Onyxia Postmortem

[Lissa]

Hello all,

Just wanted to share a few quick thoughts I had about last night.  I'm not sure that it should go here or in the crossroads; move it if you see fit.

Phase one

Our biggest problem of the night seemed to be in Main Tank positioning.  This is to be expected in my mind as there is no way to practice this other than a trial by fire smacking the big dragon on the nose.  With time we will get that down (we got it on the 4th attempt) and then we can concentrate more on other things.  That said, everyone should constantly be aware of Onyxia's positioning.  If she turns slightly don't just stand still and get hit by a flame breath or a dragon tail; move yourself to a position to the left or right of Onyxia and you will take no damage.  I don't see any reason why you can't adjust to the opposite side of the dragon if necessary even.  During phase one you should never take more damage than you can bandage back yourself if you are smart about it.  Even standing up on the ledges has little to no benefit in stage one; move around if you have to to live!  Also note that melee characters can hit Onyxia from far away.  You do not have to walk right up to her to smack her.

That's it for stage one.  Once MT position is set it is pretty easy.  I have a phase three suggestion that could also be applied to phase one but I will discuss that a bit later.

Phase two

Everyone say it with me: Clumping causing Deep Breath is a myth!!!  I have a theory that Deep Breath is actually a timered ability that goes off after a certain period of time.  The calls to keep up dps on Onyxia are designed to get through Phase two faster so that this timer never goes off.  Having a smaller raid disadvantages us slightly in this regard.  This means that everyone must maintain max dps during Phase two.  With the exception of whelp killing everyone should be doing their best to damage the dragon during phase two.  Here's the idea:

Hunters:  Keep her in range and keep plinking away and feel free to use special shots (I believe).  You are our easy main dps for this segment due to range issues.

Mages:  When not combating whelps fire frost bolts on the dragon regularly.  If you are in a whelp handling group make sure to save some mana to be ready for when they come out, possibly by using your wand on the big dragon.  This may be a good stage to use your Evocation to keep going.

Warlocks:  Make sure CoS and CoE are up at all times (coordinate which 'lock is doing which).  You will combine with priests to attempt to keep a full suite of DoTs up on Onyxia at all times.

Rogues/Warriors:  Yes, you can hit that big flying oaf.  The trick is that you must use special attacks.  This means things like Sinister Strikes for rogues or Heroic Strike for warriors.  You can also use bows or guns if you like.  The Main Tank should be aware of attempting to rebuild aggro at around 43% in preparation for Onyxia landing, Anger Management is your friend here.

Priests:  If you are not healing a whelp group then you should always have SW:P up.  If you are healing a whelp group then you should always have SW:P up; just make sure that your whelp killers are alive first.  As Onyxia approaches 45% look to start regening mana in anticipation of Phase Three but do not completely abandon dps.  Wands can also be useful

Druids:  Throughout the whole battle you are watching out for chances to battle rez.  This doesn't change in Phase Two.  You can also cast a few spells to keep damage up.  Just like priests look to start regening mana around 45%.

Paladins:  I'm really not certain if you have an easy way to damage the dragon.  Feel free to throw BoP and a few extra heals at whelp groups.  These can both be life savers for the primary IAE mage.  Always be ready with Divine Intervention if necessary.

Also, even though clumping does not cause Deep Breath, excessive clumping can lead to lots of splash damage from Onyxia's fireballs.  Always try to stay in range of the dragon to do damage but don't stand in one big pile.  This is very important: IF YOU ARE A REZZER and you find yourself out of combat (battle rez, DI) make sure to stand at range from targets while rezzing.  This greatly lessens the chance of getting hit by a fireball or splash damage which will interrupt your rez and put you back into combat.  For those that get rezzed during this stage please move away from the rezzer immediately after coming back to life.  It should also go without saying that these rezzers should stay clear of the whelp pits to reduce the chance of a whelp aggroing them.

Also note that you should never expect a heal during this phase unless you are in a whelp group.  If you get hit by a fireball back away from the pack and bandage yourself, then rejoin the battle.  Everyone should have plenty of heavy runecloth bandages on them which will help you heal back up.  The healers will generally need their mana elsewhere.  DO NOT stand around at half life expecting a heal.  This is just asking to get wiped out by the next fireball.  If you are still recently bandaged then you can try gently poking a healer for a heal if you feel it is necessary.

