Healing meme!

Kurn / / classes, druids, healers, paladins, priests, ramblings, shamans

Swiped from Miss Medicina:

Post this questionnaire, with your answers, on your blog. Pick the healing class you know most about (or is the focus of your blog) for the questionnaire, and then send it over to another healing blogger you know and love who heals with a DIFFERENT class. Include a link to the blogger who sent you the questionnaire, as well as a link to the blogger to whom you are sending it.

What is the name, class, and spec of your primary healer?

Madrana(h), holy paladin.

What is your primary group healing environment? (i.e. raids, pvp, 5 mans)

25-man raids.

What is your favourite healing spell for your class and why?

Honestly, I’m a bit of a sucker for Holy Shock. I’ve always used Holy Shock, even when it sucked. Particularly when volcanos would spawn on my face on the Supremus fight in Black Temple.

What healing spell do you use least for your class and why?

I think I use them all a lot. I use Holy Light most, Beacon of Light a lot… I think I use all my healing spells a lot.

What do you feel is the biggest strength of your healing class and why?

My Holy Lights crit for 20k. With Beacon of Light, I can drop those heals on two targets for a kind of ludicrous amount of healing.

What do you feel is the biggest weakness of your healing class and why?

Pick one: group healing or movement. Both suck. Glyph of Holy Light isn’t even a smart heal like Circle of Healing. :P

In a 25 man raiding environment, what do you feel, in general, is the best healing assignment for you?

Ideally, in a 2-tank fight, I should be assigned to one tank, who I shield and heal and have my Beacon on the other tank.

What healing class do you enjoy healing with most and why?

I’ve healed with all four classes — my paladin and shaman at 80, my paladin and priest at 70 and I have a 71 druid who is dual-specced tank/resto. But honestly, after months of standing there in front of Gruul and spamming the tanks and not being able to move lest the tanks die, when I got the opportunity to heal on my priest at one point, I LOVED it. I ran merrily around, casting Circle of Healing, Prayer of Mending and Renew around the raid. I’ve yet to try disc healing, though. I think I like healing with a priest the best, but I like being on a paladin most. I’ve got the throughput to get through a lot, I can cleanse 3 debuffs and I won’t get one-shotted by an add. Usually. :)

What healing class do you enjoy healing with least and why?

Maybe my shammy. I just can’t stop healing the tanks. ><

What is your worst habit as a healer?

I occasionally have trouble letting other people do their assignments. That’s to say, I’ll occasionally cross-heal. I mean, a lot of people do, but my reasons are generally because I don’t trust so-and-so to keep their target up.

What is your biggest pet peeve in a group environment while healing?

From other paladins: Idiots casting Sacred Shield over mine. From other healers: not respecting assignments. (Yes, I’m a hypocrite.) From tanks: blaming healers for their 2-shot death. From DPS: standing in fire/etc and then blaming healers for their deaths.

Do you feel that your class/spec is well balanced with other healers for PvE healing?

Honestly, when you take a big-picture view, yes. Paladins are solid at tank healing and can usually help two tanks at once, in conjunction with a disc priest’s mitigation, a holy priest’s occasional CoH, a shammy’s earth shield with a druid’s hots… Really, I think all five healing specs work very nicely together.

What tools do you use to evaluate your own performance as a healer?

If my target lived, I win at life. But I also check out WorldOfLogs.com parses.

What do you think is the biggest misconception people have about your healing class?

That we never run out of mana. I’m sorry, I used to chain mana pots in BT and I would still be doing so today if I could. There are just so many times when using Divine Plea is going to result in a tank death that it’s hard to use it on cooldown or at the precise moment when it’s most useful to do so.

What do you feel is the most difficult thing for new healers of your class to learn?

How to juggle Judgements of the Pure, Sacred Shield, Flash of Light’s HoT, Beacon of Light and use them all effectively.

If someone were to try to evaluate your performance as a healer via recount, what sort of patterns would they see (i.e. lots of overhealing, low healing output, etc)?

