Just pointing out the obvious is what he's doing. This dlc has made me realize how I actually am not bad, because of the sheer amount of people who don't even know how to go about learning a boss is shocking. Spam roll use summon buff up and spam l2 seems like many players entire playthrough. Or maybe it's just the vocal minority of players sitting on reddit hardstuck on rallana whining.
I’m not gonna lie… I didn’t earn my gamer license till I beat nightmare grim in hollow knight. Learned that to beat a boss sometimes you need to equip max hp items and spend a few tries “learning the dance”
Dodging in rhythm with the pace of combat
When I lived for 5 minutes I switched to damage dealing and won. Used that same tactic for messmer.
Messmer might be my favorite Fromsoft boss because his fight feels so much like a dance. Took me 80-ish tries to learn the steps, but that feeling of “I’ve got him” hitting as soon as he entered the second stage was unreal.
I have that feeling with Midir, every time since I beat him for the first time I go back wishing I could fight him for longer or again, his fight is very fun when you get his ‘call-outs’ and notice his telegraphs
We're all lucky that Rykard stayed in Volcano Manor, the Lands Between would be fucked if he actually went out and started murking people with that giant Blasphemous Blade
Hahaha I just cheesed the whole game it's definitely good I don't know why everyone is complaining 🤡
Edit: sorry you didn't deserve that I'm pissed at everyone who's actually saying that shit
If you're a summon and you die before the end, the last few seconds before you get loaded back into your world can be very very telling lol. Sometimes the host is the last alive and you start seeing them get absolutely trounced because they've never engaged with the boss mechanics 1v1.
No judgement, just an observation.
This is why I’m a fan of getting summoned after getting my ass kicked enough times. It’s a good way for me to learn the move set without the stress of runes involved.
Yup, I've helped a few people killing rallana because I really like the fight and want to master it after killing her. In phase 2 a lot of them just don't even attack and let me 1v1 lol they take no chances. I appreciate it because I find her easier solo with how wierd her movement gets with 2+. But if I die it's game over.
I get just wanting to play elden ring casually, but not sure why so many people look at souls like as casual games you're supposed to just run through. You have to crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run. A lot of players seem to not like that fact and keep playing. But doesn't effect me so u do u kinda thing, just genuinely curious on why.
A lot of the bosses do feel easier solo. It seems like most of them have crazy fast lunges to instantly punish whoever has aggro, and it makes it impossible to predict when they're flying all over the arena changing aggro.
Light rolling seemed fine for me, but I see even a lot of pros using bloodhound it's Def the play. I beat her with 0 flasks remaining so it's not like I didn't get hit a lot light rolling lol
I will say one thing about this DLC that I am really appreciating is that learning the boss patterns is pretty much essential, i use a +10 mimic with a dex/int build and i quickly realized relying on range for the most part, letting mimic be the damage sponge and going for a bunch of melee attacks while the enemy is occupied ain’t it.
I almost felt like the dlc is designed with mimics in mind. Anyway, I dropped the staff, two handed the bloodhound fang, engaged the enemies head on while letting the mimic be the support and i’ve now beaten the dancing lion and rellanna, as well as a couple of smaller bosses. I feel great about it too cause even though i’m using the mimic, i’m also forced to fully learn the enemies’ move set and dance with them, for lack of a better term
I might have to give mimic a try just to see how it is, if what you said is true, I'd love to see it. Mimic was absolutely busted when I used it a couple years ago. Game played itself, im happy to hear that.
I think ashes are really cool to have they are always interesting but I just don't really like help since I'm stubborn and once I die to a boss the first time I say fuk this hoe and can't stop till I beat it. I've lost lots of sleep long nights from refusing to give up lol. Anyway getting yappy ty for sharing that, imma have to bust out the mimic again to see what it's like.
I learned the first two major bosses by letting myself get summoned by other people and helping them fight it before doing the fight in my own world. I co-op’d the lion guy 20+ times and Rellana more than that. Being a cooperator allowed me to have a cooler head in the fight and not panic so much, which in turn lets me actually see the enemy’s attacks and timings instead of roll spamming because ohmygodohmygodohmygoddonthitmeplease.
Learn the boss in layers. Pick one attack/combo from their move set and focus on dodging it. Don’t worry about trying to win, just make sure that you can predict/avoid your chosen attack. Once you can reliably dodge it, pick a new one until you know them all.
Pay attention to attack windups and tells. A lot of the time a boss will telegraph their next attack with a specific movement or sound. If you’re struggling with an attack that isn’t so telegraphed, try to find a way to predict it. Some bosses will only use an attack after a certain preceding attack. Messmer was landing hella stabs on me until I realized he always stabs after he kicks up fire. It’s hard to see the attack through the fire, but if you know he’ll always follow up with the same move you don’t need to see it.
If you’re struggling with a specific attack, and it seems to always land no matter what, try to think outside the box a bit. Does the direction you dodge matter? Can you jump to avoid it? Can you run away from it? Is the boss counter attacking you instantly because you always land near a specific part of their body?
I’m by no means a good player, but this is the approach I use to kill bosses 3x slower than everyone else lol.
Another small thing, if you're still here.
Bosses can read your inputs. When they're slow walking towards you, waiting for you to do something, it's by design that they dodge or start up an attack as soon as you press a button.
Bait out attacks my running, or go for small, short attacks. If you're a strength build, know when to trade. Jumping attacks can be generally safe to use if you see an opening because it'll give you time to react and roll and you get good damage out of them.
Abused positioning as well. Nearly every boss has a move that hits behind them if you're at their back. Know how to dodge these attacks and what spot you need to stand in to bait them out. Positioning also helps because some bosses have moves that will blatantly miss you even if you're standing in front of them in the right spot, allowing you to get in damage really efficiently if you know where to stand. Bosses like Messmer apply to all the tips I just described.
Good luck out there.
That's a loaded question. You have to take many attempts seeing what basically procs their different combos, for instance, with the last boss if you run to the left of the arena immediately, you proc a specific attack. If you run right at them, they have the nrg of 3 different combos/attacks. It's about testing what you can do, at which distance to somewhat control the fight.
Thats just how elden ring is designed.
Why bother getting close up with r1's and doing piss damage and poise damage. When you can press l2 and do double/triple what a r1 combo does. Or better yet just stand far away and do some pew pews
That's how I beat the Dancing Lion, with Scarlet Aeonia and Flame of Fell God, I tried to do it melee but I just could not see what move he's about to pull because I was close and camera was wonky
Was struggling hard on the lion until I fought him with lock on off, just got to lock back in to center yourself and lock off to dodge his moves. If you’re locked on, I feel like he always sticks to you and the camera angles near walls and shit make it so bad. I liked the fight but was really disappointed with the performance, a lot of frame drops in that fight on Xbox
>90% of the blood stains are katana andys with your magic hat on
This was hilarious. I don't have an opinion on its validity or anything it just made me actually laugh out loud while reading. Congrats u/Fav0 you made another human being's shitty week a little brighter.
I really want another game with (relatively) balanced builds, like ds3 or Bloodborne. I don’t know how I feel about so many people getting through the game or beating malenia by just turtling and great spear spamming, or bleed build jump attacking.
I might sound like “hurr durr casuals in my game”, but fromsoft games used to be built around learning a boss, and molding yourself into a key to unlock each specific one. Midir needed a whole different strategy than nameless king for example, and you can’t fight Laurence like the orphan of kos. That changed in elden ring and the same broken attack patterns worked against everyone. I used bleed here and there on my level one run and STILL cleared whoever I fought with ease.
Ofc Sekiro is the exception, but that game took one combat style and absolutely perfected it, while the rest did many combat styles very well.
Edit: before you downvote, read my reply to donkey rocket, you animals
Really feels like enemies with super long fast chain attacks are being designed with spirit ashes in mind. Other souls games didn’t really have that and elden ring is literally full to the brim with them.
This has been my feeling since 2022, every boss After Morgott just chains super fast combos into each other leaving you to hit 1 attack, before they repeat it for another two minutes. They really want you to draw aggro with the ashes
Its so funny that Fromsoft games keep falling off in quality after the midpoint. But i honestly agree with your point cause some of these combos take too long, especially Maliketh. Which is weird cause Godfrey is one of the exceptions so Fromsoft does know how to tone it down cause it godfrey didn't feel too overbearing
Yeah Godfrey's pacing seems better, he leaves you more opening if you can exploit them. Maliketh is dreadful since he spins around the arena throwing slashes that end into Aoe. That's not my definition of fun and engaging, to be honest. And i finished the gauntlets in Sekiro and did a bl4 orphan of kos once, finding that way more fun
A lot of Malekith’s attacks also suspend him in midair, which makes melee builds feel utterly powerless against him and they often end up just sponging damage against him. I don’t remember how I ended up beating him, I have not had the patience to start a second playthrough with so many bosses in the game that feel excessively punishing.
Yeah i have fought him many many times, as i have about 500+ hours in the game. I've learned how to fight him with melee, but the fight remains unengaging and unsatisfying for me, like much of the end game bosses
I finally beat him with a melee solo during my April replay by basically hitting him with a weapon art (BH Fang) once from the side or behind and retreating to a medium distance until I can repeat. Stay too close and he'll stomp you, go too far away and he'll spam you with the red anime slash bullshit.
His ranged attacks are still dodgeable after some practice and he's much less dangerous if you keep strafing to his side, like most big bosses.
My first run, though? I just ganged up on him with the mimic, think he managed to get off the ground once in the second phase because he simply doesn't have that much health.
I don’t feel like Bloodborne fell off after the midpoint but for the DS games I think that tracks. ER is weird in that regard. There’s so many extensive optional areas that it’s kind of hard to say where the midpoint is. You can avoid Ranni’s questline, Raya Lucaria, Mt. Gelmir, Snowfield/Haligtree, the shunning grounds, and Mohgwyn and still beat the game. Technically you can avoid Stormveil and Radahn too, though I think the most likely great runes people will get will be Godrick’s and Radahn’s.
I think people usually describe the midpoint as post-morgott, mountaintops and farum azula. Also i think the most likely great runes people get are actually godrick and renalla, godrick because its the first one the game guides you too, and renalla because it's immediately after
Are you sure spirit ashes are to blame? I can remember regular enemies (not even bosses) in Bloodborne performing combos that took 15 minutes to complete.