There should be one person designated for each whelp group to call out whelp waves on TeamSpeak.  As a healer I can say that it is a billion times easier to keep a whelp group alive if I can anticipate it a half second early instead of having to wait to see health bars darting downward.  This can easily be the difference between a mage living and dying.  As another point with whelp groups; this stage is the time for every warrior to burn his/her challenging shout.  There is no other time in the battle where it will be useful so you might as well use it here to take some of the pressure off of the IAE mage and healer.  Just coordinate which warrior is going to shout when so that they do not go to waste.  With 4 warriors we should be able to get a shout off on virtually every whelp group before we hit Phase Three.

During Phase Two aggro does not matter!  Just whale on the dragon with all you've got and force her big rear end back down to the ground.  As she goes to land aggro matters again and at this point mages should all cast Detect Magic on her in order to wipe all DoTs off of Onyxia so that we can allow the MT to rebuild some aggro.

Phase Three

Now the fun begins.  I do not have as much experience with Phase Three so my comments will be a bit more general.  Phase Three is much like Phase One, but with fear and lava.  The lava impact can be minimized; the fear just has to be dealt with.  If you can get up on to one of the ledges in the NW or NE corner of the lair you can completely avoid the lava cracks on the floor.  I have found that the most reliable way to get up there is to start at the north end of the ledge and jump up to it while jumping in a southerly direction (SW or SE depending on side).  You can test this out during the beginning of Phase One pretty easily.  Fear simply needs to be dealt with.  I have read that walking backwards helps to minimize the impact of fear but I can say from experience that being feared while on the ledge will not knock you off.  Just be ready to quickly reengage in healing or damage when the fear wears off.

Healers note that Onyxia increases her damage when she gets down to 5% life.  There is no trick to this; just continue to spam quick heals (flash heal for priests; I don't know druid or pally healing as well) in an attempt to keep the MT up.

General Comment

This could apply to Phase One and/or Phase Three.  We had an instance of our MT going down at one point last night and the ensuing chaos took us all down.  My proposal is this:  We designate a backup tank from the start.  This person will start attacking Onyxia long before the remainder of the group in Phase One and Phase Three.  They will stick to standard autoattack in order to minimize any chance of them pulling aggro off of the MT but this should allow them to reliably stay second on the hate chart.  That way if the MT goes down for some reason all of the healers know who to switch to and keep the new tank up.  Warriors can not match the standard dps of some other classes if they open fire simultaneously (mages especially come to mind as they have no way to shed aggro).  This person can start attacking about a minute into the fight and roughly two minutes before anyone else (following the timing we used last night).  They will position themselves to the side of Onyxia so that they should not be taking any damage (and thus not taxing the healers).  Ideally the MT will not go down; but this seems to be a reasonable safety valve with no downside (and it will even help us damage her faster).  The fact  that the MT is using special skills and already has a head start means that the backup tank should never overtake him on the aggro chart.  It would also be preferrable that each of these tanks has the same level of defiance talents so that that will not be a confounding factor.

I think that is all that I have for now.  I would appreciate if everyone reads through this and makes any comments (things I missed; places where I'm wrong, etc.) so that we might be able to transform this into a document to help everyone prepare.  Minor details like which side people stand on can be taken care of at raid time but I think it is very helpful to have an idea what to do ahead of time.  I'm hoping that this post can serve that purpose.

- mjdoom

Edit:  Added bandaging in Phase Two.
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On thing I would like to add concerning Warlocks in Phase 2...having Warlocks on Whelp duty is a bad idea. Of all the classes in the game, we have the most DoTs available. Between my talent build and Arethor's talent build, we could have singlehandely put 6 of the 8 debuff slots on her between Corruption, Siphon Life, and a Curse (this can net around 300 to 400 DPS per Warlock). Of all classes, we're best left to keeping the damage up on Onyxia (hell, our SBs hit like a ton of bricks with CoS up on her with potential crits in the mid to high 2000s). Looking at the Damage trackers alone shows just how much damage me and Arethor were putting out last night.