In a 25m-raid? Huge overhealing, good dispells/cleanses, Holy Light, Beacon of Light and possibly Glyph of Holy Light as my top heals.

Haste or Crit and why?

Haste. I’ve got 35% Holy crit, unbuffed, and am very close to the amount of haste I need for 1s GCDs on my gear. With Judgements of the Pure, Wrath of Air totem and Swift Retribution aura, I need 673 haste to hit that. I’m at about 640 or so, thus my choice of buff food is +40 haste.

What healing class do you feel you understand least?

Resto druids. I have my 71 druid, but I don’t know how to be efficient when playing it. Lifebloom is EXPENSIVE, yo.

What add-ons or macros do you use, if any, to aid you in healing?

Grid, Clique, clcbpt (tracks pally stuff).

Do you strive primarily for balance between your healing stats, or do you stack some much higher than others, and why?

All intellect all the time! Pallies get mana, spell crit and spellpower from intellect, as well as regen (through crit and through Divine Plea being based off maximum mana). There’s no reason to stack anything else if there’s an intellect enchant available.

Wow. Just… wow.

Kurn / / coliseum, general, healing, raiding, ramblings

Heroic Twin Val’kyrs down. Using the DUMBEST STRATEGY I have ever encountered in my ENTIRE LIFE.

The whole basis of the fight is that there are auras that you should switch to based on what’s happening right then in the fight, and the aura portals are in four spots (two for each) of the room.

But does my guild do this?

No.

On the kill, 3 of us got the light aura, 21 of us got the dark aura. (Did I mention we 24-manned it? No? We did.)

Those 3 were two hunters and a warlock in BT Shadow Resist gear, basically collecting white orbs and dodging as many black orbs as they could.

As I understand it, here are four abilities the twins use.

Light Vortex – surge of light, 16k fire damage to anyone not with light aura every second for 5 seconds.

Dark Vortex – surge of dark, 16k shadow damage to anyone not with dark aura every second for 5 seconds.

Twin’s Pact (Light) – light-coloured shield that people with dark aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

Twin’s Pact (Dark) – dark-coloured shield that people with light aura should have no issues killing, then interrupting the cast (which is a heal)

So, just by describing that, one would think that half the raid is light, half is dark, everyone switches on vortex, right? WRONG.

We healed through Light Vortex.

2 resto shammies, 2 holy priests, 2 holy paladins, 1 resto druid.

It meant popping two Divine Sacrifices that overlapped (even if they don’t stack) AND all four druids in the raid popping tranquility for their groups.

But, by golly, we healed through it.

And the shammy blew heroism at the right time. And they swapped DPS targets on time. And we won!

But it was pure luck.

The order of those four abilities (which happen once a minute, I believe?) is random. But they won’t repeat until the fifth time an ability comes up. And THAT is also random, I believe. So we only got one Light Vortex. Had we gotten two, we would have been SCREWED. I was ready to Divine Protection/Divine Sacrifice (which would have killed me) if I had to, but we got through without a second Light Vortex.

Some stats:

Effective raid DPS: 121,717

Effective raid DT(taken)PS: 50,469

Effective raid HPS: 50,966

RAW raid HPS: 91,732

And only 44.4% overhealing.

My RL friend, the resto druid? 9133 effective health per second. To my 4064.7.

Whew.

Holy Divinity, Batman!

Kurn / / paladins, ramblings

Just now, while chatting with my buddy X, or Al, or any number of other names he’s got, I realized that the paladin trees are FULL of spells and talents with Divine in the name. I mean, I knew there were a lot, but GOOD GOD.

Non-talents:

Divine Plea, Divine Intervention, Divine Shield, Divine Protection

Holy talents:

Divine Intellect, Divine Favor, Divine Illumination

Prot talents:

Divinity (does that count? I say yes.), Divine Strength, Divine Sacrifice, Divine Guardian

Ret talents:

Divine Purpose, Divine Storm

That’s THIRTEEN spells or talents that are “divine”.

