Onyxia

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Onyxia

In the far off land of Kalimdor, there lies a region of swamps, bogs, and wastelands called Dustwallow Marsh. And in the southern end of the Marsh lies an area called the Wyrmbog that is the home of many kinds of dragonkin.



It is a charred desolate region.



And it is here where the dragon, Onyxia, makes her lair.

I was invited to join a raid on Onyxia today by Ogrimx, and I'd like to thank him for taking on the largely thankless task of organizing the trip. Organizing any raid group is a major undertaking and organizing one involving a largely pickup community can be especially daunting. Kudos to Ogrimx and the others like Berilac who helped him pull everything together.

The home of Onyxia is locked by a large gate of teeth, and the normal way of obtaining a key to her lair involves a very lengthy and difficult quest series in the Blackrock Depths instance, related to a jail break of Marshal Windsor. (We'll see part of this series later).



However, Blizzard wants beta testers to try out the Onyxia raid instance, so they've placed a handy goblin vendor in front of Onyxia's lair who hands out the Drakefire Amulet that acts as the key. It kind of makes things easy.



When you wear the amulet, you can open the teeth-like gate and see the green raid instance portal behind it. It is at this point that the most difficult part of the raid on Onyxia commences. That is, getting the d*** thing organized.



I was lucky in that I was one of the later people to be invited to the raid (I had just logged on). Some people had mentioned that they had been waiting for the raid to get going for almost two hours, which led to a lot of frustration. I have a few suggestions for both raid group organizers and participants, based on my experiences with this group.

For raid organizers:

1. When you're doing the initial recruiting, let people know that it's going to take some time before the raid starts and ask them to invite their friends and guildmates. Something like, "We're still recruiting people, so it'll probably be about a half an hour before we start. Let me know if any of your friends or guildmates want to come." That way, you'll get some help in the recruitment effort, and you're letting people know that they don't have to get to the instance immediately. It's better to let people hang out in Ironforge or do some outdoor quests, while the recruiting process is still going on. Then, when things start getting close (like when you have 35 people), you can tell people to make their way to the instance.

2. Early on in the recruiting cycle, recruit a couple of warlocks and ask them to farm shards for summoning. The idea isn't to summon the entire 40-person raid to the instance but to instead summon the last 5-10 people added to the raid. The point where the biggest frustrations seem to occur is when the raid is *almost* full, but where the last people are still on their way. That's when people get bitchy about starting and often will quit the raid in frustration, because the "noobs" won't get started. Speeding up those last moments via summoning makes a big difference.

3. When most of the raid is assembled and you need to give instructions, use the yell command so that your text comes out in a different color than the general raid chat spam.

For raid participants:

1. Take a chill pill. It's hard enough getting a five person party together, and the time and effort it takes to organize a group goes up exponentially with the size of the group. It takes time to organize a good raid group, so show patience.

2. Take it easy on the raid organizers and help them as much as you can. Recruit friends or guildmates and help newer players find their way to the instance. If you're a warlock, farm some shards and tell the organizers that you're willing to summon people. And if a warlock says that he or she needs people to come outside of the instance to assist with summoning, leave the instance and help summon. The more you help, the sooner the raid will start.

3. When the organizers say it's time to make one's way to the instance, do so with all possible speed. Don't dally around, and don't ask for a summon. You have feet and you have a mount, use them!

4. Cut down on the spam in raid chat. I know, everyone's excited, but it can be mind-numbing to watch the general chat speed by. And when much of the chat is spam, people can miss more important instructions from the raid organizers or requests by people who need help getting to the instance. Also, please leave yelling to the raid organizers.



Anyway, somehow a 40-person raid group managed to get formed this afternoon and commenced its raid on the lair of Onyxia.

There are four Onyxian Warders to kill before reaching Onyxia herself, and the first one we encountered was a level 60+ elite. These raid elite warders are tough compared to what people are used to in regular instances. They hit hard and have a massive aoe fire attack that does on the order of 2000 damage on each strike.



However, the first fight went smoothly due to some simple but effective organization. First, all of the paladins spread among the various parties in the raid used their fire resistance auras. Second, while the melee players charged the warder, the healers and ranged attackers stayed well back to stay out of range of the warder's aoe attack. Third, the rogues and paladins in the group attempted to keep the warder stunned as much as possible. I gather that the warders are highly resistant but not immune to stun effects, so if enough people try to stun it, then occasionally someone will get lucky and successfully land a stun. Finally, the priests cast a lot of Prayer of Healing (AoE heal) spells to keep everyone healed.

We had a few deaths, but on the whole the battle went well.



But while we were rezing, buffing, drinking, and generally recovering from the first battle, possible doom was creeping up on us.

