Confessor Caudecus fight is garbage

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:The Caudecus fight is actually quite well crafted. A well played build on a player who knows what they are doing will have no issue clearing the fight.

That is the main issue though. 90% of all players will:

• not know what to do and are lacking or unwilling to spend the time to understand the fight (or at least read up about it online if you can't be bothered to figure it out yourself)
• have craptastic builds or copied raid/fractal builds not understanding how to play them or adapt them to the fight
• have been breezing through the personal story, living story and open world content without ever being exlposed to challenge
• lack a seveer understanding of their class and game mechanics (partly because some are never explained or never needed before this fight)
• lack understanding of visual clues about attacks and proper positioning

So yes, the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base. It would have required a lot more build up and practice to bring casual players up to speed. The actual fight though is quite well designed.

Luckily there is an ambudance of guides, videos and hints on this matter by now and the option to have people help you.

if 90 % of the consumers have trouble with it . that would make it a BAD fight/product

Problem is before HoT anet breeded the community of uninspired bots who only care about autoattacking and looting, with 0 awareness of combat mechanics or the ability to read boss animations. It's good they stepped up their game with HoT and so on but many players are too lazy to adapt. It's good Anet works on some tutorials in the background, maybe finally some people will learn how to use their skills.

those "uninspired bots" paid for the game, if you think they would had invested this much for a niche population , then you dont know how business workswithout the casuals to fund it, this would had gone the same way as wildstar

And by paying for the game they agreed that content may change in time (as this is an mmo).

[GrubySzymek.1362]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@lokh.2695 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:The Caudecus fight is actually quite well crafted. A well played build on a player who knows what they are doing will have no issue clearing the fight.

That is the main issue though. 90% of all players will:

• not know what to do and are lacking or unwilling to spend the time to understand the fight (or at least read up about it online if you can't be bothered to figure it out yourself)
• have craptastic builds or copied raid/fractal builds not understanding how to play them or adapt them to the fight
• have been breezing through the personal story, living story and open world content without ever being exlposed to challenge
• lack a seveer understanding of their class and game mechanics (partly because some are never explained or never needed before this fight)
• lack understanding of visual clues about attacks and proper positioning

So yes, the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base. It would have required a lot more build up and practice to bring casual players up to speed. The actual fight though is quite well designed.

Luckily there is an ambudance of guides, videos and hints on this matter by now and the option to have people help you.

if 90 % of the consumers have trouble with it . that would make it a BAD fight/product

Problem is before HoT anet breeded the community of uninspired bots who only care about autoattacking and looting, with 0 awareness of combat mechanics or the ability to read boss animations. It's good they stepped up their game with HoT and so on but many players are too lazy to adapt. It's good Anet works on some tutorials in the background, maybe finally some people will learn how to use their skills.

those "uninspired bots" paid for the game, if you think they would had invested this much for a niche population , then you dont know how business workswithout the casuals to fund it, this would had gone the same way as wildstar

You give the casual player not enough credit here. You can be casual and still know your class. You can be casual and still adapt to a given situation. I like that GW2 is a very casual friendly game but that doesn't mean there can't be some kinda demanding content every now and then. A casual friendly game does not need to be like candy crush or fruit ninja to be a casual game. Casuals have dem skillz too u know

you are missing the point, and you are wrong toowhenever i chose to adapt and get better(if its even possible)..im not a casual anymore, since the game has MOTIVATED me to IMPROVEthat is the exact OPPOSITE of casual

At this point you are trying to equalize playing the game with being hardcore.

[flog.3485]

@battledrone.8315 said:

@lokh.2695 said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Kheldorn.5123" said:

@battledrone.8315 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:The Caudecus fight is actually quite well crafted. A well played build on a player who knows what they are doing will have no issue clearing the fight.

That is the main issue though. 90% of all players will:

• not know what to do and are lacking or unwilling to spend the time to understand the fight (or at least read up about it online if you can't be bothered to figure it out yourself)
• have craptastic builds or copied raid/fractal builds not understanding how to play them or adapt them to the fight
• have been breezing through the personal story, living story and open world content without ever being exlposed to challenge
• lack a seveer understanding of their class and game mechanics (partly because some are never explained or never needed before this fight)
• lack understanding of visual clues about attacks and proper positioning

So yes, the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base. It would have required a lot more build up and practice to bring casual players up to speed. The actual fight though is quite well designed.

