Ready Check: Rotface
by Michael Gray 
Jan 29th 2010 at 10:00PM
Rotface is the mirror twin of Festergut. I usually raid Festergut first, and then go to visit Rotface. Rotface manages to be both a DPS check and a coordination check in a single fight. This is because Rotface does things to your raid. The longer you let Rotface stack up these things, the more difficult Rotface becomes. It's not necessarily that the damage increases as much as you're increasing the likelihood that something will go wrong. It's therefore best to burn him down as quickly as possible, even while trying to handle the coordination elements of the fight.
Jump behind the cut and let's check out the fight.
You're going to need at least two tanks to fight Rotface. One tank will be busy tanking Rotface himself, while the other tank will be busy kiting adds around the room. (We'll talk about where the adds come from in just a second.) There are only three different NPCs in this fight. The first is Rotface himself. The second mob is a Small Ooze. When you get two Little Oozes together, they turn into a Big Ooze. That Big Ooze is obviously the third mob.
When you pull Rotface, have your main tank drag him to roughly the center of the room. Your healers and DPS will be inside (or right up against) Rotface's hit box. Your second tank will be on the outside perimeter of the room, since that's where he or she will be tanking and kiting the Oozes. (I promise, I'll get to the adds in just a second.)
There are three gimmicks to the Rotface fight. The first are the ooze floods that cascade within the circle room. The second gimmick is Rotface's periodic Slime Spray. The third are those Little and Big Oozes we were just talking about. You'll have to handle all three of these issues while consistently applying a steady stream of DPS to Rotface.
The Ooze Floods come from the pipes surrounding the perimeter of Rotface's room. The ooze floods themselves hit the corners of the room (northwest, southwest, northeast, and southeast). The floods are sizeable, but they'll never completely reach the center of the room. The healers and DPS won't have to worry much about the floods, except for the rare occasion when they need to run to the outside perimeter. The Ooze Flood deals damage to anyone in the flood, as well as slowing their movement speed. Consider this the fire you don't want to stand in.
The second trick is the Slime Spray. This is a relatively easy thing to handle, and I'm pretty sure it's just there so that the healers and DPS don't fall asleep. It's obvious when Rotface is about to spew a Slime Spray. The power has a second and a half cast time, so any method you use to view a target's cast bar will reveal the upcoming Slime Spray. Once the cast bar finishes, the Slime Spray will spew for about five seconds in a cone toward its target. Just don't stand in it. The Slime Spray targets a random raid member with each cast, so you'll need to be fairly attentive.The last trick is the Little Oozes and Big Oozes. They don't just simply appear. Rotface drops a debuff on a random raid member called Mutated Infection. This infection is a killer DoT, which will quickly kill anyone if they're not rapidly healed. However, you can't simply cleanse Mutated Infection -- as soon as you do so, a Small Ooze appears. This Small Ooze is not tauntable, but it doesn't hit very hard. When two Small Oozes get near one another, they will merge and become a Big Ooze. Big Oozes will continue to absorbs Small Oozes, gaining a stack of Unstable Ooze.
Unlike the little counterparts, Big Oozes do hit hard. This is why you have to kite the oozes to the outside perimeter, where the second tank can pick up the growing Big Ooze. You can't just leave everyone with their own personal Small Ooze by Rotface, or they'll merge and wreck shop on the entire raid. Both Little and Big Oozes spit slime on the floor similar to Rotface, and radiate damage to anyone around them.
When the Big Ooze absorbs enough Small Oozes so that they have 5 stacks of Unstable Ooze, they'll explode. The explosion spews dangerous slime to the center of the room, so your raid should spread out when the Big Ooze is about to blow up.
So, here's the general run down of the fight. Have your main tank pull Rotface to the center of the room. The second tank hangs out in the outside of the room. When Rotface puts Mutated Infection on a raid member, that raid member should go to the outside of the room near the second tank. When the infected raid member is in position, that's when they should be cleansed. The Small Ooze will spawn, and the raid member kites that Small Ooze around. When the second Small Ooze spawns, combine the two and have the second tank grab it. Kite the Big Ooze around the outside of the room, being careful to avoid slime pools. Each additional Small Ooze should be kited to the Big Ooze, and the entire raid should spread out when the Big Ooze is about to explode. Rinse and repeat until Rotface is dead.
