Icecrown Strategy Notepad

[Kulldam]

As we're only focusing on Heroic Lich King, it seemed appropriate to finally make public our Icecrown Strategy Notepad thread for anyone still interested in seeing how we come up with strategies and the like.

Notes for Dances with Oozes:

15 seconds into the fight, and every 15 seconds thereafter, Rotface randomly casts Mutated Injection on a random raid member. Once it expires or is removed, a Small Slime spawns. When two Small Slime contact each other, they merge to form a Big Slime. Thereafter, each Small Slime that contacts a Big Slime is absorbed by the Big Slime (despawns) and the Big Slime gets stronger with a stack of Unstable Ooze. Once a Big Slime absorbs five Small Slimes, it immediately casts Unstable Ooze Explosion, which is obviously what we want to avoid for this achievement.

Initially, I thought we could just assign some DPS to kill slime spawns during the fight so we're never at risk of getting a Big Slime to eat 5 Small Slimes. However, I finally found a 10-man video that shows health pools of the various Slime types (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPKylrFHJcA), both of which are extremely high values.

Small Slime HP: 2.8 million
Big Slime HP: 6.7 million

To be able to kill a Small Slime before the next Small Slime spawn, each of our six DPS would need to do 31,111 DPS! The good news, however, is with such high HP values, it's clear that another tactic is required and not even worth trying to DPS.

The next obvious answer is a burn -- can we kill Rotface outright before we'll get a Big Slime to explosion stage. It takes 7 Small Slime spawns for an explosion, which are 15 seconds each, plus the final cast we'd wait the full 12 second debuff duration until a spawn, so that's 15 * 7 + 12 = 117 seconds from engage. Rotface has 8,645,000 HP, so that would mean each of our six DPS would need to do 11,898 DPS from engage to death to beat that 117 mark. Obviously that's super impossible, so need a new plan.

The next option is some sort of kite method and this is where unknowns come into play. First, things we do know about the Slimes.

Small Slime Knowns:

• Small Slimes spawn on top of the player that had Mutating Injection and immediately agro that player, dealing melee damage and shooting slime projectiles out.
• Small Slimes run faster than 100% movement speed.

Small Slime Unknowns:

• It appears from video that Small Slimes will attack the target of the initial Mutating Injection with impunity. Likely they spawn with a huge initial threat on that target.
• May be untauntable.
• May be unsnareable.

Big Slime Knowns:

• Created from two Small Slime merging.
• Move very slowly (maybe 20-30% of normal run speed).
• Have normal agro tables (unknown if Tauntable, but definitely can be agroed by normal threat and will remain on target).
• Deal huge melee damage/slime spit to close melee targets.
• Pulses AE damage to any players within 10 yards, so must be kited away from the raid.

Big Slime Unknowns:

• The biggest question that needs to be answered, is do Big Slimes 'store up' their Unstable Ooze such that a 2-stack Big Slime merging with another 2-stack Big Slime will create a 4-stack Big Slime or will the merge only cause one Big Slime to gain a new stack, thereby leaving a single 3-stack Big Slime?

We're left with two possibilities really.

Scenario A: Big Slimes merging together cause an increase of the Unstable Ooze stack totals by greater than one.

If this is the case, we cannot allow two Big Slime to merge, and thus must force Big Slimes to ever merge with Small Slimes only:

1. Start the fight as usual with one player designated as Kiter A.
2. The first person to get Injection moves to Kiter A and gets dispelled and Small Slime #1 spawns (hereby referred to as "SS#1").
3. That player gets healed for a while with SS#1 beating on them until SS#2 spawns. They merge to form Big Slime #1 (BS#1) which is immediately agroed/taunted by Kiter A and moved to one of the four cardinal directions of the room to be kited.
4. Each subsequent Injection target moves near Kiter A (such that they are between Kiter A and the Big Slime chasing Kiter A) and gets dispelled to spawn the Small Slime, which is merged into BS#1.
5. After 4 stacks of Unstable Ooze on BS#1, the next Injection target moves out of the raid to the opposite side of the room and waits for Injection #2, which then spawns BS#2.
6. BS#2 is picked up by Kiter B.
7. The process continues with Injection targets moving near Kiter B until BS#2 reaches 4 stacks of Unstable, then Kiter C emerges and repeats until we down Rotface.

