I'm still not in love with the RNG aspect as several of my clanmates - and clan leader - can attest to, but I think there is something to be said for putting more time into thinking about gearing, team comps. It does help with flattening out some of the variance. 

That said, it's still frequently laborious, time consuming and often quite tilting. 

Just get rid of the advanced quest. Please.

I like the advanced quest of Hydra.  It forced me to use 3 keys.  I found out I can beat Hydra for the worst chest.  I wont spend time and resources building a real team, but will take a chest every week.  

When a hydra head is decapitated, a ramdom head regenerates.  What would be cool would be if you could build 8 champ teams.  6 starters and 2 reserve.  When a a champ is saved from digestion and spit out, you could select which of the reserve champs (including the one that was swallowed) was put back in play.

It's just so frustrating, I have lost count of the times that it's the mischief head that eats then you can't get it back because your attacks are misdirected, or if its not that then it's the head that throws up the shield that is the one that eats, if it was a straight battle it would be ok but it's just way way too unpredictable

I solve some of the Mischief issues with hex champs, see good results there and with a block buffs champ like Uugo or Norog.

If you want, would love to discuss further. I have to be forced to do Hydra and find it a tough game mode, so it would make me happy I can help even one person make it easier.

I'm moving to a "Do Hydra on Day 1" strat from now on. I think I'm finally good with the teams I want to run to handle whatever silly, unfair things Hydra RNG wants to stack up. 

If you someone want to finishing fast with hydra, he can. Just put lvl1 character to slots, but i dont like, when someone trying me to force to do something in the game and i really dont like hydra, but i lost the completing advanced quests if i cant do. I understand Plarium, why trying to force the players, because the hydra is the most hated part of the game. The Summer Trial showed to everyone with the weakest percentage numbers to reacheable goals.

I run my keys on auto on day 1 as well, i think the mindless AI is as frustrating as the mode to be honest, the AI seems obsessed with whacking the head with a juicy shield and determined to ignore the head with the eaten champ.

I think if the rewards were better i might be inclined to try manual and push for the top brutal chest (i can usually 1 key hard on auto but no further than that) but as i said- for six weeks i have had nothing usable from the chests. Maybe something other than gear should be in the loot table.

I don't mind the RNG so much as I mind the amount of time it takes. I 1-key both normal and hard, but for hard in particular, it can take up to an hour, so I usually just end up getting to the threshold for the top chest and then end the fight.

I think they made a mistake with the hydra rebalance earlier; not that they made it more accessible, but that they did it by making the fight easier. They should've kept the difficulty more or less the same (though some changes to certain mechanics wouldn't be out of place), and just lowered the damage thresholds for the chests and the health pool for the hydra. More or less the same result, but less time required to achieve it.

It's just not always an option, and I'm annoyed they're forcing my hand even more :/

That would be better, i tend to run it on my pc so that my phone isnt tied up for an hour, but i agree the time taken is a bit mental.

When it first came out i used to manual it!

The time it ties up your phone/computer is less than CB by far  for 99% of us.  I've decided to only manual NM, and auto easy and hard.  So only an hour of manual effort a week.  Not horrible.  If I get the quest and haven't done NM for that week, I auto one of the other two.  The odds of me getting the hydra quest before I get to it are relatively slim.  If I don't have an hour and bad luck gives me the hydra quest 3 days in a row, I will sacrifice 130 energy.... 

Nightmare is not even unlocked for us

I am in a fairly active clan, over half the clan finish DT hard every cycle, we usually break 5 million in cvc and UNM cb is down within an hour or so of reset.

But we have very low participation in hydra, a number of members just run a few level one rares on auto to get the quest gone.

Thanks - I haven't got good hex guys but we took out normal last week and I can get the top chest with one key on normal and two keys next up, but I usually have to restart three or four times when the mischief head eats or the shielded head eats and I can't break it in time

It should be accessible to everyone like normal clan boss but the mechanics mean it really isn't, on the lower two levels this could be helped if the shielded head or the mischief head could not eat

Zero argument as it pertains to RNG. That will still wreck otherwise good runs. 

However, Hydra was intended to be PvE content that comes after UNM CB, so in terms of accessibility it shouldn't necessarily be completely analogous. 

Frankly, the only time I ever TRY to fight the thing is for Advance Mission. 

Hydra is a late-game boss. For newer players it's definitely not something you should be taking seriously.