Sha of Pride Heroic Guide

[Zabuzan]

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Sha of Pride Heroic Guide
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If you'd like to motivate me to make more guides in the future, please check out www.vengeanceking.com follow me on Twitter @Zabuzan and like my Vengeance King page on Facebook

Introduction
Hi all,

I created a guide for my guild as reference for Sha of Pride Heroic, describing our original kill strategy.

I'm a big fan of text guides in conjunction with video guides and I feel that each has their own merits when preparing for a new encounter during progression. I'd also recommend the Fatboss, Evrelia and Gabestah video guides as a great resource ahead of any progression. Links to these video guides can be found below the text guide I've created.

Hopefully this guide can be of use to other people as well.

I've also included a TL;DR summary, for those only interested in the key points.

Disclaimer: This guide is aimed at the 10-man Heroic version of the Sha of Pride encounter and not all of the information presented may be applicable to 25-man Heroic. This is not a definitive strategy and also assumes a basic knowledge of the normal encounter and the changes to mechanics on Heroic. Other strategies are entirely plausible, but this is what we will be using for our first kill and I can vouch that it works for us!

For links to my other Heroic boss guides, check out the Index Thread.

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Raid Composition
Standard Composition: 2 tanks, 5-6 DPS, 2-3 healers
Recommend Composition: 2 tanks, 6 DPS, 2 healers

A 2 healer comp will make the fight simpler as the boss will be dropping faster relative to the speed that your raid is gaining Pride. It also ensures the sub 30% burn phase is over very rapidly, before getting overrun by adds or getting Overcome, which is a much higher risk with 3 healers.

Beating the enrage (primarily the soft enrage in Phase 2), is still totally doable with a 3 heal / 5DPS setup, but it does mean that the raid will be dealing with higher Pride mechanics for longer, both in Phase 1 and Phase 2 and almost undoubtedly makes the fight more challenging.

I would also recommend avoiding too many melee DPS, as it is easier for ranged DPS to burn down the Manifestation of Pride add, as well as soak Rifts far from the boss whilst continuing to DPS. We chose to run with 2 melee DPS for the encounter and had no issues however.


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Overview

A couple of new abilities make this into a nicely tuned up (both in terms of complexity and damage/healing requirement) version of the Normal encounter.

The first addition to the encounter on Heroic difficulty, is that the boss spawns Rifts of Corruption periodically, every 8 seconds. These Rifts spit out bolts at random raid members, which deal splash damage to anyone within the 5 yard AoE that pulses at the bolt's target. Rifts can be closed by any raid member walking over them, however doing so puts a debuff on that raid member which prevents them from closing any more rifts for 1 minute.
There are fewer rifts spawning per minute than 10 players can soak with a 1 minute debuff before being able to soak again, providing everyone is closing a new Rift shortly after the debuff drops off them. The Rifts themselves spawn in a seemingly random location, we've had a few pulls where almost all of them spawned on the far side of the room from the raid, near the tanks, which makes closing them a pain but still a necessary evil.

The second addition to the encounter on Heroic difficulty, is effectively a Pacman minigame - Banishment. A random player will be selected and Banished into the "Pacman" realm, at which point a Corrupted Fragment spawns at their location in the real realm which must be killed to bring the Banished player back from the "Pacman" realm. When Banished, players are constantly forced to be running forward, but can turn to survive the Pacman minigame to which they have been sent. There are Sha adds which will one shot you if you run into them and clearly visible purple void areas to avoid. The aim of the game is to run around the maze, avoiding the adds (which move quite a bit faster than the player) and collecting the golden orbs present by running through them. Collecting a golden orb gives the Corrupted Fragment a 25% damage taken bonus, allowing it to be killed quicker. Once the Corrupted Fragment has been killed, the Banished player will be returned to join the rest of the raid and continue the encounter as normal. Both DPS and healers can be targetted by Banishment, meaning that in some cases only 1 healer will be healing the raid until the other is brought back. Tanks are never Banished.

