Hydross the Unstable Strategy Guide

[Snitch]

Pre-Game

The gap in difficulty between Gruul and Hydross is simply enormous. Please recognize that even with this strategy and all the requirements fullfilled, you will probably need hours of executed attempts before you can win. Execution must be perfect.

Required Attunement

Serpentshrine Lair

Ideal Class Balance


DPS: 12
Tank: 4
Heal: 9

A typical breakdown would be:
Rogue: 3
DPS Warrior: 1
Hunter: 1
Mage: 4
Warlock: 3

Shaman: 2
Priest: 4
Paladin: 2
Resto Druid: 1

Tank Druid: 2
Tank Warrior: 2

Specific groupings are not listed because what is best for one guild may not be best for all. It depends on the cumulative skill, gear and layout of the classes within the raid. The two things needed are: resistances for all 4 tanks and DPS-centric groups.

Note that you could technically use 2 warriors to tank the adds, rather than 2 druids. However, warrior aggro generation (especially on multiple targets; 2 each in this case) is significantly less than that of a druid. Druids also deal more damage in their tanking form, which aids greatly in downing this boss.

Gear Minimum

Gear must be extremely high quality. Every member should be able to look through their equipment and be able to say to themselves "I only need a few more upgrades from Karazhan or Gruul's lair."

Melee DPS: Karazhan quality weapons, lvl70 blue armor or better
Healers: Mix of Karazhan quality blue/purple armor or better

Tank Druid: Frost/nature resistance gear mix, hitpoint gear.
Tank Warrior: One tank with a set of nature resistance gear, One tank with a set of frost resistance gear. Block rating is irrelevant. You will need the epic lvl70 resistance gear (your stats, such as defense, will decrease when you wear this. These mobs can critical strike, but the resist gear is far more important than the defense you're giving up).

Although druids only tank during add transitions, a recap of the fight will show that druids take more damage than the warrior tanks. This means that you must fullfill the resistance gear requirements for all 4 tanks and have resistance auras and/or totems at all times.

Below are benchmarks to gauge your resistance gear and ability to tank. If your incomming hits are more than this, you need more resistance gear to beat the encounter.

Frost tank's average hit taken should be around: 3,100. An unresisted hit with 100% mark will typically hit for nearly 11,000.
Nature tank's average hit taken should be around: 2,900. An unresisted hit with 100% mark will typically hit for nearly 10,000.
Druid's average incomming hit (single add) should be around: 3,100 with an unresisted max hit of around 6,000.

Minimum Consumables Requirements

Every major consumable possible for your class. This includes full raid flasks.

Melee DPS use a Flask of Relentless Assault, Fel Strength Elixir, Elixir of Major Agility, Winterfall Firewater, DPS food, and any other damage increasing consumable. Poisons do not work on this fight: bring Adamantite Sharpening Stones.

Ranged DPS use Flask of Firepower, Adept's Elixir, Elixir of Major Fire/Frost/Shadow Power, and any other damage increasing consumable.

Tanks use Flask of Fortification, Defense Potion, Elixir of Mastery, stamina increasing food; anything that will increase HP or mitigation. Note: Stoneshield-type potions are useless because all "melee" damage is elemental (resistance gear check, not armor).

Healers use Flask of Mighty Restoration, Mana Regeneration Potion, Elixir of Healing Power; anything that will increase your healing efficiency or the amount of mana you have.

Frost Protection Potions are a major advantage during frost stages. Although not completely necessary, they are definitely nice to have. Neither Nature or Frost Protection Potions are totally necessary. However, Hydross' Water Tomb ability has a high chance of hitting you since it can chain off other people; making it handy to use Frost Protection Potions before the encounter begins. Vile Sludge is rather insignificant in damage, and has a much lower chance of applying on you during the fight, making Nature Protection Potions a relatively excessive use.

Miscellaneous Requirements

Talent Specs: All specs must be pure PvE. Your team needs every boost they can get. This goes double for DPS.

UI Modifications: Main Tanks need a timer and must give vocal warning of impending vulnerability stacks.

Third Party Programs: Ventrilo or similar voice communication program. The raid must be vocal about needing heals, upcoming tank swap warnings, mana, add aggro status, and so on.

Wipe Recovery


The best way to wipe is to make a habbit of always dying to the right-hand side of the red line and inside the blue highlight. The Boglord must be killed every hour that it respawns. Assembly line adds may be killed to increase resurrection range by a small amount, but it is ill advised to risk Hydross agro.


Boss Abilities


Bad Luck Probability

Low. With proper strategy execution, luck is only a factor with Water Tomb. This can be minimized by staying away from the tanks and general spreading out.

