Professor Putricide

Here it is at last, the big show of the Plagueworks. (That's him dead over in the corner there. Sorry, I was busy during the fight, forgot to take a good screenshot. Look, I already admitted I'm horrible at screenshots.) The Putricide fight combines elements of the previous two fights, adds in some vehicle mechanics, tosses in a continuous ramping up of difficulty, and finishes it all off with two soft enrages and a hard berserk timer! It's simultaneously my least and most favorite fight.

Why least? Well, for starters, if you're a tank on this fight (on 25 man: in 10 man you just use 2 tanks thankfully) you have one of three jobs. Two of them are compelling and involved and will challenge you. One of them sucks horribly for the vast majority of the fight and then suddenly gets interesting at the very end. While I generally find the whole Plagueworks to be very well designed and this fight to be both visually and mechanically fascinating, I find the idea of making it a three tank fight for the last 35% but two tank for the first two phases just wrong headed. We basically either have to kick a DPS for a tank who won't be doing anything but following the raid around and trying to DPS for two phases, or force a DPS with a tanking spec and gear suitable to the fight to suit up and do something he or she didn't sign up to do. Either way I find that less than compelling.

For this fight as a tank, excluding the poor unlucky one who does nothing for a long while, you're either tanking Putricide himself or you're drinking stuff from that table in the picture there and becoming a Mutated Abomination, which is basically a vehicle that looks like Festergut/Rotface. Putricide randomly throws slime puddles under people's feet which not only do hefty nature damage if stood in, but they also spread out to cover more and more floor unless the Abomination tank gets to them and spams his Eat Ooze ability (key #1 on the interface) - and when I say spam, I mean hit that damn key until your wrist feels like goddamn hamburger. Remember Heroic Strike spam? Like that. The Abom tank will be doing that while also trying to hit Putricide with his Mutated Slash ability (which is basically there so that a warrior tank who takes the abom doesn't cheat the raid out of his sunder ability, but the Abom can actually do a surprisingly high amount of DPS - our feral tank took it and did nearly 10k DPS on the fight when I remembered to make sure to keep Putricide in range of him while he stood in the puddles, and Mutated Slash does not affect Eat Ooze's cooldown in any way or cost energy to use.)

In addition to saving the raid from ever growing ooze puddles on the floor, the Abom tank will be gaining energy as he eats the ooze. This is good because it will allow him to greatly assist against Putricide's next ability, Unstable Experiment. This summons one of two adds to complicate life for your raid, either a Volatile Ooze or a Gas Cloud. (The Volatile Ooze is a green ooze, and despite its name, the Gas Cloud is a brownish orange ooze.) In my experience he always summons the Volatile Ooze first. The Volatile Ooze will target a random party member, shoot a green beam at him or her that fixes them in place, and then charge them. It can be slowed by the Abom tank using Regurgitated Ooze, and it can be attacked before it selects a target. When/if it reaches a target, it explodes for a very large amount of damage that gets shared by everyone around it. This means that you can have all the DPS (or most of them anyway) group up around the ooze as soon as its spawns and begin burning it down before it targets anything and that damage can be shared out by as many people as possible, making it easier to slow and burn it down before it picks a new target. The explosion also has a knockback component: if you are not knocked back for some reason by it, you should still run away while it is selecting a new target to ensure that if it selects you, it will have some distance to travel and can be burned down safely.

Meanwhile, the Gas Cloud is also vulnerable to Regurgitated Ooze. It spawns on the opposite side of the room from the Volatile Ooze, and selects a raid member to attack with a red beam that inflicts Gaseous Bloat on the target. The Abom tank slows this cloud, enabling the target to kite it around while the DPS burns it down.

Once Putricide reaches 80% (we've seen it happen a little sooner or later than 80% but we're not sure if thats just mods acting up or what) he will drop Tear Gas on the floor that will stun the raid. Warriors have no abilities that can allow them to avoid this, so I won't mention it much, but some classes will be able to break this and keep DPSing. It's very important to try as a raid to avoid pushing Putricide over into a phase while there is a Volatile Ooze or Gas Cloud down, as it complicates the already complicated next phase and slows DPS significantly. DPS is important on this fight, despite all the moving around, because Professor Putricide has a hard berserk that will wipe your raid and you don't want to, say, get him to 4% or lower several attempts in a row only to hit the hard enrage. Not that I know what that feels like. So making sure you have a smooth transition into phase 2 so the DPS doesn't have to waste time dealing with an ooze or a cloud is very important - if your raid leader calls out to stop DPS please don't try and cheat for just a little more, stop DPS.

