- Author: Passion
- Date: December 14, 2022
- Updated: April 2, 2023
- Expansion: WotLK Classic
The titanic watcher of the Temple of Winter, father to the Sons of Hodir, and guide to the frost giants of Storm Peaks. Once a Keeper tasked with holding back the Old Gods, Hodir now resides in the Halls of Winter, slowly bending to Yogg-Saron’s will.
This guide will offer a detailed, step-by-step tutorial on how to remain stylish while dressing in layers to manage in Hodir’s frozen halls.
Role Summaries
- Make sure you keep moving to reduce biting-cold‘s damage
- Avoid falling icicles
- Get yourself and other players out of freeze however you can
- Get to a snowdrift during flash-freeze
- Try to stand in starlight as much as possible, as long as you are able to continue DPSing
- Try to stand in starlight as much as possible, as long as you are able to continue DPSing
- Casters will want to prioritize standing near bonfires
- Try to position the boss so your melee DPS also benefit from starlight
- Taunt swap when frozen-blows is up
- Mark NPCs in priority order so players know which ones to free first
- Call for tank swaps during frozen-blows
- Call for dispels during freeze
- Call when flash-freeze begins and ends
- Call out locations of Snowdrifts
Abilities
Hodir
During the entire fight, your raid will take increasing Frost damage every second. This damage can be lowered by moving or jumping, forcing players in the raid to keep on their feet fairly consistently to avoid being overwhelmed by damage.
Hodir deals moderate Frost damage to all players within 10 yards, rooting them for 10 seconds. This can be dispelled with magic removal like mass-dispel and cleanse, but also with any root breaks like Druid shapeshifting. Being rooted for too long can quickly become an issue with biting-cold building more damage.
Hodir causes icicles to fall from the ceiling, dealing high Frost damage and knocking back anyone hit by it. While casting flash-freeze, larger icicles will fall, leaving a snowdrift. Standing inside a snowdrift will protect you from flash-freeze.
Hodir freezes the entire raid, instantly killing all players debuffed with freeze. Players in snowdrifts will be unaffected while everyone else will be locked in blocks of ice, requiring the raid to DPS the ice to free them. This ability has a very long cast time, giving your raid ample time to reposition and hide in snowdrifts.
Hodir deals massively reduced Physical damage for 20 seconds but adds a high amount of Frost damage to each swing. This effectively requires the Hodir tank to have high Frost Resistance, otherwise they will be unable to handle the massive damage output.
At the start of the fight, there will be 8 NPCs frozen solid around the arena. These can be freed by killing the blocks of ice, releasing the NPC within. Freed NPCs will assist in the fight, using spells based on their class.
Freeing either of the Mages allows them to cast conjure-toasty-fire, negating biting-cold and freeze around it. This allows caster DPS to stand still without worrying about the constantly increasing damage of biting-cold. conjure-toasty-fire also gives players the ability to stack singed on the boss, increasing the Magic damage Hodir takes. These two effects make Mages one of the priorities to break as soon as possible.
Freeing either of the Druids allows them to cast starlight, conjuring a beam of light. Players standing in starlight gain massively increased attack and casting speed, making this another fantastic choice to break early, buffing your raid’s damage early on.
The Shamans will buff players with storm-cloud, granting a handful of players storm-power, drastically increasing their critical damage. This is a great buff, but because it’s on a limited amount of players, instead of the positioning-based buffs of Mages and Druids, this is usually a lower priority.
Priests are the least relevant, and you might not even want to worry about freeing them, depending on your group. They cast great-heal, healing a raid member for a high amount, as well as dispel-magic, freeing players from freeze.
Additionally, all of the NPCs have a DPS spell based on their class, but these do not differ massively.
Name | Class | Abilities |
|---|---|---|
Priest | ||
Mage | ||
Shaman | ||
Druid |
Raid Composition & Preparation
Hard Mode
Hard Mode for this fight is an odd one. Simply beat the boss quickly. If you finish the encounter within 2 minutes — congratulations, you did it on hard mode. This does not add additional abilities or necessarily make the fight any harder. It simply means there is less room for mistakes and everyone needs to be dealing as much damage as they can squeeze out.
