We killed Atramedes on heroic mode on the same night as Chimaeron. The changes to the fight aren’t too significant aside from a tighter soft enrage, and the fun of swatting obnoxious imps (and giving them a pummeling for good measure).
After hitting the Silence is Golden achievement as fourth on the realm, we were pretty confident heading into Heroic Atramedes.
After a 2% wipe on a previous evening, tonight we obliterated Chimaeron in the second phase to score <Fidelity> a kill. After an agonising close call watching Chimaeron pick off raiders one by one, it was a delight to see its health at 10% when the first tank fell, and have 7 toons left standing at the end of the fight.
We used a 2 tank strategy, which took some time to perfect as the change in taunt rotation is a significant difference from normal mode. So our two tanks took turns tanking feud immediately after soaking the double attacks, and the raid runs to the other tank’s position for raid healing through the caustic slimes. The catch with this strategy is that the first double attack after every feud is hitting a tank with 4 break stacks, however with some great heals, minor tank cooldowns and good avoidance / mitigation we were able to deal with it pretty well.
We had a cooldown rotation for the toon tanking feud that extended to four feuds. Due the random number of massacres between each feud phase, on our kill we pushed Chimaeron over in the 3rd feud very comfortably.
We used 2 tanks, 3 heals and 5 DPS for Heroic Halfus. We let out three drakes at the start, using 2 MDs and a tricks, leaving the whelps initially and leaving Slate entirely. I grabbed three drakes, while Dambrath (Prot Paladin) had Halfus for a full set of Malevolent Strikes, bubble and another set before trading the boss. Our Enhancement Shaman Estadoug was on interrupt duty, but was able to also DPS the current priority drake target, significantly increasing our overall DPS into the drakes. By the first Halfus trade, at least one drake was dead leaving 2 drakes on Dambrath. We continue to zerg the drakes, and grab the whelps while we have another bubble from our Holy Paladin, Noondez. By that point it’s drakes mostly dead, whelps out and a nice AoE zerg to force Halfus over 50% for the last phase. Our interrupts in the last phase were a little all over the place, but between bubble, every man for himself and our Mage Bioderm, we exploded Halfus in heroic mode.
A little while ago, we managed to complete the Achieve-a-tron achievement for Omnitron, and listed on GuildOx as the 3rd guild on the realm to do it. While the nature of the achievement (being individual and accumulative) can make it a little difficult to have a guild run register, we’ll take our little bronze medal and enjoy the company we’re keeping on that list.
The last on the list of most toons requirements was interrupting Arcanotron. Moordenar and I had our work cut out trying to get an interrupt in edgewise past Estadoug who had Arcanotron completely locked down.
Guild banners and pages abounded after our first kill of Nefarian, in a great display of guild pride. After a 2% attempt relatively early, we pulled it together for the last attempt of the evening for a convincing kill. We’re looking forward to getting stuck into heroic mode content.
Making the [Reins of the Dark Phoenix] available to all guild members at Exalted reputation is a nice touch, so we should see those keep rolling in over the next few days and weeks.
