While there were many recipes and items that were widely publicised before the launch of phase 5 some useful items definitely flew under the raider. Not least because of which bosses actually turned out to be hard in AQ40.
Viscidus – the hardest Nature resistance fight
Viscidus turned out to be the hardest boss in AQ40, and also the main reason to bring along Nature resistance gear. The blob has some unique mechanics relating to frost damage and he uses a poison volley. This means that anything that can provide instances of frost damage will be extremely useful, and anything that removes poisons as well.
Frost Oil
Frost Oil is an alchemy consumable that you apply to your weapon. It provides a frost damage proc that will help on Viscidus. This is so necessary for melee that prices on Khadgar’s Whisker and Wintersbite has gone through the roof. Every Melee player will want to have two of these for every AQ40 raid. Getting materials is hard, but it should be a really good item.
The recipe is sold by Bro’kin in the Alterac mountains, and can also be purchased on the AH by someone who got it from the vendor.
Posion removal
There are several different choices for poison removal, and they are all useful for Viscidus. In fact removing poison removes the main difficulty of the encounter and is definitely suggested. The two main poison removals to consider are Powerful Anti-Venom from First Aid and Elixir of Poison Resistance from alchemy.
Powerful Anti-venom
The recipe for Powerful Anti-Venom comes from Argent Dawn. You need to be honored, which is fairly easy to get, by just running Stratholme and Scholomance. It requires one Huge Venom Sac which drops from bugs and scorpids in Silithus primarily. The Anti-Venom has a one minute cooldown, so it can’t be spammed but it can often be a cheap alternative so you will want to use it on cooldown.
Elixir of Poison Resistance
Elixir of Poison Resistance does not have a meaningful cooldown. This makes it a fantastic option for Viscidus. The recipe is a random world drop, so you will likely have to buy it from the AH to get it, and the price is quite high. Another big issue with the Elixir is the material requirement. You need Large Venom Sacs and these only drop from low level spiders and scorpids. Even if these mobs can be farmed effectively by high level players most will not bother to do so, so the supply is usually very limited. On my realm the venom sacs sell for less than the elixir does, and the supply of venom sacs is almost non-existant.
TSM Settings
You can find my updated Alchemy setup as well as a setup for selling the Anti-Venom linked. It uses both crafting operations and my usual spread of stack sizes. I suggest changing the quantity to whatever works well on your realm after you have experimented for a bit.