Nostalgia

I downloaded a mod that lets me cruise the LFG channel without actually being in a queue for a group and I saw something... Interesting. There was someone who was looking for a tank for Ony. Whowhat? Seriously... He was looking for a tank for Onyxia's Lair.

Onyxia's Lair... Man... Takes me back. When I first joined Crucify, one of the conditions was that you had to be attuned for Molten Core, Blackwing Lair and Onyxia's Lair. The MC and BWL attunements were pretty simple and the guys I was hanging out with at the time were stumbling through the attunements and I'd actually done those. But Onyxia... Well now... That was something else entirely.

We'd actually done most of the questline but I hadn't done the precursors... In fact, we did the absolutely godawful Jail Break! quest twice (three times if you count the wipe) before I even knew what it was for. So I had to do it again. And soloing those elites in the Burning Steppes was brutal in my PvP blues. It took a few lucky crits to get the black drake down.

Then I did Jail Break! a third time with one of Crucify's officers tanking it on his rogue... I was pretty sick of BRD by the time we were done... Plus that tunnel in Winterspring... Oy. Plus the three runs through UBRS to get the blood. But I got the attunement and in my first real week in the guild, I got an invite to an Onyxia raid. I'd just gotten to rank 10 and got my PvP helm just two days earlier. And in my first Onyxia raid, two of the mage helms dropped... And only two mages didn't have it. So I replaced the helm I had spent 5 hours a day trying to get within two days... Not to mention the only other epic I had was also a head piece. But I wore my Tier 2 helm with pride right up until Burning Crusade. It's still in my bank and I put it on every now and then.

Over the months, we got pretty blase about Onyxia. If we took her out, it was on an off raid night (possibly a ZG or AQ20 night) and we'd do it with alts and newbies and one time we did it with 22 people. But I'll always have fond memories of that place. Like how our guild leader would put all the mages except himself in the even groups and then draw aggro and get himself killed so I'd always whisper the other mages that I was going on the odd side. Or the time when all the mages got themselves killed but me during phase three and we got some whelps.... On the other side. So I blinked through Onyxia and started kiting them. A paladin whispered me that he had me so I just went to town and downed them. I basically saved the raid and got a number of tells along those lines after the fight was over.

We've tried to 4 and 5 man her a few times in my horde guild at level 70 but we didn't have enough ranged DPS to get through phase two. So when I saw the call for a tank for Onyxia... I couldn't resist. On the first attempt, we were wiped out by a deap breath. The second one was a combination of deep breath and whelps. But the third attempt we had the mage lay off on phase one and blow all his cooldowns on phase two and we managed to get through it. On phase three, the warritard two hand tanked her until I finally had to tell him to stop attacking. We finally straightened it out and got her down.

I know she's been soloed but still... It was nice trip down memory lane.