Hood swing frequency - Caduceus Coil Turn 1

What is the interval or cooldown with which Caduceus can use Hood Swing, and is this affected by anything (Slow, stacks of Steel Scales)?

I have incredible difficulty healing this encounter with SCH because it requires me to either manually cast Embrace or Lustrate in order to heal a tank following a Hood Swing to prevent them from dying due to auto-attacks. Chain-casting Adlo/Physick is simply not enough, in my experience, and so I need to know when Caduceus is able to use Hood Swing again.

The fact that he can critical or double attack (or double crit) makes it impossible for me to tell that he has executed a Hood Swing or is about to, short of using the chat log or watching him on-screen (and even then, Hood Swing doesn't look drastically different, have any charging effect, or produce any sprites/effects that are noticeable.

If there isn't a regular interval or delay with which Caduceus can use Hood Swing, I'd like to know how healers or tanks handle this ability.

Either you or your tank is not geared enough or your tank is just flatout not playing their job correctly. My first experience with this fight on scholar was basically spamming adlo > 2 physicks > repeat whenever the gcd was up as well as eye for an eye and virus whenever I had the opportunity. I rarely ever had the need for lustrate and would just use my aethers for damage mitigation on the tank. If you are having trouble healing through it then you need to either take a look at you or the tanks gear, or your dps aren't killing the snakes fast enough and letting its buff stack too high for one person to solo heal. You guys are making sure to feed slimes to caduceus so he doesn't have stacks when he splits right?

Cool story, thanks. Healing Caduceus effectively (read: not relying on not having bad luck with crit double attacks) requires good timing on big cures following Hood Swings, ideally with Adlo/Lustrate casting during the animation or landing shortly afterward. Chain-healing (or gearing higher) is not the solution, because extraneous factors (Slime kiter/feeders taking damage, interrupting a cast to jump platforms) prevent this strategy from being effective. I repeat, stacks are not at all relevant because an average tank will not be one-shot by Hood Swing until 6 stacks (and if the fight ever takes that long, the healers will be out of MP by that time anyway).

I'm in Relic with melded Vanya/Rose gold eating HQ Deviled Eggs and the tank has AF2 body and Relic+1. If it was possible to chain-heal through this encounter, we would have won on the first try. He was dying consistently in 3-4 stacks. It is not only possible but easy to heal this with lesser gear and at higher stacks. Gear is hardly relevant to this encounter, as teams were clearing this with basic Relics/Darklight in the first few weeks.

Thanks for not answering my question though, you're very helpful in your criticism and trying to knock others down a peg for no particular reason on an online forum about a game. And thanks for questioning my knowledge of the encounter, that really helps too. It's like starting a dialogue/discussion except it starts and ends with you and leads nowhere and helps no one.

I was going to try to help, but OP's attitude just made me want to hood swing him IRL instead.

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Originally Posted by MieyCyruuuus

I was going to try to help, but OP's attitude just made me want to hood swing him IRL instead.

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Oh, thank you as well for your personal attack. I'm sorry that I responded to a response that insinuated one of the following (or a combination):

1. I'm not doing the fight properly.

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Originally Posted by Req

You guys are making sure to feed slimes to caduceus so he doesn't have stacks when he splits right?

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2. I'm entering the fight underequipped.

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Originally Posted by Req

If you are having trouble healing through it then you need to either take a look at you or the tanks gear.

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3. I'm overall ill-prepared for this content. In fact, he opens with this.

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Originally Posted by Req

Either you or your tank is not geared enough or your tank is just flatout not playing their job correctly.

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Is it really necessary to assume that players asking about specific mechanics are missing the very basics of a fight? It's one thing if he had asked if I had completed this checklist, which is a very fair and very valid question, and it's another thing to write a post that continues on the assumption that I or my team is incompetent and offers no advice except to strengthen my basics.

Let me offer an analogy. Is there anything worse than calling a partnering organization for a project that you feel you have worked on and know very well, only to have them ask you, "Are you sure it's plugged in?" or "Is your keyboard facing the right direction?"

Do I need to be more obvious about the point of this post? I placed the theme in the title and bolded and underlined the question. Everything I wrote after that is not relevant to the discussion whatsoever, but was included simply for reader's amusement and so that forum readers don't feel like this is just a questions/answers forum.

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Originally Posted by YuriRamona

Is it really necessary to assume that players asking about specific mechanics are missing the very basics of a fight?

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Yes, it really is if your tank is dying in turn 1, consistently, with only 3-4 stacks.

