Guild Wars 2

Its the last fight (Confessors end) but I wont add details to avoid spoilers.

Suffice to say you have to hit the counter magic skill (the one you got through masteries) in like half a second or die. Kept telling me to stun him under the chandelier.

After literally 30-40 deaths I finally beat the first champ by spamming my key rather than reacting to it, but by the second champ (where you go to the spinning chamber/riddles) my armor was broke and I couldn’t finish it. But it was the same thing, I had like less than a second to hit the counter magic key or I was stunned and 100-0.

Same, this fight is the worst boss fight I have EVER encountered in ANY MMO. What a kittening embarrassment, this better be bugged!

I can’t kill him, so I’m stuck until this is fixed.

EDIT: Finally killed him, took a very long time though. If you are stuck, keep throwing bloodstone at him until his shield is down, then do as much damage as possible….repeat, you will eventually kill him. All of your armor will be broken at the end.

well i also died hundred of times in this instance .. but somehow i managed it .. actually more the npc than me. after this instance i dont know where to go. where is caudecus chamber? i’ve been walkin in the green circle of this map for 20 minutes, found a lot of letters and enimies .. but where is his chamber???

DC’S UP THE kittenING kitten AT THE CAU’kitten’US BIT!

Here the door !

Absolutely the WORST quest EVER. Playing a dps tempest with 1k toughness and 12k health, I keep getting thrown around like a rag doll, and eventually die 100% of the time with 0 chance of doing damage. A little bit of advice on designing quests: we DO NOT need adds, Caudecus is REALLY hard on his own, there’s no need for adds; I’m sure everyone’s reaction time is not sufficient to press the button, which ultimately results in defeat. Also, the aoe circles on the ground aren’t helping either. Not everyone is willing to spend 5 hours on this stupid , nerve wrecking quest, Anet. And to think we had to wait extra for this episode…utter disappointment…

anyaeversong.2678:

Absolutely the WORST quest EVER. Playing a dps tempest with 1k toughness and 12k health, I keep getting thrown around like a rag doll, and eventually die 100% of the time with 0 chance of doing damage. A little bit of advice on designing quests: we DO NOT need adds, Caudecus is REALLY hard on his own, there’s no need for adds; I’m sure everyone’s reaction time is not sufficient to press the button, which ultimately results in defeat. Also, the aoe circles on the ground aren’t helping either. Not everyone is willing to spend 5 hours on this stupid , nerve wrecking quest, Anet. And to think we had to wait extra for this episode…utter disappointment…

had to w8 extra?

waaaaaaaaay too hard. couldn’t beat it. please nerf Cadecus/the room.

Wow…. ANet you can’t be serious. This just ridiculous. Bad enough the constructs get triggered by the npc, but then she doesn’t even help in the fight. I haven’t even gotten to Caudecus, but from how ever thing else turned out I don’t think I’d want too. I don’t rage quit very often, but this really takes the cake.

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!

liblame.7163:

well i also died hundred of times in this instance .. but somehow i managed it .. actually more the npc than me. after this instance i dont know where to go. where is caudecus chamber? i’ve been walkin in the green circle of this map for 20 minutes, found a lot of letters and enimies .. but where is his chamber???

That is certainly bugged. His room is nowhere near that green circle.

Here is my story from this instance.

I died a lot when fighting him in his secret chamber. My armor was completely broken and since you can’t repair I had to continue naked. After a few tries i spawned right in the spot the construct is doing his whirlwind AOE thing and I die instantly. And i’m not getting the option to retry from Checkpoint. Only the option to use resurrection orb. So I have to Alt-F4 and do it all over again.

Second time I complete the first fight with Caudecus the cutscene starts playing. I end it directly because I have already seen it. The conversation after the cutscene don’t start and no NPC’s are in the room. They start arrive one by one is I w8 for them all to come and hope the conversation starts. But it does not. And once again I have to alt-f4. I have now lost my will to continue this personal story for now.

I’m currently in the middle of a run on this; died I don’t know how many times, naked, on the end fight. Jump down, get one or two hits on the break bar if I’m lucky, die, repeat ad infinitum. I figure eventually he’ll go down through pure attrition…but this is just poorly designed.

