Gripping Despair

[PrairieChicken]

What is its exact function? After reading the tooltip millions of time and stuff I still don't quite get what it does.

As far as I know it gives tank debuff stack and when its empowered it does raid aoe but I don't get the exact stacking mechanism or damage calculation.

[Jetjaguar]

It's a regular stacking tank debuff that you taunt swap to reset in phase 1-2. When you reach Phase 3 and it becomes empowered, it will explode on the raid for x amount of damage (depending on stacks) whenever the debuff duration hits 0 on the tanks. If you've ever done Prof. Putricide in ICC, the debuff is *somewhat* similar in that sense. Essentially, the more stacks a tank takes, the bigger the explosion on the raid for extra damage. After it explodes, it leaves a stacking debuff in the raid for the remainder of the encounter (depending on how many stacks exploded on the raid) making you take more damage from the explosion the next time it goes off. It's largely inconsequential in normal though.