The main challenge with this method is controlling positioning. There are four sets of two pipes around the room, one attached to each of the four cardinal walls. Every so often, a pair of pipes will graphically start oozing and shortly after the ground around that wall is covered in Ooze Flood. This effectively blocks off 1/4th of the kiting area in the room at all times (the previous flood area clears away just as a new Ooze Flood is being formed on another wall). Therefore, once we reach three active kiters, each will be utilizing one cardinal wall to kite in a circular fashion with the fourth unused wall containing the current Ooze Flood. When the graphical warning indicates an occupied wall is about to floor, the Kiter at that wall must immediately move to the now empty wall being very careful not to cross paths with another Kiter's Big Slime.

Meanwhile, Big Slimes cannot be moved within 10 yards of the raid so the raid will likely need to be bunched up in the center of the room, perhaps kiting in a tight circle around the center to avoid slime pool spawns if needed.

The timing on this strategy is also crucial. Since this is basically a tank and spank for DPS, and based on our recent performance logs, we can assume about 5250 average DPS from each of our DPS raid members, plus 2,000 from the MT. Obviously, each Big Slime that spawns after the first requires another Kiter, which removes one of our DPS from Rotface, so our actual damage will slow down as the fight progresses. The following spreadsheet shows the timing, for Scenario A with 2 Healers and thus 6 DPS, will give us a kill at the 300 second mark (just after 5:00). However, at that rate, we'll be right on the verge of a fourth Big Slime spawn, so if our DPS is even slightly weaker than expected, we'll certainly get that fourth spawn and be super screwed.

If, however, we can manage the fight with 1 healer and have Kheelan DPS, that cuts the fight time by nearly 20% to 4:05, which means well before a fourth Big Slime spawn.



Scenario B: Big Slimes merging together do not increase the Unstable stack count beyond transferring their own stack totals to the newly formed Big Slime.

This scenario doesn't seem as likely to me, but if this is the case, it greatly simplifies the kiting by only have two Big Slimes up at any given time. The fight would play out as follows:

• Kiter A grabs BS#1 as before and moves to designated wall to begin the kite.
• The very next two Small Slime spawns are allowed to merge to form BS#2, near enough to Kiter A so he can taunt/agro and pull it near BS#1. BS#1 now has 1 stack of Unstable.
• This repeats until BS#1 reaches 4 stacks of Unstable.
• Now the next pair of Small Slime to merge into BS#6, which is picked up by Kiter B, who kites BS#6 on a different wall away from BS#1/Kiter A.
• Similar to how BS#1 was handled, Small Slime spawns are allowed to merge near Kiter B, so Kiter B can taunt/agro, which increases the Unstable stack on BS#6.
• Repeat until Rotface drops.

Looking on the above spreadsheet again, Scen. B with 2 Heal, 1 OT, 6 DPS actually shows a kill time of about 272 seconds, or about half a minute faster than Scenario A.

Further, there would be one big advantage to Scenario B -- with only two Big Slimes being kited at any given time, there's very little chance any one 'group' will run out of space (between the raid/dps, Kiter A, and Kiter B).

As before, if we can cut down to 1 healer, the kill time for Scenario B drops to 230 seconds -- nearly 25% faster than Scenario A with 2 healers.

Finally, there are a couple more Scenarios that I won't go into too much detail, but they are basically the same as Scenario A & B, except instead of using potential DPS for kiters, we utilize healers as kiters (think Wildhide on Algalon). There are many unknowns here, however, especially the biggest question, which is can we ensure threat is held? Moreover, do Big Slimes keep their threat totals upon merging? If so, what if two Big Slimes merge and the one a healer has built up threat on is the one that vanishes rather than the newly spawned one, and thus threat is lost/must be built again? Druids obviously have taunt, but going Bear to taunt and popping out may or may not be enough time to build threat from HoT ticks before Taunt wears off a few seconds later.

In any event, if healer kiting proved possible, for Scenario B-type setups, even with two healers we could cut the kill time down by a full minute, or using 1 healer cut it down by 30 seconds. Or if a healer isn't possible, even a ranged DPS might work if a taunt isn't required to grab Big Slime agro. A quick couple spell casts might do the trick and would still allow some DPS on Rotface.

