Guild Wars 2

I’m sitting here, on my revenant, after even swapping to marauder/cavaliers gear and accessories with vit food, being treated like a kittening pinball.

Seriously, you have horrendous encounter designers. Being stringed CC after CC because your character is knocked down and can’t avoid subsequent CC is asinine.

What’s worse, you put this endless CC fest WITH a JADE BOW. One of the worst mobs to exist. Stun, knockback, stun, spin knockback, while dodging the sprinkling aoe circles that also knockdown, while boss peppers you with conditions.

This encounter is unspeakable.

Do you people even play your own game? I can’t even use my special action button to counter caudecus’s charge because I’m already being pinballed by other mobs.

CLASSES THAT ARE NOT GUARDIAN OR WARRIOR DON’T HAVE EASY ACCESS TO STABILITY.

I must say that last fight was pretty ridiculous. You get CC’ed constantly, bombarded with conditions, there’s AoE’s EVERYWHERE (you might as wel not bother dodging them) and besides the boss there’s also a bunch of other mobs attacking you on top of what you’re already facing.

And all of that is happening in a tiny room.

I was fortunate to have a guardian with lots of heals, condition removal and other protective abilities, but kitten I can’t imagine what it must be like for some classes like Revenants (the class with like the worst healing and condition removal ever).

As for that special ability Caudecus keeps using, after setting the hotkey of that counter ability to a macro on my mouse it wasn’t much of a problem anymore.

learn to play issue. use special ability.

kill mobs first. avoid small elementals. run in circle, pick bloodstone and throw. spam that till your break bar. repeat.

Mikali.9651:

learn to play issue. use special ability.

kill mobs first. avoid small elementals. run in circle, pick bloodstone and throw. spam that till your break bar. repeat.

L2IQ issue for you. Killing the jade construct is what you do, except you can’t kill the jade constructs when they are pinballing you across the room while the boss keeps throwing conditions and knockdowns at you from his invulnerability bubble.

Moreover, the mobs SPAWN when you break the boss bar. A new door opens every time you break his bubble.

First wave is the bloodstone elemental. Second wave is jade bow. Third wave is the sniper pack. Fourth wave is the Jade Wall.

I can tell someone who is incapable of reading when the OP was about the knockbacks and not the bubble shield or breaking said shield.

I had to virtually abuse the rez points with the small elementals or going down somewhere where an ally could rez me where the Jade Constructs couldn’t keep pinballing a downed corpse to death.

This is fine. GW2 is out for quite awhile now. It’s like anet saying " Time to grow up boysssss~". I’d rather have this fight than an easy one that i won’t even feel any sense of satisfaction beating. Like the old boss fights where you just stand there, dodge sometimes , whoops i got hit time to heal i guess kind of battles. This is way better. Keep it up anet.

JahCool.3812:

This is fine. GW2 is out for quite awhile now. It’s like anet saying " Time to grow up boysssss~". I’d rather have this fight than an easy one that i won’t even feel any sense of satisfaction beating. Like the old boss fights where you just stand there, dodge sometimes , whoops i got hit time to heal i guess kind of battles. This is way better. Keep it up anet.

Except after having just beat this boss, I don’t feel any sense of achievement at all. In fact, the feeling I get is anger and “Who the hell thought this was a good encounter”. There is a fine line between a good and hard encounter vs an annoying sponge fight. Caudecus is on the very extreme end of the annoying side. If they removed the chain CC and instead added an expanding AoE beacon you must kill, then the fight would a lot more fun and challenging than annoying and long.

I honestly have no interest in running this episode on my alts because that was incredibly annoying.

This is NOT A L2P issue. This is a POOR ENCOUNTER issue. Do you know what players hate the most in any game (for combat)? losing control of their character.

Yeah, this is the most annoying fight in the game by far, mostly because of the tiny room and the world-famous GW2 camera.

Rev can be traited to have 2 stacks of stability on dodge. Might have a problem with healing, but not stability. My Thief on the other hand… Nothing. Absolutely no stability of any kind. Closest thing we got is a trait in acrobatics that stops a single knockdown every 30 seconds. The small room and Daredevil dodges also didn’t go so well. Dodge was so long that I would often go straight into an explosion because of the small room and not being able to see with the camera.

I don’t mind content that’s hard; I actually enjoy it. Room needs to be bigger though so Thieves aren’t so heavily neutered.