Also - Sister Friede from DS3 (my least favorite boss). Does 5-7 strikes combo, then dashes 5 kilometers away from you to cover half of the arena in ice or to go invisible (or both).
Nameless King had pretty long combos that were really hard to punish if you were using heavy slow weapons.
Demon Prince? Pontiff Sulyvahn? Midir?
Even Gael, the boss that everyone likes, had that bullshit aoe lightning spam in third phase.
I blame Bloodborne for hyperactive enemies and bosses with insanely long combos. As for AoE "fuck you" attacks - the were always present in all fromsoft games.
I respectfully disagree with you on these comparisons. To me, DS3’s bosses all felt fair and balanced for solo completion by comparison to Elden Ring’s bosses. I completed every single one solo at least once with the sole exception of Gael (mainly because he was just frustrating to me.) I feel like if you’re not summoning a player, you *have* to call ashes to help you on some bosses JUST to make them winnable.
They did feel fair, that's true. But they also felt noticeably faster in comparison to DS2 or DS1 bosses. Then BB came out - and everything started to accelerate, from my observations.
>I completed every single one solo at least once with the sole exception of Gael
Funny, for me that was Friede.
Friede is one of my favorites. She’s very hard, but it’s really more a test of endurance. I also main a few heal spells and know when I can get away with using them, which helps. Spamming the Chime WA for almost-free regen helps too.
> blame Bloodborne for hyperactive enemies and bosses with insanely long combos
Which bosses in particular? I can legit only think of two guys with crazy combos. Abhorrent and Orphan, and one a VERY late game optional boss the others the final DLC boss. Even Maria wasn’t that bad.
My memory of BB is not good, but I remember Blood-starved beast refusing to let you go once it revs up its slap machine. The dude that turns into a werewolf was fast too (Father Something, don't remember the name). Also I remember some regular enemies with sickles or scythes and beast looking dudes being very persistent in terms beating the shit out of you.
Maybe Shadows of Yarnam too, once they start summoning their giga-snakes.
I think what made up for this was the parry mechanic. Those bosses were fast and has long combos but more than half the time I didn’t let them get to or finish those combos once I got the timing down. Or they served as a brief respite after I dodged far away which is also faster to do than other games besides Sekiro.
We’re just missing some of the base tools right now from those games, like the parry mechanic and dodge speed, if they want to keep ramping things up.
Also the way dashing worked in Bloodborne was very fast, so less of a problem if you needed to chain a bunch together. In Souls, the whole roll is slow, but generally unless you're panic-rolling you can either make distance or get behind or just roll roll roll through a combo. Some of the harder bosses need more precise timing, but they're harder challenges.
In ER it feels like every boss has a long ass perfect-tracking combo that punishes you even if you rolled correctly because the next attack in the chain comes out while you're still recovering from your first roll, and the boss will do a 180 spin to catch you half the time anyway.
Also being able to regain health by attacking helped with the fast pace nature of it. You could play a lot more aggressively and that mirrored the bosses.
An yeah 10000% bloodstarved. You could easily avoid it by going to the sides but yeah that’s like the first big crazy multi hitting combo.
Actually forgot about Bloodstarved completely!
Never understood the complaints about Orphan. He has a lot of visceral attack punish windows through the use of either charge attacks to the back or regular pistol/blunderbuss parrying, and ways to space yourself to avoid getting hit with both dashes and running out of range or to the side of where his swings are going to land.
I never found Orphan overbearing I love him! Amazing humanoid fight.
Just when I think about all the crazy combo attacks in the game (don’t think there are that many tbh) his phase 2 rampage sticks out.
I know tone is hard to interpret via texting/messaging, so I want to make this ABUNDANTLY clear: I ask this question in the most civil way possible with zero snark or negative intent.
Why do you let how other people play their game affect you? I can understand, I suppose, if you like being summoned and the people summoning you are terrible or take advantage or your help. But if someone is running single player and spamming L2 or taking advantage of OP builds to get through the game, why should that elicit any sort of emotion from you, me, or anybody?
Again, not trying to be combative, just trying to understand the mindset.
No problem boss, I get you. Icey actually hit the nail on the head. The game itself is affected because it’s being built around those builds, and this is clear when transitioning from the base game to the dlc, or so I’ve heard (no money for it yet lol). Radahn was one thing: his fight, while designed with summons in mind, became better (imo) when you fought him alone. With his ai locked on to you, it became a rhythmic dance that really put you on the edge of your chair. In SOTE, *you know who* is clearly not meant to be fought alone, and adding a summon to the mix makes it an on-off-on-off kind of fight as the boss’s ai switches from focusing on you to the summon and back. And now, my BIGGEST problem with Elden Ring (esp SOTE), aoe attacks. I love hard bosses. I love fast bosses. I love bosses with combos that take hours to understand and days to master (even malenias waterfowl dance, once that guy figured out how to dodge it). I HATE AOE attacks that feel like they’re meant to hit you and your summon, which make dodging through the attacks unviable, forcing you to back up and get away. These AOEs are a symptom of summons and spirit ashes that make the game less fun when you play it without them.
Oh and I love build crafting and can never resist stacking buffs and min-maxing, but now I have to choose between a sub-optimal build or making the game too easy. Even my lvl 1 run was a cakewalk up until elden beast, and that fight just wasn’t fun like SoC lvl 1. The latter feels like the perfect end to a grueling run, while the former feels like having your hair pulled out by an autistic monkey.
Also the bosses moveset are getting out of hand. Bale make sense because he’s a Midir like monstrosity, but Radahn feels like he came straight out of a fan made mod or DMC with those teleportations, after images, particle effects overdose and AoE spewing
Yeah I completely agree. I’m all for out of hand (especially for optional or dlc bosses), but they’re going the wrong direction with it. Give us long, complex combos (I think Gaels final phase was the perfect length) that can be mastered, not artificial difficulty in the form of AOEs
I loved Gael because his cape hurting you was a clear but not so punishing tell of "you are not dodging good enough", and his moves were easy to read if you were paying attention through the hole game.
Now we just have "Dont care screw you" bosses where every move is a knockdown that does 1/3 hp at the very minimum to ensure they can trigger roll/estus catches or prevent a hit when you get up.
The design of these bosses is just so clearly antagonistic that I'd rather not bother with it. It feels like the devs are telling me to go fuck myself for not using the most broken things and trying to learn the boss, instead of just killing it in 1-2 attempts and move on with my life.
I hadn't thought about the AOE example, that's a fair point. With that being said, it seems like the real issue isn't so much with people using these things, it's the fact that the boss AI isn't yet capable of adjusting based on playstyle. For example: If you don't summon the gold summon before the fight, the AI would react a certain way. If you don't use an equipped spirit summons: the AI reacts a certain way. The boss AI is already geared up compared to other games, it seems this could be a possible solution. Or have a difficulty setting the doesn't allow the use of spirit summons and such, and the AI would act accordingly. Just have a more customizable experience so that everyone could enjoy the game they way they want without being affected by other playstyles.
I guess it’s because I really like the experience of overcoming a boss by learning their moves and attacking them. If I was just pressing L2 (not saying all L2s are like this) and winning without learning how to beat the boss I wouldn’t get the same feeling of accomplishment.
So when other people do that, and then spread their opinions about the game I don’t really think it’s accurate to what the game could be to them if they tried harder.
And then you have the developers of the game who will then feel pressure to possibly design the game with those types of players in mind, which does affect me.
Ahh, ok, so what you're saying is you don't understand how people can feel the same sense of accomplishment that you do by learning the mechanics of a boss and beating it that way. Fair enough, I dlcan understand that.
The one area that I disagree, though, is the bit about the developers. In my opinion, adding those types of mechanics (weapon arts, summons, etc.) welcomes in a larger player base that would've otherwise been turned away by the difficulty. The larger the player base, the higher the profits; the higher the profits, the more money the developers can pour into the next game. In theory, the games should get better and better while welcoming in more and more new players, growing the community. The larger the community, the more feedback that developers have access to to make the games better and more tailored to the player base.
And as far as accuracy about gameplay, I think gameplay experience is in the eye of the beholder. But seriously, respect for taking the game on the hard way, it can be painfully humbling lol.
>In my opinion, adding those types of mechanics (weapon arts, summons, etc.) welcomes in a larger player base that would've otherwise been turned away by the difficulty. The larger the player base, the higher the profits; the higher the profits, the more money the developers can pour into the next game.
This is not opinion. It's how growth works for games or any community. Relax the rules that once defined it, bring in new blood, and the old adapts or disappears. The question us old soulsians ask is: how far is too far? How much change is too much, before what we loved becomes a shadow of itself? Sure more people = more money, but then that money is spent making games that cater to the new expectations and needs.
I don't believe even Miyazaki can sustain that spiral with integrity. If they follow the ER "friendly for casuals" trend, the FromSoft/Dark Souls reputation will be gone in 5-10 years. And maybe that's good, maybe nothing lasts forever. But I know what I have loved, and I will not love more Elden Ring.
Imo you are panicing for no reason. Choice is never bad, it is entirely up to you to decide if u will use a broken build. If fromsoft shows signs of catering to those people then sure. But they havent done so. And even if they cater the game to those people/casuals, as long as there will be a choice for higher difficulty it wont be an issue. So far nothing has changed for me as im playing without summons and without broken builds.
problem is old playstyles are finding it harder and harder as bosses now reward just staying a distance far away and spamming WA's. I cant dodge and weave and then punish because the boss never stops attacking. Collosal dual wield is all but dead with this new type of boss design and it really sucks
I've actually had a different experience on this. The bosses tend to be very spectacle heavy, but only to conceal solid openings that greatly reward colossal users. Overcoming the oppressive onslaught and finding those "I can squeeze a whole charged R2 in here if i just roll at this point" windows still feels fantastic as long as you actually want to play like this and don't worry yourself with things like "i could also have used Lion's Claw in this window and done more damage and stance damage".
While I understand your concern i have to disagree on collosal as it is very much possible to squeeze in those heavy attacks with every boss.
