Icecrown Citadel: Festergut

Festergut ain't good-looking, that's true. In fact, if you'd make his voice just a little bit more annoying, he'd be like a skinnier version of Roseanne Barr.

Festergut is an orgy of farts and vomits. Blizzard really caters to its customer base: 5-year old boys in kindergarten with a poop fetish. I guess the rest of us just have to deal with it.

Stinky

Stinky is one mean doggy, and needs to be killed to access Festergut. He has the following abilities:

• Mortal Wound - a stacking debuff on the tank that reduces healing by 10% per stack. Tanks need to taunt off each other when the stacks get too high. The debuff stacks FAST.
• Decimate - reduces the entire raid's healthpools to very little. A decimate combined with high stacks of mortal wound is BAD for the tank.
• Plague Stench - raid wide aoe that just needs to be healed through.

First time we pulled this puppy, most of the raid was dead within seconds. Healers really need to be on their toes, especially right after a decimate.
When the dog is dead, move on to Festergut.

Festergut

Festergut is a dps race with a very tight enrage timer. On 25-man you'll need about 7.5k dps per dpser, and in 10-man about 5.5k dps. Tank healers will also have a stressful job.

Festergut will be tanked in the center of the room. Melee and a majority of the healers (especially the tank healers, since they should not be forced to move at all) should be standing on top of the boss. The rest of the raid spreads out around the boss. The people who are spread out need to be ready to collapse into groups when Festergut unleashes Gas Spores (more on that later). They cannot stand grouped up during the fight due to Vile Gas, which disables the target and deals damage to nearby allies. In addition to this, everybody in the raid needs to make sure to get three stacks of a shadow resistance buff that the Gas Spores spread.

Tanks need to switch tanking Festergut when stacks of Gastric Bloat get too high, and tanks will take lots of damage when Festergut has cast Inhale Blight three times.

Confused yet? Don't worry, it sounds worse than it is.


Gas Spores
Festergut farts Gas Spores on the raid (2 in 10-man, 3 in 25-man). After 12 seconds, the spore will explode and deal damage to everyone around the target. The thing is: YOU WANT PEOPLE TO GET HIT BY THIS. If you get hit by the damage from an exploding Gas Spore, you will get a shadow resistance buff, which you will need to survive later in the fight. Always make sure everybody gets hit by this.

Best way to handle this is to have two or three (10- or 25-man respectively) collapse points. One will be on the tank who is currently tanking the boss (since he will also need the resistance). The other(s) will be at range away from the melee group. During the fight, make sure that one spore explodes on the tank and melee, and the other(s) explode in the collapsing group(s).


Vile Gas
Festergut casts this on random targets. The target starts vomitting and deals damage to everybody around him. It lasts 6 seconds. During this time the target is disabled and also takes some damage (it can be broken by bubbling or using Every Man for Himself). Vile Gas is not cast on melee if there is at least 3 or 8 people (10- or 25-man respectively) standing at range.
This means that people standing at range must spread out during the fight, and only collapse into groups when Gas Spores are about to explode. It also means you cannot stack everybody on top of the boss.


Gastric Bloat
Festergut casts this on the current tank. It is a stacking debuff that increases damage done by 10% per stack. At 10 stacks, the target will explode and most likely wipe the raid. Tanks must switch at 9 stacks, they cannot switch earlier since the debuff lasts too long (it lasts 100 seconds, and each stack is applied about very 12 seconds).

Paladin tanks can bubble out of the debuff if they need to, but since it is a dps race, tanks most likely want to have the damage buff to help with killing the freak.

At 9 stacks, the other tank taunts, and the first tank turns into a dpser. That means turning off Righteous Fury, changing to Blood Presence, leaving Defensive Stance, or going kitty. The tank turned dps probably wants to get a Hand of Salvation, since threat might be a problem with a 90% damage increase.


Inhale Blight
Festergut inhales some of the gas in the room, to grow stronger. Everytime he does this, he starts doing 30% more damage. Inhale Blight stacks three times, which means that after the third Inhale Blight, Festergut deals 90% more damage than normally. At this point, it is wise for tanks and healers to use cooldowns to keep the tank up. After the third inhale, he vomits and goes back to normal strength.


