Beacon of Light – swapping beacon to puddles is helpful to get HP stacks from tower of radiance
Hand of Sacrifice – for Corrosive Blasts
Divinity – because there’s really no other helpful glyphs

Raid Makeup: 3 healers, 2 Tanks, 5 DPS, fight is not a DPS race and towards the end of the fight, more healing increases the speed at which the boss dies

General Spells
The Immerseus fight consists of alternating phases between Immerseus being active and when he splits in to many smaller puddles that slowly combine to form him again.

Immerseus Active Phase

  • Sha Bolt – fires a bolt at everyone in the raid inflicting 75,000 -> 120,000 (Shadow) damage in a 5 yard radius and forming a Sha Pool (damage from bolt is called Sha Splash)
    • Sha Pool – inflicts 15,000 -> 20,000 (Shadow) damage every second
  • Erupting Waters – torrents on the ground (pre-indicated by blue swirling circles) emerge throwing players on top of them in the air and doing 30,000 -> 45,000 (Frost) damage
  • Swirl – combination of two mechanics
    • Swirl – Immerseus begins to channel and rotate a large torrent of water in front of him knowing back anyone it comes in to contact with and dealing 200,000 -> 300,000 (Frost) damage
    • Swirl #2 – Smaller damage spell dealing 30,000 -> 45,000 (Shadow) damage which damages players close to the larger rotating stream of water
      *Note: There appears to be a little bit of confusion about the damage from this spell since there are two types of swirl damage on the logs. I believe that after the blue circles become the black gaseous torrents, there is damage from getting thrown up by these (Erupting Waters).  The lower damage Swirl is from players being next to the larger Swirl and the high damage Swirl is from getting hit by the stream.  Regardless, lots of damage is coming out during this Swirl phase.
  • Corrosive Blast – inflicts 600,000 -> 900,000 (Shadow) damage in a cone and increases Shadow damage taken by 300% for 45 seconds
  • Seeping Sha – walking in to the pool that Immerseus is immersed in inflicts 100,000 -> 150,000 (Shadow) damage
  • Swelling Corruption – gains stacks of swelling corruption proportional to corruption level (1 stack per 2 points), any player who uses single target abilities spawns a creature and puts a debuff on the player called Sha Corruption which stacks
    • Sha Corruption – inflicts Shadow damage for the following amounts every 1 second for 6 seconds (these are rough numbers)
      1. 2,500
      2. 8,750
      3. 23,000
      4. 54,000
      5. 120,000
      6. 250,000

Split Phase

  • Sha Pool – the central pool grows over time during split inflicting 4,000 (Shadow) damage to enemies who touch it, the damage stacks the longer the player stands in the pool, touching the pool shrinks its size
  • Sha Puddle (DPS) – 1 forms for every 4 points of corruption remaining, these puddles slowly move towards the center pool, each puddle killed removes 1 point of corruption
    • Sha Residue – killing a Sha Puddle applies a 25% damage buff to killing other Sha Puddles in a 10 yard range
  • Contaminated Puddle (Healing) – 1 forms for every 4 points of corruption removed (for the first split he appears to spawn at least a few healing puddles), these puddles slowly move towards the center pool, each puddle healed to full removes 1 point of corruption
    • Congealing – Contaminated puddle’s speed slows increasingly with heath gained
    • Purified Residue – healing a puddle to full applies a 75% healing buff and returns 25% mana to all players within 12 yards of it
  • Erupting Sha – puddles that reach the central Sha Pool inflict 75,000 -> 95,000 (Shadow) damage per Sha Puddle and 30,000 -> 40,000 (Frost) damage per Frost Puddle
  • Seeping Sha – walking in to the pool that Immerseus is immersed in inflicts 100,000 -> 150,000 (Shadow) damage

Specific Tips

My guild wiped a bit on this boss due to poor planning so I’ll go over what we eventually worked out.  Position is first off key. Coming in to the room with Immerseus and facing him, you will see that the room is divided in to 6 smaller cone areas and one larger cone area directly behind the boss the size of 2 smaller cone areas.  I would recommend that your raid position itself in this larger cone area (marked with a blue square in the picture below).  We found that if we stood on one of the smaller triangular areas, we would need to move as a raid to the next triangular area near the end of the first phase 1 due to losing room to the puddles so the larger triangular area was just enough space.  Also, the Sha Pools are hard to see in the interspersing water areas.  All of your dps/healers should be standing here.  Your main tank will stand either to the left of the group (this is obviously switchable with to the right) and move towards the left as they run out of room to drop the pools.  Your add tank will run in to the raid when the adds come out and tank the adds in the area where the raid is standing.  They will then taunt back Immerseus after they get out of this area back to their original spot.  I saw somewhere mentioned that as a holy paladin, you can turn on Righteous Fury and heal during this phase to aggro most of the adds to you making it much easier for the add tank to grab the adds.  You should however be extremely careful doing this since while the adds don’t hit hard, a lot of them will hit hard and along with other damage during this phase, you may be in some danger.

For the split phase, you should have your healers divided roughly in a triangle around the map and you should stay true to this.  Especially towards the last split phases, it will be very tempting to want to stand in the original blue area but stay true to your planning while adjusting intelligently to see where the puddles are going.  You should be able to see a few seconds ahead of time where the most healing puddles are going if you angle your camera to the ceiling.  Your DPS and tanks should be roughly spread as such at least for the first phase due to all of the DPS puddles so you can cover most of the map.  Towards the later phases, it would be helpful to have hybrid healer classes for example cover some area between the healers with the rest of your DPS watching to see where the remaining DPS puddles are going.

raidpos

Damage-wise, once swelling corruption is active in Phase 1, the raid damage begins ramping up since people are getting hit randomly by adds, standing in pools, etc.  Therefore, for the first few Immerseus Active phases, I popped my Holy Avenger to deal with this part and it was pretty much up every time for the first 3.  Other than that, have your other heals help mass dispel people and dispel any players you see with high stacks immediately (5 or above) or just in general.  It’s helpful to coordinate a loose stacking point for the mass dispel.  Make sure that you continue moving out of puddles and gas cracks on the ground.  The main thing you as a healer should watch for on your boss mods is Swirl.  As others have pointed out, Immerseus begins Swirl at one of the 4 cardinal directions in the room.  (Note that according to the map, this means he could likely start his swirl in the middle of the triangular platform.  Your raid should be to the right of the blue marker facing the boss when this happens.  I believe he will swirl for about half of the room and he will always circle in a clockwise direction.)  You can avoid swirl by either moving to the back of the room where it doesn’t touch you, or if you want to just take it to the face, you must watch out for a number of things.  A lot of our random deaths were from people getting ping-ponged around by swirl.  It’s my guess that you can get ping ponged in to one of the puddles which throws up you and then get hit by swirl again.  I once got hit 4 times in a row (bad!).  If you want to try to take the puddle to the face, make sure you do not get ping ponged in to one of the gas fissures on the ground behind you.  It’s best regardless to pop a damage reduction cooldown for the swirl.  The safest path however is to simply outrange the spell by running to the edges of the room.  In the split phase, there will be very little damage going out until the pools reach the center. DPS puddle, if killed, do not inflict any damage however Healing puddle damage is inescapable.  Regardless of how many puddles you heal up, once the Healing puddle reaches the center pool, it will explode for the damage regardless.  Your raid should save their own personal cooldowns for when this happens, especially towards later phases.  Also, you must heal the healing puddle to full to remove one point of corruption.  Make sure that you make your way back to your phase 1 position when phase 2 is over avoiding the Corrosive Blast which comes around 7-8 seconds after the end of the split phase.

Note to the DPS for the first phase.  Stop for heaven’s sake when you get 3-4 stacks.  5 stacks as I mentioned above is around 120,000 damage per second which is very dangerous considering all the other damage that’s going on.  DPS classes which have extra direct damage procs need to stop on 3.  The raid should be coordinated in when they are attacking the boss and when they are killing the adds.  This way, the tank can easily pick up adds.   The adds melee for a very insignificant amount. One other thing to note is his swelling corruption can only stack so much (1 for every 2 points of energy).  The first one is 50, and typically every DPS including Tanks in your raid will get around 3-5, get dispelled and then gain another few so that the boss will be DPSable during Swirl without gaining the debuff.  We were able to push the boss in one Swelling Corruption phase but it’s not a problem to hold off DPS and make the add phase cleaner if you want to spawn less adds.  Towards the end of the fight, his stacks of swelling corruption decrease by quite a bit because his energy is lower.

