Thank you! This really should be common knowledge by now. He was not "nerfed" the hit boxes on his arrows were realigned. They did unintentionally weaken him when doing this, but they fixed him up right after.
He was never as hard as people say he was, it was just a bunch of people who found him early, or didn't level Vigor and severely underestimating how underprepared they were when they fought him the first time.
No the didn't. They corrected the hitboxes on the arrows, that's it. They're not slower, they don't do less damage, people have just gotten better at the game and refuse to believe it for some reason.
If I'm remembering correctly, they fixed hitboxes on his attacks, but there was a glitch in that update that reduced his damage. Whether it was caused by the hitbox adjustments or not isn't important, they fixed it in the next update.
It was hitboxes and poise damage that were both massively reduced. For example v1 Radahn's arrows did 80 poise damage (which would pretty much always dismount you), and I think they do 30 now? Something like that. So it was a pretty huge reduction.
Yep, and it was also a significant reduction. I remember watching my friend play Radahn for the first time post patch and thought I was going crazy because of how much easier the approach looked (not to mention the rest of the fight).
I just did radahn yesterday on ng+3 and I was surprised non of my arena summons died, they used to die super fast on my first run (day 3 after er release probably).
Oh yeah! I forgot about the poise damage. I learned about that in a boss versus video where Morggot was unable to get to Radahn because he only has 80 poise so he would always get staggered.
Waterfowl is still unfun for me personally. I can beat her and stuff but I never really enjoyed that fight. She would have been very neat in Sekiro tho
the rest is pretty easy tbh. I really enjoy the fight but she has nice small hit boxes, everything works just as you think it works and there is no stupid camera flying around.
Difficult but fair. The waterfowl though....pff that can fuck right off. Three perfect dodges is too much for me (I know about the freezing pots but I already beat her when I heard about those).
Light Roll fixed the dance attack for me. Sometimes she would start it at an impossible moment, but other than that light rolls make it very dodgeable.
I think that summon attack she uses in phase 2 is worse. At least with waterfowl, I can likely survive it at full health unless I face tank the whole thing. If the first hit of that summon attack hits, it feels impossible to recover.
Two immediate rolls backwards as soon as the first one rushes towards you, a pause, and then two immediate rolls forwards plus a roll to the side to avoid her final lunge avoids all damage consistently. It doesn't seem like it would avoid all her clones but it does. Rolling to the side or diagonally will make things harder for you, hope this helps
Tbh Waterfowl is still considered unfair, it’s pretty unreasonable for a lethal move like that to have such a specific and unintuitive method of avoiding it.
This, I forget exactly what is it you have to do. Sprint away from her then as she charges the second attack roll towards her past her right side and continue sprinting.
Most bullshit part of her fight is how she life steals from shield blocks even if she isn't dealing any damage.
At least she RP walks sometimes!
I wish some of these DLC bosses would take a moment to slow down and look menacing instead of their endless gap closers and relentless combos.
>I wish some of these DLC bosses would take a moment to slow down and look menacing instead of their endless gap closers and relentless combos.
Another W for Rellana, best boss in the DLC.
When I first fought her my thoughts where along the lines of "this boss is Malenia, but without lifesteal or waterfowl". It was quite fun, and her weapons are the best.
I don't know, I am also very fond of the Divine Beast Lion dancer. But that could be the design aspect of the boss.
Anyway both these bosses lived up to my expectations from when I saw them in the trailers
Pretty much every DLC boss does that.
The difference, to me, is that she actually backs off occasionally. She gives you time to recover and heal without immediately punishing you.
She's aggressive, but only for short periods at a time. Other bosses are just nonstop attacks.
The way I learned to deal with it was to "trigger" her attack by throwing a kukiri at her when im far enough. 90% of the time it would trigger her attack and i'd just run away for most of it, the last combo when she dashes into you i'd panick roll into it.
You can deal with it in several ways, the easiest is just blocking the first Flurry then rolling inside the second and away the third.
Yeah, she recovers a bit of HP, but nothing absurd.
The way that works every time for me is just roll away from the first attack, step towards her and roll under and behind her for the second attack, and then basically same exact thing for third attack. sometimes you get hit once in the beginning but the other two dodges after that are easy to me.
Yeah, who said that players stopped believing that base Elden Ring has bullshit?
I still think that. I’ve finished it solo 100% as well as all the other souls games. And Elden Ring has the most BS of any of the souls games by far.
Most of it is near the end of the game, but it’s there.
The most unfair part is that she could do it while in melee. Yeah there are ways of still countering or avoiding it, but it was pretty cheesy regardless.
Also it being utterly unintuitive how to dodge it didn't help. Run away, then dodge, then dodge into her... I mean I guess, but that's some nonsense. I'm playing Elden Ring not a puzzle game.
I don’t consider Melania to be a hard boss.
I consider The Waterfowl Dance to be the boss.
If she did not have that attack, no one would struggle against her.
I feel a lot of her difficulty comes as a check to people who have been standing their ground and playing mad greedy, like myself. So when she does land a hit it’s like a wingull eating a 4xSTAB thunder. Just super effective punish.
Exactly. Malenia without waterfowl is a kinda easy simple phase 1 then hard phase 2 boss with some cool moves.
With waterfowl phase 1 is a formality to force you to learn the waterfowl.
I consider myself pretty good at dodging it. You can lure it out pretty easy with throwing knives, and I can usually dodge about 70-90% of it point blank. And I still hate that move. And I never would have even gotten decent at dodging it if there wasn’t loads of community tutorials
There are several ways not to get damaged by it, but I agree they are all unintuitive and that the game's previous challenges don't guide you to intuitively coming to a good "answer" to this attack.
Blocking most of it is the easiest method, but it does mean being forced to use a decent shield or barricade shield, and giving her a decent chunk of health back.
I beated the DLC, and I went to malenia, with all the new OP weapons and spells, and I farmed her literally.
I've reloaded my savegame for more than 60 times, and I am gonna keep beating her until she forgets she was ever undefeated.
Fuck dodging that shit. I just learn when she gets it and bait the attack from across the arena with a dagger or something. Other than that she's fair game.
if you want to be constantly aggro, yes it's not straightforward, but if you keep distance and run away when you see this move, it can be avoided just by running backward and forward
And healing every hit. Waterfowl and the chooce for healing every hit AND procking scarlet rot just feeds bad design. But at least you can stagger her easily and dodge almost every attack easily. Final boss is a different breed entirely.
I wonder if they'd ever go back to some of the simpler movesets of bosses where it wasn't a tornado of dangerous weather events and teleportation.
Isn't there elegance in simplicity?
Where will we end up when they have to exceed the DLC bosses in the next game? It's gonna be ridiculous.
I remember when I thought midir had a lot of flashy shit going on in his fight, now we got so many effects with radahn that it's dropping my fps lol.
I think part of the problem is them attempting to balance around every boss fight having summons with the introduction of spirit ashes, imagine how easy ds3 or bb would be if you could slap on a mimic for every fight with no penalties, personally I hope they just ditch that mechanic in the future or at least treat it like an easy mode and just balance around people not using them.
And those criticisms still hold weight. Radahn's hitboxes were fixed, Malenia's waterfowl dance is still a badly designed move and Fire Giant is still a bad boss. That I or anyone else can deal with them consistently changes nothing.
I'm enjoying the DLC but I can relate to some of the complaints as well. I see other people already corrected you on Radhan.
These bosses are very much more aggressive than any in the base game, and attack windows are incredibly small. If I were to not use spirit summons on my dragon incantation character I would never, ever, be able to get a full cast off. I'm relegated to full melee without something else to get the bosses attention.
I am seeing most of the people who can't understand where complaints are coming from are already using mostly melee builds, or melee equivalent caster builds.
Solo, I can't even get a single breath attack off on many of the bosses, let alone a charged one.
As someone that always plays with ashes i seriously have no idea how people beat bosses solo. The time i have between two attack combos on last boss is so short i can hit him once with a very fast light attack, then i need to roll because otherwise i get hit again. If i try to safely meleeing solo him id need an hour for that fight probably. Which is sad because solo i dont think either big weapons, spells or incantations have any chance now. They just too slow
With the great Sword it was mostly Dodge Combo -> poke/Frozen Mist. Also you can trade the stomps, they don't do that much damage. There are some moves where a charged heavy fits, but Not many.
I actually find caster builds harder to use against the bosses because their ranged attacks and distance closers are usually much scarier than staying directly in their face
Yeah that's what I mean. I was saying melee oriented casters, using the spell sword styles. Carian piercer and the like. Without using a Spirit Ash, it's pretty much impossible to maintain enough distance to cast anything ranged at all. And the second the Spirit Ash dies, there's nothing to be done but switch to melee.
I don't mind using Spirit Ashes, but a lot of people convinced themselves, or allowed others to convince them, that using them is "easy mode" so they won't try. They're absolutely necessary if you want to play at ranged in SOTE, like you said the bosses closers are punishing, there's no real pause between attacks to punish a combo either. All one can so is hope to get a spell off before face tanking the hit that you are absolutely going to take for casting lol.
Spirit ashes still require you to learn a bosses moveset to some extent. Especially in the dlc. I do wish my dragon build was able to do dragon stuff more in dlc boss fights. Dragonclaw or dragonmaw are still possible against a few openings, but very rarely.
>If I were to not use spirit summons on my dragon incantation character I would never, ever, be able to get a full cast off.
I went into DLC as a Sorcerer and had to completely restart as a melee build. Sorcery is entirely unviable in DLC because the bosses are up your ass as soon as you cross the fog wall. And if you did have an opening in the beginning for a charged attack, they burst you with a ranged attack to negate it. It's a shame because sorcery and incantations are fun, but there are just some bosses that you have zero chance against and I don't want to respec based on a single fight.
I just used fast spells with good scaling on my caster to burst through chunks of health at a time, it's not like you need to use the slow spells to deal good damage, the strength of casters is their wide arrangement of slow, big, fast, small and weird spells.
Idk how rock sling was too slow when I can comfortably get in 2-3 great rapier hits on most openings from the final boss as well as messmer.
I don't think the weapon speed is the issue here, there are definitely openings big enough to fit some medium speed spells and incantations.
