Onyxia Lair Guide

Heres the Onyxia Lair Guide

Onyxia
Onyxia is a very nasty red dragon that has a
go and check out the entrance to the lair at any
will not be able to enter the instance until you
need to finish the faction based quest chain for
lair in Dustwallow Marsh . You can
point that you want, however you
are attuned to it. To do this you
your faction.

Onyxia's Lair
Onyxia's Lair is actually a very small instance made up of one long hallway and
her room. There are only a few guards to deal with before fighting Onyxia. Her
actual room is fairly circular and you enter from the south. On the east and west
side there are egg pits, that should be avoided. If someone enters, any eggs that
are touched will hatch and attack in swarms.

Onyxia's Abilities
Onyxia has many abilities that she uses throughout any fight with her. They
vary depending on the phase of the fight that you are in. The abilities are as
follows:

Phase 1 Abilities
Fire Breath - This is a breath of fire that hits everyone in front of Onyxia in
a cone shaped area. This damage is heavily fire based and hits for upwards of 4000
damage!

Knock Back - Onyxia has an AOE attack that can knock back everyone fighting
her. It throws people very far and has a nasty habit of throwing people into the
egg pits at the side of the room.

Tail Attack - Onyxia can attack everyone behind her, with her mighty tail. This
hits for very little damage (about 300) but causes a 2-3 second stun.

Phase 2 Abilities
Flight - In the second stage of the Onyxia fight, she takes flight and can only
be hit by ranged DPS.

Flame - While in flight Onyxia will breath fire down on random players. This
hits as a main hit and a splash damage hit. It does up to 3000 damage to the player
it hits and can do up to 1500 to anyone nearby.

Deep Breath - You are given a warning when Onyxia is about to use this ability.
She will say "Onyxia begins to take a deep breath". When / If this happens she will
stop and breath fire in the direction of the largest crowd. The fire will kill
everyone in its path. The only way to avoid this it to not bunch up and if she does
call out a deep breath attack to run to the nearest side away from her.

Phase 3 Abilities
Phase 1 Abilities - All of Onyxia's phase one abilities come back into play in
phase 3 of the fight.

AOE Fear / Lava Cracks - Onyxia does an AOE fear roughly every 30 seconds of
this phase. Just before she does the ground shakes and then the AOE fear occurs and
this also triggers the lava cracks to spew forth lava. When this happens it hits
you for a good amount of fire damage (roughly 500) and causes you to be feared,
which will make you run through other lava jets, causing cumulative damage.

Phases of the Onyxia Fight

 The Onyxia fight is made up of three separate phases. The first is when you
enter and lasts until she is dropped until roughly 65%. At this point she will walk
to the south end of the room and take flight, entering stage 2. This stage lasts
until she is dropped to about 40% health, at which point she will land and enter
the third and final stage of the fight.

Phase One Strategies

Phase one starts the Onyxia fight. When you reach her lair you will see her
resting on the ground. Take this time to buff everyone and ensure that everyone has
full health and mana. When everyone is ready have the main tank (MT) charge in with
everyone else following about 2-3 seconds behind. The main tank should run straight
past Onyxia pulling her to the far north side of the room so that she faces the
wall. The best positioning takes a little practice and is a few steps in front of
the wall. This is so that the MT's back is to the wall to limit the effectiveness
of her push back ability and so that the MT is the only one in front of her when
she breathes fire.

Everyone else should split to the sides and go to the north-east and north west
corners. There you will form 3 main groups on each side. Closest to Onyxia is the
melee group, waiting for the all clear to enter combat. Next is the ranged and
healing group, which should be right along the wall. Last is a small group the
furthest south on each side to deal with any whelp spawns. This group must have at
least one mage for AOE and is best to have another form of AOE as well (either a
second mage or a warlock), and requires healers. There should be no whelps in this
phase unless someone is accidentally thrown into a whelp pit. This group should
keep an eye out but can focus mainly on Onyxia with the rest of the raid, unless or
until a whelp shows up.

Once everyone is setup in their groups the MT healers should setup a healing
rotation on the MT to ensure he stays at full health, and that they can regenerate
mana in between rotations. Other than this healing no one should do anything to
Onyxia other than the MT. The MT is the only one to be fighting Onyxia for at least
a minute, or until she drops to 99% health whichever comes first.

At this point everyone can enter combat and start doing damage. One thing to
remember though is Onyxia's fire breath ability as it can do up to 4000 damage. I
say to remember this because if anyone draws aggro away from the MT and gets her to
face sideways to them when she breathes she will kill all cloth wearers (casters
and healers) to that side, very likely causing a wipe. Therefore it is VERY
important to not overdo the damage . This is not a race, this fight in phase one is
a slow steady fight, do not try to force it. Everyone should try for about 50-75%
of their max DPS output and anyone with a way to dump aggro should (IE: Hunters
feign death, Priests fade, etc) as often as they can.