ParanoidKami.2867:

Rev can be traited to have 2 stacks of stability on dodge. Might have a problem with healing, but not stability. My Thief on the other hand… Nothing. Absolutely no stability of any kind. Closest thing we got is a trait in acrobatics that stops a single knockdown every 30 seconds. The small room and Daredevil dodges also didn’t go so well. Dodge was so long that I would often go straight into an explosion because of the small room and not being able to see with the camera.

I don’t mind content that’s hard; I actually enjoy it. Room needs to be bigger though so Thieves aren’t so heavily neutered.

The trait on dodge demands you give up invocation or assassination, which is a huge damage loss. Which makes you killing the Jade Construct take even longer so you have even greater risks of dying once you run out of dodges.

To take up the useless dwarf line for a single stack of 3 second stability. Against a jade construct and boss who are virtually spamming knockback.

Thief doesn’t have stability but it does have shadowstep as a 2x stunbreak and port, on top of actual condi clear which revenant doesn’t have so you aren’t screwed over by confusion/burn spam.

Both classes have it pretty badly anyways, but I’ll take thief and 6 evades plus built in evade frames on vault and projectile reflect on autoattack for Jade Bow over the steaming pile of garbage that is revenant post-nerf in PvE.

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unwavering_Avoidance

It’s also only 1 stack of stability on SUCCESSFUL dodge, unless you’re willing to give up another 10% worth of damage modifier from Herald grandmaster.

Did the run with my rev and died like 3 times. Found constant aoe spams, a very short window for special action and small roomwith terrible fight camera controls very annoying but it wasn’t that bad.

You can get condi cleanse and stun break with stance swap (every 10 seconds), and perma-protection and infuse light helps a lot. Thought doing it with something like elementalist would be very difficult tho.

I agree with the OP.

This fight is just too hard for the casual player. I’m here because I love the lore/story of GW1 and GW2, and while I like a good challenge and a sense of urgency, this boss fight was a nightmare from hell (and not a “nightmare” in a good/adrenaline inducing way).

The room is far too small for the amount of insanity that is going on at once. It’s overwhelming.

If you want to provide a challenge to really hardcore/skilled players, that’s great! But at least provide an easier mode for players who are here for the story. Cadecus and/or the room needs some serious nerfing/redesigning.

In the end I couldn’t beat him and I had to quit the instance because my gear was completely smashed and my character was naked lol. IF ANYTHING, you should treat this as a dungeon and suggest players do this mission with a party.

I loved this update/episode, but the impossible end fight made me so frustrated that it ruined my excitement.

havent tried it yet ill come once iv done it i better hope its idd unplayable xD

nedlee.5943:

Did the run with my rev and died like 3 times. Found constant aoe spams, a very short window for special action and small roomwith terrible fight camera controls very annoying but it wasn’t that bad.

You can get condi cleanse and stun break with stance swap (every 10 seconds), and perma-protection and infuse light helps a lot. Thought doing it with something like elementalist would be very difficult tho.

I only died 2 times.

Doesn’t make the fight any less terrible.

There’s this terrible continuing design in guild wars 2 where encounters have mobs that are launching your characters like a pinball left and right, and the knockdowns lasti forever, as in 3+ seconds being face down on the floor while you get chunked.

It’s just not fun to get double whammied because a mob has no tells in its knockback like the Jade Bow and then you get launched while being incapacitated again.

A good tell is the hound outside the manner. It lunges back and has enough of a tell to tell you it’s gonna leap and knock you down.

But these Jade Constructs are ridiculous.

The boss himself isn’t bad, but when you pair the boss with jade constructs who not only autoattack you for more damage than the boss himself, but have a ton of HP and CC is just obscene.

The last fight was plain stupid.
Its a good thing I had repair canisters on me…

There is simply way too much aoe/cc going in that tiny kitten room.

This is a learn to play issue. You’re not hitting your special action key fast enough. I had no issues with CCs’ and I was on a standard full zerker staff ele.

This boss fight was just absurd.

Even as a WARRIOR I got CCd and ping-ponged to oblivion. The counter magic ability barely gives you time to respond!

I did this fight, first time, on a full zerk rev. with power/prec food, and shiro/glint.

Pretty much an l2p issue.
The aoes are easily avoided while running around grabbing the bloodstone shards – they do ~20% break bar when thrown.

Nastiest part is the jade construct adds I found. I had to clear those out asap.

