Like Voss said.

Here’s my entry for the ShoR crit contest (though I’m not really participating):

104,692 damage. The stuff dreams are made of my friends. And that was with normal tanking gear, no dps pieces! Just lined up all my ducks in a row (9 stacks of Gaseous Bloat, almost-max Vengeance, wings popped, Sacred Duty proc) and fired.

I even let Ana tank first too! (Hence the faux-gquit, and the horse head I woke up to in my bed this morning.)

For my victory lap I murdered Antigen’s mage’s eponymous Frost Elemental.

There can only be one.

MMO-Champ also has the latest beta changes from build 13221. They seem to be missing the ShoR nerf wowhead is showing. Hrmm.

Update: ShoR was definitely nerfed.

We changed Shield Slam and Shield of the Righteous to do more base damage and scale less with AP. This was to fix a problem where numbers became absurdly large with a lot of AP, especially under the effects of Vengeance, dwarfing the damage done by druid or DK tanks. With these changes, a tank in heroic dungeon blues should deal the same damage with no Vengeance, but Vengeance will have less of an impact.

The coefficient for Shield of the Righteous was lowered from 120% to 60% at 3 Holy Power. The coefficient for Shield Slam was lowered from 75% to 60%.

But apparently Word of Glory was not.

We buffed Word of Glory base points for Holy paladins. We nerfed the Ret and Prot talents to keep it about the same for them.

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

Last night we took our first cracks at heroic ICC-10. Personally, I was not in the best condition for the venture, sporting a pounding headache and a fuse about three sizes too small. Despite my condition, everyone put up with my shenanigans and we made some good progress into the hard modes.

I’m going to spend this post talking about the four hard modes we did: Marrowgar, Gunship, Saurfang (though we didn’t down this), and Festergut and impart anything we learned.

Lord Marrowgar

What’s different?

• Bone Spikes happen during Bonestorm
• Coldflame hurts more, stays up longer
• Bonestorm will probably kill you if you are in his hitbox

The first time we tried this fight we lost six people on the first Bonestorm. It was then I realized we weren’t in Kansas anymore. I think it woke everyone else up, as well. This isn’t your father’s pug’s Marrowgar.

Mark the tanks up so people are *especially* careful not to stand on them over the course of the fight. I’m not certain (thanks to borking the combatlogs) but it looked like a Rogue ate a Saberlash at one point. So make sure no one gets too close.

When you pull try to keep him in the center of the room and have melee and ranged (minus hunters) stand inside Marrowgar’s hitbox. Coldflames start outside the hitbox and spread from there, so there’s a safety zone within. The only caveat is to watch the timers, because once you hit 5 seconds til the Bonestorm you want people to scatter so they don’t get taken out right off the bat.

Bonestorm can be painful, and will be the most dangerous part of the entire fight. You’ll have about five of them. Just make sure everyone stays generally in the same circular area, but spreads out. If two people are next to each other you might get a delicious RNG sandwich where one person gets Spiked and the person next to them is targeted for Bonestorm/a Coldflame drop. Basically, guaranteeing the Spiked person is a goner. For that reason don’t pile up on each other.

The fight is pretty straight forward but there is a serious RNG element. Everytime a healer gets Bone Spiked (especially during a Bone Storm) you’ll find yourself short for breath. Save Divine Sacrifice for those times when you only have two healers.

Basically hold it together through each Bonestorm and you should be fine.

The SS Lolship

What’s different?

• Rockets have a knockback
• Mages have more health
• Enemy ship has more health

There’s really not much to say about this fight. You might at the end find yourself questioning whether this was on Heroic or not. I suppose the only thing you need to watch out for is people on the side of the boat getting knocked off after eating a rocket.

Two words: Loot. Piñata.

Deathbringer Saurfang

What’s different?