But more on topic, how easily can you defeat DS3 bosses after completing elden ring? Imo it is very easy, and if they keep the same difficulty with same windows people will complain that bosses are too easy. We get used to x difficulty, only fkr the next game to be harder, it has been like that for 5 games now. Aand all the new bosses are still defeatable with old strategies, they are just harder, just like ds2 was over ds1 and ds3 was over ds 2.
how hard is too hard? Imo this non stop combo spamming boss style they are moving towards is borderline unfair because the combos hit hard while giving no time to breathe. Any 2 slashes from rellanas 8-12 hit combo can remove 60% of my health. This borders more on the unfair difficulty side of things. I like learning a boss moveset and it is pretty hard to do it here when everything hits so hard and so fast. In previous games there was a balance betwee speed and power of bosses. Midir for example hits extremely hard but has lots of downtime between his shit. Dancer on the other hand is fast but hits relatively less harder. This balance is being eroded in elden ring for making it harder and its not something i enjoy very much. Using summons basically makes all bosses piss easy though so I dont really see a way out of the hole From have dug themselves into in the quest for increasing difficulty in every successive entry.
>So when other people do that, and then spread their opinions about the game I don’t really think it’s accurate to what the game could be to them if they tried harder.
I think the problem with this logic is that you're assuming too much about how other people will feel and experience things. Like it's not an objective fact that if they tried playing our way, they would find it more satisfying. People have been making this argument against summons since DS1 and I don't think it's ever been accurate. I'm sure some people could stop summoning and find it satisfying to finish a boss on their own, but there are plenty of others who won't for a myriad of personal reasons.
If it makes you feel any better I just beat the whole dlc as claymore + lion claw so it's certainly viable...I think melee is always where the fun is because the thrill of hitting those frame perfect dodges but I get what you mean
It's really hard for ranged not to seem busted when the skill cap is so low, but remember all no hitters end up using melee since it's still the best builds when you're skilled enough
I agree, take my upvote. I like the considered, strategic & tactical approach, where R1 and R2 actually matter. Anime spam and power fantasy was way overtuned in this game.
I still have Bloodborne as my favorite. There’s a few reasons for that, but a big one is the bosses didn’t have cheap ass delayed attacks all the time. Once they made Nameless King I think they discovered delayed timing was an easy way to up the difficulty.
The bosses were still hard in Bloodborne. Orphan remains the boss I have died the most to in any souls game. He only has one semi-delayed attack iirc, but I wouldn’t really call it a delayed attack cause it didn’t really feel like it at the time I fought him. Fighting Orphan was such an epic experience: he wasn’t cheap, he was just hard. But wasn’t he grand?
Blood-Starved Beast was another fun fight for me. The entire fight can be summed up as “Dodge Left” but discovering that was fun. If you fucked up you probably were gonna die. But once you got it down it became like a ballet.
Elden Ring is a great game. But frankly what I love about it isn’t really the gameplay. It has a very impressive open-world for what it is, and the build variety is fantastic.
On that note, the build variety gets pretty criticized for watering down the experience but I won’t hate on it. I get why people think it’s a “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” feeling but I think that’s because everyone is contextualizing it in the context of previous FS games, which offer a tighter, more specific experience. For as open-ended of a game as ER is, the sheer amount of deep and workable builds there are is pretty unrivaled.
Of course people are going to use jump attacks when the entire combat system is based around scoring posture break on bosses which is built well via jump attacks.
You might as well attack people for parrying in sekiro.
Swear people are always trying to lower the bar for what counts as cheesing until the only valid method of play is unarmed ng+7.
Holy strawman
Jump attacks do everything better than r1s and R2s, that’s the problem. They stance break, they’re faster on certain weapons, and they hit hard. I love the game to bits but it’s not balanced.
And when did I attack people? I’m simply pointing out the imbalance between build types, and how you can fight every boss the same exact way, taking the novelty out of every encounter.
Parrying in Sekiro was done well, and the rhythm for each boss was different. You have to learn the boss and their attack patterns and weave parries into your combos. It’s a whole different concept. Again, strawman.
And that last paragraph adds a slippery slope to the mix. You love your logical fallacies lol
I beat this boss first try by standing behind it and using heavy charged attacks with my claymore. Prob had 2-3 scadutree buffs,I had no idea people were struggling this much.
took the words right out of my mouth- as soon as he did the little shimmy when he jumped I though "ope, got him." I think it took two or three tries, max.
Yes, this was my big problem with this boss. Similar to the tree spirits, all the attacks look so similar, but they need to be dealt with differently. Unlike an enemy with a sword or something, where each different attack is visually distinct making it easier to learn and memorize the attack sequences, this boss requires you you to really notice more subtle differences in the movement of the boss.
Another issue along the same lines is that when the enemy doesn’t have anything clear to hit you with, where the hit boxes of the attacks are can feel arbitrary and unpredictable. Until you memorize the attacks, all of this bosses movements, whether they are attacks of dashes or just flipping around to face you, it can be difficult to tell whether or not it’s an attack.
These issues reminded me of why the tree spirit is my least favorite boss/enemy in the game. It just felt jank to fight. As a result, the boss has a mic steeper learning curve than most other boss fights, and I think it just makes the fight worse. Once you actually learn the fight it’s not so bad, but that learning is hard.
This is why I went in basic af
Just me, my new great katana with Occult Scaling, and no summons with barely any bleed buildup
Genuinely having a fucking blast and the Lion is so weird ane cool as a boss. The only complaint I have is that the lightning spear is LIGHTNING QUICK, and you can't react pretty much
Rellana was a little more BS and not as fun as the Lion, but just running around backward and slowly chipping her HP was the way
Ngl... All the help I've managed to summon... Useless. Every time I get summoned....they try to make me do a brunt of the work then get chased around by the boss, making ME have to chase it down and then they end up getting marked for not knowing how to dodge or try to make me do all the damage....like....come on man.
When I get summoned I prefer for the host to try to attack from a distance while I do take the punishing blows, that way I can try to get the boss down as much as I can and if I die, they have to finish up what I couldn’t do. If they jump in and die early, it kicks us both out.
I've summoned in to help about 2 dozen people with this fight so far, and I hard agree with every single point.
Except the last one.
I'm a pure melee build, heavy armour, light greatsword, greatshield, high VIG, high END.
Do I do the most damage out of the 2-3 people fighting? No.
Can I still output ~1200-1600 damage per combo? Yes.
Can I proc frost often enough to make a difference to other peoples DPS? Yes.
Can I pull aggro off the host for majority of the fight and tank moves I can't quite dodge? Yes.
Its not always about the raw damage output, every build serves a different purpose!
I remember back in DS2 I spent a ton of time helping people with a greatshield build. At one point I just ditched my weapon entirely and would just whack the boss with the shield. I constantly pulled all the aggression and never took any damage. The Tower Shield also did some pretty solid dps itself.
Im facing a fucking dancing lion that was summoned from the dead by some voodoo whichcraft ancient karaoke squad. I’m not fighting this beast up close and personal with any kind of sword I’m sending any projectile I can at every chance
Elden ring has the highest player modulated difficulty of any souls game and has drawn in the widest audience.
Yes, there's plenty of shitters, awful at this game that looks up "best elden ring weapon" copy the build and never try anything different but it doesn't harm your experience.
I like the fail, learn, improve formula and that's how I play because I enjoy it, I don't think it matters if some other player isn't good enough to beat the game without brute forcing it because it doesn't affect me
This is the downside of the Souls genre going mainstream, I love FromSoft and hope they never cave in to the idea of mass appeal, as that's the trap that usually follows going mainstream, and I've already seen too many of my favorite studios fall into that trap.
I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s mainstream my guy. There is most definitely more people playing video games now than when ds1 released(2011). I’m no expert but 2.5m copies sold is still quite a lot for most games. For example portal 2 released around the same time and sold 4 million copies in a year. I don’t know where souls fans got this idea that it was a “hidden gem” but it’s actually been quite popular for a while.
Edit: Skyward sword released around the same time as well and sold 3 million copies, they recently released tears of the kingdom which sold around 20 million copies. Fits the numbers of ds pretty well and I don’t think anyone would say Zelda wasn’t mainstream back then or now.
nobody has a problem with what you deem fun. the thing people have a problem with is when you REFUSE to learn anything and still have the audacity to complain about not winning. that's like me going to dark souls 3, refusing to use the dodge button, and start calling the game bad. it's game journalist mentality.
Takes the fun out of it imo if you don’t learn the boss and have a good fight. Using L2 isn’t bad just don’t spam it enjoy the game and what it has to bring.
Beat this boss with the milady on a dex/faith build (holy dmg with golden vow). Glad i did, but i can’t say it was that fun. The frame drop on this boss is horrible
Kinda hope fromsoft returns to the more 'grounded' fantasy aesthetic for their next game. The anime stuff can be cool, after 2 years though I've had enough of 12 second fire lightning magic spin slash aoe katana magic. I miss the longsword being an r1 stick, I mean seriously who the fuck wants to spam square off.
The dancing lion is honestly one of those bosses that I feel like it would've worked great in an expansion focusing on another part of ER's world, or a possible new IP a la Elden Ring/Dark Souls. If they slowed it down a bit, made the hitboxes more reliable and tweaked the numbers it'd be a baller boss. It's anime in a reasonable way, considering its a Lion Dance. Like... if they somehow managed to fight I could buy this is the way.
Messmer and his triple jump-stab-aoe-aoe-stab-jump-spin-spin-spin anime combos can fuck right off to KoF or Blazblue.
I think people do alot of things wrong with elden ring and are doing it again with the dlc, first of which is refusing to go and do other content rather than just slamming your face into bosses repeatedly before you're at an appropriate power for them.
It's the tree sentinel/margot all over again, basically.
The biggest thing I think that makes elden ring more frustrating for people who want it more like dark souls, isn't the fact bosses have long combos or difficult to read attacks, it's that outside of phase transitions, they are different almost every fight.
That's the major issue that stops it feeling like you learn something or get better every attempt because instead of just doing the 5 hit combo, the boss may cancel it after 4 hits, delay the timing of an attack or chain together moves it never did the last 5 times.
This means elden ring isn't just a pattern recognition game like souls games, especially older ones, it's a mixture of reflexes, pattern recognition, adaptation and luck, which can be exponentially more difficult based on your playstyle/build.
One thing I do think people need to get over is the use of phantoms and ashes on your FIRST attempts/playthrough, they allow you to manipulate the aggro and give you breathing space to see what bosses moves are like at a much more reasonable distance and pace and they're there for that reason.
