Daosheen the First born strats and suggestions

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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

Daosheen the First born strats and suggestions

Post by Nannwin »

Welcome to the toughest endurance-type encounter I've ever witnessed. This fight will generally last between 30 and 45 minutes depending on DPS levels and the necessity of stopping DPS at particular intervals.

Instance zone is on the floating platform near the SE corner of Arcstone, same place as the Skylance mission arc. Once inside and buffed, run up the ramp all the way to the top- being very careful not to fall, you can take a 200k hit in there. Walk into the glowing pillar at the top of the ramp to enter Daosheen's room.

The room itself consists of a large circular platform, with four ramps spiraling out and up to reach an upper ring. That ring is where you enter to start with. You will also see the four all-important crystals hovering over holes at four equidistant points on the upper ring. Carefully move around the ring to stand on the bridge between the red and green crystals; this is the raid start position. The MA will tank Daosheen on the platform floor, close to the foot of the ramp below the healer team. Daosheen is not rooted, so push control is essential.

Note: falling off the ramps or platform at any time will warp you to the center of the room. If the raid has not started yet, this means that you land on Daosheen's head and he kills you. This also counts as "engaging" Daosheen and locks the task, which is a Very Bad Thing (TM) if we have people logging in who want /taskadds. Falling off during the encounter is quite harmless; falling off before we engage is very bad.

If you die while falling, your corpse will fall through the warp field. It can still be dragged if someone can get the corpse target, then jump off and spam /corpsedrag on the way down. That should pick up the corpse, then warp back up with it in tow.

For those of you who scramble for buff space: ALL effects on this encounter are unresistable. You can drop any and all resist buffs. Casters can and should use focus instead of self shielding- the str might come in handy. Read on for more.

Daosheen basics

Shrink is mandatory unless you are an enchanter.

Daosheen himself hits up to about 5k, and AE rampages for over 2k. He is slowable (somewhat). His rampage comes often and hits hard, so melee need to run out when they need heals. Knights seem to have generally agreed that their DPS is not worth the AE rampage damage, and that it's better to spend time healing people and controlling adds than standing anywhere near Daosheen.

Daosheen has a disturbingly high hp count and a nice healthy regen to go with it. This is very relevant, because it ensures that this encounter cannot be burnt through at ANY phase, including the final 10%. With our current level of DPS, we cannot possibly drop Daosheen before his deathtouch drops us.

Daosheen is highly resistive. It takes a substantial pack of debuffs to make him nukeable. If you have a debuff that drops FR, PLEASE use it. It brings our wizards from being subpar plinkers back to being respectable damage.

Adds spawn at every 10% interval of Daosheen's health. At 90% and 80%, one crystal spirit spawns from each crystal- total four. They hit for 1500's, fast, and are somewhat resistive. Adds should be mezzed until they despawn. Later waves of adds increase the add quantity: two adds per crystal at 70%, 60%, and 50%; and three adds per crystal from 40% to 10%. That's up to twelve adds per wave!

Enchanters and knights have been working gloriously on the adds, but let me add some details I've observed. Enchanters tend to linger with the healer squad, with some few exceptions. Knights tend to fan out around the upper ring and be ready to tag the adds as they spawn, holding down aggro for the enchanters to mez. In the later waves, it's useful to pop HoT's on the knights just before the adds spawn, to help them survive the resulting onslaught. Adds remain up for about 30-40 seconds once mezzed, then vanish. Do not ever damage an add, there is no point and you risk killing an enchanter.

Nukers, move away from the crystals as the add waves approach. There are much hardier people to take those hits, we should be lurking halfway down a ramp or in the healer cluster.

Crystals, single cures, and the click team

This is without any doubt the most important aspect of the Daosheen encounter- PLEASE read it thoroughly and understand what's going on.

Every 25 seconds, Daosheen picks 5 random people anywhere in the zone, MA excepted (usually), and casts one of four random effects on them. The victims of these effects can cure the effect by clicking one crystal. Everyone must do this personally; no one else can cure the effects for you. Purify Soul does not work to cure effects. Purification does seem to work for most- silence excepted.