No wonder I don’t feel good about going ret and doing damage. That’s not very “divine”, is it? ;D

Learn to play, nubs.

Kurn / / druids, facepalm, hunters, priests, ramblings

Okay. I’m going to sound obnoxious. I’m going to sound elitist. But you know what? I don’t particularly care.

People need to learn to play their toons before they group with other people.

Let me say that in terms the typical WoW player will understand: l2play!

What brought this on? I’m glad you asked. :P

I’ve been levelling a druid and my brother’s been levelling a hunter. Now, because my brother doesn’t raid four or five nights a week, he’s jumped ahead of me and is waiting for me to hit 71 before he comes back and works through the obscene amount of XP needed to advance. I was something like, 67 when he hit 71. I’m now 70. So I thought I’d go tank or heal Utgarde Keep. It’s an instance I’ve tanked before (albeit as a paladin) and healed before (again, as a paladin) so it’s not like I’m not aware of what’s going on, right? Right. And hey, I have like, 13k health in bear form, so that’s sweet.

So I went to LFG and got in for a last boss kill in Utgarde as the tank. No problem. We cleared from the second boss(es) to Ingvar and all went fine. I popped Survival Instincts and Barkskin appropriately, kept up mangle and demoralizing roar… I felt pretty good about myself.

I went back to LFG and got invited to a pug as a tank.

Of course, it took 20 minutes for even ONE OTHER PERSON to come to the stone, but anyways. There was a 68 disc priest (… who was gemmed for spirit and spellpower, when his dual spec is shadow, who ALSO hadn’t assigned 2 talent points), a 73 hunter, a 71 hunter, a 70 mage and myself.

I should have known that the huntards were going to cause a wipe. I should have known. But because I’m a hunter and not entirely a huntard, I figured it was all good.

Wrong.

Idiots had their pets on AGGRESSIVE and nearly wiped us by pulling right off the bat. We DID wipe on a pack just inside the entrance because, rather than, you know, MISDIRECT ME or FEIGN or ANYTHING, the huntards both managed to grab aggro while I was stunned, then died or feigned, and then the priest ate it.

The priest who, by the way, never assigned those talent points I pointed out hadn’t been spent.

So I was like, okay. That’s their one wipe before I log the hell off. And then one of the huntards was like “wtf tank”

And I’m all “Excuse me?”

“lol jk jk man scool”

><

So we move on and we’re in the room with the proto-drakes… and the goddamn nub 71’s cat goes and grabs two packs while I’m tanking three mobs.

Wipe.

And I was out of there.

So, to the idiot hunters: Pets on passive, growl OFF.

To the idiot priest: l2gem and spec properly, you moron.

I may just quest my way to 80. This is just painful.

Shocking.

Kurn / / gear, hunters, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Two posts in a single day. Good Lord, I know. What’s the world coming to?

It was a productive day. Went out and got my hunter the T9.10 shoulders with 30 Emblems to go with the T9.10 pants I got off Koralon a while back. Serpent Sting critting is hot.

Then went through Ulduar 10 with a pug and did FL, RZ, IG, XT, KO and AU, all for the first time on the hunter. So very, very, very weird to DPS those fights and that trash instead of healing them. Too bad we broke up before Hodir due to mass AFKs/DCs/etc.

Let’s see, what else… Did VOA 25 – no hunter loot. Did Ony 25 – no hunter loot, but I did win the head! So I got the Sparkling Onyxia Tooth Pendant to replace Pendant of the Outcast Hero. Pretty groovy, eh?

I’m at 264 hit rating and have replaced… I think it was 4 or 5 +16 hit gems. I’m cheap at the moment, so I only replaced them with +16 agi, but eventually, I’ll upgrade the T9 at least with +20 agility.

