Hello,

I am Hong from one of the Korean WoW servers (Deswing). Even though Onyxia was killed first on a korean server (mainly because there was no phase change at the time), we have heard of the many accomplishments by the american server players. We heard that Onyxia was killed by 17 people, so 3 weeks ago we tried with 14 people and killed her in 36 min our first time as alliance (i know alliance is big piece of crap, but my guild decided to change servers and change to alliance). But today, I heard that she was done with 10 so I searched the internet and found your video on warcraftmovies.com. Although, I have not downloaded I am very interested in details of MT healing rotation.

We do onyxia with 14-20, mc with 20-30, bwl with 35-40. This week, after hearing about your guild, we plan to fight onyxia with 10 also. I think our party will be 2 warrior, 2 priest, 1 warlock, 1 druid, 1 paladin, 3 hunter.

I think we maybe a little weak on healing power and dps compared to your party combination, but based on that do you have any recommendations? All 10 of us will make the attempt together at the same PC cafe here in Seoul so i think teamwork is not problem. But since the potions consumed are very expensive we wish to succeed first try. Any suggestions will be appreciated because i think 10 man alliance kill will be much harder than horde?

Usually we do not even bother with fire resist, but with 10 people our MT think instead of using his 7/8 battlegear of wrath he should use his fire resist equipment since we are going light on healers. Also, instead of 3 hunters our MT wants to take 2 rogues and only 1 hunter for dps, but i think aggro management and fast dps + feign death will be better for this fight and better for phase 2. Also, i think warlock is unnecessary but MT wants to take because of imp for phase 1, 3, dott for phase 2. I think it is better to take extra healer or dps member. What do you guys think?

p.s.
I apologize for my english....

Is this where I poke fun at Kaubel for being dead almost the entire fight, causing Onyxia to be killed effectively with 9?

:D

Posts like this make me proud to be in EJ. :laugh:

(It's quite late over here, by the way, so you probably won't get any really useful replies until tommorow)

I'm no expert, but I would like to try and help you in some way, so here goes:

A warlock is not a good idea in this type of situation. A warlock can only reduce the threat his or her spells generate as they are cast, and is unable to consistantly lower his or her threat level as rogues and hunters can. This can create a problem as the fight progresses, as a 10-man Onyxia promises to be a very long battle. The problem is best summed up by Gurgthock as he said here:

So, while a warlock is useful for Blood Pact and such, his or her pulling aggro due to the inescapability of the plateau makes a warlock a liability.

I would try to fit another Paladin in, if you can. Their blessings and judgment of wisdom make this fight much easier for Alliance than it is for Horde, as totems are not nearly as effective at replenishing mana or keeping a battle stable. Totems are useful for making classes deal more damage, there's no denying that, but I think you will find Blessing of Kings, Judgment of Wisdom, and possibly Blessing of Salvation or Wisdom to be invaluable in this fight.

For gear, I'd say fire resistance is pretty important. The hardest part of the fight is stage 2. The same people are liable to be barraged by fireballs over and over again, because the target list is small, so mitigating that damage is important. I don't think you should sacrifice all stats in favor of fire resistance, but good pieces are important.

As for the rogue vs. hunter debate, I believe either would work. Hunters were chosen in our case because they are typically hardier than rogues with more health and armor, have some small form of AoE for whelp assistance, and are much less likely to pull aggro. Not to mention that hunters and jumper cables go rather well togather(I am aware that rogues can mimic this feat with Vanish, but if a Bellowing Roar interrupts you the rogue is screwed for 5 minutes while the hunter only has to let Feign Death cooldown to try again).

And I believe we discussed that this would be much EASIER for Alliance than it was for us, because of Judgment of Wisdom and Fear Ward mostly. Good luck, I hope my small bit of advice helps!

Yeah you have to go with at least two paladins.

