Icecrown Festergut

[Ciderhelm]

You can find a guide to the heroic version of this encounter here!

Welcome back to the icecrown raid guide, my name is Thegreatme and in this video I will be discussing our strategy for Festergut, which is the fifth boss in the icecrown citadel raid instance.

The festergut encounter is relatively simple in terms of the complexity of the mechanics, however because of the short 5 minute enrage timer, and the large amounts of damage the raid and tanks take, the encounter is essentially a gear check.

Once you initiate the pull the room will be filled with a gas cloud that will do around 4500 damage to everyone in the raid every two seconds. your ranged should be spread out in a semicircle around the boss making sure that they are at least 8 yards away from each so multiple people aren't hit by vile gas, which is basically a conflagerate type debuff that causes the player targeted and anyone within 8 yards of them to become disoriented and do damage to everyone around them for 6 seconds

Approximately every 30 seconds festergut will cast inhale blight, this will reduce the damage done by the gas cloud by 1/3, but it will also cause him to gain a stacking buff that increases his damage done, and his attack speed by 30%. as festerguts stacks increase it may be advisable to rotate cooldowns on the tanks as needed because festergut will hit very hard by the time he does his third inhale blight cast.

Approximately every 35 seconds festergut will give 3 random raid members a debuff called Gas spore. After 12 seconds the spore detonates doing about 2000 damage every second for 6 seconds to everyone within 8 yards, anyone who survives this debuff will become inoculated, which reduces shadow damage taken by 25% stacking 3 times. who ever gets the gas spore debuff will have an animation that looks exactly like the spores from loatheb floating over their head. It is imperative that everyone gets under one of these spores before they detonate, and then immediately moves back to their position the moment it has detonated. It is imperative that everyone gets inoculated, including the tanks. because you have 12 seconds to get under a spore, under normal circumstances people with gas spores should never have to move, but if there is no spore in the melee, or if two spores are right next to each other then one of them should move so people do not get multiple stacks of the initial detonation debuff, because even if you have two or even three stacks of the damage overtime debuff, you will only get one stack of inoculated.

About 20 seconds after the 3rd inhale festergut will use pungent blight, which does 50,000 shadow damage to everyone in the raid. This ability removes all stacks of innoculated. it also resets festergut's stacks of inhale, and releases the gaseous blight back in to the room. By the time pungent blight is cast everyone in the raid should have 3 stacks of innoculated and therefore only take around 13000 damage when it is cast, if a player does not have 3 stacks of inoculated they should use their own defensive cooldowns, or have healers use a cooldown on them if one is available.

Finally, every 10 seconds festergut will put a debuff on the tank called gastric bloat, which increases their damage by 10% for 100 seconds, stacking up to 10 times. If the tank reaches 10 stacks they will explode doing 50,000 nature damage to everyone nearby, if this happens your raid will wipe. to prevent this you need to have at least two tanks for this encounter. Your second tank should taunt the boss once your first tank has 9 stacks. the first tank tank should then switch to a DPS stance or turn off righteous fury because otherwise they might pull agro. This tank should immediately taunt the moment that their debuff wears off because by that time the other tank will be only a few seconds away from getting hit with a 10th stack.

Welcome back to the Icecrown raid guide. My name is darksend and in this video I will cover the 10 man version of Festergut, one of the two abominations in the plaugeworks.

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Festergut and Rotface are the first two encounters in the plaugeworks and can be done in either order. After you defeat stinky and precious, the two mini-bosses with mechanics similar to that of gluth in naxxramas, head left down the hall to reach festergut.

Almost imediatly after starting the encounter an orange gaseous blight will fill the room and deal periodic shadow damage to everyone in the raid. Every 34 seconds festergut wil inhale some of that gas. While This will decrease the amount of periodic damage being done to the raid, it will aslo cause him to gain a stacking buff called inhaled blight. This buff increases Festergut's physical damage as well as increasing his attack speed both by 30%. He will do this 3 times until all the gas is inhaled, gaining a stack each time. When he reaches three stacks, the tank needs to begin rotating his or her own cooldowns as well as any external cooldowns to survive until the next ability 34 seconds later. This ability will be Pungent blight.