I managed to pull 5k DPS at some point today, albeit on trash. The Explosive Shot nerf has smacked me upside the head, so I’m only pulling about 4-4.5k DPS instead of like, 4.8-5.6k DPS (depending on available buffs, etc). I guess that makes sense, because hi, I’m in shit gear. ;)

Still, Explosive Shot dots are still critting, under ideal circumstances, over 5.5k. I tried Marks after the ES nerf and felt the pain of it and the fact that I don’t have remotely close to the amount of Armor Penetration I’d need to make a Marks spec work nicely. So even post-nerf, Survival’s working well for me. Or at least better than Marks. I find that I’m really accustomed to Survival, too. It felt weird to not be refreshing SS because I was using Chimera to refresh it.

Anyways, enough rambling. Productive day today. Maybe a ToC 10 on the pally tomorrow before the raid. (Incidentally, Tuesday raids have been dropped and all other raid days are now until 2am instead of 3am! Ecstasy! Maybe now I won’t be a freaking zombie!)

… wow?

Kurn / / gear, general, hunters, paladins, ramblings, ulduar

Holy crap, holy paladin tier bonuses that DON’T SUCK?!

  • 2 piece bonus – While your Divine Illumination talent is active, your healing spells are increased by 35%.

Oh my God. That is… fucking amazing. I’ve always viewed set bonuses that include talents as being something to encourage the class/spec to actually use that ability. I OFTEN forget to use Divine Illumination. Like, frequently. In reality, I should be using it on cooldown. Now this 2-piece T10 bonus is going to not only force me to remember to use Divine Illumination more often, BUT will greatly offset the fact that healing is halved when Divine Plea is up. This is a brilliant move. To date, we’ve had to use Avenging Wrath (which interferes with bubbling) to help mitigate that loss, or pop +spellpower trinkets and basically pray that we don’t have to cancel DP.

Especially considering the bonus WAS reducing Divine Favor’s CD by 60 seconds, this is a major improvement. I approve.

In fact, I consider this bonus to be just as strong as the 4-piece T9 bonus, albeit in a different way. T9’s 4-piece will encourage people to use Flash of Light and Sacred Shield more to get that FoL hot ticking away at double its regular strength. I mean, I can’t wait to get my 4-piece bonus, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be working hard to get the T10 2-piece ASAP, so I have a choice in fights. Do I aim for more healing via SS/FoL or do I aim for less panic about the tank dying? It’ll depend on the fight.

  • 4 piece bonus – Your Holy Shock spell causes the next Holy Light you cast within 10 sec to have 0.3 sec reduced cast time.

More encouragement to use Holy Shock? Another oh-shit use for it? Hm. My Holy Lights, raid buffed, are already coming in at about 1.2 seconds. I have 673 haste and then usually swift retribution aura and wrath of air and, of course, judgements of the pure. This bonus is probably not as amazing as the 2pc, but nothing to sneeze at, either. It’s not like you don’t WANT your tier, and this bonus will serve as halfway decent incentive to upgrade from T9’s 2-piece bonus, which is utter crap, unless you’re the only paladin in a 10-man raiding guild.

I’m really happy with the bonuses, for once. Can’t wait to see what the models will look like, although I’m going to predict something purple. I could really go for yellow, but I’m guessing pink/purple instead. After all, I got my wish for good set bonuses. Can’t have everything! ;)

In other news, about to go do Ulduar 10 with my hunter!!! I can’t remember the last time I was *excited* to do Ulduar…

Rounding up the last little while.

Kurn / / apotheosis, coliseum, facepalm, general, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

First thing… I tried Algalon for the first time tonight, ever. It was 25m. It’s a seriously fun fight. We only got through one Big Bang at most, though. The guild I’m apping to hasn’t killed him on 25m yet and only killed him on 10m for the first time tonight (after the 25m attempts were done). Still, I didn’t fuck up hardcore, so I’m pleased. Still, look at this damage.