I can see alliance doing it with:
Warrior
Warrior
Priest
Paladin
Paladin
Druid
Hunter

i think too little DPS for last combination. But Steelfleece, i think you are absolutely correct. I think I will arrange so it is:

MT Warrior (half and half on fire resist/stats)
Backup Warrior (heavy on fire resist)
Priest (human)
Priest (dwarf)
Paladin
Paladin
Druid
Hunter
Hunter
Hunter

I think 2 paladin necessary also for blessing of salvation and blessing of wisdom for healers. Blessing of kings and blessing of light on warriors. And fire resist aura for both parties although we will mostly be spread apart in phase 2 (as long as MT gets).

Now, for phase 2 positioning. Hunters follow flight pattern and continuous poison sting with constant DPS. MT and backup tank just try avoid fireballs and handle whelps with paladins and a little help from 1-2 hunter if needed. Druid job is heal hunter (rejuvenate on MT also) and we will use potions and bandages to minimize mana waste while priests only focus on healing melee. Basically we use buddy system for healing and like you said, we use damage meter program to manage aggro. Our MT (my underclassmen "brother") only lost aggro less than 10 times in our 200+ 40 person raids, so i don't worry much about that. If he lose aggro on Onyxia then i will beat him over the head with my keyboard and choke his neck with my mouse cord >.<

Also, I think i read that you guys no battle raise during your fight (maybe shamans just raise themselves?). How many were alive by the end of the fight? Unfortunately only I am engineer hunter who have Goblin cable so we have only 1 certain battle raiser (druid) and good for nothing me (my success rate is horrible so my members say i am worthless ; ;) I think

Now question is.... i think that 2 dwarf priest is good, but do you think it is necessary for fear ward? Because then i must use my dwarf priest and instead of 3 hunter, we must go 2 hunter and 1 rogue or maybe even 3 priest and 2 hunter? I don't think we need up to 3 priest healing power.

Sorry for so many questions. I think maybe for Christmas my guild try kill Nefarion (?) with 25-30 people. Maybe you guys do already, but will be first time on all korean servers. Thank you all for all your suggestions and advice!

i think bringing a warlock might very well be one of the best options for alliance. Good use of Divine intervention and soulstone can make a priest never have to worry about reaching the aggro limit.

1 warlock
1 druid
1 priest
1 paladin
1 hunter
1 warrior

thats the fewest people i see being able to do it. Once you reach the aggro limit, priest suicides gets combat rez'd. DI the druid, paladin uses soulstone hopefully that would occur somewhere near 30-40% then you have "fresh" healers for the rest of the way. Sure at some point the warlock would become useless in terms of doing dps without pulling aggro but with master demonilogy/BoS that most likely wouldn't be til the very end of the fight <25%. The warlocks soulstone timer might even be back by then and he can soulstone himself. Not to mention the fact that if someone does die at the "wrong" time a warlock would allow the raid to have that person run back and get summoned, although the alliance graveyard is very far away. :((((( nerf shaman

I don't think the group you described would be able to handle whelps and fireballs mixed with moving to avoid deep breaths in stage 2, prymo.

In any case, a warlock could help with healers reaching the aggro limit--but really, that shouldn't happen since the Alliance has Blessing of Salvation. Druids with a combat rez would be much more effective than trickery with soulstone anyway, since the druid can heal throughout the fight, if he or she is restoration spec he or she can Innervate(handy for a fight like this), and Cower can lower his aggro if he or she feels it's needed.

I think 1 dwarf priest is all you need Hong, I'm not that familiar with timing Fear Wards vs. Bellowing Roar but I was under the impression that you only needed one in normal circumstances? I think that would be perfectly fine. Worst comes to worst, there is always Berserker Rage.

As a side note, we did have combat rezzing by the druids and hunter's jumper cables, 3 combat rezzes in total I think, but we did not have any "out of combat" rezzing. Make sure you bring the XL cables edition. You don't need goblin engineer to use them--just have another do it if you're gnomish.

Communist lies and propaganda.