Pungent Blight
When Festergut vomits, he deals a MASSIVE amount of shadow damage to the entire raid. This is why you need everybody to have 3 stacks of the shadow resistance debuff.


Gaseous Blight
The final thing to worry about is Gaseous Blight. It's a raid-wide damage done during the entire fight. Everytime Festergut inhales some of the blight, the damage is reduced. After vomitting, the damage is back to the starting damage.

This means that healers need to be aware of timers and abilities more than usual. When Festergut is hitting the tank with "normal" strength, the entire raid is taking higher damage from the gas. When Festergut is hitting the tank REAL hard, the entire raid is taking less damage from the gas. Make sure to have healers switching between tank and raid healing depending on the gas status.



Melee dps have the easiest job in this fight. They just stand behind the boss and nuke their skulls off. They might need to take a step forward when the spore is about to explode to make sure to get hit by it, but otherwise it's just pew-pew.

Ranged dps need to be aware of who got the spores and where they should collapse to when the spore explodes. This means moving, which a majority of ranged dps hate.

Healers will be very busy dealing with high tank damage as well as constant aoe damage to the entire raid.

Tanks need to ready with cooldowns at the third Inhale Blight, as well as be sure to make the switch at 9 stacks safe.

Icecrown Citadel: Rotface

Rotface ain't good-looking, that's true. In fact, if you'd throw on some plastic boobs on him, he'd look like a fat Amy Winehouse.
Nevertheless, he has a friend; A not-so-cute puppy called Precious. Obviously, the first thing your raid will do is kill that doggy.

Precious

Precious is a mini-boss that needs to be killed to access Rotface. He is a plague hound with some nasty abilities.

• Mortal Wound - a stacking debuff on the tank that reduces healing by 10% per stack. Tanks need to taunt off each other when the stacks get too high. The debuff stacks FAST.
• Decimate - reduces the entire raid's healthpools to very little. A decimate combined with high stacks of mortal wound is BAD for the tank.
• Awaken Plague Zombies - summons a big group of zombies in a circle around the doggy. This is where Holy Wrath and Concecration shines for a paladin.

When the mutt is dead, it's time to put that freak Amy... eh... Rotface out of his misery. Consider it a mercy killing.

Rotface

Short version of tactics: Tank boss in center of room. Kite big ooze around the room. Loot.

The challenge in this fight is handling the oozes that spawn. The small oozes spawn from raid members that have been infected my Mutated Infection, either after 12 seconds, or when they are cleansed. The oozes will stick to that person until it can merge with other oozes, creating Big Oozes. Big Oozes must be kited around the room, since they can one-shot even tanks. They also deal aoe damage, so the kiting path must be away from the rest of the raid.

When five oozes have merged, the Big Ooze will explode, dealing aoe damage and sending sprays of ooze around the room. The raid needs to move out of this to avoid damage.

This doesn't sound too hard, right? Well, the Mutated Infections are cast at an increasingly faster rate over the fight. Towards the end of the fight, there will be LOADS of small oozes that needs to be handled correctly.

Things to look out for:

• Mutated Infection - deals some damage and reduces healing received by 50%. After 12 seconds (or when the debuff is removed), a small ooze spawns.
• Ooze Flood - one quarter of the room will be filled with slime, which deals damage and reduces movement speed by 25%. Only the kiting tank should ever be in these.
• Slime Spray - Rotface rains slime in a cone in front of him. Deals quite a lot of damage, so the raid need to try to avoid being hit by this.
• Sticky Ooze - both the small and the big oozes can spit out sticky ooze in front of raid members. The sticky ooze deals damage and reduces movement speed by 50%. This is especially bad for the kiting tank to get stuck in. Avoid!
• Unstable Ooze Explosion - when the oozes have merged five times, the big ooze will explode. Run away!

