The Great Onyxia Race

[oldmandennis]

About the scales, have you actually seen the quest and it's rewards, Mongo?

By digging on Alakasham, it looks like the scales are used to make an Onyxia scale cloak, at a cost of only one scale each. Maybe it takes 10 scales to acquire the recepie? Then outfitting an entire raid would only take about one year.

Just a little speculation...

[MongoJerry]

About the scales, have you actually seen the quest and it's rewards, Mongo?

By digging on Alakasham, it looks like the scales are used to make an Onyxia scale cloak, at a cost of only one scale each.  Maybe it takes 10 scales to acquire the recepie?  Then outfitting an entire raid would only take about one year.

Just a little speculation...

I was just in a group that killed her again, and it turned out that we got four scales from the skin, so that quest/recipe doesn't seem so bad now. Someone mentioned you needed nine scales to make that cloak.

[stabby]

I was just in a group that killed her again, and it turned out that we got four scales from the skin, so that quest/recipe doesn't seem so bad now.  Someone mentioned you needed nine scales to make that cloak.
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You get the cloak recipe from having a 300 skill leatherworker turn in the head quest.

Each cloak requires 1 Onyxia Scale, 1 Cindercloth Cloak (a tailoring recipe dropped by Thaurissan Firewalkers in the Burning Steppes) and 1 rune thread.

[MongoJerry]

EPILOGUE

With the pressure of the race removed, The Offenders decided that the best thing to do was to wait until more of their guildmates got their Onyxia keys before trying to tackle Onyxia again. So they spent the weekend raiding Molten Core and then the rest of the following week helping their members get through their Onyxia key quests. I wasn't sure if I would be welcomed back after defecting on Friday and after posting the journals you've just read, but people seemed to be cool about it and some guild members even complimented the journals. Still, I didn't know if that reflected the feelings of the guild leadership or if they only reflected the feelings of a few friends I knew in the guild.

The first indication that things were OK was when I got an invitation from Sabik on Wednesday afternoon to try to kill the outdoor raid boss, Kazzak, in the Tainted Scar. It was a mostly pickup raid, and we failed utterly, but it was still nice to have been invited. (Kazzak seems like a pretty easy boss to kill, but he's murder on raids with noob players in it. I'll bet a reasonably organized group could kill him with 20 players and barely break a sweat). On Thursday, I joined an Offenders UBRS run, designed to help one of their members get Drakkisath's blood, one of the Horde requirements to get an Onyxia key.

That day (April 14th) was also the day that the Grim Vengeance/Basin group that had previously killed Onyxia was going to meet to kill her again. Unfortunately there had been a major scheduling snafu. I and a healthy chunk of the Grim Vengeance guild had been told that the raid was going to happen at 7pm, while everyone else had been told the correct time of 6pm. The UBRS party was in the middle of fighting the Beast, when I got the message from a Grim Vengeance officer, "Oh good! You're on. It turns out the raid's at 6pm instead of 7pm. Ready for an invite?" I thought, Dear God, I'm not going to do this again. I told him to save me a spot, that the UBRS run I was on had just killed the Beast, and that I'd join them the moment we killed Drakkisath. He responded, "OK, I'll do my best. The raid's filling up fast." The success of the previous Friday combined with the popularity of Rubix's video and, well, these journals led pretty much everyone and their dogs to want to join the raid. I gave running updates of the progress of the UBRS run as we were clearing Drakkisath's room to the GV officer. "Three mob groups to go and then Drakk", "Two mob groups to go and then Drakk," etc. But it was too late. Every guild wanted to invite its guildmates, and every raid participant wanted to invite his or her buddies. Despite the intentions of three high ranking members of the raid I was in contact with, the raid filled and there was nothing that could be done. At least a dozen other people had to be turned away as well.

I was bummed, and I privately cursed the GV officer who told me the run was at 7pm. But when I calmed down, I thought, "Maybe this is a good thing." After a moment's reflection, I messaged Sabik:

Neriad: What time's the Onyxia raid tomorrow? We need to take her down.
Sabik: 6:30
Neriad: I'll be there.

Friday, April 15th

I logged in at 6:15 the next day and got the raid invite. 30 people were already in the raid, and by 6:40 the raid was full and on the move. As Thyrfing told me privately, "Well, this is definitely the fastest forming Onyxia raid ever." I laughed hard at that one.



After getting ganked by an Alliance raid forming at the entrance to Onyxia's lair (Onyxia runs seem to have suddenly become popular on the Alliance side as well), I and others zoned in, and we started clearing the Onyxian Warder guards.



