Following the recent changes by Plarium to Hydra in RAID many players have been able to achieve some kind of an improvement versus their previous results.
What were the changes?
- HP, ATK and DEF decreased on all Hydra difficulties.
- The countdown of the Mark of the Hydra was increased from 16 to 20 turns.
- Up to and not including Nightmare it requires less damage to free Champions after Digestion.
- It is now possible to Provoke the Head of Decay.
- Chest rewards were boosted.
My 44.74 mil damage on Hydra Hard
After multiple attempts which took about 2 hours (yes, unfortunately the RNGesus is very much still alive in Hydra) I was able to achieve my record of 44.74 million damage in a battle that took 71 minutes and 37 seconds. So a massive waste of over 2 hours just for 1 key.
Let's start with the screenshots and I will add some explanatory text after that:
Picture 1) Time taken
This picture, taken at the end of the battle, is there to confirm the correct time taken because the game does not show time over 1 hour (see picture 2), it wrongly shows only 11 minutes. The real duration is 71 minutes and 37 seconds for 1 key.
Picture 2) Result screen: 44.74M Damage Dealt
Picture 3) Clan View which also shows equipped sets:
Picture 4) Team stats
Information / Tips:
I tried different combinations before this team.
One of the combinations which was interesting was having Visix as the lead position. The advantage of this was having a permanent Slow on all Hydra Heads 100% of the time and having a guaranteed Provoke on Head of Decay. Her 3 turn Provoke cooldown was ready right before the Head of Decay had a turn.
Against all those advantages the disadvantage was less damage output as the lead position is a critical position. And furthermore, the risk when Visix was eaten the team lost both the Provoke and the Slow benefits.
Depending on what champions you have I would still suggest you to try this combination - it might give a good result for you.
In another combination I used Seeker to constantly attack Head of Decay. The benefits are the Provoke is on the A1 (not guaranteed but many attacks = high chance, however Affinity also can go against depending on Rotation) + TM boost. Unfortunately, for me this did not work out well because my Seeker is build for my Clan Boss team and he has a lower speed and is more focused on damage rather than being able to survive and provoke. But it is certainly an option for others.
Another good option for Provoke is Husk, however my equipment is not good enough to allow him both high accuracy and high CDMG using one of the 3 sets to help him CD faster (Reflex, Relentless, Frenzy). I tried doing this by boosting Accuracy with Kimi but this did not work reliably.
I also tried changing other champions not related to Provoke such as using Lydia, Uugo, Doompriest, Dhukk, Umbral and even Skullcrusher, but I did not get a good result.
Another tip is that I noticed that since the stats are a bit weaker now it was easier to quickly kill 1 Head and start gaining big damage hitting the Decapitated Hydra Head.
Another tip is to keep discipline and keep hitting the Head of Torment instead of the Decapitated Head with all supporting champions and only using the damage dealers for non-Torment attacks. This results in higher damage output then if everyone would focus on the Decapitated Head.
Another tip is not to use ATK down debuff if you are playing with Geomancer as your main damage dealer. This increases risks especially with Head of Wrath but this is what you need to dish out bigger damage. Head of Wrath should be controller carefully by blocking buffs preventing his ATK up or removing his buffs with Geomancer. Also should be fully controlled when he does his big attack by counting the hits and manually triggering his big attack only after you are ready to receive it (either with a DEF up or with a Shield or Strengthen and after healing). It is important that you have a way to counter his Provoke by cleansing so that you can control the hits.
And of course the important tip with my result, as you perhaps already saw, is to use 1 or 2 Provoke sets (Taunting set) to help Provoke the Head of Decay. In this case you can see I have used the Provoke set on my Geomancer which worked well most of the time, however there were several occasions where he failed to Provoke up to 5 times in a row, so do not expect 100% success this way, but it was certainly enough to help me achieve my record.
I have given multiple other tips in my previous Hydra posts, please also refer to those such as: https://raid-tips.blogspot.com/2022/05/hydra-hard-33-mil-damage-150-turns-team.html
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