World of Warcraft: Hodir (Ulduar Boss) Strategy Guide (Update)

Hodir is one of the bosses in Ulduar (you may know him from the Storm Peaks reputation faction/daily quests there. Yes that’s him!).

He has approximate 36 million Hit points (Yes, you read right: thirty-six million HP!!!) with an 9 Minute enrage timer.

Abilities

• Biting Cold: Deals increasing periodic damage to stationary enemies. Movement diminishes this effect. Effect is 100*(2^(Number of stacks of Biting Cold), with a maximum stack amount of 8 (25600 damage). It ticks every second.
• Frozen Blows: Physical damage reduced by 70%, but attacks deal 40000 additional Frost damage (partially resistable). 35 sec cooldown or so.
• Flash Freeze: Encases the target in a block of ice with 44k hitpoints (35k on normal.) Approximately every 30-45 seconds. Instakills all frozen targets. Long cast time.
• Ice Shards: Drops from the ceiling with a clear graphic. Does 12k damage and knocks back 20 yards. Leaves behind a Snowdrift. Snowdrift cancels the effects of Flash Freeze.
• Freeze Inflicts Frost damage to nearby enemies, immobilizing them for up to 10 sec. 5kish damage and freezes, 10 yard range around Hodir and/or PBAoE (unsure).

NPCs

Heroic: 8
Normal: 4

• Back row (towards Hodir)
  MoonkinA EleShmA MoonkinB PriestA MageA
• Front row (towards entrance)
  PriestB MageB EleShmB

Notice: This are names of the horde version.

Moonkin

• Name:  Kar Greycloud and Tor Greycloud
• Note: They cast Starlight - a beam of light that increases casting/attack speed by 50% - in its radius (about 3-4yds)

Elemental Shaman

• Name: Spiritwalker Tara and Spiritwalker Yona
• Note: They cast Storm Buff that increases the critical strike chance of up to 3 friendly targets in a chain by 100% for 15 sec and DPS some

Mage

• Name: Goesha Blazweaver and Aurora Blazeweaver
• Note: They cast Toasty Fire: Warms nearby friendly creatures, preventing the effects of Freeze and Biting Cold, and increasing Spirit by 4. Toasty fire can be extinguished by falling ice or powerful frost magic. 12 yard radius
• Basically, casters can stand by it to avoid taking the 'biting cold' debuff (which forces you to move periodically)
• Strongest DPS of all NPCs

Priest

• Name: Battle-Priest Gina and Battle-Priest Eliza
• They dispel the Frost Nova
• Mediocre DPS

The Fight

Engage

• Do NOT attack any frozen NPC's before Hodir is engaged, otherwise the NPCs will despawn
• He has very short agro rage, so raid recovery is possible
• He should be pulled by one of the sides in order to avoid hitting one of the NPC

The rest of the fight

• Avoid the snowfalls
• Don't get frozen
• Remove freeze from the NPC's
• DPS Hodir
• The icicles fall from the ceiling (like snowflakes) and you have approximately 4 seconds to dodge them
• They deal ~12k damage which is the majority of the raid damage. Less "icicles hits" = less healers necessary in the raid = more dps
• Cast periodically freeze (same as Frost Nova) which deals ~5k damage AoE effect which immobilizes for 10 seconds. It is dispellable

Flash Freeze

• He casts Flash Freeze once every 30-45 seconds (internal cooldown of 30 sec) with a cast time of 9 seconds
• While it's casting, look for Icicles and find the ones that are still in snowflake form. You will need to move near these but not on them. Look for a white cloud around them, that's the sign that those are the icicles that will form snowdrifts.
• When they form snowdrifts on the ground, move on them. This will protect you from getting frozen.
• Pets will get frozen, so pet classes must recall pets during this period
• All NPC's will also become frozen and must be dispelled as soon as possible
• The ice blocks have ~44khp on Heroic mode and 35k on Normal

Rare Runed Chests

Every three minutes Hodir will destroy one chest, which contains extra loot. The last one is his berserk timer and he will enrage then (9 minutes)

Tactics (Detailed)

Once the boss has been pulled it is ideal to have your raid quickly free the frozen NPCs then move onto the boss. With the added buffs from the NPCs you will make up that time spent freeing them, and as the ice blocks don’t have very much HP that shouldn’t be long anyway.