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Originally Posted by MieyCyruuuus

Yes, it really is if your tank is dying in turn 1, consistently, with only 3-4 stacks.

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Thank you for once again ignoring the point of the thread and continuing to push your agenda across.

Please share your infinite wisdom about how and why we shouldn't be failing and what I'm doing wrong and what needs to be done and what tactics and strategies I'm failing to consider.

Under no circumstances should you answer the question. Please reply to this post with another tangential response.

Really loving your comment history. Your contribution to these forums is truly commendable. Here are some gems that deserve recognition. Can we all rise to appreciate your gift to these forums?

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Originally Posted by MieyCyruuuus

people.... die to repell?

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Originally Posted by MieyCyruuuus

I was going to try to help, but OP's attitude just made me want to hood swing him IRL instead.

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We do this fight feeding no slimes after split, use the tail to your advantage and have tanks start rotating Def cd after 3 stacks.

I wasn't at all trying to insult you, I am sorry you took it that way, but the bottom line is that this is a fight that really only needs the basics to be completed, and I was telling you how I completed the fight on my scholar over 2 months ago with nothing more than a relic to my schs name and a few darklight pieces I had leftover from 1.0. If your tank is dying constantly with 3-4 stacks then there is a huge issue that needs to be looked at, and it is probably way deeper than just hood swing as I don't personally know anyone that even watches for that ability to the extent you would need to watch for something such as death sentence in turn 5. When there is a core issue in any of the fights I have ever gone through, then it is always best to take a look back at the basic mechanics of the game itself. It is something that I have had to do in every phase of coil, and you will more than likely have to too. Who uses what buffs when, who is outputting the optimal amount of DPS and who is not, who is not healing properly. I have taken healers into the instance with minimal knowledge of the fight and downed it on the first try simply because they had a basic heal rotation down from doing things such as titan and garuda, and then we get to turn 2 and they have a huge issue keeping the tank up even with another healer helping them. I simply drew my conclusion about the possible issues you were having based on my own experience from the fight, which I have cleared about a dozen times on both my main and my undergeared alt combined. I am sorry if they came out as insulting, but you asked how to deal with the mechanic and I straight up told you the healing rotation I used which will allow for enough damage mitigation through adlo while still using the lesser heal in physick as to not burn through your mp and it was enough to clear the instance when I was still learning how to play the game. If you are doing exactly as I had described then it led me to believe you were having 1 of 3 issues.

1. You or your tank are incredibly undergeared if you are having trouble - Not true apparently, but with little background info on what strategy you were using or what your party comp was you never know. I tried to give some insight into the garuda fight for someone who claims its impossible for anyone to survive aerial blast if you let any of the plumes go off because his team comp is made up of people still using gear from low level dungeons and he told me I was full of shit because I said its possible to completely ignore the plumes alltogether.
2. Your tank is not utilizing his cooldowns to properly mitigate damage when needed - he shouldn't need any of them before 3 stacks and if he is using them before then then he is not playing his job properly as he does not recognize that it is not needed when he is barely taking any damage to begin with.
3. Your DPS are not killing caduceus fast enough so you are getting too many stacks, which will happen at a certain point if you are trying to burn it without feeding slimes.

The last statement in the original post said that you would like to know how tanks and healers manage the fight if there is not a regular interval. I haven't personally ever timed it, there may be a regular interval that it uses it, but I feel that it is irrelevant in the fight as a whole as YOU CAN simply chain heal through it without any sort of advanced tactics or even having to micro your fairy.

He uses hood swing roughly every 15-20 seconds only getting delayed if the tail swing is baited.

How dare you "insult" the OP even more Req?

I love the internet. And I love reading the OPs amazing responses.

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Originally Posted by MieyCyruuuus

How dare you "insult" the OP even more Req?

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What can I say, I am a huge jerk and I love to insult people instead of help. Ask anyone I know and they will tell you this.

I am replying here to feed the trolls further.

Let me edit my previous comments to make sure I include the words "insult" and "jerk" so that you all don't seem like you're exaggerating anything. I mean, once someone calls someone out for mindless personal attacks that contribute absolutely nothing other than vitriol to a thread, that means they definitely don't like you and think you're a bad person, right? It's not like we're trying to establish a modicum sense of civility and a minimum for reasoned discussion, or anything, the lack of which makes these OF the laughing stock of other community groups.

