Bizarro are currently working on this encounter and I thought I would share some of our thoughts and tips with you all

This is one of the most unforgiving encounters I’ve seen (I didn’t see a lot of H-LK but I assume it’s up there) which is made that much more unforgiving with the plague of high latency and the seemingly unended lag that oceanic servers seem to face on a regular basis.

In my opinion the fight comes down to two critical aspects;

1. Interrupts – Which has, for whatever reason been an ongoing issue for Bizarro in any encounter that relies heavily on this mechanic (Ulduar General is a great example)
2. DPS/Mana Check – By this I mean, it’s such a healing intensive encounter that sooner or later your healers will be oom, so do you have the DPS to kill the purty dragon before he rips your tanks a new one?

So this is a 3 phase fight, with each phase having some interesting mechanics within them (personally although I feel I’ve been grinding my testicles in a blender for 60+ attempts, I think it’s a cool fight is that healthy?)

Phase 1

Basically a  tank and spank in this phase with some OMGWTFWASTHAT abilities that you need to be aware of. Both Ony and Nef will be in the game and need to be tanks

Children of Deathwing (buff) – This will increase the attack speed of both bosses by 100%, this is easy enough to avoid by tanking the bosses on opposite sides of the area.

Our Phase our positioning is as shown below;

Onyxia is cross and Nef is Skull

Electrocute – This goes off every 10% of Nefs health that goes down and does a HUGE amount of unavoidable raid damage. It is important that leading up to a 10% health lot all raiders are topped off. It is also very important that you time your dps so that this ability wont go off with any other high damage abilities. It is for this ability that ranged and heals are stacked in the middle of the room to share AOE Heals like Healing Rain and Eff.

Ideally you will go through 2 Electrocutes in Phase 1 while Ony is being DPS’d down by your Ranged DPS (with a handful switching to Nef as required too). You should have Ony to about 10-15% as the second Electrocute goes off, once that’s done all DPS switch and finish off Ony to Trigger Phase 2. You should also keep an eye on Ony energy if she gets to 100% then SQUISHRAIDDEADED

Other abilities of note;

Onyxia – Electric Discharge – This done massive amounts of AOE damage to the raid (and gives your healers heart attacks) but is easily avoided by turning the boss so she’s facing the wall just prior and turning back after the Discharge is completed. WARNING – We found that sometimes the discharge stopped and then started again so get used to how long the ability goes for and make sure you dont turn her back too soon.

Onyxia – Tail Lash – Basically tough luck, you will get hit by this sometimes, it’s just gonna happen while the tank is stopping Discharge from hitting the entire raid

Nefarian – Hail of Bones – This ability will be cast 6 times and will spawn an Animated Bone Warrior each time, these should be picked up and tanks off to the side. As long as they are kept away from the dragons fire they will eventually run out of energy and die (they will be re-spawned in Phase 3 so this is why we want them off to the side so they are easily managed then.

Phase 2

Once Ony is killed Phase 2 starts, Nef takes off and everyone should get to their allocated Pillar. Ideally each pillar will have;

• 2 Healers
• 2 Melee Interrupters
• 1 Backup Ranged Interrupter (we use a floating, if someone is lagging etc then our ele sham goes to that pillar).
• Even spread of other DPS.

The floor will drop and you will be standing in lava, you need to get to the top and get onto the pillar in as little time as possible. I found with US latency I was getting up with 4-5 stacks, others seemed to be 5-6 and the bads were 7-10. Basically the more stacks you get the more damage you take by the abilities once you get up there.

Pro Tip: I struggled to get onto the pillar when just hitting space to jump up out of the lava, float up slower and wait for the platform to drop completely then do a single swim up and out onto the pillar. Also do not stand against the pillar, stand 5 yards away otherwise you’ll get trapped under the pillar lid thingymejiggy. It WILL take some practice but eventually everyone will get it.

Once you’re up, this whole phase is really about interupts. Again you are trying to get 2 Electrocutes, you may need to stop DPS on adds towards the end on 1 of the pillars but while all this healing and interrupting is going on range should be burning Nef as much as possible to push him through the 10% brackets.

Use your cooldowns, health pots, bandages, health stones, survival abilities, ANYTHING in this phase ESPECIALLY if interrupts are failing.

Interrupters need to get a rotation sorted and make calls over voice when they stuff it up so someone else can pick it up. If you have feral/balance druids get a rotation for Tranq going after Electrocutes. The ability you need to be killing is Blast Nova

So at the end of this Phase Nef will be around 60% hopefully.. enter Phase 3

Phase 3

Basically this Phase is now all about DPS and whether you can get the boss down before the Add tank(s) get overwhelmed or your healers go oom. We have 1 tank pick up the spawning adds and kite them along the path shown below with the Add Tank Healers tracking behind the tank (that means the tank is kiting the adds towards the healers not the other way around), while the other tank picks up Nef and moves him over to the side. We have dps and heals stack up out of the way as much as possible.

The kiting path is to avoid Shadowblaze, this will energise the adds and spread very quickly if it’s being touched by anyone.

If the adds get energy back at any stage then we have our trusty (hate them) mages to run out and freeze the adds in place to give our healers and tanks a little break.

So that’s the encounter and a run down of our strategy, for healers you really need to get your mana management perfect to pull this off. My strategy is;

1. Get an early Innervate off, ensure that you’re not clipping your buff though (i.e. you dont hit 100% too early or it’s wasting the regen)
2. We had 2 shams for most of last night so they were dropping Mana Tide on a rotation, this made it much easier but you want to ensure that your innervate is off and finished with enough time for you to use a bit of mana before tide goes off. Again about maximising your regen potential for the encounter. This is where communication is good, have your shams add a macro to let you know in your healing channel that Tide is being used. This will with practice allow you to get the most from Innervate.
3. With these two things you should pretty much be heading into Phase 2 with near full mana, by the first Electrocute you should have your Innervate back up again so pop it as soon as it’s available.
4. If you’re lucky enough to be on a pillar with a sham you may get another Mana Tide, if not you shouldn’t NEED it anyways
5. Pop your mana pot when again you can get the most out of it (you can probably leave this till about half mana), if mana is looking ok then save it for Phase 3
6. Phase 3 you will probably be healing pretty full on especially on Electrocutes, get mana back where you can and keep an eye on innervate you may get a 3rd one towards the end of this phase too

That should get you through the encounter, pretty much healing 100% if you’re smart with what you’re using Enjoy this fight, it’s pretty amazing in terms of using all your healing tools to their best