I started to cry play this story with my thief
everytime I died on Caudecus Confessor and come back to the room, I instantly died again even before I can dodge
and with this I can’t continue my story
I’m not a pve player so I’m not familiar with the bloodstone thing

TT_TT

Whoever designed this absurdity needs to be prevented from playing guardian ever again. Perhaps force the designer to be on ele and run it for 20-30 times? Probably still not punishment enough. No, I don’t use freaking Special Action Key cause I am not raiding. So when it flashes for 0.25 second followed with knockback+condi-bomb that is not a good encounter. All while camera is spazzing out because the room is the size of a tin can (so you can either see where the boss is going or where tiny elemental is creeping up on you from behind to do a bonus knockback). Really, really stupid.
Yes, it’s doable (if NPCs don’t bug out and actually do rez you, it just takes 4 minutes cause they are being targeted with the same daze bomb), but stupid and goes on “never again” list.

Get all of your achievements now, cause it’ll never be replayed

It is a very nice chaotic fight. l2p. And I played on engi not alot of stab there. GW2 is getting more difficult, and has been since HoT. And most ppl like it!

Artemis Thuras.8795:

I did this fight, first time, on a full zerk rev. with power/prec food, and shiro/glint.

Pretty much an l2p issue.
The aoes are easily avoided while running around grabbing the bloodstone shards – they do ~20% break bar when thrown.

Nastiest part is the jade construct adds I found. I had to clear those out asap.

more like learn to design better encounter

This fight has a few problems that I can see.

1. The room is too small. I personally solo story missions but I know a lot of people like to do things in groups and I can’t imagine trying to squeeze a group fight into that room.

2. Too unforgiving for a story. Make a single mistake and barely clip the edge of just one of the 100 red circles in that room and you’re CC’d for 5-10 seconds straight.

3. Reflexes required to use your special skill against Caudecus is too quick for most people who are also trying to dodge and kill a large number of mobs/circles. It seems to be under 1 second to use your skill before you are sent into a stun lock and knocked around for 5-10 seconds. This gives players far less time than normal to react when compared to red circles or most other game mechanics.

Used a Minion Master to fight him. Two health bars and vampiric minions mitigated some of the nonsense that was going on in there.

It’s just ridiculously cheap design. Having a boss instantly knock you down, then wail on you until you die isn’t a “l2p issue,” it’s just lazy design. Those who say otherwise most likely just got lucky.

I can take getting punished by stepping on fire on the floor, even with irritating lag, but badly designing a room and making CC attacks have perfect accuracy is just plain lazy. Or maybe they didn’t have perfect accuracy and the lag was just interfering; either way it’s cheap.

I mean, I don’t understand why people keep bringing the shards up. The problem was never caudecus himself or breaking the shield.

The problem is the jade construct tearing you a new one with a spam of knockbacks alongside Caudecus’s knockback that you also need to react to (but cant because the stupid jade bow construct already got you face down in the floor).

The Jade Constructs do more damage than Caudecus himself! And it doesn’t help said Jade Constructs also have veteranl level HP while Caudecus is also wailing on you, the damage and CC is ridiculous.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

I did this fight, first time, on a full zerk rev. with power/prec food, and shiro/glint.

Pretty much an l2p issue.
The aoes are easily avoided while running around grabbing the bloodstone shards – they do ~20% break bar when thrown.

Nastiest part is the jade construct adds I found. I had to clear those out asap.

Pretty much this.

The NPCs even res you if you get downed/killed.

Nice encounter, a good step away from the ridiculously easy usual stuff found in the LS. Nice to see things going in a different direction from the press-1-to-win mentality.

SkyFallsInThunder.8257:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

I did this fight, first time, on a full zerk rev. with power/prec food, and shiro/glint.

Pretty much an l2p issue.
The aoes are easily avoided while running around grabbing the bloodstone shards – they do ~20% break bar when thrown.

Nastiest part is the jade construct adds I found. I had to clear those out asap.

Pretty much this.

The NPCs even res you if you get downed/killed.

Nice encounter, a good step away from the ridiculously easy usual stuff found in the LS. Nice to see things going in a different direction from the press-1-to-win mentality.

NPC didn’t rez in my case, as the Jade Bow Construct also pinballs your downed corpse around the platform.

Nah I like a good solo challenge but this fight is a joke. It’s pretty obvious it was tested on something with 30k hp, 3k armor and easy stability like warrior. Infact ya it probably was only play tested on warrior. If anything this fight just shows how weak plain old stunbreaking in this game is.