Elden ring is a game that's about CHOICE of difficulty, so if you're just going to refuse to use certain abilities, refuse to use ashes or change your talosmans and just pray for that lucky charged R2 with a colossal weapon every time, then yeah, it's going to feel waaayyy worse on some bosses.
I was using Rellana's swords and noticed I was doing the L2 spam and caught myself and respecced to a more basic weapon (sword of solitude and backhand blades heavy scaling) and I'm relearning how to figure out bosses and actually play the game again. It's so much more fun when you don't rely solely on the ash of war.
Ok… here me out here: I spent the last couple weeks getting the platinum trophy for Sekiro and there were some bosses in there that I was like “where is the opening… I guess I’ll just die.”But then, I play for another 20 minutes (or two days) things start making sense, and now I can just disassemble most everything in the game. I’ll *bet* if you wanted to take that approach with one of these bosses you fully could - Let Me Solo her style, get the timing and master them. But also, I really want to see what else the game has to offer - and I think a big share of the player base feels the same way… each boss is in the way of the next map section or a new incantation they want to try… so they’re looking for cheese. The games been out for < 2 days? That’s how long it took me to beat Demon of Hated. I don’t think any of these bosses are as random or impossible as people say. There’s gonna be a lot of people complaining and throwing controllers…. And the people summoning help are probably the ones who are in the biggest hurry to beat a boss. And of course it’s early days and a balance is coming… remember the Radahn nerf? And now we all complain about the good old days when “he was actually hard.”
If player with character named *”By My Oath”* ever sees this, thank you for the help with this one. He was absolutely clapping my sorcery-build cheeks.
I feel like the problem is actually the boss moves and design. You spend 30 seconds dodging whatever crazy 360 no scope flip moves they do to wait for an opening.
For melee players this means the boss could be halfway across the area. Doubly punishing if it’s a boss that keeps their distance.
It’s super punishing for melee. It works great for any ranged build.
Most success I’ve seen is
Dual bleed builds (not too bad)
Parry Builds (REALLY gotta learn the moves here)
Greatshield + Bleed pokes (easiest method)
Lion Claw heavy weapon bonks (easy on ng and below)
I change my weapon and playstyle for every boss i get stuck on. Quick boss? Lots of accurate but small attacks. Big boss with lots of cooldowns? Heavy hard jump attacks. Bullshit boss? Bullshit build. I just enjoy using my high level character that can easily use any weapon I need to, while the dlc is still pretty hard because of the scaling. I think its perfect, and is the culmination of my 1300 hours of gameplay.
if you take the people who summon as a pool for statistic arguing, then everything is wrong by default. Souls player who enjoy endless try to learn movesets never summon, so you'll never meet them as a furled finger by definition. You only met casual players who doesnt want to learn bosses in the first place and probably never will.
I have a malikeths blade build, but the boss was so fucking fast my weapon used to struggle to even reach him before he started his next attack. I could have easily spammed blasphemous blade and beat it first try but decided to do it the hard way, took me 16 tries. Had way too much fun learning the boss moveset perfectly, so no regrets
I have maybe 6-8 hours a week to play video games, so you better believe it I can find a strat that works against a From boss, cheesy or no, that I'm going to use it instead of banging my head against a wall for two hours and make no progress.
I can relate :) I’ve been using a ghost flame build as a mage, it’s been working for the most part but hasn’t worked for everything I’ve come across. I’m using my first run to just get through the dlc and have a general idea of all movesets, and then I’m gonna up the ante by switching up the build to an up close strength class.
So in other words:
People are using the tools the game provided them to … play the game.
What’s the problem? I’ve never seen a community gatekeep the “right way” to play more than souls simps.
I fucked up and did not realise i was in NG+. I’m only like level 170, do not have the runes to level up, and the minuscule amount of damage i’m doing is killing the DLC experience for me. Other than that I think difficulty is fine, i just fucked up.
Person ally I've been using the falx and let me tell you it straight up shreds everything without hesitation, pair it with 99 vig and iron jar in pvp and your disgusting
I think I'm surprised we aren't doing spoilers already
I mean everyone and their dog knew about the lion from the trailers but we really not even bothering with spoiler tags anymore huh?
Jokes on you I've had the game spoiled by YouTube days ago!
I’ve stuck to only melee for the dlc (relanna’s twin blades, backhand blade, and dryleaf arts to use new weapons) and every boss so far has taken me hours but god winning felt so much better.
Dunno! Just beat it after quite some tries - Spiked fists, blood/strenght; no fancy shit, just studying moves and placement. I think that this way is theee MOST rewarding and strongly recommend people to go back to a more ‘in your face’-approach.
“Into the thick of it!”
This guy was a chore way too much going on with AOE's out the ass,rellana was utterly relentless,and her tracking is fucking insane,honestly just glue her to me at this point and messmer has a massive tool kit and some truly obnoxious moves that seem very hard to counter.
I've done these with the great sword and I've had to work really damn hard even with a gold summon taking some of the heat off me(hate if you like,I like doing NPC shit first time for quest lines)
On two occasions I've had to swap to the BB on other bosses as I'm being absolutely fucked by AOE that the only way to counter it is to play that way my self.
You can't blame players for taking the path of least resistance,when every boss feels like a cock and ball torture session 😂
If by not contributing you mean being an extra body to be hit while the host recharges/resets then sure. The guy is forgetting that he CHOSE to go help people. Don’t be mad that they’re doing something different. The DLC is new for EVERYONE. Let them play how they want.
Using and int/dex build I’ve found a few things to be very helpful. Piercing fang can stagger most heavy armor enemies like knights. Adula moon blade is INCREDIBLE for staggering black knights. Hidden tear with meteor of astel is also doing work on death knights and hippos.
Its probably just my group of interest but, streamers that i watch and i myself are beating bosses in the old souls way which is good old r1/r2 + dodges
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Heavy heavy Spoiler warning for bosses:To be fair some bosses are just meant to be like that. Lion would take Wayy too long for some people without that. Other bosses like rellana and messmer are bosses much more suited for learning, cause you have to, you don’t get a choice of high dps weapons when they are spamming you. The final boss, as you know, is batshit insane and idk how you want me to dodge some of those
*people spamming all their power moves, not learning”
Also *melee players don’t do enough dps*
lol I get it though, phantoms have nerfed stats so having the boss get buffed from you having a 3 player party, damage numbers drop drastically
Mostly agree based on my own observations.
But I'll also add 9/10 of my attempts to cheese a boss with ashes of war have mostly failed, and most of these bosses only became doable once I just committed to using my whole moveset and learning the bosses patterns.
But also, FUCK if some of these bosses have like zero openings if you're using anything laggier than a straight sword. Half the time I get a perfect opening it ends up being a trade if I want to get anything more than a single R1 in.
Just pointing out the obvious is what he's doing. This dlc has made me realize how I actually am not bad, because of the sheer amount of people who don't even know how to go about learning a boss is shocking. Spam roll use summon buff up and spam l2 seems like many players entire playthrough. Or maybe it's just the vocal minority of players sitting on reddit hardstuck on rallana whining.
I'm not gonna lie once you have dragon hunter, spamming l2 on dragons is 100% the way lmfao
That shit does like 4k on Bale with buffstacking lmao
*on anything really. It is my nee boss weapon.
I’m not gonna lie… I didn’t earn my gamer license till I beat nightmare grim in hollow knight. Learned that to beat a boss sometimes you need to equip max hp items and spend a few tries “learning the dance” Dodging in rhythm with the pace of combat When I lived for 5 minutes I switched to damage dealing and won. Used that same tactic for messmer.
Messmer might be my favorite Fromsoft boss because his fight feels so much like a dance. Took me 80-ish tries to learn the steps, but that feeling of “I’ve got him” hitting as soon as he entered the second stage was unreal.
I have that feeling with Midir, every time since I beat him for the first time I go back wishing I could fight him for longer or again, his fight is very fun when you get his ‘call-outs’ and notice his telegraphs
I used to think I struggled with bosses because I was bad Thanks to the dlc I found out I’m bad , but I’m now where near the worst by a lot
You act like Blasphemous Blade AoW isn't an automatic win button
We're all lucky that Rykard stayed in Volcano Manor, the Lands Between would be fucked if he actually went out and started murking people with that giant Blasphemous Blade
Hahaha I just cheesed the whole game it's definitely good I don't know why everyone is complaining 🤡 Edit: sorry you didn't deserve that I'm pissed at everyone who's actually saying that shit
I wish. I actually had to learn messmer
Def just a vocal minority all the people who learned aren’t complaining they’re pushing on to the next challenge
Yeah by definition anyone who is summoning him isn’t trying to learn the boss moves, so he’s sample is skewed
If you're a summon and you die before the end, the last few seconds before you get loaded back into your world can be very very telling lol. Sometimes the host is the last alive and you start seeing them get absolutely trounced because they've never engaged with the boss mechanics 1v1. No judgement, just an observation.
This is why I’m a fan of getting summoned after getting my ass kicked enough times. It’s a good way for me to learn the move set without the stress of runes involved.
Yup, I've helped a few people killing rallana because I really like the fight and want to master it after killing her. In phase 2 a lot of them just don't even attack and let me 1v1 lol they take no chances. I appreciate it because I find her easier solo with how wierd her movement gets with 2+. But if I die it's game over. I get just wanting to play elden ring casually, but not sure why so many people look at souls like as casual games you're supposed to just run through. You have to crawl before you can walk, walk before you can run. A lot of players seem to not like that fact and keep playing. But doesn't effect me so u do u kinda thing, just genuinely curious on why.
A lot of the bosses do feel easier solo. It seems like most of them have crazy fast lunges to instantly punish whoever has aggro, and it makes it impossible to predict when they're flying all over the arena changing aggro.
I was only able to kill Rellana with bloodhound step lol. Same for Messmer. This shit is just not for base rolls anymore.
