Hood swing frequency - Caduceus Coil Turn 1

[YuriRamona]

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.

[Req]

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?

[YuriRamona]

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.

[MieyCyruuuus]

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

[YuriRamona]

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

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.

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

2. I'm entering the fight underequipped.

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

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

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

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.

[MieyCyruuuus]

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

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

[YuriRamona]

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

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?

people.... die to repell?

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

[Anachronox]

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.

[Req]

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.

[poh]

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