[00:00:25.621] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 4639 (A: 7176)
[00:00:25.621] Madranah Flash of Light Tank1 +*0* (O: 6637)
[00:00:25.621] RestoDruid Lifebloom Tank1 +525
[00:00:25.854] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 24051
[00:00:25.854] Tank1 Necrosis Algalon the Observer 74
[00:00:25.868] Tank1 Retribution Aura Algalon the Observer 209
[00:00:26.028] Tank1 Frost Fever Algalon the Observer 353 (R: 88)
[00:00:26.164] Tank1 Retribution Aura Algalon the Observer 233
[00:00:26.343] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 7441 (A: 4659)
[00:00:26.343] HolyPally1 Flash of Light Tank1 +443
[00:00:26.714] Tank1 Plague Strike Algalon the Observer 1131
[00:00:26.726] RestoDruid Lifebloom Tank1 +1066
[00:00:26.897] Algalon the Observer hits Tank1 21430 (O: 2249)

And just like that, dead like dinner. My holy light was in the middle of casting and I just needed another half second to make sure it would land… Anyways. I didn’t make a fool of myself, which is nice.

As to the previous guild’s drama…

Continue reading “Rounding up the last little while.”

/facepalm

Kurn / / facepalm, raiding, ramblings, ulduar

Through a VERY odd series of events, I’m having to update DKP from my last guild on Bronzebeard.

Now, since I wasn’t actually at the raids and such, I’m having to go back through their World of Logs parses, along with various screenshots the tank officer sent me.

So I’m looking at a log from Ulduar, where they were doing Thorim, Hodir and Freya.

And, while browsing the log, I see that there was 630,000 damage taken from Biting Cold.

I scratched my head. Yep, just the one attempt…

1) Unnamed Resto Druid Who Doesn’t Know How To Play At All Which Makes Me Wonder Why She Was Even In The Raid: 108,454 damage from Biting Cold.

2) New Holy Paladin Who is Clearly a Moron: 65,148 damage.

3) New Shadow Priest Who, One Must Wonder, Seems To Never Have Done Ulduar Before: 62,135 damage.

4) Long-Time Holy Priest Who Manages To Look Good After That Bunch Of Morons: 39,534 damage.

5) Decent Resto Druid Who Apparently Needs To L2Move His Ass: 39,930 damage.

Seriously?

I just did Hodir this last Wednesday with the guild I’m apping to.

254,051 damage from Biting Cold.

1) Moron Hunter Who Was Dying To AOE All Night: 54,054 damage.

2) Dumb Enhancement Shaman: 48,052 damage.

3) Moron Of A  Mage App: 45,027 damage.

4) Pretty Decent Mage App: 26,270 damage.

5) “Senior” Holy Paladin: 11,226 damage.

Where was I?

13) Me: 2,944 damage.

Where was the resto druid in the raid?

18) My RL Friend: 584 damage.

The level of play is just a LOT higher on Proudmoore in general, I think. I feel badly for people on Bronzebeard.

Tales of patch 3.2.2, Onyxia and many failed pugs.

Kurn / / facepalm, guide, hunters, onyxia, raiding

Onyxia has been back in our lives since the servers came up on Tuesday. That’s about 30 or so hours ago.

In the last 30 hours, I have:

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a semi-pug with my hunter (and gotten the Dragonstalker Helmet after dying early on while pulling whelps off a priest)

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a full pug with my shammy healing (and been one of four people left standing — me, the MT and two DPS — because people don’t understand the concept of whelps, aggro and deep breaths)

– Killed Onyxia on 25m in a raid with my paladin healing with the guild I’m applying to (with nothing bad to report)

– Killed Onyxia on 10m in a pug raid with my paladin healing (whereupon I died and the druid in the raid apparently didn’t know what “BR” or “brez” meant)

– Wiped several times on 25m Onyxia on my hunter (I think it’s three different raids?) including one where one of the “tanks” had 30k health unbuffed and was wearing PVP gear

I know I need to write a post about guild drama and why I’ve ended up on Proudmoore, but honestly, that can wait.

HOW TO DO ONYXIA WITHOUT BEING A DUMBASS

It kind of astounds me that I feel I even have to think about writing this, but apparently, there are a ton of people out there who never killed Onyxia the first time around. I used to lead Onyxia raids. Granted, they weren’t altogether successful (due primarily because we would go in with 30 instead of 40 people) but I DID down her pre-BC and I have my Rhok’delar to prove it.