Edit: finally got him down; didn’t have any issue finding the study, but I just followed Canach…that said, that boss fight is just insane. One of the things I love about GW2 is it’s generally pretty casual friendly (I’m a mid-30’s working dad, so don’t have that much time). That fight was very much not…I’m sure someone with good reflexes who can spend hours at a time playing to get timings, dodges, etc. down to a science can finish it easy, but that’s not what I’d expect in a PS mission in GW2. Dungeon, raid, sure; PS, definitely not.

I solod this and finished it on my first try with my scrapper, no bugs that i saw, just challenging story content, which would be cake walk if you party with others, people just need to up their game.

I ate a lot of floor polish last night in there on my Daredevil even though I figured out the mechanics as soon as the initial NPC dialogue was done in the first minute. My friend had the same problem on her Druid, to the point she gave up. Today we went in together, on her Druid and my Reaper, and we wrecked Caudecus to little tiny bits, and his little mobs, too. I think she got briefly downed once, I never did.

Profession/build really does make a difference imo. I’m pretty sure if I’d tried to help her complete the story with my Daredevil we’d have been losing armor just like before.

Found the final fight impossible solo, succeeded on the 1st try with a partner – doubling the amount of shards thrown and halving the aggro took the fight down to decently challenging. Also I got smart, hotkeyed Counter Magic, and just spammed that key nonstop the entire time – about 75% catch rate!

Should be easier now with the patch

I finished the fight with some effort, but good grief am I motion sick right now from the spinning room!

I hear they nerfed the difficulty of this instance. I never saw the first version. But having run the instance last night after the nerfs – I can still report that this chapter is way too hard for casual players like me.

For the motion sick folks — how zoomed is your camera? I have mine fairly high up and out and I think I only noticed the spin once or twice.

And I’m someone that gets motion sick from rotating motion in my visual field amazingly fast. Can’t let my husband run the ceiling fan when I’m watching TV with him, can’t deal with magic orbs circling another player’s character while sitting in RP, etc.

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!

I’ve played MMOs since 1999. Raided in WOW. LOTRO. Asheron’s Call. You name it. I can say based on YEARS of MMO boss fights: this is the worse. There’s no sense of progression or organization. The clear indication of this are the overlapping telegraphs happening all over the place coupled with the size of the room making camera use virtually useless. I truly hope Anet never designs a boss fight like this. It was terribad.

Granada Garuda.8391:

I solod this and finished it on my first try with my scrapper, no bugs that i saw, just challenging story content, which would be cake walk if you party with others, people just need to up their game.

It is not a cake walk. You kitten well know it so don’t lie. The encounter is an absolute mess and poorly designed.

Korval.3751:

Granada Garuda.8391:

I solod this and finished it on my first try with my scrapper, no bugs that i saw, just challenging story content, which would be cake walk if you party with others, people just need to up their game.

It is not a cake walk. You kitten well know it so don’t lie. The encounter is an absolute mess and poorly designed.

I (as a Mesmer) duoed the pre-nerf encounter with another Mesmer. We never died. We never had trouble with the mechanics. We didn’t even think it was notably difficult. Describing it as a cakewalk is quite accurate.

If you still had trouble with more than 1 person, it just means you were both bad, not that the encounter is hard.

1) One of the “riddles” is poorly written IMHO

2) Once I picked the “correct” answer and entered the hall to the final fight, the door closed on me and I was stuck in the doorway. I had to wait until I finally died by the exploding bloodstone coming close enough to damage me, and restarting from a checkpoint.

3) I do think it’s bad design but not for the other reasons mentioned in this thread so far. My primary issue is that you’re fighting in a small circular room, and playing a Charr I had some real issues with the camera and finding out where the red damage circles on the floor were and where the adds were in the room. Would be 100x better without the outside walls so you could freely look in all directions without issue. Tight cramped space and crappy camera – no fun. Had to restart from checkpoint repeatedly to finish this one.

Oh the rage, I come from Darksouls III into this game for a nice break from dying over and over… Then I get into this secret room as daredevil and just die instantly… lose all my armour… and make basically no progress… 0% ok… normally guildwars is difficult, but not stupid. ;(

Exerosis.8640:

Then I get into this secret room as daredevil and just die instantly…

Do you not have counter magic? It’s basically required.

