Raid Rx: Healing through Professor Putricide

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related.

The professor has a masters degree in potions and a Ph.D in raid wiping. Even the most stalwart of healers will have face a barrage of obstacles that will affect healing ability. This guy is my personal Achilles heel in Icecrown so far. Not more than a few days ago, I went an embarrassing 8 for 8 on Malleable Goo deaths. Talk about my pride being wounded. I'm supposed to be good at dodging stuff that comes flying toward me not running into them or getting drilled in the face by this green exploding goo.

Anyway, keep reading for my awesome mistakes and what I learned from them.

I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you have a basic understanding of the Professor Putricide encounter. This article is meant mainly for the healers.

Alright, on to phase 1!

Phase 1

Pick two tank healers to cover your tank on Professor Putricide. If one of them gets focused by a green slime or has to kite the orange cloud, at least you'll have one more for support. In any case, this early phase is a light one and there isn't a whole lot of healing that needs to be done. You can probably get away with five healers. If your DPS is jaw-droppingly amazing, take 6 with you instead.

Green slime

Get as far away as possible from where the Volatile Ooze is going to spawn (under the green faucet or tap thing). If you get targeted, you want to give your DPS players as much time as possible to blow it up before that mess even gets near you. Chances are though, it is going to get near you. With the exception of the tank healers, every healer needs to collapse onto the green slime target to help distribute the healing. Any melee DPS players should also be in range to distribute. This is the time to apply any mitigation spells (Power Word: Shield) or HoT spells like Wild Growth on the players that are about to make contact with it.

Pro tip: Try to position yourself so that when the green slime hits, it propels you in the direction of where Putricide is being kited to. You want to stand so that you are standing between the Professor and the slime as it hits the marked player.

Orange slime

Okay so it's more of a Gas Cloud (and not just any ordinary gas cloud) as opposed to a slime. Whatever you do, if you happen to be the player affected by Expunged Gas, do not run toward the Gas Cloud! Doing so leads to a wipe, an angry raid leader, and being the laughing stock of the raid for the next millennium. You do not want to be that guy.

It might be a smart move to assign a healer specifically dedicated to keeping the slime targets alive.

Remember, start off as far as possible away from the orange spawn (the green wall where the green slime spawns is a good choice as the orange slime spawns underneath the orange faucet). When it appears, wait a few seconds for it to come closer, then start running toward Putricide's potion table, kissing it, and then running along the orange wall. You don't have to actually kiss the table but you should run along the outer part as much as you can to kite it.

If you're the healer being targeted, load yourself up with HoTs like Renew and such. Don't stop for anything. Healing the Putricide tank? Alert your partner just in case.

Pro tip: If you think your raid can handle it, have the tank kite Putricide in a path parallel to the orange slime path. It does add a slight bit of extra damage to the boss due to incidental AoE damage from your players.

Phase 2

Congratulations for reaching the tear gas phase! Everything is exactly the same as phase 1 except there are a few additions. So keep avoiding the slimes and the gas clouds along with the other crap that takes place here.

Okay, so it isn't quite the tear gas phase but it has worn off now.

In addition to the green slime and orange slime running around duties, there are two extra things to watch out for.

Malleable Goo - You can refer to this as the Matticus-slayer. I am either too slow, unlucky, or just plain bad (probably variations of all 3). To clarify, it isn't the goo alone that manages to kill me. It is usually the goo plus some other thing. Although I'm the last person that should be advising you on this, here are some excellent defensive goo tactics.

• Avoid the wall: Do not stand next to the wall when healing. If the goo comes your way, you will have zero chance at all whatsoever to survive.

• Turn on all sounds, alarms, klaxons, and colors: You'll want to know when that goo hits. For some reason, I tend to tunnel vision a lot especially when I'm one of the tank healers. I found that when I was healing the raid overall, I had a much lower goo death rate.

• Stand on the melee: I haven't yet tried this myself, but it seems to work in theory. The goo appears to target ranged players most of the time. So why not stand on the players who it will target the least, like the melee players? There is just one danger to this plan...

Choking Gas Bombs inflict Choking Gas to players around them. If you plan on staying with the melee, you better be able to keep up with them. Otherwise, these gas bomb explosions might detonate and wreck you.

This phase takes up most of the fight. As Putricide's health gradually closes in on the 35% mark, every healer should start moving toward his lab desk. This is where Putricide will go as phase 3 is entered. The tanks will be picking him up here and it is absolutely crucial that healers are within range.

Phase 3

When you position yourselves, it is important that you not stand where the tank needs to kite Putricide to. The Professor is going to continually spawn acid pools and it is crucial to not be standing in a spot where the tank needs to kite him to.

He hits like a freight train. Damage and attack speed is increased by 50% courtesy of Mutated Strength. Keep him focused and pay strict attention to your target of target frames. Your tanks will be rotating every so often to distribute his Mutated Plague debuff. Keep your cooldowns ready. Ideally, your tanks will use their cooldowns when they taunt to pick up Putricide. Overlap yours after a few seconds to give yourself a stronger chance of survival.

Unfortunately, there isn't much else you can do here as it is a fairly straight forward burn phase. The success is going to rest on the abilities and DPS output of your raid. Hold the line!

Want some more advice for working with the healers in your guild? Raid Rx has you covered with all there is to know! Need raid or guild healing advice? E-mail me at matticus@wow.com and you could see a future post addressing your question. Looking for less healer-centric raiding advice? Take a look at our raiding column Ready Check.