Phat Loot Phursday: Onyxia Scale Cloak
We did Quel'serrar a while back, so with Onyxia headed back to the game, we'll look at the other piece of gear that involved the black dragon we love to hate.
Name: Onxyia Scale Cloak (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWDB)
Type: Cloak
Armor: 43
Abilties:
- +7 Stamina, +16 Fire resistance. Ah, the days of level 60, they seem so far gone now. Compare this to a prime tanking cloak nowadays, and take a look at just how far we've come.
- On equip, protects the wearer from being fully engulfed by something called Shadow Flame. What is Shadow Flame, you ask? Here's where this item really gets interesting: sit back and enjoy a tale of old level 60 raiding.
- Shadow Flame is actually an ability used by Nefarian, Onyxia's brother, and a few other bosses in Blackwing Lair. He casts a huge unblockable AoE during his fight -- unblockable, that is, unless you're wearing one of these cloaks (although since then, Ice Block and Divine Shield will both stop it).
- But to get a cloak (see below) you'd have to beat Onyxia, so this item was basically meant to send guilds back to the big dragon even while they were working through BWL. Interesting little mechanic, though you always used to hear guilds say they were trying to "get more cloaks" so they could go after Nef.
- This item doesn't seem to be returning in the anniversary patch, unfortunately. We get a new Vendorstrike, but no Onyxia Scale Cloak?
And to get the pattern in the first place, you have to down Onyxia, take the head to a faction leader, and then they'll send you to a quest giver that will teach you the recipe for the cloak. Feeling nostalgic yet, old-school raiders?
Keep in mind that if you are 70, you won't see the exclamation point to find this quest. You'll have to turn on low-level quest tracking if you want to see it. And you'll probably have to do it before patch 3.2.2, since the old Onyxia is likely going bye-bye.
Getting Rid of It: You never know when Nefarian might return -- maybe for the 10th anniversary? But in case you're not worried about that, you can trade the cloak in for 1g 51s 98c, disenchant it into a Large Brilliant Shard, or sell it on the AH, as it is BoE.
Filed under: Items, How-tos, Fan stuff, Odds and ends, Instances, Quests, Raiding, Phat Loot Phriday, Bosses
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 3)
Nagrim Aug 20th 2009 10:25PM
Pale is the new tan.
Carver Aug 20th 2009 10:30PM
I'd rather be pale than get skin cancer.
joerendous Aug 20th 2009 10:32PM
HA! awesome temp column name!
segsp Aug 20th 2009 10:40PM
Should be noted that shadowflame is a DoT.
Lifefire Aug 20th 2009 10:42PM
Aye,
I remember someone always forgot to put on their ony cloak on our first attempt on nef for the night. Even I did once :P
Best one was when our MT forgot his cloak. We all died in a few seconds wondering what just happened.
When my guild was at he level of progression to be getting to nef, we usually brought about 20-30(depending on the group) instead of the full 40 to ony's lair. So, In theory you could have multiple raids gathering the scales faster. It prolly took about 2-3 weeks after reaching nef to have the rest of the guild with an any cloak. So it's not this year of grinding just that.
Suzaku Aug 20th 2009 11:28PM
Have mine in my bank. It's nice looking, at least.
Blizzard really needs to add more cloak graphics into the game.
Gimmlette Aug 21st 2009 11:02AM
"Have mine in my bank. It's nice looking, at least."
Most definately. A bunch of us who never saw those instances when they were live have been trying to get T1 and T2 gear sets. I need Raggy to drop my Dragonstalker pants and then someone in BWL to hand over the gloves and I'll be set. I put on the rest of the gear AND the cloak and, for a bit, think about what it must have been like to have had that set in real time. As often as the T1 mage pants have dropped off Ragnaros when we run it, you had to run MC every week you could to get your particular pants.
Spectacular Death took 20 level 70 into BWL pre-Warth. We knew "of" the cloaks but had no leatherworker who knew the pattern to make them. The first dragon to spew Shadowflame is Flamegore after the suppression room. We know where to tank him. We just heal through it, we'll be okay. We certainly lived up to our guild name. No one knew or remembered it's a DoT. Silly little dragon wiped us.
