Now that Siege of Orgrimmar is on farm for me for LFR, I decided to post some tips on doing well. The thing is that there’s a huge variance of difficulty mostly due to how certain bosses had been nerfed or were pre-nerfed while others still are overtuned and can cause trouble for groups because of mechanics that people never bother paying attention to. The key to success with the Siege of Orgrimmar LFR though is that no matter what, patience and a positive attitude with perseverance will win out (unless you’re time constrained).
Before going into the guide, I want to preface this post by saying that the theme that Blizzard is attempting to aim for in this part of the expansion is the notion of “personal responsibility”. Generally, the vernacular for this term is “GTFO the fire!” What you’ll see is that the mechanics in these fights themselves are not difficult by themselves but the combined effect along with how each person handles those mechanics are what can make or break most encounters. As a result, these mechanics do not favor people who AFK or expect to be carried; people who refuse to handle these basic mechanics do few people any favors and most likely will be kicked after being publicly humiliated.
Immerseus
Without a question one of the easiest bosses in Siege of Orgrimmar. Before starting the main thing you need to do is run around the room to avoid aggroing the boss. Too many people accidentally aggro the boss, which causes groups to wipe as you pretty much are required to spread around the room. Always make sure there’s an equal number of people in each section of the room with healing evenly spread. The tanks should be positioned at the two sides near where you entered.
Most of the encounter is a tank-n-spank situation where you’re beating on the boss. However, pools will spawn under your feet which you must move away from immediately. As a melee DPS, I tend to go from left-to-right, forming a row until one whole line is created. Once a row is generally filled, I’ll move back to the area behind the first row and proceed once more left-to-right. The big problem throughout this part of the fight is watching for lines that will knock you up in the air and dealing with the water spout that will knock you back. I really haven’t figured out how to deal with the water spout but I haven’t seen it do anything severe at the LFR level. So I just take the hit and run back.
Once you reduce the boss’ health to zero, he’ll dip down and those pools that were forming around you will coagulate. You need to avoid those (which is why I attempt to line them up row by row). Then comes to the second phase where two types of puddles shoot out: a dark blue one and light blue one. DPS goes on dark blue, stunning/slowing them if possible while healers focus on healing up the blue ones. As the fight progresses, you’ll see more light blue ones spawn, so for these if you have some healing capabilities, you might consider throwing them out to give your healers a hand. Whenever one of these hits the boss, it’ll cause raid-wide damage. So you can blow a personal defense cooldown, especially if your team is not on the ball with getting these down. You keep going through this process, whittling away at the bosses health until he no longer can reform.
The Fallen Protectors
In this encounter, you face the quest givers for the Golden Lotus with Rook, He and Sun. The main idea for this encounter is that they must die simultaneously (roughly 15 seconds of one another) or they heal up. The tactic for handling this fight is burning each one to 60% and 30% so that they perform a phase transition then carefully burning each one down equally. This can require some communication to ensure that people aren’t tunneling onto a single boss (which happens quite often).
The optimal order of burning these bosses is Rook -> He -> Sun and repeating for the phase transitions, which only will happen twice during the fight. The tank must ensure that Rook always faces away from the raid as he does a frontal cone style of attack. Once Rook is reduced to 60% and 30% he’ll phase transition where three adds are spawned in Sorrow, Misery and Gloom. Misery and Gloom should be picked up by the tank while everyone burns Sorrow first. Sorrow will essentially place a nuke (Inferno Strike) on a target that resembles a yellow/red flash spot with a timer. That person should stack with others so that if the group cannot nuke Sorrow down fast enough, the damage is split. Otherwise, it’ll pretty much one shot the target, which is the primary reason to get Sorrow down first.
Gloom and Misery are pretty interchangeable once Sorrow is eliminated. Misery might be the next priority since they put a ground effect called Defiled Ground which is basically another “GTFO the fire” situations. Since the tank will probably be running around kiting Misery, these areas will build up over time, thus making it worth getting her down fast. Gloom’s ability Corruption Shock is an interruptable ability. So in seeing it, you should try as often as possible to prevent it from being cast.
After all three adds are removed, you should focus on He. He is a rogue with a Killing Spree-like ability. That can make targeting him for melee a little frustrating at times. The main things to look out for is the poison he spawns on the ground and his gouge. The poison looks like a faint, olive-green puddle. DBM will tell you that you’re standing on it but it can be difficult to see at times with all the effects going out. Gouge is just like the rogue’s ability, but if you get it, the main thing to remember is to face away from He; it’s mostly a tank mechanic.
