Festergut is not as hard as you might think!
Shopping list:
2 tanks
5 healers (you may need more, but be careful of gimping DPS with this)
rest even distribution of ranged and melee DPS
I am sure everyone is aware of the mechanics of this fight by now (possibly wipetastically familiar with them).
There are 2 parts to this fight - what the raid does and what the tanks do. I will start with the easier of the two - the raid.
Raid strat
Festergut will be tanked in the middle. Melee stacks up on his butt ranged at ranged and smashes the boss. Rinse repeat.
...
Ok, so it isn't quite that easy, but it pretty much is close to it. There is one mechanic that the raid has to worry about. When spores spawn (say that 10 times quickly) you will see a little yellow spikey ball dancing on your head. Everyone needs to get underneath someone with a yellow ball, and all the people with the yellow balls need to spread apart from each other.
In practical terms it means something like this: Have your ranged people sitting out in 2 ranged groups (I believe there is a minimum requirement for people at range, the usual 7 or 8 I think), and your melee stacked on the boss. If there are 2 in melee, one person has to run out to ranged. Basically, there need to be 2 spores at range, one in melee. If there are 2 in any one group, you are going to have to call out who is moving and to where. I cannot stress how important that part is in this fight. For example, if the tank gets the spore and another melee? the melee dude has to call out they are moving and to where.
Why 3 groups?
After 12s those spores are going to explode and put a DoT on people within 8 yards. 1 Dot you can heal through, 2 is pushing it and will probably end up in your death.
So, send the person with the yellow ball away!
NUH-UH! When those spores explode they buff everyone in range with shadow protection. It is really important that the entire raid gets 3 stacks of this debuff or when he does this the entire raid will die horribly.
So raid, coordinate your spores (3 separate groups) make sure one is in melee, 2 at range and ensure everyone gets 3 stacks of that buff before festergut explodes the raid. Apart from that, stand there and go hard with your DPS. The recommended time for bloodlust/hero is early on while everyone is alive to get the benefit of the buff. Saving it for "30%" or some other arbitrary number is not relevant if you are losing people in this fight. And until you gear up and learn the fight, then you will be losing people. When you are more confident with the fight, feel free to move BL/Hero to wherever is more effective for you as a team.
But you mentioned you NEED people at ranged?
Yeah I did, and I was reminded by a lovely commenter why (as you can tell, I had primed for this and just plumb forgot to write about it). You need your ranged out... well, at ranged and they need to be spread out so that this doesn't end up in melee, and no more than one person is chucking their guts out at any one time. In 10s I think its 3, and 25s about 8.
Tank strat
Ok tanks, time to show us your stuff! This really is a tank check. Are your tanks geared, and do they know how to use all the emergency buttons at their disposal and do they understand threat mechanics?
Just tank and spank
First of all, you dont have to move - so that makes it easier. Tank him where he stands.
Now, festergut hits like a mack truck on steroids and you will die if you don't manage your CDs effectively. And by effectively I mean actually sit down with the other tank and work out a rotation based on what CDs/trinkets you both have available. This part, I cant actually help you with directly (as there are far too many tank CD combos) but getting this right is vitally important to the success of the fight. Get out your spreadsheets kiddies! You need to have some kind of something up at all times - in this rotation you need to include things like healer CDs as well.
The trick is, every time Festergut inhales the yellow crap on the ground (visually, it becomes thinner and thinner until there is nothing on the ground and he has 3 stacks up), he hits harder and harder. So you need to keep your best CDs for when he has 3 stacks up. Because ... as a healer... all I can say is DAYUM! OWIES! If there are periods of time when it is necessary to have a gap between CDs, try to make this gap when Festergut has 0 or 1 stacks of the debuff. Your healers will appreciate you for it.
Now depending on your CDs, but this seems to be a general rule of thumb, tanks take 2 stacks of the bloaty debuff festergut bestows upon you as a tank, before the other tank taunts off you. When your tanks take 10 stacks of it, they explode and that's GG guys! At most your tanks should be getting 9 stacks. If festergut isn't dead by then, you will have hit the 5 min enrage timer anyway.
When you have the debuff, you are doing more and more damage, so be very aware of your threat and perhaps even turning off your auto attacks might be a wise idea when you are not actually tanking.
Have a click through to the comments, there is a bit of discussion around CD's stacks and inhale timings which you might find interesting.
