Icecrown Rotface

[Ciderhelm]

Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Icecrown Citadel Raid Guide! My name is Aliena and in this video I'll cover everything you need to know about the normal mode 25-man version of the Rotface encounter that's unlocked after defeating Deathbringer Saurfang.

Rotface has 36 million health and is located in a circular chamber with pipes going all around the outsides of the room. He is pretty much a tank and spank fight with three twists to him that give him a bit of a Grobbulus-Heigan Naxxramas flavor. A setup of 2 tanks, 6-7 healers and 16-17 dps is recommended for this encounter.

To start out the fight, your main tank should run into the middle of the room and turn the boss 180 degrees with the rest of your raid staying close behind Rotface's back. Once he is turned, the raid should spread out in the area right behind and next to Rotface, ideally leaving the area right around your main tank open. This is because Rotface uses an ability called Slime Spray, which is a 1.5 second cast and then a 5 second channeled AoE nature damage spell. He will pick a random raid member to cast it on, turn towards that person and then channel Slime Spray which hits for about 7k damage per second in a frontal cone.

While he doesn't hit particularly hard, you do want to avoid that extra damage on your tank if at all possible. It's incredibly easy to predict what area is going to be affected by Slime Spray since Rotface turns before he even starts channeling. Everyone in the affected area simply needs to move out of it.

Now secondly, what I'd like to explain is the environmental twist and the reason you're all stacked up in the very middle of this large room. The room is actually split into four quarters. At any given time during this encounter, one quarter of the room is going to be covered by green slime that deals around 5k nature damage every second and reduces movement speed by 25% for 5 seconds to anyone standing in it. The slime will randomly cover all four areas one after another, but never the same one twice until all four have been covered once. That pattern repeats throughout the entire fight. It's easy to see where the next ooze flood will take place since the pipes open a little prior to that. The majority of your raid will never have to worry about this, unless they get hit with a debuff called Mutated Infection.

Mutated Infection is a disease that lasts 12 seconds, deals around 4000 damage every second and will reduce all healing received by the target by 50%. This is approximately cast every 15 seconds but seems to speed up as the fight progresses. When the debuff runs out or is cleansed, a small mutant slime baby will pop out at the affected target's feet, which is where your offtank comes into play. People that get the debuff always need to run to the Offtank, so he can pick up the slime offspring. Once two of these little slimes come together, ie. after two infections, they will merge into a big slime that hits exceptionally hard and it is advised to kite it along the outsides of the room, but keeping the ooze flood pattern in mind.

Every person that gets a debuff after the big ooze has emerged needs to move into the kiting path between the offtank and the big slime to ensure that the big slime is close enough to absorb the little one.

The big slime continues absorbing little player slimes to power himself up, and once it absorbs 5 little oozes, it will cast a spell called Unstable Ooze Explosion. This ability has a slow cast and air travel time, but basically launches around 10 missiles into the air that are aimed at random players, or rather the ground they stand on. They also deal considerable damage in a 6 yard range when they hit anyone and the damage stacks, so once you see the emote, every raid member needs to move out of the middle of the room to keep it free before the bombs land.

Once it explodes, the whole game starts over. Merge 2 slimes, power them up 5 times, move out of the middle, rinse repeat. The pace of debuffs and oozes spawning seems to pick up during the battle, so ideally you want to assign someone to dispel it when the raid member is close to your offtank so the affected person does not have to stand around the whole 12 seconds.

Key to this fight is your kiter, sufficient DPS, and relying on people with the debuff to move to the right spot at the right time without getting irritated by Ooze Flood. Good luck!

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Welcome back to the Icecrown Citadel raid guide! I am Splug, and in this video I'll be going over our strategy for the Rotface encounter.

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There are two major mechanics the raid needs to be aware of and react to. Every few seconds, Rotface will turn toward a random player and begin to channel a slime cone attack. To counter this, we split our raid into two groups, with each stationed behind one of Rotface’s legs. Whenever the boss turns to face a group, everyone in that pile rotates around to the other group’s position for the duration of the slime spew. When it ends, they shift back to their native position.

