Tuesdays are for buggy raids

I think now that the Lich King is vulnerable he must be attempting to slow down raids with buggy boss encounters. How else can I explain the painful nonsense we kept running into last night?

First of all, thanks to Patch Day a swath of people were either late or having huge performance issues. Lag was also a major issue for some, though we were thankfully spared the dreaded Gunship lag. Nonetheless, all these little nibbling bites that were slowing people down were invariably cutting into raid performance.

And then there was the brand new buggified version of Saurfang we ran into last night. Usually we don’t see the first Mark until sub-50%, last night we had it at around 70% or so, and a second one going out before 60%. We assumed maybe someone was having issues kiting or people were standing too close together, but instead it just seemed like his Blood Power generation rate was off the charts.

We reset the fight by fleeing to the boat, but then the second time we had the same BP generation issues. We just decided to go with the flow and ended up killing Saurfang with something like six Marks up, no deaths. It wasn’t ultimately an issue for us, but this bug can probably prove to be a roadblock for others. Hopefully they’ll fix it soon.

After Saurfang we were already pushing against the clock and just went to cement our Blood Council kill last week with an equally clean kill. No luck on our part though, because in addition to melee dps assuming being told to scatter when Empowered Shock Vortex was being cast actually meant clump with other melee and get one shot, we had to deal the Kinetic Bombs deciding to randomly explode in midair.

We probably had a few wipes caused by bombs going off and killing too many people, especially ranged dps, which was tight last night and led to more Bombs hitting the ground and exploding. We kept getting ground up in the negative feedback loop.

Based on some cursory research I did it sounds like putting dots on the Bombs was making them explode as they were preparing to despawn. Does that make sense? Anyone have any insight into this?

Finally at around 15 minutes before raid end we dropped Blood Council after eeking out the kill with half the raid dead.

Overall not the best raid night, by far. Still, as long as attendance holds all week we can finally get some progress done on a wing boss. That’s all I ask, dammit.

Caught up

Wednesday last week may have sucked, but on the bright side it gave us a jump start on our 10man group and allowed us to go into ICC-10 last night with all but the two wings bosses and Blood Council down.

First things first, we hit up Blood Council and despite a dopey wipe (hunter pulled aggro on Keleseth, died, his orb hit the ground, everyone died in the ensuing chaos) the second shot was a quick and clean kill. Netted the orb achievement again, because nothing makes that fight easier than siccing a pet on an orb.

We then bounded up the ramp to the first trash pull before the Blood Queen. Bad things ensued. First we tried a straight pull but it went south very quickly. Second time we tried a little more CC but I got gibbed before we all got in position (I hatehatehate the Tactician). Third time we got a clean pull but the other tank and I soon died, leaving two healers and two dps up with about three mobs. They then proceeded to somehow kill all the mobs with coordinated CC while us losers ran back in a classic cavalry maneuver. By the time we heroically returned, the dps had mopped them all up. Well played.

Once we were done with the trash pull from hell we dispatched the four guys at the top of the ramp and tried to figure out how we were going to handle Blood Queen. After kind of rambling off everything I remembered reading about the fight, we all basically agreed we weren’t going to do a good attempt until we say the fight ourselves. So, we pulled and had a hilariously disastrous wipe, though we ended up seeing the different aspects of the fight: the brain link, the swarming shadows, the vampire bite, etc.

Going back we retooled the strategy a bit (ok, actually formed a strategy) and pulled again. This time we lost a few people early on to some silliness but kept going to get more practice. Had her down to ~60% that time.

The third attempt we had more a plan going and new what to look for. We also had one of the dps (actually, a druid healer going boom for the raid) switch to heals. Seems counterproductive for a dps race fight, but the dps we had was good and we needed the breathing room that a third healer would provide. The third attempt was awesome and despite losing someone early in the fight (who was then brezzed) and a rogue (Falowin, of course) at around 40% we managed to kill her right at the exact second when she enraged and murdered both me and the offtank.

So, wow, our first wing boss down. I was expecting that fight to be a lot harder.

