Wednesday, April 29, 2009

How To Solo Tank Hodir

Hodir is alot like Malygos. It requires special gearing, producing high threat, and being highly mobile - all in a race to beat the enrage timer and stay alive.

Frost Resist Gear

To solo tank Hodir (which I recommend, on 10 and 25 man), you need to wear three piece Icebane gear: Chest, Boots, Belt. This lets you be normally healable through his Frozen Blows. The mats for crafting crazy cheep - a total of 40 Saronite Bars, 7x Eternal Fire, 7x Eternal Water, and 3 Frozen orbs. You'll probably spend more gemming and enchanting it.

I started my set by putting on my best Tanking Gear, then swapping in these pieces. First I enchanted the chest with defense, and equipped a defense trinket (I used Seal of the Pantheon, but Repelling Charge is better). From that point, I socketed only as many +16 Defense gems as needed to reach uncrittable (only one for me), then did +24 Stamina in the rest. Avoidance will suffer, but that is totally fine.

Being Mobile

Your Melee DPS need to be standing in the pillars of light, to get a haste bonus, and kill the boss inside the enrage timer (think: Malygos sparks). Hodir's hit box isn't that big, so you'll have to do lots of moving over the course of the fight to keep him in a position where he is hitable from a pillar. On top of that, you need to personally avoid icecicles falling on your head, find a safe position during flash freezes, and keep moving (or jumping) to avoid biting cold.

High Threat

If your positioning correctly, the DPS will nearly always have the huge haste buff - putting some classes right on your tail as far as threat is concerned. Identify your top person, and make sure they have vigilance. Intervene top threat people during Flash Freeze, if possible.

If there are two somewhat-close light beams, you can work Hodir into a position where you too get the haste buff. When this happens - make sure your mashing Heroic Strike - with something like a ~.7 swing timer, you'll be pumping them out like crazy. Awesome positioning like this, and the time when DPS is breaking out NPCs from flash freeze - are your two biggest boons towards keeping a threat lead.

That's It

If you keep threat, avoid unnecessary damage, and keep him in DPS friendly spots - then its all up to your raid. If you're surrounded by fast learners, that can avoid icicles and flash freezes, push out decent DPS, and heal the heavy raid wide damage - you should have him down in no time.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

enjoy reading this site. Off question, what add ons do you use? and what add ons do you feel are 'must have' for tanking?

Unknown said...

I use Deadly Boss Mods (required), Xperl (recommended), Omen (required), Auctioneer (optional) & Prat (optional).