[10/25] I Believe This Cache Is Rare

[kram]

Similarly, Ignis' "just burn" strategy is basically just a DPS check: Can you burn him before he gets enough adds up to gib the tank. On 10, this is easier, but on 25 ... I'd be scared to.

My guild tried this on 25M and 10M last night, the 10M strat was successful. (4 min 2 seconds no joke, our freaking rogue died in slag though and got bresed, we gave him TONS of shit about it)

25M not so much, i lived just fine until about 6 stacks with the boss at 15%, when Pain suppresion wore off i got unlucky and took 2 hits in a row, 1st one was Guardian spirited, and the 2nd came right after with no CD's up and hit me for 55k =[

Ignis was nerfed yesterday and you can have one tank solo the adds for the most part. Only takes 10 stacks for a add to go molten, I can basically drag it into the fire HoJ and its molten by the time the stun is up. If you put a tank on it and he cant break the adds himself just have a dps do it. A DK could basically solo it before the nerfs anyway.

None of the hard modes are really hard, they are all DPS checks.

4-Tower Leviathan is a maneuverability/coordination check.

FL is about the only fight in Ulduar with a hard mode that isnt just a dps check.

My comment about hard modes not being hard is in regards to most of the 'hard modes' are just extra HP or reduced damage taken. OS 3d was a completely different fight from 0 drakes to 3 drakes. If you look at hard modes like Freya +3 Elders the fight is basically the same with extra HP, Damage taken and 3 new abilities (a fissure disguised as a ticking sunbeam, roots that need to be dpsed and a renamed flame jets). Even Yogg's hard mode doesnt change the fight much outside of playing it a bit more safe with sanity, -40% raid dmg and a few sketchy mechanics with the adds in p3. It seems like over half hard modes are basically timed fights and not much more(its like adding 2-3 items to malygos loot table for getting a 6min kill).

[Joanadark]

The thing that concerns me about Hodir hard mode isnt reaching the DPS requirement. Remember, the shorter the fight the more DPS scales due to high proportial Heroism uptime.
The thing that concerns me is two-fold. Tank threat in order to realistically hold against that level of DPS output while wearing Frost Resistance gear, and absolute perfection by all the DPSers busy trying to maximize their DPS at avoiding all the non-lethal raid damage flying around in the encounter, because the number of healers would need to be absolutely minimized to tank healing.

[PsiVen]

We tried for this on 10-man for a bit tonight, using a resto druid to solo heal and a DK tanking. Threat wasn't much of an issue with Salv and MD to go around, but healing was, and our DPS wasn't there. We lost people by 50% at the 80 second mark or so, and our absolute best probably would have been 20% at the timer. We could have made the 2:30 achievement, but not this new one, and our raid was about 40% 226 gear. 25-man we haven't even bothered trying, it just seems impossible.

edited to stay on topic. -- Guillex

[Jasari]

Heh, Ensidia borderline-exploits the encounter but is able to just barely get the new "nearly impossible" 2min hard mode down: http://ensidia.com/home/news/hodir-down-ensidia.html

[guillex]

I have edited some posts and deleted others that have absolutely no reason to be in a thread about a Hodir Achievement.

Keep it on topic, or all of the posts, other than the OP's, will be deleted to bring the thread back into relevance.

-- Guillex

[Seloei]

Anyhow, i was wondering... on 10 man
With a stacked raidgroup of mostly casters ( say mage, shaman, lock, boomkin combo ) with 1 tank and one healer. Is it possible to drag the boss during the fight so that the "npc's" get clumped together for easy freeing and buffing. And the raid dodging the icicles while staying grouped up. Should bring em the toasty fire and guaranteed stormpower going off fast.
Haven't had time to do any 10 man runs with work + 25 man raids.
Or how are you supposed to do the fight?
Ranged are handicapped by the icicles that fall on them forcing them to stop casting, melee are handicapped by having to run far away to get the npcs freed in time and the toasty fires wont benefit them at all.

Normal mode is a walkover, the new buffed hardmode however...

[Tieran]

The new buffed hard-mode is a joke.
A stable 9k dps over 2 minutes from 8 dps. You would have to have *perfection*, lucky crit streaks, lucky with NPCs not being flash frozen etc etc etc

I think Blizzard went to town overtuning this fight because the dps race is all this fight relies on as a hard mode. IMO it is a slight let down on what has otherwise been a pro instance

[Panzerdin]

On 10-man, it requires insane luck. On 25-man, it's impossible.