Exuberant after dethroning the Blood Queen, we then bounced back to the Plague Wing to bring a fiery vengeance down upon Professor Putricide. Our very first attempt and it was clear that we had built upon the knowledge we gain from previous attempts. And, also, the dps we had was nuts. We hit phase 2 after the first green slime was dead. We pushed it to phase 3, but we had an orange slime up at the same time, and a little too many puddles on the ground. Wiped in the ensuing chaos.

Still, great first showing! We were all pumped. The next try we got it again to phase 3 but I screwed up the tank switch and kept accidentally outthreating and pulling off Nordic, the warrior tank, when he would taunt it off me. We wiped because I had 5 stacks and he had 2. /facepalm

I clearly wasn’t giving him enough time to build rage after he was crammed in the Abom the entire time. So third attempt I swore I wasn’t going to wipe the raid that time and we had similar results. Quick switch to phase 2, a hop, skip, and a jump to phase 3, and then I’d back off when not tanking Putricide so as not to pull threat. We lasted a lot longer and finally downed the bastard about 5 stacks on me and 4 on Nordic. Down to the wire, for sure.

But it was a kill nonetheless! Very exciting, two wing bosses for the first time.

I’m trying to think of any tips for Putricide that I can impart (I surely can’t offer anything for BQL, haven’t done that fight enough) and the main thing I can emphasize is the fight revolves around how quickly you kill and how well you control the green/orange slimes. If you can down each before they reach their victim that’s more time you have on Putricide. And, furthermore, it’s so very key to make sure everyone stays as far back as possible from where the slimes spawn (except for hunters, who can feign off a link) so there’s a maximum distance between add and target.

Once you get down to phase 3, it’s all about the dps and the tanks not screwing up their switches (ahem). Tensest part of the fight, but the easiest as well if everyone is alive and everyone is doing their job.

The best part of last night is for sure the realization that the group we had last night could easily kill the Lich King. Well, maybe not easily, but with some practice. We have the capability, now we just need the opportunity.

And now to parlay this knowledge into the 25man so we can kill a wing boss there…

Raiding redemption

This week has been quite the rollercoaster ride. Tuesday was probably our best raid night yet, killing up to Saurfang and then Festergut and Rotface, all in the span of about two and a half hours. And then putting some shots in on Blood Council before calling it at the usual time. We were all pumped to get the farm stuff done in one night and have the next two for some honest-to-goodness progression. Nothing could stop us now.

And then nobody showed up on Wednesday.

Actually. not entirely true. About twenty regular raiders showed up Wed, and we couldn’t scrape together enough fillers to make a full raid. So, we called it after standing around while trying to work everything out. We broke into 10mans instead and farmed badges/killed some bosses/destressed a little.

Last night I was getting worried that the poor attendance monster would rear his ugly head. On top of a few other absences, Demo couldn’t make it due to some madlibesque family entanglement–though, on the bright side, this did spawn a new guild meme of using “wife’s [familial relation]‘s [familial relation]‘s [asian nationality] [random relation]‘s [event]” as a reason for not being able to make raids. I predict great things for that joke.

So I threw together the raid and Cendra got the dkp in order and we all headed in. The raid was composed of 22 regulars and 3 fillers, and generally wasted bad looking. Not our Tuesday night prime, but you can’t win them all.

We immediately head for the Blood Wing and start going through the trash, wherein I successfully demonstrated my model of Sap Tanking (ie. tanking both the Tacticians while being stunlocked for the duration of the pull).

On the Council itself I gave a (not so) brief rundown of the fight and how it goes for the people who didn’t see it last week or Tuesday. I was tanking Valanar on the stage, Purraj the Druid had Taldaram over to the right, and Slyke the Shadow Priest would ranged tank Keleseth.

Our first pull went, as you’d expect, chaotically. Keleseth was the second Prince and he quickly dispatched poor Slyke who didn’t have enough dark nuclei. One of the raiders, who despite being a nice guy has a major tendency to insist on raid changes–loudly–in vent, suggested vociferously that Slyke couldn’t cut it and we needed a warrior tank on Keleseth. Considering that was the first try of the night, I wasn’t prepared to shift strategy, so that avenue of discussion was cut off and we buckled down to work on the strategy at hand.