If at any time you click a crystal you're not supposed to click, you get nuked with Crystal Feedback, a 10khp DD with 10sec stun. Watch your clicks. Make sure you go for the correct crystal, and only click once. Click with your left mouse button, not your right mouse button.

These are the four single-cast effects, and the crystals you must click to cure them.

Curse of the Firstborn - debuffs 300 stats/saves - yellow crystal
Plague of Mana - 3000hp/tick DoT - green crystal
Presence of the Firstborn - silence - red crystal
Smothering Dismay - melee slow + snare - blue crystal

Everyone must have this information readily available at all times. Write down the spell names and their associated colors on a sticky note and stick it to your monitor. Type them into the /note window. Create custom audio triggers on the spell hit messages telling you which crystal to click. Whatever solution you choose, you MUST be able to determine, at a glance, which crystal you need to click.

Now, take a moment to think on what those effects really do. The DoT is obviously the most individually threatening. Silence keeps the casters/healers from participating, but isn't immediately life-threatening. Stats debuff is pretty transparent to anyone with decent gear; it might snare a caster due to encumbrance (hence the advisement on using Focus), and it will cause a drop in melee DPS and avoidance. Slow/snare is rough on melee but harmless on casters, except insofar as it slows you down getting to the crystals to cure; regardless, it is also not immediately life-threatening. Keep these aspects in mind when you are NOT permitted to click cures. Read on for more on that.

At 75%, Daosheen begins casting AE mez and charm effects. One or the other of these effects- never both at once- will hit the raid every 75 seconds until the encounter's end. The mez hits everyone in a 65-foot radius; the charm hits about 15 random people at once. These effects must be cured by the click team, consisting of four pre-designated FD class members, one per crystal.

Notes specifically for the click team: memorize your DA spell(s) before the encounter begins, they will become extremely important at the 10% mark. Keep Daosheen on target unless you accidentally click on something else and switch targets, in which case it's not a big deal- just useful to reference his lifeline. Feign VERY close to your crystal- stand so your toes are hanging off the edge of the crystal's hole, then feign there. DO NOT STAND UP for the duration of the encounter, aside from the DT cure process mentioned below. Join the cedao channel. Create a hotkey that refers to that channel: "*RED* CLICKED" or similar, obviously inserting your crystal's color. Also, ensure you have Spell Awareness LAA available, whether via group or raid. If you do not have it, tell the raid leader you need moved to enable it.

These are the two spells cast, which are the first responsibility of the FD click team:

Aura of Stone - mez - red THEN blue
Runes of Alliance - charm - yellow THEN green

Both AE's, and the four singles, all last 10 minutes. No use trying to outlast them unless they're not hindering you.

When an AE goes off, an emote goes off with it. See the bottom of this post for the relevant texts. When that emote goes off, the crystal team must click the crystal sequence IN ORDER. When the first crystal is clicked, you will see an emote that the crystal begins to glow. The crystal glow emote (plus the "CLICKED" hotkey pressed by the first clicker) is the reference for the second clicker to click. Done successfully, you will see a final emote: "A bolt of light joins the two crystals for a moment." The AE mez or charm is now cured.

When the first crystal begins to glow, the second clicker has about 4 seconds to get their click in before the crystal glow fades. If the glow fades during an AE cure process- that is, if someone's too slow on their mark- the process must be restarted. Meanwhile, 15 people are either doing nothing or beating on the rest of the raid. Ideally, the cure process should take about 2 seconds or less; we've seen successful cures in under half a second. This is both very impressive and very helpful.

Here's the important part for the raid as a whole. If an AE goes off, and the first clicker clicks the correct crystal, then someone attempting to cure a single effect clicks any of the three wrong crystals to click next- that person will get fried by Feedback and the cure process will fail. This also means that the 2nd clicker in the process will key off the first person's click and ALSO get fried, thus killing their feign and making them valid targets for the DoT single. If someone tries to cure a single by clicking the correct 2nd crystal, then the clicker on that crystal will also click, and will then get fried.

The moral of the story above: it is ABSOLUTELY CRUCIAL that no one cures a single-cast effect while an area effect is being cured. We cannot possibly stress this enough. Repeat that bolded line to yourself 50 times, and you will be ready to raid Daosheen.

