Cosmic Observatory

Recommended: , crowd control, projectile mitigation

Upon entering this Strike Mission, the time of day is locked to whatever it was at instance creation.

Although a relatively simple boss, the jotun wizard Dagda does have quite a few attacks that require decent reactions from players due to their fast start-up and high ticking damage. Furthermore, she has a large amount of health compared to older Strike bosses, meaning that squads without a relatively sensible composition will take a while to bring her down.

Boss Attacks

Some attacks in this encounter will apply a debuff known as Residual Anxiety, which at 10 stacks will make players hostile to their squadmates and unable to damage the boss.

Dagda will generally attack in a scripted sequence throughout each phase of the encounter (with auto-attacks invariably filling in the gap between mechanics), adding and substituting new attacks in as her health depletes:

Shooting Stars

Spinning Nebula, then (under 90% HP) Spreads OR (under 75% HP) Soul Feast 

(under 50% HP) Rain of Comets

(under 50% HP) Planet Crash

A stray Spread mechanic can sometimes spawn in the middle of a phase, but besides that the pattern is relatively rigid.

 

For the targeted player, this attack is telegraphed by red text on their screen and in the chat box which reads “Beware the Shooting Stars. Hide behind your allies!”. For the entire squad, a target symbol will be visible above the target’s head along with a large green arrow extending from the boss and through the target.

Whenever this attack’s arrow telegraph appears, players should check to see if they are the target. If they are, they should back away from the boss a fair distance so that the rest of the squad can body-block the magic projectile; don’t AFK on the boss!

Dagda can sometimes choose to teleport a short distance away from the center of the arena before using this move, in which case the orbs will only be sent toward the center. Furthermore, she will always teleport back to the center immediately after the attack concludes.

If she uses Spinning Nebula on top of the group, players should back away or Dodge out as soon as possible to be able to avoid the projectiles—this attack can pack quite a punch without strong heals backing up the squad!

While moving out for each phase transition, make sure to stand in the safe zones between each cone, dodging if necessary.

As with most Spread AoEs, players should pick a spot and generally stick with it, only slightly moving in response to the players around them in order to avoid misinterpretation of each other’s intentions. Players with ranged damage and support should move out further to make space for their melee compatriots.

Be very careful when this attack coincides with Dagda’s quarter-health phase transitions; the forced movement toward the edge of the arena can make players bunch up unintentionally.

---

Players should be looking at the boss’s health in order to predict when a phase transition will occur and move out accordingly. Being slow to leave Dagda’s pool of pain will lead to a swift downstate for most builds.

In order to make the boss targetable again, players must kill the assorted Kryptis minions that spawn around the arena; two minions will spawn during the first split phase, four during the second one, and six during the last one. These minions are Veterans and Elites (with defiance bars to match), so they will require multiple players to focus them down in order to expeditiously clear the phase.

Dagda also has a few other health-related mechanical triggers, most notably an odd occurrence at 90% HP remaining where she goes untargetable, casts Demonic Blast, then becomes targetable again without any player input.

---

Dagda can summon Soul Feasts after Spinning Nebula concludes; listen for Zojja screaming her heart out to know that one has spawned.

Although they will expire after enough time on the field, the proper way to dispatch Soul Feasts is for a player to pick up one of the white orbs, which will grant them the Purifying Light special action skill. Purifying Light will instantly destroy a Soul Feast on hit, so this player should then target the Soul Feast—by using TAB (or whatever their Next Enemy keybind is) as the only two hostile entities on the field will be Dagda and the Soul Feast—and let the special action skill loose.

Notes:

• Dagda can body-block Purifying Light and prevent it from hitting a Soul Feast when she’s in between it and the player that cast the special action skill. Players should make sure the boss is not in the way when dealing with this mechanic.
• Soul Feasts’ models will linger for a while after they are destroyed; these are not active and will not harm players.

Always break Dagda’s defiance bar as the Exposed debuff will speed up the last two phases considerably; the damage from the smaller AoE can be safely ignored.