For other bosses in Ulduar, check the Ulduar Healing Strategy Page
Hodir is a fight that requires a lot of movement. This boss is a big cuddly snowman who likes to spread the love, and the iceblocks. This fight will keep you on your toes.
Notes about the fight:
- Lots of movement
- Raid wide damage
Abilities
Biting Cold – This is an aura like affect that pulses through the entire raid. This is much like the ability from Keristrasza in the nexus, you need to keep moving to keep it from stacking up on you. Each stack increases the periodic damage it deals.
Freeze – This deals about 5k frost damage to all players within 10 yards of the target, it also roots the targets in place.
Flash Freeze – This encases the entire raid in blocks of ice. This is prevented by standing on snowdrifts.ÂÂ
Icicle – Occasionally giant blocks of ice will fall from the ceiling. These deal 12,000 damage to anyone hit and have a knock back component. You can see which areas will be hit by a small circular glyph on the ground. If you are having trouble seeing the glyphs, go into your video settings and turn on Projected Textures. Before a flash freeze, a larger glyph will show on the ground before the ice falls and will leave behind Snowdrifts which must be used to avoid flash freeze.
Frozen Blows – Reduces Hodir’s physical damage but adds a frost damage component to his attacks. This also has a raid wide frost damage effect.
Enrage – Hodir has a 9 minute Enrage Timer
Ability Examples:
Icicle
Snowdrift
Freeze
NPCs
Hodir also comes with a selection of NPC’s that must be broken out of their icy prisons. There will be four on normal and 8 on heroic. The npc’s consists of the following.
2x Druids: The druids are hard to miss, they’re in boomkin form. When you break them out they DPS Hodir but also cast Starlight which increases the attack speed of anyone standing in it by 100%
2x Shaman: The shamans DPS Hodir elemental style and will occasionally cast Storm Cloud on a raid member. This ability lets you buff several raid members with Storm Power which increases their critical strike damage by 135%.
2x Mages: The mages will help try to break fellow NPCs out of ice blocks and will cast a Toasty Fire. The fire is literally a campfire on the ground, but it fights off the effects of biting cold. Falling ice and Flash Freeze will wipe out the fire.
2x Priests: The priests will smite and occasionally throw out a heal, but most importantly they will cast Dispel Magic to free players from the effects of Freeze
Execution
Your raid will head in following the Main Tank. The tank will take Hodir back towards the rear of the room. DPS will begin by breaking out the NPCs. After all the NPCs have been broken out, DPS can start in on Hodir. When DPS first engages Hodir it is a good time to blow Heroism / Bloodlust. Healers should move into position near the Main Tank while everyone else needs to move into position around the raid. DPS continues on Hodir until he is about to cast Flash Freeze. Everyone needs to move to the Snowdrifts to avoid being frozen. After the Flash Freeze any raiders who were frozen should be broken free ASAP. DPS will then begin on the NPCs again until all are free, and then will resume DPS on Hodir. Rinse and repeat until the big guy is done.
Healing Hodir
Healing Hodir has two major components.
Main Tank – Three healers should be assigned to the main tank. They should be in close proximity at all times and moving with the tank as needed. Grace from a Disc Priest helps even out the damage from Hodir.
Raid – The rest of the healers should be spread out along the outside of the raid to cover as many raiders as possible.
All healers will be moving quite a bit during this fight, dodging falling ice and shaking off the effect of biting cold until the NPC’s are broken loose. Shamans will be using a lot of Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave, Druids will be right at home rolling HoTs, Paladins will be using quick Flash Heals, as well as priests utilizing renews and quick heals. It is possible to toss out a longer cast heal such as Greater Heal or Chain Heal and move before biting cold stacks, as long as you can find yourself a rhythm for move and cast. Your main goal as healers should be to find a Toasty Fire close enough to the raid to sit on. If you have the Toasty Fire buff, you can spam heals without the worry of stacking Biting Cold. Since the rest of the raid will be moving around though, be prepared to move to keep people in range. Once you learn to balance the movement and the heals the fight is pretty straightforward.
