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!

ICC25HM: Lord Marrowgar

This is the first in a series of guides to the bosses of Icecrown Citadel 25man Heroic Mode. I’ll be adding more of these as time goes on and as we down new bosses.

So, what’s different?

• Bonestorm will probably kill anyone in the epicenter
• Coldflame does more damage, stays up much longer
• Bone spikes occur during Bonestorm

Group composition we used: 2 tanks, 6 healers, 17 DPS.

The trickiest part of this fight is going to be the Bonestorm. You’d think Marrowgar would hit harder on the tanks but, honestly, he doesn’t. He was hitting me for an average of 26k last week, which on a tank pushing 70k hp is a tickle. I’m very comfortable two tanking this fight and freeing up one dps, rather than splitting the Sabre Lash three ways.

Coldflame turns into a fun game of hop-skotch. You and your partner tanks will be spending any non-Bonestorm moment of the fight strafing left or right. Likewise, I usually mark myself and the other tank, and then (because such is privilege of MTing) I call out in vent which way I’m going during each burst of Coldflame. Usually left four times, then right, rinse, repeat, etc.

To make it easier on the rest of the raid, they can just hide in the red circle under Marrowgar. Coldflame trails form just outside it. Tanks could theoretically do this too, but with only the two of us I’m worried about the tight confines of the inner hitbox leading to accidental Sabre Lashings. Plus, strafing is much more fun.

So, like I said: Bonestorm hurts. But, thankfully, it’s easily mitigated by a strategy posted by Rilgon on Stabilized Effort Scope. There is a cast time when Bonestorm is about to happen, so as soon as I see him casting it, I split one way, my co-tank splits the other. We spread to opposite ends of the room along the base of the ice. Likewise, a pre-appointed Hunter goes to one side of the door, and a Boomkin heads to the other. Four points to a square. Everyone else clumps in the middle.

The reason four of us spread out is Marrowgar will generally target the person farthest away from him to park a Bonestorm on top of. If it’s a tank, great; if it’s the boomkin, he can Barkskin; if the hunter, he can use Deterrence.

Ranged need to kill spikes that pop up in Bonestorm ASAP. Coldflame likes to worm its way under those people. If the Hunter or Boomkin that eat Bonestorms get spiked, I throw a Hand of Sacrifice on them to be safe.

If Marrowgar jumps into the middle, I pop Divine Sacrifice (the whole thing, not just Divine Guardian) and soak up some of that damage. Putting your healers in a group with you isn’t a terrible idea to give them some breathing room in those “oh crap” moments.

Honestly, this fight is a cakewalk and you’ll probably one shot it on your first attempt like we did. The hardest part for your raid will be scattering out of the middle of the Bonestorm if Marrowgar dives into the quivering pile your raiders are surely forming.

The lewt!

• Legguards of Lost Hope
• Bracers of Dark Reckoning

The night I solo’d ICC25, or something

Ok, it’s sort of hyperbole. But, well… you’ll see.

We started the night with Festergut Heroic, after about 12 wipes on him last night we were itching for a quick kill. It wasn’t a one shot, but every one of the five attempts we did we shaved a percent off his health each time we wiped to the enrage. 5%, then 4%, then 3%, then .9%. Then the last attempt we had this amazing go with no Goos hitting melee, no healers getting gibbed, probably a few ranged getting hit, but generally a great attempt.

As we got closer to the enrage we were riding the razors edge. It was obviously going to be very close. Anafielle hits 9 stacks a few seconds before enrage, I pull it off her with Righteous Defense, then as he turns gigantic and throbby red, I bubble, Hand of Reckoning, and do as much damage as I can. As soon as the fixate fell off, Fester turned and splatted Ana into a fine paste. With molecules of his hit points remaining, Valgard (a ret pally who also bubbled) and I did our best to whittle what we could down while Vili ankhed back up and continued to heal furiously. Finally, moments before aoe death overcame us, we chipped away that last few thousand hp and Festergut dropped to the floor.

Epic, to say the least.

And best of all we spent generally little time on Festergut, so we had a lot more breathing room for the rest of the night. My initial goal at the beginning of the week was a little bold, I thought: Heroic Marrowgar, Lootship, Festergut, Rotface, and BQL. Perhaps a boss or two too much, but it was a worthy first week goal. After the wipefest on Festergut last night, I dialed it back a bit in my head, just getting Festergut and Rotface down would be good enough. So, that’s the attitude I started the night with: just get the twin uglies down and we’ll be in a good spot. Right-o, off to the races.

So with Festergut dropped, we scurried off for Rotface. I heard this fight was easier than Festergut’s hardmode, but I had no idea. Our very first attempt turned into an utter clusterfrak at around 30% with 2/3rds of the raid dead, and yet we almost killed him. Thankfully we wiped, and could do it for real. The second time around we killed him with no issue. Another easily farm-able hardmode, I love it.

Then we tumbled over to the Blood Wing and dispatched the Blood Princes. I basically explained the BQL hardmode as “more dps needed, one mistake wipes us, don’t screw it up!” It was delivered lovingly, I swear.

Some were pessimistic about the dps required to drop her, but for some odd reason Frank was in hibernation and I was feeling sunny about our chances. It was probably some head trauma.

