Siege of Orgrimmar Boss Preview: General Nazgrim
I'm not even going to sugar coat it. As a main Alliance player, I was delighted to get a chance to put the General in his place and strike down one of the Horde leaders. But as with the case of most PTR boss encounters, it was not to be. The General thoroughly kicked my behind all over the place.
You'll find the General in the Ragefire Chasm area of Orgrimmar. He's expected to be the 8th encounter you'll find and he's surrounded by a large number of grunts. The General will call upon his Kor'kron legions to aid him periodically in battle. You'll be fending off waves of the Kor'kron while simultaneously battling through the different stances and rage abilities of the General.
Read on for a little preview on what he does and my impressions of him!
Sundering Blow -- This is your tank switch reasoning for the fight. It inflicts 600,000 physical damage. Reduces armor by 10% for 1 minute and generates 5 rage with an additional 5 rage per stack of Sundering Blow on the target. We'll go over rage in a moment later on but this is extremely important.
The healers needs to keep their head up in order to mitigate the effects of Bonecracker. General Nazgrim will throws a mace at a player. If struck, reduces maximum health by 50% and causes the player to bleed for 40,000 physical damage every second for 30 seconds.
Stance Stance Revolution!
Battle Stance -- A simple stance that generates 1 rage per second.
Berserker Stance -- His damage goes up by 25%. His damage taken goes up by 25%. His rage generation increases as well. We tried to Heroism through this to both take advantage of the damage in and the damage out. It gave healers that extra haste to counteract his attacks while simultaneously empowering our DPS to hit him that much harder.
Unfortunately, we got blown up pretty quick on the next Berserker Stance.
Defensive Stance -- During this stance, we had to ease off the pressure a little bit. The ranged DPS switched to cleaning up any extra Kor'kron ads that were still present. The melee players continued to apply pressure. The tanks managed to drag him to the side and point him away from the middle allowing us to continue to chip in damage.
Rage Abilities
General Nazgrim will use the ability which costs the most rage. Once he uses a rage ability, he is not able to use another one for the next 15 seconds because he has to Cool Off. As you can imagine, this fight involves a careful management of his rage generation.
Heroic Shockwave (30 rage) -- Leaps at a player, inflicts 300,000 damage within 10 yards of impact. 30 Rage. Causes three After Shocks. Ground cracks between General Nazgrim's location and the location of the player. After a few seconds, the cracks erupt and inflict 400,000 Fire damage to players within Aftershock and grants Nazgrim 3 Rage per player struck. We saw this ability the most and it's quite easy to avoid. Lines will shoot out in 6 different directions. Dash out before the fire explodes.
Kor'kron Banner (50 rage) -- Throws down a banner that generates 3 Rage for General Nazgrim for each attacks done by his allies. You'll want to neutralize the banner as soon as you can. Everyone should switch off any ads and burst it down quick or else the General's rage will creep up higher. Oh, plus the Kor'kron troops won't take any damage.
Ravager (70 rage) -- This is one up from his banner. If he throws this, you're going to be in trouble. He'll throw a blade that lasts for the duration of the fight. Ravager inflicts 370k to 430k physical damage to enemies within 6 yards every second granting Nazgrim 3 Rage for each enemy struck. If it's thrown out, people will have to avoid that area of the map. It isn't going to go anywhere so your raid needs to be smart about it. Even better solution is to not give him the rage to toss this out (or at least, try to delay it as long as possible).
War Song (100 rage) -- Screams. Inflicts 75% of maximum health as Physical damage to all players. 100 rage. This is his auto wipe mechanic if you allow his Rage to build up too high.
The Kor'kron Special Forces
Orgrimmar Faithful -- These are the first set of grunts you'll encounter before the pull. They're not the elite force. They'll die quickly to AoE upon the pull anyway. Wouldn't worry about them at all.
Kor'kron Ironblade -- Ironblades will wander in and just bladestorm around the room with their Ironstorm ability. If they hit 25% health, they'll immediately burn a Last Stand and become annoying for a little while longer.
Kor'kron Arcweaver -- The Arcweavers are the magic contingents of the Kor'kron. Arcweavers will take priority over Ironblades. They'll hit targets with an Arcane Shock which increases the Arcane damage done by the caster by 25% (only for 10 seconds). Thankfully, Arcane Shock is interruptable. Peel a player off to cover them until the Arcweavers are dead. Magistrike is smaller AoE that they cast which is also interruptable and applies a DoT that's removable.
Kor'kron Assassin -- These guys scare me the most. They'll start off stealthed. Consider packing some hunters and deploying periodic flares? Anything to knock these guys out of stealth early would help, I imagine. Like their real life rogue counterparts, they have the ability to two shot players with Backstab (That's 500,000 damage but only if they're attacking from behind). Use that mouse look of yours and make like an MMA fighter and don't give them your back. If you are the victim of an Assassin's Mark, run.
Kor'kron Warshaman -- The last threat is the Warshaman. Not sure if there's any relationship to the Dark Shaman. These guys are the supporters for the bulk of Kor'kron. They'll cast an Earth Shield which heals for 5% of the targets maximum health if struck. Remove these the moment you see them. They also have an Empowered Chain Heal. Unlike normal Chain heal, the heal increases for each ally it jumps to (up to a maximum of 5). If you spot a Healing Tide Totem, knock it out fast otherwise it'll negate everything you've done up to that point.
General Nazgrim also has the ability to deploy snipers, but we won't see that until heroic mode.
This is a really fast paced fight. Don't let the thought of "oh it's just another add fight" fool you. I played holy and discipline both times here. You're going to want someone glued to the rage bar and yelling out what to expect next. On the 25 man variation, I'm already expecting to setup select DPS kill teams to go around eliminating ads as they appear. I'm leaning towards the Warshaman first as a priority before knocking out Assassins next. Arcweavers can be controlled by dedicated interrupters. It isn't a scripted phase-by-phase type of an encounter. How easy or hard it goes is going to be dependent on the the raid and how well they do in managing Nazgrim's rage and his Kor'kron legion as they stream in.
WoW Insider Siege of Orgrimmar previews
