Onyxia 25man OT issues

[goretaur]

Hello Tankspot! This is my first post here, so I hope I have put it in the right spot! My question is regarding the tanking "requirements" for Onyxia 25. Here is a link to my armory: The World of Warcraft Armory

I was one of three tanks in this raid, one being a super geared DK who was main tank, super geared pally who was OT, and lil ole me who was an OT. Now despite me accidentally taunting Onyxia on Phase 1 and killing all the rogues (LOL), (hey i was trying to taunt a whelp, sue me), I had some difficulties in Phase 2.

I was assigned to OT the Adds that come out of the entrance during P2. The problem was... the heals were failing to keep me up. I read some strats and was using disarm on the adds, and I never died to the flame breath, but the healers could not keep me up. They eventually kicked me from the raid saying my gear sucked...

MY question to TankSpot is... should I not be pugging Onyxia 25? Any advice is appreciated.

[Phathead 009]

Unfortunately I don't think you're geared for Ony 25. Consider that since this raid drops ilevel 245 gear, it's on par with TOC 25 in terms of dmg and gear requirements. While you have a decent tanks set so far, your gear is more at the stage of late naxx 25 / early Uld 10 in terms of overall level. I would say if you want to OT guardians as a warrior in Ony 25 you should at the very least be geared in T8.5 level gear, which is totally doable with just Emblem of Conquest badge grinding.

Also, how long was it taking to DPS down the guardians. Disarming keeps them from using ignite weapon and flame nova, but unless you are killing them in the time of a single disarm, or chaining disarms with other warriors/rogues, then there is a chance that once they get their weapon back they are igniting it and starting to hit you for around 18-20k. I'm guessing fully raid buffed you are not over 40k health, so it's very easy for a guardian to 2 shot you with a buffed weapon if it's not getting burned down fast enough.

I'd say for Ony 25 as OT, you need to be at around 34k+ unbuffed health, and have ilevel 226 or better for all major armor pieces (the ones you can fill with emblem of conquest purchases). Additionally I would try to push your dodge up a bit more. It's a better avoidance stat than parry, and 20.61% is low for an OT trying to do Ony 25.

Also, if you are only OT'ing the guardians, make sure you are effectively using your cooldowns. You'll probably get 3-4 guardians during phase 2, so you should shield wall one of them, last stand one, and enraged regen one, which will lighten the load on your healers.

[goretaur]

Thanks for the response! Yeah I figured my gear wasn't up to par, given the healers hard time at keeping me up. There were other factors going on, the Adds weren't dying fast enough and I was trying to tank two at the same time etc. Use of cooldowns is a good idea as I was using them, but when tanking two adds with my gear= swift death. But as always... I am steadily working on my badge gear! Thanks

[Regill]

If two guardians are up, your dps is slacking. No reason for each not to die before the next comes out.

One thing though. First night I did onyxia was with my guild. I was tanking guardians and pretty much ignored the damage they did, ignored the abilities, and generally facerolled through. 2nd week I had to pug onyxia (missed the guild run), and was dropping cooldowns left and right tanking guardians watching my health bar in horror, wondering where my heals were.

Bottomline: pug healers are terrible as a general rule.

[Skaggi]

Ah well... and nobody thought it would be a good idea to let you tank whelps instead of the big hitter?

Shame...

I tend to agree that you could gear yourself a little better (there's lots of 'free' gear floating around) but nevertheless you should be able to tank one side of whelps with a dedicated healer, smart cooldown usage and threat management, but that will be depending on your skill then and not on your life bar which is at the moment a little short for that job.

Cheers!
skaggi

[Shortypop]

Your hp is probably a little low but I would still ask to tank the big adds rather than the whelps, as a warrior and the way they "dribble" out of the sides over time picking them all up without a DnD/cons type "staying" ability can be tricky. I'd make sure you know who your designated healer is and make sure you stay in range of them, we always kill them as they spawn to decrease incoming damage, so you should only have to deal with one at a time and don't be afraid to burn through your cds (you won't need them in P3 anyway).

