Blackwing Descent: Atramedes - Defeated Feb 20th 2011

[Whitey]

wowwiki:Atramedes

[video=youtube;76_r3fgddV4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76_r3fgddV4&feature=player_embedded[/video]

Originally Posted by Aliena                             
             Hello and welcome to the TankSpot Blackwing  Descent Raid Guide! My name is Aliena, and in this video I'll show you  all you have to know about Atramedes, the blind dragon you'll encounter  in the second tier of this new raid instance. We completed this fight  with 1 tank, 6 healers and 18 DPS, but similar raid configurations may  work just as well.

Atramedes is a very unique encounter. As mentioned, he's blind, so all  abilities he does are centered around sound. When the fight starts, you  will have a sound bar pop up in your UI. Getting hit with any of  Atramedes' abilities will increase your sound level. When the bar is  full - ie you hit 100 sound - Atramedes will know where you are and kill  you in about two seconds.

The fight is split into two phases that'll keep repeating. As soon as  you engage Atramedes, you start out with the ground phase which always  lasts 80 seconds. Let's go over the abilities that he'll use during his  ground phase. The first ability you'll see is Sonar Pulse - Atramedes  will release 4 sound discs that start at a random point in the room and  spread out from there. Touching a disc adds 7 sound to your bar and  inflicts some damage.

They move slowly and aren't that hard to avoid. If you get unlucky and  they spawn on you, move opposite of the direction they're moving into.  You'll stack up some sound, but it shouldn't bring your bar to 100.

His second ability is Modulation- this will look like a gigantic sound  disc reverberating through the room. Modulation can not be avoided or  dodged and will inflict 40000 shadow damage to your entire raid on top  of adding 7 sound to everyone's sound bar. He'll use this occasionally  throughout the ground phase.

His third ability is Sonic Breath - this is cast at the target that  currently has the highest amount of sound. Atramedes will face his  target (boss mods figure out correctly who it is and this should be  called out on vent) and start a 2-second cast. At the end of the cast,  he'll follow his target with flames, and anyone getting caught in the  fire will take massive amounts of damage and stack up sound. The more  sound Atramedes' breath target has, the faster the flames will follow  him.

Most often, a ranged raid member will have the highest amount of sound.  To counter this (and to make healing easier for Modulation), your ranged  raid members and healers should be loosely stacked up. When Atramedes  picks a target and starts casting his breath, his target should move to  the right and 'kite' the breath, wheras everyone else in the ranged pile  should move to the left. If his breath target has a movement enhancing  effect available like body and soul, no one should get hit by the breath  at all. The breath is channeled for 6 seconds, so everyone needs to  make sure that they're out of its way while it's being kited.

Atramedes' last phase 1 ability is Searing Flame. He'll cast this once  per ground phase and it's his most devastating ability. For 8 seconds,  he'll channel a fire AoE that inflicts about 20k damage to every raid  member per second and stacks up a fire damage debuff. It is crucial to  the fight that you do not let Atramedes cast this. To interrupt Searing  Flames, you can hit one of the ten gongs that are aligned around his  chamber.

Hitting a gong will cause Vertigo to Atramedes, which stuns him for 5  seconds and makes him take more damage within that time frame. However,  after he recovers from vertigo, he'll shatter the gong that was used, so  you can only use each gong once. This serves as soft enrage timer -  when you run out of gongs, you're probably screwed.

After you survive 80 seconds of the ground phase, you'll trigger his air  phase. This one only lasts 40 seconds. As soon as Atramedes hits the  air, he'll once again target the player with the highest amount of sound  and this time he'll chase him down with flame breath from the air.  Everyone should be moving when the air phase hits to increase the  chances of getting away from this flame breath.

The fire will move faster the higher the target's sound level is and on  top of that will speed up the longer Atramedes is chasing someone. You  will eventually want to interrupt this by using a gong, which once more  will cause Vertigo to Atramedes. After Vertigo is done, he'll shatter  the gong and go on to chase the player that used it. You want someone  with a huge movement speed increase to be the person to hit the gong  during the airphase, like a rogue for instance.

Obviously, any other movement speed enhancing buffs are are big help in  this phase. The flames will leave flame patches on the ground that deal  damage and increase sound when touched, so try to not kite them into the  most idiotic direction you can think of. He'll also use Roaring Flames  during his air phase, which adds more flame patches on the ground in  random locations. Obviously, we'll do what every person with a brain  does when they see fire on the ground - TOUCH THE BRIGHT SHINY  MESMERIZING THI- I mean.. don't stand in it. Ever.

His last air phase ability is Sonar Pulse, which looks like the discs  from the ground phase, but these ones will spawn in the location of  random raid members, and shortly after they appear, a little missile  will hit the center of the disc. Getting hit by the missile will deal  damage and add 7 sound, so it's important that every raid member stays  moving during the air phase to avoid these.. and the fire.. and the  arcane ball.. and the fire breath. So yes, keep moving during the air  phase and avoid getting hit by anything.

Once the 40 seconds are up, Atramedes will land again and phase 1 starts  over. This cycle repeats until Atramedes' health pool is depleted. Make  sure to only have reliable raid members hitting the gongs - getting the  interrupts right is the most crucial thing about this encounter. Other  than that, this fight is all about dodging stuff and kiting fire. If  executed correctly, Atramedes should die rather easily. The soft enrage  is very lenient and unless half your raid is dead, you should not get  close to it. I've attached footage of the whole fight to show in detail  how we dealt with his various mechanics. Good luck and have fun!

[Arcticfire]

awesome fight guys, well done on the gongs by semi, with that short notice and short preperation.
killed it on 2nd pull, 1st pull was a good one already IMO.
 
ps. I think we downed him on 20 feb, not on 20 jan?

[Arcticfire]

Bump for monday, know what to do with those gongs