[MongoJerry]

The second warder sent the group into a scramble, and since not enough people were prepared for the battle, the warder managed to get several aoe shots off straight off the bat, killing or severely wounding a large number of players. The party recovered somewhat, but the warder made consistent inroads. One member after another was dropping and soon all or nearly all of the melee fighters were dead. As you can see in the screenshot above, nearly two-thirds of the raid party was dead and the remainder was composed largely of squishy cloth-wearers.

Luckily, though, by the time the above screenshot was taken, the warder was down to about 10% health. The warder made more headway into the group, but all the surviving casters spread out and dealt all the damage they could. For my part, I used all my mana, a mana pot, and Inner Focus. Seeing that the warder was down to a sliver of life, I broke out my wand and fired a 21-point damage wand shot, which turned out to be the death blow. I was quite proud of that.



After rezing, buffing, drinking, and otherwise recovering from this second battle, we moved on to the third warder who fell more systematically.



The fourth and final warder was level 62+ and was therefore much tougher to kill than the earlier warders, but by this time, the raid party had the system down and we had no trouble dispatching him as well.



All we had left to do was kill a dragon.

UP NEXT: Onyxia

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Onyxia, part II

In this corner, Onyxia, taking an afternoon nap.



And in this corner, a rag-tag band of forty challengers. Who will win?



In typical Blizzard-style humor, Onyxia seems to like to randomly get up and stroll around the area. She did so twice while the raid party was organizing itself, causing the party to scramble. I understand that Kronos actually enticed her to do this the second time by sending an Eye of Kilrogg to where she was sleeping. Onyxia saw the eye, killed it, and then took a stroll before settling back to her regular spot. Bad warlock! Bad bad warlock!



The party finished organizing and buffing itself. The time for battle was at hand!

[MongoJerry]

Battle erupted and Onyxia yelled out:

Onyxia: How fortuitous. Usually, I must to leave my lair in order to feed.

Clearly a 40-person raid group was not going to frighten her away.



She broke out of the melee pack somehow, (death of the warrior tanks?) and charged the back rank of spellcasters. Things were not looking good.



More than half the party had died and we had hardly dented Onyxia's health bar.



This wasn't just a beating. This was a rout.



All of the group's visions of glory died in less than a minute of battle. This wasn't a case where a little better organization would have helped. We had hardly touched Onyxia's health bar, so we had clearly missed something.

I thought back to the days long ago, when I played the old text-adventure game, Adventure. This game from the 1970's could really be thought of as the great-grandfather of all modern adventure games. One day, as I was playing Adventure on my Osborne 64, a 20-pound "portable computer" with a 4-inch green screen monitor (*way* dating myself here), I came across a dragon sprawled across a persian rug. Clearly, I was supposed to find some way of getting the dragon off the rug, so I could take it back to the house on the hill (don't ask).

For three days, I tried to get the dragon off the rug. The first thing I tried was killing the dragon. The user interface could only understand two words at a time, so I typed, "Kill dragon," and it responded as usual, "With what? You're bare hands?" And then I said, "With axe," and the axe flew out of my hands and bounced harmlessly off the dragon's hide. I then tried bribing the dragon with food, tried shackling the dragon with chains that had bound a bear I'd found, tried exchanging gold coins for the rug, and tried just about anything that could possibly be tried to get that dragon off the rug. Finally, in frustration and in a fit of ironic humor, I went to the dragon's room, and typed "Kill dragon." The game then responded as usual, "With what? Your bare hands?" I then typed, "Yes." (pause) "Congratulations! You killed a dragon with your bare hands! The dragon falls and rolls off the persian rug."

Knowing Blizzard's penchant for ironic humor and knowing that Adventure was the great-grandfather of the modern adventure game, I suggested that we try to attack Onyxia with our bare hands.

The party didn't go for it.



However, some others made another observation. On either side of the path to Onyxia were dragonet eggs. Some mentioned lore related to Warcraft II where a dragon was captured when the dragon's brood was threatened. So, we made plans to attack the eggs first to see if that might affect or weaken Onyxia in some way.



Unfortunately, at this point, we ran into one of the major problems with raid groups in general and with pickup raid groups in particular. While half the people were still buffing and drinking, the other half decided to take it upon themselves to start showering spells and attacks on the eggs. At the moment the attacks started, I had no mana after buffing my party (with the good fortitude buff, by the way -- I'm no cheapskate). So my group's priest (me) became designated as in combat, (read: unable to drink) while she had no mana. That meant that not only was I toast but also the other four people in my party, who I was supposed to protect. This situation repeated itself in one form or other in other parties in the raid group. This illustrates raid group cardinal rule #1:

RULE #1: WHEN YOU ARE IN A RAID GROUP, DO NOT ATTACK ANYTHING UNTIL THE RAID LEADER TELLS YOU TO.

Dozens of dragonets sprang from the damaged eggs and overwhelmed the group. Onyxia herself didn't do anything, but the dragonets were more than enough to pick apart our disorganized group. The eggs themselves also respawned quickly. After the fight, the Game Master watching us let us know that the "secret" to Onyxia doesn't involve the dragonet eggs. The eggs are there just for decoration.