Hints:

• The people who gets the Mutated Infection should run to the kiting tank, get cleansed, and make sure that the small ooze that spawns merges with the big ooze that is following the kiting tank before they run back to the raid.
• The main tank can use cooldowns to survive the Unstable Explosions, and thus does not have to move at all in the fight. The hardest thing for the main tank in this fight is avoiding falling asleep.
• If you get more than one Big Ooze (which is BAD), try to make them merge into a single one as fast as possible.

Using a paladin as the kiting tank has many advantages:

• Paladins can cleanse the Mutated Infection debuff. If the kiting tank handles all the cleansing, it can be controlled better.
• Paladins can build threat on the Big Ooze from a distance (Hand of Reckoning, Avenger's Shield, Exorcism, Judgement), and will thus not risk being one-shotted by the ooze.
• Paladins with Pursuit of Justice will run faster than other tanks, which makes kiting easier.
• Paladins can use Hand of Freedom if they get stuck in Ooze Floods or Sticky Ooze.
• Paladins are sexy and their pure awesomeness will make Oozes think twice before hurting them. And if they do hurt them, paladins have Ardent Defender.

If you get the job to tank the boss, prepare for a snooze fest. If you get the job to kite the oozes, prepare for some serious stress.

The kiting tank's job depends on how raid members move when they get the Mutated Infection. No tank in the world can save the raid if people run too late or to the wrong place or get cleansed at the wrong time or decide to hug the big ooze or hug other small oozes with their own small ooze. Not even paladin tanks can Taunt Stupid or Cleanse Retard. Maybe in Cataclysm, though.

Icecrown Citadel: The Lower Spire Part II

Due to a nice long Christmas vacation, I've fallen way behind in my write-up on Icecrown Citadel. The next wing is already open, and I will of course write about that one in a later post.

But first, I have to finish writing about the first wing.

After killing the skinny tart Lady Deathwhisper, the raid jumps onto an elevator and takes a short trip to the lower part of the roof of Artha's little house. Up on the roof, Horde and Alliance are fighting over who has the coolest ride; The Skybreaker or Orgrim's Hammer. As all guys know, discussions regarding rides can only be solved in two ways: a) Bash eachother's brains in, or b) compete in a race. And that's what the third encounter in Icecrown Citadel is all about.

Bash in some Horde skulls (if you're Alliance, otherwise that would be bad) and make a run for the Alliance ship: The Skybreaker. Now it's a race to the top, and all dirty tricks are allowed.

Gunship Battle

When taking a ride in The Skybreaker, you are putting your lives in the hands of grumpy drunken dwarves. If that wasn't bad enough, the orcs onboard Orgrim's Hammer has decided to make the trip even more interesting.

This fight is the Chess event (remember Karazhan?) of Icecrown Citadel. It's pretty hard to fail, except when the encounter bugs out horribly.

Before starting the event by talking to Muradin, make sure everybody has had a chat with the dude next to him so that everyone has a rocket pack equipped. With this rocket pack, a player can fly between the two ships, and this is needed to beat the encounter.

The raid is divided into three groups: Defenders, Gunners, and a Boarding party.

The Defenders' jobs are quite simple: Kill everyone within range. The enemy is trying to board your ship every now and then, and these attackers need to be tanked and killed. Whenever there's no attackers, this team should help out killing things in the enemy ship. Therefore, ranged dps is best suited for the Defenders team, since they can attack both the enemy's boarding party as well as the axe throwers on the enemy ship.

Gunners use cannons to damage the enemy ship until it breaks down. They need to avoid overheating the cannons, and whenever the cannons are frozen by the enemy battle mage, they leave their cannons and help the boarding party kill the battle mage. Gunners could be either melee or ranged dps.

The boarding party jumps over to the enemy ship either to just kill off the battle mage who is freezing the friendly cannons, or to kill off rocketeers and axe throwers as well.

A tank should always jump on to the enemy ship first, and leave it last, since the enemy commander (Saurfang in Horde's case) will engage any unfriendly visitor to do some serious hurt. The tank should stack avoidance, since Saurfang gains a stacking buff everytime he hits something which increases his damage done. If the buff reaches 20 stacks, the tank will most likely be one-shotted. The buff resets after Saurfang hasn't hit anything for 20 seconds.

