Siege of Orgrimmar: Feral DPS – Garrosh Hellscream
Garrosh Hellscream – Siege of Orgrimmar
Welcome to the 5th part of my Feral PoV guide through Siege of Orgrimmar focusing specifically on Garrosh Hellscream.
To see my guide on:
- Imerseus, The Fallen Protectors, Norushen & Sha of Pride (1-4) click here
- Galakras, Iron Juggernaut, Kor’kron Dark Shaman & General Nazgrim (5-8) click here
- Malkorok, Spoils of Pandaria & Thok the Bloodthirsty (9-11) click here
- Siegecrafter Blackfuse and Paragons of the Klaxxi (12 & 13) click here.
The following guide is from the point of view of Feral Druid in normal mode SoO 10man. I won’t be going into detail on specific strategies here as that’s what dedicated guides are for.
If no glyph/talent is mentioned, assume it is the generic build (i.e. Cat Form and Savage Roar for glyphs) and talents of your choice. Also, many spec choices are opinion based so if you have a preference (e.g. Feline Swiftness over Wild Charge) do not interpret my recommendation as the end-all of choices! Feedback, advice etc would be greatly appreciated, so don’t hesitate to leave a constructive reply.
Garrosh Hellscream
Just a few notes.
This is the most complex fight in the instance, requiring efficient execution and a lot of personal responsibility. I’ve decided to dedicate a separate guide to this encounter to do it justice, and because I have had the pleasure of wiping to it enough to get a very good idea of the strengths Feral can bring to this fight.
Symbiosis:
There’s a few options you may want to explore based on your raid’s compositions and strengths:
- Priest for a general defensive cooldown, and to give a shadow priest tranquility
- Paladin for a cooldown that allows you to still attack or channel Tranquility without having to move for mechanics
- Rogue to shift combo points or Warlock to shift bleeds.
- Warrior for an extra Stampeding Roar
I like to Symbiosis our Warlock, as it allows me to transfer bleeds either to Farseer Wolf Rider or Desecrated Weapon. Keep in mind that the weapon is not a high priority, but at times I find I have a full duration Rip running and I’m about to overwrite it with a stronger one, so I use a macro to quickly target a desecrated weapon, cast soul swap and then switch back to Garrosh.
Spec:
Tier 1: Displacer Beast > Wild Charge > Feline Swiftness. I find Displacer Beast is by far the best for all types of movement in this fight. Wild Charge would also come in very useful to switching back to Garrosh or to an MC’d raid member, but because of min/max range issues for the latter, I prefer DB.
Tier 2: Cenarion Ward > Renewal > Ysera’s Gift.
Again very preference based. Damage on this fight is very predictable, and the big blunders you make are likely to result in instant death rather than giving you a chance to hit Renewal. CW has a very short cooldown, can be used in anticipation and at integral stages. It allows me, for example, to stand in for every Whirling Corruption with a defensive cooldown, and I can use on every Empowered Whirling Corruption. The on demand healing is really good especially if you’re doing this fight with only 2 healers.
Tier 3: Typhoon, no ifs or buts.
Tier 5: Disorienting Roar > Mighty Bash
Tier 6: Comes down to the usual debate. Do you need a raid cooldown (probably during Empowered Whirling Corruption)? Take Heart of the Wild. Or do you just need to keep yourself alive and do your best dps? Take Dream of Cenarius.
Glyphs: Some good options are:
After trialling Glyph of Survival Instincts for a lot of attempts, I eventually just stuck with Glyph of Shred for QoL. Alone, Glyph of Survival Instincts just doesn’t seem to sync up well with damage bursts. For e.g. I was only able to use it on one Whirling Corruption. If you were to use this glyph with Assurance of Consequence I imagine its value would be greatly increased.
For Stampeding Roar, I used it each Realm of Y’Shaarj Intermission. Since everyone is grouped up here there’s not a whole lot of need for the glyph, unless you have another druid who is taking the first roar, and you take the second, where it may be more beneficial for you to use this glyph.
Trinkets: I don’t usually make gear recommendations, but I thought it might be relevant on this fight. Since there’s a lot of AoE, at first I used Sigil of Rampage, but the longer the fight went on, the more close it was to Haromm’s Talisman in damage %. In the end, I settled on Assurance of Consequence, as the reductions on your defensive and offensive cooldowns syncs up very well with the phases. It allowed me to use Barkskin on 2/3 Whirling Corruption (using Survival Instincts on the first), enabling me to DPS through all of them.
Recommendation: Assurance of Consequence.
Goal:
Phase 1: This is pretty simple. Just AoE the adds down while staying on Garrosh in the middle of the room, and switching to Farseer Wolf Riders when they come out. It helps a lot if your off tank can taunt these so they stack up on the side with the Iron Star, but this isn’t always possible. Remember to interrupt only their Ancestral Chain Heal (not Chain Lightning).
Now we select the engineer on the side closest to the throne to kill, so the star on the side of the entrance is the one that will activate.
As I’ve tried to represent in my picture with my awesome paintshop skillz, each Iron Star will damage anything on one side of the room. To avoid it you’ll simply want to be standing a little away from the middle as it goes past.
The Iron Star Impact will do a massive amount of damage to all adds (and will 1 shot most players), so raid damage on them isn’t very important (except for the Wolf Riders), so while it’s nice to inflate your damage and see some big numbers, your most important goal will be to ensure the adds are in the path of the star by pushing them into it with Typhoon.