Some of the Normal mechanics which you may not have bothered actively managing are rather more important on Heroic; dealing with Gift of the Titans, dispels and the Manifestation of Pride add properly is key to minimising Pride on the raid and will make the encounter significantly easier if dealt with properly. If you haven't mastered the tank swap already on Normal, to taunt quickly enough after the Pride debuff is applied to avoid even a single boss melee hit, now is the time to get that sorted! The tanks will also need to pick up and nuke the small Sha Reflection adds spawned by the Self Reflection ability.

The fight is still a 2 phase fight, but the phases are almost identical, just with a Pride reset at 30% marking the start of Phase 2, with a soft enrage mechanic being introduced.


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Positioning

Unhappy Green Circle = Sha of Pride
Purple Circle = Primary raid stacking location (loosely stacked within roughly the space of an Efflorescence or Healing Rain).
Yellow Circle = Active Boss tank location and Sha Reflection add killing location.
Blue Circle = Players affected by Gift of the Titans move there before the Manifestation of Pride dies to be the closest players.
Orange Circle = Manifestation of Pride spawn location.
Red Circles = Imprisoned player location.

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Strategy
Sha of Pride Heroic is handled almost exactly the same as a perfect Normal kill, but with the addition of soaking Rifts, being able to play Pacman and getting the small Sha Reflection adds that spawn picked up by a tank to kill rather than the DPS nuking them down.

Sha of Pride Energy Abilities
It should be noted that the abilities used by Sha of Pride coincide with specific energy levels that the boss reaches. The Sha of Pride gains 100 energy every 60 seconds and at 100 energy he casts Swelling Pride - this deals significantly more raid damage on Heroic and a raid cooldown rotation will be required to survive it, especially later in the fight as more sources of damage are working against the raid at once. The abilities tied to specific energy levels the Sha of Pride reaches are dealt with as follows:

• ~30 Energy - Self-Reflections - Sha Reflection adds spawn on up to five random players. A purple cloud forms at these players’ feet, and two seconds later, a Sha Reflection add jumps out of it. Players standing on a purple cloud when the add emerges will be dealt moderate Shadow damage and gain 5 Pride. By default, each Sha Reflection targets the player targeted by the purple cloud it emerged from and deals light melee damage to them, however the adds will re-aggro onto the highest aggro target rather than fixate, meaning they are tankable.
  
  Every time Sha Reflections spawn, the DPS should stack loosely together (within the space of an Efflorescence or Healing Rain is a good indication) when Self-Reflections is about to be cast and then spread out once the purple clouds have spawned. The DPS should ignore the Sha Reflection adds entirely and they should be picked up by the tank not currently tanking the boss.
  
  It should be noted that Self-Reflection “ticks” once per second for four seconds, but the second, third, and fourth ticks only spawn adds if there are players with 25, 50, or 75 Pride respectively; this means as the fight goes on the number of adds spawning increases dramatically. To meet the DPS requirement for the fight, it is optimal for the DPS to nuke the Sha of Pride single target, whilst one or both tanks cleave the adds down each wave, before the next set of Sha adds spawn.
  
  Beware of running to close any far away Rifts when this ability is going to be used, as it will cause issues for the tank to pick up adds if they are spawning all over the room. This isn't vital for the first Self Reflection, but as the fight goes on and greater numbers of adds spawn it will become hugely important. Misdirects and Tricks of the Trade, Mocking Banner and so on are all great tools for getting the adds rapidly onto one or both of the tanks.
  
  
• ~50 Energy - Banishment - A random healer or DPS is selected and Banished into the "Pacman" realm. They must avoid the adds, whilst running continually and try to pick up as many golden orbs as possible. To get the Banished player back, the rest of the raid must burn down the Corrupted Fragment that was located where the Banished player was previously stood quickly.
  
  Every golden orb the Banished player gets, applies a stacking 25% additional damage taken buff on the Corrupted Fragment, so the better you are at Pacman, the quicker you'll get out of the Banishment realm! Bear in mind that touching any of the purple void zones will rapidly kill you and getting touched by an add will one shot you, whilst you are in the Banishment realm.
  
