Just a few general strategy questions since hitting a snag at Loatheb.
- Can anyone confirm if Vampiric Embrace works on the Loatheb fight? Is it dispelled every 30 seconds along with other curses or is it treated like the hotfixed pre-tbc patch to prevent using this ability?
- Are most guilds saving Loatheb for last and going at it with full world buffs after 4H is down?
- Any Horde specific strats for the fight like double stacking shamans in tank group?
- Would a beefy bear tank offer any advantages over a warrior in this fight?
#1: I just looked at a random Spriest log on the rankings. https://classic.warcraftlogs.com/reports/84aNR7JGf6jKZvX3#fight=1&type=auras&view=events&hostility=1&spells=debuffs&ability=15286
It is dispelled every 30 seconds and does get affected by the “1 heal per minute” restriction.
#4: From my analysis with logs in the last few days, Loatheb doesn’t crush, which is normally one of the weaknesses that Bears have in that they can’t reduce crush rates like Warriors can as they don’t have a Shield Block-like ability. That certainly makes Bears a lot better than they otherwise would be.
Loatheb still crits, and Warriors can reduce that crit rate better than Bears can, through both defense on gear and Shield Block.
Bears have higher armor, which helps.
I don’t know what avoidance difference there is between the two specs. If it’s close, Bears might be better overall due to the better armor in spite of the increased incoming crit rate. If Warriors have better avoidance, I’d expect them to be better.
Do you think frenzied regeneration would put bear over warrior potentially for this fight?
same here. stuck on loatheb. its a matter of having enough dps to kill the boss before your healers become jumbled up and cant heal the tank by the time it becomes their turn again. also, everyone should use a greater shadow resistance potion before the pull to ensure they stay alive during the fight.
it is ideal to prioritize loatheb while your group has intact world buffs. the only other bosses where wbuffs make a noticeable difference in difficulty are patchwerk, sapph, and to a lesser extent KT. this is why a lot of groups go construct -> plague wing.
Warriors are better at pure mitigation. Block being able to consistently shave 200+ off of the attacks, along with having Parries, makes us better than bears. Since threat isn’t an issue on this fight after the first 20-30 seconds, you should use only enough threat gear to keep an early lead.
I appreciate everyone’s feedback
Warriors can get reasonably close to armour cap with inspiration and consumables and also have 10% reduction from defensive stance vs bears.
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Sooo… I looked a bit more at the logs, could you run 2 spriests and group swap every 30 seconds to keep up VE healing nearly 100% lol?
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Vampiric Embrace is on the corrupted mind 1 heal per minute debuff, and it’s a curse and Loatheb decurses himself every 30 seconds.
I found healing the tank to be much less of an issue than just killing him before the Dooms get to be too much damage for the raids personals to keep themselves up.
Loatheb is much easier so if you cant down him you’re probably not gonna kill 4h but buffs do help. They can also be useful on 4h though if your dps is high enough to do the burn Thane strat which simplifies the fight considerably
so, say after an initial decurse, spriests puts on VE, gets the debuff, dps/heals like crazy for a 30 second window until next decurse, waits another 30 seconds until debuff falls off, applies VE right after next decurse. Every other decurse cycle is healed by 1 shadow priest. If you have 2 shadow priests and group swap, or just 2 in tank group to begin with, could get close to 100% uptime in tank group for VE healing.
Again, the tank healing really isn’t the issue. It could have some value for dps groups if you time it around the Dooms though, but you’re still possibly better off having the SP just drop form once a minute to throw out a Gheal/POH
Agreed, but it is nice to have decent baseline heals for that group and gives some extra breathing room while still putting out some dps. Would allow locks in that group to life tap and throw more dps since consumables CD’s are saved for doom spike damage. Not saying it’s the most optimal way to fight boss, but I’m just trying to give the maximum room for mistakes in our strat in case someone gets sleepy.
Too bad s priests deal garbage dmg and the fight is a dps race.
Looking at napkin math the healing is not appreciably different from just throwing out a max rank prayer of healing, unless you’re a 99th percentile shadow priest.
A 90th percentile shadow priest would heal their group for 2200 over 30 seconds. Certainly worse than greater heal for a tank. Marginal use for DPS groups.
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That’s great and all, and I’m really happy for you as a warlock, but for this particular fight who cares. As you said, it’s a DPS race, and while spriests may not be putting out warlock numbers, logs show that spriests are putting out more healing and damage than the other priests.
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Looking at the log linked by the 2nd poster shows shadow priest healed for 33% more HPS over next top healer (on tank) and about 100% more than their median healer. Granted the spriest was a pretty pink parser and this wasn’t super burst-y healing. The extra heals on the tank party, which had 2 locks, also allowed at least 1 lock in the group the luxury of not using drain health. It really looks like the 1 spriest was extremely useful for the fight. 2 may be overkill, but if it smoothed out the fight and saves world buffs or is used to help keep a top dps group alive as long as possible during the fight to mitigate a minor screw up and consistently down the boss, it may be worth playing around with even if it violates the sacred meta.
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I feel it fair to point out that your guild’s shadow priest does like half the damage of that guy.
Hmm… That’s a good reason help a spriest out with a spellpower flask during progression attempts. Anyway, we’ll muddle through the fight one way or the other.