ICC Plagueworks : Professor Putricide

Amonra · 01/12/10, 10:05 AM

My guild did our 25 man raids on Professor Putricide last night - it was fairly successful but we couldn't quite kill him due to problems beating the soft enrage (best attempt was 2%). I'm therefore looking for some input into our phase 3 strategy, particularly as the limited number of attempts makes it difficult to just try various different ideas.

Phase 3:

There are three potential enrage timers to worry about - one hard enrage timer (berserk) and two soft enrage timers:

1. Berserk after 10 minutes total fight time - if you reach this then Putricide will simply one shot your tanks Not too much to say on this as it is fairly easy to avoid provided you don't waste time on the first two phases of the fight.

2. Running out of room - there is no way to eat up the slime puddles in phase 3 so the best you can do is keep moving around the room to avoid them, Eventually you will run out of places to stand and then rapidly wipe.

3. Every 10 (I think) seconds Putricide puts a mutated plague debuff on the tank. This does raid damage which increases significantly with more stacks of the debuff. One stack does c.150 damage/3 seconds. Two stacks do c.1500 damage/3 seconds. Three stacks do c.4000 damage/3 seconds. We never saw four stacks but based on this progression it would be very bad. If a tank dies with mutated plague then it heals Putricide for a fairly significant amount. [edit - seems I had missed part of the progression and it is more like 1 stack = 150 damage, two stacks = 450 damage, 3 stacks = 1500 damage, 4 stacks = 4.5k damage.

For our raid, timers 2 and 3 seemed to run out at pretty much the same time - i.e. we were running out of room at about the same time as the raid damage was becoming too much to heal. Clearly the fight isn't impossible - guilds have beaten it and with a little more dps we would have won. But besides getting our dps to play better, I'm wondering if anyone has any thoughts on ways to buy more time for the soft enrage timers.

Slime puddles

To try and avoid enrage timer 2 (running out of room) we started tanking Putricide on one wall and then moved clockwise around the room - basically moving on every time the slime puddles grew enough to restrict our movement.

One thing which needs to be taken into account is that our ranged dps/healers were fairly randomly scattered around the room. If one of them is targeted for a slime puddle then we lose a lot more floor space than if a melee dps at the edge of the room gets targeted. The simple solution would be to all stack up on the boss, but presumably malleable ooze will have to target melee range at that point, which is going to lead to a wipe.

Overall however, the slime puddle enrage wasn't the real issue - had we not wiped to enrage timer 3 (AE damage) then we would likely have won just before the final free corner got slimed.

AE damage

Our strategy used 3 tanks who spread the mutated plague debuff among them evenly. With all tanks at 2 stacks of the debuff the raid healing could keep up fine, However as soon as a tank got 3 stacks the raid healing could no longer keep up and the raid slowly started dying. When the second tank got 3 stacks the raid started dying fairly quickly. [Edit - see above. I think our raid must have been wiping at the 4/4/3 stack level, rather than 3/3/2 level]

We threw around a few ideas to try and help this scenario but never got the chance to test them. Does anyone have any thoughts on these, or their own experiences to share?

1. Save hero for later in the fight - we had typically used it about 30 seconds into phase 3. This meant that it was running out right at the point the raid damage really spiked. Saving it until later would help with healing, but would potentially lose dps as by that point either people are dying, or spending more time moving to avoid slime puddles.

2. Try and get someone else to take a debuff as due to the stacking mechanics, it is very beneficial to spread the stacks out as much as possible. So either this would mean using a fourth tank for the fight, or it would mean getting a dps to taunt just before the debuff is used (and then using cooldowns to avoid getting meleed to death). It this were successful then it would effectively mean the healing could keep up for an additional stack.

3. Get one of the tanks build up to 4 stacks and then immediately die. The raid damage would then be manageable for longer as we wouldn't have two tanks with 3 stacks until we had 10 stacks in total. The downside is that this would heal Putricide so the extra time we buy would need to exceed the time lost due to the heal. Also we would need to find a better way to avoid the slime puddle enrage as our current strategy would run out of room long before 10 stacks.

