Jaina Proudmoore - Cheese/Intermission Only Tactic

The Intermission tactic, or "cheese" tactic involves deliberately failing to trigger Phase 2, skipping many difficult mechanics. It requires 10-15 highly geared players, and there are a few non-standard techniques that need to be used.

Before the fight

As with all fights:

• Check the dungeon journal
• Check tactic videos, such as on FatBoss
• Read up on tactics, such as at the Wowhead guide

This tactic involves not interrupting her at any point in Intermission. If you have an itchy trigger finger for casts, unbind your interrupt.

Timewarp, heroism or other similar effects must also not be cast in the usual way. If they are, she will iceblock to counter this, and effectively ruin the attempt.

She does not respond to the very specific timewarp like cast of the mallet of thunderous skins. Do not use this randomly or on pull. Use it as per the tactic below. Only one person will be assigned to this, so if it is not you, please do not cast it. As above, if you have are likely to accidentally cast it, unbind this.

A cleaving spec or aoe spec is required.

The horde have separate racials, so ensure these are on your toolbar. Of particular note is the troll racial: Berserking, which offers a mini personal timewarp - great for the pull.

Phase 1 | 100% - 60%

This is essentially a hard nuke through to 60%, avoiding some key mechanics that can affect the group badly.

There are 5 main mechanics for the entire raid to be aware of, in terms of priority:

• avalanche
• ring of ice
• Freezing mechanics: chilling touch stacks up 20 times then causes players to become frozen solid; it is caused by most damage and effects such as freezing blood, and gathering blizzard
• freezing blast
• bombard, causing searing pitch

Tanks should also:

• Ensure they swap or deal with chilling touch by either tank swapping or using searing pitch before 20 stacks
• Try to point freezing blast at large/overwhelming sections of searing pitch, or safely away from the raid

Healers should:

• Ensure they quickly dispell players who are affected by grasp of frost

Approach throughout phase 1:

• Players should stack in preferably 1 group (and never in a group of less than 5) throughout the entire fight; this mitigates the freezing blood effects
• Damage from Jaina, such as freezing blast, should be avoided to stop taking stacks of freezing blood
• Use searing pitch to drop stacks of chilling touch
• Use freezing blast and avalanche to reduce the amount of searing pitch on the deck
• Quickly free people frozen solid

Key mechanics to master:

• Do not get knocked off the deck by bombard
• Run out of the group if avalanche is cast on you, returning quickly after it is complete
• Move out of ring of ice quickly
• Use mallet of thunderous skins after the first avalanche

Note that there are two visually similar effects going on. Do not get them confused! A swirly circle denotes avalanche (move), and solid lined circle denotes your radius for the freezing blood effect (stay close to others).

In terms of the DPS race, a mallet of thunderous skins will be used approximately 30s after the pull, so you may want to save cooldowns for this. Berserking can also be aligned to allow for a near constant opening burn of haste buffed damage output.

With good DPS, this will be a quick phase and she may not even cast ring of ice.

Before she transitions:

• Try to drop stacks using searing pitch
• Ensure that as she transitions you are within range of 5 people

Intermission | Part 1

In this phase, you must find and kill adds, then locate Jaina.

At the start of the phase:

• You remain on the boat as RP occurs for around 20 seconds
• Jaina will channel cast howling winds
• Jaina will spam small glacial shards which immediately applies frozen solid to a player if they are hit
• Many large blistering tornados will spawn, knocking you back and applying stacks of freezing blood
• 3 adds (icebound images) at random positions will apply arctic armour to her making her immune to damage and interrupts

Note that the following still apply:

• freezing blood
• gathering blizzard (now guaranteed at 100%)
• frozen solid

To complete this phase:

• A player will be marked in the raid
• Move as a group following this person, tightly
• Avoid blistering tornados and glacial shards
• Quickly free anyone who is frozen solid
• Kill all adds
• Do not interrupt Jaina
• Form up in a group 10-15 yards from Jaina

Intermission | Part 2

In this phase, you use predictable mechanics to form a safe space and cleave Jaina while freeing players.

At the start of the phase:

• You be 10-15 yards from Jaina, who is spamming glacial shards

Note that the following still apply:

• freezing blood
• gathering blizzard (now guaranteed at 100%)
• frozen solid

To complete this phase:

• All players move in a very tight movement toward Jaina, stopping within melee range
• One or more members will instantly become frozen solid from glacial shards
• The remaining players then focus the players who are frozen solid, cleaving Jaina

Once again:

• Do not interrupt Jaina at any point

As people are frozen solid, they form a protective barrier and this protects the rest of the raid who can quickly free them. Jaina has low overall health and can be calmly cleaved down well before her cast of howling winds completes.

TL;DR

Phase 1:

• Don't use timewarp or similar; only use mallet of thunderous skins
• Stay stacked with at least 4 others
• Free frozen players
• Move out with avalanche
• DPS priority is frozen players, then Jaina, only cleaving adds

Intermission:

• Stay stacked with at least 4 others
• Don't interrupt
• Free frozen players
• Kill adds to stop Jaina's shield
• Charge Jaina as a group
• DPS priority is frozen players, then Jaina