Step 1: Trash

If you’re new to the Onyxia encounter, you don’t know about her trash. Which is okay. But as with all new encounters, there are two ways of learning about them — researching and experiencing.

Onyxia’s trash consists of four mobs, called Onyxian Warders, and they are pretty easy to dispatch. Key points to bear in mind:

– They have a Cleave. Do not stand in front of them unless you are a tank.

– They have an AOE fire nova ability. Do stand at range if you can.

– Do attempt to pull one at a time. (Hot tip! If you’re a tank, do not stand over that hump in the tunnel, because your healers do NOT have line of sight on you! You’ll know the hump in the tunnel when you see it.)

Once the trash is taken care of, it does not seem to respawn within 20 minutes or whatever the old timer was. For this, we should all be grateful.

That brings us to…

Step 2: Lady Katrana Prestor, I Presume?

So there she is. Lying there on the ground in her lair. The environment hasn’t changed at all and most of Onyxia’s abilities haven’t changed. In fact, the fight is remarkably similar to how it used to be. Old-school raiders shouldn’t have any problems.

Phase 1

Your tank, presuming he or she is not a complete moron, will run in and turn Onyxia around, so the tank’s back is to the north wall and Onyxia’s back (and tail!) is facing the south tunnel where you came in from. If your tank is not doing this, your tank is likely an idiot and I urge you to hearth the hell out of there ASAP. :P

Once positioned, Onyxia in Phase 1 is pretty simple. Phase 1 lasts from 100% ’till 65%. Things for everyone to bear in mind:

– Standing in front of her is only for the tank. By “in front” I mean anywhere in front of her front legs. She has a 180 degree CLEAVE, breathes fire and has a wing buffet that bounces you quite some distance — which is why your tank should position themselves to bounce off the north wall to land, more or less, exactly where he or she was pre-wing buffet.

– Standing in back of her is for NO ONE. You hear me? NO ONE get anywhere near that damn tail! You get hit by her tail and it’s not some stun like on Sartharion, ohhhhh no. You get hit by her tail and you get shot over into the whelp eggs. Upon doing so, you will break the eggs. And in so doing, you will likely wipe your raid. So do not stand behind her.

– Melee (and OTs) should stand at her midsection, preferably closer to her hind legs than her front legs. OTs should watch for whelps to pick up.

– Ranged should be, you know, at range, and keep an eye out for whelps to DPS down when the OTs have aggro on them.

Phase 2

Phase 2 begins when Onyxia has hit 65% health and ends when she lands at 40%. She’ll be all “screw YOU guys, I’m gonna fly around and ruin you!” I think the phrase is actually “I’ll incinerate you from above!”. Don’t say she didn’t warn you.

Several things happen in Phase 2.

a) 20 whelps spawn from each side every 90 seconds. This can be poor. Give the OTs a chance to grab aggro before you AOE things. Healers should watch your healing at the spawn so you’re not ruined by 40 whelps right off the bat.

b) Lair Guards are a new twist to the fight. They’re a lot like Onyxian Warders. They ALSO cleave. They ALSO have a blast nova. And they also have this thing called “Ignite Weapon“. So that’s 25k damage to targets in a 5 yard radius on 25m and 17.5k damage to targets in a 5 yard radius on 10m. The trick is that Ignite Weapon can easily be dealt with by… that’s right, disarming them. The blast nova still sucks, but since melee have to be directly underneath Onyxia to beat on her, you can put melee on these Lair Guards to help disarm them and have them run out during the 5 second cast on Blast Nova. Basically, you want to burn these suckers down ASAP.

c) Onyxia needs to be taken down to 40% health primarily by the ranged DPS in your group. Due to the fact that she moves around a LOT, dots are here to save the day. That means every single dot you can think of. Whatever does the most damage the fastest wins. Ranged should primarily down the whelps whenever they spawn (after giving tanks a chance to get aggro) and then return to focusing on Onyxia. It’s best to refresh your dots right when the whelps spawn to ensure maximum damage done on Onyxia while you AOE.

d) Onyxia will be flying around the room, as I mentioned. She’ll also be casting two spells. One is Fireball and it hits people for 5-8k damage (10m/25m) and has a 10yd splash radius, so do /range 10 and stay away from people.

