Serpentshrine Cavern - Leotheras the Blind

[Shadowwolf]

Links:

http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=264
http://www.wowwiki.com/Leotheras_the_Blind

Video:
[youtube=500,425]FlOaGtzNq-Q[/youtube]

Abilities:

• Leotheras alternates between Humanoid Form (~45 sec) and Demon Form (~60 sec) through most of the fight. He wipes threat upon transition between forms
• At 15% health, the two forms split apart and must be handled together
• Leotheras enrages after 10 minutes of combat, wiping the raid very quickly.

Humanoid Form

• Melee: 2500-3000 on plate
• Whirlwind:
  
  
  • 12 sec duration
  • Leotheras spins around the room (similar to Sartura in Ahn'Qiraj)
  • ~3000 damage instant (mitigated by armor) plus a 15s bleed for 2500 per 3s tick (no mitigation)
  • 15 sec cooldown
  • Randomly switches targets during, and resets threat at the end

Demon Form

• Chaos Blast : Leotheras' only attack in this phase, centered on his current target.
  
  
  • 2 sec cast
  • 150 fire damage AoE
  • Applies a 45 sec debuff which increases fire damage taken by 1675 and can stack up to 20 times

Inner Demon

About 25 sec into the Demon Form phase, Leotheras summons Inner Demons for up to five raid members (never for the person with aggro). The inner demons can only be attacked by the person to which they belong. If Leotheras returns to humanoid form while an Inner Demon is still alive, that person becomes Mind Controlled for 10 minutes (non-removable). Pet classes must make sure their pet does not get the killing blow, the Mind Control is only prevented if the player deals the death blow.

Inner Demon capabilities:

• ~11,000 health
• melee damage: ~1000
• spell damage: Shadow Bolt for ~3500 (reflectable)
• take increased damage (+65%) from arcane, nature, and holy spells
• take slightly reduced damage (-20%) from shadow and fire spells
• vulnerable to most forms of CC like daze, stun, disorient, fear and even banish (not recommended)

Suggested Strategy:

Phase 0 - Engage
Before Leotheras himself can be engaged you have to kill the three channelers keeping him banished. Spread them out and focus fire them down one by one. A feral Druid in DPS gear is more then enough to tank one of the channelers.

[attachimg=1]

Phase 1 - Human form
Leotheras will Whirlwind from time to time so spread the raid out as shown in picture 1. Make sure that melee DPS runs away from Leotheras in time before the Whirlwind starts and that all DPS stop just before the Whirlwind ends since a full aggro reset takes place. Get Leotheras tanked swiftly and start DPSing again. This repeats itself for about one minute after which Leotheras will turn into his demon form.

[attachimg=2]

Phase 2 - Demon form
When Leotheras turns into his demon form a full aggro reset takes place. Use a Warlock in fire resist gear (the more the better!) to tank him. Once tanked start DPSing. Eventually (it takes longer every time you enter phase 2) Leotheras will use Insidious Whisper. Make sure that the effected players focus fire down their respective demon. This is hard, especially as a healer or a protection Warrior. Use whatever you have available, be it recklessness or totems! After about one minute Leotheras turns into his human form, yet again completely resetting aggro.

Phase 3
At 15% phase 3 starts. Both Leotheras human and demon form spawn at the same time. Both forms behave exactly the same as before with one exception; the demon form won't cast Insidious Whisper anymore. The demon form is also at 100% so DPS down the human form, when it dies the demon form will despawn and the fight is over.

Demon Form

It's a frequently used tactic to have a demo specced warlock with fel hunter and high fire resistance tank this encounter. Nonetheless, it's also possible to tank him conventionally.

Tips for warrior tanks

You need to have about 365 fire resistance and about 18K health raid buffed. Flasks of Chromatic Wonder are great for this. Tank him at the edge of his hitbox to protect melee DPS from being hit by the Chaos Blast splash.

The incoming damage will go from zero (no debuffs) to most of your health bar, but if healers are on the ball you should be able to go up to about 12-14 debuffs before being instagibbed. Thunderclap seems to reduce the frequency of attacks which will make you survive longer.

Threat will probably be a problem, especially when you're not taking damage, so using Mighty Rage Potions is a very good idea and will allow your raid to squeeze out more DPS. High stamina DPS gear will also help assuming you can reach the maximum fire resistance, and use Battle Shout until you have about 4 debuffs then switch to Commanding Shout.