Intermission:
At 10% you’ll be transported into the Realm of Y’shaarj. As this is happening, you can continue to DPS Garrosh while you are carried up, but he will become immune to damage once you have gone through, so squeeze in one last ferocious bite but don’t bother trying to refresh your Rip or Rake here.
Stampeding Roar as soon as you are transported. Each temple has more or less the same goal: kill the adds and try to soak the golden globes on the ground that will give you Consumed Courage, Consumed Faith or Consumed Hope and reduce your damage taken. This is quite important as you’ll take a lot of damage once you face Garrosh again in this realm. If you weren’t able to get the buff you should try to cycle your defensive cooldowns and Cenarion Ward to help your healers out.
Phase 2: In this phase Garrosh will do a new move called Whirling Corruption. It doesn’t do an extreme amount of damage, however you need to discuss with your healers whether it’s ok to stay in or not. Regardless, you should never stay in without a personal cooldown such as Barkskin, Survival Instincts or a Symbiosis-type cooldown, and use any Predatory Swiftness procs on Healing Touch if you’re not in the practice of doing this already. If you chose Cenarion Ward you can use it for each one. As I mentioned before, the reduced cooldowns from Assurance of Consequence helps here immensely. If you are finding it difficult to stay alive for this then you may want to just stack with ranged and healers for this move.
Garrosh will periodically cast Touch of Y’Shaarj that will Mind Control 2 raid members in 10man. Just about any CC works for these and Disorientating Roar is amazing for aoe interrupt. Single target interrupt if some person is a little removed from the group. Do not use bleeds on (normal) MC’d targets. Several times I’ve killed a raid member with 100k+ rake ticks; they do not need much damage to end MC so either only single target Mangle or just Swipe the group is more than enough. We have the process down so well that basically I Disorientating Roar, our shaman puts down stun totem and before that has worn off the targets are back to normal.
We get about 2-3 of these before we start getting Empowered Whirling Corruption, which you need to pay close attention to because this is definitely a GTFO and spread out move. Killing your own add is pretty easy, and taunt any doubles or extras off tanks or healers with a macro like this:
- #showtooltip
/cast [form: 1] growl; !bear form
The hardest part of this phase is getting double ups with the Touch of Y’Shaarj and Minion of Y’Shaarj in close succession. Practice getting minions down quickly and efficiently. Displacer Beast is amazing for getting to and from MC’d players.
Once you’ve gotten Garrosh to 10% again, he’ll start his final phase. This is a burn phase while dealing with Empowered mechanics, such as Empowered Touch of Y’Shaarj, Empowered Whirling Corruption and Empowered Desecrate. Probably the best DPS opening you’ll have is as soon as this phase starts, however I found it almost impossible to keep my Rip ticking after this without ignoring vital mechanics. However, the faster this phase goes by far the easier it will be.
On our progression attempts we found it best to only kill the adds on the first Empowered Whirling Corruption of this phase, and for any consecutive ones, to just let a tank hold them. On more efficient kills however we probably only got one of these.
MC’d players will now be empowered with more health and immune to normal CC effects, so they will need to be interrupted directly. At this part you may try to use your Glyph of Fae Silence though you should only need this if something goes wrong, because there should be at least 2 people on each MC to spread interrupts. Communicate with your raid for this if you’re alone on one MC, or if you’re the MC and are not being interrupted, or for who is taking what interrupt. You can use bleeds on empowered MC, because they have more health and are much more vital to DPS down, but still be careful.
There is a lot happening on this phase and it’s easy to get overwhelmed, but it’s important to remember you’ve dealt with all these mechanics separately during the fight, the trick is working out your positioning, raid cooldowns and priorities.
Thanks for reading my Garrosh Feral PoV guide! If you found this helpful, please spread it around!
If you have any feedback, advice, ideas or spotted any glaring errors, please leave a constructive comment!
PreyDrive 
Really great guide here.
I found some of your choices interesting, especially the Glyph of Fae Silence and Cenarion Ward. I always have trouble with CW because its on the GCD. I run with SotF and DoC those two plus high levels of end game gear makes it difficult to find a spare GCD to use it without energy capping, that and finding a keybind for it.
Which glyphs are you actually running? Cat Form and Savage Roar are basically mandatory and Glyph of Stampeding Roar is so useful for the Realm of Y’shaarj.
Great guide anyway. Good job.
~Elamari
I never actually found a use for Fae Silence though I listed it as an option, especially if your groups interrupts are a little shaky.
I have the same problems with CW, especially because it has a longer GCD than melee abilities so it feels like it takes a million years, and most other fights I find I simply don’t use it because of the risk of energy capping. However, I really like it on Garrosh since you always know where there’s going to be heavy damage and you can use it beforehand, and I try to offload excess energy when I’m about to use it.
I generally run Cat Form, Savage Roar and Shred. Especially in Realm of Y’shaarj Garrosh turns a lot and you’re also running around him constantly, so shred is just nice QoL. I don’t have a problem with Stamp Roar reaching everyone as I usually use it as soon as we load when everyone is grouped up, then our resto druid takes the second. I played around with Glyph of Survival Instincts, but the CD still just didn’t line up to what I wanted it to.