Could A Hunter Duo Onyxia?Follow

As the topic states. I am currently leveling my alt hunter, and she is at 67. If I got a tanking pet, like a turtle or bear, specced into fire resistance, and took a pally with me, could we duo Onyxia? I think we probably could, the deeper question here would be, what kind of gear would we need to pull it off at 70?

Thoughts?

Purely speculation, but I'd almost say the newest PvP epics for the stamina and armor. The stamina is not so much for the Hunter, but for the spillover to your pet. After you spec max Fire Resistance and Natural Armor, there really aren't a lot of points left to boost your pet's stamina to any significant degree, since you'll probably be wanting Rank 2 Avoidance and your standard array of dps/threat generating skills as well.

In addition, anything that builds armor value on your Hunter (armor, agility, etc.) that would augment your pet's armor probably wouldn't hurt. Most Hunters would build for a lot of Agi anyways (for the AP) but it shouldn't be overlooked as something that also increases your armor rating which spills over to your pet. Just as with Stamina, the spillover isn't likely to be a huge number, but everything helps.

As you probably already know, pet armor scales semi-decently in Outland (my Boar had just over 13k armor the last I looked). It's the HP that gets you (I think Piggles has just shy of 6k HP). Since pets don't get the benefit of resilience (that I know of), it would likely be the crushing blows/crits that would put your pet in jeopardy.

Since I wasn't around pre-BC, I have no idea what a solidly raid-equipped level 60 tank might be sporting for armor rating in a fight like that. I'd be interested to see what the armor/HP of a 70 Hunter's pet would be if that Hunter was head-to-toe in Merciless Gladiator gear.

Beyond that, your guess is as good as mine lol

Edited, Aug 23rd 2007 6:42:14pm by AureliusSir

That was Azuregos, and was also the reason Pet Mend got changed from a channel to a DoT so to speak.

I've seen a vid where a lock and a pally duoed Ony.

The lock (affliction specced) "tanked" ony in PvP gear while the pally heal-spammed the whole time.

The fight took ~45 minutes. Phase 1 and 3 didn't seem to be problematic at all. Phase 2 however was rather complicated.
While Ony constantly fired at the lock and made those breaths which can hit for 2k fire damage 4-5 times, the pally had to tank those adds. He basically kept healing himself and with consecration and his aura he killed the adds.
Healing was very tense during phase two. Without the warlock constantly healing himself with drain life I think those two would not have managed to kill ony.

So I believe there are three things making a hunter+healer combo really hard:

1) The mana issue
2) Healing in Phase 2
3) Aggro. Ony has a aggro reducing move setting the MTs aggro back by ~10k every 30 seconds or so. Thus the pet will loose aggro and either the healer or the hunter has to "tank" ony for quite some while.

Killing Ony with just two hunters won't be possible at the moment. Pet healing will be an issue as there will be times when the pet takes several hits in a row. Our hot is not strong enough and when also healing the pet mana will become an issue. Further phase 2 will be really hard as there is no way to AOE the adds and there is no one healing the hunters through ony's attacks.

It's not quite the same as the subject, but one of my Guild mates attempted a duo with his Healadin and his girlfriend's Warlock. They used the VW Pet. As he reports it, they had more than enough DPS with just her, but the VW was unable to hold aggro through knockbacks. I'd expect the same to be true with a Hunter's Pet, and so a player Tank would be needed and that would eliminate a spot for a healer unless the Tank were a Druid or a Paladin.

Ony was 5-manned prior to BC with 5 level 60 T3 equipped folks, so a duo by 2 level 70s isn't completely out of the realm of imagination. But it might take a Tank and a Healer, leaving no room for a Hunter.

Actually, I wouldn't think Aggro would be much of a problem. A Healadin generates very little healing threat, and a Hunter Pet certainly provides more theat than a Voidwalker. Positioning Onyxia after knockbacks would be kind of awkward, but with two people you can kind of just stand wherever.

The bigger problem would be staying alive in Phase 2, as the Paladin will likely just be keeping himself up. Still, with enough FR it should be possible if you only took the occassional heal, as the whelps won't hit the Paladin for very much at all either.