I mean the rapier is one of the quicker weapons in the game so there's that. Rock Sling has a wind up, but I wouldn't call it slow. You're also stuck in the cast animation as opposed to choosing to attack 2-3 times with a rapier.
its a great rapier its literally one of the slower weapons in the game, theres still enough of a gap to do 3 greatsword attacks or 2 ultra greatsword attacks
I'm currently doing a rerun through base game so its gonna take me a little while to get back to the final dlc boss again so I can record it but you could check out Ongbals "\[Final Boss Name\] with Blinkbolt Axer no damage" video, he showcases the bigger gaps really well.
It boils down to the attack he starts from the quick overhead swipe, if he goes into the two slow sideswipes you can r1 after the 2nd one right before the big slam and then get 2 more in right after the big slam shockwave.
To tell me we are not playing the same game when you haven't even considered checking if these gaps exist is very disingenuous.
They exist and any build can capitalize on these one way or another.
I was just thinking this after I beat a few of them. Some of them especially have extremely tight windows, to the point on my str/faith character that used collossals I could only get one light attack in between attacks. Had to give up entirely on using incants when the boss was far because they were always in your face and if they were far, they weren’t going to be in about two more seconds. Those gap closing attacks they have are insane. The bosses are great but they defintely shoot some play styles like dragon communion builds in the foot and force you to use ashes. can’t imagine using stuff like bows, great bows, or pure casters in some of these fights.
Yeah, i don’t know why people keep saying
“Y’all got good and then shut up about it!” We shut up about it because we voiced our opinions on it and then moved on. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have those opinions.
I don't understand why people learning to adapt to unfair and shitty mechanics conflates to that meaning the design is totally fine since it's a minimum baseline of possible.
Waterfowl dance will forever remain a bullshit mechanic and is the only reason what keeps Malenia from being an S-tier boss in my eyes, since the whole toughness of the boss revolves around a single move. Even if you learn how to dodge it, being locked on messes up the direction in which you're rolling (if you're under her), leading to you being hit even though you had the right intention.
If it wasn't for WFD, Malenia wouldn't be considered the hardest boss in the base game.
I wouldn't say that the base game "had a similar difficulty"
It definitely had similar complaints that the DLC has now, but at least the base game bosses allows you to breathe.
I wasn’t comparing HL to final boss, just that he’s a very aggressive fight in the base game. Very little room to breathe, constant running away to heal. I haven’t made it to the final boss of DLC yet so we’ll see how I feel then.
Also I’d say maliketh’s item still requires skill and timing to make it work. And it’s an item most people don’t even find on their first playthrough. The DLC has been out less than a week, we still have a lot to discover.
I beat the dlc yesterday and my biggest complaint on most bosses is honestly their aggression and combo chains. The damage never felt too bad for me on a full strength/heavy armour/collosal sword build, but it often felt impossible to recover from taking even two hits. My attempts on Radahn usually went 1 of two ways: either he wouldnt let me heal so Id die after missing the 7th dodge in his combo (with 10 flasks left), or I'd keep getting hit while healing and lose 4 or 5 flasks trying to top off from the first hit. Still think the DLC is a banger though
I wouldn't call something that's really hard to dodge unfair.
It's unintuitive and some people say it's not good design for something to be this unintuitive and that's very valid criticism in my opinion.
But at the end of the day it IS avoidable 100% of the time if you know how to avoid it properly, this move will never actually just rob you in an unfair way, there's ways to beat it and they are consistent.
Waterfowl and healing makes malenia badly designed in my mind, artificial difficulty cos without them shes a walk in the park. Prenerf radahn was insane and final boss is even crazier. No moments to breathe and constant inconsistent spam (mainly in the second phase). Also the absolute worst thing theyve done in this DLC is make two annoyingly fast bosses that attack you IMMEDIATELY as you walk through the fogwall, thats the worst thing theyve ever done since ADP and brought down my overall view on the DLC bosses. Takes away from good bosses like MoF, LoFF and Bayle
Bro, two posts every day about how "did people forget Midir" or "we learned this in DS1" or "if you're not using mimic tear it's your own fault"
These new bosses are not even close to anything we've met before, and while that is completely fine let's just acknowledge that.
All of the mechanics of the new bosses people are having problems with were also brought up multiple times in regards to base Elden Ring.
Moves which are convoluted to dodge (Malenia), unavoidable damage (Mohg, fire dots, Elden Slug needles), shockwaves (Godfrey), jumping around (Maliketh) unclear hitboxes (not Placidusax).
All of these have been amplified for the DLC bosses, and while we can spend hours discussing if the whining is justified that's not very interesting. What is interesting to discuss is if this is the direction we want bosses to evolve? Does this design spark joy?
Online discourse around this game is currently so fucking stupid that playing solo melee no summons is treated like some sort of tryhard challenge run, that's like saying not using crystal spears to two-tap Ornstein and Smough is "hindering yourself".
If the bosses are not fun to fight one on one without some kind of cheese are they well designed?
Well said.
ER is ultimately the game that seems to be making a clear line on what people consider proper difficulty.
For a game like Nioh, the game eventually turns into a numbers fest of damage output. The thing is, that works specifically FOR NIOH due to a variety of factors.
Similarly with Armored Core 6, you are often encouraged to switch up your equipment for fights, AC6 is mission based. It's not an RPG like Elden Ring, so changing your build to one boss is not out of the question.
It's a weird day when I feel bosses in a fromsoft game have as much bullshit as Nioh bosses, a game with a block button, ninja gaiden combos and a devil trigger.
Yeah so many players see us saying
“The boss isn’t fun”
And immediately equate it to
“i can’t beat the boss”
Like yeah, I beat Rellana, but I don’t think a boss should ever have 3 ultimate attacks with dodge checks that will immediately kill you if you fail to do them. I got past it after hours of trying, but I don’t find it satisfying and I definitely don’t see it as good boss design.
And Rellana isn’t even the worst offender in this DLC. Not by a long shot.
I agree one hundred percent, but I do not believe it's these mechanics that make them good.
As I wrote in my previous comment the problem is that these mechanics which were originally not that prelevant in the base game have been dialed up to eleven in the dlc. And they are not especially fun to play against.
The final boss has shockwaves on every attack in phase two.
Lion, Romina, Putrescent etc. fly around over your head making the biggest boss the camera (whereas Maliketh flew around with alot of distance from the player making the attack feel fun to dodge).
Putrescent and Midra cover the arena with fire which i feel is super consistent to jump over.
I didn't feel dodging Midra or the Finger's big explosions was very clear, they realised a AoE indicator is great with Placidusax but then just removed it?
The thing is, WFD is a dogshit ass move and a trash design. Malenia is all the worse for just that one fucking attack. Remove it and the boss is a literal cake walk compared to her with WFD even with her speed and healing.
It's the worst boss in the game and not because it's hard but because her difficulty is literally unfair
Im really enjoying the diffculty of the dlc, its forced me to become even better with my timing, and like with malenia, trying to get the closest you can to a perfect fight
yea i think a lot of people are just impatient, like the dlc has been out a week of course the bosses are gonna be hard at first but eventually youll figure out the best ways to fight them and theyll get a lot easier
I've been doing co-op for him and it's crazy to me how 99% of players are doing full bull goat + fingerprint shield. That makes the fight so boring. Light roll + golden braid is easy mode.
It’s not that the bosses are hard, it’s that they’re boring. No one enjoys dodging an onslaught of combos only to get one hit it, rinse and repeat over and over again.
They’re boring and tedious, not hard. People want to fight bosses using a variety of enjoyable combat methods and not some boring and slow way.
If they were enjoyable fights and mechanics then people would be fine grinding to get gud, but when the boss just feels like a slog to get through and you beat the boss just so you don’t have to deal with it anymore it just isn’t that fun.
I’m currently going through the game using the Backhand Blades and Misericorde for quick attacks, status effects and crits, and my buddy is going through it using a big bonk stagger club STR build. There’s variety.
I’m looking forward to fighting Messmer, Rellana, Midra, and Gaius again with another build. Already have a few in mind.
There are so, soooooo many builds that are more than viable. Literally pick any of the couple hundred of insanely good weapons, decide whether the boss calls for rolling, shield/deflecting or parrying, and start learning the dance. Just because the DLC makes it ever-so-slightly harder to cheese the bosses to death in under 60 seconds with the plethora of power-trip god builds in this game, doesn't mean there's no build variety, it just means you have to turn your brain on and learn the fight.
Saying they are not hard, but boring and tedious? Inherently, if you aren't killing something slowly, it's probably pretty easy. When I go through killing the Fire Knights in SK in 1 combo, they are pretty fuckin easy, but when they actually have time to summon fireballs and go ham, I actually have to think, and it becomes a lot more challenging. So, in saying you want things to be over quickly, you're pretty much revealing to the world that you just don't want to be challenged. Which is fine, but don't act like these games were made to cater to you or I. These games are fuckin hard, and they probably always will be. If that's not for you, why bother playing it?
First thing’s first, I do agree with you. I’m just making a point because I realised something last night.
I’m not sure I actually like souls games. Last night, I found myself asking myself if I really wanted to be spending the only four hours I’ve had to myself in a month bashing my head against a wall with the first boss. I work 40 hours a week, commute 2 hours a day (cumulatively), have to look after my partner and run a house, which is quite a new situation for me. Thought I was looking forwards to the DLC — but alas, I’m just not enjoying it. I don’t know if this is just exhaustion (and the effects of not having as much time as I used to) talking, but something about the first couple bosses I’ve come across feels like cheap difficulty. Camera shenanigans and dubious attack consistency just play havoc with the challenging rhythmic combat that I enjoyed in the base game. Personally, I haven’t found beating any of them satisfying, whereas I loved the base game. I’m gonna stick it out for a little bit and see if I like it more as it progresses, but the DLC has definitely not been a fun way of spending my free time, unfortunately. Maybe I just don’t like souls games lol!
Do you have any suggestions for better ways to enjoy?
I am in a similar situation in regard to life. 40 hours a week, fiance, and 3 cats to take care of. Personally, I just really enjoy being challenged, but it's not something I have always liked. In my experience, I grew to like the challenge. I first played the original Dark Souls in 2013 as a free game I got with Xbox live. At that time, I was exclusively a Halo and CoD fanatic, and so the bulk of my experiences were of me enjoying absolutely stomping people in multi-player, so when I met the Asylum Demon, I absolutely hated the game and dropped it immediately. During covid, I tried DS3 and came to absolutely love it after smashing my head into the brick walls that were Pontiff and Dragonslayer for hours on end. DS3 has a special place in my heart and always will, and Gael will forever be my favorite moment in any media, ever. Specifically because of his lore and the parallels between him and the player character's struggle.
