Icing the Frost Queen

I’m still in shock we pulled this off. I mean, not completely, I did know it was going to happen. Mathematics demanded a kill, and we gladly complied. Still, it’s a pretty big deal for the guild that all our hard work paid off. I could not be more proud of our raiders, this was a kill we all needed to keep the faith.

We started the week with a rough patch, to say the least. Tuesday was… brutal… and we’ll leave it at that. So Wednesday we had something of a chip on our shoulders that demanded satisfaction. We buckled down and righted all the wrongs that held us back on Tuesday and still managed to get to Sindragosa with the usual 2 hours left in raid. Our game faces on, we got to work.

The first attempt was ok. We had a flawless first air phase, then a disastrous second. The second attempt we did immaculately until the third air phase, then the attempt collapsed. Shaking the rust off, as we say.

Subsequent attempts were so-so, generally requiring battle rezzes to be used in air phases, which was killing me. At least at this point we were hitting phase 3.

Finally after another attempt where the same mage (who I don’t often bring, but was dragging along as an Unchained Magic human shield) died for the umpteenth time to a Frost Bomb, I removed him from raid–something I should had done attempts ago–and brought in a newly recruited shadow priest.

Around this point we also imposed some pretty severe discipline onto vent. Basically, the rule became in phase 3: no talking unless it’s a healer announcement, a tank swap, or something life threatening. Everyone else just focus and lock it down. I think this was a huge key to our success.

The next attempt we got the fight to 7%. It was going fantastically, but Ana was cut off from heals momentarily and died, and then I went to pick it up but was eventually rocking way too much buffet stacks. Still, everyone was filled with hope. There was not a single air phase death that attempt. There was even a great raid awareness moment where a block got dropped the opposite way from where we were taking them, and everyone got out of the way, and then we kept the correct direction going afterwards. All in all, the mojo seemed to be back.

So we lined up again, and after a quick stupid wipe, we did what was destined to be the money shot. Air phases were nearly perfect, we had one death because someone was DC’d, but we kept going. Phase 3 starts and I get to work. Ana and I swap like clockwork, blocks go down with expert precision, healers are calling out roles and switches through vent without interruption. Finally we hit the single digits and it’s just gogogo time.

The enrage timer was ticking down, leaving us about a minute at that point. Everyone just pushed it as hard at they could and as I watched Sindy’s health slowly tick away from 3%, to numbers I never dreamed could lie beyond that. The “holy bleep” moment of “this is going to die” hit me in a euphoric wave, and then the Frost Queen crashed over dead and coughed up her purples.

I scored the 277 token from her for a hefty, hefty amount. Worth it nonetheless. Everyone was elated, and for some reason we rode that high over to heroic Putricide just to throw in some faux-attempts and get some idea of the mechanics of the fight.

Obviously we didn’t get very far. This is indeed our next dragon to slay, so to speak. I look forward to our coming weeks together, Putricide.

Oh, and as a humorous sidenote: remember how I said I was going to start rolling for Abom Duty? Well, prior to the first pull Ana, Nordic, and I rolled off for the right of riding the Abom. Nordic always wins, and I thought I finally had him when he rolled an 11. I then rolled a 6. Ok, well, Ana could be our last hope, right? Wrong. She also rolled a 6!

Curse you Nordicslayer.

Nonetheless, with five minutes left in raid we swapped it over to normal mode and quickly did the achievement in preparation for our eventual drakes scramble.

Great raid night overall, and a fantastic end to an ignominiously beginning week.

TIL: The Putricide Abom is a lot of fun

Why wasn’t I told?!

10man last night and I was tanking with Morvain, the Death Knight with the cat problem, and when we got to Putricide there was a moment of pause. Usually Nordic just takes the Abom, or him and Ana roll off for it in the 25man. And yet last night, on a whim, I decided to take it for a spin.

I knew the long and short of it: mash 1 when standing on a puddle, 2 to slow (though we were doing the achievement, so no slows), and apply sunders with 3. I spent the fight running around, gulping puddles, and applying sunders as needed. And I had a blast. It was a nice change of pace over just ducking around with the good Professor in tow.

