The Great Onyxia Race

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Vengeance

At the end of our fifth and final attempt on Thursday, I couldn't hold back any longer.

Neriad: I hate to sound like a whiner, but setting a 6:30pm start time and having people show up two hours later is not cool. Can we set a time and stick with it, please?

I got several "agreeds" from others in the raid who had been in a similar situation as me and even got an apology from one of the raid leaders who arrived late. OK, what time was the raid going to be the next day, then?

"5:30" (on Teamspeak)

I couldn't believe my ears. The raid had had enough trouble getting people to the raid at 6:30. What were they thinking? Are they on Hawaii time or something? Then, I heard the confirmation, "Yeah, 5:30." I couldn't believe it. Alright, I thought. I'll see, but I'm not going to hold my breath while waiting for people to show up.

Friday, April 8th

I actually came home in time to log on at 5:30, but I couldn't get myself to face the inevitable disappointment. So I surfed the web, puttered around the house, and finally logged on at 6:30. Surprise, surprise, few of the raid regulars were on and many of the raid leaders were missing. I messaged one of the Offenders I knew and was told to message a particular person for an invite. I thought, no way. No way was I going to go through that again. At that moment, I saw an advertisement in the general channel of Orgrimmar looking for a priest for a 5-man run of Undead Stratholme. Perfect. I told him, "I'm going to do a 5-man run of UD Strat. I've wanted to do that since beta. Maybe I'll join you guys when I'm done as a replacement player or something."

And that was a true statement. I actually have wanted to do a 5-man run of UD Stratholme -- well actually all of Stratholme -- since beta. I had a blast the one time I tried it in the beta (we wiped deep in the Scarlet Bastion), and I always love a challenge. However, there was also a part that I didn't say: Maybe by the time I'm done, you guys will get your guildmates online. I joined the 5-man party and headed over to the Eastern Plaguelands.

On my way to Stratholme, I started receiving multiple invites from Grim Vengeance and Basin folks I knew, asking if I wanted to join their Onyxia raid that evening. I thought, "Man, I wish I'd known they were raiding tonight, too," although looking back on it, I probably should've guessed that they would. I turned them down, though, since I'd already committed to the UD Strat party and wasn't going to let those people down.

I shouldn't have bothered, thought, because the UD Stratholme run ended up falling apart when one person went link-dead and didn't return for fifteen minutes. Other people in the party suddenly had "guild things" that came up (sounded like excuses to me), and I ended up being stuck out in the Eastern Plaguelands for no reason. I messaged wayneigan, the Grim Vengeance raid leader, asking him how the recruiting was going. He replied that they hadn't formed up, yet, because people were still in instances but in about a half an hour they would. At the same moment, I got an official invitation join to the Offenders raid. I stared at the invitation for a long time. I was pretty annoyed at the Offenders by this point, but I had previously raided with them quite a bit, and I still felt some loyalty. I saw that at least Sabik was on now, although some of the other regulars were still MIA. Alright, I thought, if they're actually going to get going this time, I'll go. I hit "Accept." It was 7:15 and we still had only half a raid party at this point. I settled in to farm water elementals to get some Essences of Water I need for a +healing enchantment I want. It was going to be boring and repetitive, but at least I had something to do.

Time passed slowly. I killed a really stupid Alliance warrior who tried to gank me while I was fighting a worm (he was from one of those ganker guilds that don't know how to fight one-on-one). I then killed an Alliance rogue who probably didn't deserve to be attacked, but I had to let him know to get his own lake of elementals. The rest was all drudgery while waiting, and I never did find any Essenses of Water. By 8:00, the composition of the raid had barely budged, with perhaps 3-4 people having been added in the previous forty-five minutes. Then, at 8:05 (I looked at the clock), wayneigan sent me the message, "We have 39 people and would love to have you."

I looked that the Offenders raid list of 25 people with four of them offline and said, "I can't take any more of this." I messaged wayneigan and said, "I'm in." I then sent a carefully written message to the Offenders raid:

Neriad says: Hi, guys. I'm sorry, but this is the third time I've shown up to do an Offenders raid, and the raid hasn't been ready. I've been recruited by GV for an hour now, and they have 39 people. I'm just going to go."