I ended up just graveyarding it. Pretty sad really.

Mikali.9651:

learn to play issue. use special ability.

kill mobs first. avoid small elementals. run in circle, pick bloodstone and throw. spam that till your break bar. repeat.

I must agree with this. I one shot it the 1st time with a necro.

Magnus Godrik.5841:

Mikali.9651:

learn to play issue. use special ability.

kill mobs first. avoid small elementals. run in circle, pick bloodstone and throw. spam that till your break bar. repeat.

I must agree with this. I one shot it the 1st time with a necro.

^

Get a keybind for the special ability, makes the fight much easier. Clicking on it in time is difficult.

You can avoid the cc wave this way.

Magnus Godrik.5841:

I must agree with this. I one shot it the 1st time with a necro.

After reading all of the fuss, I was worried about the encounter a little on Necro, but it wasn’t that bad. Mildly irritating if you aren’t paying attention but not undoable. Easy access to the Special Ability is pretty important.

Justine.6351:

Nah I like a good solo challenge but this fight is a joke. It’s pretty obvious it was tested on something with 30k hp, 3k armor and easy stability like warrior. Infact ya it probably was only play tested on warrior. If anything this fight just shows how weak plain old stunbreaking in this game is.

I ended up just graveyarding it. Pretty sad really.

Done it on a full glass cannon tempest with no support utilities and no food.

I guess what’s considered a “good solo challenge” depends on the individual.

I do however think that jade bow was a bit too much.

Zenith.7301:

I’m sitting here, on my revenant, after even swapping to marauder/cavaliers gear and accessories with vit food, being treated like a kittening pinball.

Seriously, you have horrendous encounter designers. Being stringed CC after CC because your character is knocked down and can’t avoid subsequent CC is asinine.

What’s worse, you put this endless CC fest WITH a JADE BOW. One of the worst mobs to exist. Stun, knockback, stun, spin knockback, while dodging the sprinkling aoe circles that also knockdown, while boss peppers you with conditions.

This encounter is unspeakable.

Do you people even play your own game? I can’t even use my special action button to counter caudecus’s charge because I’m already being pinballed by other mobs.

CLASSES THAT ARE NOT GUARDIAN OR WARRIOR DON’T HAVE EASY ACCESS TO STABILITY.

Did it with my full zerk mesmer.

Main cc its Cadeucus skill that you null with pressing fast your special action botton, if you dont do it fast it will knock you several times, even if you pressed it. The window time isnt large but not too short either.

Equip a typical all terrain build with some condi cleanse, a stun breaker just in cased and a range weapon (it will help a lot).

Aoes are just position, moving, swiftness, dodge or mobility/blink skills.

Center on the adds specially the jade constructs.

We were 2 (mesmer and necro) and it took us 3-4 min to kill it. No one of us down or dead, it was really easy and not frustrating.

I don’t know how you all have issues with the Caudecus fight :x

@Mizuira – Simple enough because of 2 but the thing is most ppl here are solo. It is good to have a friend with you to make everything easier. My friend spent 30 minutes on the fight, she didn’t want my help and i really feel bad about it.

I barely managed to win the fight but its true that Jade Bow are hell of a problem. The special skill encounter is too short and easy to miss with ton of CC, red circles around you.

Deli.1302:

This is a learn to play issue. You’re not hitting your special action key fast enough.

Personally, I consider that poor encounter design – the period of time you have to trigger that special action key is really freaking short if you have any significant latency coughAustraliacough.

Seriously, if we get too many more encounters designed like that, it might be what pushes me to leave, and I’ve invested a lot into the game and the community.

Everything else I could live with, but needing to constantly watch for that special action key to pop up because I needed to jump on it IMMEDIATELY was a step too far.

I’m not a fan of the chain CC in this encounter. Not a fan of the small room which messes with the camera. Not a fan of adds that just add to the chain CC spam.

It honestly would be a perfect encounter if the chain CC was toned down. And a decent way to accomplish that for a lot of players would be to just tone down the jade adds to regular mobs. This way the CC is the same, but people can kill the adds contributing to it much more quickly if they focus it down. If not that, then removing the knockback on the CCs and just making them short stuns. This would cut down heavily on the chained CC nonsense since being hit by one wouldn’t propel you into 3 more.

Theonord.6359:

It is a very nice chaotic fight. l2p. And I played on engi not alot of stab there. GW2 is getting more difficult, and has been since HoT. And most ppl like it!

