Ready Check: Professor Putricide
by Michael Gray 
Feb 5th 2010 at 6:00PM
Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Icecrown Citadel, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.
Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He's kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King's slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who's constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I'm mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.Putricide is a movement fight. There's a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds), and then not-stand-in-stuff. (Most of the stuff you'll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another.) It's not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid's ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff.
Let's take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.
For your 10-man raid makeup, you'll be aiming for two tanks. You'll want either two or three healers, with the rest of your raid being DPS characters. Whether you need two or three healers will depend on how sturdy your tanks are, as well as how awesome your raid healing is -- use your best judgement here. In 25-man, you'll need 2 off-tanks, and about twice as many healers. One of your off-tanks are going to have a special challenge in this fight, as he or she will have to pilot an abomination.
There are three basic phases to the Putricide fight. You get into the second phase when the Professor is at 80% health. The third phase begins at 35%. When the phases turn over, you'll get hit with Tear Gas, which will stun your entire raid while Putricide makes a dive for his chemical table.
As soon as the first phase starts, have your off-tank run directly for the table and immediately take over the Mutated Abomination. You do that by right clicking the table. The abomination is going to put out constant damage to the raid via Mutated Transformation, but the Abomination's ability to eat slime will make up for that detriment.
Throughout the fight, Putricide will lob ooze out to the raid. The Slime Puddles are bad news, doing significant damage to anyone who has the misfortune of standing in them. (So, don't stand in the ooze.) The Abomination has the ability to eat the slime puddles, which will both provide power to the Abomination and decrease the size of the puddles. If the puddles grow too large, then your raid won't have anywhere to safely stand. Every time the Mutated Abomination eats a slime, it'll pick up the Energy required to fuel Regurgitate Ooze, which will slow down the two adds that appear.
While in first two phases, Professor Putricide will summon two different types of adds. The raid warning will call out an Unstable Experiment when it's time for the add to appear. This happens about once every 40 seconds. The two types of adds are Volatile Ooze and Gas Cloud. The Oozes appear in the north portion of the room, where they leak from the ooze tank. Gas Clouds appear on the opposite side in the south. Both adds will choose a target and crawl towards it. They each have different special affects they place on their victim, and then an explosion they do if they reach that victim. If they're not killed before they explode, they will choose another target and start their attack routine all over again.
Volatile Oozes will spawn, focusing on a target and rooting that raid member in place. (The root effect is called Volatile Ooze Adhesive, and isn't just a clever name.) If the Volatile Ooze reaches the raid member, it will explode in a Ooze Eruption. The eruption will not only deal massive damage to anyone standing near it, but it will also knock everyone around the room. That includes knocking some folks into the Slime Puddles. So, it's important to burn Volatile Oozes down as soon as they appear, long before they manage to reach their target. If the Ooze does reach its target, however, the explosion is split evenly between everyone within range. If you're not getting the Ooze down in time, try and have the raid stack on the target instead, so as to evenly spread out the damage.Gas Clouds will also focus on a single target, but they don't root like the Volatile Ooze. Instead, Gas Clouds put a 10-stack of Gaseous Bloat on its target. The Bloat will inflict damage on the target, while steadily dropping off on of its stacks every few seconds. If it reaches its target, the Gas Cloud will explode to deal damage to the entire raid. Obviously, it's best to burn down the Gas Cloud just as quickly as you burn down the Volatile ooze.
When Putricide hits 80%, he will drop that Tear Gas we talked about and enter Phase Two. He runs back to his desk and grows two tentacles. (I feel like I should make an anime joke here, but I'll skip it.) Putricide will start shooting Malleable Goo at random raid members. Anyone who stands in the area where the Malleable Goo lands will take huge damage, and receives a slowing debuff which will increase their casting and attack time by 200%. Goo will generally attack ranged targets first, but will target melee if there is no ranged target to affect. This is really the only completely new trick for the second phase, but everything from phase one will continue.
He'll also drop a Choking Gas bomb in between Malleable Goo attempts. They explode for truly massive damage, and should be avoided when you see them land. The tank should kite Putricide away from the area they land in, and melee should be careful not to stand in them.
