The Great Onyxia Race

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Entering Phase III

On the following Wednesday (April 6th), I celebrated the completion of my take-home graduate physics exam (seriously, it was brutal) by logging on to WoW to do some Dire Maul runs. The Offender I had talked to on Friday ("Name_Withheld2") apologized for what happened on Friday. I told him it was no problem, stuff happens, it wasn't his fault, etc. I then asked him when the next Onyxia raid was. After double checking with his guildmates, he told me "6:30 tomorrow." "Cool," I said. "I'll be there."

Thursday, April 7th

The next day, I logged on a few minutes before 6:30 and was immediately struck with a sense of de ja vu. None of the Offenders's guild or raid leadership was on, and most of the Offenders who were on were in instance runs of some sort. I messaged people in the guild to find out what was happening and got a bunch of "I don't know. It's supposed to be at 6:30" and "I don't know. Nobody's here." So I was stuck. I didn't know when or if the Onyxia raid was going to happen, so I couldn't commit to an instance run of some sort. I could farm for a bit, I guess, but that bores the heck out of me and anyway, the spots I'd want to farm (Eastern Plaguelands, mostly) are far away from Orgrimmar, and I'd hate to travel all that way only to have to hearth back to do the raid once I got there. So I started fishing off the coast of Duotar and skilled up in cooking, while simultaneously being bored out of my mind.

Meanwhile, on the Grim Vengeance/Basin/Stasis/Unholy Legion/Immortal Dragons/others side, things seemed to be going well. I got a series of invites from close Grim Vengeance and Basin friends to join them in their Onyxia raid, and I had to keep telling them, "No, sorry. I told the Offenders yesterday that I'd raid with them today." They formed up and headed to Onyxia's lair while I remained stuck fishing in Duotar not knowing if there's going to be an Offenders raid at all.

Finally, at about 8:30, The Offenders guild and raid leadership started logging on in rapid succession, and the raid formed up. To say I was both bored out of my skull from fishing and pissed off at being treated this way would be an understatement. Heck, if I'd known that people weren't going to show up until 8:30, I could've done a Dire Maul run or something.

Oh, well, stuff happens. Let's kill this dragon.



We entered Onyxia's lair at 9pm, two and a half hours after the scheduled start time. Grim Vengeance/Basin/others had gotten at least an hour's head start on The Offenders this evening.

The First Attempt



Phase I? No problem. We didn't skip a beat. And then...



I don't know what happened here. Looking at my screenshots, I have several screenshots of Phase I, then this picture, and then us forming up for the second attempt. I don't know if it was a Deep Breath or whelps or what. Meh, call this first attempt a warmup.

The Second Attempt



When Phase II started on the second attempt, you could definitely see the results of previous experience coming to play. For one thing, we finally got it through our heads that the best way to deal with Deep Breath was to make sure that Onyxia never used it. We were much better about spreading ourselves around the chamber. The priests and hunters kept dot's on Onyxia, while those who happened to be in range of her continued to blast away at her as best they could.



On the whelps front, I would give us a passing but not stellar grade. We were certainly dealing with them better than we had before, but the whelp fights were still more chaotic than they needed to be.

The reason for the chaos was pretty simple. We had been so traumatized by Onyxia's Deep Breath that we were overcompensating for it. There was a fear that we were clumping too much while fighting whelps, so the new anti-whelp tactic was to have each of the rogues, hunters, and warriors single target whelps and pull them back to fight them away from everyone else. The idea was that everyone could stay spread out this way even while fighting the whelps. This wasn't necessary. We should've instead aoe'd the mother out of the whelps and killed them before Onyxia even noticed the clumping. But we managed our way nonetheless.



While Phase II is hard on a raid group in general, it's actually a low-stress period for priests -- at least for those who aren't directly assigned to heal the anti-whelp groups. (In our case, druids and shamans were assigned to heal these groups). There isn't a main tank to keep alive, and with everyone spread out and largely out of healing range, raid members are expected to handle most of their own healing needs with first aid bandages and healing potions. (An Onyxia fireball hits you for 2k damage? Heal yourself for 2k health with a heavy runecloth bandage). So, I took upon myself the following jobs:

1. Keep SW:Pain on Onyxia. DOT's are good in Phase II, because you can move forward, cast the dot on her, and move back out of the way -- thus keeping the dps up on her while still not clumping up. There's also a theory that Onyxia is less likely to do her Deep Breath when she has multiple dots on her, but I think that's a myth.<>
   
2. Shoot wand shots at Onyxia when she happens to fly in range.<>
   
3. Help the anti-whelp groups as needed. Sometimes I'd throw an extra heal on someone and sometimes I would throw some wand shots or SW:Pain's on the whelps. In the above screenshot, I decided to pick off a single whelp and fight it solo. When it was nearly dead, a rogue came by and landed the killing blow. I guess he was being chivalrous, thinking he was protecting a priest or something, but come on, guys, a priest can kill things too, you know.<>
   
4. Save some mana for Phase III.<>
   [st]
   
   Things were looking good. We took some losses in Phase II due to whelps and fireballs from Onyxia, but we were able to recover with soulstones, combat rezes, and rezes from rezers who died, got combat rezed, and were then out of combat and therefore could rez. (That's a mouthful). Onyxia's life slowly but surely drained from her.
   
   Onyxia yells: It seems you'll need another lesson, mortals!
   
   
   
   Onyxia landed and Phase III began. We had managed to get through all of Phase II without inducing a single Deep Breath. This was a major accomplishment.
   
   Phase III is a chaotic hectic battle. Onyxia casts an aoe fear (I'm guessing about every 15 seconds but don't quote me on that), and lava spurts up between the cracks in the floor. From the written accounts, The Offenders got the impression that it was the lava spurts that caused the fear, so it seemed like all one had to do to be safe was to not stand on a crack. This is in fact not the case. Onyxia herself casts the fear and it affects everyone in the room no matter where you are. The lava spurts merely do damage. The fear causes you to run, if you run through the lava spurt, you take a lot of damage. If you run through two or more spurts, you'll likely die. And, of course, the main tank is getting feared along with everyone else, which makes everything that much more chaotic.
   
   
   
   I'll describe how one deals with Phase III later on, but suffice it to say that our group wasn't prepared for it. People were being feared all over the place while whelps were running rampant through the raid. (I think they were mostly leftovers from Phase II, although it's possible that someone got feared into an egg pit). I got nailed by a Flame Breath, and we were all pretty much Onyxia's playthings as we got picked off one by one. Raid wipe.
   
   We didn't get very far into Phase III, but it was still a huge accomplishment just to get there. This was the first time that we had made it through Phase II and the big thing was that we had been able to get through all of Phase II without inducing a single Deep Breath. If we could learn to do that consistently, then the whole Onyxia encounter could be reduced to figuring out Phase III. And once we were able to do that, it'd be light's out for Onyxia. I knew we still had some distance to go, but we were rounding the last bend, and I could see the finish line.