Luckily there is an ambudance of guides, videos and hints on this matter by now and the option to have people help you.

if 90 % of the consumers have trouble with it . that would make it a BAD fight/product

Problem is before HoT anet breeded the community of uninspired bots who only care about autoattacking and looting, with 0 awareness of combat mechanics or the ability to read boss animations. It's good they stepped up their game with HoT and so on but many players are too lazy to adapt. It's good Anet works on some tutorials in the background, maybe finally some people will learn how to use their skills.

those "uninspired bots" paid for the game, if you think they would had invested this much for a niche population , then you dont know how business workswithout the casuals to fund it, this would had gone the same way as wildstar

You give the casual player not enough credit here. You can be casual and still know your class. You can be casual and still adapt to a given situation. I like that GW2 is a very casual friendly game but that doesn't mean there can't be some kinda demanding content every now and then. A casual friendly game does not need to be like candy crush or fruit ninja to be a casual game. Casuals have dem skillz too u know

you are missing the point, and you are wrong toowhenever i chose to adapt and get better(if its even possible)..im not a casual anymore, since the game has MOTIVATED me to IMPROVEthat is the exact OPPOSITE of casual

Hmmm that rather shows that you don’t like what the game has to offer imo. You will always be expected to improve at some point because the game relies on skill rather gear treadmill.

[BrotherBelial.3094]

So from what I've read, people are mad because they can't facetank a boss and just durp him down? I mean where is the fun in just walking in to a room, and just auto attacking the boss while I go drink a coffee and watch a movie? This fight got nerfed twice I believe, I did it pre nerf with a DH and locks of blocks/invun, and a warrior with blocks/invun. I think I died once on the warrior, and didn't with the guard as I'd already done the fight once so knew what to expect. It was challenging, but if you "read the room" everything you need to end the fight in 5 minuets is in there.

[Hesacon.8735]

I won this fight before they nerfed it using a core necro. When I read they nerfed it I was surprised because it wasn't that hard. Just seemed like a standard fight where you dodge around until you figured out the puzzle half of the mechanics.

[Sinful.2165]

I know that some encounters are keyboard-smashing-in-rage-frustrating for a lot of people but..... why?

It seems like so many people play this massively multiplayer game like a single player and expect to breeze through solo with the worst game play imaginable.

To call these players ‘casuals’ is an insult to casuals. Just because someone doesn’t invest every second of free time into the game doesn’t mean they can’t learn, adapt or appreciate a challenge.

[Randulf.7614]

As a fairly rubbish player, I really appreciated the mechanics on this one. Fairly straightforward, without being too overwhelming. Move in a circle, pick up bloodstone chunk, throw. Repeat and dps between break bars.

I will point out that most of the criticism you read were prior to the nerf. Believe you me, if you saw what it used to be like, you really would for ammo for complaint (as did we all).

There are a lot harder, more complicated and frustrating encounters to come

[Algreg.3629]

For some it is hard, for others it is not. Just with any given task. If you remove every difficulty some players struggle with, you will ultimately get flat maps with no enemies at all.

[Dreadshow.9320]

@zealex.9410 said:

@Dreadshow.9320 said:

@Karaha.3290 said:But that's not the games fault.

I'm not blaming the game I'm just stating what I like or in this case dislike in the hope enough players agree and Anet makes boss fights more like the dragons fights from the original story. I'm not a fan of fights where I spend more time avoiding mechanics than fighting. They should call those Boss mechanics avoidance rather than Boss fights. But eh, if more players like those, keep them coming don't ruin everyones' fun on my account plenty of stuff in game I like.

Making more boss fights like zhaitan?????

More like the shadow dragon minions before the big dragons.

[Ashix.4897]

Caudecus isn't the problem. It's the damn Jade Bow. Screw those mobs!