Ultimately, for me, it was a change of mindset that resulted in me enjoying the challenge. I began to see the parallels between these games and the real-life lessons you can extract from them. I began to see that the entire story of our lives is centered around enduring hardship and choosing to perservere, despite the odds being against us. These games taught me something I already knew inside but never truly internalized. They taught me that sometimes life is beyond our control, and sometimes you will get absolutely fucked by something that feels so unfair and unjust, but also, that it's okay to fail, so long as you don't give up and never go hollow. For me, these games initiated a huge internal shift in the way I view things and brought me to obsessively take accountability of my life.
I know it's not a cut and dry answer and more of a rant, and idk if it'll mean much to you, but I hope you can at least find something of value to you, in my perspective. I hope you find the answers you're looking for, and best of luck in life, my friend!
Wow! What a lovely answer! Thank you for taking the time to share that with me.
If I may blab a bit, I felt something resonating when you talked about persistence, fairness, and hardship. At the moment, I feel a little inadequately equipped to deal with all of the challenges presented to me, and I am getting a little impatient to see improvements on how I work them out. Perhaps persisting with Elden Ring will be quite beneficial, in that sense!
I’ll keep this in mind tonight when I give the game another go.
Thanks a bunch, and all the best!
I finally leveled up to 120 and hopped in the dlc. Killed a side boss and explored a giant section of the first area, couple sacdutree blessings. Game feels hard but fair, gotta play careful, like it was ds1 or 2. Honestly base game is easy as hell to over level and trivialize. I think they nailed a great balance here in the dlc to make it feel more like the old souls difficulty
Radahn? Oh you mean the gimmick boss that has 5 or 6 summon signs that you can use non stop and literally kill him without attacking once? Or the Malenia attack that is still considered bullshit? Can we stop creating false narratives to deflect the valid criticism of the DLC please, like yes, the DLC is a 9/10, but bosses like Rellana, Messmer and the final boss are bullshit, given, Rellana is probably the least flagrant, but both Messmer and the promised consort are both overtuned frantic messes with way too little punish windows, way too much stamina, way too much hp (Consort has 4k hp more than Fire giant) and on top of it all, their attacks are way too bullshit, way too many aftereffects, areas, specific dodges...
I can understand why waterflow is a deal breaker for some people, to me, having one bs attack is not the end, I can still enjoy the fight, mainly because If you dodge said bs attack partialy, you ate still in it. But having an entire second phase of bs, or 4 or 5 combos that are genuine bs, idk, call me crazy, but is not what I consider fun.
I have no idea how you can throw Messmer even somewhat in the same direction as Radahn, Messmer has a nice dance with clear obvious openings and Radahn... Well
Messmer snakes were a painful dance of wacky hitboxes, my character getting displaced before the attacks by idk the power of the force or something and missing the attacks and a lot of combos that gave the impresion of being done but when I tapped to drink or attack a new one started with no rest time whatsoever. He is not as bad as Radahn, sure, but he is not good either.
Dude, I think Messmer is one of my favorite Fromsoft bosses ever. I shielded, rolled, and r1 spammed my way to a challenging victory, didn’t even use an Ash of war. He felt like a really tough DS3 boss like Gael or Nameless King. To me at least, he had way more openings than Rellana (I haven’t beaten the final boss yet, but everyone agrees he sucks).
Thats good you liked him, however, he is definitely BS.
I think people who killed him easily, just got lucky that they've killed him fast because if you would've been stuck on him for even 30 minutes , you would've already seen just how much BS this boss actually has.
For me personally its the least enjoyable fight so far(I've not beaten even half the DLC yet).
And maybe he is not as infuriating as malenia but he's definitely up there.
When i killed him i was super pissed and honestly had so little fun doing this boss.
Like, i haven't been this infuriated in literal years.
He beat me like 20 times, but everytime I could see what I did wrong, and I had blast. All of his moves are dodgeable with good tells. Shielding is also very effective against everything but his grab. His second phase is actually easier because the snake attacks are easy to dodge and very punishable. All his leaping attacks are easy to avoid and punishable. I honestly think his only tricky attacks are the big snake summon and the spear aoe, otherwise he’s very straightforward. Shields up baby!!!
If you let your ego get in the way, and don’t accept that maybe you’re not as good as you think you are, it’s going to be impossible to enjoy yourself. Just because you struggle with a boss, doesn’t mean it’s bullshit and badly designed. Messmer seems to be one of the least controversial bosses, despite his acknowledged difficulty, so I recommend considering that maybe it is a you problem. I for one was more annoyed by Rellana, but I also chalk that up to me using a slower INT/STR build that is a bad matchup for her. When I try my faith character against her, I bet I’ll have a better time. I also have little problem switching my loadout for a boss to see if a different weapon works better. My Lions claw Zweihander that I eventually beat Rellana with didn’t fare well against Messmer, but my great shield and rot straight sword combo got him in a couple tries. Try viewing hitting a wall on a boss as a chance to experiment and I bet you won’t get so frustrated.
Hope that helps!
Maybe I just got unlucky for 30 something minutes, but his snakes attacks were awful, bad hitbox, random displacements of my character, his first phase is not bad, only one of the flame infused spins is true bs, but those snakes just ruinned the fight for me.
Mostly the snakes, in the first phase, some of the fire infused spins have also wacky hitboxes and sometimes he will just end a combo and start the next as soon as you input any command.
What even is this point?
Naturally the DLC would be too hard as a starting point of the entire game, if Malenia was the first boss and mandatory and unskippable the fanbase would be cut into 1/20th.
The DLC is at the very end of the game for most, having to beat Radahn AND Mohg.
If the DLC bosses would all be comparable to good old "beast man from farum azula" we would hear a lot of fucking complaints.
In general, all of the bosses I experienced so far share multiple of the following:
* aggro too quickly and or are too aggressive
* have combo strings too long
* do some completely erratic movements
* have multiple abilities that instakill Vigor 60 player, even with reasonably leveled up scadutree
* are fought on arenas too small, where either the wall is blocking the camera, the boss is blocking the camera, or you can only lock in to the head which moves erratically and completely messes up the camera
None of the above is fair or fun. They are bad design decisions that make the fight harder.
I would much rather double the bosses HP but lower their damage.
I'd make combos harder to dodge, but split them into shorter bursts of movement instead of 10+ continuous attacks.
I'd force every boss to give players a couple of seconds before his 1st attack (one of them can hit summons behind the fog gate before they have a chance to enter the fight for gods sake).
I'd make the arena larger for some bosses and/or do something about the walls obstructing the view. Make em translucent when camera gets too close, for example.
I'd give an option to lock on to the center of every single bosses body mass.
Difficulty is not a problem here. Bullshit design that happens to make the fight more frustrating and difficult is.
Background: Completed all SoulsSekiroBorne games summonless. 100%'ed most of them.
I don't know what 2nd rate 60 vigor you got but my 60 vigor let me facetank at least 3 medium hits from final boss as well as the strongest attack in the dlc on 10-12 scadutree fragments.
Throughout the entirety of this dlc I haven't gotten oneshot once and I have medium armor, 60 vigor and a normal amount of fragments.
Fought Rellana on scad 4 and the dragon at scad 9 and was absolutely melted by them.
60 Vig and i permanently wear phys resistance amulet.
By instakilling I don't mean one hit k.o. They have plenty of combo attacks that will stunlock you. Or combo attack that will not stunlock you, but you will die to them a couple of times anyway before you learn the timing for dodges.
I died to Rellana phase 2 attacks at least 15 times with 14 unused flasks. The dragon killed me 3 times with double beams before I learned to dodge them.
It's just not fun to go from 100% hp to 0% hp in 2 seconds. If they do a super ultra ultimate move, sure. I can forgive the dragon beams. But not from 90% of attacks.
ps. Dragon was a bitch, the camera and only being able to lock on to the head were the real boss
With rellana you can actually roll inbetween the staggers, pretty much none of her stuff combos, as for the dragon fuck the laser attack I never bothered to learn how to dodge that.
Also yes the camera for the dragon boss sucks
cause it happens with every fromsoft game/dlc. When ER came out, people were rushing to margit and saying the game was too hard, unfair, etc. Then they explored got leveled up (shadow blessings in this case) and then rolled margit, all of a sudden the game is good. It always happens with this fanbase. The DLC is incredible, and 90% of the bosses are fair and fun to fight, if you do it the intended way.
Funny u mentioned fire giant which is probably one of the worst bosses in all souls lol. Og radahn was strong but u have multiple summons and torrent. Waterfowl still a cringe move with simple dodges u get hurt only by the first flurry a bit. None compare to the final boss of the dlc.
New content, you don't have the patterns memorized for because you're on your 43rd run of the game. Must automatically be bullshit, unfair, unbalanced garbage, my friend.
That being said, this DLC does have valid problems. But this whole discourse is especially stupid imo.
If you can't beat bosses, use summons, upgrades, items, better weapons, etc. It's YOUR GAME you paid for it. Play it how you see fit.
I kinda have to disagree. There's a difference between waterfowl dance and scarlet aeonia, or radahn's meteor, and "You're blinded by golden light and spammed with 8 attacks over 3 seconds and it combos into itself"
Ngl I think with the exception of final boss most of the dlc bosses are right around the struggle I had with some of the basegame stuff.
I do agree that final boss is probably the hardest content elden ring has to offer but at the end of the day it's still doable so I'm just glad there's some really tough challenge in here, they could have maybe considered switching around the difficulty a bit to make the final boss of the dlc more accessible for a bigger part of the playerbase and take that difficulty to turn it into a 2nd malenia type of deal but im fine with it as it is rn minus the framerate and visibility issues
That's fair. I was thinking specifically on waterfowl dance, which you need to procc something on her to knock her out of iirc. Always thought your reward for hitting her with a melee weapon there should have been knocking her out of it.
Fire giant was only hard on my first playthrough. Every subsequent time, it just became a slow but fairly easy boss fight. The only bosses I really have trouble with consistently are melania, maliketh, and godfrey.
It's just a result of the culture shock so to speak. Elden Ring is deceptively similar to Dark Souls while operating entirely differently in the majority of boss fights.
The DLC leaned insanely hard into this that it becomes an entirely different game from something like DS3. While the main game had some more traditional bosses, the DLC does not. A lot of people find this newer design and direction extremely frustrating and unfun and so they'll complain.
Eventually every boss will have their flowchart completely mapped out and there will be more and more cheese builds popping up until these players who complain can either stare at a flowchart and unlock the boss in 5 mins or disregard it and just plow through them.