We'll have to test some stuff out to get this one going, as a lot of unknowns right now will determine the true difficulty of this achievement.

[Kulldam]

Notes on Flu Shot Shortage:

Festergut has 9.41 million HP, so our kill time should be approximately 265 seconds, or 4:25. Every ~45 seconds he casts Gas Spore on two random people, which will explode in a small AE around them after 12 seconds causing players in the AE to get a stack of Inoculated.

Then, every 2:15 (or more likely every 2 minutes but the first cast is at the 2:15 mark), he casts Pungent Blight, raping everyone without sufficient protection.

Obviously the key to this fight is keeping the Inoculated stack down while finding a way to survive the Pungent Blight.

There are a couple ways to handle this.

Scenario A: Manage Gas Spore/Inoculated stacks by juggling positioning and using Hand of Protection.

Essentially, the first Gas Spore we split into two groups and everyone gets one stack of Inoculated, which puts as at 25% resistance.

The next cast of Gas Spore, we all stack up again to get us two stacks for 50% reduction.

The third and final cast before Pungent Blight, we do not stack up but instead have our Paladins each cast Hand of Protection on the two people targetted with Gas Spore, which will probably remove the debuff if done within the 12 second time frame (as Gas Spore is a physical debuff).

Then we eat Pungent Blight with a well-timed Divine Guardian from Khrash just as Pungent is being cast, and we all safely skate by on 70% minimum resistance to the 50,000 damage hit.

The downside of this scenario is it requires we kill Festergut in under 4 minutes or we'll get a 6th Gas Spore cast (and our Hand of Protection will be down), so without severe luck on the targets of those 6th casts by having it hit someone that can go immune and remove the debuff, we'll be SOL. A sub-four minute kill, assuming two healers and two tanks (which seems required from the videos I've watched), requires 39,203 Raid DPS, or an average of 5,865 DPS per DPS member, which would be very much on the high end for us.

Scenario B: We utilize only one stack of Inoculated per person and instead rely on self-cooldowns to survive the Pungent Blight.

The first Gas Spore we split into two groups as before and everyone gets one stack.

The second and third Gas Spore casts, we stay completely split up and assume there will be no repeats of targets for Gas Spore on those two casts. If there is, we'll have to use a Hand of Protection or other immunity to remove the debuff from the particular player who has two stacks already and has Gas Spore on them.

Then, everyone has 25% reduction from Inoculated but considering our makeup, we have a lot of self-cast reductions that may allow survival.

Khrashdin: Ardent Defender + Divine Protection (100%)
Kilwenn: Ice Block (100%)
Thawfore: Divine Shield (100%)
Mattingly: Cloak (90%)
Fides: Dispersion (90%)
Rofldat: Anti-Magic Shell (75%)
Kulldam: Shield Wall + Last Stand (40%)
Wildhide: Barkskin + Dire Bear Form (20%)
Kheelan: Barkskin + Dire Bear Form (20%)
Ugra: Sadface (0%)

We'd also have Divine Guardian from Khrash for another 20% reduction, so before Shadow Resist comes into play, everyone except Ugra *should* have a minimum of 25% + 20% + 20% = 65% reduction, which means Pungent should hit for about 17,500 on Druids and less for everyone up the chain.

For Ugra, I don't know offhand if they can be used in conjunction, but if so, Thawfore could be tasked with using Hand of Sacrifice on Ugra for 30% reduction to Ugra since Thaw will be bubbled. In addition, Ugra, Wild, and Kheelan will be grouped with Khrash and myself so they will get the effects of Khrash's Divine Sacrifice. Unfortunately I do not know the 'order of operations' that things like Divine Sacrifice work in conjunction with Ardent Defender, but that should add a very nice buffer and easily allow Ugra and Druids to survive the Pungent damage.

Therefore, everyone in the raid should have a form of damage reduction with a 2 minute or under cooldown, allowing us to use these methods for every Pungent cast required. This makes Scenario B the best option imo for this achievement and a rather simple one at that.

[Rofldat]

from MMO-Champ

Two Big Oozes can also merge to combine their stacks.

Since it doesn't say that Big Ooze spawn with ANY stack, and option would be to keep making another Big Ooze and feed it to the one being mainly kited, so 0 + 0 stack = 0.

