Due to the holiday season (not that we need a dedicated season to over indulge in drinking, eating, and slacking, Hybrids have a tendency to do this all year round) Blizzard was kind enough to give us four weeks of storming Icecrown Citadels first wing, the Lower Spire, before last week opening up a new wing, the Plagueworks, giving us access to a further 3 bosses, Rotface, Festergut and Professor Putricide.
Thankfully, we now have the first wing on farm status which allowed us to get straight to the matter in hand after quickly tearing through the first wing giving us the option of Festergut or Rotface, we hadn’t prepared tactics on either so it was pretty much a coin toss as to which we would attempt, prior preparation prevents piss poor performance and all that!
However, first we had to navigate our way through a gas room that many didn’t know existed, culminating in a few comical deaths as we edged our way through yet another game of Frogger, for those of us who are old enough to remember… After tip toeing through the gas, next on the agenda was some trash mobs, and what do Hybrids do with trash mobs when we have no idea what abilities they may possess? That’s right, we mindlessly aoe and hope and pray that tanks keep aggro and healers keep those tanks and us that know no better face rolling our aoe buttons alive! Several frantic minutes later and we managed to come out the other side of the aoe fest with only a few minor casualties (generally a few huntards but they are slowly taking over our raids; I counted 7 in one raid!).
A few more aoe trash packs later and we were onto two big dogs, Stinky and Precious and their mad scientist handlers, ok we’ll nuke them down just like the rest… wrong! Within seconds the entire raid was taking massive damage and within minutes we were all dead and to the tactics pages we had to trundle with our tails between our legs.
Once we (finally) managed to get past the dogs, we decided on tackling Rotface first, watched a few tankspot videos read a few tactics here and there and hastily had a few attempts. Chaotic? Damn right it’s chaotic! Now to me, this is a real boss fight, and I’m still not 100% certain I know what the hell is going on half of the time! Unless you are very lucky, this fight asks a question of all members of your raid, ensuring they are switched on and fleet footed in their actions, needless to say the first few attempts were rather disastrous.
The basic premise of the fight is that the boss is tanked in the centre of the room with ranged stood behind him. Every x amount of second a random player in the raid is infected with “Mutated Infection” which creates an ooze once dispelled / worn off the player, this small ooze is then kited until another player get the infection and creates another ooze, at which point the two are brought together to create a big ooze. The big ooze is then kited by a designated kiter, with each subsequent infected moving into the path of the big ooze before being dispelled and the small ooze joining up with the big ooze again… Still following? Ok, now there are taps that are being fixed throughout the fight that create a big green sludge on the floor (ooze Flood), which slows anybody stood in it down and gives out damage coupled with the boss periodically doing a sludge spray in a cone from the way he decides to face, meaning all dps have to often be quick on their toes to get out of the way.
Now, if all this wasn’t enough, once the big ooze collects 5 of the smaller oozes there is an unstable ooze explosion, meaning all raid members have to move away, but not too soon!
As you can guess we spent a few nights wiping in various convoluted ways, i.e. managing to get two big slimes up on multiple occasions, valves opening on the kiters heads, many many times the infected didn’t bother moving, this was resolved by the old trusted tactics of shouting abuse on TS until they twigged it was them everybody was shouting at.
After another reset we managed to take down Rotface, however this wasn’t without its hitches as we lost half the raid in the process, so we can hardly resign this abomination to the farm just yet, however I hope this is an insight into what we can expect from all future bosses.
Thankfully, we now have the first wing on farm status which allowed us to get straight to the matter in hand after quickly tearing through the first wing giving us the option of Festergut or Rotface, we hadn’t prepared tactics on either so it was pretty much a coin toss as to which we would attempt, prior preparation prevents piss poor performance and all that!
However, first we had to navigate our way through a gas room that many didn’t know existed, culminating in a few comical deaths as we edged our way through yet another game of Frogger, for those of us who are old enough to remember… After tip toeing through the gas, next on the agenda was some trash mobs, and what do Hybrids do with trash mobs when we have no idea what abilities they may possess? That’s right, we mindlessly aoe and hope and pray that tanks keep aggro and healers keep those tanks and us that know no better face rolling our aoe buttons alive! Several frantic minutes later and we managed to come out the other side of the aoe fest with only a few minor casualties (generally a few huntards but they are slowly taking over our raids; I counted 7 in one raid!).
A few more aoe trash packs later and we were onto two big dogs, Stinky and Precious and their mad scientist handlers, ok we’ll nuke them down just like the rest… wrong! Within seconds the entire raid was taking massive damage and within minutes we were all dead and to the tactics pages we had to trundle with our tails between our legs.
Once we (finally) managed to get past the dogs, we decided on tackling Rotface first, watched a few tankspot videos read a few tactics here and there and hastily had a few attempts. Chaotic? Damn right it’s chaotic! Now to me, this is a real boss fight, and I’m still not 100% certain I know what the hell is going on half of the time! Unless you are very lucky, this fight asks a question of all members of your raid, ensuring they are switched on and fleet footed in their actions, needless to say the first few attempts were rather disastrous.
The basic premise of the fight is that the boss is tanked in the centre of the room with ranged stood behind him. Every x amount of second a random player in the raid is infected with “Mutated Infection” which creates an ooze once dispelled / worn off the player, this small ooze is then kited until another player get the infection and creates another ooze, at which point the two are brought together to create a big ooze. The big ooze is then kited by a designated kiter, with each subsequent infected moving into the path of the big ooze before being dispelled and the small ooze joining up with the big ooze again… Still following? Ok, now there are taps that are being fixed throughout the fight that create a big green sludge on the floor (ooze Flood), which slows anybody stood in it down and gives out damage coupled with the boss periodically doing a sludge spray in a cone from the way he decides to face, meaning all dps have to often be quick on their toes to get out of the way.Now, if all this wasn’t enough, once the big ooze collects 5 of the smaller oozes there is an unstable ooze explosion, meaning all raid members have to move away, but not too soon!
As you can guess we spent a few nights wiping in various convoluted ways, i.e. managing to get two big slimes up on multiple occasions, valves opening on the kiters heads, many many times the infected didn’t bother moving, this was resolved by the old trusted tactics of shouting abuse on TS until they twigged it was them everybody was shouting at.
After another reset we managed to take down Rotface, however this wasn’t without its hitches as we lost half the raid in the process, so we can hardly resign this abomination to the farm just yet, however I hope this is an insight into what we can expect from all future bosses.