Loading ...Hodir’s “Mage Trick” and More!
I must say, I love the Hodir fight. It’s gotta be in my top 5 tanking fights of all time. Why?
- You need to be constantly moving.
- You need to use cooldowns aggressively.
- You need to generate tons of threat.
That’s the holy trinity of the tanking world. It’s everything we could ask for in a fight to really challenge ourselves.
How do we Move?
- Jump. It’ll keep the debuff from stacking.
- Strafe. It’ll get you out of falling Icicles quickly.
How do we use Cooldowns?
- Save Shield Block for Frozen Blows.
- Last Standing during 1 Frozen Blow. Shield Wall during the other.
- Call for Cooldowns when the above are both down.
How do we generate Threat?
- Do your Threat thing + Spam Heroic Strike.
- Stand in the Light.
- Teach a Mage the “Mage Trick”.
Okay, what’s the Trick?
First and foremost, I’ve gotta give kudos to my Twitter buddy, Feist for telling me about this.
Standing near campfires during this encounter allows casters to stack a buff to do unreal damage. When a Mage gets close to you in threat, get them to use Mirror Image, use all of their cooldowns and go all out. They’ll easy surpass you in threat, but whereas they normally would just go invisible before this ended, you want them to wait and call out when Mirror Image is ending. Just as it does, Taunt. You’ll gain all that threat they generated. They can then go invisible and everyone in the raid should have a healthy cushion to continue dpsing under as a result.
What if that’s not enough?
If your group is really strong, it may not be enough. So, what’s a tank to do?
1. Vigilance
First, make sure you’re using Vigilance on the right person. You clearly don’t want to be using Vigilance on your “Mage Trick” guy, at least not at first. Warlocks I find are very good targets for it during this fight, but Feral Druids can be as well. Also, make sure to not Vigilance someone that you may threat cap because if they’re being forced to stop attacking then you’re losing out on their 10% threat all of a sudden. In other words, your highest threat target is NOT always the right Vigilance choice. Finally, don’t forget that we’ve got a way to boost our Vigilance. 
2. Intervene
During Flash Freeze especially you’ve got some time to muck around. Use that time to select someone high on the threat list and Intervene them to steal away a bit of their threat. Late in the fight, this is will give them a lot of breathing room. Try to favour those without Aggro wipes over those with for this treatment. Also, try to avoid Intervening any other time otherwise you’re kinda defeating the purpose of generating threat at all by making your melee run after Hodir thus losing valuable DPS time.
Oh, and 1 more thing…
It’s a silly, needless waste of a valuable DPSer to use 2 tanks on this encounter. Throw on 3 pieces of Frost Resist gear, get your Defense to 540 and go to town. Frozen Blows is really the only scary part of the fight anyway. (…and if you’re really gutsy like my Tankspot friend, Rak, you can just not use Frost Resist at all, but don’t tell your healers I told you to do that.)
Your thoughts?
Personally, Hodir is as good as it gets for me. It’s exactly what I want in a tanking experience. How about you?
May 19th, 2009 at 7:48 am
I have to agree I love this fight! It really pushes me to be able to do all the things that make people love a good tank.
I really like the mage trick and will be giving that a try this weekend.
As always Vene great post and keep up the great work.
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May 19th, 2009 at 8:15 am
Hodir was an absolute blast. We didn’t have many threat issues on our first kill but our dps are still trying to get used to the buffs. Unfortunately we hardly ever have a Mage in the group.
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May 19th, 2009 at 8:45 am
One of the things our priests do that a lot of people might still not be used to doing is to use Guardian Spirit aggressively. Don’t save it for when you need to stop a killing blow on the tank - use it for the 40% extra healing during Frozen Blows. If it’s glyphed, and the tank doesn’t get a killing blow, then it even reverts to a one minute cooldown and can be used again in a hard mode kill. It’s a good way to handle many big damage aspects of fights.
With just frost aura I always resist ~12k of every frozen blow swing with no frost resist gear. Add in 20% less magic damage from four piece shield block, and it isn’t bad at all.
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May 19th, 2009 at 8:46 am
our very first kill I offtanked in my polar set, since then we have solo tanked it every time.
On my alt however it is a bloody mess. We got the hard mode timer on alts this week (lol) in 10 man. I used a GS wall on the 1st blows and a GS stand on the second (with shield block on both but no 4pc bonus) neither of which were glyphed or talented.
No FRR either because my warrior could not be bothered to have it made.