Keeping in mind that this was the first time meeting Onyxia for a healthy chunk of the raid, Sabik led a dry run of the encounter with one of our druids in seal form playing the part of Onyxia. All three phases of the encounter were rehearsed this time. When the rehearsal was finished, we rebuffed each other, and when I asked Mick to buff me with an Arcane Intellect, he replied, "if you include me in your onyxia novel maybe." I told him, "No promises, but we'll see. :-)" There you go, Mick.



We charged forward and quickly assumed our phase I positions. It was weird not being in the healing rotation. We had ten priests in the raid (I don't think I've ever seen that before), and I think Dastree, who takes care of coordinating healing teams for The Offenders, had difficulty finding jobs for all of us. He ended up assigning six other priests to the healing rotation for Phase I and assigned me and another priest to handle heals on Sabik during the transition from Phase II into Phase III. During Phase I, I threw up random heals on Sabik and poured a modest amount of dps onto Onyxia.



We twice lost control of Onyxia in Phase I due to someone pulling aggro. The first time wasn't too bad, because the person who pulled the aggro either died quickly or realized the mistake quickly enough to jump to where Sabik was before Onyxia breathed on everyone. The second time (pictured above), however, was much worse and could have been disastrous if not for the fact that Onyxia's life was already below 70%. After a few scary seconds, Onyxia did her "This meaningless exertion bores me" emote and started walking toward the south end of the chamber. Phase II had begun. We were saved by the bell!



In Phase II, the Offenders showed that they definitely subscribed to the theory going around the Blizzard forums that the way to keep Onyxia from doing her Deep Breath was to full burn kill her. Sure, they spread out, but they focused far more heavily on dealing damage to Onyxia than the Grim Vengeance/Basin group had. In fact, when Onyxia's health was down to 75% back in Phase I, Sabik had told all the casters to only use wand shots in order to let their mana bars fill up for Phase II.

Why would going full burn on Onyxia stop her from doing Deep Breath? There are three competing explanations for this. The first is that perhaps the developers simply wrote Onyxia's AI that way. In other words, it could be an "If they focus too much on whelps and don't hit Onyxia enough, let's burn them!" kind of thing. It's possible, but I don't think so. The second explanation is that perhaps if individuals don't do anything to Onyxia herself (they kill whelps or just stand around out of range), they eventually drop off Onyxia's aggro list. So you could have a situation where Onyxia's aggro list gets down to, say, 20 people who are mostly hanging out in one section of the room, the section that's near her, of course. Her algorithms that measure the clumpiness of the raid would then say to her, "Hey! They're all in that one section of the room! Flame them!" If you have your raid emphasize dps on Onyxia, however, people are unlikely to drop from Onyxia's aggro list, and you won't have this problem. It's a reasonable explanation that's based on the fact that there used to be a bug in Phase II where people would indeed drop off Onyxia's aggro list and get out of combat. However, that bug appears to have been fixed, so there's room for doubt that this explanation is correct.

The third and final explanation is the one I subscribe to. It says simply that if you go full burn on Onyxia, Phase II goes by faster, so there's less time for mistakes to happen and fewer opportunities for Onyxia to check to see if she wants to Deep Breath. Whatever the true explanation, the bottom line is that saving up mana and then going full burn on her in Phase II seems to work well.



Onyxia yells: It seems you'll need another lesson mortals!

Onyxia landed to start Phase III and a moment of chaos ensued. First of all, a fresh batch of whelps came out. I used to think that any whelps around at the start of Phase III were just leftovers from Phase II, but this has happened too many times to be coincidental. I now think that a new batch of whelps always pops during that transition period from Phase II to Phase III. I'm not 100% certain of this, but it does appear to be the case.



But the bigger issue was that Onyxia charged over to the crowd of healers and ranged dps players waiting for her in the northwest corner of the room and took it apart. Dastree later explained what happened. As Onyxia landed, he Flash Healed a warrior that was next to Onyxia's landing spot and drew aggro. Everybody got feared, so nobody got a chance to hit her to draw aggro away from Dastree. Onyxia charged at Dastree in that northwest group, and although Dastree Faded as quickly as he could, it was too late. (Most likely either Onyxia had gotten too close to other people in the northwest corner by then or others in that group had cast heals or cast some damage spells, too. Actually, looking at the screenshot, there were several DoT's on her. Maybe that's what drew her in the first place and not Dastree's heal after all).

