The second wing in Icecrown Citadel is made up of the lab and experimentation area of Professor Putricide called the Plagueworks.  While he is the last boss in the area you must defeat two of his hideous creations before you can reach him.  The creations are called Festergut and Rotface and are both fairly complicated fights.

Festergut

Festergut is the first boss in the Plagueworks and is an undead abomination found in a gas filled room.  The gas plays an important part in the fight as anyone in the room suffers shadow damage the entire time that is caused by the gas.  The damage starts off quite high and must be healed through.  However, throughout the fight Festergut will inhale portions of the gas.  Each time he becomes more powerful and by the third inhale he will be doing much more damage to the tank, potentially causing healing issues.  At the same time the damage caused to the rest of the raid will have dropped significantly.

While this is going on players must watch for the targets of Gas Spore.  This will be directed at random players in the raid and start a 12 second debuff.  Once that 12 seconds runs out the spore will explode dealing light shadow damage to everyone nearby and granting a 25% resistance boost to further blights.  This resistance can be stacked up to three times.  When a player is targeted with a gas spore they should either let other players know in chat, vent, or by pinging the mini-map, whichever way your guild chooses to handle it.

Festergut

Once Festergut inhales the fourth time, he will let out an attack called the Pungent Blight, which deals huge shadow damage to everyone in the room.  The only way for players to survive this is to have gained enough stacks of the resistance buff by being close to players that have the gas spore.  For most players this will mean having the full three stacks each time he is ready to inhale for the fourth time.  Once the Pungent Blight attack has been done, the room fills completely with the poison gas again, essentially resetting the fight to the beginning. 

Also in the room are several areas of Vile Gas, which cause significant damage to a player.  These need to be avoided while moving through the room, however when the room is full of gas it is hard to spot them until it is too late.

Lastly, Festergut will enrage and wipe the raid after 5 minutes, so even if you can survive the ongoing damage, you still need to push DPS to down him in time.  The fight also requires a second tank due to a debuff that Festergut places on the tank. The debuff stacks up to 10 stacks and inflicts roughly 10,000 damage each time it is applied. In addition each stack on the tank increases the damage that it does by 10%. If it ever reaches 10 stacks it will kill the tank instantly. The debuff lasts just under two minutes.

Heroic mode - Festergut

The biggest change to the Festergut fight is that Professor Putricide gets involved in it.  Roughly every 30 seconds he will throw a Malleable Goo into the fight.  This does big damage if it hits the player and slows them down greatly for 15 seconds, the same as it would in the Professor Putricide fight.  Players need to watch for who is targeted and ensure they get out of the way.

In addition to the goo, Festergut hits much harder (which heroic boss doesn’t) and has more health.

Rotface

Rotface is Festergut’s “Brother” and the second boss found in the wing.  He requires two tanks and a bit of coordination between all members of the raid.  The main tank must establish agro against Rotface and tank him in the center of the room.  He is tanked near the center of the room due to the fact that the outside of the room has canisters that release slime that spreads on the ground and causes damage.  Therefore players should stay in the center as much as possible.

The tank needs to face him away from the group and everyone forms up behind him, while staying in the center area of the room.  Throughout the fight Rotface will target random players to cast Slime Spray on.  When he does this he will turn to face that player, then cast the spray.  When this happens everyone has a little over 1 second to clear the area in front of him and get to the sides.  Since everyone will be directly behind him as soon as he turns everyone simply scatters to the sides.  Once he is done spraying he will reface the tank and everyone moves back in behind him.

Rotface

The off-tank stays to the outside of the room avoiding the slime on the ground.  Throughout the fight Rotface will target random players and cast Mutated Infection on them.  When this happens they must move towards the off-tank and have the infection cleansed.  When it is removed they will drop a small ooze. The small oozes are not tankable and the player must stay near the off tank until another players is infected and comes out to the off tank. At this point the small oozes will merge into a larger ooze that is tankable. Once a large ooze is active, infected players need to run in front of the off tank to have the small ooze drop in its path to be absorbed.

