Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Healing on the run: Festergut



Festergut

Where to stand

Everyone except for ranged dps will stack together in melee range INCLUDING healers.

What to watch for

1. Vile Gas! – This nasty little spell will cause its target to vomit uncontrollably (stunning them) and inflict a good amount of damage to anyone in the area. Festergut will cast this on 3 ranged targets (8 in 25 man). If there are not 3 (or 8) ranged targets to cast it on, the boss will cast this on the melee group, essentially wiping the raid. This spell makes raid healing extremely important. Make sure you’re giving constant attention to your ranged dps in this fight. If one of your ranged dps dies either a melee player or a healer will have to run out to take their place, which will make this fight much more difficult to win.

2. Enrage timer! – Festergut has a 5 minute enrage timer. Unlike other enrages, you won’t have an extra few seconds to dps while the boss runs around killing everybody one at a time. Festerguts enrage hits everyone at the same time, so you have exactly 5 minutes to dps him down or it’s a wipe. This is the reason why keeping everyone alive is so important. They call this fight a “dps check”, but healers will have to be on the ball as well if you’re going to get past this boss.

3. Pungent Blight! – After Festergut has cast three sets of gas spores (see below) he will cast pungent blight. This spell hits for 50k hp and is only survivable if you have the buff from the gas spores. Three stacks of inoculate will reduce the damage taken by 75%, resulting in a loss of roughly 12k hp to everyone in raid. You best get those HoTs rolling before this spell is cast.

4. Gas Spores. – The boss will cast 2 gas spores (3 in 25 man) on random characters throughout the fight. When they explode, everyone in range will gain a stacking buff called inoculate which increases resistance to blight (reducing the damage taken by 25% per stack). The exploding spores will do a little damage to all in range, but it’s not anything to worry about. What you do need to worry about is whether or not everyone is getting the buff. If both (or all three) spores are cast on the melee group then someone will have to bring their spore out to the ranged group and vice versa.

5. Gaseous Blight. – During this fight a cloud of gas fills the room doing damage to your entire raid. The damage done will decrease by 1/3 each time Festergut inhales the gas, but doing so will cause him to grow and do 30% more damage. After he inhales 3 times the gas will be released back into the room and the process will repeat. This mechanic causes an interesting shift in focus from raid to tank healing and back again. Regardless of who you are assigned to heal, pay attention to how much gas is in the room and adjust your healing priorities appropriately.

6. Gastric Bloat. - Festergut will cast this stackable debuff on the tank every 15 seconds causing 10k damage but also increasing the tank's damage done by 10%. At nine stacks the OT will taunt off or else the MT will explode (at 10 stacks). Watch for the tank swap and be prepared to heal the proper target.

Summary: As far as mechanics go, this is a simple “tank and spank” type of encounter with very little reason to ever move your character. This makes Festergut the easiest boss in the plagueworks, as long as you have the dps to beat the enrage timer. If you feel that you don’t have the numbers to beat it, give Rotface a try. The mechanics of his fight are much more complicated, but solid raid coordination can make up for a lack of burst dps.

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