Lord Jaraxxus, Hardmode (25)

This fight against Lord Jaraxxus is one of the easier fights in Tournament of the Grand Crusader. There are, of course, a few changes designed to make the fight more difficult. Those are:

1. Mistress of Pain will now cast Mistress's Kiss.
2. The Portals and Volcanoes that spawn adds must be DPS'd down before they will stop spawning adds.
3. Everything hits/ticks harder.
   

Setup
Before the start of the fight, you want to arrange your healers and ranged DPS in a circle around the outside of the middle. Don't stand on the points of the stars; they're misleading and too far removed from the raid on the opposite side of the circle. Stand a little away from the inner ring, inside the triangles. Separate your healers first, then your ranged DPS; ranged should stand on healers, no more than two to a healer. The boss should be tanked in the middle, and after the pull it should look something like this:


Obviously, you can utilize the triangles that work the best for you, this is just an example. As you do this more and more, you'll notice healers and DPS getting territorial over their triangles. This is perfectly natural. After all, the Northeast triangle is mine, and my DPS is Francesco the mage and occasionally a Warlock. It's my spot.

Before you pull make sure your ranged directly South and your melee stand away from the boss so they don't get smacked in the face and one-shot.

Execution
Once the boss is pulled, a lot of the fight depends on your DPS and their ability to change targets quickly to the portal/volcano and DPS it down so there are not too many adds. It's especially important for the portals, as more than one Mistress of Pain can lock up your healers very quickly, especially if you're running with a bunch of Paladins. The Kiss can be counteracted, true; just target Jaraxxus or a Mistress and start casting Starfire as a Druid, or a Shadow spell for a Priest or a Fire spell for a Shaman (remember, it has to have a cast time!). Paladins, only having Holy spells, are SoL as soon as Kiss lands on them. Their choices are to cast something, take the interrupt and the damage but be locked out for less time, or to sit out the fifteen seconds of the debuff, which is not recommended.

More Mistresses equal more Kisses equal more locked out healers, as even Priests, Shamans and Druids can become accidentally locked out if the Kiss lands on them while they're in the middle of casting something. If your DPS is having trouble getting the portals down while only spawning one Mistress, consider going to five healers and having an extra DPS; we did this for our first kills and, despite the loss of one healer, it was easier without the Mistress running rampant.

Believe me, any girl whose signature kink is the 360 Pain Spike isn't someone you want to be locking lips with, extra arms or no.

Getting the volcanoes down quickly is also important, as too many Infernals can start wrecking your raid. A couple ticks of their channeled AoE followed by a chain lightning from Jaraxxus and you could be looking at a lot of dead people. Get away from them, even if you have to abandon your spot. Your spot will be there when the infernal goes away, I promise. Unless someone dumped fire in it, and then maybe you should think of getting a new spot, because your spot currently sucks.

Your tank will round them up, the DPS will knock them down (no interrupts for their inferno nor banishes to keep them in line; you have to just work with them), and things will go back to business as usual. Healing Incinerates is of paramount importance because if people blow up, so does the raid, even more so than in normal. Likely, if not everyone dies, a lot of people will be dead at the end. If people are locked out from Kiss, heal the Incinerated people harder. Blow your cooldowns because the tank won't or shouldn't need them. Just get them healed ASAP.

Make sure you run out when you're affected by Legion Flame, so you're not dropping fire on your group or the melee or wherever you are with fire. However, please realize: you don't have to run all the way to the wall! Get to the outside of the group, then start this rotation: pause. drop a patch of fire. move. pause. drop a patch of fire. move. repeat from the beginning until the debuff is gone. It's not a constant drop, and running all the way to the outside just leaves a perforated trail of fire through the raid and you start ranging healers, as opposed to leaving a nice, consolidated patch outside the ranged that's easy to avoid and not nearly so hazardous to your health. And, for goodness's sake, don't run out for Incinerate. Recognize the difference! Red Fire means STOP, Green Fire means GO.

That's it! Adjust to AoE's and fire, don't get locked up by the Kiss if you can help it, and heal! Then he should die and you'll be ready to face the Faction Champions.


Yes there are a lot of bones. This was our first kill. Subsequent kills have been far more successful and bone-less, unless you count having to get a DK to respec for corpse explosion just so we could clear out the boss's annoying, non-despawning corpses.