Siege of Orgrimmar Preview: Sha of Pride
The Sha of Pride is the fourth boss in patch 5.4's Siege of Orgrimmar raid instance. You'll find him in the chamber right after defeating Norushen. It's the last Sha in existence and allegedly the one that has influenced Garrosh in his actions throughout the expansion.
Read on to get an overview of his abilities.
After Norushen manages to purge all the Corruption off of your group, the Sha of Pride will emerge. unlike the previous encounter where there were a lot of individual focus, you'll have to rely on groups of players to bail you out.
The Sha of Pride has a corrupted Prison mechanic which is neat. We've seen other immobilization abilities before (Wind Lord's Amber Prison). But that ability involved players clicking off stuff. You'll notice three arcs around the prison areas. When a player gets imprisoned, someone needs to stand on the arcs. Think of them as pressure plates. Once they're lit, step on them and the player gets freed. It takes two players in order to free one on 10 man. I surmise it will take three on 25. We split our healers and DPS into groups that float near the prison areas while they're DPSing. Don't actually stand on top of them as Corrupted Prison will knockback nearby players within 12 yards and deal 250k damage to anyone caught. Oh and if that wasn't enough, the imprisoned player will be taking damage until they're freed (or dead).
Adds will periodically stream in. Lock some interrupts on them. Their casts will add Corruption for each successful attack. Shut it down and thin them as they come in. You'll want a tank to alternate between the Sha of Pride and his ads. The Manifestations of Pride will give the nearest 2 players 5 Pride whenever they die (Last Word).
With Norushen, you and your party had to manage Corruption. With the Sha of Pride, your group will be managing your ... (You guessed it) Pride. As your raid continues to gain stacks of Pride, they'll be affected by various abilities (think Cho'gall back in early Cataclysm). We'll go over this in more detail later.
For the healers, Mark of Arrogance is a removable DoT. It also stacks. Players will be hit with a 55000 damage per second DoT. The catch: Whoever dispels it gains five Pride. Most healers can handle that kind of increasing damage. We didn't want our Pride stacks to rise quickly so we ultimately dispelled them after two applications instead of removing them after one.
For the tanks, be wary of Wounded Pride. The current target is wounded for 15 seconds. Wounded players gain 5 Pride whenever they suffer melee damage from the Sha of Pride. This is your tank switch ability and they need to do what they can to micro manage it so that it doesn't go up.
Once Sha of Pride reaches the 30% health mark, it's time for the raid to go beast mode. Norushen unfortunately gets struck down but he manages to get off a parting Final Gift resulting in resetting everyone's Pride stacks to 0. The Unleashed effect of the Sha of Pride will cause him to inflict tons of damage every 10 seconds for the rest of the encounter. Players gain five Pride each time they're hit by it.
Speaking of gifts, Norushen can provide players with immunity to Pride (Gift of the Titans). If all players with Gift of the Titans are within eight yards of each other, they gain Power of the Titans (Haste, damage, and healing buff). We designated a stack point for players who had the buff to immediately disengage from their group and head over there. Right behind the boss is a good start.
Let's go over the Sha's Pride abilities.
Players start the encounter with 0 points of Pride. Whenever they're hit by an ability from the Sha of Pride or one of its minions, players gain 5 Pride. As a player's Pride increases to 25, 50, 75, and 100, Swelling Pride will inflict additional effects on that player.
Swelling Pride - When the Sha of Pride reaches 100 energy, it releases a wave of dark energy inflicting 350,000 Shadow damage to all players, giving them 5 Pride. In addition, Swelling Pride will trigger a secondary effect on any player with 25 or more Pride.
Bursting Pride - Between 25 to 49 Pride, a mass of Sha corruption is created at their location. After 3 seconds, the corruption explodes inflicting 2500000 damage to anyone within 5 yards. Players hit gain 5 Pride.
Projection - Between 50 to 74 Pride, they create a project 15 yards from their current location. Projections explode after 6 seconds, inflicting 175000 Shadow damage to all players unless the projection's creator is standing within it. Players hit gain 5 Pride.
Aura of Pride - Between 75 - 99 Pride, an Aura of Pride afflicts players for 25 seconds. This effect causes the player to deal 150000 Shadow damage to their allies within 5 yards every 0.5 seconds.
Overcome - At 100 Pride, their damage and healing done increases by 50%. They also become permanently mind controlled with their health increased by 500%.
If you need to wipe quickly, the Sha of Pride has a quick wipe mechanic called Reaching Attack. The Sha of Pride strikes at a distant target inflicting 50% of weapon damage as Shadow and increasing Shadow damage taken by 25% for 8 sec. The Sha uses this ability when no one targets are in melee range.
All in all, this encounter involves a little extra coordination and some pre-raid planning. You'll need to organize prison groups and the healers to go with them. You'll want to put your strongest DPS players towards the entrances where the adds will appear from. At the same time, players receiving the Gift of the Titans need to be aware of when to stack and move together to maximize their damage output. I think the biggest challenge here is going to be managing the individual Pride levels of players. There's quite a bit of awareness that's going to be needed and I suspect this is going to be both fun (and really chaotic) at the 25 man level.
WoW Insider Siege of Orgrimmar previews
