Attument the Huntsman and Midnight is the first boss in Karazhan and the easiest by a long way. Considering the huge number of gimmick fights in the burning crusade with lack of taunt and some ingenious but rather annoying abilities this is a refreshingly simple tank and spank battle. However there are a few tips for defeating attumen and midnight that you should know starting this battle.
First things first though, lets get the basics sorted.
Attumen has around 350,000 health and is an Undead bloke, like the majority of bosses in Karazhan. He has a variety of attacks, most of which can be easily avoided if your tanks and players stand in the right place. While Attumen can be solo tanked it is not recommended and you will require a minimum of two tanks for the other bosses anyway.
His attacks are as follows,
- Melee – 1.6k – 2.1k on tank, 8k on clothies. Attumen can and should be disarmed.
- Shadow Cleave - Cleaves anyone in front of him for around 4k.
- AoE Curse – Reduces chance to hit with melee and ranged attacks and spells by 50%. Casts every 30 seconds. Can be removed by mages and druids.
- Mount Up – When he or Midnight reaches 25% health he will mount and they will form 1 boss at full health.
- Charge – This charge does over 6k damage on cloth and does a knockdown however it has a minimum range so can easily be avoided by having everyone hug. Remember to stay on his back half to avoid the Cleave. This is only active when Attumen Mounts Midnight.
The Basic Setup
The raid setup for attumen is fantastically simple.
First, Your offtank needs to get agro on Midnight, I suggest giving at least 5 seconds for this as neither Attumen of Midnight can be taunted (Damn Kara has a lot of this). It helps if you take midnight to the wall, keeping him well out of the way.
Once your tank has sufficient agro DPS Midnight to 95%. At this point Attumen will appear, it is vital that at this point your main tank gets agro on Attumen and faces him away from the group.
The rest of the group including the off tank must stay behind attumen to avoid his cleave ability,
Important things to remember about the Attumen fight are Demoralising Shout and Thunderclap, Disarm can and should also be used on Attument to significantly reduce his melee damage. And Spell reflect will help the fight by putting the 50% miss chance onto Attumen himself.
So you have your Raid in place with the two bosses where you want them. The next part is simple, DPS Midnight down as fast as you can. As soon as he hits 25% hp Attumen will mount him, restoring to 100% health. We do this because Midnights health goes down significantly faster than Attumen’s
As soon Attumen mounts Midnight your Main Tank must ensure the Attumen/Midnight combo is attacking him and move him to face away from the group again. All other raid members must huddle up directly behind the boss to avoid his cleave and charge ability (Which is lethal to clothies, especially if only one stays outside the group.)
The DPS should leave a couple of seconds after the bosses join to allow the tank to get enough agro, this is rarely required, but 2-3 seconds is a safeguard to a possibly stupid wipe.
The rest of the fight becomes a very easy tank and spank battle, healing is fairly easy and should only be needed on the tank itself, it should only be a matter of time till Attumen goes down!
It may also be useful to note that there is a repair guy near this boss, however you need a certain level of rep with the violet eye to use him. He also sells several rare recipes (Bind on Pickup) for any flourishing Jewelcrafters or Blacksmiths out there.
He doesn’t go to full health in Phase 3, he just goes to the % that Midnight or he himself was on before either of them got to 25%