Advice on Ony 25?

[Evassara]

Last night I was in an Ony 25 Pug.

Fully buffed I had around 42k HP, 28k Armor, 31 Expertise, 7% hit, and 51-56% avoidance.

I've tanked Ony 10 with no problems but I've noticed that the damage was substantial when tanking Ony 25.

I was taking 20k hits quite often from cleave and physical hits.

I was better geared than the other two paladin tanks but what I noticed it was easier for the Healers to keep the Paladin up rather than me.

I know the two obvious things that would help in this situation is Health and Armor to reduce incoming damage and have more hitpoints to deal with incoming damage.

I dual wield but I don't think Parry Gib was an issue.

For Ony and some of the other newer bosses it just seems like Tanks with block are better equipped to tank those fights since they will be taking less damage due to mitigation with block.

Any ideas on how I can better handle that situation? Things will be much easier for DW Frost DK when 3.3 comes around since Blizzard seems to be pushing us away from avoidance in favor or pure health.

[Fealthas]

Currently Paladins take the least amount of damage while tanking and I personally have never seen a DW DK tank last long on any fight. Ony hits decently hard on my druid but I soak alot of damage. Im thinking your health might be a little low for MTing Ony 25 but I may be wrong.

[Theotherone]

These days being a Frost DK is about learning to manage your cooldowns and take care of yourself with all the tricks you have. 1 min on Unbreakable Armor and 2 min on IBF means you have to stagger wisely. I find myself raising my ghoul at a time in fights when I think I'll need to sacrifice to get some health; I use Blood Strike more often to get that little bit of health restored and I'm happy to pop Army of the Dead when I feel a 25% reduction in damge would do me good. Rune stirke a lot to proc my Sigil. It's about playing smart, the days of DK's being able to take large amounts of damage by just standing there are over.

Frankly, though, why would you MT Ony unless you were the tank closest when she came down - and you should be fine on her if that's the case. However, I find I'm best suited for Whelp/add duty with DnD, HB, DG and Pestilence to spread the love around and BB for more multi-target aggro.

[Evassara]

Well I had equal HP to the other two tanks and my avoidance and threat was much higher than the other two.

I'm guessing that Ony is similiar to many other new fights Blizzard has created like ToC where Avoidance is completely ignored in some situations.

It was a noticeable difference in the amount of damage being taken by me and the lower geared paladin. I guess block is key for that fight.

[ghromorth]

You gotta learn when to use your cds properly (not saying you aren't 42k tells me you have played a lot) but we learn everyday something new , i use AMS for breaths, when i see that my health its coming too low i use IBF, and every minute i use UA, ghoul cd its awesome(summon him when your other cds are down). Onyxia hits like a truck(well not that hard) and healers are used to easy heal a paladin (more healing recieved and "oops sry i didn't heal you, revive your self plz" cd). If you pugged it, ask for a pally MT, if its your guild... tell em to heal you like men .

Note: I was able to tank magnataur in togc25 with 4 stacks w/o dying... you see sometimes its a healer issue (ony hits like 100% less than that guy)

[Evassara]

You gotta learn when to use your cds properly (not saying you aren't 42k tells me you have played a lot) but we learn everyday something new , i use AMS for breaths, when i see that my health its coming too low i use IBF, and every minute i use UA, ghoul cd its awesome(summon him when your other cds are down). Onyxia hits like a truck(well not that hard) and healers are used to easy heal a paladin (more healing recieved and "oops sry i didn't heal you, revive your self plz" cd). If you pugged it, ask for a pally MT, if its your guild... tell em to heal you like men .

Note: I was able to tank magnataur in togc25 with 4 stacks w/o dying... you see sometimes its a healer issue (ony hits like 100% less than that guy)

I do try to use my CD's for UA, IBF and AMS as much as possible.

I was taking 20k for cleave and physical hit from Ony in 25 man which seems excessive.

At least with ToC and Gormok the Impaler you don't take that much physical damage it's more from the Impales which is semi predictable.

Next time I go I need to log the fight so I can analyze it afterwards.

Thanks for the advice given.

[Bovinity]

42k fully buffed is pretty low for Onyxia 25, honestly. She does hit really hard sometimes, and melee + breath + lava + feared healers can be a dangerous situation.

It sounds like playwise you're doing everything right, I'd try to focus on beefing up your EH a bit.