[Edit - changed to reflect more accurate damage per mutated plague stacks]

MatsT · 01/12/10, 10:28 AM

Our experience with "Enrage timer 3" are quite different from yours. 4 stacks will make the tank damage the raid for 2.5-3.5k dmg per tick while 5 stacks will cause 12-18k. Our original strategy used only 2 tanks, and keeping the raid up with 4 stacks on each tank was fairly trivial. The only real reason people were occasionally dying is that they were hit by the Malleable Goo. However, this strategy only gives you around 80-85 seconds to kill him and we only managed to get him to 5-10% before he cast the 9th plague meaning a tank got 5 stacks and immediately killed the entire raid. I suspect this will be the case for most guilds unless you are really high-end and using only mains.

Our solution was to turn the alt Arms Warrior into a sunder+rend bot in tanking gear and have him taunt+shieldwall, taking 2 stacks of plague. This gave us 20 extra seconds to kill him which turned out to be enough. We could possibly have had him taunt again for 1-2 more debuffs to extend the timer even more, but the room was all but full with slime and people were starting to die so it wouldn't have helped much. It would probably have been possible to take 1-2 debuffs even in dps gear provided you use enough cooldowns, but it didn't seem worth the hazzle since he was doing quite low damage anyway. This might be needed for hard mode if dps requirements are sharp enough.

As for Heroism/Bloodlust usage, your raid dps will typically be dropping sharply around 1 minute into phase 3 due to too much movement. I wouldn't recommend waiting more than ~20 seconds to blow it. If healers can't keep up with the damage you need to bring more resto druids, but if people are dying already at 3+2+2 stacks of plague I suspect they are getting hit by something other than the plague.

Amonra · 01/12/10, 11:43 AM

Originally Posted by MatsT

Our experience with "Enrage timer 3" are quite different from yours. 4 stacks will make the tank damage the raid for 2.5-3.5k dmg per tick while 5 stacks will cause 12-18k.

You could be right (and it would be very helpful to know if you are). I had arrived at my numbers by looking through the logs as best I could and comparing that to the number of stacks the tanks said they had received. Unfortunately I've been unable to get wowmeteronline to show me the events involving mutating plague - either because it is having trouble categorising these (as they are friendly damage) or because I'm simply failing to select the right filters to show them up.

Axanor · 01/12/10, 11:57 AM

Vanish, Feign Death, and similar abilities would cause the oozes to drop aggro and recast their focus laser on someone else. Using them on the green oozes helped buy DPS time, but on the orange ones it seemed to be risking a wipe if people used them since it could recast its laser on a nearby melee player.

Jezz · 01/12/10, 12:33 PM

I think the most important thing to look at concerning the enrage timer is people getting hit by debuffs (from either the bouncing slime or the gas bomb things). The positioning of the melee is very important, they should be standing right in the middle of the bosses back to avoid getting the hit debuff just from the tick of the bombs he drops.

Add both debuffs to grid and look who is getting hit, if you are really struggling with either enrage timer it is more than likely because of that.

♦ arison · 01/12/10, 1:04 PM

Bringing three tanks buys quite a bit of time over bringing two. The damage ticks are basically 450 * 2.5 ^ (num_stacks - 1) coming from each tank every 3 seconds. Having 1.5 times as many tanks each dealing well under 2.5 times as much damage (since each tank's num_stacks is lower) buys much more time and makes the slime the enrage rather than tank or raid healing. I made a spreadsheet of the difference, and it is pretty profound (it assumes a 12s stack time, but the results hold the same in terms of relative damage as the fight goes on).

The DPS requirement on the fight itself is modestly forgiving. It is completely about positioning and timing and controlling when you cross 80% and 35% with respect to ooze/cloud presence. We found it easier to control the 35% pushover by calling "ranged on boss" for the last 50% of a gas cloud's health when the boss was around 37% (where we'd intentionally left him for when the cloud spawned). This had the gas cloud dying right at or after the transition and allowed for full DPS time on the boss. You can't do this as easily on an ooze because of the nature of its fixate, but gas clouds make it quite easy to pull DPS off safely at the last minute to better control the transition.

In P3, if a slime puddle is left up, drag the boss there, then move towards an edge slowly, leaving slime and gas bombs behind. You want new puddles to form on the edge of walls or other ooze puddles to buy more time and maneuvering. Move too slow and people die; move too fast and the room fills too quickly. Raid members should be using their own survivability cooldowns for he last few percent as healers need even more focus on the tanks (as any tank death guarantees a wipe because of the healing).