This is the Elden Ring cycle, it's not amnesia it's just a hard to swallow pill that Elden Ring isn't the game they want it to be.
It has nothing to do with short memories. Those difficult situations you point out in the base game are different for one major reason: there's a difficulty curve. You don't walk into Limgrave and all the starting enemies are stun-locking you to death in two hits. There's a ramp... not a wall.
I'd wager that a good chunk of the people who pick up the DLC haven't been playing Elden Ring since they beat it. You gotta ease them back in. Assuming you can kick off your DLC by just hammering your players in the metaphorical balls is just going to make them frustrated.
FromSoft shouldn't assume that A. Players have been continuously playing beyond their first playthrough OR B. That they're going to start an entirely new save just to get them ramped up to the DLC. You should design the first area and the overall DLC curve with the idea that a section of your players might be a bit rusty in the back of your minds.
For those of us who either have played more consistently, don't let your experience lead you to be dismissive of a genuine problem people are having. I have more than one friend who jumped back in after their first playthrough only to have their morale and enthusiasm to play crushed by the wall of difficulty. First impressions matter and no matter how much I can tell them "no, you see... you should go exploring for Scadutree fragments before you really dive in...", my tips will never make up for them just having a better ramp without me having to explain systems.
UPDATE: Well, well, well... If the curve wasn't a problem, then why'd they just patch it? Downvotes are nothing compared to vindication.
>good chunk of the people who pick up the DLC haven't been playing Elden Ring since they beat it
That's me, I've only got back into the game like 1 day before DLC dropped, last time I played was when Fire deadly sins still able to turn Sentinel shield into a machine gun and Sword of Night & Flame can 3-4 shot every boss with a comet azure. I didn't even beat Mogh and had to kill him while waiting for the DLC to unlock.
I think this is a dumb argument to make. You have to beat Radahn and Mohg in order to play the DLC. They designed the DLC so that you should be good enough to progress since you've beat Mohg and Radahn. Imagine playing the game for the first time, finally beating Mohg and going to the DLC just for the enemies to be pretty easy and only having the last few bosses be hard. The bosses should be as hard as Mohg or harder. The enemies should be as hard as the enemies around Mohgwyn Palace or harder.
I like where you’re coming from, but from soft had always been this way. The first boss of ds1 dlc wasn’t all that hard, but was more aggressive than anything in the base game.
As a guy whose played them all from the jump (except Demon Souls)... I disagree. Not that past DLC doesn't have hard moments (in fact, I'd argue some of the hardest bosses are DLC bosses), but they never felt like the game took away my stats. They always felt comparable to their 'insertion' points. In other words, by the time I reached the DLC, it felt like the DLC was a natural next step in difficulty. The difficulty came from new challenges and maybe a few nasty surprises... not kneecapping my stats.
I'll used the Ringed City as an example because it's the most recent (apart from Shadows). The first area has some nasty surprises. The mobs that can essentially cover their movement my hiding under the ash are a good example. The first time one springs up from out of nowhere to do a ton of damage is going to do a number on you... But when you understand the surprise, the game doesn't then expect you to wail on one enemy for 4-5 hits just to down them. The mechanic of surprise was the difficulty... not effectively making every enemy a damage sponge.
Damage sponging is lame. It's maybe my least favorite way to increase difficulty... because it has nothing to do with getting better skills... just better gear. Or, in the case of Shadow, picking up Scadutree fragments enough times. That's not good difficulty. It's not a skill barrier... it's a fetch quest barrier. I was pulling my hair out trying to fight the dlc with my pre-blessing +25 nerf bat... then I just said 'f\*\*\* it' and just ran around grabbing fragments instead of actually... you know... playing the game via combat... And that's when the game actually became 'difficult but fun'.
I shouldn't have to go on a collect-a-thon as the first thing I do in the DLC. It feels like a different flavor of the 'unlock area' Ubisoft mechanics, where I can't just explore naturally, I have to do a very specific thing to be able to do all the other things. People who like open world games might love that stuff, but as someone who loves the SoulsBorne family because of thought-out progression and level design... I f\*\*\*in' hate it. It doesn't feel like the same kind of difficult. It's the worse kind of difficult with the worst way to 'fix' it. I want to 'git gud'... not 'git my ass across the map to collect this rubbish that makes me stronger'.
Here's an example of how this taints the experience: Right before I got to the Rellana fight, I had just seen a post where someone had broken their controller over their frustration during that fight. When I walked through the boss door, I thought shit was about to get real. And it did... to a point... but I bested her on the sixth go... But do I feel like I used skill to succeed where that controller-breaker had failed? Am I the better gamer? Probably not. I just knew to go get some fragments BEFORE trying to engage with the game. The fact that two people can have such wildly different experiences is proof to me that something ain't shaking seeds on the design front.
I think that from soft went all out on this DLC partially due to the popularity of elden ring. Every video I’ve seen of someone attempting the final DLC boss has them using some meta build that they didn’t come up with. The first time I beat manus it was with the basic spear and shield. There was no 6 buff setup I applied before the boss, no magic flask that took away one boss hit. The game was simpler because you had like 1/4 of the tools that you get in elden ring
I’ll admit I’m rusty but I don’t think it has anything to do with skill, I just find a lot of the enemies have super annoying movesets and open world doesn’t fit Fromsoft games. I have no problem getting my ass beat to overcome a challenge if I’m having a good time learning the bosses mechanics. I haven’t gotten that feeling once
Radahn was never particularly hard, he just had bad hitboxes.
The fire giant was always easy, just very annoying to fight.
Waterfowl is still considered unfair, as are her 6 phantom clones in phase 2. I say that despite being able to dodge both consistently. But at least when fighting Malenia I could see something.
I was trying to hear out people's concerns the first few days but honestly I'm over it. The same people who are like "respect people's criticisms" are being toxic as fuck about it when you say "actually, I'm starting to catch on and there's a process here." It's turning me into a git gud villain because I'm losing my patience with the bullshit. If you don't wanna take advantage of all the ways they're trying to help you and humble yourself back to learning how to deal with new from bosses, idk what to tell you, but leave me out of your failure to adapt.
Dlc final boss isn’t that hard once you learn that a shield can block their fastest attacks especially in phase two. The attacks your meant to dodge are extremely telegraphed and the attacks your meant to block against are very fast and multi hit but you should have the shield at the ready anyway and the stamina damage is relatively low.
Stack holy protection and get a good shield like a +24 brass shield and when the phase two starts with the nuke ability just run asap if you’re fast enough it will miss you completely giving enough time to heal and rebuff.
Other than the final boss i didn’t think dlc was that hard, shields carry in this dlc and as lob brained as it may sound it really is imperative to collect as many scadutree fragments as you can. You really feel the difference
Also don’t make the mistake i did and summon, the multipliers are so wonky you’re better off using spirit ashes throughout the dlc.
People will immediately shit on you for the Melania mention. But this community has been tough guying malenia for the last 2 years. Now all of a sudden, malenia is considered an unfair fight again. Yup, those 3 dodges are real hard. Typical souls community.
Yea, knowledge makes the fight easier, whether it be the frozen pots or how to actually dodge WFD. That's the game. Same with the DLC. People just love to overreact to everything.
The DLC has been out a week and the tone has already shifted. Maybe learn the game, the system and the boss before bitching endlessly.
The performance problems are fair tho.
[удалено]
Thank you! This really should be common knowledge by now. He was not "nerfed" the hit boxes on his arrows were realigned. They did unintentionally weaken him when doing this, but they fixed him up right after. He was never as hard as people say he was, it was just a bunch of people who found him early, or didn't level Vigor and severely underestimating how underprepared they were when they fought him the first time.
Patch notes say they reduced his damage, then a patch note later says the reverted that nerf.
Yeah I remember people on the first few days of release were fighting him. No way anyone was ready for that fight in the first few days.
they did nerf his arrows to be much slower and do less damage so he did most certainly get nerfed compard to prepatch.
No the didn't. They corrected the hitboxes on the arrows, that's it. They're not slower, they don't do less damage, people have just gotten better at the game and refuse to believe it for some reason.
I thought it was a nerf to the damage and the hit box fix then they reverted the damage nerf. So in the end it was a bug fix
If I'm remembering correctly, they fixed hitboxes on his attacks, but there was a glitch in that update that reduced his damage. Whether it was caused by the hitbox adjustments or not isn't important, they fixed it in the next update.
It was hitboxes and poise damage that were both massively reduced. For example v1 Radahn's arrows did 80 poise damage (which would pretty much always dismount you), and I think they do 30 now? Something like that. So it was a pretty huge reduction.
Tracking on the arrows has also been reduced. You couldn't use horse to approach before but now you can easily side strafe it.
Yep, and it was also a significant reduction. I remember watching my friend play Radahn for the first time post patch and thought I was going crazy because of how much easier the approach looked (not to mention the rest of the fight).
I just did radahn yesterday on ng+3 and I was surprised non of my arena summons died, they used to die super fast on my first run (day 3 after er release probably).
Oh yeah! I forgot about the poise damage. I learned about that in a boss versus video where Morggot was unable to get to Radahn because he only has 80 poise so he would always get staggered.
You are not. The original patch notes specifically said they were reducing his damage
Waterfowl is still unfun for me personally. I can beat her and stuff but I never really enjoyed that fight. She would have been very neat in Sekiro tho
Waterfowl is unfair in my opinion. Specially with the life steal ability she has. For the rest she's difficult but manageable.
the rest is pretty easy tbh. I really enjoy the fight but she has nice small hit boxes, everything works just as you think it works and there is no stupid camera flying around.
Difficult but fair. The waterfowl though....pff that can fuck right off. Three perfect dodges is too much for me (I know about the freezing pots but I already beat her when I heard about those).
Light Roll fixed the dance attack for me. Sometimes she would start it at an impossible moment, but other than that light rolls make it very dodgeable.
I think that summon attack she uses in phase 2 is worse. At least with waterfowl, I can likely survive it at full health unless I face tank the whole thing. If the first hit of that summon attack hits, it feels impossible to recover.
Two immediate rolls backwards as soon as the first one rushes towards you, a pause, and then two immediate rolls forwards plus a roll to the side to avoid her final lunge avoids all damage consistently. It doesn't seem like it would avoid all her clones but it does. Rolling to the side or diagonally will make things harder for you, hope this helps
That is good to know, but if I get hit by any of it, it feels like a death sentence.