Block honestly isn't the big deal that you seem to be thinking it is for this fight. For whelp tanking it's great I'm sure, but for tanking Ony it's not going to give the huge amount of mitigation you're attributing to it. Especially when you consider the phase 3 breath/melee/lava/fear crap that is about the only "real" danger to the tank.

Unfortunately the answers are generally pretty simple and pretty much the same for every tanking question right now in current content. Stamina, stamina, stamina. =O

[ghromorth]

I was taking 20k for cleave and physical hit from Ony in 25 man which seems excessive.

At least with ToC and Gormok the Impaler you don't take that much physical damage it's more from the Impales which is semi predictable.

its not excesive, and gromok its a lot of physical dmg (impalex3+one of his hits), last time i went there in heroic 25 (last tuesday xD) hit hitted for 22k reg hit and impale for 19k-22k i think thats not excesive, its normal ony hits me for like ~19k but i have a litle bit more armor than you

[Tengenstein]

Yeah Ony's a bitch in P3; i have about 47K health buffed and in one of my off tanks said something whether he should use WotF to break her fears, and i said no, wait till i die. of course the pally MT healer starts asking why am i gonna die, at which point she fears, my zerks on CD, so's my WotF, and me and the pally run straight towards each other, getting him cleaved, and dead. oh well carry on. the dead pallies still telling me i'm not gonna die, i'm still telling my OTs to get ready to pick her up, and then I go splat the warrior OT picks her up, but cos he's broken the fear he gets no healing and has no hots ticking goes splat too, and then the DW DK picks it up and slowely dies. leaving onyxia to die while being kited by hunters.

she kills tanks, end of.

[Mert]

Not for epeen, but simply to add comparison into the coversation, I'm a Prot Paladin at around 51k HP, 58% avoidance and 31k Armor (all when fully raid buffed) and she can still cause a few scares for me, especially in Phase 3 where she just loves to fear me then hit me in the back of the head

Having said that, I've not had nearly the trouble with tank deaths in this fight that others have described, so I wonder if it is (sadly) simply a matter of having enough HP to comfortably soak two hits in a row and nothing more. I've not noticed Block doing anything spectacular when tanking Onyxia (though I'm not unhittable in my MT set). A nice block set is the I win button for the Whelps though - you can pretty much tank all the whelps for the duration without worrying about anything other than picking them up, heh.

[Evassara]

Not for epeen, but simply to add comparison into the coversation, I'm a Prot Paladin at around 51k HP, 58% avoidance and 31k Armor (all when fully raid buffed) and she can still cause a few scares for me, especially in Phase 3 where she just loves to fear me then hit me in the back of the head

Having said that, I've not had nearly the trouble with tank deaths in this fight that others have described, so I wonder if it is (sadly) simply a matter of having enough HP to comfortably soak two hits in a row and nothing more. I've not noticed Block doing anything spectacular when tanking Onyxia (though I'm not unhittable in my MT set). A nice block set is the I win button for the Whelps though - you can pretty much tank all the whelps for the duration without worrying about anything other than picking them up, heh.

I'm just not familiar with the Block mechanic to reliably form an opinion on it obviously, it was just an assumption because of my deficiency (Damage Taken).

I can tank the Whelps amazingly well and require very little healing.

So for fights where there are alot of mobs possibly from all sides which is better Avoidance or Mitigation/Block? My avoidance is currently around 56%.

Just trying to get an idea if I should be on Whelps next time of the big adds

[Bovinity]

That's more than enough avoidance, really. Like I said before, what you need to focus on now is your EH because honestly 42k fully buffed is very low for 25-man T9 content. Doable, but still very low.

[MellvarTank]

I agree with all that has been said. Basically, during phase 3, you have to be able to take 2 (sometimes 3) hits without heals, and it usually totals to something like 20k, 16k, 18k (not exact, I don't watch the numbers that closely). Essentially, you need to rely on Hot's during this time, cooldowns, and fear totems. This is probably one of the few fights where warriors have a slight advantage on account of berserker rage, but the cooldown is long and can only be used 1 out of every 2 fears... not to mention this also won't save you if the healers are feared.. so only "slight" if at all.

I really don't think block has much to do with this fight either. In reality, wing buffet hits 20k, breath hits for around 20k, and cleave hits for 18k (give or take a few thousand). Block will not save you in this fight, but more EH will.