Hydross the Unstable has about 4 million HP.

Mark of Hydross

Stacks either nature (poison phase) or frost (water/frost phase) vulnerability every 15 seconds: 10%, 25%, 50%, 100%, 250% extra damage. This applies to everyone in the raid. You cannot out-range or avoid it by standing behind a wall (line of sight). There is no way to remove this buff other than waiting the 30 second duration for it to wear off. The mark will only effect abilities/melee damage in the phase they were recieved in, because only that type of affliction is being recieved by your raid.

Water Tomb

Stuns the targets for 4 seconds and deals massive damage. Anything inside 8 yards of the target will also be affected and the Tomb will jump from person to person as many times as it can, given that the targets are less than 8 yards from each other. It will stuns your DPS (the one thing you cannot afford to lose is DPS), and if the tomb chains to too many people, it will result in a death. Losing a person will result in losing the encounter.You must spread out. He will cast this about every 7 seconds during his frost phase only. This is affected by Mark of Hydross: full tick marks at 100% vulnerability will kill someone if unhealed. This spell will target any random non-MT.

Rogues may avoid this by vanishing the same moment he targets you to cast the ability. There is a slight lag time in the time Hydross turns and the time he casts, which allows you to avoid the spell. You must have the "target's target" user-interface option enabled and be ready to Vanish the instant he turns to you. This is very valuable to the raid because it will save 2-4 melee much needed DPS time in avoiding the stun and it will also save healer mana.

Vile Sludge

Reduces damage delt and healing done by 50%. Deals 500 dmg per second when unmodified by Mark of Hydross, with a duration of 24 seconds. This spell is cast about every 15 seconds during his poison phase only. The damage is affected by Mark of Hydross. This will randomly cast on anyone in the raid. Dealing with this minor inconvenience is mentioned periodically below. Note however, that a raid could (in most cases) ignore the effects of this spell and results would be the same. This is removable with magic immunities such as Divine Shield or Cloak of Shadows.

Summon Water Elemental

Spawns 4 adds of one type in 4 corners around Hydross (imagine the corners of an imaginary box, with him being in the center) after each cleansing/poisoning. These are triggered by stepping over invisible boundaries in the immediate area. The locations of the two triggers and the relative position of the adds are shown in the positioning diagrams. In frost phase, Hydross summons 4 Pure Spawns of Hydross (water elementals), in poison phase he summons 4 Tainted Spawn of Hydross (poison elementals).

Pure Spawns of Hydross has around 55,000 HP

Tainted Spawn of Hydross has around 62,500 HP

Enrage

Explaination: Occurs 10 minutes after engaging Hydross. The damage of his outgoing melee hits and his abilities is multiplied to an amount impossible to deal with. For example, 1 tick of Water Tomb will kill a raid member on full health. He will have completely killed your raid within 15 to 30 seconds of enraging.


Strategy


Fight Overview

Hydros the Unstable is sitting in two beams of light, which purifies his body. This also gives him the ability to purify the adds coming down the "assembly line." When you move him out of his beams, he becomes poisoned (he emotes "Aaghh, the poison..."), and uses poison abilities only. When you move him back between the beams, he's repurified (emotes "Better, much better.") and only uses frost abilities.

Hydross begins in his frost/water state. He switches whenever he crosses the trigger lines (shown on diagrams below). Whenever he switches, he spawns 4 adds. Switching does not cleanse the mark but he will cease using abilities/damage types of that resistance, rendering the mark inert. The mark increases damage by more and more over time, thus forcing a switch after a certain time (15 seconds per mark stack; 5 seconds before 250% being the absolute maximum as 250% will 1 shot the tank; thus about 1 minute 10 seconds is the most time you can stay in one phase). At 10 minutes he enrages. He is tanked by two warrior tanks; one for each phase, equipped with frost and nature resistance gear accordingly. There are also druid tanks in mixed resist gear, who are used in both phases to collect the adds towards the middle.

Estimated Fight Length: 10 minutes.
Maximum Fight Length: 10 minutes, 30 seconds. There are roughly 30 seconds after his 10 minute enrage where you can attempt to kill him as he kills your remaining raid.

Phase 1 Overview

This phase is from the pull to first swich. You finish off the assembly line adds, but Hydross doesn't spawn his own adds till phase 2. Details below.

Phase 2



This diagram is a snapshot of where people should be standing when poison phase (phase 2) begins. When the boss's phase changes and adds spawn, the tank moves from 1 to 2. When adds are down, 3 and 5 move to 4. About 5 seconds before the switch to water phase, the boss will be brought east to a point on the threashold of the trigger shown on the water diagram (this is so the tank only needs to take a few steps backwards to change the phase). 5-10 seconds from transitioning to the poison phase, druid tanks must move to their spots in the phase 3 diagram and aggro-insensitive ranged need to spread out.