Once he’s at 60/30%, you’ll face an add called the Embodied Anguish. You have to burn this add down but the main thing to deal with is the Mark of Anguish. In LFR, if you get targeted, the easiest thing to do is pass it to one of the tanks. If you really hate someone, you can give it to them as well. It mostly is something that acts as a DoT and reduces their armor. But I think during this phase, He becomes untankable, which is why you can pass it to the tank in this phase.
Finally, you deal with Sun. She really doesn’t need to be tanked. However, she does have an AoE called Calamity which is unavoidable raid-wide damaging effect. She has another ability that can be interrupted called Shadow Word: Bane. However, this aspect isn’t as critical at the LFR level. The main thing for her is the phase transition where she goes into Dark Meditation, summoning a purplish bubble where everyone needs to stack under. While under this bubble, the tank needs to make sure Rook is still faced away from the raid (I’ve seen tanks point Rook towards the middle which is just plain stupid). Dark Meditation is a pretty easy phase as you’ll focus on two types of adds; one is inside the bubble and there’s one outside. Melee AoE the adds inside the bubble while range focuses on the one outside. Healers just need to heal through this phase.
Once that phase ends and the three are below 30%, you’ll begin the burn. Since all three have their health bars posted on the right side, you’ll want to keep on eye out on their percentage of health left. If any single one is significantly higher or lower than the others, you should switch to that add or off that add. When they’re around 6% or less, then you can safely burn them down.
Norushen
This is a fight where you must cleanse corruption from yourself before facing the Sha of Pride. You’ll face an Amalgam of Corruption where you’ll do significantly less damage because of the corruption you have. As the fight proggresses, two types of adds will spawn: Manifestation of Corruption and Essence of Corruption. The Manifestations of Corruption must be picked up by the tanks while Essence of Corruption are smaller adds that spawn around the room and have an ability called Expel Corruption which should be interrupted.
During the fight, you may (or may not) be summoned to phased version of the room where you face the two adds just described on your own in a “test”. Depending on your role, you’ll have different ways of handling this test. As a DPS, you essentially need to down the three adds. Whenever you kill an add, the equivalent will spawn in the room. Generally, the easiest approach is to focus on the large add then follow up by attacking the smaller ones. The reason for this is that the large add will create a pool that will make taking on the smaller adds more of a challenge. As you defeat each add though, you will remove the corruption. You have a limited time for this and you will be ported randomly compared to other versions of this encounter.
In the main room, chaos will slowly increase as more adds will be generated over time. Your job is to ensure that you get these down; in fact, if you’re not cleansed, there’s no point in focusing on the Amalgam as you won’t be doing full damage. So the priority is always adds over the Amalgam. While handling the adds, the Amalgam will periodically spawn a beam called Blind Hatred which rotates around the room. This mechanic is pretty easy to avoid but as adds spawn more frequently around the room, this can get hectic. Mostly, this part is difficult because the mechanic has potential to split the raid, making healing more difficult.
One thing that will happen which makes the encounter difficult are these blue/purplish balls around the room. If they are not picked up, then they deal raid-wide AoE damage. Tanks mostly will be the ones handling this but in picking up an orb, one will have their corruption increased by 25%. So your hard earned work in the test will be eliminated if you’re not careful.
Lust should be saved for the 30% mark where generally most people should be cleansed. Lusting at the beginning is absolutely stupid since you’ll be doing reduced damage. If you have problems with DPS, then you might consider saving your big cooldowns either for your personal test or after you completed your test. Either way, it’s pretty pointless blowing major cooldowns early on in the fight since your damage, etc. will suffer until your corruption is removed.
Sha of Pride
This fight is the reverse of the Norushen fight in that you must prevent yourself from gaining pride. You will have a bar indicating how much pride you gain throughout the encounter. There are a large number of ways to gain pride so you must attempt to avoid gaining pride too quickly as well as preventing yourself from giving others pride.
You’ll stack up in the rear, opposite of the entrance near where the axe is. You want to stack up for this fight as healers and DPS will gain a buff from Norushen called “Gift of the Titans” where 5 randomly chosen people will receive something like a mini lust. Gift of the Titans also prevents one from gaining pride, but it does have a limited duration. This is particularly important for healers, which I will come back to in a moment.
