Ready Check: Festergut and friends
by Michael Gray 
Jan 22nd 2010 at 4:00PM
In a small break from normal operating procedure, I want to talk a little about the trash on the way to your first boss. The trash in Icecrown Citadel is fairly awesome, and worth a little bit of description. As soon as you enter the main spire, you're going to find these jets of blue smoke shooting from the walls. It's worth noting that you shouldn't stand in them, or you'll die. Rogues can disarm these traps fairly handily.
Jump behind the cut and let's start looking at Festergut and his wonderful array of friends.
As you enter the spire past the green jets of death, the first mobs you'll see flying around the central spire are the Val'kyr Heralds. The Heralds themselves aren't so bad to kill, but they have a trick that can send your groups into apoplexy. As the fight against each Herald proceeds, they will drop a Severed Essence on members of the raid. That ability creates a Severed Essence mob -- a duplicate of one of your raid members. The longer the fight against each Herald continues, the more Severed Essences you'll have to fight. It's probably best to have your off-tank pick up these additional mobs, while you focus on burning down the Herald. Then go back and clean up the Essences at your leisure. The jets and the val'kyr are not actually Plagueworks trash, but you'll have to deal with them on your way there.
Stinky and Precious
The next fight I really want to talk about is the showdown with Precious and Stinky. We'll go one by one, but to sum up: welcome to Gluth 2.0 and 3.0. Both Stinky and Precious sport a Decimate ability, so your healers will definitely need to be ready to handle that when it drops. Equally problematic for healing your tanks are the rapid-fire stacks of Mortal Wound that will slow down your healing on the main tank. Mortal Wound will stack up to ten times, at which point no healing will successfully land on your tank.
Let's start with Precious. The general heartbeat, so to speak, of the fight with Precious is very similar to the fight against Gluth. You'll need two tanks. When the stacks of Mortal Wounds gets too high to heal through, swap the mob between the two tanks. It's best to taunt to a fresh tank just after a Decimate drops, if you can at all arrange it that way. Precious also summons lots of zombies, but these zombies do not heal Precious when they reach Precious. I've found it best to kite Precious down the stairs and then back up the other stairs, so that the tank isn't carrying too many zombies all at once. The zombies walk pretty slow, so you won't have too much trouble.
Stinky has the same Mortal Wound and Decimate dynamic as Precious, but has no zombies. Instead, Stinky smells bad, and is constantly shooting out an aura of Plague Stench. Plague Stench will constantly deal raid damage to anyone in line of sight of the dog, so it's best to burn Stinky down as fast as possible. Think of this fight as a healer check, since it will definitely push your healers hard to keep the entire raid topped off.
Festergut
Festergut is probably one of the two ugliest bosses in the game right now. The other would be Rotface, who shares the same model as his brother. The fight with Festergut is actually fairly straightforward, and only has two different gimmicks. The first is the Gastric Bloat he puts on the tank, which will require you to have multiple tanks. The second is the Gaseous Blight that fills the room when you enter. Here's how all this works out.The first trick with Festergut is the stacking debuff called Gastric Bloat. This debuff will stack up to ten times on the tank. When it reaches ten stacks, the tank will explode in a funky Gastric Explosion. The explosion will hit your raid hard -- it instantly kills the person who exploded, and does huge damage to everyone else in the room. So, obviously, you don't want to let the Bloat go to ten stacks. Have your off-tank taunt Festergut when the first tank has 9 stacks of Gastric Bloat. It takes two minutes for the debuff to drop off, which is also how long it takes for the Bloat to get to 9 stacks in the first place. When a tank is "cooling down" their bloat, they should be DPSing the boss, since the Gastric Bloat also has the side effect of increasing the target's damage by 10% per stack.
Ranged DPS (and healers) will need to worry about Vile Gas, a debuff that encourages them to spread out at all costs. If you get too close to other players with Vile Gas, bad things will happen.
