Our preview series for Siege of Orgrimmar concludes with Sha of Pride. Icy Veins has a good discussion of strategy and a rundown of mechanics, which as usual I won't cover here. What's more interesting to me is they've already suggested a means to deal with most of the mechanics in the fight: by stacking up on the boss.
Now, I've been a raid leader a long time. I've seen lots of strats that suggest stacking up and having only particular raid members leave the stack when necessary. Perhaps it has to do with my 25-man background, but in my experience such strategies are very all-or-nothing, and one raid member's failure to execute often results in a catastrophic wipe. Thus, while the stack-up strategy makes sense, I feel it worthwhile to consider, as a thought exercise, what a strategy for this fight would be like without a big group stack-up in place.
Such a strategy would probably split the raid into 2-4 groups and give dedicated positions to cover the prisons (see note at the end of this post). This would make movement out of splash damage mechanics a lot easier to do. The big challenge would be getting everyone with Power of the Titans to stack up. I suggest keeping melee on one side of the boss (or perhaps, both sides) and designating the back of the boss as the stack point for those with the buff.
Still, it bears remembering that a spread-out strategy like this is inherently less efficient at keeping the group buffered and topped off. The question is whether this additional challenge is mitigated by the less-stringent need for any one person to respond to mechanics correctly at a given time. And it may also be that one person will accumulate a lot of Pride on their own and thus generate too much additional raid damage (and Pride) to matter. The one good thing about a stack-up strategy is that when you're hosed, at least it's a quick and efficient death.
Concerning the stack-up strategy IV describes, one of the things that troubles me Self-Reflection. The 2-yard radius on the initial damage is something that IV doesn't mention with respect to people moving out of the stack. Is this something that people will know is cast on them and will be able to react to fast enough to escape the stack? One hopes.
Another issue I've read on PTR forums is a disparity in dispelling, that 10-man groups could dispel without gaining any Pride (just use the healer who is currently Pride-immune), while 25-man groups don't have that luxury. Something to keep in mind with healing assignments.
On prisons: on 10-man, it seems that 2 prisons are cast (not 1 as said in IV's guide; see this 10-man vid around 8:55). The positions of the prisons seem to be Norushen's near left and far right. Since it may be there aren't enough ranged and healers to split like that, melee will likely have to help with freeing people from prisons. Note that on 25-man, 3 people are required to free a person (see this 25-man vid, but beware some sudden Chinese shouting).
This looks to be an encounter that will challenge both execution and DPS given the 1.2b health pool that was said to be in place on PTR. That may come down for live, but even with post-ToT gear, that's like killing Horridon with only the modest 15% buff in place. Looks to be a doozy.
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