The biggest challenge with this fight will be realizing you have a Small Ooze, and getting it out to the Big Ooze. Since you have to do this kiting while dodging all the slime on the floor, it can be challenging for folks who aren't used to kiting mobs.
Good hunting!
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), Raiding
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
leitniear14 Jan 31st 2010 12:20AM
i can't wait to hit 80 and start raiding everything! Ready check is just making me more and more impatient
Doddilus Jan 29th 2010 10:21PM
"The explosion spews dangerous slime to the center of the room, so your raid should spread out when the Big Ooze is about to blow up."
This is incorrect, it spews slime to where people are currently standing much like vezzax's shadowcrash. So, the ooze needs to explode, then everyone needs to move.
curtisrutland Feb 1st 2010 12:25AM
Right. Deadly Boss Mods now warns that an explosion is imminent, then tells you to move the moment it happens.
It targets people not at the moment the cast begins, but the moment the cast finishes. It will launch projectiles in an arc to those spots. So the best strategy is for everyone to be clustered on the boss, until the big ooze finishes his cast, then to haul butt away. If you scatter preemptively, you scatter the areas where the explosions will hit, making it much more likely someone will run into a targeted zone and die.
WoWie Zowie Jan 29th 2010 10:29PM
"It's not necessarily that the damage increases as much as you're increasing the likelihood that something will go wrong. It's therefore best to burn him down as quickly as possible, even while trying to handle the coordination elements of the fight."
its a dps race due to the fact that the small oozes spawn at an accelerated rate the longer the fight draws out, to the point it hard to keep up healing
Meredyth Jan 29th 2010 10:42PM
While thankfully the ooze flood around the corners of the room is just low ticks of damage, the circular slime puddles that the small and large oozes spit out also slow you down considerably, something the kiting tank should definitely take into consideration when moving the Big Oozes around the room - while you can usually stay out of range of their nasty aoe pretty easily, if you get caught in a slime puddle, the mob will catch up really fast. They have an annoying tendency to spit puddles into the flood, so keep a careful eye out.
Elaus Jan 29th 2010 10:51PM
Not very many people know this, but Rotface has a soft "enrage time". At three minutes, he will start applying the infections much faster. This has become a major stumbling point for many guilds on my server (including my own). You need to have enough DPS to bring him way down by the "enrage", or else you may not survive very much longer past 4 minutes.
Also, the guides out there say the damage in the fight is nature damage. It is actually shadowstorm damage. To be able to build resistances to this, you need to have shadow AND nature resistance. The two combined equal your Shadowstorm damage. I would suggest skipping aspect of the wild or nature resist totems, because it would seriously hinder the dps needed to bring Rotface down.
Scunosi Jan 29th 2010 11:04PM
We've found that his spray isn't a cone effect, it's much more of a jet. You can simply sidestep it to not get hit by it.
However, because it's a jet, it also shoots clear across to the wall from wherever he's facing, so if you're kiting an ooze, watch out.
Bith Jan 30th 2010 12:38AM
We've found that the the Slime Spray has a wider "range" towards the wall, suggesting a cone-like effect in my opinion. Did you notice that it was just as easy to dodge towards the wall just as it was in the center? Very interesting, we'll give that another try. Thanks :)
flashdrives Jan 29th 2010 11:28PM
haha awesome
Bith Jan 30th 2010 12:38AM
"The second trick is the Slime Spray. This is a relatively easy thing to handle, and I'm pretty sure it's just there so that the healers and DPS don't fall asleep."
You do know it can hit anyone up against the wall and it's a quick way to kill the kiting OT and anyone with an infection (Slime Spray + Infection DoT = dead) that's trying to combine with the Big Ooze right? Due to it being a cone effect, it's also ridiculously difficult to dodge all the way out there due to the wide area it hits.
So yeah, good luck trying to get Slime Spray to not hit your OT.
Thepearl Jan 30th 2010 1:10AM
"The Small Ooze will spawn, and the raid member kites that Small Ooze around."
