Advice on Calus legend fight?

[Pizzarugi]

I abandoned the activity from the sheer frustration of this encounter. There's nowhere to hide, nowhere to run.

The closest I've gotten to beating him, I made it as far as his third phase (the swords) using stasis turret spam and Grand Overture, but by that point I'm pretty much out of heavy ammo and I'm desperately trying to avoid getting 1shot by him. I feel like my damage isn't strong enough to deal with adds reasonably despite at least matching the recommended power level and if it isn't Calus killing me, it's all of the mobs in the arena. In fact, to charge my Grand Overture's rockets, I tend to shoot the slugs at the mobs before unloading the salvo on the boss. I don't even try to fight the Tormentors, because that's ammo being wasted on killing them when I'm already trying not to die from him and his adds. Strand has helped me very little in this encounter, the damage is just not there nor the CC unlike my stasis turrets.

So yeah, I need help. I'm unsure what to do.

[Dosbilliam, Boring but Practical]

Can't speak for Legend, but the thing Strand brings is MOBILITY. You can grapple around the room staying away from things like the Tormentors; even playing on normal I died a ton, mostly because I'd be moving away from one and it still managed to Suppress me, leading to me falling like I was playing an old Tomb Raider game or something. :P

[Bnn1]

Strand seems to be a hit or miss here.

I noticed that Tormentors sometimes can be 3 shot with stasis supers (Titan, Hunter), sometimes take nearly no damage from anything. The ones in Calus fight are luckily more the squishy variants.

Fighting the Tormentors is essential since they will destroy anyone who isn't a well lock.

Calus is nearly immune to Rockets, as least legendary rocket launchers. Heavy GL's also do slight damage only. The best bet is fusion nades on a solar warlock and witherhoard with a well. Calus in second and first phase takes a ton of damage from Strand supers, too...

You gotta experiment with tactics, weapons and subclasses, since one person will be fine with Stasis, and another will not be able to use Stasis at all. Good luck.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by Ben1:

Strand seems to be a hit or miss here.

I noticed that Tormentors sometimes can be 3 shot with stasis supers (Titan, Hunter), sometimes take nearly no damage from anything. The ones in Calus fight are luckily more the squishy variants.

Fighting the Tormentors is essential since they will destroy anyone who isn't a well lock.

Calus is nearly immune to Rockets, as least legendary rocket launchers. Heavy GL's also do slight damage only. The best bet is fusion nades on a solar warlock and witherhoard with a well. Calus in second and first phase takes a ton of damage from Strand supers, too...

You gotta experiment with tactics, weapons and subclasses, since one person will be fine with Stasis, and another will not be able to use Stasis at all. Good luck.

Yeah, stasis supers. I'll be honest, my brain's still in the "eat super energy for green bricks" strat from pre-lightfall so I need to give that a try the next time i attempt this fight.

I'd agree about the Tormentors, but I'm struggling to kill them and what little special and heavy ammo I have is going into Calus or his adds to keep them from overwhelming me.

I'm not using rockets, I'm using a machine gun called Grand Overture. What it does is that it fires slugs akin to those Cabal juggernauts with the slug launchers, each hit generating a rocket. Once full, you can switch to fire them in a massive salvo. It's enough to knock Calus down 1/3rd of his HP and costs no ammo. It's the most powerful heavy weapon I've got because as you've said, he's strong to rocket launchers and heavy GLs (RIP Anarchy).

[Cecyl]

Honestly it's just an annoying ass fight and there's not much you can do besides butting your head against the wall until you win. I can't speak about warlock as I did it on a void hunter but most of the other elements are better than strand because the basic barebones strand you get during the campaign just can't compare with the survivability you can get from the others. The grapple doesn't even really help on legend tbh.

You'll basically just want max resil despite the nerf and as high recov as you can, then you just use whatever subclass you're better at surviving with and just pray you make it.
His last phase is straight ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ and just confirms that all the other times in the campaign where difficulty was at an all time high just boiled down to being in a small ass room cutting down almost all your mobility options against a super agressive enemy that's like twice as fast as you with 3x the range who also takes very little damage.

I've had so many tries where I died when he had very little hp (like maybe 5%) and I didn't do anything different than the try that finally worked, all the times I failed it just seemed like for some reason the psions ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spawned in the worst spot possible and he suddenly got god tier pacing and almost just tp'd next to me.
I even got hit through invisibility a bunch of times.

Oh and yea, just bring burst damage, I personally ran monarque, a high impact sniper and a linear fusion. Then again I ran that because I was on a void hunter running gyrfalcon, I'd prob use a different loadout on a warlock, tho I'd still be running void because devour is just way too good in this type of fight and nova's probably better for dispatching tormentors.

