Patch 5.2 PTR: Breaking Jin'rokh the Breaker

I headed back to the patch 5.2 PTR recently with Lore from TankSpot, and members of his guild Months Behind to test the first boss of the Throne of Thunder, Jin'rokh the Breaker. We had an entertaining time, at first, as can often be the case on the PTR. The developers had ported all the testers into the wrong part of the raid, so we set off exploring, and found a geyser that transported us all up to Lei Shen, who, while he happily continued his RP, refused to engage us in combat. We couldn't get to Jin'rokh at first, but a swift disband and regroup secured us entry into his room.

Jin'rokh is the first boss of the new raid, and as such has relatively straightforward mechanics, certainly compared to Lei Shen. Again, I was on my goblin restoration shaman, so view the fight from a healer's perspective.

Jin'rokh's fight proceeds in repeating, short phases. He engages and beats up your tank for a short while, putting out very healable damage. Jin'rokh will place a stacking debuff on the tank called Static Wound, which increases damage taken from melee strikes more and more as it builds. This is apparently designed to force a tank swap.

Conductive Water

Conductive Water is the key to the Jin'rokh fight. Once you've been beating him up for a short while, he will pick up the active tank and throw them at one of the four Mogu statues in the four corners of his room, per the right-hand image.

As the tooltip notes, this throw puts a heavy hit on the active tank and those near him, as well as stunning the tank for nine seconds. At this point, clearly, another tank should take over! We tried using a warrior in defensive stance to take over from our paladin tank, but the damage Jin'rokh was putting out made our warrior very soft-shelled, and the nine seconds didn't seem long enough for the debuff to fall off the main tank. This might work better with a presence-swapping DK, or a feral druid turning into a bear.

Wherever the tank is thrown, a small pool of Conductive Water will form. While it looks like a Defile, it's actually good for you, most of the time, as it offers a buff called Fluidity to players standing in it. The dungeon journal tooltip, interestingly, doesn't match the tooltip of the actual fluidity buff, which states that the 40% healing buff is only to healing received, not healing done, so depending on which is correct, it may not be as beneficial for healers to stand in the water as for DPS, although a healing received buff isn't exactly problematic for anyone.

The Conductive Water will gradually fill the room, leaving very little space in the middle, but seeming to leave four grates at the very edges of the room clear. On the fourth tank throw, the room will be close to filled with water. This is effectively a soft enrage.

Electrified Waters

Why not stand in this water the whole fight? There has to be a catch. The downside to the Conductive Water is that, as the name suggests, it conducts electricity. What does Jin'rokh use as his main attacks? You guessed it, electricity. Various abilities will channel damage through the Conductive Water, but, fortunately, most of them can be avoided. The bad news is that the Fluidity buff also causes players to take 80% increased damage from all those abilities.

The aforementioned tank debuff, Static Wound, is one of the things that travels through Conductive Water, so it's a good idea to have your tank avoid standing in the water if possible. The stacking damage from the debuff is applied to all players in the water, with the 80% increased damage making that increasingly problematic as the fight continues.

Electrified Waters is another of Jin'rokh's abilities that uses the Conductive Water against the raid. This attack puts out 35,000 damage onto all players in the Conductive Water every second, plus the 80% increase, and removes the beneficial element of the Fluidity buff that was the reason you were in the water in the first place. Jin'rokh also casts a Lightning Storm, dealing moderate damage to all players over a 15-second period. This moderate damage immediately becomes very immoderate indeed if players are in the Conductive Water.

Focused Lightning

The final ability which electrifies the Conductive Water is Focused Lightning, an orb of lightning that fixates on one of your raid team, apparently preferring ranged DPS and healers over melee. The orb deals light damage to the player it's fixating on, and will detonate on reaching the player, dealing moderate to heavy damage, and, importantly, spawning a Lightning Fissure.

The damage dealt by the orb while it travels is localized, only hurting players within five yards of the orb itself, and the detonation is exactly the same. All this damage is, however, subject to the +80% Fluidity influence, so getting the orb away from the water is a high priority. Detonating the orb outside the water spawns a Lightning Fissure, as mentioned, but this must not be too close to another Lightning Fissure, or you will have an Implosion. And yes, that nature damage is subject to the Fluidity multiplier -- this is a raid-wiper.

If the orb should detonate in the water, it will spawn a Lightning Fissure that is immediately removed by Conduction. This deals moderate damage to all players inside the Conductive Water, again subject to the +80% modifier. However, if the Focused Lightning detonates inside Electrified Water, by touching a player, it will cause a Violent Detonation. This will cause some pretty serious problems for your raid. It deals around 750,000 damage to all players within a five-yard radius, and, naturally, this damage is increased by 80% if the players are in Electrified Waters, and will be transmitted through them.

Tactics

How do you deal with all this? I'm going to try to break it down into simple steps.

1. When the tank is thrown, players should travel to the point where he landed. They should try to avoid being there before he lands, thanks to the splash damage. That is where the Conductive Water will spawn. A tank-swap is also required at this point, and the new tank should ensure that they are not standing in Conductive Water, if possible. DPS and healers should stand on the edge of the growing Conductive Water, as they will need to move out of it in a hurry.
2. When a Focused Lightning orb appears, either kite it or detonate it. This is up to your healers, really, and will require some customization according to your raid setup. If your healers are happy to heal through the moderate damage caused by detonating the orb in the water, do that, as the Fissure will disappear. Less overall damage is taken if the orb can be kited and detonated in free space, but as the room fills with water the space will become less and less, and new conductive water will cause Conduction on the fissure if it's still there.
3. When Jin'rokh casts Electrified Waters, move out of the water. This is why it's a good idea to be near the edge of the water. It won't kill you immediately, but it removes the water's benefit, while maintaining the +80% nature damage taken debuff. Moving out of Electrified Water is particularly important for players with a Focused Lightning fixating on them, if it detonates in Electrified Water it will wipe your raid.
4. When Jin'rokh casts Lightning Storm, get to water-free space and stack. The stacking is for the benefit of your healers, as they may need a little help to heal through the damage. This will electrify all the water. He won't cast Focused Lightning orbs while he's casting Lightning Storm, but one will appear shortly thereafter.

And that's about it for the basic tactics. It's not currently possible to predict where the thrown tank will land, so there is an element of RNG to contend with, as the room fills with water in quarters. The water, once electrified, will remain electrified, so traveling through old water patches is best avoided. The contrast is fairly clearly shown below.

After the lightning storm, depending on how much water-free space remains, the healers will have a chance to recharge briefly, do take that opportunity to do things like cast Hymn of Hope, use a Potion of Focus or fire off some Lightning Bolts.

Try your best not to fill the four grates around the edge of the room with Lightning Fissures, if you haven't managed to kill the boss before four pools are electrified, these will be your last safe haven, unless they're killing you with lightning! The damage from the Electrified Water is not an instant raid wipe, and is healable, but not for long. If your DPS is such that you have the boss very low by the time the fourth pool is electrified, that would be an excellent time for healing cooldowns.

Overall, it's a fun fight, around the level of difficulty you would expect from the first boss of a new instance!

For other bosses, check out Horridon, Iron Qon, and Lei Shen!

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