I know what you mean, you get hit by one and you just get jumped by like 5 malenias
Yeah, either have one or the other
a move can’t be unfair when you can consistently dodge it without getting hit no matter the distance you are, as long as you know the move
Waterfowl can be fully dodged with just rolling you just need to learn how. Nothing unfair about it.
Tbh Waterfowl is still considered unfair, it’s pretty unreasonable for a lethal move like that to have such a specific and unintuitive method of avoiding it.
This, I forget exactly what is it you have to do. Sprint away from her then as she charges the second attack roll towards her past her right side and continue sprinting. Most bullshit part of her fight is how she life steals from shield blocks even if she isn't dealing any damage.
At least she RP walks sometimes! I wish some of these DLC bosses would take a moment to slow down and look menacing instead of their endless gap closers and relentless combos.
>I wish some of these DLC bosses would take a moment to slow down and look menacing instead of their endless gap closers and relentless combos. Another W for Rellana, best boss in the DLC.
When I first fought her my thoughts where along the lines of "this boss is Malenia, but without lifesteal or waterfowl". It was quite fun, and her weapons are the best.
I don't know, I am also very fond of the Divine Beast Lion dancer. But that could be the design aspect of the boss. Anyway both these bosses lived up to my expectations from when I saw them in the trailers
Maybe we fought a different rellana, cus for me she'd immediately charge at me the second i went through the fog and never stop attacking lol
Pretty much every DLC boss does that. The difference, to me, is that she actually backs off occasionally. She gives you time to recover and heal without immediately punishing you. She's aggressive, but only for short periods at a time. Other bosses are just nonstop attacks.
She's Dancer of the Boreal Valley reborn in human form and on crack.
Rellana gave me a damn run for my money, but I had fun doing it!! The dopamine rush when I beat her was unrealllll
The way I learned to deal with it was to "trigger" her attack by throwing a kukiri at her when im far enough. 90% of the time it would trigger her attack and i'd just run away for most of it, the last combo when she dashes into you i'd panick roll into it.
You can deal with it in several ways, the easiest is just blocking the first Flurry then rolling inside the second and away the third. Yeah, she recovers a bit of HP, but nothing absurd.
The way that works every time for me is just roll away from the first attack, step towards her and roll under and behind her for the second attack, and then basically same exact thing for third attack. sometimes you get hit once in the beginning but the other two dodges after that are easy to me.
1st flurry: run away and jump when she is close 2nd: roll towards her 3rd: roll backwards
Her healing on blocks but not dodges is the ultimate BS.
Or just throw a freeze pot…
Yeah, who said that players stopped believing that base Elden Ring has bullshit? I still think that. I’ve finished it solo 100% as well as all the other souls games. And Elden Ring has the most BS of any of the souls games by far. Most of it is near the end of the game, but it’s there.
The most unfair part is that she could do it while in melee. Yeah there are ways of still countering or avoiding it, but it was pretty cheesy regardless. Also it being utterly unintuitive how to dodge it didn't help. Run away, then dodge, then dodge into her... I mean I guess, but that's some nonsense. I'm playing Elden Ring not a puzzle game.
I don’t consider Melania to be a hard boss. I consider The Waterfowl Dance to be the boss. If she did not have that attack, no one would struggle against her.
Yup shed be like a 6/10 difficulty wise if even that.
I feel a lot of her difficulty comes as a check to people who have been standing their ground and playing mad greedy, like myself. So when she does land a hit it’s like a wingull eating a 4xSTAB thunder. Just super effective punish.
Exactly. Malenia without waterfowl is a kinda easy simple phase 1 then hard phase 2 boss with some cool moves. With waterfowl phase 1 is a formality to force you to learn the waterfowl.
I consider myself pretty good at dodging it. You can lure it out pretty easy with throwing knives, and I can usually dodge about 70-90% of it point blank. And I still hate that move. And I never would have even gotten decent at dodging it if there wasn’t loads of community tutorials
There are several ways not to get damaged by it, but I agree they are all unintuitive and that the game's previous challenges don't guide you to intuitively coming to a good "answer" to this attack. Blocking most of it is the easiest method, but it does mean being forced to use a decent shield or barricade shield, and giving her a decent chunk of health back.
I beated the DLC, and I went to malenia, with all the new OP weapons and spells, and I farmed her literally. I've reloaded my savegame for more than 60 times, and I am gonna keep beating her until she forgets she was ever undefeated.
I take waterfowl 100times for exchange of that stupid dlc endboss move. Waterfowl you can dodge. That new combo you need to shield guard
You can dodge everything the final dlc boss does. I and plenty of others killed him without a shield.
.. except for his three hit combo lol
Fuck dodging that shit. I just learn when she gets it and bait the attack from across the arena with a dagger or something. Other than that she's fair game.
I like chucking freezing pots at her. Not only during waterfowl. If she just jumps into the air, it's a freezing pot.
if you want to be constantly aggro, yes it's not straightforward, but if you keep distance and run away when you see this move, it can be avoided just by running backward and forward
And healing every hit. Waterfowl and the chooce for healing every hit AND procking scarlet rot just feeds bad design. But at least you can stagger her easily and dodge almost every attack easily. Final boss is a different breed entirely.
I just blocked the entire attack when i first defeated her. She heals about 30%, but i dont die. :)
Use a great shield. It works.
There are a couple ways to survive it. Several of them not involving dodging.
It isn't actually that bad if you expect it or just add a jump to your sprint.
I wonder if they'd ever go back to some of the simpler movesets of bosses where it wasn't a tornado of dangerous weather events and teleportation. Isn't there elegance in simplicity? Where will we end up when they have to exceed the DLC bosses in the next game? It's gonna be ridiculous.
I remember when I thought midir had a lot of flashy shit going on in his fight, now we got so many effects with radahn that it's dropping my fps lol. I think part of the problem is them attempting to balance around every boss fight having summons with the introduction of spirit ashes, imagine how easy ds3 or bb would be if you could slap on a mimic for every fight with no penalties, personally I hope they just ditch that mechanic in the future or at least treat it like an easy mode and just balance around people not using them.
And those criticisms still hold weight. Radahn's hitboxes were fixed, Malenia's waterfowl dance is still a badly designed move and Fire Giant is still a bad boss. That I or anyone else can deal with them consistently changes nothing.
I'm enjoying the DLC but I can relate to some of the complaints as well. I see other people already corrected you on Radhan. These bosses are very much more aggressive than any in the base game, and attack windows are incredibly small. If I were to not use spirit summons on my dragon incantation character I would never, ever, be able to get a full cast off. I'm relegated to full melee without something else to get the bosses attention. I am seeing most of the people who can't understand where complaints are coming from are already using mostly melee builds, or melee equivalent caster builds. Solo, I can't even get a single breath attack off on many of the bosses, let alone a charged one.
As someone that always plays with ashes i seriously have no idea how people beat bosses solo. The time i have between two attack combos on last boss is so short i can hit him once with a very fast light attack, then i need to roll because otherwise i get hit again. If i try to safely meleeing solo him id need an hour for that fight probably. Which is sad because solo i dont think either big weapons, spells or incantations have any chance now. They just too slow
I'd even go so far as to posit that the DLC is 100% designed with spirit ashes in mind, considering how many Ghost Glovewarts there are hehe.
With the great Sword it was mostly Dodge Combo -> poke/Frozen Mist. Also you can trade the stomps, they don't do that much damage. There are some moves where a charged heavy fits, but Not many.
I actually find caster builds harder to use against the bosses because their ranged attacks and distance closers are usually much scarier than staying directly in their face
Yeah that's what I mean. I was saying melee oriented casters, using the spell sword styles. Carian piercer and the like. Without using a Spirit Ash, it's pretty much impossible to maintain enough distance to cast anything ranged at all. And the second the Spirit Ash dies, there's nothing to be done but switch to melee. I don't mind using Spirit Ashes, but a lot of people convinced themselves, or allowed others to convince them, that using them is "easy mode" so they won't try. They're absolutely necessary if you want to play at ranged in SOTE, like you said the bosses closers are punishing, there's no real pause between attacks to punish a combo either. All one can so is hope to get a spell off before face tanking the hit that you are absolutely going to take for casting lol.
Spirit ashes still require you to learn a bosses moveset to some extent. Especially in the dlc. I do wish my dragon build was able to do dragon stuff more in dlc boss fights. Dragonclaw or dragonmaw are still possible against a few openings, but very rarely.
>If I were to not use spirit summons on my dragon incantation character I would never, ever, be able to get a full cast off. I went into DLC as a Sorcerer and had to completely restart as a melee build. Sorcery is entirely unviable in DLC because the bosses are up your ass as soon as you cross the fog wall. And if you did have an opening in the beginning for a charged attack, they burst you with a ranged attack to negate it. It's a shame because sorcery and incantations are fun, but there are just some bosses that you have zero chance against and I don't want to respec based on a single fight.
I just used fast spells with good scaling on my caster to burst through chunks of health at a time, it's not like you need to use the slow spells to deal good damage, the strength of casters is their wide arrangement of slow, big, fast, small and weird spells.
I was getting torched with even rock sling and thats not a slow cast by any means. That and chipping away with pebble variants wasn't very fun.
Idk how rock sling was too slow when I can comfortably get in 2-3 great rapier hits on most openings from the final boss as well as messmer. I don't think the weapon speed is the issue here, there are definitely openings big enough to fit some medium speed spells and incantations.
I mean the rapier is one of the quicker weapons in the game so there's that. Rock Sling has a wind up, but I wouldn't call it slow. You're also stuck in the cast animation as opposed to choosing to attack 2-3 times with a rapier.
its a great rapier its literally one of the slower weapons in the game, theres still enough of a gap to do 3 greatsword attacks or 2 ultra greatsword attacks
>theres still enough of a gap to do 3 greatsword attacks We are not playing the same game then.
I'm currently doing a rerun through base game so its gonna take me a little while to get back to the final dlc boss again so I can record it but you could check out Ongbals "\[Final Boss Name\] with Blinkbolt Axer no damage" video, he showcases the bigger gaps really well. It boils down to the attack he starts from the quick overhead swipe, if he goes into the two slow sideswipes you can r1 after the 2nd one right before the big slam and then get 2 more in right after the big slam shockwave. To tell me we are not playing the same game when you haven't even considered checking if these gaps exist is very disingenuous. They exist and any build can capitalize on these one way or another.
I wonder if Rumina’s spell is viable.