I use intervene on general during surge not because I cannot kite fast enough but because I always intervene the top threat caster to lower his threat. But i never once thought of using it on hodir thanks for the idea.
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May 19th, 2009 at 9:04 am
I ended up tanking an attempt without frost resist by accident and while it was scary it was not, by any means, unhealable. As long as you chain cooldowns to get through Frozen Blows you can survive through it without much problem. Consider it training for chaining cooldowns during Phase One of Mimiron.
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May 19th, 2009 at 10:42 am
We just killed him last night for the first time. I actually went fury and had our DK tank pick him up and I am sorry but I think I had more fun dpsing that fight, zipping around and saving people who were iced and running all over the place to get buffs in the light.
It is by far one of the most fun encounters in the game…… and then we went to Thorim…….
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May 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am
“Standing near campfires during this encounter allows casters to stack a buff to do unreal damage.”
Are we talking about the campfire that gives +4 spirit? I’ve never done this fight so I might be missing something, but +4 spirit doesn’t equal unreal damage in my mind…. could someone please explain further? Thanks.
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Namthe reply on May 19, 2009 10:54 am:
It’s not that camp fire, no. In the Hoidir fight, there are a number of friendly NPCs, each of which buff you in different ways after you free them. The mage-type NPCs drop “Toasty Fires”. These give the aforementioned crit buff and also protect those nearby from various frost-based effects caused by the boss.
And, I’d probably agree about the frost res not being essential. I’ve done it in regular (stam-oriented) gear once on 10-man and it wasn’t any harder. In 25-man it’ll need active (and fast) cooldown management but that’s about it.
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May 19th, 2009 at 11:42 am
For your “Mage Trick” you need the mage to actually pull threat and then taunt. I say this because the tool tip for Taunt says “This has no effect if the target is already attacking you.”
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Veneretio reply on May 19, 2009 12:00 pm:
He will, I assure you.
The Mirror Image basically hides his threat temporarily similar to Fade for Priests and then when it’s done it’s duration, it returns all of the threat for the mage. This is why taunting works.
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May 19th, 2009 at 11:51 am
We had about an hour of attempts on Hodir Saturday and didn’t really come close. These are some good ideas to think about. Someone was telling me later you could spell reflect a frozen blow. Does that work? Threat wasn’t my problem as much as surviving the frozen blows. Only the hunter in our group would ever get really high on threat and he could feign if need be.
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Veneretio reply on May 19, 2009 12:03 pm:
Frozen Blow used to be Spell Reflectable on the PTR for a short time before Ulduar’s release, but definitely is not anymore.
As your group gets more accustomed to the buffs, I think you’ll find that threat is going to be an issue. As to surviving frozen blows, it’s really about proactively using cooldowns as the post illustrates. There’s also nothing wrong with bringing extra healers as long as you’re going for the easy mode.
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Feidt reply on May 19, 2009 12:05 pm:
Spell reflect hasn’t worked on Frozen Blows since early PTR. If threat is a non issue your DPS is doing it wrong. If healing is having trouble during frozen blows have them jump in a moonbeam for the +100% haste heals.
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Feist reply on May 19, 2009 12:06 pm:
Teach me to post on my phone..
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May 19th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Let your DK tank this fight.
I’m not even kidding.
Let your DK tank this fight.
A frost DK will have a 60% crit rate in tanking gear due to Killing Machine and will do more than half their damage from spell attacks. As a DK, I’ve sustained nearly 20,000 threat per second on Hodir due to good luck with the elemental shaman buff.
It’s doable as a warrior, it’s interesting as a warrior, but for the love of god if you have a DK tank in your guild, let him do it.
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Sephirawth reply on May 19, 2009 12:34 pm:
And that is exactly why I have our DK do it….. Warriors, go TG and help with 5k dps!
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Furiat/Vege reply on May 19, 2009 1:59 pm:
Bah, I’ve seen me doing 10-10,5k tps at some pugged Emalon on alt. Could have hero and tricks (doubt) then, but not all buffs were avaible. No BiS (even Naxx) threat gear, no vigil glyph, typical Deep Wound build.
8k tps is something common for me(in 25mans).
(numbers from Omen)
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Furiat/Vege reply on May 19, 2009 2:10 pm:
Furiat is a warrior ofc.
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Sephirawth reply on May 19, 2009 2:20 pm:
Have a DK do it and watch……
May 19th, 2009 at 2:27 pm
a disc priest is absolutely godlike on hodir, since frozen blows will only actually hit you if the physical part does damage (at least on 10man anyway). Demo shout + TC + disc shield + shield block = no dmg to tank from frozen blows.