When Putricide hits 35%, he'll hit your raid with Tear Gas, and then go mutate again. The third phases grants Professor Putricide Mutated Strength, which increases his damage and attack speed by 50%. When you attack Putricide, he'll put Mutated Plague on your tank. This plague inflict damage to everyone in your raid. At this point, your tanks will have to taunt-swap Putricide so that the Mutated Plague stacks never get too high that your healers can't handle the raid damage. You don't want to swap too often, however, because Putricide is healed every time the Mutated Plague drops off a tank. (For about 3% of his damage.) For 25 man, you'll need three tanks to make sure the plague doesn't get out of control, while you'll only need 2 for 10 man.
Phase three continues with the Gas Bombs and Malleable Goo, but no more Volatile Oozes or Gas Clouds will spawn. You won't have the abomination in the third phase, which is where you get the extra tank to handle swapping Putricide around. The Slime Puddles will still continue to grow, however, so you want to lean on the DPS in this third phase. Without the Mutated Abomination, the growing Slime Puddle will eventually overrun your raid.
In summary, here is the flow of the fight. Your main tank pulls Putricide, while one of your off tanks pilots an abomination. When adds appear, kill the adds. The abomination should be eating slime off the floor to give your raid safe places to stand, and placing its slowing effect on the adds. When you get to the second phase, don't stand where Malleable Goo is going to land. Continue to burn, steady like the beating drum. When the third phase happens, blow all your cooldowns, and burn him down as quickly as possible. If you stay too long in phase three, you'll have no place safe to stand. Good hunting!
Edit: Added information about Smoke Bombs, which I missed unintentionally. Thank you to the comments below for pointing this out.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
winterhawk Feb 5th 2010 6:25PM
Just a tip for you mages and rogues out there--mages can Invis and rogues can Vanish when Putricide starts casting Tear Gas. If you get the timing right, you're not affected and can run over and get a few seconds of free DPS on the Professor while everybody else is frozen.
benai Feb 5th 2010 6:33PM
thanks
Almoderate Feb 5th 2010 7:33PM
A word of caution on any "creative use of game mechanics" here... I wouldn't recommend doing this for two reasons:
1. It's obviously not the way Blizzard intended this encounter to be fought. That means it's likely that they'll label this an exploit and you could risk a ban.
2. It'll likely be hotfixed in the very near future.
winterhawk Feb 5th 2010 8:05PM
Do you think this would count as an exploit? Is ice blocking during the fear phase of the Blood Queen an exploit? I think there's a fine line between exploits and simply using your abilities to their advantage. And it's not like the small amount of extra DPS is going to make a huge difference (unless you stack your raid with rogues and mages, and then you've got other problems).
I see your point, certainly--it's not like we need to do this to beat Putricide, and if they hotfix it so it doesn't work anymore, so be it.
Feist Feb 5th 2010 6:28PM
Okay, so Mr. Gray, have you actually pulled Putricide? If you have, were you raid leading? Because you seem to be missing several extremely important encounter mechanics here.
Re: P1&2:/Ooze Gas management:
Green - Volatile Oozes explosion is split amongst all those that it hits. If it hits ~4-5 people on 10 man, or ~8-10 on 25, it gets very healable. Anyone that can afford to should be stacking up on the target of the Volatile Ooze Adhesive (or on the slime itself as melee), because all but the very best of raids /WILL/ see an ooze explode at least once before dying every time. Stacking means that explosion won't kill anyone. Melee should stay away until the Green Ooze selects a target, to give the rest of the raid time to stack if they are selected.
Orange - Damage from the Orange Clouds explosion is tied to the number of stacks remaining on the bloat target. I.E. kite as long as possible to minimize the raid damage when the gas cloud catches up. Again, melee need to stay out until a target is selected here, and kiting the ooze is more important than DPS on the boss or the ooze while it's up if you're selected.