I need to start ninjaing that job in the 25man.

The rest of the night we wrapped up some outstanding achieves that various people needed, like a Heroic Blood Princes kill for Gulliveig, and Portal Jockey for myself.

We then moved on to Sindragosa to finally put away the heroic kill. It took us three shots but we finally got the old girl down (in 10man at least). One of my main goals last night was to use the spinning strategy and to prove to myself that it can be done, and that it doesn’t hamper the raid. It seemed overall to be a huge help, if only to keep blocks uniform, so I’ll remain firmly in the “pro-spinning” column.

We had issues with the enrage timer because we’d lose a dps here or there in phase 3 to what appeared to be self-inflicted wounds. Namely, Chilled to the Bone being stacked too high. I’m sympathetic to the idea that if the healers can get you, you’re golden, but crunch times happen, Unchained can be unkind, and healing might be stretched. And then suddenly having so many stacks of that debuff is going to kill you.

In any case, good practice for Wednesday I hope.

With the heroic Sindy kill, a bunch of us got our drakes. (This is the part where Ana comments “MONTHS BEHIND!”) It’s a nice achieve to have, but I don’t particular care for a boney dragon. I’ll probably still to my Rusted Proto for now, I like the cut of his gib far more. Is that weird?

Been waiting a long time for all you can eat

Another step closer to getting my ICC drake, as we wrapped two of the harder achievements in the 10man meta last night. One was the terrifying All You Can Eat, the other the endurance-testing Been Waiting a Long Time for This. With these two under my belt I need only Portal Jockey and a heroic Sindragosa kill, and I’m golden. Or… boned… in this case.

And yes, I know Ana’s team has had their drakes for a few weeks now. But Team Alpha is all about catch up! It’s how we roll.

Anyway, I digress. Let’s talk about how we did each achievement.

All You Can Eat

The first attempt we did for this achievement was using a zerg strategy that Anafielle had touted in the past. I’m always very wary of zergs, and this was no exception. Having one healer get consistently Unchained was not fun, and having two mainspec healers go to offspec roles that they don’t typically raid with didn’t help either. We quickly wiped.

So we started doing it the non-cheese way. For the next two hours (and I know it was two hours because we had trash respawn), we kept breezing through phases 1 and 2 and then crashing hard in phase 3. People would stack a debuff too high and die, or blocks would go in the wrong place (since we were trying to keep them close to the head)… in short, it was a series of clusterfarks.

A lot of us were tired, some were hungover, and basically the general raid wasn’t operating at peak efficiency. I was questioning whether this was going to happen.

After the trash respawned, I had a brain storm: positioning blocks and getting them in the ideal spot seem to be our biggest issue, so why not change how we drop blocks? We’ll drop that first block in that ideal spot, and then every time we need to put down a new block, the tank rotates Sindragosa slightly so that a new ideal block spot opens up to the left of the existing block. Then there’s a close, pristine block to hide behind for the tank swap, and dps can instantly identify which block to nuke down.

Here’s a terrible diagram (nothing to scale) to demonstrate my crazy talk:

Sindragosa starts with her face at position A. First block goes down just to the right of her face where that white dot is. Next time someone gets frost beaconed, the current tank rotates Sindragosa to a point halfway between A and B, and the block goes to the next white dot. Old block is burnt down, raid has a close block to hide behind, and dps still have access to Sindragosa’s stomach.

Just crazy enough to work, I thought. And anything else was preferable to the same old that we were doing and wiping with for so long.

So we tried this new strat, and got the achievement on the first try with it.

I’m so going to try this strategy with our 25 heroic run on Wed.

Anyway, some other helpful tips–and apparently I’m the last one to know this–but if you’re LOS’d at the 2 second mark on your Buffet debuff, it’ll fall off. So you can start running at the 1 second mark, which gives you a whole ‘nother two seconds to beat feet and relieve the other tank so they can drop their debuff. Moreover, the RaidAchievement addon is amazing for this. Will instantly tell you if someone screws it up so you don’t kill Sindragosa and miss the achievement because some dope wasn’t watching their debuffs.

