Festergut and Rotface suck. They are hard bosses and require each and every raider to give 110%. Each player needs to maximize the performance of their role and minimize anything that hurts the overall team effort (especially avoidable damage!).
Here are some dopey little tricks you can use to bring your A game to each fight:
1. Use a slow dps weapon for Festergut
Considering how tight the enrage timer can get, dps from every member of your group matters, and as Paladins we have the luxury and privilege of contributing more than our fair share of tank dps to the pile.
While Festergut may hit hard, he only does during a small window of the fight. Assuming you have the defense to spare, don’t be afraid to use a slow dps weapon (the slower the better) to maximize your damage. The slower your weapon is, the more damage each 5-stack proc from Seal of Vengeance/Corruption will do.
2. When not tanking Festergut, stand behind him
You should be soft-capped for expertise anyway, so to maximize your damage done on this fight, stand behind the boss to avoid causing parries for yourself and the person currently tanking.
3. Make the best use of your Gastric Bloat buff
Let’s combine points one and two. When you hit 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat and get the boss pulled off you, jump behind the boss, cancel Righteous Fury, self-cast Hand of Salvation, pop wings, and go to town.
Doing that in the ten man last night, after my tank switch I ended up pushing little more than 8000 dps. You can see it after that second huge dip in my dps, I slid behind the boss and immediately exploded in damage.
4. Make sure to Judge when kiting the Big Ooze
Judging is an important part of keeping threat on the Big Ooze while kiting. If you’re just shield tossing every 30 seconds you’re going to find the healer aggro riding hard on your heels. So, you definitely need to judge when possible.
The easiest way to manage Judging without getting murdered by being too close to the Ooze is to run ahead of it (as you would normally) until you’re just out of range and the Judgement icon is red on your bar. The millisecond it gets color back, click it/hit the hotkey, unleash your Judge, and then keep moving.
You can also use the range on Judgement to safely gauge your distance from the Big Ooze.
5. Use Seal of Righteousness for Big Ooze kiting
Seal of Righteousness will give you the most threat bang for your buck. Since you won’t be able to get close enough to build a 5 stack, Seal of Vengeance/Corruption is useless. Moreover, Seal of Command is only really good for aoe situations.
Thus, the burden falls on the neglected Seal of Righteousness. Each time you judge with SoR you’ll do more threat than you would judging any other seal.
A Tip for Tip #4, Judgment doesn’t require facing. You can fire it at any target in 360 degrees around you.
Great point, you don’t need to stop and face the Ooze, you can just fire it on the fly as you kite.
Ohhhhhh. So I guess I should be judging Big Ooze. He always hit me though… I guess it is time to be a serious pro about judgement range, like you describe! I did notice myself losing it to healing aggro once or twice. Good to know that this should not happen & how to deal with it next time.
I macroed turning RF off & casting Hand of Salv so i could just smack a key when the MT took Festergut off me. I did lay into the boss from behind, but I didn’t pop wings because I was very worried about taking the boss back off him. I guess I can & should … it just worries me.
We weren’t having any trouble with the enrage on 10m (he died at 3:45 this week), but I’m sure the enrage will be a huge problem when my guild actually gets there on 25.
All good things to know.
I even returned Exorcism back to my bars for Rotface. If you’ve got a big enough range on the big ooze you can cast one off with heaps of time to spare. Helps the threat situation alot
#4 don’t wait until it becomes enabled – just spam the keys. This will help if you are having 500ms lag – the quicker you judge the quicker you can move again. You don’t want to be close to the big ooze at all.
I build threat on the Big Ooze using Judgment (with Seal of Righteousness) and brief ticks of Consecration. Avenger’s shield is only used in emergencies to daze the Big Ooze while I escape (such as when running through slime pools). On that note, don’t be afraid of running through the slime pools when you have to. Remember to cast Hand of Freedom on yourself when doing so. I also throw Hand of Reckoning on the Ooze as soon as it spawns for a high threat burst (damage on taunt rocks). Lastly, putting points into Pursuit of Justice makes the kiting much easier.
For Festergut: Make sure your highest DPS tank goes first.
This is not axiomatically a paladin. A feral druid is by far the best choice. My 245 geared alt pulled off a net 7400 dps on Festergut wearing full tank gear – IE, not a stunt – simply by going cat, and spamming mangle with 9 stacks of debuff. I might be able to pull off something close to that on Mel, in a full tier higher gear, if I went first, but it’d be iffy. Paladins and DKs are probably close in 2nd place. A DK’s naturally lower tank DPS would be offset by being able to swap in a dps enchanted weapon, go blood presence, and run a full dps rotation. Warriors should never go first, if you have an option. They simply don’t do as much DPS, especially during the “not tanking” phase.
For Rotface: Don’t forget tricks like Freedom for kiting through the slime flood, you can cleanse debuffs, and bosac if the slime spray happens to be pointing towards an unfortunate raid member kiting a small slime.
Hi awsome site dude, just wondering what tool you use to measure the raid dps (like your graphs) :) ?
Great post, thank you!
One additional tip… on Festergut, when transitioning from tank to pseudo-dps-with-9-stacks, you can also swap out your libram, weapon, and maybe even your shield to something more suitable to smashing face. (E.g., Libram of Valiance = +200 str!)
@Changer: I use World of Logs. Awesome site, you upload a combat log and it parses the whole thing out and makes graphs that you can drill down in to see damage done, healing, damage taken, etc. Awesome, awesome raid tool.
Thanks for your reply. I will defenatly check that one out.
One other thing that I haven’t seen mentioned here and that hopefully everyone is doing–judging justice on the ooze. Since no-one is hitting it, light and wisdom are both useless. However, the slowing effect from justice is fantastic!
Also, a lot of times near the end of the fight things are going down the toilet quickly and you’ll have two big oozes merge. When that happens there is a 50-50 chance that you’ll get each one’s aggro table, meaning that the newly formed big ooze may well head off into the raid if you aren’t quick with your hand of reckoning/shield throw.
Well, judging Justice doesn’t really slow a mob, it just prevents it from speeding up. I don’t think the Big Ooze actually ever speeds up (someone correct me if I’m wrong) so I don’t think there’s really any benefit to judging justice.
Not that there’s any benefit to any of the other judgement effects either.