I got two private messages from Offenders players who said they understood. I wasn't the only one who was feeling let down by the guild and raid group. Twenty minutes later, however, I got an angry message from an Offender who accused me of being disloyal and asked me how I could switch raiding parties at the drop of a feather after all the raiding I had done with them. I replied that it was something that I had given a great deal of thought to and that it was a decision made due to not just what had happened that evening but also the previous two times I had tried to join the Offenders on an Onyxia raid. I wasn't very clear in the moment when I was replying, and I was angry at the same time that I was trying to be diplomatic, so I my words were probably a jumbled mess. However, looking back on it, I wish I would have said, "If you want to raid, get your @#$% guildmates to show up for your @#$@ raids." That just about sums everything up.

When I joined the Grim Vengeance/Basin raid group, I was greeted by a chorus of cheers from long-time friends and acquaintances with whom I'd instance partied many times. I didn't like doing what I did, but I knew that I had made the right decision. It was time to kill a dragon.

The First Attempt



The tactics employed by the two groups were similar, but it was interesting to notice some of the differences between the two groups. The first thing I noticed was the difference in group compositions in that the GV/Basin raid had a much deeper healing corps with seven priests, seven shaman, and five druids. You can make up for a lot of mistakes with that kind of healing and rezing support backing you up. Second, GV emphasizes soulstones more. In addition to the soulstones from the two warlocks who came on the raid, they had warlock alts soulstone priests just outside Onyxia's lair prior to runs, so we had around six priests soulstoned at the start of each attempt. This seemed like a bit of an exploit to me, but oh well. Finally, one minor difference between the two groups was that Grim Vengeance likes to have their healer rotations swap at 50% mana rather than have the priests burn their whole mana bar on each turn. It's a minor difference, but I like it. Priests rotate more quickly, which keeps everyone awake and focused, and it allows all priests to keep a reserve tank of mana in case something goes wrong. If I'm ever welcome back on an Offenders run, I'll definitely recommend that change to them.

On The Offenders side, a couple of their priest regulars spent the talent points to get Divine Spirit. In long raid fights, spirit and mana regeneration in general takes on great importance, and having a priest add 35 spirit to every mana user in a 40 person raid is a big bonus. I was shocked to find out that none of the seven priests in the GV/Basin group had it, since I was so used to just saying "Divine Spirit, please" and have it pop over my head. Right now, I use a hybrid holy/shadow/discipline spec that works well for both PvP and 5-player instance runs. If I continue to do a lot of large-scale raiding like this, however, I might switch back to a holy/discipline setup.

At this point, I should explain the guild composition of this raid party, because it really was a consortium of guilds. The main guilds involved were Grim Vengeance, The Basin, and Stasis. In addition, I understand that Unholy Legion played a big role in some of the group's earlier practice runs, although they didn't participate on this day. In addition, there was participation from Immortal Dragons, I Can't Win, Big Game Hunters, The Lurking Loungers (me), probably some other guilds I'm forgetting, and even a member of The Offenders. However, the players who were doing most of the organizing, recruiting, and leading were from Grim Vengeance, so they deserve to have top billing. I'll use terms like Grim Vengeance or GV/Basin, but what I really mean is the collective group as a whole.

Back to our story, Phase I of the first attempt passed without a hitch.



Then, Phase II started. What's kind of cool is that at the start of Phase II, you get a free shot at her for about ten seconds as she walks from the north end of the chamber where groups usually tank her down to the south end of the chamber where she takes off. While she's walking, everyone should feel free to go full burn on her. Warriors should burn all their rage, and rogues should burn all their energy on her. They'll never get a better shot at her.