Been Waiting a Long Time for This

We went into this achievement with an equal mix of tiredness (it was 30 minutes before raid end), confusion, and ignorance about the mechanics of the achievement. After talking with Ana about the rules (you need to get >30 stacks and hold that til transition) it became obviously that no one did their homework. Thankfully, Ana is an achievements expert.

So anyway, first attempt we did the first phase like normal, stacking diseases and just holding off transition, and by the time the disease got to about 20 it started murdering ghouls instantly. The disease fell off and we had to wipe.

Again, didn’t do our homework! We consulted Ana and she explained with great patience that we should RTFA and actually do the strategy: basically, cleanse the first disease far away so it doesn’t pass to the group or the mobs, then dispel the second disease onto the mobs, then after that dispel the rest of the diseases far away so no one gets it.

You skip the first disease so you can gather up the first wave of ghouls, giving you time to build up a solid base of fodder for the plague. I know this now because on our next attempt the first person to get the plague forgot and ran to the mobs. Diseased passed onto the mobs, and we just shrugged and kept going. But the plague hit >20 stacks, it was quickly murdering mobs left and right. We had the LK at 72%, and held him there, and I frequently had to run back to him and get the disease passed either to a freshly spawned ghoul or to a teammate to keep it alive.

Utter chaos.

Finally, we had it up to 32, and pushed LK hard. We finally pushed him over with the disease on someone at 31 stacks, it got cleansed, passed to ghoul that somehow survived, I pulled them aside on the edge as we worked through the transitions. Each ghoul dropped dead in short order, then I self-cleansed the plague off of me, removing it from the fight.

We then went back to autopilot through LK10, eventually downing the fight with the only moment of difficulty being when Gandy the Rogue accidentally overshot the ledge while his rocket boots we active and plummeted to his death. We almost wiped because people started laughing, but Frank whipped everyone back into line.

Towards the end, I was eyeing the enrage timer nervously. We were down one rocket man dps and had about 3 minutes left at the 30% mark. My fears abated, we hit 10% with 1:30 to go. …I so did not want to have to play plague-juggling again.

This achievement is definitely easier than the Sindragosa one, but the tradeoff is it’s a much bigger pain.

And now that both of those are done, time to start worrying about Sindragosa 10H for next week…

A night of frost and glory

Interestingly enough, I haven’t done a raid recap post in a long while. Nothing much to report lately–we’ve been plugging along on Heroic Sindragosa, having our first real night on her last night. Our showing wasn’t very impressive, we’re having some trouble with the whole buffet of what the fight demands: block positioning, Unchained Magic people not blowing others up, etc. Survival issues.

So, I’m thinking next week we’ll do what we did when we were learning normal Sindragosa: max survivability. DPS wears extra frost resist gear, add a seventh healer, then the goal is to live til the enrage timer. Once we make it that far we’ll dial back survivability until we can find the sweet spot that gets us in under the clock.

This is a strong contrast to last night with our second kill of Heroic LDW where we were mastering the hardest parts of the fight, people were failing at the easiest, most fundamental part of the fight: the ghosts. A ghost would pop up next to someone–melee, ranged, heals, whatever–and they wouldn’t notice til it exploded, or notice late and not be able to get away. We did about four attempts of differing degrees of success, each splashed with the delightful stench of ghost ‘splosions, and each time I got a little closer to completely Franking out. (Yes, it’s a verb now.)

Finally, before the last attempt I snapped and let Frank take over. I told everyone that we were not going to spend two hours on the fight. I don’t care if we wipe, but it was not going to be to ghosts. Everyone was on notice, one more ghost-induced wipe and we would switching it to normal and move on. I felt like crap after declaring that, cause I don’t want to be that raid leader, the Troxxed-style douchebag that issues ultimatums and leads by making people feel bad.

Frank was vindicated when we then went on to perfectly kill H LDW, with no deaths by ghosts. It was… shocking. I don’t know if I should feel good that we pulled it off, or worse that it could so easily be done. I guess we’ll see next week!

