Atramedes Tank Strategy Guide (Heroic Mode included)

Introduction

This guide is intended to provide a comprehensive description of the encounter with Atramedes in Blackwing Descent. It is mostly targeted to tanks who desire to have a short but detailed overview of what is expected of them during that fight.

This guide is updated for World of Warcraft WoD 6.1.2.

The Atramedes encounter requires a single tank who will only need to survive weak melee swings and dodge rather obvious abilities.

Atramedes is a blind dragon. He uses sound to locate his enemies and that concept is largely reflected in the mechanics of the encounter.

The encounter itself consists of two alternating phases: Ground Phase (80 seconds), and Air Phase (40 seconds) during which the raid will essentially focus on avoiding Atramedes' abilities.

• Keep your threat up.
• Avoid travelling disks ( Sonar Pulse).

• Keep moving.
• Move away immediately from the disks that spawn on the ground ( Sonar Bomb).
• Do not stand in fire ( Roaring Flame).
• If you have the highest amount of sound at the beginning of the phase, you will have to kite a breath attack ( Roaring Flame Breath) for as long as you can.
• If you are designated, you will need to relieve the player chased by the breath attack. To do so, hit an Ancient Dwarven Shield (gong). After that the breath will follow you and you need to kite it.

Two groups of four NPCs are guarding the room where you will be fighting Atramedes. Defeating them is necessary to gain access to the boss.

These two groups have similar, non-trivial mechanics. Each NPC has a specific ability (can be a spell, a buff or a debuff). When an NPC dies, he heals the remaining members of his group to full health, and transfers them his ability. This means that the NPCs in each group need to be killed in a precise order, so as to avoid spreading the most harmful ability first.

The NPCs will be assigned a kill order: 1, 2, 3, 4. You will be asked to tank two of them, either 1 and 3, or 2 and 4. The only thing you need to watch out for is Whirlwind cast by Spirit of Burningeye, the NPC that should normally be killed last. This abilities deals a lot of damage but reduces the NPC's movement speed which enables you to move out of range. Spirit of Burningeye will normally start moving towards a random raid members when doing Whirlwind, in that case, simply taunt him and he will come back to you.

For that group too, the NPCs will be assigned a kill order: 1, 2, 3, 4, and you will be asked to tank two of them, either 1 and 3, or 2 and 4. The damaging abilities of the NPCs all have an area of effect, so you need to be careful not to tank the NPCs too close to the raid, unless there is only one NPC remaining.

Atramedes' abilities, in addition to dealing damage, add sound to the raid members. Initially, everyone is at 0 sound and this value increases every time they are hit. The increase depends on the ability and the amount of sound the player already had. Whenever someone's sound reaches 100, they are killed by Atramedes.

The only way to reset the sound of everyone in your raid group is to use one of the ten Ancient Dwarven Shields (gongs) positioned around the room. As the tank, you will normally not have to worry about have your sound reset.

Graphically, the amount of sound a player has is displayer by a sound counter (or sound bar) that looks like this in the default UI:

The small dot in the middle will grow as sound accumulates. If you want to display the numerical value for your sound count, you will need to configure your unit frame or boss addon.

Using invulnerabilities like Divine Shield or Ice Block does not prevent you from getting sound. Instead, if you try to bypass a boss mechanics with such an ability, you will probably end up with 100 sound as soon as the ability ends and will subsequently be killed by the boss.

The Ground Phase lasts 80 seconds and is the initial phase of the fight. As the tank, all you have to do during that phase is to stand still and survive the low melee damage from the boss. From time to time, you will need to slightly move to dodge Sonar Pulse. This ability spawns disks below the boss. They will travel towards random raid members and add sound to anyone they touch. You should not take into account any other ability from Atramedes.

Also, you should probably be slightly attentive to Sonic Breath. It does not concern you directly but the other raid members need to kite that breath ability around the room. If they perform poorly at that job, you might need to move to prevent the attack from hitting you.

When the Ground Phase ends, Atramades will take off and remain in the air for 40 seconds: this is the Air Phase during which you will need to be constantly on the move to avoid Atramedes abilities. Ideally, you will take no damage during that phase.

Atramedes will constantly be casting Sonar Bomb. This ability spawns 5 disks in 10-man difficulty, and 8 disks in 25-man difficulty, at random raid members location. A disk does not move and only serve to mark the location where, after 3 seconds, a bomb will be dropped, dealing damage and adding sound.

In addition, you will need to avoid flames on the ground because they trigger Roaring Flame when you pass through them. These flames either come from Roaring Flame Breath, a breath attack which targets the player with the highest amount of sound and leaves a trail of flame on the ground for 45 seconds, or are spawned by Atramedes at random locations in which case they only remain for 30 seconds.

As the tank, you will normally build a limited amount of sound during the Ground Phase and it is highly improbable that you will be targeted by Roaring Flame Breath when the Air Phase starts.

If you are a Druid, you can be asked to go in Cat Form to help with Roaring Flame Breath. The idea is that this attack will eventually catch up with the targeted player. When that happens, you need (if asked, of course) to go to an Ancient Dwarven Shield (gong) and hit it, so that the breath attack now targets you. To keep ahead of it, you will need to use your speed enhancing abilities, namely Dash and Stampeding Roar.

Try hitting the Ancient Dwarven Shield (gong) that is located the furthest away from the player currently targeted by the breath. This will make it travel a longer distance before reaching you, thus gaining a few, precious seconds.

From a tank perspective, the fight remains exactly the same. One mention should be made regarding Sonar Bombs in the Air Phase, which drop a lot faster in Heroic Mode, giving you a lot less time to move out of their landing spot.