If there’s one thing our raid team is good at, it’s inventing our own hard modes. Last night’s Atramedes (25) kill was no exception.
You see when you’re good and you’ve earned the trust and respect of your raid team you get asked to do things above and beyond your basic class role. In other words you are forced to sacrifice your DPS to ensure the raid doesn’t wipe. I was put on gong duty for Atramedes. Not every gong mind you, just the gong to handle Searing Flame. Responsibility accepted /salute.
Now the way I handle Searing Flame is this.
- Watch the countdown timer on my boss mod (in this case BigWigs).
- When the timer expires wait to see that Atramedes is casting Searing Flame.
- Strike the gong as soon as he starts his cast.
The NFL has a saying, one catch per pass. Well, for Atramedes the saying is one gong per Searing Flame.
I tend to be very competitive and I set a personal goal (which I achieved /flex) of striking the gong while allowing the minimum amount of Searing Flame ticks. Here’s the thing though, Atramedes doesn’t always cast Searing Flame when the countdown timer finishes.
All the boss timer does is indicate that Searing Flame is “off cool-down” and ready to be cast. It’s up Atramedes to decide when he wants to do it.
The first time he cast it right on cue and I hit the gong right on cue. The next time he hesitated and I didn’t. The third time he hesitated and I didn’t.
It’s quite the feeling to strike the gong and hear nothing but the sound of the gong. Each reverberation telling you that hit it too soon, and that Searing Flame hasn’t happened yet, and that it’s still going to happen and that you’ll need to hit another gong, and that you only have so many gongs available to you. Not once, but twice did hear this refrain.
We entered the final air phase with one gong remaining (Protip – Know thy Star Trek. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one). Our rogue opted to follow standard protocol and used the final gong to save the life of the person being tracked. In retrospect we would’ve been better sacrificing him and saving the gong for the next Searing Flame, but where’s the fun in that, right?
With our last gong spent, the boss at 16%, several already dead, and 35 seconds until the next Searing Flame, I told the raid, “Look alive everyone, this thing just got an enrage timer!” And with that the race was on.
Over the course of the next 36 seconds we proceeded to beat Atramedes like a rental car where you’ve opted for the insurance. And then we reached the end.
5%, tic, tic, tic.
4%, tic, tic, tic.
3%, tic, tic, tic.
2%, tic, tic, tic.
1% – “Brace yourselves and give it all you got!”
And then – BOOM!
I don’t know who got the killing blow, and I don’t really care. I, like many of my comrades was dead, but staring at a giant sparkling corpse. *phew*
Now rezzed, I began the distribution of loot and simply said thanks to the unknowing who complimented me on the precision in which I handled Searing Flame, choosing to hide my confession until now.
Good Hunting!
PS – As you can see in just one fell swoop ten of us went down, and we had a lost a few others earlier. We we’re truly lucky to get out of this scrape (Protip: In today’s raids all it takes is one player to screw the pooch. Choose your roles wisely 😛 )
As the designated Gong Boy myself I know of the pains of clicking too early and causing the healers to weep.
That was until I found an addon called AtramedesShieldClicker. All it does is about 5 secs before he is due to cast Searing Flame it puts a greyed out box in the centre of your screen which you cannnot click through. So all you do is line it up with the gong and spam click over the gong. As soon as Atramedes casts Searing Flame the box disappears and you bang the gong.
Best of all. If you don't tell anyone about it you look like a pro ^^
No need to blur out the names of all the participants, there, as World of Raid logs are publicly accessible. I just pull up the logs for Drenden and there you are: #6 in DPS on the final attempt and successful kill of Atramedes. Pretty easy to be a WoW detective, nowadays.
I was surprised to see you had three Survival hunters on Tuesday. I run survival myself, but it's not usually the most popular spec.
Good luck on Nefarian.