Has anyone beaten the Operator in Part 3? Him and his buddies seem to be able to hit with 120+ damage all the time... any tips? I've used potions, shield, traps, and the ever popular rolling... but it doesn't seem to cut it.

Spoiler!!

He's very hard even on easy. Heck he's probably the hardest fight in the game.

1. Deal with the gargoyle asap, they are the real killers
2. Don't bother with Operator when he has his shields on.
3. Quen up all the time.
4. Swallow, +damage + armor potion, +10% damage oil coating
5. When gargoyles die, roll to him and get some combo on. Roll back asap if he casts shield.
6. Trap gargoyle, or use freezing/ slow trap if you find it useful.

My friend suggests ignore the gargoyle but I find that impossible.
iT helps if you are high level and upgraded your armor to Ys amor, and got the Gargoyle side quest blade.

Takes me shit ton of tries in the end I got lucky. Played on normal btw.

regarding his drop, the wand he has is used as steal sword, though I think the craftable steel sword is a lot better.

He drops dragonscale which is used to craft probably the best Silver sword (diagram from the weapon guy in act 3). This swords only has 2 slots, it does +4% damage to all monsters and has +10 sign damage. Good if you are magic build. However if you want to respec thus foregoing this ultimate silver sword, the gargoyle side quest reward sword (3 slots) is probably on par if you put in 3 +5% damage rune. Plus it gives you +2 vigor every hit.

I must have tried that guy more than 10 times and Geralt was built around swords and a bit of magic to have 3 vigor, with Vran armour fully upgraded (+ dwarf, Vran and forgot the last but it had something like a female name or some) and 2 fire runes in my swords + 1 earth rune i kept dying so i decided to skip it and it was on easy

might also try some Dancing Dragon bombs, since they leave a patch of fire that wears some of the shield

Who/what is Operator?

He is this very mysterious...person/creature? not really sure. You meet him in Ch 3 if you follow through on a quest you received in Ch 2. Something with bygone in its name I think? It's pretty cool, kind of a glimpse into the unknown of the witcher world, as well as a glimpse into the past of the world.

SPOILER

He's kind of a secret boss that most people will miss. I only knew him through internet forum. In chapter 2 Roche's side you will get a chance to pick up a mysterious paper that need to be decoded, however most people would go straight and aks Dethmold to decode it since there is an dialouge option avaialble for Geralt to do that. No one knows that if you keep it to chapter 3 and talked to the armor/weapon guy he can decode it too! After that you will have to go through two mini painstakingly annoying minigames before you get to see the Operator. Once there you can either ask him to respec, or fight him and get some uber loots.

I just beat him after multiple tries. I set it on easy because I really just wanted to kill him, and also for the loot. Even then he was pretty tough. I used all of my traps and bombs and daggers but the thing that worked really well was the fury trap. I had six of them on me. I was lucky I did because I had plan on getting rid of them, they seemed some what useless to my playing style. Guess I was wrong :-)

I set them up, 1 on each side of the battlefield whenever the gargoyles came up, made one of them cross and watch the chaos unfold. The Operator pretty much killed his own gargoyles and i just ran around. Kept my level 3 Quen sign up, had 5 vigor bars and had the swallow, golden orielo and wolf potion on. Though in hindsight I would've replaced the wolf with tawny oil. Equiped with the Draug armor with magic wrap enhancement and steel armor enhancement. Superior Temerian jack boots and Nilfgardian leather pants. My swords were The Arbitrator steel sword and the Robust Blue Meteorite silver sword. Just in case you guys were wondering about my equipment.

Good luck to everyone else :-).

I finally managed to beat him, but I think I kinda took advantage of a little glitch. There's four pullars at the coners of the room, and if you stand at just the right angle behind them, the Operator won't notice you... the gargoyles will though, but I was easily able to handle them with out the Operator shooting fireballs at me. In fact, he did notice me a few times because I moved from behind the pillar a bit, but since the gargoyles were so bunched up, he ended up hitting them a lot.

I don''t know if this was cheap or not, but it still was extremely hard and I barely made it out without dying. Still, it felt really satisfying killing that sucker!

Killed him on hard, first try .. oh no , wait.. more like 30th :D. Those gargoyles could one shot me with 580 dmg in a single hit.:
The tactic was: shield all the time, fighting the gargoyles behind pillars. The most fustrating thing was that Geralt casted the shield sign too slow, if the gargoyles manged to jump on me during casting it was game over.

There is an even greater glitch. If you just entered the room and prior to entering the dialogue cutscene, you can kill the Big O once with ranged weapon / spells. After that, walk forward and the dialogue cutscene will still play. A "proper" fight initiates where Big O does not summon the gods-damned Gargoyle which enables you, long-suffering players, to put him down like a La Fayette soldier.

As a pure swordsman, the pillars were key for me too.

Beat the operator into the back corner at start. He didn't cast on me that way.

Then hoped to get one gargoyle at a time while one kinda hung back. That happened if i positioned right in the corner.

Quen, Quen, Quen.

Was it just me, or was group finisher disabled for that fight? Woulda been a touch easier with that.

I look forward to seeing him on my next go.

I tried that. He kept getting out of range and the cut scene would begin before he died. And, so, gargoyles.

Was playing as swordsman + minoring in potions. Never really managed to get Big O out of the way. I saw some sweet spot where the Gargoyles would not actively pursue me but Big O always push me out with his fireball.

Tried to bomb-spam but I always suffer from loss-of-control symptoms where 2 of my WASD and spacebar do not respond.

Anyway what do you actually do with his loot? I know you can use the scale for a decent sword (initially I thought you got the scale by slaying the dragon) but is there any use for the staff for quest purposes?

The staff does have Quest Item label. I'll be...

It also gives crazy Incineration bonus.