This means that the boarding party cannot stay too long at the enemy ship before they have to retreat and let Saurfang's buff reset. Make sure not to leave pets or totems on the enemy ship when retreating, since this will prolong the reset time of his buff.

The main purpose of the boarding party is to kill the battle mage as fast as possible, so that your gunners can start using their cannons again.

Things to look out for:

• All mobs gain experience and get stronger the longer they live. It's important to kill off all mobs as fast as possible to reduce the damage they will deal. Make sure to prioritize killing order based on how experienced the mobs are.
  
• Battle Fury - this is the stacking damage buff that the enemy commander gets. Make sure that it doesn't stack too high, because then the tank in the boarding party will die.
• Below Zero - this is when the enemy battle mage freezes your cannons. The battle mage needs to be killed as soon as possible, so that your gunners can continue damaging the enemy ship.
• Rocket Artillery - the enemies are bombarding your ship with rockets. Big runes on the deck will show you where the rockets will land. Try to avoid these, since they hurt. The more experiences the rocketeer that fires the rocket is, the more damage the rocket does.
• Sergeants - these are the most dangerous members of the enemy boarding party. They whirlwind and does mortal strike. Make sure these guys don't get too experienced, or the defending tank will most likely die.

Our first experience: This encounter was seriously bugged the first week. After winning the battle, our ship never docked, and since our master looter had died on the enemy ship, he couldn't be ressed and we couldn't distribute the loot. Since this seemed to happen to a lot of raiders, I guess Blizzard had a busy time handling tickets regarding loot distribution from the gunship battle the first week.

To minimize the risk of the tank in the boarding party dying, you can keep the boarding party on your own ship until the battle mage appears. Then move the entire party over to the ship, kill the battle mage and the most experienced rocketeers, and jump back before the damage to the tank gets too high.

Alot of people seem to think this encounter is the shizzle. Personally, I think it's a bit annoying. It's hard to fail, and it just takes long to execute.

When the fight is over, your triumphant ship docks and the next boss is waiting for you.

Deathbringer Saurfang

We all knew death knights were overpowered, but this guy is taking on 25 opponents without flinching. And like any other death knight, he's cheating by healing himself whenever he does damage. Nerf death knights, I say!

The key to this fight is to limit the damage he and his adds deals to the raid, since the damage done heals him. One way is to try to shorten the fight time by making one or two of your healers respec dps to kill him faster. Healing in this fight is easy at first, but gets real nasty the longer the fight lasts.

Two tanks are needed, since Saurfang will put Rune of Blood on his current target, which heals him for 10 times the damage he deals. That's when the other tank taunts and keeps the orc's interest until he gets the Rune and it's time for a new swap.

Tanks should wear avoidance gear, since Saurfang gains 1 Blood Power everytime he hits the tank. When he reaches 100 Blood Power, he casts Mark of the Fallen Champion on someone in the raid, and that's when it gets exciting for the healers.

The hardest part of the fight is probably controlling the Blood Beasts that he summons. These nasty buggers need to be kited and killed as soon as possible. If they hit someone, Saurfang gains Blood Power, which is bad, thus the job of kiting and killing falls on ranged dps. The beasts can (and should) be slowed as much as possible.

Things to look out for:

• Mark of the Fallen Champion - the people who get this will take lots of damage, and will heal Saurfang for 5% of his health when they die. In addition, when marks are up, Saurfang gains Blood Power more frequently. You have a choice here: Keep one healer spamming the people with the mark, or just let them die. On 25-man, letting them die is usually the most efficient choice. On 10-man, it's not recommended.
• Rune of Blood - make sure to tank switch as soon as this is up, since it heals him considerably.
• Call Blood Beasts - melee dps (this includes the tanks) need to stop ALL aoe damage when the beasts spawn, so that the kiters have a chance to get aggro on them. If one of the melee gets aggro, he needs to run away to avoid getting hit.

Our first experience: We wiped on Saurfang until we learned how to handle the Blood Beasts. When we had those under control, the fight was no longer a problem.

My next Icecrown post will be about those handsome fellas Festergut and Rotface.