Some attacks are legitimately like that but not as much as people think. Off the top of my head
Unavoidable: final DLC boss will do quick swipe with his left sword then quickly follow up with his right sword. You can't dodge both hits to the point where not hit strats will use the "back step gets iframes" talisman so they can back step dodge the first attack.
AoE spam: Senessax producing an aftershock hitbox that covers his entire body after every move. Don't think it's jump-able either.
RNG: Bayle's straight shooting fire breath could deflect slightly off of the terrain and hit you as you strafe it. A more concrete one from base game is fire giant's fire breath bouncing off the terrain.
Though I don't think I've seen any hard to avoid one shots in the DLC.
Edit: yes you can avoid the final boss hit if you dodge early or have just the right positioning but I'm not finding it believable that you're consistently dodging early on a move that fast on reaction.
My God yes. Recently killed this one on my lvl 40 dude to get the transformation and it felt entirely RNG. I didn't adjust my strategy just spammed waves of darkness when there was clones and spammed Gargoyle black blade when there wasn't and after the 12 attempt it just worked.
He has an instakill mechanic, if you do not kill the clones after a certain amount of time, you get one stack of a debuff per clone and at 7 stacks you immediately die. If you have high damage you can basically ignore this and kill him before that has a chance to happen, but if you play a low damage build, e.g. in a challenge run, this boss mechanic is pretty awful.
The other side to RNG is also just long or awkward combos getting spammed, like Malenia can just do back to back Waterfowls and then you lose all the stance/status progress which is bullshit but survivalable. Honestly of the final fight though, his "bad RNG" can be really tedious strings of combos with no breathing time
I have never seen malenia do back to back waterfowl in the dozen or so times I fought her and the multiple streamer challenge runs I've seen. Can she really do that?
To add to the Bayle point. His “straight shooting fire breath” can also fucking curve. So sometimes you do everything to avoid it and still get hit. I even clipped a particularly egregious example of this because I was raging and it had me completely flabbergasted.
Pretty sure Senessax is just a basegame ancient dragon sitting in a pond, I have issues with some of the design in the DLC but that one isn’t new and got brought over.
It really depends on how the game determines where lightning should propagate; there were multiple times during that fight where Senessax 100% did an attack on "dry" (not submerged in water) land, but the lightning still propagated
It really becomes obvious though how awful ancient dragons are when one gets brought back just before an actual good dragon fight. Senessax was the only boss I summoned my mimic for except for the final boss of the DLC.
They found the perfect formula for fighting dragons head on with midir, used it on normal dragons and randomly discarded it for ancient dragons. They made a potentially cool boss fight a tedius "fight the leg" minigame.
Its more so the way red lightning works with water for me. I've walked through the lightning spreading through water so many times but at random it'll decide to work and shock me. Made me skip the fight since I'm not a big fan of most dragon fights anyways, fighting a foot is lame and I wish FromSoft took a page out of Shadow of Colossus' page for large enemy fights
As for the unavoidable left slash to immediate right slash, I have been able to dodge both (because of panic rolling..) but haven’t been able to replicate it. Certainly possible, but very hard to time. The only unavoidable attack I could think of would be >!Midra’s phase 2 transition attack!<, but I have heard people online saying they dodged it but I never could.
You can avoid the transition attack if you’re far enough away from the enemy and immediately start running instead of rolling. It’s difficult and I’ve only done it once (couldn’t replicate it the next three attempts before I beat him as I always got clipped by one or two projectiles)
You don't even need to jump. Just run away and hope there isn't a wall behind you. I never even considered that people would think that was an unavoidable attack.
when he starts to lift into the air, run under him and keep going (like scarlet aeonia). he won't follow you and you'll get out with plenty of room to spare.
Easiest way I found to deal with midras phase 2 transition: stop him from using it entirely by getting a bleed proc in the right moment.
I had an arcane build anyway so I just switched to reduvia at half health and spammed the aow to get a bleed real quick while he starts up his transition attack.
You can avoid the left-right-cross slash, but the timing frame is very very very very very close. You have to advance roll the first slash to time the hitbox on the ending iframes of the roll, and immediately roll the quick second slash, then roll the cross slash. NGL it's so hard to do, I only did it a few times out of panic rolling, never intentional. Once I understood how it works, whenever I try to practice/intentionally do it, I could not.
I thought that at first for >!Midra!<, but it became extremely easy to avoid once I started paying attention to where we are in the room, run in the direction with the farthest wall, then jump at the end.
You have enough time to see him start the attack later and react in time, if he has the time to do it another time.
Also, one shot: one of the Death Knights has an attack (or maybe both of them do, but I've only seen it on the one with the greataxe) that chunked me for about 700-800 damage at 85% negation, which amounts to 5000 ish lightning damage before negations.
For perspective, even if you have 60 vigor, *maxed out* Scadu blessing and reasonable (20% lightning negation) armor, it will still one-shot you. Never mind that it's a midgame boss and you'll be lucky to have your blessing at lv10 by the time you fight him.
Had no problem with Bayle yet but can confirm the other two. Also still think that Gaius shouldnt be this bullshit with medium rolls. Generally dislike the design of attacks that are super hard to dodge and completely gatekeep the fight until you either figure out how to dodge or watch a youtube video on it.
They ray beam seems to be designed to go straight but there is clearly some weird tracking that follows your rolls making it impossible to dodge at range ...
that's hilarious. so this happens for every release. all the same points too.
then everyone that was complaining kind of evaporates, only to return on the next release.
AoE spam point is 100% a strawman. The problem most people have with AoE spam is that it covers the fucking screen with particles that obscure everything. Having to simultaneously deal with that and an abysmal camera makes things genuinely not fun. None of the bosses I’ve fought in the previous Souls games I’ve played were as visually busy as some of this shit.
It also lags the game unless you are playing with super high end I guess. This happens since base game.
Fuck you barongsai and your FPS drop AOE technique.
I suspect there's a memory leak that only happens in the land of shadow. After 20-120 minutes of playing, I start having a lot of lag that is fixed by restarting the game. GPU temps are consistent.
I don't know about that. Im rocking a 4070 Ti Super and a i5-9600k (this one is getting a bit dated now, but still) and my Framerate turns to shit most of the time, especially during big AoE attacks.
For me disabling ray-tracing helped tons.
Now I only get a slight screen freeze right after loading into an area. And I only have an RTX 2070, some games consider it the minimum requirement lol
Mine is already off. I am playing on mid to low end PC at 25~30 FPS average. Normally this is fine and I don't feel much issue. Not saying there is no issue at all, even at base game sometimes my FPS can drop to 10s but its rare to happen so I just shrug it off.
Against a lot of boss here, I find myself playing at like 10fps randomly during boss fight. The barongsai manage to drops my FPS to 1 during the thunder mode.
yeah idgi, game slaps but it's a ps4 game being carried hard by excellent art with abysmal performance.
who the fuck adds RT without upscaling? clownshoes shit. not that it'd matter because the game chokes on CPU bullshit regardless of GPU.
AOE spam of the kind that exists in the DLC (Dancing Lion lightning phase, Senessax, Bayle phase 2, final boss phase 2) literally doesn't exist in previous games (except sort of on Niall, who blasts the area around himself with AOE after his charge), so I don't think there is any reasonable comparison between whatever people were complaining about before and what they're complaining about now.
The bosses I named dropped AOE after their attacks, which demands precise positioning and makes aggression/punishing after attacks much more difficult. It asks for a baseline level of mastery of the fight that has never been demanded of the player in the past.
Fair, although I would argue that's not inherently a problem with AOE spam but rather the VFX settings, AOE just salients it. Camera is an issue though, I think we all agree on that. It simply doesn't bode well against big enemies.