The second pull went a lot more smoothly and when it came Slyke’s turn to tank and empowered Prince he did a fantastic job and easily survived his phase. Unfortunately the melee had to muddle it up by getting blown up by an empowered shock vortex.

Third try we had an Empowered Conjured Flame take out a huge chunk of range that was too close together. On that attempt though we got them to ~60%. Progress was obviously being made. I played the optimist for the crowd, told everyone they were doing fantastic (which they were), and re-emphasized positioning to minimize Conjured Flame damage.

Fourth try we had another mishap with the Empowered Shock Vortex, but still got them down to 37%. We were definitely getting there!

Fifth try everything seemed to click. Melee switched fast, hunters were on the ball (literally) getting pets onto the Kinetic Bombs. No one died to ESV, no one died to ECF, and when we were on Valanar with 5% of his health to go I suddenly realized we were about to score the kill. At about 1% the Invocation of Blood jumped to Taldaram though, and Purraj ended up finishing him off, I think.

Anyway, we got the kill and an achievement to boot!

After the Council we went to work on Putricide a bit since we were somewhat familiar with that fight (as opposed to going in blind on the Queen). Our best attempt was something like 65% out of the six attempts we did, so not awesome, but we’ll get there.

I just need people to actually show up, dammit.

Highs and lows

Low point

On Saturday I was struck with the desire to bring my lvl 65 hunter (my very first WoW character, rolled the day after the game was released) out and try to finally get him going again. I bought 145 emblems worth of heirloom items, paid for normal flying, and then tried to figure out how to play a hunter again. I lost interest immediately.

High point

Rolled a new warlock instead–yes, this is on top of my other alts: the 42 druid, the 41 shaman, the 48 mage, the 80 DK–I have Alt-ADHD.

Spent the better part of yesterday leveling it with Cendra’s new rogue. Was pretty fun, and I love all the spells it has at such a low level. I’ll probably play it until 40 or so and then get bored.

Low point

Saturday I threw together a somewhat impromptu Undying run. Razuvious was the raid weekly this week, so turns out half the people invited were saved already. Finally decide we’ll just 8 man it, everyone’s pumped for a fun drunk raid, and we go to do Razuvious first. While manning one of the Understudies, my pet frame was turned off and I couldn’t drop mine in time to save Zilga’s from dying. I pick Raz back up, we’re doing good, last 10% of health. Then I lose aggro, Razuvious runs over and instagibs a poor warlock and then before we can all flee to reset, the boss dies. I screwed up Undying on the first boss.

High point

Went and did ToGC-10 instead, finished it with 48 attempts left. Got a few upgrades for the warlock, who I hope will start raiding soon. One for the win column, overall.

Low point

After that tried a late ICC-10 alt run. Never got past Marrowgar because people couldn’t switch to spikes or avoid dying in the fire.

High point

No one got saved to a fail run.

Low point

Didn’t kill Putricide last night in ICC-10 (mains run).

High point

On our best attempt we got him to 26% and there was a marked improvement every attempt that didn’t have some crazy RNG screw up early on (ie, every “real attempt”). We definitely could have killed him with a lot more time.

Also, as you might have guessed, we killed Roface on 10man for the first time. We had a third healer in the group switch to actual heals for the fight and it reduced a lot of the “one healer dead = wipe” issues we had last week. Our first try we wiped at 7%, second at 1%, third a clean kill with no deaths. Was a thing of beauty.

Low point

Went into an AV yesterday to drop a Great Feast and score my Dinner Impossible achievement. Someone asks if there’s a tank and some tool responds he can tank it. Another guy says “Rhidach has 51.1k” (no wasn’t me) and the tool retorts “I’ll out threat him and live longer.” I kept trying to type in /raid a witty riposte (“Oh ho ho, so you think …”) but I failed to realize that you use /bg to talk in the battleground raid channel. I lose my chance to salvage my ego.

High point

I haunted him the whole way to Vann where he pulled and after a few seconds I pulled aggro by out tpsing him. He taunted back, the healers didn’t have enough time to react, and he died. And I lol’d. Oh, how I lol’d.

