Friday, May 21, 2010

ICC encounter tips - The Plagueworks

Continuing the series. Most of these tips focus on rDPS Demonology, since I haven't got to raid Affliction in far too long.

For the Festergut and Rotface fights, pay attention to the ground textures. There's an outer circle at about 30 yards from the edge of the boss's hitbox. You can stand on that circle at the pull and get your rotation set up. Then, there's an inner circle, with spiky triangles and shit. If you drew lines E/W and N/S through the center of the room, they would intersect the inner circle at the same place as one of the triangle spiky bits every time. These points are good to know, as you will see.

Festergut

Regular Festergut is just a DPS race with a little movement for the spores and some DPS damage mitigation management. It's pretty fucking easy to DPS. The main trick in all cases is to use your Shadow Ward to mitigate the Pungent Blight and save yourself the bother of taking 3 stacks of Inoculated. <Insight> have one spore called to go to the tanks, ranged are left to figure out whether it's faster to run to a tank spore or a ranged spore and GTFO the middle a.s.a.p. Warlocks in general are good choices for staying out, thanks to the teleport circle, but also good choices for stacking on the tanks.

Affliction: Start your rotation from the outer circle. If pulled by a tank who isn't a halfwit, Festergut should start in the middle and stay there, and you can cast everything you need from the edge without having Grim Reach. Use the instant GCDs of your startup rotation to move towards the outer rim of the inner circle and drop your teleport there. Stay outside the inner circle, so you remain a target for vile gas. If you are ranged-heavy, an affliction warlock is an excellent choice to stand on the tanks and never, ever, ever move. Otherwise, get at most two stacks of Inoculated, teleport back to your casting spot, and use Shadow Ward before Festergut expels his Pungent Blight, and you'll be fine.

Demonology: Same deal as Affliction. Again, if you've got a ton of ranged, Demonology warlocks are excellent choices for stacking with the tanks, since immolation aura is a respectable DPS chunk. Again, Shadow Ward with two stacks, or Shadow Ward + Metamorphosis with one stack, and you'll be fine.

Festergut - Heroic

The added fun mechanic here is everyone's favourite: Malleable Goo, which Professor Putricide lobs from his balcony in the NW of the room. This makes standing towards the SE preferable, to give yourself more time to avoid the goo. Unlike the actual Putricide fight, in H-Festergut, the incoming goo puts a green circle under its landing point, which is convenient. The range on the explosion is 10 yards, though, so you do have to move quickly.

Unlike normal mode, where lurking near the middle, but in range for Vile Gas is good, on Heroic, being as spread out as possible towards the edge is preferable. Drop your teleport circle, before the pull, on the outer circle on the floor, and then move 10 yards to the side of it. The Circle masks the goo puddle, which would be a huge pain in the balls if you weren't going to just use the 'port to get out of it. Make sure no mouth-breathers in your raid are standing on your circle. Leave the inner circle rim for healers.

You can survive with 2 stacks of Inoculation, Shadow Ward, and a quick Death Coil right after Pungent Blight to help make up the health deficit. Whether you should or not, is up to you. If you die, you're the moron, not your healers. Remember that Vile Gas can come just before Pungent Blight, so you might want to make sure you're human and have EMFH on CD for that conjunction.

Rotface

Normal-mode Rotface, <Insight> puts everyone just outside his hitbox, we soak the slime spray, let a Big Ooze form first in the middle and then run little oozes to it until it explodes. Rinse, repeat. You might as well drop the port for getting back to the middle after running an ooze, or moving out of the ooze explosion.

Affliction: The main thing here is not to neglect the ability of an interrupted Drain Life / Drain Soul to refresh your corruption while you're on the move. This is especially important if you're using the NMIC ab initio, and rolling crit.

Demonology: Yay, you get to be in melee range. Don't forget Immolation Aura, and don't forget that you have Demon Charge if you need it to get to or from the boss, as well as your circle.

Rotface - Heroic

Heroic Rotface adds Vile Gas to the mix. Unlike Festergut's gas, Rotface won't disorient you, but it will chain, and it hurts a lot, so you can't stack all the ranged in the middle (or everyone will die in a hurry). This makes the floor pattern very important.

You remember I mentioned those spots on the outer rim of the inner circle at the cardinal directions? Those four points are the points of least movement. Although graphically the slime that comes from the walls looks like it is lapping at your feet, on those four magic points, you are just outside the border of two pools, and you're eligible for ranged vile gas. Drop your circle on one of those points, and let no man, dwarf, gnome, goat or night fairy take it from you.

Edit: I added a picture! Click for legible version.


Shadow Ward is again useful because the Big Ooze's aura deals shadow damage and will get kited past your jealously-guarded spot. Either move (sacrilege!) or use Shadow Ward and Death Coil.

Professor Putricide

Depending on how your raid handles this fight, your teleport can be a great tool here, because you can use it while targeted by the Volatile Ooze, giving the raid more DPS time on the ooze. Use it as late as possible.

Affliction: This fight is kind of balls for Affliction. It's almost impossible to roll corruption on the Professor, so replace NMIC with your back-up trinket (which you have right? right?) and deal. Each ooze/cloud should get a full cycle of dots on it. Make sure to put full dots up on PP before the Tear Gas transition. Overwrite if you have to, it will be a DPS gain.

If your raid DPS is high enough, dot up the add, then switch back to PP. You'll be doing respectable damage to both. Avoid getting yelled at by the raid leader.

Demonology: Do your damnedest to trigger Decimation from the ooze/cloud and use it on the Professor. Don't forget immolation aura for damaging the adds as they pass by, and Demon Charge to stay in range.

