Festergut

This is basically a tank and spank encounter. It's got some interesting complications in it to keep the raid on their toes, but from a DPS warrior's perspective those complications are minimal. First off, there's an enrage timer so you have a DPS target to beat: you are expected to go hog wild on DPS as soon as possible and as hard as possible. If you have either a haste pot or an armor pot (assuming you have Armored to the Teeth) this is definitely a fight you'd want to use them on.

Festergut is all about gas. Basically, to be blunt with you, he's either belching or doing something far more unpleasant to the entire raid. It's best not to think about it. First off, he does an ability called Gaseous Blight that does AOE damage to the entire raid. It actually starts off doing more AoE damage than that, but Festergut will repeatedly inhale the gas lowering the amount of damage it does. This isn't as good as it sounds, however. As he inhales, he also ramps up the damage he himself is doing to the tanks. Inhaled Blight stacks three times, so by the time he's lowered the Gaseous Blight in the room to its lowest amount, the tank is taking hits 90% faster for 90% more damage. (I know, as DPS, you don't care.)

Once he's inhaled three times, however, we get the only complication that's of real concern to DPS warriors: Pungent Blight. Go ahead, look at how much shadow damage is about to be dealt to the entire raid. That's just the 10 man version, too. (Damage is ramped up in 25, of course, on all of these abilities.) How can you, humble DPS warrior with about 30k health, survive this?

I'm glad you asked. Throughout the fight Festergut will be casting Gas Spores on people in the raid. (2 in 10's, 3 in 25's.) If you are in melee and you get the Gas Spore, you will explode after 12 seconds and apply a debuff to everyone in range (including the tank) that will tick for 2k damage a second for 6 seconds. So stay there. Yes, you heard me, stay there and blow up on the melee and tanks. Why? Because if you do this, you are applying Inoculated, a buff that reduces the damage everyone who has it takes from Pungent Blight (all shadow damage, in fact) by 25%. This buff stacks up to three times for a total reduction of 75% - combined with things like Prayer of Shadow Protection or Shadow Resistence Aura this can reduce the lethal 60 to 80k damage to a much less raid destroying amount.

So basically that's the whole fight for you as DPS: do as much DPS as possible to beat the enrage timer, if you get the Gas Spore make sure to move up a little ans explode on the tanks as well as the melee, and did I mention doing as much damage as you possibly can? Cause you really should do that, Festergut's enrage timer is no joke.

Meanwhile, as a tank, you still have plenty to do. This is a two tank fight because of the mechanic used to ensure that threat really isn't an issue: Gastric Bloat. If you're the tank starting off on Festergut, he begins stacking this on you, and each application will cause you to gain a buff increasing your damage dealt by 10% (this will, of course, also increase your threat). Sounds good so far? Well, you blow up and die if you get 10 stacks of it. You also do a ton of damage to everyone in range of you, meaning that you'll probably kill all the melee too. In order to avoid this, the offtank taunts off of you at 9 stacks (I have found that it's best to be ready to taunt as soon as 8 stacks are up so that you can be ready to use Challenging Shout or Mocking Blow if the initial taunt fails - Vigilance on the other tank is good here if they're not terribly worried about threat) and the first tank can thereby drop back into the melee with that 90% damage buff and do actual honest to murgatroyd DPS while waiting for your stack to fall off. (For a warrior tank, I recommend switching to Battle Stance, maybe beg for a Hand of Salvation from a friendly paladin if you can get it.) Between the taunt trading and the increased threat from Bloat it's not a terribly hard fight to tank, but if you don't hit those transitions properly you'll kill everyone, so don't screw up.

Also, while taunting, you may or may not have to taunt Festergut when he has a full three stacks of Inhaled Blight. If that is the case, it's extremely advisable to use a cooldown immediately. You may even want to chain them. I generally go with Shield Wall, followed by Last Stand and a trinket: if for whatever reason you can't do this you need to let your healers know so they can use whatever means to keep you alive while an angry bloated gassy undead monster hits you in the face for 90% more damage 90% faster. Finally, as tank, you can still get Gas Spores, so if you do alert the melee to come up into Festergut a bit and make sure they get it when you blow up.

This is basically the whole fight. Tanks swap off and then go play pretend DPS, DPS go for absolute broke, monster breaks wind on the raid repeatedly, everyone tries to blow up spores on the raid as much as possible, everyone hopefully doesn't die and Festergut hopefully does. He drops Festering Fingerguards and the Cloak of Many Skins on 10 man, the Fleshrending Gauntlets, Might of Blight and Belt of Broken Bones on 25.

Next up, Rotface: not a friendly fight for DPS warriors and somewhat boring for a warrior to tank as well.

