Loading ...The Lady’s Loot
The 5th Anniversary heralds the return of an old friend, Onyxia. This time around she’s certainly upgraded her tier of loot significantly. On the flip side difficulty-wise, she seems to be quite easy compared to modern encounters. So, there’s probably a lot of you that have already killed her and even more of you that certainly can if you’re willing to brave a pug.
Alright, what’s her loot?
10 man
25 man
Head of Onyxia: Purified Onyxia Blood Talisman
But, what about…
Too slow, too slow and not a tanking trinket.
Back to the Task
The Quel in both it’s 10 and 25 man varieties leaves something to be desired. You cannot count on them for Defense rating to make you crit immune. They are slow so they’ll generate less threat than similar level, faster alternatives. Which is to say that they’ll best items that they’re a few tiers ahead of, but similar or close items will be superior. They also aren’t exactly an ideal starter weapon for those struggling to hover around the 540 Defense minimum mark.
For example, I’ll be sticking with Anub’arak10’s Ardent Guard over even the 25 man Quel.
The ring, however, is on the opposite side of the spectrum. Both the 10 and 25 man versions are fantastic. Outside of Hard Mode loot, the combination of the 25 man version and the Emblem reward, Clutch of Fortification are your best bet. The 10 man version is very strong too though and will finally give those tired of looking at The Leviathan’s Coil a reason to take it off.
The helm falls somewhere in the middle. It’s a tad bit behind items on the same item level, but it’s certainly a fantastic upgrade for those wearing anything a tier or more below. While the 25 man version of this piece doesn’t trump the Emblem’s Headplate of the Honorbound, acquiring it will certainly force you to rearrange your priorities when determining which Emblem piece to pick up next.
The neck, like the ring, is an excellent piece. It is not without having some competition though. For the 10 man raider, it’s fairly obvious that it falls slightly below Lord Jaraxxus’ Endurance of the Infernal. For the 25 man raider, the dilemma will be whether to use it or Legionnaire’s Gorget/The Arbiter’s Muse to which I recommend the latter for most situations. (Ony’s neck being the better if you’re in need of some extra threat/dps)
Finally, the Head of Onyxia. If you don’t need the Defense rating, skip it. It has no usage nor any Stamina making it sub-par to most trinkets out there. Basically, the item is far better given to another role that’ll benefit from the alternative rewards.
Thoughts
As critical as I am of Onyxia’s rewards, I’m approaching it from the perspective of someone that’s been raiding a while. If you haven’t, you’re going to love any piece that comes your way from her loot table. She’s very puggable especially on a 10 man level and with her dropping you Emblems of Triumph, I encourage you to kill her, often.
October 4th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
The 25 quel does more dps but less tps than similar weapons. Fair tradeoff imo since I’m usually quiet a good bit ahead of the dpsers on omen. Where it really shines however is in the proc which has over 45% uptime from my parses. Makes it fantastic for many of the same reasons you cited for the GoI trinket.
I’m certain I read somewhere that blizz said the resist stats are freebies and did not come out of the item budget. I could be wrong tho.
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Orla reply on October 4, 2009 5:04 pm:
that 45% uptime may be so, but what about the other 55% when it is not. If you are counting yourself crit immune using the proc off of it, you are doing your raid a major disservice. Even if you are not counting on the proc, you still have to make up for the defense on the rest of your gear meaning that you will have to sacrifice on threat stats in order to remain uncritable.
As vene said, it would be better to stick with a weapon that has a static increase instead of chancing it.
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Veneretio reply on October 4, 2009 5:44 pm:
Slower weapons do both less tps and less dps.
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Copper reply on October 4, 2009 6:43 pm:
Even with Devastate being an instant attack and recently buffed?
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Veneretio reply on October 4, 2009 7:20 pm:
Yes.
mister six reply on October 5, 2009 12:26 am:
With no other gear changing and moving from Titanguard (similar damage stats to the 10man normal anub drop) to the 25man Quel I saw an increase in damage done. Granted I’d be more comfortable with the 10man heroic anub drop but he was less than forthcoming tonight. :=/
Skullkrushor reply on October 5, 2009 9:22 pm:
Take into account Heroic Strike. With a faster weapon you can use it more often.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:47 pm
None of the resist that exists on Onyxia weapons are drawing from stat allocation budget. Totally free, fun stats. The resist is even nice in current tier encounters, especially Anub (Leeching Swarm and Penetrating Cold).
