A Tale of Loatheb - or, "Terrible, terrible fight design"Follow

My guild got a first-kill Heigan in on Friday (yay and such), although the fact that we did it with 33 people in the raid is... a little disconcerting. Nevertheless, we started in on Loatheb after finishing up the other bosses we hadn't downed on Sunday, then tinkering with him for a few minutes at the end of the raid to get the basic fight mechanics down. We went in with a full raid and tons of consumables to throw at him.

We're making progress, although we do still have some issues (namely that our DPS isn't high enough and we still have people not popping the right consumables at the right times; we may go for some world buffs eventually, but we're not sure if it's worth the effort/risk)... but this is less about that and more about the fact that the fight design for this encounter is terrible. Just... terrible. Godawful, balls-to-the-wall suck.

What kind of idiot at Blizzard thought that a fight that absolutely REQUIRES heavy consumable useage each and every attempt/kill (and the consumable useage NEVER GOES AWAY, even with better gear, unlike the practice of popping DPS pots for some bosses and then stopping once they've been downed a few times) was a good idea? And to make it GREATER SHADOW PROTECTION POTIONS? The most difficult/annoying potion to farm, bar none? (Yay for requiring FOUR Fadeleaf/Gravemoss plus a Dreamfoil for each!)

I feel like finding the developer and smashing his face into his monitor. It's just... so... stupid. Creative idea at the start, but the mechanics/end result are just... retarded.

For those of you who are wondering, Loatheb is... an interesting boss. He puts a linked cooldown on ALL healing/shielding effects of one minute... which means that healers can't cast very often. Which is actually kind of neat - you get to set up a classic EQ-style CHeal chain, and the rest of the time the healers can (and should) be throwing up DPS. Moreover, during the fight Fungal Spores spawn in the room that give the closest five people a buff that increases physical crit by 50%, spell crit by 60% and reduces all threat to zero - or, to put it another way, "you gets to hits things hard".

The problem lies in the fact that he uses a raid-wide AE effect called "Impending Doom" (similar to Lucifron's magic AoE, but typeless - can't be dispelled) starting at two minutes into the fight and every 30s thereafter. As a practical matter, this means you start the fight with a Greater Shadow Protection Potion... pop another one at two minutes, then go through a variety of other consumables to ensure you stay alive (Healthstone, Bandages, etc).

It's... kind of creative, and honestly as a Warrior I'm one of the classes least hurt (the buff makes Recklessness a non-factor so you can use Shield Wall, plus Lifegiving Gem is essentially a free potion to either replace a GSPP or let you use a cheap one/health potion and Defensive Stance helps mitigate the damage if you pop it right before it hits) but I feel for my raid buddies who can't skimp out on consumables at all. It's... a rough fight in terms of consumables, and even if you one-shot him every week you're still blowing a rather hefty chunk of money in pursuit of a rather stupid encounter.

Sigh. The overall loot quality is garbage, too.

/agree

blowing lots of consumables to learn an encounter is ok. like patchwerk, broodlord, rag before. once your gear and practice improves, you can reduce consumables and eventually do it without.

the only thing that would help here is if each raid member had like 12k hp to survive several of the impending dooms. what about shadow resist gear? well, that would reduce your dps too much. maybe after a few level-ups (in bc) your dps is high enough to be able to wear sr gear.

it's stupid that you have to spend (correct me if i'm wrong) 3 greater shadow prot pots per raid member for each and every kill. plus all the other consumables. and imagine progress night on him. at some point you will have to start poting and will still wipe, because you will only see the later stages of the encounter if you pot heavily. not like "ok, we got him to 30%, we have it down. pot up and kill." and warlocks will go through ridiculous amounts of soulstones (more than they can carry, so hello to farming between attempts).

otherwise, the heal chain and fungal spore ideas are pretty nifty, i love that aspect, but the rest is just stupid...

world buffs are essential

edit: and oh kinda stupid to use pots on all tries, just do some tries if you get him to 50-60% before 1st curse you can pop world buffs and pots and flasks and its gg


Edited, Dec 5th 2006 8:51am by mettuZ

We didn't pot on all tries, we waited until the fight was stable until about the 3:00 mark, when people (healers) would start dropping dead every time. Still need more DPS from somewhere, though; may end up doing world buffs, not sure yet.

