For part one of this two part series, click here.

Gnomekind has yet to summon
anything smaller than themselves

Welcome back to the Trials. If you were as disappointed as I was when I found out that there was only one boss encounter for the first week, you’ll be pleased to know that you get… one more boss. Yes, just one extra boss encounter after the Beasts of Northrend. The good news is that it’s just one boss this time, but it requires a lot more attention.

Boss Encounter 2: Lord Jaraxxus

General Designations

Two Tanks are needed for this fight, one for Jaraxxus and one for the adds that will spawn later. The main tank will kite Jaraxxus clockwise or counter-clockwise around the ring. You’ll get the reason later. The off-tank gets to deal with the Mistresses of Pain and Felflame Infernals.

Healers will need to watch for players who get hit with the Incinerate Flesh debuff. The player who gets it has 12 seconds to receive 30,000 or 60,000 points of healing, depending on the difficulty, to remove the debuff. If they don’t get healed, they explode into a Burning Inferno, dealing raid-wide fire damage every second for five seconds.

DPS should always kill the adds that show up, whether they are Mistresses of Pain or Felflame Infernals.

Movement

The main tank will kite Jaraxxus around to reduce the damage by multiple Legion Flames left left by the melee DPS or the tank. Any other players who take the Legion Flame should move in the direction opposite of the raid’s, similar to the Grobbulus fight in Naxxramas.

All of the raid should stay away from the Nether Portals and Infernal Volcanoes. The Mistress will target random players with her Spinning Pain Spike (AKA Piledriver). The Felflame Infernals also target random players with their charge, but throw in a channeled AoE that deals Fire damage to anyone within 15 yards after the charge before returning to the off-tank.

Ranged classes should maintain a 10-yard distance from each other to reduce the number of jumps made by Fel Lightning.

Extras

Jaraxxus will buff himself with 5 or 10 stacks of Nether Power, increasing his magic damage by 20% for each application. Use any dispels to take Nether Power off Jaraxxus before someone drops dead from a powered-up fireball or chain lightning.

And with Jaraxxus down, sit back, fume at the lack of bosses for your second week, then wait for the third week for something much more challenging.

Ten minibosses makes for
a chaotic encounter

Boss Encounter 3: Faction Champions

Before you start the encounter, get everyone to your faction’s arena side. The Champions will spawn on the opposing side once you start the encounter. They’re a patient lot and will let you make the first move but have no problem with laying the beatdown on anyone who happens to be hanging around their side of the arena.

Player rules apply to everything here, right down to the skills used by the Champions. Think like the arena, where your control skills last for a much shorter duration than on regular monsters, you could be the target if you’re the weakest and DPS are more likely to be among the first to die.

10-man encounters deal with 6 random champions composed of 2 healers and 4 DPS. 25-man encounters get 3 healers with 7 DPS.

This is not a tank-and-spank. There’s no threat table for the Champions. They can be taunted for a few seconds, but they will switch targets and will sometimes focus all their efforts into killing one person even if they happen to be several yards away. You can be hit with multiple skills in less than a second.

This is not a clump-and-AoE. The Champions take 75% less damage from all AoE spells and regardless of the AoE’s strength, it WILL break any control spells cast on the Champions.

Crowd Control

You will spend a lot of your time casting every control spell in your book. Polymorph, Fear, Entangling Roots, Freezing Traps and more will be the only way you can keep enough of your raid alive to focus their fire on one target.

Expect a lot of dispels to be cast against your control spells. Refresh and spam your control, but diminishing returns will cut down the frequency of your casts.

Designate someone to AoE Fear the Champions when they clump. Clumped Champions are usually chasing one person within the raid.

Dispelling any buffs placed on the Champions is just as key as turning them into pigs. Have a Discipline Priest ready with Mass Dispel with all other dispel-capable classes as support.

One or two interrupt-capable classes should be focused on the healers that the raid isn’t attacking.

Movement

The Champions don’t do much damage individually, but some of them are fans of AoE effects such as the Warrior’s Whirlwind. Spread out to reduce that kind of damage.

Move only when you’re being targeted by several Champions. You will have to use your protective cooldowns to survive the onslaught, but that’s enough time for the Champions to get the picture and move on to harass some other poor sod.