If 0 stack Big Ooze add 1 stack to another big Ooze, then it'll still be beneficial to feed a big Ooze to antoher big Ooze(since 2 small ooze is required to make 1 big ooze)


Also on Festergut

You have become resistant to the blight, decreasing Shadow damage taken by 25% for 2 min.

Since the debuff last for 2 minutes, if we all stack up and get 2 stacks right away and then can avoid sets of the debuff from going off. It'll fall off letting us start the stack up again.

Another option is to only stack up the debuff for people that require it to survive. Since as you mentioned some of us have high dmg reduction on cooldown, those of us with higher than 70% reduction pre-shadow resist should be able to take the full blast of Pungent with said cd and survive.
So assuming we don't get unlucky Spore application, then we can have something like
1st cast - 1 stack on 2 players + any(Ugra) who need it(and maybe let Ugra have 2 right now so his debuff will run out after the blight and he'll be ready to re-stack on the next cast)
2nd cast - 2 other players
3rd cast - 2 more players, so by now ideally we'll have 6 people with 1stack and Ugra with 2
Pungent come, cooldowns used(if Thaw have Aura Mastery to use with Shadow Resist, that would help since it's on 2 min cd as well)
by this next cast(let's say 45s per Spore) it'll be 135s since the first spore, or 2.25 minute, and the first set of Inoculate should've fallen off.

And if there's only small amount of people having 1-stack, even if someone get unlucky and targeted again, he can run off alone and have 2 stacks instead of ruining the ach by hitting 3rd stack. And if the person with 2 stacks(Ugra, or the unlucky person with spore choosing) get hit by another Spore, we can Hand of Prot them to remove it(or in my case, I 'should' be able to AMS to avoid the debuff again.


The Doctor's achievement simply require the person that drink the potion to turn into abomination to never use the ability(if it is normally used when the doc go into minor enrage of some sort(like Tyrannus in PoS) then we simply should have the tank use defensive cooldowns to survive it)

[Wildhide]

Notes on Flu Shot Shortage

I had been looking at this one last night and came up with some similar ideas.

First, I don't believe two tanks is required. He doesn't do anything that requires a tank switch, like, say, Deathwhisper's threat reduction debuff. I believe the only reason some people used two tanks was to make the damage during Inhale Blight easier to manage using cooldowns, but, I think we can suck it up manage with one tank staggering their CD's.

This will free up Khrash to heal and Khee to DPS. Beacon should prove useful for healing the random Vile Gas damage. Also, aura mastery with shadow resist aura should negate a large portion of the Pungent Blight. I am sure on the numbers, but it should enable most people to survive if they somehow only had one stack of inoculate. It would definitely be enough to make the damage manageable if everyone had two stacks.

When it comes to managing stacks, I believe I have a way to minimize the amount of RNG and get everyone two stacks. Assuming three Gas Spore casts per expunge, we can have the first two Spore targets let their spores explode only on themselves, so, after the first cast, we only have two people with 1 stack of inoculate each.

For the next Spore cast, everyone, save the first two targets stacks up with spore targets to get one stack. We should use one marked person for the ranged and one for the melee/tank to avoide giving two stacks of inoculate from one cast - if it even works this way. Assuming one of the first targets isn't targeted again by the second cast, we should have one stack on the entire raid with one more spore cast incoming. If a repeat target is chosen, we will have no choice but to hope they are not repeated again for the third cast. Hand of protection(s) can be utilized if necessary.

For the third cast, assuming no repeat targets, everyone will bunch up accordingly and get their second stack of inoculate. This should reduce the damage from Pungent Blight to a maximum of 22550 pre-resistances.

Using this strategy to manage the inoculate stacks, we should be able to easily survive two Pungent Blight casts. Using aura mastery on one and self cooldowns (Ugra can get a PW:S as his "cooldownlol") the other, we should be able to win the game. We just have to hope the RNG is nice to us on the second spore cast.

PS. I suppose a super easy way to do this would be to HoP the first two spore targets, so we are guaranteed to only get two inoculate stacks on the raid. But, I think it's more important to save the HoP's for the second expunge, since timing could get hairy later in the fight with spore casts. Also, this would do nothing for the first two spore targets after the first expunge. Perhaps then would be a good time to use the HoP's? asdf

[Kulldam]

from MMO-Champ

Since it doesn't say that Big Ooze spawn with ANY stack, and option would be to keep making another Big Ooze and feed it to the one being mainly kited, so 0 + 0 stack = 0.

