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WoW Insider's Guide to Atramedes

Atramedes is the fourth boss in Blackwing Descent. This is kind of an odd encounter, because Atramedes is blind. As soon as your start the encounter, a Sound bar will pop up on your screen. This is important because many of Atramedes's abilities are targeted according to who has the highest Sound at the time. Additionally, if you get to the maximum amount of Sound, Atramedes can target you directly and will instantly kill you.

You should note the position of the 10 gongs in the room. These interrupt Atramedes's Searing Flame ability, which is a huge key to the fight. Each time you use a gong, Atramedes will then immediately destroy the gong. Once you've interrupted Atramedes, he's be stunned for about 5 seconds and take additional damage from your attacks for that time. Note that you only have 10 gongs, so they serve as your effective "end point" for the fight if you run out.

General strategy


There are two phases to this fight, an air phase and a ground phase. The phases are repeated until either your raid or Atramedes is dead. The ground phase lasts 80 seconds. The air phase lasts 40 seconds.

Phase 1

  • Sonar Pulse places four glowing discs on the ground, which you must avoid. If you touch the pulse disc, you will stack up Sound. They might spawn on top of you; get away as soon as they appear. Ranged characters tend to have more trouble with this than melee, due to pulse movement.

  • Modulation places a huge pulse of sound through the room. You can't avoid it and must simply heal through it. It also puts a little Sound on everyone in the raid.

  • Sonic Breath picks a target and gives you 2 seconds of warning. Once that cast time is finish, the breath will follow its target with a swath of flame. For this reason, have your ranged characters clump together. When the Sonic Breath picks a target, that person goes in one direction while everyone else goes in the other.

  • Searing Flame will do damage to the entire raid, stacking a debuff that causes you to take additional fire damage. For this reason, it's key to use the gongs to interrupt the flame. Note that you only have 10 gongs, so they serve as your effective "end point" for the fight if you run out.

Phase 2 When Atramedes is in the air, he'll pick a target and use fire breath on it. That target must flee away from the fire's range. The longer the phase continues, the faster the fire will move. (The initial speed is determined by how high the target's Sound level already is.) For that reason, you want interrupt the attack with a gong after a few seconds. The targeted player should try not to kite the fire toward the rest of the raid.

Atramedes will also drop fire at random on the ground. He will also drop new Sonar Pulses, which will explode with little graphic missiles when hit.

Overall, your raid will need stay on the move during this fight, avoiding the fire and Sonar Pulses.

Other resources

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Ready Check shares all the strategies and inside information you need to take your raiding to the next level. You might also be interested in our strategy guides to Cataclysm's 5-man instances, and for more healer-centric raiding advice, visit Raid Rx.