Rotface - very difficult on 10-man

[stgeorge]

I read through the Rotface encounter thread and our 10-man group watched the tankspot video and we thought we understood, but we clearly didn't - 10 straight wipes, every single one of them under 1 minute in duration.

We were completely flummoxed by how the spray works, it seems sometimes he would turn and face someone, other times he'd be spinning around - at least 5 people would get hit by it.

The oozes came out very quickly, like every 4 or 5 seconds it felt like. By the time the first person kited his ooze out the second ooze was already formed and before we could form the big ooze, a third ooze was already in the raid. We would typically have 4 oozes out before we could finally form a big ooze (but by that point 5-6 people were dead)

The small oozes would take at least 5 seconds before they formed together, usually dancing around each other never quite touching which killed our dps (and caused 2 players to eat 2 sets of AOE).

We had 3 healers, and in 7 of the attempts 2 healers were the first to get the oozes which caused almost immediate wipes. We tried 2 healing one time, but the raid just flat out got wiped when a healer had to kite.

Is it really meant to be this hard? For reference, we 1 shot the prior bosses except for Saurfang which we usually need 2 or 3 attempts. We average about 36-38K raid DPS on Festergut when our Disc priest goes shadow.

Tanks: Warrior (boss), DK Frost (kiter)
Heals: Shaman, Paladin, Disc Priest (goes shadow for 2 heal attempts)
DPS: Mage, DK Blood, Fury Warrior, 2 Hunters

[Colonel Mustard]

If by spray, you mean slime spray, it works just like it does in normal mode, he picks a target, and starts hurling.

We usually just wing this one, one tank, three healers, casters spread out, hunter usually kites.

Not sure what's going on with the oozes, haven't had the same problem, when you try to merge the oozes you don't need to be on the actual ooze, just dance around a bit in front of it and the little ooze paths to the big one. Save freedom or cooldowns for if the kiter happens to end up in slime, but try to stay away from it, better to move the boss from the middle and kite around the slime.

When someone gets the infection, make sure they move as fast as possible, and when just outside the raid dispell it, that will ensure the ooze spawns and is already pathing along when you try to merge it. Waiting with dispelling it until the target is on the ooze is often a time waster. I think we usually blow up two oozes before the boss is dead.

When he casts vile gas, spread out so you don't link it, there's usually a brief moment to do so.

Hope any of this is of use.

[stgeorge]

Well, we can't even get a big ooze to form before half the raid is dead. We had two people literally standing on each other with 2 little oozes who refused to form together until 5 seconds later (at which point both dps were dead). We've had the big ooze just glide right over a little ooze without forming together. Healers are constantly pulling aggro on the big ooze or even better, being forced to kite.

Then I go read World of Logs and I see 85% of all 10 man guilds wipe on Rotface. The average 10-man guild capable of killing the boss is doing 60k raid dps in a 10-man, so I can see how it's easy when you're killing the boss in under 90 seconds, but that's never going to happen for us.

I think the second half fights might be a bit overtuned if on 10-man normal, you have 50-60% guilds clearing the first 5 bosses (reasonable) and then it drops down to 15% for the next 5 (unreasonable) and 1% for the lich king (which means guilds like ours will never see that - or more likely any decent player we have will jump ship to a high-end raiding guild leaving us in a constant state of mediocrity).

Ack, I'm ranting, it's been a tough raiding week.

[Bashal]

It sounds like a general lack of coordination handling the oozes.

The mutating infections (at first, certainly within the first minute) really don't come every 5 seconds, its more like 12. But when things are hectic it can seem like less time.

There are a few different ways to do this fight. They all work; some methods just click for you more than they did for someone else.

* In the end, my raid settled on cleansing immediately. THis means the infected person needs to start moving to the ooze kiter (or the first guy to get a little ooze) right away, too.... and in the correct direction

* The dps are kind of "spread out" at melee range behind him; if he turns in someone's general direction to puke, they move around to his side temporarily (usually 2-3 people have to move).

* At 10% health we stop cleansing, and just burn the boss (heroism if ya got it).

If it makes you feel any better, between two different ICC10 groups, we easily wiped more than 20 times before we finally killed him. Some bosses just kinda throw you for a loop until you get a couple of kills in.