Melee? Don’t stand too close, as his melee attacks are like an AoE, just big enough to cover his model. When counter magic pops up, use it. The boss will teleport to you and begin to attack, so simply dodge through him.

Ranged? Stay in melee range, as he seems to favor attacking ranged targets with his deadly projectile, which explodes, so don’t stand near the NPCs.

Watch the walls. When they begin to stop spinning, the adds will spawn. The boss won’t actually attack when shielded, so you can simply wait for the adds first, then break his shield. Right at the start for example, take his shield down to ~25%, then wait a few seconds for the first adds to spawn.

Lysander Freeman.4186:

1) One of the “riddles” is poorly written IMHO

Which riddle? There’s three of them, and I think they all make perfect sense. The first riddle is one from the real world, and the second reflects knowledge of the game world, no matter which path you take. And do please explain why you feel the riddle is poorly written.

Rognik.2579:

Lysander Freeman.4186:

1) One of the “riddles” is poorly written IMHO

Which riddle? There’s three of them, and I think they all make perfect sense. The first riddle is one from the real world, and the second reflects knowledge of the game world, no matter which path you take. And do please explain why you feel the riddle is poorly written.

Well, I screwed up my first pass, because I didn’t think the second riddle would be quite so, uh, nakedly racist. I under-estimated (or over-estimated?) Caudicus on that one.

I beat it in my first pass without dying, thought it was rather easy. I didn’t do the chandelier for the first part either tho; just couldn’t stun him under it. I just threw bloodstone at him and beat him until he died. I was also using a mm necro tho, so that helped.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars 2 for around two years, mostly PVE, but occasionally paired up with one other player. It has become obvious to me that the Personal Story arcs in Heart of Thorns and more especially in recent Living World Seasons are becoming increasingly more difficult to complete as an average solo player.

Hero Points have become much more challenging too. In the original game, an average player could expect to complete them all solo. In Heart of Thorns it is extremely difficult to win Hero Point battles unless you are playing in a group with other players.

I am close to a decision to give up playing any Living World Season content as it has more or less ceased to be fun. The story leading up to Confessor’s End was imaginative and very well written. I especially liked the element of sneaking around that was introduced for the first time, but the final chapter was a real slap in the face.

The worst chapter of the new content, is Confessor’s End in Lake Doric. The difficulty level is ridiculous! The final battle in the Lower Chamber is an awful design! I know that many highly skilled players, equipped with the best Legendary weapons and armor have managed to succeed, but average players like me, equipped with normal Exotic gear and weapons, just get killed again and again in a horrible loop of death. This is not fun!

ArenaNet need to patch this chapter and tweak the difficulty down somewhat, otherwise they will alienate a lot of players.

I wonder if they have introduced a new policy to focus on extreme challenges suitable only for group players and are turning away from PVE player content.

Please ArenaNet, fix this!

Paul Andronicus.4179:

The worst chapter of the new content, is Confessor’s End in Lake Doric. The difficulty level is ridiculous! The final battle in the Lower Chamber is an awful design! I know that many highly skilled players, equipped with the best Legendary weapons and armor have managed to succeed, but average players like me, equipped with normal Exotic gear and weapons, just get killed again and again in a horrible loop of death. This is not fun!

I am an average player who only has exotic gear and extremely casual in play style, but I managed to muddle through the entire encounter by myself. Twice. On the first day, yes, it was terrible. The Jade Constructs coming in are unwelcome sights, and there were so many circles on the floor, there was nowhere to stand that was ever safe. It got a lot better after that battle got patched. Have you tried it since? It’s still not easy, but it’s bearable. I went from being defeated 6 times to only being downed a couple. It is doable, but you need to figure out what to do in a fairly quick amount of time.

Well, after spending over 2 1/2 hours of hell in this event and getting nowhere, especially the last room, I have to wonder what is the purpose of events like this.
Games are supposed to be fun, and thats the last word I would describe this event.
No more of this garbage for me.

mauried.5608:

Well, after spending over 2 1/2 hours of hell in this event and getting nowhere, especially the last room, I have to wonder what is the purpose of events like this.
Games are supposed to be fun, and thats the last word I would describe this event.
No more of this garbage for me.