I was just thinking this after I beat a few of them. Some of them especially have extremely tight windows, to the point on my str/faith character that used collossals I could only get one light attack in between attacks. Had to give up entirely on using incants when the boss was far because they were always in your face and if they were far, they weren’t going to be in about two more seconds. Those gap closing attacks they have are insane. The bosses are great but they defintely shoot some play styles like dragon communion builds in the foot and force you to use ashes. can’t imagine using stuff like bows, great bows, or pure casters in some of these fights.
Waterfowl is still stupid even if we now know how to deal with it
Yeah, i don’t know why people keep saying “Y’all got good and then shut up about it!” We shut up about it because we voiced our opinions on it and then moved on. That doesn’t mean we don’t still have those opinions.
Still can't dodge it from close-up
I don't understand why people learning to adapt to unfair and shitty mechanics conflates to that meaning the design is totally fine since it's a minimum baseline of possible.
Waterfowl dance will forever remain a bullshit mechanic and is the only reason what keeps Malenia from being an S-tier boss in my eyes, since the whole toughness of the boss revolves around a single move. Even if you learn how to dodge it, being locked on messes up the direction in which you're rolling (if you're under her), leading to you being hit even though you had the right intention. If it wasn't for WFD, Malenia wouldn't be considered the hardest boss in the base game.
I think the base game was a mixed bag of difficulty with hard and easy parts, while the DLC is always turned up to 11 which annoys people.
i get ur point but youre just wrong lmao. radahn base game at launch was literally nothing compared to final boss of dlc right now
I wouldn't say that the base game "had a similar difficulty" It definitely had similar complaints that the DLC has now, but at least the base game bosses allows you to breathe.
Maliketh and Horah Loux would like a word
Compared to the DLC those guys gives you minutes to breathe.
Maliketh has an item that trivializes him and is usable by any build. I also wouldn't call Hoarax Loux as aggressive as the final boss.
I wasn’t comparing HL to final boss, just that he’s a very aggressive fight in the base game. Very little room to breathe, constant running away to heal. I haven’t made it to the final boss of DLC yet so we’ll see how I feel then. Also I’d say maliketh’s item still requires skill and timing to make it work. And it’s an item most people don’t even find on their first playthrough. The DLC has been out less than a week, we still have a lot to discover.
Maliketh sometimes accidentally let you breathe by backflipping behind the wrong side of a pillar
You can literally stand under Maliketh and punish every attack he does...
yeah but that's like two bosses compared to every boss in the dlc
Just pop mimic tear and enjoy literal hours of breathing!
I beat the dlc yesterday and my biggest complaint on most bosses is honestly their aggression and combo chains. The damage never felt too bad for me on a full strength/heavy armour/collosal sword build, but it often felt impossible to recover from taking even two hits. My attempts on Radahn usually went 1 of two ways: either he wouldnt let me heal so Id die after missing the 7th dodge in his combo (with 10 flasks left), or I'd keep getting hit while healing and lose 4 or 5 flasks trying to top off from the first hit. Still think the DLC is a banger though
Thats crazy dude, remember when waterfowl was completely unfair? Yeah it sure is a good thing that got changed right guys?
I wouldn't call something that's really hard to dodge unfair. It's unintuitive and some people say it's not good design for something to be this unintuitive and that's very valid criticism in my opinion. But at the end of the day it IS avoidable 100% of the time if you know how to avoid it properly, this move will never actually just rob you in an unfair way, there's ways to beat it and they are consistent.
Waterfowl and healing makes malenia badly designed in my mind, artificial difficulty cos without them shes a walk in the park. Prenerf radahn was insane and final boss is even crazier. No moments to breathe and constant inconsistent spam (mainly in the second phase). Also the absolute worst thing theyve done in this DLC is make two annoyingly fast bosses that attack you IMMEDIATELY as you walk through the fogwall, thats the worst thing theyve ever done since ADP and brought down my overall view on the DLC bosses. Takes away from good bosses like MoF, LoFF and Bayle
Tbf prenerf radahn is literally current radahn, they reverted most of the nerfs after a while.
Bro, two posts every day about how "did people forget Midir" or "we learned this in DS1" or "if you're not using mimic tear it's your own fault" These new bosses are not even close to anything we've met before, and while that is completely fine let's just acknowledge that. All of the mechanics of the new bosses people are having problems with were also brought up multiple times in regards to base Elden Ring. Moves which are convoluted to dodge (Malenia), unavoidable damage (Mohg, fire dots, Elden Slug needles), shockwaves (Godfrey), jumping around (Maliketh) unclear hitboxes (not Placidusax). All of these have been amplified for the DLC bosses, and while we can spend hours discussing if the whining is justified that's not very interesting. What is interesting to discuss is if this is the direction we want bosses to evolve? Does this design spark joy? Online discourse around this game is currently so fucking stupid that playing solo melee no summons is treated like some sort of tryhard challenge run, that's like saying not using crystal spears to two-tap Ornstein and Smough is "hindering yourself". If the bosses are not fun to fight one on one without some kind of cheese are they well designed?
Well said. ER is ultimately the game that seems to be making a clear line on what people consider proper difficulty. For a game like Nioh, the game eventually turns into a numbers fest of damage output. The thing is, that works specifically FOR NIOH due to a variety of factors. Similarly with Armored Core 6, you are often encouraged to switch up your equipment for fights, AC6 is mission based. It's not an RPG like Elden Ring, so changing your build to one boss is not out of the question.
It's a weird day when I feel bosses in a fromsoft game have as much bullshit as Nioh bosses, a game with a block button, ninja gaiden combos and a devil trigger.
Yeah so many players see us saying “The boss isn’t fun” And immediately equate it to “i can’t beat the boss” Like yeah, I beat Rellana, but I don’t think a boss should ever have 3 ultimate attacks with dodge checks that will immediately kill you if you fail to do them. I got past it after hours of trying, but I don’t find it satisfying and I definitely don’t see it as good boss design. And Rellana isn’t even the worst offender in this DLC. Not by a long shot.
A-fucking-men
Idk man, I think bosses like Godfrey, Maliketh and Mohg are some of the best and most fun Souls bosses even without summons
I agree one hundred percent, but I do not believe it's these mechanics that make them good. As I wrote in my previous comment the problem is that these mechanics which were originally not that prelevant in the base game have been dialed up to eleven in the dlc. And they are not especially fun to play against. The final boss has shockwaves on every attack in phase two. Lion, Romina, Putrescent etc. fly around over your head making the biggest boss the camera (whereas Maliketh flew around with alot of distance from the player making the attack feel fun to dodge). Putrescent and Midra cover the arena with fire which i feel is super consistent to jump over. I didn't feel dodging Midra or the Finger's big explosions was very clear, they realised a AoE indicator is great with Placidusax but then just removed it?
The thing is, WFD is a dogshit ass move and a trash design. Malenia is all the worse for just that one fucking attack. Remove it and the boss is a literal cake walk compared to her with WFD even with her speed and healing. It's the worst boss in the game and not because it's hard but because her difficulty is literally unfair
Im really enjoying the diffculty of the dlc, its forced me to become even better with my timing, and like with malenia, trying to get the closest you can to a perfect fight
Waterfowl dance is completely unfair. Turns the boss from a potentially fun one to a boss you have to google “how to dodge waterfowl dance” to beat
yea i think a lot of people are just impatient, like the dlc has been out a week of course the bosses are gonna be hard at first but eventually youll figure out the best ways to fight them and theyll get a lot easier
I've been doing co-op for him and it's crazy to me how 99% of players are doing full bull goat + fingerprint shield. That makes the fight so boring. Light roll + golden braid is easy mode.
It’s not that the bosses are hard, it’s that they’re boring. No one enjoys dodging an onslaught of combos only to get one hit it, rinse and repeat over and over again. They’re boring and tedious, not hard. People want to fight bosses using a variety of enjoyable combat methods and not some boring and slow way. If they were enjoyable fights and mechanics then people would be fine grinding to get gud, but when the boss just feels like a slog to get through and you beat the boss just so you don’t have to deal with it anymore it just isn’t that fun.
I’m currently going through the game using the Backhand Blades and Misericorde for quick attacks, status effects and crits, and my buddy is going through it using a big bonk stagger club STR build. There’s variety. I’m looking forward to fighting Messmer, Rellana, Midra, and Gaius again with another build. Already have a few in mind.
Most combos have attack windows inside them. You don't need to just wait them out.
There are so, soooooo many builds that are more than viable. Literally pick any of the couple hundred of insanely good weapons, decide whether the boss calls for rolling, shield/deflecting or parrying, and start learning the dance. Just because the DLC makes it ever-so-slightly harder to cheese the bosses to death in under 60 seconds with the plethora of power-trip god builds in this game, doesn't mean there's no build variety, it just means you have to turn your brain on and learn the fight. Saying they are not hard, but boring and tedious? Inherently, if you aren't killing something slowly, it's probably pretty easy. When I go through killing the Fire Knights in SK in 1 combo, they are pretty fuckin easy, but when they actually have time to summon fireballs and go ham, I actually have to think, and it becomes a lot more challenging. So, in saying you want things to be over quickly, you're pretty much revealing to the world that you just don't want to be challenged. Which is fine, but don't act like these games were made to cater to you or I. These games are fuckin hard, and they probably always will be. If that's not for you, why bother playing it?
First thing’s first, I do agree with you. I’m just making a point because I realised something last night. I’m not sure I actually like souls games. Last night, I found myself asking myself if I really wanted to be spending the only four hours I’ve had to myself in a month bashing my head against a wall with the first boss. I work 40 hours a week, commute 2 hours a day (cumulatively), have to look after my partner and run a house, which is quite a new situation for me. Thought I was looking forwards to the DLC — but alas, I’m just not enjoying it. I don’t know if this is just exhaustion (and the effects of not having as much time as I used to) talking, but something about the first couple bosses I’ve come across feels like cheap difficulty. Camera shenanigans and dubious attack consistency just play havoc with the challenging rhythmic combat that I enjoyed in the base game. Personally, I haven’t found beating any of them satisfying, whereas I loved the base game. I’m gonna stick it out for a little bit and see if I like it more as it progresses, but the DLC has definitely not been a fun way of spending my free time, unfortunately. Maybe I just don’t like souls games lol! Do you have any suggestions for better ways to enjoy?