Ask a friendly Paladin to cast Divine Intervention on you during the last 15% if your debuffs stack too high, as this will remove them. Ideally do this when you have a full rage bar to allow you to get him back off healers, and click it off quickly before people start dying.

Inner Demon

Whenever a player has to deal with an inner demon, he should be healed by the non-affected healers, even if self healing-capable. DPS classes should find this encounter rather easy. For some classes a few hints may help:

• Holy Priest: Simply spamming Smite will effectively kill the Inner Demon with an incredible amount of time left over, almost one of the fastest classes able to kill their demon. Due to the demon taking increased damage from holy, any shadow spells are probably a waste of time. Fearing often causes the demon to run out of DPS range. Any form of healing should not be used except Healthstones, as your priority is to kill your Inner Demon as soon as possible--other healers not Demon'd will take care of you, but feel free to PW:S or Renew before he uses the spell in case you receive it, just waste no time NOT killing your demon. No spell damage gear should be needed.
• Holy Paladin: Start by use Avenging Wrath and Seal of Righteousness, then continue with Consecration, Exorcism, Holy Shock and Judgement of Righteousness. Clean up with Hammer of Wrath.
• Retribution Paladin: Easy target, just pop Seal of Blood or Seal of Command, use Exorcism and Crusader Strike to crush it and turn back on the boss.
• Restoration Druid: Start with Moonfire, break Tree of Life, then continue with Barkskin, followed by spamming Wrath. Barkskin lasts 12 seconds during that time cast about five Wraths. After that start spamming Moonfire since Wrath gets pushback. Also use Insect Swarm if possible.
• Restoration Shaman: Keep Lightning Shield active. Do not try to melee DPS the Demon, instead use Chain Lightning and Lightning Bolt. Keep a Searing Totem up. Use Earth Shock to interrupt Shadow Bolts.
• Protection Warriors: Warriors should try to be at 100% rage before they can get the demon. This is acheived by simply attacking Leotheras in battle stance in his demon form, using Devastate and Heroic Strike, economize on rage as much as possible. When the inner demon is there, shield reflect the demon's shadow bolt. Wear a mix of DPS and tanking gear for this fight.
• Hunters: Pets can be used, but that's a little dangerous (lest the pet gets the kill). It's safe to use the pet until about 20%, then put it on passive. If the pet had growl on auto-cast before, it should still hold aggro until the demon is dead. Hunters who can't use their pet (or prefer to leave it on the boss) can use the hunter dance and should be fine too.
• Combat Rogues: These have a particularly easy time with inner demons, they can stay on the boss and simply kill the Demon with Blade Flurry.

Split Phase

At 15%, Leothoras' Demon Form splits from his Humanoid Form, and both forms must be handled together. The Demon Form starts with 100% health, while the Humanoid Form retains its current health. The Humanoid Form abilities are the same as before. The Demon Form still uses Chaos Blast, but no longer spawns the Inner Demons. Upon defeating the Humanoid Form, the Demon Form despawns.

[Shadowwolf]

Heres a better illustration of the Leo fight for those of you still unsure how it goes.

[attach=1]

Basically its DPS till he whirlwinds, when the whirlwind timer has about 5 seconds before its over, stop any dots and DPS and let the tanks grab him again since he resets aggro. Once the tanks have him, resume DPS and repeat. When he changes to Demon Form, the lock tank for that phase should be positioned away from other people so the AOE from the fireballs doesnt kill anyone and a healer or 2 should be focusing on that lock to make sure they spam heal up any dmg the fireballs cause.

Melee have a rough time with this fight in order to avoid the Whirlwind Bleeds. Basically melee should stay in, dps till the alert that his WW cooldown is ready which they run out and wait for the whirlwind to complete, then run back in and repeat. Melee can unload on him during demon form so long as they dont pass the lock in threat.

[Airtotem]

From my vantage point...
I think where we lost the fight was in the last 15%, when we needed to heal both Gren and Khader, as well as the people getting whirl-winded.

It seemed like we needed healers to focus on Gren, because as soon as he dropped shortly after the split at 15%, then the demon would go around killing the raid.   The demon would 2shot Gren, so we needed to have heals being cast ready to land right as soon as he was hit with a fireball.  The demon has a fast cast time, so little flash heals would probably not be able to top off Gren's 16k health, and the fireball cast time is faster than my healing wave cast time.   I tried my best with big heals to keep Gren topped off with 9k crit heals, but when 1 fireball takes him down to 35%, and the next one kills him, then I just think that it's important for the healers to coordinate keeping the demon tank topped off.  I take responsibility for this for not stepping up and working with another healer to focus on Gren.  On every attempt, he died way too early in that last phase, I am sure he will tell you the same thing, and as a healer, I am sorry for letting him drop so soon.