[Noodle Ant.1605]

Saying that we can beat the boss doesn’t really solve any problems.

Like some people here, I liked that this boss was more of a ‘find the mechanics’ fight rather than that hp sponge + a ridiculous bunch of easy mechanics you had to keep an eye on from the boss in the latest chapter. But just because I’ve ‘one-shotted’ the bosses from HoT onwards so far (excluding S3E3 with a horrible AI tracking system, and Beast of War getting squished because I was stupid, heh) doesn’t mean ‘hey, it’s okay other people clearly wouldn’t have struggled with this’.

Firstly, I think armor damage should be completely removed from story instances, especially when there’s no anvil/repair station. Something like this already exists - Outnumbered, from WvW. The fact that you lose effectiveness potentially by attempting to learn and also how you can be forced to fight bosses in underwear completely baffles me. Or just add in an anvil somewhere. Fighting the latest boss (can’t specify because spoilers?) in your underwear is a complete joke.

How about we use the NPCs who are always with you but always FAIL at combat? Maybe after a few tries (3?) they start giving hints/actually start helping out (attempting half the effort to do mechanics for you) LIKE ACTUAL GUILD MATES instead of dying all the time? Raids nowadays seem to be learnt on YouTube rather than the actual encounter and people here are already pointing to guides so I see absolutely no harm in implementing this IN THE ACTUAL GAME.

All the bosses after this one appear to be ramped up in to similar difficulty so if you can pass this one no sweat than the subsequent bosses should be/have been no trouble. Otherwise...

[Yrch.5491]

@"Cyninja.2954" said:The Caudecus fight is actually quite well crafted. A well played build on a player who knows what they are doing will have no issue clearing the fight.

That is the main issue though. 90% of all players will:

• not know what to do and are lacking or unwilling to spend the time to understand the fight (or at least read up about it online if you can't be bothered to figure it out yourself)
• have craptastic builds or copied raid/fractal builds not understanding how to play them or adapt them to the fight
• have been breezing through the personal story, living story and open world content without ever being exlposed to challenge
• lack a seveer understanding of their class and game mechanics (partly because some are never explained or never needed before this fight)
• lack understanding of visual clues about attacks and proper positioning

So yes, the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base. It would have required a lot more build up and practice to bring casual players up to speed. The actual fight though is quite well designed.

Luckily there is an ambudance of guides, videos and hints on this matter by now and the option to have people help you.

By the time I reached the boss, much of my armor was already broken. I simply had a difficult time, especially with all the veteran mobs to get there. But I persisted and made it. I self repaired numerous times until I was out of canisters. At one point just before the boss, I died and because my armor was broken, I left the story, returned to town and repaired and then came back. It was then that I found out the entire story reset and it started me from the beginning. So by the time I reached Caudecus, I was already pretty frustrated.

I feel pretty comfortable with my Mes. I have read several guides online, watched a few videos and while probably not as proficient as some of the better players, I am good enough to play most of the game. This is a game and I play it casually. I even googled the Caudecus fight and saw that I was actually doing everything the right way, perhaps just not fast enough or with the right gear. But as a casual player, I have the gear quests have given me, a piece or two from the trader and from the few dungeons I have run.

As far as the actual Caudecus fight, the mechanics seemed fairly straight forward, run around pick up the blood stone, throw it at him and stay out of the red stuff on the ground. The problem for me is that my armor was very damaged before I even started that fight, I did not want to pop out to repair and have to start from the beginning again, so I just kept going. There were a dozen or so times where I teleported into the room, only to be immediately one shotted, before I could even dodge out of the way. While the screen was loading, I was spamming my dodge key and still could not get out of the way. By this point I was just instantly dying, not even having a chance to rez myself.

I think your comment, "the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base." is right on point. I get some of you are really good at this game and so that was a fun challenge, but for me and many others, it was a nightmare. Perhaps if this was an optional boss or a world boss that would be fine, but it's a main part of the game being the storyline. I don't know what they can do to please both types of players, but it is these kinds of fights that start to turn me off to the game.

[FrizzFreston.5290]

or... Get a friend to join you.