It's in Phase II where Grim Vengeance showed their extra experience running Onyxia. As I mentioned before, The Offenders had become decently good at dealing with whelps the night before, but here, the whelps were dispatched with almost unconscious precision. Each time a whelp wave came, someone would call out "whelps," a warrior on each side of the chamber would walk toward the whelps, shout them to him/her, and aoe power would flood the area around the warrior from all directions. The whelps would all die in less than 10 seconds, and the group would get back to fighting Onyxia.



In addition, the whole group spread itself around the room in a formation that was beautiful to behold. One Grim Vengeance member directed traffic to relieve the occasional clustering. e.g. "You're bunched up a bit too much in the northeast -- move down to the space in the southeast." "The middle's kind of bare. Some people move to the middle." But most people didn't need to be told where to go. They just spread out and silently found their own isolated spots calmly and coolly. I looked at the formation and thought, "I wonder how many Deep Breaths they experienced to get them to do that?"

It's interesting to see in this screenshot that Grim Vengeance shamans were using some totems as well. I'd love to run an experiment to find out if totems increase the chances of a Deep Breath.



With the whelp situation handled and with the group spread out, preventing Onyxia from using her Deep Breath, all group members had to do was keep the dps up on Onyxia as she flew around the room and heal themselves whenever they got hit by fireballs. Phase II was looking almost as easy as Phase I.

Incidentally, Grim Vengeance members are firm believers in the theory that keeping dot spells on Onyxia lowers the chance of her using her Deep Breath, so whenever the number of dots on her dropped below five (mostly SW:Pain and hunter Venom Sting), there were loud calls to get dots back on her quickly. Again, I think that this is a myth, but it certainly doesn't hurt to have the extra dps on Onyxia while she's flying around. Whether the theory is true or not, it's a good idea to have those dot spells on her anyway.



Onyxia landed at 40% health, starting Phase III, and chaos erupted. People were way out of position from the start.



On top of that, while Venom, our main tank, was pulling Onyxia back to the north wall, he pulled her too far to the northwest, taking me and a swath of other people out in the process.



I and others got combat rezed by druids, but the fight was a chaotic mess. The situation got further complicated when a stream of whelps flew in from the egg pits. It turned out that Rubix got feared into Onyxia's tail and subsequently whacked into an egg pit. Imagine a healthy steroid-juiced Barry Bonds tossing a baseball up and whacking it out of the park. That's kind of the way it was with Rubix playing the part of the baseball.



The fear, lava, and whelps played havoc on the party.



Not surprisingly, the screenshot after this one pictures me running back through Dustwallow Marsh on a corpse run. Raid wipe at 32%.

Goodkarma: 32% is awful :(

I chuckled when I saw Goodkarma's comment. The group's warmup run got them through Phases I and II with no loses. Sure, we needed to work out our transition into Phase III, but the group was in good shape.

And despite the early Phase III exit, we did learn some important things about Phase III. The tactics for Phase III work very similar to Phase I. The main tank drags Onyxia up to the north wall of the chamber, while the rest of the raid splits up and stays on either side of her. The only thing that complicates Phase III is all the fearing and lava spurts, so you have to find a way to deal with them. We learned on this run that tremor totems don't prevent or stop the fear, so there doesn't seem to be anything you can do to keep from being feared. (I wonder if that dwarf priest anti-fear buff works here. If so, that'd be a huge advantage for the Alliance if parties could keep their main tanks unfeared. If not, then score one for the good guys -- the Horde, I mean). However, you can minimize the fear's effects in several ways:

1. Hunters can turn on Aspect of the Pack. Apparently, the fear triggers the AoP's dazed effect and stops all those affected from running.<>
   
2. You can move back and forth quickly. Apparently, if you're moving while you get feared, you end up just standing still.<>
   
3. There are small ledges on both the northwest and northeast sides of the chamber that one can climb up to. (Levitate makes getting up to them easier). The ledges are in healing range of the main tank, and when you get feared, you don't have anywhere to go, so you just stand there. All healers and ranged dps players should go to those ledges.<>
   [st]If everyone uses one of these tricks and ends up standing still whenever they're feared, then nobody gets sent through the lava spurts or gets feared into Onyxia's tail. It makes things pretty simple.
   
   In theory.