Hey Moz, or any EJ tank for that matter!

GCR is having a small issue and I thought maybe you can help us with some information.


Since the 1.7 patch, our tanks have been having issues w/ regaining Agro during Phase 3 of Onyxia. Can you lend any insight on how Ony's agro works or what they can do to regain the agro fairly quickly?

Phase 1 and 2 are a non issue. it's just the tanks regaining agro during the transision to phase 3 and after the constant fears that we are having problems.

Here's some clarification (didn't know he was posting as well).

Just looking for a little advice and possibly warrior talent spec info, skill usage, or other misc help regarding Onyxia 2->3 transition.

Background: Earlier in May we (GCR) lost a good number of members due to a split, and since then we worked diligently to build up our raiding success. I think it took us about a month to get onyxia down, and we downed her several times after that until the recent patch. We've been farming MC up to rag for quite a while now, and we're getting lots of people with 5+ pieces of their tier1.

Our general strat is basically the same as described in pacifist's site: split the raid in half with 1 group per side dedicated to whelps. Slow easy DPS in phase 1, blast DPS and stay seperated in phase 2. Phase 3 SHOULD be similar to phase 1 + chaos. This was working perfectly and we'd down her within 1-2 tries every week up until the latest patch.

It should also be noted that we have killed her 1 time post-patch, but we're struggling the past 2 attempts. It seems that our tanks are not able to obtain aggro on the transition. We've been trying very hard and going back at least 2 times per week for several hours and it always seems to be the transition that kills us. We seem to be able to get her under 20% but the transition just weakens us enough where we either have not enough healing, or not enough DPS and eventually we just dry up. Last night we got her to 14~% on our best attempt.

Our tank generally has full rage right before the transition, they pop abilities to resist the fear (wotf, berzerk stance stuff, etc), and cause aggro. But as soon as she lands she jumps on like 3-4 people's case and usually breaths once or twice in the process. We usually are able to eventually get aggro, but death comes slowly after that point. We have been trying lots of different new strategies to try and help the situation and we have come up with a couple things that helped greatly, but the problem still exists.

We make sure that rogues/hunters feign/feint as much as possible, and on the transition, all rogues vanish. I personally had her aggro me immediately after phase 3, when I had vanished + got hit by 2 fears and hadn't even attacked her yet after the vanish. In yesterday's attempts we had shaman using -1 and -2 heals to prevent them aggroing as well, and that worked for them.

My question is: Are there any noticable things that we are missing?

Any information/help would be welcome.

Grats on the nef kill btw =)

Yeah.. sorry about the lack of Subject information, I'd change it but I can't edit my post for some odd reason. Thanks Nixxed for explaining it better as I could not go back and edit the post.

I tanked her for the first time in awhile a couple days ago and aggro did seem pretty dicey compared to what I remembered. I'm not sure what to tell you except that having 2 tanks for phase 3 has made things a lot more stable for us a lot of the time; I forgot to remind tank #2 to fight for aggro last time we killed her, which probably would've made the fight a lot less messy, and in general I reccomend it

also, consider having the tank pop recklessness as soon as she lands. You can switch to defensive stance now and retain the buff, which is pretty nice and would probably help a lot with the problems you've been having, and 20% more damage to the tank shouldn't be a major issue on onyxia as long as healers are paying attention

We had some success with the tank sundering her before she lands.

Rogues/hunters can all vanish/feign of course.

Or one hunter can keep/get agro and pull her up north to where you want to be tanking her.

Stop all DoTs around 43-44%.

One of the most important things warriors can do to get (and keep) aggro is to avoid/break as many fears as possible. When the ground shakes, pop zerker rage/WotF. Spell Alert helps (every tank should have this mod) -- "Onyxia begins to cast Bellowing Roar."

Yea I require that all the rogues who come have that mod. It probably should be required for all users.

Another mod I like a lot is aggroalert, as it puts big red text on the middle of your screen to tell you 'WTF Mate you stole aggro'. I also like our rogues to have stunwatch so we can time stuns better if we're trying to stunlock adds and such.

We have actually been stopping dots at 42%, but maybe upping that to 44-45 would make a difference. I think it could possibly have been a barman proc (gutgore needs to drop =( ) that caused her to bite my head off during the one attempt.