This phase's positioning is flexible.

Phase 3



This diagram is a snapshot of where people should be standing when the water phase (phase 3) begins. When the boss's phase changes and the 4 adds spawn, the tank moves from 1 to 2. When adds are down, 3 and 5 move to position 4. About 5 seconds before the switch to poison phase (phase 2), the boss will be brought west to a point on the threashold of the trigger shown on the poison diagram (this is so the tank only needs to take a few steps backwards to change the phase). When 5-10 seconds from transitioning to the poison phase, 6's need to move to 7's to ensure the tanks don't get hit by Water Tomb. They must stay in spread out positions until the phase is near the end or they will spread Water Tomb to each other.

Aggro sensitive ranged must be on the east side of the poison phase trigger in case they pull temporary agro. This includes ranged DPS and main tank healers.

This phase's positioning must be perfect.


Phase 1 - Detail

(From pull until 10 seconds before 250% Frost Vulnerability. This is approximately 1 minute. The boss's HP should be near about 80% at the end of this phase)

Start off with druids running up to engage "assembly line" elementals, far from Hydross. After the initial adds have been downed (they will keep respawning until Hydross is engaged in combat), the tank will run to engage. The tank should begin directly west of Hydross, and run in a straight line facing him. Use a Swiftness Potion and intercept him. When you are at the end of your intercept path, continue to run through the boss (east) so as to drag him a safe distance from phase 2's trigger. Once he is repositioned, run back through him (west) so that your back is facing the raid. When you're done positioning, he should be in the exact spot he started at before the pull; only now there's a tank in front of him.

At the same time the tank is pulling/positioning, the adds should be finished and the raid may start DPS-ing Hydross. You need to do a considerable amount of damage in this time. Ranged DPS should be spread out, and melee DPS should be in 2 small groups positioned equally from the tanks. You will typically get the boss to about 80% before needing to switch phases.

As each phase increases in duration, the mark will stack higher and healing will become more intensive. When the mark is stacked to 100% and is about 5 seconds from 250%, the tank simply needs to walk backwards until Hydross is pulled across the threshold. When this is ready to happen, all casters need to move away from where the warrior will be back-peddling to. DPS must cease fire. The warrior can then move backwards, triggering the next phase. The warrior with nature resistance needs to Shield Slam and Heroic Strike immediately after Hydross changes colors (indicating the switch in his resistances and abilities). If any DPS is dedicated to Hydross, they may begin 5 seconds after the tank switch. This is the end of phase 1.

Detailed Breakdown by Class


Tank

Potions Usage: Warrior wearing frost resistance needs Switftness Potions.
Aggro Sensitivity: Sensitive for first 10 seconds
Stance Management: Fury for the pull, Defensive for the rest.
Movement: Run through the boss to begin, this will position him where he normally stands at no-aggro. After hes stationary, run through him again so that your back is facing west (toward the casters).
Note: You must run through after the intercept or he'll reposition himself a bit. The small repositioning will trip his poison phase, result in 4 adds, and probably wipe the raid due to Enrage.
Do not shield block. You cannot block an elemental.

Melee DPS

Potions Usage: Thistle tea, rage pot.
Aggro Sensitivity: Sensitive for first 10 seconds
Target Priority: Hydross
Cooldowns: (Non-add rogues) Everything available.
(Add rogues) Bladeflurry, damage trinkets with a cooldown of less than 2 minutes (they will be up for every phase3, to be used on adds).
Utility: Battle Shout.
Movement: Spread out around Hydross in 4 groups. Each tank is 1 "group", there should be 2 groups of melee DPS.

Ranged DPS

Aggro Sensitivity: Sensitive for first 10 seconds.
Target Priority: Hydross
Utility: Usual class DPS debuffs
Pet Usage: Whichever increases single-target DPS the most against Hydross
Movement: Spread out. You need to be further than 8 yards from each other person.

Healing

Tank sensitivity: Sensitive. If the tank doesn't partially resist a hit, his life will drop to 30-40% in one.
Healing assignments: Two shamans healing Water Tomb damage; Chain Heal is ideal. Other healers on the current main tank.
Aggro Sensitivity: Insensitive
Potions Usage: Mana
Movement: Spread out. Be more than 8 yards from each other person.
Note: Do not cancel heals nearly as much as in typical fights. The warrior's hp will can be brought to 40% in a single hit. Hydross' melee speed is consistent, but resists are not. Overhealing should be around 40% for tank healers. Use a meter such as SWstats to record and view overhealing.

