A Rogue in Icecrown Citadel – Rotface

As with all of my guides, this is not intended to be a strategy for the whole raid.  It is only intended for rogues and other melee dps classes.  For a full strategy guide check WoWWiki .

The Rotface fight is basically the opposite of his sibling/friend/whatever Festergut.  Where Festergut is a pure stand-still dps race, Rotface is about situational awareness, mobility, and keeping out of the bad stuff.

The Rotface fight needs two tanks – one for Rotface and another for the slimes.  If you use your Tricks of the Trade to send threat to the tank, then set it to the Rotface tank.  When the fight opens, you’ll settle in behind the boss and start your attack rotation.  Get as much damage done as you can quickly, because you won’t be standing there for long.  Its not a bad idea to pop some cooldowns right off the bat before things start to get hectic.

The easy part – Rotface vomits occasionally in an arbitrary direction, doing damage to anyone in melee range that he faces.  Its easy to avoid.  He turns and faces someone other than the tank and starts to vomit.  You strafe to his other side or run through him and keep attacking.  There are some strategies that organize the raid into two parts (right foot and left foot) and has them move as a group to avoid the vomit.  I’ve never found that to be necessary on 10-man, although it might be more important in 25.  If he turns toward you, move to another side.  He has no cleave so its not a problem if you end up in front of him when he’s done vomiting.

The tricky part is when you get targeted with a Mutated Infection.  It puts a DoT on you and reduces the healing you receive by 50%.  Your Cloak of Shadows will get rid of it but DON’T CLOAK YET. Be patient…

After 12 seconds with the Mutated Infection, or whenever it is dispelled, the infection goes away but a Little Ooze will spawn and aggro on whoever had the infection.  It has essentially infinite aggro, so it can’t be taunted away.  It will chase its target and attack and also do AoE damage.

The way to get rid of it is to get it near another Little Ooze.  When two Little Oozes are close, they merge into a Big Ooze.  Big Oozes can be taunted and kited.

So here’s what a rogue should do.  If you get Mutated Infection, there is no rush.  As long as the healers know you have it, they can HoT you and you won’t die.  You can even keep dpsing the boss for a few more seconds.  After a couple of seconds, drop one last finisher on Rotface and then go out to find the Ooze tank, who will be circling the edge of the room.  Avoid stepping in any green stuff, of course.

You will find the Ooze tank and he will probably be kiting another ooze.  Get in front of his path.  At that time, you can Cloak to get rid of the Mutated Infection (or let a paladin or priest dispel it if you prefer).  The Little Ooze will spawn and start to attack you, but should quickly merge with the other ooze.  Then you want to get out of there quickly, because the big ooze does significant AoE damage.

This is the most crucial part of the fight.  If raiders aren’t managing their infections properly and getting the oozes merged, then the healers will have a hard time with the damage on multiple targets.  You need to find the ooze tank quickly and get the ooze absorbed efficiently.  Sprint is useful here because it will get you to the ooze tank in a hurry, and also gets you out of AoE damage range of the ooze as it follows you.

Note that it is your job to make sure that your Little Ooze merges before you run back to the raid.  If you jump the gun, you’ll drag the Little Ooze back into the raid with you which will do AoE damage to everyone.

Avoid the green puddles which are randomly around the room.  Also, Professor Putricide floods 1/4 of the room at a time with slime, so don’t run in that either.  If the ooze tank is in the slime, meet him on the other side of the pool.

Once your ooze is merged, go back to the boss and get back to doing damage.  Feel free to use your cooldowns whenever they are up.  If you get a Mutated Infection just as you pop a cooldown you can stay on Rotface for a few more seconds and pump out some more dps before running toward the ooze tank.

There’s one more thing to worry about.  When the Big Ooze has absorbed 5 Little Oozes it becomes Unstable.  It does a lot of AoE damage and sprays slime around.  From everything I have read, it seems like the slime is targeted at the time that it becomes Unstable.  So if your raid moves out to the edge of the room, you will avoid it completely.  Let your tank choose what direction to go, and he’ll pull Rotface that way.  You can just follow along and keep doing damage.

Threat won’t be a problem on this fight.  Since you’ll spend a fair amount of time off target as you run around with the Mutated Infection, the tank should be able to build a big threat lead, so you can use your Tricks on another dps.

This fight is not too hard as dps.  Its a big strain on healers and a kiting test for the ooze tank.  Once the ooze tank gets the rhythm down the rest of the fight should fall into place.

There’s not much in the way of rogue drops for you on 10-man.  There is a pretty good thrown weapon – Gluth’s Fetching Knife, or a fist weapon – Abomination Knuckles.

The 25-man fight has a great Mutilate 1.8 speed dagger – Rib Spreader.  A nice iLvL 264 ring called the Seal of Many Mouths drops here as well.  Lastly, there is a nice pair of gloves with some Armor Pen for you combat rogues – Aldriana’s Gloves of Secrecy.  That name is a tribute to the EJ theorycrafter well-known for her dps spreadsheets.