As a healer, it’s vital especially towards the later split phases to heal enough globs up.  You can calculate yourself an ending scenario.  Immerseus going in to a split with 28 energy will spawn 7 DPS puddles and 18 healing puddles.  For 3 healers to heal 18 healing puddles is quite a chore.  Position your camera up around where you’re designated to stand to see where the healing blobs will land.  Start the phase off with 5 holy power and dump your heals in to one while standing next to it to get the buff and then go for the other puddles.  You can LoH a puddle to immediately get the buff twice during this fight.  You should at the end be popping your healing cooldowns since a majority of them will be healing puddles and it is healing these that speeds up the boss kill.  For Phase 1, you should keep in mind the corrosive blast hit with be a very heavy damage nuke.  Also, your main tank on the boss will additionally have a few adds on him which should be killed as well and will therefore be taking quite a bit of damage.  For the most part however, the healing requirements on this boss are very manageable.  The highest damage times are the first swelling corruption and the end of the split phases where people could potentially die out-of-range (use healthstones!).  The only reason to use 3 healers on this fight is to deal with the split phases and the fact that the DPS requirement of this boss is very low.  For healers the fight essentially progresses from a heal your fellow raid members to heal the puddles fight.

Common Reasons for Wipes and Solutions

  • Swirl is instakilling people -> either be prepared with a damage reduction or avoid it by outranging it
  • Adds are overwhelming the raid -> don’t go all out on the boss, coordinate damage from adds to boss or designate adds as first priority as soon as they are out
  • First phase damage is insane -> it will be you’ll just have to deal with it, use your healing cooldowns during Immerseus’ active phase towards the beginning of the fight, don’t stand in the puddles
  • Split phase damage is insane because too many puddles are reaching him -> coordinate your raid’s positioning and your healer cooldowns, yes you will need to use them on puddles
  • People are getting gimped when Immerseus is pulling the puddles to him before he splits -> GTFO out of the middle of the puddles before split

Good luck!

November 11, 2013

Prismatic Prison of Pride: Haste Breakpoints

If you’ve had any contact with finding haste breakpoints then you’ve probably seen the healer breakpoint cards at Totemspot which help you find what haste rating to get when going for extra ticks of healing spells.  Eternal Flame functions at a base level of one tick per 3 seconds for 30 seconds.  With haste, the time between ticks decreases as the total duration of the HoT stays the same.  Therefore haste increases the number of ticks.  Sacred Shield functions similarly however the time between ticks is 6 seconds.

The Prismatic Prison of Pride (drops off Sha of Pride) is Siege of Orgrimmar healer specific trinket which increases our haste and mastery rating, critical strike healing and damage, and spirit by a certain percentage depending on the ilvl.  The tooltip displayed is a rounded version of the true multiplier.  Since many reforge programs don’t consider PPP in to their calculations, what you must do is to remove the trinket and calculate the haste needed before the multiplier and reforge to that.

I’m gonna try to make your life more simple and give you a table of the necessary breakpoints with any of PPP version out there.  The massive table below is composed of 6 mini-tables for each un-upgraded version of the trinket (LFR, Flex, Normal, Normal WF, Heroic, Heroic WF).  In each table, there are 3 major columns for un-upgraded (0), upgraded (1) and upgraded (2) versions.

hastebkpt_PPP

Thanks to Totemspot and Keldion‘s work in making this!

October 17, 2013

Website Update In Progress

Hello fellow paladins, time for a website update.  Theme feels much cleaner and easier to see.  I have cleaned up the menu for the site finally.  You can find all my previous challenge mode, ToT, and holy paladin guide under the dropdown at the top of the page.  Some idea of what’s coming in the next few weeks:

  • I will soon be getting in to SoO heroics and hopefully progressing quickly…so those should be coming…
  • I am planning to do some serious Proving Grounds madness and will probably write up a guide on that if I can get to at least Endless 30
  • I have been collecting data for both the multistrike and cleave trinkets as well as probably doing a comparison between Horridons and the DSD trinket and will write up some reports on those
  • Finally, I will be updating the Holy Paladin Guide in the next week or so to 5.4.  This will include changes in spells, gearing strategies, BIS lists, etc

In the spirit of that last point, for paladins who are wondering what to reforge and gem in 5.4, I’d advise you to check out these two links to a website called World of Wowgraphs.
Gems: http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/statspve-gem-2-1-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
Reforging: http://www.worldofwargraphs.com/statspve-items-2-1-0-0-0-0-0-0.html
This website compiles information from holy paladins who have killed 6/14 heroic bosses at least and their items, reforges, and gems.  It may give you an idea of what the better gearing strategies are out there now.  As always, the results from websites like this which don’t consider raid makeup, 10 vs 25 man, play skill, and a hundred other factors should be taken with a grain of salt.  All I’m saying is maybe take this one with a few grains 🙂

October 17, 2013

Heroic Lei Shen

Well it’s 5.4 and why did I decide to release this guide?  There may be someone who can get some use out of it…

Anyways, there’s already a lot of great heroic Lei Shen guides out there.  Here are some links:

Getsu’s Holy Paladin Heroic Lei Shen Guide

MMO-Champion Forum 10M Heroic Lei Shen Guide

Youtube Videos (Holy Paladin Perspective)

Unlike my other guides, I won’t go in to the details of each spell from Lei Shen but provide some more in-depth tips that you may not be able to grasp from videos or general guides.

The Heroic Lei Shen fight is broke up in to 3 phases with 2 intermissions one between each phase.

  1. Lei Shen active, Decapitate, Thunderstruck, Crashing Thunder, conduit active near Lei Shen, phases at 66%, highest energy conduit becomes disabled however Lei Shen retains this ability for the duration of the fight
    Intermission 1, Lei Shen unattackable, all conduits active, 5 different abilities x2
  2. Lei Shen active, Fusion Slash, Ball Lightning, Lightning Whip, conduit active near Lei Shen, phases at 33%, highest energy conduit becomes disabled however Lei Shen retains this ability for the duration of the fight
    Intermission 2, Lei Shen unattackable, 3 conduits active but all 4 abilities retained, once again 5 different abilities x2
  3. Lei Shen active till death, Overwhelming Power, Violent Gale Winds, Thunderstruck, Ball Lightning, Lightning Whip in addition to the 2 abilities he retains from phase 1 and 3

Don’t be too daunted by the amount of abilities Lei Shen retains in the last phase, the phase of this fight you will be wiping on the most is phase 2, the first intermission.  Lets go in detail a bit for each of the phases.

Phase 1: Lei Shen active, Decapitate, Thunderstruck, Crashing Thunder, conduit active near Lei Shen, phases at 66%, highest energy conduit becomes disabled however Lei Shen retains this ability for the duration of the fight

Assuming you’ve read some of the guides out there on how to position for this fight, the first phase doesn’t provide a lot of healing conerns.  Everything hits for a lot harder.  Thunderstruck is basically a one shot if you’re anywhere within 10-15 yards of it.  But these things shouldn’t be making your life a lot harder.  Since your raid is already stacked for a majority of the fight, it’s easy to stack up your shields with Holy Radiance and Light of Dawn and using more EFs on the melee/tanks as well as yourself.  The Crashing Thunder damage can be healed up quickly with Holy Prism.  Definitely go Speed of Light for this fight.  You will need this to move from platform to platform as well as for the Helm of Command ability.  The one main source of damage occurs when your raid transitions between pillars.  In Heroic, when Lei Shen is not latched to a conduit he will cast discharged energy on the whole raid.  This debuff is permanent for the rest of the phase (it will drop off during intermission).  On the last movement to the pillar, your discharged lightning stacks may be above 15 or so making the transition extremely damage.  One of your healers should pop a healing cooldown for this transition.  You can optionally also pop individual 1 minute reduction cooldowns for it.  This last movement will be the main and only source of large raidwide damage to watch out for.  MAKE SURE that for the last pillar you go to, you do not pop your Speed of Light.  You need to save it for the Helm of Command during intermission.  Instead, just pop your Divine Protection (so good for this fight). Chances are if you figure out which conduits you want to disable first (which is actually enabling them for the rest of the fight) and getting the power of the conduits right then this first phase won’t be too hard.