  Beware of running to close any far away Rifts when this ability is going to be used, as it will cause issues for the DPS to break you out if you've ran over to the other side of the room and got Banished before you could get back close to the raid..
  
  
• ~65 Energy - Imprison - On 10-man Heroic, 2 people are Imprisoned. This should be a fairly low risk ability as the Prison locations are always the same. The active boss tank will always be stood as shown by the yellow circle on the positioning diagram. This means on the prison closest to the tanks, the active boss tank can stand on the pad closest to the boss whilst the other tank runs to the further one, preventing the boss from using Reaching Attack by avoiding range issues, but also meaning that the rest of the raid don't have to worry about the far Prison. On a side note, Reaching Attack is targeted at the highest threat raid member (i.e. the tank) and applies a stacking debuff causing additional damage taken as Reaching Attack continues.
  
• ~80 Energy - Manifestation of Pride - The Manifestation of Pride that the boss summons is dealt with just the same way as on Normal difficulty. Bear in mind that these adds spam an interruptible nuke called Mocking Blast, which deals moderate Shadow damage to a single target and increases Pride by 5. These should be locked down with interrupts and stuns, and should be killed as a matter of priority, to ensure no raid member is gaining unnecessary Pride.
  
  When the Manifestation of Pride dies, it also increases the Pride of the 2 nearest players by 5; to avoid this, the Manifestation should be killed right where it spawns and at least 2 people with the Gift of the Titans buff should be stood where the green circle is shown on the positioning diagram, as having the Gift of the Titans buff allows you to negate any Pride gains associated with an ability.
  
  
• 100 Energy - Swelling Pride - This is a raid wide AoE, that increases the Pride of all raid members by 5 and deals high damage. In combination with the Mark of Arrogance debuff most likely present on a number of players, as well as the chance of someone getting clipped by the bolts being extruded from any Rifts up, can be deadly.
  
  AoE healing and mitigation cooldowns should be used to survive these, as well as personal mitigation. Setting up a rotation of cooldowns in advance will make this easier - for instance, we use Devotion Aura on the 1st and 4th, Rallying Cry + Spirit Shell on the 2nd, Rallying Cry + Tranquility on the 3rd and so on. This will obviously be dependant on your raid comp.
  
  To make AoE healing easier, the raid should be loosely stacked behind the boss when Swelling Pride goes off, so make sure to hold off or quickly get back from closing Rifts to ensure the raid is fairly well grouped when the boss is about to hit 100 energy.

Effects of Swelling Pride on the Raid:
Depending on what level of Pride players are at when Sha of Pride uses Swelling Pride, the raid is still susceptible to the same effects:

• 0-24 Pride - No additional effect occurs.
• 25-49 Pride - Bursting Pride - A large purple void zone at the player's location which explodes after 3 seconds, dealing damage and increasing Pride by 5.
• 50-74 - Projection - A projection of the player spawns 15 yards away, indicated by a green arrow pointing at a purple ground effect. It will explode after 8 seconds, dealing raid wide damage if the player is not standing on it.
• 75-99 - Aura of Pride - Deals AoE damage to all allies within 5 yards of the affected player, spread out to mitigate this.
• 100 - Overcome - As soon as a player hits 100 pride they are "Overcome", increasing their damage and healing by 50%, but causing the next Swelling Pride cast to permanently Mind Control them,. If this does occur, it's very likely a wipe anyway and if all the mechanics are dealt with properly then there is no way anyone should be anywhere near 100 Pride for the encounter.

Phase 1 - 100% ->30%
During this phase, Sha of Pride uses all the standard abilities found in Normal mode. Some of these are dealt with slightly differently on Heroic and the tactics for specific abilities are described in the sections prior to this one. Norushen still periodically blesses 1 healer and 2 DPS with the Gift of the Titans buff. Sha of Pride still periodically applies the Mark of Anguish debuff on random raid members and this stacks. Gift of the Titans should be used to allow the healer to dispel 3 stacks of the Mark of Anguish debuff with no Pride gains (e.g: buff lasts 20 seconds, dispel at 0 seconds, 8 seconds and 16 seconds of the buff).

