Loatheb

Loatheb is a towering fungal bog beast and the last boss of the Plague Wing (the Plague Quarter) of Naxxramas. His aura lets each healer cast a healing spell only once a minute, and he dooms the whole raid with shadow damage that grows more frequent as the fight goes on. Raids beat him with a strict healer rotation, a stack of potions and bandages, and the spores that grow in his room. He was one of the raid's hardest walls of damage and healing.

Background

The game gives Loatheb little story. He is a huge, rotting mass of fungus that stands at the end of the Plague Quarter, past Noth the Plaguebringer and Heigan the Unclean, where the Scourge brews its plagues. His room is ringed with fungal growths that release spores, and they turn out to be the raid's best weapon against him.

Warcraft Wiki points out that his name is an anagram of "healbot", a fitting joke for a boss built to stop healing, and probably an intentional one.

Abilities

• Corrupted Mind: Loatheb's effect puts every healing spell a player knows on a shared one-minute cooldown. Each healer gets one heal per minute, and the same applies to cleanses and dispels.
• Poison Aura: nature damage to players in melee range.
• [[forever:spell:29204]]: starting two minutes into the fight, every 30 seconds he places a mark on the whole raid that deals heavy shadow damage after ten seconds. After five minutes it comes every 15 seconds. It can't be removed or resisted.
• Remove Curse: every 30 seconds he removes curses from himself.
• [[forever:spell:29234]]: spores grow around the room every dozen seconds or so. When one is killed, the five players nearest to it get [[forever:spell:29232]] for 90 seconds, a large boost to critical strike chance that also makes their attacks cause no threat.

Strategy

The healers form a rotation. Since each one can cast only one heal a minute, they take turns healing the main tank, one big heal every few seconds, while the rest of the raid heals itself.

That means consumables. Every player plans the fight around Inevitable Doom: bandages, healthstones, healing potions, Whipper Root Tubers and Greater Shadow Protection Potions, used in a set order as each Doom lands. Judgement of Light and poison cleansing totems help the melee with the aura. By the five-minute mark Doom is landing every 15 seconds, and a raid that hasn't killed Loatheb soon after that runs out of potions and dies, so the fight is also a damage race.

The spores make the race possible. Raids assign groups to take turns killing a spore and collecting Fungal Bloom. With 50% more critical strike chance and no threat, those players can attack as hard as they like without pulling him off the tank.

Warcraft Wiki notes that Blizzard later shortened Greater Shadow Protection Potion's duration to two minutes, so players couldn't drink one well before the pull and keep it up all fight.

Loot

From our database (patch 1.12):

Loatheb drops the Tier 3 leg tokens (see Tier Sets). The [[forever:item:22800]] is a caster staff with 113 spell damage and healing and 2% spell hit. The [[forever:item:23042]] is a trinket that raises all resistances, and when used raises them further. The [[forever:item:23038]] is a melee ring with 52 attack power, and [[forever:item:23039]] is a polearm with 45 agility for hunters. The [[forever:item:22726]] is a piece of Atiesh.

Quests

• [[forever:quest:9229]]: he has a small chance to drop [[forever:item:22708]], which starts a quest at Light's Hope Chapel.
• Tier 3: his tokens go into quests such as [[forever:quest:9036]] for warriors and [[forever:quest:9104]] for warlocks.

Sources

• Loatheb (Classic), Warcraft Wiki
• Loatheb, Warcraft Wiki