SoO LFR Part 1 | SoO LFR Part 2 | SoO LFR Part 3 | SoO LFR Part 4


As the whole Mists of Pandaria expansion cycle has been building towards a huge conflict between the Alliance and the Horde, the new raid in Patch 5.4 should come as no surprise to anyone. The newest raid is the Siege of Orgrimmar and is likely the last major raid content release for the Mists of Pandaria expansion.

If there are any surprises to be had with this new raid it is that not only the Alliance are fighting the Horde, but most of the Horde are as well! OK, not so much of a surprise since we saw it coming in patch 5.3 with the Warchief pushing almost all of his one time allies away.

The other minor surprise is just how big the raid is and where it is located. The raid houses 14 raid bosses and is made up of two major stages located in three major locations. It starts off in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms and will then move to Durotar and finally to Orgrimmar itself.

This new raid is also be the first raid released by Blizzard that features a new fourth raiding format called "flexible raid difficulty". This new format allows groups of varying size from 10-25 players to raid while automatically adjusting the difficulty to match the number of players present. To find out more about this new feature check out our guide here: Flexible Raid Sizes in Patch 5.4.

This guide covers the first section of the Siege or Orgrimmar LFR and the four bosses you will encounter in it. The bosses found here are Immerseus, The Fallen Protectors, Norushen, and the Sha of Pride. This guide is meant for LFR players only, as it covers to most critical elements of the LFR version of each encounter. The full versions of these fights are more complicated and demanding and require more in depth knowledge than provided here.

Similarly, tanks are covered here briefly and it is possible to get through the LFR version with what is listed, but really if you are a tank you should do some more research and know the fights in more depth.

As an added bonus each boss also has a really short version of the essentials that can simply be pasted into raid chat to ensure that everyone knows the 25 words or less version of the fight.

Immerseus

This is the first fight in the new raid and as such is a fairly easy warm up encounter. The encounter does have some really fun mechanics though and for a change is a fight that gets easier as it goes on instead of harder. This makes it especially nice for a first fight in a raid as it gives you time to get the cobwebs out and get up to speed. The fight has two main repeating phases each with it's own mechanics.

Phase 1 - Main Phase

  • Corrosive Blast is the main ability that tanks need to worry about in the fight. It is a frontal cone attack that deals significant shadow damage and applies a debuff that increases shadow damage taken by 100% for 45 seconds. Tanks need to swap when hit by this or a second hit will kill them. No one but the current tank should be in his front arc. Tanks should stand about 90 degrees from each other.
  • Sha Bolt is an attack that is spammed constantly that hits players for shadow damage and then leaves a Sha Pool at their feet. The pool is small but does shadow damage every second to anyone in it, and due to the frequency of this ability it is very easy to run out of space quickly. This is a pain for melee players especially since you will need to stay away from his front arc and avoid all the pools that drop.
  • Immerseus also has a cone attack that pushes players away if hit that sweeps through about a third of the room, as well as the room itself having waterways flowing from the center that will push players back as well as damaging them.
  • Immerseus has a relatively low health pool for a raid boss, but has a secondary health stat called corruption which starts at 100. Whenever he is dropped to zero health the second phase starts and the corruption counter comes into play.

Phase 2 - Split Phase

  • When phase 2 starts Immerseus bursts apart and sends two kinds of puddles flying randomly around the room. For every 4 corruption that Immerseus had there will be 1 Sha Puddle and for every 4 corruption that he has already been cleared of there will be one Contaminated Puddle. They will form randomly around the room and start moving towards the center to reform Immerseus.
  • Sha Puddles need to be destroyed before they reach the center of the room. Contaminated Puddles come in damaged and must be healed to full heath before they reach the center of the room. When destroyed or healed a puddle will deal minor AOE damage and reduce Immerseus's corruption total by 1. If allowed to reach the center of the room it will deal AOE damage to everyone in the room and remain counting towards his corruption total. The Sha Puddles cause more AOE damage than the Contaminated Puddles.
  • The phase ends when either all puddles have been killed/healed or have reached the center of the room.
  • Phase 1 will then restart with the new lower corruption number and a correspondingly lower health pool to cause a split.

Immerseus Macro

/raid Tanks taunt on Corrosive Blast, avoid front arc, move out of pools, focus DPS and Healing on targets in phase 2, use slows as much as possible.