Honestly, I’ma filthy casual who plays axe/axe Berserker/Warrior, and I died a couple times in the secret chamber, but I beat it the first time around, back before the nerf…

I just don’t see why everyone is so crazy about this encounter. I can understand if there are bugs that block progression, but the hate here is a bit much.

mauried.5608:

Well, after spending over 2 1/2 hours of hell in this event and getting nowhere, especially the last room, I have to wonder what is the purpose of events like this.
Games are supposed to be fun, and thats the last word I would describe this event.
No more of this garbage for me.

Exactly my thoughts. The mission is a masochists dream. The whole thing is just extremely poorly designed, fun factor went into the negative digits on this mission. I’m not a masochist kitten .

Sephas.8793:

mauried.5608:

Well, after spending over 2 1/2 hours of hell in this event and getting nowhere, especially the last room, I have to wonder what is the purpose of events like this.
Games are supposed to be fun, and thats the last word I would describe this event.
No more of this garbage for me.

Honestly, I’ma filthy casual who plays axe/axe Berserker/Warrior, and I died a couple times in the secret chamber, but I beat it the first time around, back before the nerf…

I just don’t see why everyone is so crazy about this encounter. I can understand if there are bugs that block progression, but the hate here is a bit much.

The issue isn’t if it is completable or not; you can’t NOT win if you just keep at it, even with 100% broken armor because he doesn’t regenerate. But for many, many people this is tedious and slow. Clearly some reworking is not a bad idea if so many people have a not fun time with basic story content.

I had no problem with it, even on my super-squishy thief, so really I’m not understanding all these complaints.

After they nerfed it, it’s practically a cakewalk so long as you keep strafing from bloodstone shard to bloodstone shard.

I managed to one-shot it on my full-zerker Mesmer, but I’m not going to pretend that it was easy. The whole instance felt rushed, with Anise and Demmi constantly running ahead, while I wanted to stay a moment and take in the scenery.

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

Also, when a boss has a special mechanic or ability, why would you throw us immediately into a high mobility fight with loads of AoE, without us being able to first read the tooltip? It was an absolute mess, having to run around, avoid circles on the ground, exploding Mesmer portals, not to mention the fact that the boss teleported right on top of you when you used counter magic. All throughout, I never actually got a moment to pause and read the kitten tooltip, so I still don’t know what his abilities actually were.

Don’t even get me started on phase 2…

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

Yeah I quickly learned to rebind it to somewhere handy. In my case I bound it to Q for easy reach. I had to learn there is no thought to using it- if the icon flashes, hit the button ASAP. There is no real cooldown or reason not to use it all the time it is available.

Moonyeti.3296:

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

Yeah I quickly learned to rebind it to somewhere handy. In my case I bound it to Q for easy reach. I had to learn there is no thought to using it- if the icon flashes, hit the button ASAP. There is no real cooldown or reason not to use it all the time it is available.

It’s essentially the GW2 version of a Quick Time Event (QTE). I’m not really familiar with anyone that likes QTEs, and I’m not a huge fan of it here…but it doesn’t actually make the instance difficult. I just wish they had you doing more interesting things with the special action key like we see them doing in raids with it.

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

Thanks. Yeah, I was able to read up on it after I wrote that post. I’m still iffy towards it simply being a “react to this” kind of deal. We’re not told what the boss is trying to do, there’s no levity there to decide whether or not to counter. In the case of Caudacus, you interupt his Shadowstep – but that has the effect of him popping on top of you and instantly cleaving. At the time of the fight, I never felt rewarded for interupting his shadowstep, since the result of me hitting that key just led up to me being damaged in melee, having otherwise spent that fight running around at range with Scepter/Pistol and iDuelists.

Granted, he might have done something much worse if it had not been interrupted.

Malice.8439:

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

Thanks. Yeah, I was able to read up on it after I wrote that post. I’m still iffy towards it simply being a “react to this” kind of deal. We’re not told what the boss is trying to do, there’s no levity there to decide whether or not to counter. In the case of Caudacus, you interupt his Shadowstep – but that has the effect of him popping on top of you and instantly cleaving. At the time of the fight, I never felt rewarded for interupting his shadowstep, since the result of me hitting that key just led up to me being damaged in melee, having otherwise spent that fight running around at range with Scepter/Pistol and iDuelists.