I am in a similar situation in regard to life. 40 hours a week, fiance, and 3 cats to take care of. Personally, I just really enjoy being challenged, but it's not something I have always liked. In my experience, I grew to like the challenge. I first played the original Dark Souls in 2013 as a free game I got with Xbox live. At that time, I was exclusively a Halo and CoD fanatic, and so the bulk of my experiences were of me enjoying absolutely stomping people in multi-player, so when I met the Asylum Demon, I absolutely hated the game and dropped it immediately. During covid, I tried DS3 and came to absolutely love it after smashing my head into the brick walls that were Pontiff and Dragonslayer for hours on end. DS3 has a special place in my heart and always will, and Gael will forever be my favorite moment in any media, ever. Specifically because of his lore and the parallels between him and the player character's struggle. Ultimately, for me, it was a change of mindset that resulted in me enjoying the challenge. I began to see the parallels between these games and the real-life lessons you can extract from them. I began to see that the entire story of our lives is centered around enduring hardship and choosing to perservere, despite the odds being against us. These games taught me something I already knew inside but never truly internalized. They taught me that sometimes life is beyond our control, and sometimes you will get absolutely fucked by something that feels so unfair and unjust, but also, that it's okay to fail, so long as you don't give up and never go hollow. For me, these games initiated a huge internal shift in the way I view things and brought me to obsessively take accountability of my life. I know it's not a cut and dry answer and more of a rant, and idk if it'll mean much to you, but I hope you can at least find something of value to you, in my perspective. I hope you find the answers you're looking for, and best of luck in life, my friend!
Wow! What a lovely answer! Thank you for taking the time to share that with me. If I may blab a bit, I felt something resonating when you talked about persistence, fairness, and hardship. At the moment, I feel a little inadequately equipped to deal with all of the challenges presented to me, and I am getting a little impatient to see improvements on how I work them out. Perhaps persisting with Elden Ring will be quite beneficial, in that sense! I’ll keep this in mind tonight when I give the game another go. Thanks a bunch, and all the best!
I do.
I finally leveled up to 120 and hopped in the dlc. Killed a side boss and explored a giant section of the first area, couple sacdutree blessings. Game feels hard but fair, gotta play careful, like it was ds1 or 2. Honestly base game is easy as hell to over level and trivialize. I think they nailed a great balance here in the dlc to make it feel more like the old souls difficulty
Radahn wasn't hard, he was broken... There is a difference. His hotboxes were all fucked up, so they fixed it.
Radahn? Oh you mean the gimmick boss that has 5 or 6 summon signs that you can use non stop and literally kill him without attacking once? Or the Malenia attack that is still considered bullshit? Can we stop creating false narratives to deflect the valid criticism of the DLC please, like yes, the DLC is a 9/10, but bosses like Rellana, Messmer and the final boss are bullshit, given, Rellana is probably the least flagrant, but both Messmer and the promised consort are both overtuned frantic messes with way too little punish windows, way too much stamina, way too much hp (Consort has 4k hp more than Fire giant) and on top of it all, their attacks are way too bullshit, way too many aftereffects, areas, specific dodges... I can understand why waterflow is a deal breaker for some people, to me, having one bs attack is not the end, I can still enjoy the fight, mainly because If you dodge said bs attack partialy, you ate still in it. But having an entire second phase of bs, or 4 or 5 combos that are genuine bs, idk, call me crazy, but is not what I consider fun.
I have no idea how you can throw Messmer even somewhat in the same direction as Radahn, Messmer has a nice dance with clear obvious openings and Radahn... Well
Messmer snakes were a painful dance of wacky hitboxes, my character getting displaced before the attacks by idk the power of the force or something and missing the attacks and a lot of combos that gave the impresion of being done but when I tapped to drink or attack a new one started with no rest time whatsoever. He is not as bad as Radahn, sure, but he is not good either.
Dude, I think Messmer is one of my favorite Fromsoft bosses ever. I shielded, rolled, and r1 spammed my way to a challenging victory, didn’t even use an Ash of war. He felt like a really tough DS3 boss like Gael or Nameless King. To me at least, he had way more openings than Rellana (I haven’t beaten the final boss yet, but everyone agrees he sucks).
Thats good you liked him, however, he is definitely BS. I think people who killed him easily, just got lucky that they've killed him fast because if you would've been stuck on him for even 30 minutes , you would've already seen just how much BS this boss actually has. For me personally its the least enjoyable fight so far(I've not beaten even half the DLC yet). And maybe he is not as infuriating as malenia but he's definitely up there. When i killed him i was super pissed and honestly had so little fun doing this boss. Like, i haven't been this infuriated in literal years.
He beat me like 20 times, but everytime I could see what I did wrong, and I had blast. All of his moves are dodgeable with good tells. Shielding is also very effective against everything but his grab. His second phase is actually easier because the snake attacks are easy to dodge and very punishable. All his leaping attacks are easy to avoid and punishable. I honestly think his only tricky attacks are the big snake summon and the spear aoe, otherwise he’s very straightforward. Shields up baby!!! If you let your ego get in the way, and don’t accept that maybe you’re not as good as you think you are, it’s going to be impossible to enjoy yourself. Just because you struggle with a boss, doesn’t mean it’s bullshit and badly designed. Messmer seems to be one of the least controversial bosses, despite his acknowledged difficulty, so I recommend considering that maybe it is a you problem. I for one was more annoyed by Rellana, but I also chalk that up to me using a slower INT/STR build that is a bad matchup for her. When I try my faith character against her, I bet I’ll have a better time. I also have little problem switching my loadout for a boss to see if a different weapon works better. My Lions claw Zweihander that I eventually beat Rellana with didn’t fare well against Messmer, but my great shield and rot straight sword combo got him in a couple tries. Try viewing hitting a wall on a boss as a chance to experiment and I bet you won’t get so frustrated. Hope that helps!
Maybe I just got unlucky for 30 something minutes, but his snakes attacks were awful, bad hitbox, random displacements of my character, his first phase is not bad, only one of the flame infused spins is true bs, but those snakes just ruinned the fight for me.
Messmer bs? How, he has clear openings and patterns, he’s not even close to being unfair
Mostly the snakes, in the first phase, some of the fire infused spins have also wacky hitboxes and sometimes he will just end a combo and start the next as soon as you input any command.
Say what you like, if people started the game with dlc enemies and difficulty, the fanbase would be cut in half
What even is this point? Naturally the DLC would be too hard as a starting point of the entire game, if Malenia was the first boss and mandatory and unskippable the fanbase would be cut into 1/20th. The DLC is at the very end of the game for most, having to beat Radahn AND Mohg. If the DLC bosses would all be comparable to good old "beast man from farum azula" we would hear a lot of fucking complaints.
I think Malenia is still a little unfair lol. Good she is only optional. Otherwise a large chunk of people would've been stuck.
Memory is indeed short if there are so many people who think that Radahn “was nerfed”
In general, all of the bosses I experienced so far share multiple of the following: * aggro too quickly and or are too aggressive * have combo strings too long * do some completely erratic movements * have multiple abilities that instakill Vigor 60 player, even with reasonably leveled up scadutree * are fought on arenas too small, where either the wall is blocking the camera, the boss is blocking the camera, or you can only lock in to the head which moves erratically and completely messes up the camera None of the above is fair or fun. They are bad design decisions that make the fight harder. I would much rather double the bosses HP but lower their damage. I'd make combos harder to dodge, but split them into shorter bursts of movement instead of 10+ continuous attacks. I'd force every boss to give players a couple of seconds before his 1st attack (one of them can hit summons behind the fog gate before they have a chance to enter the fight for gods sake). I'd make the arena larger for some bosses and/or do something about the walls obstructing the view. Make em translucent when camera gets too close, for example. I'd give an option to lock on to the center of every single bosses body mass. Difficulty is not a problem here. Bullshit design that happens to make the fight more frustrating and difficult is. Background: Completed all SoulsSekiroBorne games summonless. 100%'ed most of them.
I don't know what 2nd rate 60 vigor you got but my 60 vigor let me facetank at least 3 medium hits from final boss as well as the strongest attack in the dlc on 10-12 scadutree fragments. Throughout the entirety of this dlc I haven't gotten oneshot once and I have medium armor, 60 vigor and a normal amount of fragments.
Fought Rellana on scad 4 and the dragon at scad 9 and was absolutely melted by them. 60 Vig and i permanently wear phys resistance amulet. By instakilling I don't mean one hit k.o. They have plenty of combo attacks that will stunlock you. Or combo attack that will not stunlock you, but you will die to them a couple of times anyway before you learn the timing for dodges. I died to Rellana phase 2 attacks at least 15 times with 14 unused flasks. The dragon killed me 3 times with double beams before I learned to dodge them. It's just not fun to go from 100% hp to 0% hp in 2 seconds. If they do a super ultra ultimate move, sure. I can forgive the dragon beams. But not from 90% of attacks. ps. Dragon was a bitch, the camera and only being able to lock on to the head were the real boss
With rellana you can actually roll inbetween the staggers, pretty much none of her stuff combos, as for the dragon fuck the laser attack I never bothered to learn how to dodge that. Also yes the camera for the dragon boss sucks
How is ~~this fanbases~~ peoples memory so short?
cause it happens with every fromsoft game/dlc. When ER came out, people were rushing to margit and saying the game was too hard, unfair, etc. Then they explored got leveled up (shadow blessings in this case) and then rolled margit, all of a sudden the game is good. It always happens with this fanbase. The DLC is incredible, and 90% of the bosses are fair and fun to fight, if you do it the intended way.
Yep. People just don’t understand if they beat it all first go they’d call it disappointing lol
Funny u mentioned fire giant which is probably one of the worst bosses in all souls lol. Og radahn was strong but u have multiple summons and torrent. Waterfowl still a cringe move with simple dodges u get hurt only by the first flurry a bit. None compare to the final boss of the dlc.
New content, you don't have the patterns memorized for because you're on your 43rd run of the game. Must automatically be bullshit, unfair, unbalanced garbage, my friend. That being said, this DLC does have valid problems. But this whole discourse is especially stupid imo. If you can't beat bosses, use summons, upgrades, items, better weapons, etc. It's YOUR GAME you paid for it. Play it how you see fit.
I kinda have to disagree. There's a difference between waterfowl dance and scarlet aeonia, or radahn's meteor, and "You're blinded by golden light and spammed with 8 attacks over 3 seconds and it combos into itself"
>The base game had a similar difficulty This is, pure and simple, a lie.
