Raid Rx: Healing Festergut and Rotface
by Matt Low 
Jan 5th 2010 at 4:30PM
Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.
With the impending release of the Plagueworks wing in Icecrown Citadel, how about some healer tips for the two abominations? Between the two of them, I think Festergut is easy to understand conceptually but harder to execute. Be prepared to bring on the healing as it will stress the healing team.
Festergut
Your raid group has exactly 5 minutes to blow him up before he enrages and blows you up. For number of healers, Drop it down to 5. If your raid group DPS is amazing, your raid can get away with 6 in favour of stability. Stock up on raid healing if the players are available for it. 1 tank healer should suffice.But to break it down, Festergut has 42 million health. With 5 minutes, that's about 140000 raid DPS.
Correction: Forgot to mention that 2 tanks will be needed on the fight to deal with Gastric Bloat. The current tank will be hit with it and after 10 applications, it's going to explode and deal AoE damage.
When your raid begins the encounter, the room will be flooded with gas. The entire raid is going to suffer damage from it. Holy priests, shamans and resto druids will have a field day healing due to the constant damage ticks that are going off.
Once your tank parks the abomination in the middle of the room, if you have a paladin or a disc priest (or any tank healing player for that matter), place your tank healer in the middle of the room along with the melee. Your tank healer isn't going to be doing anything else other than tank healing.
Players who suffer from Vile Gas need to be healed up. They're going to take some damage over time and will become disoriented. The gas usually targets players who are at range instead of the melee. If Vile Gas hits a player, nearby players will become disoriented as well. In other words, spread out. The damage from the DoT is roughly 5000 every 2 seconds for 6 seconds.
Periodically throughout the fight, players at range will be hit with a Gas Spore (3 on 25). When the gas spore detonates, the raid will take some damage but they will become inoculated. Now, I believe there is a cap on the amount of players that can get inoculated per spore but that may have changed. 1 Gas Spored player needs to run into the melee group and ensure those players get inoculated. The other 2 gas spores need to stand apart from each other and the range should head to the closest one.
As you can see, this encounter then becomes nothing more than a repeat of spread out, collapse, spread out, collapse.
The gas in the room is going to get inhaled 3 times before he exhales. Yes, that exhale will almost certainly wipe the raid unless you have been inoculated. Gas Spores come out 3 times before the Pungent Blight is exhaled. Every inoculation application grants a 25% resistance to shadow damage and stacks 3 times. The Blight itself hits for 48750 to 51250 damage without any resistance. It might be possible to get away with only 2 inoculations but healing and tank cooldowns will need to be used.
Debuffs to note in your raid frames:
Inoculated - Specifically, watch for the number of applications. If a player has under 3, cooldowns will need to be used on them so they can survive.
Vile Gas - Hit those players with HoTs and they should live long enough.
Rotface
Stratfu has a great writeup of what needs to be done with diagrams.If your raid has fought Grobbulus before, then this encounter will be fairly similar. You can go back to running a 5-6 healer setup here. Run at least 2 tank healing capable players. The raid off tank will have a few responsibilities.
Place Rotfaces tank and the raid directly in the middle of the room. It is the only area that will be safe from Ooze Floods. You'll see thees giant canisters on the wall and they will periodically break covering about 25% of the outer ring (a quadrant basically).
Mutated Infections are a disease. It is very important to not cleanse this immediately. Place an extra healer or 2 on anyone affected by it since healing taken is going to be reduced by half. Rotface will cast this on a player at random. When this happens, your raid off tank will need to hustle away from the raid and stand in an area that has not been affected with an Ooze Flood. After 12 seconds (or if the Mutated Infection is cleansed), a Small Ooze will spawn. That Ooze needs to be picked up and kited around in a circle. The Ooze has a number of abilities like slowing down movement and spawning a puddle that deals damage to anyone near it.
The next player that gets a Mutated Infection needs to run toward the off tank. Once their disease is cleansed, another Small Ooze will spawn and if there is another Small Ooze nearby, they will merge and become (you guessed it) Big Ooze. As the Big Ooze continues to absorb Small Oozes, the damage it deals is going to increase by 20% every time. Be sure to add an extra healer to the tank if you feel it is necessary.
After 5 Small Oozes, the Big Ooze will start casting an explosion. It will target the position of random players in the raid and fire. Since everyone is still standing in the middle, all you have to do is scatter and get away from the middle area until it is safe. Once you're clear, run back in and begin the Oozification process again!
Good luck everyone! Professor Putricide is next up.
Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? E-mail me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check. Filed under: Druid, Paladin, Priest, Shaman, Analysis / Opinion, Features, Raiding, Raid Rx (Raid Healing)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Rioriel Jan 5th 2010 4:36PM
WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE, SLEEPY TIME!
Kevin Jan 5th 2010 4:46PM
oioi these guys were a pain on the PTR's. Here's to hoping my guild gets it! ^^
Tridus Jan 5th 2010 4:53PM
Great and timely writeup, thanks!
Azhariel Jan 5th 2010 4:56PM
HOLY SHIT, as a holy priest that found 3-healing deathwhisper and 2-healing saurfang intense, I think I'm going nuts trying those.
Glaras Jan 5th 2010 4:59PM
19 DPS with 7300+?
...oi...
bushkanaka86 Jan 5th 2010 5:13PM
You completely forgot the part about Rotface and his toxic spray. He targets 1 person and casts it and everyone else needs to move to the other side so they don't take damage. Also, I didn't do it on the PTR but all the videos I saw showed that in 25 man, Festergut targets 5 people with the gas spore.
