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Last night me and the guild I'm in were at Onyxia. We've killed her before, but nothing seemed to work last nigth. Especially once phase 3 started. Phase 1 and 2 are easy. But out problem occurs as soon as Onyxia decides to land after phase 2. It's close to impossible for our tank to get aggro in the beginning of phase 3. And on top of that, Onyxia seems to be aggroing people who were on whelp-duty during phase two and who haven't even hit her once. I'm pretty curious as to WHAT causes this. As a mage, I don't get aggro. All the aggro seems to be directed at healers and warriors.
Can someone explain to me how to best regain aggro from Onyxia in phase 3? It's really odd because on our first few kills, this wasn't a problem.
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Our tank says it's very hard to regain aggro, and I believe him. ;-)
We try to make sure there are no dots or curses of doom or anything on onyxia at the end of phase 2, so that she's landing "clean". Our main tank (and I _think_ sometimes also our backup tank) then engage her and drag her back into position, with nobody else attacking at all until some aggro has been built. The fear on landing and at intervals throughout phase 3 is something we're going to have to work on dealing with, as it seems careful positioning on the back walls is no longer going to stop the fear sending us all over the place through the lava spurts when 1.7 goes live.
You don't know what you're talking about.
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Necroth,Aug 22 2005, 03:27 AM Wrote:And on top of that, Onyxia seems to be aggroing people who were on whelp-duty during phase two and who haven't even hit her once. I'm pretty curious as to WHAT causes this. As a mage, I don't get aggro. All the aggro seems to be directed at healers and warriors.
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She randomly selects targets in Phase 2 to attack in my experience.
[Signed]
Sharanna the paladin who got hit 3 times in a row in phase 2 last time we attempted Onyxia ;)
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Tal,Aug 22 2005, 08:10 AM Wrote:She randomly selects targets in Phase 2 to attack in my experience.
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[Signed] Mio the Hunter, who hasn't been hit in Phase 2 in the last 5 or so attempts.
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lfd,Aug 22 2005, 11:30 AM Wrote:Our main tank (and I _think_ sometimes also our backup tank) then engage her and drag her back into position, with nobody else attacking at all until some aggro has been built.
[right][snapback]86872[/snapback][/right] Also, make sure that everyone has CT_RaidAssist and the option "Show Main Tank's Target" on. Anyone who gets aggro from Onyxia during Phase 3 should immediately drop whatever they are doing and move to the North wall, which makes it a lot easier for the MT to regain aggro.
As for the fears, they are going to be a huge pain in the butt when 1.7 hits. Up until now I've been able to avoid them almost completely by moving backwards once the ground starts shaking, which prevents the fear effect from having you run around. A very useful item to have will be the Blacksmith's Insignia trinket, which grants +10 to all resistances, 50 armour, and Fear immunity for 30 seconds. I personally always use it for the Phase 2 -> Phase 3 transition to get back into position without having to worry about the first two fears or so.
We've also noticed that Onyxia seems a lot more prone to spam Fear and switch aggro during Phase 3 when DPS on her is low, so our current strategy is to keep damage steady on her once the tank has her under control, and only take very sparse breaks.
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We've been trying to gauge at around 44% when she will drop, sometimes its as low as 36%. At around 44% everyone, except for the MT and the MT healers should move as far back to Phase 1 positions in the NW and NE as they can, and well away from the Whelp pits and against the walls. Let the ranged attackers drop her the remainder, until she lands. At transition, wipe dots, hunters FD, rogues feint, etc, The MT should have some fear protection at this point, and a main healer as well. The MT needs to re-establish aggro and drag her back to the north wall just as in Phase 1. Our last 4 attempts last Saturday failed at transition. Mostly because the priests died, and the final time it was because someone was tail swiped deep into the whelps at transition.
If everyone moves to their NE and NW position in Phase III Ony will come north to kill someone, and hopefully the MT can re-engage her.
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Just to clear up a couple of things...
1. Who in their right mind raids without Raidassist?
2. I'm not talking about Phase 2, Tal. That part is INCREDIBLY simple. The fireballs in phase 2 all use a random targeting system, so you cannot avoid getting hit by one.
3. Of course everyone moves back to their positions when she lands. Only problem is, that the maintank doesn't seem to get any aggro even though he's smacking her around and building threat. She seems to just ignore him, and hit random people.
My personal guess is that someone does a few rends or someone someone else throws out a few dots so that she aggroes whoever dotted her when she lands.
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lfd,Aug 22 2005, 03:30 AM Wrote:The fear on landing and at intervals throughout phase 3 is something we're going to have to work on dealing with, as it seems careful positioning on the back walls is no longer going to stop the fear sending us all over the place through the lava spurts when 1.7 goes live.
