Here is how you beat Kanaxai.
1. First of all you must design your build to beat it. If you don't come into the mission having all the necessary compenents to beat it, you won't. I say this knowing that a number of PUGs have gotten all the way to the boss and then spent 3/4 hours trying to kill the boss and failing. So, with the aim of helping those groups, don't try to beat the boss unless you have a group built to beat it. And of course as is true for any difficult mission you need all 12 people to communicate and stay for the whole time.
2. Ok here was our build:
1 W/mo, Wammo(Mending, Healing Hands,etc.)
1 Axe warrior, distracting blow, tanking skills
2 Nukers (My build, I brought fireball,immolate,rodgort's,meteor shower,arcane echo,meteor,elemental attunement(elite),drain enchantment)
1 Rt/E(Wards,dmg)
1 Trapper
1 Mesmer(Enchantment Removal/Interrupts)
1 SS necro w/ spinal shivers
4 monks(3 heal party spammers, 1 aegis/prot)
3. Much has already been said about how you beat the rooms leading up to the boss, so I won't spend too much time discussing that. The scorpion wire gave us the most trouble, but with good communication(i.e. ts) it shouldn't be much trouble.
Ok, on the boss there are a number of things that the party needs to deal with:
1. Constant -8 degen. To counteract this you need 2/3 monks spamming heal party.
2. The boss' axe attacks. Both of the tanks need to corner Xanaxai against the walls of the pit. If the boss breaks out he'll kill the casters in short order.Along these lines, the trappers and nukers need not to use aoe effects that cause him to break agro(e.g firestorm).
3. The boss' healing/protection enchants. The boss uses two enchantments, one which heals him for 1000hp after 10 seconds and another which causes 1/2 spells/attacks to fail. Thus it absolutely critical that there be a variety of people in the party who can strip enchantments and interrupt. Of course, stripping enchantments will be more important. Our mesmer stripped many enchants and warriors did distracting blow.
4. Every time you knockdown the boss, monsters spawn. Another point at which PUGs will break down. You have to not knockdown the boss until he has stopped recieving damage. If you do knockdown outside of these points more shadows will spawn and you will all die. For the first knockdown, 6-10 shadow mesmers spawn in a tidy circle around the boss. The best way to deal with this is have the trapper trap in a circle around the boss where the shadows will spawn and have the nukers use non-kd spells to kill the shadows. Make sure all the casters are spread out so the mesmers don't hit everyone with chaos storms. Basically you want to keep removing enchants/interrupts on the boss while healing and keeping a constant dmg on the boss so he doesn't heal himself. He has a high innate health regen (+8 or so I think) so you need to keep some damage dealers on the boss (warriors and mesmer for us). Ok, after the first knockdown the boss falls below the first threshold. As soon as he reaches the next threshold(i.e. he has stopped taking damage) you knockdown again. This time instead of mesmers spawning, 10 shadow assassins spawn. To counteract this everyone needs to group up in a circle near the boss. The trapper should trap all around the group and when the shadows spawn the Ritualist needs to drop wards. With a good trapper and non-kd nukes the shadows will fall quickly. For the next threshold, 10 onis spawn. Again best way to do counteract this is to all group up next to the boss. Then, for the last knockdown(only takes 4 knockdowns not 10) oni, mesmers, and assassin shadows spawn. Grouping up works fine again, just be sure to get out of chaos storms when they fall.
As it so happened our SS necro err 7ed out so that when we reached the boss we were forced to rely on our mesmer to strip the enchantments. But since he brought 5 or 6 enchant removals (and was a great mesmer), it wasn't too hard to keep it up. Healers should just make sure to keep him healed and/or they should make sure not to let their energy drop too far to not be able to strip. More or less, if one of the enchantments goes off and heals, you have to start over.
Alternatives to the build:
1. Order of Apos would probably work well to remove enchantments although a mesmer is still probably a better bet.
2. The ritualist and/or 2nd nuker could be replaced I imagine. A warder is pretty important though. And two eles bringing three to four meteor showers going against the mobs makes getting to the boss much easier.
Hope this helps. Have fun farming.
Sean Heartstone
