Onyxia
From Twilight Wiki
| Onyxia - Facts |
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(Boss)
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Onyxia is the main boss encounter located within Onyxia's Lair. She is the current Brood Mother of the Black Dragonflight.
This encounter consists of very minimal trash clearing to get to her, and a 3 phase fight.
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Video
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Abilities
Onyxia melees for about 12-15k on plate and is tauntable.
Phase 1
- Flame Breath — 18-21k (25-Players: 28-31k) fire damage in a cone in front of her. Two second cast.
- Cleave — 100% Weapon damage cleave in a cone in front of her affecting up to 10 targets.
- Wing Buffet — 21-24k (25-Players: 28-31k) physical damage in a 20 yard frontal cone. Ignores armor.
- Tail Sweep — 8-9k (25-Players: 12-13k) physical damage to targets near her tail. Ignores armor. Large knockback, often into the whelp caves.
Phase 2
Onyxia takes off at 65% health and drops all her threat from Phase 1. During this phase she has no specific threat table and will attack raid members at random. She can be melee'd underneath her hitbox from the ground.
- Fireball — 4-5k (25-Players: 7-8k) fire damage to random target in the raid and to anyone within 10 yards of the target.
- Breath — Onyxia emotes "Onyxia takes in a deep breath..." and about six seconds later all targets in a direct line in front of her will take repeated 4-5k Fire damage hits. The amount of damage is greater the closer to the center of the line of cast you are.
- Spawn Onyxian Whelps - At the beginning of phase two and about every 90 seconds after Onyxia will spawn 40 Onyxian Whelp's with 60k HP who melee for 500 or so on plate. 20 will come from each side of the whelp cave.
- Spawn Onyxian Lair Guard - Every 30 seconds or so in phase 2 Onyxia will spawn an Onyxian Lair Guard with 190k HP. This will cast Ignite Weapon which adds 25k fire damage to its melee attacks and gives them a 5 yard AoE, and Blast Nova which does 25k fire damage to targets within 10 yards.
Phase 3
Onyxia lands at 40% health. When she lands her aggro is completely reset, so the main tank must grab her as quickly as possible. She retains all her phase one abilities and gains the following abilities:
- Bellowing Roar — 1.5 second cast, 100 yard AoE fear. Three second duration.
- Eruption — During the duration of bellowing roar lava will erupt from the cracks in the floor. Being touched deals about ~5k (25-Players: 7-8k) Fire damage.
- Spawn Onyxian Whelps - Small numbers of the Onyxian Whelp's from Phase 2 will continue to spawn in phase 3.
Strategy
This encounter is considered to be very simple but requires a lot of attentiveness from the raid members. Phase 2 is the most challenging part of the fight to get through.
Phase 1
Phase 1 is a simple tank and spank phase. Onyxia will be doing damage exclusively to the main tank provided melee DPS watches their positioning to avoid her Tail Swipe. Healers should be off along the wall edges to her sides in range of the tank and keep the main tank topped off as best as possible.
DPS during this phase is suggested to be "light". The raid should save most of the high damage cooldowns for Phase 2 so that she lands more quickly limiting the number of additional mobs that spawn and the likelihood she will Deep Breath on the raid.
Phase 1 Positioning
The main tank will want to position Onyxia directly in the center of the room facing the back wall (opposite how she is facing when you start the encounter). The best method for the pull is for the main tank to just cut directly through her and spin her around. DPS shouldn't be touching her until the tank is in position and has sufficient threat established.
Ranged classes should be evenly spread out along the side walls as close to the back as possible without being directly in front of Onyxia. Everyone should be as far away from the entrances to the Whelp caves on either side of the room as possible.
Melee DPS classes need to position themselves in the middle of her body. You dont want to be too far forward as you might get hit with her Flame Breath or her Cleave and you dont want to be too far to her back as she can Tail Swipe and knock you into the Whelp caves spawning Onyxian Whelp's which can complicate things quickly.
Phase 2
When Onyxia hits 65% of her health, she will leave the main tank and start flying. Its suggested to do as much damage as you can during this 5-8 seconds where she starts to take off so that Phase 2 ends as quickly as possible.
