Cassia Varo, OP

Kingcroft

I have never posted a complaint about the difficulty of a boss but I have to say there are some things about Cassia Varo that don't make sense. She is immune to stuns and knock back. She isn't a giant, she is not a heavy armored NPC (even if she was, immovable isn't a permanent effect) so why is she totally immune to knock/stun attacks? The only way to beat her (she isn't invincible) is to interrupt and tank (the flame atronach is very needed for constant damage.) Actually I think this NPC could beat Molag Bal without the buff.

My main point isn't so much that she is difficult, but that her immunity to stun/knock back limits the ways you can approach this fight and it makes no sense game mechanics wise in that she is just a normal sized non heavy tank/healer with a powerful attack. If anybody was able to have the abilities she has, they could roll any other boss/player in the game.

Gisgo

Did you notice anyone with a roman name is more or less OP in this game?
I should have named my NB Catus Belli or something...

theroyalestpythonnub18_ESO

This fight stands out in my mind because of how bizarre it was. We didn't get any explanation or information on who she was or why she was so powerful, at least not to my knowledge. I thought she was just a random cultist.

Pyatra

<Insert Monty Python joke here>

The Pact's stupid alchemist guy is like that too.

Whisper292

Yesterday's update supposedly nerfed her. I can't test this out, though, because we've already fought her and her pet ogrim and moved on.

Weberda

I fought her yesterday (for the 2nd time). I killed the Ogrim but after ten minutes gave on Varo. I went up the tunnel to heal and regroup. When I came back the ogrim had respawned. I kill him again and the quest ends with me getting credit for the Varo kill even though she's standing by the altar. ???????

dogmeathyenarwb17_ESO

She's unkillable, it's simple as that. I don't know what they did to her in the patch but as soon as she starts her heal she INSTANTLY gets 100% health. Utterly impossible to do with an international net connection.

Weberda

I fought another just like her in the previous zone. Took two of us to take him down. The minute they come out of stun they heal up. You cannot deal enough damage to them. I even used my 'negate" ult and 9 seconds wasn't enough.

Crescent

The stupid boss at Tuwwacca's Throne is even worse, summoning waves of undead to fight you while he still can attack you himself for big damage.

But yeah some veteran mobs have healing channels where you simply can't use any attacks for a melee character because if you run out of stamina to bash them and they start a channel, a single tick of the channel will restore back like 25% of their health.

I had this fight with the orc necromancer wanting to summon Mauloch at Malabal Tor and it took forever to kill her because as a melee I had to basically autoattack her to death and save all my stamina for all the times she wanted to heal and I had to interrupt her.

Tying dodge/interrupt to stamina was so dumb...

Korereactor

Weberda wrote: »

I fought her yesterday (for the 2nd time). I killed the Ogrim but after ten minutes gave on Varo. I went up the tunnel to heal and regroup. When I came back the ogrim had respawned. I kill him again and the quest ends with me getting credit for the Varo kill even though she's standing by the altar. ???????

This happened to me as well...I got the hell out of there no questions asked (lol).

Lorgren_Benirus

Killed her solo, VR4 I think it was. I pulled ogrim first and it charged me but Cassia remained on her spot. She did show this aggro sign but did not follow. Took the big lump down and went to fight Cassia. Old harpy heals like mad, no bloody player can ever heal as fast and as much as she did. She heals I interrupt, she uses templar heal I punch her in head, she nukes me with ice and starts to heal, I try to interrupt but game doesn't react and she heals herself up fast. Interrupt action is slow as hell after their shield bash nerf and no, I was not using a shield, I'm dual wielder. But interrupt is slow and in more then half the cases the game doesn't even react when I use interrupt action, char just stands there and does nothing..

Anyways I died to some ice nuke. Since I carry soulstones I got up on the spot and good thing was that the flame atronach was still up and fighting, so I did not have to redo it. Cassia of course healed herself to 100% by the time I could move again so I just jumped her and started to smack away. And really, all I did was basic attacks (used also Swallow Souls and Refreshing Path) and saved stamina just for interrupts. She heals - interrupt and keep swinging. She tries to heal again - poke and keep swinging. She damages you too much - potion, Refreshing Path and keep smacking all the time. And when my fingers were almost cramping up she finally went down.