The reason why we cleanse immediately is because the infection gives a debuff that reduces healing received, which can make it hard to keep them alive if they take any additional damage beyond what the infection gives.

[Bashal]

I think the second half fights might be a bit overtuned if on 10-man normal, you have 50-60% guilds clearing the first 5 bosses (reasonable) and then it drops down to 15% for the next 5

Count on the encounters being nerfed as time goes on. That seems to be blizzard's strategy for ensuring everyone sees it, yet at the same time giving more uber people a bit more of a challenge.

[Quinafoi]

If you're losing half your raid in the first minute of the encounter, it isn't because the encounter is overtuned. There are very serious problems with the raid in general if you aren't capable of surviving even that long. There isn't sufficient information provided to determine what the problems are for your raid.

On the boss turning...
The boss turns to cast Mutated Infection and Slime Spray. If you react to the wrong one, you may end up running right into the other. Slime Spray has a cast time, pay attention to the cast bar for the boss, if you don't see him casting, you don't have to move out of the way. The closer you are to the boss, the easier slime spray is to dodge, you have to move 2 yards to get out of the path instead of 10 yards. However, even if you're at range such as after a big ooze explosion, you can still avoid much of the slime spray if you are paying attention to it while you are running back in to the middle.

On the small oozes...
1. Everyone has to know where they are running out to before they run. If they run to the wrong side of the room, that's their fault. Look before you leap. You have 12 seconds to get out of the raid, that's plenty of time to figure out where you are going first before you drive halfway across the country in the wrong direction.
2. Never clense a person unless they are both moving in the right direction (towards the big ooze) and already out of the center. The dot ticking on the person even with the healing reduction debuff is still less to heal through than the aura of the slime on the entire raid. If they ran out of the raid the wrong way, don't clense them early either otherwise you just have a mob chasing them until they can get it merged.
3. No one is responsible for merging your slime except yourself. If you fail to merge the slime that spawns from you, that's your fault. No one can correct it for you. Learn from your mistake and stop repeating it. No one else can move your character for you.
4. You don't have to kite small oozes. Little wake up call, but a small ooze isn't going to kill you if your healing is sufficient for the encounter. For that matter, you will take damage regardless because you can't outrun it completely like you can with the big ooze. The first person to get it can simply wait for the second person to come out. They don't need to run around in a circle while the other person chases them. Just stand in place, wait for the second person, when they merge, both run back and the kiter takes over. If you can't merge the first two when there is nothing else going on in the encounter yet, your raid has absolutely no chance of completing this encounter.

[Muffin Man]

Is it really meant to be this hard? For reference, we 1 shot the prior bosses except for Saurfang which we usually need 2 or 3 attempts. We average about 36-38K raid DPS on Festergut when our Disc priest goes shadow.

Not to be harsh. But in many ways Rotface is the first difficult boss.

If you have the dps/hps/eh. Marrowgar, Gunship, Festergut will fall without much effort.

Deathwhisper isn't difficult either, though it does require a little awareness. Saurfang can be tough if your dps are tunnel visioners, which by ICC I doubt they are. But once the beasts are focused properly, it's a straightforward fight.

Rotface though... it's one hell of a coordination check (Princes and Valithira are also crazy).

Small oozes not forming could be lag. Either the server doesn't think they're close enough to merge or it's graphical lag and they've already merged (nameplates help with the latter).

A frost DK might just be the perfect tank for the big ooze. So healers should never be getting aggro from the big slime. Frost Fever, Howling Blast, Death Coil is quite a toolbox for kiting.

One thing I've noticed for Rotface is that panic usually dooms raids. It sounds like it's happening to you guys if you can't figure out the spray. Rotface will face someone, then start to spray. He doesn't continue to move. But if people are jittery and running back and forth then of course they'll have difficulty locating a safe zone. If people are jittery and spread out instead of stack up, he'll end up facing almost any direction. Then main advantage to having two separate groups is that the instant he turns you'll know whether or not he's targetting you. But if you guys are sloppy and spread out.. maybe he's targetting you or maybe he's not, and where exactly is the edge of his cone?

You still have to be careful to adjust if he targets someone running with the slime, either the infected person or the kiter. That's just an element of randomness that your raid will have to deal with.

