I've rummaged through the "Hydross + Shield Block" thread and can't find a lot of discussion on this...it's mostly a tanking gear discussion.

Last night was my guild's first night of real Hydross attempts (we'd poked around SSC before, done some attempts on a few bosses). We aren't going to tank-and-spank him through 250%, as it's clearly not intended and won't be possible in the next patch. I'm pretty pleased with our progress, got him to 50% on the last couple attempts before a tank death (OOM healers). We were lasting 8 minutes on those attempts, so clearly our control is about where it needs to be and now it's a question of DPS (obviously far from where it needs to be). As DPS gets more familiar with the fight I'm sure they'll get faster, but we're looking at having to almost double what we're putting out in order to score a kill.

Our DPS has never been stellar...we've struggled with many of the DPS races over the last couple years, particularly with Loatheb. We consistently kill 4 adds before Mag spawns (minimal potting) and kill Gruul in about 12 growths. Consumables will obviously be a big chunk of the DPS we need to make up for the kill but there's clearly something we're missing in terms of pushing it to the proverbial limit.

Last night we were pulling all our DPS off Hydross to burn the adds down quickly when they spawned. This led to the melee underperforming...less than half of what the casters were putting out (top caster was around 300k, top rogue was about 130k). It might be worth keeping the melee on Hydross full-time. Also, while we initially banished 2 adds, we found that our DPS was killing the first two fast enough that they had to wait around for a few seconds on Banish before finishing the second pair off. Using fears instead of Banishes (or maybe ranked down banishes?) we could squeeze out a little more DPS there. We could also pull the adds next to Hydross to use Whirlwind/Blade Flurry/Multishot.

Basically, we have a huge DPS gap ahead of us and any of the ideas I've come up with seem like drops in a bucket. Is there some big-deal concept I'm missing or do we just need to refine our execution, stack the raid with caster DPS and pot to hell and back?

First off a good DPS benchmark is, in my opinion 20% for the first (no-add) transition and 10% each transition after that. At 20% Banish/Fear the adds and burn him down. Doing that will allow you to beat the enrage without much difficulty. All of this is assuming a fully potted raid, of course.

A few dps improvements we found was that we'd have a MS Warrior on the adds + rogues with windfury. Casters would only kill the first couple adds (to let the tank build aggro) and then they would switch back to the boss. Casters lose a lot of DPS if they do not finish a spell cast which comparatively meele do not lose by switching targets.

Another thing can benefit your dps greatly is having your warlocks spec Felguard. On our kills our warlocks were pushing 500k+ dmg with their Felguard doing 100k+ (he might have also been using Seed of Corruption I'm not sure). We only used 1 banish as we felt that anything more would be a waste waiting for it to come out.

I wouldn't get discouraged if the DPS requirement seems way out of reach. The first time we got him to enrage he was at 54% (unpotted with multiple deaths). Consumables and practice make a HUGE difference here.

Hope that helps.

I've never done Hydross before, but ranked down banish for at least the 3rb add to be killed would be a very smart idea.

You already know all you need to kill Hydross, work on your execution and you should have him down. Over time, experience and slightly better upgrades will make the encounter a bit less stressing (but far from trivial).

You definitely need to DPS pot to hell and back for Hydross. I'm certain that Blizzard will needs to reduce Hydross's HP to smoothen the raiding difficulty curve, considering he's after Gruul.

That said, you can do a couple things to help perk up your DPS:

- Minimize melee. Sad, but true. Melee that are grouped up on the frost phase can get chain ice blocked. I believe our kill had 2 or 3 rogues + the tanks.
- Group the first two adds together. This will help with multishot, bladeflurry, and potentially whirlwind/cleave. Throw 20 and 30 second banishes on the other two--they should break right on time.
- Make sure your shadow casters are being DPS efficient. Their damage scales greatly with single targets and it might not be advantageous for them to follow the DPS train for the adds. Even normal casters can waste time on spells that don't finish.
- Finish the fight in the nature phase, taking at 250%, blowing last stand/nightmare seed, then shield wall on enrage. You should be able to bring him down quite a bit in the last minute.