On our best attempt last night (the 14% one) we did have one tank pop recklessness and that is what helped us... unfortunately it wasn't until after a few people got digested. Looking forward to giving this another shot.

WHAT I DO

-Be in zerk stance with full rage before she lands
-As she is landing pop berserker rage to avoid the fear
-Dump your rage with MS, whirlwind etc
-Switch to def stance
-Hit her till she starts hitting you and switch to zerk stance and use rage to avoid fears and stuff
-Keep hitting her till she dies and loot your 899875th nemesis skullcap, stormrage cover and ring of binding, hooray

And make sure EVERY shaman (bring 16 and put 2 in each group for double totems) drops tremor totem amirite.

Us alliance have it easy. I just blood rage throughout stage 2 until full aggro. With fear ward I can just stay in defesive. Right when she starts coming down I start sundering and shield slamming. As long as whoever has aggro when she lands runs north, I can usually get aggro before that person dies. I did notice though, that since 1.7, when she lands she doesn't really stick to one person until they are dead. She tends to jump aggro for those first few seconds. Probably just fear resists or something.

(healing)

I have it, but I disable it most of the time. I hate the chat window spam I get, i.e. the spell warning messages.

can one person have it and it announces it to the whole raid? if so what is the option for that.

Yes Newladin, I am full Prot now. I do miss the PvP capabilities I had, but to tell you the truth I never did PvP much. I find WoW to have horrible PvP. It's just a pain knowing it's near impossible to defend myself when ever a horde sees me.

Shield Slam is pretty damn spiffy for PvP, though it's no replacement for MS and some of the other arms/fury talents. I gave up trying to PvP with my shitty warrior a long time ago. (I could also just suck at pvp with warriors.)

I was having a little problem with Onyxia also. The other tank and I basically fight for agro until we get her positioned correctly and then whoever doesn't have agro backs off. We are both blacksmiths/undead so we can pop a Glimmering Mithril Insignia clicky and then WotF before the first 2 fears instead of switching to fury.

It seems to be a little easier if you wait to sunder until she hits the ground, but she'll usually get atleast one breath on a "side" that way. However sundering her directly after the phase 3 yell was just causing her to bounce around with 2 tanks out of rage.

The best advice I can give is to be immune to as many fears as possible and save your rage until she lands. She seems to have her own agro system and plays differently than any other mob I've come across. Good luck.

Good advice overall but no longer as viable as it used to be. Now that you can't prevent running around during Onyxia's fear, it's inevitable that someone (me) is going to go south and get tail swiped into the whelps (twice).

I really hate when Ony gets in a weird positions and refuses to move. Last night someone in the middle of a healing group had aggro as soon as she landed and doesn't move. She breathes on the healing group and a good number of them die... /sigh. Then for the rest of the fight shes sitting to the very far west side. I don't want to risk having her breathe on the other healing group while trying to center her in the room so I just leave her there and face her north as much as I can.

/end of frustrating mob rant.

I think most things have been covered here.

Primary concern is make sure you avoid that initial fear (beit using WotF, Berserker Rage or even Fear Ward).

At around 43%, we usually stop all dots and I use the full rage bar I have (from dealing with welps) to get her sundered up, throw in a shield bash/slam or whatever it takes to use up your bar.

As phase 3 is about to begin, I have bloodrage up, pop a rage potion if I have it, avoid the fear and then use high threat generating abilities as she hits the ground.

The biggest thing (aside from getting people to stop dots, cease attacking as she's landing and NOT throwing the tank a heal until she's actually on him - I mean her melee doesn't hit that hard - no reason to be overhealing before she's under control) is getting the rest of your raid positioning themselves such that if indeed she has aggro on someone else, you don't get your tank running all over the damn cave, possibly getting tail swept in trying to get her under control.

Yeah Legato is FULL Protection now. I should know. I respecced him <_<

I'm not too sure if Lough has told you all, but we are having one hell of a time durning the transition as well. Thanks for the information listed here. I'll try these points during our next encounter.

Knock is a PRO tank when given fear ward :-)

Give me free stronghold knock... I will be your best friend, I swear.