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Veneretio reply on May 19, 2009 2:32 pm:
Excellent point. This makes me want to test a High Block Value set for the encounter in order to abuse this.
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Belak reply on May 20, 2009 5:38 am:
Ooh, that is interesting. When we go back Thursday, I’ll break out the nearly-Unhittable set and see how it works.
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Talldar reply on May 20, 2009 5:14 am:
I don’t get the disc priest’s shield thingy. Is the extra frost damage only applied when you actually receive incoming damage, yet not if that damage hits the priest-shield? If so, that more sounds like a bug to me than anything else. If not so, what’s the shield for? And how does the AoE not eat that shield up?
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Blackmambism reply on May 20, 2009 5:34 am:
the thing with frozen blows is that it drops hodir’s physical dmg down to ~2-3k (on 10 man), while it gets a huge amount of frost dmg (much like a shaman’s flametongue). if you don’t get damaged in anyway (even if it absorbs from a shield) from the physical part of the blow, the frost dmg doesn’t come through either. probably not working as intended, but it’s helpful
oh, and the AOE dmg that the raid gets does eat the shield up, but it still is helpful.
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Talldar reply on May 20, 2009 9:41 am:
Thanks for the clarification, that’s what I assumed. While this kinda makes the Disc-Priest shielding optional the basic idea is really excellent!
Machus reply on May 20, 2009 11:04 am:
Does that apply to blocking? That would be unusual and maybe a bug.
There’s several mobs that have a melee attack that does a magical type of damage, such as the first boss in MgT. Avoidance works on those, so if the blow doesn’t land you take zero damage. But It’s a surprise to hear that blocking would work on Hodir.
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Blackmambism reply on May 20, 2009 2:08 pm:
afaik it works with blocks, sometimes hard to block all of his dmg though
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May 19th, 2009 at 6:20 pm
We’re having a lot of fun on Hodir 10, where I play as mage. This fight and Mimiron works very well with arcane mages taking the [Incanter’s Absorption] talent and using the appropriate ward to greatly boost their spell damage. Our group missed the rare cache by a few % last week.
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May 20th, 2009 at 10:42 am
Commenting on Veneretio’s concerns about threat - the Unrelenting Assault spec makes threat a non-issue for me (or at the very least less of an issue). As a Prot Warrior with full frost gear, no problems at all being healed or keeping a healthy threat lead in regular mode killings of Hodir.
Other than that, agree with everything Veneretio has laid out.
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May 22nd, 2009 at 12:03 pm
I single tank this sans frost gear in my UA spec all the time. Smart cooldown usage is usually enough to one shot this fight.
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May 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Whoa, wait a second. Why would you ever not want to Vigilance the person who tops your threat meter? Yea, that person may have to stop dps’ing momentarily, but that person has still generated the most threat for you..
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Sarkav reply on June 4, 2009 4:51 pm:
Not necessarily.
ex:
-Ret Pally does 8k DPS and you gain from that but he is threat capped.
-Warlock does 9k for the first minute of the fight, then shatters and proceeds to do 12k DPS for the rest of the fight.
The Pally will show up higher on the threat meter, but putting vigilance on the warlock will give you far more threat, which will in turn raise the threat ceiling for the Ret pally.
There is also the question of whether or not an ability like Tricks of the Trade or misdirect is magnified by vigilance. I have not seen any conclusive numbers to say whether that is true or not.
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May 28th, 2009 at 1:58 pm
I agree, this fight is everything I’ve ever wanted in a fight. It tests my ability to watch my survivability, max threat, all while strafing and kiting, and calling things out on vent. Especially as a warrior, I find this fight a delightful challenge, and a good way to measure my abilities and prowess as a tank.
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June 9th, 2009 at 7:28 am
Yeah, I was wondering what the problem with threat was…
I was using my UA spec in three pieces of frost resistance gear and ending up an absolute mile ahead of everyone on threat, as they are changing targets every once in a while to release the adds after each Flash Freeze.
I thought that was normal.
Then, of course, I realised that we weren’t getting him down and that was because he keeps hitting the enrage. Now, I know it’s not because my DPS are generally slacking; therefore, it’s obviously because they’re not managing the buffs correctly.
Personally, I tend to stand in the spotlights for the haste buff (more Heroic Strikes) and simply jump to avoid the cold. Any suggestions for how peeps can make the best use of the available buffs?
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