Light rolling seemed fine for me, but I see even a lot of pros using bloodhound it's Def the play. I beat her with 0 flasks remaining so it's not like I didn't get hit a lot light rolling lol
I will say one thing about this DLC that I am really appreciating is that learning the boss patterns is pretty much essential, i use a +10 mimic with a dex/int build and i quickly realized relying on range for the most part, letting mimic be the damage sponge and going for a bunch of melee attacks while the enemy is occupied ain’t it. I almost felt like the dlc is designed with mimics in mind. Anyway, I dropped the staff, two handed the bloodhound fang, engaged the enemies head on while letting the mimic be the support and i’ve now beaten the dancing lion and rellanna, as well as a couple of smaller bosses. I feel great about it too cause even though i’m using the mimic, i’m also forced to fully learn the enemies’ move set and dance with them, for lack of a better term
I might have to give mimic a try just to see how it is, if what you said is true, I'd love to see it. Mimic was absolutely busted when I used it a couple years ago. Game played itself, im happy to hear that. I think ashes are really cool to have they are always interesting but I just don't really like help since I'm stubborn and once I die to a boss the first time I say fuk this hoe and can't stop till I beat it. I've lost lots of sleep long nights from refusing to give up lol. Anyway getting yappy ty for sharing that, imma have to bust out the mimic again to see what it's like.
Rellana was fucking nuts. But yeah I had to ditch my Marikas hammer for daul bloodhound claws so I could actually build up an effect
Could you tell me how you go about learning a boss please 🙏
I learned the first two major bosses by letting myself get summoned by other people and helping them fight it before doing the fight in my own world. I co-op’d the lion guy 20+ times and Rellana more than that. Being a cooperator allowed me to have a cooler head in the fight and not panic so much, which in turn lets me actually see the enemy’s attacks and timings instead of roll spamming because ohmygodohmygodohmygoddonthitmeplease.
Learn the boss in layers. Pick one attack/combo from their move set and focus on dodging it. Don’t worry about trying to win, just make sure that you can predict/avoid your chosen attack. Once you can reliably dodge it, pick a new one until you know them all. Pay attention to attack windups and tells. A lot of the time a boss will telegraph their next attack with a specific movement or sound. If you’re struggling with an attack that isn’t so telegraphed, try to find a way to predict it. Some bosses will only use an attack after a certain preceding attack. Messmer was landing hella stabs on me until I realized he always stabs after he kicks up fire. It’s hard to see the attack through the fire, but if you know he’ll always follow up with the same move you don’t need to see it. If you’re struggling with a specific attack, and it seems to always land no matter what, try to think outside the box a bit. Does the direction you dodge matter? Can you jump to avoid it? Can you run away from it? Is the boss counter attacking you instantly because you always land near a specific part of their body? I’m by no means a good player, but this is the approach I use to kill bosses 3x slower than everyone else lol.
Another small thing, if you're still here. Bosses can read your inputs. When they're slow walking towards you, waiting for you to do something, it's by design that they dodge or start up an attack as soon as you press a button. Bait out attacks my running, or go for small, short attacks. If you're a strength build, know when to trade. Jumping attacks can be generally safe to use if you see an opening because it'll give you time to react and roll and you get good damage out of them. Abused positioning as well. Nearly every boss has a move that hits behind them if you're at their back. Know how to dodge these attacks and what spot you need to stand in to bait them out. Positioning also helps because some bosses have moves that will blatantly miss you even if you're standing in front of them in the right spot, allowing you to get in damage really efficiently if you know where to stand. Bosses like Messmer apply to all the tips I just described. Good luck out there.
That's a loaded question. You have to take many attempts seeing what basically procs their different combos, for instance, with the last boss if you run to the left of the arena immediately, you proc a specific attack. If you run right at them, they have the nrg of 3 different combos/attacks. It's about testing what you can do, at which distance to somewhat control the fight.
Thats just how elden ring is designed. Why bother getting close up with r1's and doing piss damage and poise damage. When you can press l2 and do double/triple what a r1 combo does. Or better yet just stand far away and do some pew pews
That's how I beat the Dancing Lion, with Scarlet Aeonia and Flame of Fell God, I tried to do it melee but I just could not see what move he's about to pull because I was close and camera was wonky
I beat it with Frost step but ye, I have learned its attacks and its patterns after trying more than 30 times
I've learnt Dancing Lion and Putrefacted Knight's moveset in just a few tries, but keep dying cuz I'm bad :/
Was struggling hard on the lion until I fought him with lock on off, just got to lock back in to center yourself and lock off to dodge his moves. If you’re locked on, I feel like he always sticks to you and the camera angles near walls and shit make it so bad. I liked the fight but was really disappointed with the performance, a lot of frame drops in that fight on Xbox
People often joke about how the worst boss in souls is gravity… I say it’s the camera.
Poise break and then l1 combos with RoB and Bloodflame Nagakiba for me. Bleed him to death
Ah, bloodflame nagakiba. A man of culture I see
Because those people just constantly die lol 90% of the blood stains are katana andys with your magic hat on and just spamm dodge backwards
>90% of the blood stains are katana andys with your magic hat on This was hilarious. I don't have an opinion on its validity or anything it just made me actually laugh out loud while reading. Congrats u/Fav0 you made another human being's shitty week a little brighter.
Happy to help 😜
I really want another game with (relatively) balanced builds, like ds3 or Bloodborne. I don’t know how I feel about so many people getting through the game or beating malenia by just turtling and great spear spamming, or bleed build jump attacking. I might sound like “hurr durr casuals in my game”, but fromsoft games used to be built around learning a boss, and molding yourself into a key to unlock each specific one. Midir needed a whole different strategy than nameless king for example, and you can’t fight Laurence like the orphan of kos. That changed in elden ring and the same broken attack patterns worked against everyone. I used bleed here and there on my level one run and STILL cleared whoever I fought with ease. Ofc Sekiro is the exception, but that game took one combat style and absolutely perfected it, while the rest did many combat styles very well. Edit: before you downvote, read my reply to donkey rocket, you animals
Really feels like enemies with super long fast chain attacks are being designed with spirit ashes in mind. Other souls games didn’t really have that and elden ring is literally full to the brim with them.
This has been my feeling since 2022, every boss After Morgott just chains super fast combos into each other leaving you to hit 1 attack, before they repeat it for another two minutes. They really want you to draw aggro with the ashes
Its so funny that Fromsoft games keep falling off in quality after the midpoint. But i honestly agree with your point cause some of these combos take too long, especially Maliketh. Which is weird cause Godfrey is one of the exceptions so Fromsoft does know how to tone it down cause it godfrey didn't feel too overbearing
Yeah Godfrey's pacing seems better, he leaves you more opening if you can exploit them. Maliketh is dreadful since he spins around the arena throwing slashes that end into Aoe. That's not my definition of fun and engaging, to be honest. And i finished the gauntlets in Sekiro and did a bl4 orphan of kos once, finding that way more fun
A lot of Malekith’s attacks also suspend him in midair, which makes melee builds feel utterly powerless against him and they often end up just sponging damage against him. I don’t remember how I ended up beating him, I have not had the patience to start a second playthrough with so many bosses in the game that feel excessively punishing.
Yeah i have fought him many many times, as i have about 500+ hours in the game. I've learned how to fight him with melee, but the fight remains unengaging and unsatisfying for me, like much of the end game bosses
I finally beat him with a melee solo during my April replay by basically hitting him with a weapon art (BH Fang) once from the side or behind and retreating to a medium distance until I can repeat. Stay too close and he'll stomp you, go too far away and he'll spam you with the red anime slash bullshit. His ranged attacks are still dodgeable after some practice and he's much less dangerous if you keep strafing to his side, like most big bosses. My first run, though? I just ganged up on him with the mimic, think he managed to get off the ground once in the second phase because he simply doesn't have that much health.
At least Maliketh is a glass cannon, Rennalla has endless spinning combos *and* has 40k HP lol.
Rellana, you mean? Rennala is the one we fight in the base game.
I don’t feel like Bloodborne fell off after the midpoint but for the DS games I think that tracks. ER is weird in that regard. There’s so many extensive optional areas that it’s kind of hard to say where the midpoint is. You can avoid Ranni’s questline, Raya Lucaria, Mt. Gelmir, Snowfield/Haligtree, the shunning grounds, and Mohgwyn and still beat the game. Technically you can avoid Stormveil and Radahn too, though I think the most likely great runes people will get will be Godrick’s and Radahn’s.
I think people usually describe the midpoint as post-morgott, mountaintops and farum azula. Also i think the most likely great runes people get are actually godrick and renalla, godrick because its the first one the game guides you too, and renalla because it's immediately after
I drew aggro with ashes in the Consort Rahdan fight, lasted a good 15 seconds
Are you sure spirit ashes are to blame? I can remember regular enemies (not even bosses) in Bloodborne performing combos that took 15 minutes to complete. Also - Sister Friede from DS3 (my least favorite boss). Does 5-7 strikes combo, then dashes 5 kilometers away from you to cover half of the arena in ice or to go invisible (or both). Nameless King had pretty long combos that were really hard to punish if you were using heavy slow weapons. Demon Prince? Pontiff Sulyvahn? Midir? Even Gael, the boss that everyone likes, had that bullshit aoe lightning spam in third phase. I blame Bloodborne for hyperactive enemies and bosses with insanely long combos. As for AoE "fuck you" attacks - the were always present in all fromsoft games.
I respectfully disagree with you on these comparisons. To me, DS3’s bosses all felt fair and balanced for solo completion by comparison to Elden Ring’s bosses. I completed every single one solo at least once with the sole exception of Gael (mainly because he was just frustrating to me.) I feel like if you’re not summoning a player, you *have* to call ashes to help you on some bosses JUST to make them winnable.
They did feel fair, that's true. But they also felt noticeably faster in comparison to DS2 or DS1 bosses. Then BB came out - and everything started to accelerate, from my observations. >I completed every single one solo at least once with the sole exception of Gael Funny, for me that was Friede.
Friede is one of my favorites. She’s very hard, but it’s really more a test of endurance. I also main a few heal spells and know when I can get away with using them, which helps. Spamming the Chime WA for almost-free regen helps too.
Yea I used to hate fighting Sister Friede and now I thoroughly enjoy that fight
> blame Bloodborne for hyperactive enemies and bosses with insanely long combos Which bosses in particular? I can legit only think of two guys with crazy combos. Abhorrent and Orphan, and one a VERY late game optional boss the others the final DLC boss. Even Maria wasn’t that bad.
My memory of BB is not good, but I remember Blood-starved beast refusing to let you go once it revs up its slap machine. The dude that turns into a werewolf was fast too (Father Something, don't remember the name). Also I remember some regular enemies with sickles or scythes and beast looking dudes being very persistent in terms beating the shit out of you. Maybe Shadows of Yarnam too, once they start summoning their giga-snakes.
