Onyxia’s Lair is in Dustwallow Marsh, outside of Theramore. You should have a flight point to a camp near here from leveling. Inside this catacomb you will find the brood mother herself, Onyxia. After carefully calculating her plans for many years, she entered into a pact with her elder brother, Nefarian to take over for their missing father Deathwing and gain control of the entire flight. To this end, she has begun manipulating many mortals and dragons alike to her own ends and wields considerable political power over many groups.
Raid Build:
Don’t take this fight for a face roll, Buff up and have some fire resistance plans in place for the fight. This is not the best fight for melee dps so take as few as you can and the ones you do bring make sure they understand exactly why this isn’t a melee friendly fight.
- 10 Man: 2 Tanks, 3 Healers, and 5 DPS (as many ranged as possible). Use 3 healers if the group is doing this raid for the first time, this is a survivability fight more than a dps race. Once your raid groups have this fight down to a one shot run drop a healer and down her with 2 heals.
- 25 Man: 3 Tanks, 6 Healers, and 17 DPS (more ranged then melee). The 3rd tank helps a lot for adds in phase 2 but like the 10 man when your raids are downing her in the first few tries drop a tank and a healer and put 2 more dps in to shorten the fight.
Raid Leader’s Assignment Cheat Sheet (Scaled for 10 man fight):
- Main Tank: Tank Onyxia for Phase 1 and Phase 3 towards the back wall, tank whelps in Phase 2. Call for AOE on whelps as needed; if DPS is slow on Lair Guards you may need to hold a 2nd for a brief time.
- Off Tank: Dps Onyxia in Phase 1 and Phase 3 (tank whelps if needed), tank Lair Guards in Phase 2. Warriors make good OT’s for this fight because of their disarm ability.
- Ranged DPS: DPS Onyxia Phase 1 and Phase 3. Phase 2; AOE initial whelps, switch to Lair Guards when they spawn (every 30 secs), then DPS Onyxia. Help on later whelps as necessary. Stay away from the Blast novas from the Lair Guards.
- Melee DPS: DPS Onyxia Phase 1 and Phase 3. Phase 2; kill guards and whelps as they spawn. Run away on Blast Nova. Warriors and Rogues can help a lot by disarming the Lair Guards.
- Healers: Phase 1: All healers on Main Tank. Watch the pull, a knock back can put the tank out of range. Phase 2: Most healers on guard tank, One on whelp tank and raid. Most raid damage on this fight is avoidable, so if the raid pays attention the healers workload will be low but this is based on your raid’s skill at avoiding deep breath and Blast Novas. On Phase 3 have one heal raid plus Off Tank and best two on Main Tank.
Strategy:
Phase 1:
Tank will pull Onyxia to the back wall of her lair. Onyxia is tauntable, and has a bunch of frontal cone attacks (including a knockback) and a tail sweep in Phase 1, so DPS/healers stay to her sides. At the east and west of her lair is a tunnel with whelp eggs, which will spawn whelps if someone ends up over there (usually tail swiped)…the Off Tank needs to pick them up if that happens. If everyone positions correctly, the only person taking damage will be the MT. At 65% HP, Onyxia will take off and start Phase 2, which is the challenging part of the fight.
Phase 2:
This phase will start when Onyxia is down to 65% and end when she is down to 40%. There are 3 types of targets during this phase.
Whelps: Onyxian Whelps will Spawn at the beginning of Phase 2, on the left and right of the raid out of the tunnels. Have both tanks take a side, round them up when they spawn, then drag to the center for AOE. Watch for any that peel off you and head to a healer. More will spawn, roughly, about every 60 seconds. Whelp tank needs to grab these and group up for AOE. Melee will be tied up with Onyxian Lair Guards. Have ranged switch to AOE’ing whelps when needed.
Lair Guards: Onyxia will summon 2 Onyxian Lair Guards every ~30 seconds from the entrance to the Lair while in Phase 2. They use Cleave, Blast Nova, and Ignite Weapon, all of which are devastating to melee. Blast Nova is an attack that has a 5 second cast time and cannot be interrupted. When you see the cast bar start, move away IMMEDIATLY. Tanks can stay and the healers wont have a problem if they only have to heal the tank through the blast nova. If dps doesn’t move out of the Blast Nova someone will die so make sure the melee and ranged dps are very aware of this attack at all times in Phase 2. Tank them in the center of the room right in front of tunnel where you entered her chamber. So the healers and DPS need to stay away from this when dodging Deep Breaths, You don’t want ranged dps or healers running away from a deep breath and straight into a blast nova. Take down the Lair guards as fast a possible, having 2 Onyxian Lair Guards up for to long is not good, they hit hard enough in tandem to drop the tank quickly. In 25-man, assign a disarm rotation this will significantly limit the melee damage done to the tank. This phase is where 90% of the pugs will fail.
Onyxia: She will fly around, dropping fireballs on random raid members, A Deep Breath will precede this warning, “Onyxia takes in a deep breath…” When you see or hear that warning, STOP whatever you’re doing, and run to the outside walls of the lair not in the cave where the welps are. The deep breath will go in a line from her current location to the wall. If you have dps or healers that cant dodge this then you will fail at this spot most of the time. Ranged should be DPSing her down when not helping kill the whelps and Lair Guards that are up. Once you get her to 40%, you start Phase 3.
Phase 3:
Onyxia lands. Unlike the original version of the fight, Onyxia will no longer wipe aggro between phases, which means that your tank from Phase 1 should be the first person she goes to in Phase 3. Tank her in the same spot you did in phase 1. During this phase she gains an AOE fear, a light raid damage attack, and a few whelps will wander in from time to time. Use can use Fear Ward, Tremor Totems, Berserk or racial abilities for the fears. These are minimal the raid but can be a problem for the tank, when the tank fears into the raid she will breathe and take out raids very quickly. This phase isn’t too hard if the tank and healers are on point and focused, but the transition can be difficult. Typically there are still few adds floating around that need to be killed, healers are out of position, the raid-wide fear, etc. It’s a good idea to save your CD’s for the transition from Phase 2 to Phase 3. Burn her down and loot her corpse.
Loot:
She Drops Enlarged Onyxia Hide Backpack, Ashen Sack of Gems, Until 3.3 she will drop 3 Emblems of Triumph every time in both 10 and 25 man.
She will also drop Head of Onyxia every time, which will begin the quest – A Most Puzzling Circumstance. The rewards aren’t all that bad either. You can pick one of these at the turn in;
Polished Dragonslayer’s Signet
Sparkling Onyxia Tooth Pendant
Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman
The rest of the drops you can look at here for 10 man drops or here for 25 man drops. but the most enticing thing she very rarely drops is the Reins of the Onyxian Drake. it has a very low drop rate at 0.2%.
Achievements:
Many Whelp! Handle It! (10 player) This achievement requires you to cause 50 Onyxian Whelps to hatch within 10 seconds after she takes off for phase 2, and then manage to kill the boss! This will probably be messy in terms of timing and execution
More Dots! (10 player) – This achievement is essentially an Onyxia speed kill, requiring you to defeat the boss in a mere 5 minutes!
Onyxia’s Lair (10 player) - This achievement is awarded for simply defeating Onyxia in either 10 or 25-player difficulty.
She Deep Breaths More (10 player) - Defeat her without anyone in your raid managing to get hit by this Deep Breath and you will be rewarded with this achievement.