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Both the northwest and northeast sides have a spot where you can jump onto the wall. When you're up on the wall you will still be feared but not into the cracks (since fear doesn't throw you off walls/cliffs) as long as you stay reasonably away from the two jump spots. On the northeast side I find it easier to jump up using the mouse to turn. After the tank has stably positioned Onyxia in phase 1, there is plenty of time for everyone to figure where and how to make the jumps.
If people get agro of Onyxia while on the walls, she'll sometimes teleport them directly to her instead of moving.
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acidjax,Aug 23 2005, 12:41 PM Wrote:If people get agro of Onyxia while on the walls, she'll sometimes teleport them directly to her instead of moving.
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She also sometimes goes into evade mode at that point too.
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08-23-2005, 05:57 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-23-2005, 06:01 PM by acidjax.)
Pesmerga,Aug 23 2005, 10:50 AM Wrote:She also sometimes goes into evade mode at that point too.
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I think that was an early on problem that was fixed long ago. Instead of evade bugging she probably now summons the person that has current agro to her. Maybe now there's some check of whether she can move somewhere before she tries moving there.
Onyxia hasn't evade bugged yet to the guild I'm in. We've been fighting her that way for several months.
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Necroth,Aug 22 2005, 03:27 AM Wrote:Last night me and the guild I'm in were at Onyxia. We've killed her before, but nothing seemed to work last nigth. Especially once phase 3 started. Phase 1 and 2 are easy. But out problem occurs as soon as Onyxia decides to land after phase 2. It's close to impossible for our tank to get aggro in the beginning of phase 3. And on top of that, Onyxia seems to be aggroing people who were on whelp-duty during phase two and who haven't even hit her once. I'm pretty curious as to WHAT causes this. As a mage, I don't get aggro. All the aggro seems to be directed at healers and warriors.
Can someone explain to me how to best regain aggro from Onyxia in phase 3? It's really odd because on our first few kills, this wasn't a problem.
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Are you ensuring that when she lands at the end of phase two, she has NO DoTs on her, and everyone has ceased attacking? Throughout phase two, she has no aggro table, but once she lands, boom. If she's still got DoTs, or if people other than the MT are dealing damage, they'll have aggro (and so will anyone who acts on them with buffs, heals, etc.).
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Necroth,Aug 23 2005, 08:14 AM Wrote:3. Of course everyone moves back to their positions when she lands. Only problem is, that the maintank doesn't seem to get any aggro even though he's smacking her around and building threat. She seems to just ignore him, and hit random people.
My personal guess is that someone does a few rends or someone someone else throws out a few dots so that she aggroes whoever dotted her when she lands.
The main problem in that transition is healing aggro. If a healer heals somebody near Onyxia before the main tank builds up any aggro (note: it doesn't have to be the main tank who was healed -- just someone who happened to be near Onyxia when she landed), Onyxia will charge right to that healer and smack everyone in that area around. This is particularly a problem for Horde players who don't have the benefit of placing Fear Ward on their main tanks. If the main tank gets feared in the middle of the room, they can run far enough away that their aggro wipes, and Onyxia will charge the healers.
As far as solutions go, there aren't many easy answers. For alliance, it seems that it would be a bit easier -- make sure the main tank has Fear Ward on him or her, make sure the main tank is waiting there for Onyxia when she lands, and make sure people aren't nuking her when she lands. For Horde, it's a little trickier and messier, but basically, the main tank has to do whatever he or she can to make sure they don't get feared away while backing Onyxia up to the north wall. Again, all dps should be off until the main tank establishes aggro (tell people to focus on killing the remaining whelps if any). Also, make sure that people aren't anywhere near the whelp caves when Phase 3 is near. Otherwise, it's pretty much set up a good system of out of combat rezing to rez anybody who does get killed in that phase transition. Once Onyxia is up against the north wall and once enough healers are up to heal the main tank, Phase 3 is easy. It's just the transition that's hard.
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For the Horde!
Having fought Onyxia (and Magmadar) extensively on the Horde side, our guild uses three techniques to fight off the first bout of fear hitting a tank on engaging Onyxia at Phase III or Magmadar during the pull (which we do using Ice Block for Mag).
1. The Main Tank starts in Berseker Stance and uses Berserker Rage to gain immunity to fear.
2. An undead priest with an active Will of the Forsaken spams dispel on the Main Tank.
3. A Shaman in the same group as the Main Tank drops a Tremor totem.
In the case of Onyxia we put the Main Tank in a group with at least two Shamans. This allows for redundancy on Fire Resistance Totems and Tremor Totems. In particular, as the Tremor Totem dispels fear every n seconds, redundancy in Tremor Totems increases the likelihood that one will go off shortly after any fear.
For additional redundancy we use the Blacksmith's Insignia Trinket on some of our Main Tanks. (And a little WotF as one of our MTs is undead).