It’s kind of bum that they gave us so many slow weapons here. It’s a good decision design-wise, though, in that this fun little “gimme” fight doesn’t totally own the current instance’s loot table.
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Veneretio reply on October 4, 2009 7:50 pm:
I agree it’d been nice to have some faster weapons available especially something like a tanking axe. :/
Also, I’ve removed the misinformation regarding wasted item points on resistances stats.
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AeroWow reply on October 5, 2009 2:11 am:
It might even be worth going out of your way to note the free stats from resist. Sure resist can be a joke (Sapphiron, I’m looking at you), but it can also be immensely helpful if used in the right way and in a fight that specifically benefits from it (Anub, Hodir, and maybe some others). At the risk of sounding like a broken record, resist for tanks on Anub is huge. That 30% of a fully topped tank’s life gets to be pretty draining. And the Penetrating Cold likes to have fun at the most inopportune times.
Huge. Something to consider.
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Everblue reply on October 5, 2009 3:48 am:
MMO champion lists Nature Resistance plate in the new Icecrown Citadel crafted items list. Brace for Hydross! Serpentshrine Cavern was merely a setback!
mister six reply on October 6, 2009 3:42 pm:
It’s likely the green dragon boss. If it’s anything like Hodir or Sapphiron then crafted resist items will be optional for the encounter and not required.
October 4th, 2009 at 6:50 pm
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=49492
This neck seems to have been accidentally left off the post. It’s an amazing amulet and as good as anything in 25 ToC.
Dropped for my group yesterday but I lost roll, sob.
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Veneretio reply on October 4, 2009 7:51 pm:
Yup, no idea how I missed it. It’s been added to the post. Nice catch!
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October 4th, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I want to pick up a 2.7 speed weapon for OTing devastate spam to be honest. There aren’t too many, but the one off of ony isn’t too bad looking that you linked. I might have to see if the proc off of the other one is more dps though in a very rage limited sensario.
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October 4th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
the trinket does have one use that i can think of - on a new fight that requires a significant amount of resist (my first time in hodir, for example), i used the 84 def trinket from naxx to keep me crit immune.
ony’s trinket is certainly an upgrade to that, and i’ll pick it up for similar situations… i see there is arcane resist gear being added to the next expansion…
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October 5th, 2009 at 12:23 am
If you are thinking of next expansion (ie. not next content patch), then you don’t have to worry about defense value anymore.
All tanks should be getting crit immunity from talent similar to the way druid works as mentioned by blizzard.
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marklar reply on October 5, 2009 2:08 am:
eh, i meant next content of course
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October 5th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Quel is a pretty interesting beast as far as a study in balancing defense goes. I recently upgraded to the Hammer of XT-Hard, so It’s not as big a priority for me anymore - at least compared to some other pieces from her loot table.
Perhaps this is not really the place, but it seems to me like it would be a pretty awesome tanking piece for a Death Knight, especially now that there is a rune to give Defense on single handed weapons. It might explain the relatively poor itemization for warriors.
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mister six reply on October 5, 2009 8:38 am:
slow/slow is best for dw dk tanks. That said the 1h def enchant isn’t ingame yet. It’s slated for 3.3.3.
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October 5th, 2009 at 9:12 am
I think the sword is better than you give cred for. Nobody should be using it just to be crit capped, thats foolish. They are using it for all the goodness extra armor and def gives. Outside of stam def is the best thing to gem for anyways, especially as a warrior.
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kahalm reply on October 6, 2009 4:10 am:
only if you value block or your dodge is really high, defense suffers from high diminishing returns from parry and miss
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AeroWow reply on October 6, 2009 8:01 am:
Actually, Defense benefits from DR, because the stats are more “spread”, therefore getting hit less by DR on the whole.
