Vish strats and suggestions <finishing out don>

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Nannwin
Of course I could be totally wrong and be talking out of my ass too so your mileage may vary
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Joined: Thu Dec 27, 2007 2:45 am

Vish strats and suggestions <finishing out don>

Post by Nannwin »

The Basics

At the fight start, the MA will pull Vish into position along the rock wall. DO NOT engage Vish until he is in position. Early in the fight, Vishimtar must be marked with the cleric anti-DS mark, to negate Vishimtar's 250hp caster DS. (Any detrimental spell cast on Vish will cost the caster 250hp.)

Vishimtar hits moderately hard, not too bad, on the MA. Additionally, he AE rampages- for large range, and full damage. This will kill you FAST if you get caught in it. It's important for new melee-classed members to observe for a few moments and see where others are standing, so you can imitate. Rogues only on the rear; all other melee should be on his flank. At no time should any caster or healer be inside AE rampage range.

Vish AE's Vishimtar's Shadow every so often, maybe 30 seconds on / 60 seconds off, for the entire fight. Keep yourselves and your groups alive. Infusion of the Faithful can give you a resist chance for this, particularly if your resist caps are raised, and particularly if you've finished tier5 DoN progression. Casters and ranged DPS should stay close to the healer squad; there's no reason to be at long range, you'll only outrange the heals you need to survive. Vishimtar's Shadow can be cured randomly by Radiant Cure and its upgrades; it's worth casting at the start of the Shadow AE if your RC is up.

Any player who dies, at any time, will spawn a skeleton add called "a spirit wraith". These hit quite hard and are very resistive. Naturally, they have a tendency to go for healers and casters, who will die and spawn another wraith. This process turns into a wipeout cascade in VERY short order. Wraiths should be mezzed; after a certain timespan, they will despawn on their own. Necros and bards (and now, monks and rogues...) can help with the mez process.

No pets at any time. They just get mulched by the AE rampage and AE DoT, and while they're up, they push Vish out of position. They don't spawn adds when they die, but they're still not worth the time, effort, and annoyance.

Also, no damage shields at any time, no exceptions. This is critical. Includes any form of clickie DS, bard haste or group resist songs, ranger AC buffs, and druid AA heals.

Create a social hotkey in a convenient place, and enter into it this text: /say shoulder my burden.

If somehow you get flung off the platform- for example, by a stray shadow- you will warp back to the zone-in point if you are levitating. If you are not levitating, you will probably return to the zone in with an accompanying 200khp impact. Sometimes you might not warp back up, in which case you should yell in /rs for a CoH out of the pit.

The scripted adds

As with virtually any EQ raid these days, Vish doesn't fight alone. His first trick is to spawn four "an incorporeal shadow" at 75%. These mobs hit for about 20hp a pop and can proc a fling effect. They also have about 100hp. If killed, they will turn into "a lifedrain shadow", which hits for 1400+ and flurries. If a lifedrain is mezzed for awhile, it will revert to its incorporeal form.

The way to handle these is to have four SK's pull them away from the raid, unequip their weapons, and hold them off the raid with no damage. They memblur about every 10 seconds, so it's a constant, but boring job. Our SK's do a fine job of it. If a shadow gets loose, which happens rarely, you should simply look away from it and let it beat on you until a knight gets it back under control.

The next adds come at 50% on Vishimtar's lifebar. The four corrupted drakes scattered around the outer edge of the room will stand up and attack. They hit moderately hard and have plenty of hit points; but if killed, they respawn fairly quickly. So we control these in a similar fashion. Paladins- or lacking paladins, warriors- offtank the drakes for the remainder of the fight. They should be slowed, crippled, and otherwise fully debuffed, but not attacked.

The last set of adds comes four minutes after Vishimtar is aggro'd. Note that depending on the raid's DPS, this might fall at any random point on Vishimtar's lifeline. Vishimtar will emote in yellow text:

Your presence has caused the children to awaken. They will be ... hungry.

At this moment, an egg spawns at some random location in the area. It must be found, and its location called- generally, "north", "south", or "in raid". When an egg spawns, all melee must run to it and attack it with blunt or hand-to-hand weapons. (These get a 10x damage modifier- enjoy the eye candy.) If the egg is not crushed within a certain timespan, it will hatch a mess of tiny drakes, and these will kill people like crazy, spawning lots of adds, and wiping the raid.

One egg spawns each minute for four minutes; after the fourth egg is down, Vishimtar sends up another emote about protecting the eggs, and eggs stop spawning for four minutes. Then another set of eggs begins to spawn, and so forth, until Vish dies.

The last adds that spawn are "cloud of concentrated chaos". These are very small, white storm dervishes that wander around the outer edge of the encounter area. They are not KoS. One spawns about every 5mins or so. When killed, a chaos cloud will fire off a 10khp/mana/endurance heal across the entire raid area, thus keeping us going for this relatively long encounter. Generally, our rhythm is to kill one cloud after each set of eggs is done spawning, but it's the raid leader's discretion on when to pull and kill a cloud.

