DQ first run - looking to improve

[Wyrmnax]

Well, yesterday i had my first demon queen run.

Truth be told, my first 3 demon queen runs. So you can figure how it was. On normal.

The first 2 runs were with a inexperienced group. Apparently only 1 or 2 in there ever had fought her before, so it was a good learning experience.

The third run i joined a group of other 4 that could probably have her dead by themselves. They just wanted to bring more people to make it easier, i think.

That said, i have some questions.

1) How to deal with the gnoll archers? I only though about flesh to stone after the fights, but i do believe they are red named, and hence immune to it. Tossing firewalls up top only means they are getting resummoned. IE: Theres a way to permanently disable them?

2) How to deal damage to the queen while she is away? Putting a firewall on top, yes. But half of the times i did that it actually put the firewall on the limit of the arena, and not on her

3) Her attacks arent particularly nasty. She hits for 40ish each hit, so its about the same as a giant. 30ish through stoneskin. So she needs about 6 attacks to kill me ( WF Wizard - 200 HPs at 14 ). The problem is that every time she touches she does 25 attacks, more than enough to hit 6 times. Is this normal ( IE: Dont expect to survive even 5 seconds of melee )?

4) Any way to deal with the spinning blades? Jump and try to keep outside of their paths helped, but when you are dealing with gnolls shooting you, queen chasing, and random blade barriers that you dont know who put down sometimes you just run through the blades, and it becomes messy.

5) Is she vulnerable to anything? Looks like everything i casted on her for damage was yellow numbers. Well, except the 450 disintegrate. But is there any damage type that is consistent on her?

6) Should i even be casting for damage? Isnt there something else i could be doing that would be more useful for the group, besides keeping whatever i can hasted and displaced? Even my 450 disintegrate did very little to her, what was killing were firewalls and the other players ranging.

[Visty]

lets see

1) How to deal with the gnoll archers? I only though about flesh to stone after the fights, but i do believe they are red named, and hence immune to it. Tossing firewalls up top only means they are getting resummoned. IE: Theres a way to permanently disable them?
only way is to killem asap, either via firewall or ranging them. they used to be orange named so you could make them helpless via str dmg but that wasnt how turbine intended the raid, so they made them rednamed

2) How to deal damage to the queen while she is away? Putting a firewall on top, yes. But half of the times i did that it actually put the firewall on the limit of the arena, and not on her
firewall on her (make sure you have her hardtargeted, not just softtargeted) and range her (need cold iron and good to bypass her DR)

3) Her attacks arent particularly nasty. She hits for 40ish each hit, so its about the same as a giant. 30ish through stoneskin. So she needs about 6 attacks to kill me ( WF Wizard - 200 HPs at 14 ). The problem is that every time she touches she does 25 attacks, more than enough to hit 6 times. Is this normal ( IE: Dont expect to survive even 5 seconds of melee )?
unless you got ****load of DR its not really good advice to melee her. she shreds everything. even heard storys that she bypassed 100% fort somehow and did land crits

4) Any way to deal with the spinning blades? Jump and try to keep outside of their paths helped, but when you are dealing with gnolls shooting you, queen chasing, and random blade barriers that you dont know who put down sometimes you just run through the blades, and it becomes messy.
get evasion. other then that you have to heal through them or run away from them

5) Is she vulnerable to anything? Looks like everything i casted on her for damage was yellow numbers. Well, except the 450 disintegrate. But is there any damage type that is consistent on her?
she is immune to lighnting and resistant to fire and acid. i think cold does full damage, but not sure about that

6) Should i even be casting for damage? Isnt there something else i could be doing that would be more useful for the group, besides keeping whatever i can hasted and displaced? Even my 450 disintegrate did very little to her, what was killing were firewalls and the other players ranging.
thats how that raid is done actually: firewall and ranged attacks
sure, you can do other things too to damage her, makes it faster till she dies

[Murgatroyd]

My answers are similar to Visty's


1) How to deal with the gnoll archers? I only though about flesh to stone after the fights, but i do believe they are red named, and hence immune to it. Tossing firewalls up top only means they are getting resummoned. IE: Theres a way to permanently disable them?

Firewalling is the best way. Sure they will eventually respawn, but this way they're not constantly dinging you.

Another option is to have someone with a good shield to pull their aggro and just sit somewhere and shield block.


2) How to deal damage to the queen while she is away? Putting a firewall on top, yes. But half of the times i did that it actually put the firewall on the limit of the arena, and not on her

Walk up to the edge and you'll be able to drop a firewall on her. Make sure you have her targeted.


3) Her attacks arent particularly nasty. She hits for 40ish each hit, so its about the same as a giant. 30ish through stoneskin. So she needs about 6 attacks to kill me ( WF Wizard - 200 HPs at 14 ). The problem is that every time she touches she does 25 attacks, more than enough to hit 6 times. Is this normal ( IE: Dont expect to survive even 5 seconds of melee )?

