I’m sure there’s a rule against this somewhere, but I want my blog to be noticed. So far I’ve been found by exactly one google search, but it’s not even cool enough to warrant it’s own post.
Anyways, if you are here looking for a naked Angelina, Miley, Taylor, or Beyonce, get out of here. I will make fun of you in a few days. If you are here to hear about the Perfect Hodir Run, read on.
This actually happened a few weeks ago but I never got around to writing it all out, well now I am. I realized that if I want my blog to be noticed, I need to actually write stuff in my blog. Whoa, what a concept.
Rewind a bit to a Monday a few weeks back. The guild (group 2) was running Ulduar 10, it was my first time in the place except for a fail FL only run that never made it to FL. I had no idea that he looked more like a golf caddy than a dragon but I adapted quickly. Being a gunner for Arioch was a blast, I gotta say. I had started to shoot at pyrite before we even got going, then all of a sudden it got a lot harder when I was shooting at moving targets while moving.
But I’m not writing about our one-shot of FL. I’m not writing about the wipes on Razorscale, the one-shot of XT, the wipes on Right Arm, or the one-shot Cat Lady. Maybe I just did… never mind.
Hodir. He’s so hard, we wiped on the adds leading up to him. Twice. The second time may or may not have been the fault of a certain holy paladin who likes to face-pull. I’m leaning towards “may”
We finally clear trash and get to the boss… wow he’s big. And cold. I can tell because the entire room he’s in is ice. And I hear he throw ice, or maybe he just roars and the vibrations cause ice from the ceiling to fall on people. Same diff.
I’m assuming that most of the people out there reading this (yes, all two of you) understand the mechanics of the Hodir fight. For those of you who were looking for hot naked pics and decided to read on anyway, here’s the breakdown:
1. Don’t stand in the big blue circle. No duh. If it wasn’t there when you started the fight, and it is big and glowy and doesn’t look particularly helpful, DON’T STAND IN IT! Standing in big blue circles tends to get you hurt/dead/yelled at. (not in our guild no, but in others I imagine)
2. Freeing NPC’s is top priority. It turns out this boss fight is actually a hidden escort quest in disguise. When Hodir does his massive-freeze-everyone-in-the-room-unless-you’re-standing-on-a-snow-patch-spell the NPC’s will specifically NOT stand on the snow. Retards. These NPC’s give valuable buffs such as extra crit, faster casting speed, they will dispel the mini frost novas, oh yeah, and conjure a fire so you can stand still and cast.
** Quick note on this one: As a resto druid I had assumed that I could just run around like a constipated wiener dog the whole time, since most of my spells are hots anyway. I had actually been auto-running for most of the time, until I realized that I could get off one casted spell before having to move again. Nourish heals for like 12k.. for like 1 second… yeah. When I finally learned to stand in the fire (haha) I healed a lot better.
3. Don’t stand in ice, stand on snow. More than once someone in the raid (it was even me once) would jump into the snow too quickly, meaning it wasn’t snow yet and then they get roflstompedowned by the ice.
So, to cut a long story short, we wipe 12 times on Hodir that Monday. We have a few trys at Ignis and then we call it a night. We come back a few days later to try Hodir again.
The first try was close, I actually was the first death (sadface) because of the overeager-jump-into-the-snow-that-isn’t-there-yet-syndrome. I think big guy was down to 30% or so.
Second try of the night (14th overall) started out pretty smooth. NPC’s were out quick, and I decided to stand next to the campfire. Wowee, I can heal! It really helps during frozen blows, just tossing a Rejuv sometimes isn’t enough, but getting off a 1 second Nourish most definitely is.
We go through several freeze phases, waiting for the ice and jumping on the snow perfectly. We even got the mage NPC out first each time, meaning I got more heals off and I looked better both on the healing charts and on the raid frames. At about 20% health left on Hodir I made the mistake of saying in Vent “whoa guys, I think we’re gonna do this!”
I was promptly told by the raid leader to shut up, don’t jinx it. It didn’t matter. We completed the perfect Hodir run. I know it was perfect because:
No NPC’s died.
We kept moving constantly.
We moved to the right places at the right time.
What was hilarious, was that the guildy who was calling out these achievements was in a Flash Freeze when Hodir died… but I’m not complaining. We got 3 of the 4 achievements in the same run, after 13 wipes. It felt amazing.
And that, my coolest friends, was the perfect Hodir run.
Next post I’ll tell explain how you can get 30 fps in dalaran. On maxed graphic settings. For under $1,000.