This means that you might be rotting with a 3khp/tick DoT on you, waiting for a cure to complete. We realize this. Heal potions are a great way to offset some of the damage while you wait for cures to become safe again. You might be silenced while trying to keep the MA alive. This is a problem, but the solution is not to jump for the red crystal and try to get cured- you will simply fry yourself and/or someone else, and cause the AE mez or charm to last longer than it should. These AE's are almost a non-issue if handled correctly. Wait patiently for the cure to complete, then you have 70 free seconds to cure single effects. Just remember to watch for the bolt of light emote- that's your "all clear" signal.

Another thing to note on single cures: occasionally, apparently at random and unlinked to the AE mez and charm, either the red or yellow crystal will begin to glow. (Probably coincides with people curing effects using those crystals.) When a crystal is glowing, clicking that crystal or two others will cause you to get fried with Feedback. For instance, if yellow is glowing, then the yellow, red, and blue crystals are all "charged" and waiting to zap you. Clicking green during this time is harmless- you will cause the bolt of light emote, and nothing happens, because there's no AE to cure. But then you might need to click AGAIN to cure your single effect, I'm not sure. Keep a close eye on your buff list and make sure the buff faded. Moral of the story: if you see crystals glowing, you might want to wait until they fade to click in your singles. This is a relatively low-impact aspect of the encounter, but any way to avoid 10k nukes is a good thing.

VERY important: we have many many many reports of people clicking crystals without any response. Single curers: click once, check your buff list, and make sure the effect is gone. If it is still there, single click again, and check again. (If you double click, it is extremely likely you will get fried for 10k.) FD click team: make ABSOLUTELY certain your crystal begins to glow when you click it. If it doesn't, then don't hit your "clicked" hotkey, or the next person will misfire. Single-click again, make sure the glow emote showed up, THEN hit your hotkey. This is infinitely more important on the deathtouch cure. If you click, but your click doesn't register and you hit your hotkey, the cure process will fizzle and will have to be restarted- and it is astronomically unlikely that we will be able to get the process done again before the DT fires.

A brief note concerning the mez.. A mezzed player tends to fall off the mob's hatelist completely. I have noticed that many times (but not every time) when I get mezzed, the mez cure leaves me with an hourglass on my OOC indicator. This means that my aggro has been wiped. Completely. If you DPS folks can't see the advantage of this, please reroll your class from level 1 and start again. Note that the mez is a PBAE, 65 foot range; it's to your benefit to be inside that range if you are a nuker or melee DPS.

A brief note concerning the charm.. A charmed player runs around like a headless chicken, occasionally stopping to whack an unsuspecting guildmate a few times. You can and will run off the platform while charmed. If this happens, you can fall through the warp field under the platform and land on the floor below. In order to warp back up, once the charm is cleared, you must first run up the outer walls of the "bowl" until you can't climb any higher; then drop down again. You will hit the warp field and land safely in the center of the platform.

The flow of the event, and the deathtouch cure

Now, any newcomers are probably staring at these words with a glazed look of "....what?" in their eyes. It's really not as hard as it sounds; you just need to learn the execution of the cures while beating Daosheen silly and controlling adds.

From 100% to 75%, Daosheen is a pretty straight beatdown, with a little add control at 90% and 80%. Take this time to note how the single effects hit and how to cure them. Also take this time to experiment with AE rampage range (melee only..). A little attention here will help a lot later on when things become well and truly chaotic. Oh, but wait- this is a control encounter.. It should never become chaotic if we all do our jobs right!

At 75% and beyond, raid leadership will call for DPS stalls and DPS bursts. The goal is to cause adds to spawn a short time after a mass AE is cured. This helps to ensure that the adds spawn while our enchanters are awake to mez them- very helpful. When the raid lead calls DPS off, everyone must stop hitting Daosheen except the MA and other tanks building aggro. DoT's must be used very responsibly; do not let them bleed into the 71%, 61%, 51% marks (etc)- make sure they stop before he hits 72, 62, 52 (etc) so as not to force him over the threshhold too early. (Wizards- manage Pyromancy appropriately, but do keep it on for the long stretches between add waves. We need the FR debuffs.)

So we successfully stall our DPS at 71%, an AE mez fires and is cured in about 1 second (because no one single cured during that time.. right?). Then we can open up the DPS, spawn the adds, control them successfully, and continue DPS. Repeat this process until Daosheen passes the 20% mark.

