We had 5 tanks in the raid, so between them they were able to control the adds quickly (1 for each add + whomever was tanking Hydross that phase). A single tank should be able to hold aggro on a single mob through any damage the AoE put on it. We'd occasionally have an add break loose early but didn't lose anyone to it...at low stacks the damage is easily healed even if they do smack a caster. In fact, our only death the whole fight was an undergeared Priest who got a 100% Water Tomb and received no heals.

What kind of AoE do your Mages use? Or do you have a Shadow Priest in your Magegroup fpr mana reasons?

http://www.lossendil.com/wws/?report=yqnzvkgcri26w
That's the first kill, you can check out the Mages' spells yourself. Ferth was not using Arcane Explosion (just Flamestrike) and you'll notice he ended up way behind the others. All 3 Mages were in a group with Tor, our resident Shadow Priest. They chain-slammed SMPs the entire fight...mana was absolutely an issue we dealt with.

Well, Ferth didnt use a single mana pot, so that's probably why he didnt use AE.

THAT ASSHOLE. Anyway, you'll notice the huge drop-off from AoE to the single-target DPS. "Potentially disastrous" is overstating the risk of AoEing the Frost phase...as long as you execute the AoE in a controlled fashion (anyone NOT DPSing the adds keeps their distance), your healers are on the ball (note the Chain Heal spam in my individual report) and you kill the adds FAST (during the 25% phase...they should be dead by the time of the 50% mark) the risk is minimal. We got a number of worst-case-scenario Water Tombs and it didn't come close to wiping us.

Controlling aggro on the adds is not that much of a issue.. If you go with the AoE approach you can have your mages and warlocks dps hydross while the offtanks(we use two) build enough aggro to hold the adds.

With KTM set on hydross, the aoe classes can push dps on hydross as aggro is being built and then nuke away once the adds have been dealth with. Including adds, our top dps deal about 600k+ damage during the Hydross encounter. We run with 2-3 shadowpriests and 7 or 8 Locks/mages, with 2 hunters to aid with transition.

We killed him for our first time last week on our 2nd flasked attempt and this week he was surprisingly enough a oneshot. That being said we would not be anywhere near killing him without all out flasking.

In terms of execution the aoe approach is probably easier but it requires a more specific raid composition. I would not attempt the AoE approach without atleast 6 mages/warlocks and atleast one, preferably two shadowpriests.

We started SSC recently and (against some advice from these forums) our first target is Hydross. We have 2 tanks in Hydross-tanking gear (365 resist buffed for one element), 2 tanks in super-add gear (300+ buffed for one element), and 1 druid in hybrid gear (220~ish buffed for both).

We were trying the single-target adds strat and just working on our transitions, but decided to give AE a try for the nature phase. We only have 2 mages and 3 locks in the raid, but it seemed a lot easier.

We had our nature warrior OT and the hybrid-resist feral try to pick up aggro on two adds each for 10 seconds, and then AE'ed on top of Hydross. Our main problem was establishing smooth aggro on the adds, both at the start and when the AE damage started rolling in. I think possibly using the 4-tank strategy on the nature phase would be a good idea. However, would 1 add pose a significant threat to a tank with only ~70 buffed NR (that would be our frost MT and frost OT, both of whom would only have hunter aura or an NR totem)? I figure if we kill the adds before the 3rd mark, they should be okay... right?

Also, has anyone tried doing only a partial AE strategy? Meaning, we AE on nature phase and single-target frost phase. I'm just curious, we'll probably try that as our main strategy going forward unless we simply can't come up with the DPS to kill him in 10 minutes.

(edit: damn our 3rd mage getting married and being unavailable to help us AE on all phases!)

Well the adds are dead at the 50% mark at the very latest. With sufficient raid spacing you really dont have an issue even in frostphase. Risk is low, execution is easy since you can leave adds to mages and locks while remaining dps focus on hydross and the only "lost" dps is the last SoC from the locks that may not proc due to adds being downed already.

Im not claiming to be a hydross authority but IMO, having more than 2 tanks on the adds is a loss of dps that may or may not potentially tip the scales. If your guild wants to progress in SSC you need to be packing atleast 2 OT:s that can tank more than one mob. It is not hard to pick the adds up and with a proper mixx of gear, damage taken should not be more than the healers can handle. I would suggest that you use Flasks for your OT:s as well as a hunter/pala for Frost resist aura and Aspect of the wild along with imp.

