Callagadra seems way easier than what people say

Grim Dawn Gameplay Discussion
1

I mean, I just passed a new char lvl 100, and, without any real optimization, and with 2 or 3 changes during the fight, I was able to remove 70% of her HPs, which means that I would have been able to kill her if I was more patient (Well my lack of OA made the fight pretty time-lasting)

Anyway, my non-optimized char is able to kill her, so I think Callagadra is overrated. I’m ofc talking about ultimate Callagadra since my char is already able to facetank epic one for most of the fight.

Btw I’d like to share my gameplay for people who want to kill her. They may be more successful than me :wink:

My char

Warlord using a shield (Well two shields but one is counted as a mace :p) and hitting with Righteous Fervor and lots of ennemy’s res debuff (Empyrion guardians, ring 1 skill, ring 2 skill, Markovian’s Advantage, and OF COURSE, Break Morale).
So, of course, my experience is linked to a shield + mace on warlord gameplay. I think casters and dual wield builds may have a harder time :x

Take a low cd mobility skill with no targeting needed !

Glyphs & Runes offer access to a wide variety of mobility skills. I’d suggest, for this fight, having a low-cd (3 sec or less) rush skill with no targeting needed. It will make you flee easier when needed, and dodge Callagadra’s summons (Sandstorms and… Sand things) which will most of the time deal no damages but can suddenly eat your health pool like crazy.

Gameplay style : Hit & run

Since Callagadra hits pretty light at first but gives you tons of debuffs, you can basically warcry and then facetank for some seconds and leave when she starts making tons of damages.
It can be useful to have some support skills like Menhir’s Will, to let you survive if you’re too late on escaping.

Once she starts dealing more damages, escape, wait for the debuffs to go away, wait for warcry’s and potions’ CD to finish and then go again.
Yes, the fight will be long, but if your char is not optimized you should already be happy to be able to win by being patient.

At 50% HP you might need even more defense.

Callagadra unleashes her true powers at 50% hp. While you may have been like “Well it’s gonna be easy”, here the nightmare begins.

I personnally use the Fortress relic, so in this phase I decided to go only when the Living Fortress skill was up. I would go on, Battle Cry, Living Fortress, hit for some seconds and resume running.

Since I’m not the patient type of guy, I also took my whole reserve of Aether Clusters, and decided to go with either Living Fortress or a Cluster up.

Losing patience, I decided to also go with Break Morale alone and I think that’s what killed me :3

The stats you should focus on

Definitely go for all physical things. You need Pierce overcapped at 50% I think because she basically can stack debuffs of around 25%. She also hits with fire and vitality but I really didn’t feel like these attacks were threatening.

What is definitely threatening tho is her physical attacks and debuffs. She not only reduces elemental res, but also physical res too; from 43% physical res I went all the way to 0 (trust me I had time to wonder and then check that)

So, here are the stats you should focus on :

  • Physical res (Well you still need some of this to make her first attacks feel like wind)
  • Armor (Obviously)
  • %Target reduced damages (Less obvious but still pretty useful)
  • %Damage absorption (Also less obvious but it will replace physical resist well)
  • Shield %block chance, recovery time, damages blocked

Also please note that I don’t feel like I am legit as a teacher. Many people may know Callagadra better than me; I exposed these points to have them discussed more than to give indications even tho I think they can help some. So please don’t hesitate to comment on those as I am eager to understand this boss 100% and, who knows, to learn more about the game in general.

2

I always said Ravager is stronger than her.
I’d say Mogdrogen is the strongest, because he has massive RR and damage, most OA and requires you to get additional max lightning resist to kill him (or at least for most builds). The increase in max lightning resist for your character is also his weakness, as every character can do that, but some lose too much in exchange.

Ravager is the second one, because he shreds DA, has RR, massive damage and you basically either need enormous amounts of ADCtH or armor/physical resist along with other resists which are his secondary damage types.

Callagadra is super easy, the only “hard” part there is the attack and casting speed slow, other than that get some armor/physical resist, overcap pierce res and you’re fine. She’s also easily kitable, while Ravager and Mogdrogen are not since they still can slap you for running around when you’re casting skills.

I know this is not really related to the thread, but maybe someone will find it somehow useful. :smiley:

3

I don’t agree on the fact that Rav is harder tho.
Callagadra forced me to play hit & run for hours and finally got me when I wasn’t paying attention, while against Ravager the same character was able to facetank him from A to Z with only having to move at one moment.