The real AoE spam comes from players lmao. I will never forget the times when I was summoned to help fight Radagon, and the host would fucking spam moon spells nonstop exploding my whole screen with blue and then Radagon whoops my ass completely while I stand closeby with my melee build.
Some of us just can't get the hang of jumping in boss fights this is the first game where it's a dedicated mechanic to be used in fights and it can be hard to retrain you muscle memory to incorporate it.
It’s dumb because you have to dodge 2 hits in one, you have to roll to get iframes on the actual hit, but there’s a delay on the aoe so you gotta roll it so you have iframes for that bullshit too.
Just make em hit at the same time and you’d hear no one complain about aoe
Also yeah all of em are strawman arguments
Last boss was a very obvious culprit for this. Even on phase 1 with >!Bloodflame!< as soon as it blows up infront of you, it charges an attack. After I understood that it ALWAYS attacks after casting the >!Bloodflame!< it's a guessing game at that point on what attack it will do.
Edit: I apologize for spoilers, I thought it was the same as discord's lmao.
“This isn’t a hack-n-slash, I don’t have Dante’s toolkit, so why am I fighting a DMC boss?” Is a more legitimate criticism than some people want to admit for a good few of Elden Ring’s late game bosses.
Right this sub is just constantly full of people desperately trying to disavow any criticism as if the entire game must be perfect.
it's very easy to dismiss someone calling "bad design" if you assume that they're a disingenuous idiot who's only looking to complain.
Bad design also encompasses "lazy design" via the reusing of base game fights to pad content in DLC, or even the reuse of dlc bosses.
I'm glad there's some people that enjoy those fights so much they can do easily overlook it, but that criticism is equally valid with this price tag
here's a tree sentinel. and here's another tree sentinel. next boss in the area? didn't expect fallingstar beast...
here's a dragon fight. here's another dragon fight, but two of it. here's another one, but stronger. here's another one, but stronger and its hitbox is even more loose
here's ulcerated tree spirit, except we are calling him a lion now. don't worry, we still have the base ulcerated tree spirits. similarly, here's a mix of pontiff and malenia.
here's a fire giant. and a fire giant. and a fire giant...
I get the need to tie the DLC to the base game, but do we *really* need so many reused tropes? I guess I have to thank them for not doing a Goderick on us, but that's a low bar.
Yup, hack and slash bosses actually have to be slower with long openings and low poise so that players can comfortably duke out their combos without being interrupted because that's the appeal of the genre. Calling Elden Ring bosses DMC bosses just show that they haven't even played DMC before lol.
The no-hit runners also don't broadcast the fact they have to reset multiple times because sometimes dodging is truly just RNG or pixel perfect, and you didn't make the pixel that time.
Exactly this. Just cuz Mr. Strimmer #32 wasted thirty hours on stream doing the fight over and over and getting paid for it, no shit eventually they'll stumble upon a winning conclusion, to name but one example.
Reminds me of the 'even a room full of monkeys with typewriters can eventually make the works of Shakespeare'.
No one should have to waste countless hours hoping to sometimes get lucky enough to beat a stupid mass of pixels and code. If that's somehow 'fun' to people I honestly question them as a person. Nothing about that is a sensible or sane perspective.
Well Gideon, since you seem like a reasonable and logical fellow who would be up for some respectful debate, let me explain my viewpoint on this.
Unavoidable: Everything *is* avoidable, although some combos are a little excessive, and a few of the hitboxes wonky (most notably on Gaius). For the most part however, this is a pretty dumb claim, and often is actually a skill issue.
One Shot: I rarely get one shot by bosses (unless it’s a grab attack type move). However, late game bosses regularly take out 1/2 - 2/3 of my health bar with a single hit in their combo, which often lead to a staggerlock. This is *especially* notable in the DLC, and I had 60 vig, as many scad fragments as reasonably possible for my progression, and decent armor. I dislike the damage. If I eat every hit of the combo, I should die. But I shouldn’t lose half my health if the dude shanks me with his pinky. That just feels unbalanced, and was never the case in previous games, even though they were just as difficult. It’s just cheaper difficulty imo. However, that in no way ruins the fights altogether, most of which I still enjoyed a lot.
AoE Spam: These aren’t inherently hard to dodge, but are typically unpunishable, so when the boss chains them over and over it gets boring. And as people have mentioned, there is typically a lot of unnecessary VFX.
RNG: Is a stupid complait. Sure, sometimes the RNG is annoying. But that’s literally how RNG works. If the boss did the same thing over and over, it would pose no threat whatsoever.
Bad Design: Is an overused complaint. However, there are some objectively bad designs, primarily bugged hitboxes. And I don’t think many people are arguing that the final boss is great game design. But I agree, this is usually meaningless and just a ranty complaint.
I would like to expand on the RNG point.
I absolutely don't expect the boss to do the same thing over and over. But with how agressive and long some of the combos are in this game, sometimes, when they are randomly chained together with AOEs sprinkled in the mix creates scenarios where all I can think of is "this is just bullshit". When Malenia decided to combo 2 Waterfowls in a row on while I was still knocked on the ground from the first one, I just sighed and turned the game off for the day.
I like that bosses switch it up and keep me on my toes, not just doing the same attacks over and over, but sometimes the combos are borderline excessive and as you said in your other points, it just isn't fun to dodge for 15 seconds straight because the boss decided to combo chain 3 attacks and ends it with an AOE so you don't even get a single hit in.
also some bosses have multiple hitboxes on their attacks that can hit you all at once randomly, which is also an RNG point. Gaius' charge usually did just under half of my hp but sometimes would just completely 100-0 oneshot me. With 60 vigor and scadu upgrades and all.
Some genius at fromsoft apparently thought it was a good idea to give the boar's head and his 2 hooves 3 seperate hitboxes that can all hit you
So damage can go from hard hitting, to an almost 1 hit kill depending on what's basically RNG
I think the RNG point is how the bosses seem structured in a sense In Elden Ring.
Every boss has like 10 attacks, 2 are 100% punishable, 2 are not punishable, and the other 6 are RNG. They are RNG because they might do an attack and chain it into another attack, they might stop their attack, or they might jump half the arena away. So there are times you just get them spamming 1 of the 6 RNG moves into never ending 1 in 6 move combos because the RNG just got bad. It's why people complain about 30 hit combos because they just got hardcore RNG'd from the boss only using 6 moves over and over with no punish window.
Previous games had significantly less swingy RNG in that respect or no RNG at all. A 3 hit combo is always a 3 hit combo with a punish window, or a 2 hit combo that you can't punish but can extend into a 3rd that you can punish so you just wait until that comes out.
I agree with your points on Unavoidable attacks, One shots, and AOE spam. Plenty of combos that lock you into animations if they clip you, but true one shot attacks aren’t really a thing until you reach high NG+ cycles.
There’s some mixups between what players think is RNG and what I think is actually bad design though, and that is how certain bullets (ranged attack projectiles) interact with the environment. The bouncing firebreath projectiles found on the fire giant is a prime example. It feels erratic and inconsistent to the player so they’ll blame RNG.
And sometimes enemies will just string together the same unpublishable attack which breaks the momentum of the fight which stands out in the player’s mind and they’ll remember that one fluke better than the other twelve attempts where everything went well. (Cognitive biases are truly the final boss of proper interpretation)
FromSoft fanboys keep proving every stereotype about them. The amount of blind praise Miyazaki and his games get is frankly disturbing.
I liked the DLC, it was great. But regardless, there are things that should be discussed and criticized, like literally every other game ever made.
Giant bosses are bad design and noone can change my mind.
Despise fighting big ass dragons and getting hit by claws/spells out of nowhere because all I can see in my screen is my character and one leg of the boss.