I'm pretty sure and sense of civility went out of the window when you leashed out on the first person that replied, who tried to help you the best way he can. Your reading comprehensive skills and emotional sensitivity does not change what the the fact that Req was trying to help you and answered the way any sane person would have. And I don't know if English is your first language but you might want to look up "Personal attack" so you know what it actually means.

If you're concerned about the timing for hood swing, I recommend referring to the many videos available of this encounter and counting the seconds between the hood swings, accruing a sample size large enough to establish a degree of confidence, then applying it to your own attempts and seeing how it lines up. It is a very straightforward mechanic, so Req's application of Occam's Razor to your difficulties makes perfect sense.

People are giving you constructive questions/assumptions. If you're not manually using Embrace of your Fairy, you're doing it wrong. Sorry to say that but thats a fact. Eos/Selene use Embrace with a delay by themselves not to mention they don't use it all before a party member dropped below 80%. Since they patched it so your GCD doesn't affect the Fairies abilities there is no reason whatsoever in any content in the game not to heal manually with her...

If you are dependant on feeding slimes after the split, adjust your strategy or "get better". Any type of healer should be able to keep any type of tank alive after the split w/o feeding any more slimes. It doesn't get anywhere "hard to heal" before 5 stacks and if you're reaching 5 stacks, your DPS needs to look at what they are doing wrong.

PS: To answer the initial question, no there is no way of telling when hoodswing is coming. The animation for it looks kinda like a sideways slash with its body, but the CD on it isn't any higher than 10seconds. So yeah...you have to spam heal the tank in that phase...that's how it works. If he is at full health maybe throw in a Sacred Soil, but even that can sometmies mean life and death for the tank if he eats Hoodswing and a crit hit after. Also your tanks should have some sort of feeling for when to use what cooldown to help out the healer responsible for them. I know how long the fight usually takes with my group so I time my cooldowns to get the most out of them over the course of the fight. There is no point in saving a CD for "later" in the fight when "later in the fight" it will be back up again anyway.

PPS: The SCH healer in my group has Relic and Full DL...thats it. Not one Allagan or AF2 piece and she has no trouble healing Turn 1-4...

Apparently this isn't common knowledge based on the responses here heh.. Cad does actually indicate when he's about to do Hood Swing. You simply have to watch out for it. He emits a flash, Hood Swing follows shortly after; go watch some videos of the kill to see what I'm talking about.

You ask for help but do not provide sufficient information, so people need to ask questions. I think sufficient questions have been asked on this thread so I only addressed the above.

Now my 2 cents on the drama:
You reacted with extreme butthurt after posting a thread asking for help.
When you ask for help just discard the bad or what won't work for you, and take what might possibly work. Have enough confidence in your own abilities that if (or when) someone says you're bad and you know you're not it's just silly to allow it to hurt you.

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Originally Posted by kayuwoody

Apparently this isn't common knowledge based on the responses here heh.. Cad does actually indicate when he's about to do Hood Swing. You simply have to watch out for it. He emits a flash, Hood Swing follows shortly after; go watch some videos of the kill to see what I'm talking about.

You ask for help but do not provide sufficient information, so people need to ask questions. I think sufficient questions have been asked on this thread so I only addressed the above.

Now my 2 cents on the drama:
You reacted with extreme butthurt after posting a thread asking for help.
When you ask for help just discard the bad or what won't work for you, and take what might possibly work. Have enough confidence in your own abilities that if (or when) someone says you're bad and you know you're not it's just silly to allow it to hurt you.

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Thank you for your response. I have already watched videos of the fight and it was difficult to pinpoint the timing of Hood Swings because of a multitude of factors (often in combination): low resolution, not battle log viewable, and distant camera angles. Your suggestion is appreciated.

The reason why I responded aggressively to the first few responses is because they failed to answer the specific question that I posed in the title and the original post.

It's fairly obvious at this point that there are fundamentals and basics to my play that can be improved. There is no question about that. Healers/tanks can pull through 4-5 stack Caduceus no problem without any special tactics, especially from the very first few weeks of launch when players were underprepared and undergeared, and still clearing this encounter. Dying to 3-4 stacks means that something is clearly wrong with our strategy/tactics that can be easily improved.

There is no denying that our gameplay can be improved greatly (after all, can anyone say they've perfected their play, unless they are a robot?) and that focus on these core components is the highest yield on our success rate per unit of time that we spend mastering.

however...

There are already answers to how to handle these basics elsewhere on the internet and forum that I have tracked, studied, and practiced, and clearly failed to fully grasp.

