A few weeks in, and the Caliligos experience has been decidedly worse than it was for even Velganos at release.
Let me count the ways:
*Caliligos is untargetable half the bloody raid due to all kinds of reasons (running, landing, long iframe patterns), while dishing out substantial damage to the player in many case. Frustrating time wasters.
*Moves around erratically in most of his regular patterns, making it arbitrarily difficult for directional attackers to land their full damage. Whether he decides to go through your Gunlancer charging his Surge Cannon or dodges a Surge because he’s shaking his hips as if he was in a nightclub, the experiece sucks terribly.
*Despite already having the above, he also has a bunch of patterns where he dashes across the screen. Why?
*All the above leads to Caliligos often being stuck in corners or running after players when they’re in the narrow corridors connecting the battlefield. Again, makes the raid extra terrible for directional attackers while making the main mech harder to execute.
*The dreaded Stagger/Counter/WP mech. Forced battle item usage in most scenarios, dependent on all your teammates executing correctly. In isolation these factors are not too bad, but one weak link can ruin the whole raid as you’re very depending on the buff to clear the raid at ilvl. The above factor can also mean a failed mech from not being able to pick up all the orbs (because they spawned in his body) or countering in a direction teammates can’t rotate towards. At least with Velganos you could solo carry DPS with the raid’s mechanics - it’s the opposite here.
*He often uses his massive AoE counterable move after main mech, meaning his internal counter cooldown is still active and you can’t actually stop the move. Bad programming, full stop.
*Huge difficulty increase when you reach the last phase. You have no idea whether your group can actually clear the raid until you get there. This is because Caliligos starts dealing massive splash damage that’s essentially unavoidable if you’re a melee DPS and not particularly mobile.
*Blue raid boss with blue telegraphs in a blue map… who thought this was a good idea? Makes most of the problems outlined a lot worse and IMO is the main reason pugs die often. Until they can memorize the boss’ movements dodging consistently is a tall ask.
*Virtually all the above problems are extinguished by having a support teammate. This raid is a joke if you get matched with or join a lobby with Bard/Paladin. Even if you fail the main mech and only deal half your directional DPS, the only downside is the raid taking longer - which is a non-issue if you can heal/shield through all the BS. Due to the systemic support shortage though, all the above problems must be dealt with by the average player.
TBH it’s ridiculous that guardian raid homework essentially has to be cleared with premades, otherwise it’s a fucking miserable experience. Once monkey is out and Caliligos becomes the realm of 1490s only, I wonder if anyone will even do the raid.
