Template:Coilfang Reservoir
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Hydross the Unstable <Duke of Currents> is the first boss of Serpentshrine Cavern in Coilfang Reservoir. He seems to have lost his sanity as a result of being held prisoner by Lady Vashj. He is kept in check by the two beams in his prison. If he leaves them, he becomes poisoned, causing him great pain.
General information
- Level: ?? Boss
- Type: Elemental
- Health: ~3,500,000
- Damage: ~6000-8500 Frost/Nature melee damage (unmitigated)
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: Cast on a single target every 7 seconds. Stuns you 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). It also affects all players within 8 yards of the original target, but it will not chain from secondary targets.
- 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.
Adds
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.
Strategy
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 Main Tanks
In order to kill Hydross your Main Tanks need decent resistance gear. If you can't get the reagents with your Guild, you need around 4300g to get it. Here are some suggestions on your resist sets.
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). 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.
Frost resistance
| Item | Slot | Resistance | Mats | Crafters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 [Iceguard Helm]
|
Head | 50 |
|
Honored Violet Eye Blacksmiths | |
| Glyph of Frost Warding | Head enchant | 20 |
|
N/A | |
 [Pendant of Thawing]
|
Neck | 30 |
|
Revered Lower City Jewelcrafters | |
 [Inscription of Endurance]
|
Shoulder enchant | 7 |
|
N/A | |
 [Iceguard Breastplate]
|
Chest | 60 |
|
Honored Violet Eye Blacksmiths | |
 [Iceguard Leggings]
|
Legs | 60 |
|
Revered Violet Eye Blacksmiths | |
 [The Frozen Eye]
|
Finger | 35 |
|
Honored Violet Eye Jewelcrafters | |
 [Frost Armor Kit]
|
Chest, legs, hands, and feet augmentation | 32 (8 each) |
|
Leatherworkers | |
| [Frost Resistance Aura]
|
Buff | 70 | none | Paladins | |
| Total | 364 |
|
Nature resistance
| Item | Slot | Resistance | Mats | Crafters | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 [Wildguard Helm]
|
Head | 50 |
|
Revered Cenarion Expedition Blacksmiths | |
| Glyph of Nature Warding | Head enchant | 20 |
|
N/A | |
 [Pendant of Withering]
|
Neck | 30 |
|
Revered Scryers Jewelcrafters | |
| [Inscription of Endurance]
|
Shoulder enchant | 7 |
|
N/A | |
 [Wildguard Breastplate]
|
Chest | 60 |
|
Exalted Cenarion Expedition Blacksmiths | |
 [Wildguard Leggings]
|
Legs | 60 |
|
Revered Cenarion Expedition Blacksmiths | |
 [The Natural Ward]
|
Finger | 35 |
|
Exalted Cenarion Expedition Jewelcrafters | |
 [Nature Armor Kit]
|
Chest, legs, hands, and feet augmentation | 32 (8 each) |
|
Leatherworkers | |
 [Aspect of the Wild]
|
Buff | 70 | none | Hunters | |
| Total | 364 |
|
Loot
See also
- The Burning Crusade: Guild Progression for the first kills
Quotes
"I cannot allow you to interfere!" (entering combat)
"Aaghh, the poison..." (Nature phase)
"Better, much better." (Frost phase)
"They have forced me to this..." (killing a player - clean)
"I have no choice." (killing a player - clean)
"I am... released..." (dying - clean)
"You are no better than they!" (killing a player - corrupt)
"I will purge you from this place." (killing a player - corrupt)
"You are the disease, not I" (dying - corrupt)
Patches and Hotfixes
Template:Patched Template:Patched Template:Patched Template:Patched
External links
gsDKP Loot table MMO-Champion Strategy guide
3ioB (Suramar-US) Rogue PoV Shadow Syndicate (Mug'Thol) Melee PoV Chival Tank PoV