Couple of things. How is your raid make-up in terms of healers? We bring 8 healers and kill him right around his enrage point every week (give or take 10 seconds).

Obviously, everyone should be specced for maximum damage possible (no hybrid pvp specs, no mutilate on a poison immune boss given your dps gap). In terms of melee dps, our raid make-up is fairly caster-heavy. We typically bring 2 rogues (me and another rogue that has almost identical gear), 1 enhance shammy and one dps warrior. The 2 rogues are always 1 and 2 on the meters for Hydross. In terms of add priority vs Hydross, we tried different things at the start but found that peeling the melee off Hydross and on to the first 2 adds and then going back to Hydross was a good compromise while learning the fight. The mages would then kill the 2nd 2 adds.

Also, melee dps is very weapon dependent, obviously, so I hate to ask but how is your rogue's gear? Both the other rogue and me are combat daggers mainhanding Malch with very good offhands. If he is still wielding a 71 dps MH from 5 mans, you may want to consider just bringing another mage/lock, I am sorry to say.

Melee are an absolute liability on this fight especially if you don't do it in NR phase exclusively. More ranged dps helps a lot. The frost phase could use some work in this regard, melee are a detriment since they need to basically choose to dps or not dps him and risk getting water tombed since depending on how many melee you have, you can only spread so far around him. A ranged class just needs to find a safe place to stand, and if they get tombed, its not a huge dps loss for 1 person to get it.

The solution to melee dps and tombs is pretty simple - make groups of 2-3 melee stand on top of each other and have each group spread out, letting you control the amount of melee that get chain tombed.

Perhaps this question has been answered already, but I can't find it anywhere: About what % at Enrage should one aim for unpotted before going for broke on consumables? buddha gave some numbers, but those are assuming full buffs as I understood it.

Also, is it advisable to have DoTs up when Hydross switches phase? We adopted a rather draconian regime of no DoTs at all on transfer (12 add wipes will do that to you), but it does feel like it's cutting into lock and shadowpriest DPS quite deeply.

A large part of the fight seems to be having 2 tanks that can generate substantial threat very quickly on the transition. An HS/Shield Slam should be enough to overpower the dots very quickly. The tank knows when the transition is coming, he can save up a ton of rage when the time is right. If DOTs are the only things on Hydross for the first couple seconds, unloading a full rage bar into him should give you solid aggro.

That is 2-3 people not dealing any damage while stunned versus 1, and 2-3 people who need to be healed versus 1. That isn't really a positive.

Hmm, it's kind of hard to say at what % best attempt it's time to pot.

I would say if that you can keep up everyone for the full 10 minutes until enrage then you should be able to kill him fully potted assuming your DPS know what they are doing.

DPS consumables will provide ~25%-30% increase but keep in mind that translates to even more damage on him because you kill the adds faster thus enabling you to spend more time on the boss.

Edit: My experience has been similar to Gurgs in that our DPS meters have been Felguard Warlock then Rogues.

Well the difference to me is (just on the frost phase, nature phase no one is inhibited by anything really) is to be able to do your job, you really can't just stand somewhere and no one will be near you. The previous suggestion, while a viable solution, doesn't change the fact that if 2-3 melee get tombed by standing on top of each other, its more healing required and more dps lost compared to a caster or hunter or anyone who can dps at range getting tomb.

Thats really solid rogue numbers. I'm just assuming you he's grouped with a shaman obviously, we don't have one at the moment so our melee dps isn't as high compared to our caster dps. On our kill the top was Warlock, Mage, Hunter, but I can't remember how much they did off the top of my head.

iirc, a vanish/clos popped as soon as hydross targets the rogue stops the iceblock from landing.

Yes, have tanks getting solid aggro on the adds and then aoe the crap out of them (and Hydross). This allows you to beat the enrage timer with extreme ease.

I've done around 500k and was in first place using max consumables and WW/ cleaving the adds... very easy to push that high but the tanks need to be skilled enough to not let them aggro on you or 1 shot and you die.

Usually I'll kill the first and 2nd add then switch to the boss and just AE the others because as time goes on the 3rd or 4th one , if I pull they 1 shot me.