Learning this fight is about milestones.

The first one is getting the big ooze formed and kited away from the raid.

The next one is surviving an ooze explosion.

The last one is keeping your calm through his soft enrage (there's no emote, he just started infecting people faster and it gets more frenetic).

Good luck.

[stgeorge]

If you're losing half your raid in the first minute of the encounter, it isn't because the encounter is overtuned. There are very serious problems with the raid in general if you aren't capable of surviving even that long. There isn't sufficient information provided to determine what the problems are for your raid.

On the boss turning...
The boss turns to cast Mutated Infection and Slime Spray. If you react to the wrong one, you may end up running right into the other. Slime Spray has a cast time, pay attention to the cast bar for the boss, if you don't see him casting, you don't have to move out of the way. The closer you are to the boss, the easier slime spray is to dodge, you have to move 2 yards to get out of the path instead of 10 yards. However, even if you're at range such as after a big ooze explosion, you can still avoid much of the slime spray if you are paying attention to it while you are running back in to the middle.

On the small oozes...
1. Everyone has to know where they are running out to before they run. If they run to the wrong side of the room, that's their fault. Look before you leap. You have 12 seconds to get out of the raid, that's plenty of time to figure out where you are going first before you drive halfway across the country in the wrong direction.
2. Never clense a person unless they are both moving in the right direction (towards the big ooze) and already out of the center. The dot ticking on the person even with the healing reduction debuff is still less to heal through than the aura of the slime on the entire raid. If they ran out of the raid the wrong way, don't clense them early either otherwise you just have a mob chasing them until they can get it merged.
3. No one is responsible for merging your slime except yourself. If you fail to merge the slime that spawns from you, that's your fault. No one can correct it for you. Learn from your mistake and stop repeating it. No one else can move your character for you.
4. You don't have to kite small oozes. Little wake up call, but a small ooze isn't going to kill you if your healing is sufficient for the encounter. For that matter, you will take damage regardless because you can't outrun it completely like you can with the big ooze. The first person to get it can simply wait for the second person to come out. They don't need to run around in a circle while the other person chases them. Just stand in place, wait for the second person, when they merge, both run back and the kiter takes over. If you can't merge the first two when there is nothing else going on in the encounter yet, your raid has absolutely no chance of completing this encounter.

I came here to get advice and I appreciate everyone's help so far. But you need to realize that not every guild is full of superstars who can dance around multiple boss mechanics and still pop out 9000 DPS while 2 healing everything and power-kill the boss in under 90 seconds.

If 85% of the guilds *who take the time to send logs to Worlds of Logs* (which means these are more organized guilds already) are failing this encounter in normal, then perhaps the encounter is too hard. Hard modes should be tuned for 10%-15% completion rate. Normal mode should not. That's it for the soapbox.

[Mammoth]

Q is right though. Rotface is the first boss you can't cover for other player's shortcomings. You either move out of Slime Spray or you get hit. You either kite your little Ooze properly into the Big Ooze or you take a ton of damage over time and die; or form a second Big Ooze; or cause Little Ooze AOE damage to the rest of the raid. My 10-man guild still hasn't downed Rotface (though recent absences due to RL have contributed) and it all comes down to people not properly avoiding slime spray and failing to kite oozes. We have the tanks, heals, and DPS for it. We're still working on raid awareness and that's why we struggle on Rotface. A few things we've learned:

Oozes merging: the graphics for this are problematic. The oozes will frequently graphically merge several seconds after they are brought within range. Our solution is to simply make sure you've brought them close enough and get on with your business. Trust that the oozes will merge rather than stand in the two AOEs and die waiting for the graphic of the merge.

Dispel as soon as the infected player gains distance from the raid. The 50% healing debuff will kill them if they end up taking any additional damage.

Q said it already but it bears mentioning. Players must figure out where they need to go before they move. One step in the wrong direction means you are now 2 steps behind.

[Fledern]

I came here to get advice and I appreciate everyone's help so far. But you need to realize that not every guild is full of superstars who can dance around multiple boss mechanics and still pop out 9000 DPS while 2 healing everything and power-kill the boss in under 90 seconds.