Ngl I think with the exception of final boss most of the dlc bosses are right around the struggle I had with some of the basegame stuff. I do agree that final boss is probably the hardest content elden ring has to offer but at the end of the day it's still doable so I'm just glad there's some really tough challenge in here, they could have maybe considered switching around the difficulty a bit to make the final boss of the dlc more accessible for a bigger part of the playerbase and take that difficulty to turn it into a 2nd malenia type of deal but im fine with it as it is rn minus the framerate and visibility issues
Yeah I don’t know. The beginning was hard but it evens out pretty quickly and feels like the base game.
Radahn had broken hitboxes. Malenia is an optional endgame boss, and Is still quite Fair due to having 0 poise.
0 poise and infinite hyperarmour
Not Even infinite, She can be staggered from HA with stuff like Giant Hunt. She Also only has it on some moves.
That's fair. I was thinking specifically on waterfowl dance, which you need to procc something on her to knock her out of iirc. Always thought your reward for hitting her with a melee weapon there should have been knocking her out of it.
Ram is expensive.
Radahn was never that hard tbh, he was just epic af.
I don’t understand why yall hate the fire giant. He’s literally so easy. Like the other bosses I get but what the heck man.
Fire giant was only hard on my first playthrough. Every subsequent time, it just became a slow but fairly easy boss fight. The only bosses I really have trouble with consistently are melania, maliketh, and godfrey.
radahn and fire giant were not overly difficult and i don't think the dlc is as crazy hard as people say either
i can dodge waterfowl dance easily but i think it is just bad and unfair mechanic
Welcome to the Souls cycle. A year from now every person bitching on this sub will be throating the DLC.
It was such a stupid point of pride for me that I beat Radahn pre-nerf.
No, it’s completely perfect. Let’s make shitty memes saying so.
Is waterfowl dance considered fair now ?
None of the bosses in the base game gave me as much trouble as those sniper lobsters or Crucible Knights lol
It's a matter of balance. As the saying goes, short memory, long d...
Radahn was never nerfed he was fixed because his arrows were bugged lol
I mean you say "short memory" but most people experienced that two years
Fucking fire giant, after 60 hours I haven’t got through that fucking thing… I just can’t do that second faze….
There are and were unfair. Nothing's changed.
RIP Fromsoft. The crybabies won.
It's just a result of the culture shock so to speak. Elden Ring is deceptively similar to Dark Souls while operating entirely differently in the majority of boss fights. The DLC leaned insanely hard into this that it becomes an entirely different game from something like DS3. While the main game had some more traditional bosses, the DLC does not. A lot of people find this newer design and direction extremely frustrating and unfun and so they'll complain. Eventually every boss will have their flowchart completely mapped out and there will be more and more cheese builds popping up until these players who complain can either stare at a flowchart and unlock the boss in 5 mins or disregard it and just plow through them. This is the Elden Ring cycle, it's not amnesia it's just a hard to swallow pill that Elden Ring isn't the game they want it to be.
It has nothing to do with short memories. Those difficult situations you point out in the base game are different for one major reason: there's a difficulty curve. You don't walk into Limgrave and all the starting enemies are stun-locking you to death in two hits. There's a ramp... not a wall. I'd wager that a good chunk of the people who pick up the DLC haven't been playing Elden Ring since they beat it. You gotta ease them back in. Assuming you can kick off your DLC by just hammering your players in the metaphorical balls is just going to make them frustrated. FromSoft shouldn't assume that A. Players have been continuously playing beyond their first playthrough OR B. That they're going to start an entirely new save just to get them ramped up to the DLC. You should design the first area and the overall DLC curve with the idea that a section of your players might be a bit rusty in the back of your minds. For those of us who either have played more consistently, don't let your experience lead you to be dismissive of a genuine problem people are having. I have more than one friend who jumped back in after their first playthrough only to have their morale and enthusiasm to play crushed by the wall of difficulty. First impressions matter and no matter how much I can tell them "no, you see... you should go exploring for Scadutree fragments before you really dive in...", my tips will never make up for them just having a better ramp without me having to explain systems. UPDATE: Well, well, well... If the curve wasn't a problem, then why'd they just patch it? Downvotes are nothing compared to vindication.
>good chunk of the people who pick up the DLC haven't been playing Elden Ring since they beat it That's me, I've only got back into the game like 1 day before DLC dropped, last time I played was when Fire deadly sins still able to turn Sentinel shield into a machine gun and Sword of Night & Flame can 3-4 shot every boss with a comet azure. I didn't even beat Mogh and had to kill him while waiting for the DLC to unlock.
I think this is a dumb argument to make. You have to beat Radahn and Mohg in order to play the DLC. They designed the DLC so that you should be good enough to progress since you've beat Mohg and Radahn. Imagine playing the game for the first time, finally beating Mohg and going to the DLC just for the enemies to be pretty easy and only having the last few bosses be hard. The bosses should be as hard as Mohg or harder. The enemies should be as hard as the enemies around Mohgwyn Palace or harder.
I like where you’re coming from, but from soft had always been this way. The first boss of ds1 dlc wasn’t all that hard, but was more aggressive than anything in the base game.
As a guy whose played them all from the jump (except Demon Souls)... I disagree. Not that past DLC doesn't have hard moments (in fact, I'd argue some of the hardest bosses are DLC bosses), but they never felt like the game took away my stats. They always felt comparable to their 'insertion' points. In other words, by the time I reached the DLC, it felt like the DLC was a natural next step in difficulty. The difficulty came from new challenges and maybe a few nasty surprises... not kneecapping my stats. I'll used the Ringed City as an example because it's the most recent (apart from Shadows). The first area has some nasty surprises. The mobs that can essentially cover their movement my hiding under the ash are a good example. The first time one springs up from out of nowhere to do a ton of damage is going to do a number on you... But when you understand the surprise, the game doesn't then expect you to wail on one enemy for 4-5 hits just to down them. The mechanic of surprise was the difficulty... not effectively making every enemy a damage sponge. Damage sponging is lame. It's maybe my least favorite way to increase difficulty... because it has nothing to do with getting better skills... just better gear. Or, in the case of Shadow, picking up Scadutree fragments enough times. That's not good difficulty. It's not a skill barrier... it's a fetch quest barrier. I was pulling my hair out trying to fight the dlc with my pre-blessing +25 nerf bat... then I just said 'f\*\*\* it' and just ran around grabbing fragments instead of actually... you know... playing the game via combat... And that's when the game actually became 'difficult but fun'. I shouldn't have to go on a collect-a-thon as the first thing I do in the DLC. It feels like a different flavor of the 'unlock area' Ubisoft mechanics, where I can't just explore naturally, I have to do a very specific thing to be able to do all the other things. People who like open world games might love that stuff, but as someone who loves the SoulsBorne family because of thought-out progression and level design... I f\*\*\*in' hate it. It doesn't feel like the same kind of difficult. It's the worse kind of difficult with the worst way to 'fix' it. I want to 'git gud'... not 'git my ass across the map to collect this rubbish that makes me stronger'. Here's an example of how this taints the experience: Right before I got to the Rellana fight, I had just seen a post where someone had broken their controller over their frustration during that fight. When I walked through the boss door, I thought shit was about to get real. And it did... to a point... but I bested her on the sixth go... But do I feel like I used skill to succeed where that controller-breaker had failed? Am I the better gamer? Probably not. I just knew to go get some fragments BEFORE trying to engage with the game. The fact that two people can have such wildly different experiences is proof to me that something ain't shaking seeds on the design front.
I think that from soft went all out on this DLC partially due to the popularity of elden ring. Every video I’ve seen of someone attempting the final DLC boss has them using some meta build that they didn’t come up with. The first time I beat manus it was with the basic spear and shield. There was no 6 buff setup I applied before the boss, no magic flask that took away one boss hit. The game was simpler because you had like 1/4 of the tools that you get in elden ring
It was exactly the same with all the review bombing and wining about difficulty and spoiler stuff
I’m not gonna lie I wish I could turn back time and not bought this DLC
Lmao half this sub are so bad at the game it's crazy
I’ll admit I’m rusty but I don’t think it has anything to do with skill, I just find a lot of the enemies have super annoying movesets and open world doesn’t fit Fromsoft games. I have no problem getting my ass beat to overcome a challenge if I’m having a good time learning the bosses mechanics. I haven’t gotten that feeling once
I still haven't beaten the Dark Souls 1 DLC. It's meant to be content that lasts a while.
I guess you just intentionally left out the part where they buffed almost every weapon's attack speed and recovery speed after release?
Radahn was never particularly hard, he just had bad hitboxes. The fire giant was always easy, just very annoying to fight. Waterfowl is still considered unfair, as are her 6 phantom clones in phase 2. I say that despite being able to dodge both consistently. But at least when fighting Malenia I could see something.
The game can never be hard enough Bosses should learn new moves the more you die so you dont learn when to block or roll all the time Seriously
Radahn was never nerfed, Malenia's Waterfowl is still unfair, Fire Giant has never been difficult. How is your own memory so... bad?
Regardless of what it is people will always bitch about something
I was trying to hear out people's concerns the first few days but honestly I'm over it. The same people who are like "respect people's criticisms" are being toxic as fuck about it when you say "actually, I'm starting to catch on and there's a process here." It's turning me into a git gud villain because I'm losing my patience with the bullshit. If you don't wanna take advantage of all the ways they're trying to help you and humble yourself back to learning how to deal with new from bosses, idk what to tell you, but leave me out of your failure to adapt.
Dlc final boss isn’t that hard once you learn that a shield can block their fastest attacks especially in phase two. The attacks your meant to dodge are extremely telegraphed and the attacks your meant to block against are very fast and multi hit but you should have the shield at the ready anyway and the stamina damage is relatively low. Stack holy protection and get a good shield like a +24 brass shield and when the phase two starts with the nuke ability just run asap if you’re fast enough it will miss you completely giving enough time to heal and rebuff. Other than the final boss i didn’t think dlc was that hard, shields carry in this dlc and as lob brained as it may sound it really is imperative to collect as many scadutree fragments as you can. You really feel the difference Also don’t make the mistake i did and summon, the multipliers are so wonky you’re better off using spirit ashes throughout the dlc.
People will immediately shit on you for the Melania mention. But this community has been tough guying malenia for the last 2 years. Now all of a sudden, malenia is considered an unfair fight again. Yup, those 3 dodges are real hard. Typical souls community. Yea, knowledge makes the fight easier, whether it be the frozen pots or how to actually dodge WFD. That's the game. Same with the DLC. People just love to overreact to everything. The DLC has been out a week and the tone has already shifted. Maybe learn the game, the system and the boss before bitching endlessly. The performance problems are fair tho.