[Seloei]

Was trying to find vids on this on warcraftmovies, and i found... 4 different ones. All of them have them burning the freezes at start then nuking the boss like hell, moving out of the icicle drop spots (not just the big ones) and standing in the moonbeam and the one who gets the +crit buff runs through the raid.
All of the movies have had mainly casters and no melee, at all. Single tank, single healer, 2/4 had a priest healing, one was a druid and the last one i didn't notice who.
Is that the only way nowadays, without it needing a switch back to the old one? 2:30 was doable with 25 man naxx gear, on 10 man on ptr, but now it's still doable but requires a lot more coordination.
Basicly, in order to do the 10 man achievement, you need 25 man ulduar gear or lucky streaks without any of the npcs getting frozen. Can't remember any of them being frozen in the vids, will check it again when i reanalyze them.

[Panzerdin]

You need:
No refrozen NPCs
Near-perfect buff area positioning
The boss not to FF at the wrong time

Basically, you must both overgear the encounter, and be very lucky/patient.

[Taragon]

We were able to get a 5% attempt with two melee(Melee aren't really effective here) and 2 healers. 10 man.

Threat was a moderate issue if a mage couldn't get an invis off due to the aura or frost nova. (13k+dps)
Sadly the adds/dots killed him on our best attempt after he shattered the cache.

Things to note,
Getting the fire stack up to 25 (+50% magic damage) is huge. It's a proc when you're standing next to fire.
Healers can stand out of the main group of dpsers so they don't accident get the shaman buff.
IF a healer or tank gets the Shaman buff they have to spread it to the dpsers. (Basically the way it works is you get a buff with 4(?) stacks, You go around and the stacks will apply to other players).
We put breaking the shaman out as a priority, followed by the mage, followed by the moonkin, then finally the priest. Not sure if that is best.

[Tieran]

After a bit of playing around I can confirm this much:

1 healer is a must.

Melee is not really to be used... we had 4 melee and got him to around 1.8 mill.
However that said Rets seemed to do ok dmg

With 8 DPS in the raid your talking a steady 8.4k DPS per player, thats quite hard. If a caster gets all the buffs though they can easily push 10-12k, (we had our shaman doing 58k lava burst crits...) point of what I am saying is that lowers the rests sustained dmg drastically.

Yesterday we were having some issues with Buggy flash freezes - people standing in the middle of the drift being frozen or people being frozen then unfrozen a few seconds later etc - can anyone else confim this as a bug / or tell us what we were doing?

[Seloei]

Just a thought, doesn't he casts the icicles and snowdrifts on the raiders? So you could position half the raid near 2 of the npcs and the other half near the other 2 so they won't get frozen? I think thats what i saw in one vid. They had both snowdrifts spawn next to hodir and dodged the small icicles from the sky. Had all the moonbeams nearby also, whats the mechanic of those? Cast in X yards of a random raider or tottaly random? haven't seen him do it miles away from the boss anyway, usually near to most.

How about hunters? the toasty fire causes singed to be applied by ranged and magical attacks? Couldn't a well geared hunter using a fast weapon get the stacks up very fast by popping bloodlust, rapid fire and haste trinkets? Should make him hit twice every second to get the debuff up to 50% in less than 10s, then the casters can have a field day.
Also, since paladin threat is mostly holy damage ( spell ) our threat would skyrocket aswell. The hunter might end up only doing ~6-8k dps, but the added dps from the casters might outweigh it.
Can't seem to see any benefits for bringing any melee to that fight, besides if your 'forced' to respec to a dps from a healer/tank.
Maybe a ret pala, to ease the frozen blows if they pop raid wall ( shieldwall + divine sacrifice ).

edit: this is for 10 man, 25 man is being quoted by ensidia as impossible at the current time, and if the top raiding guild finds it impossible, either their doing it wrong or it is impossible.

[sfrog]

Been reading Ensidia's post on it and I can agree with the luck factor - Our best attempt was 20% and that was pure, blind, dumb luck. Curiously, what exactly is the flower power they're talking about?

[Panzerdin]

Spellstealable buff on mobs near Freya, stacks 10x at +25% damage each.

Also, is it necessarily worth freeing the priest?