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October 6th, 2009 at 9:03 am
yes and no, miss suffers greatly from dr, and most warriors have bigger dr on parry then on dodge, for kahalm this means 10 def gems = 0.81%miss+1.14%dodge+0.94%parry (+1,64%block), but 10 dodgems =2.99%dodge
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October 7th, 2009 at 8:47 am
Anyone know what’s with the resistance stats on these items? So far in WotLK I haven’t seen a boss that need resistance gear. I thought Blizz left that concept, but it seems to be back for Icecrown maybe?
Also it only reads “resistance” and not “nature resistance, shadow resistance” etc. Kinda weird or what?
On a side note, I haven’t been down ToC raids yet so I might have missed something there.
*$
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AeroWow reply on October 7, 2009 12:12 pm:
Actually, these pieces have specific resists (Helm, for example, is Nature and Frost, trink has fire, and the ring has all resists, if I remember correctly). It’s just a Wowhead data handling error.
The resist from these pieces is meant to be a fun throwback to the fact that all of the pieces back when the original Ony raid was around had all sorts of these Resist stats.
Don’t worry - the resist stats on the loot that drops from Ony at 80 does not cost the item anything in terms of stat allocation budget. In other words, you’re not missing “real” stats with the existence of the resist. This is not the case for most (all) other resist gear at 80, and is a fun little thing they’re doing for the fifth anniversary of WoW (which bringing back Ony is all about).
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October 7th, 2009 at 10:16 am
Well for those that dont over gear the content resist gear is nice for Hodir. Mainly to cut down the dmg of frozen blows and it helps if you are a bear. But most tanks out gear the content substantially.
There are nature resist sets coming out for Icecrown.
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mister six reply on October 7, 2009 4:59 pm:
FrR gear was optional on Hodir even during progression. It was helpful for bears because the EH was high moreso than the resist itself (just like how bears used it for sarth).
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October 7th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
I intend to pick up one of the 2.7 speed weapons to run about in BG’s Devastating for 4k crits, I have no Rogues in my 10man group, so… I just have to wait till the dual weild DK picks up hers then they’re mine, mine, mine!
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October 8th, 2009 at 6:05 am
I got my hands on a Burnished Quel’serrar a few weeks ago; The proc up-time is amazing, I’ve seen as high as 83% up-time, usually about 60%.
The armor during the proc is really nice, the defense from it is worth like 3% avoidance.
Where it really shines is fight’s like ice-howl, where the proc has a chance to “cooldown” while your not attacking the boss.
Choosing to use the quel over some more conventional weaponry is like choosing to use the black-heart over a brewfest trinket.
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kahalm reply on October 8, 2009 9:04 am:
as there is no internal cooldown, the procc does not penefit from not-attacking-phases
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October 9th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Being a 50k raid buffed warrior I disagree…I love the trinket and Quel. 28% dodge and 23% parry bamf. I will say though when old blood and glory drops it will see the door.
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October 17th, 2009 at 11:47 am
I too have been thinking about Quel’serrar lately (I got the 10 man version). At the moment I’m just using it in heroics along with glyph of devestate, where it shines in establishing threat on short low-wage fights (ones where almost all of my rage comes from talents rather than damage).
BUT…I’m not sure we aren’t selling it short as a survival weapon for geared raiders. I (and I imagine many other frequent raiders) have not the slightest problem staying over 540 defense, even with Quel and some trinkets that lack defense. And in that situation, if threat is not an issue (or when it’s secondary to survival) it seems to me that the proc is worth far more than we are giving it credit for.
What do you think Vene?
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October 31st, 2009 at 7:04 am
How do the updated helm’s of wrath compare to honorbound? I am having a hard time justifying the 75 emblems for that helm when both the 10/25 man version seem to be pretty decent.
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Veneretio reply on October 31, 2009 5:52 pm:
The 10 man Wrath helm is a lot worse than Honorbound. The 25 man Wrath helm is a very small amount worse. If I had the 25 man Wrath helm, I’d certainly take the Honorbound helm much later in the list. If I didn’t though, I certainly wouldn’t skip the Honorbound helm in hopes of seeing the Wrath25 helm drop. There’s a lot of loot in Ony’s loot table and you may very well never see a Warrior tanking helm. Go with the sure thing, you’ll eventually have more emblems than you know what to do with anyway.
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