• Blood Beasts will one-shot your kiters
• Blood Beasts will gain Scent of Blood, fun for the kiters
• Blood Power stacks faster
• Saurfang hits harder (thus, more damaged on the Marks)

On the bright side

• Still only two Blood Beasts

We only did three attempts on this, getting to 41% our last go. I wanted to keep going and see how far we could get in ICC-10 that night, but in hindsight we totally could have downed Saurfang if we spent the last hour of the raid on this guy, rather than moving on. The fight isn’t that rough for the tanks. It’s your healers that are going to be pulling their hair out by the end of this. You think they were white knuckle healing the Frenzy phase before?

We had a hunter kiting on one side, an Ele Shaman on another, with an Arcane Mage assisting both. When Beasts came up, a DK would Chains of Ice the one heading for the Hunter, giving Cendra extra time to pump damage into the Beast before it reached him. Then, when the Beast was closing in, I would taunt and before it could get to me Cendra would finish it off. On the other side the Ele Shaman/Mage pair didn’t have much trouble with theirs.

I found that playing taunt tag with the Blood Beasts to be crazy helpful in keeping them away from your kiters. If those creatures reach their target, you’re going to be down a kiter and they probably end up finishing off a healer in the ensuing chaos.

I’ll report more on this fight when we actually down it.

Festergut

What’s different?

• Oh god, three stacks, it hurts
• Malleable Goos away!
• Much tighter enrage timer

This fight is very easy once you get the hang of it. For one thing, don’t want your healers in melee anymore. If they get hit by Malleable Goo they suffer a 250% casting speed debuff, and that’s murder with so much AOE and tank damage, so keep them out with ranged.

When you pull Festergut, run him over to the left, far away from Putricide’s balcony. This will give you maximum viewing range to watch the Malleable Goos get tossed down and to predict who they’re heading for. Likewise, a small green puddle will appear on the floor to presage where the Goo is going to hit. Ranged and Heals can adjust accordingly, though melee has a somewhat harder job with it.

Because Festergut is so big it’s going to be hard for melee to see the puddle if they’re directly on top of the boss. Instead they should stand to the left or right of the boss (next to his leg) so they can see under themselves when a green puddle appears. If ones does appear, melee should immediately shuffle over to the other leg. This should put them out of the range of the Goo.

Being hit by the Goo will also give you a movement debuff. Watch for this to happen when Gas Spores are up, in case someone needs a Hand of Freedom to help get them over to the ranged Spore in time for the debuff.

The three-inhale period for Festergut is going to be a test for your tanks. He hits like a truck then (again, I wish I had logs) and you’ll want to use everything in your arsenal to mitigate the damage. Use bubblewall, pop an armor pot, pop trinkets. External cooldowns. Whatever you need to do! Moreover, don’t be afraid to put a Hand of Sacrifice on the other tank during their turn at a three-inhale phase.

Pop Divine Sacrifice during the Pungent Blight.

Like I said, the fight is generally pretty easy (in the sense it’s not hard to adapt to the mechanics). Don’t get hit by Malleable Goo, get your three spores, don’t die to anything stupid. Use your cooldowns to not get gibbed by Festergut during his soft enrages.

When I set out to write this post I didn’t realize how behind the times I was with this addon. While AVR (short for Augmented Virtual Reality), in the version I have downloaded and setup, works with BigWigs for Icecrown boss encounters, apparently there’s been a shuffle with the mod making it so BigWigs is not longer needed. So, I’m thankfully spared detailing the dance you need to do to make this addon work with BigWigs while not clash with your bossmods of choice.

Instead, just grab the base AVR pack, and then AVR Encounters.

Now, I’m sure the functionality has remained the same, so let’s talk a bit about the Encounters side of this glorious piece of work. While you can use to the mod to put custom textures down on the ground for everyone in your raid to see (provided they have the mod), the really amazing part of this addon is how it streamlines (perhaps “dumbs-down” is a better word) certain boss mechanics.

For example, on Festergut, the mod will put a massive red circle under the spores.

This will show everyone the range of the spore so they can be sure to stand in its fungus-y embrace. For myself, as the tank and raid leader, it especially facilitates my job by making it take a split second to see if there are two spores in melee so I can order one to run out.