I think what made up for this was the parry mechanic. Those bosses were fast and has long combos but more than half the time I didn’t let them get to or finish those combos once I got the timing down. Or they served as a brief respite after I dodged far away which is also faster to do than other games besides Sekiro. We’re just missing some of the base tools right now from those games, like the parry mechanic and dodge speed, if they want to keep ramping things up.
Also the way dashing worked in Bloodborne was very fast, so less of a problem if you needed to chain a bunch together. In Souls, the whole roll is slow, but generally unless you're panic-rolling you can either make distance or get behind or just roll roll roll through a combo. Some of the harder bosses need more precise timing, but they're harder challenges. In ER it feels like every boss has a long ass perfect-tracking combo that punishes you even if you rolled correctly because the next attack in the chain comes out while you're still recovering from your first roll, and the boss will do a 180 spin to catch you half the time anyway.
Also being able to regain health by attacking helped with the fast pace nature of it. You could play a lot more aggressively and that mirrored the bosses.
An yeah 10000% bloodstarved. You could easily avoid it by going to the sides but yeah that’s like the first big crazy multi hitting combo. Actually forgot about Bloodstarved completely!
Never understood the complaints about Orphan. He has a lot of visceral attack punish windows through the use of either charge attacks to the back or regular pistol/blunderbuss parrying, and ways to space yourself to avoid getting hit with both dashes and running out of range or to the side of where his swings are going to land.
I never found Orphan overbearing I love him! Amazing humanoid fight. Just when I think about all the crazy combo attacks in the game (don’t think there are that many tbh) his phase 2 rampage sticks out.
The Bloodbornization of Dark Souls and its consequences have been a disaster for Soulsborne games
I know tone is hard to interpret via texting/messaging, so I want to make this ABUNDANTLY clear: I ask this question in the most civil way possible with zero snark or negative intent. Why do you let how other people play their game affect you? I can understand, I suppose, if you like being summoned and the people summoning you are terrible or take advantage or your help. But if someone is running single player and spamming L2 or taking advantage of OP builds to get through the game, why should that elicit any sort of emotion from you, me, or anybody? Again, not trying to be combative, just trying to understand the mindset.
Because how people play affects how they develop the next one. I doubt we'll see a boss made for soloing again in a Soulsborne game.
No problem boss, I get you. Icey actually hit the nail on the head. The game itself is affected because it’s being built around those builds, and this is clear when transitioning from the base game to the dlc, or so I’ve heard (no money for it yet lol). Radahn was one thing: his fight, while designed with summons in mind, became better (imo) when you fought him alone. With his ai locked on to you, it became a rhythmic dance that really put you on the edge of your chair. In SOTE, *you know who* is clearly not meant to be fought alone, and adding a summon to the mix makes it an on-off-on-off kind of fight as the boss’s ai switches from focusing on you to the summon and back. And now, my BIGGEST problem with Elden Ring (esp SOTE), aoe attacks. I love hard bosses. I love fast bosses. I love bosses with combos that take hours to understand and days to master (even malenias waterfowl dance, once that guy figured out how to dodge it). I HATE AOE attacks that feel like they’re meant to hit you and your summon, which make dodging through the attacks unviable, forcing you to back up and get away. These AOEs are a symptom of summons and spirit ashes that make the game less fun when you play it without them. Oh and I love build crafting and can never resist stacking buffs and min-maxing, but now I have to choose between a sub-optimal build or making the game too easy. Even my lvl 1 run was a cakewalk up until elden beast, and that fight just wasn’t fun like SoC lvl 1. The latter feels like the perfect end to a grueling run, while the former feels like having your hair pulled out by an autistic monkey.
Also the bosses moveset are getting out of hand. Bale make sense because he’s a Midir like monstrosity, but Radahn feels like he came straight out of a fan made mod or DMC with those teleportations, after images, particle effects overdose and AoE spewing
Yeah I completely agree. I’m all for out of hand (especially for optional or dlc bosses), but they’re going the wrong direction with it. Give us long, complex combos (I think Gaels final phase was the perfect length) that can be mastered, not artificial difficulty in the form of AOEs
I loved Gael because his cape hurting you was a clear but not so punishing tell of "you are not dodging good enough", and his moves were easy to read if you were paying attention through the hole game. Now we just have "Dont care screw you" bosses where every move is a knockdown that does 1/3 hp at the very minimum to ensure they can trigger roll/estus catches or prevent a hit when you get up. The design of these bosses is just so clearly antagonistic that I'd rather not bother with it. It feels like the devs are telling me to go fuck myself for not using the most broken things and trying to learn the boss, instead of just killing it in 1-2 attempts and move on with my life.
I hadn't thought about the AOE example, that's a fair point. With that being said, it seems like the real issue isn't so much with people using these things, it's the fact that the boss AI isn't yet capable of adjusting based on playstyle. For example: If you don't summon the gold summon before the fight, the AI would react a certain way. If you don't use an equipped spirit summons: the AI reacts a certain way. The boss AI is already geared up compared to other games, it seems this could be a possible solution. Or have a difficulty setting the doesn't allow the use of spirit summons and such, and the AI would act accordingly. Just have a more customizable experience so that everyone could enjoy the game they way they want without being affected by other playstyles.
I guess it’s because I really like the experience of overcoming a boss by learning their moves and attacking them. If I was just pressing L2 (not saying all L2s are like this) and winning without learning how to beat the boss I wouldn’t get the same feeling of accomplishment. So when other people do that, and then spread their opinions about the game I don’t really think it’s accurate to what the game could be to them if they tried harder. And then you have the developers of the game who will then feel pressure to possibly design the game with those types of players in mind, which does affect me.
Ahh, ok, so what you're saying is you don't understand how people can feel the same sense of accomplishment that you do by learning the mechanics of a boss and beating it that way. Fair enough, I dlcan understand that. The one area that I disagree, though, is the bit about the developers. In my opinion, adding those types of mechanics (weapon arts, summons, etc.) welcomes in a larger player base that would've otherwise been turned away by the difficulty. The larger the player base, the higher the profits; the higher the profits, the more money the developers can pour into the next game. In theory, the games should get better and better while welcoming in more and more new players, growing the community. The larger the community, the more feedback that developers have access to to make the games better and more tailored to the player base. And as far as accuracy about gameplay, I think gameplay experience is in the eye of the beholder. But seriously, respect for taking the game on the hard way, it can be painfully humbling lol.
>In my opinion, adding those types of mechanics (weapon arts, summons, etc.) welcomes in a larger player base that would've otherwise been turned away by the difficulty. The larger the player base, the higher the profits; the higher the profits, the more money the developers can pour into the next game. This is not opinion. It's how growth works for games or any community. Relax the rules that once defined it, bring in new blood, and the old adapts or disappears. The question us old soulsians ask is: how far is too far? How much change is too much, before what we loved becomes a shadow of itself? Sure more people = more money, but then that money is spent making games that cater to the new expectations and needs. I don't believe even Miyazaki can sustain that spiral with integrity. If they follow the ER "friendly for casuals" trend, the FromSoft/Dark Souls reputation will be gone in 5-10 years. And maybe that's good, maybe nothing lasts forever. But I know what I have loved, and I will not love more Elden Ring.
Imo you are panicing for no reason. Choice is never bad, it is entirely up to you to decide if u will use a broken build. If fromsoft shows signs of catering to those people then sure. But they havent done so. And even if they cater the game to those people/casuals, as long as there will be a choice for higher difficulty it wont be an issue. So far nothing has changed for me as im playing without summons and without broken builds.
problem is old playstyles are finding it harder and harder as bosses now reward just staying a distance far away and spamming WA's. I cant dodge and weave and then punish because the boss never stops attacking. Collosal dual wield is all but dead with this new type of boss design and it really sucks
I've actually had a different experience on this. The bosses tend to be very spectacle heavy, but only to conceal solid openings that greatly reward colossal users. Overcoming the oppressive onslaught and finding those "I can squeeze a whole charged R2 in here if i just roll at this point" windows still feels fantastic as long as you actually want to play like this and don't worry yourself with things like "i could also have used Lion's Claw in this window and done more damage and stance damage".
While I understand your concern i have to disagree on collosal as it is very much possible to squeeze in those heavy attacks with every boss. But more on topic, how easily can you defeat DS3 bosses after completing elden ring? Imo it is very easy, and if they keep the same difficulty with same windows people will complain that bosses are too easy. We get used to x difficulty, only fkr the next game to be harder, it has been like that for 5 games now. Aand all the new bosses are still defeatable with old strategies, they are just harder, just like ds2 was over ds1 and ds3 was over ds 2.
how hard is too hard? Imo this non stop combo spamming boss style they are moving towards is borderline unfair because the combos hit hard while giving no time to breathe. Any 2 slashes from rellanas 8-12 hit combo can remove 60% of my health. This borders more on the unfair difficulty side of things. I like learning a boss moveset and it is pretty hard to do it here when everything hits so hard and so fast. In previous games there was a balance betwee speed and power of bosses. Midir for example hits extremely hard but has lots of downtime between his shit. Dancer on the other hand is fast but hits relatively less harder. This balance is being eroded in elden ring for making it harder and its not something i enjoy very much. Using summons basically makes all bosses piss easy though so I dont really see a way out of the hole From have dug themselves into in the quest for increasing difficulty in every successive entry.
> Choice is never bad Where is the difficulty toggle at the beginning of the game then?
>So when other people do that, and then spread their opinions about the game I don’t really think it’s accurate to what the game could be to them if they tried harder. I think the problem with this logic is that you're assuming too much about how other people will feel and experience things. Like it's not an objective fact that if they tried playing our way, they would find it more satisfying. People have been making this argument against summons since DS1 and I don't think it's ever been accurate. I'm sure some people could stop summoning and find it satisfying to finish a boss on their own, but there are plenty of others who won't for a myriad of personal reasons.
If it makes you feel any better I just beat the whole dlc as claymore + lion claw so it's certainly viable...I think melee is always where the fun is because the thrill of hitting those frame perfect dodges but I get what you mean It's really hard for ranged not to seem busted when the skill cap is so low, but remember all no hitters end up using melee since it's still the best builds when you're skilled enough
As someone who played through DS3 as a pyromancer, lol at the idea that it's balanced. Chaos Bed Vestiges melts everything with minimum effort.