Conclusion - crappy quest, crappy boss fight, annoying and not fun at all, annoying veteran content.

goatlyonesub17_ESO

I bug reported the quest. My sorcerer character and a clannfear, a winged twilight, a storm atronach, and that fire atronach all hitting on Cassia Varo at the same time... hardly scratched her. A monster that hard should have three red wings on each side of her health bar as a warning, but Cassia has only one red feather on each side, I think.

Daraugh

Just did this one today, she's still ridiculously strong. Level 33 templar and it took two deaths before I could get her down. Her healing is hard to interrupt since she regains health SO fast. The damage she does wasn't as bad as her self-healing was.

ghengis_dhan

I tried fighting her last week with similar results; I just couldn't get her health down for long.

After thinking it through and researching, it seems that if you experience any kind of lag, you don't get the combat cues in time to interrupt BEFORE she starts healing. So, I went back around 10 AM Eastern today and switched my main attack to Crushing Shock (Force Shock morph).

After killing the ogrim, I hit her with Elemental Susceptibility (Weakness to Elements morph) and spammed Crushing Shock while my clannfear, twilight, and the friendly flame atronach joined in. I was surprised by how fast she went down.

I've heard similar stories from archers who used Venom Arrow (Poison Arrow morph).

rockiesGrizzly

thanks for everyone's thoughts above. thought i was going crazy that my atronach, another summoned creature, and full strength fire barrage couldn't kill her.

after reading your experiences, i found someone random and formed a group. STILL COULDN'T KILL HER.

only after running back out and finding a THIRD person, with all of us giving everything we had, did we take down Cassia.

like everyone said, the self-healing was the kicker. kept getting her down near death, only to revive. seriously couldn't have done it w/ less than three people.

Enodoc

I think it's the lag that's the problem, not her power. If you interrupt her just as she starts healing the battle goes pretty smoothly. (That's smooth in terms of the combat difficulty, not the latency.)

Morimizo

This battle is still a complete pain. I don't mind the healing, if it were in line with the normal healers you run across, maybe a little better since she's a boss. But the INSTANT and COMPLETE healing is broken. There are a few other bosses like this (a Reaper's March Aldmeri ruin west of Arenthia, for example, has these insta-complete healers guarding quest items-not ashamed to say I sneaked by them to acquire the items).

I think this sort of boss belongs in Group Dungeons and Trials only, where help, and another stamina pool (or three or eleven) for interrupts, is necessary anyway.

Dizzorder1

Just fought her solo. Took four tries. I'm a level 34 High Elf DK tank, Stamina build. What I did was buff up (Spiked armor, green dragons blood, Igneous Shield) and start hacking away with a combo of heavy attacks and dizzying swing uppercut (try to leave a large pool of stamina) and largely ignore the Ogrim while continuing to move around her. Once I start to take more damage than I can handle I use magma armor and then spam dizzying swing uppercut. Nothing but dizzying swing uppercut. If your lucky and you managed to have a quick run where she didn't heal because she was busy attacking, you might take her down. I did not, I did find that If you run behind the shrine and jump over that little cliff you can re-group for a min and get your bars up and rebuff while she keeps attacking the flame atronach. Then I go back in, sword and board, and get my magma shell back, go back behind the shrine and regroup again. Then start the uppercut spam-fest again. I found that the times after I jumped behind the shrine were on the whole much closer to victory because when she focuses on the flame atronach she seems to heal less.

Reading your issues made me feel a WHOLE lot better, was starting to worry I was underpowered after my second death. I don't know if the above will help. Because you still need to get lucky with how often she heals but ducking back behind the shrine will at least let you turn one life into multiple attempts

UrQuan

She's actually really easy to kill if you can get the timing on interrupting her healing right. The problem is that because of how fast she heals, if you're suffering from any noticeable lag it's virtually impossible to get that timing right. I've fought her with lag, and had to give up. I've fought her without lag, and the fight was over ridiculously fast.

likewow777

UrQuan wrote: »

She's actually really easy to kill if you can get the timing on interrupting her healing right. The problem is that because of how fast she heals, if you're suffering from any noticeable lag it's virtually impossible to get that timing right. I've fought her with lag, and had to give up. I've fought her without lag, and the fight was over ridiculously fast.

