With the second week of 5.4, the first wing of Siege of Orgrimmar has been opened up on the Raid Finder. You'll be able to get iLevel 528 loot here, which means that if you've got normal or SPA gear that's been fully upgraded, you'll need to do some upgrades for these to be... upgrades.
Despite the name of the raid, this entire wing takes place in Pandaria. One could, in fact, argue that the wing's final boss, the Sha of Pride, is actually the final boss of Pandaria.
Initial Trash:
You will begin in the Titan facilities underneath the Pools of Power, where Garrosh dumped the Heart of Y'shaarj and destroyed the Vale. There are a few packs of corrupted Jinyu to fight here, but you can actually avoid some of them. The most important thing to do is kill the big elemental trash, which are what maintain a constant flow of corrupted droplets that will attack you on their way to the boss' chamber. When all three big elementals are dead, you're free to fight the boss.
Immerseus:
Immerseus is pretty easy, especially if you have solid dps. You'll notice that the big guy actually has a pitiful amount of health (less than a single Spirit King from MSV.) You'll also notice that he has a purple energy bar. This bar is a better indicator of your progress.
While you fight him there will be a powerful tank-swap ability that deals massive shadow damage in a cone, so dps and healers should try not to stand near the tanks, nor should the tanks stand near each other. Taunt this at one stack, even if you still have the debuff, as he does not do it very often.
Immerseus wil spawn little Sha-corruption pools very frequently, so you'll need to keep on the move and try to deposit these in an orderly manner.
Finally, he will occasionally do something called Swirl, where he'll send a tidal wave of water in a big circle around the room. Moving in or out will allow you to dodge this.
When he gets to zero health, he will split, sending tons of those droplets from before to the outer edge of the room. DPS must kill the black, corrupted ones, while healers should heal the blue, friendly ones. Doing either will give you an appropriate buff to your damage or healing, respectively. The droplets will slowly make their way to the center and eventually converge, bringing the boss back.
However, for every droplet killed/healed, his power bar will go down a point, and his remaining health will likewise become smaller. Thus, this fight actually gets easier as it goes along, as you'll be able to get him to the split phase faster and faster.
Protectors of the Vale:
You will immediately then be able to fight the corrupted protectors, He Softfoot, Rook Stonetoe, and Sun Tenderheart.
The three bosses need to die within ten seconds of each other, and at 2/3 and 1/3 health, they will disappear and summon adds that need to be killed. I won't go into every add's abilities because frankly I can't remember all of them.
This is a fairly chaotic fight, but in practice it's not terrible. One tank will take He and another takes Rook.
I tanked Rook this time. The main thing to worry about for him is that he does a Fists-of-Fury-like ability that will stun you and damage you. For a tank, this is pretty mild damage, but you want to face him away from the raid to keep him from doing so to the dps and heals. Rook's adds will put void zones on the ground, so you'll have to move them around.
He Softfoot will Gouge his target, but if you turn away before he completes the attack, he will not be able to stun you, otherwise he'll fixate on a random raid member until you can taunt him back.
Sun Tenderheart... I actually have no idea what she does.
At some point, either He or Sun's adds will cast a spell that causes the entire area to do big damage, but there will be a safe zone that reduces that damage in the center.
DPS will need to focus all the adds down, and try to keep the damage even on all the bosses. When they are all around ten percent, I recommend grouping them up (while still facing Rook away) and using as many cleave-like abilities as you can to get them down evenly. Be sure to switch targets if one of them has more health.
Trash Before Norushen:
With the protectors forcibly retired, you can move on through the vale, toward the chamber where Norushen had been looking over the Heart of Y'shaarj. There will be many Sha adds and patrols, so pull carefully. Finally, there will be a mini-boss that looks like a major Sha. Face this away from the raid and be sure to dodge out of his massive, cast attack, because it will 1-shot you even with an active mitigation ability up.
Norushen/Amalgam of Corruption:
Norushen actually just makes you do this fight before he'll let you into the next chamber. On LFR, he basically just watches.
Everyone has a corruption bar that will fill up if they are hit by certain attacks. On LFR, Norushen will send random people (though it seems never tanks) into a "test realm" where they must either defeat certain adds or heal friendly NPCs. Doing so will reset your corruption to zero, allowing you to do full damage to the Amalgam.
The Amalgam of Corruption has a standard tank-swap debuff. Theoretically, the tanks will sometimes be sent in to cleanse their corruption, but in three attempts (with a victory at the third) we were never sent in.
When adds are killed in the test realms, they will appear in the real world. While the smaller adds can just be burned down, the non-active tank should pick up any Manifestations of Corruption, as these can do some nasty damage. Luckily, they will die pretty quickly, but unluckily, they often spawn at opposite ends of the room.
There also seem to be some purple orbs that you can jump on to dispel, at the cost of some serious damage and corruption. However, leaving them up is bad, as I believe they pulse damage.
Finally, there is a cutter beam that rotates around that does massive damage. Avoid that if you can.
Trash Before Sha of Pride:
When you enter the chamber, you find that Taran Zhu is not so dead after all. He and Lorewalker Cho reflect on how it was maybe not such a good idea to let outsiders into the Vale while Norushen tells you to kill the Sha of Pride.
The trash before the final Sha is pretty simple. It's just a big mess of little Sha-lings that fill the room. It's a big AoE zerg, though you should pace yourself to avoid getting overwhelmed, as I believe they explode when they die.
Sha of Pride:
This is one of those fights that seems painfully simple from a tank perspective, but is clearly not, because it took us four attempts.
During the fight, you'll have a Pride meter. Pride will go up as you get hit with various abilities, and it will only reset once, when you get him to 30% health.
The Sha of Pride has a grey resource bar that slowly fills over time. When it hits full, he will cast Swelling Pride, which causes everyone to gain a little pride and also do an effect based on your pride level.
At 0-24%, it does nothing special. At 25-49%, you'll spawn a little swirl of purple that people have to avoid before it explodes. At 50-74%, you'll spawn a voidzone near you that you must stand in to dispel or it will do damage to all your buddies (yours will be marked with a green arrow.) Honestly, I don't know what happens at 75-99%, but at 100% you'll be permanently mind-controlled, giving this a pretty nasty "soft" enrage timer.
Various raid members will get a buff called Will of the Titans. When these players stack together, they create an AoE buff called Power of the Titans, which will give everyone a lot oomph to get the Sha down before everyone gets too prideful.
However, due to Swelling Pride, you'll want to spread out periodically. DPS basically needs to get into a rhythm of stacking up and then spreading out, and then re-stacking quickly.
Periodically, the Sha will create Reflections of various raid members. These guys look like little Sha-lings, and any damage they take is dealt to the person of whom they are a reflection. So try to kill them gradually, so as not to kill your friends.
Likewise, the Sha will cast Imprison on three (in LFR) players. This will send those players to three of the four circular prisons. Little panels will light up orange around the prisons. A player needs to stand on the two lit panels per prison to free the person or they will die.
The Sha will also summon Manifestations of Corruption, but I don't know what these do, so...
At 30%, the Sha will become Unleashed, resetting everyone's Pride but also giving him a boost to damage. This is when you want to pull out all the stops and hit Hero/Bloodlust/Time Warp.
Aftermath:
With the Sha of Pride defeated, Jaina and Lor'themar run in, discovering Gorehowl where the Sha of Pride had been (odd then that Garrosh wields it in his fight...) They exchange some angry words and then prepare for the assault on Orgrimmar.
Later this week, I'll look at the wing from a DPS perspective. I expect the latter two bosses to be particularly different in those cases.
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