I have very mixed feelings about the Putricide fight. As a fellow healer on my team said, it's controlled chaos if you do it well; very predictable, fairly easy to heal once you get the hang of it. But there's a ton going on, and a lot of movement depending on the method you use. Not exactly a paladin's best friend. However, it gives us a chance to break out some quick usage of spells we may have gotten lazy with in our comfy straight heal-bomb fights. Putricide always puts me at about half HPS of what something like Festergut would have me, so this is not one of our strong fights for sheer output. Where we shine here is with versatility and a quick response time.
Preparing for the RaidThere isn't much in the way of differing preparation here. Get your flask and your food - most anything is fine, though heavy crit or SP may prove beneficial to some - and, you know. Show up. In 10-man we 2-heal this, though with the 5% buff it may be possible for most raids to get away with 3-healing if it's truly needed. It certainly does give a bit of leeway. I have somewhat of a perfect world in that my other two healers are generally a druid and a holy priest, so we've got a bit of everything covered on our team. For 25, we were running 6 but I fear we may have to knock that down to 5 once people get the hang of the fight and darting out of the avoidable damage.If you haven't done so, I recommend setting Sacred Shield to a keybind. For this fight, I change mine out with Cleanse. You can try a castsequence macro with Sacred Shield, Flash of Light, and Holy Shock, but I tend to find it distracting more than anything.Professor PutricideThe good doctor has the following abilities in his quest to destroy all life on Azeroth:
Slime Puddle: Tossed on the ground through all phases. If your abomination tank is quick, they shouldn't be much of a problem to avoid.Unstable Experiment - Green Ooze: This is always the first experiment cast. Creates a green ooze that will target a player, make them immobile, then come pounce on their head. It will proceed to pounce on other players until it is dead. Unstable Experiment - Gas Cloud: Chooses a target and puts 10 stacks of Gaseous Bloat (a DoT) on them. The player must kite this experiment; if it reaches them it blasts everyone near them for a significant amount of damage. Tear Gas: Signals the change between phases. Rogues can get out of this and stab the boss while he's monologuing, but the rest of us get to stand there and wait.
Choking Gas: Starts with Phase 2. Two flasks are placed on the ground; standing near them does damage to you and reduces your chance to hit. Not as much of a worry for a healer, but you want to avoid them when they explode.Malleable Goo: This is your big menace, especially as a holy paladin. Starts in Phase 2, bounces toward a target. Damages on impact with a high splash radius, but most importantly, increases casting time by a whopping 200% for 20 seconds. Do not want. Mutated Strength: Phase 3, essentially makes the Professor 50% meaner.Mutated Plague: If the room filling with slime wasn't enough of an enrage timer, this'll do it. Stacks on the tanks, pulsing outward to damage the raid. If it stacks too high, you're guaranteed death. The StrategyPhase 1First thing's first: Step away from the cleanse button. If you've just done Rotface, you may be a tad cleanse-happy. Unfortunately, Mutated Transformation shows as a dispellable debuff on Grid and you can, in fact, remove it. Doing so knocks the abom tank out of the vehicle and forces them to get another potion, losing valuable time in the process. My raidmates have learned that when the start of the fight is followed shortly thereafter by swearing from me, I've accidentally cleansed this debuff. Now I just move cleanse off my bar for this fight.
Depending on your raid, you will form up on the orange or green side. The raid leader for our 25 prefers the green side, our 10 man leader prefers the orange. If you're forming up on the orange, you have some time and space to get things ready. Toss a Beacon on the abom tank once they are in the vehicle, then pop off a few quick heals on folks who get caught in slime puddles. The Putricide tank should not be taking all that much damage just yet. Once you see the warning for Unstable Experiment, get ready. You'll see the target on Grid and get a warning in DBM - throw a Sacred Shield and Flash of Light on them as soon as possible, and collapse into them. If the slime reaches them and you're thrown into the air, hit a Holy Shock on the way down. If the slime has chosen a new target, repeat the process as quickly as possible.Note that if you start on the green side, all melee are going to get damaged and knocked back, and you'll have far less time to react. Be prepared and adjust accordingly. Quick, reactive heals are the key for both of the initial phases. Head to the green side if you're not there already, but be wary. If your tank is moving the Professor, he may be taking increased damage from lack of block/dodge/parry. Don't be afraid to stop for a moment to get off a Holy Light. You can always catch up before the experiment drops. When it does drop, same thing as last time. Put up a Sacred Shield + FoL HoT on the target, Holy Shock if they need it. Because of the nature of the Gaseous Bloat debuff, they will take a lot of damage initially, tapering off as time wears on.
Ideally you will get to Phase 2 before the third experiment drops. We usually get him down before the second, but we've had times where the Gas Cloud is up. Either way, when you see the warning for Tear Gas, hit your Divine Plea. It will tick through the stun and provide some mana if you need it.Phase 2
Keep up with the experiments as before, but now you need to be aware of one more nefarious component: Malleable Goo. This is easy to avoid, but surprisingly easy to get caught in, as well. And boy, is it embarrassing when you do. Fortunately, DBM gives a warning not only when it's targetting you, but when it's near you. If you see this warning, just strafe out of the way. The only problem comes if you are switching sides or otherwise moving around and dart into the Goo's path. Don't get Grid tunnel-vision here: You will get smacked in the face.The choking gas is of very little concern for you; just move off of it before it explodes and you should be fine. Putricide is pushed into Phase 3 at 35%, giving you another chance to hit Divine Plea during Tear Gas. You want to have no experiments up at this point, and ideally no slime puddles, as well. Phase 3
Here's where things change up quite a bit, and if you're not expecting it, you're guaranteed to lose a tank. The abomination will disappear, leaving you with one tank to Beacon and one to Sacred Shield. Your raid should not be taking much damage, and it's more important that you focus on the tanks at this juncture. Tank swaps occur quickly, so I don't recommend switching Beacon targets unless you actually have a moment to breathe.