Yeah I try not to trust stuff I just read, especially when the encounters aren't even out.

If 0 stack Big Ooze add 1 stack to another big Ooze, then it'll still be beneficial to feed a big Ooze to antoher big Ooze(since 2 small ooze is required to make 1 big ooze)

I think this one is more likely and is exactly what is described in Scenario B in the above spreadsheet.

You can see that each Big Slime spawn is staggered by 30 seconds (time for two Small Slimes to spawn and merge) and then that newly formed Big Slime is merged with the kiting Slime (BS#1 until 4 stacks, then BS#6 until Rotface drops).

Also on Festergut

Since the debuff last for 2 minutes, if we all stack up and get 2 stacks right away and then can avoid sets of the debuff from going off. It'll fall off letting us start the stack up again.

That's not exactly how it works.

The Gas Spore is cast 3 times between Pungent Blight no matter what, so if everyone gets 2 stacks, we need a way to clear the Gas Spore from the final two targets during the third cast to ensure no one hits a 3 stack -- again, exactly what I described in Scenario A. Hand of Protection may work as mentioned, but that would require a sub-4 minute kill to pull off.

Also, Pungent Blight removes all existing Inoculated stacks on the raid, so the 2 min timer is irrelevant.

Another option is to only stack up the debuff for people that require it to survive. Since as you mentioned some of us have high dmg reduction on cooldown, those of us with higher than 70% reduction pre-shadow resist should be able to take the full blast of Pungent with said cd and survive.
So assuming we don't get unlucky Spore application, then we can have something like
1st cast - 1 stack on 2 players + any(Ugra) who need it(and maybe let Ugra have 2 right now so his debuff will run out after the blight and he'll be ready to re-stack on the next cast)
2nd cast - 2 other players
3rd cast - 2 more players, so by now ideally we'll have 6 people with 1stack and Ugra with 2
Pungent come, cooldowns used(if Thaw have Aura Mastery to use with Shadow Resist, that would help since it's on 2 min cd as well)
by this next cast(let's say 45s per Spore) it'll be 135s since the first spore, or 2.25 minute, and the first set of Inoculate should've fallen off.

And if there's only small amount of people having 1-stack, even if someone get unlucky and targeted again, he can run off alone and have 2 stacks instead of ruining the ach by hitting 3rd stack. And if the person with 2 stacks(Ugra, or the unlucky person with spore choosing) get hit by another Spore, we can Hand of Prot them to remove it(or in my case, I 'should' be able to AMS to avoid the debuff again.

I think it would add unnecessary risk not to purposely have everyone get the first Inoculated cast, rather than trying to limit it to 6 only. Once the first cast is complete, our only concern is the probability that the same two people will be selected twice in a row for the 2nd and 3rd Gas Spore cast. Assuming each Gas Spore target is truly randomly selected, each Gas Spore target is a ten-sided die and getting the same two people is equivalent to rolling exactly a total of 3 with two ten-sided die.

Therefore, the probability of rolling exactly 3 twice in a row and thus getting Gas Spore on the same two people in a row, is 0.04%, so it's very unlikely we'll see that happen.

What is more likely, is the probability of getting a 3rd Gas Spore on one of the people who got the 2nd Gas Spore cast. That comes out to 11.56% chance, but even that leaves nearly 90% chance it won't happen. When it does happen, however, we need use only one of our Hand of Protection cooldowns so we can then save the other Hand of Protection should it happen a second time on the next round of Gas Spores.

The Doctor's achievement simply require the person that drink the potion to turn into abomination to never use the ability(if it is normally used when the doc go into minor enrage of some sort(like Tyrannus in PoS) then we simply should have the tank use defensive cooldowns to survive it)

Try as I might, there simply wasn't enough information available to even bother writing something up on this one. The Abomination's Regurgitated Ooze ability sounds like it's meant mostly as a form of controlling the Volatile Ooze spawns. They cast Volatile Ooze Adhesive to a random raid member, which as described in the tooltip, roots the raid member while the ooze runs toward them. When the Volatile Ooze reaches said player, it uses Ooze Eruption, doing big AE damage if there aren't a lot of raid member stacked up.

