Hydra is the other elite Fire Tree skill. It requires four prerequisites, but one of those is Warmth, so in a sense that means only three prereqs. Hydra is not available until clvl 30, so that pretty much means it's a skill for Nightmare and beyond, not for Normal. There are three potential reasons to invest in Hydra: as a scout/sentinel skill, as a situational attack skill, and as an all-purpose skill.

As a scout, only slvl 1 is needed. One thing to keep in mind is that it takes a hydra about a second, maybe a wee bit more, to orient itself and locate a target. Hydras will shoot at anything within their range, regardless of intervening walls, so that helps with the scouting role. As a sentinel, particularly indoors in the dark, to warn you of approaching dangers from any angle, hydra can be invaluable. It's also useful for tracking (and killing) Gloams and Burning Souls. Also keep in mind that hydras will shoot only at the target that is closest to them, not closest to you. Don't grow overconfident in their ability to forewarn you: they can help, but nothing can save you from your own hubris if you get too cocky.

As a situational skill, Hydra is the most impressive skill the sorceress has available -- but only if you use it wisely, meaning from a distance, letting it fight for you while you stear clear of harm's way -- and only if you place staying alive as a higher priority than the rate of your experience gain. SF + Orb + ridiculous mana + maxed fast cast can clear areas far more quickly, but you're going to die in the process fairly often. Hydra is the Stay-Alive uberskill, and you can make it work wonders for you regardless of your equipment.

The first situation to look for is capitalizing on the terrain. If you can put some sort of terrain feature between yourself and the target(s) that completely prevents them from reaching you while your pets are wailing on them, you're in a winning situation. So long as you can't be reached, you remain safe, and time is on your side. Cast as many hydras as you need, and even wait for your mana to recharge by itself, rather than running back to town, so as to take advantage of the situation. Some examples of this include casting hydras through a doorway into an enemy-occupied room or corridor, then moving to anywhere that makes it tough if not impossible for your foes to move through the door. You might even close the door in a few situations. In fact, you can cast Hydras ON a closed door and some of the heads will appear on the other side and be able to attack any targets there. Some might consider this an exploitation, but you can do it, and it has its uses. If you overuse it, though, you will slow down your pace. There are numerous situations where it could be used but shouldn't be because it will only waste time. You can also do this with some walls, even. You'll have to experiment to find all the ways you can take advantage of this feature. Another example of terrain is the Arcane Sanctuary or the end of the River of Flame, where you can cast hydras on other islands then retreat to a safe distance and let them work their magic. Combining Hydra with Teleport can allow you to lead targets into a trap, then to escape and leave them stuck somewhere with your pets.

The second situation for hydra use is against ranged attackers. Hydra is great for ALL ranged attackers because they will pause to shoot at you, and because you can summon your pets to attack, then retreat and generally not need to worry about the targets chasing you and moving out of range of the hydrashot. This also gives you a way to minimize your exposure to those ranged attacks in a way NO other skill available to a sorceress can dream of matching. You need not even expose yourself at all in many cases, because you can summon hydras to shoot at targets around corners or even off-screen. The range of your hydras is quite nearly as long as your own range in casting them. If you raise a hydra at screen edge, it can see almost a whole extra screen away and "warn" you there is a target there by firing at it. This may sound like scouting, but it goes beyond that. You can raise pets at the edge of the screen and eliminate ranged attackers who may die without you ever seeing them. This is not something you must do, but it is something you CAN do. Even if you do expose yourself, you can raise hydras then retreat. Or stay in range but perform Happy Feet (meaning you dodge to hold the target's attention while the hydras attack).

The third situation for hydra use comes against teleporting opponents. These are limited to teleporting bosses and Zakarum Priests in Kurast, but you'll encounter enough teleporters to make it worth your while to realize that Hydra is an awesome skill against them. Your pets will instantly retarget teleporting enemies, so long as they remain within range. You may need to spread your hydras around more than usual to make this work, but you don't even need to worry about targetting beyond that. Also included in this situation is the invisible or cloaked opponent: Burning Souls and Gloams. You can see these targets moving around by the glow they make, but only if the rest of the screen is quiet. In a firefight, they are hard to track. They can be tough and annoying other times, too, such as having a glare on your screen in the late afternoon. Hydras will spot and quickly eliminate these pests.