Intermission 1, Lei Shen unattackable, all conduits active, 5 different abilities x2

My goal here is to make this phase a little less confusing for you.  The order of spells in this phase goes like this:

[23:20:38.900] Lei Shen casts Supercharge Conduits
[23:20:38.987] Lei Shen casts Diffusion Chain
[23:20:39.168] Lei Shen casts Overcharged
[23:20:46.904] Lei Shen casts Helm of Command
[23:20:52.114] Lei Shen casts Static Shock
[23:20:52.948] Lei Shen Bouncing Bolt (Hits Ground)
[23:21:02.173] Lei Shen casts Overcharged
[23:21:04.181] Lei Shen casts Diffusion Chain
[23:21:11.030] Lei Shen casts Helm of Command
[23:21:12.233] Lei Shen casts Static Shock
[23:21:17.067] Lei Shen Bouncing Bolt (Hits Ground)

Basically he will toss out Diffusion Chain + Overcharged at the same time first.  Make sure that you’re spread apart for this.  Right after the overcharged goes out (6 seconds), one person in your raid (and only one person will get hit by Helm of Command.  He will also around the same time send out his Bouncing Bolts (~2 per platform).  The people who does have Helm of Command should be in charge of handling the Bouncing Bolts.  If you get an extra add it’s not the end of the world.  You can ask your tank to come over and taunt it if possible or just DPS it down.  Just continue to get in the bolts if you miss them.  Helm of Command lasts approximately 8 seconds therefore you should be able to stand in any Static Shock that comes up but you’ll have to move quick.
The order of the second set of spells should be for people primarily to stand in the Bouncing Bolt.  If you get Static Shock and you can solo soak, get the bolt and then wait 2-3 seconds and pop your immunity.  Don’t panic.  The Helm of Command person should only worry about staying on the platform.  If your Static Shock player can not solo soak, also don’t panic.  Soak the Bolt and then run to the other people in the group (especially if it’s the Helm of Command in your platform you will want to stay somewhere close to them so after it ends, and it will end before your static shock goes off, they can quickly stack on top of you.

For the second set of spell, it’s the same thing.  You have around 4 seconds after the Static Shock goes out to get in position so after you’ve soaked your bolts it’s probably better just to move back in to position to maintain that you’re still far enough from each other.  The first two spells once again come close to each othee BUT note here that the chain comes a few seconds AFTER overcharged.  What this means is on the second overcharged you must wait for Diffusion Chain to go out before stacking.  Otherwise you can say Hello to 3 adds.
The second set of spells for this last group is a little bit different as the Static Shock comes a bit early.  For this one, if you have Helm of Command and Static Shock on the same platform you must either try to stack up with the Helm of Command person or if you can 2 person soak it then you should do that as the Helm of Command player will be taking a lot of damage.  In my tries, the first static shock was hitting for ~1.5M so it’s possible to soak it with two players if you toss some absorbs and hit Devotion Aura and some personal cooldowns.  Granted it’s probably better to save Devotion Aura for the next phase.  In some cases, you can just have that person die and get ressed.  Killing 1 person with a res is better than killing 3 people with a res.  Finally, it’s very likely that if your platform gets Helm then the other two people will be in charge of getting the Bouncing Bolts as well and then quickly stacking up for Static Shock.

It’s important to plan out your groups accordingly.  You want to separate melee into different groups and people who can solo soak with Tanks, etc. For example, you don’t want to have a platform with 3 casters who all can’t solo soak or only 1 can solo soak.  You should place your Tanks with Ranged DPS so that the Tanks can help out with some of the Bolts. It will be highly variable depending on your composition.  Anyways, all of this information may help in clearing up what’s going on during this phase but much of it will come down to practice.  The most important thing is to avoid stacking for Diffusion Chain.  Many guides have recommended using a separate Weakaura to track this which I find extremely helpful.

Phase 2: Lei Shen active, Fusion Slash, Ball Lightning, Lightning Whip, conduit active near Lei Shen, phases at 30%, Lei Shen retains level 1 Static Shock along with performing whichever ability he is next to  the conduit of.

This phase is fairly easy to handle.  Designate 3 people with 1 backup person to stand on the outside.  It is possible to get Lei Shen to spawn only 3 ball lightnings if you have 3 ranged out and everyone else grouped up on the boss.  The backup person is because Lei Shen does static shock some time before ball lightning.  If this happens to one of the 3 designated people, the backup person will take their place and the person with static shock should run in to the stacked group to soak.  Make sure this person who runs in stays in until the balls go out.  The balls do a large amount of damage each time they bounce so it’s important to have your death knights mass grip/single grip them to kill them.  Also, it’s important not to stack with each other while stacked on the boss.  Maintain a small area around you so that a bouncing ball doesn’t hit more than one person.  You can also just run back out a bit because the balls should be killed fairly quickly.  Other than this, the only thing your ranged need to do is to stand in such a way that Lei Shen’s Lightning Whip targets an area where your raid is not running. This means standing to the left of the conduit since you are moving East to South to West.  On the last platform, position the Lightning Whip on the right of the conduit since everyone will be running left.  Healing requirement is really low except for ramping up slightly running between conduits.

Intermission 2: Similarly to Intermission 1, the conduits are increased by one level.  Depending on how much time you spent at each conduit, you may be able to decrease the levels during this phase.  This is why Phase 2 DPS is quite important.  With one platform empty, there will be more people on each platform.  For my guild, the formation 3/3/4 worked.  It will highly depend on your raid makeup.  What you want is for example to have people who can oh shit hit a button and immune static shocks on a platform with less people.  Players who can’t live through Static Shock by themselves should group with 4.  It’s vital that you stun the add from Diffusion Chain since it hit likes an absolute truck.  Since this targets only ranged, it’s also good to have ranged with a tank or other CC who can control this add.  The order of the spells is the same. On average, this phase is easier than Phase 1 simply because there are more people on each platform.  For holy paladins, make sure you help stun the add.  Healing will be spikey and change fast so be prepared to use your Flash Heals.

Phase 3: Ball Lightning, Lightning Whip, Thunderstruck, Winds, Level 1 Static Shock and Diffusion Chain
People were proposing very exact plans to deal with this phase and for us it turned out to be unnecessary. The one thing to maintain is the 3 people on the outside plus one backup.  It’s more important this phase to spread out for a majority, only stacking for ball lightning and static shock.  One note for holy paladins, You can pop your bubble for the static shock such that it will immune you through static shock AND a thunderstruck.  This greatly reduces the amount you will need to run during this phase.  The damage during this phase is quite high.  As soon as the winds come, get ready to  pop your cooldowns.  Set up a cooldown rotation for the thunderstrucks and make sure you move away from Thunderstruck.  As a Holy Paladin, I found it easier to be one of the people on the outside because I could bubble when things were going to shit.  So make sure you continue standing on the outside while moving away for Ball Lightning since it come very quickly after Thunderstruck.  Everyone who normally stacks should also spread out to place the Thunderstruck farther away from melee. Other guides recommend moving from one quadrant to the other but we found that it just was too much movement for very little gain.  Better to remain relatively spread while in range of healers.

Finally good luck!

October 8, 2013

Siege of Orgimmar 5.4 Normal Mode Quick Guide (Boss 13-14)

After a nasty bought of appendicitis, I have successfully delayed my guild in being anywhere close to competitive this patch.  Along with roster issues and other things, my guides this patch will unfortunately be rather behind the flow of things.  Nevertheless, better late than never so let me give you guys a few hints on Paragons of Klaxxi and Garrosh.