The other thing to worry about is the ongoing Gaseous Blight that fills Festergut's room. It starts off incredibly powerful, and will tax your healers to keep the raid at full health. Festergut will periodically "inhale" the gas, which makes him hit harder, but the Blight a little weaker. After he's inhaled four times he farts a Pungent Blight, damaging the entire raid. So, this is the ebb and flow of the fight: the raid is taking a lot of damage from the Gaseous Blight. With each inhale, the raid takes less damage, but the tank takes more. So your healing will slowly shift from raid-focused healing to tank-focused healing. When Festergut reaches four inhales, he will explode and kill everyone with a big Pungent Blight. However, there's something you can do to keep the raid from dying from that one, big fart.
Festergut will periodically drop a Gas Spore on random raid members. (It drops 2 spores in 10 man, but 3 spores in 25 man.) That spore will explode, doing light damage to any player within range and providing them with a Inoculated buff. That buff will keep you from taking deadly-level damage from Festergut's Pungent Blight fart, and becomes key in letting your healers successfully heal through the encounter. For that reason, it's a good idea to keep your melee in a clump, and make sure your ranged collapse for spores. However, once the spore has popped the range need to spread out again lest they murder each other. (Editor's Note: Edited the previous sentence for encounter clarity.) When the spores occur, have the spore-players be sure to spread out across the two groups.
Once you master these dynamics, you'll actually find Festergut fairly easy. He does have a 5 minute enrage timer, so you need to be certain you have enough DPS to get through the fight. If you find yourself short of the damage throughput to kill him within 5 minutes, you may need to adjust your strategy.
Good luck hunting out there, folks.
Ready Check is here to provide you all the information and discussion you need to bring your raiding to the next level. Check us out weekly to learn the strategies, bosses, and encounters that make end-game raiding so much fun. Filed under: Ready Check (Raiding)
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Spacehyena Jan 22nd 2010 4:16PM
It's worth noting again that Precious drops one of the most coveted items in the game right now. ('Most coveted', at least, judging by the loot drama from our last encounter.) X)
Thetealone Jan 22nd 2010 4:27PM
what would that be? every time i've killed the dogs on both 10 and 25 man.. which is every week now for 4 weeks they've dropped nothing.. and only skin for an arctic fur about 50% of the time
Spacehyena Jan 22nd 2010 4:46PM
http://www.wow.com/2010/01/15/phat-loot-phriday-preciouss-ribbon/
*heavenly choir*
Quorniya Jan 22nd 2010 4:17PM
You forgot a very important mechanic of this fight that ensures that ranged should NOT clump up:
Festergut periodically inflicts an ability called Vile Gas on random ranged members of the raid, causing them to take a bit of damage and wander around vomiting uncontrollably. This ability will spread to other ranged players if they are too close, so ranged have to stay about 10 yards apart. Festergut won't use this ability on melee or the tanks if there are at least 3 players in melee range.
Nick S Jan 22nd 2010 4:20PM
Yep. We use a semi-circle of ranged DPS spaced 10 yards apart; that seems to be the distance required to guarantee that even a wandering puker won't hit anyone else. Then the ranged player with the spore just runs to the middle of the line for a quick clump.
Dan Jan 22nd 2010 5:15PM
We use the W formation. The healer with the least amount of healing while movement capability goes in the centre forward position and all the ranged move to him/her during the spores.
Also try to split the raid evenly. 5 standing in melee range (2 tanks, 1 healer and extra ranged if less melee are available) and 5 in the ranged formation. Should ensure that the spores spawn separately (1 in range 1 in melee).
zappo Jan 22nd 2010 4:52PM
Yeah, first time I saw this was on 10 man and we had all the ranged and healers standing on top of each other. Everything was going fine until someone got vile gas and we died in about 5 seconds all at once. It was sort of funny actually. But yeah, won't be doing that again.
Jakravdian Jan 22nd 2010 5:00PM
There is a minimum number of people who must be outside melee range for melee not to get vile gas.
My guild will stack everyone on the boss except for this minimum number. It keeps things tight and easy to deal with spores.
On 10 man, you must have at least 3 people outside melee range, and on 25 man you need at least 7-8 outside. The smaller numbers make it easier to spread out to avoid puking on other raid members.
Note: if anyone in the outer ring dies using this strat, someone from the inside MUST run out, or the melee will get vile gas and the raid will wipe almost instantaneously.