This game, if not every game, is better with a friend

[Overlord RainyDay.2084]

I suppose I didn't experience it on release, but I thought the Caudecus fight was much better than those from LS4. I'd much rather have a hard-hitting boss with a reasonable amount of HP than a damage sponge with weak attacks like the pre-nerf branded wyvern, or golem Mk3. from LS4.

[Randulf.7614]

@Yrch.5491 said:

@"Cyninja.2954" said:The Caudecus fight is actually quite well crafted. A well played build on a player who knows what they are doing will have no issue clearing the fight.

That is the main issue though. 90% of all players will:

• not know what to do and are lacking or unwilling to spend the time to understand the fight (or at least read up about it online if you can't be bothered to figure it out yourself)
• have craptastic builds or copied raid/fractal builds not understanding how to play them or adapt them to the fight
• have been breezing through the personal story, living story and open world content without ever being exlposed to challenge
• lack a seveer understanding of their class and game mechanics (partly because some are never explained or never needed before this fight)
• lack understanding of visual clues about attacks and proper positioning

So yes, the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base. It would have required a lot more build up and practice to bring casual players up to speed. The actual fight though is quite well designed.

Luckily there is an ambudance of guides, videos and hints on this matter by now and the option to have people help you.

By the time I reached the boss, much of my armor was already broken. I simply had a difficult time, especially with all the veteran mobs to get there. But I persisted and made it. I self repaired numerous times until I was out of canisters. At one point just before the boss, I died and because my armor was broken, I left the story, returned to town and repaired and then came back. It was then that I found out the entire story reset and it started me from the beginning. So by the time I reached Caudecus, I was already pretty frustrated.

I feel pretty comfortable with my Mes. I have read several guides online, watched a few videos and while probably not as proficient as some of the better players, I am good enough to play most of the game. This is a game and I play it casually. I even googled the Caudecus fight and saw that I was actually doing everything the right way, perhaps just not fast enough or with the right gear. But as a casual player, I have the gear quests have given me, a piece or two from the trader and from the few dungeons I have run.

As far as the actual Caudecus fight, the mechanics seemed fairly straight forward, run around pick up the blood stone, throw it at him and stay out of the red stuff on the ground. The problem for me is that my armor was very damaged before I even started that fight, I did not want to pop out to repair and have to start from the beginning again, so I just kept going. There were a dozen or so times where I teleported into the room, only to be immediately one shotted, before I could even dodge out of the way. While the screen was loading, I was spamming my dodge key and still could not get out of the way. By this point I was just instantly dying, not even having a chance to rez myself.

I think your comment, "the fight is not well implemented for a majority of the player base." is right on point. I get some of you are really good at this game and so that was a fun challenge, but for me and many others, it was a nightmare. Perhaps if this was an optional boss or a world boss that would be fine, but it's a main part of the game being the storyline. I don't know what they can do to please both types of players, but it is these kinds of fights that start to turn me off to the game.

I do agree with your sentiment that story bosses need careful tuning and need to err on the side of easier (esp some of the ones after Caudecus - if you thought that was bad, you are in for a major shock in LS4 especially). However, players by and large seem to be progressing, so I don't think it's the majority that are suffering here. There is no doubt there is a large pool of unskilled players. I consider myself low skilled - I dont use combos, I use weapons that look good rather than switch for diff situations. I struggle with t2 and beyond fractals and I care little for optimal builds preferring instead to play what I enjoy. And yet there are players very much below me and in large numbers too. But those I encounter, still dont really have a huge issue with this fight since it was nerfed.

At some point, and this applies equally to me as well, the learn to play factor will come into play. If you are needing repair canisters prior to Caudecus, then something isn't wrong with the instance, but how you are progressing, esp as many of the fights are meant to be beaten using the traps you turn against the enemy and there are no one shot mechanics in there if you are using balanced armour stats. I'm not trying to attack you or your skill, but story needs some challenge in it in order for it to keep any integrity. In the case of this story, I feel they got the balance right speaking as a low skilled player (post nerf I stress again).

