Kasi

Don't shadow priests get a huge amount of + hit from talents?

 

Elendril

for us:

group 4
group 5
group 6
group 7
group 8

more or less in order ;)

loatheb damange meters aren't really all that meaningful because spore timing is huge. our first spore group is all fire mages to get ignite stacking early, then the remaining mages and war/rogue/hunter, then the rest of the melee in various chunks. i think i was #9 on dmg meters in our last kill, beating out a bunch of rogues and fury warriors, simply because i was the group 5 hunter giving the rogue/warrior trueshot.

 

kais[bo]

buffing by raid groups is not exactly necessairy though. :)

 

Elendril

i'm less pointing out that it's based on groups and more that damage meters are largely defined by spore order.

 

sulliwan

We used to base the spore rotation on which classes get more benefit from it (ie: hunters and locks before rogues). But after giving it some thought, we found out that the classes that do higher damage by default are also best to prioritize for the spores since aggro is somewhat of an issue before the spore buff for a few classes, considering the tank doesn't get that much rage from loatheb's attacks. So having the high dps classes go all out earlier seems to work out better than basing the rotation on which classes gain more from the +crit buff. Usually our damagemeters for loatheb are topped by 3-5 fire mages, all at around 1k-1.5k dps, then 2-3 fury warriors at 800-1k dps, then a mix of rogues and 2 frost mages and then hunters/warlocks/prot warriors in some random order.
Warlocks, as has been said, are just bad for this fight. Rogues hit the effective melee crit cap due to glancings and can't maximize the buff potential, hunters are unable to use their pets. So the classes that really get most benefit are mages and warriors(heroic strikes negate the melee crit cap from glancings).

 

alienangel

Hunters can use pets, pet just don't add much damage because they don't get the buff, they can't heal themselves, and well, they're pets. I think my generic wolf pulls out 6-8k damage before dying - horde pets would be worse off.

That's a good point about the aggro issue though, I'm going to poke for the warriors and rogues in my group to be pushed up the spore priority list :P

 

Trazhenko

I wonder if it would be worth it for rogues to stack maximum +hit gear (at the cost of crit gear) for that fight, since with the buff, every attack is going to be a miss/dodge(5% ?)/glance(40%)/crit. Trading all your misses for crits sounds nice. You still won't even come close to getting the full benefit of the buff though :-/.

 

◊ Quigon

JoW/BoW makes a fairly significant difference for warlocks in this fight that horde will not have, so I think if we're going to be discussing damage meters, you should consider within the faction.

We have a warlock who can hit top 10 against absolutely decked out rogues and mages and warriors on patchwerk quite consistently, but he can lose to me in DPS on loatheb (MT)... I notice the last damage meters shown show all the warlocks barely above the main tank. I'm guessing that is a horde guild. That is rougly how our meters look - other than the one warrior who shouldn't be there.

 

cladnin

Some interesting crit data for Loatheb, showing effectiveness for the spore buff on rogues. Yes, it does matter, but how much kind of surprised me. This is from our first kill. Rogue 3 and 5 didn't get any spore buffs. Rogue 3 never backed off Loatheb (no, I can't tell you why; I seriously don't know), and Rogue 5 was rumored to have his buff stolen from someone everytime, who knows! The odd part about the numbers is Rog4's melee critrate being so high. Rog4 actually has worse armor pieces than 1 2 and 3, but has our only Death's Sting. Anyways:

Rog1: BS-98%Crit Melee-45%Crit
Rog2: BS-93%Crit Melee-47%Crit
Rog3: BS-73%Crit Melee-45%Crit
Rog4: BS-98%Crit Melee-55%Crit
Rog5: BS-67%Crit Melee-45%Crit

The spore buff is pretty amazing for anyone who gets a large benefit from crit. If you have dps heavy warlocks, they get a lot (ours however don't get a lot of dps and keep curses on). Fire mages should be top priority, then frost mages. Rogues with 4/9bs and hunters with 6/9cs are amazing to get their buffs early (however alliance hunters need the mana less than horde). I generally group mages to go first, then highest dps rog/war+1hunter for next, and fill it in that order. The buff is simply amazing for 4/9bs, I can't get over it -_-.

 

thebuddha

Last week (our first kill) we had:

Group 1: 3 Firemages 1 Frostmage 1 Warlock
Group 2: 4 Mages + Warrior (I think; don't remember)
Group 3: 4 Rogues 1 DW Fury warrior
Group 4: 4 Rogues 1 DW Fury warrior
Group 5: 3 MS/Fury Warriors 2 hunters
Groups 6-8: Healers

Here is the damage meters from the fight (pretty much every buff except world/dm buffs):



I was kind of dissapointed with my damage since fully buffed I'm at like ~950 fire damage vs UD. I had more or less 0 ignite damage, though.

In retrospect, I think there is a lot of optimizations we can do. First off, I'm not sure why we had a frost mage and a warlock in the first spore group. That was definitely a waste.

For next week I think I'm looking at:

Group 1: 5 firemages
Group 2: Top 2 DW Fury warriors + Other mages
Group 3: 4 Rogues + Warrior
Group 4: 4 Rogues + Warrior
Group 5: Remaining DPS (hunter/warlock/nightfall bitch)
Groups 6-8: Healers

I'm curious to see how other guilds set up the groups.