50% at the two-minute mark would be... a little fast, though, (i.e. could kill before the four-minute mark pretty easily when you factor in executes) although I'm trying to get a good handle on what exactly our DPS should be looking like for a kill run. Figuring that we have mostly DPS in the first five groups, after 60 seconds all relevant groups should be buffed... so... if you figure that the raid will live until at least 5:25, if there was a linear damage progression you should have Loatheb at around 65%... factoring in Executes and the damage skew due to some groups not getting the crit buff until later, if we can get him to 70% at the 2 minute mark he should go down. We were getting close to that but not quite there with no world buffs.

/agree

It's a fight that consumes thousands upon thousands of gold to learn and yet remains inordinantly expensive once you've learned it.

Though I disagree about the loot: Brimstone + T3 legs = hot ;)

We use a shadow priest in the MT group as his dps + healing on VE (between curse drops) works out quite nicely.

We still use world buffs on it. Go in, do 1-2 dry runs to make sure healers don't **** up their rotation, go back to Org to pass out pots and turn in head, fly to Grom'gol for ZG buff, snag the EPL stam buff and then on into Loatheb. Better hope everyone is paying attention because wipe = no Loatheb for the week =P


Grats on Heigan too btw. Though really it's a fight that doesn't need anywhere near 40 people.... he has absolute crap for hp. The only reason to have 40 people is to mitigate the effect of the uncoordinated people that die to the dance lol.

You know when you're in a major city or certain zones (i.e. STV) and suddenly there's a strange /yell text and lightning comes down from the sky, giving you a random 1-2 hour buff? That's a world buff :)

They're connected to turning in certain items.

The legs I'll agree with; the Brimstone staff really isn't that great (compared to Wraith + Offhand, f'rexample, and Maex isn't... at all hard). The ring is pretty nice too for melee, but still, the overall loot isn't anywhere near as good as Maex (Kiss of the Spider, Wraith Blade) or Thaddius (Abom BP, Castigator, Spire of Twilight).



Yeah... we had about 25 people make it through the first dance phase (and they all survived, saved for a few tunnel deaths - mostly bad luck on timing his stage phase). Still disconcerting to have a first boss kill with quite a bit less than a full raid.

On one of our earlier wipes we had the entire raid wipe save the main tank and two healers (Priest and a Druid). They survived and kept him alive for six more rotations while the tank whittled Heigan down about 6% by himself (Thunderfury go!). Heigan isn't at all hard... the dances just weed out the slower/stupider players, although the tunnel does suck. (And yes, if there are less than a certain number of players Heigan won't teleport).

Of course, right at 19% (number one damage dealer up to that point, even as a melee!) as I get ready to Death Wish/Recklessness/Kiss of the Spider Heigan ports me to the tunnel. I kind of go... okay, make it out, round the corner and Heigan ports me back to the start with about three seconds before the teleport.

-_- *******.

Edited, Dec 5th 2006 10:28am by RPZip

wraith blade + twin emps offhand > brimstone staff. less stats, but more damage.

yeah, i just rewatched a vid, he never resists any of it. from the gear he's wearing, he should have low sr, so it's hard to say if he was just unlucky that he didn't partially resist on the 3 or 4 dooms.
but maybe it's inteneded that way (money sink encounter).

you can reduce the pot need somewhat by increasing dps (gear improvements), but it's still stupid that you need to use that many pots or even world buffs on a weekly basis just to get your kill and be able to advance deeper into the instance. the world buffs not just for having to leave the instance and only get one chance, but for wasting the 2-3 hours for killing nef. bah.

I'm aware of the differences, I have that combo >.> My point was that you only get to kill each boss once per week and there's no guarantee that you'll get what you want... my current guild has only seen one Wraith Blade drop since they've been in Naxx. Brimstone is still an excellent staff, especially for warlocks who care less about crit. You trade 2 damage and 1 crit (which is near useless for an affliction lock) for a significant stat upgrade.

And we usually just buy people's Nef head; easier than wasting the time on a BWL run :( Still lame and a huge waste of time having to GET the buffs and get back to the instance... ugh.

interesting trivia: loatheb is an anagram of healbot. yes, blizzard is laughing right now.