[Zothor]

Easy Conquest badges have been out for months now... along with the stupid amount of easy tanking loot in Heroic and normal TOC... it's simply not acceptable to be wearing replaceable ilvl 200 gear if you want to be taken even vaguely seriously. Badge gloves, IMMEDIATELY. Heroic TOC 5 until you get the shoulders and ring, like YESTERDAY. Valor badge bracers should hve happened BEFORE the patch! They're BOE, buy them in cash or with your main if you have to, but get them.

You should decide now if you want to be a tank for the long haul. It's the single most gear demanding role in the game, and you simply can't cut corners. You're missing shoulder, chest and bracer enchants, and frankly your weapon enchant says more about your effort level than anything.

Tanking isn't easy and it's not cheap. Pugs generally get carried by half a dozen players, and two of those people almost always have to be at least one very good tank and healer. If you're going to pug as a tank, expect this kind of thing, especially if you're not committing 110%.

[Phathead 009]

@Zothor - Chill out dude, it's just a game. You can give him advice on his gear without being a dick about it.

@goretaur - Regill makes a really good point - you should never be tanking 2 guardian adds at the same time. Most or all of your dps (yes ranged too) should be switching to these guardians once the OT has them locked down and focusing them to death. In the Ony pugs I run, these adds usually die in about 12 seconds (using the 10 second disarm timer as a baseline). I believe they spawn 30 seconds apart, so if you have 2 of them up at once, it means your DPS is either taking almost 3 times as long to kill them as they should, or the ranged DPS is just staying on Onyxia, which doesn't really work with the addition of the guardian adds and their flame nova.

[theholyfx]

25 man ony does not require ulduar 25 man gear. An ulduar 10 player is more than capable of doing Ony 25 man. And when you consider ulduar 10 gear is only 6 ilvl above naxx 25 gearing, there isnt a lot of change even to that gear level.

[goretaur]

Thanks for the responses fellas.

Zothor: I agree with what you are saying, and I am working on my gear. If you take a look at my armory now you will notice I have gotten the badge bracers (which took me a long ass time to save up for btw) and they are enchanted, and I am still doing the daily heroics everyday so I can upgrade my shoulders, since I'm fairly casual and don't have 4+ hours to dedicate to raiding every night of the week. And to your comments about TOC gear, I am wearing a lot of it minus the shoulders which I have never seen drop, because I always get the paletress! And fyi- I just recently started playing again for like 3 weeks after a 3 month long break so I don't have hundreds of thousands of BoC's laying around. I don't understand your comment about my weapon enchant, as I am trying to reach the hitcap (I thought hitting the monster was good no?)...

I read blogs like tankingtips.com and a few others, and supposedly the reg TOC gear is good although it is iLevel 200. Should I replace them immediately with badge gear?

About the shoulder enchant- I do enjoy the PvE part of this game very much, but I hate doing dailies and quests, so I will NEVER have the Sons of Hodir enchant. Call me a noob all you want but doing mindless boring quests are lame. Maybe I should quit the game since I need to L2P? OR- i could grind the quests to get friendly and just buy my way to exalted with relics? haha. Maybe then people will think I'm l33t!

[Phathead 009]

I have the base level shoulder enchant, and the grind to get to Friendly with Sons of Hodir is not bad at all. I cannot ever see grinding myself to exalted with them for an extra 5 dodge rating and 5 stamina (it's like 50hp and .1% dodge), so don't worry about going for the purple enchant, the blue level one will do just fine. I have never had anyone complain about me not having the epic SOH enchant in all my time playing WoW as a tank.

The ilevel 200 stuff from TOC is ok, but there are some nicer ilevel 219 pieces that are better, and the ilevel 226 stuff from Emblems of Conquest is definitely an up over anything ilevel 200 from TOC. You don't have to upgrade it all tomorrow, but I can't see any reg TOC pieces worth keeping over the Conquest badge gear. Like you, I am a very casual raider who plays maybe 25 hours a week max, so I did the same thing. Start with drops, upgrade fully through conquest badges, then start saving up your triumph emblems to get the next level of stuff, all while pugging Ony 25 and TOC 10/25 to hope for some ups there too.