Another interesting option for fighting the new Hydra Clan Boss in RAID is a low ranked champion: Snorting Thug.
This champion has very interesting and effective mechanics. Everything on him steals buffs away from the enemies, which makes him a perfect candidate for the 1-man high-RES buff strategy against Hydra.
Here is my idea:
- We put high Resistance on the Snorting Thug (for Nightmare and UNM aiming for 500 RES) with the aim that Head of Mischief will always attack him to steal his buffs, but the RES will not allow that.
- And to make sure he is always the champion with the highest number of buffs we can not only reduce his speed compared to the rest of the team but use his abilities to constantly steals any available buffs on the Hydra Heads. I actually think because of his PASSIVE we could run him at base speed! (Frenzy set allows him to go faster despite low speed) That would also allow stacking more RES and HP on him (not having to use Speed boots). While his attacks are nice I think his Passive skill is enough for this.
Also when he does attack his attacks are based on HP and while he does not have the best multipliers he will still contribute to the damage score.
However, as mentioned, that is not his purpose - his main contribution to the team is making sure that we have all the buffs and the Hydra has none.
But I believe that with up to 10 buffs (will help if there is a buff extender in the team) all his stats would be greatly increased making him very effective.
And he will further add damage via his natural Counter-Attack anytime a Hydra Head has no buffs.
On the negative side of things, he really must be booked to ensure higher chances of Buff Stealing - I tested the Snorting Thug without books and it is significantly less effective. He will need 11 books to max all skills, which is not few but also not as high as 17 or so which some other champions have.