The other major mechanic the raid needs to be aware of is the mutated infection. This disease effect causes a moderate amount of damage, but more importantly causes a Small Ooze to spawn when removed. Small Oozes cannot be taunted, and will slowly pursue the player who they spawned from until they are destroyed. Once the player afflicted by Mutated Infection is outside of the raid, they can be cleansed safely.

When a Small Ooze contacts another ooze, the two will merge to form a Big Ooze. The Big Oozes have a normal threat table, and can be taunted.

The first player with the infection gets clear of the raid, is dispelled, and has to kite his Ooze until a second player is infected. When the second player is infected, he needs to get clear of the raid (preferably in the direction of the other kiter), be dispelled, and kite his Ooze into the other Ooze. From there, the offtank will taunt, tank, and kite the Big Ooze, while subsequent infections run out of the raid to drag their Small Oozes into the Big Ooze until it explodes. Remember: damage never has to attack anything other than Rotface himself. The Oozes will all be consumed by proper execution of the kiting.

Both sizes of Ooze will occasionally fire globs of Sticky Ooze near the player who is kiting them. These globs spawn patches of slime on the floor which reduce movement speed by 50%. They are tossed out inaccurately, and as such are fairly simple to avoid.

Periodically, Professor Putricide will flood a corner of the room with slime. The slime causes a relatively low amount of damage, and a minor snare. This is actually a fairly insignificant mechanic; the kiting tank can still outrun the Big Ooze, the damage ticks are not significant enough to be threatening, and the rest of the raid has no reason to be anywhere near the flooded areas.

Once the Big Ooze absorbs five other oozes, it will begin to explode. The whole raid will need to be aware of the explosion, as a series of ooze droplets will rain down on locations which players were standing at when the explosion occurred. All the raid has to do to counter this is move to an area no one had been standing at. Any of the corner sections that isn’t flooded by slime should be safe. When the slime has finished raining down, the raid resumes their normal positions and starts with the first Small Ooze kite again.

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TANKING FOOTNOTE:
While the Big Ooze’s initial damage is still manageable, the damage dealt quickly reaches unhealable levels as other oozes are absorbed. We found the Big Ooze was best handled by taunting it free from the raid, then generating a small amount of threat by tanking the Big Ooze through a defensive cooldown for about ten seconds. From that point on, the offtank should kite the ooze around the edge of the room, being careful to keep it away from the raid as it has a point blank AE pulse.

[Dreador]

Is there any info on Stinky and Precious? We spent a decent amount of time failing on them last night for sure!

[Lore]

We've got a Stinky & Precious mini-guide coming, yes

[Astemus]

Our guild was having a fairly difficult time kiting the ooze to keep him out of range of the raid in the center. Basically we were having two problems with this. First, running through the giant green stuff is tough to do, as we've all been conditioned to avoid that stuff, so invariably, the giant ooze would run through the raid, or close enough to damage them, causing many problems. Combined with a tick or two of Rotface's cone or a small slime patch attack was fatal to most people. Second, keeping agro on the big slime from heals as it was kited.

It seems like both of these problems have been addressed here, which is as the off tank kiter, just ignore the large slime puddles. The thing to watch for is a small slime patch in the big one, which will slow you down to 75% speed and do some heavy damage, and also likely result in the slime catching you. Also, tanking the big slime at first with a CD will really help the problem of losing threat to heals.

[Crommi]

Is there any info on Stinky and Precious? We spent a decent amount of time failing on them last night for sure!

As far as 10man version goes:

Precious
-Pull it to the previous room to prevent accidentally aggroing other dog as well.
-Helps if you announce decimate on Vent/TS
-Tanks swap at ~6 stacks of debuff, tank who is free should help with zombies as they spawn.

Stinky
-Pull it to the previous room to prevent accidentally aggroing other dog as well.
-Helps if you announce decimate on Vent/TS
-No zombies, but make sure to top raid up fast after Decimate due to his damage aura.

[Splug]

It seems like both of these problems have been addressed here, which is as the off tank kiter, just ignore the large slime puddles. The thing to watch for is a small slime patch in the big one, which will slow you down to 75% speed and do some heavy damage, and also likely result in the slime catching you. Also, tanking the big slime at first with a CD will really help the problem of losing threat to heals.