Re: P2 and new abulities:
You've completely missed Choking Gas Bombs, which Putricide periodically drops in melee range (it's on an interval with Malleable Goo - he alternates the two). These explode a few seconds after being dropped for *ENORMOUS* amounts of damage. The tank needs to kite the boss away from these, and raid members need to not run over them when maneuvering away from/to oozes. The vials also pulse an AE hit reduction debuff onto people until they explode, so just get the hell away from them ASAP unless you want to see your DPS go in the toilet.
Re: P3 If Mutated Infection falls off anyone *by any means* (bubble, expiration, tank death*), Putricide will heal by ~3-5% PER STACK. Basically, if a tank loses their debuff, it's a wipe, as you will not have the DPS to kill him through wither the hard enrage, or even the soft enrage (too much slime to stand safely). That means that you need 2 or 3 tanks taunting the boss between them often enough to keep all of their stacks growing steadily without falling off, without any tank going over 4 (which is the point at which the exponentially growing raid damage becomes unhealable). At the same time, they need to taunt slowly enough to prevent taunts from going into DR, hence the need to set up a rotation of taunts when each tank reaches 2 or 4 stacks (as called for by your strat).
Alex Ziebart Feb 5th 2010 8:23PM
Thanks, Feist.
We updated the post to include the Smoke Bombs, as well as clarify a few of the other points. We do try to approach these in as simple a manner as possible (raids work out the tiny details on their own, some things you just need to tailor to yourselves) but we didn't leave out anything intentionally.
Feist Feb 5th 2010 9:43PM
Thanks for fixing it. I still think the hit debuff from Choking Gas bears mention, and a note that just about all but the very highest of DPS raids need to collapse for Green oozes is within reason and not getting into the nitty gritty varies with every guild details of things like positioning, whether to use aggrodrops/immunities/movement abilities (Vanish, Iceblock, Blink, Demonic Port, etc. etc.) to cause a second kite.
I just think it's important that a site like wow.com get this sort of thing right. Fact is, the audience here is that much less likely to realize the information is incomplete or inaccurate than at a site like, say, Stratfu or Tankspot - the broader the audience and focus (and the audience and focus of wow.com is broad indeed!) the more likely it is that an omission or mistake in an article like this will simply go unnoticed and accepted as accurate by those most in need of the correct info.
Thanks for the quick fix! :)
Dawts Feb 5th 2010 6:33PM
We just got to him last night really late in our run. Only 2 attempts before we called it. Is it normalto get hit by the green ooze at any point? When it spawns we always get hit by the first target it chooses.
Feist Feb 5th 2010 6:39PM
It's perfectly normal for the first person targetted to be reached by the Green Ooze and to have one explosion go off. Your raid needs to stack on the targetted person to soak the damage (it's split between everyone in range, and is easily healable at 5+ targets).
One alternative strat, popular in melee heavy, or very high DPS raids, is to tank Putricide right at the Green Ooze spawn point, and have all melee jump on it instantly as it spawns - if you have enough melee to survive the first explosion without other ranged getting in there, you can do a significant chunk of damage before the first explosion, lose less DPS time on Putricide, and still avoid the second explosion. YMMV with that strat however.
Pyromelter Feb 5th 2010 6:42PM
Depends on your raid composition and how good both your abomination driver and ranged dps are. Ranged can start attacking the green ooze right away before it targets anyone, and if you've got some pro hunters, mages, and warlocks, it usually should be dead by the time it hits. Unfortunately, it's usually out of tab-targeting range if you are standing max distance, so you have to click on it (fail blizz tab targeting FTL), which eats up precious milliseconds of dps time.
Most raids that aren't insanely overgeared will probably eat a hit from the green ooze if they don't have dps cooldowns to blow during that part. so it's pretty normal, yeah.
Pyromelter Feb 5th 2010 6:39PM
Three pro-tips:
1. The druid healing talent that restores rage/energy/mana/runic power will also help replenish the abomination's energy, so druid raid healers are absolutely perfect for this encounter (not to mention healing while running which druids arguably are the best at)
2. Use Bloodlust/Heroism right as Phase III starts. It's a dps race from 35%->0%, and that is where it will be most needed.
3. If you are a mage and get targeted by Volatile Ooze, you can blink. So after dps'ing the ooze a bit, turn 180°, blink, and give you and your raid an extra few seconds to kill that ooze.