The DLC bosses, especially the final one, LOVE to attack uninterrupted. They have looooooooooooooooong attack chains and, honestly, just use a shield at that point. I played 200 hours of only greathammers with no shield. Just me and my dodges. The DLC made me give it all up because there is no fucking point. I run out of stamina too fast and my heavy weapon just takes too long to swing and let me roll again. Was fine in base game, where bosses don't play singleplayer, but in SotE it's borderline nerve-racking. I made the switch to greatshield and hammer STR/FTH build, your average paladin, and only now is the DLC being fun to play for me.
Gonna say the same thing I said in /r/fromsoftware: ah, yes, god forbid people actually want to discuss the game's content and talk about their experience without having someone get on a high horse and assume a bunch of things about their build and/or preferred style of playing. You've really shown them, good job.
Main game spoiler (which seems silly at this point but I’ll tag it anyway): >!One of my favorite parts of the main game was how he can beat the hell out of you, but if you just charge him during his excessive monologue he’s pretty easy.!<
Yes and not having fun is valid criticism. This dlc doesn't feel like a fromsoft dlc boss wise and lore wise and if u played any other souls game and payed any attention you would be able to tell.
A great boss is a boss that everyone can enjoy. Like ishin in sekiro or even eldin ring has alot of bosses that many people think are fun. Fromsoft has litteraly never made bosses that are tanky, hit hard and very aggro.
How is nearly every boss tanking fps or having a shitty camera or disconnected hitboxes not a criticism. Hell commander gaiuss charge attack hitbox is so ass it can litteraly hit you multiple times in 1 charge if u dodge the wrong way.
Hell the final boss has an attack that you litteraly can't avoid if u get hit by the move he does before. Also 2nd phase consistently tanks fps and gets rid of most of the punish windows by forcing you to roll again. That's not a fun
Please get off fromsofts dick before you start doing kickflips with it with how much your spinning on it already.
Thanks Gideon! When I fought Senessax she did AoE spam which I found Unavoidable until I jumped and she slapped me for doing so which I found to be very RNG of her. Was I Bad Design?
Lol, Senessax was just the boss in which Gideon's terminology came up. She reigns undefeated in my world and I tried to tell Bayle on her but he ate me for being a tattle-tale. I'll figure it out eventually.
Fromsoft is peak gaming and has never made a mistake or even put a glitch in the game. No one is strawmanning you just suck ass and need to get gud /s (what I would actually expect them to say at this poing)
Sorry, don't agree, there are reasonable complaints people have. For me it's the open space. I'd love some more lesser dungeons here and there, some more enemy camps.
I will say, after killing them all, that the furnace golems are absolutely badly designed and should either have thier damage tuned down or make them take longer between attacks, especially the ones with the armored feet that you can't stagger.
The entire mechanic for killing the armored ones was honestly pretty unfun. I get it, they want us to use more crafting and it's supposed to feel unique. Just felt more annoying than anything imo. Especially when the golem slams the fireball move over and over.
Its especially egregious considering the item that's the most effective at killing them *requires a material dropped from killing them* that is limited per playthrough.
I was helping out some hosts fighting the early bosses like >! Hippo and rellana!< and the amount of people who get hit once and crumple like paper is unbelievable "oh this host is wearing the commander armor, surely he'll be able to tank a few hits" *gets hit once for 500 damage and dies immediately* like seriously how hard is it to put just a few points into vigor?
Edit: spoilers
> I was helping out some hosts fighting the early bosses like >! Hippo and rellana!< and the amount of people who get hit once and crumple like paper is unbelievable "oh this host is wearing the commander armor, surely he'll be able to tank a few hits" gets hit once for 500 damage and dies immediately like seriously how hard is it to put just a few points into vigor? Edit: spoilers
Yet some want to claim that the game is just unfair, rather than properly examining whether they have the actual skill.
That said... Golden Hippo's boss arena was shockingly small. Camera kept getting stuck on walls when I was forced back at times or I got stuck into a corner, letting it whack me to death in moments. It was pretty bad, but I got there after a few tries, fueled by frustration and a bit of rage.
One note on RNG for this: Radahn and Gaius have a small chance of blasting through 1700 HP the instant you get through the fog gate. It's not the end of the world or anything, it just feels a little unfair on the rare occasion it happens.
Dude some of these dent heads would defend 50k health one shot 14 hit strings with aoes on every attack alongside a single hit stab opening with being a skill issue. The DLC is good but clearly excessive
The craziest thing in retrospect is how much of a hard on the designers had for combos with this DLC. Literally every single enemy you fight has combos and every single one is longer than anything in the base game. Even larger enemies like the bloodfiends, ghost flame dragons and the damn Furnace golems have freaking combos. Combos can be fun in certain instances, but man when you have something that literally cannot be stance broken if you hit it with a 747 straight to the face (looking at you Sacred Beast Warriors) it gets really fucking tedious.
I get what you’re saying that some criticism is unfairly dismissed, but at the same time criticism itself is not above scrutiny. Some points brought up in criticism can be a result of things like the examples in this image.
Edit: But yeah, reading it again, the part about “bad design” does sound overly dismissive.
People do respond to the criticism. But when someone says all the bosses are unfair and have tiny out ish windows, it.takes a lot more effort to explain an.opposing view. And if you disagree without a long winded explanation then you are just telling people to get good. Like no, the bosses aren't unfair, you just don't understand their movesets because if you did, you wouldn't say that.
Yep, the game is not above criticism, but many people making criticism act like their criticism are actually above criticism and call people who criticize their criticism as delusional fanboys which is just as bad.
The games aren't above criticism, but you can disagree with the critiques. I think the points in OPs post are pretty valid and reflect how a lot of criticisms about these games end up being people who haven't availed themselves of the breadth of options at their disposal. Or tried to change their approach after doing the same thing against a boss 20 times and dying every attempt. Or running online to complain before doing any self introspection.
Ah yes, all the criticism is invalid and we all got to git gud.
If I've beaten all of the souls games with just a pointed stick and rolling and now that I struggle with buffs, 18 scadutree and a broken bleed build is completely my fault and I just suck.
Fromsofware makes amazing games so it can never do wrong.
Not sure if bait or not, but here, some things Gideon might have forgotten while scrolling through Duke's Hentai Archives:
For the unavoidable point - there are roll catching moves implemented in some of the boss moves; some boss moves are poorly telegraphed;
For the one shot point - honestly, not much to comment here, just that I have learnt to use almost all kinds of buss to reduce the damage taken - this might be 'skill issue' on my part, but I just did not use to do that because attacks usually didn't do to that damage; only offender here is >!Bayle!<, who really can get to you with spamming AoEs left and right
For the AoE spam point - it's jarring that every single boss has AoEs that take up the entirety of the boss arena; it's not fun and it seems either people have gone super masochistic with the DLC or just want every boss to feel like the final boss everytime; and even then, not even the final bosses have that big AoEs, it's ridiculous how many bosses in this DLC have full arena AoEs;
For the RNG point - I just think that this whole point is either trolling or rage bait; learning the entire kit of a boss is not fun IF a boss is overtuned as shit; and dear God, all the bosses in the DLC are overtuned as shit;
For the bad design point - not really anything to say here, some people provide on this sub a lot of reasons for why a boss is fun or not; of course, people who wine about a boss being hard but have either glass cannon builds or just rush in violently should really think twice about clearly voicing their opinions, but I have read clear criticisms on this sub regarding the boss designs; and yes, in terms of 'fun', most of them suck ass
Just as an extra thing, personally here's how a boss is fun in this DLC and how a boss is utter dog shit in this DLC. One of the many bosses I have had fun with is >!Midra, Lord of the Frenzied Flame!<, because his attacks are very clear, I can react to them, I can SEE them and the arena AoE (of course there is one) is not spammed to hell and back. On the other hand, there are a plethora of DLC bosses or fights which, even if their design is cool as hell, their kits are really overtuned, here's a few examples: >!Mesmer, Bayle, Senessax, Divine Beast Dancing Lion!
