Tuesday, January 19, 2010

ICC10: Putricide

Putricide is the wing-boss for the Plagueworks in ICC. He is a combination of dps-race, environmental awareness, vehicle (for one player), and healing-intensive fight.

Video of the Hardmode at the bottom; used a slightly altered strat.

Raid Makeup:
  • 2x tanks
  • 2-3x healers (we used 3 for first kill)
  • 5-6 DPS
This is not a very melee-friendly fight. The more ranged dps you can bring, the better.


The Pull:

For the first two phases, you will only be using 1 tank. Your second tank will turn into a (friendly) abomination by drinking a potion from the table behind the boss as the raid pulls, and will spend most of the fight in this form.

DO NOT cleanse your abomination tank; this will remove their abomination shapeshift. It will appear as a debuff, but do not cleanse them!!

P1 and P2 of the fight (up until Putricide reaches 35%) will be spent with the raid swapping back and forth from one side of the room to the other, staying on the side farthest from where the next ooze add will spawn. For this reason we found it easiest to pull on the left-hand side of the room, since the first ooze add spawn will always be the green ooze on the right-hand side.




Things to avoid:

P1-P2-P3: Slime Puddles: straight-forward green puddles of pain. These are thrown out periodically (two at a time) at random players. Do not stand in them unless you're the abomination. They steadily grow larger; the abomination will be eating these puddles (yummy) to make them go away and power the abom's own attacks. Aboms: you can only eat slime that you're standing on; you will have to reposition yourself closer to the center of a large puddle as you eat it away.

P2-P3: "Flasks:" these orange gas-bombs are placed in melee range, 2 at a time, and will explode 20 seconds after they are placed down. They look like flasks on the ground radiating an orange-brown mist. The flasks themselves have a damaging, hit reduction aura before exploding; the explosions will hurt anyone caught in them. When you see these go down, kite the boss to the other side of the tables, away from the flasks, and stay away from them. The explosion does a hefty chunk of damage and reduces your +hit by 75% for 20 seconds, so these NEED to be avoided.

MELEE: Putricide's hitbox is very large; be sure to make use of this large hitbox when staying out of slime and flask-gas. You can refer to melee combat pets' attack spacing to get an idea of what the melee hitbox is.


P2-P3: Malleable Goo: a glob of green jello-like substance is hurled through the air at a random player, bouncing along until it reaches where it target had been standing, where it will then explode much like the gas-bomb-flasks. Does a hefty chunk of damage and doubles your casting times for 20 seconds, so these NEED to be avoided. If you see one flying through the air, call it out in warning so all the ranged can move away.


Oozes:

These are a key ingredient to phase 1 and 2. Oozes spawn one at a time, green on the right and orange-brown on the left; they must be destroyed as quickly as possible. You will want to be on the far side of the room from wherever an ooze spawns, to give maximum distance it must travel before it reaches whoever it decides to target. Oozes will not target the MT or the abomination. Once the ooze is dead, dps can return to killing Putricide.

Green ooze:
  • Spawns on the right-hand side of the room, and is the first ooze to spawn.
  • Roots and debuffs one player, dealing heavy damage via a DoT
  • Explodes on the player if they reach them, then switches to a new target.
  • Explosion damage is split among nearby players, so less dangerous if shared by more people.
Once a green ooze spawns, the abomination can use regurgitated ooze to slow it, while all ranged dps should switch to attacking it. Once it has selected a target, the melee can run in and start dps as well; avoid running over before it has selected a target, or it may choose one of the nearer melee. The rooted target can still cast spells and attacks; they just are unable to move from their spot.



When the green ooze nears its target (assuming it does not die before it reaches this point), the dps and healers should GROUP UP on that target to share the explosion, preventing anyone from dieing from the blast. The pile of players will be knocked back, and then the ooze will choose a new target: being dpsing it again immediately, and repeat should it reach that target, as well.



Avoid grouping together too soon, or your rooted player may end up stuck under a double-pool of slime along with the rest of the raid, and players will very likely die under the combined damage.

Once the green ooze is dead, the ranged all need to move to the right-hand side of the room while dpsing Putricide.


