Lord Jaraxxus

Hot on the heels of Monday's kill of the Heroic Beasts, we returned to ToGC 25 on Wednesday. We quickly mopped the beasts back up, after teaching the new group of ranged DPS the proper positioning for phase two. After the beasts went down, we moved onto Lord Jaraxxus. Lord Jaraxxus is a pushover on normal mode, however, it's a whole different story on heroic. While not as difficult as the beasts, the biggest thing that a raid must fight against Jaraxxus is their own perception that Jaraxxus is a wimp. Things that were of somewhat menial importance, such as legion flames, fel infernos, and incinerate flesh went from slight nuisances to raid destroyers.

We wiped a few times to people being careless with legion flames and not switching onto the portals quick enough. I wound up letting Angry Dammer surface a little bit. Not much, but enough to get their attention. With the raid's focus gathered, we began identifying problems and setting up a general strat for how we'd handle the fight. We focused on minimizing tank movement, to ensure a consistent portal spawn point. We then assigned our three raid healers to specific points of the star to ensure that the legion flame victims wouldn't run out of healer range. Then we made sure the DPS were pre staged to DPS down portals and volcanoes as quick as possible. We began to make progress, and it culminated on our tenth attempt, as we began to put all the pieces together.

The attempt was running very cleanly, we never got more than one Mistress or 3 Infernals before the spawn point was closed. Nether Power was getting dispelled briskly, and people were quick with Fel Infernos and Legion Flames. But with Jaraxxus at 23%, and the 3rd nether portal having just been closed, the proverbial shit hit the fan. The healer for the add tank got hit by a fel lightning, then immediately got lit up by the mistress' pile driver. At the same time, Jaraxxus buffed nether power, pulling the attention of the priests, who comprised two of the three raid healers. On top of this, the interrupters hadn't pushed back into range of Jaraxxus, allowing Jaraxxus to get a nether enhanced Fel Fireball off, whacking off about 85% of my health, and locking my healer onto me. All of this lead to the add tank going down, cutting the mistress free, and leaving no one to cover the infernals that would soon be sprouting into our raid.

As I taunted the mistress onto me, I made the call. Full burn on Jaraxxus. All DPS snapped onto Jaraxxus, and the cleave and AoE damage quickly reduced the Mistress to a distant memory. The volcano spawned, and began spewing infernals out as Jaraxxus was pushed deeper and deeper into execute range. Our boomkin shifted to bear, popped barkskin, and did his best to keep the infernals from running amok, as the healers went into overdrive to try and keep everyone up. Tick by tick, Jaraxxus' health inched towards our victory, and with cries of glee echoing through vent, he crumpled to the ground.

Those cries of happiness were replaced by gasps of horror. The last thing Jaraxxus did before his death was cast incinerate flesh on our shadow priest. The entire raid had completely come to a standstill once Jaraxxus was done, and that included our healers. The poor shadow priest erupts into a burning inferno, scorching the 19 members of the raid that managed to outlast the eredar lord. Oh, the humanity! When the napalm deathstorm boiled over, 12 of the 19 raiders got waxed. The 7 who survived had all popped cooldowns, ranging from my Divine Shield, to Iceblock, to Anti-Magic Shell. Not sure how the warlock managed to survive it... shady...

No sexy tanking loot has dropped in any of our ToGC 25 kills yet, and with Icecrown looming, our focus will be shifting elsewhere, but I'm still glad to prove that unlike previous tiers, we're capable of making an impact on the 25 man level.