Some people were talking about trying to hunter solo Onyxia in the comments, so I thought I’d give it a shot and post the video and how to hunter solo Onyxia guide.
It took a few attempts before I figured it out, and special thanks go out to the Cheerleader who not only formed a raid with me so I could get in to solo Onyxia and make this guide, but then stood outside the instance ready to 2-man it when I failed. Alas, I eventually succeeded and her waiting was for nothing.
Oooh, also when I’m doing tough soloing stuff, I have power auras set to warn me when Mend Pet is down — since I didn’t use it, I had a big yellow shield around me the entire guide. Sorry about that.
Here’s the video guide of me BM Hunter Soloing Onyxia:
YouTube direct link: Hunter Onyxia Solo
How to Hunter Solo Onyxia Guide
For the hunter Onyxia solo I used my standard extreme soloing spec, BM 57/12/2
I used a turtle, my preferred extreme soloing pet, with a slightly tweaked talent structure: This Build.
Here’s the breakdown:
Phase 1
Sent in pet, MD, sit there and attack. Watch aggro and FD resists. They’re a pain in the ass. Ony has a knockback, so you’ll have to position your pet so that its back is to the wall. I did this by just letting the pet get knocked back to the entrance once, then putting it on passive to come to me until it was about in position, then had it attack again.
You do not need to heal your pet at all — it’s passive healing will take care of all damage that Onyxia dishes out.
Onyxia takes flight when she gets near 60% health.
Phase 2
The hard part, when Onyxia takes flight. This phase lasts from about 60% health until Onyxia is at 40% health, and is the longest phase for the hunter Ony solo. There are two challenges here: Onyxia fire bombs, and the whelps that periodically spawn. The fire bombs in particular with eventually kill you. Your choice is to end the phase fast, or not get hit. I took the second route.
When Ony takes to the air, put your pet on passive so it’s near you. As soon as the whelps come out, sick the pet on the whelps and FD!! As long as you are feigning death, not only will the whelps ignore you, but Onyxia won’t toss her fire bombs at you.
FD is the key here. Let your pet get aggro on the whelps. Hit shell shield when it gets low. On this first wave there are so many whelps that you will probably have to get up and toss a heal on the pet, and volley them down. Then find a comfy corner along a wall to FD.
Your pet is now in charge. Have your pet damage Ony and take whelps whenever they come out. The whelps should be small enough in numbers that your pet can handle them alone with no need for heals. Use shell shield if there are a lot of them, and just keep plugging away at Onyxia.
My FD eventually ran out, and I had to hang out and shoot stuff for 30 seconds before I could FD again. The reason you take this phase FD is mostly because of the fireballs. Onyxia alternates between you and your pet. Your pet can take it with no need for any heals. You cannot.
Phase 3
Onyxia lands and you need to position her so she’s facing the wall again. Finish off any whelps left, and bandage if you’re low.
Stay against a wall so that the fears don’t put you into the lava bursts. Your pet will be feared too, and may end up in an odd spot, in which case you can just move to compensate. From here on out it’s easy, though with the lava I did have to toss the occasional heal on the pet. Not sure if it was necessary, but better safe then dead after 10 minutes of fighting.
And Onyxia is Dead!
And that’s all there is to it. Collect your 50g, stack of purples and blues, Onyxia hide bag, Onyxia head, and skin her for some scales.
Rock on Frost:D I had total faith in you:D (of course:D) It is very impressive what you can do:D woot woot:D
Heh. A reason to go back and try it again. I couldn’t get past phase 2 when I tried it myself the other day. Had to call in a healer. But thanks for the strat. I’ll be sure to try it out. It’s a nice test for a solo’ing BM hunter, and is a fun fight anyway.
Pretty awesome, good job.
Complete and total Awesomesauce.
I BOW TO YOUR WILL!
Awesome tactics explanation, I tried it earlier and one shotted her with your help. I did use a worm instead of a turtle, didn’t wanna level a turtle 5 levels, it worked beautifully.
I named the worm Frostheim
Well done frost
@ Buurmen:
But was it a White Worm?
Very nice and impressive congrats on the kill, last time we had 3 to take her down but i dont have your dps yet but working on it.
Less a comment, more a question.. What addon are you using for the sheild thing for petmend? That’s one thing I’d like to see, actually.. a list of really good addons for hunters. I look at addon lists and i’m lost..
