Serpentshrine Cavern - Hydross the Unstable

[khader]

SSC run on the schedule for 02/01 and even though goal is lurker, this is one of the better guide videos i've seen for any boss.

Appears resist gear, frost and nature, on all the tanks is important.  Link to resist gear for pally/warrior on wowwiki - http://www.wowwiki.com/Hydross_the_Unstable/Resistance_Gear. I've got most of the Frost resist items just need to work on the [item]Frost Armor Kit[/item] x 4.

And now the video

[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAgTiGXQ7BM[/youtube]

[Shadowwolf]

Links:

http://www.wowwiki.com/Hydross_the_Unstable
http://www.mmo-champion.com/index.php?page=108

Video:

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Abilities:

• Purify Elemental: He will have this buff on him when he stands in the water beams, which switches him into Water Form. He will lose it when he leaves the beams, switching him to poison form.
• Enrage: Hydross will enrage if not killed within 10 minutes, wiping your raid in a matter of seconds.

Water Form

• Immune to frost and will hit for frost damage.
• Mark of Hydross: Debuff on the entire raid. Stacks up to 6 times, increasing frost damage received by 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 percent.
• Water Tomb: A target-based AOE, targeting one player and affecting all players within 8 yards, cast every 7 seconds. Stuns all affected players for 4 seconds and deals 4500 frost damage over 5 seconds (which means that anyone getting this with a 100% debuff needs to be healed before the DoT ends).
• Summon elementals: When switching from Poison Form to Water Form, Hydross will summon 4 Water Elementals.

Poison Form

• Immune to nature and will hit for nature damage.
• Mark of Corruption: Debuff on the entire raid. Stacks up to 6 times, increasing nature damage received by 10, 25, 50, 100, 250, and 500 percent.
• Vile Sludge: Cast on a single target every 15 seconds. Deals 4000 nature damage over 24 seconds, and reduces healing and damage done by 50%.
• Summon elementals: When switching from Water Form to Poison Form, Hydross will summon 4 Nature Elementals.

4 adds spawn whenever he switches his form.

• Health: ~50K
• Damage: ~4-6K Frost/Nature melee damage
• Immune to nature damage during poison phase, immune to frost during water phase.

Suggested Strategy:

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General tips

• It is advisable to use two MTs, one with high nature resistance and one with high frost resistance. The nature geared tank can tank Hydross the Unstable in his poison form and the frost geared tank can tank Hydross the Unstable in his pure form. Hydross deals magic melee damage, which can miss, be dodged, parried, partially resisted, but not blocked (so don't bother using Shield Block). Note that he can also crit (but not deal crushing blows), so the tanks should wear resistance items, but still have enough defense to avoid crits.
• Even though he deals magic damage, it's still melee, so Demoralizing Shout/Curse of Weakness/etc do reduce his damage.
• Paladin AoE tanks and Druid off tanks with a mixture of frost and nature resistance gear and high stamina can help with the adds.
• Spread out as much as possible to avoid the Water Tomb.
• When Hydross the Unstable is around 15%, it is recommended to use all forms of CC on the spawns and do as much damage as possible on Hydross the Unstable. This is the best time to use those high damage, long cooldown moves.
• Have a hunter frost trap in Hydross's path while transitioning to Nature Stage; this will slow all spawning adds, making them easier to deal with.
• A common way of dealing with the adds is grouping them all up near Hydross the Unstable and then AoEing them down as it will not only make them all go down somewhat quickly but also do damage to Hydross the Unstable.
• The safest way to switch his form is to have the entire raid move to the one side of the platform Hydross is about to enter. He will pretty much have random aggro after switching his form. Everyone standing on one side will make sure he stays on that side, so he doesn't run around and switch right back into the form he was supposed to leave (leaving you with 8 adds and a tank with a 250% debuff).

Before the pull

There are two types of trash mobs that move around Hydross the Unstable's platform Tainted Water Elementals come from the right and stop in front of Hydross the Unstable and become Purified Water Elemental then continue along the platform. They have relatively low hit points only hit for about 300-400, but a huge aggro range. Have your tanks go and kill off a few of these to up their rage before pulling Hydross the Unstable.

The pull

Have your Main Tank pull Hydross the Unstable by going to the right (against the pillar) and charge/intercept him. His aggro range is quite big so be careful or he will change to poison form at the beginning of the fight and you will lose a lot of time killing the first four adds.