Yeah, it's one of those fights you don't rush, or at least that's how I've beaten her. Without lag, if you can time the bashes well, she won't generally heal much, and I follow-up with a heavy attack to knock her HP back down. Her offensive attacks are the toughest, I think, to avoid and still be within range to stop her heals. The best thing I've found was to eat her attacks and mitigate with blocking/shields so I can stay close, then heal myself if needed.

It's a slow battle but surviving is surviving.

Galbsadi

Confirmed still broken 5/18/2015. She couldn't kill me until I just let myself die due to maintenance, but fought her for a solid 15 minutes...she'd get down to 50%, pop a heal, I'd interrupt, she'd still be back up to 90%. Fight around to get her down to 40%...due to being a magicka build I'm out of stamina from dodging/interrupting....and she insta-heals to 100%.

Seriously, ZoS, FIFTEEN MINUTES and ONE QUEST BOSS heals this well? I can solo dolmens and world bosses...but you make an unkillable single-player enemy?

nick59349b14_ESO

I'm vet 7 and still can't beat her. Nothing stops the regeneration.

eliisra

I did the quest on one of my alts a few days ago and didn't notice a thing. Only had to interrupt the healing lady once or twice with a bash, burn them down, normal procedure.

However this was in the VR8(EP gold) version of Malabal Tor. Maybe different for DC/AD, since people seem to have such problems with that quest? My version of Cassia Varo and Igozai was standard easy mode ESO solo PvE.

nick59349b14_ESO

eliisra wrote: »

Only had to interrupt the healing lady once or twice with a bash, burn them down, normal procedure.

Can you elaborate on this?

Thanks.

zappamdb16_ESO

Vet 4 rank and absolutely I ain't been able to beat her. The healing is too fast and just a little bit of lag makes impossible to interrupt.

zappamdb16_ESO

Ok, after trying maybe 15 times or so I've been able to beat her: you have to make sure there is no lag, stay close (I am a battlemage so it's difficult for me) and interrupt as soon as she starts healing. It's difficult but possible.

nick59349b14_ESO

I think it's just a matter of luck. I was finally able to beat her too but it's because she just stopped healing herself for some reason. I was only a couple minutes into the battle too. I agree though, I stayed close.

Rynier

Ok I logged off at the entrance to this mission. I am playing wtih a low ping of 280-400ms depending how the traffic to europe is. Will this be too much lag ? I am built for tanking so my damage is almost nothing. It would be the equivalent of my hitting her with a marshmallow . IM pretty quick with bashing but if this is as quick as you gents make it out to be I am in real trouble here.

UrQuan

Rynier wrote: »

Ok I logged off at the entrance to this mission. I am playing wtih a low ping of 280-400ms depending how the traffic to europe is. Will this be too much lag ? I am built for tanking so my damage is almost nothing. It would be the equivalent of my hitting her with a marshmallow . IM pretty quick with bashing but if this is as quick as you gents make it out to be I am in real trouble here.

If your ping is closer to 280 you may be OK. If it's closer to 400 you may be in trouble. If you're a tank build, though you can probably stand to spend a long time trying to get the timing right, so even if your ping is closer to 400 you may be able to get it done.

Rynier

Thanks for your reply. averaged 270 ping last night and i think I was way over leveled for the fight. I used my flame breath and sword swapped to 2nd bar and talons him. then bashed and bashed and bashed and he died before ever being a real threat to me. I didnt use GDB once and fight lasted about 10 seconds .

UrQuan

Rynier wrote: »

Thanks for your reply. averaged 270 ping last night and i think I was way over leveled for the fight. I used my flame breath and sword swapped to 2nd bar and talons him. then bashed and bashed and bashed and he died before ever being a real threat to me. I didnt use GDB once and fight lasted about 10 seconds .

Honestly, whether you're over-leveled or not has little to do with how hard this fight is. It's all about whether you can bash to interrupt at the right time. If you can, it's an easy fight regardless of your level (well, unless you're more than 5 levels lower I guess). If you can't, it's practically impossible.