The Rifts will be opening far more rapidly than you can close them, but try and keep on top of them as best you can. As soon as you've dropped the 1 minute debuff preventing you from soaking a Rift, you should be looking for the next opportunity to soak another one - but make sure you don't cause issues by being too far away from the raid before Self-Reflection, Imprison, Banishment or Swelling Pride. If you are a tank, don't risk going out of range when a Wounded Pride tank swap is coming in if you'll need to taunt the boss, as being out of melee range will cause Sha of Pride to use Reaching Attack and start owning the rest of the raid. Soaking a Rift also applies 5 Pride; so people with Gift of the Titans are a good call for that as well!

Whenever Sha Reflection adds are in, make sure the tanks get them picked up quickly and cleave them down before the next wave spawn. DPS should resist the temptation to AoE them and instead focus on single target burning the boss, as this is a better use of their higher damage. The early waves of adds will pretty much die to passive cleaves. When there are a lot more of them, one or both of the tanks may need to switch full time on to the adds to get them down in time.

Pride is reset to 0 when the boss hits 30% health, so use this as a measuring stick to gauge whether or not you are building Pride too quickly. If all mechanics are adhered to quickly, most of the raid shouldn't be much above 50 Pride by the time.

The most risky part of Phase 1 (and the fight as a whole), is when a healer gets Banishment. If this occurs late in P1 or especially going into Phase 2 when damage on the raid and tanks is at it's highest, things can get quite sketchy. Bear this in mind and use personal mitigation / healthstones or similar to survive if this does occur, but focus on getting the healer back out of the Pacman realm as soon as possible.


Phase 2 - 30% ->0%
Phase 2 begins as soon as the boss hits 30%. Every raid member has their Pride reset to 0, but the boss begins a soft enrage mechanic which can rapidly cause things to get out of control. All of the standard abilities that occured during Phase 1 continue to occur during Phase 2, so the fight is effectively dealt with in exactly the same way as before; however, the soft enrage mechanic is an additional ability that Sha of Pride uses every 10 seconds, called Unleashed. Unleashed deals a large amount of AoE shadow damage to the whole raid and also increases Pride on every player by 5.

Gift of the Titans is no longer present in Phase 2 as Norushen has been taken out of play by Sha of Pride, so any dispelling will incur the 5 Pride penalty. By this point in the fight, some players may even have 2 stacks of Mark of Anguish debuff, so prioritise dispelling them.

When Swelling Pride occurs, a large mitigation cooldown should be used if possible and throughout Phase 2, as many healer cooldowns should be used as possible to keep everyone topped for the relentless damage.

Depending on how many Rifts are up, you may decide that the additional damage taken from soaking Rifts is too dangerous and just focus on nuking the boss whilst dodging bolts for the remainder of the encounter. Leave this up to your healers to decide on the fly, depending on what healing and mitigation cooldowns are still available.

Heroism, a second pot and all DPS cooldowns should be used to ensure Phase 2 is as short as possible. You are far more likely to wipe to the damage in Phase 2 than by too many people getting Overcome and the boss should be dead before then or you most likely will be instead!


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Summary
Phase 1

• Do not use Heroism on the pull.
• Raid stays loosely stacked as much as possible for better AoE healing.
• Aim to close a Rift as often as possible, as soon as the soak prevention debuff has dropped off, start looking for a chance to get another.
• Avoid being away from the raid (i.e. soaking Rifts), whenever Self-Reflection, Banishment or Swelling Pride are about to occur, tank to pick up adds, DPS to kill Fragment and healers to AoE heal respectively..
• Tanks should pick up Sha Reflection adds and kill them, DPS should ignore them and nuke the boss.
• Cooldown rotation for Swelling Pride.
• Watch your own Pride level and be ready to react accordingly to the mechanic triggered by Swelling Pride.
• DPS need to be killing both the Manifestation of Pride and the Corrupted Fragment as soon as possible. Manifestation of Pride is also susceptible to stuns and interrupts.
• The 2 people closest to the Manifestation of Pride when it dies should have the Gift of the Titans debuff, to avoid any unnecessary Pride gains.
• Healers should be dispelling Mark of Anguish as often as possible when they have Gift of the Titans. Some dispels may be required outside of Gift of the Titans if the debuffs start getting out of control.