In the Rotface fight, AVR is a lifesaver. When a Big Ooze explodes and fires its slime rockets into the air, AVR will put red circles on the ground under where everyone was standing so you can guess where a rocket might hit the ground, making dodging them a cakewalk.

Once I get everyone in the raid to get set up with this addon, this will finally kill the much-maligned “Leg Shuffle” strategy. Rather than “everyone move to the other leg,” I can just say “don’t stand in the red circle, ya idjits.”

On Putricide, AVR is unfortunately a little buggy, but still a world of help. It will put a red circle under where a Malleable Goo is going to land.

Unfortunately, AVR only tracks one of three goos. But, at least it will mitigate some of the damage and help melee know in P3 if they’re about to get murdered by a goo falling on their heads. Alternatively, there’s an option for Putricide where you can have AVR put a red circle under everyone when Malleable Goo is cast, so people just need to not stand in a red circle to avoid getting it. That would work well, but I can see it being a headache for melee.

Lastly, we only saw a little bit of Sindragosa on Wednesday night (sidenote: first time we got to her, woo) but AVR demonstrated its effectiveness in all its glory for this fight. It puts a circle under every Frost Beacon so they can space themselves out and hopefully people won’t go into their circle and get frozen as well. We only got two tries in, but I can see this mod making the learning curve a lot more forgiving on this fight.

According to the AVRE page, they cover Marrowgar, Lady D, Blood Queen, and Lich King as well now. I can’t wait to try out these fights with the new version.

If you are using this mod I’d like to hear your impressions of it.

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

best paladin tank enchant waist 3.3

Well, technically the only waist enchant is the Eternal Belt Buckle. If you’re an engineer though, you have two supplementary choices for some additional AOE damage. Using the Frag Belt or Personal Electromagnetic Pulse Generator tinkers on your belt (stacks with the buckle) can give your big pulls a little more oomph. The former obviously summons a bomb for you (with a neat little stun) and the latter can set off an Explosive Decoy for a chunk of physical damage. Both pretty handy.

nightmare tear does it give 10 to dodge also?

No, but it does give 10 Agility, which translates to some dodge. Though, not as much as 10 Dodge Rating would give.

glyph of judgement or command low level

Command is pretty nice at low level for the free mana it gives. That’ll make the early levels much easier to suffer through when going OOM is a constant, looming shadow.

sindragosa parry haste

Sindra does indeed parry haste (confirmed in this thread). This shouldn’t be much of a worry for two reasons: her breath is her biggest source of damage rather than her cleave, and dps will die if they sit in front of her, so you don’t need to worry about a clueless warrior causing you trouble, he won’t be up for long.

what kind of damage is putricide dealing? amplify magic

To the raid it’s either Shadow or Nature damage, depending on the attack. Your tanks will be taking a huge chunk of Physical damage from Putri’s melees, but even then there’s a lot of magic damage (especially in phase 3) and you don’t want to risk a tank gibbing ruining your attempt. I would recommend against amplify magic, honestly.

can i exchange my voa sanctified for emblems and mark?

Ye gods no.

does armor penetration stack with hammer of the righteous?

The damage is Holy, so it’s already penetrating armor.

does judgement proc seal of command cleave?

It does if you have at least one point in Judgements of the Just. It isn’t the judging the procs the cleave, it’s the application of the JoJ debuff. Probably a bug, but I’m not complaining.

festergut melee parry gib?

Festergut has parry haste turned off, so there is no danger of that.

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

Apologies for not posting yesterday, I got swamped and I didn’t really have anything good to write about. I mean, not much has happened this week in the world of tanking other than the warrior and DK buffs. There’s a Dev Chat tonight on Twitter and I’m eagerly hoping some interesting revelations about design philosophy or Cataclysm will be revealed. I have a question banked, but if any of you non-Tweeters have a good one share it in the comments and I’ll steal it if it’s better than my standby.