There are some gimmicks you can use to even further reduce the risk of difficulty in the ooze patches. When I had to pool dive in the 25-player version, I hit anti-magic shell and was able to suppress the snare aura. We also had a retribution paladin and holy paladin ready to fire blessing of freedom in the event AMS was on cooldown.

I originally commented in the video about tanking the slimes with a major defensive cooldown (I think I even left a comment about it in the script), but the line had to be pulled. Rotface dies fairly quickly...

-Splug

[dagimp007]

kiting the slime is a little funky, it seems to have a good reach. i was kiting last night and found out there is a fine line of gettign hit and draggin it into the raid (still working on not screw it up)

[Twistedhoof]

Best practice is to burn BL at the start of the fight as like Grobbulus from Naxx he debuffs at a slower rate at the beginning allow more DPS time with BL up. Good for both 10 and 25's

In 25's we found the having 2 slime Kiters (both Prot Pallies for us) worked well as we sent the first four slimes to one the next four to the other and then allowed them to merge and explode giving us more time to DPS before spreading to avoid the Missiles.

Also he does not have a frontal cleave the we could see this allows healers and ranged dps to stack up on the outside of his legs and keep the melee directly behind lessening the probability of needing to move for the slime spray.

One thing we noticed is that it is very BAD to clense the debuff as that causes (again like Grobbulus) him to apply the debuff on a new target. Getting progressively quicker as the encounter goes on. It ticks off on it's own.

[Raistlin212]

The spray attack, I need a little clarification please. When he targets and starts casting, can everyone move out of the way? Or does the target need to stand still to avoid pulling the spray into the group (aka does he turn to follow the targeted person)?

[rgho]

We've got a Stinky & Precious mini-guide coming, yes

I watched the Mini guide you posted to Stinky and Precious and I wanted to offer a quick alternative to Stinky for people who are having issues healing after the decimate. We first pulled Precious down to the bottom of the stairs and killed it per your video. Then we cleared Precious' hallway and got the giests down from the pipes and killed them.

On Stinky, while he had patrolled away, we stacked everyone against the wall directly adjacent to the hallyway that Stinky pats down. We had the tanks move out so they were still in line of sight of the healers standing just past the corner of that wall to also get LoS to Stinky, and they pulled Stinky to there. The healers are able to stay out of line of sight of the ae and still heal the tanks. We had the melee dps stand on top of the tanks (zomg! in front of the mob is bad!) and the ranged dps take a step or two away from the wall so they can get LoS to the dog. When decimate was about to occur (or for the slower members of our raid, just after it occured), everyone except the tanks ran up against the wall so they were out of line of sight of the pulsing AE. You can't LoS decimate, that happens anywhere in the instance, but by putting Stinky on that corner the healers can top everyone off out of LoS of the AE and at the same time still heal the tanks. Due to a couple of mistaunts, we had the Mortal Wounds stack too high on a tank to get very much throughput healing him, in that case we had the other tank taunt and had the mortal wounds tank move to the healers (and thus out of LoS) and get some heals where he wasn't eating the AE. This made Stinky really really simple, and the only death we had was someone who didn't move on the first decimate.

Hopefully this is understandable and helps people who are having difficulty with the mob.

EDIT: I drew a pretty picture. Immediately before the decimate (or after or whatever) everyone but the tanks collapse on the blue healer oval and make sure to press up against the wall:

[xmod2]

The spray attack, I need a little clarification please. When he targets and starts casting, can everyone move out of the way? Or does the target need to stand still to avoid pulling the spray into the group (aka does he turn to follow the targeted person)?

Treat it like Mimiron phase 2. DPS circles around to avoid the front of the boss.

He picks a target (didn't actually target them for us), spins towards them then starts spraying. He won't turn after the spray begins and then spins back to the tank when it ends.

As for the Mutated Infection. Can anyone confirm that cleansing the debuff causes the next cast to happen sooner? Is it like Grobb where it is time based, or is the cooldown on the move % based? Just curious whether it's better to bloodlust at the beginning to reduce the time of the fight, or to bloodlust at the end to reduce the time spent in the fast cast portion.