Since then, we've had a steady supply of cloaks for all raiders. We still have people who want to go without and we don't make them take a cloak. Invariably, after Flamegore, they are asking if they can have one. Everyone says the same thing when they equip it, "Wow. That looks nice. Wish more cloaks looked this good."
Yeah.
equiraptor Aug 20th 2009 11:44PM
@Savant2k: It was changed to 5 days in patch 1.9. From what I can tell, it looks like it was 6 days before. That's based on reading historical pages from November of 2005 on WoWWiki. That makes it 2-4 months on the 6 day lockout, not the 2.5 to 5 months I originally said.
I was a hunter. I stood in the back. I could see everyone. I loved looking out over the raid, everyone in the same cloak.
Radiophonic Aug 20th 2009 11:47PM
You can also go behind his throne and avoid the SF breath of DEATH.
Fartmasterking Aug 21st 2009 12:16AM
Yea, but its NOT as cool...and COOL! IS! EVERYTHING!
aercane Aug 21st 2009 1:33AM
You still need at least a tank with this to take down Nefarian without serious grief, even at 80. And everyone else has to stand behind the throne... but after that its cake.
gobnat Aug 21st 2009 1:36AM
only the tank and some healers needed the cloak, everyone else hid behind the thrown. Or in the little cave at the back.
By the end of Vanilla WoW bigger guilds had tonnes of these sitting around their banks were even giving them away in some case.
I would never sell mine though, ah good times :)
Seraphna Aug 21st 2009 10:30AM
That only worked if you tanked the adds at the throne. One of the first common setups was to fight them in two packs at the doors they entered from, as they're still spawning when Nefarian comes down, everyone was out in the open with said setup.
Keya Aug 21st 2009 2:00AM
First, you only *really* needed the cloak for the tank in BWL and some healers until Nefarian (where it's pretty much a *must* if you aren't lucky and find the dead spot in one of the adds' spawn room).
As BWL was not all that trivial, you had quite some time to get everyone a cloak.
Did anyone mention that you needed "higher than usual" skinning? As in, running UBRS all damn week to get this freaking knife??
As much as nowadays raider are used to everything being accessible, it sure as hell didn't feel hardcore.
As Onyxia wasn't the hardest encounter in the world (except after every maintance - 'does she breath more often???'), a viable tactic to get many cloaks was to use alts + randoms to have more raids than your standard raid setup allowed.
I would not yet sell mine, it's a memory of the past when the Horde didn't have a paladin and decursing in the Chromaggus encounter took a lot of different classes & awake people. Did I mention there was no mass-dispell?
Seraphna Aug 21st 2009 10:32AM
You actually didn't need Finkle's Skinner, there was the Skinning Enchant to gloves and the + Skinning sword from ZG as well. At one point my hunter had 335 skinning when properly equipped.
nieboh Aug 21st 2009 2:57AM
I still have my cloak...and it's still BoE. Our guild was getting prepped for BWL and I was issued the cloak, but we never got very far in BWL (actually, we never got past the first encounter) so I never had to put it on. Then BC came along and I stuffed this thing in the bank. Sadly the guild disolved over a rift to remain casual or to become a "hard-core" raiding guild and I lost track of many great people as they drifted off server or out of the game.
But yeah, I've kept my cloak for the sake of nostalgia.
I think it's great that Ony is coming back for 80, but I think it's a shame that so many players never got the chance to experience the attunement quests. That chain was truly epic.
lucca Aug 21st 2009 8:08AM
Just out of curosity are you talking about an old guild DoD on thrall server?
nieboh Aug 21st 2009 10:08AM
No, sorry, but I bet it's not all that uncommon a situation/history. Was OOD on Staghelm (Ally).
NinjaF Aug 21st 2009 4:36AM
NinjaCamp.com wants to give WoW.com an old fashioned ass kicking at Blizzcon2009! http://www.ninjacamp.com/2009/08/breaking-news-we-want-to-fight-wowcom.html
Cyrus Aug 21st 2009 6:38AM
Linkwhoring much?