Faxmonkey Solos Onyxia, Rogue Class is Sad

Onyxia has now been solod by every class in the game, except rogues. Whats up, rogues? Come on!

Faxmonkey is only the most famousest mage in the history of WoW. Don’t know who he is? Well, it’s time you learn.

And lo, for Faxmonkey did wake up, and loggeth into his account. Whereupon, being restless, spoke thusly:

“Today… today, I shall kill a dragon.”

Thus spake Faxmonkey, and thus it was done.

You can get the video of his kill here, at Warcraft Movies. The music is very strange. You have been warned.

His talent spec looked like this.

His strategy revolved around how Incanter’s Absorption interacts with Ice Barrier and… you know what? I’ll let him tell you…

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- Ice Barrier + Incanter’s Absorption. Not only does this fuel, directly, my damage (it frequently pushed my +damage above 3k), but it also strengthens my shields themselves. Because shields get an 80% coefficient, the more damage I absorb, the more damage I can absorb.

- 2 Minute Evocate + Glyph = 60% heal every 2 seconds. Yum!

- Frost Warding + Ice Armor + Fire Ward + Torment of the weak. Frost Warding by itself goes from a marginal talent to an *incredible* one in this particular build. Not only does it feed me 1k-1.5k mana every few minutes, but that mana then goes into Mana Shield so I can absorb an extra 1k-1.5k damage. It makes it possible, on a limited extent, to support mana shield. But wait, there’s more! I don’t need mage armor for this — Ice Armor offers a significant reduction in attack speed to melee, so it’s a better choice. Frost Warding increases my armor with Ice Armor thus giving me extra mitigation. But it gets better because of new changes on the PTR, that debuff from Ice armor also triggers Torment of the weak for 12% extra damage dealt. Hurray!

-Prismatic Cloak + Mirror Image. Prismatic Cloak gives me a 6% damage reduction, very useful — but it also gives me instant invisibility. Why would I need that you ask? Well, turns out they’ve “fixed” mirror image on the PTR so it no longer immediately takes aggro off of you. Invisibility will fix that problem right up!

You see? It’s all working together in a way that the sum is greater than the parts! It’s a very unique talent build.

The Advice

So you want to try this yourself? Well please do. It’s a lot of fun! Every mage with decent 25 man naxx gear should give it a go.

At first will seem like the fight simply needs to be RNG’ed. This is not the case. All aspects of the fight are controllable by you — however, you must be *extremely* cautious in how you manage your cooldowns. It’s a bit of a tight rope walk — here are all the balls you need to keep in the air to control this fight:

1) Fire ward 100% up time. Except during Phase 2 (which is a snoozefest for mages, unless you had a really rough phase 1 going into it), Onyxia will probably never completely chew through your Fire Ward. With that in mind, it simply must be recast every 30 seconds. You cannot afford to eat a Fire Breath with Ice Barrier. That reduces the number of melee hits it will absorb by roughly 2 and that’s going to make you take more damage before your next Ice Barrier is available and thus more damage before your next Evocate. This is bad and more than one mistake in this department will quickly add up.

2) Ice Barrier recast as soon as it’s up. Get that cooldown restarted asap — unless by some miracle of RNG your last Ice Barrier is still up. Watch this cooldown carefully!

3) You have 3 “stall techniques” to spend during phase 1 and you can use them a second time during phase 3. They are: Mirror Images, Ice Block, Coldsnapped Iceblock. Use them wisely because they are all you get. I needed 2 evocates in phase 1 and I think 3 in phase 3. So using these cooldowns smartly is entirely necessary in order to make it from evocate 1 to 2, or 2 to 3. Do not waste them.

4) Mirror images must not be used until after a flame breath to maximize their duration. Flame breath tends to one shot them all, this is bad. Still using them after a flame breath doesn’t guarantee she won’t just do it again in 10 seconds, but 10 seconds is 10 seconds.

5) Evocate Must not be used until after knockback, or, in phase 3, until after a fear. This means you need to plan ahead. If you are at 4k life after one knockback, you need to ask yourself — can I wait until the next knockback or do I have to do it now? This is where you have to use really good judgment. You have to assess all the tools you still have available, when you can use them (for instance, can you even use mirror images yet or has she not done flame breath) and then make a wise choice about when the best time to use Evocate is.

6) You only get one potion, save it for phase 3.

7) In retrospect, the PvP trinket was unnecessary.

8) Fairly obvious, but always make sure you have a fresh shield or both shields when evocating. Pushback rules have been lightened up, but you can still lose *50%* of your evocate to pushback if you do not plan ahead.

Good Luck!

-Fax

(You can read his full forum post here on the Official WoW Forums. Posted here for those of you who detest ads. I am aware of the hypocrisy, thank you.)
Note: If any mages out there still have pieces of their old T3 hanging around, now might be a good time to bust those out. 1 minute Evocates? Pray to whatever god you worship…

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