Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Icecrown Citadel, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He's kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King's slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who's constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I'm mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.

Putricide is a movement fight. There's a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds), and then not-stand-in-stuff. (Most of the stuff you'll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another.) It's not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid's ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff.

Let's take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.

For your 10-man raid makeup, you'll be aiming for two tanks. You'll want either two or three healers, with the rest of your raid being DPS characters. Whether you need two or three healers will depend on how sturdy your tanks are, as well as how awesome your raid healing is -- use your best judgement here. In 25-man, you'll need 2 off-tanks, and about twice as many healers. One of your off-tanks are going to have a special challenge in this fight, as he or she will have to pilot an abomination.

There are three basic phases to the Putricide fight. You get into the second phase when the Professor is at 80% health. The third phase begins at 35%. When the phases turn over, you'll get hit with Tear Gas, which will stun your entire raid while Putricide makes a dive for his chemical table.

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