I see many players get confused by this. Unless you actually have a powerful slow effect like Hamstring or Curse of Exhaustion it's not worth it to start moving like an idiot around the room, you don't avoid any hits, and just hinder your ability to heal or dps. When you locate the person that has the second Infection, meet with him at some place in the outer circle of the room and just don't move. And for the love of god don't move away from that person.
Cerril Jan 30th 2010 2:35AM
As above, a lot of mis- or incomplete information here.
1) Slime spray is a cone. It's easy to dodge if you're in the center, less easy if you're busy moving a small ooze out to the outside (or coming back in), and it's very very difficult to heal if you have --
2) Mutated Infection; the DoT isn't the killer, it's the healing debuff that comes with the DoT
3) Oozes leave puddles, Rotface does not leave puddles. The puddles target near the oozes' targets so there will always be the potential for one to appear in your path
3a) The Ooze Flood (25% snare) works much differently than the puddles (50%) snare. The sticky ooze is a death sentence, but the Flood will end up getting kited through at least a couple times in most successful fights.
4) You do not do not do not kite the small oozes. You run them somewhere then either stand there (if there's no big ooze) or wait for them to begin combining and then run back in. If it's stuck to you, it's going to melee you (for dinky amounts). Only the big ooze has a snare on it. If you can root at will (e.g. frost nova) then you can 'place' the small ooze in the kite path of the big ooze (as well as rooting the ooze that inevitably ends up trailing the kiter), but that's the entire extent of the kite.
4a) Big ooze melee is lethal.
5) Unstable ooze explosion targets people as the ooze drops go up into the air. Spreading out ahead of time will cause some combination of wasted DPS and people not moving enough after the explosion and getting hit. It's just like the Vezax [as above] - wait until the ooze goes up, then be somewhere no one else was at that point.
6) You really need to emphasize the reason for the increasing difficulty. It's not a matter of things getting harder to manage but a factor of his drastically faster infection tossing that's going to drive your cleansed insane and require you to let the infected people suffer longer so you don't get a second or third big ooze up.
Xalgar Jan 30th 2010 2:39AM
BOOMER!
Slaytanic Jan 30th 2010 3:13AM
"What? Precious? Nooooooooo!!!!"
This and his battle cry make me smile EVERY time he is engaged. Very silly and fun. :)
"New toys? For me?!? Oh......I hope I don't break them this time."
xSeanZx Jan 30th 2010 3:42AM
I hate Rotface.
My guild can kill Festergut with 1:10 left on the enrage timer and we can not get this bastard down.
We are inching closer though... people seem to be getting the hang of it.
fisiol Jan 30th 2010 5:51AM
"the slime is flowing again"
not "working again"
ps. it's good to stand at his legs, when he starts vomitting just run through him and keep dpsin
Clydtsdk-Rivendare Jan 30th 2010 8:22AM
If you let the mutated injection run its course do you still get a slime?
Also, shadowstorm damage, to my understanding, works the same way as frostfire bolt in that it uses the lower of the victim's resist checks. So you have to have both resistances to be effective.
Lemons Feb 13th 2010 6:27AM
The slime would still spawn if you let the debuff run its course. Sounds like it's best to run out of the group and then cleanse the disease off of yourself if you can. If everyone cleanses as soon as they get the infection there's a good chance that two little oozes will merge into a big ooze in the middle of the melee and that's pretty much a game over in a lot of cases.
Filppula Jan 30th 2010 12:11PM
One way to simplify the Mutated Infection is to dispel immediately rather than trying to heal through the DoT since it does have a Healing Reduction Debuff. The hits from the Little Ooze are less than the DoT itself. The only caveat with this is when he starts accelerating the Mutated Infection application stop the immediate cleanse since you then have a high probability of accidentally forming a big ooze in the group. Typically, we do this until the first Big Ooze Explosion on 25 Man and through the entire fight on 10 Man (we usually have him down before the acceleration on 10s). Also, we often have those with Disease Cleanse (Shaman, Paladin, Priest) cleanse themselves as they move to the outer side of the room rather than worry about timing the cleanse.
jasonw Jan 31st 2010 10:05AM
can't wait for CATACLYSM! hey check out this site you can earn free time cards!!! world of warcraft