Professor Putricide - Heroic

Heroic mode adds Unbound Plague to the encounter and replaces the Tear Gas phase transition with a sly two girls, one cup reference. Nasty. The sheer RNG of Phase 2 with the plague, malleable goo, flasks and beefier adds makes this fight… unpleasant. Like many guilds, we nominate the 4th tank to take the plague and die with it during this phase, so you will most likely need to have a soulstone ready at all times and be prepared to apply it to the sacrificial scapegoat.

Demonology: Metamorphosis on the pull, and it should be ready towards the end of the phase transition. Stand in melee range, saving immolation aura for the end of your time as Lollidan. Because you're constantly switching off PP to take out adds, use CoDoom over CoA until P3 (but you should have time for one full CoA in demon form before applying the stronger CoD - clip if you have to). Otherwise, good fucking luck. This fight's a bitch.

Pets: Your pet does not get the target-specific debuff for the phase transitions. It should always be on the volatile ooze, regardless of your debuff, to help soak the explosions.

Thursday, May 13, 2010

ICC encounter tips - Storming the Citadel

Herewith a summary of warlock-specific tips for each encounter, regular and heroic. Naturally, this is from the perspective of the strategies used by <Insight> [US-Medivh], but you're a warlock. You're smart. You will adapt. I'm also concentrating on Affliction and Meta/Ruin (raid buff) Demonology, since that's how I raid. Advice for non-heroic still holds for heroic, except where noted.

Lord Marrowgar

Affliction: you can pretty much ignore the Bone Storm: self-heals have the extra damage covered, especially if you're using a quick Drain Life to refresh NMIC-ed Corruption during the storm. Move out of fire, win. If your raid likes to have Marrowgar tanked in a specific spot, place your circle accordingly, but you shouldn't be moving much. If there's a convenient Bonespike Graveyard at the 35% transition point, then use Seed of Corruption twice (at most) then refresh your trinketed Corruption.

Demonology: you can ignore the Bone Storm, too, thanks to Soul Link and your handy Felguard. Time your Metamorphosis and Immolation Aura for the Bonespike Graveyard. Even if it's Not Your Job™ to nuke the Bone Spikes, use one to trigger Decimation.

Lord Marrowgar - Heroic

Neither spec can ignore the Bone Storm on heroic, the incoming damage is too high. Run.

Affliction: if 3 spikes are ever clumped, tab-spam Seed of Corruption on them. Again, drain to keep your trinketed Corruption up on Marrowgar, although you're more likely to be tap-draining for the refresh only, while you take care of the spikes. If your raid DPS is high enough that you can stay on the boss full time, lucky you.

Demonology: Metamorphosis is more useful during Bone Storm, both for reducing the damage you take, and for increasing your burst on the spikes. If you get a convenient clump charge/immolation aura will be win.

Lady Deathwhisper

Position your circle before engaging at the 30-yard range limit from Lady Bugfucknuts at a roughly 70° angle to her, so you can cast at her and at the left side adds without having to move much. Shadow Ward her Death and Decay in Phase 1, save it for shade explosions in Phase 2. Set up a Howl of Terror rotation with any other warlocks for the mind controls. Have fear hot-keyed (I use Grid and Clique to fear MC-ed raid members.)

Affliction: Your raid leader should leave you on the crazy cult lady full-time, or get a stern talking-to. Be careful on the phase transition; you may want to hold off Shadow Bolt spam for a rotation or two.

Demonology: If you're not getting to spam Soul Fire on two out of three adds on your side and at least three Soul Fires on Lady Barking-mad with every wave, you're doing it wrong. Be very careful on the phase transition.

Lady Deathwhisper - Heroic

Save Soulshatter for as late as possible into Phase 2. Good luck. We position the Loopy Lady at the bottom of the entrance stairs for P2 (avoiding LoS issues from her pillars, more room to avoid ghosts, melee on the P2 adds, ranged on the boss). It's even more important to avoid ghosts in P2; I find that dropping my circle on the stairs is best, since it's often less populated.

Affliction: Turn off Spell Lock if it's going to screw up your raid's Frostbolt interrupt rotation. Have it hot-keyed so it's ready if they need an external interrupt.

Demonology: Turn off Cleave, and turn off Charge in P2. A passive Felguard will charge/stun to interrupt opportunistically, and while that's great for interrupting the Adherents, it can screw with your tanks' interrupt rotation, which is bad. Very bad. Shadow Ward and Fear are essential hear - redundant CC on the MC targets is good.

Gunship

Dot the shit out of the axe-throwers, don't rip aggro on the boat, try to get in a cannon, go nuts.

Demonology: You should totally be in a cannon. Metamorphosis prevents use of the rocket pack and the cannon. Have your hearthstone hotkeyed and stop-cast hearth to break out of Metamorphosis early if you have to jump or blow the boat up.

Gunship - Heroic

Ditto. Enjoy your free 277 loots.

Deathbringer Saurfang

Affliction: If your raid leader doesn't have you on the boss full-time, s/he's doing it wrong. Preferably in melee range. If you do get to be in melee range, as usual you should save Soulshatter for as late as possible, and don't be shy about calling for Salv if you need it.

Demonology: Every round of Blood Beasts is a Decimation proc on Saurfang. Go nuts.

Deathbringer Saurfang - Heroic

Same deal. Adds are more troublesome. Don't get hit. Drop your circle during the RP lead-in, positioned such that any beast that's coming for you will have to change direction to reach you, and by the edge of the balcony.