Any hints on Hodir hard mode (10 man)

[Puri]

Hello,

we have some major problems with Hodir hard mode, which we've been told was the easiest hard mode, but hat seems not to be true for us. We had some decent dps (Steelbreaker hardmode was down ~20s after first tank died, Yogg-Saron in p3 after two portal phases, ignis down after ~2:30, Thorim hard mode down before reaching 8 stacks) - although mainly melee dps.
Our setup was:
DD: Cat, Ret, DK, Rogue, Fury (also 2. tank), Ele, Shadow
Tank: Bear
Heal: Priest, Tree

The problem is, we did not miss the 3 minute kill by a little amount, we failed for almost 50 seconds.
I see stacking caster dps helps because of the singed debuff, but that is not an option.
We distributed stormcloud throughout the raid (which wasn't that hard as it almost always hit an melee). No one was caught in flash freeze.
We always freed the npcs from their blocks. This is what I thought could be changed, as it costs some decent dps on the boss as the melees had to move there, and the mages only benefit two caster classes, although they are helping in freeing the others. So should we let them die in the block instead?

Any ideas or hints would be really appreciated.

[Bainz]

It's true that Casters do benefit from the buffs in that encounter the most.

Don't bother breaking the Priest Blocks, just the Druids/Shamans/Mages.
I honestly don't know what's wrong if your DPS is that good.
What are the top 5 DPS like? Number's wise.

[Yagamoth]

Try only freeing the mage and the shaman, somehow the other two npcs will get out aswell.

Other than that... Make sure, your DPS is aware of the fact, that they should mainly use attacks, that can crit. (for example - as a moonkin it's the best bet to only use starfire in the pillars, ignoring any procs, don't know about other dps classes)
Make sure, your tank moves hodir near the light-pillars and try to have near 100% DPS uptime.

[Sartecho]

Tank him in the middle, have the melee stand in the Starlight buff as much as possible, have the shaman and the spriest stand next to the campfires, they are the only ones in your group who can stack the singed debuff efficiently.

Whether or not you get him down will depend heavily on how far you have to run for the freezes and how convenient the Starlight pillars are for the melee.

My group always breaks out every ice block every time in both 10 and 25 hard modes. Those NPC's are there for a reason. The only time you can skip them is when there's like 20 seconds left after the last flash freeze and you might as well just pour it on the boss.

[Swampmoose]

There are more than 2 people benefiting from the singed debuff. A large portion of a ret paladin's dps is spell for example. Make sure it is stacked because it will be a large dps increase for anyone using spells. Don't ignore it. The fight is all about management of the buffs. You must break out the NPCs asap, and then use what you are given. Stand in the haste, spread Storm Power around to the raid, stack singed.

[Deleted]

One thing: have your ranged *always* free the mage, Missy, first. She will proceed to drop 10k dps dots on the other flash frozen npc's.
My group only frees other npc's if they happen to be near Hodir for whirlwinds and such. We let Missy do the work while we focus on doging blocks from the sky and nuking Hodir.

There are some tactics to get Hodir into a corner so npc's will move closer together and thus have beams, fires and clouds closer together, but it's mostly a gamble if npc's move as you want or not.

[hx9]

The thing most people don't understand about the hodir fight in general is the lightning buff from the shaman. One person gets the lightning buff, and they must distribute the charges to the other raid members by walking up to them and touching them.

[gaymer77]

If your shaman & priest aren't doing at least combined 25% of your raid dmg then you have a problem. That fight is all about your caster dps. Your melee should ALWAYS break out iceblocks which allows the two dps that will get you that kill back on him to kill him faster. If your melee gets the buff they need to run it to your casters first then back to your melee. In 10 man on my priest I pull an average of 9k dps and our mage/lock/boomkin/shaman pull 10-12k. Melee pretty much get screwed on that fight because the buffs benefit your casters more than melee. Our druid spams starfire just like he does on General. One of my RL friends in the guild actually goes arcane just for Hodir because he loves seeing 65k arcane blast crits fly by on his screen. Also you better make sure that your tank has high threat making abilities otherwise your ranged will pull off of him if they get all 3 buffs on them (which they should have at all times if you want to do 10 man hard mode).

From what I gather, you guys are good at pushing hard fast dps with no outside buffs because you say you have a 2:30 Ignis. The problem is Ignis dps is purely based on YOUR ability to pump out dps yourself. Hodir is all about managing random buffs to boost your dmg otherwise you won't get him down before he shatters.

Also, all of these people saying to have your ranged break out the iceblocks are ignorant. Priests have no burst dmg while your shaman does. Your ranged is who will get you that kill not your melee so you want your ranged back on Hodir asap while your melee that should be below all casters on dmg meters should be breaking out iceblocks. I'd suggest having the 2 between the druid, rogue, and pally break them out because they are more bursty than the others (also the iceblocks are concidered "all behind" so the druid can go to town on them as can a rogue).

