Siege of Orgrimmar Fight-Specific Tips (Part 1/4)

Hey, everybody. Since my fight-specific tips series was so popular in Throne of Thunder, I thought I'd do it again for Siege. I'll be breaking these down along the Flex/LFR groupings, but all my tips are primarily for normal-mode, with some heroic notes on the fights I have done.

• Immerseus
• Fallen Protectors
• Norushen
• Sha of Pride

Immerseus

This is quite possibly the easiest encounter to have ever existed. That said, I do have some tips for Disc to help on heroic mode, and to speed up your normal loot grabs.

Halo

A well-aimed Halo just as the oozes are spawning can slow every single ooze in its range - including the DPS adds. Try to cover as many of the blue ones as you can, but hitting black adds can help the DPS too. Also, consider leaving to go heal some other oozes after you cast it; the ones you Haloed are going to take quite a while to hit, you'll have time to come back.

Life Grip the blue ones.

Blue ooze about to hit the boss? Nope! Just yank it back out to you. Many priests do not realize that Leap of Faith works on many friendly NPCs since 5.3.

Atonement fixes healing range.

Healing range issues are a big deal on normal. Atonement is good plenty for this fight, and trivializes the range issues.

Heroic Mode

In heroic, you get extra raid damage, craptons of adds, and a painful DoT in the main phase. Stack up Spirit Shell about 15sec into the main phase, drop a Mass Dispel into the raid about 6 sec after the DoTs start going out, and dump ALL the mana, because you can regen 25% per by standing near the blue adds when you top them off. Good luck!

The Fallen Protectors

Do not brawl with Rook if you can help it.

This fight is pretty easy on normal, but brutal to heal on heroic. The main mechanics that you as a healer need to concern yourself with are the DoTs, which cast often and need FAST dispels, and Calamity, which gets cast slightly more often than once per minute.

Calamity

Cast during main phase, it hits your raid for a decent chunk of health each. Try to get Spirit Shell up, or drop a Halo/Cascade right as it casts. Failing either of those, pre-casting Prayer of Healing to drop immediately after the cast can help too.

Prayer of Mending becomes good when Garrote is everywhere.

As the fight wears on, many players will be Garroted. Particularly right before He's desperate measures phase, this will likely be half the raid. Which means, PrM will bounce everywhere. Abuse it.

Heroic Mode

On heroic, many of the bosses' major abilities still cast during desperate measures phase, and Calamity and Garrote hurt a lot more. Garrote will actually total about half of the raid's total incoming damage. Ask classes that can strip it (Divine Shield, Hand of Protection, Ice Block) to do so early and often. Calamity will fuck your raid up during Rook's desperate measures, particularly if it syncs up with an Inferno Strike. Make sure you'll have Spirit Shell stacked for that, and burn your AoE healing before and after. Many of the toughest phases will have most of the raid stacked on heroic. Consider using Divine Star.

Norushen

This fight is pretty easy on normal, but becomes a tight DPS check on heroic.

Prayer of Mending works.

There is a 3sec frost damage aura, and sometimes one or more shadow damage auras. Prayer of Mending will bounce well.

You are ideally suited to handle the shadow orbs.

As a healer with decent DPS, you can be in and out of the Look Within trial faster than any other spec. Grab all the shadow orbs you can, and hop into the spirit world as soon as you hit 100% corruption.

There are a LOT of adds for Twist of Fate.

You'll have tremendous uptime if you remember to hit the weak ones. Also, you don't face a damage penalty for being corrupted when attacking adds, so they're a good Atonement target anyway.

Heroic Mode

In heroic, the DPS check becomes very tight. As such, healers have to handle the shadow orbs, and allow the DPS to reset their corruption first. (Alternately, try two-healing, although I have not tried this personally.)

Sha of Pride

This fight is the first to have non-ignorable mechanics on normal mode. You'll be getting a buff that allows you to dispel DoTs, and grant haste to the others with that buff if you all stack up.

Stack for Divine Star.

Most groups are hanging out stacked most of the time. Divine Star is six shades of win. Also, consider 1-healing. This fight is silly easy to heal.

Dispel free-for-all at the end of phase 1.

When the boss transitions to phase 2, he does a full Pride reset on everyone. Feel free to dispel everything, even if you're not immune to Pride.

Glyph of Purify deserves a mention.

With all the single-target dispels you'll be needing, Glyph of Purify may actually be useful. Should add 4-5k HPS. More if your raid over-gears the fight.

Tag the Reflection adds for Twist of Fate.

'nuff said.

Heroic Mode

On heroic, the boss will periodically banish players to a "maze", summon rifts in the floor that AoE players, and the dispellable DoTs do a lot more damage. The DoTs need to be stripped as soon as possible. They hurt enough that it is sometimes worth dispelling them even if you don't have Gift of the Titans: for example, if someone ever reaches two stacks. Because of the rift AoEs, you'll need to be lightly spread. I recommend Cascade, although all three 90 talents preform poorly on the kind of stacking we had. We also two-healed it. Three-healing might work, the limiting factor on fight length wasn't berserk timer, but rather all the healers reaching 100 Pride. An extra healer would buy you an extra 1 minute in the final burn.