As soon as she is airborn, 40 Onyxian Whelp's will spawn from both sides of the cave entrances in the room and aggro on the first person they come close to. These dont hit very hard on plate by themselves but there are a lot of them and they can easily overwhelm a cloth DPS or healer if not tanked. They can also start doing heavy damage if all of them are hitting the tank at once and taking too long to die so DPS should be focusing on AOEing these down as quickly as possible.
As soon as the whelps die, Range DPS should focus back on Onyxia. Keeping as much sustained damage on her (at least in her previous version) would minimize the likelihood she would cast her Deep Breath on the raid.
Every so often during Phase 2, she will spawn an Onyxian Lair Guard which needs to be picked up as quickly as possible by the tank and all melee DPS should focus it down ASAP. A dedicated healer should be assigned to watch the Off-tank and melee DPS while on these NPC's.
Everyone should also keep as far away from the Whelp cave entrances on either side as much as possible to avoid spawning additional whelps.
Additionally, everyone should also avoid getting too close to the entrance tunnel to avoid aggroing the patrols that were killed before the encounter. They respawn as soon as Onyxia is engaged to prevent people using the tunnels for exploit.
Handling Onyxia's Deep Breath
Every so often, and the ability is completely random, Onyxia may cast her Deep breath on the raid. It moves out along the floor of the room in a wide line in front of her and the closer you are to the center of that line, the more damage you take. Pallys can Bubble and Mages can Ice Block to avoid taking damage from this if they get caught with nowhere to run.
Onyxia moves around 8 points of the room during Phase 2, its random where she stops as well, she doesnt move in a perfectly organized rotation. The diagram below shows the points where she can be and where the safe spots are if she casts her Deep Breath. You want to run to the farthest sides of wherever she is facing to avoid taking damage. This is why the whole raid should be watching her position and where she is facing so that they can move as quickly as possible.
In addition to avoiding her Deep Breath, the raid needs to try and stay as spread out as possible to avoid spreading damage from her Fireball attacks to more than her target. Anyone she hits which is random will take 5k fire damage and anyone within 10 yards of that person will be hit for the same. Healers should do their best to keep everyone topped off during this phase.
The goal for Phase 2 is to take down Onyxia as quickly as possible to 40% health while managing the adds. The quicker she hits 40% the safer the raid will be and less adds will spawn. If she takes too long to reach 40% you may get overwhelmed with adds and it can cause a wipe.
Phase 3
When Onyxia hits 40% health she will drop down in the center of the room and begin her attack again. Almost immidiately when she lands she will cast her Bellowing Roar so its best that everyone makes their way to the Phase 1 positions just before she lands. One person if not the raid leader should keep an eye on her health and call out for the raid to get into position letting DoT's bring her down to the final 40% needed to drop her to the ground again.
Having a Fear Ward on the Main Tank is ideal, however if you have an Onyxian Lair Guard still alive, its better to place the fear breaking ability on the Off-Tank so that they can position them somewhere safe and avoid causing excess damage to the raid.
The main tank needs to grab her as soon as she lands to avoid her 1-shotting anyone else in the raid. Her aggro table will be completely reset from Phase 1, so if you have a Hunter in raid, using Misdirect on the tank as soon as she lands is helpful. DPS should also use this initial landing time to finish clearing out any leftover adds from Phase 2 while the main tank establishes aggro on Onyxia.
Phase 3 positioning is the same as Phase 1. The fight is basically the same now with the exception of her AOE fears, the lava damage that people can be hit with if they run through an erupting crack, and the occasional Onyxian Whelp spawn.
Ranged people will want to get as close up against the side walls as possible so that when the AOE fear hits, they minimize the chance of running through a lava crack.
Any anti-fear abilities or reduction abilities should be saved for the main tank and melee mostly so that during a fear Onyxia isnt brought out of position too much risking others being hit with her Cleave or Fire Breath. The tank should position her facing the back wall as quickly as possible after each fear.
This phase is pretty simple as with Phase 1, occasionally an Onyxian Whelp will spawn from the caves and aggro generally on the healers first, so DPS should burn these down as quickly as possible to avoid accidents.
The key to Phase 3 is watching aggro as soon as she lands and everyone getting back into position as quickly as possible to avoid any excess raid damage from the lava.