After downing Festergut we decided that we really really wanted to get this Dances with Oozes achievement the first week on Rotface.  We messed with a couple of different strategies on a couple of nights before finally deciding on one that seemed to work the best for our group.  Also… I do know what you’re thinking: “ZOMG Angela, where is the Professor Putricide Post?!?!?!”  Well… we are taking our time with him, and have not used up all of our attempts yet.  I’ll get back to you later in the week when we have

The Fight in General

Ok, so here is the deal with Rotface… a lot of the damage is avoidable and takes place in the form of a “slime spray” that will happen in a cone shape in the direction of whomever he targets.  We spent the entire fight hugging Rotface’s ass, and once a target was picked and he turned, we’d run though him to again be behind him, were we continued to kill him.  I’m going to say right away, that anyone getting hit by slime spray deserves to be smacked in the head  Pay attention, and you can avoid it, because it really does do a lot of damage and us healers have better things to worry about!

During this fight, the room is also being partially flooded with green goo you don’t want to stand in, as it slows you down and does a lot of damage.  There will also be circular green goo piles that can be avoided (your basic circle of death mechanic.)

The other thing that is happening during this fight is people are randomly being chosen to have a DoT (Mutated Infection) applied to them, which not only deals lots of damage, but reduces healing received by 75%.  When this is cleansed or runs out its 15 second duration, you will get a little ooze that will be fixated on you (not tauntable, that baby’s yours!) that will go around hitting you.

When two little oozes get near each other they form a big ooze.  The big oozes hurt, and can not be tanked, they must be kited.  This big ooze will then envelop more oozes, each time gaining a stack until it reaches 5 stacks.  At five stacks, the ooze will explode and send out rockets that will hit where you were standing, so once launched everyone flees from the center of the room to somewhere safe till they hit, then returns to what they were doing.  You then start fresh with two little oozes forming a big ooze with 1 stack, kiting it, adding to it, ect ect till Rotface is dead.

As a healer you need to keep up heals on the tank, keep heavy healing on the people with the DoT, and spot heal raid members that are getting hit with slime spray.  Oh, and pay attention so you’re not the one getting hit with the avoidable damage!!

Dances with Oozes

The achievement for this requires that you never let a big ooze explode, or essentially that you never let it reach five stacks.  The first thing I want to mention is that a big ooze that envelopes a small ooze will gain one stack.  But, a big ooze that envelops another big ooze that has one stack, will also gain one stack.  So essentially, if you choose to do it this way, instead of getting one stack per ooze you are getting one stack per two oozes if you have them form up a big ooze first before dragging it to the existing big ooze.  Hopefully this diagram will help you better understand what I’m saying:

As you can see, one method we explored was never letting a small ooze touch a big ooze.  Always let two small oozes create a big ooze first, so that you get the maximum number of small ooze spawns out before your big one reaches five stacks.  Ultimately we didn’t go with this method, but it may be something that works for our group.

The next thing we tried was to spread the entire raid out around the room and have people hold their little ooze as long as the could, never letting them reach another ooze to form up.  This resulted in a lot more people accidently getting hit by slime spray, as well as occasionally having an accidental big oozes spawn and wipe people out unexpectedly.  I think this strategy is valid at the end of the fight to burn down, but probably shouldn’t be implored from the beginning as your main method.

What we ended up settling on was a burn method.  We went with one tank and two healers for this fight.  The tank went in fully hotted and we popped heroism a couple of seconds later.  Everyone, healers included, went full out damage.  Once he started sending out the DoT we switched to healing while the DPS burned.  We ignored the first small ooze, and once the second person got the DoT we took them to the edge of the slime pool filling the room.  When the first large ooze spawned our elemental shaman started to kite it.  We had a paladin giving him freedom whenever he would call for it.  When he got to three stacks on his ooze we then started on a second large ooze.  This second ooze was kited by a boomkin (who could shape shift out of any slowing debuffs) and followed behind the first large ooze at a safe distance.  The reason we formed this at three stacks instead of four stacks was to give ourselves a little margin for error incase the shaman got a little ooze, or someone ran too close to this first big ooze with their little ooze.  We continued to burn Rotface and he was dead well before a third big ooze was needed… however in theory you could add a third kiter as it became necessary.