There were already too many people in melee range, and the healers had enough to worry about, so David and Nightlord, the two backup tanks, stayed out with the melee DPS and watched.
Ten healers should have had no trouble keeping two main tanks alive. If they couldn't manage that, it might be time to start looking for new healers.
For all the influence Onyxia had built in human society, once she returned to being a dragon, the contrast was almost embarrassing. She barely had any forces of her own.
She was practically a one-dragon operation.
There were very few trash mobs in Onyxia's Lair, and the Warders weren't even as dangerous as Molten Core trash. For a boss that dropped a Tier 2 helm, Onyxia's forces were honestly pathetic.
"We got it! We got it!"
"Hahaha, we're insane! We actually killed a level 62 elite in a forty-player raid!"
"I heard Madhouse wiped all night on the trash at the entrance to another forty-player raid. We're fucking good."
Gabryell almost felt bad correcting them.
"That was trash, not a boss."
"That wasn't a boss?"
OnlyOne said, "Its level and HP looked about the same as General Drakkisath's. Drakkisath is a boss."
Gabryell smiled. "Upper Blackrock Spire is only a ten-to-fifteen-player dungeon. This is a forty-player raid. If a raid boss had that little health, forty people would melt it for free."
OnlyOne thought about it and had to admit he was right. With three or four times as many players, a proper raid boss obviously needed a much larger health pool.
"You all did really well, though."
Gabryell still gave them credit.
"Onyxia's Lair is on the same tier as Molten Core. Madhouse wiped all night in MC without killing a single mob. We wiped once and already killed the first trash mob at the entrance. As of tonight, we're ahead of every other guild in Tichondrius."
For a raid thrown together on short notice, killing a level 62 Onyxian Warder after a single wipe was genuinely good progress.
At this rate, they should at least reach Onyxia tonight.
Killing her was another matter, but Gabryell would already be satisfied just getting that far. Based on what he had seen so far, he had every reason to believe Fearless could be the first guild to take Onyxia down in the near future.
"Hahaha, of course we're stronger than Madhouse. We're Fearless!"
"Fearless! No fear!"
Everyone was fired up.
This was what Gabryell wanted to see from a raid: people solving problems together instead of wasting time blaming each other.
"Why didn't that dragon drop any gear?"
The question immediately caught everyone's attention.
"No loot?"
"No way. Something that strong didn't drop anything?"
"What a scam. Level 62 elite and not even one piece of gear."
Gabryell had the raid set to Master Looter, while green-quality, common, and junk items were still distributed automatically.
They only bothered with designated "lucky hands" when looting bosses. There was no reason to do that for trash.
Gabryell wasn't surprised that the Onyxian Warder had dropped nothing useful.
Onyxia clearly kept all the good loot for herself.
Her four elite guards were nothing like Molten Core trash mobs, which could drop Tier 1 belts and bracers. The Warders relied entirely on world drops.
And world-drop rates?
Forget about it.
Most kills gave you nothing worth talking about. But if a level 62 elite dragon did happen to cough up a BoE epic, it could be something like Teebu's, Cloudkeeper Legplates, or Alcor's Sunrazor.
With no gear to show for the first kill, everyone felt cheated.
When the second Onyxian Warder came patrolling toward them, they were already itching to kill it and see if this one would finally cough up some loot.
"Hugo, pull it over."
Gabryell still had Hugo handle the pull. Sending the main tank out to grab it risked creating another line-of-sight problem.
Hugo stepped forward, tagged the level 61 Warder, and brought it back to the raid.
There was only one type of trash mob in the entire instance, so nothing about the strategy changed.
The only real challenge in Onyxia's Lair was the Black Dragon Princess herself. The Warders were little more than filler so the dungeon wouldn't feel completely empty on the way to the boss.
Once the raid understood how to handle them, they weren't particularly difficult.
They hit less brutally than the giants in Molten Core, and ten healers could comfortably keep up with a main tank sitting at around 300 Fire Resistance.
Carlos was already very well geared for Fire Resistance. His equipment alone put him above 200, and a Paladin's Fire Resistance Aura brought him close to 300.
Susie was a little lower at roughly 280, which was still enough for her to serve as a Fire Resistance tank in Molten Core.
"Man, these guards are broke."
The second Warder didn't drop any gear either, leaving everyone disappointed again.
Gabryell had never expected reliable loot from them in the first place.
If he genuinely wanted to farm BoE gear from Onyxian Warders, he would have to kill them over and over for days and hope RNG eventually paid out.
Years later, during WoW Classic, one of Gabryell's friends gathered five other players and tried to six-man Onyxia.
They wiped twice, and by the time they were ready to try again, the trash had respawned. With no choice, they cleared it again—and Teebu's Blazing Longsword unexpectedly dropped.
After that, the six of them started camping Onyxia's Lair and farming the Warders every day.
A week later, another Teebu's dropped.
They eventually sold both for around 8,000 gold each—roughly $500 apiece at early Classic gold prices. For a rare world-drop sword, that was an absurd amount of money.