Yes, unless you have a lot of hit points it's best to just stay away from you. She has a nasty habit of hitting you with overrun and then chopping you into little bits.


4) Any way to deal with the spinning blades? Jump and try to keep outside of their paths helped, but when you are dealing with gnolls shooting you, queen chasing, and random blade barriers that you dont know who put down sometimes you just run through the blades, and it becomes messy.

You can dodge the blades since they're slow but sometimes you just can avoid em. A good tactic if Lailat isn't around is to hug your cleric and have him mass heal through the blades.


5) Is she vulnerable to anything? Looks like everything i casted on her for damage was yellow numbers. Well, except the 450 disintegrate. But is there any damage type that is consistent on her?

Cold spells work best, and if you can debuff her, then disintegrate becomes useful as well.


6) Should i even be casting for damage? Isnt there something else i could be doing that would be more useful for the group, besides keeping whatever i can hasted and displaced? Even my 450 disintegrate did very little to her, what was killing were firewalls and the other players ranging.

Damage spells are the way to go, but save sp for the last 15%. She tosses a spell mantle on herself and can only be hit with spells that are 6th lvl or higher (disintegrate, polar ray).

Hopefully if you have a ranger in the group, his manyshot has reset by then :D

[Missing_Minds]

5) Is she vulnerable to anything? Looks like everything i casted on her for damage was yellow numbers. Well, except the 450 disintegrate. But is there any damage type that is consistent on her?

Visty already gave you pretty good answers, but I figure I'd add this into it as it is forgotten a lot. (and won't help you at all, sorry)

Divines can nail her as well. Any of the light spells will roast her as well as blade barriers as she runs around.

Her DR requires BOTH cold iron and good aligned (pure good, holy, flametouched iron, etc.) to beat.

[Wyrmnax]

Visty already gave you pretty good answers, but I figure I'd add this into it as it is forgotten a lot. (and won't help you at all, sorry)

Divines can nail her as well. Any of the light spells will roast her as well as blade barriers as she runs around.

Her DR requires BOTH cold iron and good aligned (pure good, holy, flametouched iron, etc.) to beat.

Hey, i could always get a +2 flametouched dagger of pure good and go snuggle with her... I bet it will be one of those *** moments for the rest of the pt though...

Thanks for the answers guys. One other thing only. What should i be doing enfeeble her? I am still quite new to the raid stuff, dont know even where to begin. Besides Ray of enfeeblement, that one i do know.

[Missing_Minds]

Hey, i could always get a +2 flametouched dagger of pure good and go snuggle with her... I bet it will be one of those *** moments for the rest of the pt though...

Thanks for the answers guys. One other thing only. What should i be doing enfeeble her? I am still quite new to the raid stuff, dont know even where to begin. Besides Ray of enfeeblement, that one i do know.

You mean a +2 cold iron dagger of pure good? I'm sure she'd squeel a bit before she slapped you silly for not taking out the garbage. ;)

She's got SR and high saves... so you may have a hard time. But honestly, I've never known any boss (save undead ones) that are immune to the debuff spells. People have... or used to have a field day debuffing the heck out of the Reaver. :)

Emm... given her teleports, I don't know if they'd stick though. Hard to say. I've never taken a caster in there to find out. I would say it is deffinatly worth a shot at least.

[Baahb3]

Ray of Enfeeblement, Symbol of Weakness, Waves of Fatigue/Exhaustion and Bestow Curse are all good debuff spells.

[Missing_Minds]

Ray of Enfeeblement, Symbol of Weakness, Waves of Fatigue/Exhaustion and Bestow Curse are all good debuff spells.

And previously (and may still be) BC from weapon and from spell stacked.

[Wyrmnax]

Cursespewing Cold Iron Dagger of Pure Good, here we go!

Thanks guys.

[Shade]

1) They always respawn. You can either get someone to get the agro and dodge their attacks or heal thru. Or just kill them very fast. Option 1 works better on the higher difficulty settings where they have too much hp. 2 works well on normal.

2) Believe your simply targetting it wrong. Put her in the focus orb and get in range, ie on the very edge of the platform, it will work. Assign only 1 person to do this however, as wall of fires do not stack.


3) Her attacks arent particularly nasty.
Actaully yea they are. 40-50 dmg may not seem like much. But she has 6 arms, and thus 6 swords and multiattack is a staple of mariliths.. IE she attacks with all 6 arms every swing. She has a triple swing attack, so she can do a maximum of 18 hits in rapid succession. Very strong melee with allot of DR and healing can withinstand these attacks.. Wizards cannot. Her swords include unholy and anarchic Khopesh's.. .So she will do massive damage to those who are Lawful Good. True Neutral characters take allot less damage.

