Can we take down Onyxia?

[Steamboat]

My guild is small but mature. We are mostly in ZG gear. We regularly clear ZG in one night (including Jin'Do and Bloodlord) and we've only been to AQ20 one time, but we took down Kurinaxx on our first try. (We didn't attempt any further.)

We watched a video of a 5 man group downing Onyxia, and decided to give it a shot.

So tomorrow we are taking just 22 people for our first try at Onyxia. Everyone will have a class specific flask courtesy of the guild bank, and Greater Fire Prot all around. Our MT has 203 FR unbuffed, and we have 1 Dwarf Priest.

I'm just wondering: Do you think we have a shot?

[Mackrealtime]

Maybe, You can try but biggest challenge will be getting your guild to learn the fight, If u know the fight well enuff, you can avoid getting deepbreathed all together.
So Maybe, Maybe not. Depends on how fast your guild learns

[Steamboat]

We have been instructed to do white damage / conserve mana in phase 1. During phase we plan to go all out / keep as many debuffs up as possible.

We're sort of banking on higher dps in phase 2 / keeping debuffs maxed in phase 2 to keep us from getting deep breaths.

[Oatmealsmurf]

It will depend on your ability to learn the fight and you will have to avoid the deep breaths. My raid leader has done it 5 man before... (took them 2 hours from pull to kill he said) and it's done 10-15 man pretty frequently... also the infamous all mage and all druid Onyxia kills. It's one of the least personel dependant fights... so you CAN do it.

The fight is all about aggro control... if someone grabs aggro from the MT and Ony gets turned she can kill half the raid with her flame breath or tail swipe people into the whelp rooms and wipe the raid. For that reason I would advise that you have everyone get KTM threat meter... And also not give out flasks of supreme power to your dps casters. With half a raid you're going to have to go through periods where the casters basically shut it down completely to manage their aggro and allow the Tank to rebuild his. The only people who should be doing constant sustained DPS are rogues and hunters because they have aggro dumping capabilities.

Also wouldn't advise wasting any flasks until you are comfortable with the phases and the transitions from one to the next. Once you know how the fight goes then use your flasks to make it easier to finish. Having a MT who knows how to stance dance and thus avoid the fears is also a plus. Of course if you're Alliance and you have dorf priests you get Ony on easy mode and the fears won't be much of an issue.

[Redmumba]

You'll be more than ready to tackle Onyxia. Onyxia is not at all difficult. However, it IS an exercise in guild organization... if one person isn't watching and gets feared into the whelp caves, chances are you won't be able to handle the surge of whelps. If a Dwarf Priest isn't putting FW on the MT, they have to be ready to stance-dance. If Onyxia does a Deep Breath, how many people are going to be able to run to the side in time?

Its only as hard as you make it. :) As long as your MT and his/her healers are semi-decent, you'll have no problem with Ony. Remember... its about response time and organization.

[Dynatos]

As long as your MT and his/her healers are semi-decent, you'll have no problem with Ony.


I beg to differ. Yes, it's important for the MT to keep aggro ... but that should be done without a hitch with a fear warding Priest (which the OP indicated they have).

The biggest cause for wipes I've seen is either (a) people not understanding the axis on which Onyxia breathes, and thus causing multiple people to die to her deep breath; and (b) poor/no whelp control.

I've done Onyxia with as few as 18. Guildmates have killed her with 15 (and I'm sure we could do it with 10 if we really wanted to). But, these were people who understand the mechanics of the fight and the mechanics of raid tanking and healing at an AQ40 level. Positioning, mana conservation, and the like in Onyxia pales in comparison to fights such as Twin Emps, C'Thun and even Nefarian in BWL; ZG doesn't really teach you any of those skills.

As said by others, I would not recommend flasking until every single one of you understands the fight. Onyxia is only trivial to those who fully understand how she operates.

[Oatmealsmurf]

I didn't see the mention of the dorf priest... but with only one the tank will have to stance dance some to avoid fearing if possible as well... she'll fear more than once every two minutes. It's doable though even if your tank can't avoid all fears... as long as he stays on top of the aggro list and gets her turned properly as soon as possible.

And if you don't have KTM everyone should at least have target of target on... and if you are at the top of the thread meter or she targets you in phase three... you should immediately run to the north where she is being tanked... take your death for the team and keep everyone else alive.