This is where things get lethal. Daosheen has a trump card AE up his sleeve- Doom of the Firstborn, a 200-range PBAE that will trigger a 100k deathtouch 18 seconds later. He casts this effect at precisely 10% and 5% health. He also casts it independently of the 25-second single effect timer, and 75-second area effect timer. To cure the DT effect, the click team must enter the combination: red THEN yellow THEN blue THEN green. As before, no more than 4 seconds between clicks, or the glows fade and the sequence must be restarted. And as I mentioned before, if the process fails the first time, it is highly likely that the DT will trigger and kill us all before it can be re-entered. A failure MUST NOT HAPPEN.

In order to facilitate the cure of the deathtouch and control of the adds, we treat this the same as the previous x1% marks (21, 31, etc). Beat Daosheen to 11%, then pull ALL DPS aside from the MA. We wait patiently for him to fire a mass AE. When the AE mez/charm hits, ALL single cures must be completely suspended until AFTER the deathtouch is cleared. Inserting a click here wipes the raid- that is all there is to it. Let yourself rot with that 3k DoT rather than killing the entire CE raid force. Watch the MA die because you can't cast, rather than killing us all.

When the AE mez/charm hits, click team cures it with much haste. Then we burst DPS- discs are encouraged, but watch enrage! At this point, the FD click team should all stand up and cast DA *before* Daosheen hits 10%. When that 10% mark comes, twelve adds will spawn, and Daosheen will fire the AE DT. Click team enters the click combination in order: red - yellow - blue - green, and the DT is cured. Meanwhile, enchanters and knights lock down the adds while DPS keeps Daosheen from regenning back UP to 10% and potentially causing problems, like 12 more adds and another DT. When adds stabilize, FD team should FD again and stay down.

Successful DT cure emote: "The crystals emit a blinding flash of light before going dark once more."

After the DT is cured, single cures may resume, with the same stipulation as before: do not cure singles while the click team is curing an AE. Daosheen will continue AE'ing the mez and charm every 75 seconds until he dies. Push Daosheen's health to 6% and stall him yet again. Cease all single cures. Wait patiently for a mass AE to hit; cure the AE; then burst DPS on Daosheen. No adds this time, so it's much easier- punch in the DT cure. Now, for the first and last time, we have free reign to light up Daosheen with every scrap of DPS we have at our disposal. AE mez/charm will still hit probably 1-2 more times before Daosheen dies, but it's his last stand, and after all we've been through to get to this point, it's just a pebble on a rocky road. There is a tremendous feeling of satisfaction when Daosheen finally gives up the fight and falls flat.




Audio Trigger summary

Required- entire raid:

Daosheen calls upon the elemental forces to contain his enemies. - AE mez hit - suspend single cures, click team enter red - blue
Allegiances shift as Daosheen speaks a cryptic phrase. - AE charm hit - suspend single cures, click team enter yellow - green
Your life begins to drain away. - AE DT hit - suspend singles cures, click team enter red - yellow - blue - green

Required- click team:

Doom of the Firstborn - if you are DA'd, the above DT trigger will not work- ensure you have Spell Awareness and NPC spells on, and use this one instead or in addition

HIGHLY Recommended- entire raid; click team optional:

A festering darkness saps your strength. - stats debuff on, click yellow
Your blood is tainted with magical essence. - DoT on, click green
You are dumbstruck by the presence of the firstborn. - silence on, click red
You lose your will to fight. - snare/slow on, click blue
....DO NOT click these cures if any of the AE effects is active, wait until:

A bolt of light joins the - mez or charm successfully cured, single cures may resume UNLESS Daosheen at 11% or 6%
The crystals emit a blinding flash of light before going dark once more. - DT successfully cured, resume single cures until next AE

Recommended- click team:
The (insert color) crystal begins to glow. - key this off the crystal that comes before you in the DT sequence; create another for your mez/charm cures if you wish. You can then trigger your clicks off those audio triggers rather than the previous person's hotkey. You WILL get false hits as crystals glow randomly throughout the raid; use this trigger only as paired with the triggers indicating AE casts.
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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
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