Phase 2

• Heroism and all DPS cooldowns as the boss hits 30% and enters Phase 2.
• All of the mechanics from Phase 1 persist.
• The extra Phase 2 mechanic, Unleashed, inflicts high raid damage and 5 Pride. It is cast every 10 seconds, healers will need to be on their A game to keep everyone alive to the high and often spiky raid damage during this phase.
• Be especially aware of your own Pride during this phase as it will be increasing much more rapidly, react accordingly to the mechanic triggered by your Pride level due to Swelling Pride.
• Decide whether or not the risk outweighs the benefit of closing further Rifts at a certain % and just focus on nuking the boss, using personal mitigation, dodging bolts from Rifts and generally staying alive. We found 10-15% to be quite a sensible time to stop worrying about the Rifts and focus on both nuking and dodging! It is probably also possible to do so right from the start of Phase 2.
• Chain healer and mitigation cooldowns throughout this Phase and keep everyone up long enough to kill the boss.

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General Tips

• Warlock imps can dispel the Mark of Anguish debuff of raid members, without incurring any Pride penalties on the Warlock or anyone else for that matter. This makes them stupidly useful and also makes keeping on top of the debuffs far easier even with only 2 healers.
• More to follow.

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Video Guides
Below are some video guides for further reference, bear in mind that not all aspects of the strategies or tips described in the videos may be shared with my own information, but can be used in conjunction with the guide for a better overall idea ahead of progressing on this encounter.

Fatboss Video Guide:
LINK

Evrelia Video Guide:
LINK

Gabestah Long Video Guide:
LINK

Gabestah Short Video Guide:
LINK

Gabestah Tank Video Guide:
LINK

Gabestah DPS Video Guide:
LINK.

Gabestah Healer Video Guide:
LINK


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Reference Links
For a full list of Gabestah Video Guides, please check out his thread HERE

Icy Veins Sha of Pride Guide: LINK

Healiocentric Sha of Pride Normal Guide: LINK

Healer CDs Tips: LINK


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Change Log

1. Added links to the Gabestah Long, Short, Tank, DPS and Healer video guides.
2. Added links to the Fatboss and Evrelia guides.
3. Clarified approximate energy levels coinciding with each of Sha of Pride's key abilities.
4. Amended Rifts to 1 spawn every 8 seconds, in keeping with 10-man Heroic rather than 25-man Heroic difficulty.
5. Added links to Facebook, Twitter and Blog.
6. Fixed link to the website.

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[Deleted]

Great guides Zab

Also it's realy odd that a warlock imp is able to dispel Mark of Arrogance, the tooltip clearly says that only single target dispels can remove it and the imp's sear magic dispel is more like a mini massdispel.

[Zabuzan]

Yeah, imagine that'll be fixed eventually - Mass Dispel from Priests doesn't work at all!

[Braindwen]

Manifestation definitely starts spawning at 80. Tends to pop out of the ground around 85, but I see his little nameplate off in the distance at 80.

Abilities line up with a nice even 15 energy spacing between them. Reflections at ~35, Banish at ~50, Prisons at ~65, add at 80. Tend to see banishment start casting a little before 50 and finishing at about 49-50, and likewise prisons seem to start casting anywhere from around 65-68 energy. It never seems like banish and imprison are on exact energy levels, though, but you can tell within a second or so from his energy.