Anyway, back to last night. As I tweeted yesterday we were starting the night with our Shadowmourne guy, Nordicslayer, having 48 shards. He’s been collecting them slowly, but surely, since May 11th and we’ve had the extra drop chance of heroic modes since the beginning of June. His poor luck aside, the raid was pumped for him to finally finish the damn axe that night. Or to listen to him cry when he only got one shard from the five bosses we were doing. Either way.

Much to my surprise, a shard dropped off of heroic Festergut, first boss of the night. And then the last one he needed dropped off of heroic Rotface. Finally, some luck!

A parade of us then ran downstairs to watch him turn in the quest and the shards and finally collect his damn axe. Nevertheless, this was months in the making–congratulations Nordicslayer!

I tried to get a nice screenshot of him for the guild site, but he must have moved at the last second, only leaving behind the swirling soul that apparently used to inhabit Antigen’s mortal shell.

We reached Sindragosa at around 7:45 server time, giving us a good 2 hours or so to work on the fight. But you know the rest.

To give us a break, I switched it to normal and we dropped her easily and then moved on to the Lich King to collect the Sealed Chest. The Lich King was another clean kill, excellent for the second wave of dpsers getting dropped off the side of the map. Oops. Personally, I was most excited that that was the first time in a long time I didn’t have to go into a rambling 10 minute explanation of the fight for some new person. I’m sure everyone else was pretty stoked about that too.

Nordic looted the Sealed Chest, and per our agreement he kept one of the vanity items for himself and gave the other four up for the guild. He chose the mount, I took three items to hold to give as prizes in a series of off-night guild events/games, and then per my constant nagging requests over the last four months, took the tabard for myself.

It’s weird. Achieving Shadowmourne feels like we’re turning the page on one of the last chapters in ICC. I know we still have Heroic Sindragosa to kill, then Putricide–and then by some miracle a choir of angels is going to come down and push Arthas off the side of the Frozen Throne for us–but it feels like we’re running out of time in there. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m starting to get some major ennui about ICC. Not bad ennui (if there’s such a thing), just… 9 months is a long time to do an instance, you know? It’s time to move on to bigger Internet dragons.

But then again, we have a much more literal Internet dragon to work on right now.

Sidenote on the latest beta build: I’m not going to do too much prodding with the changes, because we know things will be majorly changing again soon. I will however check out how hard ShoR is hitting for tonight. I’m hoping to have a post titled “IT’S OVER 9000″ tomorrow.

Her end was inevitable

It seems like a lot of guilds out there have stopped progressing really this summer, which makes me proud of my plucky little guild that we’ve continued plodding along in ICC 25 even in the middle of the summer doldrums. We racked up a latest progression kill last night, on heroic Lady Deathwhisper 25. Obviously the 30% buff is a big help, and helped us cheese a few aspects of the fight (I’m specifically thinking of making ghost explosions 30% less deadly than they could be) but ultimately I don’t think that diminishes our accomplishment. Just reduced how much wall-head-banging was required.

In any case, we started working on this mouthy lichess last week and put about 2 hours in before I switched it back to normal so we wouldn’t fall behind for the week. Our best attempt we got her to around 30%, which is not to shabby.

Then this week our very first attempt and we got her to around 23% before the raid wiped in a ghost-ignited explosion. I was filled with hope, but then on the second go we had some serious issues with ghosts and wiped at around 40%, which me start to Frank out a bit, like Bruce Banner after getting a paper cut. I reiterated my philosophy of “ghost=death” and insisted that melee get away as soon as they come up to prevent a ghost that was perhaps zeroing in on a tank from turning them into a puddle.

Third attempt was much, much better on the ghosts. It still ended ingloriously, but seeds were obviously planted. There was little to no tunnel-visioning and I heard very few tell-tale ‘splosions from the raid.

Fourth attempt we got it down to 7% before we were completely overwhelmed by adds and the raid was finished off. I was officially in full-blown “we can do this” mode.

