Terlig

For Vezax we used 3 healers only once at the first try, one-shotting him. Now we do this with 2 healers (druid and me), slightly more difficult, but works. Normally i solo heal MT till P2, i have at this step depending on luck aprox. 80% mana. On Animus Druid starts to cast his heals, i put beacon on MT and also heal raid/OT. At 50% we use those shadow protection potions (absorbing shadow dmg) + Divine Sacrifice to smooth it.

Mimiron - 3 healers is a must have IMO. We try to position fire on each transition to move them from the raid.

Yoggie - we did it with 3 healers to get rid off all diseases/poisons as fast as possible. We choose 2 melee dps and 2 hunters to dps the brain. Just before hunters enter the portals, we buff them with shields and HoTs - helps a lot. Hunters were suppose generally to dps from fixed positions closest tentacles, while melee goes further. Generally, DPS is not a problem on this fight. We could easilly remove 50% of his hp in 1 portal phase. Hunters should cast "aspect of daze" ;-) after killing tentacles to shorten travel time ;->

 

leladax

Has anyone ever seen it with a minority of melee DPSes (e.g. 2 in a 10man) to have a melee DPS advantage? It appears that melee are being limited into proccing the fireplace debufs and being less in numbers (together with the tank), they have a lower probability of getting the crit buf; let alone using a beam is harder, predominately because even if you move it into one, you may have to run off it to avoid snowfalls soon after, without a good alternative to be found quick.

 

Rhaegal

Your question is worded strangely, so I'm not entirely sure what you're asking, but I'll answer both possible extremes: in 10 man (we're strictly 10-man, so no 25-man gear), we've successfully done Hodir hard mode both with only 2 melee DPS and only 2 ranged DPS, depending on who showed up for the raid that night. In any case, myself and the other person healing make a point to pass around Storm Power to whoever needs it if we get it, and sometimes our tank will pull Hodir around to help. As for beams, that problem is true for everyone, melee or ranged. If you're asking if you can bring only two melee and still have them on top of the meters, there's no reason to expect that they would be on any fight let alone Hodir, just because you'll be lacking a lot of physical synergy whereas your casters are probably propping each other up nicely, nevermind the encounter mechanics where casters can and do hit 16k+ DPS for the fight. That said, our holy paladin tends to go ret for Hodir, and has broken 8k in crappy off-spec gear on nights where we do have lots of melee.

Stand back! I'm going to try SCIENCE!

 

leladax

I agree, though beams are an advantage for ranged because more that 1 beams may be in range; if a nearby alternative is there, an icicle is less problematic compared to melee, who will need careful boss repositioning in an equivalent situation.

I suspect that melee disadvantage may have been the reason Designers added the 'move or get debuf' mechanic in the encounter to indirectly interrupt the ranged that are predominately the ones in need of time casting. This though is not a disadvantage for instant casters.

PS. Fireplaces are involved in another mechanic but they can be probably considered of the same merits in this matter.

 

Mideci

Certain melee classes do well on a boss -- Hodir -- who takes a lot more magic damage and gives you a crit buff. Enhancement shaman, for example, are one. Fury warriors are not. Rogues not gigantically so, rets and DKs probably more so.

Casters are inherently magic damage dealers. All of their damage benefits from singed. Some of them have crit mechanics -- for example mages -- that make them benefit extraordinarily well from Storm Power.

It's not a great melee fight, but once that can be beaten with many combos of ranged and melee on 10 man even in 10 man gear. It just make require tighter execution than for 25-man guilds, who can beat the encounter in 2 mins at this point without too much random number generator good fortune.

 

tommynt

in our first 25man killnight on Hodir hard, our cat was top3 dmg in like every try untill we killed him.

While this statement allone doesnt bring much to the table I just want to say that a proper execution of some top notch dps rotation can be more succesful then running around looking for specific buffs just to run away a sec later again.
But sure magic dmg is powerful in this fight, so was our ret topping the rougues who are usually on top and respecing to SV from MM brought a huge dps boost for the Hunters

 

Mideci

Kudos to your cat, seriously. But a well played mage who has good fortune on Storm Power can do 15-17k dps. Your cat cannot. So while it's fine to discuss playing well and doing your best, the reality of Hodir is that casters benefit from all 3 buffs and the net result can be an insane boost to dps. Why? Because it's a boost to 100% of their dps and Singed, in particular, solely benefits magic damage. If your cat -- who deals essentially no magic damage (is it none? I'm not quite sure these days) -- is topping the meters, your other dps is not doing very well on the fight.