Paragons of Klaxxi
You fight against the 9 Klaxxi Paragons you freed while questing in Dread Wastes (good going).  Originally thought the order they came is random however the order for my guild has not changed in the past three weeks.  The order appears to be the following:

Hisek, Rik’kal, Skeer (at beginning), Ka’roz, Korven, Iyyokuk, Xaril, Kaz’tik, Kil’ruk

Some Klaxxi Paragons affect other Klaxxi Paragons so you just need to know the combinations.  You also know who’s next by a buff they gain while they’re standing there waiting.  All the paragons have their own abilities as well in addition to a helpful ability they give by click on their corpse.  The buffs aren’t really going to make a difference in normal.  Also, the bosses gain damage when another one of them is killed.  For example for the first three, if you kill Rik’kal, Skeer and Hisek will gain damage.  This kind of means that you will need to kill the bosses after a certain number of rounds.  I’ll tell you my guild’s successful kill order at the end. First general boss abilities…

Skeer the Bloodseeker
– Affects other Paragons: Causes tank to take 10% more damage from Rik’kal the Dissector’s melee attacks per stack
– Bloodletting, summons bloods which move towards a damaged Paragon and heal him, 2 spawns in 10 man
– Helpful buff: DPS buff, allows attacks to have a chance to summon blood orbs which heal (like healing spheres)

Rik’kal the Dissector
– Affects other Paragons: Causes tank to take 10% more damage from Skeer the Bloodseeker’s melee attacks per stack
– Applies stacking debuff, when expired spawns Amber Parasites which fixate on random players dealing high damage, healed to full every 10 seconds, not applied to tanks under active mitigation
– Turns random players in to Amber Scorpions who have their own attacks, one useful one can instantly kill the Amber Parasites, also causes player transformed to take damage
– Helpful buff: DPS buff, turns them in to an amber scorpion for 30 seconds

Hisek the Swarmkeeper
– Multishot to random members
– Aim, targets random raid members and stusn for 5 seconds, should be at least a few yards away from the boss, fires a damaging beam between them and himself, split by players who stand in between, each player who stands in between takes some physical damage and also spawns a zone on the ground that deals damage
– Helpful buff: Ranged DPS buff, first damage shot at player, deals more damage farther away, increases its damage taken by 15%

Ka’roz the Locust
– Charge random players around room who take damage and are disoriented for a while
– Jumps to platform and hurls amber down to form void sons
– Helpful buff: DPS buff, allows them to do the same thing and jump on the platform to hurl down amber, in addition, hurling amber at bosses encased instantly shatters it

Korven the Prime
– Shield Bash->Vicious Assault, knockdown followed by series of high physical damage attacks in front of him
– Helpful Buff: Tank buff allows them to encase other players in amber making them immune from damage for 5 seconds

Iyyoukuk the Lucid
– Deals 1/3 of a players health, instantly kills players below 25% health
– Assigns a series of colors (5 possible), shapes (5 possible) and numbers (5 possible) to players, he will then target a random player and all players who have that players color/shape/number and link them, anyone who comes in contact with the link will take damage, deals less damage if you are further away (think opposite of Stone Guards fire chain)
– Helpful Buff: Healer buff, target a player and heals all players of that race or class

Xaril the Poisoned Mind
– Affects other Paragons: Causes tank to take 10% more damage from Kil’ruk’s melee attacks per stack
– Caustic Blood, tank debuff, explodes fro massive raid damage at 10 stacks, application can be prevented by having an active mitigation ability up, also tank swap
– Toxic Injections, assigns raid members to either red, blue, or yellow
– Red: Spread
– Blue: Clump (only 2 in 10 man)
– Yellow: Move away from poison cloud
– Helpful Buff: Healing buff from corpse, 10 second duration, healing to target is stored then released when target takes damage

Kaz’tik the Manipulator
– 4 initially unattackable bugsaround room
– Mesmerize causes players to walk towards one of them, dealing physical damage each second, the bug gains energy for each tick, if the player reaches the bug they die and the bug becomes active, DPS the bug that is causing the players to break the fixate, they will also do this at 100 energy
– Fires beam at random player, everyone else should get out of the beam
– Helpful Buff: Any role buff summon a mob to help you DPS

Kil’ruk the Wind-Reaver
– Affects other Paragons: Causes tank to take 10% more damage from Xaril the Poisoned Mind’s melee attacks per stack
– Gouge->Mutilate, heavy tank hitting attack
– Death from Above, leaps in air and lands on random member dealing damage in a small AOE
– Helpful Buff: DPS buff from his corpse

Summary

Raid Buffs
Any Roll: Kaz’tik the Manipulator
Tank: Korven the Prime
Healer: Iyyoukuk the Lucid, Xaril the Poisoned Mind
DPS: Rik’kal the Dissector, Skeer the Bloodseeker, Ka’roz the Locust, Kil’ruk the Wind-Reaver, Hisek the Swarmkeeper (Ranged)

Interactions: Just means when these two are out at the same time, they should not be on the same tank
Kil’ruk the Wind-Reaver <-> Xaril the Poisoned Mind
Skeer the Bloodseeker <-> Rik’kal the Dissector

Recommended Talents: Speed of Light (for getting into the arrow from Hisek and avoiding other things), Holy Prism (raid is generally spread out)
Recommended Glyphs: Hand of Sacrifice, Beacon of Light and Divinity are basically the 3 standard glyphs now

Tank Damage: Moderate, can be kind of spikey when the bosses come out with the interactive tank debuffs but otherwise not too bad
Raid Damage: Low-Moderate, only dangerous times were when the bosses with color related mechanics came out

– Don’t pad, any dps on the target that doesn’t die will be healed when another paragon dies
– Kill Order

Beginning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hisek 4
Rik’kal 1
Skeer 2
Ka’roz 5
Korven 3
Iyyokuk 6
Xaril 7
Kaz’tik 8
Kil’ruk 9

– While you’re killing Hisek, Rik’kal will spawn his first set of bloods which will move towards Hisek because he has the lowest health.  You should be able to kill Hisek before these bloods reach him.  Once the blood’s target disappears the bloods will not heal another target so you don’t need to worry about the first set.  You will need to kill the second set.
– After Hisek is killed, it’s generally a good idea to stay spread apart.  Watch for the orange crap on the ground as well as the boss who sents out sonic waves which do quite a lot of damage.  When the Kunchongs come out, have the raid move away from them so they aren’t too close when they become targeted for the mesmerize.
– We kill Hisek and Ka’roz before killing Iyyokuk and Xaril even though they’re out because they were left up for too long and their abilities were beginning to do a lot of damage.
– Just make sure you know what you’re doing for Iyyokuk and Xaril.  For the red/blue/yellow on Xaril, the blue people need to go find 1 yellow person to stand next to.  The red people need to spread out and the yellow people need to spread out but be aware if they’re soaking with a blue person.  For Iyyokuk, you have a fairly long amount of time to spread out and reduce the damage.

Garrosh Hellscream
The Garrosh encounter is a multiphase encounter with a transition phase that occurs between phases.  He starts off with abilities which are empowered and more abilities are added as the phases go on.
In Phase 1 which lasts until he’s at 10% health, he has two innate abilities.  Desecrate targets ranged players and throws a weapon greating a zone at the location.  This weapon can be killed in its unempowered form and the size of the zone decreases with its life.  He also does a buff on any adds that are up increasing their damage and health by 150%. There are three adds in addition to Garrosh.  The first is a typical tank and spank add which slows tanks with hamstring.  The second is a farseer who heals, casts chain lightning and a gains a buff each time you interrupt his casts.  You want to interrupt his chain heal so gaining buffs is inevitable.  You shouldn’t be interrupting chain lightning though so make sure the raid stands apart.  The third add is a siege engineer which spawns at opposite sides of the room and channels to free a wheel from the side of the room.  The wheels roll in opposite directions and each of them take up one half of the room so you can potentially avoid both of them.  The recommendation is to kill one of these and let the other one go. This should be done by 1 DPS in the case of 2 healers and a DPS healer such as a Disc priest or HotW Resto druid when 3 healing.
At 10% he will go in to his first transition phase.  This phase stays the same throughout the fight and lasts for 1 minute.  You have a chance to get transported to either Terrace of the Endless Spring, Temple of the Jade Serpent or Temple of the Red Crane.  You will have to defeat an add and stand in the buff it gives upon death which reduces damage by 50%.  After you kill the add, Garrosh becomes active and starts casting Annihilates which yoru raid must dodge.  You have a chance to DPS Garrosh now before he enters the next phase.  In the two Temples, you should split your raid into two groups.
After the first transition, Phase two will start.  Garrosh will be at full health, minus the damage you did to him during the transition.  Garrosh now has four abilities, 1 of which is the same from Phase 1.  These spells become empowered when Garrosh gains energy and remain empowered during the Phase.
– Whirling Corruption, AOE raid damage attack, corrupted at 25 energy, shoots missle at random raid members doing AOE damage in a small region and summoning an add, when these adds die, any other nearby adds get super buffed
– Touch of Y’Shaarj, mind controls random players who then try to mind control other players, the mind control is broken at 20% and the mind control they cast can be interrupted, corrupted at 50 energy, mind controlled people are empowered and can no longer be stunned, can still be interrupted
– Desecrate, same as Phase 1, corrupted at 75 energy, these weapons can no longer be killed, but still have a smaller zone radius when they have less health
– Gripping Despair, stacking DoT and requires tank switch, corrpted at 100 energy, when the buff disappears, it deals damage to the player equal to the value of the debuff and also causes the player to take 10% increased damage from it pr stack
In addition to these 4 abilities, every 2 minutes your raid will be taken to the transition phase again.
In the third and final phase, Garrosh will be at 100% again.  During this, he will use only the empowered abilities.

