Norushen (tactics)

Norushen is the third boss of Siege of Orgrimmar. While Norushen plays a pivotal role in the encounter, the target of the encounter is to overcome the Amalgam of Corruption and the Sha that spawn from the players' own pride. Norushen will then aid the players against the Sha of Pride.

Adventure Guide
Some say that the mogu race was created in the image of this titanic construct, left deep beneath Pandaria to watch over and guard the continent's darkest and most dangerous secret.

Encounter Design
''Observant Scenario-runners will recognize Norushen from the Dark Heart of Pandaria Scenario. We decided early on in the development process that we wanted to have this Titanic watcher guarding the Vault of Y’Shaarj, and prioritized his model and the chamber for use in the Scenario in order to better foreshadow the upcoming raid encounter.''

Overview
Norushen seals all players inside a Quarantine Zone and extracts a portion of each player's corruption to form an Amalgam of Corruption. The object of the encounter is to destroy this creature. Players must reduce their personal level of Corruption in order to inflict full damage to the Amalgam. Players can accomplish this by interacting with the nodes of Purifying Light that active around the room, which will pull them into another phase where they must face a role-specific challenge. Overcoming this challenge will Purify the player and allow them to inflict full damage to the Amalgam.

[[file:Dps_icon.png]] Damage Dealers

 * Interact with a Purifying Light orb to enter the Test of Serenity and defeat the enemies inside to rid yourself of Corruption.
 * All damage dealt to Manifestations of Corruption and Essences of Corruption in the normal realm is copied to the boss Amalgam.
 * Rotate around the Amalgam to avoid Blind Hatred.

[[file:Healer_icon.png]] Healers

 * Interact with a Purifying Light orb to enter the Test of Reliance; inside, keep your allies at full health to maximize their damage to the Greater Corruption and complete the trial.
 * Rotate around the Amalgam to avoid Blind Hatred.

[[file:Tank_icon.png]] Tanks

 * Interact with a Purifying Light orb to enter the Test of Confidence; avoid and weather the Titanic Corruption's attacks to rid yourself of Corruption.
 * Rotate around the Amalgam to avoid Blind Hatred.
 * Take turns tanking the Amalgam to allow Self Doubt to fade.

Abilities

 * Amalgam of Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Greater Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption
 * Titanic Corruption

Unleashed Corruption

 * Whenever players successfully defeat an element of corruption during the Test of Serenity it will be unleashed in the normal realm.
 * Manifestation of Corruption
 * Essence of Corruption
 * Essence of Corruption
 * Essence of Corruption
 * Essence of Corruption

Strategy
When a player speaks to Norushen to begin the encounter, Norushen will seal the entire raid within a Quarantine Zone. Shortly afterwards, an Amalgram of Corruption will spawn, and the objective of the encounter is to defeat the Amalgram. If it is not defeated within 7 minutes, Norushen will activate the zone's Safety Measures, which will instantly wipe the raid.

All raid members start within the "Normal Realm", and have 75 out of 100 points of "Corruption". Having Corruption translates into less damage done to the Amalgram of Corruption. Raid members will regularly need to port into a "Test Realm" to remove their Corruption and do full damage to the Amalgamation.

Normal Realm
The Amalgram of Corruption itself has relatively few abilities. Unleashed Anger is purely a tank concern, which can be handled through active mitigation, while Self Doubt is a stacking debuff handled through standard tank switching. Icy Fear is an unavoidable raid-wide AoE that increases in damage as the Amalgram loses health, and simply requires that the raid stack up whenever feasible to benefit from AoE healing.

Blind Hatred is the primary danger, and works exactly the same way as Immerseus' Swirl water beam, but with the potency of the Disintegration Beam from Durumu. The raid will simply need to rotate ahead of the beam, or run through the boss and around the beam to return to the designated stack point.

Whenever DPS that are in the Test Realm kill one of the adds in their Tests (more on the Tests themselves later), the adds will be sent to the Normal Realm for the rest of the raid to deal with. Unleashed Manifestations of Corruptions are top priority for the raid, as they spam an AoE raid-damaging ability (Burst of Anger). When killed, they leave behind a Residual Corruption void zone that should be soaked as soon as possible (ignoring or forgetting it will quickly lead to a raid wipe due to high AoE damage). The void zones can only be soaked by players with 75 or less Corruption, and will give the soaker 25 Corruption, so this task should be left to tanks and healers, although a DPS player who is just about to enter the Test Realm can also soak without too much of a DPS loss. The second type of add, Unleased Essences of Corruption simply spam Expel Corruption at the Amalgram, which causes the Amalgram to gain a stacking damage buff. Expel Corruption can be intercepted (with the penalty for interception being considerable Shadow damage on the interceptor), and intercepting all Expel Corruption casts is the requirement for the achievement None Shall Pass.

Additionally, when the Amalgram reaches 50%, it gains the Frayed ability. This causes the boss to spawn an additional Unleashed Manifestation of Corruption at 50% health and at every 10% health thereafter.

