Icecrown Citadel: the Plagueworks

Last week the second wing of Icecrown came out, the Plagueworks. Featuring of course, Rotface and Festergut, and their creator the marvelous professor Putricide. Our best 10 men and women spent hours this weekend trying to down them but it just isn’t happening yet. We tried Festergut a few times, and decided to focus our efforts on Rotface (who is suposed to be easier). On multiple attempts we got Rotface down around to 30% of his health, but died to overwhelming amount of Slimed players. The spawns are just far too fast for us–when so many people are dancing near the Big Slime to drop off their little slimes, they eventually die from a small error, or lag, or just bad luck.

We’re running with the recommended strategy, of a Rotface tank in the middle, and a Big Slime kite-tank running around the perimeter. DPS/Healers with who get an injection continue doing their thing until there’s a few seconds left on the debuff (they do NOT cleanse, we found delaying the slime spawn let the player contribute healing/dps for longer), and run to the outer edge of the room to kite their small slime around and eventually into a big slime (which is very tricky to start, but our raid became quite skilled at this with practice). The pally offtank (me) kited the Big Slime around the perimeter until it explodes, warns the raid, we move out of the way, and repeat.

When one person dies their slime tends to just sit in our big melee/tank/ranged/heals cluster in the middle, pick random targets, not obey aggro, and not be kite-able. Is this boss impossible with one death? The thing that gets me is it doesn’t quite seem tuned properly. It’s a 10 man, therefore should be doable in 232 gear, right? Most of us have an average item level of 240+, and it seems we have the strategy down very well here, so what gives? I can only think that it’s some kind of strategy problem–something we are still somehow not seeing.

Looking for Group: Tank shortage and how to Remedy

As you know, I have a Prot Paladin and a Warlock. I’ve had a very good view of the vastly different queue times on DPS and Tank. On my paladin, it’s literally 1 second to get into a Dungeon, unless someone AFKs the ready check (then it can be up to 30seconds, oh no!), compared to my Warlock, which usually has to wait 15minutes or so to get into a run (which the Tank often bails on if it’s Old Kingdom or Oculus). I usually skip the daily on my Warlock now, since it’s such a waste of time to sit in queue.

Obviously, if you play a DPS you’re well aware of this problem. Nobody wants to wait 15 minutes to have their tank bail if they don’t like the dungeon that popped up. Blizzard buffed Oculus and is re-tuning dungeons like Old Kingdom, which might help a bit. I’m not so sure that’s going to make a huge difference. Let’s look at other reasons why it’s hard to get a tank.

First of all, I’ve noticed a lot of people setting their dual spec to Protection (or Feral), so that they can burn through the daily heroic fast, and with a tank they trust (themself). Considering how easy it is to get tanking gear, and how low the bar is for gear that’s required for entry to tanking heroics, this is a great idea! So why aren’t they chaining heroics?

The main reason is that people aren’t behaving well in the group. I’ve talked with lots of tanks and chaining heroics usually ends when you encounter someone terrible. Hunters and Rogues–just because you can misdirect to the tank doesn’t mean you can pull groups. If you want to do a speed run where you help the tank pull–ask the tank! They might be into it, in which case you could co-ordinate and go even FASTER. Surprising the tank with groups of adds is a horrible idea.

This morning in Old Kingdom, a hunter was misdirect pulling groups of casters on the lower level. Do I need to tell you how bad of an idea this is? Healer aggro can overtake the misdirect shot very quickly, and if the casters aren’t silenced, they will sit far away where the tank can’t get them and destroy the healer. Fortunately most tanks will notice something like this and react. Just because you survived doesn’t mean it’s okay–that misbehaving dps (I’ve seen healers do it too) just took that Tank out of the LFG rotation. That tank isn’t going to want to run another!

Misbehaving members also make Tank’s ignore lists–which means you will wait longer.

My recommendation is to stay behind the tank and communicate. If you want to pull extra groups to go faster–just ask the tank! Likewise, if the tank is pulling too many groups at once, let them know that you can’t handle that! I like doing dungeons fast, and I even like pulling entire rooms (I’ve got Drak’Tharon keep down to a trivial number of pulls!) but not everybody else does. This is more important than making Mana Strudels, Fish Feasts or Healthstones or even  buffing as far as I’m concerned (Buffing btw, is not significant in 5-mans when everyone is doing 4k+DPS.  Don’t get your panties in a knot because you’re missing Blessing of Might, I think your 3500 instead of 3600 DPS will be enough to get us through Nexus!).

Much of this isn’t just courtesy to the tank, it’s courtesy to the Healer and DPS as well. So if you want to improve the dungeon queue, don’t do things that will cause the most in-demand party members to feel like logging out. Treat them nice and maybe they will continue chaining heroics to gear up their off-specs too.

As for me, I’m sticking to one LFG Heroic per day–I’m getting a sick of Leeroys, and all I want is my Frost Emblems.