Ran into a "bug" in the Kayran fight that was extremely frustrating, and may explain for some people why they have been having so much trouble with the fight.

After it is pinned by the bridge collapsing it begins throwing rocks at you. From everything I have read here and at other sites, once you start making your way up the bridge it is supposed to stop throwing rocks and start swiping at you.

The problem occurs if you are very quick to begin climbing the bridge. If you reach the bridge too quickly, the Kayran will continue throwing rocks and never transition into swiping. This makes the fight virtually impossible, as the slope of the bridge combined with the extremely short flight time on the rocks when you are so close to the creature leaves you in a constantly stun/knockdown lock, eventually killing you.

After a half dozen tries or so I ran around below the bridge and let the Kayran throw a few rocks at me before climbing it, and it transitioned into striking rather than throwing. It was a much easier climb at that point.

Anyone else confirm/deny this? I was fairly frustrated so I did not try it multiple times to see if I could get the exact conditions for it continuing to throw or transitioning to strikes.

same here...

Not that I necessarily endorse this solution, but there is a God mode cheat on the Nexus.........................

It was a trivially easy fight once the transition occurred as it was supposed to. I expect there is some bug with the transition that prevents it from happening if Geralt moves onto the downed bridge too quickly.

I just defeated the Kayran today on hard and it took me plenty of tries. At first I didn't know I was supposed to run up the bridge and got rock-owned, then the bridge part bugged I guess and I got rock-owned on the bridge, eventually I stopped getting rock-owned on the bridge and killed that bastard.

So yea, it might be bugged there...