[Noodle Ant.1605]

I dare say that the next few episodes should include a few ‘avoidance’ boss/sequence. To emphasise on mechanics. Besides, my ‘commander’ - a tiny asura, is getting tired of bashing up dragons, gods and supermassive golems with a something relative to a toothpick. We don’t always need something to display our mad raid skills at the end of each episode.

[JDub.1530]

I'm not a great fan of this fight. It's AOE spam and endless adds in a very confined space. Had a heck of a time completing it on my Guardian. I ran through again on my Druid and it went much better. I don't know if it was having a pet to do damage when I was scrambling around, or I had a better build for the encounter, or I was more familiar with the encounter, and staying on top of throwing the bloodstone shards, thus shortening the fight. Without knowing what factors made it easier the 2nd time through, I can't really assess the overall difficulty of this boss.

[Glacial.9516]

I seem to recall my frustrations with Caudecus came primarily from the size of the room and camera issues. I could certainly get behind every instance having repair anvils inside them though. Or an option to repair (for a fee) from anywhere when you don't have a repair canister with you.

[MithranArkanere.8957]

My only problem was the camera. The place was just too small to properly manage to see what was going on until you figure out which angle will not make the camera go crazy all over the place.

Setting the collision slider in the camera settings near the max setting also helps, since the camera will be more lenient with obstacles and won't bob about as much.

[deatine.2498]

I'm generally not that good at boss fights/dishing out damage, but for me, the only difficult part of the fight was the fact that I got stuck in the door at first.Odd how much it differs between people.

[Khisanth.2948]

@"Karaha.3290" said:Maybe some ppl should overthink their 100% dmg 0% defense stats/strategie. Yes, Pve/Story mobs can be ouchie.It was kinda hilarious when HoT were released and ppl just couldn't kill a single non-veteran smokescale.

Actually this is one of those fights that demonstrate why that is the best strategy. For example with high enough damage you can kill Caudecus before the "CC on every hit" jade construct even spawns and avoid that whole mess.

It also allows you to clear off the adds that spawn much faster.

On the other hand one of my easiest run was with my guardian which consisted mostly of autoattacking with a hammer. The only other one comparable was mesmer but the mesmer strategy is no longer valid due to change to warden.

Yes, you can do Caudecus (and other story bosses) with full dmg gear/build, but surprise, you have to learn their mechanics then. No boss was made to be unbeatable. And if you don't want or just can't do mechanics / avoid mechanics, take some defensive utility skills or get a more defensive armor. A full soldier set will cost 5g or so and you can reuse it on other story bosses (have fun with LS4 btw).

Armor is useless against carpet bombing CC ...

Reflect/projectile destruction on the other hand is useful for stopping Caudecus' Headshot(making an assumption on the name since his skills and weapons match a sword/pistol thief).

[Biff.5312]

I died once but beat it without much trouble. The only real problem for me was that when you stand near the wall and he comes to where you are, you literally can't see.

[Yrch.5491]

I really appreciate all the comments. This is another reason I love this game and it's community. I came here out of frustration and vented a bit. There are lots of MMO's where I would have been flamed to silence, but here, everyone was genuine, sympathizing or giving advice on how to beat it. Everyone knows the GW2 player base is one of the best!

[ParanoidKami.2867]

Most of the complaints for the fight were at the launch of it. They nerfed it shortly after and I finished it easily. Try looking at what it is you're having trouble with and how you could counter.

[Carighan.6758]

@"Oglaf.1074" said:I had literally no idea what was going on in that fight.

That is, I think, a much much bigger issue in recent fights, especially story bossfights. The "what the?"-element of not understanding what is even happening.

For a game which - uniquely! - displays text under enemies describing key elements of them, and for a game priding itself on CC-relevance for bosses in PvE and on its elements of counterplay, story bosses in particular are left unexplained to a trial&error approach. And I mean, sure, it's unlikely I'll be here more than 2-3 times tops, if even that. I get it, not worth the developer time.

But then I'd prefer if they just transplant and mix existing game elements and also transplant and combine the descriptors from the outside mobs. Or, even better, have earlier situations where abilities get "demonstrated", the Vale Guardian is a perfect example of this other than the color-confusion.