See above.

I definitely agree that a warlock is unnecessary.

With Fear Ward and paladins' low-aggro heals I think you will find that stage 1 and stage 3 could be done with probably 7 people easily. Your planning should focus around stage 2. For that, I think your group composition should be just fine. It's really more about cooperation and adapting to the fight than any specific plan, because Onyxia's deep breaths, positioning, and the whelp spawns add so many variables to the fight. All I can say for phase 2 is to make sure no one gets isolated too far from a healer (if I could do it again I'd assign each non-healer a healer buddy whose job is to follow that person around during phase 2), because everyone will be getting hit by a lot of fireballs, and even 4-5 whelps can kill someone if no healing is nearby. Good luck!

Also, your English is very good -- nothing to apologize for there.

Looks like Gurgthock is leading raids into people's hearts

Replace Ironforge with either "Molten Core" or "Blackwing Lair" and its worse, much much worse.

She fears more often than 30s but 1 is enough to make things much easier.

Also, what is this about paladins having an innate agro reduction?

Paladin heals generate 1/3 of the aggro they should.

It's a "nerf" to stop paladins from being able to tank just by self-healing. :rolleyes:

Unnecessary and, for reasons stated above, actually detrimental to their own long-term survival.

Sometimes I hate my class. :(

Druids aren't useful in a 5-man UBRS run, so WELCOME TO THE CLUB!

Was this one of those end of beta changes only the cool kids know about?

Don't ask me, I never played beta except for the one-week open beta before retail. :o

But yes, probably.

Short answer: yes.

Longer Answer:
Due to the way that your heals work (Amount healed vs. Casting time & talents) your heals generate roughly 1/3 of the aggro that a priest's do with no Blessing of Salvation. The difference is nullified if a priest has BoS and uses Rank 6 Flash Heal, however.

What this means is that a paladin in good healing gear / crit gear can chain-cast heals NEAR indefinitly (if you crit heal on certain spells, you get the cost of the heal back, the sweet spot on never running out of mana is 90mp/5 and 14% crit rate [yeah it's an almost unattainable crit rate on spells for paladins, but it would give them unlimited healing mana, which should probably be hard to get.]).

Due to this, and the survivability of paladins in general (Your damage shield absorbs an unlimited amount of damage, making you immune to all debuffs effect.) makes you a great choice for small-group onyxia (survivability is very important on phase 2, as she fireballs the shit out of you.). If you're caught off guard trying to heal a hunter or something and a deep breath comes up..you can shield if you can't get out of the way, no other class in this game has the ability to survive mistakes on binary attacks like that with no major reprecussion to healer mana.

~Refer to the talent Illumination in the Holy Talent Tree
~Refer to the Blessing of Wisdom Rank 6 Plus the 20% increase from Imp Blessing of Wisdom -- 36mana / 5 bonus - With excellent damage mitigation and the ability of a paladin to escape damage while a tank reattains aggro, blessing of wisdom can be used interchangably with blessing of salvation for the duration of the fight, as BoS can be applied retroactively to remove bossmob aggro.
~Refer to the mana conservation and burst healing additions made by Skill Blessing of Light - Yes, the tank will not be able to receive another blessing, but it's not like he'll be needing BoS.
~Refer to the damage mitigation increase Devotion aura or Fire Protection Aura Rank 3 will provide.

Now do you see why Paladins are excellent?

TL:DR: Paladins have fire totem, a larger effective mana pool, and more armor/mitigation potential than shamans, but they can't pop up and rez someone in the middle of combat, so it's really a toss-up. In short take 1 paladin for each group on your small-group onyxia attempts.

Jesus Christ, I wish I was a paladin instead of a paper thin priest.

I'm playing one on Maelstrom, it's a lot of fun.

The fun lies in the fact that when you're doing PvE stuff you're never really in danger of death. Even at low levels I've had sequences where I fought through four even-level monsters(stupid fleeing trolls).