OutDPS!

Hodir is supposed to be unfriendly for hunter DPS. I know why people say this, and to an extent, it’s true.

There’s a lot going on in this encounter, so the first skill that will serve you well is being able to see what you’re looking for through tons of spell animations. You can’t get away with unchecking projected textures either, as one of our jobs is to not stand in a projected texture.

This fight has a one minute cycle due to one of Hodir’s abilities. Your first task upon starting the fight is to help rescue some friendly NPCs from “tombs of ice” that look like a mage’s ice block. There are four types of friendly NPCs, and one type (the mage) can break other tombs of ice for you. You either have to free the mages first, or free only the mages, depending on your raid’s plan.

While doing this, you need to be aware that there is a mechanic called biting cold similar to Keristrasza‘s intense cold. You need to keep moving, or else you get a stacking debuff that will kill you fast. Typically, when not protected from this (more on that soon), I fire instants while moving the minimum necessary to avoid biting cold stacks, and stop to get off a single steady shot before resuming my movements.

Good thing we’re moving so much, because every couple of seconds, you’re targeted with a little icicle falling from the ceiling. You’ll see a small blue rune on the floor for a few seconds before it lands, so don’t let it land on you.

Friendly NPCs

Once the friendly NPCs you have been assigned are free from their ice blocks, you switch DPS to Hodir. Now unaided, we’d probably have a hard time with this guy’s enrage timer. Luckily, the friendly NPCs we just freed will help us. Of course they’ll attack the boss, but they do less DPS than an arms warrior. Their real value lies in the fact that they can buff our DPS if we know how to use them. In order of importance:

Mages cast toasty fires around them. Standing in 10 yards of a toasty fire relieves you of having to run around to avoid biting cold stacks, and makes your attacks singe Hodir. That’s a stacking debuff and some extra fire damage. This buff has priority for us. The fires are put out by the little falling icicles, but only if they fall directly on them. So don’t stand on top of the fire, just stand next to it. If you see a little blue rune under your feet, move to the other side of the fire.

Shamans cast storm cloud on players, which allows them to buff nearby allies with storm power. The deadly boss mods addon caused one of our crit chickens to /yell that he had the buff, and he was instantly surrounded by ranged DPS. Since they were following him around, I noticed that he made sure they were also in range of a toasty fire. This buff is nice, but is less important than the fires. Still, call people over to you if you get it. I would ping the map to help.

Last and least (for us), Druids will cast a beam of light on the floor called starlight that will buff our haste. I know, what good is haste if you have to be moving all the time so the two attacks we do that benefit from it, auto-attack and steady shot, can’t be cast? Well, if you’re in the radius of a fire and you can get to one of these, go for it. Otherwise, ignore them.

All the other ranged DPS will prioritize starlight, which makes our position by the fires that much more important. Our damage tends to come in a higher number of smaller hits than, for example, mages or whatever. This makes us perfect for getting the maximum sized stack of the singed debuff onto Hodir. We also benefit the most from the fires.

The thing with these buffs is that using them takes practice. You normally want to get as many as you can. Get used to picking out fires on the ground, and make sure everyone knows to do what they can to maximize the shaman buffs.

One minute cycle

Assuming you’re doing everything right, you’re standing in a fire (I know, right?), avoiding the “targeting runes” of the little icicles falling on your head, and calling out if you get the shaman buff. Now what? Well, Hodir’s one minute cycle will end with some big bad icicles being dropped on the floor.

You’ll notice that these are several times larger than the little ones trying to put out your camp fire. When you see them, you have 4 seconds or so to get near to them. You don’t want to stand in the large “targeting rune” or else you get blasted back 30 feet when it hits. Once it lands, you have 2-3 seconds to jump (not walk) up onto the snow drift they leave behind before Hodir casts flash freeze on everyone. This will freeze anyone not on a snow drift into an ice tomb, which will quickly kill them because of the biting cold stacks, as well as cost the raid 100k damage to break you out. The mages will break these eventually, but it takes them a few seconds to do it, and they can’t cast fires while they’re breaking n00bs free. A note- usually the friendly NPCs will get refrozen and need to be broken out. Prioritize mages.

As soon as he casts flash freeze, he goes bat-poo crazy and does many times the health pool of every player in AOE damage while hammering the tank much harder for 20 seconds. Every minute that you survive in this fight, you owe your healers a beer. Whatever you do, don’t add to their load! Heal yourself if you notice your health getting low: pots, racials, anything you can. The first 20 seconds of his cycle is where you lose people.

Hunter unfriendly?

So what makes this hunter unfriendly? Well, to start with, moving constantly costs us auto-shot DPS and steady shot DPS. Also, of the 3 DPS buffs, the druid buff does just about nothing for us. This is also where everyone else will cluster, so they will typically get the shaman buff. Still, nobody’s faster at stacking up the singe debuff than we are, and our “stand and blast” DPS gets magnified quite nicely with the fire buff.

The reality is that if you’re reading this, your guild is probably still learning the fight and you’re trying to figure out how to do more. Every group who learns this fight will have trouble learning to position the DPS on the fly to take the maximum advantage of the available buffs. Be a leader in this, and your DPS will skyrocket.

If everyone is already doing the best they can, then yes, you will fall behind. Rogues in particular get some amazing numbers here once they know how to position themselves. The largest differentiator in this fight, however, is not class, gear, or spec, it’s skill at positioning. Learn this and you will top the meters until everyone else catches up :)