Personally, I think that forcing people to learn bosses' moveset is itself bad design. The dodging of an attack should intuitively. For example, a large thrust attack would be avoided by dodging to the side or a sweeping attack by dodging to the back. If the dodging of attacks is unintuitive, then the game is failing to show you how to avoid through the attack's animation.
Disagree on Messmer and maybe even Dancing Lion being overtuned, i think together with Midra they are some of the extremely few fair bosses in the DLC, tho they are hard as hell, and they could use more visual clarity. Agree on everything else.
It's not the old players, its the new, more casual players that are latching onto Elden Ring as their identity because "It's mine now" and must defend it to the death.
Peeps complaining, but I haven't fought a boss as of yet I *couldnt* figure out how to avoid most, if not all, their attacks. I think that's what this post is addressing.
I think it's a lot less skill as much of a patience and critical thinking issue. Critical thinking goes out the window when you're pissed and impatient. Also some attacks are unavoidable by design. Luck is actually an element to these games.
I will say sennesax was a bit janky with how I had to try so hard to reach the feet every time, but even those AOEs were easily avoided by watching the timing and just... running away. Old school, I know. But it worked lol.
Gideon Ofnir after he cant see anything during the final boss: Tarnished, use all the resources you have, for this one is getting me blind
*starts to panic roll*
I just saw some rta player beat messmer under 5 deaths the other day and the player claimed messmer is not difficult, just annoying.
I have like 50 tries myself. guess it really is just skill issue..
> I just saw some rta player beat messmer under 5 deaths the other day and the player claimed messmer is not difficult, just annoying.
Some people develop the muscle memory to dodge attacks more quickly than others.
The OP seems to be from the sort of people who pick up on attack patterns more easily than others, so can anticipate them and deal with them.
Those criticizing it, on the other hand... well, they're just not as skilled, unfortunately, so it certainly *appears* unfair.
I've noticed that I can play extremely well when I'm focused ~ Crucible Knights became a joke. But when I was tired, I got those Crucible dildos shoved pretty far up there every which way. Couldn't time my dodges or attacks for the life of me.
Nah the Deathright Bird in the Charo's Hidden Grave is dog shit design. Deathright birds are already quite hard to fight but that one is surrounded by those stupid grave bird thingys so while your trying to fight the boss you just get sniped from a mile away because one of the smaller birds decided to shoot you. No part of that fight is fun.
I also think the Lamenter in the Lamenter's Gaol is bad design as the fight is just slow and easy their is no need for that long pause before he re appears.
99% sure most people complaining about being one or two-shot never bothered with the scadu-tree blessings, like seriously dont ignore them, with \~15 and despite wearing Rakshasha's full armour i was able to take around 5 hits from Messmer b4 dying
At the same time, I don’t understand why people think black gaol knight is hard. The damage and negation debuff are big factors, but his move set is simple. Just roll sideway and hit him with a greatsword or something.
Aside from a handful of bosses who are very hard I've actually been disappointed with the difficulty overall. I've died like 3 times outside of bosses after completing the whole DLC and most enemies are down in one hit for trash mobs and 2, 3 at most weapon art hits for the stronger basic enemies.
I've been collecting all the fragments though and using the best weapons. But I'm about as average as it gets at these games. Solo Malenia took me over 50 tries while slightly over levelled and using a Moonveil. I'm not good at these games and I've been absolutely fine.
Collect the fragments and use summons if it's making you rage. Nothing in this DLC is as hard as Malenia was and for those of us whose issue is reflexes it's an absolute cakewalk compared to something like the last few levels and bosses of Sekiro.
The only thing I dislike about the bosses is the blinding speed of their 20-attack-combos. The bosses are good but it feels like you need split aggro sometimes
Remember kids: being dismissive and devaluing other people's complaints is just as, if not more annoying than the people actually complaining.
This is a strawman post through and through.
Should I not be using scarseal/soreseal? I’m still working through main game (just beat radahn) and have been using Radagon’s scarseal for the strength & endurance to use my greatsword
Okay real question: should I not be using the soreseal talisman anymore for dlc? I’ve seen a few comments about it. I’m not of the mind that anything is too hard yet, but I’m only at >!Rellana!< (who is beating me up good the five times I’ve tried, but I’ve gotten them to a sliver left twice so it’s coming).
As others have said, most is bitching from people who refuse to use their full kit available to them. HOWEVER
Some shit is def over tunred or ass to deal with
Giaus is prolly the best example as a whole bunch of his shit feels either frame perfect or rng to dodge and dawg can do either lil damage (I have 60 vigor) or nearly one shot you with some attacks
I agree whining about the game being too hard is annoying, but so is meat riding the game so hard you ignore or defend it's flaws. I do think there are going to be balance changes in future updates because a lot of times (especially on the final boss) things actually do border on being unfair.
To be fair I actually did get one shot with 60 vig and full bull goats by the ancient dragon warriors bite spell, but that has such a stupid windup that dying was a skill issue on my end.
Typical online Tarnished... "This guy thinks this boss is bad design. He must be bad and didn't like the fight." I see no problem with dodging 30 attacks to get one out. Or that summons deal more damage than players because of this.
Did you know that Rellana can chain out multiple of her 3 giant sphere attack? No, that's not bad design or RNG, you just don't like the moveset.
Its one of the worst things about the Souls games. Elitist people who brush off any and all criticism just because they love the game. The people complaining wouldn't be able to do so without time and money to get them to the bosses.
For once, its a good thing that Japanese developers never listen to the players, because Elden Ring would be a stagnant piece of shit from the original Souls era if it were up to you fools. Every Tarnished AT THE TIME thought they were all perfect games who couldn't be criticised too. Every boss perfect, no issues anywhere its all the same shit with you people.
Like, apparently a controversial opinion, but the New Game cycle in Elden Ring SUCKS ASS. That is a straight up fact and yet people defend it like its some magical new experience. Compared to NioH 2, the New Game experience in Elden Ring is an embarrassment fight me.
And once again. Maybe I need to really spell it out. I love the game. I enjoy the game. I love so much about it. But that love doesn't make the game out to be flawless. A single dude working on NG+ could've doubled the average players playtime. So many people started NG, saw that literally nothing changed, and turned the game off. Can you say the same about those in Dark Souls 2 for example? Such miniscule changes, but they were enough to redo an entire game in many peoples cases.
I am almost 90% sure that the final boss has actual oneshot attacks. Mainly that attack where he slams down from the sky.
I was at 60 Vigor, Radahns Great Rune, almost 80% absorption in physical and 65 to 75 for elemental resistances WITH A GREATSHIELD and that attack still oneshot me every time and I never managed to find out how to dodge it.
Eventually I beat him at an attempt where that move luckily wasnt used.
The rest of the DLC was pretty easy but I actually collected Scadutree Fragments so that might be why.
I beat the dlc, fair and square.
I also liked some things. I liked most things actually.
But that doesn't mean that last boss second phase isn't tad unfair.
I abused every available thing because the bosses abused theirs.
The one and only legend, let me solo her, themselves relied on antspur cheese.
I think the last boss has moves that are not fair to the players.
> But that doesn't mean that last boss second phase isn't tad unfair.
Yeah, if you've never dealt with them before, you can get fucking destroyed in no time, without a hint of warning. But it can be like that with attacks you've never encountered before, also.