However with only 5 AoE:ers you may have to give the OT:s more time on the adds before you start AoE:ing since each mage/warlock will need to do alot of aoe damage to take the adds down. 13k is alot of AoEing.

You will likely have issues with marks stacking too high if you only have mages and locks on the adds.

You only really have to single tank the spawns. The time lost on spawn dps by banishing can be made up by shifting to Hydross while the banish ticks down. We put all the dps on the first two adds (shadow priests start on the second, everyone else starts on the first) then we all go to Hydross. When the banishes break, mages finish off the adds while the raid stays on Hydross.

We got our first kill yesterday in our first flasked try after 8 min, however flasking actually lowered our dps due to more people dying. Would had probably gone smoother if we had more attempts with the flasks to get people used to their new found aggro.
Safe to say, we won't be using flasks in the future, at least not until we have the rest of SSC on farm.

I really encourage people to dare to try out different add killing strats to find one that fits your guild the best. Our best try was 63-64% last week, we changed things around this week and had that number already after the first nature phase.

Given you're tanking an elemental, I edit: uhh.... apparently didn't know what I was talking about.

Shield slam crits = aggro, which is what he was talking about.

>_> <_< oh. I forgot about that change however many patches ago from being AP based to Block based. :[

Boy I wish AP translated to block.

No no, I mean shield slams haven't always been based off the block on your gear... that was changed in some patch a long time ago that I neglected. I believe it's damage used to be calculated from your AP.

I didn't mean to suggest that block had any bearing on your AP... just that it used to be AP and now is Block.

My apologies for the minor hijacking of the thread, but does anyone have any numbers from the PTR on the updated version of Hyrdoss? Would like to sit down and theorycraft a little about the AoE approach, so would be good to know how much the adds will change.

I believe Hydross's HP have been lowered as well, and nothing hits as hard. Honestly even a small reduction in the DPS requirement would make the fight easily beatable without consumables. It's beatable without consumables now, but requires a good strat and flawless execution (in addition to some raid stacking).

Hydross also stacks to 500% now though so any guilds who try the dont-move-him strat will need to adapt. (talking about the 2.1 patch obviously not live)

We used an AoE strat (just three Warlocks with seeds and 2 mages chipping in with Flamestrike) with three hybrid tanks and seven healers. The strategy worked very well and we killed it on our first night of attempting Hydross. However, our total DPS on Hydross was low. Everyone was using consumables, but the entire raid wasn't flasked. We went past the enrage timer at something like 11 or 12% and barely got the kill. - http://www.ainur-guild.org/logs/hydrosskill/ is the WWS of our kill.

Since almost every wipe before that came from aggro issues with the transition, we were calling to stop DPS and I think the majority of our DPS issues came from that. We moved DoT classes back and forth across the lines, but we're still losing 5-15 seconds every transition just to make sure the tanks have aggro. From the WWS, our DPS was only available on Hydross for around 85% of the time. What's the best way to handle the transitions to avoid aggro issues? Also, for those of you who have the done the AoE strategy, is using mages for Arcane Explosion/Blast Wave a good idea on the nature side (to free up the warlocks earlier) or is it better for them to concentrate on just DPSing Hydross?

Your warlocks were doing too much of the work. Our mages Flamestrike on the frost side and AE on the nature side, and manage comparable overall DPS. Six AoE classes vs. five also helps a ton.

For comparison, here are the DMs from our unbuffed Hydross kill this timer, from the other thread:

Further stat comparisons:
Each of our warlocks did 50-60% of their damage to Hydross, and 40-50% to the adds.
Yours did almost all their damage to the adds and hardly any to Hydross.

You have affliction locks and they aren't DoT'ing Hydross full-time? Why?

And yeah, I think just generally overly conservative with DPS. You have two hunters for MD on every transition -- use them. Our mages/rogues/etc. all had 98%+ presence on the fight, while yours were 90%'ish. The main perplexing thing is some of the warlocks with like 60% presence -- were they just standing around, waiting, spamming SoC a lot, and then going back to standing around doing nothing?

How fast were the adds dying? The point of an AoE strat is to aim to have all 4 adds dead within 30 seconds of a transition, at around the 25% Mark, leaving you 30 seconds of hard DPS, then easing off into the transition, and repeat.