Anyway, off we went and on the first attempt we lost a few people in the air phase. And by a few people I mean the two that had the bites. Somehow no one noticed and right before the enrage someone observed, “hey we haven’t had any bites lately.” Woops, 30% enrage wipe.

The next time we lost some people on airphase, yet despite brezzes, eventually it was a wipe with the enrage hitting at 8%. The fourth go we had a really close wipe, something like 4% or so. We could so get this, just needed one flawless attempt. Just one.

The fifth attempt we had just that. No deaths, no mistakes, bites went to the right people. I had high hopes as we trudged through the motions. Finally as we came to the moment of truth, we were looking to be just shy of the enrage. About 2% left as it was going to hit. As we usually do, the enrage hit and all the Pallies bubbled. Eventually only Ana and I survived, BQL runs up for air phase at around .5% and starts blood bolting. Looks like a wipe as we furiously judged and tossed wrathful hammers.

In our darkest moment, a glimmer of hope. Vili bolts up and spot heals Ana and I, only to be struck down once more. Ana soon follows. Somehow I persisted and a lingering Rip from Purraj the feral druid got the killing blow.

When the dust settled, I surveyed my surroundings, sighed a heavy breath of relief, and then immediately tweeted my victory.

What? Rez? Oh, yeah, I could do that. I was duly chastened.

When rezzes were finished, the loot window went up, we all bid, and I managed to score my first 277 piece: the heroic t10 token. I am so excited to begin building my blue tier set. Even if it cost me nearly a kilo of dkp!

With the excitement contained and about 10 minutes left in raid, we dodged over to Sindragosa and one-shot her, which put us exactly where I started this week hoping we would be: all farm bosses dead plus those five benchmark heroic kills. And we did it, we totally did it. I am so proud of my raid crew, another fantastic week.

Good first steps!

Heroic Marrowgar was a joke. Not much harder than normal Marrowgar himself. I found this shocking when, on the first attempt, he was at around 50% health, we were two Bonestorms in, and one person was dead. I was expecting a minor speed bump like when we first did this on Heroic 10 mode. But nope, easy one shot, and the slot machine burped out the purps.

We did LDW on normal, obviously, and then went on for Heroic Lootship. About the only hiccup there was being I was jumping over, a missle hit one of the spiky things on the side of the ship that a Resto Druid was parked on, and the game decided that despite being in midair I was hit as well, so I went flying off sideways into the gap in between the ships. I reappeared in the middle of the deck and sprinted back over to the other side, but by the time I got there and picked up Muradin, three melee were dead. I’ll never hear the end of that.

Normal Saurfang, which we could probably do, but my thinking is find what the baseline for how many easy hardmodes we can do every week is, and then build it from there. To maximize upgrades.

After Saurfang we headed to Putricide’s hallway and cleared the trash to go to Festergut first. This is where things got interesting. Once I was done explaining what was different on heroic mode, and how I wanted everyone in melee to stack on a marked person and switch legs every time a Goo got launched, we had an epic wipe where people consistently got hit. Bah. Eventually we settled into the ES model of progression: slow, steady gains. Within short time we were hitting the enrage timer, so now we just needed to up dps to actually drop the boss.

It was around this time the Fates decided to throw a monkey wrench in the works. First, one of the dps (a warlock) had to drop for a work emergency, so I invited one person to come in and got no response. The warlock that left dropped a summoning stone and hearthed out. I then invited another dps with similar results, no response again.

The first dps I invited (who was having connection issues earlier in the night but assured me they were fixed) then accepted and we summoned him in. He starts running in place and looks like he’s DCing. I sigh and remove him, as the second dps I invited finally accepts and joins the raid. Unfortunately the DCing dps is still there, running in place, and we can’t summon the other guy since there are 25 people in the instance. As the guy finally disappears, the summoning stone disappears as well.

I sigh, and Zilga and I run outside to summon the dps who’ll give us 25 people. Unfortunately once we get near the summoning stone outside, we realize we’re both in different phases and can’t see each other. Another sigh and we both hoof it in as the 25th makes his way to us.

As we reach Festergut’s room again, one of the druids manages to somehow pull Festergut with a Crashin’ Thrashin’ Racer and starts the encounters. Some of us bolt into the hallway and hide while Festergut kills any unlucky afkers or those who stayed behind in the room. As the three or so of us that survived the wipe catch our breath in the hallway, someone trips a hidden trap, and a flood of geists come barreling down towards us. At this point I have to laugh, because it’s officially gotten ridiculous.

Eventually the geists die and we get back to business. Progress starts rolling again and by the end of the night we were wiping at around 4-5% on the last two solid attempts. Disappointing, but at least we know we can get it once people tighten up dodging Goos and the whole not-dying thing.

At 9:30, half an hour before end time, the trash respawns in the hallway. I decide to give everyone a break rather than spending 15 minutes clearing trash for two more attempts on the boss. We just want and quickly demolished normal Dreamwalker for a “shake off” kill.

So with the night over we stood at 2/12 heroics. Not godly, but we made good progress on number 3, who I’m sure we’ll brush off with little trouble tonight, allowing us to knock down #4 (Rotface) and put in solid attempts on #5 (BQL).