Two-Man Onyxia Raid in WoW Classic

Raids in World of Warcraft aren’t meant to be just for two people. Nevertheless, two WoW Classic players managed to beat Onyxia.

World of Warcraft is one of the first, if not the first, to have raids as a form of content. Designed for many players, they are meant to promote teamwork and cooperation, and a slight lack of coordination can spell trouble. Or at least used to, as two raiders in WoW Classic just beat a forty-man raid. It took a lot of mana potions, however – good thing they have the WoW Classic bags to carry all that.

Was Once Powerful

Before anything else, here’s a fact: WoW raiders are better than ever. Perhaps the biggest reason for this is because raids in the retail version have been getting harder and harder, so players have been adjusting accordingly. So, when they return to WoW Classic – or for others, try out for the first time –they find the raid bosses easier than usual.

The boss in question Onyxia. During Vanilla WoW, she was a tough customer, and WoW Classic is supposed to be a very accurate attempt at capturing that point of World of Warcraft history. It is impossible for it to be a 1:1 recreation of that era, but it comes close.

The same is true with Onyxia. The daughter of the fabled Deathwing, she is known to be a schemer that pretended to be a human noble in order to become Stormwind’s ruler, but her ploy was discovered and her scheme fell through. That, however, does not mean she is a pushover. In fact, as one of the two secondary antagonists in Vanilla WoW, it should go without saying that she is powerful lore-wise.

Dragon Defanged

Her prowess in the lore is backed up by her 1.8 million hit points, and her deadliness in raids. At the same time, when you look at the lore’s power scaling, she’s not exactly up there. In a way, it reflects the fact that she was powerful for her time, but she’s fallen in ranking ever since. Nowadays, almost all raiding teams in retail, even those made up completely by randoms, can run her with zero problems whatsoever.

Same goes in WoW Classic. As long as people know the basics of the fight, a 40-man raid is going to have zero problems. There are even those that succeed even when they’re less than 40. Two people, however, is a huge difference from thirty-two.

Despite being Onyxia no longer having the same shock and awe she used to have, two players taking on her is still a very impressive feat. Aside from the fact that she has all that HP, it’s still very much easy to get wiped with such a small party – just take the healer or the tank and it would’ve been over.

Thankfully, both the priest and the warrior were both exemplary players, so Onyxia is pretty much in the bag for them. It took them over an hour and burned a lot of mana potions (imagine all the WoW Classic gold spent on that), but that doesn’t diminish the fact that it’s an amazing feat.

Pre-Patch Precedent

Going back to WoW Classic Onyxia, there is a fact that she’s already the version that has been nerfed since the game version came out. This is because WoW Classic is patterned after World of Warcraft patch 1.12. For Onxyia, that means she’s already been nerfed on her first arrival.

Back in the really old days, raid bosses were released to be too hard to be killed, so Blizzard had to tone down the difficult to make it fair for the players. It’s not that they were caving in to the casuals of the player base; it’s just that they were simply impossible to win against them at the time. The game was new so players didn’t understand yet how it works or what they can do to give themselves a huge advantage, so it’s only right for Blizzard to cut them some slack.

But now, not anymore. In fact, it’s because of this reason that when WoW Burning Crusade Classic rolls in, players are getting the pre-nerfed versions of its exclusive bosses. It’s going to be harder, but World of Warcraft players are up for the challenge.

Plus, WoW Burning Crusade Classic having pre-nerfed bosses validates its existence in a way. Lots of players, even veterans, didn’t manage to fight them, as only a few high-level players got the chance to do so. And even those that got the chance to confront them didn’t win. But now that the overall skill curve of the player base is way up, Blizzard can no longer pull their punches.

Is Onyxia’s defeat in the hands of two people going to be the shape of things to come for WoW Classic bosses? Only time will tell. For now, let’s just give a round of applause for the two brave and skilled record-setting adventurers.

This article does not necessarily reflect the opinions of the editors or the management of EconoTimes