The Fallen Protectors

This second fight takes place in the destroyed area in the Vale of Eternal Blossoms that once held the Golden Pagoda. The area is now a place of destruction where you must fight three of the fallen and corrupted Golden Lotus members spirits.

The fight is made up of two main phases, a normal phase where all three bosses have their normal abilities and a desperate measures phase where one or more of the bosses will call on desperate measures to fight you off. Each boss will call on their desperate measures twice in the fight, once when they are reduced to 66% health and a second time at 33% health. A key component of the fight is managing DPS so that you do not need to deal with more than one of them at a time in desperate measures mode as they are much more difficult than their normal modes.

Another coordination part of the fight is the return of a once common key mechanic for multi-boss raid encounters. All bosses must be brought to 1% health at almost the exactly same time or they will start to cast an ability that will heal them by 20% health. The cast time on this ability, called Bond of the Golden Lotus, is 15 seconds, so that is all the time you have to get all three down to 1 health in once the first hits that number.

Rook Stonetoe

  • This boss needs to be tanked due to his Vengeful Strikes ability, which stuns his target and hits everyone in his front arc twice per second for 3 seconds.
  • He also has two random target abilities. He throws barrels of Corrupted Brew at random targets which deal shadow damage to everyone in 5 yards and applying a 15 second slow effect. He also has a charge type ability called Clash which has him charge an enemy and then attack with a Corruption Kick. The kick deals physical damage every second to those in melee range and shadow damage to those further out.
  • When Rook's Desperate Measures activate he summons three spirits which each has a different ability which are mainly AOE based. Corruption Shock deals nature damage to a random enemies location and everyone nearby. Defiled Ground smashes the ground by the tank dealing huge damage to everyone nearby. Lastly his Inferno Blast deals massive damage to the tank but is split between all targets within 9 yards. This means that players must group on the tank when this is cast. All three need to be killed to end the phase.

He Softfoot

  • The tanks need to watch this boss due to his Gouge ability, it stuns his current target for 6 seconds and causes him to attack a random target until taunted. This means that whichever tank is not tanking him needs to pick up the taunts while his main tank is stunned.
  • He has several DOT attacks such as his poisons on his weapons, or the poison pools he leaves on the ground, or the Garrote attack he uses on random players.
  • When He's Desperate Measures activate the spirit summoned will select a random players and put the Mark of Anguish on them, it will then attack the marked player until dead. The mark deals shadow damage and roots the target but can be transferred to a new player. Whenever the mark is transferred a stacking debuff is applied to everyone in the raid called Lingering Anguish which increases damage taken by the mark by 35%.

Sun Tenderheart

  • She casts an ability called Shadow Word: Bane which his multiple random targets for significant shadow damage over time. Worse yet it spreads and jumps targets. It is dispellable and should be removed quickly.
  • This boss has a nasty ability called Calamity which hits all players for 30% of their maximum life, but at least clears all shadow word: bane effects.
  • Sun will also target random players for a Sha Sear attack which deals shadow damage to the target and everyone nearby for a short time.
  • When Sun calls on her Desperate Measures two spirits are summoned called Embodied Despair and Embodied Desperation. In addition Sun enters a meditation state and deals shadow damage to everyone every half second. Players in her meditative field suffer 35% less damage while players further than 40 yards from her suffer 35% more damage. The two adds summon manifestations of the players they attack that need to be killed. The phase ends when both adds are destroyed.

Fallen Protectors Macro

/raid DPS selected boss only until to next break point, kill desperate measures, move to next boss. Once all below 33% split DPS and keep them all even to 1%.

/raid Avoid AOE, but group up for Rook's Inferno Blast in DM mode or tank dies. Group up in Meditative Field for Sun's DM phase.

Norushen

This is an interesting fight with some new mechanics that require players to fulfil role specific tasks to be able to fully participate in the fight. The fight is not even really against Norushen, but is instead more of a test to prove your worth by defeating an Amalgam of Corruption that he forms from the corruption in the players.

Players will start the fight with 75 points of Corruption which will reduce the damage they cause to the Amalgam by 90%. To purify themselves they must complete a task by interacting with the Purifying Light to Look Within which takes them to a solo instance. When they do they will face one of the following tests. If they succeed they will emerge from the trial with 0 corruption and be able to deal full damage to the Amalgam. Also whenever a player defeats a test the corruption they fought there is released into the regular fight as unleashed versions of themselves.

