This may be challenging. So my goal is to have the first largest slice always in a hover state if other slices aren't hovered. Hovered meaning other slices faded and halo on the hovered. I have added code that adds the tooltip in the middle of the doughnut chart and to shows the first slices tooltip on mouse out and load. I keep the tooltip there by using the tooltip delay trick. I am almost finished but can't figure out how to keep the halo on the slice and the other slices faded. This may have sounded confusing but hopefully these images of what I want can help.

one speed bump is that the environment that I'm putting this in wont allow me to use css or functions outside of the main highcharts function. That's why all the functions are inside.

https://jsfiddle.net/sabdorhx/1/

    events: {
  load: function() {
    var chart = this,
      legend = chart.legend,
      point = chart.series.chart;

    // starte with first slice hovered
    chart.series[0].points[0].onMouseOver();

    // Legend hover show tooltip
    for (var i = 0, len = legend.allItems.length; i < len; i++) {
      (function(i) {

        var item = legend.allItems[i].legendItem;
        item.on('mouseover', function(e) {
          //show custom tooltip here
          chart.tooltip.refresh(chart.series[0].points[i]);

        }).on('mouseout', function(e) {
          //show first slice tooltip on mouse out
          chart.tooltip.refresh(chart.series[0].points[0]);
        });
      })(i);
    }
  },
}

_

series: {
  events: {
    mouseOut: function() {
    //mouse out of slice and show first slice
      this.points[0].onMouseOver();
    },
  },