If I needed these things repeated, I would have asked that in the original post. Something to the effect of, "What am I doing wrong?" or "I don't get why we're failing, we shouldn't be" or "I'm at a loss for why we are failing". Anything that suggests that what we are doing is right and fine and the only thing blocking our way is my timing of Lustrate following Hood Swings. I apologize that I did suggest that this encounter required special tactics to complete, and opened up all this drama by even posting about my personal experience.

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In any case, it should be obvious that my role is a Scholar, a healer. Advice on the tank's role, abilities, and tactics are, at best, tangentially related to this discussion. Even if I were to know what's best for them to do, and facilitate communication between us, there will always be instances where another player (such as the tank) fails or makes a mistake. My goal is to improve my own play to the point where I maximize our chances to beat this encounter even if we PUG a derpy tank. Many of the suggestions provided depend upon the skill and preparation of the tank. For a vast majority of healers, they don't have the option of leaving a group or finding a new team if their tank is failing. Indeed, the FC system locks us in with players who have varying degrees of willingness to improve. We also have little control over what the tank does and when. And so, why not flesh out one particular mechanic that might give healers that little bit of edge in a fight?

Let me draw an (albeit extreme) example. How many times have we met PLD that spam Rage of Halone back-to-back and refuse to take advice? DPS that insist on not dodging red zones? Sometimes they listen and change, and sometimes they don't. And even if they try, they will have lacked the practice that brings them to mastery. And so, why not, as healers, master our own gameplay and understanding of mechanics, so that we can minimize the effect of the weakest link?

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I did not, at any point, ask for general assistance with this encounter. And so, I made it clear that this not what was wanted, and in very unpleasant terms, as I will freely admit. I apologize for feeding trolls, but it seemed that at least a few people were amused by our banter so it's not all bad.

It's our responsibility to stand up when respondents side-track the discussion and espouse their analysis of the post, however in error it may be. This happens not infrequently on these forums. Sometimes, it is certainly welcome, when struggling players are on the wrong train of thought and should be focusing on other things, such as basics and controls. In this case, it was not welcome.

If my original question was irrelevant, then readers can simply ignore this thread. Given the tepid response to this thread, as I expected, predicting Hood Swing is neither necessary nor sufficient to beating this encounter. I apologize if I suggested that this mechanic was important or critical to this fight. I also apologize if my information was insufficient. In retrospect, I should have not posted additional information regarding my particular case and just asked the direct question. I had hoped that this would personalize my post a little bit more, but instead, it was distracting and too tempting to a few respondents.

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Originally Posted by TirionCrey

People are giving you constructive questions/assumptions. If you're not manually using Embrace of your Fairy, you're doing it wrong. Sorry to say that but thats a fact. Eos/Selene use Embrace with a delay by themselves not to mention they don't use it all before a party member dropped below 80%. Since they patched it so your GCD doesn't affect the Fairies abilities there is no reason whatsoever in any content in the game not to heal manually with her...

If you are dependant on feeding slimes after the split, adjust your strategy or "get better". Any type of healer should be able to keep any type of tank alive after the split w/o feeding any more slimes. It doesn't get anywhere "hard to heal" before 5 stacks and if you're reaching 5 stacks, your DPS needs to look at what they are doing wrong.

PS: To answer the initial question, no there is no way of telling when hoodswing is coming. The animation for it looks kinda like a sideways slash with its body, but the CD on it isn't any higher than 10seconds. So yeah...you have to spam heal the tank in that phase...that's how it works. If he is at full health maybe throw in a Sacred Soil, but even that can sometmies mean life and death for the tank if he eats Hoodswing and a crit hit after. Also your tanks should have some sort of feeling for when to use what cooldown to help out the healer responsible for them. I know how long the fight usually takes with my group so I time my cooldowns to get the most out of them over the course of the fight. There is no point in saving a CD for "later" in the fight when "later in the fight" it will be back up again anyway.

PPS: The SCH healer in my group has Relic and Full DL...thats it. Not one Allagan or AF2 piece and she has no trouble healing Turn 1-4...

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Thank you for your response. Hood Swing can come within 10 seconds of each other, but I have a feeling that there is some minimum cooldown or an average time. The reason I asked the question is partly because I knew there isn't a set time, but if the average was around 20 sec, that means it would be possible to save and time Lustrate charges for Hood Swing.