4) Can't jump them. But if you run the raid enough, you can learn the patterns and avoid them. Doing it while avoiding arrows and the queen too is difficult, it's a raid, it's designed to be.

5) Sonic will give you red numbers. However she will occoasonally cast protection from sonic, and sonic spells tend not to do much damage.. So no, your really limited to just fire and cold. She is immune to lightning. Full stats at the wiki (http://ddowiki.com/index.php?title=Queen_Lailat&) Wall of fire tends to be the best until she becomes immune near the end.. At which point cone of cold, delayed blast fireball and polar ray become the best options.

6) If you have strong melee or ranged characters in the group.. Your total contribution can be limited to buffs and debuffs. Often holding the archer agro or killing them is very helpful to the group as well. Casters can do good dmg with crit wall of fires on her, but getting her to stay in them is rather difficult.

[MrCow]

This is a guide that is about a year old (written in module 8), but I figure it may have some things you might be able to use regardless:


Guide to the Demon Queen Fight

**NOTE** This may not be 100% correct and reflects my perception on the Demon Queen Raid fight.

The Demon Queen is a raid that is now mostly about dodging and partly about making it as hard as you want it to be. The Module 8 battle flow is as such:

When spoken to she will immediately teleport off to the cliffsides. For people who haven't done this raid in a while this is probably the thing that will strike you as "different". When this occurs the 4 pillar gnoll archers will spawn, Lailat will cast spells from the cliffsides (such as Wrack, Lightning Bolt, Burning Blood, Telekinesis, Shield, various elemental Protections, and so forth). The Mobile Blade Barriers will also come out and slowly drift across the platform. She will remain teleporting from cliffside to cliffside until she has been taken down to 95% HP.

The next phase is when she will come to the central platform. Unless you have high DR it is highly recommended that you stay away from her, plain and simple. The main reason I see people party wipe in this raid is that they simply don't stay mobile and get slaughtered. Having less than 220 HP usually means a death sentence when she gets near you. She will stay in the central platform until she is taken down to 80%.

Once taken down to 80% HP she will teleport back to the cliffsides and now alternate between the cliffside/Mobile Blade Barrier phase and the chase people in the central platform phase. Also, the 3 Elite Effreti Guards will come in at this point.

After whittling her life down to 20% HP she will move on to the final phase. The Mobile Blade Barriers become more sporatic moving from center-to-edge on the central platform and Lailat will resume chasing people down. At this point the gnolls and effreti will not respawn if they are killed. Also, she has a Mantle of Invulnerability so 5th level and higher spells are ideal. Because some folks get absolutely torn up in the Mobile Blade Barriers this is often the part where you want to unload what you can as fast as you can (Manyshot, Cone of Cold, Polar Ray, Barbarian DR boost and whack her, etc.).

Various Tips

Gnoll Archers

For the experienced Maralith slayer, these are probably the most deadly of the pieces in this fight. Here are some ways to help against them:


Freedom of Movement will negate the crippling effect of their arrows.
Stoneskin/Spearblock will lower the damage you take from them.
They are red-named, so damage is the way to take them down (Wall of Fire or ranged weaponry tend to be the preferred methods).


Ways to go about managing the Gnoll Archers:


Gnoll Archers will respawn about 1:30 after you kill them, unless you are on the final phase.
One way is to get a gnoll decoy and have only one person tag them (get aggro by throwing kitchen sinks at each gnoll archer). If someone is assigned to do this, refrain from killing the gnoll archers or harming the gnoll archers until the end of the fight. This person will likely want to either stay still and block (if your shield DR is good enough Lailat won't threaten you either) or stay mobile and dodge arrows.
Kill them throughout the battle. If you go with this method, don't worry about when they respawn. Just take them down again.


Effreti

Typically these are the easiest part of the fight as so many melee have good weapons to beat these down quickly. However, things to watch out for:


Resist Fire helps to negate Scorching Ray and Shroud of Flame.
Shield or Nightshield is recommended to block Force Missiles.
Blur/Stoneskin/Axeblock/Displacement can help negate their attacks.
Spell Resistance can help block Ray of Enfeeblement (which does 1d6 + 3 STR penalty).
Effreti only cast if they feel they can hit you in melee or are not moving. If they are chasing you then they rarely cast.


Ways to go about managing the Effreti:


Effreti respawn after about 1:00, unless you are on the final phase of the raid.
Melee feel somewhat useless in this raid with the way most groups do it, so let them commence a good ol' fashion beatdown on them.