Recommended Talents: Speed of Light, Light’s Hammer (most of the time raid is clumped)
Recommended Glyphs: Hand of Sacrifice, Beacon of Light and Divinity are basically the 3 standard glyphs now

Tank Damage: Moderate-Heavy, boss hits hard bro, the first phase when the adds are out is one of the more intense tank damage phases, along with the last phase with the tank debuff
Raid Damage: Morderate-Heavy, raid damage is more or less moderate apart from heavy damage phases, this includes the whirling corruptions and the intermission phases where he annihilates

– Raid DPS is an important consideration on when you’re bloodlusting.  If you’re three healing, likely you will get to bloodlust twice, once in phase 1 for adds and once in phase 3.  If you’re 2 healing, your bloodlust will likely not be up again for phase 3 and you should save it for phase 3.  – The key part of this phase is phase 2.  If you’re three healing, you will likely end up going in to intermission before phase 3 and have an empowered whirling corruption right before that.  It’s important that you kill the adds in phase 2 and apart from each other. If you’re two healing, it’s very important to push the boss to phase 3 before he goes in to a second intermission.  You should pop your blood lusts and other things to get him to this point.
– I can’t stress enough the importance of an interrupt order for mind controls.  This needs to be spickety clean through the whole fight.  Forget about mind controls in phase 3 and zerg boss? It will be a wipe.
– For phase 3, I would advise killing the first set of corrupted adds. then kiting the second one around as your other tank takes Garrosh.  Be mindful of mind controls, they must be interrupted and broken out.  The last phase is kind of a clusterfuck so try not to get separated from the group.

September 17, 2013

Siege of Orgimmar 5.4 Normal Mode Quick Guide (Boss 11-12)

Poops, didn’t get to Garrosh this week.  Laid-back raiding FTW!  Did manage to kill Thok and pretty much kill Siegecrafter Blackfuse before one of our players needed to go so here’s the guides for these two dudes.

Thok the Bloodthirsty
The fight is composed of Phase One, Phase Two and modified versions of Phase One depending on what happens in Phase Two.  In Phase One you fight the boss with his innate set of abilities including a frontal cone attack that applies a stacking damage increase debuff (tank swap), a tail lash, a blast that his random members of the raid, and a screech which interrupts spell casting when he gains 100 power.  In addition, when players drop below 50% health they recieve a debuff called ‘Bloodied’.  To enter Phase Two, 5 raid members with ‘Bloodied’ (10 man) should stack together.  The timing of this pretty much coincides when the damage from Phase One gets high enough to warrant a phase swap.  In Phase Two, he fixates on random players for a few seconds who should kite Thok for the duration.  Thok will do a frontal cleave attack during this time so other raid members should be careful to avoid him and the fixated raid member should avoid kiting him in to the raid.  You can set up raid markers for people fixated to kit Thok and have everyone else stand away from the boss. Also during this phase, you will be able to free one of the NPCs in the room with a key that drops from the Kor’kron Jailer that also spawns at the beginning of Phase Two.  The order of freeing the mobs (because this affects Thok’s abilities in Phase One should be Akolik, Gorai, Montak (easily remembered as they are in alphabetical order).  After he devours the NPC you free, he returns to a modified Phase One.

Akolik
– His frontal cleave turns into an acidic frontal cone attack applied a stacking armor debuff (tank swap), this goes on around 2 players and has quite a fast reapplication
– His random blast damage to the raid changes magic type and also applies a DoT
Gorai
– His frontal cleave turns into  a frost damage frontal con attack which applies a stacking debuff, at 5 stacks the player becomes frozen and starts losing 5% health every 2 seconds, they must be broken down (this shouldn’t happen to tanks)
– His random blast damage changes magic types and applies the same frost debuff that freezes the player at 5 stacks
Montak
– His frontal cleave turns into a fire frontal cone attack and applies a stacking DoT
– His random blast changes magic types and also leaves a void zone on players hit, move out of these

Recommended Talents:
Speed of Light (Jurassic Park style running away)
Would recommend going Light’s Hammer for this fight even though the area is quite large as for a good period of the time your raid will be stacked.  It will help you get through more of his screeches.
Probably clemency is also a must have for this fight although with the change to unbreakable spirit, bubble will be best for yourself, clemency is to help out raid members. I was told that Hand of Protection blocks the interrupt on the screech since it’s raid damage but I don’t believe it does.  It definitely does block the physical damage though.
Recommended Glyphs:
Hand of Sacrifice to place on a few members once the damage gets too high.  Divinity is Nice I guess…Beacon of Light.

Tank Damage: Moderate, one of the harder hitting bosses up to this point but still nothing really to worry about.
Raid Damage: Moderate-High, the screech, oh god the screech

– The raid stacks together in Phase One to the side of the boss, except for when the person you  kill is Montak. For this everyone needs to spread roughly apart to avoid setting fire zones on top of other people.
– The screech starts coming very fast, like you can’t get a holy radiance off in time fast.  I’d recommend using holy avenger (hell SH/heavy haste might actually be better than EF for this fight) near the 7th or 8th screech so you can continue to LoD the raid.  (This is on 10 man, in 25 EF is still probably better.)  Pop your devotion aura around maybe the 10th or so screech so your healers can heal without fear for the 6 second duration.  Make sure you call this out.  Optionally you can bubble near the end but you should probably time this with at least Guardian possibly Avenging Wrath or Divine Favor because you will need to be healing the raid up by yourself basically.
– After the first transition, be ready for the poison debuff.  Thok continues to apply this to around 2 people in the raid through the phase where you need to kite him around again.  This means people who are kiting might be out of your range and will be taking ticking damage from it.
– The position of Thok is in my opinion the key to success.  In my raid, we tanked Thok near the edge of the room.  When the transition came, the raid moves the add to the center of the room and the fixated raid member simply begins to kite the boss around the side of the room either way.  The ice phase and fire phase weren’t that bad but on the fire phase you should have him pretty low going in to it otherwise reconsider your DPS.
– We 3 healed this fight because one of our healer’s gear was pretty low ilvl.
– The jailer hits the tank for a moderate amount, if your tank thinks he can take the hits you don’t need to place your beacon on him.  The good thing about beacon is that the range of the heal is 60 yards.  You can place it on farther away members and heal members around you to help them out.
– Get your healers dispell guns ready.  Also fel imp helps.  The debuff is magic despite doing poison damage.

Siegecrafter Blackfuse
The room is set up with a center platform and two conveyer belts running northwest and northeast.  The northwest belt is the one you enter.  The two pipes to enter are located at the bottom close to the entrance of the room.  Siegecrafter is on the platform with the adds being assembled on the belts and the finished adds coming out on to the platform from the northeast conveyer belt.

