Stomping Putricide’s kids
Sorry for the non-post on Wednesday. I really didn’t have the time to get a post together, and moreover lacked anything interesting to blog on. So in the end I did you all a favor sparing you some dopey half-arsed meditation on what’s a better technique for jumping during Keristrasza. I prefer the occasional twirl, myself, but that’s neither here nor there.
So anyway, Tuesday’s raid was fairly standard: blew through the first four bosses in an hour and then went into the Plagueworks to down Festergut and Rotface. Unfortunately, ever since Saurfang the raid was afflicted by some pretty nasty server lag. On our last attempt on Festergut I was getting on ability off every six seconds or so. It was a mess. Eventually we called it in frustration, the enrage timer being too tight to beat with the hurdles thrown up in front of us.
Last night we assembled on time and headed in with the determination to kill Festergut fast and get some serious work down on Rotface. At the time though I was filled with doubt because many of our top dps couldn’t make it that night. Festergut’s enrage loomed eerily over the potential of our raid.
Sure enough, however, my pessimism was proven wrong and we kill Festergut on the third attempt (after two bad attempts trying to get people to stack/spread innoculations better). And not only that, but the raid dps last night was only about 800 less than it was the first night we killed him. A stinging and welcome rebuke to my negativity, for sure.
Eyes on the prize — let’s kill Rotface
Now that Festergut was dead again (last week: not a fluke) we could focus on the latest roadblock in our progression, Rotface.
One of the biggest issues we had during Rotface last week was, as we determined after, the fight was going on way too long. Our best attempt was seven minutes long, and that was with him at 4%. Ideally, he should be dead by 6 minutes, because that’s the point when infections go out at an insane rate, to the point where the fight is unsustainable to continue.
Remember: infections increase over time, and are not tied to Rotface’s hp, so bring the pain fast and hard is essential.
Part and parcel to our poor coordination last week was, every time there was a slime explosion, everyone just ran for it, usually far away from the boss. This produced raid dps over time that looked like this:
Notice those gigantic sinkholes? That when everyone panicked and ran for it. That’s a huge dps loss to accumulate over time!
Last night the new plan was this: everyone stacks and stands generally on the same side of the boss. So we started with everyone on the left leg (with ranged a little farther back). When there was an explosion, I would call out the cast, and everyone would shift to his right side.
When the Big Ooze begins casting his explosion, he targets where random people were standing at that moment. Coupled with a 2 yard range of the slime rocket damage (once they hit the ground), to negate the threat of the ooze explosions, all everyone needs to do is shift away to the other side of the boss uniformly.
The upside to that change in strat was people could continue dpsing during an explosion with minimal interruption. That gave us this raid dps:
Huge improvement!
After a few attempts working out the kinks and getting everyone used to the new strat, we had an amazing last attempt with expert slime drop offs, quick and efficient shuffling, and exceptional heals. I would occasionally look up at Rotface during my circling of the room, and noticed that he was suddenly at 10%. At this point the infections really started to pick up, and once it got to 5% people just went in to dps and I joined them, being vigilant that if any Big Oozes popped up in the middle I’d grab it and run for it. But 5%-0 took the blink of an eye, and Rotface dropped easily.
An awesome turn around from last week when we were having huge issues on Rotface. It’s always heartening to see that sometimes you just need a strategy change to seal the deal.
I don’t know if everyone was actually expecting to kill Rotface because we weren’t really ready for Putricide. No one knew the strat, had seen him in 10 man, or anything else that would make this a modicum more easy on us.
Despite the 10 minute break we all took to watch the Tankspot video, we basically went in blind, which was kind of fun in a masochistic way. We burned 5 attempts getting him down to 70% or so on our best shot. Lots of work to do there for sure, but whatever. It’ll happen in due time.
For now I’ll focus on the positive: Rotface down.
Armory Feed
Grats on the kill!
@servantoftherocgmail.com
14 January 2010 at 5:03 pm #
We had server lag on Azgalor, too. Ours started in the gunship, near the end, and fortunately let up for 20 minutes to kill Saurfang. After that, however, it bogged down again. Not sure what’s up.
Rotface’s debuff application rate is definitely tied to his HP level, not to time, unless there’s a hard enrage at 6 minutes (Which wouldn’t surprise me) where he begins to cast it extremely fast.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Rhidach, Gravity. Gravity said: RT @Rhidach: great post: re Putricide's and using WoL to show RDPS drops – http://tinyurl.com/ye9okvj [...]
GZ on kill.
how did u deal with slime spray when everyone were on one side of boss?
@thelordpsy
Datamining has indicated that Rotface has 4 infection timers. 14 seconds, 10 seconds, 8 seconds, and 6 seconds. You get 4 infections on each timer, after which he spams the 6 second timer until everyone’s dead.
The Renaissance Man’s last blog ..Terrible New Everyone!
@Soul
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That would be a rough diagram of the middle of the room. If you can imagine a circle around that area. With the boss being in the middle and melee stacking up on his left leg and the ranged staying in the bottom left quadrant then it gives the ranged a little room to spread out to vary the direction in the slime spray. If melee gets sprayed they can easily sidestep, keep up DPS and move out of the way.
When the big ooze casts Unstable Explosion you KNOW the bottom right quadrant is totally safe since when he targeted everyone they were all in the bottom left.
So EVERYONE doesn’t have to stack up perfectly but as long as you keep on general area consisting of the entire raid and another area completely clear then you know when it comes down to it that area is safe and will allow DPS to remain consistent while moving without a massive amount of lost DPS.
@Renaissance man
Here is my data from one of our kills:
14, 14, 21, 12, 12, 13, 16
10, 10, 10, 13
8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9
5, 6, 7
I cannot reconcile your data with mine
(If it was unclear, that is time between casts of Unstable Infection)
thelordpsy’s last blog ..Bad Information Pisses Me Off
He pushes back infection casts during slime spray. However, I also believe it’s HP-based, as our kills definitely still have the frantic phase at the end, despite being in the 4 minute range. Also, there was a blue post, when they were fixing Rotface in 10-man, that suggested that 30% was the trigger for fast infections.
The health nerf wasn’t based on the infection timer changing at a percentage. It was done due to the fact that the infection timer made the fight exponentially more difficult for 10 man groups in the same manner that Deathbringer Saurfang was exponentially more difficult for 25 man groups. Blizzard is unnable to reconcile the unequal proportions between groups.
The Renaissance Man’s last blog ..Terrible New Everyone!