The fourth situation involves LEBs (Lightning Enchanted bosses). These foes spew sparks on every hit, and with fire skills, that is always going to mean nonstop sparks. Whether it's Inferno, Blaze, Firewall, Meteor, Fireball, or Hydra... fire means lots of little hits on the target, and each hit will cause the sparks to fly. The difference between Hydra and the others is your exposure. Whether you can use terrain to trap the target or impose a barrier between you, or can cast against a ranged LEB and retreat, Hydra is the safest skill you can use on a LEB. If the LEB is particularly fast and aggressive, you may have to rely on Happy Feet to stay ahead of them, and in this case Blaze would likely be your best bet, but Hydra can still be effective. Some use of chilling skills, such as Frost Nova or Blizzard, may also assist.

Fifthly, Hydra can serve as artillery support to take down targets more quickly. Use it to supplement your other skill usage as well as serve as sentinel or scout. Hydra works in multiplayer in this capacity, since when cooping, your allies will be doing damage and your hydras will always be supporting them, and they will often be tanking for your hydras, meaning fewer missed shots.

Sixthly, Hydras are king against the Fire Sorcie's most-hated opponent: the leaper. Leapers are not only dangerous and annoying, but in Acts 3 and 4 they are also HIGHLY fire resistant. Hands down the best fire skill against them is Hydra. Every hydrashot that hits will stun a leaper and knock it back. A few hydras can keep a whole army of leapers at bay, and your pets will stunlock leapers against walls or any other terrain feature the beasties get pushed up against, rendering them helpless. Hydra plus Firewall/Meteor can quickly and safely eliminate these dire threats even in Hell Act 4 multiplayer, without help from any other skills. Hydra alone can get it done, too, though that will take a little longer. Use of Blizzard can assist, as can some Blaze. Hot Babes who do not opt for Hydra as a primary skill should still invest at least one point here not only for the scouting but also to help out with the leapers. Other sorcie skills adept at handling leapers include Blizzard and Nova, and to a lesser degree, Frost Nova, all of which will keep the leapers at bay.

Finally, hydra is indicated against slow opponents. Cast, retreat, wait. The targets will die. Against a hard-hitting but slow opponent, such as Griswold, this can be an ideal tactic.

All-Purpose use of Hydra means employing it even against opponents that would be more easily or more safely killed with other skills. If you can trap targets or use terrain to block them off, that's a situation you can capitalize on, and no reason not to do so if it presents itself. However, if the situation goes bad, or if you are using hydra against ranged attackers but other skills against melee attackers, you aren't relying SOLELY on Hydra to get the job done. However, if you are going to rely on Hydra for everything, that changes the equation, increasing both your risk and the amount of tactical maneuvering of all sorts that you will have to perform. Against melee targets, you really have only two Hydra options: find a way to make a trap, or use Happy feet to maintain distance (run, run, run, and run). With patience, you can always lead targets back to a trap zone you've found, and use the same trap over and over, even if means luring targets from Travincal to Upper Kurast or from Chaos Sanctuary back to the River. As long as you've secured at least one place to trap opponents, you can avoid heavy exposure to danger. However, in some situations, most particularly when you are entering a new area and as yet have established no foothold, this just isn't possible, and your ONLY option then is to raise Hydras in bunches and run around trying to keep from getting trapped, to stay ahead of the chasers but keep them in range of your pets. Sometimes this can be a tall order, but you CAN do it with enough luck, determination, mousework and tactical planning.

So this covers when and how to use Hydra, for all situations. The skill works better in some places than others. Backing it up with other skills is the most effective means of using Hydra. Some of the best skills for dealing with the situations where Hydra is less effective include Blaze, Glacial Spike, Blizzard, Teleport and Static Field. Frost Nova, Frozen Orb, Telekinesis, Cold Armors, and Thunderstorm can assist.

The final issue with Hydra is the decision of when to stack them and when to spread them out. Stacking gives you the advantage of most if not all of the hydra heads targetting the same opponent most of the time. This is to your advantage when it is important to your strategy to kill a particular opponent first, or to start thinning the crowd as soon as possible to reduce your risks as soon as possible. The advantages of spreading your hydras a bit include increasing their total range, having them triangulate their shots against moving targets (fewer missed shots), extending their overall range considerably at the cost of concentrated strength, and giving you a wider field of play to work within as well as greater chance of gaining some additional benefit against newly-arriving or unaccounted-for targets, both in terms of warning you to new arrivals and dealing them some damage.