[Splug]

Treat it like Mimiron phase 2. DPS circles around to avoid the front of the boss.

He picks a target (didn't actually target them for us), spins towards them then starts spraying. He won't turn after the spray begins and then spins back to the tank when it ends.

As for the Mutated Infection. Can anyone confirm that cleansing the debuff causes the next cast to happen sooner? Is it like Grobb where it is time based, or is the cooldown on the move % based? Just curious whether it's better to bloodlust at the beginning to reduce the time of the fight, or to bloodlust at the end to reduce the time spent in the fast cast portion.

Re: Slime cone: It seems like he picks a direction and continues to face it until the cast is complete, so you are safe to move as soon as he turns and begins the pre-channel cast.

Re: Infection debuff: We've had multiple people with the debuff, so I do not believe cleansing it has any effect at all on the next ooze spawning. However, that's just personal speculation based on what I saw.

-Splug

[zerek2211]

It doesn't seem to be mentioned however the trouble we were having was at around roughly 30% he starts to cast mutating injection A LOT faster. We were unable to determine whether this was a faster CD or spawning two at a time.

This essentially caused our priest to be full-time dispelling and bubbling with no GCD's spare for anything else.

My question is how are you guys handling this soft enrage? Is it time based or is it percentage based? We were saving heroism/bloodlust for the end thinking that it was percentage based, however seeming you haven't mentioned it, is it possible that you guys never reached this soft enrage because your dps was high enough?

Essentially it is unmanageable at the end due to too many adds being up our best attempt was about 4% and there were 5 - 6 big oozes running around.

What are others experiencing?

Also one more question, are you running with two or three healers?

[Twistedhoof]

Towards the end of the fight you will have multiple people with the debuff same as Grobbulus. In our Kills last night we did notice that he would immediately reapply the debuff if it got cleansed. Not cleansing helps make the adds more manageable in the early stages of the fight.

[Arianne]

We blew heroism early. I did notice that he started putting the debuff on multiple people at one time near the end of the fight, but it didn't seem to cause a problem for our healers (holy pally and resto druid) in 10. You shouldn't need to change your strat, the big oozes will just explode faster. If you had multiple big oozes then that's an execution failure. If you notice, at 3mins and higher in the video they have multiple debuffs up at one time.

[Vanthus]

As the kiting off-tank, I ran into a problem last night when I would get the infection while the Big Ooze was chasing me. I could not get my ooze to merge with it, without being close enough to take a 26k hit. Any suggestions?
I also often was taking the cone attack for being in that area. It seemed to hit me even at the very edge of the room. Any way that this can easily be avoided while kiting?

[Predakhan]

Did anyone else encounter problems with the slimes merging together? Not sure if it was server lag or just the way it happens but the slimes didn't seem to want to merge as expected. Especially the smaller ones to the larger slime.

Do you just need to literally run your little slime right on top of the big ones??

[Dreador]

Did anyone else encounter problems with the slimes merging together? Not sure if it was server lag or just the way it happens but the slimes didn't seem to want to merge as expected. Especially the smaller ones to the larger slime.

Do you just need to literally run your little slime right on top of the big ones??

We found it best to intersect the path of the kiter so your ooze moves in front of the big ooze, or move in front of the kiter and kite towards.

[Mcknight]

As the kiting off-tank, I ran into a problem last night when I would get the infection while the Big Ooze was chasing me. I could not get my ooze to merge with it, without being close enough to take a 26k hit. Any suggestions?
I also often was taking the cone attack for being in that area. It seemed to hit me even at the very edge of the room. Any way that this can easily be avoided while kiting?

They are able to be snared. As a DK I would just chain them and let the big ooze catch up. If you don't have a snare you could call for help from someone who does.

[Kidate]

As said before, 2 small oozes combine into 1 large. Large oozes absorb small ones untill they reach enough stacks.

However, we experienced that large oozes can combine to. And in some cases they vanish, and in other they join to one and combine their stacks.

Im wondering about this dynamic, if it's a bug or intended. If intended, could the number of stacks relate to if they vanish or combine?