[NoAbloIngles]

Any Numbers? Wowstats? recount SS?

10man its a easy cake, with full Mele, full range, range/mele mix.

we usually kill him at 2:00-2:20sec

our setup
1-2 healer (paladin, Pala/druid)
1 Tank(paladin)
7-8 DPS ( mele 5-8k dps, casters 10-15kdps)

burn Blood Lust+CDs after the first Flash Freeze.

Projected Textures [x] make sure everione can see where the snow is going to fall lol

[Jilraz]

Kite the boss around to the pillars of light so melee can benefit from it aswell.

[assa]

in our 10man we have a mixed grp aswell,
setup :
tank : DK
healers : holy priest & resto druid
dps : rogue/enh sham/war/ret pala/mage/lock/hunter

before u start u should do
/target veesh
and gief her a mark ( that is the mage beneath the IB )

we only kill that one since she will free the other 3 npc's at a pretty decent time

tank the boss in the middle kite abit arround so every melee can get the boomkin light thingys
try to use bloodlust&pots and stuff like that at the time most ppl have the shaman buff

[Doctavice]

I would reccomend marking just the mage iceblock beforehand to break out(Veesha is the name I think?) the mage breaks ice blocks really fast and will take care of the rest no problem. My group just has range stack @ fire (only use moonbeam if in range of fire) and focus the mage down while melee sticks on hodir like glue. if you spread the storm power buff then the dps requirement for this fight becomes pretty trivial, just make sure you break the mage out first it sounds like you're wasting alot of dps time having melee run around getting to all the blocks (perhaps even breakin the mage out last?)

[Filpity Flopity Floup]

Hey all say that casters benifit the most from all the buffs, now in our guild runs 10 and 25 normal mode man its mostly always melee (dk and rogue) that are top of the dps on Hodir. Is this the case in most guild runs? Or is it just that our guild casters suck?

[Exure]

Use 1 healer, take another DPS that should give some advantage to your raid. Eg. a boomkin would be nice.

[Zeelian]

Hey all say that casters benifit the most from all the buffs, now in our guild runs 10 and 25 normal mode man its mostly always melee (dk and rogue) that are top of the dps on Hodir. Is this the case in most guild runs? Or is it just that our guild casters suck?

Casters should be ~5k ahead on that fight due to how the buffs works (most of the numbers i look at have melee topping out around 10-13 and casters topping between 12-15 with mages ~2-3k higer, but going as high as 20k in some cases) so yeah, ur casters are slacking compared to your melee.

[Darrkh]

what we generally do in 10-man (and it never seems to fail). Mark all 4 of the npc's inside the iceblock. Free order is mage, shaman, boomkin, priest. Break them in that order. A hunter acts as the singed bitch and everyone else gets the Crit debuff and the beams. If the hunter happens to get a beam nearby, yay for him ;D

Break them all 2 or 3 times (should be twice). When he does a flash freeze under 20% you dont bother breaking the adds and nuke the boss

[Shaelin]

First we did it we were on a 1 tank - 2 healer setup, melee heavy just like the OP. I even failed at the fight due to low weapon skill (aesir's edge just dropped that run and I had to tank the other bosses till Hodir), hysteria on our rogue gave him 11k dps ^^

anyway, keep the boss directly near a light and free mage/shaman and you should be fine.

[Filpity Flopity Floup]

That report is insane. But we're only a casual guild so only normal modes for us :P. But i got my answer, casters in our guild suck. Thanks.

[talrob]

Did it in a semi pug (3 from our guild, 5 from another, 2 from random good guilds), we were having trouble reaching the enrage timer with 1 tank 2 healers (mainly due to 1 or 2 fails on flash freeze) so I switched to my main shadow spec and had 8 dps and I healed during frozen blows (divine hymn first one, spam spam second), he dropped like a brick with 8 dps...

The main healer was a god of a druid though...

[failrogue]

As a rogue, i hit 8500 DPS on hodir. RNG favors our group though since we have mostly melee (Frost DK, Sword rogue, Kitty Druid, Retadin, Mage, Boomkin, Disc priest, holy priest, Warrior Tank, and a 10th who i'm forgetting about lol.)

It is melee heavy, which is tuned enough for either melee or caster heavy groups.

With luck you guys will be fine. I'll try posting a WWS if i can find it. one second :P

But its all about RNG and hoping you get the Storm Cloud buff on one major group (when our two casters got the buff it sucked since they didn't bother passing the buff on)

Have your casters shoot just the mage out of the ice block and continue going. Sorry for rambling, i'm bad at this posting thing. :-\