Good luck :)
Squeek Feb 5th 2010 6:44PM
If it was as easy as this makes it sound, everybody would have killed this guy week 1.
Here's what wasn't mentioned:
Oozes re-link. When the green ooze reaches its target, it will explode, but it won't despawn. You have to continue DPSing. The most important part about the three seconds of re-link time is that nobody should be anywhere near it. This is the rule of thumb for the entire encounter, actually. If one of the oozes is casting its link, you need to get the hell away from it.
The same goes for the orange one. The orange one will find a new link when the 10-stack debuff on its target wears off, so be far away from it when it does that.
These links can also drop off via Feign Death, Divine Shield, Vanish, and any other aggro-dropping abilities. So be careful using them.
The trick to these Oozes is to keep Putricide on the opposite side of the one that will spawn next. Green is always first, so tank him on the Orange side of the room. When the Green one is dead or near dead, your tank should be moving him toward the Green side of the room to prepare for the next Ooze spawn. Our group likes to have all ranged DPS stand at their estimated max range and lay into the oozes as they spawn. Even the green one. You can burn down a green ooze before it even gets to its link unless it's one of your ranged DPS, and if it is one of your ranged DPS, you can usually kill it after one explosion. Just make sure melee is following the green ooze in to the linked person to soak the explosion damage. Green is definitely the hardest one to deal with, but orange can be an issue if your dps isn't high enough to kill it before the debuff wears off.
Also, try not to have an Ooze alive going into a phase transition. It causes a lot of problems. Just stop DPS on him to get the timing down properly. 82% is a good place to stop if you know a new ooze will be spawning in the next 5 seconds.
Phase 2: Malleable Goo is definitely the most important aspect of Phase 2, and I'm gonna let you finish, but Choking Gas Bombs... also exist. Choking Gas Bombs are small orange bombs on the floor that explode after a few seconds of being placed down. They also explode if you touch them. Therefore, they're timed mines and proximity mines. Either way, if you touch them, you get a delicious -75% hit chance. So, don't touch them. The best way to avoid this is to just move the boss 10 yards or so every time he drops the bombs.
Malleable Goo is another story entirely. This is the primary reason that the tanks and melee should be about 20-25 yards away from the ranged DPS and healers. If you are not a melee attacker in one form or another, you should never ever be near the boss. Malleable Goo bounces across the floor and it's very difficult to predict where it will actually explode. Basically, it chooses a target, gets the X/Y coordinates for that target's current position, and bounces toward that. If you don't know where that person was standing before he/she moved, it'll be hard to tell where it will hit. Pay close attention to the Goo and just stay as far away from the line it's traveling. Don't be on that line, at all.
Then you approach phase 3. Again, make sure there's no ooze alive. Except this time, it's absolutely imperative that no ooze is alive. If your DPS have to kill the ooze and fail (because it isn't debuffed), you wipe. If your DPS have to kite it around, that's time lost DPSing Putricide, which is time that the stacks on the tank build up. You'll wipe.
Ideally, you want to do a 2-stack switch. The MT has 2 stacks, the OT taunts. When the OT hits 2 stacks, you can taunt back, or you can wait until he builds to 4 and then have the MT taunt. Putricide will get one tank to 4 stacks at the same time, and reducing the number of tank swaps is ideal for your healers. Therefore, we do a 2-4-4 rotation in our taunts. OT taunts when MT is at 2, MT taunts when OT is at 4, OT taunts when MT is at 4, and if you're going past this point, you've likely wiped.
Bloodlust should be used when the OT is tanking. The ideal time is when both tanks have 2 stacks, but if your DPS is high enough, then use it sooner. You want bloodlust to be up for the most painful part of the fight, which is the time right before he dies. Everybody in the raid will be taking insane damage.
As for the debuff itself, the only way it's going to fall off is if your tank dies. If you're fighting him to the point where it's expiring, you're already dead. The absolute most important thing about p3 is keeping the tanks alive. If a tank dies, he heals for too much and you wipe.