The other spell is, of course, Deep Breath.

When you see the emote that Onyxia is taking a deep breath, you have exactly 8 seconds to not be fried by it. What you need to do is this:

a) Look up.

b) Find Onyxia.

c) Run behind her or to her sides.

d) If it’s not possible to run behind her or to HER sides, run to your closest side of the cavern, without spawning whelps, please. Or, if you’re REALLY in trouble, you can iceblock or bubble through it. It’s a cone-shaped breath that doesn’t last too long, but if you take the full brunt of it, you’re literally toast.

Assuming your raid can handle the whelps and the Lair Guards and doesn’t get fried…

Phase 3

Give your tank Fear Ward or, at the very least, Tremor Totem. Strength of Earth or Stoneskin totems are fail in Phase 3. Shammies should be split up so one is in each group, assuming you have that many shammies. Tanks, then healers, then DPS should have priority on Tremor Totem. Why? She does a Bellowing Roar that fears you like a moron for three seconds. You’ll know it’s coming because the screen will shake just beforehand.

In conjunction with that, lava now spews out of the cracks in the floor. So don’t stand on cracks in the floor. Oh, and she still does EVERYTHING she did in phase 1. So watch where you’re standing!

Unlike classic Onyxia, 3.2.2 Onyxia no longer resets aggro between phases. She should come right back down to your main tank. MTs, you should be in position when Onyxia hits about 43-45% health so that she comes to you and positioning isn’t so much of a pain in the ass.

Then you burn her and collect your phat lootz.

Loot:

In addition to the helms (there are 3 different Judgement, Stormrage Ten Storms helms, 2 different Frostruned helms, 2 difference Transcendence helms and 2 different Wrath helms — all for different specs) and other gear she drops, she will drop an Enlarged Onyxia Backpack (Unique, 22 slots), an Ashen Sack of Gems (similar to Magtheridon’s gem bag, containing 1-3 epic gems) and, of course, her own head. Her head leads to a quest, which leads to some nice loot, which you can check out here.

But what about the Mature Black Dragon Sinew? Does Onyxia still drop it?

Way back in the day, hunters had a class quest for an epic bow, staff and quiver. To start the quest, you had to get the Ancient Petrified Leaf from Majordomo’s chest in Molten Core. He would always drop EITHER the leaf or the priest item for their quest, the Eye of Divinity.

But even without being on the quest, you could acquire the Mature Black Dragon Sinew (needed for the bow and the staff) from Onyxia. That’s what happened to me. I was in a pug Onyxia run and was the only (nub) hunter who hadn’t already gotten her bow. So I got the Mature Black Dragon Sinew and eventually got the Leaf and then got my bow.

Bornakk, a blue poster, has said that the Mature Black Dragon Sinew would still be available in-game, though probably not off Onyxia herself. WoWHead comments attest to this, claiming a drop off a non-elite dragon somewhere outside of BRD (possibly the Burning Steppes? That would make sense, as there are dragons from level 50-60 in the zone, and it’s a levle 60 quest.).

What this means is that hunters can still get their bows, if they so desire, which means my brother should start farming dragons for his sinew. :)

Heh.

Kurn / / healing, paladins, raiding, ulduar

Good to know that with 36,389 mana (raid buffed), I FINALLY have enough mana to not need saronite vapours on Vezax, normal mode.

And, for the first time ever, a raid group I was part of one-shotted Yogg. With 21 people. 5 healers. Regular mode, of course. But Phase 3 was upon on faster than I thought possible. Portal DPS must be sick.