When you stack hydras, you press your right mouse button and hold it down, counting out the number of times you hear the casting sound. Stop when you have all you wanted, or if threats force you to move to avoid taking damage. You can, of course, cast them one at a time, with a separate click for each, but this takes longer. Faster Cast items are particularly useful for Hydra tactics because the thing to do is raise your pets in larger rather than smaller numbers. When you need them, you need them NOW. Hydra is an awesome skill, but its power comes over time, not all at once, and if power is needed because the target is tough or the mob is large, you may well empty your entire mana ball as quickly as you can, then move to Happy Feet or switch to another skill (again, Blaze is awesome here because it needs so little mana and works so well against the things that give Hydra the hardest time). To lay down a spread of hydras, you do the same thing: click and hold the button, moving the cursor as you go. The hydras will be summoned at your casting rate, which is increased with fast-cast items. You can't afford to be panicking, spreading all your pets a mile apart. Tactical efficiency varies by situation, but generally your hydra spread should leave your pets either overlapping by a bit or just about touching nose to nose. This is not the same as using multiple groups of hydras to attack multiple targets. That, too, is a form of spreading out, but has more to do with how many hydras you are using, and how much Warmth you have. Hydra is a mana-hungry skill. Each casting can deal a lot of damage, but it can't multiply that damage against numbers the way that Blaze, firewall, meteor, blizzard, and particularly Frozen Orb can. Of all the fire tree skills, only Firewall is more mana hungry than Hydra, and generally I recommend moderate to high levels of Warmth skill to support your Hydra use.

Here are some examples of how I used Hydra, on the decision to stack or spread. Against Fallen Shamen types, I spread. A stack may miss once the target starts moving, and he will. Spreading ensures more hits and less likelyhood the target will move out of range, thus generally offering a faster kill. Against Unraveler types, though, I stack. Their skeletons are slower, more numerous, and they are only encountered indoors. Against rogue archers, I spread. They are quick and more apt to move around, even to a point of chasing you if you retreat too far. Against Act 2 Leapers, I spread. This lets me stay mobile and continually use the Hydras as rolling artillery support. Against Teleporters, I spread wide and hard, as many Hydras as I can get out there covering as much area as possible, though still generally not wider apart from end to end than one screen width. This may mean a spread of three here, a spread of four there, and some stragglers spaced out. Against Act 3 and 4 Leapers, I spread, but only a little if leapers are the only thing attacking. Stacking might have too many of them targetting one foe and thus missing another. The object is too keep them away from me and spreading them a little bit helps. If there are melee attackers in the mix, I will spread wider, because I may be forced to move. At a doorway, beyond which lies a roomful of targets, I will stack through the door, right at the door. When I can safely do so, I'll move up to or near the door and spread some more around inside. Hydras are ideal for making a stand at a choke point of any kind, because they can do your dirty work for you while all you have to do is defend against or distract one or two melee opponents at a time. Against a tough boss I will usually spread the hydras, and do the same for a large mob if there is plenty of room to work with. If space is cramped and there's no foothold yet, I'm more apt to stack them in hopes of thinning the crowd more quickly even at the expense of taking longer overall to get all the kills. If you stack the hydras, you must stay close to the stack or you move out of range and shots will miss. I prefer to put more distance between myself and the targets, once the hydras are there, whenever possible.

Ultimately, you'll have to decide your own stack vs spread policy based on how you use your hydras, what other skills you have, your items, health, mana, Warmth, and the situations at hand. Experiment to find what works best for you then go with it.

Finally, comparing hydra with meteor. This comparison is patently unfair due to the broken nature of Fire Mastery (which, up through v1.06, does not work with Hydra). However, even if mastery did work with Hydra, Meteor would still be stronger because it deals its damage in one big hit and can pound a wide area of effect. Stronger isn't always better, though. You must expose yourself to enemy ranged attacker to slay them with meteor. Hydras can be cast around corners, through doors (open or closed), on the edge of the screen. Hydras also persist. You can raise them, then depart, or summon them then passively lure a target into their range and strand him there. You can set traps with hydras. All these things make hydra strategically superior across the board. However, tactically, meteor will always be stronger and more precise.

The most telling fact is that you can still get most of the benefit from hydra at low levels. You can still scout, still shoot around corners, still raise sentinels and guards. Maxed meteor backed by a bit of Hydra gets nearly the best of both worlds. The converse just isn't true. Low level meteor stops being reliable in a hurry. Thus, as things now stand, the meteor sorcie is the mistress of tactical combat, the epitomy of precision, and the queen of fire. However, the hydra sorcie will always remain the mistress of control, humilator of fools, and the queen of style. If you are a fan of the Fire Tree, neither experience should be missed.

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