General Nazgrim (tactics)

General Nazgrim is the eighth boss of Siege of Orgrimmar. Nazgrim fought, traveled, and brought glory to the Horde during the Northrend, Cataclysm, and Pandaria campaigns alongside fellow Horde heroes. In the end, he would place his loyalty to Warchief Garrosh Hellscream before being ended by the Alliance he fought against and the Horde heroes he fought with. The encounter with Nazgrim involves dealing with his various rage-powered abilities as a Warrior and the Kor'kron adds he summons.

Adventure Guide
''Once a grunt in service of the former warchief, Thrall, General Nazgrim rose quickly through the ranks after overwhelming victories in Grizzly Hills and sunken city of Vashj'ir. Fiercely loyal to the Horde and bound by a rigorous code of honor and duty, Nazgrim will hold the line for his warchief until his dying breath.''

Encounter Design
''The decision to include Nazgrim as a raid boss was a controversial one—Horde players have seen him rise through the ranks from Sergeant, to Legionnaire, and now to General. Unlike many of our Raid bosses, he is not necessarily wicked, but he is a soldier whose loyalty to Orgrimmar leaves him no choice but to defend its walls. Of course, the Alliance likely has a different perspective on just how “noble” his past actions have been. . . .''

Overview
General Nazgrim is a powerful warrior who builds Rage by damaging players with various abilities, and periodically spends that Rage to unleash powerful attacks. Throughout the encounter, mixed groups of three Kor'kron troops at a time stream in to assist their General.

[[file:Dps_icon.png]] Damage Dealers

 * Defeat Kor'kron Forces quickly so as not to get overwhelmed.
 * Interrupt Kor'kron Arcweavers' and Warshaman's spellcasts.
 * Quickly destroy Nazgrim's Kor'kron Banner and Warshaman's Healing Tide Totem when they are placed.
 * Directly attacking Nazgrim when he is in Defensive Stance will cause him to generate Rage rapidly.

[[file:Healer_icon.png]] Healers

 * If General Nazgrim has between 75 and 99 Rage when Cooling Off ends, his War Song will deal heavy damage to the entire raid.
 * Kor'kron Assassins fixate on a non-tank target and deal heavy damage to their prey.

[[file:Tank_icon.png]] Tanks

 * Trade off tanking Nazgrim to allow Sundering Blow to fade, or Nazgrim will gain large amounts of Rage.
 * Keep Kor'kron Warshaman far away from Nazgrim, or they may heal him significantly.

Abilities

 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
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 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
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 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper
 * Kor'kron Sniper

Strategy
Nazgrim is an add management fight with a high emphasis on execution -- even minor mistakes in executing the encounter can snowball into a wipe.

Handling adds
Nazgrim will pull with a large group of Orgrimmar Faithful, but these adds have low health and only weak melee attacks. These adds should be AoE-ed down at the pull.

For the rest of the fight, Nazgrim will periodically summon two adds. These will be randomly selected from four types of adds, and no summon will have more than one type of add. In order of priority, the adds that can be summoned are:


 * Korkron War Shamans are the top priority for the raid, no matter the circumstances. They cast Chain Heals and put down Healing Totems that can very easily heal other adds, as well as Nazgrim himself, very quickly -- it is not unknown for a War Shaman to heal Nazgrim from 1% to 60% in mere seconds.  These must be interrupted and nuked down with extreme urgency, as well as any totems that they spawn, and tanks should keep Nazgrim far away from them (tanks will thus not pick War Shamans up).  If they manage to cast Earth Shield on Nazgrim or another add, it can be removed with an offensive dispel.


 * Kor'kron Arcweavers cast many interruptible abilities; the raid will need to interrupt as many as possible (particularly Magistrike) while bringing them down. These must also be dealt with urgently, although any War Shamans will take precedence over them.


 * Kor'kron Assassins are relatively easier to deal with, provided that any raid members fixated by the Assassins never turn their back on them, otherwise Backstab will kill them very quickly. The off-tank can round up any Assassins when they are not fixating any other raid members.


 * Kor'kron Ironblades have an area-of-effect ability (Ironstorm) and heal themselves when they reach 50% through Last Stand. These adds are the least problematic; if their numbers are not overwhelming, it may be worth keeping some of them alive and killing them only when Nazgrim enters Defensive Stance.

Handling Nazgrim
Nazgrim cycles through three stances on a one-minute timer in the same order. Battle Stance simply causes Nazgrim to generate 1 Rage each second. Beserker Stance loses the 1 Rage per second generation, but causes him to do 25% increased damage (though he will also take 25% increased damage as well) and causes all his other Rage generating abilities to generate double Rage.

