Norushen
Latest
Totem Talk: Healing Deeper Under the Veil
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Totem talk for elemental, enhancement and restoration shaman. Want to be a sultan of swing healing? A champion of Chain Heal? Totem Talk: Restoration, brought to you by Joe Perez (otherwise known as Lodur from World of Matticus and content creation at InternetDragons.TV), shows you how. Between taking down bosses and pushing ever further into the Siege of Orgrimmar, I've been taking a tour of all the horde side places that I haven't been too in almost 10 years. This past week I went through and explored Undercity again. Man has that place changed since the first time I set foot there. That said, the familiar halls still feel almost the same, almost like a home coming. I mean, you never forget your first bat ride do you? That feeling really does translate well in the new raid tier. After all, to me at least, it is all about saving the once and glorious horde. Once you make the puddle clean again, and you're ready to start making your way deeper into the Siege, your next stop is going to see you facing down some old friends. It's an interesting story point, to emerge from the vault beneath the well only to be greeted by what were once among your most valued allies in the war against the Mogu. This is not a comprehensive boss guide, but is instead tips and tricks I have learned through my own personal experiences.
Bosses in 5 Seconds: Siege of Orgrimmar LFR wing one
Here we are again, people, with the first wing of LFR open for almost a week, more and more people are braving the queue and the eternal tank shortage, and stepping into the Vale of Eternal Sorrows to cleanse some corruption. But what are we all doing in here? Why the heck does this watery dude keep going back to full health? Why am I in this twilight zone? And, more importantly, why am I dead? Please do note that these aren't in-depth strategies that elucidate every nuance of the fights. They're quick'n'dirty rundowns that will arm you with just enough knowledge to get your head around the key mechanics and hopefully make it through the fight alive. And they'll let you seem all clever in raid chat at the start. I'm aiming, simply, to tell you how to make it through. No clever business, nothing fancy. Immerseus Spread out around the boss Carpet your area with sha puddles Run from Swirl Tanks shouldn't stack, and should swap on Corrosive blast. Don't stand on tanks. In phase 2, which starts at 0% health, damage dark blobs and heal pale ones. Stand nearby when they explode for buffs. He dies when his corruption bar reaches 0. You'll pull him down to 0% health several times.
Watcher explains Heroic Norushen changes
This week, we saw a bit of discussion on Heroic Norushen, and the means by which guilds were defeating him. This led to the decision to make some adjustments to the fight this week. As you might expect, those guilds that had already defeated the boss using the 'brute force' strategy (basically, paring down the healers brought to the fight to a bare minimum and overwhelming the boss with DPS) weren't happy at the prospect of having to go back in next week and relearn the fight, since their approach was made vastly more difficult by the changes. Now we have Ion "Watcher" Hazzikostas' explanation of the changes and why they were made, and it's a pretty interesting read if you're into encounter design and its implementation. Just some selected bits of information from the post: Originally on the PTR Heroic Norushen had a 'draw' mechanic that would have prevented the brute-force method, but it was removed because it had bad effects once gear improved, forcing groups to throttle their DPS. The intent isn't to increase encounter difficulty - the problem isn't that the fight is too easy, it's that people are just skipping the mechanics entirely. Going back to reference the Encounter Design Dev Watercooler, Watcher mentions that "a major factor when it comes to deciding whether to make changes to address an unintended strategy is whether the approach actually involves interesting gameplay." - I think it's fair to say that just throwing DPS at it so you can avoid the mechanics isn't all that interesting. The difference between the changes to Thok this week and Norushen in the upcoming reset are profoundly the difference between a bugfix (Thok was always intended to have Acceleration on all difficulties save Raid Finder, it was simply accidentally turned off on all other difficulties as well as Raid Finder) and a decision to change an encounter to close off an approach that was never intended. That's why Thok was hotfixed immediately, but Norushen is being changed with the server reset so it affects all guilds equally. For more, you can read Watcher's post here on the forums, and we'll reproduce it in full behind the cut as well.
Lichborne: Vale of Eternal Sorrows raid loot for death knights
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done. With normal and flex modes in full swing, and Raid Finder due in the coming days, it felt like a good time to start looking at what gear we can pull out of patch 5.4's new raid, the Siege of Orgrimmar. Today, we'll look at the first wing, the Vale of Eternal Sorrows. When gearing up, there are a few things to remember. Note that the item weights described in most guides assume best in slot gear with maximum level play. For example, haste has dropped to the bottom of the 3 major stats for all 3 death knight DPS specs. While some of this is due to bug fixes and changes in itemization, some of it is also a result of gameplay. These sims that returned haste as a low level stat also assumed their user was dressed in heroic warforged gear and using Plague Leech to get 2 death runes every 25-30 seconds and Anti-Magic Shell to gain extra runic power every 45 seconds without fail. If you aren't really in those categories, don't assume a piece of gear is trash for you without the sims to back it up. In a similar vein, that new item level 540 flexible drop is probably going to replace your item level 502 raid finder drop even if it's not optimally itemized for your spec. Also, while the "haste for tanks" craze is still going on in some quarters, I still am not a huge fan of it, especially now that Riposte lets you get at least some threat off of avoidance. I will link normal gear choices, but most of these choices will drop in all 4 difficulties, with the possibility of warforged drops in normal and heroic difficulties.
Patch 5.4 PTR: First Raid Finder wing of Siege of Orgrimmar Available
Patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar is available for testing on the PTR raid finder for the weekend of July 19 - 22. If you're looking for something to do this weekend, why not head over to the PTR and check it out? The first part of Siege of Orgrimmar involves the first four bosses. This is another big indicator of how close we're getting to a patch 5.4 drop on live servers. Perhaps another month and a half or two? Vale of Eternal Sorrows (Part 1) Immerseus The Fallen Protectors Norushen Sha of Pride Weekend LFR Testing - July 19-22 The first LFR wing of the Siege of Orgrimmar raid is currently open for testing, and will likely remain so throughout the weekend. Please feel free to check it out and share your feedback. source
Siege of Orgrimmar Preview: Norushen
Norushen is expected to be a part of the third encounter in the Siege of Orgrimmar that's coming in with patch 5.4. After we cut through the trash, we found that Norushen prevented us from going any further. Apparently, he detected that we were full of pride and said our bodies had to be purged before we could advance onwards. Our main job here is to defeat the Amalgam of Corruption. It's the elements of pride within us combined into something that we can tangibly kill. If we don't kill the Amalgam within 7 minutes, Norushen's quarantine zone kills everyone. And how does one about purifying themselves? Why I thought you'd never ask!
Patch 5.4 PTR: Raid testing for Thursday, July 11
Blizzard released the raid testing schedule for tomorrow -- players planning on hitting the PTR can expect to find Norushen waiting for them in 10-man normal mode. Keep in mind that PTR bosses are open for testing purposes, and leave your feedback in the appropriate threads when you're done beating them up! Also keep in mind that these are PTR bosses, so mechanics and the fights themselves may change as the PTR progresses. If you're worried about finding a group, don't be! It's not at all uncommon to find a group just by sticking around in the chat channels and asking around. And don't worry about your gear, either -- gear is scaled in the raid zones for the purposes of testing.