They liked it so much that ANet postponed LWS3 in order to make Magumma more
Accessible and easy in the April 2015 patch

Too add. Raid bosses are actually fun yet difficult. they should carry the design mentality of raid bosses into solo content.
There is also an issue for someone like me who is Australian and as such, has Australian net. no matter how fast I can react. ping eats any chance. so bosses should be designed with this in mind since not everyone has super fast internet.

To be honest… Not everything has to be 11111111.

I liked that it was hard since we are not talking about a common mob (this was the last boss of the story).

Yes, it was annoying and the Jade bow made it harder. But the check point is right there and you don’t lose progression.

I’m an Ele, and I have the Raid meta build (aka, no Stability outside of earth OL) I died… a LOT… and that is ok.

Jhoul.6923:

To be honest… Not everything has to be 11111111.

I liked that it was hard since we are not talking about a common mob (this was the last boss of the story).

Yes, it was annoying and the Jade bow made it harder. But the check point is right there and you don’t lose progression.

I’m an Ele, and I have the Raid meta build (aka, no Stability outside of earth OL) I died… a LOT… and that is ok.

a good designed boss battle would be something you could beat without relying on checkpoint. battle of attrition via constant checkpoint is not and never should be the go to method for dealing with a boss.

Yeah, I died many times in this fight, seriously reduce the CC at least remove the Jade add’s CC pls.

Argol Vazin.3061:

Jhoul.6923:

To be honest… Not everything has to be 11111111.

I liked that it was hard since we are not talking about a common mob (this was the last boss of the story).

Yes, it was annoying and the Jade bow made it harder. But the check point is right there and you don’t lose progression.

I’m an Ele, and I have the Raid meta build (aka, no Stability outside of earth OL) I died… a LOT… and that is ok.

a good designed boss battle would be something you could beat without relying on checkpoint. battle of attrition via constant checkpoint is not and never should be the go to method for dealing with a boss.

THIS

I don’t know why Anet has to make most of their new final bosses-MUST do X to damage the boss.

i found this fight way tougher than the final HoT fight, i actually got downed a couple of times, still managed to scrape by as a reaper MM first try,
i do feel sorry for classes like thief and ele,
i can’t even imagine how sucky the fight would be for them.

Liewec.2896:

i found this fight way tougher than the final HoT fight, i actually got downed a couple of times, still managed to scrape by as a reaper MM first try,
i do feel sorry for classes like thief and ele,
i can’t even imagine how sucky the fight would be for them.

HoT final fight’s problem is the bugs.

At the very least, providing some kind of armor repair in this instance would have cut down on much of the L2P issues. I know you want a challenging fight in a tiny room with string CC, massive aoe and adds, but once a player’s armor is broken it becomes a death-attrition boss instance.

I’ll grind my way through it because I’m stubborn like that, but this was something which really should have been addressed during your playtesting.

I play a Condition P/P Engineer and I have to say this fight certainly favors the more Direct damage dealers rather than Condition damage dealers. His constant bombardment of attacks doesn’t give much time to build up CC damage compared to a Direct Damage character with straight up large damage.

Tried this fight yesterday solo. I play a ranger and got totally owned. Died 8 times before I gave up. Pretty much every time I went in, either I get CC’d and died instantly, or I run in circle like an idiot then get killed by one of the AOE.
Today I just partied up with 3 other players and blew past that boss in about 25 seconds.
I guess Anet has intended this fight for a party.

You know what would make this bearable? Actually make the special skill give you breathing time. It feels like even if you activate it, because the CC still comes in, it feels pointless.

Oh and the Veteran Jade Bow.

draxynnic.3719:

Deli.1302:

This is a learn to play issue. You’re not hitting your special action key fast enough.

Personally, I consider that poor encounter design – the period of time you have to trigger that special action key is really freaking short if you have any significant latency coughAustraliacough.

Seriously, if we get too many more encounters designed like that, it might be what pushes me to leave, and I’ve invested a lot into the game and the community.

Everything else I could live with, but needing to constantly watch for that special action key to pop up because I needed to jump on it IMMEDIATELY was a step too far.

I’m in the same boat. By the time I finished the encounter I was too frustrated to care about the resultant storyline, and I worry Anet will design future encounters like this. Their obsession with flawless twitch play, which has become the norm since HoT, is ruining the game for myself and many other disabled players.

terribly designed encounter. the room is far too small for the amount of stuff happening and the length of time you get to react for counter magic is laughable.