Phase 2 begins at 65% so it is very important to let off DPS some time before
that and ensure that the MT is the top on the aggro list. It is best to let him re-
establish firm control by giving him another 60 second period of time some time
between Onyxia having 70% and 65% health. When she reaches 65% health Onyxia will
walk towards the south end of her lair and take flight, starting phase two.

Phase Two Strategies

Onyxia in Flight

In this phase you must ensure that everyone maintains spacing from each other.
Players need to move around to ensure they have range to Onyxia while she is
flying, however they must also ensure they watch around them and never form groups.
If Onyxia spots a group of players she will initiate her deep breath attack and you
have 5 seconds to get to the nearest wall (as above in Onyxia's Abilities). If done
correctly you will very rarely have to deal with this attack. In addition to
avoiding deep breath you have two basic goals. They are to keep the whelp spawns
under control and to do DPS as fast as possible to Onyxia to get her to land.

When Onyxia takes off, each whelp pit will spawn a large group of whelps that
need to be dealt with quickly. The raid should help the whelp groups clear this
initial spawning as fast as possible before moving on to help with Onyxia. After
the initial group is dead they spawn in regular intervals in smaller numbers that
can be dealt with fairly easily once you are used to them.

Ranged DPS on Onyxia

The second main objective is to get Onyxia down to about 40% health as fast as
you can. Ranged damage is all that can hit her while in flight though so it is
important to have everyone doing as much ranged DPS as possible. You should track
all debuffs and DOTs on her and ensure they are kept up so that you move through
this phase as fast as possible.

At roughly 40% health Onyxia will land. Starting at this point the MT should
follow her movements in the air so that he is right beside her when she lands. Also
just before this point all ranged DPS on her should stop so that the MT can re-
establish aggro when she does land. When she lands you move to phase 3 of the
fight.

Phase Three Strategies

In phase three everyone should move back to their phase one positioning with
one minor change. You should make sure you are not standing on the cracks that will
erupt lava. While this will not prevent taking damage it will limit it somewhat and
if positioned perfectly you will not be feared by it. Make sure everyone is spread
out and that the MT is back to the north end of the room.

At the end of phase two and beginning of phase three it is critical to hand off
aggro from the ranged leaders to the main tank. Once she lands the tank should
again be the only thing attacking her for a while to establish firm control just as
in phase one. The part that makes this tricky is the fear caused by the lava and
Onyxia's knock back ability. When Onyxia lands and while the MT is establishing
control the MT will in most cases get knocked back or feared at least once. This is
where things can go wrong fast. Everyone should stay of damage until she is back to
the Phase one position along the north edge of the room and the Tank has full
control. Usually a full 1% health drop as in phase one will ensure complete aggro
control for the rest of the fight if people are careful with their DPS.

This part of the fight should be very similar to the first phase. Keep your DPS
under control doing about 50-75% of your max and clearing aggro as often as you
can. The biggest change is the addition of the fear. Make sure you stay away from
the whelp pits so you are not feared into them and if you are call it out fast so
that the whelp groups can kill them quickly.

Onyxia Dead

When Onyxia is near death (last 5-10% health) she will enter a rage state and
her damage output goes up sharply. This is another key point to watch for and your
MT will need a lot of healing to stay up. Every healer in the raid should ensure
that the MT is staying up before putting heals anywhere else. Second healing
priority is the DPS players so that she actually goes down.

Conclusions
 Onyxia is more about long term patience than all out DPS and speed. If you
follow the strategies laid out here and have patience and practice a little you
should have no issue beating her. Phase one is insanely easy if no one goes crazy
on DPS. Phase two becomes easy once you figure out how to deal with the whelps and
keep up ranged DPS. Phase three requires some luck the first several times you do
it, and a ton of skill on the main tanks part to keep control while being feared
and knocked back. The hardest part of the whole fight though seems to be the main
tank regaining aggro at the end of phase two / beginning of phase three. Once that
part is mastered though the fight goes a lot smoother. In fact once the tactics
have been mastered I have taken part in raids defeating her with 28/40 people, and
have heard of 20 man groups killing her.

I am sure there are some other strategies out there that work as well, so if
you know of any that I am missing please feel free to let me know. What is listed
here is the tactics I have been exposed to in two different end game raiding guilds
(one Horde and one Alliance). I hope they are a help to everyone.

The most important thing to remember is that as a scripted fight this will take
some practice. No matter how accurate any strategy guide is, nothing can prepare
you more than experience. Expect a few wipes and plan for it. My guilds took 20 -
30 wipes before we downed her for the first time, and then continued to have
occasional wipes until we had downed her at least a dozen times.