I've got a few questions about Hydross that I would like to get insight from other peoples experiences.

My guild has downed Hydross twice and we seem to have a really random time with the initial pull. I decided to post about this after we wiped tonight 5+ times because of him going over his tripline and spawning his poison adds. We have the tank pull by hugging the right "cleansing" pillar next to hydross and running towards him spamming charge. It works half the time and he can drag him into position without triggering the nature phase, but it seems like the "tripline" is kind of hazy as far as exactly where it decides to trigger a transition. This ends up in us having a really luck based pull depending on where the "tripline" ends up. We've tried having the tank use swiftness potions which helped somewhat but Hydross would still sometimes seem to trigger his nature phase on us.

It seems to me like the problem lies when the warrior charges he goes through the mob causing Hydross to reposition himself and sometimes trigger the nature phase depending on where the tripline decides to place itself.

I have some ideas to try next time such as having one of the druid hybrid resist tanks pull by using sprint and then have the warrior pull it off of him. I'd like to hear how other people handle this as I'm sure were just messing something up stupidly that should be simple.

We used to have a lot of problems with this as well at the start. What I do now to avoid him tripping is pop a swiftness potion, blood rage and intercept once I get close enough. As long as nobody does anything to agro him it works pretty much every time. It's also important to run in as close to the right pillar as possible, though it seems you're already doing that so should be fine.

Another possibility is using an invisibility potion. The only downside to this is that healers etc can't follow you in, though I'm not sure how much of a problem this is since I've never actually tried it.

Rogue stealths up to Hydross. Warrior intervenes in. Never had any problems with this method.

Two solutions.
1) Eye of Kilrog/stealther just infront of hydross, have your tank intervene them.
2) Just pull him to nature, it really makes very little difference which phase you start in these days.

I build up rage on the assembly line mobs, then intercept him from the far right while a hunter misdirects on me.

We had some problems with the pull as well. My theory is that the trigger is actually not the line in front of the platform. Sometimes you can pull him so far out that his center his almost on the line and he doesn't change. Then you only move him slightly and he changes phases.

What I think happens is that Hydross has a circular "hitbox" which is just as big so it doesn't fit inbetween the two banners. The banners mark the trigger points. Once a banner is inside his hitbox the phase change happens (at least during the pull).

If you pull him from the side and he only moves a few yards his "hitbox" will overlap with one of the banners. If you pull him frontally though he can move up to the line and not trigger a phase change.

And that's what we do now. Just run in frontally and charge. He moves quite a lot and it looks really close but worked everytime. Even without Swiftness Potions.

We tried this and still had a few pulls where he crossed into nature and then followed the tank back over the line to frost, spawning 8 adds.

We opted for pulling straight to nature and haven't looked back, no more arsing around with flukey pulls.

You will lose one minute of pure DPS this way. If you can manage the enrage timers well, then you should go ahead. We simply intercept Hydross from the right pillar from out LoS.

We do this with the druid OT stealthing in and a hunter misdirecting onto the warrior frost tank. Took some ironing out but seems to work fine now.

Wow, I know hydross is pretty easy now.. but you would lose a large section of direct damage to the boss let alone having to have your raid ready for adds right at the start..

The strat we use is heavily AoE based and the difference in damage done from pulling him in frost and going straight to nature was only around 8% before the first proper change - the only trade off being that the pull has no chance of failing due to latency or just common bad luck.

I don't see how having adds picked up at the start is any more difficult than it is mid fight, if anything it's less prone to error as one of your tanks hasn't just been preoccupied with tanking Hydross.

I had the same problems when we tried Hydross during the last weeks. Even after popping a swiftness potion it can get pretty close imho since you have only a short window of opportunity where the intercept will hit Hydross in time. One of the main problems with this encounter is the inconsistency regarding the line where Hydross will switch over.
But generally speaking: build rage on the adds, then proceed to the right pillar, pop the potion, hug the pillar (but not to close, if you keep running slightly into the pillar, it will slow you down) and time your intercept. Everybody should watch their aggro closely, we had some pulls where my shield slam missed and Hydross straight went to a healer, resulting in a messy and quick wipe.

What your missing on thou is a minute of pure pure dps focusing on Hydross where compared to pulling him into nature means dps will have to focus on the adds then onto hydross. This may not be a worry when your not near the enrage timer but for new guilds trying Hydross out this 1 minute of dps can be the difference between wiping and killing.

We go along with the swiftness potion and intercept tactic from the left pillar and I have yet to see it fail.

I am 100% POSITIVE this is not what is happening as I talk with our tank who is having the problems. He intercepts everytime but even when the intercept lands, the boss will phase change after repositioning itself, even while targeting the tank.

I think the eye of kilrogg method or the rogue method will eventually lead to the most success for our guild because the tank is positioning himself out of LOS against the right pillar, yet this problem still persists. Thanks for the suggestion.

Currently, we're using a banish 2, single target focus fire method for the adds and we fall within the enrage timer. But allowing a phase change would definitely be out of the option because we down get hydross to 80% on the initial stretch which we feel is vital to our success.

To illustrate my point:

Try swapping to an aoe strat, it really makes a lot more sense given how close to the enrage people seem to be using a single target method. Give it a go and I can promise the fight will feel like it's on farm after the first successful kill.

Hm, this sounds...very interesting. I MUST try it

We used swiftness pots on our first night, now we just use aspect of the pack and a warrior who hugs the right pillar (espacially this last part is important!). Pulls are even better then with the pot actually.

After about a night of wiping mostly due to bad pulls, we decided to use the invisibility potions. We let the tank build to full rage on the adds, then have him move in and thunderclap to break invisibilty.

Only thing to watch out for is the healers getting a bit too anxious and aggro'ing Hydross before the tank has came out of invisibility. Having nearly full rage is also very nice for starting heavy dps on Hydross right away.

This is what I do now after seeing someone mention it here on a different thread. It works great and you dont need swiftness pots.

We were playing around in SSC for about an hour last night after our first mag kill (woo!) and cleared all the trash upto hydross.

My question...how does the "assembly line" elementals work? it seemed like there was an endless amount of them cycling by the whole time. Is there a way to pull them safely? Do they have to be killed at all?

Please excuse my ignorance on this matter. We just took a peek at him and this kind of baffled me.

They stop spawning once you engage Hydross, until then there are an endless number of them. But don't worry because their cake, easily solo-able.