Pungent blight deals massive shadow damage to the entire raid by releasing all the inhaled gas back into the room. This will resume the raid damage but it will also completely remove festerguts buff. This cycle repeats until the 5 minute enrage timer. In order to counter the pungent blight, every 40-50 seconds 2 random raid memebers will get a debuff called gas spore. When the spore explodes, it will hit everyone nearby with a dot called blighted spores. When this dot runs out however you become inoculated, which is a stacking debuff that actually helps you, decreasing shadow damage recieved by 25% per stack. However the counter works both ways, pungent blight will also completely remove your inoculated stacks.


While this is going on there are also two other abilities he does. The first is only on the target he is attacking. Bastric bloat is another helpful debuff. It does about 10K damage when the stack is applied but each stack inceases the tanks damage by 10%. The down side is if the stack reaches 10 the tank will instantly explode killing himself and dealing about 30K damage to all raid members in range. This is actually a good thing because by forcing tank transitions you get a second full set of tank cooldowns to use during the time when he has 3 stacks of inhaled blight. We found taunting at 8 stacks to be the best way to handle the transitions. On the plus side, the tank can now go cat form, blood pressence, click off righteous fury, or do battle or berserker stance and do some decent damage for the minute and a half or so with that 80% increased damage buff before taunting back, just dont forget to swap back.

The final ability is vile gas, which inflicts moderate shadow damage every 2 seconds for 6 seconds and additional damage to nearby players. It will also disorient anyone hit by it so it is very important for ranged to stay spread out.

As long as you can ensure that you have enough ranged for this to never hit a melee, your tank healers should always be stacked with the melee. This also has the advantadge of that healer never having to move to get a spore.

We did this with 2 ranged dps and 3 healers, one of which standing in melee range. We worked out on vent before hand which dps would run into melee if they both got a spore. obviously if one healer and one dps got it the dps would move allowing the healer to keep casting, and if both healers got it the resto druid would have moved into melee due to the ability to cast while moving.

[Valhal]

Is it public test realm?

[fidom4life]

No it released a day earlier then on the EU realms so they are able to post it now for us

[Kiertel]

Makes the video a little strange to watch.

[Xillian]

In our attempts Festergut gives the tanks a real pounding during phase 3. We had a shadow priest who I usually keep throwing out dps go holy at it wasn't enough so I recommend 3 strong healers. Also having the tank healer stack with the tank should be a requirement for all raids.

[Darksend]

In our attempts Festergut gives the tanks a real pounding during phase 3. We had a shadow priest who I usually keep throwing out dps go holy at it wasn't enough so I recommend 3 strong healers. Also having the tank healer stack with the tank should be a requirement for all raids.

not stacked on the tank, stacked on the melee. in 25 man I missed the spore twice because I was to far away as the tank so either the spore in the melee or the tank needs to run closer to the center of his hitbox.

[Njordus]

After a few times hitting the enrage timer at ~5% (25m), I want to put more ranged dps into melee range. Do we know the minimum players we need at range? 3 seemed to be the number on 10 man, so I'm assuming it's 8 on 25?

[Olat]

As Blizzard previously stated that they are reducing spike dmg in boss fights, I find it odd that in 25m our tanks were getting hit for 30k+ every .5 secs during inhale 2 and beyond. Our healers (7 of them, 2 being Holy Paladins spamming Holy Light) couldnt keep our tanks alive.

Also during the 25m we had multiple melee getting hit with the spore and if that happens a melee needs to run out. If 2 spores detonate on the melee simultaneously in 25m, its pretty much GG for your Melee.

The 10m Version we had small issues but, that was just from learning the mechanics.

[Njordus]

DBM puts marks above players' heads with spores. Skull X and Square (i think). What we did was have the person marked "X" run into or out of melee range if the spores were not 1 melee 2 ranged.

[Twistedhoof]

In 10 man this was very simple just spread out and then collpase onto the tank/melee when the spores go up.

This fight requires switching of the healing focus. At first it requires heavy raid heals and as he inhales the gas the focus switches to the tank heals.

In 25's only the ranged was spread, NOT including the healers, they stack with melee and tanks for ease of healing. We had two ranged groups that would spread out on North and South sides of the room, each group would stack up on each other for the spores, if the melee or tanks did not get a spore it would be called out on vent for which group would collapse onto the melee.

He has a very strict enrage timer and deaths of anykind are hard to recover from. Due to the nature of the fight rebirths/soulstones can only be used after Pungent Blight has been cast so the person being rezzed has a chance to get a full 3 stack of the inoculated debuff.

He has a HARD enrage that requires 144.1 k raid DPS to beat. if you are close but are not going to make it, make sure that all DoT's are refresh as close to the end of the timer as possible as the tanks will usually survive for about 10-15 seconds after the enrage, so the more ticking DoT's the better.