Anyway, the column!

if icehowl charges you what do you do

Gotta go when the volcano blows. Hold down your left or right strafe key as soon as you hit the wall and run off as soon as you unfreeze.

amplify magic festergut

There are a lot of fights in ICC that Amplify Magic wouldn’t be a bad idea for, at least for the tanks. Marrowgar the tanks should only be taking physical damage and skittering out of the coldflame post haste. On Saurfang literally all the damage is physical, even his “spells”, so everyone could have Amp Magic. Festergut the tanks are going to take mostly physical damage (with only trivial nature damage from the gas in the room) but there is still some magic damage to be had, so it’s a risk.

On the flip side of the coin, for offtanking Blood Queen and tanking Sindragosa, Amp Magic is a terrible idea. Way too much spell damage to split the difference.

how hard does festergut hit

During his three-stack major-pain phase (in 25man), he was hitting me for 25k a swing. Humorously–or maybe not–in heroic mode he melees for an average of 37.5k according to this thread. I like the way one guy described it, “like Brutallus dual-wielding Algalons.”

can you fight sindragosa without downing dreamwalker

No. The door to Sindra opens after Dreamwalker is rescued.

drinking game ulduar

Every time someone asks where to port to you take a drink.

best professions for a tankadin

I like my combo of Jewelcrafting (+63 stamina) with Engineering (+885 armor). You can’t go wrong with JC/Blacksmithing (+60 stamina) for an all-purpose combination, though.

1 tanking festergut

I suppose it’s possible, with a Paladin tanking him up to nine stacks, Hand of Recking, popping Divine Shield and cancelling it immediately to drop the stack. I’ve seen Festergut dropped in 10man before the second tank switch, and an additional dps would facilitate that. Not sure about 25man with the crazy dps requirements needed to kill him there before a second tank switch.

best mobs to level weapon skill on

I’ve been trying for weeks to get my 400th point in Unarmed for the achievement, but to no avail. I’ve been just putting up Seal of Light and afking while punching those giant elite skeletons. I suppose it would be easier to try those unkillable ogres in Dire Maul… but, meh, Feralas is so far away.

conviction or socomm

If you’re choosing one over the other I’d say SoComm. That seal has been pretty handy for snap aggro in ICC, particularly tanking Defense on the Gunship or when Rotworms spawn on Dreamwalker. Plus makes the daily heroic a breeze.

does judgement of justice work on rotface ooze?

JoJ works by preventing a player or mob from speeding up past run speed (ie, faster than 100%), not slow them down, like the popular misconception seems to be. Big Oozes never speed up, so JoJ doesn’t really work.

does seal of command proc off avenger shield?

No. Only single attacks.

parry haste icc

Gravity has a great post compiling which bosses parry haste in Icecrown. Short answer is only Deathwhisper and Sindragosa, which pretty much kills expertise as a survival stat if you’re tanking in ICC. Just consider it for threat now.

so sick of elemental shamans knocking me off take your face off the keyborde and watch where your going

I know! Those ele shammies are the worstest!

Better Late Than Never Friday is a random monthly feature where I pull a bunch of search terms from Google Analytics that landed folks here and try to answer questions that may not be directly answered at this site, as gleaned from their keywords used.

righteous defense taunt small ooze

The Small Ooze is taunt immune, so unfortunately that won’t work. The only way to get rid of them is to merge one into a Big Ooze.

best libram tankadin

Eternal Tower is, technically, the best for survivability (although the ramp-up time is annoying and can cause issues). It’s a marginal upgrade over Defiance, however, and not worth getting until you run out of better things to spend Emblems of Frost on. Just farm Triumph badges and get the 245 dodge libram. Contrawise, Valiance is the best threat libram right now.

how to use righteous defense

Back in my day to use Righteous Defense you had to target the person being attacked, and if you wanted to directly taunt the attacking mob you’d have to use a /targettarget macro. Thankfully, Righteous Defense was changed a while back. It’ll work the same if you use it on the mob or the mob’s target.

armour penetration for tankadins

Bad stat for us, don’t even think about it! The same reasons that make ArP bad for Ret Pallies bad for us–our threat derives primarily from Holy damage, which pierces armor as is. It’s for this reason I always cursed the tanking gloves off of Ignis that had ArP on them.

does the hp5 on purified onyxia blood talisman work in combat

Yes. But you shouldn’t use it unless you’re soloing old content, or something equally frivolous. hp5 is not a tanking stat.

festergut amp magic

Bad idea, amplify magic will make the various raid damage attacks do even more damage. The only fight amp magic is good for is Saurfang, because every attack in that fight is classified as physical damage.