Therefore, it's likely this achievement will mean keeping the raid somewhat close together such that anytime a Volatile Ooze Adhesive is cast on someone, we can stack up on them to ensure no deaths from the Eruption cast if we can't kill the Ooze before it reaches the targeted player.

[Kulldam]

Woops, delayed my reply to Rofl too long and didn't see Wild's message!

First, I don't believe two tanks is required. He doesn't do anything that requires a tank switch, like, say, Deathwhisper's threat reduction debuff. I believe the only reason some people used two tanks was to make the damage during Inhale Blight easier to manage using cooldowns, but, I think we can suck it up manage with one tank staggering their CD's.

It seems odd to be that people would use two tanks if they didn't have to, but who knows.

That said, if Khrash doesn't tank, we have no Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian/Ardent Defender, which is a huge damage reduction for the weaker self-cooldown classes (Ugra/Wild/Khee). Yes we'd have Aura Mastery, but there's no way the extra 130 SR from Aura Mastery can match the 20% damage reduction of Divine Guardian.

If we really find we want Aura Mastery and Beacon, probably better off having Kheelan DPS and Thawfore heal so Khrash can remain tanking.

When it comes to managing stacks, I believe I have a way to minimize the amount of RNG and get everyone two stacks. Assuming three Gas Spore casts per expunge, we can have the first two Spore targets let their spores explode only on themselves, so, after the first cast, we only have two people with 1 stack of inoculate each.

For the next Spore cast, everyone, save the first two targets stacks up with spore targets to get one stack. We should use one marked person for the ranged and one for the melee/tank to avoide giving two stacks of inoculate from one cast - if it even works this way. Assuming one of the first targets isn't targeted again by the second cast, we should have one stack on the entire raid with one more spore cast incoming. If a repeat target is chosen, we will have no choice but to hope they are not repeated again for the third cast. Hand of protection(s) can be utilized if necessary.

For the third cast, assuming no repeat targets, everyone will bunch up accordingly and get their second stack of inoculate. This should reduce the damage from Pungent Blight to a maximum of 22550 pre-resistances.

Using this strategy to manage the inoculate stacks, we should be able to easily survive two Pungent Blight casts. Using aura mastery on one and self cooldowns (Ugra can get a PW:S as his "cooldownlol") the other, we should be able to win the game. We just have to hope the RNG is nice to us on the second spore cast.

This sounds like the best option by far; great idea Wild!

The chances of one of the two initial Gas Spore targets getting cast on again by EITHER the second or third cast is 22.8%. So still, even if one of our initial targets gets a second stack on the second cast, the chance they'll get that third stack is still 0.04%, so virtually impossible.

PS. I suppose a super easy way to do this would be to HoP the first two spore targets, so we are guaranteed to only get two inoculate stacks on the raid. But, I think it's more important to save the HoP's for the second expunge, since timing could get hairy later in the fight with spore casts. Also, this would do nothing for the first two spore targets after the first expunge. Perhaps then would be a good time to use the HoP's? asdf

Yeah I'd say no reason to waste HoP unnecessarily. Also even though we're speaking of this like we get one shot at it, even if we have super shitty luck, we can just wipe and try again and again until the stars align.

[Wildhide]

Woops, delayed my reply to Rofl too long and didn't see Wild's message!

It seems odd to be that people would use two tanks if they didn't have to, but who knows.

That said, if Khrash doesn't tank, we have no Divine Sacrifice/Divine Guardian/Ardent Defender, which is a huge damage reduction for the weaker self-cooldown classes (Ugra/Wild/Khee). Yes we'd have Aura Mastery, but there's no way the extra 130 SR from Aura Mastery can match the 20% damage reduction of Divine Guardian.

If we really find we want Aura Mastery and Beacon, probably better off having Kheelan DPS and Thawfore heal so Khrash can remain tanking.

What are the breakpoints for resistances? I don't quite remember, but isn't 105 the breakpoint for a minimum resist of 10% with a maximum of 30%? So, 130 would skew the resistances a bit more towards the 30%, and 260 would make the minimum at least 20% with a possibility of more. Wouldn't this be better divine guardian's 20%?

Also, again, I am stupid and don't remember, but aren't resistances calculated before damage mitigation? This would make them slightly better than another damage mitigation, but I have never been one to crunch numbers - so I don't know.