Also, for mages and locks, haste is nearly a proportional increase in dps; this isn't the case for physical / melee classes. And while storm power is good for all, the proportion of your damage that crits and your critical strike multipliers determine just how valuable that is. If you have non-critting DOTs as part of your damage rotation, for example, they won't benefit from Storm Power. Every spell cast by a mage, on the other hand, benefits from the crit multiplier.

 

leladax

Perhaps seeing a caster advantage, Designers tried to balance it with Biting Cold to interrupt them indirectly. But if a tank actively tries to give Starlight or/and Toasty Fires to melee at all times, it may make it harder for ranged to have their target in range and on sight. I tend to think though that the inherent advantage of ranged being ..ranged, make Starlight and Fires quite an easy job for them, while only Biting Cold remains to balance it, which may prove inadequate to do it in most setups or gamestyles.

 

ildon

It's not biting cold, since those are mitigated by the fires, it's the icicles. The icicles force the ranged to move into and out of the lights, and discourages stacking (although in my opinion, the benefits of casters stacking [instant spreading of storm cloud] outweighs the detriment of all the casters having to dodge the same icicle). Melee can dodge the icicles by rotating around the back of the boss while continuing to deal near full damage. For almost all casters, moving at all is a hit to DPS.

 

Mideci

Yes, melee is moving. But melee pretty much will never have Starlight in 25 mans because, well, even if you get lucky, an icicle is about to move all 7-12 of you. It's a caster fight, pure and simple. I should add that melee has had Starlight maybe 1 out of 3 weeks in our raid anyway. When someone can show us parses with melee dealing 15k damage, we can discuss how melee friendly Hodir is.

The reason to belabor this point, by the way, is to remind people where to put Storm Power. Your priority should be the tank super early, then your casters, then your melee. If you are killing Hodir without doing this, you are fine not doing it. If you are not killing Hodir, you might seriously want to understand the fight mechanics and follow that strategy.

 

vorda

World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis
World of Logs - Real Time Raid Analysis

Anything works, it just depends on your players.
My old guild had bad melee and amazing casters, so we gave storm power to casters, counting on one or two of them to hit 15k and 'boost' those 6-7k melees.
This guild is much more balanced, and it shows on dps meters as well. The storm power rule is that ranged waits a bit and then brings it to melee.

 

leladax

*delete. wrong thread.

 

Mideci

No one ever said melee doesn't work. The buffs are, however, better for people that deal magic damaged. I refer you -- again -- to Singed and it's effect and the fact that physical damage cannot possibly be buffed by it. And you can continue linking random parses to prove the obvious fact that Hodir can be beaten in hard mode by melee heavy groups. We all know this.

 

HRAE

This is just another example of just how good casters are. The melee got 2-4 times more storm powers than the mage and he still ended up on top.

 

Lucinde

It must be said that do mages exceptionally well in Hodir because they are arguably the class that benefits the most from haste. Even without good Storm Power RNG, mages can produce crazy numbers by just standing in the moonlight. Add some storm power and it goes through the roof.

It's hard to argue that melee can do better than casters because of the Singed debuff and the fact that casters can just pick a spot with both fire and moonbeams, do awesome DPS and consider the stormpower a bonus to move into wicked DPS territory. Melee is dependent on the storm power much more than ranged in that respect.

That said, we surely have had kills where a frost DK (pre 3.2) would just dominate the meters and surely the fight can be won with a lot of melee, but usually it's mages and -surprisingly- shadowpriests topping up on Hodir by a pretty good margin.

 

Cloudgatherer

I apologize if this is a slight necro, but my guild saw an issue last night with Thorim that we think is due to the 3.2.2 patch and I wanted to ask if anyone else has seen it. On every Thorim attempt we had last night, after getting him off the balcony I would pick him up and we would fight for about 5-8 seconds before he would mysteriously evade and then despawn. We saw this happen 3 times in a row. Now, I know there is a way to evade/despawn him if I were to stay up on the balcony and taunt him, his pathing can't reach me and he despawns, however that was not the case last night as everyone had jumped down into the arena and I had a solid agro lead on him. Anyone experience a similar problem or know of a workaround here? Thanks.

 

Dancing Wu Li Master

World of Warcraft - English (NA) Forums -> [BUG] Thorim Evading

There's a thread on the R&D forums as well.