20 defense vs titanium plating

Neither, go with the BC-era +18 stamina enchant if you have the defense to spare. Otherwise get the +defense enchant.

22 agility titanweave dodge

Agility if you have enough defense, Titanweave otherwise.

3.3 divine sacrifice worth it?

Absolutely! Assuming you get Divine Guardian as well, it’s like a free 20% damage reduction cooldown for us that benefits the raid as well. DS/DG is a mandatory talent for raiding.

blacksmithing vs engineering tankadin

I’m partial to engineering, myself, for the cool toys and the armor glove enchant/agility cloak enchant. However, you’d probably be better off if min/maxing just to go with the straight +60 stamina of blacksmithing.

seal of righteousness vs seal of vengeance

Seal of Vengeance is still our best single-target threat seal. Seal of Righteousness has it’s uses though, particularly on Rotface if you’re kiting the Big Ooze. You can’t melee it, and because SoR’s judgement offers the most damage in that situation, it’s the best choice.

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.

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.

Finally, the next wing! Last night was very exciting as all new content nights are. Everyone was pumped, and a little punchy. We didn’t know what to expect, which is always a fun feeling.

For the initial trash I put on the trash spec and started mowing through trash. I felt bad (and hell, still do) because as a Paladin, aoe-tanking a swarm of undead is child’s play, but for a warrior tank and their underpowered aoe threat, it was a huge ordeal for him. He eventually switched to dps spec and I continued to solo tank the trash.

We cleared out both from corners of the room then I moved to one of the back corners. Immediately someone pulls the group in front of the stairs, so I swung around and used a Holy Wrath to grab their attention. Then, apparently a hunter pet dashed off and grabbed the pull in the opposite back corner, so suddenly another pack was incoming. I got those together too and just started aoeing and switching targets as fast as I could. With me belting out an off-key rendition of POD’s “Alive” we slowly aoe’d them all down.

I ended up doing 11k dps, one of the shadow priests did 25k… it was nuts. I know this is just trash, but still, I love my heroics spec.

Anyway, for the first four bosses we did the usual burn through. Deathwhisper is a joke now that her adds and mana shield were so nerfed. Next week we can easily pull one melee off the adds groups on both sides and onto the boss, push it into phase 2 even faster. Gunship was, scarily, almost a wipe when two healers dc’d, Demo died on O, and neither myself or the druid had rocket packs on.

So O turned into the melee quickly jumping over, the healers frantically trying to keep them up, and then them all fleeing as soon as the mage died. It was impressive and I learned a valuable lesson about equipping my damn rocket shirt.

Saurfang was Saurfang. Not much trouble, and even better, when he died I bolted over to the chest and was elated to find not one, but two Conqueror’s tokens in there. Finally! I scored one and still have enough DKP to grab the next one that drops.

After Saurfang the mage (yes, we only have one) darted through the open doors into the next area. Like something out of The Last Crusade, he immediately bought the farm. All we heard was woosh and his head came tumbling back out past us. Another person ran in and made it, emboldening the third who then died to whatever mysterious force was executing people in the next hall.

Apparently this was Frogger 3.0, and traps on the wall would expel gas on people and generally kill them. Unfortunately, they are disarmable by rogues, so our sneaky buddies went to town and we made our way through.

Or, you could just warp up to the Upper Spire. But Frogger is way more fun.

Banging a louie, we entered the Plagueworks for the first time. Picking off some geists and scientists in the initial hall we spotted two giant Gluth look-alikes. I remember something I read from one of Matticus’ PTR reports back on WoW.com that mentioned they share Gluth’s abilities.