Misc. Notes

The pull can be a sticking point without Swiftness Potions. Use them and save yourself a headache.

If Water Tombs are giving you problems when the debuff is stacked to 100% and your DPS seems fast enough, you can switch out of the frost/water stage earlier each cycle. If you are DPS heavy, leave at 100%. If you're a bit heal heavy, leave a few sec before 250% and assign an extra healer to Water Tombs. Always leave poison/nature at the same time (a few seconds before 250%).

To determine whether your DPS is fast enough, you must transition PAST phase 3 at least once. Record the percentage amount of damage dealt to Hydross during your phase 2 and phase 3.

% damage dealt in (phase2) + (phase3) = (% of dmg dealt to Hydross every 2 minutes)

You will deal 20% of his hp in the first 1 minute (phase 1) and Enrage happens at 10 minutes. Thus, you have 9 minutes to do 80% of additional damage. Divide 80% of Hydross' HP by the sum of your damage delt from phase 2 and phase 3. If this number is greater than 9, you will probably need more damage on Hydross. This could mean you're killing adds inefficiently, or it may mean your gear isn't good enough. Also bear in mind that this is an estimate. Due to loss of mana, abilities, and players, your DPS will decrease as the fight progresses.

Phase 2 - Detail

(Begin poison/nature stage. Four nature-hitting adds spawn. Tank switches from frost tank to nature tank. This phase lasts until 10 seconds before 250% Nature Vulnerability. This phase lasts aproximately 1 minute.)

View the diagram above for this phase.

Hydross will have changed colors from blue to green and spawned 4 green adds. These adds can 1-hit kill anything other than tanks. One mage should begin the phase in the middle of the adds, Frost Nova before they're fully phased in, and then Blink to safety. Druids will pick up these adds and group them together under Hydross. All DPS should wait about 5 seconds, assist one predetermined person and then DPS the adds down quickly. You will have about 20 seconds to DPS Hydross after the adds are down before needing to shift to the next phase. When this time comes (5 seconds before the 250% mark), DPS and the MT's primary healers must move east of the poison phase trigger (to the sides), as shown in the diagram. This is also the time when druids move into the position in the diagram and DPS ceases fire until the switch occurs. Tank switch is the same as the last, except the two warriors' roles are reversed. The nature tank needs to move backwards across the trigger until Hydross changes colors. This is the end of phase2.

Detailed Breakdown by Class


Warrior Tank

Hydross is Taunt immune. However, each phase switch of Hydross will result in a partial aggro loss to the current tank. This allows the tanks to switch at each phase. Positioning is really the only thing for you to perfect. Be sure no one is near you (avoid Water Tomb). The tank that just got relieved may Concussion Blow an add, but shouldn't try to tank it due to having the wrong resistance gear.
Potions Usage: Health potions, Last Stand, any other emergency item or ability.
Aggro Sensitivity: Sensitive. The DPS must cease damaging Hydross for about 3-5 seconds after the phase switch.
Stance Management: Defensive Stance.
Movement: Move Hydross across the threshold in the poison diagram to trigger the phase.
Note: Be ready to use consumable/trinkets/Last Stand/etc. Sometimes the aggro dump happens before the phase switch, resulting in a huge non-resisted hit to the tank wearing the wrong resistance gear type.

Druid Tank

Two adds each, systematically decide who tanks which 2, repeat the same plan each phase. Once tanked, try your best to stack them all on top of Hydross. Be prepared to bash an add, be vocal on voice comms and let your add-damaging rogues know if you need a stun. This occurs if your healers are debuffed, if you take several non-resisted hits, etc. At the end of the fight, the druid tanks will have taken as much damage as the main tanks. Note also that their health will dip up and down much more than the MTs due to wearing split resistance gear.

Melee DPS

Potions Usage: Thistle Tea, Rage Potions.
Aggro Sensitivity: Adds and Hydross sensitive for first 5 seconds.
Target Priority: Split 2 rogues on Hydross with the rest on adds. Assist a single person on adds.
Cooldowns: (Non-add rogues) Anything.
(Add rogues) None.
Utility: Battle Shout. Rogues listen on voice comms for Water Tombed/debuffed healers. Watch the druid tanks' HP. The add fighting rogue(s) should be on 1 druid's set of adds and be ready to stun with at least a 2-point Kidney Shot or a Vanish and Cheap Shot if the druid's HP dips under 40%.
Movement: Move to Stage 1's spread-out positions AFTER adds are down.
Note: Be very careful to avoid Frost Nova "traps" (having the adds immobilized on top of you), you can be 1 shot at any time by any single add.