Healer notes
This is a gear check for the healers. Everyone is taking a LOT of damage, most especially the tanks. Keep an eye on festergut's debuffs and ensure that you ramp healing up appropriately. Like I said earilier, visually, you can see where the debuffs are up to by the colour of the gas on the ground. It goes from a thick yellow to paler yellow as he inhales to there not being anything on the ground when he is hitting the hardest. If you struggle with seeing boss debuffs, this should assist you in remembering where it is up to.
You shouldn't have mana issues if you are in melee range and autohitting the boss. I simply cannot recommend this enough. You will be churning through the mana and having JoW up will probably save a tanks life. Also, JoL and ILotP will be amazing help in this fight along with any auras that help as well. Any kind of "passive" healing is absolutely vital to keep up.
Make sure your CDs are included in the tank CD rotation, and really, really focus on keeping those tanks alive. They will be taking a hell of a lot of damage, I just can't stress that enough - from what I am seeing it looks to be about the same if not more than heroic gormok
So why are we wiping?
Is everyone getting 3 stacks of the shadow protection?
Are the tanks sufficiently covered off with CDs, saving their biggest CDs for when there is 3 stacks of the buff on the boss?
Is the raid spreading out properly for the 3 spikey balls?
Are the healers not organising themselves properly to be as efficient as they can with healing?
Thursday, January 21, 2010
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Comments by IntenseDebate
Rains · 790 weeks ago
You're forgetting to mention this spell:
Vile Gas
Unlimited range
Instant
Inflicts a Vile plague in targeted area, inflicting 4875 to 5125 damage every 2 sec for 6 sec. The plague causes the infected targets to vomit uncontrollably inflicting 3900 to 4100 damage to nearby allies.
http://www.wowhead.com/?spell=71218
This is the reason you don't want your ranged grouped up at all times - they need to be 10 yards apart, grouping up only when spores come out.
Another thing I wanted to mention is - your tanks can take 9 stacks of the debuff at once before the other tank taunts. I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe the if you take MT 9 & OT 9, your MT's debuff wears off and he can taunt the boss and tank until the actual enrage. This way allows tanks to do their job for a more extended period of time, which then allows them to manage their cooldowns a little better (although you only really need to chain CDs when Festergut gets 3 stacks). If you do it this way though, it is very important that as soon as one of the tanks taunts, the other stops attacking because he is doing 90% increased damage at this point and can easily grab the boss.
And last - if anyone is having trouble with the enrage timer:
- after the second Pungent Blight, you can completely ignore spores and burn the boss, as the third Pungent Blight matches with his enrage timer, therefore wiping the raid whether you have gained the 3x spore buff or not. Also, if you're cutting close to the timer but still wiping, you can actually save Heroism/Bloodlust for this last phase after the second Pungent Blight since the ranged dps will no longer have to move to group up for spores.
- you need 8 total people outside melee range. Warlocks are a good class to leave outside - they can summon their teleporters and instantly teleport every time for spores. Shadow priests and hunters are also good to leave at ranged since moving doesn't cut their dps that much. Mages and boomkins - either have them sit in the melee, or have them sit at the spore converge points. Most of their damage is casted spells, so it's good if they are stationary throughout the fight.
:D
brangwen 48p · 789 weeks ago
How I could forget about the vomiting, I have NO idea. I started to write about it (saying that you needed people out at range) and then... BAM no brain. I will add it in in the next day or so when work gives me 5 mins to breathe!
The tanks can technically take 9 stacks of the debuff, the problem is coordinating that with CDs and with the breaths. So you rotate your tanks to ensure they have their CDs up at all times. Most tank CDs are on a 2 or 3 min timer, and last about 10-20s, they might have 3 or 4 of them (depending ont he tank). So, you need to take a tank OFF tanking when they run out, and pop a new one in who has fresh CDs to go in.
Also, different tanks have different abilities to tank in different ways. One of your tanks might be specced and geared for initial threat, then another tank might have gear and spec to take the hard hitting 3 boss buffs. You have to take that into account. And damnit, I should write about that too!
Rains · 789 weeks ago
You gotta love the tank spam healing on this fight :))
Btw I love your blog - every time I get on here, I get inspired to make my own one OR I feel like applying to your guild :D
brangwen 48p · 788 weeks ago
Also, the 9 stack thing works just fine in 10s, but again it still comes down to CD managament. Take as many stacks as you can and keep the CDs up. If you can get to 9 stacks awesome! Hope the other tank can do the same ;)
grademiners · 379 weeks ago