  • Test of Serenity (DPS) - Must defeat the enemies in the zone in one minute. There are manifesations of corruption that deal AOE damage in a frontal cone and Essence of Corruption that deals damage in a straight line.
  • Test of Reliance (Healers) - The healer is joined by several NPC's that need to be healed and cleansed through a fight with a Greater Corruption.
  • Test of Confidence (Tanks) - The tank must survive for 1 minute against a Titanic Corruption. This is a matter of using your tanking skills to interupt, avoid, or absorb damage.

Amalgam of Corruption

  • The Amalgam has several AOE type attacks but the most dangerous is Blind Hatred which deals a significant amount of damage in a cone in front of him and he turns slowly to rotate it around the room.
  • Unchecked Corruption is the key ability in the fight though, as it is a pulse that the Amalgam releases throughout the fight that causes residual corruption (which drop as zones on the ground when you kill unleashed corruption) to explode for huge damage. Luckily the damage is reduced the further away from the corruption you are. The important part to note though is that if there are no residual corruptions in the room to explode, then this effect wipes all players instead! So make sure you have players completing the trials and then defeating the corruptions.
  • In addition to having to deal with the corruptions in the room, any that reach the Amalgam will buff him for 15 seconds allowing him to deal an additional 5% damage. This buff stacks.
  • Additionally the Amalgam can Banish the tank if he is not cleased, requiring the tank to complete a test before coming back out into the fight.

Norushen Macro

/raid Complete tests at Purifying Light to cleanse corruption. Priority is to DPS adds, then boss in main fight. Avoid all AOE.

The Sha of Pride

The fight against the Sha of Pride is the last fight in this wing of the raid. In it you are assisted by the Titan Norushen whom you just had to prove yourself to. He will grant random players a buff that makes them immune to the pride mechanic described below and boosts their haste and damage by 15% if they stand near another buffed player.

The fight revolves around a mechanic of managing pride points. Each player will start with 0 but will gain pride over the fight when they are hit by various abilities. Pride affects players differently based on their current total pride with break poinst at 25, 50, 75, and 100 pride.

  • The Sha of Pride using Swelling Pride whenever he reaches 100 energy. It deals shadow damage to all players and gives them 5 pride. It also affects players based on their current pride if they have 25 or more pride.
    • 25-49 Pride: an explosive sha blast is centered on the players location, 3 seconds later it explodes for significant damage to anyone nearby.
    • 50-74 Pride: Creates a projection of the player someplace up to 15 yards away. If that player does not find it and step into it within 6 seconds it will explode dealing shadow damage to everyone and granting all players 5 more pride.
    • 75-99 Pride: The player deals shadow damage to anyone within 5 yards of them for 25 seconds and that player gains 5 pride.
    • 100 Pride: The player deals 50% more damage and healing until hit with Selling Pride and then becomes mind controled and fights for the Sha.
  • The Sha will place Mark of Arrogance on random players throughout the fight. This is a stacking DOT that continues for the rest of the fight. If dispelled the dispelling player gains 5 pride. This makes it difficult for healers to manage either pride or healing.
  • The main tank mechanic is Wounded Pride, which will require a tank swap for 15 seconds while active. While affected by wounded pride any time you are hit in melee you gain 5 pride.
  • Throughout the fight the Sha will summon Manifestations of Pride as adds that need to be killed as quickly as possible. They inflict shadow damage and give pride to the two closest players when they die.
  • The Sha of Pride can also lock players in a Corrupted Prison. This targets random players and requires other players to stand in locks around the player until all of them have someone in them to unlock the player.
  • The Sha will also banish random players to a separate realm, where tehy need to run and avoid contact with sha corruption. While banished a representation of the player will be left behind which needs to be defeated to free that player back to the normal realm.
  • When the Sha reaches 30% health he will kill Norushen and stop his aid to you. When this happens Norushen will reduce your pride to 0 and the fight enters a burn phase. The Sha will deal AOE damage every 10 seconds and inflict 5 pride to each player. This gives you a maximum of just under 4 minutes to dispatch the sha once this phase starts. However, since he continues to use other abilities the time is really about 2 1/2 minutes.

Sha of Pride Macro

/raid Free players from prisons, group when you get titan buff. DPS order is reflected players, adds, boss. Keep out of AOE.


SoO LFR Part 1 | SoO LFR Part 2 | SoO LFR Part 3 | SoO LFR Part 4


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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