The Great Onyxia Race

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: The Return to Onyxia (Thursday, March 31st)

The next day, I logged on to join The Offenders on their first attempt to kill Onyxia. I got multiple invites from Grim Vengeance and Basin friends to join them on their raid, but I told them all that I had already committed to The Offenders' raid that day. I was excited. Finally, I was returning to Onyxia's lair after a six month hiatus, and I knew that the crew I was going with had the skill, organization, and stamina to win. The race to be the first Horde raid group on Tichondrius to kill Onyxia was going to be close. The Grim Vengeance/Unholy Legion/Basin group had a head start, but The Offenders had more experience with raiding in general and raiding with each other specifically. This race was going to go down to the wire.

The Offenders' raid formed up, and we entered Onyxia's lair. There are four Onyxian Warders that you have to fight one at a time to get to Onyxia herself, but those fights are pretty easy. The Warders have some nasty area-of-effect attacks, but they have a short range -- like 20 yards. All one has to do is send a warrior to tank the warder, while healers spam heals on him from a distance. After the main tank builds up enough aggro, the rest of the raid members then turns on their ranged dps. The fights are quick and easy.



Ah, Onyxia. We meet again.



Prior to the run, Sabik and some of the other raid leaders had read the accounts of other raid groups who had killed Onyxia. Most or all of such accounts are written from an Alliance perspective, however, so we've often found ourselves having to adjust tactics somewhat to account for the differences between paladins and shamans. (The fight against the Molten Core boss Baron Geddon, for example, required a major alteration of tactics from the written accounts). Prior to engaging Onyxia, Sabik held a dry run with one of our druids in seal form playing the part of Onyxia. There are three phases to the fight with Onyxia, and the screenshot above shows the proper placement for Phase I, with the main tank tanking Onyxia against a wall with the rest of the raid split on either side of her. Our goal on this evening was to quickly learn how to deal with Phase I so that we could start learning how to deal with the much more deadly Phase II part of the encounter.

The First and Second Attempts



We charged into Onyxia's main chamber. The first objectives are to get Onyxia turned around and pulled up against the north wall and to let the tank build up some aggro. The first moments of the fight can be a little tricky, because obviously the main tank is going to take some hits in the act of turning her around and pulling her and yet the healers can't heal the tank too much or else pull aggro. To make this initial stage easier, we had Ephedra, another warrior, charge in first to turn Onyxia around and pull her to the wall and then had our main tank, Sabik, come in shortly behind and steal aggro with some hits -- thereby splitting the initial damage that Onyxia dishes out between the two warriors. It turns out that this two-warrior trick isn't necessary, but it was a nice idea nonetheless.



Once Onyxia is pulled to the back wall, the rest of the raid party can rush to Onyxia's sides. Her sides are the safety zones. In front of her, you'll be hit by her swiping claw attacks and her fire breath. If you get behind her, you'll be swatted into the air by her tail and can end up landing in the dragonet egg pit, causing swarms of dragon whelps to fly out and attack the party. We set up a healer rotation made up of three pairs of priests, and this was more than adequate to keep Sabik alive. After Sabik build up some aggro, the raid was told to slowly turn dps on. The key to Phase I is to make sure that no one ever pulls aggro off the main tank. If someone does, then Onyxia will turn to toward that person and likely fire breath the entire side.



On our first two attempts, we had breakdowns in Phase I. Keep in mind that this was the first attempt to kill Onyxia for nearly all members of the party, and it was the first attempt to kill Onyxia for Sabik, our main tank, in particular. The reason why one pulls Onyxia to the north wall is that she has a knockback attack, and if the main tank gets knocked back too far, the tank will lose aggro completely, typically resulting in a wipe. If the main tank is up against the wall however, he or she won't get knocked back too far and can therefore keep aggro. It sounds simple, and for the most part it is. However, the wall has a slope to it, and there's only a small section of it where it is steep enough to prevent a tank from being knocked back too far. It can take a couple of attempts to get the feel of where this spot is. Once Sabik figured out the landmarks to look for and knew where to stand, however, the group never again had trouble with Phase I.