The oozes have several abilities, the main concern being an AoE damage effect to everyone near them.  Therefore the off-tank should be the only one around it.  The AOE damage that it causes is quite a bit so it it best for even the off tank to kite the ooze instead of tanking it. Secondly they spew out AoE slime areas that cause damage and slow people down.  These need to be watched for and avoided by all players.  Once five small oozes merge into the large ooze it will explode.  The explosion throws out areas that need to be avoided, so everyone clears the center until they expire. 

Once the center is clear, everyone repositions and the fight resumes from the beginning with small oozes merging.  The fight continues like this until you have defeated Rotface.

Heroic Mode - Rotface

As is normal on heroic mode bosses, Rotface has higher health and hits harder.  In addition the mutated infection that he places on people that spawns the little slimes reduces healing by 75% instead of the normal 50%.  This makes getting into position and getting it removed as quickly as possible extremely critical.

In addition Professor Putricide gets involved in the fight and throws vile gas clouds down into the fight.  Anyone hit cannot move for 5 seconds and has their hit rate lowered by 75%.  Basically you are out of the fight for 5 seconds.

The fight is basically the same as normal mode, but far less forgiving.  Since this is a difficult fight for many groups on normal mode still, heroic can be extremely difficult.

Professor Putricide

Professor Putricide is the last boss in the Plagueworks wing of the Icecrown Citadel.  He is the insane Professor that created the two previous bosses and wants to cure us of all our flesh. 

This fight involves having two tanks, one tanking professor Putricide and the other drinking a potion from the professors desk to become an abomination that looks like the two previous bosses. Throughout the first two phases of this fight the abomination tank must eat the slime pools that form on the ground and slow the oozes and clouds that the professor spawns. The main tank simply hols the professor by the ooze pipe to the right of the entrance to the room and avoids slime pools.

When oozes or slims appear everyone that is not targeted by one must dps them down as fast as possible. Once you drop the professors heath enough he will stun everyone and run back to the table and phase two begins.

In phase two the fight remains much the same, however he now throws mutable slime at players that must be avoided. He also places flasts on the ground that need to be avoided or they slow you down and place a large DOT on you. Once you lower his health enough he will stun everyone and phase 3 will begin.

In phase three the off-tank reverts to thier normal appearance and you must trade threat back and forth to balance the debuffs that the professor puts on you. The tanks jobs are to hold aggro, while balancing debuffs, while kiting the professor around the ever growing slime pools. DPS must burn the professor down quickly.

Since you have no way to get rid of the slime pools any longer they serve as a soft enrage timer. You need to defeat him before the room fills. Therefore the tanks should kite him as slowly as possible and DPS / Healers should stay grouped up so that slime is not thrown all over. As soon as a slime pool appears everyone moves as little as possible to a new safe place, preferably hugging and existing slime pool. This extends the third phase giving you slighty mode time.

Heroic Mode - Professor Putricide

Putricide is a difficult fight to begin with, and Heroic mode is just that, Heroic.  In addition to more health and damage, he throws more malleable goo at players and gains two new abilities. 

The first is called Unbound Plague which is essentially a bouncing 1 minute DoT that jumps to players that are within melee range and stacks indefinitely.  Putricide casts it on a random player who must get away from everyone immediately.  Each stack does a small amount of damage.  The idea is to hold onto it until you need to hand it off to someone, around 10-15 stacks.  However when it jumps off a player it leaves a different 1 minute debuff that raises damage from the plague by 300%, which means you can not get it back or you will die.  You need to hand it off 4-5 times for everyone to survive, so you need to have a preset order of players to hand it off to and stay away from everyone else.

Secondly, instead of stunning the raid with tear gas between phases, Putricide instead spawns both a volatile ooze and a gas cloud.  You need to get these down as fast as possible without taking extra damage.

Good luck - the fight is even more insane than the normal Putricide fight!

 


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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