[bhroam]

The Ony fight for my guild was several weeks of wiping until we learned to work together and not pull aggro. Phase 1 is pretty easy if you lay off attacking for a while. Phase 1 can be done with a tank and a army of priests. The only worry would be the tank dying of old age beffore Ony takes off. Phase 2 can be tricky with her deep breaths.... and as the previous Ony Deep Breath thread shows us... none of us have any clue what causes deep breaths =]. You need good whelp control. 4 mages is a good number if you have them. 2 on each side with a warrior and a priest. The warrior tries to get aggro from the whelps... the mages frost nova them in place and AoE them down.

Phase 3 is similiar to phase 1, but you have lava spewing from the cracks in the floor and ony fearing. Having your tank stance dance is good, but we've seen her fear many times between his cooldown. Once he's feared and can't stance dance it away, dps needs to slow down.

Oh the little things: soulstone your tanks and mages... you need to run back if you wipe. Save your druids battlerez's for the dwarf priest. He's probably your most important player with his/her fear ward. Oh, and if you wipe and run back, you need to either wait for the warders to repop and kill them again, or gather everyone at the front and run straight from the front to Ony... no stopping. If you stop, you'll get 2 warders repopping on you.

[mesonm]

Well, I guess I'll have to be the skeptic of the bunch....

Sure, Ony can be done with many fewer than 22, but not until you've figured it all out...I predict that it will take awhile of trying to get it down...

Partner with a guild that can supply 10 more experienced folks, and you'll fare much better, more quickly...

Not saying it can't be done...but you'll probably succeed more quickly using a modified approach.

I would try it anyway, and come back here to prove me wrong...heh

[bhroam]

Mesonm has a great point... You can either partner with another guild to get the numbers, or pug it. Grab your 22 poeple and ask all your friends. There are a probably a lot of keyed people out there who have never seen Ony. Grab another 18 people and start learning the fight.

[Steamboat]

Save your druids battlerez's for the dwarf priest. He's probably your most important player with his/her fear ward.

Hurray me! I'm the dwarf priest. Fear ward is on a 30 second cooldown, not 2 minutes as someone mentioned. I'm not sure what the interval is for Onyxia's fear though.

Thinking about it, here is my prediction:

Phase 1 goes fine, phase 2 we lose a few to fireballs raining down, phase 3 we fail because we don't have enough healers / dps alive to finish her before everyone is either dead or OOM.

As for partnering with another guild, that's not really an option. We're doing this just as much for pride as for loot. Also I didn't mention that 5 of us (me included) have downed Ony before with pugs. Although I was on my warlock for those, not my priest.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Oh they are going to take their lumps doing it with only 22 people ... but to tell the truth I think I'd rather do Ony with 30 people than 40. It's not a fight where you need a ton of DPS... as long as you have a good tank and a good healing crew it's just a matter of not messing up and getting other people killed by your mistakes. The more people you have in the raid... the more people have an opportunity to mess it up for everyone.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Our posts crossed so I didn't see yours... as I said though... the fight isn't about not having enough dps. It's about having a competant healing crew and a Good MT. as long as you have two mages up, some melee to handle the whelps while they concentrate on Ony, and healers who know how to manage their mana pool... you'll be just fine.

This is how I predict it goes. Phase 1 goes fine... which it should never not because it's all white damage... phase two you lose at least half your raid on multiple attempts due to deep breaths and not understanding how to track Ony and position yourself to be away from them... I expect you to have periodic difficulties with deep breaths until you have her on farm status. Fireballs are really nothing to worry about... people can bandage through them. I expect the phase 3 transition to be botched quite a bit... though fear ward should make it easier... but I bet some of your casters or healers get above the MT on the threat list and even once they come out of fear Ony immediately turns and breathes fire on half the raid... killing essential healers in the process.

Trust... it's not going to come down to not having enough DPS unless you just lose all your DPS classes... it'll come down to managing the fight and keeping your MT and healers alive and with mana.

[Eonblue]

Well, it definatly is doable and it sounds like you have the right info...if i may brag about my guild....we downed her our first night of trying (after a few wipes) with 23 members all in ZG gear and we never did MC or of course BWL...now we take her down twice a week with 20-22 members...just practice a few times and as long as everyone can learn from their mistakes pretty quickly you'll get her down without too high of a repair bill :)

PS
I always like to load up on FR pots and Shadow power pots (lock)

[Steamboat]

Ok, new question: Do I have what it takes to main heal Onyxia?