For Phase 2, everything above still holds true. Slime puddles are still dropped and he must be moved out of them, while trying to keep him in range of the Abom tank for its surprisingly high DPS, and Oozes/Clouds are still dropped and must be dealt with. But he also has new abilities to take into account. First up is Malleable Goo, as the Professy will help by throwing blobs of goo at a target that explode, do a lot of damage, and put a really hideous debuff on anyone they hit, 200% attack and casting speed reduction. Keep in mind that this is an execution fight, yes, but it's also a fight with two soft enrages and a hard berserk: you cannot get this debuff. As soon as Malleable Goo is thrown you have to move out of the way, it travels in a straight line and can be avoided.

The next new ability in this phase is Choking Gas, which is clearly visible as two beakers he drops on the floor. This will almost always be called out on vent because the 75% reduction to chance to hit is actually far more insidious than the damage it does: this is another ability that you simply must not be hit by. Run away, even if it costs you DPS now, it'll save you more DPS later. Choking Gas Explosion happens 20 seconds after he drops the bombs, so stay away from them. (In my experience as tank, he drops the bombs right at his feet so I move immediately away from them.)

From 80% to roughly 35% this is the fight: stay out of goo, switch to Ooze or Clouds as called for, group up properly on Ooze to spread the explosion damage out, kite and burn the Clouds, avoid Malleable Goo and Choking Gas Explosion. As a DPS warrior, make use of abilities like Juggernaut and Intercept (with Heroic Fury if you have it) to maximize your mobility. Don't be afraid to Intervene while kiting Clouds to get some distance, too. The phase 3 transition is pretty much identical in how it operates: he drops Tear Gas and you absolutely cannot have an Ooze or Cloud up, because the Abom tank is about to be ejected and won't be able to help slow or DPS it. Please listen to your raid leader's DPS calls.

Phase three has Putricide run back to that table and drink something else. This is the phase you need three tanks for, as the Professy swells into a raging behemoth and beelines (hopefully) for the tank, who is trying desperately to get him to someplace hopefully free of Slime Puddles. In this phase, there is no Abomination to eat the puddles, so they are constantly thrown at random raid members and grow with time without any way to remove them. That's right, it's everything you loved about Vashj phase three! While this is going on, Putricide is also stacking a debuff on the tanks that causes raid damage to spiral up every time it stacks: this means that the raid damage will quickly become impossible to heal as the stacks increase. This is why the need for three tanks: tanks have to swap Putricide and get the debuff in order to keep the actual stacks on any one tank as low as possible. Meanwhile, if a tank dies with the debuff, Putricide is healed and the more stacks the tank has when he dies the more Putricide is healed for. All that, and a hard Berserk, too!

In phase three the tanks have to kite Putricide around to keep him out of the Slime Puddles and Gas Bombs (oh yes, he still drops those) while burning cooldowns as the stacks increase to stay alive as long as possible, since any tank death is basically a wipe, while the DPS just goes for broke and every possible DPS cooldown is blown. If you manage to juggle all the different variables, taunt trade to keep the stacks low enough, kite him properly and get the DPS up where it needs to be, Putricide dies and we all get some loot.

There's different strategies for phases 1 and 2... some like to kite Putricide to the various sides of the room the next Unstable Experiment will spawn from, while others like to keep him on the same side as the green tank to maximize time on the Volatile Ooze and making kiting the Gas Cloud easier. It's up to your and your raid (we use the one side strat, but we're very melee heavy) which you prefer.

When dead, Putricide drops the Unidentifable Organ, Infected Choker, Scalpel-Sharpening Shoulderplates and the Facelifter on 10 man and the Protector's Mark of Sanctification, Tiny Abomination in a Jar, and Last Word on 25.

Thus ends the Plagueworks.