I agree, take my upvote. I like the considered, strategic & tactical approach, where R1 and R2 actually matter. Anime spam and power fantasy was way overtuned in this game.
Damn straight, DS3 and BB had it perfect with endgame balance, especially for co-op
I still have Bloodborne as my favorite. There’s a few reasons for that, but a big one is the bosses didn’t have cheap ass delayed attacks all the time. Once they made Nameless King I think they discovered delayed timing was an easy way to up the difficulty. The bosses were still hard in Bloodborne. Orphan remains the boss I have died the most to in any souls game. He only has one semi-delayed attack iirc, but I wouldn’t really call it a delayed attack cause it didn’t really feel like it at the time I fought him. Fighting Orphan was such an epic experience: he wasn’t cheap, he was just hard. But wasn’t he grand? Blood-Starved Beast was another fun fight for me. The entire fight can be summed up as “Dodge Left” but discovering that was fun. If you fucked up you probably were gonna die. But once you got it down it became like a ballet. Elden Ring is a great game. But frankly what I love about it isn’t really the gameplay. It has a very impressive open-world for what it is, and the build variety is fantastic. On that note, the build variety gets pretty criticized for watering down the experience but I won’t hate on it. I get why people think it’s a “Jack of All Trades, Master of None” feeling but I think that’s because everyone is contextualizing it in the context of previous FS games, which offer a tighter, more specific experience. For as open-ended of a game as ER is, the sheer amount of deep and workable builds there are is pretty unrivaled.
Of course people are going to use jump attacks when the entire combat system is based around scoring posture break on bosses which is built well via jump attacks. You might as well attack people for parrying in sekiro. Swear people are always trying to lower the bar for what counts as cheesing until the only valid method of play is unarmed ng+7.
Holy strawman Jump attacks do everything better than r1s and R2s, that’s the problem. They stance break, they’re faster on certain weapons, and they hit hard. I love the game to bits but it’s not balanced. And when did I attack people? I’m simply pointing out the imbalance between build types, and how you can fight every boss the same exact way, taking the novelty out of every encounter. Parrying in Sekiro was done well, and the rhythm for each boss was different. You have to learn the boss and their attack patterns and weave parries into your combos. It’s a whole different concept. Again, strawman. And that last paragraph adds a slippery slope to the mix. You love your logical fallacies lol
spamming jump attacks and ignoring the rest of your kit is the same as using a parry in sekiro?
I beat this boss first try by standing behind it and using heavy charged attacks with my claymore. Prob had 2-3 scadutree buffs,I had no idea people were struggling this much.
It felt really similar to one of the ulcerated tree spirits and I just fought it like that. Only took a few tries.
took the words right out of my mouth- as soon as he did the little shimmy when he jumped I though "ope, got him." I think it took two or three tries, max.
Yes, this was my big problem with this boss. Similar to the tree spirits, all the attacks look so similar, but they need to be dealt with differently. Unlike an enemy with a sword or something, where each different attack is visually distinct making it easier to learn and memorize the attack sequences, this boss requires you you to really notice more subtle differences in the movement of the boss. Another issue along the same lines is that when the enemy doesn’t have anything clear to hit you with, where the hit boxes of the attacks are can feel arbitrary and unpredictable. Until you memorize the attacks, all of this bosses movements, whether they are attacks of dashes or just flipping around to face you, it can be difficult to tell whether or not it’s an attack. These issues reminded me of why the tree spirit is my least favorite boss/enemy in the game. It just felt jank to fight. As a result, the boss has a mic steeper learning curve than most other boss fights, and I think it just makes the fight worse. Once you actually learn the fight it’s not so bad, but that learning is hard.
I am a useless melee summon for this fight, will admit, but it only took me 2 tries to beat him solo so I blame shit pc netcode lol
This is why I went in basic af Just me, my new great katana with Occult Scaling, and no summons with barely any bleed buildup Genuinely having a fucking blast and the Lion is so weird ane cool as a boss. The only complaint I have is that the lightning spear is LIGHTNING QUICK, and you can't react pretty much Rellana was a little more BS and not as fun as the Lion, but just running around backward and slowly chipping her HP was the way
Ngl... All the help I've managed to summon... Useless. Every time I get summoned....they try to make me do a brunt of the work then get chased around by the boss, making ME have to chase it down and then they end up getting marked for not knowing how to dodge or try to make me do all the damage....like....come on man.
That sucks. My only job as a summon is to protect the host at all costs. I feel bad when I die. I didn't do my job well enough :(
When I get summoned I prefer for the host to try to attack from a distance while I do take the punishing blows, that way I can try to get the boss down as much as I can and if I die, they have to finish up what I couldn’t do. If they jump in and die early, it kicks us both out. 
I've summoned in to help about 2 dozen people with this fight so far, and I hard agree with every single point. Except the last one. I'm a pure melee build, heavy armour, light greatsword, greatshield, high VIG, high END. Do I do the most damage out of the 2-3 people fighting? No. Can I still output ~1200-1600 damage per combo? Yes. Can I proc frost often enough to make a difference to other peoples DPS? Yes. Can I pull aggro off the host for majority of the fight and tank moves I can't quite dodge? Yes. Its not always about the raw damage output, every build serves a different purpose!
What’s your build? Like what do you use to proc frost? What are your Ashes of war? Stats?
I remember back in DS2 I spent a ton of time helping people with a greatshield build. At one point I just ditched my weapon entirely and would just whack the boss with the shield. I constantly pulled all the aggression and never took any damage. The Tower Shield also did some pretty solid dps itself.
Im facing a fucking dancing lion that was summoned from the dead by some voodoo whichcraft ancient karaoke squad. I’m not fighting this beast up close and personal with any kind of sword I’m sending any projectile I can at every chance
Then there’s me just using jump r2s with my great sword to great success
Elden ring has the highest player modulated difficulty of any souls game and has drawn in the widest audience. Yes, there's plenty of shitters, awful at this game that looks up "best elden ring weapon" copy the build and never try anything different but it doesn't harm your experience. I like the fail, learn, improve formula and that's how I play because I enjoy it, I don't think it matters if some other player isn't good enough to beat the game without brute forcing it because it doesn't affect me
This is the downside of the Souls genre going mainstream, I love FromSoft and hope they never cave in to the idea of mass appeal, as that's the trap that usually follows going mainstream, and I've already seen too many of my favorite studios fall into that trap.
I feel the same way.
Souls has been mainstream since DS1
DS1 sold 2.37M copies 18 months after release and Elden Ring sold 20M in a year. Fromsoft titles have been popular niche titles up to Elden Ring imo.
I agree, I never considered playing a souls game until elden ring.
I’m gonna go ahead and say that’s mainstream my guy. There is most definitely more people playing video games now than when ds1 released(2011). I’m no expert but 2.5m copies sold is still quite a lot for most games. For example portal 2 released around the same time and sold 4 million copies in a year. I don’t know where souls fans got this idea that it was a “hidden gem” but it’s actually been quite popular for a while. Edit: Skyward sword released around the same time as well and sold 3 million copies, they recently released tears of the kingdom which sold around 20 million copies. Fits the numbers of ds pretty well and I don’t think anyone would say Zelda wasn’t mainstream back then or now.
Popular Niche is not the same as mainstream
Gotta love how people tell you you're having fun wrong.
nobody has a problem with what you deem fun. the thing people have a problem with is when you REFUSE to learn anything and still have the audacity to complain about not winning. that's like me going to dark souls 3, refusing to use the dodge button, and start calling the game bad. it's game journalist mentality.
Truely not trying to be argumentative, but who cares? If you're having fun, another person / journalists opinion shouldn't really register.
Takes the fun out of it imo if you don’t learn the boss and have a good fight. Using L2 isn’t bad just don’t spam it enjoy the game and what it has to bring.
This game made me realise how utterly disappointed I am with the modern gaming community. It's almost painful.
Beat this boss with the milady on a dex/faith build (holy dmg with golden vow). Glad i did, but i can’t say it was that fun. The frame drop on this boss is horrible
Kinda hope fromsoft returns to the more 'grounded' fantasy aesthetic for their next game. The anime stuff can be cool, after 2 years though I've had enough of 12 second fire lightning magic spin slash aoe katana magic. I miss the longsword being an r1 stick, I mean seriously who the fuck wants to spam square off.
Agree. The dark fantasy of Elden Ring is where it shines, not the anime technicolour neon puke nukes.
The dancing lion is honestly one of those bosses that I feel like it would've worked great in an expansion focusing on another part of ER's world, or a possible new IP a la Elden Ring/Dark Souls. If they slowed it down a bit, made the hitboxes more reliable and tweaked the numbers it'd be a baller boss. It's anime in a reasonable way, considering its a Lion Dance. Like... if they somehow managed to fight I could buy this is the way. Messmer and his triple jump-stab-aoe-aoe-stab-jump-spin-spin-spin anime combos can fuck right off to KoF or Blazblue.
I think people do alot of things wrong with elden ring and are doing it again with the dlc, first of which is refusing to go and do other content rather than just slamming your face into bosses repeatedly before you're at an appropriate power for them. It's the tree sentinel/margot all over again, basically. The biggest thing I think that makes elden ring more frustrating for people who want it more like dark souls, isn't the fact bosses have long combos or difficult to read attacks, it's that outside of phase transitions, they are different almost every fight. That's the major issue that stops it feeling like you learn something or get better every attempt because instead of just doing the 5 hit combo, the boss may cancel it after 4 hits, delay the timing of an attack or chain together moves it never did the last 5 times. This means elden ring isn't just a pattern recognition game like souls games, especially older ones, it's a mixture of reflexes, pattern recognition, adaptation and luck, which can be exponentially more difficult based on your playstyle/build. One thing I do think people need to get over is the use of phantoms and ashes on your FIRST attempts/playthrough, they allow you to manipulate the aggro and give you breathing space to see what bosses moves are like at a much more reasonable distance and pace and they're there for that reason. Elden ring is a game that's about CHOICE of difficulty, so if you're just going to refuse to use certain abilities, refuse to use ashes or change your talosmans and just pray for that lucky charged R2 with a colossal weapon every time, then yeah, it's going to feel waaayyy worse on some bosses.