Marcos · 01/12/10, 1:30 PM

Several notes:

Mutated Plague:
- NOTE: 25-man Putricide had a bug where Mutated Plague was doing less than the intended damage. This has been hotfixed.
- Does damage equal to 75/120 (10/25) * 2.5 ^ # stacks to every player except the tank with the debuff causing damage..
- The debuff lasts 1 minute.
- Taunt DR is in effect for Professor Putricide, so managing debuff applications has to be done with that in mind.
- An application of the debuff occurs roughly every 10 seconds.
- With two tanks, you have until roughly the 90 second mark before damage is too great on the raid. Adding a third tank extends that to roughly the 130 second mark.
- In 10 player mode, Putricide will heal for 300k x # stacks of Mutated Plague if the debuff fades for any reason (Divine Intervention, death, duration ending). In 25 player mode, 1.7 mil is the base heal.

EDIT: Bug in Mutated Plague damage fixed. Formula updated.

vorpalblade · 01/12/10, 2:36 PM

Originally Posted by arison

Bringing three tanks buys quite a bit of time over bringing two. The damage ticks are basically 450 * 2.5 ^ (num_stacks - 1) coming from each tank every 3 seconds.

Almost, but your base damage is off. None of the formulas for mutated plague thus far quite seem to add up. In the World of Logs reports I'm seeing (for targets with no other damage reduction, on 25 MAN fights):

---POST 1/12/10 HOTFIX Numbers--- (as seen in more recent logs like this one)
Mutated Plague (1): hits for 300
Mutated Plague (2): hits for 750
Mutated Plague (3): hits for 1875
Mutated Plague (4): hits for 4687.5
Which would be: DMG = 300 * 2.5 ^ (num_stacks - 1)

---Pre 1/12/10 Hot-fix Numbers (for historical data's sake)---- (Logs: Cuties Only, Forlorn Legacy, Elitist Jerks, and Poor Play)
Mutated Plague (1) hits for 150, (2) for 450, (3) for 1350, (4) for 4050.
Which would be: DMG = 150 * 3 ^ (num_stacks - 1)

Based on the kill logs thus far, the most common tanking strategy is three tanks , taunting each Mutated Plague debuff: so 1/1/1 -> 2/2/2 -> 3/3/3. With on the ball healing, switching tanks that frequently is the way to best minimize raid damage. We experimented a bit with 2/2/2 -> 4/4/4, and found it sustainable for the most part, but the raid damage ramps up pretty severely once the last tank is getting his final stacks and the raid is taking 12-13k from the tanks combined every few seconds. The incoming raid damage increase is not really worth the simplified tank/healing rotation. We made the mistake of underestimating the new wing and splitting some mains into a second 25man group like we'd done in previous weeks (and also to allocate acidic blood), so we wound up short on dps for the kill, with the final attempts being late phase three (including a sub-1%) wipes.

EDIT:
For 10 MAN, plague is higher base damage, with a lower multiplier. Base 187ish damage, multiplied by 2.5 with every stack. Some parses show slightly higher/lower base damage range. Logs referenced were Juggernaut (had Sanc) , Serious Casual TNT10 , Bad Omen, and Poor Play

MP(1): 187-188
MP(2): 468-469
MP(3): 1171-1172
MP(4): 2929-2930
(DMG = 187.5 * 2.5 ^ (num_stacks - 1))

Copernicus · 01/12/10, 3:29 PM

For Taunt, my taunt application's diminishing returns were happening (every taunt lasted half the length as the previous one) but Putricide didn't go immune after five taunts. My Growl debuff was lasting half a second at that point.

---

Putricide also got two hotfixes for the Tear Gas-

* Professor Putricide's Tear Gas will no longer remove player auras.
* The Growing Ooze Puddles in the Professor Putricide encounter will no longer continue to grow while players are stunned.

Valerian · 01/12/10, 5:42 PM

I have heard rumor that the new hotfixes caused the Abomination to remain stunned for longer than the rest of the raid. I haven't been able to confirm this anywhere though except one source. Has anyone else seen anything similar happening? The only problem I'm seeing with confirming this is that the hotfix only went through yesterday and I imagine most people had already used up their attempts.

In theory the bug should be nearly irrelevant if you're doing your transitions properly. It can be disastrous on a failed transition though if a gas cloud happens to target someone without some sort of movement speed increase if the abom really is stunned for too long.

♦ Brade · 01/12/10, 7:14 PM

We saved our 10 tries for Monday night in the hopes that any bugs would have been worked out by then.