For this raid I will have Flask of Distilled Wisdom, Brilliant Mana Oil, Mageblood potion, Major Mana potions, nightfin soup, and 33 mp/5 from gear. I have Will of Arlokk but it's got +55 healing on it, not +20 spirit. Raid buffed I think I sit around 275 spirit and I do have meditation but no 3 piece trans bonus. I have +378 healing. My unbuffed mana pool is *gasp* 5200. (I have sacrificed a lot of int for +healing in order to downrank.)

I'll probably be able to get 1 innervate, but not more. When I go OOM I'll have a Paladin ready to step in and spam flash of light while I wand some mana back off judgement of wisdom.

[mesonm]

Don't sacrifice too much int for +healing...You'll not want the druids to innervate you until late in phase 2, or maybe in phase 3.

[Oatmealsmurf]

Your mana pool is kind of suspect. You're going to end up overhealing a lot as you won't be the only one on the MT so it's probably more important to get more casts than having a ton of plus healing. Might try using some lower rank heals to conserve mana... but over all I think you'll be fine. We've never handed out flasks or high end pots for ony and our healers do a splendid job. If you have been clearing ZG twice a week for a while you should have plenty good gear for it. Just make sure you don't shoot your load early and try and stay alive.

[LordXeper]

You must not forget that the 4,5,10 man Onyxia groups almost always have very nice raid gear and have done Onyxia NUMEROUS times.

I would advice you to try to get 30 and give it a shot.

[Pongle]

If your main tank isn't a noob, you can do ony with zero dwarf priests :)

[ouchthathurt]

30-35 man is actually the sweet spot for our guild. The last few times we tried with a full raid actually wiped us :shocked:. We've done it with as low as 25 people before, as well as having only 5 people alive in phase 3. Today we tried with 20, and wiped a few times. Definitely doable, but alas we had three deep breaths.

If you happen to have death wish, as I do (fury tank, w00t) and some decent gear, pop it. Make sure you have good healers first though. Otherwise stance dance her the way down. Have tremors down also.

[Dutchgrass]

Hurray me! I'm the dwarf priest. Fear ward is on a 30 second cooldown, not 2 minutes as someone mentioned. I'm not sure what the interval is for Onyxia's fear though.

Can be faster, or slower. You cannot rely purely on Fear Ward to make sure the MT doesn't get Feared, he has to know how to stancedance.

Like others, I also suggest taking more people and not flasking everyone right from the start. Odds are likely that you will spend those 2 hours just learning the phase transitions and they will wear off prematurely.
People might have 5 manned her, but their gear and experience will be vastly superior to yours.

[Magikhat]

We 8 manned ony last night. Took forever.

[Dynatos]

30-35 man is actually the sweet spot for our guild. The last few times we tried with a full raid actually wiped us :shocked:. We've done it with as low as 25 people before, as well as having only 5 people alive in phase 3. Today we tried with 20, and wiped a few times. Definitely doable, but alas we had three deep breaths.

If you happen to have death wish, as I do (fury tank, w00t) and some decent gear, pop it. Make sure you have good healers first though. Otherwise stance dance her the way down. Have tremors down also.


He's a Dwarf Priest. Tremor totems are kind of, well, impossible until TBC.

[Dutchgrass]

Tremor totems also have the annoying habit to pulse a nanosecond before the MT is Feared. :rolleyes:

[Cerberus]

Hm.. just adding a few things about the mysterious deep breath:

1. It's random

2. She will deep breath straight across the room from where she is positioned (what corner) NOT where she is facing. This means everybody has to move accordingly when she moves.

Assign a hunter to pling the minimap with her position. She has 6 places she can move to iirc. And again, DON'T look at what way she is facing.

If you do this with ~22 people, moving as one unit can be a good idea, this also applies to phase 3. Staying together will make all the whelps come to you so you don't have any people dealing with whelps where she potentially can deep breath. If you have to split in the same way as phase 1 when she lands you might find one side lacking important classes as well.

About whelps
With a small raid you run a very high risk of getting your mages killed if you make them aoe whelps. I'd rather have them assisting a warrior.

gl :)

[mesonm]

well? I'm waiting to hear the story on how it went!!

Or, maybe it is tonight?

