Loatheb looks slightly complicated but after a few tries becomes easy to understand. It requires people to look outwards and pay attention. You only need to have one tank on him for the entire encounter.
Gimmicks
Everyone gets a 16 second debuff that reduces healing by 100%. After that, you have a 4 second window to heal players up before the debuff gets reapplied.
Secondly, something else that makes this fight that much easier is a different debuff called Fungal Creep. There are going to be periodic mobs called Spores that will spawn. When you destroy them, they give 5 players the Fungal Creep debuff. It increases your critical chance by 50% and your spells cause no threat. The Spores die relatively quick and should take no more than 4 spells before they spontaneously combust.
Positioning
Set up shop on the central platform.
Healing Makeup
Matt’s group:
- Resto Shaman
- Holy Paladin
- CoH Priest (me!)
You’ll definitely want an AoE healer for this fight. Try to time your heal around the warnings that appear. We tasked the Paladin to do nothing but heal the main tank on this fight. The Resto Shaman would heal group 2 while I was parked in group 1. The mechanics to Chain Heal has changed slightly so that if you target the initial player with the spell, it will only jump to other party members instead of going raid wide. With the Glyph, it will bounce to 4 targets total.
3 seconds before the debuff wears off, light up a Prayer of Healing. You want to time your heal so that it lands just as it wears off and it sets you up for 2 or even 3 Circle of Healing taps on the 2nd group.
What about the debuff phase?
At this stage, all you need to worry about is wanding and doing DPS. Keep an eye on your mana. Be sure you don’t DPS more than you have to. Your Power Word: Shield will still work. Don’t hesitate to throw that up there whenever you get the chance on your tank.
Changelog
9/23/08 – Original post