Platform Mechanics
Siegecrafter has his own abilities including a tank swap, a buff gained whenever his adds are killed which buffs his attack speed by 100%, a launch sawblade ability at a random member which rotate in place dealing damage to anything that touches to it.  It lasts indefinitely until either the fight ends, or it is magnetically pulled in my one of the adds that spawn.  Any adds which come within 35 yards of the boss are healed by a percentage every few seconds so all adds should be tanks far away.  He also gains a buff if the wave of adds is not killed.  Additionally, there are several adds in the fight.
Automated Shredders are mobs (unrelated to the belt) which spawn every 2 minutes after 30 seconds.  They have a buff, Reactive Armor which reduces their damage taken by 80%.  Note that the tanks who gain the debuff from the boss (which required the tank swap) can tank these and hit them at 200% damage.  They also have a ability which causes them to leap in the air and land dealing damage in an AOE.  It is stunned for 5 seconds after this and takes 200% damage.  Finally, it gradually accumulates stacks of a damage buff.  These adds can be damaged by a lot of the boss and other add’s abilities.
Conveyer Belt Mobs are mobs which have been assembled on the belt.  3/4 possible adds will spawn each wave.  Once these are assembled on the northwest belt, they will fire 1 ability on the northeast belt when they come out and then disappear.  Note that all of these abilities affect the Shredders.
– Missle Turrets strike in rings around the center of the platform for massive damage
– Laser Turrest send a laser beam that follows raid members around, periodically spawning void zones on the ground (think Amber Shaper Un’sok), people who stand in these gain a DoT
– Electromagnets pull all players towards it for 10 seconds, all sawblades will move towards it, players should get out of the way of these and run against the pull
– Crawler mines jump off the platform and fixate random players, when it reaches the target it explodeson all raid members and knocks them in the air, for the first minute, they can be stunned and killed, after that they move faster and can not be killed
Conveyer Mechanics
– Beams of fire are located along the belt but can be avoided
– Assign two groups (2 dps) to enter these as entering one will incur a debuff which does not let you enter again for 1 minute

Recommended Talents: Speed of Light, get away from the laser.  Fist of Justice for stunning the crawler mines. Holy Prism better for this fight as people are spread out.  Would recommend getting clemency to help any non-dps healers out, otherwise get Unbreakable Spirit to prevent the Overload damage.
Recommended Glyphs: Would recommend getting Hand of Sacrifice and the Divine Protection glyph to transfer 20% of the damage reduction to physical for the Overload.  Mana’s not that big of a problem on this fight.

Tank Damage: Moderate, sometimes the tank can get lower due to the adds dying and the boss gaining the buff.  Also, the debuff application of the boss hits for quite a bit.
Raid Damage: Moderate-High, depending on how many overcharges you get.

– My raid was having a bit of trouble getting the shredders down.  We ended up resetting each electro-charge stage by bring around 1-2 sawblades near the northeastern platform where the adds come out so that the tank had an easier time positioning the add in it.  It’s important that the ranged DPS turn to the shredder when it is stunned to help it out.  I think that other guilds had less problems with this so you may not need it for your raid.  We were getting 4 overcharges sometimes (come in intervales of 10%) which was hitting for 380,000 on all raid members.
– Something to note about the sawblades, they have some kind of delay on where they end up going to so you can avoid all damage most of the time.
– Be very very careful when the electromagnetic add comes out.  If a blade flys through you, you will get hit with the 200k damage which will be bad with all the overcharges coming in.  Position yourself so that you aren’t between a blade and the northeastern platform.
– The fight is very much rinse and repeat, he isn’t doing any more damage at the end of the fight vs the beginning of the fight.

September 16, 2013

Siege of Orgimmar 5.4 Normal Mode Quick Guide (Boss 7-10)

Kor’kron Dark Shaman
This fight occurs in Orgrimmar commons.  The two shamans are sitting inside the main building where Garrosh usually sits.  I’d recommend someone like a hunter pulling them out and Feign Deathing so that they’re not located inside anymore.  Leading up to this, there are two cages of Alliance/Horde shamans.  You get the key from looting the body of one of the mobs and they will give you a 15% magic resistance totem to help you out.  The two shamans each have a mechanic which requires a tank swap.  This fight is slightly hectic in terms of positioning as there are several things that spawn around the whole area which players must get out of.  First is this green line of poison that shoots out after a few seconds on a ranged player from the boss.  It’s easy to see who’s got it because they’re illuminated with a huge green beam.  This player simply needs to move out of the rest of the raid who should be roughly clumped.  The next thing that spawns is this circling purple wind that does damage to anyone standing in it.  I believe this also turns in to a purple tornado which should also be avoided.  The bosses also periodically debuff random players with a DoT that much be healed up.  After a certain health (all these abilities are trigger by health percentages) he will start spawning a wall of immovable mobs which hit anyone who come near them.  They can one shot you.  Finally, periodically the boss will call down several globs of green goo that should be AOEd down.  These do some kind of ticking damage to anyone around them so tanks and melee dps should move out of it.  These adds should be slowed and CCed.

Recommended Talents: I went Light’s Hammer for this fight as our raid was stacked for a large majority of the time.  Otherwise, I just placed it down on the tank group.  This fight has a lot of movement though and perhaps Holy Prism would be better.  Speed of Light definitely for moving around.
Recommended Glyphs: Utilize your Divine Protection well.  Some good choices are Divinity, Beacon of Light and Hand of Sacrifice.

Tank Damage: Moderate, Tank damage can get a bit spikey with the nukes that the bosses send out.  When the globs spawn, keep a close eye on your tank’s health as they will take some initial damage from the AOE.
Raid Damage: Moderate, Raid will be getting random DoTs and possibly people standing in things they shouldn’t be so there is a lot of spikey or consistent DoT damage going around.

  • Positioning is key to this fight. Start off the fight in a neat formation and adapt as the things come out on the ground.  We started in the top left and scooted parallel like towards the right.  Make sure the bosses are facing the walls and close to the side when they spawn the wall of immovable adds.  The rest of the raid should designate someone to stack on and move roughly with each other.
  • Don’t run through the wall unless you’re really about to die or have some kind of damage reduction or prevention.
  • This is a pretty chaotic fight, you will be running around a lot so just be aware of people’s health as you avoid things yourself.
  • Kill the dogs first.

General NazgrimTactics on this boss is fairly easy.  G.Nazgrim is kind of like a warrior.  He switches between stances every minute or so beginning with battle, then berserker, then defensive.  In Battle stance, he gains a moderate amount of rage and does normal damage.  In Berserker, he does more damage, takes more damage and generates more rage.  In Defensive he gains no innate rage but does gain it from people attacking him.  He also takes less damage.  The only person attacking him during Defensive is the tank if they have the sunder armor debuff on them.  You should wait to taunt him right before he applies the debuff so you can actually hit him after you taunt.  The sunder armor debuff is the tank swap mechanic.  You should do it ever 3 stacks or so. Every 15 seconds Nazgrim will perform his highest costing rage attack.

  • 30 Rage, he leaps at a random target doing damage in a small AOE and two criss-crossed lines of fire will spawn from that point a few seconds later explode.  Moving either backwards or to the left or right if you are the target of the leap will avoid the fire
  • 50 Rage, he spawns a banner which causes attacks of all adds to give him rage, kill very quickly
  • 70 Rage, AOE physical damage attack, pop any physical damage reduction cooldowns
  • 100 Rage, throws a weapon at a random player which will damage them then spin around in place until the end of the fight

Basically any damage players unnecessarily take will give Nazgrim rage.  If you do the fight right, you should never be able to get him to 100 rage.  Your first job is to deal with these abilities.  Your second job is to deal with the adds.  He spawns 4 types of adds.  All of them can be stunned, rooted, etc.

  • Ironblades, tanks these, otherwise don’t do much other than spin around, ranged should slowly kill them
  • Assassins, focus a random target going stealth before and going up to their back, if you turn your back to them they backstab you which is likely a one shot
  • Arcweaver, randomly nuke players and blink around, interrupt as many of their spells as possible, kill these quickly, second priority
  • Warshamans, chain heal, put down healing totem, kill totems first, interrupt chain heal, kill these with first prioirity

Recommended Talents: Holy Prism, most of the time raid is spread out, Fist of Justice to help with the adds.Recommended Glyphs: The typical glyphs are fine.

Tank Damage: Low-ModerateRaid Damage: Low-Moderate, there are periods of time when he throws up raidwide nukes but those come with ample notice

  • If you are targeted by an assassin make sure you don’t turn around.
  • Fight is fairly straightforward with easy mechanics and lots of room for error.

MalkorokThe fight occurs in a circular room.  The fight is Tortos-esque in the sense that everyone gets a Debuff in Phase 1 called Miasma.  Every heal on these players will contribute to an absorb shield maxing out at the person’s life.  There is no way for this shield to drop however and any further damage taken beyond the shield absorb stays with the player until the next phase.  Malkorok has a few abilities.  As usual, there is the tank swap.  Other than this, he periodically places 3 circles around the room.  One person (and no more than one because the damage is not split) must stand in these purple circles.  Once they go off, if you have at least 1 person in each circle, that person will take a large nuke (which shouldn’t show up if your healers are doing it right).  If you don’t have one of the circles covered, everyone in the raid will take the damage nuke.  He will also periodically do an arcing smash which is simply something you need to avoid.  This ability plays a part in his third ability which is called Breath of Y’Shaarj.  After every 3rd arcing smash, he will light up the ground of the 3 arcing smashes with Breath of Y’Shaarj which will basically instantly kill anyone standing in it.  Due to this, you must track where the arcing smashes hit.  You should have one person in your raid marking this.  Finally, he will periodically send players in the air who will take some falling damage.  Players around this player will also get hit so spread out.  After this phase, he will transition to a second phase which lasts for around 20 seconds.  During this phase he has two abilities.  One is a frontal cone of around 2M damage that needs to be split between all members.  He repeats this very quickly.  He also puts a debuff on two players (in 10 man) that do some damage on the player but also periodically hits in an AOE around the player.  These players must move out of the raid and then get dispelled.  Do not dispell inside the raid.  During this phase, the AOE healing needed will be very, very high.  Think of it kind of like one of Megaera’s Ramages.