Gold was expensive back then, so the price wasn't as insane as it sounded.
Molten Core trash farming worked the same way.
If you had enough friends and enough patience to grind, farming raid trash for BoE epics could still make good money.
"Still nothing. Onyxia really does keep everything for herself. Doesn't even give her own guards decent gear."
The third Warder, naturally, dropped nothing useful either.
"Leader, should we kill the one in the corner too?"
Near the bend leading into Onyxia's chamber, another Onyxian Warder was standing off in a corner doing absolutely nothing.
Apparently, it was both lazy and very interested in staying alive.
As long as players hugged the left wall, the Warder would "pretend" not to notice them.
Gabryell couldn't blame it.
If the boss wasn't going to pay, why work hard?
"It's level 62. Kill it."
Normally, a raid heading for Onyxia wouldn't bother with that Warder at all.
This one had simply spawned at level 62.
That was enough reason for Gabryell.
He wasn't passing up another shot at Teebu's.
There were no other trash mobs nearby, so there was no need to pull it far back.
Carlos Charged straight in.
"Whoa! Look at the size of that dragon!"
In the middle of the fight, someone glanced to the left and froze.
Onyxia was sleeping right there.
She was probably the largest dragon any of them had encountered so far.
Now that looked like a raid boss.
"Where? Where? Let me see!"
The melee who had been hanging back immediately moved forward for a look.
Several ranged players and healers who couldn't see from where they were standing followed them.
"Holy crap, she's huge. Now that's a real boss. Every boss we fought before looks like a house pet next to her."
"Damn. A boss that big has to drop a ton of good gear. If we kill her, we're getting rich."
"Wait, was she always this big? She looked way smaller in Stormwind. What the hell has she been eating?"
Everyone became so distracted by Onyxia that they forgot they were still fighting one of her guards.
"Damn it!"
Carlos suddenly shouted, "I'm down! Susie, pick it up! What the hell, Susie? You're dead too?!"
His shout snapped everyone back to reality.
They had been so busy staring at Onyxia that half the raid had simply stopped paying attention to the fight.
DPS zoning out was one thing.
Once the healers started doing it too, the few still paying attention couldn't keep both Carlos and Susie alive.
The Warder beat them both down.
"Stop staring! David, pick it up!"
Gabryell barked another order.
"Everyone back! Get out of the AoE!"
The Mages immediately Blinked backward.
Anyone without a movement ability could only pray.
The Warder barreled toward the group and fired off another AoE before David had even managed to pick it up.
Several players dropped immediately.
Fortunately, a handful of people had kept their heads.
They had already started retreating the moment the two tanks went down.
"I'm letting this one go. If it happens again, I'm chewing people out."
Gabryell could have snapped them back to attention earlier, but he had deliberately allowed the mistake to play out.
They needed to understand that losing focus for even a few seconds in a raid could snowball into a wipe.
David finally got the Warder under control, but the damage had already been done.
Half the raid was lying dead on the floor.
"Don't run! Keep fighting. We can still kill it."
Gabryell stopped the few players who were already heading for the dungeon exit.
"The tank is still up and we still have healers alive. That means the pull is still recoverable. Why are you running? Are we going to sprint for the exit every time one tank drops?"
He quickly assessed what they had left.
Six healers.
Around ten ranged DPS.
More than enough to burn through the Warder's remaining 26%.
"Healers, spam David. Overheal him if you have to. If David stays alive, we win."
David's gear was worse than Carlos's and Susie's, so the healers couldn't afford to be conservative.
"Dispelled."
ServerHeals removed the debuff from David.
"I'm almost OOM. Someone else take the next dispel."
"I've got it," Danielly said.
If they let the debuff keep stacking, not even a god could keep David alive.
The six remaining healers held on remarkably well.
With almost no mana left between them, they somehow managed to keep David standing long enough for the raid to finish the fight.
Of course, David had to burn both Shield Wall and Last Stand to survive.
"Leader, that was on us."
More than twenty players lying dead on the floor finally owned the mistake.
At least they hadn't caused a full wipe.
If they had, they would have had a lot more to answer for.
"Good. Then remember it. Don't let it happen again. Next person who does gets benched."
Making mistakes because they didn't know a boss mechanic was one thing.
Losing focus like this was another.
Gabryell would tolerate the first.
He wouldn't tolerate the second twice.
"We got some weird wand."
The surviving Priests and Paladins started rezzing the dead.
Lunatori couldn't help with that, so she walked over to loot the level 62 Warder that had nearly wiped them.
With Master Looter active, no roll window appeared.
Gabryell Blinked over and crouched beside the corpse.
Lunar Wand of Healing (Uncommon)
Binds when equipped
Ranged
Wand
67–126 Arcane Damage
Speed 1.70
(56.8 damage per second)
+20 Healing
Durability 55 / 55
Requires Level 59
Gabryell hadn't expected Lunatori's "weird wand" to be the Lunar Wand of Healing.
It was the famous "touch of green in a sea of purple and red."
In the current patch, it had the highest healing bonus of any wand.
Green-quality on paper.
Epic-level value.