However, I made a mistake and chose the Ravager of Minds. It seems it’s kinda easier than the Rav of Flesh so I guess I could be wrong :stuck_out_tongue:

Didn’t try Mog on this char but from what I remember I think we can agree on that. I’m just not sure about who is the strongest between Mog and the Crate.

4

Well I tried again and killed her in less than 1h.

Seems it’s better with some more opti and some pots :slight_smile:

5

Callala is harder to facetank but is relatively easy as long as your ego can withstand the shame of kiting. Ravie gets angry when you run. Mogster is a one-trick pony and he’s piece of cake once you got your lightning res covered. Plus you can use his pets as sustain meat.

6

My ranking is

  1. Crate
  2. Callagrada
  3. Ravager
  4. Modgroden

Honorable mentions: Lokkar and Bourbon Clones

It depends on your build. Ravager and Modg are easily facetanked by some.
But Calla cannot be facetanked by 99% of the builds (I’m sure someone finds a way to do it), so unless you kite and spend a lot of time you can’t kill her. Ranged and pet builds have more chance to do it, some even reliably kill her (and crate), but have trouble with the others while kiting. Crate is more complicated because of it’s mobs, only.

7

Essentially, killing Callagadra looks like this:
https://youtu.be/DvrizP4h1hk

8

Secret bosses are not super bosses. They may be flagged as one, but the stats are way lower than what Super bosses have. Also, secret bosses are supposed to be retarded in a way, John clones himself, Lokarr spawns low/mediocre damage wind devils which stack, has many procs and spawns Johns and Crate just spawns crates which annihilate you (so effectively the boxes are stronger than Crate himself).

9

Yeaaah, it has definitely nothing to do with the fact that phys (retal) warlord is still on the very top of the food chain at the moment and basically the only build so far who can kill and clear all (maybe except Crate) game content without even tweaking his gear.

1 Like
10

Lol, I have a warlord that can facetank her all the way until her death. I just need to pot up. He can also kill ravager of souls without pots. It’s not as hard as people think. Heck, I even have a dual wield elemental tactician build that can facetank Grava’Thul through his nullification ability and all the way until his death. This game is EASY AF!

11

Now that’s a funny way to kill a superboss x)

12

I don’t think that’s true. Many builds out there can kill most of the superbosses without a single tweaking, also, my char doesn’t have awesome stats at all so I am pretty sure that a lot of builds can kill Callagadra pretty easily (some taking a long time tho)

13

Does the amount of slow resist make any difference against her?

let’s say 30% againts 80% slow resist.

14

Yes, Sand Tornadoes apply nearly 60% slower attack through their auras.

15

I fought her with a retaliation DE build which had 71% slow resist with procs and I saw literally no difference at all when I had my 20% or whatever and 71%. I am pretty sure slow resist, as other secondary resistances, reduce the duration only, and as her slow is an aura (it’s applied by the whirlwind tornado thing), it’s applied every frame or something, therefore slow resist doesn’t matter. I was ticking about 5 times a second, making my HP stay at 100% all the time, and after the slow applied, no matter how much resist I had, I was ticking about twice a second, and my HP kept dropping to even less than 1/4 of my HP and healing could not save me as it was healing me for only like 2k per tick or something similar.

16

It says it has 1s duration of the debuff. It also says it’s an aura so should be reapplied every second. So you’re saying slow res doesn’t work against such auras?

17

Basically, yes. If debuffs were applied every second the game would have really, really shit DoTs and duration effects because if something would cleanse itself from debuffs, it’d take an entire second to re apply it.

Example:
You have Aura of Censure, you’re attacking something that can cleanse itself from debuffs, for example Grava, if you dodge his balls and they land on top of him, he’ll be cleansed from all debuffs, now you no longer apply the AoC debuff until a second is gone - this is gamebreaking and effectively a nullify skill that misses you but hits the caster lowers your damage.

The way it works is as following:
A debuff is applied every frame, and the effects that are there are also applied every frame, but flat damage is delayed by a second so it only ticks once a second. DoT effects are applied every frame (not sure about damage ticking DoTs, but I think it’s the same), so a 60% slow will be applied every frame, but will only last 1 second (reduced by slow resist).

How am I sure it’s applied every frame? Simply because if you move into an aura range in less than a second, the effect is fully applied, if it was applied per second, you’d have to move in range, wait till a second if over and then could run away. I kinda feel I said this line twice, lol.