[Marthius]

It's a nice video, but I got one gripe Sorry but why you keep jumping up and down all the time? Fair enough if there is a reason it's needed, but otherwise just a bit annoying to watch the screen move constantly.

Sorry

M

[squats]

It's a nice video, but I got one gripe Sorry but why you keep jumping up and down all the time? Fair enough if there is a reason it's needed, but otherwise just a bit annoying to watch the screen move constantly.

Sorry

M

hes bored.

This was my favorite fight last night for sure.

[Kazeyonoma]

yeah, Festergut, very fun fight, enjoyed it, =] Very healing intensive fight, switching from heavy raid to heavy tank back to raid and back to tank again. Definitely need 3 healers for 10 man until higher gearing, as we were getting destroyed with just 2 healers.

[KrystalDragon]

STOP JUMPING! Oh my goodness that was very very frustrating. Highly distracting.

[Zartanchi]

It is imperative that everyone gets under one of these spores before they detonate, and then immediately moves back to their position the moment it has detonated.

Does it matter which spore you go to? For example, can ranged go to a melee or should melee stick with melee and ranged with ranged?

[Vorogar]

Hey guys, I've been a regular reader of Tankspot but just signed up. /wave

Tonight my 10-man guild and I went back into ICC to try the new quarter. On an attempt before we downed him, I discovered something that caused our wipe. Throughout all the attempts before, while my paladin tank partner was tanking Festergut and I was waiting for the stacking debuff to wear off, I was regularly intervening to absorb a hit and relieve some damage on him. At one point I had about 50 seconds left on the debuff when I intervened. A few seconds later I noticed I had 9 stacks of the debuff (up from 8) and a 2 min duration again. I can't confirm this (and I'm not sure how the debuff is applied), but my only explanation is that my intervene intercepted the debuff-applying attack. So, something to check out and be aware of.

[Evadd]

first off, thanks for another great video and guide. it helped reaffirm some of the mechanics on the little/big oozes that we had trouble with on our first couple attempts.

question re: the described 10-man strat: does gastric bloat on the tanks get applied every 10 seconds and last for 100 seconds as it does in 25? if so, how can the tanks switch at 8 stacks? if i'm thinking this through correctly, tank 1 takes 8 stacks x 10 seconds = 80 seconds. tank 2 taunts, and takes 8 stacks x 10 seconds = 80 seconds. if the debuff lasts for 100 seconds and assuming it's refreshed with each new stack, that means that tank 1 still has about 20 seconds of debuff left with 8 stacks when he has to taunt back. on the 9th stack, it will now be at 100 seconds again, no? there must be something i'm missing since Darksend said that's the way they did it...

[Trexokor]

As Blizzard previously stated that they are reducing spike dmg in boss fights, I find it odd that in 25m our tanks were getting hit for 30k+ every .5 secs during inhale 2 and beyond. Our healers (7 of them, 2 being Holy Paladins spamming Holy Light) couldnt keep our tanks alive.

I'm not sure I understand how you were having problems with his tank damage with your setup. On our attempts we were using 5 healers; 2 Shamans, 2 Druids, and myself as Holy Paladin, and while barely able to keep up, we did, without any 3-stack tank deaths until I was forced to move in any given attempt. He was hitting our tanks for 25-29k damage with full stacks and only as frequent as every 0.9 seconds; maybe you're missing a debuff or two on him?

It's definitely heavy damage, but nothing that isn't manageable.

In the 10 man, we did just fine with Paladin+Druid healing. None of the encounters in Icecrown so far have required 3 healers for us. This was with a few 264 pieces, but the fight was very sparing on my mana and lenient on the requirements, I'm quite sure I'd have been able to do the same in 10 man gear. I can see needing 3 healers for it perhaps if you don't have a Paladin.

If you think this fight is healing intensive, wait until you reach putricide. Healing meters are lower but with the amount of movement involved, the healing requirements are huge when you run 2 healers.

[doom1992]

I noticed you jumping a lot in that fight, is there any particular reason for it?

[Thorondor]

Excuse me, I'm not sure if I understand:

He was hitting our tanks for 25-29k damage with full stacks and only as frequent as every 0.9 seconds; maybe you're missing a debuff or two on him?

Is there a particular debuff that would diminish the amount of damage he does, or the frequency of attacks? Thanks in advance.