As you said, bad luck can mean the difference between life and death. I was just hoping that predicting Hood Swing can shave just a little bit of the luck factor away and make the encounter more predictable and straightforward. Chain-healing (i.e. face-rolling) Adloquium/Physick and Lustrate/SS every 30 sec is not my idea of minimizing the luck factor when Caduceus may decide to Hood Swing and double crit while I am jumping platforms and I have to interrupt an Adloquium. And if anyone else would suggest that that scenario results in failure, I would disagree and say that there could be a way to minimize that luck factor, including Hood Swing prediction.

One of the respondents actually contradicts your statement about fairy micro. And so, I'm not sure how constructive all this criticism is, if this is considering basics by you, but as irrelevant to another. It is certainly constructive dialogue and discussion, but not really advice I could then take and use in my play. Can we really say that anyone is missing the basics, if there isn't a consensus about what the basics are?

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Originally Posted by YuriRamona

One of the respondents actually contradicts your statement about fairy micro. And so, I'm not sure how constructive all this criticism is, if this is considering basics by you, but as irrelevant to another. It is certainly constructive dialogue and discussion, but not really advice I could then take and use in my play. Can we really say that anyone is missing the basics, if there isn't a consensus about what the basics are?

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That person is mistaken. You definitely want to keybind and spam Embrace like a madman. It helps healing quite a lot, and allows you to save on a good deal of MP.

not a healer, just adding my two cents in as a tank.

Hood swing comes about every 10-15secs, I've never really need to be concern about it until stacks startin to ramp up. I only use my CDs after 3 stacks or when there's an emergency situations. Worst come to worst, as a PLD i still have hollow ground to keep myself alive.

WHM here. I've healed Caduceus fights successfully for about a month now.

As noted in the thread, Hood Swing comes "every so often", and feels like the boss just got a free crit; hard enough that you go "ow, what the hell" but not Titan-style cheapness (auto-attack to cleave to Mountain Buster, mmmm). The big challenge healers have is that you've each got a tank to protect, so you don't have anybody to back you up. You will be casting on every GCD with almost no exception.

For WHMs, this means you're going to spam Cure 1 without end and Cure 2 whenever you see your Cure 1 left a gap in the health bar. Regen 10 seconds in and then keep it up always. Swiftcast Medica 2 to keep a second regen up. Hold Benediction for emergencies, if you can. Someone got hit by poison? Toss a Regen and let it work. Shroud at 75% and then Shroud a second time if you can.

For SMNs, this means Adlo before the fight, Eos+Physick spam throughout the fight, Adlo whenever you get your tank near to topped off, keep at least one Aetherflow stack in reserve for Lustrate. Someone hit by Poison? Eos can help, or you can Swiftcast a Succor in the rotation for some extra shielding. Adlo shield is up, you've got full Aetherflow stacks, you're off Aetherflow cooldown? Drop an Energy Drain in there for some extra MP -- but you may want to keep a Bard handy. (This fight tends to bottom out the SMN I run with.)


If your full rotation isn't keeping the tank alive, start adding enhancements: food and potions for all players, see if you can get better timing on tank cooldowns (if possible), and maybe get a DPS to bait the tail swipe for a roughly one-GCD interruption in Caduceus' attack pattern. If all that's being done, and you still can't get it... plan when Hallowed Ground gets thrown so you can top the tank back up and maybe get a little mana back. Use it as a limited refreshment window instead of as an "omg we're dead" last ditch cooldown.

If you still can't get it, you're probably up against one of two things: gear, or practice. (Or 'lag', but that's such a go-to dog ate my homework style reason for a fight going bad that I hesitate to list it.)

Good luck in there!

(Aside: I've got fight write-ups at talesofbindingcoil.wordpress.com if you'd like some text material to review.)

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Originally Posted by Dano

not a healer, just adding my two cents in as a tank.

Hood swing comes about every 10-15secs, I've never really need to be concern about it until stacks startin to ramp up. I only use my CDs after 3 stacks or when there's an emergency situations. Worst come to worst, as a PLD i still have hollow ground to keep myself alive.

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as above, i tank caduceus like this (use burn strategy):

if i main tank, i pull caduceus and use sentinel to let the healers have some time to start casting. after that i do not use any cooldowns unless i am very close to dieing, unless it is stoneskin. after the split, i pull him to the other side of the map, and start rotating cooldowns starting with sentinel, periodically recasting stoneskin when possible. hallowed ground is saved for the final part of the fight, when he gets mad because the other snake dies.

if i offtank its the same after phase 2. only difference being the slimes, as i cover the bard when he has to spawn one.