Rotface

For a tank on this fight, there are basically two jobs. As a warrior tank, you are the absolute worst choice for one of them, namely kiting the ooze adds. Seriously, they'd be better off using a ranged DPS. A druid tank with Entangling Roots and Feral Faerie Fire, a DK tank with their Icy Touch, Chains of Ice and Blood Boil, or even a paladin tank with Avenger's Shield, the ability to judge, Hand of Reckoning (a taunt that actually does damage and so is superior to warrior taunt for this specific use) and Exorcism (although slightly risky with the cast time) will all have vastly superior ranged threat to a warrior, who can basically throw a weapon once a minute and then spam taunt every time the kited ooze drops aggro (which it will do more often than your taunt refreshes with all the healing threat in this fight) - if for some reason you're absolutely convinced a warrior must kite in this phase, put Vigilance on a really high threat healer, get a hunter to use misdirect every time it's up and pray. (No, rogues should not be tricking the oozes, they'll die.)

Hey, Blizzard? Buff warrior ranged threat if you're going to keep insisting any tank can tank any fight in the game. Because this is an example of where a warrior absolutely, positively is the bottom of the basement tank for a role. If you have a warrior and another class tanking on this fight you pretty much have to put the warrior on the boss, not because the warrior is a better tank for that, but because he or she simply cannot hope to match the other tanks here. I can't imagine it feels good for the other tanks to feel forced into running around playing tag with the ooze every week because the warrior just can't do it, either.

Now that I've gotten that rant out of my system, here's what you as a warrior tank will be doing on this fight. You'll run into the room, engage Rotface, and position him as close to the center of the room as possible. Then you'll tank him there. You may have to move him out towards one of the quarters of the room that isn't flooded with ooze when the big add explodes and does a shadow crash but with mucous and then move him back. That's the whole fight from a warrior tank's perspective.

Since DPS warriors need to be aware of the rest of the fight, I'll describe it now. While the fight is ongoing, Professor Putricide will emote several times that he's fixed the poison slime pipes. You'll grow to hate this emote and want to slap him for it, but he won't stop doing it. He basically floods a quarter of the room with snot (come on, we all know that's what it is, undead snot, just accept it) in a semi-random fashion. I say semi random because, like the abilities of the Twin Val'kyr in TotC, they don't repeat until all four have been flooded. So if he floods the NE first, he won't flood it again until he's flooded SW, NW and SE, and if you pay attention to the first three floods you'll know exactly which quarter will be flooded next before it resets. You want to try and avoid standing in that, of course. I mean, it's on the floor, of course you have to avoid standing in it.

Meanwhile, Rotface will be doing two annoying things. First, he randomly targets a raid member and vomits green slime all over him like a bad Nickelodeon flashback. When this happens, the entire raid (even the guy targeted) can avoid it by moving. The raid usually stacks as close as it can to behind Rotface while avoiding the ooze flooding the floor and moves to the tank when Rotface casts, there's time before he casts it and he doesn't turn to keep hitting the original target. Meanwhile, he's also casting Mutated Infection on a random raid member. While this is a nasty debuff it's best not to cleanse it immediately, as doing so spawns a small ooze that will spray a slowing goo puddle on the floor as well as radiate nature damage. Generally speaking, if you're a DPS warrior you're going to hate getting Mutated Infection, as you will have to run out of melee, find the tank who is designated for oozes and stand near him to wait to be cleansed. Worse, the small oozes cannot be taunted, so if you're the first person to get Mutated Infection you're going to have to hang out near the ooze tank until he can get two of them to combine (unless it can get rooted successfully so you can run back to DPS).

Once there are two or more small oozes joined into a big ooze, the real fun begins. The kiting tank will need to stay the heck away from the big ooze, as it will do about 6k damage every 2 seconds to everyone within 10 yards of it. If you get Mutated Infection at this point, you will also need to get close to the tank to be cleansed without getting in range of the big ooze, because you don't want to get hit for 6k or so every 2 seconds either. Also, as more small oozes are added, the big ooze gets Unstable Ooze stacks, which ramp up that AoE damage very, very quickly.

A big ooze with four stacks of Unstable Ooze will probably one shot a tank who gets near it. Finally, when the big ooze absorbs four more smaller oozes (stacking Unstable Ooze to 5 stacks) it will explode and shower up to 8 ooze missiles (on 25, 3 missiles on 10) at random players in the raid. Each missile hits everyone in a 6 yard range for 12k or so, which means standing grouped up and letting the ooze missiles all hit in one spot makes it easier to avoid them if you move away as soon as the explosion starts casting. You do not want to be within 6 yards of more than one ooze missile, much less all of them.

So this is the fight: move out to get Mutated Infection cleansed, make sure it's safe to go back in and DPS (don't drag a little ooze back into the melee), avoid the Slime Spray by moving to the tank, move out of Unstable Ooze Explosion's targeting area before it fires, try not to run into a flooded quarter of the room. Like I said, it's a lot of dancing about. Rotface drops Gluth's Fetching Knife, Rotface's Rupturing Ring and Flesh Shaper's Gurney Strap on 10 man and the Bile Encrusted Medallion, Winding Sheet, Blightborne Warplate and Raging Behemoth's Shoulderplates on 25.

Of course you know this leaves Putricide. He gets his own page, he's that special.