The third stance, Defensive Stance, is worthy of special mention. Nazgrim will take 10% reduced damage, and will gain 3 Rage for each attack made to him, except for tanks debuffed with Sundering Blow. Since success in this encounter will come through keeping Nazgrim's Rage bar as low as possible, it is extremely important for the raid not to DPS Nazgrim at all during Defensive Stance (except for debuffed tanks), even if there are no adds present at the time (this is the reason for the raid wanting to keep as many Ironblades as the raid can comfortably handle alive until this point).

Nazgrim has two standard abilities. The aforementioned Sundering Blow is a tank debuff that additionally causes Nazgrim to unavoidably gain Rage (more Rage depending on how many stacks of Sundering Blow the tank already has); tanks will need to perform a standard tank swap to deal with this. Bonecracker places a bleed effect on players and reduces their maximum health; healers will just need to keep these targets alive until the debuff expires.

The remainder of Nazgrim's abilities cost Rage to use. He will use one Rage ability every 15 seconds (this can be tracked through his Cooling Off debuff), and will always use the most expensive one he can afford. The abilities he can use are:


 * If Nazgrim has between 0 and 29 Rage when Cooling Off expires, he will not cast any Rage ability until his Rage hits 30 (at which point he will cast Heroic Shockwave).
 * If Nazgrim has between 30 and 49 Rage when Cooling Off expires, he will cast Heroic Shockwave. Players need to be spread out 10 yards before this goes off to avoid taking splash damage, and must move from the Aftershocks that appear afterwards to avoid giving Nazgrim any extra Rage.
 * If Nazgrim has between 50 and 69 Rage when Cooling Off expires, he will summon a Kor'kron Banner which causes all attacks by any adds present at the time to grant Nazgrim Rage. The banner has low health and can (and should!) be destroyed quickly.
 * If Nazgrim has between 70 and 99 Rage when Cooling Off expires, he will cast War Song, which does 50% Physical damage to everyone in the raid. Healers should top the raid off if they anticipate Nazgrim casting this, particularly on raid members affected by Bonecracker.
 * If Nazgrim has 100 Rage when Cooling Off expires, he will summon a Ravager weapon, which moves slowly through the room. They must be avoided as taking damage from them results in the raid member taking high Physical Damage and Nazgrim gaining considerable extra Rage.  The raid should avoid giving Nazgrim enough Rage to cast this as much as possible, since the Ravager weapons will restrict movement; this will eventually snowball into a wipe.

Final 10% burn
The final 10% of the fight can be extremely problematic, as Nazgrim will overwhelm the raid with adds if not defeated quickly.

A strategy for dealing with this is:


 * Keep an eye on Nazgrim's stances; the raid does not want Nazgrim entering Defensive Stance in the final 10% of his health. If necessary, stop DPS on Nazgrim at 13%, allow him to enter Defensive Stance, and then push him below 10% once Defensive Stance is over.  Ideally, the raid would want Nazgrim to be in Beserker Stance when pushing him below 10%, with plenty of time to spare before entering Defensive Stance, but this may not always be possible.
 * Once the raid decides to push Nazgrim below 10%, all offensive cooldowns should be popped (including Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp), and Nazgrim defeated as quickly as possible.
 * Even though this is a burn phase, War Shamans still take precedence over burning Nazgrim down, as they can (and will!) heal him back up if ignored.

Achievement: Gamon Will Save Us!
To begin with, one raid member should free Gamon from the tree that he is tied to, on the Demolisher trash preceeding the raid's descent into the Cleft of Shadow on their way to Nazgrim.

On the actual fight, earning Gamon Will Save Us! is a reward for doing the fight "properly", and requires that the raid handles Nazgrim's Rage perfectly. Two casts of War Song will kill Gamon, and so will any Ravager weapons that wander into Gamon's vicinity. It is however possible to heal Gamon, and additionally, it has been reported that the raid can skip the warlock trash causing Gamon to remain behind there.

An important note is that, much like the Only the Penitent... achievement in the Firelands, the raid only has one chance per raid lockout. If the raid wipes to Nazgrim or Gamon dies, he will not respawn.

Related Achievements

 * Gates of Retribution
 * Mythic: General Nazgrim
 * Gamon Will Save Us!
 * Siege of Orgrimmar Guild Run

Quotes

 * Alliance Intro
 * yell


 * Horde Intro
 * yell


 * Alliance Aggro
 * yell


 * Horde Aggro
 * yell


 * Aggroed if Gamon is present
 * say


 * Kor'kron Forces
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell
 * yell


 * 10%
 * yell


 * Wipe
 * yell


 * Death (Alliance)
 * say


 * Death (Horde)
 * say
 * say


 * Gamon Will Save Us!
 * say


 * Unused quotes
 * Gamon, you have finally learned. I am proud to have died at your hands.
 * For the Horde.