Killing the beast: DT phase

From 100% to 25%, Vishimtar is a straight beatdown. Control shadows at 75%, drakes at 50%, and crush eggs whenever they spawn. At 25%, with all this mess going on already, the real fun part begins.

The first thing that happens is at 25%. Four "mournful spirit" will spawn around the edge of the encounter area. These are LARGE, white storm dervishes- not to be confused with the SMALL dervishes, which are the chaos clouds. This is a very important distinction! I believe, also, that the chaos cloud cons light blue, whereas the mournful spirits con dark blue.

At 24% health, Vishimtar's life will stop dropping, and no amount of damage will drop him below that mark. Not long thereafter, he will begin casting a new effect called Creeping Doom on four random people at a time. If you are one of the lucky Doom victims, your audio trigger should fire. If you get Doomed, you have sixty seconds to escape its effect, or it will kill you. You have three ways to escape, which should be executed in THIS order of priority.

Method 1: Get cured
Find a mournful spirit. Run close to that spirit, and target it. Press the social hotkey I mentioned way up top, with the text: "shoulder my burden" in /say channel. (Remember, you might be snared by Vishimtar's Shadow, making it that much more difficult to get to a spirit.) If you successfully complete these steps, a number of things will happen. Creeping Doom will be cleared from your buff list, without killing you. The spirit who cured you will die, to respawn a short timer later. And Vishimtar's minimum life lockout will decrease by 1%, allowing the raid to kill him just a bit more.

Vishimtar will NOT DIE unless 25 cures are completed. Keep that in mind- you must fight to get these cures done expediently, or else we will eventually wipe to attrition.

Method 2: DA
When the Creeping Doom buff timer hits 6 seconds, cast a DA-type effect- Divine Aura, Divine Barrier, Harmshield, Quivering Veil of Xarn, etc. Wait until Creeping Doom has faded off your buff list, then click off the DA effect and rejoin the fight. Doing this will keep you alive and contributing, but will not allow us to further damage Vish. Remember, only DA if you CANNOT get cured.

Subnote #1: Paladins have reported that Purification AA will strip Creeping Doom safely. This also does not advance the raid, so treat it the same in priority as DA. I know monks also have this AA, and possibly rogues; feel free to use it in this capacity. (If you're not certain it will remove Creeping Doom, you'd best have option #3 available as well.)

Subnote #2: If the MA currently tanking Vish gets hit with Creeping Doom, he will announce that fact to the raid and alert clerics that he will require a Target DA in the near future. At this point, a second tank begins taunting Vish, to prepare to take his aggro with the primary MA under DA. When the primary MA calls, ONE cleric is to cast Bestow DA on the MA. This will flip Vishimtar's aggro to the SA, who will require heals for a short time; after Doom has faded on the MA, he clicks off DA and takes aggro back from the SA. Return heals to the MA and continue as normal.

Method 3: Gate
A vendor in Plane of Tranquility sells "A Vial of Swirling Mist" for about 1,000pp. Everyone fighting Vish should carry one of these. If you cannot find a spirit to cure, and you have no way of DA'ing through the Creeping Doom trigger, then you should gate completely out of the instance zone. Doing this removes you from the fight- but you don't leave an add behind when you go. If you're bound in the Lobby, PoK, Nexus, or Tranquility- non-combat zones- Creeping Doom will fail to kill you. You should then run back, as quickly as you can, and help to see through the rest of the raid. (If Vish dies while you're out of zone, you can zone back in for loot, so long as you don't /taskquit.)

Vishimtar will die shortly after the 25th cure has been completed. He spawns a chest with 3 loot items; additionally, his corpse carries one eye, plus nine scales. The eye is combined with an eye of Yar`Lir in a Mask of the Hidden (500 crystals) to complete this quest, resulting in a very strong class-specific item. The scales from Vish are used to complete tier5 of DoN progression, rewarding 2AA and the final special ability, which infers a greater chance to resist any resistable spell cast on you.

Audio Trigger summary

You sense your doom approaching - cure DT; or if you can't cure, avoid it
Image

No fear, no doubt....All in, balls out

"Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." Margaret Mead
casiopia
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Re: Vish strats and suggestions <finishing out don>

Post by casiopia »

Well covered thyn and yes insta-gate potion is best way to go, Also need to remember to let the melee classes and healing classes grab the spirits first if needed. I like to bind in LS to save a long run back.
Senoril
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Re: Vish strats and suggestions <finishing out don>

Post by Senoril »

Thynian wrote:A vendor in Plane of Tranquility sells "A Vial of Swirling Mist" for about 1,000pp.
His name is Gregory Maligus. The Vial of Swirling Smoke (not Mist, just FYI) is potion belt enabled. To the best of my knowledge, he is the only vendor that has an unlimited supply of these potions.
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