I've heard a lot of different things on onyxia's phase transitions and other such things of the encounter. Being the MT I absolutly love the encounter (since we're horde) I really have to be on the ball to stance-dance, WoTF, and communicate with the shamans when and where I need tremor totems.

Phase 1:

We're doing the first phase almost flawless, we stop DPS every 10% (depending on knockbacks) and I haven't lost agro since we've started her.

Phase 2:

We are having a few problems with deep breaths and we've mostly corrected those (when we attempted her today, we had flawless phase 2, great DPS, no deep breaths and no deaths.) From what I understand onyxia only deep breathes when two things happens. 1: When there is lack of DPS she does, and 2: When the raid isn't spread out.

Phase 3:

Here is where the problems are occuring, I've read that she COMPLETLY wipes agro (which I think is false) and that she does something like a 60% wipe of agro etc. I use KTM threat meter during raids, and that doesn't show a agro loss (maybe it's just not updated to her or something) but I don't rely on it to show how I'm doing. When she lands, I stand under her (so when/if she agros me, she'll be away from the raid) and blow beserker rage (since the instant fear). The last two attempts around 45% I start jumping and sundering her (when shes in the air) and when she lands, I haven't had agro. We had 1/2 the raid die to a flame breath and then she agroed on me. We still managed to kill her, but being a tank, and not having agro, pisses me off.

Here are some solutions I've thought of, and here's where I could really use everyones help.

1: We don't want ANYONE in the raid to break the first fear, warriors dont beserker rage, undead don't WoTF, because she SHOULD go to me (since I'm the only one not feared. You do have the occasional "resist" to the fear, but that's really rare (or is it?)

2: I don't know exactly why I don't have agro, what I do is, get 100 rage (from 1 whelp, and anger management) then I blow that rage on her (sundering shield slamming etc) then I go back to a whelp, get 100 more rage, and usually at that time shes at 45%.) I've seen tanks to just shoot bows, and others who just stand there in phase 2.

3: I was thinking, if she doesn't AGRO wipe, could we just take longer in phase 1, so I can get more agro? the only fear I have here is the healers out healing the agro (much like broodlord or other bosses in BWL (because of wing buffets)

4: Right now, we have FULL DPS in phase 2, that means every single person uses there cooldowns etc. (except for melee) hunters rapid fire, aimed shot, multishot, everything, mages who arn't on whelps use arcane power etc. Our reasoning for this is because when we dont own her with lots of DPS she deep breathes (which is obvious)

If anyone has any more suggestions, I'd really appreciate it. We can kill her, just the phase 2 to 3 transition is really annoying me, and it makes me feel like a shitty tank :( :ph34r:

Thanks for the help :)

Forget the threat meters, that's most likely a very rough estimate at best.

It sounds like you're doing the right thing, make sure you have full rage when she lands, get everyone north, and use CT_RA to see who she's targeting, get them to run north immediately.

Full dps in phase2 is good, so that shouldn't be the problem either.

If you have some ballsy shamans in your raid have them toss an earth shock or two while standing next to you in the tank position. Since a warrior is basically always going to need that little bit of time to solidify aggro on the transition this can at least make sure that less people are dying to stray breaths as well as give you some additional rage from the damage that is now being directed at you instead of away.

We've always found that the best person for grabbing aggro in phase 3 is a fury dps warrior, going all out on her as soon as she lands.

Then again - we've had a warlock tank her for a good 15% before he got bored and lost aggro. Really does seem to be more about hitting her hard and fast to get her attention more than anything else.

There is a going theory that her aggro is reset every time she moves in phase 2. But the truth is nobody knows for sure how it works. Therefore, dont take any risks and make sure you have a full rage bar when she lands. As soon as she lands burn as much rage as you can in 3 seconds (HS spam, shield slam and sunder), switch to beserker, beserker rage and switch back to D stance. Pop a rage pot and start sundering away. You should definately have aggro by now, if not, there is not much else you can do without risking your death.

Another tip: Have a couple of warriors beserk rage on all the fears and make sure they run to the center as the fear is cast.

Tip: Another way for tank to enhance aggro at phase 3 transistion.

Make sure that the tank isn't at 100% health at the transistion. Right at the start, the tank pop's a Major Healing potion - the healing will cause extra, fast aggro at the fat chicken.

Rynas, Hunter with conviction
Arathor server

Putting on my conspiracy hat, I'm sure they've subtlely changed the agro behaviour for the phase 2 to 3 transition.

Blizzard have admitted that they tinkered with the deep breath triggers (afaik) because they buggered them up and it's the only explanation I can see for it.

Onyxia before last, I had a full rage bar, rended her, sundered her on the transition warning, shield slammed her twice, popped my Blacksmith trinket so I was never feared on the transition, sundered again, drank a rage pot, shield slammed/heroic strike etc.

She agro'd onto me imediately on touching down, I thought sweet, got this, whereupon she promptly went off and ate 2 mages and a warlock before I could get her back.

It's pretty easy to stick her :P. I clicked off my salv, put a 5 point rupture on her at ~43%, then as soon as she emoted dropped a 5 point evis on her. She was most unhappy :P

Another annecdote from someone who's never managed to really work this out.

We once tried having a warrior (hello) do literally nothing until she actually touched down. Didn't kill whelps, get healed, literally lay down and waited, just to see how much threat you'd need to build to get her from a definite standing start.

