Viscidus

Viscidus is a giant poisonous ooze and an optional boss in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, found in a cavern beyond Fankriss the Unyielding. Ordinary attacks barely hurt him. To kill him, a raid has to freeze him solid with frost attacks, shatter him with melee blows, and then kill the globs he splits into before they crawl back together. Many guilds skipped him for a long time because the fight needed a raid full of frost damage.

Background

The game says almost nothing about where Viscidus came from. He is a huge green slime with the skull of some victim floating inside him, and he lurks in a side cavern of the hive below the temple. Like the rest of the temple's creatures, he serves the qiraji and their god, the Old God C'Thun. He resets if he's pulled out of his room.

Abilities

• Damage reduction: Viscidus takes half damage from all attacks.
• Poison Shock: a burst of nature damage that hits everyone within about 15 yards of him every few seconds.
• Poison Volley: a nature bolt that hits the whole raid, ignores line of sight, and leaves a poison that ticks for heavy damage until cured.
• Toxin clouds: every half minute or so he spits at a single player, and a cloud of poison forms where it lands. It deals heavy damage and slows anyone inside it, and its area is larger than it looks.
• Freezing: frost attacks slow him in stages. He begins to slow, then freezes up, and finally freezes solid and stops moving and attacking. What counts is the number of frost hits, not how big they are.
• Shattering: once frozen, he must be hit with enough melee attacks before he thaws. He cracks, then looks ready to shatter, then explodes.
• Globs of Viscidus: when he shatters, he breaks into up to 20 globs, each worth 5% of his health, that slowly move back to the middle of the room. Every glob killed on the way removes its share of his health for good. When the survivors reach the middle, he reforms with whatever health they carry. If he shatters below 5% health, he dies.

Strategy

The fight is a loop: freeze, shatter, kill the globs, repeat.

Frost damage comes from everywhere it can. Mages spam the lowest rank of Frostbolt, since it's the hit count that matters, shamans use Frost Shock, and everyone else uses frost wands, frost oils on their weapons, or other frost-dealing items. Once he's frozen, all melee and many ranged players rush in to hit him, while staying out of Poison Shock range at other times.

When he explodes, the globs spread in a circle around the room and start moving inward, speeding up as they go. The raid kills as many as it can, focusing one glob at a time. Raids that kill most of the globs each cycle take a big chunk of his health; raids that let them through face him again almost at full strength.

Throughout the fight, nature resistance gear and cures matter. Poison Volley ticks hard, so shamans' totems, druids and paladins keep the poison off, and nature protection potions help. Healers watch for players caught in toxin clouds.

Because the fight needed many mages and shamans, plenty of guilds left Viscidus for later. That made him a good place to farm the boots and shoulder tokens for the temple's armor sets once a raid was ready.

Loot

From our database (patch 1.12):

The [[forever:item:20928]] and [[forever:item:20932]] are tokens for the Tier 2.5 sets: players trade them, with Brood of Nozdormu reputation, for their class's boots or shoulders, such as [[forever:quest:8544]] for warriors. The [[forever:item:21625]] is a healer's trinket that shields the targets of the wearer's heals for 15% of the amount healed. The [[forever:item:21622]] is a caster sword with 72 spell damage and healing.

Quests

• [[forever:quest:8579]]: the [[forever:item:21229]] goes to [[forever:npc:15503]] at the temple entrance for Brood of Nozdormu reputation.

Sources

• Viscidus, Warcraft Wiki
• Temple of Ahn'Qiraj, Warcraft Wiki