notes on Obelisk of Ahkzul

So Khatovar and I decided to try our first TSO instance, Obelisk of Ahkzul, because it is the first one you see in TSO and because it was needed to progress the TSO signature quest and it was the daily double. I just wanted to post our experiences with Khatovar boxing 5 and me playing tank. The info at eq2.wikia is pretty decent but does not nearly do justice to the fight against Kierax the Energy Wielder.

The instance is 4 rooms basically.

Room 1: Easy. Just kill all the trash in the room to open the teleporter to room 2. Pulls are all either single pull ^ ^ ^ or pull of three mobs with one being ^ ^ ^ and the other two being single ^. Once cleared step through the swirly blue to room 2.

Room 2: Easy. Basically clear the room and you will spawn a named in the pool of water in the middle of the room. From what I recall most pulls were single ^ ^ ^ or one ^ ^ ^ with two single ^. There were some solo beasts that were ^ ^ ^ (these are the ones you actually need to kill to spawn the one in the middle) and I think four pulls of 3 ^ ^. Also of note are dead Grobb trolls laying around on the ground. If you get within aggro range of them they will animate as solo ^ ^ ^ so kill them as well. The boss was tank and spank. I don't recall much of anything about him unique... possibly a knockback.

Hallway to Room 3: The hallway has 3 or 4 double pull guards spaced in the hall... I think they were one ^ ^ ^ and one ^ ^. There are also I think two big beasts that patrol the hall as single ^ ^ ^ . best bet is to pull the evenly spaced double pulls to the doorway to the hallway or after you clear the first double pull stay where you are at and wait for the patrol. No difficulties here.

Room 3: This room is gonna cause you some pain. I would say this is EXTREMELY difficult for a single 6 box person. Read the wiki entry and I will add some details here.

1. Kierax the Energy Wielder is actually floating in the air in the center of the room. To engage him in melee you have to basically run to the center of the room and jump. The center of the room is a pool of lava with a blue vortex over it. you want to jump onto the vortex which will bounce you into the air and give you featherfalling essentially. If you miss the blue vortex you will land in the lava and die and your group will wipe or will have to run back to the zone entrance to reset the encounter. Because of this set up the only way to engage in melee is by bouncing up and floating down so melee boxers... this is not going to be the instance for you. You do not need to tank him at all (the only reason we were able to do it).

2. Up in the air spaced from Kierax are four towers or turrets basically. Each one will shoot an energy orb at Kierax and when 4 have been launch he will AOE the room (I am pretty sure its when 4 are launched). His AOE will do basically 95% damage to the group. basically when he does it a second time you will probably be dead. So to stop this you need to bounce up and down on the vortex and float through the orbs. They are slow and do not all shoot at the same time (though some do shoot very close together). It definitely takes a little getting used to evaluating exactly where you are in 3d space vs the slow moving energy orbs. Honestly he did not appear to do any other damage except possibly melee when i got close to him to intercept the orbs... because of this i do recommend who ever is bouncing to turn on at least auto attack. while I was doing it I was 100% focused on intercepting orbs and had no chance to use combat arts against him.

3. Position the rest of your group within spellcasting range and nuke him down as fast as possible. when your bouncer is in range try and put a heal on him every time... being that high in the air and bouncing around the room I was lucky to be in range of heals for more than a second or two so fast casting heals are best.

If this is your first try here as a boxer expect to die. Our first death was "how are we supposed to reach him up there" because we did not know he was in the air. the second death was "I am in the lava, woohoo!". third death we got him to 5% literally. fourth death 15%. fifth death = lava. 6th try we owned him. I am confident we could go back again and beat him in 1 or 2 tries... most of it was learning.. where to run to jump into the vortex instead of the lava. how to control my jumps and float through the orbs efficiently. He has low hitpoints and is an easy kill. the only thing you have to worry about is those orbs. ALSO. change your loot prefernces so that your jumper can assign who gets what out of the chest. why? well the chest is floating in the air where he dies. Basically your jumper clicks the chest and can land safely and distribute loot. Either that or potentially jump multiple toons up there one at a time to loot the items... depending on your set up that may be easier.

When he went down it was a serious "fsck yeah!" moment and well worth the run. We got the daily double void shards +1 for the last boss, and two usable upgrades for the team (if i recall correctly) including a seriously kool looking void sword for the tank.