But ya melee dps is very nice for hydross if they can spread out and be kept up.

I do not have time to make an elegant post, so apologies in advance (in a big hurry).

Hydross is an exponential return problem due to the add overhead.

You can halve your time for instance by increasing your dps by 50%... at some points the returns are far better and far worse than this... increasing toward linear returns at 0 time kills.

Someone else can expand this, and I made an excel chart (in like 2 minutes, so forgive the mistakes) that shows what is going on during Hydross.

BOTTOM LINE:
Consumables give huge returns on Hydross... If you were 20% away from killing Hydross, 10% more dps is probably going to overkill him badly. Consumables = win.

Here is the excel template, someone else can repaste things in a pretty form...

http://images.flying-hellfish.com/Sc...mp/Hydross.xls



Time vs DPS... yeah I know.

Various things:

Rank 1 banish the third add.

Shadow Priests and (Affliction) Warlocks (especialy if banishing) should possibly only Dot the second add and otherwise stay on Hydross at all time. Watching aggro of course. No point wasting casts and mana on things that die so quickly.

Adds should be pulled close together and close to the boss so melee DPS can blade flurry, etc.

Save stuns on the adds for the 3rd and 4th, when the mark will be higher and your OTs taking bigger hits (less healing).

In the kills I've been in our DMs went Shadow Priest, Rogue, Warlock/Rogue. Then a little bit of a drop down to the next, which was another warlock. That had a lot to do with the players/gear and the way we do the fight though (Slightly cheese 250).

EDIT: And, of course, use consumables. (Though Shadow Priests and Warlocks might run into some trouble with threat if you're not careful)

As others before me have already said, correctly specced and decently equipped rogues seem to do way more dps than any other class on Hydross. On our first kill (yesterday /cheer) the 3 rogues were 1-2-3 on the damage meters by a considerable margin.

The strat we went for in the end was to rank 1 (20 sec) banish 2 adds and keep melee dps on the first 2 adds to make use of cleave\blade flurry. Shadow priests stayed on the boss the whole time. Once the first 2 adds were down melee would switch to the boss (taking spread position to minimise water tomb chains) while ranged would nuke down the 2nd 2 adds.

A huge amount depends on the skill and positioning of the OT's. Tanking even a single add and getting it positioned correctly is not trivial given that they'll most likely have very low AP and zero + hit. AP pots\buffs help a bunch. The trick is to get 2 adds positioned on top of each other close to the boss within a very short time frame in order to maximise aoe effects.

Another thing is raid composition. We run it with 7 healers (4 for the MT, 2 for the OT's, 1 for the raid) 4 tanks and 14 DPS. In the end we just took the people who we knew could do the best dps. A group with a feral druid (offtank), enhancement shaman and 3 rogues is pretty tasty dps.

Finally one thing that might work for some is using the spare MT to tank a 3rd add and only banishing 1. This way aff warlocks can provide a pretty major boost to dps with SoC spam.

I would be rather surprised if that was even a marginal DPS boost.

I'd just like to echo this, and in some respects thumb my nose at all of those who say melee are a liability. We have always depended heavily upon our rogue core to bring the dps on those dps race fights, and we're attempting keep that through SSC as well, as we just dont have the casters to sub in a lot of cases. We bring 3 rogues and 2 dps warriors to hydross, as well as 1 enhancement shaman. One DPS warrior, our Enhance sham, and myself help with the first add, and then go full time on hydross till the next phase.

Tombing isn't too much of a problem if you have a couple resto shamans making liberal use of chain heal, and your melee stay as spread out as possible during the frost phase. Melee can work, if you have the players, the setup and the strat to do so.

Edit: Damn you psiven, already posting. -_-

Well I never said it was impossible, we had melees on our fights, its just another fight where ranged do have some advantages. Of course, I haven't been able to experiment much with an enhancement shaman in a raid setting outside Karazhan so I'm looking forward to that in the near future, just haven't had one on raids like at all besides that.

For our guild we have typically been caster heavy, so shadow priests have been really nice to have, and hunter heavy too which also is nice with shadow priests.