The other important thing to realize is that there is a soft enrage in addition to the hard enrage and the other soft enrage. Aside from the 10-minute 500% damage increase and the tank debuffs doing thousands of damage to your raid every second, the floor will fill with Ooze. Plan a kiting path during the 35% Tear Gas based on any slime pools that are up. Remember to stay 20+ yards away if you're in the ranged group. You want to be clustered for this phase, as the Slime Pools are targeted abilities. If you're spread out, the Slime Pools will land in places you don't want them. Stay together and you'll have a lot more room to work with before the room fills up.
As for the abomination driver, it's very important to keep yourself at 50+ energy the entire time. If an ooze is spawning and you have no pools to eat and plenty of energy, run over to it and start stacking Sunders (Mutated Slash) on it when it spawns and watch its cast bar carefully. Since you're in melee range of it, the Regurgitated ability will not have a travel time, and you should therefore debuff it right when the link cast time is at 2.5 seconds out of 3. If you cannot get to the ooze in time for whatever reason, take flight time into account when debuffing. It takes practice to get this flight time down.
If there is no ooze, you must spend all of your time gaining energy. Once you have 50+, you can just focus on clearing pools as fast as possible. If you're below 50 energy, you want to eat the pools slowly (aka not mashing 1) to let them grow slightly, giving you more energy.
If you're completely out of things to do, feel free to Slash the boss himself. This should be rare. At best, you might be able to eat a slime pool that is next to the boss. All 3 abilities are off the GCD, so you can Slash and Eat at the same time.
This fight takes practice. The abomination driver needs to get practice on timing and energy balancing. The tank needs to get practice moving the boss back and forth for oozes and 10 yards for bombs. The melee DPS need to get practice switching targets only when necessary and watching out for Goo and Bombs on their way back in to the boss. The ranged group needs practice on avoiding Malleable Goo and target switching right as an ooze spawns.
jam Feb 5th 2010 7:10PM
"The trick to these Oozes is to keep Putricide on the opposite side of the one that will spawn next. Green is always first, so tank him on the Orange side of the room."
As others have mentioned, there's no need to kite the green slime. Just stack your raid under its spawnpoint so melee can start nuking at it right away, before it even picks a target.
Also, you can easily tank Putricide close to the center before the orange one spawns, just have your ranged dps switch to it immediately.
Maxpowr Feb 6th 2010 2:27AM
Yes in the strat, he completely missed the point of Phase 3 which is the healer (and DPS) test. The tanks get a stacking debuff (forget what it's called) which increases damage to the raid while all that other fun stuff is going on. Eventually the stacks will become impossible (usually at 5 stacks) to heal through and it will pretty much wipe the raid. If for any reason, a tank with the debuff dies, they will heal Putricide for alot, making him unkillable before the room fills with slime.
Marcus Feb 5th 2010 6:56PM
Everyone needs to watch out for Choking Gas from Phase 2 on. Stay away from the vials when they land otherwise you'll get a debuff that'll reduce your chance to hit by 75%(there's damage, but you really don't want the reduced hit debuff)
Meredyth Feb 5th 2010 7:52PM
Important note for ranged DPS:
Absolutely no slowing/snaring effects whatsoever will work on the Volatile Oozes. (Hence, as above noted, stacking on the ooze's target is very important.)
However! The Gas Clouds are fair game. Pile on the frost spells, Frost Traps, and my personal favorite, Mind Flay. You might just save the life of one of your buddies who's in a bad corner.
jlpknights82 Feb 5th 2010 8:01PM
Our raid finally downed him last night in 25 man. That last stage is quite a rush! Positioning in phase 3 becomes very important to control the floor ooze spawns as much as possible.
Rainee Sue Feb 5th 2010 8:35PM
So when a reader points out your mistakes, the official WoW.com policy is to repair those mistakes without so much as a credit or "oops, thanks" to the reader, leaving their comment to stand and look ridiculous since it points out things that are now in the article?
Classy.
Rainee Sue Feb 5th 2010 9:47PM
Looks like some credit got edited in after I posted this. Good. :)
Obviously Feb 5th 2010 10:06PM
That screenshot at the top looks like something from RuneScape :O