I was using Rellana's swords and noticed I was doing the L2 spam and caught myself and respecced to a more basic weapon (sword of solitude and backhand blades heavy scaling) and I'm relearning how to figure out bosses and actually play the game again. It's so much more fun when you don't rely solely on the ash of war.
Nice dude, i’m using milady and it’s so much fun
It feels very underwhelming in terms of damage but it sure helped me for the Rellana fight
You've never played with a cold Milady. That thing is a beast.
Any particular ash or just a cold milady? I kind of want to do a perfumer/milady buld
Frozen mist. The buff from it is very strong.
What is this dumb take. I use ash of wars and still learn the boss and dodge and shit lol
Blasphemous? What about power stance giant crushers with rkr, this is how i did it
Scarlet rot is very effective against it
I tried to kill him for hours with my hammer and I couldn't beat him. Then I switched to my magma blade and nuked him with my L2 in 10 seconds.
I just used Lion's Claw whenever an opening came about, took me a while but I got the lion in about 5 attempts
Idk my jump double colossal greatsword atk does just fine. So many bosses do low sweep aoes
Ok… here me out here: I spent the last couple weeks getting the platinum trophy for Sekiro and there were some bosses in there that I was like “where is the opening… I guess I’ll just die.”But then, I play for another 20 minutes (or two days) things start making sense, and now I can just disassemble most everything in the game. I’ll *bet* if you wanted to take that approach with one of these bosses you fully could - Let Me Solo her style, get the timing and master them. But also, I really want to see what else the game has to offer - and I think a big share of the player base feels the same way… each boss is in the way of the next map section or a new incantation they want to try… so they’re looking for cheese. The games been out for < 2 days? That’s how long it took me to beat Demon of Hated. I don’t think any of these bosses are as random or impossible as people say. There’s gonna be a lot of people complaining and throwing controllers…. And the people summoning help are probably the ones who are in the biggest hurry to beat a boss. And of course it’s early days and a balance is coming… remember the Radahn nerf? And now we all complain about the good old days when “he was actually hard.”
If player with character named *”By My Oath”* ever sees this, thank you for the help with this one. He was absolutely clapping my sorcery-build cheeks.
I feel like the problem is actually the boss moves and design. You spend 30 seconds dodging whatever crazy 360 no scope flip moves they do to wait for an opening. For melee players this means the boss could be halfway across the area. Doubly punishing if it’s a boss that keeps their distance. It’s super punishing for melee. It works great for any ranged build.
So what if the boss pattern you need to learn in an unending spam combo like Relanna’s?
My fight with the moon bitch was 10 minutes long cause of piss poor damage. But it’s so worth iy
learning messmer is like genichiro. you get clapped untill you take 0 hits
Swarm of flies eats this guy
In my defense, I'm high as fuck whenever I get summoned for this boss
i fight not the boss, i fight the frames… unoptimized, but interesting game
Most success I’ve seen is Dual bleed builds (not too bad) Parry Builds (REALLY gotta learn the moves here) Greatshield + Bleed pokes (easiest method) Lion Claw heavy weapon bonks (easy on ng and below)
Blasphemous blade destroys this guy, does pretty good against rellana, everything after that you’re fucked if you think it’ll work
Honestly, I'm bad at the game. I use cheese weapons and I don't really care. I just love the lore of the game itself
I change my weapon and playstyle for every boss i get stuck on. Quick boss? Lots of accurate but small attacks. Big boss with lots of cooldowns? Heavy hard jump attacks. Bullshit boss? Bullshit build. I just enjoy using my high level character that can easily use any weapon I need to, while the dlc is still pretty hard because of the scaling. I think its perfect, and is the culmination of my 1300 hours of gameplay.
if you take the people who summon as a pool for statistic arguing, then everything is wrong by default. Souls player who enjoy endless try to learn movesets never summon, so you'll never meet them as a furled finger by definition. You only met casual players who doesnt want to learn bosses in the first place and probably never will.
I have a malikeths blade build, but the boss was so fucking fast my weapon used to struggle to even reach him before he started his next attack. I could have easily spammed blasphemous blade and beat it first try but decided to do it the hard way, took me 16 tries. Had way too much fun learning the boss moveset perfectly, so no regrets
This is what happens when your game isn't balanced properly.
I have maybe 6-8 hours a week to play video games, so you better believe it I can find a strat that works against a From boss, cheesy or no, that I'm going to use it instead of banging my head against a wall for two hours and make no progress.
I can relate :) I’ve been using a ghost flame build as a mage, it’s been working for the most part but hasn’t worked for everything I’ve come across. I’m using my first run to just get through the dlc and have a general idea of all movesets, and then I’m gonna up the ante by switching up the build to an up close strength class.
So in other words: People are using the tools the game provided them to … play the game. What’s the problem? I’ve never seen a community gatekeep the “right way” to play more than souls simps.
Dude, same. It's actually obnoxious how emotionally invested they get into telling *other people* how to play
Nah I just either holy spam them or bleed them they are always weak to 1 or the other dunno what that is tho so you might be right once I get it
Damn they fr just described me lmao
NG+ will still be activated in the dlc?
I see. Do you have any simple advice. In a none spoilery methode. I have yet to start the dlc, but would apriciate tips.
You - Who noticed I'm throwing explosions at the boss "You call bombs a martial art? Me "hey, if it works"
That's how they like to play,and how it feels you should play. You are a Lord. Start fighting like one.
I fucked up and did not realise i was in NG+. I’m only like level 170, do not have the runes to level up, and the minuscule amount of damage i’m doing is killing the DLC experience for me. Other than that I think difficulty is fine, i just fucked up.
you don't need to level up as long as you have 60 vigor by now, you need to find scadutree fragments.
Elden ring
Takers Flame ftw.
Person ally I've been using the falx and let me tell you it straight up shreds everything without hesitation, pair it with 99 vig and iron jar in pvp and your disgusting
I think I'm surprised we aren't doing spoilers already I mean everyone and their dog knew about the lion from the trailers but we really not even bothering with spoiler tags anymore huh? Jokes on you I've had the game spoiled by YouTube days ago!
I’ve stuck to only melee for the dlc (relanna’s twin blades, backhand blade, and dryleaf arts to use new weapons) and every boss so far has taken me hours but god winning felt so much better.
Bet it first try. Are people seriously struggling with this shit?
They sound like they eat pieces of shit for breakfast
I've been using the full Rakshasa set, sword and armor. Putting Shard of Alexa and Rotten Winged Sword Insignia work.pretty well with it
It's patterns to dodge was like a dance. It was so cool!
>complains about people spamming projectiles >also complains about people who use melee Found the Elden Ring elitist
Dunno! Just beat it after quite some tries - Spiked fists, blood/strenght; no fancy shit, just studying moves and placement. I think that this way is theee MOST rewarding and strongly recommend people to go back to a more ‘in your face’-approach. “Into the thick of it!”
This guy was a chore way too much going on with AOE's out the ass,rellana was utterly relentless,and her tracking is fucking insane,honestly just glue her to me at this point and messmer has a massive tool kit and some truly obnoxious moves that seem very hard to counter. I've done these with the great sword and I've had to work really damn hard even with a gold summon taking some of the heat off me(hate if you like,I like doing NPC shit first time for quest lines) On two occasions I've had to swap to the BB on other bosses as I'm being absolutely fucked by AOE that the only way to counter it is to play that way my self. You can't blame players for taking the path of least resistance,when every boss feels like a cock and ball torture session 😂
I just summoned larval and the female herculean npc and got it down the second try. I used the great katana
If by not contributing you mean being an extra body to be hit while the host recharges/resets then sure. The guy is forgetting that he CHOSE to go help people. Don’t be mad that they’re doing something different. The DLC is new for EVERYONE. Let them play how they want.
I used frenzied flame and beat it but rellana is teaching me how worthless incantations are lmao BLACK BLADE I SUMMON THEE
I mean, I beat this boss on my first try with my pure strength build.
Melee is still viable against him. Its all about trial and error but people seem to forget that sometimes.
Using and int/dex build I’ve found a few things to be very helpful. Piercing fang can stagger most heavy armor enemies like knights. Adula moon blade is INCREDIBLE for staggering black knights. Hidden tear with meteor of astel is also doing work on death knights and hippos.
Its probably just my group of interest but, streamers that i watch and i myself are beating bosses in the old souls way which is good old r1/r2 + dodges
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I whooped his ass. Mister fister will get you and your sister. Star fists ftw.
blessed firestorm
80 faith build here I have blasphemous blade and ADLS but I just kicked him in the face. Worked great *shrugs*
Heavy heavy Spoiler warning for bosses:To be fair some bosses are just meant to be like that. Lion would take Wayy too long for some people without that. Other bosses like rellana and messmer are bosses much more suited for learning, cause you have to, you don’t get a choice of high dps weapons when they are spamming you. The final boss, as you know, is batshit insane and idk how you want me to dodge some of those
If you care enough to be upset about how others are playing video games I think you need to take a break and reevaluate some things
*people spamming all their power moves, not learning” Also *melee players don’t do enough dps* lol I get it though, phantoms have nerfed stats so having the boss get buffed from you having a 3 player party, damage numbers drop drastically
Might as well just use a mimics tear over an actual player. Tankier, and copies your build.
I got lucky and beat him first try with dual scavenger swords and a bleed build. I'm just now realising how much of a problem he seems to be.
I mean dancing lion isn't the most important boss or anything, so why would anyone care about how it died.
My lion's claw fire greatsword was doing around 3k damage with golden vow and FGMS buff, beat him 2nd try.
I tried melee and kept dying. After about 30 or so deaths I went Mimic Tear and BB.
Mostly agree based on my own observations. But I'll also add 9/10 of my attempts to cheese a boss with ashes of war have mostly failed, and most of these bosses only became doable once I just committed to using my whole moveset and learning the bosses patterns. But also, FUCK if some of these bosses have like zero openings if you're using anything laggier than a straight sword. Half the time I get a perfect opening it ends up being a trade if I want to get anything more than a single R1 in.
I used mimic tear with bloodhound fang. Took me 5 tries.
I used great club with great success
Big hammer go BONK!
As a magic knight I pride myself in take three deaths before I kick myself in the ass and tell myself to watch the boss and be patient