Fifth attempt I set up a dedicated adds team of three ranged and two melee, rather than just assigning people on the fly based on their position in Omen. Adds as a result went much smoother, and ghosts were awesome, but it got really sticky at the end. As her health plummeted we had a really bad ghost explosion in ranged that took out a couple of healers and a few ranged. We steadily worked our way down to the 3% and I was holding my breath just doing whatever I could via Hands, Raid Wall, or screaming “GHOSTS” to keep the raid going. A cold sweat pouring down my face, we finally knocked her over dead.

We didn’t even have to do the first kill via bubbles post-enrage. I think that’s a first for progression.

In any case, another few seconds and we surely would have wiped, we were severely overwhelmed. So you can imagine how proud I was of the raid for holding it together in those crucial last seconds.

Next week I’m sure will see a much, much cleaner kill.

On a different tangent, I was also really happy with the two newest recruits we brought into raid last night. One was a DK who did great dps, and the other was the equally awesome Antigen of Haz Mace, Will Raid (I am collecting paladin bloggers it seems) who had a great first showing in his first 25man with us. I love when recruits click.

Great night over all, and the best thing is we’re ahead of schedule this week. I think we can turn that around into a full clear of ICC25 tonight.

Ten of one, half-score of the other

I had forgotten how much fun 10man is. And no, that isn’t sarcasm, last night’s ICC-10 was the most fun I’ve had in WoW in a while.

25s is all business for me (I can’t help it, I’m too focused on the success of the raid to really ever enjoy myself), but 10s is where I let down my hair. So to speak.

Last night was the first time in a long time I’d managed to get “Team Alpha” together for an ICC run. We initially were going to go and bang out some more hardmodes, and hopefully catch up to the much-more progressed Bravo Team. Unfortunately, the OT didn’t show, so Cendra got on his 232-geared Druid tank and we still went through the first three hardmodes. We opted to skip Saurfang’s hardmode, because the general consensus was both Cen’s Druid and the healers weren’t equipped to handle a frenzied Saurfang mashing up some bear paste.

As we were headed towards Princes to maybe get the guild first heroic kill for that (our 10s are woefully unprogressed, as you can see) the OT logged on. We did a quick roster shuffle with Gulliveig dropping out, since he was having router issues. Cendra got back on his hunter, and Nordic came in to OT.

We then proceeded to one-shot heroic Princes.

It was a little hairy, with Princes being one of those fights that is markedly harder on 10man than 25. The room stays the same size, and you have to cover orbs that spawn throughout the width and breadth of it with fewer people. Rather than having one pet class watching each corner of the room, I had one on each half. A little too close for comfort!

Having two melee for the attempt made it a lot easier. Rather than a pack of floor-huggers-to-be scattering like cockroaches when the kitchen light is turned on, I had to worry about two Rogues breaking in opposite directions every time Valanar went to do an empowered vortex. Indeed, tanking Valanar is a pretty boring affair. I mostly spent the encounter just watching other people and agonizing over perceived eventual demises that would be visited upon them. And judging when possible to get the Heart of the Crusader debuff up.

We then plowed through heroic BQL, Festergut, and Rotface until we reached Putricide. The goal was to put away an actually meaningful hardmode kill, and match Bravo Team in the tennis game we call competitive progression. It was about an hour before end time so we’d have to move fast.

It’s a pretty hectic fight, to say the least. But a lot of fun. There’s so much crap going on you’ll find your head spinning.

We did about six attempts, getting it to 27% our last try. The biggest thing we need to work on execution (obviously) considering this fight is like an execution ballet.

What usually did this in was diseases being passed to the wrong person, or hitting one person in melee, then another immediately, throwing off the order. We got six solid attempts in, making progress each time. Despite having to call it, we’re all pretty pumped for future attempts and will probably end up downing the sucker on Sunday.

And then the 264 Unidentifiable Organ will be mine. Oh yes.

ICC25HM: Rotface

So, what’s different?