Recriminations flew about the raid channel, and it didn't help that the Onyxian Warders that we had killed earlier started respawning while the party was being rezed. Things started getting chaotic at this point. People were running around, people were yelling for rezes, and lots of bitching and moaning was going on. Some people kept yelling to be rezed, even though there were four warders between their bodies and the main body of rezers. It was an ugly scene.

This brings up one last suggestion for you if you get involved in an Onyxia raid group: When you die, release and run back. The graveyard isn't far away, you can run across water as a spirit, and you'll save a lot of stress and anguish on yourself and the party if you do it. You can't be rezed in combat anymore, so there's no need to stay around to make it easier to select your body to be rezed in combat. You might as well release immediately and make your way back while the rest of the party continues to fight. Plus, if a rezer does rez you before you make it back to the instance, you haven't lost any time.

Finally, one suggestion for the Blizzard developers: Eliminate the respawns on the Onyxian Warders. Raid groups have enough trouble keeping themselves together as it is. There's no reason to add a respawn timer on top of everything else. If those Warders hadn't respawned, we could've gotten in another run or two at Onyxia.

As it was, the raid group fell into chaos. Some people left, because they had to go do real life things. Others left after accusing the group of being a bunch of "noobs." The situation got ugly. It was too bad, too, because the group was actually functioning reasonably well until the attack on the eggs fiasco. We did discover one thing, after all: The dragonet eggs have nothing to do with defeating Onyxia. That is actually a significant piece of information.

At the time the group fell apart, two theories were broached for how to kill Onyxia:

1. You should fight Onyxia with your bare hands.

2. Maybe you can only damage Onyxia, if your are wearing your Drakefire Amulet. Most of the party had probably thought that the amulet was only for opening the door and was not actually wearing the amulet during the fight. Many probably hadn't even gotten the amulet from the goblin in the first place and had just walked through the gate when someone else had opened it.

However, before we got a chance to test this theory, the raid party had disintegrated to 28 people and many more were talking of leaving. It was at this point that Rynin suggested that we do the Stormwind raid event, which doesn't take as many players to do, and I strongly agreed and urged everyone to go to Stormwind. We got enough, "What is that?"'s and "Um, ok..."'s to coopt the group. We had to act fast, though, before too many people bailed.

UP NEXT: The Marshal Windsor Stormwind Raid Event!

[Tal]

Great write-up as usual Mongo. :)

After the fight, the Game Master watching us let us know that the "secret" to Onyxia doesn't involve the dragonet eggs. [right][snapback]59727[/snapback][/right]

I found this part to be very interesting. Not that the GMs were watching (I knew they did that) but that one would "uncloak" to give out a secret such as that. :)

  It was at this point that Rynin suggested that we do the Stormwind raid event, which doesn't take as many players to do, and I strongly agreed and urged everyone to go to Stormwind.  We got enough, "What is that?"'s and "Um, ok..."'s to coopt the group.  We had to act fast, though, before too many people bailed.

UP NEXT: The Marshal Windsor Stormwind Raid Event!
[right][snapback]59727[/snapback][/right]

I've not heard about this - whats it about precious?

Edit: I forgot to mention. Yesterday I was finally able to log in and play around with Sharanna. For the next two hours as I quested with Roane I was innundated with requests to do BRD, BRS, Statholme, Scholomance and the new raids. I was completely at a loss to explain my new found popularity. ;)

[iyguy]

This brings up one last suggestion for you if you get involved in an Onyxia raid group: When you die, release and run back.

Isn't this a problem, though with the 100% durability loss when you use a spirit healer? Or do people at high levels always have a spare set of armor?

[Tal]

Isn't this a problem, though with the 100% durability loss when you use a spirit healer?  Or do people at high levels always have a spare set of armor?
[right][snapback]59777[/snapback][/right]

He means release your spirit and run back to your body.

[iyguy]

Doh! I knew I was missing something obvious. Thanks for the clarification.

And re-reading the quote, that's exactly what MongoJerry wrote. Double Doh!

[MongoJerry]

Woohoo! It turns out that Minimus was in the same raid group I was in and made this real-time video of the same fight with Onyxia. Check it out!

http://www.dogma-guild.org/viewtopic.php?t=111

[Chaerophon]

That looked hurty ;) Anyways, thanks for the vid - looks good!!!

EDIT: BTW, nice panther!

[MongoJerry]

Thanks to Bolty's generosity, the images are now back on-line.

[Bolty]

Onyxia flies. Yes, flies.

http://www.dogma-guild.org/

-Bolty

[Rinnhart]

Onyxia > Nagafen/Vox

I couldn't help but think "man, my PC would fricken melt" while watching that video.

That's awesome.