Orange-Brown Ooze:

  • Spawns on the left-hand side of the room.
  • Does not root its target.
  • Stacks a gaseous bloat debuff on its target that slowly ticks down from 10 to 0.
  • If it reaches the target, deals damage to the raid (not split) based on the number of bloat stacks.
  • Switches to a new target if the bloat stacks reach 0.
It's technically called a gas cloud, but it certainly looks like an ooze! This is one that must be kited by its targeted player around the room until it is killed. If the player's gaseous bloat is near to dropping off, call it out and have all melee dps retreat a safe distance away, since the ooze will target a new player once the debuff wears off.



Again, the abomination can cast regurgitated ooze on it to slow it down. The raid does not need to group up on the player being targeted by this one; just dps and heal away while the targeted player flees. Once the orange-brown ooze is dead, the ranged all need to move back to the left-hand side of the room while dpsing Putricide.

Resto druids: as Keeva pointed out, aboms do proc energy returns off of Revitalize. Keep a rejuv running on them as much as possible (assuming you have the talent).



Transitions:

At 80% and at 35%, Putricide will stun the entire raid while he goes to the table to buff himself. Phase 2 begins at 80% and introduces the Gas Bomb Flasks and Malleable Goo into the fight; Phase 3 puts a halt to the ooze spawns and starts the true "burn him quick!" phase with necessary tank swaps.

When you approach the 38% mark, halt all dps and dots on Putricide, because transitioning while a slime is up will cut uncomfortably into your dps time on Putricide. Wait until you have JUST killed a slime before pushing Putricide over the 35% transition mark! It will make your phase 3 much smoother if you do not have an ooze add to worry about killing at the same time.

Phase 3:

Your abomination will need to shift out to his usual tank form for this phase, meaning that the slime puddles on the floor will eventually overtake the room. Putricide has increased his own attack speed and damage by 50% compared to previous phases, and will be stacking a debuff on the tank that causes increasing raid-wide damage as it stacks higher and higher. Unfortunately, it also heals Putricide once the stacks drop off of a tank.

We had our tanks swap at 2 stacks.

This phase is all about burning him down as fast as possible before the slime puddles leave you with nowhere to go. He will continue to toss:
  • slime puddles
  • gas bomb flasks
  • malleable goo
...which must be avoided. Try to stay somewhat near each other to aid in AoE healing, and don't get cornered! The tanks should slowly kite Putricide around the room to avoid flasks and slime puddles, moving from clear space to (semi) clear space as they can. Always be looking for your next escape route through the growing slime!


Good luck :)


Video:

Captured on hardmode by our holy priest, Kuchki.

8 comments:

Niniel said...

Excellent summary Kae! :)

Mark said...

Who would be silly enough to cleanse the abomination? I mean really... *whistles innocently*

Ram said...

Nomnomnom :)

Charles said...

Fantastic illustrations! I feel they really add to the strategic depth of the post. Except Putricide and the oozes look so adorable that I'm not sure I really want to kill them anymore :]

Positioning-wise, one of my guildies noticed that rather than swapping from side to side we could stand (spread out, natch) in broadly the same place for most of the fight so long as the MA keeps slime spots under control. This place is either the west end of the room by the workbench or the east end by the entrance, because they're equidistant to each ooze/gas spawn spot... so you're already at max range to each spawn, but ready to DPS them the moment they pop with almost no movement involved.

Arael said...

Why do the Abo looks like Festergut and Rotface?

Just Kidding Kae, good work there.

Alyae said...

That debuff was staring me in the face on my raid frames, and i literally had to tell myself not to cleanse it... almost every attempt. Honestly at times, that was the hardest part for me.

MUST ... RESIST..... CLEANSE ...

Bandmiguelin said...

Just a quick heads up on a strat we've found to be a huge help, if you stay mostly in the north of the room (ie green ooze side), you can then start nuking the ooze when it spawns, and we've found this enables us to get it down before it hits a 2nd person. As you have all the melee on the ooze when it 1st explodes the damage is manageable, and the raid needs minimal movement to get away from the gas mob.

Sounds a bit odd I know, but trust me, its a vast improvement, makes it a much more manageable fight. Now if only I could stop being terrible at dodging those damn malleable oozes...

Kae said...

"All the melee" may be only one or two people in a ten-man, which isn't enough to soak the explosion. Also, I never noticed any delay in beginning ooze dps with the above strat, except to keep melee away from it until the ooze had selected a target (for the same reason); I can see an increase in damage on Putricide, though, from not having to move across the room.

We swapped it down to two healers this week without any issues (yay gear upgrades).