[MongoJerry]

However, the remainder of the raid did a great job of stabilizing the situation. Sabik came over, drew aggro onto himself, and pulled Onyxia to the north wall. The surviving healers did a great job of picking up the slack and keeping Sabik alive.



The remaining healers picked up the slack, but there was still a major problem. There weren't enough of them. The healing corps was down to four priests, four shamans, and one druid, and their mana bars were draining quickly. The remaining druid had already used his combat resurrection and all the other rezers were in combat, so we didn't have an immediate way of getting the rest of the raid back up. After some discussion, it was decided that Nerrad, one of our shamans, would suicide and then self-resurrect himself ("ankh") to get himself out of combat, which would allow him to start resurrecting the rest of the raid. He resurrected some priests who then resurrected other priests and druids who then resurrected other players.



I was resurrected when Onyxia's life was at 20%, and by 15% the entire healing battery was up and at full mana. Most of the healers and ranged dps characters got up on the ledges on either side of the room, where they wouldn't run into lava spurts when Onyxia feared them. Now that we had recovered from the near disaster of the transition period from Phase II to Phase III, things were working like clockwork.



Go go go!



When Onyxia had a sliver of life left, we were told to pour on the dps. Onyxia continued to put up a major fight.



But it wasn't enough to overcome this group of heros, and after 17 minutes and 11 seconds, the great dragon fell. (New contest: See who can kill Onyxia the fastest? Just kidding!)



This was a great accomplishment for this group. They didn't win the original race, but they could at least console themselves with the fact that once they got their full regular raiding party together, they were able to take Onyxia down on their first attempt. (In contrast, it took the GV/Basin group three tries to take her down again the day before). Onyxia dropped the following loot:



The Offenders uses a modified DKP point system to distribute loot among guildmates and those who raid with them regularly. At this point, I still had negative DKP points after winning my Belt of Transcendence on a previous run, so I didn't have an opportunity to roll on loot this time. However, due to this run, I'm back in positive point territory, so I will be able to roll on loot we find in the future.

[MongoJerry]

The really lucky SOB in all this was Brolly, who as the only warlock in the raid, got to pick up the Nemesis Skullcap by default. As you can see in the screenshot above, it looks like a big red turban. There were several possibly offensive and borderline racist jokes made, including calling him "Osama bin Brolly," but we were just having a good time with him.



In addition to the loot shown above, Sabik and Thyrfing got a chance to fulfill part of an epic warrior quest series that starts with a book in Dire Maul. (I understand that the book has a 0.1% drop rate and often sells for 1200g or more on the auction house. Looking at the stats on the reward for the series, I can see why). The main part of the quest series as I understand it is to take a special sword to Onyxia's lair, "fire" the sword under the flame of Onyxia, and then temper the sword in her blood after she dies. When you take the tempered sword back to the quest giver in Dire Maul, you get this:



Those are stats to make any cloth wearer on a PvP server cringe. Incidentally, looking back at my screenshots of the GV/Basin raid, I notice that Azul had done this quest the previous week.

We skinned Onyxia and got four Scales of Onyxia. I hadn't realized in my earlier writings that you could get more than one Scale per run. This makes the quest and leatheworking recipes that use those scales a little more reasonable.



We ported to Orgrimmar and held a big celebration when Onyxia's head was put on display.



When a Horde group turns in the Head of Onyxia, everyone in Orgrimmar is supposed to be blessed by Thrall with a Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer buff. On the previous day, I had been told by members in the GV/Basin group at what time they were turning in the head so I could at least get the Dragonslayer buff (and take the above screenshot). However, when The Offenders turned in their head on Friday, it didn't work. No buff ever came, and we couldn't figure out why. Oh, well.



It was still early in the evening when we finished celebrating in Orgrimmar, so we decided to head off to Molten Core to clear some of its early bosses. In one week, Onyxia had gone from being an epic encounter to being a pit stop on the way to other things. We killed Luciferon and Magmadar before calling it a night and then met the next day and cleared Molten Core all the way to Major Domo.

But that's a tale for another time.

[Falomin]

Beautiful write-up. That entranced me the entire time I read the acount. I felt almost like I was there.


A hearty CONGRATS! :)

--Falomin

"he appears to have declared war not only on the English King, but on the King's English as well."

Sherlock Holmes "His Last Bow"

[Fin]

Nothing makes we want to play WoW like your stories. :D :wub:

[Elegantly]

Congratulations! Very nice accomplishment for the Horde and again, very entertaining journals, MJ! :)