• Vile Gas–so keep people at ranged
• Raid damage is higher, especially the ooze rockets
• Big Ooze can one-shot your tank
• Ooze spills reduce movement speed a lot more

For positioning the raid in this fight, I have two ranged park in front of each of the three skull/barrel spots in the cardinal points of the room, as well as in front of the door. When spills come down they can just side step out of them. Melee stacks on one of Rotface’s legs, then when a Big Ooze ruptures and the rockets hit the air, they immediately shift to the other leg and hopefully avoid any splash damage.

Now, let’s practice maintanking this fight. Stand up from your computer. Face whatever door you used to enter the room you’re in. Now stand there. Now, hold that position. This’ll get tough, but I recommend practicing for about two hours a day for the next week to perfect the technique.

While MTing, since your job is cake, you have the spare time to make your healer’s lives easier. Use a mouseover Cleanse macro and take it upon yourself to immediately Cleanse people as they get diseased. It’ll save the healers some GCDs, and it’s not like you have anything better to do other than maintain a high threat ceiling.

While, it’s stupid easy to maintank this fight, thankfully, offtanking is another matter. The poor OT will be circling the room, doing their best to zip through ooze spills with minimum contact and minimal slowdown. Having Hand of Freedom is a must, as you do not want the Big Ooze catching up with you while dashing through a spill. Same rules for Ooze Kiting apply in heroic mode. Ultimately, don’t let it catch you, and try to keep a wide berth of the ranged and melee to prevent a Vile Gas from splashing onto you.

If you do get pinched by the Gas, have your bubble/cancel macro ready to go to quickly knock it off. You do not want the Ooze catching you, or your kiting career will be cut to an abrupt end. Likewise, if an emergency occurs and for some reason you need to change directions while kiting, pop a cooldown to pass by the Big Ooze.

As a whole, this probably one of the easiest hardmodes. The first time we did it, we almost downed it after losing most of the raid around the 30% mark. Just keep the raid from standing in an ooze rocket, or from screwing up delivery of their little oozes and you’re golden. Autopilot to victory!

The lewt!

• Bile-Encrusted Medallion (BiS neck!)
• Blightborne Warplate

Not a fluke

Like I said on Thursday, I was concerned the make-up raid scheduled on Sunday wasn’t going to happen. Thankfully it did, everyone showed along with some standbys and on-time we assembled inside the instance.

The menu that night was Heroic Dreamwalker, then normal Sindragosa and Lich King. Assuming we made it to Arthas, this would be the first time we’ve faced him since our first kill a few weeks ago. We’ve been bogged down progressing through hardmodes, and with our two raids a week schedule, didn’t really have the time to get to him on the second night. However, after our amazing showing on Wednesday, he was definitely within reach.

Anyway, Heroic Dreamwalker first. If you’ll recall on Wednesday (last callback to an earlier post for now, I swear!) we had some wipes. In hindsight this was clearly because one of our best portal jockeys was having connection issues and DCing, based on the success we had when he could actually stay on and heal. Last night, we were going through the paces, as I frantically tried to manage adds on my side and keep healers from getting eaten (I think a zombie got through).

I honestly thought we were going to wipe that attempt, we hit the 75% mark–”Press on heroes!”–and then a blazing skeleton got three ticks of Lay Waste off. Miraculously, no one died. Probably thanks to the warbling solo provided by Garrosh. In any case, we pressed on, and before I knew it the dragon stood up and blew the Scourge all to bits.

At the moment we succeeded I felt like I was drowning in a rotting sea of zombie parts, all hope lost. It was kind of amazing seeing the dragon suddenly lift up and end the encounter. Like Gandalf cresting the ridge, but less dramatic, and I don’t remember any white light.

Dorkiest simile ever; I apologize. Either way, it was pretty sweet to one shot the fight after the initial trouble we had Wedne–DAMMIT.

After Dreamwalker came Sindragosa and this was going to be the first time we did her since AVR was broken. As I’ve always maintained, I loved AVR for its ability to put marks on the ground, which removed a lot of the thinking from Frost Beacon placement. … Ok–ALL the thinking. Nonetheless, I read off the beacon placements and everyone wrote it down on a piece of paper in front of them (how… antique) and we got to work.

