An Onyxia Tale

Last night, my guild geared up for another run at Onyxia. We had already downed her three times and the encounter is getting a little old, but it is anything but mundane.

I'm not sure I told you a lot about this encounter. If I have, please feel free to skip this next paragraph, if not, read on.

Onyxia's Lair is a 40 man raid instance that when done correctly and well can be completed under an hour. It has three parts to it. The entranceway, the lava bridge and the Onyxia Encounter. The entranceway is empty and dark and you just run through it to get to the lava bridge which contains 4 monsters, called Onyxian Warders. After you kill those 4, you run and face Onyxia. The Onyxia encounter consists of three distinct phases and a 4th phase that some call a phase and others don't but I do. In phase 1, she merely tries to swipe at you and every once in a while does her flame breath which can do enough damage to kill any cloth wearing casters (and leather). She also has her all powerful tail swipe which once led me to scream "tail... tailll... TAIL!!!" when I was within range (amusing). When you get her down to 65%, she goes into phase 2 which is when she runs across the cave and goes airborne, rendering melee combat useless and has her "deep-breath" attack which will kill you if you're caught in the middle. It ordinarily does 3200 non crit on the edges, over 4000 in the middle (that makes a crit for over 6000 damage! I have ordinarily on these raids about 4700 hp). She also spawns in her "brood" or "whelps" which are annoying but can be dealt with. When you get her down to 40% she starts lowering herself to the ground and she starts phase three which has mostly the same attacks except one. She fears you and can cause you to run into the whelp caves which cause more whelps to spawn. Also the floor of the cavern erupts with lava shooting out which deal 600 damage to you when hit. The "phase 4" occurs when she gets at 5% and is so small and once you get there, you can easily deal with it. She continues doing phase 3 but her regular attacks deal 50% more damage and come 50% faster (the way to think of this. If she has 100 dps (damage per second) when she's in phase 3, she deals 300 damage over 3 seconds. In phase 4, she deals 600 damage over 3 seconds). However, if people use the appropriate abilities. This can be rendered meaningless for a short while, giving your mages and rogues a chance to kill her before she resumes.

So last night we go in with 37 people. Phase 1 goes for the most part, smoothly and we get her airborne and in phase 2. Phase 2 is like waiting for certain doom. You know you are almost guaranteed to get a deep breath and u must run when it comes but until then you wait for that instant when you hear people yell "DEEP BREATH!!! RUN TO....etc." and then you pop a greater fire protection potion and hope that you will be saved. Well when it came, (when she was at 49%) the guy calling it out yelled that the SW, NE parts of the cave were safe(for her attack is linear, when she does it, she does it in a straight line that she is facing). I somehow, come to conclusion that I will die there (still not sure how I knew this) and run to the NW instead (hmm right into her path). I get hit but not "nailed" so my fire protection potion and good luck save me. However, the people in the SW were not so lucky. True, the SW was safe but getting there, it turned out, was a death trap. We lost about 15-20 people. I watch my friend(who's a priest) and wait to battle rez the guy, bringing him back and giving him a chance to save the rest of us by rezzing other people. When she hits 42%, I battle rez him, and he sits down, drinks up and starts rezzing. Meanwhile, Onyxia has hit 40% and hit the ground. She starts mass fear and somehow I manage to get up on the ledge that keeps me away from the lava spouting up out of the floor. And then, disaster strikes. She decides that she doesn't like our main tank anymore and goes after a mage, taking out the right half of the raid (oh yeah, the raid is split into halves to help in whelp management and prevent a full wipe if this happens). We're getting people back up on the left side, we still have about 20 people up thanks to rezzes. Things look bad, but the day is not over yet. I am still confident that the day will be ours. Right when things start to perk up, Onyxia once again loses interest in our main tank and attacks the main healer on the left side of the raid. To this moment, I still have no clue why. I don't know whether I had some resistance left to my Fire Protection Potion. I don't know if the Gods smiled on me, but when the rest of the side died, I lived. I take stock of the situation. 31 people lie dead. 6 are alive. Me, the main tank, a priest, a paladin and 2 other warriors. Paladins have an interesting talent called "Divine Intervention" basically, once an hour, the paladin can cast this, which causes his own death but brings the target out of combat, which allows them to drink, eat, or resurrect people. The paladin casts this on the healer and then I hear something over the speakers I will never forget.

"Komite, DI (Divine Intervention) Hallour. Cem (me), you have to keep Dave (the main tank) alive long enough for us to get some people up. You are the ONLY healer still in combat."
I swig a major mana pot. I have 4800 mana to keep the main tank alive with for 2 minutes. And I do the only thing I can do. I heal for my life. I heal for the main tanks life.

You never realize how little 4800 mana is until you are told to keep someone alive for 2 minutes with it. So while people rezzed the dead (aside: one of the paladins during this tried to actually resurrect me while I was alive. I think I died from laughter.) I healed and I healed some more. At 2 points through it, the tank got below 1000 hit points. Finally, after 2 minutes, I was down to 21 points of mana. I had nothing left but right then a priest stepped in and took over. It was done, I was relieved, and didn't even have enough mana to cure someone of a simple poison. I looked around and saw a big mouth staring right at me. The priest said something along the lines of "you're dead", but yet I survived with 96 hit points and then, Darkness enveloped me.

My spirit waited for one of those coveted resurrections that I had selflessly given my life for but it never came and my spirit left my body. By the time my spirit felt the need to return to my body, Onyxia was dead and I was given none of the loot. The hunters got the helms. The main gatherer got the backpack, and I was given nothing and returned to the peaceful forests in Ashenvale. Onyxia had died and for the second time in my life, I had kept the main tank alive for over 2 minutes solo.

The preceding story was told from the viewpoint of the storyteller, and may contain certain inaccuracies and "creative embelishments". However, one thing remains undisputed: Cemaran, a lvl 60 druid kept Hantavirus, a lvl 60 dwarven warrior alive for over 2 minutes by himself with no help from any paladins or priests until Cern, a lvl 60 dwarven priest arrived with reinforcements. Cemaran then perished for Onyxia got too mad at him since he had lost his Blessing of Salvation from the Paladins and did not receive a resurrection until the very end of the fight. Nor did he receive any thanks for his effort until long after the fight. And even then was ridiculed by his fellow guildmates "... And then Cemaran died." "Yeah, you try healing Hanta solo for 2 minutes without salvation and you see how happy that makes Ony."