About the tanking, I just figured Khrash's healing gear was better than Thaw's, so he was my first choice - either one would be fine. If Thaw heals, you and Khee could DPS with Khrash tanking. Ardent defender is the hax, especially on progression content.

We'll just have to wait and see just how hard this stuff is.

Moving on: Any thoughts on Putricide's achievement? Does anyone know what the Abom is supposed to use his special ability on?


EDIT: I found a site with the resistance formulas and the like http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/200...-math-and.html

A rough overview, with at least 215 resist (aura mastery gives 260), the minimum possible resist is 20%. So, this is at least as good as divine sac, and most likely better as the chance to not get a minimum resist is higher than the chance to get a minimum resist. I ramble.

[Kulldam]

Moving on: Any thoughts on Putricide's achievement? Does anyone know what the Abom is supposed to use his special ability on?

Apparently you're a hater and didn't read my post above.

Try as I might, there simply wasn't enough information available to even bother writing something up on this one. The Abomination's Regurgitated Ooze ability sounds like it's meant mostly as a form of controlling the Volatile Ooze spawns. They cast Volatile Ooze Adhesive to a random raid member, which as described in the tooltip, roots the raid member while the ooze runs toward them. When the Volatile Ooze reaches said player, it uses Ooze Eruption, doing big AE damage if there aren't a lot of raid member stacked up.

Therefore, it's likely this achievement will mean keeping the raid somewhat close together such that anytime a Volatile Ooze Adhesive is cast on someone, we can stack up on them to ensure no deaths from the Eruption cast if we can't kill the Ooze before it reaches the targeted player.

EDIT: I found a site with the resistance formulas and the like http://wowthinktank.blogspot.com/200...-math-and.html

A rough overview, with at least 215 resist (aura mastery gives 260), the minimum possible resist is 20%. So, this is at least as good as divine sac, and most likely better as the chance to not get a minimum resist is higher than the chance to get a minimum resist. I ramble.

Sort of, except you're ignoring that we'll already have 130 SR, so we're not gaining 260 SR, we're gaining 130. Also the table below shows the average resistances, rather than just the minimum, and we'd be going from 20% avg at 128, to 30% avg at 219. Whereas Divine Guardian (don't confuse Divine Guardian with Divine Sacrifice) will give us 20% flat damage reduction, which adding the 20% from 130 SR, is no doubt better than just 260 SR.


Again, may be irrelevant. As mentioned, if needed we can just make Thaw heal so we can get both, no biggie.

[Wildhide]

Sort of, except you're ignoring that we'll already have 130 SR, so we're not gaining 260 SR, we're gaining 130. Also the table below shows the average resistances, rather than just the minimum, and we'd be going from 20% avg at 128, to 30% avg at 219. Whereas Divine Guardian (don't confuse Divine Guardian with Divine Sacrifice) will give us 20% flat damage reduction, which adding the 20% from 130 SR, is no doubt better than just 260 SR.


Again, may be irrelevant. As mentioned, if needed we can just make Thaw heal so we can get both, no biggie.

I fail at written communication. By saying aura mastery gives us 260, I meant that as our total resistance after it was activated - not that our resist would be 130 + 260. Even at 260 resist, it'll be an avg resist of 30% vs a lvl 83 mob.

Also, unless the tooltip is incorrect, Divine Sacrifice is not raid wide. It be only party members, but I suppose if we put Khrash with the weaker members it would serve it's purpose.

Anyways, like you said, we can get both - making the expunge trivial.

Oh, and for the Putricide stuff, I fail at reading. That doesn't sound too bad; kinda fun actually.

[Kulldam]

Also, unless the tooltip is incorrect, Divine Sacrifice is not raid wide. It be only party members, but I suppose if we put Khrash with the weaker members it would serve it's purpose.

ASDF!

Divine Guardian is the crucial part -- not Divine Sacrifice! I even reminded you not to confuse the two above just to make sure!

Whereas Divine Guardian (don't confuse Divine Guardian with Divine Sacrifice) will give us 20% flat damage reduction, which adding the 20% from 130 SR, is no doubt better than just 260 SR.

Divine Guardian is a side effect of using Divine Sacrifice.

I fail at reading

QFT.