Recommended Talents: Light’s Hammer is a must for this one. Speed of Light…Recommended Glyphs: The typical ones are fine for this.  You could optionally glyph your divine protection to get the damage reduction to physical.

Tank Damage: Low-Moderate, nothing really noticeable to me.
Raid Damage: Moderate, High during phase 2, get ready with your AOE healing in phase 2. In phase 1, you can pretty much heal to your hearts content and being careful to go in to phase 2 with enough mana.

  • At the beginning of the fight, you have a few seconds before the first seismic slam goes out (the thing that punts you in the air and everyone around you) your raid should group in any AOE healing abilities to get your shields stacked.
  • Prioritize your ranged DPS to stand in the 2 farther our purple circles and your melee DPS to stand in the one closest to the boss.  Your tanks should probably not soak the pools.
  • Phase 1 of this fight is fairly simple to execute if you have someone marking the arcing slams.  Phase 2 is high damage but should be easily done with proper cooldowns.  It only lasts 20 seconds so you can pop all your cooldowns if you wanted to and have them be up for nearly the whole thing.

Spoils of Pandaria
This fight should be done in two groups.  Each group with a defensive, an offensive, and a bloodlust.  If you don’t have this, it’s not the end of the world, it just means things might be a little harder for you. There are 4 quadrants of the fight, each side with 1 mogu and 1 mantid quadrant.  Your group of 5 is responsible for dealing with one side of this.  In this area, there are a few different types of boxes, large, middle and small.  Some guides I’ve seen says the middle crate gives 4 energy but in my experience it gave 3 at least on 10 man.  Large ones do indeed give 14.  You should begin each quadrant by killing the panda crates and getting the buff from then which lasts the whole time pretty much.  Then you should start killing the big add, adding in some small adds as seen fit.  You don’t want to be overwhelmed but you also want to finish in time.  Your goal is to get 50 energy (opening the boxes and killing the mobs in them give energy) within a certain time.  In the mantid area, you will need to avoid certain things on the ground, run outwards when you are pulled in and finally, when the big crates are opened, you will get a bomb debuff with an extra action bar.  When you get this, you get around 4 or so bombs which you must throw on the ground before a they detonate.  You will also trigger them by running over them.  If you get this debuff, run to a corner and just deposit all the bombs as you are running forward and run away.  In the mogu quadrant, you should start the same, kill the panda crates then start on the other ones.  In this one, there will be random stone mogu that walk around and do a small arcing crash in front of them that stuns players in it.  They are not tankable, and should just be killed.  The crates will also spawn these urns that will spawn sparks which fly around the area periodically stopping to do AOE damage.  Kill these urns.  Once in a while, there will be a mechanic where two beams of light pop up a few yards away from each other. At least one player should be standing in each light, otherwise everyone in the raid will take a nuke.  Other than this, each quadrant has some kind of dispellable debuff and a buff to enemy mobs that needs to be dispelled.

Recommended Talents: Would recommend Holy Prism for this as it’s 5 man and there’s a lot of movement.  Also Speed of Light.
Recommended Glyphs: Nothing really special although you won’t need your beacon glyph for this one.

Tank Damage: Low-Moderate, if you’re doing this right, your tanks shouldn’t really be taking a lot of damage.Raid Damage:  Low-Moderate, Sometimes the damage ramps up a bit but overall the damage is quite low compared to other fights, unless people in your raid are bomb happy

  • The healer buff from the panda crates is pretty cool.  Periodically you have a chance to shoot out a wave of water which heals and damages in a line.  You should position this to hit as many people in your raid as possible.
  • You can bubble and detonate all the bombs in the area.
September 12, 2013

Siege of Orgimmar 5.4 Normal Mode Quick Guide (Boss 1-6)

Just like last patch, I’d like to provide you with some quick tips on the normal mode boss fights in Siege of Orgimmar.  For heroics I will, like in ToT be going in to a lot more detail.  Of course, these are from the holy paladin perspective.

Immerseus
Immerseus is this giant water elemental that sits stationary in the middle of the room.  When you kill him, he splits up into many globules of two types, one type can be killed and one type can be healed.  These globs will start at random places around the edge of the room and slowly rejoin to the center after which Immerseus will return.  The amount of life he returns with depends on how many globules were killed and how much the globules which can be healed were healed.  There are also effects on the ground that you must move out of and periodically he shoots a stream of water outwards around the room which will knock you up or back.

Recommended Talents: Other than the obvious, I would recommend going Speed of Light so you can track where the healable globules land and quickly get in range of a group of them.  Also, you should definitely choose Holy Prism for this fight as your whole raid will be spread out quite a lot.
Recommended Glyphs: Beacon of Light, Hand of Sacrifice seems like a decent Tank cooldown now and beats things like Avenging Wrath but otherwise not really game-changing.

Tank Damage: Low-Moderate, believe there is a tank specific attack that hits for moderate damageRaid Damage: Low-Moderate, the only time there is a danger of people dying is when not enough globs are healed or DPSed down before they rejoin to form Immerseus.  You should pop Devotion Aura during this to minimize the damage.

  • Towards the end of the fight, there are more healing globules than dps globules so hybrid DPS should help with healing and you should try to output a bit more healing to heal all of them up.
  • Spread out your raid such that half the DPS and a healer are on each side of Immerseus and the tanks are between.  That way you can more easily cover the room when the globules come out.

The Fallen Protectors
The Fallen Protectors are three Panda dudes that were messed up by the corruption of the vale 😦  These are the guys you got Golden Lotus quests from before.  The fight is Council of Elders-esque but in reality it’s much easier to manage the abilities.  First off, all three Pandas must be killed within 15 seconds of the first one dying.  If they are not, then they will heal to full.  Second off, their health is not shared.  Each Panda does a special ability at 66% health and 33% health.  This ability does not get any more difficult from the first point to the second.

Recommended Talents: Holy Prism still probably beats Light’s Hammer even though the fighting grounds is smaller.
Recommended Glyphs: None of them are too game-changing.

Tank Damage: Low-Moderate, keep an eye on the tank on He Softfoot.  His damage can get high during some desperate measures.Raid Damage: Moderate, there will be a lot of random damage around the place from adds and the Girl Panda who targets random people and casts at them.

  • It’s not the end of the word if the DoT jumps but it’s helpful if you can catch it before it does.
  • There is a mechanic that requires people to stack so the damage is distributed, similar to Static Shock on Lei Shen.  It looks like two concentric yellow circles on the ground.
  • Move inwards to the Anti-Magic Zone like thing during one of the desperate measures.

Norushen
As you probably know by now, Norushen is actually the name of the friendly guy, the person you fight is actually Sha-like creature called the Amalgam of Corruption.  The fight starts with everyone a 75 corruption.  There are two glowing orbs of light around the room which people will click on which transport them to an alternative plane where they do a role-specific activity.  For healers, I believe that there are a few friendly mobs which help you kill a mob.  You must keep these friendly guys up by healing them.  It’s best for a healer/dps class such as a monk or disc priest to do this as they can DPS the add down in addition to healing.  This is also the reason I did not go in.  Occasionally he will put out a beam of light  which will rotated around the room, apparently it will randomly pick a direction that will instantly kill you if it hits you (think disintegration beam).  There will be adds called Manifestations of Corruptions that spawn by 2 methods, 1 when a player completes their golden ball phase, and 2, each 10% after the Amalgam reaches 50% health.  These adds fire things at the boss which make him do more damage, what you need to do is stand between the add and the boss while this add is alive.

Recommended Talents: Holy Prism although I don’t believe there’s anything in this fight which does damage in an AOE so you could use Light’s Hammer. (Not 100% sure on this…).  Probably get Speed of Light for those “oh crap the beams’ right behind me moments”.
Recommended Glyphs: Beacon of Light, Hand of Sacrifice for the heavy hitting Tank damage.