We didn’t have much of any issue with the beacons and easily dropped her. There was a short hiccup at the end where I disconnected but thankfully I’m not that critical. It was at like 3% and everyone autopiloted the encounter to its conclusion.

Two one shots and we were only like 45 minutes into raid time. That gave us a solid (almost) three hours to go tussle with the Lich King. And, dontcha know it, we one shot him too. Scored achievements for a swath of folks that couldn’t make our first kill, along with the 2H sword and the caster staff. Of course, by the time that was done we still had about two and a half hours left in the raid.

There was some discussion what to do with the rest of the night and we eventually we decided to go to Ulduar and bang out some hardmodes and hopefully grab some more shards for Ildara’s Val’anyr (heh, now that’s a work in progress to say the least).

We ended up getting Orbituary, additional Ignis and XT achieves for those who needed them, and then spent about 30 minutes working on the Iron Council. A lot of people left between ICC and Uld and unfortunately we didn’t have enough folks to push that last 20 seconds of the fight. On the bright side, we did get a shard for Val’anyr, so that expedition wasn’t a complete wash.

One day we’ll finish that stupid mace. I’d like to do it now, but it’s impossible with our two-night schedule to dedicate any time to a raid two tiers back, so the pieces that Ildara has now will continue to rot except for occasional half-hearted attempt to augment their numbers. Even if the mace still BiS, from the looks of it.

At least we’ll be making a Shadowmourne pretty soon! That’s a bright spot on my otherwise abyssal Legendary record.

ICC25HM: Festergut, like Brutallus dual-wielding Algalons

I must say, I am disappointed I didn’t face this boss back when the buff wasn’t at the absurd heights it is now. There something I’ve always found appealing about being reduced to a fine paste between the ulcerated knuckles of an infantile flesh giant.

To start, I apologize for skipping the three fights between this and my first ICC25HM strategy post–ie, LDW, Lootship, and Saurfang–but of those Lootship is a joke and a one sentence post seems like a waste of the tubes it could have potentially been printed on, and the other two I’ve yet to do. 10s hardmode, sure; not 25s. And I’m surely not going to write how to do a fight I’ve yet to do myself. What do I look like, a paid WoW writer?

Another sidenote: I can’t take credit for the subtitle to this post. I first read that phrase in this thread on the tanking forums way back in February and it remains one of the more hilarious descriptions of the fight I have ever seen.

So, what’s different?

• Festergut hits like a Mack Truck
• Raid-wide damage is much more intense
• Putricide tosses Malleable Goo at players

First, let’s talking about this fight from the tank’s perspective. It hurts.

Sorry, I can be more descriptive. Thanks to this buff that Festergut will be stacking up to three in a rotation, by the time he gets to the third stack he’s going to be mashing you into hamburger. Lets look at a log snippet.

[20:53:19.080] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:19.954] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge
[20:53:20.932] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:21.844] Festergut hits Rhidach 36036 (B: 2028)
[20:53:22.840] Festergut hits Rhidach 29806 (A: 2818, B: 2028)
[20:53:23.725] Festergut hits Rhidach Dodge
[20:53:24.743] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:25.649] Festergut hits Rhidach Parry
[20:53:27.131] Festergut hits Rhidach 31705 (B: 2028)

You might look at that and say, “oh 36k, that’s not that bad.” Check the times between attacks–he hits every 9/10s of a second.

Even with phase 3 being so ominous, the hardest part of the fight for your healers will probably be two stacks, when the damage is still rampant for the raid and the tank is being hit 60% harder. Try to avoid panicking and popping a cooldown early, you’ll need it very shortly.

When the third inhale happens and Festergut is rocking a 90% buff, you’ll probably need to rotate cooldowns. I’m a huge fan of using everything at my disposal: raidwall, an armor pot, bubblewall, my 4pc bonus, and external cooldowns. Don’t blow everything at once, obviously, but pay attention to the damage as it’s coming in and choose which card to play wisely.

Still, chug that Indestructible Pot ASAP. A healer will probably external cooldown you right off the bat (or, at least, mine do–they barely trust me to tie my shoes in the morning). Follow that up with a bubblewall, then close with popping a trink or the 20% absorb of your raid wall. With the buff at 25%, this should be pretty smooth sailing.

