WoW.coms Raid Rx guide:


Didn't see any Onyxia guides so I started this thread. I disagree with his suggestion to use Holy Nova, as it only heals the 5 people in your party, which may or may not be in range of the spell, plus its much harder to know if you pulled aggro. Personally, for the initial whelp phase I use mind sear, even though a shadow priest can do it so much more effectively than a disc. priest.

I kinda like his idea of sending a tank to intercept the sentinels at the entrance way. I personally don't think the main tank should do this, as he needs to be free to grab onyxia when she lands and not be tangled up with another add. However 2nd phase lasts so long, it does tend to help give the mt something to do.

Further, last night I was not consistently getting raid warnings about her deep breathes and was caught many times in it. If I'm at full health I can survive it usually. Also in second phase I would often run a different direction than the tank to get to the wall, which made getting back to the tank (who was also taking damage) very difficult. Fae also seems to be a lot more fragile than Ripsaw in terms of main tanking. (Maybe because he only has off-spec tank gear)?

Anyways during 2nd phase I think the healers with good aoe damage should break off and help get the whelps down (mind sear from priests works well). Three of the healers should be respectifully dedicated to healing the tanks and the other 3 healers that break off to aoe should break off aoe and heal raid when necessary. Those healers should be fully on raid when the bulk of the whelps are reduced.

NOTE: The ideas presented in this post are just my opinion and are by no means the official practice for the guild. A raid leader will implement the official methodology.

I don't think it was in the stars last night for a few reasons:

1) Not enough healers.

2) Main tank out of action.

Now, our reasons for failures once we stopped being hit with the deep breaths were always one or both of the below:

1) because a healer (or healers) got out of range of their assigned tank after a deep breath. With only 5 healers (2 of whom were assigned to the main tank, so that leaves 3 for the offtanks), that can't ever happen. If you're assigned to a tank, you need to run with that tank when the deep breath warning pops up.

2) because people stood in front of the big adds. If you aren't a tank, you can NOT NOT NOT be standing in front of them.

I know it gets chaotic trying to AOE the whelps, heal the tank, whatever... but you always have to have your eyes open for the big guys. They do an aoe cone effect in front of them that will kill you.

If we go in there again tomorrow and fix those two issues, this should be cake.


Also, when we got to phase 3, I saw people coming out of the caves with trains of whelps behind them. She fears when she lands, so make sure you are in the center of the room and that tremor totems are down. (Maybe have a shaman in each group if we have 5.)

Also, unless they changed it.. Holy Nova causes no agro whatsoever.

Just make sure to tell the people in your group that they need to be within range of you or they won't get heals.

I said that same exact thing in heal channel last night.

Everyone knows the healers are with the tanks, so if someone runs out of range, let them die.

I know this is technically on farm, but I want to make some suggestions to cater this fight to our usual make-up.

Onyxia's Health = 22,312,000

2 Tanks, 5 Healers

Phase 1 = 100-65% approximately at 14,502,800 health
Phase 2 until 40%, approximately at 8,924,800 health
That equates to about 5,578,000 damage to go from Phase 2 to Phase 3. I'll bring that back up in a bit.


So. Tank pulls, we all run behind, tank flips her and backs to the far wall. Meanwhile, no on else ever runs in front of her while stops to breath and no we is directly behind her, right? There is also very little reason to DPS her at all at this time! Just apply your debuffs.

Now she's positioned correctly and the raid is positioned correctly. Melee should be as far back as possible. It doesn't matter much in Phase 1, but for Phase 3 fears you want as much distance from her Cleave as possible.

Alright, so do our thing, nice and steady, and when she gets to about 66% (15M)we pop Bloodlust and all CDs and burn her hard. (we're doing around 230k DPS at this point)

EYERYONE STACK IN THE MIDDLE ON THE ADD TANKS NOW!

Here is where my suggestions start to differ from what most of us are used to....

All ranged DPS keep Onyxia targeted at all times. Burn her down.

If everyone was alive was when Bloodlust was popped, and not taking a nap, she should already be under 50% health (if not near 40%). Not including movement, we could dish out over 9M in damage in 40 seconds.

So what should hapen now is that we get a wave of Whelps which will run to where the entire raid is. Rogues will Tricks and FoK spam, and all melee and Holy/Disc priests will AoE them down. (Remember that Holy Nova does no threat and heals to boot). At some point a big add will come running into the room.

Let him run in. If Onyxia is not down at this time, she will be 'very soon'. Te Whelps should be dead, and the big add should be burned down. We should only see 1 big add and one Whelp spawn. (Unless a melee gets tail smacked in Phase 3) She will also likely not do a Deep Breath.

Now...everyone run to the far end of the cave. Ranged should never be within a 3 second run of the whelp caves. Get your ass up past Onyxia's tail. Melee stay as far from her front as possible. Unless we have 5 tremor totems, expect to have a melee cleaved or tail swiped. Ranged and Healers should have an easy time avoiding either. Fire comes out of the cracks when she fears. Don't stand on the cracks. The end.