Just know at 35 energy reflections pop out, and by the time you've dealt with them you have banishment to deal with, and by the time that's dealt with prisons come out, and you need to finish those quickly because an add will spawn very shortly, and finally swelling pride will happen shortly after the add's dealt with and you get a little break until 35 again . The only time this really changes is the very first cycle in phase 2; reflections, banishment, and imprison are all pushed forward about 10 energy to ~25/40/55 (possibly wounded pride as well, I never really checked). Add still spawns at 80 and swelling pride is obviously still at 100.

Also, wounded pride (the tank ability), seems to be based on energy too; roughly 15, 55, and 95. Finally, reaching attack targets the tank (and causes pride in heroic!), not the raid. Still want to avoid it, and it's a lot more important on heroic because of that pride .

[Zabuzan]

Finally, reaching attack targets the tank (and causes pride in heroic!), not the raid. Still want to avoid it, and it's a lot more important on heroic because of that pride .

Brilliant, thanks for the pointers. Regarding your last note, I hadn't realised that at all, I assumed it was targetted at random raid members(Sha of Fear style), however now you've mentioned it it makes more sense to target the tanks given the stacking debuff it applies rather than outright huge damage.

Update: Guide amended!

[Zabuzan]

Got it down this afternoon using this strat Galakras going down shortly with a bit of luck!... better get a move on with my Juggernaut guide.

[Deleted]

The rifts doesn't spawn every 3 seconds, that's only for 25man. Fairly sure it's every 8 seconds on 10, can't check DJ right now though because on the phone.

[Zabuzan]

The rifts doesn't spawn every 3 seconds, that's only for 25man. Fairly sure it's every 8 seconds on 10, can't check DJ right now though because on the phone.

Thanks for that, I did think it was a little odd when I read it online from a DJ quote. Will amend.

[Deleted]

Just coming here to say that we spent about 1.5 hours on Sha of Pride today, and about half way through I noticed I was getting insane pride gains (warlock). Later on I noticed when I dispel with imp, I get 5 pride everytime. Doesn't matter if I dispeled 1 or 3 people, always got 5 pride.

Sad face

[Zabuzan]

Just coming here to say that we spent about 1.5 hours on Sha of Pride today, and about half way through I noticed I was getting insane pride gains (warlock). Later on I noticed when I dispel with imp, I get 5 pride everytime. Doesn't matter if I dispeled 1 or 3 people, always got 5 pride.

Sad face

Yep, we noticed that on our kill today. Evidently been hotfixed. Was it 5 pride in total even if 3 people were dispelled at the same time?

[Deleted]

I am not 100% sure about it, I think it was, yeah. On the other hand, sometimes I would reach 100 pride at like 60% when I took virtualy no damage from the rifts shooting shadow bolts so.. who knows, need to do more testing

[Zabuzan]

Hmm, that's odd. We had our lock dispelling fairly regularly, but not on cooldown, was at the healers request.

Our lock got to about 60-70 Pride at the 30% mark on the kill.

[Deleted]

sticky with other guides!

Nice Mate!

[Zabuzan]

Thanks! More incoming very soon!

[Squishei]

Yeah seems they fixed the imp dispel at least when we tested in flex yesterday. Our warlocks pride jumped even though there was only one swelling.

[Deleted]

Yeah, imagine that'll be fixed eventually - Mass Dispel from Priests doesn't work at all!

just as an FYI, the debuff states that only single target dispells will work, hence mass dispell wont work

[Octan]

Tyvm, very useful

[Zabuzan]

Sha of Pride Heroic Guide now up on my new site: www.vengeanceking.com

Please check it out - and if you notice any errors or have any further questions, please let me know.
http://vengeanceking.com/raid-encoun.../sha-of-pride/

- - - Updated - - -

Tyvm, very useful

Glad to be of assistance.

[Zabuzan]

If you'd like to motivate me to make more guides in the future, please check out www.vengeanceking.com, follow me on Twitter @Zabuzan and like my Vengeance King page on Facebook

Kor'kron Dark Shaman guide will be up later on today.

[Zabuzan]

Thanks to thesmuggler for pointing out the links to my new website were messed up! Fixed them