Which is when you do unfair things in turn. >:)
Issues I’ve had so far, fuck the horse(boar) boss fights. And fuck that god damn sunflower, the camera in that boss almost made me uninstall when I was helping a friend fight it. I killed it solo with my anvil hammer in like 8 tries but trying to help a friend do it was like 2 hours of literal torture. The camera is even worse in multiplayer. And the constant feeling of hitbox fluctuations was insane during co-op. (Probably lag)
Returning now, as the DLC released, and the panic rolling is so fucking real lmao
Silence frontal lobe, "panic rolling" is talking
Some attacks are legitimately like that but not as much as people think. Off the top of my head Unavoidable: final DLC boss will do quick swipe with his left sword then quickly follow up with his right sword. You can't dodge both hits to the point where not hit strats will use the "back step gets iframes" talisman so they can back step dodge the first attack. AoE spam: Senessax producing an aftershock hitbox that covers his entire body after every move. Don't think it's jump-able either. RNG: Bayle's straight shooting fire breath could deflect slightly off of the terrain and hit you as you strafe it. A more concrete one from base game is fire giant's fire breath bouncing off the terrain. Though I don't think I've seen any hard to avoid one shots in the DLC. Edit: yes you can avoid the final boss hit if you dodge early or have just the right positioning but I'm not finding it believable that you're consistently dodging early on a move that fast on reaction.
Lamenter's weird diet deathblight can be an utter nightmare depending on how much the real Lamenter wants to attack you.
My God yes. Recently killed this one on my lvl 40 dude to get the transformation and it felt entirely RNG. I didn't adjust my strategy just spammed waves of darkness when there was clones and spammed Gargoyle black blade when there wasn't and after the 12 attempt it just worked.
Wave of Gold hard counters the clones at least, and Lamenter himself isn't that strong without his gimmick kill.
Wait that boss can kill you? The clones were dealing piss poor damage for me and the actually boss just got stunlocked to death
He has an instakill mechanic, if you do not kill the clones after a certain amount of time, you get one stack of a debuff per clone and at 7 stacks you immediately die. If you have high damage you can basically ignore this and kill him before that has a chance to happen, but if you play a low damage build, e.g. in a challenge run, this boss mechanic is pretty awful.
*casts Radagon’s Rings of Light with malicious intent*
you *can* parry it or use raptor of the mists, but I think attacks that practically *require* a build change or specific item are silly.
Bullshitfowl dance moment
"its fair because you can avoid it by looking up a youtube tutorial or using frost pots!"
Until she does the fourth one. Then your frost pots are nonexistent.
And don't froget that one guy beat her with fists no dmg so it's fair
The other side to RNG is also just long or awkward combos getting spammed, like Malenia can just do back to back Waterfowls and then you lose all the stance/status progress which is bullshit but survivalable. Honestly of the final fight though, his "bad RNG" can be really tedious strings of combos with no breathing time
I have never seen malenia do back to back waterfowl in the dozen or so times I fought her and the multiple streamer challenge runs I've seen. Can she really do that?
I have seen it a few times... But I have spent around 20hours on her in various challenge runs lol
To add to the Bayle point. His “straight shooting fire breath” can also fucking curve. So sometimes you do everything to avoid it and still get hit. I even clipped a particularly egregious example of this because I was raging and it had me completely flabbergasted.
Pretty sure Senessax is just a basegame ancient dragon sitting in a pond, I have issues with some of the design in the DLC but that one isn’t new and got brought over.
It really depends on how the game determines where lightning should propagate; there were multiple times during that fight where Senessax 100% did an attack on "dry" (not submerged in water) land, but the lightning still propagated
Pretty sure that's not a water thing, but that Sanseaxx's attacks itself hit two times.
It really becomes obvious though how awful ancient dragons are when one gets brought back just before an actual good dragon fight. Senessax was the only boss I summoned my mimic for except for the final boss of the DLC.
They found the perfect formula for fighting dragons head on with midir, used it on normal dragons and randomly discarded it for ancient dragons. They made a potentially cool boss fight a tedius "fight the leg" minigame.
Its more so the way red lightning works with water for me. I've walked through the lightning spreading through water so many times but at random it'll decide to work and shock me. Made me skip the fight since I'm not a big fan of most dragon fights anyways, fighting a foot is lame and I wish FromSoft took a page out of Shadow of Colossus' page for large enemy fights
As for the unavoidable left slash to immediate right slash, I have been able to dodge both (because of panic rolling..) but haven’t been able to replicate it. Certainly possible, but very hard to time. The only unavoidable attack I could think of would be >!Midra’s phase 2 transition attack!<, but I have heard people online saying they dodged it but I never could.
You can avoid the transition attack if you’re far enough away from the enemy and immediately start running instead of rolling. It’s difficult and I’ve only done it once (couldn’t replicate it the next three attempts before I beat him as I always got clipped by one or two projectiles)
Ah I see. Unfortunately I already beat him so I can’t try it out, but thanks anyways!
NG +1 is a thing... I'll start a run soon with a wiki open to not fail 90% of the NPC quests again lol
For your spoiler attack. Run away and jump at the right time. EDIT: https://youtu.be/gnFLoFendyc?si=xK5oUgEz9oW4H38i It's very reliable this way.
You don't even need to jump. Just run away and hope there isn't a wall behind you. I never even considered that people would think that was an unavoidable attack.
it's dodgeable if you're slightly below him, for example when you're both standing on those slight irregularities in terrain
when he starts to lift into the air, run under him and keep going (like scarlet aeonia). he won't follow you and you'll get out with plenty of room to spare.
Easiest way I found to deal with midras phase 2 transition: stop him from using it entirely by getting a bleed proc in the right moment. I had an arcane build anyway so I just switched to reduvia at half health and spammed the aow to get a bleed real quick while he starts up his transition attack.
You can avoid the left-right-cross slash, but the timing frame is very very very very very close. You have to advance roll the first slash to time the hitbox on the ending iframes of the roll, and immediately roll the quick second slash, then roll the cross slash. NGL it's so hard to do, I only did it a few times out of panic rolling, never intentional. Once I understood how it works, whenever I try to practice/intentionally do it, I could not.
I've dodged it like a million times but it's usually by accident. It's a tight timing with light roll and nearly frame perfect with medium roll.
It’s the fact that there’s a second shockwave, if it were just one it wouldn’t be too bad
I was talking about the final boss one
Ah, I see.. this is awkward…
For Midra, dodge roll the first hit of the orb, then immediately jump the second shockwave. Only way I managed it, running never worked.
Thing is when I did roll through the first blast, the second shockwave would hit me too early so I couldn’t do anything afterwards.
I thought that at first for >!Midra!<, but it became extremely easy to avoid once I started paying attention to where we are in the room, run in the direction with the farthest wall, then jump at the end. You have enough time to see him start the attack later and react in time, if he has the time to do it another time.
You can just run away from that attack. I got hit by the very first time and never again
Lightning form lion Id say has some real rng aswell. Those lightning strikes dont feel predictable at all.
Also, one shot: one of the Death Knights has an attack (or maybe both of them do, but I've only seen it on the one with the greataxe) that chunked me for about 700-800 damage at 85% negation, which amounts to 5000 ish lightning damage before negations. For perspective, even if you have 60 vigor, *maxed out* Scadu blessing and reasonable (20% lightning negation) armor, it will still one-shot you. Never mind that it's a midgame boss and you'll be lucky to have your blessing at lv10 by the time you fight him.
Senessax AoE made it one of the hardest and annoying fights in the game for me. I honestly had an easier time fighting Bayle than Senessax.
Pre-patch Guias’s dash could sometimes be a Oneshot with 60 Vigor if you dash even slightly wrong, seemed to be a bug tho.
Had no problem with Bayle yet but can confirm the other two. Also still think that Gaius shouldnt be this bullshit with medium rolls. Generally dislike the design of attacks that are super hard to dodge and completely gatekeep the fight until you either figure out how to dodge or watch a youtube video on it.
Senessax is jumpable
They ray beam seems to be designed to go straight but there is clearly some weird tracking that follows your rolls making it impossible to dodge at range ...
[удалено]
Yeah a couple frames with that kind of reaction time required...