Tank Damage: Moderate, tank will occasionally take a heavy tank damage attack called Unleashed Anger.
Raid Damage: Moderate-High, lots of random damage going out, Icy Fear, etc.

  • The Amalgam does have a heavy tank damage attack so watch out for that.
  • GTFO out of the beam.  There’s a way to spot where it’s amount to come out but I forget how…
  • I don’t know what really to say about this fight other than there is a lot of raid damage.  You should help get in the way of the Manifestations when they come out and run away from the beam.  Other than that just focus on healing.

Sha of Pride
Another resource fight.  You behind the fight with 0 Pride.  You gain pride from taking unecessary damage from things.  The boss periodically gains pride as the fight goes on.  When he reaches 100 energy, he will perform a 350,000 nuke to the raid in addition to a secondary effect depending on what your pride is at.  If you watch for when the boss does Swelling Prise (this nuke + secondary effect) as well as your energy level, you will know exactly how to react to it.

  • If you are between 0-24, it does nothing.
  • If you are between 25-49, it creates a thing on the ground that explodes after 3 seconds. This is the thing you run away from.
  • If you are between 50-74, a projection of you will form 15 yards away.  It will explode after 6 seconds and deal a chunk of damage to the whole raid UNLESS you are standing in it.   This is the thing you run towards.
  • If you are between 75-99, you are afflicted with a pulsing damage aura 5 yards around yourself for 25 seconds.  This is the thing you move out of the raid for.
  • If you are at 100, you’re probably doing it wrong.

Periodically, the Sha will mark two players (in 10 man, 5 in 25) with a DoT which does high ticking damage.  This can be dispelled at the cost of 5 pride OR if you are buffed by the Gift of the Titans, you can do it for free.  In my experience, there was almost always 1 healer who got the Gift.  You should be able to get both off if you notice when you first get it.  There are occasionally adds that spawn.  Your raid should be stacked up for this fight so you will see immediately when they are about to spawn under you.  You will need to move away from these adds and kill them.  They will give pride to the two nearest players upon death.  There is also a spell called Reflection which may coincide closely with when the adds come.  You basically need to move away from these as well.
Last thing to mention is the prisons.  Your tank2 will most likely be tanking him between two prisons so that they can easily stand on a lock for either of those.  You need to assign 1 main prison unlocker and 1 backup player to unlock these two, preferably players with high movement speed.  This is so if your main prison unlocker gets imprisoned.  For the closer prisons you need assign 3 players.  I think it may be possible for him to lock players on the same side.  In the case that it’s not on the tank’s side, You should just have whoever’s available go get them.  If it’s on the tank side, your other prison group can unlock the other one.

Recommended Talents: First fight where Light’s Hammer is better.  Your whole raid will be stacked up.  Get Speed of Light for quick prison unlocking!Recommended Glyphs: Nothing game changing…

Tank Damage: Moderate, didn’t really notice any really heavy tank attacks.Raid Damage: Moderate-High.  During prisons and when the Sha casts Swelling Pride, there will be a lot of AOE raid damage coming out.

  • You can pretty much stand in the same spot and move for reflections or when the Manifestations of Pride come out and that’s it.  Unless you’re doing any prison breaking.
  • Watch out for if you have Gift of the Titans, you should dispell as soon as you see it’s on you.
  • Mostly just lots of raid damage.

Galakras
This fight is in 2 phases, the first dealing with getting Galakras to come out of the sky and the second dealing with him.  The first phase is composed of several waves of adds, some with minibosses. (3, 4, 7, 8).  After the 8th wave, I believe there are just random waves of mobs that come until you shoot Galakras to bring the fight to the second phase.  The 4th wave and 8th wave occur on top of the towers.  There are two demolishers which spawn shortly after the third and 7th wave which everyone should help kill.  After this, the tower group of 5 people can go up to the towers.  The priority during this phase is to kill any banners (preferably bringing the banner add out of the raid) and any healing totems and interrupt chain heal.  You should help stun the Bonecrushers which periodically charge one of the NPCs to hit them very hard.  They can be gripped or stunned. Everyone needs to watch out when the mobs who shoot fire arrows on the ground come out and move out of them.  My impression was as the fight went on they did more damage.  After the tower group finishes the first tower, one of the DPS should stay up and shoot down any of the Dragons flying around.  During the second tower, one DPS should leave early and mount the first tower so they can both shoot down Galakras.  They should coordinate this with the group on the ground.  My raid found it easier to just wait for the additional set of adds which is just 2 dragons to come and call down Galakras when they were about to die.
When Galakras is on the ground, (this is what worked for us), we had two groups of ranged DPS spread out far away from the boss which was tanked near the NPC mobs.  The two groups are parallel to each other but spread out.  There is a ball of fire that rolls towards a targeted person.  The person who is targeted will know because they have a red laser beam towards them.  While you have this laser beam on you, you must move behind the group stack.  When the laser beam falls off, this is where the rolling ball of fire will go.  Do not panic if you see a ball of fire coming out while you have the beam.  It is the rolling ball of fire AFTER the one that comes out while you have the laser beam that is the one targetting you.  Note that you also should only soak a few stacks of the ball as the DoT on players who stand in its path stack so every 3 or 4 stacks, the player targeted by the laser should alternate to the other group.  In my experience, as long as 2 people stand in the ball of fire, it will do significantly less damage.  Players can off course cloak or bubble off their stacks to help soak.  You should probably have a healing rotation as well as save devotion aura for this phase.

Recommended Talents: I went with Holy Prism for the first few pulls because the raid was spread out, but for the second phase, Light’s Hammer is much better.  I would suggest going Light’s Hammer almost specifically for the second phase.  Speed of Light!  Also this is one fight I would recommend getting possibly Hand of Sacrifice for to help with the DoT damage.  Also, would recommend Fist of Justice to help with stunning the Bonecrushers.Recommended Glyphs: Beacon of Light…

Tank Damage: Low-Moderate. Not too bad although I noticed some adds hit harder than others.  The tower group needs to watch out as sometimes if the tank goes up first he will get quickly nuked down if he isn’t at full health.
Raid Damage: Moderate-High. The highest raid damage during phase 1 occurs when the demolishers come out.  Also at the beginning there is some kind of warcry + raid damage nuke that does a lot of damage but little damage after that.  During phase 2 the damage is quite significant.

  • Fire arrows, get out of them.
  • Very helpful to use your Divine Protection on, lots of magic damage going around.
  • One holy shock kills the Healing totem, you can help with these.
  • Stun Bonecrusher for the win!
  • On our pull, the melee were getting targeted so they should be extra careful since they will need to move a great distance to be behind the group.

Iron Juggernaut
Iron Juggernaut is a fairly simple first.  He alternates between two phases.  Phase 1 is where he is actively attacking the tank. He periodically shoots out these jagged stones which target the closest players and follows them around for a period.  He also spawns mines on the ground which explode for raid damage if they are not stomped.  In our raid, one tank could stomp all 3 mines without much healing.  You can also bubble then stomp if you see one. He also does a random nuke to players which is unavoidable.  The last thing is he periodically fires projectiles on random ranged marked with a huge red circle, you will need to move out of this.
The second phase is where he is not tankable anymore.  Several pools of oil on the ground will form and he will consistently do some kind of raid wide ticking damage.  Periodically he will put a beam targeting a player similar to Amber Shaper, and the player needs to kite it.  However you must avoid kiting it over a oil pool which will likely wipe the raid.  He also periodically does this knockback which will basically throw you back until you hit something.  In the huge area this can be a very large amount. You want to position yourself in front of some obstacle like a wall when this happens so you don’t get knocked super out of range.  He will then rotate through these two phases on a timer.

Recommended Talents: Speed of Light in case you get knocked back a lot.  Unbreakable Spirit for soaking some bombs. Holy Prism is definitely better for this fight.
Recommended Glyphs: Beacon of Light…

Tank Damage: Low-ModerateRaid Damage: Moderate, damage goes up a bit during the second phase.

  • Even if you get knocked back (which I did almost every single time) really far, it’s not that big of a deal as the tank isn’t taking damage during this.
  • Help stomp mines!  You can also BoP other players.
  • Other than kiting the fire laser in to an oil pool, there is very little you can do the screw up the fight.

Hope this helps!  Good luck!