All in all, this has never been an issue, there are more than enough ways for the Horde to handle fear without needing the Alliance Solution of Fear Ward.
-kersh
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MongoJerry,Aug 25 2005, 03:10 PM Wrote:The main problem in that transition is healing aggro. If a healer heals somebody near Onyxia before the main tank builds up any aggro (note: it doesn't have to be the main tank who was healed -- just someone who happened to be near Onyxia when she landed), Onyxia will charge right to that healer and smack everyone in that area around. This is particularly a problem for Horde players who don't have the benefit of placing Fear Ward on their main tanks. If the main tank gets feared in the middle of the room, they can run far enough away that their aggro wipes, and Onyxia will charge the healers.
As far as solutions go, there aren't many easy answers. For alliance, it seems that it would be a bit easier -- make sure the main tank has Fear Ward on him or her, make sure the main tank is waiting there for Onyxia when she lands, and make sure people aren't nuking her when she lands. For Horde, it's a little trickier and messier, but basically, the main tank has to do whatever he or she can to make sure they don't get feared away while backing Onyxia up to the north wall. Again, all dps should be off until the main tank establishes aggro (tell people to focus on killing the remaining whelps if any). Also, make sure that people aren't anywhere near the whelp caves when Phase 3 is near. Otherwise, it's pretty much set up a good system of out of combat rezing to rez anybody who does get killed in that phase transition. Once Onyxia is up against the north wall and once enough healers are up to heal the main tank, Phase 3 is easy. It's just the transition that's hard.
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With the changes in 1.7, Fear Ward will likely not be needed as much. With Warrior skills/buffs sticking with changing stances, Warriors will mostly be stance dancing to keep the fear off now. Both sides should have a pretty equal chance in 1.7 due to this change to warriors.
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09-01-2005, 08:11 PM
(This post was last modified: 09-01-2005, 08:11 PM by kandrathe.)
Necroth,Aug 23 2005, 10:14 AM Wrote:Just to clear up a couple of things...
1. Who in their right mind raids without Raidassist?
2. I'm not talking about Phase 2, Tal. That part is INCREDIBLY simple. The fireballs in phase 2 all use a random targeting system, so you cannot avoid getting hit by one.
3. Of course everyone moves back to their positions when she lands. Only problem is, that the maintank doesn't seem to get any aggro even though he's smacking her around and building threat. She seems to just ignore him, and hit random people.
My personal guess is that someone does a few rends or someone someone else throws out a few dots so that she aggroes whoever dotted her when she lands.
[right][snapback]87003[/snapback][/right] It might be that, and that would certainly do it, or...
It might be that she is larger than she looks. :D As she is running after your tank as he is trying to regain position, the whelp fighters may still be spaming arcane explosion and hitting her. They, of course, are well away from the whelp pit, but have they moved north to get into phase one positions? Drag the remaining whelps with you and whelp fighters need to use non-AOE methods during transition.
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Couple things I've read posted elsewhere that worked well for me the last time I had Onyxia MT duty.
When the rest of the raid stops their DoTs - the MT should apply a rend. That way when she wipes, odds are her first tick of incoming damage will be from the MT. Small amount of damage, but being first on the list can be an advantage..
As she descends, but before she is actually attacking, chain spam slams with a slow 2H in defensive (drinking a rage pot beforehand if necessary). When she actually starts attacking (interrupting the chain slams), put the shield back on and go back to your usual hate building techniques. There are a couple reasons why chain slam is nice during the landing:
- Slam has slightly more reach than some other warrior skills so it hits her earlier in her descent.
- 100 rage dumped with chain slam gives you ~3500+ defensive stance damage (w/o crits) in about a 10 second span. If someone in the raid is out healing/damaging that sort of initial aggro generation, they're doing something wrong.
- 3500+ defensive stance damage should offset ~14k healing from any single subtlety priest.
Shadow res. buff the MT (towards the end of phase 2) but not the rest of the raid. Fear reducing aggro is a good thing if you're not the MT and you can figure out how to survive the lava spurts (fire res).
My last time tanking Onyxia I tried the rend&slam tricks, didn't try to stance dance for zerker rage, and intentionally didn't run backwards when fear was coming (I'm sure I got dispel/tremor totem help). Still got aggro under control in a reasonable timespan.
acidjax,Aug 23 2005, 05:57 PM Wrote:I think that was an early on problem that was fixed long ago. Instead of evade bugging she probably now summons the person that has current agro to her. Maybe now there's some check of whether she can move somewhere before she tries moving there.
Onyxia hasn't evade bugged yet to the guild I'm in. We've been fighting her that way for several months.
[right][snapback]87020[/snapback][/right] Nope, she once healed back from 22% to 50% with us about 2 weeks ago (probably evading for just a single second). Definately not fixed.
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