This expansion has showcased the imagination of the Raid development team. Nearly every fight features new mechanics and never before seen gimmicks. Atramedes is one of the best examples of this trend and one of the coolest fights in Blackwing Descent.

We’ve fought Demons, Undead, and Old Gods but a blind Dragon? That’s a new one…

Atramedes is blind and relies on his impressive sense of hearing to locate raid members. This fight features one of the new systems implemented in Cataclysm which is a fight-specific bar. The ‘sound bar’ is located in the bottom middle of your screen which can be annoying if you’ve got that area covered up with UI mods. It indicates how much noise you’ve made; the more noise you make the more damage you take and once your sound is high enough Atramedes will go crazy and one shot you.

Fear not though, the sound bar can be reset to zero by ringing one of the ten gongs located around the room. The gongs will overload poor Atramedes’ ears and reset your sound as well as stunning him. Managing your sound and gongs is the main gimmick of this fight.

Abilities

Ground Phase

• Sonic Breath – The highest sound player will be targeted with a channeled breath. The player must swing Atramedes in a circle while the raid avoids his beam of breath. When hit this ability adds 20 sound per second. Follow speed is determined by the player’s sound level.
• Searing Flame – Sprays the whole room with flames dealing massive damage. This ability must be interrupted using the gongs or it will annihilate the raid.
• Modulation – Sends a shockwave out from himself dealing damage based on sound level. Adds 7 sound to all targets.
• Sonar Pulse – Spawns 4 sonic discs which are sent randomly away from him. Players hit will take damage and gain 7 sound. These are avoidable.

Air Phase

• Roaring Flame Breath – Casts at the highest sound player. Focuses a beam of fire on the target that chases them with increasing speed. A gong must be rung when the speed becomes unmanageable. Whoever hits the gong will be targeted with the next breath.
• Sonar Bomb – Spawns a pulsing sonic bomb on the ground, easily avoidable but deals high damage and adds a whopping 30 sound.
• Sonic Fireball – Sends down fireballs that have a 6 yard AoE and deal 30,000 damage.
• Roaring Flames – Flames are scattered amongst the room, players that stand in them will take increasing fire damage and 5 sound per hit.

Setting Up

Tanks: 1

DPS: 6-7

Healers: 2-3

Most of the damage in this fight is avoidable, so let your number of healers be determined by how well your raid can manage the mechanics. There is no hard enrage, but there is a soft enrage since when you run out of gongs to ring you’re going to die. Atramedes only requires one tank. 

Tactics

Pull Atramedes to the center of his room, you’re going to need the space. Your tank can face him in any direction but typically North or South works best. When Atramedes is on the ground you’re going to watch for a few things. When he casts Sonic Breath it will be choreographed and most boss mods will mark the target of the effect giving them time to swing Atramedes and avoid being hit by the breath. Everyone else needs to clear away from the targeted player to avoid being hit with the breath.

Sonar Pulse is a neat mechanic which will send four glowing yellow discs randomly throughout the room. They don’t move too fast so you can easily find gaps between them once they begin to spread out (you’ll see what I mean when you attempt him). Sonar Pulses and Sonic Breath are the true no brainers in this fight for avoiding stacking too much sound rating.

Modulation will cast periodically, it is unavoidable and won’t deal much damage unless your raid has been screwing up and getting hit by too many avoidable mechanics. Don’t be!

Searing Flame is cast once every 45 seconds or so when Atramedes is on the ground. Boss mods are incredibly useful for this. You are going to want a raid member positioned near an active (gongs can only be used once) gong ready to hit it the second that Atramedes begins to cast Searing Flame. This ability seriously hurts! Do not let it go on for long. Interrupting this will also reset your sound, so it’s not a wasted use of a gong.

After 80 seconds Atramedes will fly up in the air and immediately target a player with Roaring Flame Breath which looks like a bright beam of fire. The first flame should be gonged pretty quickly since it’s going to catch its target and when it does it will kill them in short order. The person who hits the gong will be targeted with the next breath, this means that you can control whether a second gong is necessary depending on who you have use the gong. A Rogue, for example, can begin pre-emptively running from the gong and then Sprint when the beam gets close to them. They can Cloak of Shadows after that to cause the beam to miss for another 5 seconds after which the phase is often over. Similar strategies to this are useful if your raid is having trouble conserving gongs. Add in Priest “lifegrips” and other fun stuff and you can get some serious mileage out of your gongs.

Most of the other mechanics during the Air Phase are easily avoidable. The Sonar Bombs look like a pulsing ring of yellow light and are stationary. You’ve got plenty of time to move out of them before they explode. As for the Roaring Flames…  don’t stand in fire!

A good execution of this fight will let you get 5 Ground Phases and 5 Air Phases (1 gong per phase). That’s more than enough time to kill him. You can typically have two throw-away gongs to use on screw ups when someone’s sound gets too high, any more may cause you to have trouble killing him in the time available.

The Ground and Air phases repeat in sequence for the entirety of the fight, so once you’ve mastered both you’ll have a kill. Good hunting and good luck!

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