Granted, he might have done something much worse if it had not been interrupted.

I haven’t tried it after they nerfed it a bit, but it was much worse if you didn’t hit it. Basically he had you stunlocked while he pinballed you all over the room. If you hit and don’t quickly dodge you take damage only.

Did not encounter any problems with this mission whatsoever, I soloed with a guardian and duo’d with my brother who is a guardian and I was on an elementalist.

Just evade and stay away from him in the first fight,
in the second fight you just avoid the circles, kill the minions, and throw shards at caudecus.
Bind your special key to something easy to press like V or F.
Is it really that hard?

I dis this with my friend and we never manages to hit that counter magic button a single time, I believe somewhere it was said that this fight is basically supper easy for guardians or something though.

Just did the final instance again. It’s in line with other story instance bosses so I don’t see any issue with it.

Malice.8439:

The whole instance felt rushed, with Anise and Demmi constantly running ahead, while I wanted to stay a moment and take in the scenery.

Anise and Demmi just run to the end of the current room (something I like over the “NPCs just follow you around” because that just results in them skipping should you take a step on a platform an inch lower/higher) You can take your time to look at the scenery and explore. And when you reach the manor itself they (Anise, Canach, and Demmi) follow you around so you can even backtrack with the trio if you want.

Fay.2357:

It’s essentially the GW2 version of a Quick Time Event (QTE). I’m not really familiar with anyone that likes QTEs, and I’m not a huge fan of it here…but it doesn’t actually make the instance difficult. I just wish they had you doing more interesting things with the special action key like we see them doing in raids with it.

I like QTEs when done properly, but I would hardly call Counter Magic a quick time event.

But hopefully we’ll get more uses of the special action key, since they had the sensor with Seis use it, and we have Counter Magic, and the Taimi search in Meeting of Ministers.

Moonyeti.3296:

I haven’t tried it after they nerfed it a bit, but it was much worse if you didn’t hit it. Basically he had you stunlocked while he pinballed you all over the room. If you hit and don’t quickly dodge you take damage only.

The only change they did to it was extend the reaction time (previously half-second, now full second or something like that).

It never stunlocked you, but he does have other stunning skills which could – in rare occasions – result in stun locking when used back to back. But that’s rather rare TBH.

The only stunlocking that might have really happened commonly would be from the frequently spawning Volatile Bloodstone Elementals combined with the Veteran Jade Armor and Caudecus using his not-in-the-bubble stun skills. Which would be why they switched the Veteran Jade Armor spawn with a Veteran Carnival Strongman (fewer stuns but still a heavy hitter melee).

Malice.8439:

Thanks. Yeah, I was able to read up on it after I wrote that post. I’m still iffy towards it simply being a “react to this” kind of deal. We’re not told what the boss is trying to do, there’s no levity there to decide whether or not to counter. In the case of Caudacus, you interupt his Shadowstep – but that has the effect of him popping on top of you and instantly cleaving. At the time of the fight, I never felt rewarded for interupting his shadowstep, since the result of me hitting that key just led up to me being damaged in melee, having otherwise spent that fight running around at range with Scepter/Pistol and iDuelists.

Whenever I used the special action key on Caudecus, he would teleport to me then become stunned. I don’t know if he damaged me or not, because there were so many things trying to hurt me at the time that I was never at full health. You should’ve had a few moments to get away from him, though, whether you were in melee or at range.

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

How are you supposed to know that if you don’t have time to look at stuff?

Djinn.9245:

Healix.5819:

Malice.8439:

I don’t like the way Counter-Magic is used. I suppose it’s meant to be keybound, but I keep wanting to hover my mouse over it, expecting some sort of tooltip about what I’m supposed to be doing.

The counter magic tutorial was in the first episode, which explained that it reverses the effects of whatever you are countering. It’s a generic skill, so the tooltip isn’t going to help. In this case, it interrupts his shadowstep combo.

How are you supposed to know that if you don’t have time to look at stuff?

Generally just assume that anytime that it comes up on screen, you should use it.