It’s called Power Auras. It lets you customize screen affects when different affects proc or need attention. It takes some time to learn to use and customize to your liking, but can be one of the most useful add-ons for any class.
HAWT, SRSLY
Awesome! *goes to snag it*
I havent tried this yet, but would tossing 3 points into Great Resistance and taking them out of Grace of the Mantis and Spiked Collar help to deal with phase 2?
Awesome video, inspired me to try my luck against Onyxia too, with my faithful companion, Nuada the Warp Stalker. The first time ended in me dying, but on my second try I managed to nail her. Nuada needed a lot more healing than a turtle would’ve probably needed, but that just meant that I had to get up every few minutes to throw in a quick heal.
I just killed her after a couple attempts, it made me feel really good.
Also, on my first attempt, I feigned death, and as Onyxia kited my pet, it took him out of range, which meant disappearing and end of the encounter >.>
Thanks for the explanation…I was able to take her down in one attempt. There is no way I would have figured this out on my own. You rock!
Rose, my pink turtle, has now outlived her nemesis, the mighty Onyxia.
Took four tries – not because there was any trouble… just, the first time, with Onyxia down to 2% she knocked my pet out into the hallway. Thinks we’re running, ends encounter. Twice my pet despawned – might have been distance. But the fourth time… went very well. Suitably enough, got a Dragonstalker’s Helm for my collection.
Pet AI is infuriating me in this fight, from what I can see in the vid, i’m using the same tactics as you, but when I tell the pet to attack the whelps, instead of doing that, he flounders around for a moment and then comes and sits next to me, and I die from the firebomb damage. Yet if I leave him in defensive and dont command him to attack the whelps, he leaves them alone and eventually dies.
Tearing my hair out here desperately want to solo her before the next patch comes out, but after about 11 tries now no luck, i’ve only made it past the second phase once, and then I accidentally died.
Maybe it’s my gear? Fully heroic geared but maybe that’s not good enough? Taking nearly 2k dmg from a firebomb :S
It sounds like the problem is that your pet isn’t attacking, not your gear (which is low).
When I’m FD in phase 2, I manually target the whelps and click on the pet attack (cntrl+1) to manually send him in to fight the whelp (also have pet on defensive – or aggressive – is a must). The only reason your pet should return to you is if its target is bugged and evading – and if he’s on aggressive or defensive, he should still go back to attacking Onyxia.
With 3.2.2 getting closer and closer i got in the mood to watch the Onyxia Wipe Video again for some laughs. Before going to that video I decided to watch some hunter solos of onyxia. That got me inspired to solo her before 3.2.2 comes out. So I googled a guide and found this. I havn’t tried yet, all i’ve done is respecced my offspec to fit the BM spec given here.
Since this is BM and I’m MM, I assume I want to be gemmed in AP like a normal BM hunter. I assume since it wasn’t posted here is because that is common sense, which I agree with. Just curious if anyones tried it with Agil Gems. Just trying to save some cash, by regemming all AP for this fight, then back to Agil for my normal MM spec.
You do NOT need to regem for this fight. In fact, other than the spec (and perhaps as much stamina gear as you have) you don’t need to do anything special — no T5 or T7 set, no special glyphs, etc.
Thanks for the help Frostheim, in the end I did her with a healer friend, now my gear is much much better (emblem T8.5 pieces, and Naxx 10 ToC 5 gear)
I gave her another try just now, and i’m so happy I managed to do it with very few problems (two deep breaths close together was nearly game though) I still had a few pet problems, I think what’s happening is he’s trying to get behind the whelp, but the whelp wants to move to get behind/in front of him, so they loop across the field for a while and because of the way I was selecting whelps they would be in front of me, so he would do this in my direction.
So I stopped doing that, and he still travelled a lot but thankfully only towards me once or twice.
I’m just so happy haha, as a relatively new hunter and raider (2 weeks experience under my belt) and am happy to be able to solo Onyxia and kite Gluth ads, not much of an achievement but both things I never imagined I could do
Looks like you squeaked in just under the deadline!
Onyxia has now been updated for level 80 and is no longer soloable. Well, at least not for another couple of expansions
I was trying this with the new version and wondering why I was dying on trash 0_o lololol