Ranged DPS

Aggro Sensitivity: Adds and Hydross sensitive for first 5 seconds.
Target Priority: Assist 1 person on the adds.
Utility: Frost Trap, Frost Nova, Scattershot. Don't use Banish or Fear because this reduces DPS too much.
Movement: Stay spread out and away fromthe tank during the frost stage.
Note: If you pull aggro, you will die, and your raid will lose this fight. Use Seed of Corruption if spec'd properly.

Healing

Tank Sensitivity: Both Druids and Hydross' tanks' hp will be diping up and down drastically.
Healing Assignments: 2 healers per druid with the Water Tomb healers assisting with healing anything.
Aggro Sensitivity: None.
Potions Usage: Mana.
Movement: Stay spread out.

Phase 3 - Detail

(Begin frost/water stage. Four frost-hitting adds spawn. Tank switches from nature tank to frost tank. This phase lasts for 45 seconds to 1 minute (dependant upon the raid leader's choice, which reflects whether your raid is DPS heavy or healer heavy) View the diagram above for phase 3.)

Your frost tank will have established agro. Once the frost tank has aggro, all casters need to spread out. DPS the adds down (this is when you use Blade Flurry and Sweeping Strikes). Once the adds are down, you may arrange yourselves into DPS groups and attack Hydross. You have about 10 seconds if you're a DPS heavy raid, and about 20 seconds if you're a healer heavy raid (the reasoning is listed as a "misc note" under phase 1). After this time is up, the tank should move Hydross across the poison trigger. Begin phase 2. (Phase 2 and 3 are repeated until the phase switch after the boss hits 15% HP)

Detailed Breakdown by Class


Warrior Tank

Same as phase 2 except: move Hydross across the threshold in water diagram to trigger the phase.

Druid Tank

Same as phase 2. However, slightly more difficult to round up the adds due to lack of Frost Nova/trap control.

Melee DPS

Potions Usage: Thistle Tea, Rage Potions.
Aggro Sensitivity: Adds sensitive for first 10 seconds, Hydross sensitive for 5 seconds.
Target Priority: Split, 2 rogues on Hydross; the rest on adds. Assist 1 person on adds.
Cooldowns: (Non-add rogues) Anything; Blade Flurry adds when they're clumped/controlled.
(Add rogues) Bladeflurry, Adrenaline Rush, Evasion combo. Blade Flurry will be used on every water stage. However, you must wait for druids to maintain solid agro if you do not have Evasion up. Having Vanish available is not an acceptable reason to Blade Flurry early, as the adds will 1 shot you.
Utility: Battle Shout, stuns.
Movement: Move to Stage 1's spread out positions after the adds are down.

Ranged DPS

Same as Stage 2 except no Frost Nova or Frost Traps. The water adds are immune to these.
Add aggro sensitivity is slightly higher, so you must give the druids an extra 5 seconds to build aggro.

Healing

Tank Sensitivity: Both Druids and Hydross tanks' hp will be diping up and down drastically.
Healing Assignments: 2 healers per druid and 2 healers healing Water Tomb. All other healers dedicated to the MT.
Aggro Sensitivity: None.
Potions Usage: Mana.
Movement: Stay spread out. The druid's healers need to move east (toward Hydro's platform) quite a bit to heal during the water stage. Position yourselves near the two west flags.
Note: This is the most healing intense stage in the fight and you can not afford to have any deaths.

Phase 4

(The raid will alternate repeating Stage 2 and Stage 3 (9-10 phase changes) Until the phase switch after Hydross's HP reaches 15%. At that time, use the directions below.)

The phase switch after Hydross reaches 15%, do anything to control the adds. Banish, fear, frost nova, etc. This lets you move extra DPS to Hydross. Use everything you possibly can to kill him. Use Recklessness, Heroism/Bloodlust, and any other big-use/cool-down ability that you can. The current tank may need to Shield Wall the first few seconds of the boss's enrage while the raid attempts to finish the last few percent of health. With current gear this ending strategy is a must. You will hit the enrage timer if you don't use it.

By Zyce at Bosskillers.com

[ayadew]

Complex fight.. I'd really hate all the consumables you seem to need. I got tired of that when we cleared Naxxramas, so I'm not raiding ever again in WoW

[Apocalypse]

you have to raid to get some of the better gear.:yuck:
and did i read 4 million hp right??

[ayadew]

you have to raid to get some of the better gear.:yuck:

no, there's no great difference between say blue/arena pvp gear and tier5 now.

[Zonda]

very nice guide.