When your raid has fully moved onto Hodir himself you will want to have the raid spread out because of Freeze and Ice Shards. It is important that Freeze is being dispelled and a priest is watching the melee in case multiple people get hit with Freeze and need to be mass dispelled. With the general positioning you are best suited to have the tanks keep Hodir a tiny bit more towards the middle from his starting position. This will allow the raid to spread out a good deal and still be close enough together to be able to run to a snow mound for Flash Freeze.

The NPCs are very important in this fight as their buffs are a major aspect due to the huge amount of health that the boss has and because the raid has to constantly move in order to avoid Biting Cold. They can and should be healed, and you will most likely need to assign a group of about 5 dps to constantly be ready to jump onto freeing the NPCs from Flash Freeze as their buffs are important and if they are hit with a second Flash Freeze they will die.

As for actually using the NPCs, your raid will have to work around their abilities and especially the Toasty Fire which will allow the casters to stop worrying about moving until a Flash Freeze or an Ice Shard. The Druid’s haste buff will also be useful and you should try to take advantage of it as much as possible by standing in the light.

Your main tank will be tanking Hodir in his normal tanking set and the off tank should be ready in his Frost Resistance set to taunt as soon as Hodir is affected by Frozen Blows (second tank only for Heroic Mode). The main tank then has to taunt back as soon as Frozen Blows wears off and these switches need to be announced for the benfit of the healers.

Everyone including the tanks has to move onto an ice mound (refer abilities Ice Shards) for Flash Freeze, and if the Frost Resistance tank is a warrior or a druid they will have no issue charging back to Hodir after the Flash Freeze before he moves around too much.

Aside from those things, the fight itself is very simple and only requires your raid to keep moving, and be alert to the Ice Shards, the Freeze dispels, and the Flash Freeze. While you can deal with people sometimes getting hit with an Ice Shard or getting frozen from the Flash Freeze, it is much better overall if no time is wasted on that and everyone keeps alert.

Tactics (Short)

Protect the NPC's

• First decide if you want to bother with the NPC's or not
• It should be possible either way
• The NPCs are healable (currently on PTR)
• It's very important to dispell them immediately after Flash Freeze, if you want to profit from their buffs and abilities or they will be killed otherwise

Keep Hodir in range

• Casters shouldn’t tank him where he spawns, keep him more in the center of the arena
• Melee either kite him in a slow circle around the center or have the melee clump up on the back right side and then switch to the back left when a snowfall lands on them

Minimize movement

• Don’t run across the whole room just to get a buff
• Melees don’t spread to find the snowdrift’s unless it’s necessary. Many of them will spawn near Hodir himself
• Don’t move to much, especially as ranged caster. There are enough opportunities where you have to move to get rid of the Biting Cold debuff. Maximize your dps instead

Raid Composition (normal)

• 1 tank - Can either be wearing some Frost Resistance gear or not, although it isn’t required some healers might prefer a tank with it
• 2 healers - One healer to focus on the tank, and another to focus on the raid and at times throw some heals to the tank. You can bring 3 although it is a lack of dps and two healers should be enough
• 7 dps - While melee have some advantage here as they can keep moving and continue to dps, stacking can often lead to more people being affected by freeze so you will ideally want to have no more than 3 melee. Also, with dual specs it would be suggested that you have your second tank dps for this fight

Raid Composition (heroic)

• 2 tanks - While this can be done with 1 tank, it is easier on healers to simply have a second tank in frost resistance gear taunt after a Flash Freeze for the duration of Frozen Blows
• 5-6 healers - With 6 healers you should have more than enough healing power to keep your tank and raid alive. If your healers are extremely good and healing the tanks since they are switching is easy, you can make one of your healers dps and run only 5
• 18-19 dps - Like in Normal Mode, you will want to have fewer melee than ranged, and also all your off-tanks (and maybe 6th healer) should be using their dps spec.

Hard Modes

There are 3 different modes in which you can do the boss. Well they aren’t actually “real” Hard Modes like Sartharion with additional drakes, it’s just an additional award for killing him within a certain amount of time

• Kill him in under 3 minutes (what the fuck, sounds pretty hard). Reward: 2 Rare Runed Chest Loots
• Kill him in under 6 minutes. Reward: 1 Rare Runed Chest Loots
• Kill him under 9 minutes (enrage = 9 minutes). Rewards: normal loot, no extra rewards