With all the excitement of this fight, it’s easy to forget the rest of the raid has a role to play as well. (Ah, the joys of tank checks.)

To start, position Festergut on the far left wall, facing the skeleton face, with the melee stacked behind him and the ranged in an arc behind that. Ranged needs to be conscious of Vile Gas, just like in normal. Don’t get that in melee!

As a whole, the raid will be most concerned with two things: beating the enrage timer, and dodging Malleable Goo. Failing at the latter will likely make the former impossible, because every time the Goo splashes on a character their casting and attack speeds are slowed 250% for 20 seconds. That is crippling in a dps check.

For melee, they should stack on the boss’ leg. Start on the left leg, diagonally left of it so the space in between Festergut’s legs are absolutely clear. Then when Goo is cast, strafe over to the right leg and stand right of that. Every Goo cast should be met with a strafe.

When spores go up, the way we handled them were ranged would stack on one spore in the back. Melee would get another one. And whichever spore was extra in ranged or melee would dash to the tank and stack on them. This way everyone got their inoculation and we didn’t have to worry about extra damage from someone getting two spores. The only downside is one Malleable Goo can hit all your ranged or melee when they are at their most vulnerable, so coordination and attention is so very key to make sure people more out of any incoming Goos.

The entire fight is much like normal: a dps check coupled with a tank check. Dodge Goos, don’t get crushed into kibble, and you’ll be golden. Victory in this fight is directly, inversely proportional to how many people get hit by Malleable Goo. If you’re missing the enrage timer, that is the likely culprit.

The lewt!

• Belt of Broken Bones

A full quarter more badass

I love each time Garrosh manages to get his Warsong out a little louder. Last week we killed 5 of the twelve heroic fights, with multiple wipes on Festergut and Blood Queen. This week we one shot both of those, easily. Part of that was of course knowing the intricacies of the fight a little better after the kill, but another huge help was surely another 5% more awesome.

Not to mention all the delicious HPs! I wants them all.

Er, but moving on… To add to our plate, the schedule called for adding Heroic Princes and Dreamwalker. I was initially (hell, still am) concerned about the raid schedule this week ever since Tuesday was a no-go. We have a make up night scheduled for Sunday, but even so I was very worried my all-important goal of Heroic BQL or bust every week was out of reach if we didn’t get to her last night. Mostly because Sunday has the possibility of being iffy.

So after two wipes on heroic Blood Princes, Frank started whispering into my ear dark tidings and it being an hour away from raid end I was beginning to debate in officer chat if it made sense to kill Princes on normal to guarantee BQL being down this week. The other officers (rightly) told me to simmer down and we did another go.

And killed them that next attempt. Egg on ma face!

As we running up the ramp and clearing to BQL I noticed my ShoR icon was faded out. My shield was also unequipped. I immediately panicked, thinking I sold it or destroyed it by accident, and searched my bags for them. I looked up at the top of my screen and my durability number was at 44%.

Not able to find the shield, and in near full-blown panic, I opened my character sheet and saw the shield still equipped, but at 0/120 durability. All my gear was at 44% but my shield was completely broken. Ye gods.

I don’t know why I announce these things in vent. I’m just giving Anafielle fodder for her eventual coup.

Anyway, we briskly one-shot Heroic BQL, which was pretty impressive. Though, after my moment in the sun, any plain-jane kill just feels so… pedestrian. Loot dropped and it was basically a carbon copy of last week. Anafielle got the heroic token, another Dying Light went to another mage, and everyone else groaned. At one heroic token a week right now, these things are hot commodities.

With about thirty minutes left in raid, the lot of us dodged over to Dreamwalker to start plugging away on her heroic mode. We had a few abortive attempts with one of our best portal-jumping healers disconnecting, so didn’t get very far unfortunately. 10 server rolled around and the sun set on our second, and best, night in 25 heroic modes yet. Very exciting stuff, 6/12 in one night.

Now let’s hope Sunday happens!