After a succesfull Gothik attempt we figured, "hey, lets go Loatheb while we have flasks".

Just a few had read up on the tactics and understood it. Though after a few mins of explanation most seem to get it. We made a spore rotation and healing rotation.

Went in without using shadow pots etc just to make sure we had the spore order and healing rotation right. Everything went nice and the spores spawned exaclty where I thought that they would.

Got him to around 60% just before the first doom.

The weird thing happend next try. I thoght that the spores will spawn on the green "circles" behind loatheb depending on which way you are facing him.

Though now the spore suddenly changed and spawned infront of loatheb, a bit to the left...
We got him to 21% the last try with timer standing on 4 mins. Then our MT died so our biggest problem is the healing.

I have watched around 20 different Loatheb kill movies, searched this forum and alot of other forums, but it doesnt say anywhere where the spores will spawn... Is it just random or does it have a pattern?

It is really bothering me, Im a bit of a perfectionist so I want to maximize out the debuff during the whole fight and I hate not knowing why things happen... Anyone having tips?

Offtopic: Sorry if this has been posted before, but I did the search and as I stated earlier I did not find anything regarding the spores through the 7 pages of the search result.

Thanks for the fast response, it was something like that I thought it would be.

So just have the tank run in start tanking him without moving him at all and have the raid adapt to the position?

Just tank him in the same spot, facing the same direction, every time. You'll want to set up that spot so that the spores spawn somewhere good for you, and then just keep it the same every time.

and don't let anyone rip otherwise they change spawn position

huh?

If anyone pulls aggro he will change direction or move thereby changing spawn location is what cannings said.

I don't think the raids orientation (other than the tank) has anything to do with it. We always pull him from the back left corner (assuming you're standing at the gate), and the spores almost always come out right by the entrance gate.

We've had people pull during the fight, the spore location change, and still pull it off. Just make sure your raiders are aware that the spawn can change and are ready to adapt.

no, its 100% only loatheb position. we tried that a lot. what you wanna do is to have the tank run around to the other side, to the closed gate. then he body pulls and he runs in slightly from the side, not right from the middle and does not run all the way. tank position about 70% of the distance from the wall he comes from to the middle. and not exactly oppisite of the entrance, a bit to the side. you have to toy around with that a bit. but if you do it correctly, you get the shortest running distance. for example tank loatheb close to middle but a bit to the left (left seeing from entrance/running in), then the spore will spawn at the right wall (also from entrance). if the tank bow pulls exaclty from across the room and tanks him at the wall, the spore will spawn on entrance and you have to run the full distance. tank him close to middle, shift him a bit to one side and the spore spawns pretty much across from him. the spawn remains stable for the whole fight as long as the tank nor loatheb won't move.

for healing having 3 priests in full T2 is very good. with 13 ppl put them first, 5th and 9th in the healing chain. if they have hakkar/ysondre/whatever 2 min CD/use trinkets, make them use those. the GH proc hot gets amplified and they should own the effective healing done by a mile. full T2 means low hp sadly, i use trolsl blood potion and another priest + me have lightwell for the low hp casters that get unlucky pots/HS.

Draw a line from Loatheb through the center of the center green circle. Wherever that line terminates on the opposite wall will be the approximate spawn location for the spores.

I'm not sure it's quite that simple, but if you tank him in the same spot with the same orientation everytime, the spores will spawn in the same spot everytime. It's just important to get into a routine for your guild, so you know what to expect.

We've tried a few different positions now, trying to minimize time required to get the spore buff, and it's reliable (except on the first spore, which I assume is due to him not always being in position whenever the spore check fires). It seems to prefer to shift the spore spawn slightly towards one of the 8 cardinal locations (if you think of each of the green circles as a NSEW direction, then add in NW/SW/SE/NE, that's what I mean by a cardinal location), but basically: line from Loatheb through the center of the center green circle, opposite wall, spore works reliably.

and aimed shot >:(

If one of your spore groups doesn't kill their spore in time, that will also force the spores to spawn in another location.

Sure? Our first pulls at Loatheb were yesterday. I called out a lackluster rotation ("Mages get the first one, Warriors get the next, Rogues next, then do whatever you want"), just so we could pull him and let the healers see what it was like. We often had a random spore floating around, but would usually see them appear in the same place once the pull was stabilized.

This is false.

We start our rotation at group 5, with mages, then cycle through the dps classes, skipping druids alltogether I think. Just dont forget there is always one extra spot with group 1(MT) if you miss your spore =)

Least favorite aspect of the fight:

Doom hits, I go to bandage. I forget I'm near the spore spawn. Spore wanders over and hits me for 11 damage on the first tick of my bandage.

Our Loatheb groups are normally something similiar to this..


Group 1 Group 2
Fire Mage Warrior (DPS)
Fire Mage Shaman
Fire Mage Warrior (DPS)
Fire Mage Rogue (Sword)
Fire Mage Hunter (TSA)

Group 3 Group 4
Warrior (DPS) Warrior (DPS)
Shaman Shaman
Rogue (Sword) Rogue
Rogue (Sword) Rogue
Hunter (TSA) Hunter (TSA)

Group 5 Group 6
Frost Mage Warrior (MT)
Warlock Shaman
Warlock Rogue (Dagger)
Shaman Rogue (Dagger)
Hunter Warlock

Group 7 Group 8
Priest Druid
Priest Druid
Priest Druid
Priest Druid
Priest Druid


We tank him near the center, and the spores spawn on the eastern wall just a tiny bit to the south. Our first kill was without world buffs, but our second and third kills were both using Ony/Hakkar and the +5% HP buff from the northern tower in EPL (Yes, it does work in Naxx). The difference the world buffs makes is massive, and I couldnt imagine doing him again without them, they take all the work out of the fight. If you have the healing down, I would strongly suggest trying some small world buffs if you're deciding to pot up.

Also, for Alliance, Darkmoon Faire starting today. I would expect to see a lot of kills. We just killed Heigan, and are decided whether to hit Loatheb really hard this week, but it mught be a bit tight. Some practice required before we throw oursleves at him with buffs.

2 questions:

1) Is is worth trying to set up spawn rotations which are independent of DPS groups? Or just group for spore rotations, like Masq posted, and eat some minor ineffieciency in exchange for less confusion?

2) Can anyone help me out with the exact spore timing? I'm trying to write up our bossmod and didn't pay enough attention yesterday.

1. Just go with groups for spore buffs. Spore can only buff 5 people and the buff lasts ~90 seconds with the spores spawning every ~10 seconds so it works out.
2. Its ~10 seconds but.... It varies enough that any bossmod tries to time it that way will screw up a lot (by the end of the fight from experience). The best way to track it is based when a spore dies then the next group moves into position since it takes a few seconds to get there anyways. (The event is "CHAT_MSG_COMBAT_HOSTILE_DEATH" and the message is "Spore dies." make sure you have your combatlog set to range of 150 yds though or some sort of syncing implemented).

I think the spores spawn every 13th seconds. Check bigwigs, it has timers for spores

LV claims 10 seconds - seems to be off by about 0.5 seconds at most.