Beating the fight fast enough causes a Rare Cache of Winter to spawn for players to loot, offering the following additional Hard Mode exclusive loot:
- hodirs-sigil
- bindings-of-winter-gale
- constellus
- drape-of-icy-intent
- frigid-strength-of-hodir
- gloves-of-the-frozen-glade
- staff-of-endless-winter
The Pull
Hodir can be tanked almost anywhere in the room, but most groups will either opt to fight him close to the center of the room, or in a corner.
The center of the room provides you the ability to move Hodir closer to starlight to position your melee DPS in the beam, but causes everything to be more spread around the room.
Tanking Hodir in a corner allows everything to be more consolidated in one area, including conjure-toasty-fire, starlight, and icicles. The tank will want to stay in the corner generally, though, which means your melee DPS will be less likely to receive the buff from starlight.
The Fight
At the start of the fight, there will be 8 NPCs frozen in ice. These are all representative of a specific class and if you break the ice by DPSing it down you will free the NPC to help you during the fight. The class you break free first isn’t massively important, as your group will likely want to break all of them fairly quickly.
During the fight biting-cold will stack on everyone in the raid, dealing Frost damage each second. To counteract this, players will have to either move or jump. For melee players this is fairly simple, you just want to strafe back and forth at the boss’s back, lowering your stacks while also dealing damage.
Ranged players have a bit more to consider. Casters will of course want to stand still and cast, so they will have to take every chance they can to move around during the global cooldown of instant spells. The Mage NPCs can also cast conjure-toasty-fire, creating a bonfire at their location. Players near this bonfire will no longer have to worry about biting-cold, but the bonfire can be extinguished by falling ice and flash-freeze.
Tanks also have to worry about biting-cold, but they will want to mitigate it via jumping, not movement. Tanks will also have to concern themselves with frozen-blows. This effectively switches Hodir’s damage from Physical to Frost, requiring high amounts of Frost Resistance to handle effectively. If you are using two tanks you will want to taunt swap whenever frozen-blows is cast.
During the fight, icicles will consistently fall from the ceiling, indicated by a white ring on the floor. Players will want to avoid these as much as possible to minimize damage taken. Hodir will also randomly cast freeze at a random player. This will root that player and anyone close to them. This root can and should be dispelled as movement is the most important mechanic of this fight.
Occasionally Hodir will cast flash-freeze. This has a cast time of 9 seconds, and when he begins casting large icicles will start falling. These large icicles will create a snowdrift where they land. This is a large snow mound, and standing on top of one of these will prevent flash-freeze from affecting you. Additionally, anyone hit by flash-freeze when they are already frozen will be instantly killed, making it even more important to dispel freeze.
And that’s it. Keep on your toes, move into the right circles and out of the wrong circles and this fight will be a snap.
Here are some of the main things that can typically go wrong in this fight:
- Players don’t keep up with movement, getting overwhelmed by biting-cold
- Players don’t dispel freeze, causing easily avoidable deaths
- Players don’t get to snowdrifts during flash-freeze
- The tanks don’t swap appropriately
Achievements
- cheese-the-freeze
- Defeat Hodir without anyone being hit by flash-freeze. Easy: just make sure everyone gets to a snowdrift when flash-freeze is cast.
- getting-cold-in-here
- Defeat Hodir without anyone exceeding 2 stacks of biting-cold. This is more difficult, requiring everyone to constantly be moving as well as freeze dispels to be perfect so that players aren’t rooted for more than a second.
- i-have-the-coolest-friends
- Defeat Hodir without any of the friendly NPCs dying. This can be a bit random depending on what the NPCs decide to do, but, most importantly, never let them stay frozen as they will be instantly killed by flash-freeze if they are frozen.
- staying-buffed-all-winter
- Have the buffs Toasty Fire, storm-power, and starlight all at the same time. This requires you to be near a bonfire, in a beam of light, and under a storm-cloud all at once. This is going to take some luck.
Congratulations on defeating Hodir! Make your way around the Antechamber and fight the next titanic watcher.
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About the Author
25man hard mode is 2mins iirc
Beating Hodir faster than the 2 minute timer does not spawn two chests. Only one Rare Cache will ever spawn.
The wording was confusing, corrected it, thank you.
Master the Hodir encounter in Ulduar (25) with coordinated movement, effective use of buffs from NPCs, and managing raid-wide damage. Stay aware of timers for Flash Freeze and focus on freeing allies quickly!