As you burn the Sha of Pride, you will go through a few encounters. The first thing that will occur is Self-Reflection where a pool will form under a few random players that spawn adds. When Self-Reflection starts people should start spreading, especially as the pool is formed. You don’t have to move very far but in LFR it’s just far safer to spread enough to avoid others’ pools. Once the adds spawn, you need to AoE these down. Over time, these smaller adds will build up in numbers, making the encounter more difficult as you get overwhelmed. Since there is no need for a tank swap, some groups will position one of the tanks with the group to pick up the adds. This part is optional and unnecessary, especially since there will be a prison on the other side. So having the tank on the opposite side solo the boss can make this encounter slightly more difficult.
The prison part actually occurs next. As long as the party is stacking on the axe while the tank is on the opposite side, then you’ll see the prisons spawn to the immediate left of the group and the far right. When these prisons pop up, two members of the group must step on the glowing yellow semi-circular parts. You can’t just have one person step on one semi-circle then move to the next; this must occur simultaneously. While the person is imprisoned though, that person takes damage and has their pride increased. For the far side prison, you can have one tank handle one of the panels. If you have a warlock in the group, you can create a Demonic Gateway to allow people to get to that side quickly. Otherwise, you’ll want someone without Gift of the Titans and who has a solid speed boost (e.g. feral druids, shaman, etc.) to help break the other prison. Under no circumstance should the people with the Gift of the Titans leave the group.
Once the prisons are free, you’ll face the Manifestation of Pride in the back. This is partly why you want to stack on the axe in the back. The easiest way to deal with the Manifestation of Pride is to have ranged nuke them down and/or have a death knight Death Grip it close to the group so that the melee doesn’t lose too much ground. As you nuke the Manifestation of Pride down, he’ll frequently cast Mocking Blast. These must be interrupted since they will not only damage a player but add 5 pride as well.
A little after the Manifestation of Pride is summoned (actually once the Sha of Pride reaches 100 energy), the Sha of Pride will cast Swelling Pride. At this point, the effect will depend upon how much pride the individual has. If you’re under 25 pride, you generally don’t have too much to worry about. Once you hit 25 pride, you’ll need to start to react accordingly. 25-49 pride causes a pool under the player. Pretty much you need to GTFO from the pool. However, in LFR since people are stacking around the axe, there’s a huge chance that people won’t move and these pools will not only cause damage but gain 5 pride.
50-74 pride forces the player to find a swirling pool with a green arrow (called Projection) to run to it and stand in it. If they fail, it’ll cause AoE damage to other players and add 5 pride. 75-99 is Aura of Pride which again causes AoE damage to other neighboring players and making others gain 5 pride for each hit. Finally at 100 pride, the person becomes a dark manifestation. They gain some buffs but if they are hit again by the Swelling Pride, they get permanently mind controlled and it’s pretty much game over.
So the easiest way to really handle Swelling Pride safely is just run away from the center as the Sha of Pride is casting it. I have no faith in my fellow LFR players and treat them the way I treat and view LA drivers; with absolute disdain and paranoia. Even if running the hell away from the center might cause a temporary DPS loss, it’s far safer than getting hit by these simple mechanics for people who refuse to pay attention.
Regardless, the encounter continues more or less the same way until the Sha of Pride hits 30%, where Norushen is slain, thus no longer providing the Gift of the Titans buff but removing everyone of their pride, giving you a clean slate to work with. At this point, your pride will increase no matter what every 10 seconds from the AoE going out. Here’s where people should lust and burn the Sha down. The main things to look out for at this point are the adds as they should spawn in massive numbers.
Either way, the name of this encounter is avoiding pride. Generally in LFR, I found that the real two problems are people not moving from the center during Self-Reflection and Swelling Pride. It’s just far easier to scatter when this happens then reform. The next aspect that causes high build up of pride is from healers who dispel without the Gift of the Titans. Combine that with the other two mechanics and you’re looking at disaster. So you’ll want to really look at those who have built up large amounts of pride and wipe the raid, then call them out to make sure they know why they’re getting too much pride. A lesser aspect is the prison near the tanks. Tanks and DPS who just tunnel might ignore the prisons, especially as things grow more chaotic. So never be that person who wants others to handle things for them. Keep an eye out for the other prison and be ready to issue out a movement booster. Dead people are no good in LFR anyway.