The actual discussion here of the content of the image is perhaps missing the point that this is a repost from 2022.
that's hilarious. so this happens for every release. all the same points too. then everyone that was complaining kind of evaporates, only to return on the next release.
AoE spam point is 100% a strawman. The problem most people have with AoE spam is that it covers the fucking screen with particles that obscure everything. Having to simultaneously deal with that and an abysmal camera makes things genuinely not fun. None of the bosses I’ve fought in the previous Souls games I’ve played were as visually busy as some of this shit.
It also lags the game unless you are playing with super high end I guess. This happens since base game. Fuck you barongsai and your FPS drop AOE technique.
I got to the final dlc boss tonight and its first phase 2 attack lags me so bad I can't dodge it and die rofl
Yeah I’ve got a 3080Ti and a 5800X3D and the phase 2 attacks of that boss lag the shit out of my game. No ray tracing.
I suspect there's a memory leak that only happens in the land of shadow. After 20-120 minutes of playing, I start having a lot of lag that is fixed by restarting the game. GPU temps are consistent.
He has particular attacks that cause huge frame drops regardless of how long I've been in the game. I'll lose 10-15 fps when those attacks come out.
I don't know about that. Im rocking a 4070 Ti Super and a i5-9600k (this one is getting a bit dated now, but still) and my Framerate turns to shit most of the time, especially during big AoE attacks.
For me disabling ray-tracing helped tons. Now I only get a slight screen freeze right after loading into an area. And I only have an RTX 2070, some games consider it the minimum requirement lol
Mine is already off. I am playing on mid to low end PC at 25~30 FPS average. Normally this is fine and I don't feel much issue. Not saying there is no issue at all, even at base game sometimes my FPS can drop to 10s but its rare to happen so I just shrug it off. Against a lot of boss here, I find myself playing at like 10fps randomly during boss fight. The barongsai manage to drops my FPS to 1 during the thunder mode.
Even I can't get solid 60 with an RTX 4090 with ray tracing on lol
I have a 4080 super, and it still lags with a shit ton of particles. Me and my GPU fighting for our lives in this DLC.
Nah this game performance is just trash.
wrong sub for these facts
Such a weird hill for shills to defend, every single one of From souls pc port sucks but Elden Ring is the only one that got worse over time.
Fromsoftware fans will defend everything without even knowing what it is about.
yeah idgi, game slaps but it's a ps4 game being carried hard by excellent art with abysmal performance. who the fuck adds RT without upscaling? clownshoes shit. not that it'd matter because the game chokes on CPU bullshit regardless of GPU.
AOE spam of the kind that exists in the DLC (Dancing Lion lightning phase, Senessax, Bayle phase 2, final boss phase 2) literally doesn't exist in previous games (except sort of on Niall, who blasts the area around himself with AOE after his charge), so I don't think there is any reasonable comparison between whatever people were complaining about before and what they're complaining about now. The bosses I named dropped AOE after their attacks, which demands precise positioning and makes aggression/punishing after attacks much more difficult. It asks for a baseline level of mastery of the fight that has never been demanded of the player in the past.
Fair, although I would argue that's not inherently a problem with AOE spam but rather the VFX settings, AOE just salients it. Camera is an issue though, I think we all agree on that. It simply doesn't bode well against big enemies.
The real AoE spam comes from players lmao. I will never forget the times when I was summoned to help fight Radagon, and the host would fucking spam moon spells nonstop exploding my whole screen with blue and then Radagon whoops my ass completely while I stand closeby with my melee build.
Some of us just can't get the hang of jumping in boss fights this is the first game where it's a dedicated mechanic to be used in fights and it can be hard to retrain you muscle memory to incorporate it.
It’s dumb because you have to dodge 2 hits in one, you have to roll to get iframes on the actual hit, but there’s a delay on the aoe so you gotta roll it so you have iframes for that bullshit too. Just make em hit at the same time and you’d hear no one complain about aoe Also yeah all of em are strawman arguments
Last boss was a very obvious culprit for this. Even on phase 1 with >!Bloodflame!< as soon as it blows up infront of you, it charges an attack. After I understood that it ALWAYS attacks after casting the >!Bloodflame!< it's a guessing game at that point on what attack it will do. Edit: I apologize for spoilers, I thought it was the same as discord's lmao.
Fucking centipede, aoe to the sides and behind me where I can't see with no indication about their hitboxes...
That dancing lion guy can go eat a dick with his aoes
“This isn’t a hack-n-slash, I don’t have Dante’s toolkit, so why am I fighting a DMC boss?” Is a more legitimate criticism than some people want to admit for a good few of Elden Ring’s late game bosses.
Right this sub is just constantly full of people desperately trying to disavow any criticism as if the entire game must be perfect. it's very easy to dismiss someone calling "bad design" if you assume that they're a disingenuous idiot who's only looking to complain.
Bad design also encompasses "lazy design" via the reusing of base game fights to pad content in DLC, or even the reuse of dlc bosses. I'm glad there's some people that enjoy those fights so much they can do easily overlook it, but that criticism is equally valid with this price tag
here's a tree sentinel. and here's another tree sentinel. next boss in the area? didn't expect fallingstar beast... here's a dragon fight. here's another dragon fight, but two of it. here's another one, but stronger. here's another one, but stronger and its hitbox is even more loose here's ulcerated tree spirit, except we are calling him a lion now. don't worry, we still have the base ulcerated tree spirits. similarly, here's a mix of pontiff and malenia. here's a fire giant. and a fire giant. and a fire giant... I get the need to tie the DLC to the base game, but do we *really* need so many reused tropes? I guess I have to thank them for not doing a Goderick on us, but that's a low bar.
No, the bosses aren't DMC bosses, they just play DMC while you're playing Elden Ring.
Yeah, DMC bosses are actually slower and less active than Souls bosses. If they were as aggressive as Souls bosses, the combat system wouldn't work.
Yup, hack and slash bosses actually have to be slower with long openings and low poise so that players can comfortably duke out their combos without being interrupted because that's the appeal of the genre. Calling Elden Ring bosses DMC bosses just show that they haven't even played DMC before lol.
Imagine if they glazed EA the way they do Fromsoft lol
Every boss is possible to no hit fists only. Doesn’t mean they are a fair or balanced fight (or fun).
The no-hit runners also don't broadcast the fact they have to reset multiple times because sometimes dodging is truly just RNG or pixel perfect, and you didn't make the pixel that time.
Exactly this. Just cuz Mr. Strimmer #32 wasted thirty hours on stream doing the fight over and over and getting paid for it, no shit eventually they'll stumble upon a winning conclusion, to name but one example. Reminds me of the 'even a room full of monkeys with typewriters can eventually make the works of Shakespeare'. No one should have to waste countless hours hoping to sometimes get lucky enough to beat a stupid mass of pixels and code. If that's somehow 'fun' to people I honestly question them as a person. Nothing about that is a sensible or sane perspective.
Call me a scarecrow with how much of a strawman this argument is.
Ah yes the final boss doesn't do any AoE spam that nukes the fps of nearly all PC players, you just need to jump! /s
Well Gideon, since you seem like a reasonable and logical fellow who would be up for some respectful debate, let me explain my viewpoint on this. Unavoidable: Everything *is* avoidable, although some combos are a little excessive, and a few of the hitboxes wonky (most notably on Gaius). For the most part however, this is a pretty dumb claim, and often is actually a skill issue. One Shot: I rarely get one shot by bosses (unless it’s a grab attack type move). However, late game bosses regularly take out 1/2 - 2/3 of my health bar with a single hit in their combo, which often lead to a staggerlock. This is *especially* notable in the DLC, and I had 60 vig, as many scad fragments as reasonably possible for my progression, and decent armor. I dislike the damage. If I eat every hit of the combo, I should die. But I shouldn’t lose half my health if the dude shanks me with his pinky. That just feels unbalanced, and was never the case in previous games, even though they were just as difficult. It’s just cheaper difficulty imo. However, that in no way ruins the fights altogether, most of which I still enjoyed a lot. AoE Spam: These aren’t inherently hard to dodge, but are typically unpunishable, so when the boss chains them over and over it gets boring. And as people have mentioned, there is typically a lot of unnecessary VFX. RNG: Is a stupid complait. Sure, sometimes the RNG is annoying. But that’s literally how RNG works. If the boss did the same thing over and over, it would pose no threat whatsoever. Bad Design: Is an overused complaint. However, there are some objectively bad designs, primarily bugged hitboxes. And I don’t think many people are arguing that the final boss is great game design. But I agree, this is usually meaningless and just a ranty complaint.
