Onyxias power bar mechanics questions

[Squishypants]

Can anyone with experience in the fight clarify how her electric power bar mechanics work in regards to dps on her.

I read that if you're not dpsing her the power bar increases faster but that's all the info I have. Does this include tank damage so as long as a tank is on her the bar is always slow? Does it go faster/slower proportional to the amount of dps on her?

I'm wondering if it's a bad idea to have all dps on her until 5-10% then switch to Nef until her power is almost full or if we have to keep a dps on her at all times in addition to the tank.

[Emothianes]

Most strategies I've seen imply that a tank's dps is not sufficient, however a single strong dps can keep her bar at a nice steady climb. In my raid (talking 10man here) we found it best to take Onyxia to about 40% while waiting for Nefarian then just leave the tank and our rogue on her while the rest of the raid moved to Nefarian. This timed out so that she died just after the second crackle, which was our goal.

I should note, however, that her bar was NEVER close to blowing us up. I think 70% was the worst of the attempts. So a tank alone may be able to hold it down.

[Kaustos]

Most strategies I've seen imply that a tank's dps is not sufficient, however a single strong dps can keep her bar at a nice steady climb. In my raid (talking 10man here) we found it best to take Onyxia to about 40% while waiting for Nefarian then just leave the tank and our rogue on her while the rest of the raid moved to Nefarian. This timed out so that she died just after the second crackle, which was our goal.

I should note, however, that her bar was NEVER close to blowing us up. I think 70% was the worst of the attempts. So a tank alone may be able to hold it down.

We do this and do 3 crackles. When nef comes down the rest of the raid immediately gets on him while myself (rogue), a warr tank and hpally hang out with Onxyia. We trim her down to ~100k just as the 3rd crackle is about to be pushed, trigger the crackle, I get a feint and killing blow off. Works nicely and very little wasted DPS. Note that you have to kill her during the 5 second window of the incoming 3rd crackle, or she'll pop and fry everyone.

[Aleysia]

I could be wrong but I don't think her power bar has anything to do with the amount of dps being done to her. At least, my guild has never paid any attention to it, outside of the fact that if you make Nef electrocute 3 times in phase 1 and Onyxia is still alive, she will one-shot the raid.

We typically dps Onyxia to 20-25%, dps Nef through 2 electrocutes, then balance dps between the two so that we get Electrocute warning -> Ony dies -> Electrocute. Never had an issue.

[Jakesterwars]

My guild basically has me (tank) and a hunter on Onyxia once Nef comes down. Before hand though we have everyone on her to blow her up to ~50% or so and me and hunter will kill the rest of it before the third crackle and second phase. Damage output on Onyxia doesn't matter when it comes to her bar, but with every crackle she does gain some on her energy bar (from what it seems after each crackle). So you can't stay with her too long if you want to push three crackles.

[Kewi]

Bumping a few day old thread, but this is the 'most recent' discussed here...

As the Ony tank for this fight, her crackle energy does seem to be variable -- At least once I noticed she didn't get a static 20 energy she usually got on our attempts...
As for energy gains on a periodic interval, I do not know the exact mechanic, I try manually counting it out but we're talking partial seconds which is hard to get a good judge on.. it appears to be 1 energy every 2-3 seconds ?

Of course, all this is reviewed in-fighting and is subject to my own viewing/time bias, which in fights can be off. However, I'm almost positive I've seen Ony gain less then 20 energy on a crackle -- though I have not seen a higher gain then about 20...
However, our strategy while we're learning always keeps some DPS on ony (and I don't know specifically how much DPS we're doing to her) so... can't really comment much more then on observation.