Well, this would usually be when I'd write about the new wing of the current raid and go over the trash pulls and bosses. However, since I was thrown into a group already in the middle of the last trash pack before Lei Shen, I guess my subject will be more focused.
That's probably all right, though, because this fight is absolutely nutbags. We finished it on our 5th attempt, which a helpful and more experienced mage said was actually quite good. It didn't help that my Recount was screwing things up tremendously.
Because there were so many things going on in this fight all at once, I'm sure some of my details will be wrong here. If you've read these raid reports, this is more of an embedded journalist-style than a real raid guide. If you want one of those, I highly recommend Icy Veins, which is an all-around great resource for bosses, gearing, talents, stat-weights, and rotations.
Anyway, though it was a little anti-climactic to show up right at Lei Shen, I have to commend Blizzard for doing a decent job building up this new villain. We know a lot about him, and I felt pretty motivated to fight him. Serving as the middle-boss of the expansion can make the stakes seem a little less heightened - we're no longer awed by this new land, and this isn't really the fight we've been building up to all along.
Though actually, in a way it is. In many ways, Lei Shen is the boss of Pandaria. If this were a more typical expansion, Lei Shen would be the final boss, but the upcoming Horde Revolution is going to throw a monkey-wrench into that.
Ok, so the fight:
You fight Lei Shen on a giant square-shaped platform, with the corners pointing in each of the cardinal directions. Lei Shen is basically a giant ball of electricity, and he uses this to power the four towers at each corner. Each tower has a different ability, some of which spawn adds and some of which do other things, but honestly I was concentrating too much on moving him around and not getting killed to really think much about those.
As he stands near the towers, they gain energy slowly. If one gains full power, it levels up, making its ability cause more damage. As a result, you're going to have to drag him from tower to tower. When he's not near a tower (look for the expanded parts of the corner as a guide to how close he needs to be) he'll deal raid-wide AoE. It's not huge, but it'll kill your raid if you don't get him to a tower.
Pick whichever tower whose abilities you do not want to deal with and let the energy get to 85-90%. After that, move him to the next tower, and don't let any other towers get more than what the first got.
During this phase, tanks will need to swap on Decapitate, and the one targeted by it should run away and pick up adds while the other taunts. The farther they are from Lei Shen when it goes off, the less damage they'll take.
When you get him to 67% or so, he will go to the center of the room, where he becomes invulnerable. You then want to spread out the raid to the various corners of the platform. You'll want to absorb bouncing bolts, or whatever they're called, which will create a swirly thing on the ground for you to see where they're coming. If you don't, these will generate an add, which will need to be tanked and killed.
Also during this phase, random people will get Overcharged, growing huge. This person should try to be in the far corner and everyone in their quarter of the platform should group up on them. When Overcharge goes off, a ring of lightning will shoot out from them, stunning anyone it hits, but leaving a little grace area for those who are stacked on the person. If you stand in the corner, this ring will expire before it gets to the other quadrants, so do that.
When the transition phase ends, Lei Shen will shatter the tower with the current highest energy, making that quadrant flooded with electricity. Don't go in there anymore.
The second phase is very similar to the first, but instead of Decapitate, there is an ability called Fusion Slash, which is a more standard tank-swap mechanic, but also has a knock back. So don't stand right on the edge (in LFR at least, it doesn't send you all that far, but you do want to give yourself a little space.) The other major thing is that one of his abilities spawns Ball Lightning, which are little adds that I do not think need to be tanked and should just be AoE'd down. Also, he will do Lightning Whip, which will leave some AoE on the ground... I think.
Anyway, at 33%, he'll do another transition phase, which works pretty much the same, I think, only you have one fewer quadrant to cover.
In the final phase, we either ignored the tower mechanic or it gets shut down, so we just dealt with the AoE instead, and just burned him. As far as I could tell, his abilities are the same as they are in phase two - so you still have adds to burn and you still need to tank-swap, but at this point it's really just a hard burn.
Now, look at that explanation. That is an already admittedly abbreviated version of the fight. I didn't even go into what the towers do (one or two of them spawn adds, I know that!) Anyway, this is a bit of a step up from the other fights on LFR, and probably the most complicated boss since LFR's inception (Madness of Deathwing had a lot of phases, but all but the last were pretty much the same one.)
People will learn this fight. I actually don't think the damage is even that much, but mechanically it's insane. Expect it to take a while for everyone to get the fight down. This is really an execution fight instead of a gear-check.
Later, I'll try to touch on the other Pinnacle of Storms bosses.
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