[Dallana]

We managed to down Ony on our first visit to her Lair with 32 or so people. Took us 4 wipes but we got there in the end.

Now we roll up and do here with anywhere between 20 and 30 people relatively easily. Phase 1 is a joke, Phase 2 is easy as long as you can avoid the deep breaths (Lots of people claim to know how Ony's DB works but I've yet to find a proper explanation) and by avoid I mean get to the sides. Best bet in Phase 2 is to all out DPS her down as quickly as possible. Phase 3 is tricky but as long as you have 2 decent tanks it shouldn't be too hard.

The biggest keys of the fight are:

Managing the aggro transition between Phase 2 and 3. MT needs to pick up aggro quickly. I reccomend a Rage potion and sunder spam. The ZG trinket helps too.

Maintaining control of her in Phase 3. We're a horde guild so no Alliance easy mode for us. We have 2 Warriors building aggro and rotating their Berserker Rage. Even then there can be times when she Fears 3 times within 30 seconds and knocks out a caster.

[ouchthathurt]

You can get very lucky as Horde with the totems. Many times I have been feared, but she would attack the totems instead. It gives just enough time for it to wear off and take aggro back without killing anyone.

[Steamboat]

Update:

Last night was the run. We had 22 people for it. After 7 attempts...

We got her to 19%.

There are lots of little things you have to learn. We wiped once for each thing you have to learn. On our last attempt, after everyone was out of all consumeables and the flasks had run out, we did everything perfectly. We made it to phase 3 with everyone alive. I had full mana, and my off-healer had full mana.

Then, somehow, the Warders got pulled. We had her at 19% with everyone alive, and the mother-effing Warders got pulled.

After that, no one really had the heart to go on. Plus it was 2am.

A word on my gear/mana situation: Full raid buffed/flasked, I had 9100 mana, 58 mp5, and 317 spirit. At no point on any of our attempts did I have an issue with mana.

We decided to go with the theory that more debuffs = no deep breaths. It worked out for us. At first, no one really tried hard to keep debuffs on and our first couple attempts we had 4 deep breaths before everyone was dead. After that, we had between zero and 2 on each attempt. Since we had so few people it was hard to keep the debuff bar full. We made a rule "priests aren't healing anyone in phase 2, you are responsible for your own health" and then had priests SW:P / Holy Fire. Once we started that strat, deep breaths went way down.

The thing that we never really solved was the whelp problem. On every attempt some would get loose and run around forever annoying people. On our second to last run they caused a wipe because they kept me from healing. Just as phase two was ending, I went running to try to fear ward the MT before Ony landed. I got two whelps on me so I shielded and asked for help killing them. I didn't get help, so I ran after the MT, my shield ran out and I got dazed and couldn't get within range. Ony landed, MT had no heals and died.

It was a blast though. Next time I'm going to suggest Flask of Supreme Power on the mages to maybe help with the whelps, and I'm going to put a runspeed enchant on my boots.

[Dutchgrass]

As long as people stay away from her Tail Swipe, and don't roam too far south that a Fear might run/knock them into the whelp caves, you shouldn't have that much trouble with them.

A Warder being pulled might be due to someone roaming too close to the cave entrance.

[Oatmealsmurf]

yeah either too close to the cave entrance or someone went afk/dced in the tunnel and then came back online mid fight. When that happens it pulls all the warders. So make sure you tell people if they get booted to not log in and if you have TS or Vent come there first... ask if it's safe to log in before doing so.

[Dallana]

I wouldnt go down the route of Flasks for the mages. Keeping the whelps under control is dead easy - get 2 tanks to demo shout to pick them up and pull them into the centre. Frost nova and then AOE, job done.

Also, too much DPS isn't a good thing for Ony as it can create problems in Phase 3. The fear and the knockback both cause the MT aggro problems and Mages dishing out bigtime DPS isn't going to help.

The tanks need to learn to keep Ony under control in Phase 3 and DPS needs to be slow and steady - those two things will solve all your problems.

[bhroam]

Well it does sound like you have the strat down.... just keep doing what you're doing. Dallana is right about the whelps. handle them at the mount of the cave with warriors and mages/frost nova. Toss a druid in the mix there if you have a bunch to help helaing/AoEing.

Another thing you can do if you don't have the mages for that is to have a rogue or two help out. They're relitively useless in phase 2 (they throw things =). They can nuke a whelp or two in short order.

