Onyxia - Revamped and Pissed Off - A Guide to Pwnage

Oh yes, everyone is super excited about killing the new, revamped, level 83 Onyxia! Trade and LFG channels were buzzing all day about getting PUGs setup, everyone had a little daydream about getting the rare 310% flying mount.

Then Onyxia put some baby powder on her hands and pimp slapped the shit out of all those noobs.

Onyxia is not a joke, she is a hard hitting bitch and the fight is mostly a coordination encounter. Onyxia does not care if you can do 6k dps or 2k dps, this fight is not a dps race. As long as your healers aren't having mana issues...this fight can go on forever. Which I kinda like....it makes my job alot more important then it already is and others really notice the difference between and good and a bad healer.

Anyways....the encounter, yes....lets get to that shall we?

Its My Baby Mama...

First off, I love Onyxia. She was my first real raid way back in the day of 40 mans and doing the raid today really brought back some fond memories.

Check out my awesome editing skills on this picture of Onyxia's Lair. Get familiar with it, it will be helpful when I am explaining how to take this ho down.

The Easter egg object in the middle is the lady herself. Notice her tail, how she is facing, and where all the casters and dps are located. There are a few reasons why I like everyone but the tank on one side. It is mostly for phase 3, but there is no point of changing it in phase 1. It is so everyone is grouped up and in range of my tremor totem. It also gets you setup perfectly for phase 2.

Phase 1

Start by loading your tank up with HoTs (Heals over time...aka druids). The tank will then walk towards the dragon to begin the encounter. At this time, the only people that should be REMOTELY close to the tank is the healers. Ony hits hard and it is possible to get out of the range of heals while positioning the beast like my map shows. This will result in a wipe due to your MT going down with in the first 10 seconds. The only person that should EVER be in the frontal cone of Ony is the tank.

So now you are in position. The tank has its back to the wall, your melee dps is not getting hit by the tail and everything is going to plan.

Phase 1 is just a tank and spank. There is no reason bust any of your cool downs since there isn't an enrage timer. Just hang back and pew pew until she reaches 60%. At this point she will turn around and walk towards the entrance.

Keep on pew pewing...this is where dps becomes important.

Phase 2

Onyixa will fly up in the air. At this time 20 whelps come out of each cave. Best way to handle this is to group up in the middle, let the tanks get a few seconds to gain aggro and AoE those biatches Naxxramas style! Having an AoE healer like a Shaman or priest really makes this the easiest and faster way.

When you get the whelps down, a bigger add will come. Have all dps kill it asap. The big add comes from the entrance. If you are all grouped up, then the tank should have no problem aggroing him. This add hits hard, but is very healable. The thing you need to look out for with these guys is when they do a castable aoe. I forget the name, but its like a 5-6 second cast that surrounds the add with fire dmg and it will kill you if you don't get out of range. 15 yards should be more then enough space when he does this ability.

Onyixa will be in the air shooting fireballs at a random people. Make sure your raid group is spread out...but is in the same general area. This is especially important for healers and tanks not to get separated and due to the random fireballs Ony is throwing around, I found it best to grouped up, but still spread out 10 yards or so from everyone.

The whelps will come every 90 seconds and the bigger adds will come pretty much every 30 seconds or so. Have 1 tank stand near the entrance of each whelp cave. When then spawn they will get aggro. If you want to you can have them meet up in the center to be aoe down, or you can just assign a few melee dps to take them down. They do not hit hard and do not have much health points.

Every once in awhile, your screen is going to say the following...

"Onyixa takes in a deep breath"

AS SOON as you read this message, look where Ony is in the air and try to get behind her or strafe to the side. She will do a fire breath attack that will only hit where she is currently facing.

This is VERY IMPORTANT people. It is so important that there is an achievement if noone in the raid gets hit by one ok? You will not survive a deep breath. Ony has been munching on Funyuns and garlic bread while chain smoking non filter cigarettes and drinking black coffee. Result is her breath is FUNKY and will kill you....pay the F attention =P

Ranged DPS - You need kill Onyixa while she is up in the air AND when the bigger adds come, kill them ASAP. Remember, this is not a dps race. As long as your healers have mana....which they should...this should be simple.

Melee DPS - You need to kill the bigger adds and also take down the whelps. Don't be a hero, just do your job. When the whelps get spawned from the whelp cave, wait until a tank has aggro before busting out your AoE attacks. Feel free to single target them, but if you start going aoe crazy before the tank has aggro....your death is on you.

This is what worked out best for us. If we had the ranged dps stay on the boss the whole time to get her down faster, then we had massive issues keeping everyone alive and a very big issue transitioning to phase 3.

Killing the bigger adds ASAP really made phase 2 alot EASIER. It wasn't even a strain on my mana healing it.

At 40% Ony will land...

Phase 3

Ok, the hardest part is over with. If you did it like I did, the transition from phase 2 to phase 3 shouldn't have any big adds up and most of the whelps down.

DO NOT TOUCH ONYIXA!

Let the tank regain aggro. This might take a little bit due the ranged dps pew pewing him down the last 20% of her life.

Instead, finish off all of the adds and remember, don't get anywhere near that tail. It will swipe you into the whelp cave which is only going to cause frustration.

Once the adds are finished and the tank has repositioned with plenty of aggro, begin to pew pew away. This is the perfect time to bust all of your cool downs and go nuts, just don't pull aggro.

Onyixa in this phase is the exact same as she was during phase 1, but now she does a group fear and during this fear, lava now comes through the cracks on the floor...hitting for 5-7k. In our 10 man, we had everyone on one side of Onyixa to ensure that everyone was in range of my tremor totem.

The End

Collect your loot and brag to your friends. Congrats!

Healing thoughts

This encounter does have some intense points, but overall you do not need to worry about mana consumption if you are epic'd out. I used my mp5 set for the first few wipes, but then switched to my single target, spell power / crit heavy, throughput set and was fine.

As a resto shaman the only time I ever used chain heal is at the begining of phase 2 with the 40 whelps. Other then that it was Riptide + LHW all day. I think the fight is well tuned and will not likey to be puggable for atleast a few more weeks.

After then everyone should be used to the encounter and explaining each phase will not take 15+ minutes and require Vent.