If 85% of the guilds *who take the time to send logs to Worlds of Logs* (which means these are more organized guilds already) are failing this encounter in normal, then perhaps the encounter is too hard. Hard modes should be tuned for 10%-15% completion rate. Normal mode should not. That's it for the soapbox.

There is no such requirement to beat this encounter. And yeah, our guild is full of the opposite of superstars but we did manage to beat this encounter both in 10man and in 25man (and in 25man you have way more opportunities to fuck up :P)

From your description, it sounds like your primary problem is your dispeller - he's dispelling the disease before the infected moves out of the raid. That's a lot of raiddamage right there and healers are probably panicing trying to heal up everybody and missing one of the tank, the kiter or the little ooze kiter and then everything goes to hell.

This is what we do to beat the encounter reliably:

1. Assign one and only one dispeller. Nobody else should try dispelling. The dispeller should dispel just as the person comes near the big ooze (or the ooze kiter if the big ooze hasnt formed yet).
2. People with little ooze should wait to see their ooze merge with the big one before running back. The big ooze has a pretty hefty range at which it can absorb the little one so it's possible to stay out of its aoe range and still deposit your little ooze. The merging can take a good 3-5 secs so be prepared to hang out there for a bit
3. Mark the ooze kiter with a very visible mark. We use either orange circle or the yellow star. Both are the lowest priority for DBM usage but if the ooze kiter gets infected it'll overwrite it. Give marking privilages to your ooze kiter so he can mark himself back
4. Make it clear to everyone that it's their job to take their disease/little ooze to the big ooze. Not the kiters job. One raidmember came up with a very good analogy that made everyone understand it really well: The ooze kiter is a schoolbus driver, the big ooze is the bus. Your little ooze is your child. The bus doesnt come to pick up your child, you go to get your child onboard to where the bus can pick him up
5. Let the ooze kiter run through the green puddles covering the quadrants. But make sure that NOBODY ELSE goes in there. The ooze kiter is a tank and is being healed, having the healers deal with more heal targets is asking for trouble. If the kiter is going through a puddle, the diseased should wait for him at the exit point.

All this setup does is it makes sure that only 3 people at any time need healing: The tank, the kiter and the diseased.

As for avoiding the spray, if he turns to put mutated infection on somebody it's over in an instant and he turns back anyway. If he turns to puke, you should have ample time to run away anyway. The trick of having everyone stand in melee range is also good - only the hunters will need some range - sides of the boss are usually good places where they'll (hunters) need minimal movement.

Once you get this running smoothly, you'll notice that diseases start coming in in faster intervals. The idea is to NOT panic. That proved to be the hardest hurdle to get over for us. It's very possible to have a big ooze exploding and 2 infected people running about with little oozes attached to their ass. While visually that looks complicated, there's absolutely no change in game mechanics and if you keep cool, you should continue on fine.

Third nasty thing to manage is the Big Ooze explosion. Best person to watch for this is the tank. He should also be watching which quadrants got covered and which quadrants just cleared so he knows where he should kite the boss on the explosion. If he complains about it being complicated, slap him hard, he has the easiest job in the encounter. He should wait & watch the big ooze, see it cast the green blobs, announce on vent to everybody to get out and kite the boss the hell away from the middle where the raid just was.

The fight does require quite a bit of coordination to get right but if people keep cool & observe the schoolbus trick, it should settle down pretty fast.

(So far, i've seen all encounters except LK first hand and i'd say Putricide is the hardest one with Rotface coming up second. Dont despair at wiping a lot :P)

[Muffin Man]

I came here to get advice and I appreciate everyone's help so far. But you need to realize that not every guild is full of superstars who can dance around multiple boss mechanics and still pop out 9000 DPS while 2 healing everything and power-kill the boss in under 90 seconds.

If 85% of the guilds *who take the time to send logs to Worlds of Logs* (which means these are more organized guilds already) are failing this encounter in normal, then perhaps the encounter is too hard. Hard modes should be tuned for 10%-15% completion rate. Normal mode should not. That's it for the soapbox.

He's giving you the boss mechanics. If you panic or if you think that the fight is just too hard, then you're not going to make progress. It's a demanding fight since it randomly puts people on the spot. Anubarak was like that too during the submerge phases. You could go weeks without being chased. Then you get targetted a immediately die... that's a pretty steep learning curve.