Until next time, Happy Healing.
One thing we noticed last night was that if you run onto the snowdrift pile right after the icicles fall (but before the drift appears), you actually have to jump to get onto the drift. We had a few raid members frozen, and we could see them standing in the right spot, but not ‘on’ the drift (they were in it). Also, no jumping during the freeze itself, had a few get frozen in mid air.
Adgamorixs last blog post..The Sheathadin
Nice guide!
One thing to mention is that the moonbeams make Prayer of Healing really, really powerful. Careful use of the moonbeams can allow 1 priest to heal at least 2 groups through Frozen Blows, which should be the only serious damage the raid takes.
This becomes important for Hard Mode Hodir (kill him in under 3 minutes). We did hard mode last night, and you really cannot take more than 4 healers (unless you have 5+ mages… mages are a bit OP in this fight). 2 on the tank and 2 on the raid.
So remember to use those moonbeams for all their worth!
PS- when the shaman NPC buffs you, you’ll start shooting lightening at everyone around you. This is NOT bad and you should NOT run away from the group. Instead run into your largest group of DPS. Just trying to save some undeserved embarrassment…
I can’t say enough how awesome Projected Textures is for this fight. Thanks for the tip with the Moonbeams and Snowdrifts!
Veneretios last blog post..Are you Double Potting?
@adgamorix: The no jumping thing is pretty much for every mechanic like Void zones, flame walls, icicles, hurricane etc. The game doesn’t update your position until you land. You might have seen this by the slight delay from when you hit the ground after a high jump and the game assigning you damage. We’ve had the don’t jump talk with many people.
@Lodur – It’s possible on the jump thing. I didn’t ‘see’ it, but one guy who was frozen was talked to. We asked if he was jumping while on the mound and he said yes, and that’s when he got frozen.
TBH I was fairly certain that the jump mechanic was the same (like jumping out of a void zone is a no no), but I like to give someone at least one ‘benefit of the doubt’ moment.
Adgamorixs last blog post..Once more into the breech – PvP build
We only had two healers – a disc prist and holy paladin – on our main tank (a paladin with 3pc FR) and had no issues. The extra raid healing was appreciated, too.
“Shamans will be using a lot of Riptide and Lesser Healing Wave”.
Can’t say this was the case for me. Whilst riptide was very useful I could easily cast a chain heal then move and not have the debuff stack. Most of the time, though, I just plonked myself happily down by a toasty fire but during the frozen blows I’d grab some nice haste-buff if I could and topped people off quickly – way more effective than slower ‘safer’ heals near a fire. Grabbing a fire *and* a haste buff is godly 🙂
Chain heal actually really rocks in this fight – most people are clumped together near buff spots (either in the light or toasty fire for casters, or at the boss’s feet for the melee) so you shouldn’t be afraid to use it just because it’s a ‘long cast’. Even though I am not a lover of chain heal spamming, I am not afraid to use it here.
As a random aside, if you have any draenei they should think of activating their gift of the naaru on the first frozen blows as it can then be up again at the end of the fight if things are getting tight for your healers. It meant I had to worry less about keeping myself alive whilst healing, too, which is also a plus 🙂
“We’ve had the don’t jump talk with many people.”
….had to have this chat with a few people, too. 🙁
As for people getting frozen on mounds – we’ve had that happen at times when people were not jumping at all – always seemed to be an issue with them lagging whilst also being late to run onto the mound.
/hug
Just wanted to point out that any Absorbed Melee strikes while Frozen Blows is up prevents the frost damage being dealt to the main tank. I can confirm this for 10 man only but would expect the same mechanic on 25.
On 10 man, we’ve a bear MT, so he’s a blessing on Frozen Blows, huge avoidance and a big hp pool, he is hotted up and I spam him with Nourish and help the raid with Wild Growth + Rejuvs. But if you really want to make FBs heal go smoother, get yourself into Starlight (the Boomkin npc buff), it makes the heal job so much easier, although they regularly get targeted for Icicles, you shouldn’t be standing in the one place too long anyway.