She took about 20 seconds to stick to me, having run after a druid and a mage and the stuck briefly to a Fury warrior. So that at least tells us that the total amount of aggro she has on any one person is relatively small, on that attempt anyway.

Onyxia Phase 3 still defies almost all logic thrown in its direction, so far as we can tell.

Pretty useful and informative stuff, huh?

We usually let one of our Fury warriors go all out on her (DW, no shield, full out unloading), seems to lock her down real quick. They have a good time competing on who can get her locked down the fastest.

It sounds like you're using berserker rage before she fears. I've had great success waiting for her to fear and then breaking it right away. She snaps right to me, and I just go from there. Also try getting her fully sundered before she lands. (But make sure your rage bar is full when she comes down).

We've always had random experiances with her landing tbh - we do the same strategy every week, with mages and warlocks dealing dps steadily in phase one. She usually takes off around 66% or so, and she has landed at anything from 40% to 23%, with no appreciatable difference.

The *only* thing we have noticed, out of all our attempts, is that she east the mages without the 3 piece NW bonus first in phase 3 when she's loose, out of all the mages, no matter what they were doing or what their job was in Phase 1 / 2.

We've also had her aggro a rogue who was in the whelp caves at the time, who hadn't dealt her any damage. He vanished, she ate someone else - and then went back to him. All the time tanks are wailing on her as usual.

TBH, I just think she randomly targets people until someone builds up enough aggro to overcome that - sort of an "aggro barrier" system. Once someone has that much aggro, she behaves like a normal mob, but until then, she kilsl whoever she feels like...

Certainly, we can't work out any logic to the people she does actually chase after in phase 3.

That's odd. We've never seen her land below 36%.

I'm fairly convinced that phase 1 speed is what influences landing in phase 3 -- we started with moderately slow dps in phase 1, and got landings around 38% on most attempts. When we bumped up the dps in phase 1 a bit, we started getting 40% on every attempt. Then when we had a new tank doing it (with less threat generation than our MT) and really slowed down phase 1 for two attempts in a row, she dropped at 36% both times.

The people that get hit in phase 3 for us are our top healer (frequent) or random warlocks/mages (infrequent, and when it's a mage, it's usually our top dps mage).

If we do moderate dps on phase 1 (hunters all-out popping FD every time it's up, rogues autoattack and feint, warlocks/mages wand, MT gets a 2k damage head start) and our top threat warrior is tanking, he hits her once in phase 3 and never loses aggro.

QFT. We one shotted her before 1.10, but the aggro issues now are making it a source of heartburn to our raid leaders. We have her lock on to healers that don't do anything through Phase 1 or 2 and DPS that stopped attacking her before she landed.

The aggro table looks more like the Beast's now, and it's irritating to have her lock onto people and wipe a side at 15% when the MT is the only one hitting her and using a healing rotation.

Edit: That is how we do it, but our MT actually gets a 2% of her total health head start. We've even moved to 3%, but it hasn't made her any less bitchy in P3.

We just burn her down tbh in phase 1, after the tank has 1 minute 30 of aggro building on his own.

We used to take breaks at 90%, 80%, 70%, and then they became breaks at 85%, 70%, until nowadays we just don't bother.

Has never made any appreciable difference to her phase 3 behaviour as far as we can tell, she still acts exactly as she feels like it in phase 3, whether we burn her in phase 1 fast, or take it nice and slow with lots of breaks.

I would *pay* for a Blizzard designer to come out and tell us exactly what causes her to DB and how her aggro works in phase 3. They should do that as a pre-expansion interview gimmic... :)

There's nothing weird about her land timing. She moves with regular intervals, and if she initiates her "move" script under 40%, she will land instead. So if she moves at 41%, you can get her very low before phase 3 starts.

I think 9% was our lowest landing. We had warriors grab whelps and spam execute. That was a fun kill, though i was a bit nervous that we'd kill her in the air and not be able to loot.

Our lowest was like 0,5%. She started yelling, then she fell dead to the ground. Looked really funny!

Our MT can pick her up pretty much flawlessly every landing now.

Personally I believe she wipes aggro at one of two points:
1) Every time she moves during phase 2.
2) Immediately before she EMOTES to land.

She certainly wipes aggro before her feet touch the ground, and this is where shadowbols and dots can pull aggro. I also wonder if it isnt possiblt to resist her aggro dump.

Our MT starts sundering at 40%, and using rend. Going all out as soon as CTRA throws out its warning, and he picks her up almost flawlessly almost every time.

Judia

Weird. We must just have the strangest run of luck; we usually get phase 3 to start around about the third time she moves, we just must have really consistent dps on it...

I believe she might never reset her threat in the whole encounter. The numbers from phase 1 + phase 2 vs phase 3 transition seem to match up. Previously i used to do nothing in phase 2, and regaining aggro in phase 3 was a chore, often taking 6000-8000 damage worth of threat to accomplish. The other night i tried maximising threat in phase 2 by beating on whelps, eating a deep breath or two, and then spamming sunder on Onyxia. Both times in the phase 3 transition, she snapped right to me and didn't leave.

It is rather anecdotal i admit, but it does make a bit more programming sense. Whenever a theory involves "well, he must do some weird move that just edits his threat list about now", it sounds a bit dodgy.

I still bet you a twinkie that she didn't actually move at any point below 40%, until she announced her landing. I'm pretty dang sure that the trigger for her movement script checks for current hp, and if it's <40%, it goes to the landing script.