There are a lot of fights were at first gasp it's like... how are we going to do it. A lot of 25 man guilds had that feeling for Thorim when they couldn't even get past the gauntlet. Hell as a tank, the first few times I tried tanking Thorium's arena I felt like it was just overtuned. Remember Mimiron? All those phases, so many things to remember and run from.

Or a more recent example FACTION CHAMPIONS. People railed against it up and down the forums. People said it wasn't possible for PvE only guilds to beat them. All these people claimed that despite being superstars they just couldn't beat the encounter.

But eventually they just took it one step at a time, killing one champion before wipe, then two... at least with Rotface you'll get a lot of repetition on spawning oozes and 'handing' them off to the kiter. By default you'll get some practice avoiding his slime spray. This is a great fight for putting raiding markings on raiders too. One on the kiter, and one on each 'group leader' like for KT melee. Then you just follow the appropriate mark at the appropriate time. Break the fight down into manageable steps.

If my non-Yogg killing 10-man guild can down Rotface then yours can learn it too.

Oozes merging: the graphics for this are problematic. The oozes will frequently graphically merge several seconds after they are brought within range. Our solution is to simply make sure you've brought them close enough and get on with your business. Trust that the oozes will merge rather than stand in the two AOEs and die waiting for the graphic of the merge.

Try my nameplates trick. Outside of the first week, I've been tanking this fight, but it worked then with the graphical lag and I'd assume it still does.

Also, when merging small oozes. Always bring them to where the big ooze is going, don't chase after the big ooze. I recall that the small ooze would fake out on trying to merge with the big ooze if you approached from behind.

[jigarita]

This fight has been the thorn in our side for weeks. We have wiped more than I can count. Last night was our best attempt getting down to 12%. I will tell you our first dozen attempts were a lot like yours... Not making it past a min. Here are some of the things that are working for us:

1. All ranged (except hunter) grouped up on Rot's behind. Boss tank announces "MOVE" when the spray happens and basically boss tank and raid switch places. All the raiders move behind the boss while he is spraying and the Boss Tank moves to the side and close to his front (stay out of spray). The two leg method on tankspot was a little too much for us with the "is it me that has to move?" Everyone moves, plain and simple.

2. A priest follows our Kiter tank around on their run. He keeps heals up on the tank and dispells the mutation. All the raiders are suggested to zoom their camera's all the way out and look down on the raid. It makes it so that they can see the tank and big ooze from anywhere. When someone gets infected they run straight to the tank even if it is straight through the boss.

3. Explosion - Boss Tank calls it out... "Explosion - Left(Right)" everyone straff to left or right depending on where a puddle of green goo happens to be at that moment. Worst case has been happening where a spray and an explosion overlap. That is what got us at 12%. :S

The main thing is practice. i have had one raider that gets really annoyed with the weeks of wiping on this boss. It is frustrating. The thing is it is challenging. We keep doing better. Last week our best attempt was 36%. Last night we got it to 12%.

I like to have a challenge and I see this as a challenge but one that is doable. Believe me we aren't the best raiders in the bunch. We average about 5k dps. So we aren't the elite. Yet we got this far and we will keep chugging along.

Hope this helps someone.

[Quinafoi]

I came here to get advice and I appreciate everyone's help so far. But you need to realize that not every guild is full of superstars who can dance around multiple boss mechanics and still pop out 9000 DPS while 2 healing everything and power-kill the boss in under 90 seconds.

If 85% of the guilds *who take the time to send logs to Worlds of Logs* (which means these are more organized guilds already) are failing this encounter in normal, then perhaps the encounter is too hard. Hard modes should be tuned for 10%-15% completion rate. Normal mode should not. That's it for the soapbox.

Please direct me to the blue post that says if you spend an hour fighting a boss you are entitled a kill and loot.

Simply showing up at the boss does not necessarily mean you can kill it.

Bottom line. You spend 10 attempts on it. Maybe your raid is one of those raids that needs 50. That's just the way some raids are. Not everyone learns at the same pace. You claim to already understand the mechanics of the encounter, that's great. "Knowing is half the battle." Now you just have to put that knowledge to use and work at it. Knowing alone isn't enough to get a kill. If you simply give up and say it's too tough, well, then the encounter beat you before you even got there.