You can also have your tank wait until he/she is out of combat (with the trash above) then take an Invisibility Potion and run in to pull Hydross the Unstable, make sure everyone in the raid is aware that the tank is using an Invisibility Potion or the healers will pull Hydross the Unstable by trying to follow the invisible tank.

The fight

Once your MT is in place at the center of the platform, try to spread your raid. Don't hesitate to go behind Hydross the Unstable, you won't have many line of sight problems in this fight. You now have one minute to DPS him, this is a very important part of the fight because it's the only time where you can DPS him without having to handle adds first.

Changing Hydross to Poison form

After about 1 minute, you will reach the 100% damage increase from the Mark of Hydross, this is the time to move him to the edge of the platform to change him into his poison form. Make sure he doesn't have too many DoTs on him at this moment, Hydross the Unstable resets his aggro when his form changes but NOT his debuffs, which means that a warlock who has put too many dots on him will get aggro and die. Or worse pull Hydross the Unstable back to the center platform summoning an additional 4 adds.

When Hydross the Unstable changes to his poison form, he will spawn 4 Tainted Spawn of Hydross, which you can crowd control. Kill these adds as fast as possible, you only have one minute before you will need to change Hydross the Unstable's vulnerability again. Make sure you don't banish too many of them or you will have to wait before you can kill them. Once all the adds are down go all out on Hydross the Unstable.

Changing Hydross to Pure form

After about 1 minute, you will reach the 100% damage increase from the Mark of Corruption debuff. It is now time time to switch Hydross the Unstable back to Pure form, by letting the MT run to the center of the platform. Don't forget to stop DoTs again.

When Hydross the Unstable changes to his Pure form, he will spawn 4 Pure Spawn of Hydross, which you can Banish. Note:Pure Spawn of Hydross are water elementals, which means you can't use frost trap/frost nova to CC. Kill these adds as fast as possible, you only have one minute before you will need to change Hydross the Unstable's vulnerability again. Make sure you don't banish too many of them or you will have to wait before you can kill them. Off tanks with some frost resist gear are really useful here if you don't have enough warlocks.

Repeat until he's dead.

Alternately on the adds

If you bring 5 tanks to this fight, and at least 3 warlocks, AoEing the adds down with Seed of Corruption is a possibility. This however demands for your healers to be 100% awake so that you dont lose your frost geared tank on the nature adds or lose your nature tank on the frost adds. The 3 off tanks should aim for around 120-150 resistance to both frost and nature, and apart from this use their normal tanking gear.

Healing strategy

A Restoration Shaman ought to be assigned to heal Water Tombed people during Pure Phase and then to assist with light general healing during Poison Phase. The best way to accomplish this is for the Water Tomb Healer to backup until he is at max range from the Melee Players on Hydross. Zoom out your camera to max range and keep a watch on all the players in the raid. Do not wait for BigWigs, CT Raid or any other announcement to tell you that a person has been Water Tombed. Instead, you will be able to see the big bubbles and click on one of them and cast Chain Heal before the announcement goes off or they could yell it out in Ventrilo or Teamspeak. This is most important when the Mark of Hydross is at 100% or if it happens to go to 250%.

Resistance gear for tanks

365 is the resistance cap against a lvl 73 mob. At 365, it is considered to be at a 75% average damage reduction (they will be resisting >=75% of the damage 80% of the time, see page on Resistance for more information). Hydross hits for ~8,000 unresisted, so this should make the average damage about 2000. The way resistance works, the amount of damage actually resisted will fluctuate from full resists to no resist; so healers remember that this is average, and your tank will still take spikes. No matter what, the tank will still have a 1% chance to take the full 8,000 hit.

Besides the buffs from hunter/paladin/shaman, there are a few more easy options to raise your resistance. These are especially useful if your gear isn't complete yet or to be able to switch out some items for others with better stamina for example.

• [item]Flask of Chromatic Wonder[/item] - increases your resistance to all schools by 35
• [item]Magic Resistance Potion[/item] - increases your resistance to all schools by 50

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[Jilinna]

I also found a video to kill Hydros the unstable from a melee point of view as well  from the same person who made the the lurker below video i posted earlier.

the music is kinda annoying on this video but never the less here it is 

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=48615

[Lynette]

Now that we know how to defeat Lurker, this boss will probably be on our sights at some point this upcoming week.  Everyone, please review.

[Vengeance]

Bump for convenience of others