I took my Druid out of the other guild, as they were beginning to raid three days a week from 8:30pm EST to Midnight. Raiding six days a week, not including any 10-man adventuring I might want to delve into over the weekend, was just too much. So it’s back to one guild and one “progression” raid. Unfortunately for me that “progression” raid doesn’t have a lot of “progression” in it. We were back in there last night, still trying to kill Putricide. First wing, Rotface, Festergut, and Blood Princes are all on farm status now but Putricide, Dreamwalker, and the Blood Queen are being very difficult. As we now have a handful of people who need the Putricide kill for their Shadowmourne quest chain, we’ve been focusing on him more than the others. And despite the now 10% buff in Icecrown, we can only get down to around 50% before we end up wiping. As with so many fights before this, the root issue to our problem is personnel performance. Too many people are being killed by Malleable Goo during phase 2. And it doesn’t much matter whether it’s a healer or DPS that gets killed. If it’s a healer we slowly suffer, but if it’s a DPS we end up not being able to kill the oozes quickly enough and eventually get to a point where we have two up at the same time. Then it’s over.
As fights go, the Putricide fight isn’t all that difficult – really. Phase 1 is a general tank and spank from 100% down to 80%. But during one ooze alternatively spawns, requiring the DPS to kill it. There is a bit of management required when the boss nears 80% as you generally don’t want to have an ooze up, or spawn when the transition from phase 1 to phase 2 occurs. But once phase 2 does occur the fight remains largely the same, but with the additional element of Malleable Goo thrown in. Throughout phase 2 Putricide will randomly target ranged players and will toss Malleable Goo at them, requiring the player and anyone within 10-yards of that player to move away. If they do not and are struck, the goo will explode dealing substantial damage to that individual and everyone within 10-yards of them. It will also put a negative haste debuff on them for a period of seconds, causing casting time to increase by 200% and running speed to decrease by 50%. Fairly nasty debuff but the direct damage aspect of the explosion is the part that generally kills you and is what keeps causing our wipes. It’s the classic “people aren’t paying enough attention” to what’s going on around them during a fight thing. We have the DPS to finish the fight, but once we start to lose people to the goo or the oozes it simply cascades from there.
I’ve only seen phase 3 on my Druid when I was raiding with him, but phase 3 is all about Putricide. No more oozes, but the ranged still have to worry about the Malleable Goo, and the melee have to contend with slime puddles spawning around the boss. So phase 3 is a movement phase, where the boss is slowly kited around the room.
Perhaps we’ll kill him on Monday night, but if not it’s simply another wasted week of progression and another wasted week toward Shadowmourne. With the Cataclysm beta reportedly starting this month I’m definitely beginning to see opportunity to get the three boss kills I need and then collect the 50 shards I need, coming to an end.