Interrupting the Council, and some achievs fun

After Tuesday’s lagtastic night we had downed the first five bosses of ICC, leaving us Rotface and the Blood Council as Wednesday’s agenda. I admit, I was full trepidation, our Rotface kill last week was a bit messy and I was worried we’d get bogged down in that fight.

The first attempt though alleviated a lot of my worry, we got him to 17% on the first go, and that was with a snafu involving someone’s first time on the fight and them not realizing they got infected. So, messy finish, but hopeful nonetheless. Second attempt we got him down to 12%, mainly due to another ooze issue where a second Big Ooze got made and it ate a few people. Third time, however, was the charm and despite everyone going to hell at 5% we got Rotface down. Very exciting.

I don’t want to say to say the “f” word just yet (er, I mean farm), but we’re definitely getting there.

With Rotface down the time came to go put some attempts in on the Council (my thinking being we’d have more success against them than against Putricide). So happily off to the Blood Wing we trudged and lined up for a trash pull.

The trash before the Blood Council is… interesting. It requires strategy and–believe it or not–crowd control. For the two huge packs before the Blood Council’s stage we ended up shackling one guy and trying to use hunters to take one of the Tacticians out of commission. The Tacticians (basically Rogues) suck. They pop in out of no where, sap a tank, making him drop aggro, and then the mobs run roughshod over everyone. Definitely do what you can to burn down the Tacticians one at a time while the other is controlled.

Once we cleared out the trash we were ready for some potshots on the Council.

The fight itself isn’t too awful, it just requires a lot of juggling, so to speak. There’s the shock waves, the beach ball, the conjured flame, and the dark nuclei all to contend with. The fight is a huge orchestra of different clashing cacophonies, and the point of the fight is to get everyone to herd those dangers into one smooth harmony. Not as hard as it seems, but we spent the rest of the night learning everything that can go wrong (as is our usual habit) which lines us up for a kill next week.

Some things I learned:

• When Valanar is empowered and casts his shock wave you have 4.5 seconds not to run away, but you find your own spot away from other melee. When the cast time ends a shock spot appears under you and explodes for a chunk of damage. The trick is to be by yourself so you don’t get hit by other shocks.
• When someone gets chased by an empowered Conjure Flame they need to run for it (this means all ranged need to be at max range from Taldaram) and wave through everyone around them. Every time the Conjured Flame incidentally hurts people around it, it will do less damage when it explodes. So the kiter should take it through ranged, burn as many stacks as possible, and then explode it with them 15 yards away from everyone.
• The ranged tank on Keleseth has a really hard job.

Some things I read today that I wish I knew last night:

• It might make more sense for a melee tank to deal with Keleseth in the 25 man. If he gets into melee on the ranged tank (especially while empowered) that poor ranged will go splat. I think next week I’m going to try to tank him and Demo can take Valanar and Purraj (the druid) can get Taldaram. It’d be a boon for raid dps at the very least.
• If you sic a hunter’s pet on a beachball the pet will stand under it, wait for it to get low, and then hit it enough to send it up in the air. This will trivialize the beachballs.

Pretty complicated seeming fight, but once we get the hang of it, it should be cake. I’m looking forward to trying it next week.

Speaking of months behind!

Probably the more exciting thing last night was the last minute achievement burst I was inspired to do. Before raid I gathered some buddies (Cendra, Ildara, Gulliveig, Gandy) and we jumped over to Gundrak to try to do Less-Rabi. The strategy I outlined was gently get him to 51%, interrupt the next transform, then bloodlust and push to the kill while throwing interrupts like nuts at the 5 second mark.

I pulled and after the first transform he was already at 41% health. I boggled a bit but kept going. Somehow, not sure, we nailed the next interrupt which must have been a millisecond long since it took place at like 10% health. Moorabi dropped before he knew what hit him. So, Less-Rabi done and two more to go: Share the Love and Amber Void.

Since we were already in Gundrak we finished the place up to get to the last boss and then Gandy jumped on his DK to initially tank at first. Once I got impaled I took over and held him for the rest of the fight. After about three rhino phases everyone was impaled and we dropped the boss and grabbed the achiev. That was the last one Cendra and Ildara needed for Glory of the Hero so I dropped a mailbox for Cendra so he could retrieve his Red Proto, which was then the 100th mount he needed for Mountain of Mounts. Crazy achievement day for Cen!