I'm with everyone else on the flasking idea... if you had no mana issues, you shouldn't need the flask... and as for the mages, you don't want them unfamiliar with how much aggro they pump out. A flask of supreme power is gonna give them another 150(125?) +spell damage. This will definitely throw them off and they'll start gaining aggro on a aggro touchy fight.

If you have the dreamfoil to burn, make greater fire prot pots... it'll eat a deep breath.

[Aerath]

Rogues can use special attacks to hit Onyxia.

[bhroam]

They can? man, shows you how much I know about playing rogues with Ony =]

[xxlebox]

onyxia is a mob.. not a boss, you should be able to succeed if you're people listen well to your GM's tactics :)

[Cerberus]

The deep breaths are random, so there's not much you can do or have to worry about. Every so often in phase two she will make a decision to move or DB with a higher chance of moving to a new position. After she moves from south to north at the start of phase 2 she will move clockwise or counter-clockwise to one of the closest positions if she chooses to move.

[Gnat]

Id say that somewhere around 30ppl is perfect.

More space to spread out on in P2, less ppl to screw up more money for each :P

1-3 warriors, 1 priest, 2-3 druids, 2 pallys and stock the rest with dps classes. Healing aint hard in this figth what so ever, i play a priest so i know.
Neither is controlling aggro, its as easy as this, NO dps until she`s at 98%, by then u couldnt pry her of the tank eaven if you tried. Fear ward? not needed, The fear is resistable and a deacent tank knows stance dance.

Phase 2, Dots, dots and eaven more dots, spread out, dont get clusterd up, her bombs hits more ppl if u are.

Deep breath: u know it comes by a "Onyxia takes a deep breath" thing that pops up on your chat log. run to the sides asap. healers should only run out of theis spot at the side to re-aplly SW:P.

Pashe 3, vanish, iceblock, feign, fade etc. let the tank get aggro back, wait 2%of hp, nuke her. easy as pie :)

[Nitroussquirrel]

Heh, you can do it easy. My guild can and has done ONY 22 man. I kinda find it funny seeing as we have have wiped 40 manning her. Once you you know what to do its more effective to do her with less people, you tend to get more people doing their job and not slacking off, plus...you get more gold if it doesnt go to the bank.

[Steamboat]

I know everyone has been in suspense, waiting for a follow up to this old thread. :wink: So I thought I should update:

Last week we tried again, only our second attempt ever. This time we fielded 29 people, and only 1 dwarf priest among us. We had flasks and fire protection pots and repair bots and we were ready to keep trying until we got it right.

And then we downed her on the first try with zero deep breaths.

I don't know what everyone else did differently, but as the dwarf priest here is what I did differently than my previous attempt:

-Phase one our main healer was the only one to heal the tank. The rest of us just threw hots on him, waited to regen back the mana, and did it again. Every healer but the main healer had full mana after phase 1. The main healer sat out phase 2.

-Phase 2 I wanted to keep dots on Ony but not run out of mana. So I spammed rank 1 sw:p and rank 1 holy fire alterately. I also kept myself shielded for the duration of phase 2 since I didn't have any fire protection pots. I watched my buff timer and each time my shield ran out I put another one up.

-Phase 3 I kept myself shielded before each fear. When necessary I used renew on myself. Between shielding and renewing myself I just made sure to keep Fear Ward on the MT every time it was cooled down, I tried to anticipate the fears and renew him just before they happened, and otherwise kept a constant stream of heal 4 on the MT. I didn't use a mana potion or get an innervate and I never ran out of mana.

Anyway we had dual Wrath helms drop, and not a single caster item. But it was still fun to take her down.

[Stigg]

/grats man! Im glad to see guilds still doing PVE with the new honor buff.

Awesome! And 29 players?!? Thats pretty impressive! Now rush through MC and get Rag down! You only have a week!

[Steamboat]

Haha...we actually talked about going to MC right after the run. But our MT (with the high FR) was sick IRL and after he decided to go to sleep we kind of fell apart.

A lot of us had been drinking heavily IRL so 12 of us formed an AB group and played with no gear on. But apparently we were a bit too drunk because we went 2 and 2 before we called it quits.

It was funny to see how angry the 3 puggers with us were when they were in a "pre-made" and lost. :smiley:

[Stigg]

Alcohol + 29 man first downing of Onyxia = Life is good.