THE GREAT ONYXIA RACE -- The Tale of Two Raids

In the waning days of the closed beta, Blizzard desperately wanted players to test out the recently added Onyxia raid encounter before the game was finalized for retail. They came up with a contest. Whatever guild managed to kill Onyxia would have its name reserved on whatever server it chose in retail. This was a pretty lame reward, but the most important part was that whatever guild managed to kill Onyxia would forever be known as the first guild to kill Onyxia. The race was on.

Not being one interested in guilds or guild politics, I tended to be a free agent about such things, and being a well known level 60 priest, I got lots of offers to join Onyxia raids. At least I'd like to think I was invited to raids because of my renowned skills as a priest. In truth, by the final week of the beta, the population of high level characters on the closed beta PvP server had dropped significantly as people left to play with their friends on the open beta servers. There were one or two Onyxia raids a day and while the banner that we were fighting under changed, in reality the cast of characters doing the fighting changed little from attempt to attempt, since the same crew of free agents like myself tended to dominate most of the raids.

We never did kill her, and the reasons were many. (See my writeup of the first attempt to kill Onyxia in the closed beta, if you want a good laugh). The biggest one was that raids in general were new, so people weren't used to knowing what to do or how to act in them. We also didn't have any of the nice raid-specific custom user interfaces like CT_raidassist that people use now, and most people didn't use Teamspeak or any other such voice communication system, which made raids much more difficult to coordinate. Of course, we also had to deal with the fact that the Onyxia encounter was brand new, so we ended up spending attempts just trying to figure out how the encounter works. For example, one time we intentionally attacked Onyxia's eggs, thinking that that might weaken her. (It didn't work). Also, as a largely pickup group, we sometimes had to deal with idiots who messed everything up -- like the time one guy took it upon himself to attack the dragonet eggs even after we told him that it didn't work. Finally, it didn't help that at the time, warder guards would spawn next to Onyxia after two failed attempts to kill her. This was basically "game over" for any raid, which was a shame. Sometimes raid groups would just start to get into a rhythm and then suddenly those guards would show up and break everything up. Luckily, the guard spawns were taken out in retail.

Despite all the problems, I am happy to say that our ragtag group managed to get Onyxia up in the air and fly, something that most other beta groups did not manage to do. (Our best attempt got her down to 62%). Still, I set as one of my primary goals once retail came out to get back to Onyxia and finally see that *expletive deleted* dragon die. I quickly got to level 60, farmed some useful +fire resist gear, and got the Onyxia key as quickly as I could. (The Horde Onyxia key quest is a long quest series that starts with the Lower Blackrock Spire quest, The Warlord's Command).

Now all I needed was 39 other people who wanted to kill Onyxia, and there was the rub. Being a person unaffiliated with any major guild complicates efforts to get in some of the large scale raiding parties. (I play under the banner of the "Lurking Loungers," because I am the site administrator for the WoW section of the unaffiliated game strategy site, The Lurker Lounge). Still, raiding parties always need priests, and I figured with my outgoing personality I would eventually find some groups I could regularly raid with. Sure enough, after putting some feelers out, I started getting raid invites, first for pick-up raids and then some more guild-centric raids. After a couple of good experiences with The Offenders, I started raiding almost exclusively with them.

There was one problem. Everyone was raiding Molten Core, while nobody was raiding Onyxia. I kept getting raid invites from Unholy Legion and later from Grim Vengeance combined with some friends I knew from the Basin. I wanted to additionally raid with those groups very much -- especially the GV/Basin group, since I knew so many people there -- but the game locked players into instances for seven days (now six days). I hated that restriction, as I kept having to turn down friendly invitations with a litany of "No, sorry, I told the Offenders I'd raid with them this weekend, so I can't get locked into your instance" and "No, sorry, I'm locked into the Offender's instance. Good luck!" However, I always told people, "But, hey, if you ever do Onyxia, look me up! I have the key." The response was always the same: "Not enough of our guildies have keys." My dream of killing Onyxia had to be put on hold.

Fast forward to a couple of weeks ago, and suddenly there was a flurry of activity among Tichondrius Horde players to get Onyxia keys. When inviting people I knew to instance runs, I got several "Sorry, I'm helping some guildies kill world dragons" or "Sorry, we're doing UBRS runs to get blood." I didn't know what precipitated this sudden interest in Onyxia, but I was glad that it was happening. Two weekends ago, I got my first invitation for an Onyxia run from a group that was a mixture of Grim Vengeance, Unholy Legion, Basin, and a smattering of people from some other guilds. I badly wanted to go, but I had already committed to running Molten Core with The Offenders all that weekend. (Don't get me wrong. I had a blast playing with TO that weekend. We made great progress, clearing all the way up to Golemagg). I told the guys who invited me that I would definitely be interested in joining them for any weekday attempts on Onyxia, though.

That Wednesday, I logged on to do some Dire Maul runs and noticed that Sabik, the Offenders primary raid leader, was on. I asked him when the next Molten Core raid was going to be, and he replied that the guild was going to try to kill Onyxia instead and was in the process of doing UBRS runs to help people get their keys. I thought that this was strange. We were on a roll with our Molten Core runs. Each week, the group was getting farther into the Core, and fights were getting faster and more systematic. I had visions of getting all the way to Ragnaros in a couple of weeks, and it seemed strange to break up the group's rhythm by suddenly switching to fighting Onyxia. It was like the whole Horde was caught up in a massive group-think that we had to kill Onyxia, and I didn't know what caused this sudden change.

I didn't know, because I didn't read the official Tichondrius server forums. If I had, I would've learned that an Alliance guild had killed Onyxia and was lording the accomplishment over the Horde players on the forums. It didn't help that the Alliance guild was one of those annoying guilds. Players on PvP servers will know what I'm talking about here. It's the type of guild that considers killing a person in a 10-vs-1 fight while the person is stuck in loading lag as his or her bat touches down a great accomplishment. The major Horde guilds couldn't let this situation stand, so they started pushing their members to get their Onyxia keys. Horde guilds wanted to kill Onyxia for the honor of the Horde, and they each wanted to be the first Horde guild to accomplish the feat so that everyone would know exactly what guild brought this honor to the Horde.

A new Onyxia race was on!

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.