After the raid we then headed over to Oculus so I could grab my last Glory of the Hero achievement, Amber Void. It was a quick run (as Oculus is stupid-simple now) and it wasn’t long before a Proto was also waiting in my mailbox.

Now to help Gul get his Glory achievement.

Tips for Festergut and Rotface

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.

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.

Eh, he can still go rot

Nope, no Rotface-25 kill last night. But we were close. Oh so close. So close I could taste it, and you do not want to know what Rotface tastes like.

Ok, angry poo. There, I said it.

(That would be more funny and less disturbing if you’re familiar with his emotes.)

Anyway, our best attempt we had him at 4.9%, and we spent multiple attempts dancing just about that number.

We were probably approaching the fight wrong too. More interested in the long game, we had six healers and it being a Thursday not our best of the best dps. I think next week we’ll do five healers and try to get him down faster. There’s just no way to hold out once you get to the six-second, crazy Infection time. You just get overwhelmed, it’s a total enrage timer and we were not giving it the proper respect.

I wish there was some magic advice I could offer on this fight, but it’s really just coordination and praying your raiders can pay attention to having Mutated Infections. The dreaded Situational Awareness.

If you have raiders that could walk the Atlantic City beach, step on a hypodermic needle, and not notice… you’re screwed.

Also, Blizz really needs to reduce the hit box on the Big Ooze. That thing could reach across the room and knock me out cold if he wanted to.

All in all it’s nice to have a challenge again. The fact that we have to spend more than one night learning a boss isn’t as soul crushing as I imagined it might be (ToC surely spoiled me). We’ll get him sooner rather than later.

He can go rot

Last night my brilliant idea was to fall back to 10mans and kill Rotface and Putricide so we can convert that experience to easier kills in the 25man. Unfortunate kink in the works: Rotface is really hard in 10man. At least he was for us last night.

Yeah that’s three Big Oozes. We had some spectacular wipes.

Anyway, strike my earlier statement. The boss wasn’t hard, we just weren’t doing the fight correctly. The execution was off, I was trying to juggle too many things at once, people didn’t yet get the hang of dealing with infections.

So tonight we’re going into 25man with no 10man kill, though a wealth of knowledge on how badly the fight can go. So, that’s a plus.

I wish I could decisively say “ok do the encounter this way”, but I can’t. Instead I’m going to take a page from my own book when we were learning Anub’arak, and tell you what not to do when offtanking Rotface.

1. Don’t run in a circle around the room

The tanks rupture in a random pattern, with the only constant being that a quadrant won’t flood twice before the other three flood once. Kiting counter clockwise around the room isn’t going to cut it. Clockwise, neither. You need to half kite; then, once a quadrant clears, bee line for it.

2. Don’t stop moving when kiting the big ooze

The big ooze moves slowly, but not so slowly you can RP walk away from it. You do not want to ever be in melee range of the big ooze, so don’t come to a halt letting someone catch up to you. The room is a circle, your raiders should be smart enough to run a straight line from where they were to where you will be, not try to follow you as you run around the room.

3. Don’t run through a tank spill unless your Hand of Freedom is off cooldown

The spill will eventually slow your movement speed by 50%. You don’t want to run through it unless HoF is available. Otherwise the ooze will significantly catch up to you.

4. Don’t run in front of the slime spray cone

When you see that slime spray emote or DBM warns you it’s coming, check your position and make sure you’re not directly in the line of fire.

5. Triage the dangers of the fight correctly

In terms of deadliness: big ooze melee > running big ooze through raid > running over the tank spill. When presented with the necessity to quickly get across the room and one of those three has to happen, always choose running over the spill if (like said above) your HoF is off cooldown. If not, then skirt the edge of the spill (yes, giving aoe damage to the raid closest to the big ooze, though it won’t hurt that much) until you are safe.

Rotface is a rough fight, fraught with perils galore. As the offtank, yours is the hardest job of the fight–all the responsibility of the raid’s success rests on your plated shoulders. And if you’re the MT, I hate you. Enjoy your sammich!

The Plagueworks opens

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.