So, for future raiders on that boss, try to keep the strategy for that last phase in mind, and maybe coordinate the distribution of the heals a little more efficiently than I did.

(btw I do not mean to try to change the strategy or the leader's direction on this fight, nor do I mean to pretend I know it all about this fight, this was simply just an observation after I got to sleep on it a little)

=)

[Kothnok]

A couple of tips for Inner Demon fights:

• Only use Insta-cast spells, potions, healthstones, and the like to heal and only if death is imminent.  A healthy raid member that is mind controlled makes it that much harder to down Leo.
• Discipline Priests with Reflective Shield talent, use Power Word: Shield liberally on those fighting Inner Demons, especially on Protection Warriors.  The holy damage dealt by the reflect will help quite a bit in killing these demons quickly and usually means the difference between life and death for a Protection Warrior.

Healing after the split for me means I toss a heal Gren's way whether he needed one or not whenever I wasn't moving from WW or healing others bleeding to death.  I can only work so fast though and it did little good to toss Gren a big heal when Leo's WW was pounding me.  I think if every healer present tossed Gren a heal whenever possible (whether he needs it or not) we might do better at keeping him up during the split.  As Gren pointed out during last night's attempts, he split at bad times.  There wasn't much we could do about that other than try to get the split at a better time (during Leo tanking is ideal instead of demon phase).

[Grendeel]

What happens during the demon phase is this.  Typically i will often resist his attack but on occasion he will land a full hit or a partial hit.  Its a 1 min stage and at the start the damage isnt too bad.  As i get hits, a fire debuff starts stacking on me.  The closer we get to the end of the 1 min stage the larger that stack is.  I think around 7 stacked debuffs, i start taking huge damage (full hits can be around 13,500 hps). I dont care what healer we have in our raid, if i get back to back hits like that (like 2 secs apart), no one is gonna heal through it.  Damn blizz for its random luck fights.

Its why its recommended to soulstone the tank lock or have a brez ready on hand.

Mostly last night the timing was bad.  2 13,500 hp hits back to back isnt very common and our healers did well keeping me up.  What is bad is when he splits at 15%  soon after he has changed back to the normal phase. The fr debuff that has stacked on me is on a timer (i think around 40 secs).  Its hard for healers to keep me up if that debuff on me doesnt have time to wear off (in fact almost impossible to keep me up for the last 15% hp on the boss).

Ideally if this bad transition happens, i will die, and we have a tank pick him up for a bit.  The tank wont have the fr debuff on him at the start and should be able to live for a little bit.  In the meantime i pop the SS, or take the brez.   Get healed back to full health and then resume tanking leo.  Thats the only way i lose the fr debuff when we have bad timing

Also for others, i try and put curse of doom on leo so that it procs 2-3 seconds after he has switched to demon phase. If everyone can recognize that debuff and wait til it procs, aggro shouldnt be an issue.  Once in a while Doom gets resisted, and if this happens, you will need to wait a bit longer before dpsing.  I try and anounce that in raid chat if its resisted.

[Lynette]

It seemed like we needed healers to focus on Gren, because as soon as he dropped shortly after the split at 15%, then the demon would go around killing the raid.   The demon would 2shot Gren, so we needed to have heals being cast ready to land right as soon as he was hit with a fireball.  The demon has a fast cast time, so little flash heals would probably not be able to top off Gren's 16k health, and the fireball cast time is faster than my healing wave cast time.   

I've helped heal Leo on a few occasions and I can say the difference b/w winning and losing from my vantage point was exactly this.  The times where we won, I remember chain casting flash heal during this period in order to keep Gren up - regardless of his health.  I saved all my CDs and mana pots for this last 15% and usually burned thru an entire mana bar for Gren.  If the demon is occupied, the rest of the raid can focus on Leo.  Keeping Gren alive is the key!

Leo is a tough fight no doubt.  Unlike some of the other SSC bosses, it truly requires 25 folks on top of their game, including: killing their inner demons, being very careful with threat b/w phase shifts, and avoiding WWs.  If a couple of folks make a mistake, a wipe is imminent - either the way it happened to us last night or the enrage timer coming into play.