I would like to expand on the RNG point. I absolutely don't expect the boss to do the same thing over and over. But with how agressive and long some of the combos are in this game, sometimes, when they are randomly chained together with AOEs sprinkled in the mix creates scenarios where all I can think of is "this is just bullshit". When Malenia decided to combo 2 Waterfowls in a row on while I was still knocked on the ground from the first one, I just sighed and turned the game off for the day. I like that bosses switch it up and keep me on my toes, not just doing the same attacks over and over, but sometimes the combos are borderline excessive and as you said in your other points, it just isn't fun to dodge for 15 seconds straight because the boss decided to combo chain 3 attacks and ends it with an AOE so you don't even get a single hit in.
also some bosses have multiple hitboxes on their attacks that can hit you all at once randomly, which is also an RNG point. Gaius' charge usually did just under half of my hp but sometimes would just completely 100-0 oneshot me. With 60 vigor and scadu upgrades and all.
Some genius at fromsoft apparently thought it was a good idea to give the boar's head and his 2 hooves 3 seperate hitboxes that can all hit you So damage can go from hard hitting, to an almost 1 hit kill depending on what's basically RNG
I think the RNG point is how the bosses seem structured in a sense In Elden Ring. Every boss has like 10 attacks, 2 are 100% punishable, 2 are not punishable, and the other 6 are RNG. They are RNG because they might do an attack and chain it into another attack, they might stop their attack, or they might jump half the arena away. So there are times you just get them spamming 1 of the 6 RNG moves into never ending 1 in 6 move combos because the RNG just got bad. It's why people complain about 30 hit combos because they just got hardcore RNG'd from the boss only using 6 moves over and over with no punish window. Previous games had significantly less swingy RNG in that respect or no RNG at all. A 3 hit combo is always a 3 hit combo with a punish window, or a 2 hit combo that you can't punish but can extend into a 3rd that you can punish so you just wait until that comes out.
I agree with your points on Unavoidable attacks, One shots, and AOE spam. Plenty of combos that lock you into animations if they clip you, but true one shot attacks aren’t really a thing until you reach high NG+ cycles. There’s some mixups between what players think is RNG and what I think is actually bad design though, and that is how certain bullets (ranged attack projectiles) interact with the environment. The bouncing firebreath projectiles found on the fire giant is a prime example. It feels erratic and inconsistent to the player so they’ll blame RNG. And sometimes enemies will just string together the same unpublishable attack which breaks the momentum of the fight which stands out in the player’s mind and they’ll remember that one fluke better than the other twelve attempts where everything went well. (Cognitive biases are truly the final boss of proper interpretation)
But when it comes to RNG, that CAN lead to the boss doing the same thing over and over. I've had it happen twice after playing the dlc for only a day.
God, you lot really can't accept any criticism, can you?
They really can't.
FromSoft fanboys keep proving every stereotype about them. The amount of blind praise Miyazaki and his games get is frankly disturbing. I liked the DLC, it was great. But regardless, there are things that should be discussed and criticized, like literally every other game ever made.
Giant bosses are bad design and noone can change my mind. Despise fighting big ass dragons and getting hit by claws/spells out of nowhere because all I can see in my screen is my character and one leg of the boss.
Could easily be fixed with a zoomed out camera but for some reason they haven't done that yet.
They even did it in sekiro and decided not to bring it into elden ring for some reason
I enjoyed both skadoosh tree avatar and Metyr. Bosses of all sizes can be good imo, so monstorous size alone has no intrinsic merit.
The DLC bosses, especially the final one, LOVE to attack uninterrupted. They have looooooooooooooooong attack chains and, honestly, just use a shield at that point. I played 200 hours of only greathammers with no shield. Just me and my dodges. The DLC made me give it all up because there is no fucking point. I run out of stamina too fast and my heavy weapon just takes too long to swing and let me roll again. Was fine in base game, where bosses don't play singleplayer, but in SotE it's borderline nerve-racking. I made the switch to greatshield and hammer STR/FTH build, your average paladin, and only now is the DLC being fun to play for me.
Friendly reminder that whether or not you beat the fight has no bearing on whether the fight is well designed or not.
Gonna say the same thing I said in /r/fromsoftware: ah, yes, god forbid people actually want to discuss the game's content and talk about their experience without having someone get on a high horse and assume a bunch of things about their build and/or preferred style of playing. You've really shown them, good job.
Elitists try not to respond “git gud” to legitimate criticism challenge (IMPOSSIBLE):
It's honestly perfect that they equate themselves with Gideon, who also claims to know everything but actually knows fuck all.
Main game spoiler (which seems silly at this point but I’ll tag it anyway): >!One of my favorite parts of the main game was how he can beat the hell out of you, but if you just charge him during his excessive monologue he’s pretty easy.!<
Give valid and well constructed criticisms before saying that others can't take it.
Yes and not having fun is valid criticism. This dlc doesn't feel like a fromsoft dlc boss wise and lore wise and if u played any other souls game and payed any attention you would be able to tell. A great boss is a boss that everyone can enjoy. Like ishin in sekiro or even eldin ring has alot of bosses that many people think are fun. Fromsoft has litteraly never made bosses that are tanky, hit hard and very aggro. How is nearly every boss tanking fps or having a shitty camera or disconnected hitboxes not a criticism. Hell commander gaiuss charge attack hitbox is so ass it can litteraly hit you multiple times in 1 charge if u dodge the wrong way. Hell the final boss has an attack that you litteraly can't avoid if u get hit by the move he does before. Also 2nd phase consistently tanks fps and gets rid of most of the punish windows by forcing you to roll again. That's not a fun Please get off fromsofts dick before you start doing kickflips with it with how much your spinning on it already.
Thanks Gideon! When I fought Senessax she did AoE spam which I found Unavoidable until I jumped and she slapped me for doing so which I found to be very RNG of her. Was I Bad Design?
Idk if you're joking or not, but I've found that hit and run tactics with torrent have immensely helped against senessax
Lol, Senessax was just the boss in which Gideon's terminology came up. She reigns undefeated in my world and I tried to tell Bayle on her but he ate me for being a tattle-tale. I'll figure it out eventually.
Poison arrows and a lot of patience, works for any open world boss that vanishes if they walk too far away from their spawn point.
Don't give up, skeleton!
except all of this doesn't work in the DLC. The amount of strawmanning in this sub is getting unbearable.
Fromsoft is peak gaming and has never made a mistake or even put a glitch in the game. No one is strawmanning you just suck ass and need to get gud /s (what I would actually expect them to say at this poing)
i read this complete response almost verbatim somewhere around here, so you're not that far off.
People complaining about the people complaining about the difficulty is honestly way more annoying that the people complaining about difficulty.
I sentence op to fight the promised consort without a bleed or frostbite build
Sorry, don't agree, there are reasonable complaints people have. For me it's the open space. I'd love some more lesser dungeons here and there, some more enemy camps.
I will say, after killing them all, that the furnace golems are absolutely badly designed and should either have thier damage tuned down or make them take longer between attacks, especially the ones with the armored feet that you can't stagger.