Unfortunately for us, we did see the Abom bug you're talking about. The abomination stayed stunned for twice the amount of time as the rest of the raid. In order to circumvent the issue we had to hold dps and transition on an ooze phase. Having an unsnared cloud up with a stunned Abom was a guaranteed wipe for us.

Lex · 01/12/10, 7:34 PM

Originally Posted by Valerian

I have heard rumor that the new hotfixes caused the Abomination to remain stunned for longer than the rest of the raid. I haven't been able to confirm this anywhere though except one source. Has anyone else seen anything similar happening? The only problem I'm seeing with confirming this is that the hotfix only went through yesterday and I imagine most people had already used up their attempts.

In theory the bug should be nearly irrelevant if you're doing your transitions properly. It can be disastrous on a failed transition though if a gas cloud happens to target someone without some sort of movement speed increase if the abom really is stunned for too long.

We had this happen last night in our 25m attempts.

Our Abomination was stunned for 2x the duration during the P1>P2 transition. However, it seemed to only happened when we had a gas cloud or volatile ooze up going in to the transition.

Valerian · 01/12/10, 9:51 PM

Well we ran some attempts at Putricide tonight and not once did the Abom stay stunned for longer than anyone else so I guess its been fixed.

Stopokingme · 01/13/10, 3:42 AM

Originally Posted by Axanor

Vanish, Feign Death, and similar abilities would cause the oozes to drop aggro and recast their focus laser on someone else. Using them on the green oozes helped buy DPS time, but on the orange ones it seemed to be risking a wipe if people used them since it could recast its laser on a nearby melee player.

Our experience with Volatile Oozes is other then that, they seems to have a real hard time to target a player with Adhesive, casting it, having the beam appear for a split second, then having it start to recast again, we adapted to this by having all ranged nuke them from max range and having the melee stay on Putricide until a target actually 'stuck'.

Sometimes the target would take immediately, sometimes it wouldn't get a target at all and just died from ranged nuking it, really odd behaviour.

khel · 01/13/10, 4:00 AM

Originally Posted by MatsT

As for Heroism/Bloodlust usage, your raid dps will typically be dropping sharply around 1 minute into phase 3 due to too much movement. I wouldn't recommend waiting more than ~20 seconds to blow it. If healers can't keep up with the damage you need to bring more resto druids, but if people are dying already at 3+2+2 stacks of plague I suspect they are getting hit by something other than the plague.

What is causing more movement later in the fight? If the slime puddles are spawned in a controlled manner then movement seems pretty linear throughout Phase 3. Melee uptime is going to remain consistent, and ranged players will continually have to move to stay in range of Putricide and dodge Malleable goo from start to finish.

Originally Posted by Amonra

1. Save hero for later in the fight - we had typically used it about 30 seconds into phase 3. This meant that it was running out right at the point the raid damage really spiked. Saving it until later would help with healing

I am going to try this this week with our raid. A good time to bloodlust, assuming a solid transition and controlled slime puddle spawns is roughly when the 3rd tank gets his 2nd debuff. Of course it's a dps loss if people die early, but bloodlusting healers when they need it the most is also going to prevent later deaths. People need to stay alive anyway to meet the dps requirement in Phase 3.

Originally Posted by Amonra

2. Try and get someone else to take a debuff...
3. Get one of the tanks build up to 4 stacks and then immediately die....

The solution here is really just better dps. If the debuffs are removed in any way, including bubbles, tank deaths, or just falling off after 60 seconds, then Putricide will heal. I strongly recommend going with a 2-2-2, 4-4-4 debuff strategy. Bringing a 4th tank could work, but that won't help with the 10 minute enrage or give you more floorspace to work with.

Phases 1 and 2 Positioning
We tried a different positioning strategy for Phases 1 and 2 than I saw in most kill videos this week. Instead of dragging Putricide North and South constantly for each Ooze/Cloud spawn, we kept our ranged dps and healers near the table (West) and tanked Putricide in the northern side of the room the entire time. This minimizes raid movement significantly, and also gives "free" dps via cleave style damage. Often the Volatile Oozes sit there trying to cast Volatile Ooze Adhesive over and over unsuccessfully, and even in the worst case where 1 or 2 melee get focused, the casters and healers never have to move and can focus a lot more on avoiding malleable goo and dpsing/healing. Having ranged standing near the table also reduces their movement when needing to switch dps to the Gas Clouds in the South.

This positioning works well, and I recommend it for any guild that is melee heavy.