[Maxxium]

Pro tip … stay on one bottom platform kill the adds and stay there damaging callus. Jump to higher platform when he calls down the stuff from above jump back to bottom platform and use cover kill adds dmg him kill tormentors then push him to 2nd phase it’s easy as heck

[Dark, House of Luck]

Literally just swung around the whole time while putting witherhoard into Calus, both phases. This was on Legendary as a Titan.

[Ol'Jonesy]

My fireteam took a shot at it and took about 5 times to get it figured out, but we did. We had someone doing necrotic and Strand, myself on Well, and a void hunter. So, no, we voluntarily did not all take strand. Essentially, we stayed mobile and burned down the tormentors when they spawned with heavy weapons and well of radiance. Aside from this we generally picked a single platform and kept it cleared, the hunter kept an eye out on the team for the missle attack. Once we got a routine down it was pretty easy, it was just a case of managing adds and the tormentors - Calus himself was not much of an issue.

I do recommend everyone being 1750+. That did make a difference.

[Bnn1]

Originally posted by Ol'Jonesy:

My fireteam took a shot at it and took about 5 times to get it figured out, but we did. We had someone doing necrotic and Strand, myself on Well, and a void hunter. So, no, we voluntarily did not all take strand. Essentially, we stayed mobile and burned down the tormentors when they spawned with heavy weapons and well of radiance. Aside from this we generally picked a single platform and kept it cleared, the hunter kept an eye out on the team for the missle attack. Once we got a routine down it was pretty easy, it was just a case of managing adds and the tormentors - Calus himself was not much of an issue.

I do recommend everyone being 1750+. That did make a difference.

Legend caps your LL at 1750 for the final fight.

[Papamike]

Are you not able to do this on your own? thinking of uninstalling game. totaly impossible as a singel player. And yes youre doing okay in one try and the get kicked out from the arena by some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mob. sigh.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by Papamike:

Are you not able to do this on your own? thinking of uninstalling game. totaly impossible as a singel player. And yes youre doing okay in one try and the get kicked out from the arena by some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mob. sigh.

I gave up and resorted to cheesing the boss by shooting him from under the stairs. This fight is beyond ridiculous.

The rest of the legend campaign was fine, but this one fight is grossly overtuned.

[Nerrinas]

The entirety of the legendary campaign is easy, but only if you already had a heavily optimised build with good weapons / loadouts. You can't power through it because of the cap on scaling, but you can legitimately kill Calus in 20-30 seconds using a decent warlock or hunter build.

If it's a new character, or even a new player, you will struggle significantly because you weren't the target audience for that difficulty of the campaign.

Tips for the solo player would be to have an AoE weapon that you can shoot passively in the middle platform to deal with the Psions / slowly tickle calus HP down whilst keeping the outside platforms managed. Wave-frame grenade launchers being the best choice, Witherhoard if you've got it as an exotic.

Don't bother with the Tormentors, you can do the entire fight without damaging them once because they move incredibly slowly at full HP. It's actually a much worse idea to start damaging them until they enrage, because then they will sprint at you permanently until they die.

Calus is nowhere near as tanky as his size dictates, One Witherhoard shot and a rocket takes off about 30% of his HP during both phases of the fight.

Play with some form of invisibility or healing. If you don't have a good weapon loadout / exotic to help keep you alive, you will struggle with the infinitely respawning enemies.

[GK | Leviathan]

YouTube strats if you’re struggling.

But if you want help, let me know I’ll jump in and do it for you:

[GatoMancer]

I ended up having to use the cheeze strat on this, but in my many failings I noticed you can get on the outer edge of the inner platform and circle strafe shoot at calus while walking around about 270 degree rotation clockwise and counter-clockwise on the platform and he'll just stand still, get behind the small covers when needed. The stuff on the outer ledges won't hit you much and if you need to heal just run in the circle strafe pattern and you'll heal.

When the tormentors pop in is when problems start appearing. you CAN keep the back and forth rhythm and semi-kite them but their leap in slam attack will punt you and suppress your skills if you're too close to it and kill you (by pushing you off the edge).

Also Osteo Striga does wonders for overall damage output here and make cleaning the Psions that spawn in an easier task.

[Badger]

Stay on the platform you start on and move away from it at absolute necessaty (e.i getting that shadow bombaredement from above).

Also make sure you kill Tormentors before heading to Calus's second phase otherwise you'll get crowded and ultimetely get s**t on

[SenseiDecay]

Concussive, and fire resist mods on your chest piece really helped a lot in this fight for me. Put on a sniper and just shoot him from the balconies.