Things you are doing right...
Your raid has a problem and you're seeking help, nothing wrong with that.
Things you are doing wrong...
Assuming your raid is entitled easy content, that simply because they know the strat they should be gaurenteed a kill. Complaining about the fight being too hard isn't going to help you get beyond the fight. You have to work at it, simple as that. If life provides you no challenges, you will never grow. The same holds true in the game.

If you're going to complain about the fight being too hard, no amount of advice is going to change that. Any failures you make you will simply mark up as the fight is overtuned and unfair. You won't learn from your mistakes and you won't improve because you'd consider it meaningless, what's the point of attempting to learn an encounter if it is overtuned and you have no chance of winning.

[Rudolpho]

Rotface is not hard with practice. I had an amazing group for the first 8 weeks of ICC and rotface rolled over us for like 2 weeks. Once we finally got him down, we had brought in 2 pugs and still managed with no deaths. Now, my group has changed. Still have about half of the same people but this week the new group tried rot for first time and took about 5 tries for the new people to learn the mechanics and down him. He is just really really easy if people can pay attention and DONT panic.

[gacktt]

Rotface on 10 man is a control fight, even if you all do 3k dps on average he will die as long as you can handle slimes, even if they come every 6 seconds you should still be able to handle all of it as it is part of the fight. Wiping comes as a domino effect, if the slime kiter fails then you will wipe, if people fail at merging or swim around in pools or don't avoid explosion then yeah you will go down one by one.------ Doing 8-9k dps for everyone just makes his normal mode a joke because you get to bypass the soft enrage of 6 second applications, you'll still have to learn how to survive 2 or so minutes of his soft enrage for hard mode.

[Mr.Winkle]

I'm not sure where you got your worldoflogs info from either, the average dps for a kill is 34.5k with kills as low as 20k.

There's no enrage timer as far as i know, its more just about execution. We wiped >20 times before everyone got the hang of it, but now we can 1-shot it.

Here's some additional tips:

1) When mereging the slimes just hame the small slime kiter run through the big slime. The kiter will take 1 5k tick of dmg but the slimes will merge. Sometimes there does seem to be a small delay on the merge animation, it;s just something you need to get used too.

2) Keep kiting small slimes to the big slime even when it's begining to explode, they still merge.

TBH if you're wiping inside 1 minute then somethings going really wrong. It's only at the 3 minute timer that he starts putting out slimes every 6 seconds.

[Kloon]

I lead a 10man team in my guild there, last week we struggled with him and killed him at like eight attempt, with only me being alive (Paladin tank, i kited the ooze's, soloed last 2%)

This week we 1shotted him, with only 1 dead, our setup was:

Tanks: 1 Paladin (Kiter) & 1 Druid.
DPS: 2 Rogues, 1 Priest, 1 Destruction Warlock and 1 Survival Hunter
Healers 2 Holy Paladins (One cleansing the disease) 1 1 Restoration Druid.

[mangaart1st]

I lead two different 10 mans for ICC each week. I run one myself, and Raid Lead both. I can tell you this my primary group it tooks us exactly 30 attempts for our first kill. This was before the HP nerf which was imo badly needed. Since then that group in the following weeks slowly took less and less attempts per week. Now that group 1 shots every week. My 2nd group, going in with the knowledge I had from my first group took roughly 8-9 attempts for their first kill.

In all I have probably a total of 80 something attempts on Rotface between two groups.

The only hints I can give you is this:

**PAITENCE**

We start with 3 heals in both groups and until 50% one of our healers help with DPS and we Heroism at the start. Mainly this fight like everyone has stated is a fight of milestones.

[Natal]

How effective are cleansing totems? My guild is having problems with this fight and we started using cleansing totems, it certainly seemed to help but I have heard mixed feelings about using them? If anybody knows a prior post or has any experience using them in this encounter please let me know, thanks!

[Mr.Winkle]

How effective are cleansing totems? My guild is having problems with this fight and we started using cleansing totems, it certainly seemed to help but I have heard mixed feelings about using them? If anybody knows a prior post or has any experience using them in this encounter please let me know, thanks!

A cleansing totem isn't ideal since it only ticks once every 5 seconds. You really want the slime injection cleansed immediately since the debuff does serious damage.