Icecrown Citadel – Festergut Heroic

This guide will assume that you are familiar with the normal version of this encounter. You can read my own guide to this fight here.

Naturally, Festergut gains additional health in the heroic version.

• 10 Man Normal – 9,412,000 Health
• 10 Man Heroic – 13,700,000 Health

The main difference between the heroic mode of this encounter and the normal mode that you’re accustomed with is an additional ability. Luckily, it’s an ability that you’ll already be familiar with from the Professor Putricide fight. Throughout the encounter, Professor Putricide will be sat on a ledge, throwing Malleable Goo at your raid.

While the Malleable Goo is targeted at one member of your raid, it has a splash damage that is larger than the spell effect. Due to this, it’s vital you leave a large distance between yourself and the “puddle” that the Malleable Goo leaves on the ground.

It’s extremely important that you do not get hit by the Malleable Goo. If you are hit, you’ll receive a debuff that slows casting speed (or attack speed) by 250% for 12 seconds. Just as Festergut was a DPS race in it’s normal variation, it remains so in it’s heroic version. As such, DPS being hit by the Malleable Goo can result in the raid missing the enrage timer. Alternatively, healers being hit my the Malleable Goo can result in tank deaths.

Malleable Goo does have a flight time, it’s flung from a platform at the far end of the room and the puddle graphic appears prior to the spell hitting. In order to give the maximum amount of flight time (and thus allowing your raid members the longest period of time to react and move), we tank Festergut closer to the door than usual on normal mode.

The encounter is otherwise unchanged. That means the Gas Spore mechanic is unchanged and your raid will still need to move to ensure that everyone gets inoculated from the blight. It’s therefore more important than usual that your raid members return to their designated spots as soon as they receive the inoculation. If they fail to move, or move to slowly, the result can be your raid members being hit by the Malleable Goo.

Image courtesy of Owlkin.Org

The above screenshot captures the two mechanics (Gas Spore and Malleable Goo) in action. You can clearly see the ranged DPS stacking together to ensure they all receive the inoculation, whilst also steering clear of the neon puddle on the ground marking the landing point of the incoming Malleable Goo.

Summary

This is one of the easier heroic modes, particularly if your raid (and specifically, your ranged DPS and healers) are already accustomed to being spread out throughout the fight. This is precisely why I encourage the positioning featured in my strategy guide for the normal version of this encounter. Your main concern as a ranged DPS is avoiding the Malleable Goo. The casting speed debuff is extreme and with a twelve second duration, it’s a huge loss in DPS. Should multiple DPS be hit by this, you will fail the enrage timer. The key to this encounter is good raid awareness, both to monitor the path of the Malleable Goo and ensure that you’re receiving the inoculation debuff. Whilst it may initially seem quite chaotic, it’s an easy fight and shouldn’t take your guild long to master.