Adds that spawn as a result of DPS players completing their tests have the Foul Link ability, which causes damage done to them to be copied to the Amalgram. It is however important to note that adds that spawn due to Frayed do not have Foul Link, so if the enrage is tight, it may be worth assigning some players (preferably melee) to permanently focus on the boss and have less damage on the adds.

Assigning players to the Test Realm
The Quarantine Zone will contain various Purifying Light orbs: 2 in 10-man groups, scaling to 4 in 25-man groups. A player will need to run to an orb and click it to port over to the Test Realm. The orb will despawn once clicked on, and will respawn once the player returns to the Normal Realm.

The raid will want to get as many DPS players in the Test Realm for as much damage on the Amalgram as possible, but should be wary of sending too many DPS in at once to prevent the remainder of the raid from being overwhelmed with adds. Ideally, DPS should only take half of the available orbs, with the remainder of the orbs being taken by tanks or healers (tanks are generally preferred over healers). Sending tanks and healers over allows them to soak the Residual Corruption void zones.

Therefore, it will be necessary for the raid leader to assign a tank/healer rotation and a separate DPS rotation on the orbs. The exact composition will vary between raid groups, but the raid should aim to have at least a minimum number of players purified that will be necessary to beat the enrage timer before the boss gets Frayed. Once the boss gains Frayed and all players have returned to the Normal Realm, pop Bloodlust/Heroism/Time Warp and kill the Amalgram as soon as possible.

On Raid Finder difficulty, assigning players to the Test Realm is not necessary, as players will be automatically ported into the Test Realm at random. Selected players will be marked with a debuff for several seconds before being teleported, giving them the opportunity to prepare to face their challenge.

Test Realm
The test realm differs based on the player's role (tank, healer or DPS).

Tank Test Realm
The tank Test Realm pits the tank against a Titanic Corruption, and the tank must simply survive for 60 seconds, at which point the tank will be fully purified and will return to the Normal Realm.

The Titanic Corruption has two main abilities: Hurl Corruption must be interrupted, and Burst of Corruption requires the tank to move to avoid the ground attack. None of the other abilities are particularly problematic, and cooldowns can be used when necessary.

The test will end early if the tank manages to kill the Titanic Corruption before the 60 second timer expires. This is extremely desirable, as it means that the next player in the tank/healer rotation can get purified earlier, which may allow extra players to become purified.

Healer Test Realm
Healers in the Test Realm are faced with a Greater Corruption and three NPCs that attack it. The healer must keep both himself and the friendly NPCs alive for 60 seconds to become fully purified and return to the Normal Realm.

The key to this test is to dispel Lingering Corruption within 10 seconds to prevent high Shadow damage on either the healer or one of the NPCs. The only other abilities are a void zone (to be avoided, as with all void zones), and unavoidable damage (Disheartening Laugh) that must simply be healed through.

As with the tank test, the test will end early if the healer is able to do extra damage on the Greater Corruption that results in it being killed before the 60 second timer runs out. This is extremely desirable for the same reasons as for tanks.

DPS Test Realm
DPS will always have to deal with a Manifestation of Corruption and multiple Essences of Corruption. These are the same adds present in the Normal Realm, but with different abilities. The Manifestations have a frontal cone attack that should simply be avoided, and the Essences have a line of fire attack and a frontal shield (so, the Essences should be attacked from behind).

Unlike tanks and healers (who loses all Corruption at the end of their test), DPS loses Corruption based on how many adds they defeat. Defeating the Manifestation removes 40 Corruption, and defeating Essences removes 15 Corruption per Essence. There will always be one Manifestation, while the number of Essences to defeat depends on the player's initial Corruption when entering the Test Realm.

The DPS player will return to the Normal Realm after either 60 seconds or defeating all adds. However, the DPS player must attempt to kill all adds within the time limit, as failure to do so will return the player to the Normal Realm with Corruption remaining, which is undesirable.

Achievement: None Shall Pass
Earning None Shall Pass requires that every Expel Corruption cast by an Essence of Corruption while in the Normal Realm be intercepted before reaching the Amalgram. This simply requires that each Essence of Corruption must have a player between it and the boss, and that they be killed with extreme urgency, as Blind Hatred will cause issues with interception.

The achievement can be cheesed by never sending any DPS into the Test Realm -- if no DPS ever goes in, no Essence of Corruption will ever spawn and thus, there will never be any Expel Corruption casts. This, however, will make the already-tight enrage timer even tighter (or indeed impossible), and should only be attempted by a well-geared raid purposefully attempting the encounter in Flexible difficulty.

Related Achievements

 * Vale of Eternal Sorrows
 * Mythic: Norushen
 * None Shall Pass
 * Siege of Orgrimmar Guild Run

Quotes

 * Upon entering
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 * Intro
 * say
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 * Speaking with Norushen
 * My eternal vigil has kept the corruption of pride at bay. To face this corruption yourself you must purify yourselves in the burning light.  This process will not go easily for you.


 * Are you ready?


 * Aggro
 * yell
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 * Look Within
 * yell
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 * Player killed
 * yell
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 * Wipe
 * yell


 * Outro
 * yell