You'll need to stay ahead of the tanks here, thus ahead of the slime that will be swiftly filling the room. Don't let yourself get backed into a corner; you can't afford to blow your bubble for something so silly. Now is the time to pull out all the stops. Once your tanks start getting to 3 stacks of the debuff, blow talented Lay Hands for a bit of a buffer, use BubbleSac (make sure you're in the same group as the tanks!), even Aura Mastery if you're running Devotion Aura; every little bit helps. Pop your cooldowns - two piece T10 + Divine Illumination is excellent here - and heal your ass off. After what amounts to a short, hectic phase, he'll either be dead or your raid will explode. Hopefully it's the former.
Loot
The Thankless Job For Spaztastic Squirrels
Since entering the Plagueworks, I’ve inflicted a fairly nasty blight upon myself. Maybe I’m a masochist. Maybe I’m just a control freak. But in our current 3-healer team, I assigned myself the duty of cleansing and healing infected targets with a Beacon on the offtank.
This isn’t a true healing guide for Rotface – I’ll post one of those some other time. Mainly it’s a guide for whoever else has this rather thankless job. But mainly, as is customary of this blog, I will be focusing on this role from a paladin perspective. That said, here are some things you will need to be your raid team’s cleanse-monkey:
Cleanse – Yeah, I know. Didn’t expect that one, did you? To make this more than a Captain Obvious bullet point, I’ll suggest you have cleanse bound to something easy to reach if it isn’t already. Mine is bound to 8. Don’t ask why. I’m not even sure.
Deadly Boss Mods – Seriously, if you’re raiding without it, you’re missing out on a big assist when it comes to raid awareness. Update it before your raid and you should be good to go every week.
Decursive/Grid/Etc – I don’t personally use Decursive, but you need to be able to see, at a glance, who has the debuff. If you’re using Grid, make sure you set Mutated Infection at a high priority.
I would also suggest a firm grasp of mouse movement and/or strafing. You’ll be doing a lot of it.
So you’ve got your spell and your addons. Time to start cleansing! (Yeah… it doesn’t even sound glorious, does it?)
First, you need to alert your raid of your intention to control the cleansing. The reason for this is twofold: Your fellow dispellers will know not to dispel unless you’re behind, and your raid-mates will know they need to run to the big ooze as soon as they get the debuff.
As cleanser, your job revolves around monitoring the following:
Mutated Infection – This is the debuff you will need to cleanse. Again, make sure it is prioritized in Grid.
Slime Spray – Occasionally Rotface will turn toward a member of the raid and spew out a lovely rain of slime. When you see him turn, get the hell out of the way.
Radiating Ooze – A constant AE damage pulse coming off of the big ooze. Don’t stand near it unless you absolutely have to: It does 5.5k dmg per tick to anyone within 10 yards.
Unstable Ooze Explosion – Once the big ooze absorbs 5 small oozes, it’s gonna asplode. When it begins to cast this spell, it will take note of your position and the position of everyone else in your raid, flinging slime at those points. Easiest course of action is to make a bee-line for the walls.
Ooze Flood – At all times during the fight, a quarter-section on the outside will be flooded with ooze. Don’t stand in it. It won’t kill you outright, but coupled with everything else it’s something that is completely avoidable- you can see slime trickling out of the pipes before the area floods – and there’s no excuse to be standing there unless everything goes haywire.
Starting the fight, your Sacred Shield should be on the Rotface tank with a FoL HoT rolling as they run in. Beacon the offtank (or whoever you have kiting the big ooze) and hug one of Rotface’s legs. You’ll have some time to help heal the tank here, but pretty soon you'll be focusing on your primary targets.
When the first person gets Mutated Infection, wait until they run out of the raid to cleanse them. When the second person gets it, wait until they get near the first person. Sacred Shield and FoL the infection targets – at this stage they shouldn’t need much healing beyond that.
Once the big ooze is up, you want to wait, ideally, until the infected person gets in front of the kiter’s path before cleansing. This will minimize the amount of time they spend near the big ooze before the little one integrates. Keep doing this until the big ooze is about to explode, then high-tail it out of there.
As the fight progresses, you’ll likely see infections popping up while the ooze is exploding. Try to keep your cool and maintain the situation; don’t cleanse too early unless you absolutely have to. If you get ahead of yourself, you can end up having multiple big oozes spawn, creating a lot more chaos than necessary.
If you get Rotface down to 20%, congratulations! Now prepare to do everything you’ve been doing, but at supersonic speed. Resist the urge to cleanse early, again, because the second you cleanse another raid member is going to get infected.
Be quick with a Hand of Freedom if the kiter needs to run through the flood. With any luck, your kiter won’t be taking more than occasional damage. But keep Beacon refreshed on the off-chance he gets snared and the ooze catches up. It can stack up to 100% damage increase, and anything short of quick and decisive healing won’t save the kiter.
At the end of it all, when the other healers are commenting on how that ‘wasn’t so bad’, you can laugh and continue shaking a bit as you come down from your adrenaline high. Nobody will pat you on the back. Nobody will throw out a rousing ‘Nice cleansing!’. Chances are, most people didn’t even notice. But if you did your job well, you played a pivotal role in a very technical fight.
So here’s to you, Running-Around-And-Cleansing-Like-A-Meth-Hyped-Squirrel-Paladin!
Friends
