Professor Putricide: Video and explanation
On Tuesday night, my guild hit the new Icecrown Citadel bosses in the Plagueworks wing -- Festergut, Rotface, and Professor Putricide. While Festergut and Rotface are both pretty straightforward encounters, Putricide is a different matter. Due to Icecrown's gating system, you will have only 10 attempts on Putricide this week (on both 10- and 25-man, so 20 total if you see both versions of the fight), and mistakes are costly. Moreover, our raid found some pretty good strategies for both Festergut and Rotface, but there's a lot of conflicting information about Putricide.
Our hunter's guess was that the encounter on the PTR might have been buggy, and that's why the different strategies we read seemed at odds with each other, so our raid leader looked it over and took what turned out to be a pretty good shot at what we needed to do. After wiping on Putricide-25 3 times and walking away from it convinced that the encounter was still bugged, we split the raid into multiple 10-man teams and took a crack at it there. The footage you'll see above is our 10-man's 4th attempt and a clean kill (i.e. no deaths), with my annotations on the fight. Past the cut are a few more notes (and one correction) that I hope will be helpful.
- As noted in the video, Putricide was not bugged; Blizzard's intent is that the raid is only able to have one abomination up at a time.
- To correct a mistake made at two points in the video, Putricide's phase changes occur at 80% and 35%, not 85% and 30% as I initially thought.
- We're still somewhat unsure about the specifics concerning some of Putricide's abilities, so I apologize in advance if any of the other information contained in the video turns out to be inaccurate. This strategy worked really well for us, but I wish I had more specifics on why it worked really well for us.
- The DPS requirement here is quite high, particularly once Putricide enters phase 3. You lose the abomination in phase 3 and thus the ability to gobble up all the ooze making the floor dangerous, so Putricide has to die before you run out of places to stand (if you've done Firefighter or Lady Vashj, it's pretty much the same deal here).
- Our second 10-man made the kill with only two healers, so you should be able to use 2 or 3 here as you prefer. Healing requirements, as with DPS, are very high. The abom has an AoE damage pulse and players take a great deal of damage while targeted by green or orange oozes.
- We used an off-tank in phase 3 because we weren't certain whether some of Putricide's abilities would require a tank switch or additional cooldowns (he is tauntable), but I'm seeing other raids not do this. EDIT: after consulting some guildies on this, they're positive the OT is needed to prevent a debuff on the MT from stacking too high. Our hunter is saying have the OT taunt at 4 stacks. Addendum; please read the comments section for additional clarification on this from Heilig and Kalon.
- The MMO-Champion page on Putricide referenced in the video can be found here. You'll note that the abom only has 3 abilities to worry about, but your "driver" will need some time to get used to them.
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, How-tos, Features, Raiding, Guides






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
zainwolf Jan 7th 2010 6:13PM
Thanks heaps for sharing! Can't wait to look it over...
Wild Colors Jan 7th 2010 6:17PM
Awesome and clear description (better even than tankspot's). Thank you! If we make it to him tonight, hopefully even we casuals will stand a chance :)
redraga Jan 7th 2010 6:21PM
Very clear description. Nicely done video. How did you record the video without the UI?
Allison Robert Jan 7th 2010 6:46PM
It's actually really easy -- if you play on a Mac, the ingame video recorder will allow you to toggle the UI on and off while you're shooting. If you don't play on a Mac, I'm not sure. :(
DrunkenPandaren Jan 7th 2010 9:01PM
Press Alt Z
splodesondeath Jan 7th 2010 9:10PM
In-game video recorder?!?
And how does one get a hold of that?
wowmartyjohnson Jan 7th 2010 6:22PM
Freaking beautiful. One of the better "How To" vids I have seen. Thanks!
rodney.elliott Jan 7th 2010 6:26PM
What a superb video - great quality and excellent use of subtitles. Keep up the good work.
Vasco Jan 7th 2010 6:35PM
Great job, both on the fight and on the video - I want you for heals :)
Chungo Jan 7th 2010 6:36PM
So, would it be best to have the OT be the abom pilot for the first 2 phases and then once ph3 hits go through a tank rotation?
Allison Robert Jan 7th 2010 6:38PM
In general, yes. Our hunter had the most experience with it, though, and we also weren't entirely sure if phases 1 or 2 would require a taunt at some point. So our hunter elected to stay on abom duty, and our feral DPS'd phases 1 and 2 then off-tanked phase 3.
Heilig Jan 7th 2010 11:51PM
You absolutely must have a second tank on ten man, and a third tank on 25 man makes the fight much more forgiving. The stacking debuff he puts on the tanks does aoe damage tot he raid, and if it hits 6 stacks on anyone, you all take 90K damage and wipe. In addition, if the stack falls off of anyone, he heals and you wipe. So the optimal way to do it is to have one tank take a stack or two, then taunt off him, then taunt off that tank at maybe 2 stacks, etc.
With two tanks you get 10 debuff applications before you wipe. With 3, you get 15 applications, although by that time the floor is pretty much gone anyway. You should always ride the edge of the goo, too, kinda like kiting the fire on mimiron, otherwise you lose real estate way too fast.
Heilig Jan 7th 2010 11:53PM
Sorry, misunderstood the question. Wasn't trying to be argumentative, just wanted to clarify some things.
Most raids will have their OT handle the abom simply because you need as much dps as possible on oozes.
SloBash Jan 7th 2010 6:38PM
That's an excellent video, thanks heaps for taking the time to make it! We're heading in there tonight and this will give us a real leg up :D
ltgalloway Jan 7th 2010 6:45PM
Thanks for not putting a crappy techno garbage song over it!
Slaytanic Jan 7th 2010 7:22PM
This.
I'm perfectly content just hearing the game in the background, vent is a HUGE bonus on ANY video.
Deathknighty Jan 7th 2010 6:47PM
All of the above commendations, plus, that fight looks really, really fun!
I've got to get into an ICC raid! :D
braydn Jan 7th 2010 7:02PM
Nice video, thanks for sharing it...
I'd be able to appreciate it even more if there was a video of 10 man geared people doing this, it's quite misleading to the difficulty of the fight for 10 man raiding guilds if the people in the video are doing the 10 man raid in 25 man gear...
Otherwise, grats to the kill and thanks for the help with the strat...
Cetha Jan 7th 2010 7:13PM
that has to be one of the best raid instructional videos I have ever seen - awesome work! thanks for the information
Slaytanic Jan 7th 2010 7:14PM
Best video I've seen so far, by far. You make it look so easy!! Everything we've seen so far (includung our own attempts) seems to give this the complexity of Yogg. You've simplified it greaty, ty. This is going to my guild's forums RIGHT NOW.