Tebla Jan 22nd 2010 5:12PM
We do similar. We have the ranged in a W type pattern all spread out and clump the spore where we place the totems in front of the door. As far as I have been able to find out the range of the spore is 5 yards. So, if you range with a zig zag pattern all 10 yards apart, you should only have to move 5 or 10 yards max to get the buff. There is a pretty steep DPS requirement for this fight, so the less movement the better.
Valt Jan 22nd 2010 4:21PM
"He does have a 5 minute enrage timer, so you need to be certain you have enough DPS to get through the fight."
Wich I heard is about 7k dps atleast from anyone.
And since casters need to move time to time that "9k melee dps" balances things out.
So yeah.. have fun. I heard that you can easily do 7k dps with "decent gear".
On 10man we noticed that about 5k dps from all (or 6k melee 4k caster etc) is good enough.
bushkanaka86 Jan 22nd 2010 4:22PM
Why do I feel that every Ready Check leaves something out?
Festergut will also effect a random ranged raid member with a debuff that causes them to vomit all over anyone within 8 yards of them causing huge damage. Therefore, all the ranged should be at least 10 yards apart the whole time to avoid throwing up on each other. They should only come together every time the spore is up and once it pops, spread back immediately.
In order to avoid having healers running and not healing, they can stack on the melee. However, you must have 3 ranged people at all times to avoid the vomit debuff from landing on the melee and wiping the raid.
Cyanea Jan 22nd 2010 11:59PM
What we do is mark a healer who stands still by the door the entire time. The ranged all run to him, regardless of who has the spore. Simplifies things.
Erthshade Jan 22nd 2010 4:31PM
You missed mentioning an ability that means your ranged /can't/ stay clumped up all the time. Periodically three of the ranged (in 25-man) will get Vile Gas (may not be the exact name) and lose control for a few seconds as they stumble around puking. If two characters are too close to each other and start puking, you're likely to lose both of them. Mages can iceblock out of it, saving themselves and anyone near them from the repercussions.
The spores put a short DoT on everyone in range when they explode. Once the dot expires, that's when a person gets the Innoculated debuff. If you get more than one spore exploding on someone, they're likely to die from the dots stacking.
dinnercoat Jan 22nd 2010 4:42PM
I think they purposely leave out one tiny key piece of info on the encounter so the read will have something new and exciting to learn when they go in! =)
winterhawk Jan 22nd 2010 5:10PM
DPS hint for you mages out there: Don't bother running in to get inoculated for the first three spores. Just stay where you are and keep DPSing (unless you get the spore yourself and your raid leader wants you to run someplace else to clump up). Then, when Festergut does his big Pungent Blight attack, just Ice Block through it. When the attack is over, pop out and keep on DPSing! (This will only work through one cycle, obviously, but it's a nice DPS increase).
Wyred Jan 25th 2010 6:26AM
The same applies to shadowpriests with dispersion. If you have it glyphed (and I imagine most do) that's a 1min and 15 sec cd. Not sure, but that might be quick enough to be ready each cycle (check before you try this)
sziszi Jan 25th 2010 9:49AM
As shadowpriest if you DONT have it glyphed, you have it like 1-2 seconds earlyer than he cast. His cycle is exactly 2 minutes, so if you use it first time he start casting, you just have to press it when the dispersion button is glowing ^^
Tilt Jan 22nd 2010 6:25PM
"As soon as you enter the main spire, you're going to find these jets of green smoke shooting from the walls."
It's blue smoke, at least on 10-man.
Lirazelle Jan 22nd 2010 7:13PM
Warlocks - Drop your demonic circle for this fight. Either drop it at the spore gather point or where you'll be standing when you're spread out. This way you only need to run in or out, but never both. The instant 30 yrd jump will help keep your dps up and your rotation continuous. Also - use your shadow ward for pungent blight to help out your healers. Definitely use it if you missed a stack of inoculation.
Added tip for mages - blink. Use it =)
Cyanea Jan 22nd 2010 11:58PM
Stinky's aoe pulse is Nature damage, so drop a Nature Resist Totem and it'll take the edge off.