Mobile Blade Barriers: Cliffside Teleport Phase

People without evasion tend to hate these the most in this raid. The Mobile Blade Barriers, though, are only as bad as you make them. During this part of the raid you should only get hit a maximum of once per Lailat Cliffside Teleport. Here are some points for these blade barriers:


The Mobile Blade Barriers only do about 60 damage on a failed reflex save. This does not scale with difficulty.
The Reflex Save DC does scale with difficulty.
During the cliffside phase the Mobile Blade Barriers are predictable. They start from whatever cliffside Lailat teleported to, drift to the opposite cliffside, and halfway back to the center.
As they move a gap will form somewhere about midway through the drifting process which will allow you to run through unharmed. However, this is only recommended for people who are confident about running through unharmed.
The biggest flaw people make in this part is standing still in the middle of a Mobile Blade Barrier or running sideways through it. Both actions will cause you to get hit by it multiple times. This is a leading cause of death for most low HP people with poor reflex saves.
The best course of action for most people to take is to run straight through the Mobile Blade Barrier as they pass the center. Yes, you heard me. The best thing is to run through them in the center. Providing you line yourself up to run through a single Mobile Blade Barrier you will only be hit by it once, being no threat of death to any build (except maybe 6 CON arcanes :D). The toughest part will be actually convincing people to do this and watching them do otherwise, causing more harm to themselves than they should be.
These Mobile Blade Barriers can be dispelled with Break Enchantment on a good roll, but it requires aim and luck. For this phase it isn't worth it.


Mobile Blade Barriers: Final Phase

This is where all hell breaks loose. Unless you are a paragon on evasive dexterity then you will hit these Mobile Blade Barriers. More info on them:


The Mobile Blade Barriers still do about 60 damage on a failed reflex save. This does not scale with difficulty.
The Reflex Save DC does scale with difficulty.
The Mobile Blade Barriers will start from the center and slowly go in a straight line to the edge of the central platform. They can randomly sit near the edge or the center for 0-6 seconds before making their next move (from edge to center, center to edge, or edge to edge).
When possible, try not to stand in the direct line that the Mobile Blade Barriers are travelling.
Also when possible, don't stand in a Mobile Blade Barrier on the edge, or you will take damage for every second you stand in it.
These Mobile Blade Barriers can be dispelled with Break Enchantment. It may be worth the effort to do so as they will not respawn.


Queen Lailat

Lailat herself isn't much of an issue providing you make sure you STAY AWAY from her. The big snake lady should only be a problem in 6 situations:


You are crippled or slowed from STR loss.
You don't have a striding item or haste (or are a monk or barbarian).
You were wracked (Warforged are immune to wrack).
You are in the center of the platform when she teleports to the central platform.
You got hit by Overrun.
Lag struck.


In any other situation you don't have much of an excuse to run away from the big snake lady.

Queen Lailat can be hit by the following:


Destruction (weapon-based effect version)
Bestow Curse/Cursespewing
Symbol of Pain
Symbol of Weakness (but a current bug removes it after 6 seconds)
Strength Sapping
Fatigue/Exhaustion
Sunder
Ooze Guard Sundering
Eagle Claw Strike
Curse of Healing
Crushing Despair


Recommended buffs for fighting her:


True Seeing (she will cast displacement when she goes onto the cliffsides, but not when she is in the central platform).
Resist Fire (For burning blood)
Resist Acid (For burning blood)
Resist Lightning (For Lightning Bolt)
Resist Sonic (For her melee strikes)
Freedom of Movement (For Wrack)
Haste/Expeditious Retreat/Longstrider (to outrun her, providing you lack a striding item)


Queen Lailat's melee attacks are a 6-strike hit (or 3-strike hit if you are on her left or right side) On normal they do ~20-31 per hit, as well as 1d6 true chaos damage, 1d8 sonic damage, and 2d6 + 4d6 on crit from unholy burst. Only a couple of her strikes can do unholy damage.

If anyone plans to melee Queen Lailat it is highly recommended they have some DR from slashing, have resist sonic, and that you try to debuff her with Exhaustion, perhaps more if you feel like it.

Some stats on Queen Lailat:


Has DR Cold Iron + Good.
Resistance vs. fire, acid, cold.
Immunity vs. lightning.
Casts the shield spell up to block magic missiles.
Her SR on normal is 29 and climbs to 31 on hard and 33 on elite.
Her AC on normal is around 32, 36 with shield up. This scales with difficulty.
About 26000 HP on normal.

[Atenhotep]

How is it that in three years this is your first DQ? :eek:

[Wyrmnax]

How is it that in three years this is your first DQ? :eek:

By quitting the game before Mod3 came out, rejoining after Mod5, quitting again right after Mod6 and rejoining back just as it went F2P.

I have a long story with DDO...

[Zenako]

Personally when we run it, if we have a ranger with a decent bow (Something of Greater Gnoll Bane for example), usually just have them clear the pillars of the gnolls as their first task with Manyshot. Usually get 3+ cleared before manyshot expires. Just makes it easier, and lets that character then focus on the DQ until the gnolls return (if it takes that long - sometimes yes, sometimes no). Having the Right Ammo stocked is critical to being effective ranged attacks in this quest.