Putricide HC 10man

Since I just spent 3 hours wiping on Putricide 10 man heroic mode, I thought I could give some insight as to why this fight is so damn hard. Any tactic will tell you about what skills to look out for, but perhaps I can give a new take on it. Did we make it? No. Were we even close? Hah, not really. Did I get a good idea of what the frickin problem was? Yeah, definitely.

Putricide is one of those fights where you have to keep track of alot of things at once, and perform them close to perfect, or there -will- be a wipe. On fights like Lady Deathwhisper, it is ok if you forget to dps a target for a while, or if you forget to move from a ghost (even in heroic) or stand a little too long in the green stuff. That is definitely not the case at Putricide heroic, where every little mistake quickly accumulates to a situation which is no longer manageable. Quite like on Lich King actually.

We have gotten close to phase 3, and we have tried a number of different tactics. I've only healed this fight so far, so this'll be from a healers perspective (if any). I'm glad to say our problem doesn't seem to be lack of healing, since people mostly die from mishandling different mechanics (of course with unlimited healing there wouldn't be any problem ;)). The big difference to normal is that you'll have a disease jumping from person to person (Unbound Plague, which my DBM has misspelled Unbound Plage annoyingly enough. I will call this disease and plague alternatingly for no reason :P), that does more and more damage the longer it stays on the target (it's sort of like the disease on LK phase 1, but different). There will also be two oozes at each phase transition.

These two things are what make everything so difficult, I'd say the disease more than the oozes actually. Not that the disease itself is that difficult to handle, really. Just that in combination with everything else that happens, people (in my raid anyway) always seem to either do it wrong, or have bad luck. Bad luck being the only person in the raid who really can't take a disease at the moment is the one that gets it. Or the disease carrier who is about to turn it over to someone is targeted by the green ooze and frozen. All these things can be handled of course. In the end there is no such thing as bad luck, just bad skill ;) But it means the same situation can be easier or tougher depending on luck.

First of all, the plague. It will jump onto someone, anyone, in the raid almost at once. You shouldn't carry the plague more than around 12 seconds, since it does 200 damage each second, accumulating. So 200 damage the first second, 400 the second second and so on (if I understand wowheads data correctly). At 15 seconds or so it will oneshot most people. As it could come onto anyone in the raid, that includes melee. It will instantly jump when you get close to someone, so if it gets on someone in melee it will most likely transfer at least once before melee has dispersed enough for it to stick to one person. A ranged must then pick it up after 10-12 seconds, hold it for 10-12 seconds and have some other ranged pick it up and so on, until it runs out of time (after 60 seconds). There are alot of issues arising with the disease handling. We used different tactics, either have everyone diseased run to a special "roundup" point, so that everyone always knew where to find them or just have them stand where they were so as to avoid confusion. Both tactics worked so so, because the real issue was that after an ooze explosion, no one seemed to know their heads from their backs. A classic problem was also that the diseased person was the one targetted by the ooze, which meant none of us could really huddle with him/her. Or that the one designated to pick the plague up got too far away after an explosion and the plague carrier died.

What you need here is presence of mind (not the skill :P). At all times you need to know where the plague carrier is, and if you can step in to take the plague, should the necessity rise. We used a special order of people to grab the plague, so that we had some sort of control of who'd been infected. But being able to work around and off this order is paramount, you will most likely have to improvise the plague switching, so have everyone up to the task. We wiped too many times because of people not finding eachother, the designated plague switcher being too far away (as mentioned) and no one taking over the job (although we got alot better at it towards the last tries) and problems like it. The only time you can let the plague slip your mind a little is when you've already been affected and have got the debuff. But then too you must make sure to not get too close to someone carrying it!

Secondly, the oozes. Definitely not as much of a problem as the plague. Most of our issues with the oozes arised from us having issues with the plague. One tactic is to have everyone (except hunters of course) huddle under the green spawn point and nuke it when it spawns. If 7-8 targets are being hit by it, it is really no problem to heal through. A tip I got from a guildies brother was that the hunter snake trap snakes apparently share damage too. Have your hunter (if you have one) place a snake trap just before the green ooze spawns and the snakes will take part of the damage (assuming that guy was correct)! One thing to think about is that you don't want an ooze up when the phase transition starts, since two new oozes spawn at that time. Three oozes is definitely too much to handle. Cool down on the dps before each transition, make sure you know where the plague is and handle the ooze (if there is one) before going to phase 2. And during all this there will be plagues to think about too. If you're being blown around by oozes, and you will be, make sure to be blown towards a plague carrier if you're going to pick it up, or away from a plague carrier if you don't want it. But don't get blown away from the healers...

Healing wise this isn't that tough actually. Like I said, we haven't got to phase 3, where the real healing action starts though but until then a fight like Blood Queen heroic has way heavier healing. When people died in phase 1 and 2, it wasn't so much because of lack of healing as being oneshot by an ooze or plague, or quite often both at once. Or so I felt anyway, maybe I'm slightly biased ;) One hint that the healing wasn't the problem was that we died just as easily when being three healers as when being two. I played as holy since I find it more mobile than disc. Being able to run around throwing renews, poms, circle of healing (especially after an ooze explosion) and insta-flash heals (surge of light) is really sweet in this particular fight. For this fight I recommend healing to be around 10k hps, and each dpser should have at least 7k dps (which would be something like 9k-10k dps singletarget nuke).

Now, Putricide is tough. But only because you can't let your mind wander even a second. You can't forget about one thing, or the mistake might be (probably will be) irreparable. Quick reactions and decisionmaking is everything in a fight like this, and you need 10 (or 25) people who have this. People who don't have to think about what to do, but know what to do. And of course, practice practice.