Blizzard enabled Festergut for testing on the PTR 3.3 build 10623 on Thursday, October 21. It was up for testing on US servers barely an hour and a half due to a bug in the 25-players mode dungeon where Festergut had the stats of a normal 10-players mode boss.Regardless, we had the chance to engage him at least twice before access to the Icecrown Citadel dungeon was shutdown.
I gotta say Icecrown Citadel is defnitely not for PUGs. Considering many players came with pre-mades wearing top-notch Tier sets, the encounter is not about tank-and-spank, or dispelling. It is mostly a survival battle.
Let's take a look at the trash mobs first, before I explain the boss fight. At the zone in, you will find a teleporter similar to that present in Ulduar. When you click the portal, you get a popup window to choose your destination. In our case, for testing purposes the only option was The Upper Spire.
Festergut is located on the Plagueworks wing. You will notice to both sides of the teleport terminal a hallway blocked by what looks like a misty barrier. I will save you the time, and tell you that curiosity killed the cat. That's not a solid wall, the icy mist will instantly kill your character. A repair bill saved for you, let's move on.
The room looks like the central chamber that holds firm the Icecrown tower, you know the huge ice chunk of a mountain that you are acquainted with in the load screen of the Warcraft III: Frozen Throne RTS game. The Icecrown Citadel was built off Saronite ore all around the original icy mesa to protect it -- I guess. As you look above, the chamber reaches all the way to the top of the Frozen Throne.
There are Valkyries patrolling the area, and a variety of undead units such as Abominations, Pustulent Horrors, Plague Scientists, Geists, Storm Giants, and zombies. Each pull is a different set of mobs, which helps with the boring factor.
Everything looked easy, until we reached a juncture with various patrols. Things got pretty ugly. In the video you will see what happens when you do not pull a single target, such as a Storm Giant, down the stairs. Eventually the patrols aggro, and your group will certainly wipe.
The most dangerous of the trash mobs in this section is definitely the dog-like mobs that resemble the Naxxramas boss: Gluth. Something you should know is that the gluth-ish trash mob places a debuff on the tank that stacks up to 10 times. Basically, once it reaches 10 stacks, the tank will get 0% heals and eventually die. Thus, the way to go about this without any wipe chance is to switch tanks whenever one of them gets five stacks.
I think a good idea to prevent a tank from dying is to have a paladin cast a protection shield to block any further physical damage, and to break aggro. Probably a hunter misdirection to the second tank for a smooth transition.
The other thing to consider is that like Gluth, these mobs will AOE and leave everyone down to 25% health. Heal the tank to max health asap with a combination of HOTs and big heals, and those assigned to raid healing should AOE heal, then individually bring everyone up to full health. Now you know why more than one of these is a certain wipe. In the video, the tank and the raid made the mistake to single pull a Storm Giant, without moving him down the stairs, tanking him right in front of the doorway -- and out of nowhere the patrols on both sides of the doorway aggroed. Two Gluth-ish dogs stomped through the raid. It hurt.
Down the left hallway we reached Festergut. This is definitely not a tank and spank boss. There are a few mechanics going on that will strain your healers to the max, and will require group coordination. It is a survival battle. As soon as you engage Festergut, you will see all the orange tanks around the room release a orange mist on the ground. This is called Gaseous Blight and it does shadow damage per tick. Make sure to buff shadow resist prior to pulling Festergut. It's very helpful considering this blight does damage per sec.
The video shows the Combat log, and this info below is interpreted from there.
ABILITIES
Melee Swing: 10289 - 18642 Physical damage
Gaseous Blight: Hits for 3273 - 4099 Shadow damage per sec. This blight is on the ground most of the fight.
Vile Gas: It is a debuff cast on two targets which causes approx. 3997 - 4206 Shadowstorm damage. The target will get a pink arrow pointing downwards on the head for visual identification. The player loses control of his character which starts to spin and vomit for 5 sec. The vomit does AOE damage to all nearby raid players. Vile Gas lasts for 12 sec. Festergut will cast Vile Gas every 36 sec.
Gas Spores: You will see onscreen the message: Festergut releases Gas Spores! It afflicts two-players (10-players mode). From feedback, the raid needs to coordinate to move toward the players who get afflicted. It will do damage to all nearby raid players, but it debuffs you with Blighted Spores which causes 1950 - 2050 Shadow damage every 1 sec for 5 sec. but offers you 25% resistance to the Gaseous Blight, reducing the shadow damage done to you.
We didn't live long enough to see other abilities or mechanics, or phases. Only managed two attempts before Blizzard shutdown access to the Icecrown Citadel dungeon. It will certainly take a few attempts to figure out what's going on and what the raid needs to do. Impressions? You are not prepared !!! Illidan was a piece of cake compared with Festergut, and if this is just a taste of what awaits you within the frozen halls, it will offer a challenge for months while we wait for the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm expansion.
1 comments
That is pretty much the most disgusting-looking thing I’ve ever seen in WoW.