 

Elendril

group 1 - 4 fire mages, 1 warlock (for imp buff)
group 2 - 2 fire mages, 1 fury war, 1 rogue, 1 hunter
group 3 - 1 warrior, 3 rogues, 1 hunter
group 4 - 2 warrior, 2 rogue, 1 hunter
group 5 - rest of the DPS
group 6-7 - healers

one group (our druids) don't get the buff, because of the timing of the spore buff running out on the first group and the relative benefit of crit for them (they don't have much spell dmg gear to DPS and no inspiration type talent to maximize crit value)

 

◊ Quigon

The people running less than 4 fire mages... you might be surprised but that ignite is falling off way more than you might expect.

 

◊ Praetorian

Our first spore group is always 5 mages. Then a group with two fury warriors, two sword rogues, and a shaman. Then another group with one shaman and warriors/rogues (dagger rogues, who get less from the buff). Then another shaman+melee group with a mage stuck in there if we have six. Then a shaman+hunters group. Then the rest is just a mishmash of healers and warlocks.

 

Lethshyish

Ouch.

I have not fought loatab yet but I know that is a huge kick in the face for us. Does the debuff go to life stealing warlocks?

If the fight is more then 3 min (which I'm guessing it is by the way everyone's talking about it) a warlock should not be able to beat other dps classes unless there is a huge skill/gear gap between them.

grelm is right that many warlocks waste their potential by being lazy and not thinking about what they are doing. We can do really well on many fights but this sounds like on in paticular where we get shafted.

I'm confident that I won't be near the bottem of my guild's damage meter when we get to him, but it really looks like they should beat me if they are trying as hard, and I'm sure the best rogues and mages will beat me if they are playing as well or better.

 

Dolohov

Yeah, I'm interested to find out whether Drain Life, Siphon Life and - most importantly - Voidwalker Demonic Sacrifice are affected by Loatheb's healing debuff. If they're not affected, I don't understand why a 9/21/21, 5/5 Doomcaller Warlock who uses Shadow Ward and Greater Dreamless Sleep Potions intelligently can't do respectable DPS.

 

Nurru

Siphon Life, Drain Life and Demonic Sacrifice do not trigger the debuff. The only things that do are targetable or group healing and shielding effects. So things like Ice Barrier, Divine Shield and Ice Block don't trigger it either.

< Aislinana> Why would it be my job to sleep with vontre? Don't I have standards?

 

Grelm

As mentioned above, they do not count. Nor does Deathcoil.

However, Shadow Ward, will not stack with Greater Shadow Pots or Normal Shadow pots, unless the ammount of Shadow Ward absorbtion is greater than the ammount of absorb left remaining on the Potion buff. This results in 'wasted' potion absorbtion more often than not. It's a nice alternative for those "Eat it" dooms.. but in a DPS race fight where you can sustain yourself without it.. it seems like a fairly marginal ammount of absorbtion for some lost mana/time. Just my personal observation with it. The normal consumable rotation itself.. is enough to sustain your life through the entire fight if DPS is on par.

As for Greater Dreamless Sleep.. not a great idea. 12 seconds is an eternity on Loatheb and more importantly, it eats your potion timer for GSP.

Personally, I start tapping early before the first doom hits, so I can let Siphon/Deathcoil get me back up to full before the 2min doom hits. After that it's fairly simple to keep up Siphon, use a well timed drain or two.. and be smart about when you are lifetaping.

 

Clockwork

Uh... few things.
First, Loatheb glances like a level 62, which is ~25% of the time. So you you can still crit 75% of the time. So only around 5-10% crit is wasted for a fury warrior.
Second, as a fury warrior, with that sort of buff, which provides insane rage generation through even just your offhand, I am HSing on around 3/4 of my swings. HS is not subject to glancing blows.
Third, a though a hunter may personally gain more from the buff, raid DPS would decrease overall by denying the warrior the buff till the end.




Kill was somewhere around 5:00. And yes, I know my DPS for that fight was 1337.

 

Morrigan

Cannot confirm this. My statistics say 40% glancing hits on Loatheb.
But you're probably right about the rest.

 

Clockwork

*Shrug* That's what we found over a few hours of learning wipes on our first night 2 months ago.

 

rochan

What buffs did you have and what is your profile?

 

◊ Oggie

Eh?
BEcause of aggro? I'm missing something here.

 

Kody

Do dagger rogues really get so little from windfury? Figured they'd outdamage frost mages at least. Ours is:

Fire Mage(singular most the time since they're the one that got the ignites) -> DW Warriors -> Fire mages -> SS Rogue(Rochan)/Dagger rogues -> Frost Mages -> Hunters -> Warlocks in terms of damage.

We always put the buff on the mages first, then a group with 3 warriors, a hunter(TSA), and a rogue, then we spread out the other warriors in the next couple groups for battle shout on the rogues. There's always a hunter in each warrior/rogue group for TSA as well.

 

Kody

DW fury warriors with that buff up will have flurry up almost indefinitely. You basically want it on them asap.

 

Clockwork

http://www.ctprofiles.net/478745

We do the world buff cheese to do Loatheb and Gothik in succession. I think that night I had Rend, DM, and ZG. No Ony/Nef head IIRC. Then the usual assortment of raid buffs/pots.