Anyway.....7300 dps is going to keep my 25 man raid away from Festergut for a while.
bushkanaka86 Jan 5th 2010 5:31PM
I will clarify the forgotten Rotface mechanic:
Approximately every 20 seconds, Rotface will target a raid member, turn, and after a 1.5 sec cast, he channel a move called Slime Spray at said raid member for 5 sec. The spray does about 5000 damage (per sec?) to anyone in a cone around the targetted person. Since know one knows for sure what the arc of the cone is yet, the best strategy for dealing with this is as follows:
Everyone except for the 2 tanks stack up behind the boss. When Rotface targets a raid member, everyone besides that person runs to the tanks side of the boss. The person that is targetted must wait on the backside until the boss starts channelling. Once Rotface starts his spray, the targetted raid member is welcome to join everyone else to avoid additional damage.
After the channelling ends, everyone move back to the backside of the boss and continues as normal. The tank doesn't have to move ever, and the OT should be kiting slimes far enough away that he won't get hit by the spray even if it is aimed in his direction.
Important note: The boss can still spray even when everyone is scattering from Big Slime's explosion. So when you are scattering and running back in, make sure you don't run right back in to a Slime Spray.
crschmidt Jan 5th 2010 5:14PM
My guess is that the enrage won't be the (very short) 5 minutes it was on the PTR. 7 minutes moves it to average required DPS being 5200; in our TOC 25 Normal geared group, that's basically where we sit right now. We haven't had luck downing Deathwhisper, so we're short on Lower Spire drops, but other than that, it just feels more sane. I wouldn't be entirely surprised by a 6 minute enrage either, though that's gonna be a tough one to hit for a lot of groups, I think.
25-man Saurfang kills -- the closest thing I know of to a 'stand still and kill' for most of the raid -- have an average/median (both) of around 117k DPS; a brief glance looks like less than 5% are above 140k. I'd be willing to acknowledge a 10%-15% buff to the DPS based on the way the fight works vs. saurfang, but not a lot more unless I'm totally off base, and that still leaves the median DPS on the (already somewhat low success rate) Saurfang encounter as being below the 140k needed for a 5 minute enrage.
Has anyone seen it live yet, or is the five minute version based on the PTR still?
bushkanaka86 Jan 5th 2010 5:21PM
I read a couple different strategies and from what I saw, people were saying that one day it was a 5 minute timer on the PTR and the next day it was a 7 minute timer. So we don't really know yet. It was changing back and forth but I am sure they will tweak it as needed. A 7 minute enrage my guild can do. A 5 minute, it will be a while....
Philip Jan 6th 2010 8:13AM
It was 5 minutes on 10 man for us last night, cleared him on third attempt (bad tank switches on first two).
Haven't seen Festergut on 25man yet tho.
crschmidt Jan 6th 2010 8:25AM
That's... 'unfortunate' :) Our best DPS as a guild on 25-mans is something like 100k; pushing 140k (even with an extra 2-3 DPS) is going to be awful hard.
Grats on getting him down :)
ToyChristopher Jan 5th 2010 5:17PM
Wow thanks for this write up!
ZMES_Matt Jan 5th 2010 5:20PM
Any word on the 10-man version of how much health Festergut has/minimum DPS needed?
Jhestor Jan 5th 2010 5:32PM
I agree. These articles are good, but I've switched from 25 man raiding since Ulduar to a cozy 10 man team with friends.
Can we get specific write-ups on the 10 man version, or at least even a mention?
bushkanaka86 Jan 5th 2010 5:29PM
I will clarify the forgotten Rotface mechanic:
Approximately every 20 seconds, Rotface will target a raid member, turn, and after a 1.5 sec cast, he channel a move called Slime Spray at said raid member for 5 sec. The spray does about 5000 damage (per sec?) to anyone in a cone around the targetted person. Since know one knows for sure what the arc of the cone is yet, the best strategy for dealing with this is as follows:
Everyone except for the 2 tanks stack up behind the boss. When Rotface targets a raid member, everyone besides that person runs to the tanks side of the boss. The person that is targetted must wait on the backside until the boss starts channelling. Once Rotface starts his spray, the targetted raid member is welcome to join everyone else to avoid additional damage.
After the channelling ends, everyone move back to the backside of the boss and continues as normal. The tank doesn't have to move ever, and the OT should be kiting slimes far enough away that he won't get hit by the spray even if it is aimed in his direction.
Important note: The boss can still spray even when everyone is scattering from Big Slime's explosion. So when you are scattering and running back in, make sure you don't run right back in to a Slime Spray.
bushkanaka86 Jan 5th 2010 5:32PM
Stupid comment system, that was supposed to be a reply to my previous comment.
chris Jan 5th 2010 8:07PM
Um Uncle Fester what about "Gastric Bloat"?
Need 2 tanks right?
doraemei Jan 5th 2010 11:04PM
Doesnt Festergut also have an ability called Gastic Bloat that is applied to the tank and stacks for 10 before exploding and causing massive AOE damage? or is that removed from live?
glitterheather Jan 6th 2010 2:12AM
My guild downed both tonight. Specifically, Rotface does not appear to actually -target- anyone now with the bile spray thingie. We watched him on multiple attempts, and he never actually changed targets from the tank, he just turns and sprays. Even if the person who is "targeted" by the spray runs to the other side, he won't turn.
On Festergut, only 3 spores spawn in 15 man and he does have a hard 5 minute enrage timer.
glitterheather Jan 6th 2010 2:13AM
uh, that's 25 man, not 15 man. ROFL.