We pulled Precious and comically wiped to him the first time, not sure how it was going to go. Once we regathered, what we did was Demo and Purraj (the druid) tanked and switched off aggro on Precious since he applies the mortal wound healing debuff that Gluth had. I hung behind, in heroic spec, and whenever adds spawned I’d use Holy Wrath and pick them all up and help the dps aoe them down. Demo and Purraj kited Precious around the stairway to give me room to grab skeletons.

As for Stinky, again we wiped because we weren’t expecting the decimate+poison aoe combo. And yes, both dogs do decimate, healers need to be ready for that. Anyway, with Stinky his big thing isn’t spawning adds, it’s the periodic poison aoe he does around him. Aspect of the Wild or a Nature Resist Totem helps, since it’s nature damage. Stinky is generally pretty easy, just make sure healers are prepared to quickly get everyone healed a bit so they don’t die to the first poison aoe after the decimate.

Festergut, the big, stinky enchilada that pays a visit the next morning.

Interesting fight to say the least, and a major dps check. Here’s our log of the kill so you can see what we were working with on 25man. 40.4 million hp, 5 minute enrage. Generally that means a lot of dps with five healers and two tanks. I’ve read 7.5k, which seems about right. Also, keep in mind the tanks will be doing around 4k, rather than 2.6k, which will help.

It took us a few wipes to establish some things and for people to hit their comfort zone. This includes the wipe where we had Festergut down to 4000 hp before he enraged and nuked us all. It was horrifying as I’m sure you can imagine.

What we did was figure out it’s generally a good idea to have five to six ranged in the back. Less than that and we got Vile Gas in melee, I don’t know what the magic number in ranged is, probably could have gotten away with an extra spriest or something in the melee pile. Heals stood in melee.

The fight sort of has four phase that rotate. Initially for the first two phases the room has thick orange gas on the floor and he does lots of raid damage but little tank damage. Once you hit the third phase (when he has 2 stacks of his buff) he starts hitting the tank for a lot more. Once he gets three stacks, he’s hitting the tank for around 25k a pop. And he hits fast, so cooldown coordination with healers is a must. We had priests calling out Pain Suppressions on vent while Demo and I juggled our own cooldowns. I also tossed Demo and Hand of Sacrifice and used Divine Sacrifice to help out.

As for tanks, we’re getting a stacking debuff called Gaseous Blight. Each stack increases our damage by 10%, but once it hits 10 stacks we explode. The debuff also takes almost two minutes to fall off. So tanks need to be really quick on switching aggro at exactly nine stacks once the other tank loses their stacks. We had two wipes directly attributable to taunt misses and a tank exploding.

Now, the awesome side of this debuff is the stacking damage increase. When Demo pulled off me, I immediately hopped behind the boss, cast Hand of Salv on myself, popped wings, and poured in the damage. I didn’t think of this at the time, but taking Righteous Fury off would probably also be ideal so you don’t get threat capped by the other tank and can help contribute to getting past the enrage timer.

The other huge thing everyone needs to watch out for are the Gas Spores that spawn. It’s paramount that everyone in raid gets three Innoculate stacks before the end of the last phase when Festergut exhales and does massive shadow aoe. As a tank you can probably live with 2 stacks but most healers and dps will be one shot or severely hurt with less than the full three stacks.

So whoever in melee has the Spore needs to stand directly under the boss so it gets spread to the tanks as well. Dps and tanks should also try to stand as close to Festergut as possible without accidentally turning him around or (in dps’s case) being considered in front of the boss and then creating parries.

Eventually this fight boils down to staying alive long enough through Innoculates to beat the enrage timer. We were riding the timer pretty hard for most of the night but on the last attempt I think the execution clicked for everyone and we eventually killed him with 20 seconds left on the clock.

Tonight is Rotface, and pending a fix of the Putricide encounter I guess that’ll be it for the week aside form 10mans. So far, so good. I like what I’ve seen and I’m a huge fan of the ramped up challenge factor and love how well my guild has been tackling it thus far.