Room 4: no trash. walk into the room and a minion will summon the last boss. He was easy after all that hopping around. One thing of note was he appeared to do a aggro wipe on me at one point. no problem for a tank but save any taunts for when he does it. He has a nasty aoe knockback so tank against a wall and kool everyone else at max range if possilble. He did put out some decent damage (bursts really) that max tax your healing team but if you are using a dual healing boxing team you should be fine.

anyways, i hope this helps some folks out. Please correct anything I may have mistaken here and any comments are always welcome and helpful.

Vilaraa+5

Just a few notes from my perspective. Setup SK {husband}, Templar, Defiler, Warlock, Illy, Troub. This is an instanced dungeon, so you'll have no competition {whoohoo!}.

Stuff in here is all shadowy stuff, so seeing is slightly difficult. It's not too bad since the majority of the rooms are brightly-colored, but I did run right into a shadow or two hiding in the dark corners.

Rooms 1 and 2 had plenty of stuff to mez and to quote Coupling, healing "was a piece of piss". Spamming my wards/reactives and mezzing out 1 or two from initial pulls made these rooms cake. We only ran across 1 patroller add.

However, in room 1, beware of the guards on the portal to room 2. You will not get a boss in this room, but the guards he leaves can do a nasty knockback that launched my guys all over the room and down into the little pits on the side. No deaths, I don't know if you can even fall in and die, but it was enough to cause LoS issues.

Room 2, like I said, no big deal. More to mez, some heavy hitters with a few AOEs, and a lot of shadowy areas but nothing horrible. The trolls were a bit of a surprise and hurty, so make sure to clear them out so you don't get them as adds. It says that after the last mob is cleared, the boss will spawn. This was not the case for us, there were still 2 trolls and an abyssal biter hanging out after we killed Proto-Ravager, 1 of the trolls being by the pool next to Proto-Ravager. They do not add and the boss stays at his spawn point until you pull him {watch your agro range of course if you are still clearing around him}. He was pretty much tank and spank, I think he smacked us with an AOE once, but that was it.

Hallway was easy pulls, just be sure to pull the first pair all the way out to the start of the archway leading into the hallway. The ^^^ pat comes right up to the end of the hallway and he would suck as an add.

Kierax's room was the biggest asspain and the only point where we had any deaths.

1. Do NOT enter the room until you are ready to engage. If you want to scout the room first, go no further than halfway through the archway or he will trigger. If he starts talking, he has triggered and that means orbs are in the air! Move it or lose it.

2. If you lose your orb-absorber, you will have to exit the zone or suicide to get the event to reset. On one of our tries, we lost the tank but the rest of us were up, I ran out to the second room and went out of combat, so we thought we were ok. Rebuffed, went back, hit the door and wiped because he'd been sitting there eating orbs the whole time and just obliterated us.

3. Be prepared to move. If he eats enough orbs, you should get taken down to almost dead, but should be able to recover with enough group heals before he can do it again. BUT, your orb-absorber will almost certainly be out of range to get hit with any heals. As 5+1 I was able to attempt some movement to land some healing on him, but it required some coordination on his part to get in range long enough. Suggest holding instant cast heals specifically for the tank and if at all possible, splitting up the healers so one is on each side of the lava pool.

4. Positioning. The best location I had for keeping DPS up was on the other side of the room, to one side or the other of the door to room 4. You may need to readjust, but somewhere around the 2-3 o'clock or the 10-11 o'clock worked pretty well for us.

5. Healing. Damage is minimal, DPS is critical. The AOE is unavoidable and can't be negated by wards or reactives {as far as I saw}. Swap your healer's 1st-line defense buttons {wards, reactives....HoTs may be worth keeping up} with Debuffs and DPS. Your direct healing abilities are all that's going to be of real use, so make use of all ST and group heals, including instants and emergency.

6. DPS. Use all you've got here. Pets, ranged attacks, cooldown spells. Bards should be pluckin' arrows, casters should spit out any and all pets {IE, use your Illy's conc slots to pop out her pet instead of the conc buffs}. Use boosts on your DPS, which includes healers for this fight. Also, if you have time compression or any sort of cooldown reducing ability, put it on your healers. I tried putting it on the tank and the DPS, but I found it much more vital to get the group heals off faster/more often than anything else. Healers should be ready to rez.

Like Abode said, this is not a MB friendly fight since someone needs to focus totally on eating orbs. But it is possible to do with +1 or very well organized macros on the non-floaters.

The last room was cake after Kierax. There's a long diologue, so you have plenty of time to survey the room and set up. For us, the burst damage came with the AOE, so be prepared to regroup and heal up ASAP.