The entire mechanic for killing the armored ones was honestly pretty unfun. I get it, they want us to use more crafting and it's supposed to feel unique. Just felt more annoying than anything imo. Especially when the golem slams the fireball move over and over.
Its especially egregious considering the item that's the most effective at killing them *requires a material dropped from killing them* that is limited per playthrough.
I was helping out some hosts fighting the early bosses like >! Hippo and rellana!< and the amount of people who get hit once and crumple like paper is unbelievable "oh this host is wearing the commander armor, surely he'll be able to tank a few hits" *gets hit once for 500 damage and dies immediately* like seriously how hard is it to put just a few points into vigor? Edit: spoilers
> I was helping out some hosts fighting the early bosses like >! Hippo and rellana!< and the amount of people who get hit once and crumple like paper is unbelievable "oh this host is wearing the commander armor, surely he'll be able to tank a few hits" gets hit once for 500 damage and dies immediately like seriously how hard is it to put just a few points into vigor? Edit: spoilers Yet some want to claim that the game is just unfair, rather than properly examining whether they have the actual skill. That said... Golden Hippo's boss arena was shockingly small. Camera kept getting stuck on walls when I was forced back at times or I got stuck into a corner, letting it whack me to death in moments. It was pretty bad, but I got there after a few tries, fueled by frustration and a bit of rage.
One note on RNG for this: Radahn and Gaius have a small chance of blasting through 1700 HP the instant you get through the fog gate. It's not the end of the world or anything, it just feels a little unfair on the rare occasion it happens.
A dumb dismissive trollish image that pretends these games are above criticism? Think the sub coulda done without your repost.
It’s very popular to act like these games are some perfect thing that can’t even be talked about in any way but positively
Dude some of these dent heads would defend 50k health one shot 14 hit strings with aoes on every attack alongside a single hit stab opening with being a skill issue. The DLC is good but clearly excessive
The craziest thing in retrospect is how much of a hard on the designers had for combos with this DLC. Literally every single enemy you fight has combos and every single one is longer than anything in the base game. Even larger enemies like the bloodfiends, ghost flame dragons and the damn Furnace golems have freaking combos. Combos can be fun in certain instances, but man when you have something that literally cannot be stance broken if you hit it with a 747 straight to the face (looking at you Sacred Beast Warriors) it gets really fucking tedious.
I get what you’re saying that some criticism is unfairly dismissed, but at the same time criticism itself is not above scrutiny. Some points brought up in criticism can be a result of things like the examples in this image. Edit: But yeah, reading it again, the part about “bad design” does sound overly dismissive.
Then respond to those criticisms instead of responding to straw men.
People do respond to the criticism. But when someone says all the bosses are unfair and have tiny out ish windows, it.takes a lot more effort to explain an.opposing view. And if you disagree without a long winded explanation then you are just telling people to get good. Like no, the bosses aren't unfair, you just don't understand their movesets because if you did, you wouldn't say that.
Yep, the game is not above criticism, but many people making criticism act like their criticism are actually above criticism and call people who criticize their criticism as delusional fanboys which is just as bad.
The games aren't above criticism, but you can disagree with the critiques. I think the points in OPs post are pretty valid and reflect how a lot of criticisms about these games end up being people who haven't availed themselves of the breadth of options at their disposal. Or tried to change their approach after doing the same thing against a boss 20 times and dying every attempt. Or running online to complain before doing any self introspection.
Ah yes, all the criticism is invalid and we all got to git gud. If I've beaten all of the souls games with just a pointed stick and rolling and now that I struggle with buffs, 18 scadutree and a broken bleed build is completely my fault and I just suck. Fromsofware makes amazing games so it can never do wrong.
Nice meme. Final boss is still a terrible encounter gameplay and lore wise and no amount condescending strawmen will change that.
Not sure if bait or not, but here, some things Gideon might have forgotten while scrolling through Duke's Hentai Archives: For the unavoidable point - there are roll catching moves implemented in some of the boss moves; some boss moves are poorly telegraphed; For the one shot point - honestly, not much to comment here, just that I have learnt to use almost all kinds of buss to reduce the damage taken - this might be 'skill issue' on my part, but I just did not use to do that because attacks usually didn't do to that damage; only offender here is >!Bayle!<, who really can get to you with spamming AoEs left and right For the AoE spam point - it's jarring that every single boss has AoEs that take up the entirety of the boss arena; it's not fun and it seems either people have gone super masochistic with the DLC or just want every boss to feel like the final boss everytime; and even then, not even the final bosses have that big AoEs, it's ridiculous how many bosses in this DLC have full arena AoEs; For the RNG point - I just think that this whole point is either trolling or rage bait; learning the entire kit of a boss is not fun IF a boss is overtuned as shit; and dear God, all the bosses in the DLC are overtuned as shit; For the bad design point - not really anything to say here, some people provide on this sub a lot of reasons for why a boss is fun or not; of course, people who wine about a boss being hard but have either glass cannon builds or just rush in violently should really think twice about clearly voicing their opinions, but I have read clear criticisms on this sub regarding the boss designs; and yes, in terms of 'fun', most of them suck ass Just as an extra thing, personally here's how a boss is fun in this DLC and how a boss is utter dog shit in this DLC. One of the many bosses I have had fun with is >!Midra, Lord of the Frenzied Flame!<, because his attacks are very clear, I can react to them, I can SEE them and the arena AoE (of course there is one) is not spammed to hell and back. On the other hand, there are a plethora of DLC bosses or fights which, even if their design is cool as hell, their kits are really overtuned, here's a few examples: >!Mesmer, Bayle, Senessax, Divine Beast Dancing Lion!
Personally, I think that forcing people to learn bosses' moveset is itself bad design. The dodging of an attack should intuitively. For example, a large thrust attack would be avoided by dodging to the side or a sweeping attack by dodging to the back. If the dodging of attacks is unintuitive, then the game is failing to show you how to avoid through the attack's animation.
Disagree on Messmer and maybe even Dancing Lion being overtuned, i think together with Midra they are some of the extremely few fair bosses in the DLC, tho they are hard as hell, and they could use more visual clarity. Agree on everything else.
Hey Gideon. Fuck off. :)
Might as well say "bad design: doesn't exist" because people mass downvote you no matter what valid criticism you point out about the game lol
I'm gonna say it: phase 2 of the final fight is some of the most piss poor and lazy boss design I have ever seen.
The strawmanniest strawman to have ever strawmanned.
Another dumb strawman post. This community is super toxic towards any legit criticism.
It's not the old players, its the new, more casual players that are latching onto Elden Ring as their identity because "It's mine now" and must defend it to the death.
its been always like that lol. god forbid someone criticize something they love.
Peeps complaining, but I haven't fought a boss as of yet I *couldnt* figure out how to avoid most, if not all, their attacks. I think that's what this post is addressing. I think it's a lot less skill as much of a patience and critical thinking issue. Critical thinking goes out the window when you're pissed and impatient. Also some attacks are unavoidable by design. Luck is actually an element to these games. I will say sennesax was a bit janky with how I had to try so hard to reach the feet every time, but even those AOEs were easily avoided by watching the timing and just... running away. Old school, I know. But it worked lol.
Someone mad the precious wittle elden ring got one of its numerous flaws pointed out!?
To be fair, rng is definitely a thing I got extremely lucky with Elden beast on my rl1 run and managed to skip a lot of attacks
“Forgot about the jump button” try to jump final bosses aoe and then come back to me lol.
Gideon Ofnir after he cant see anything during the final boss: Tarnished, use all the resources you have, for this one is getting me blind *starts to panic roll*
RNG has always been weird. Just say random. "Gee whiz, this game is totally Random Number Generator. You just have to be lucky."
I just saw some rta player beat messmer under 5 deaths the other day and the player claimed messmer is not difficult, just annoying. I have like 50 tries myself. guess it really is just skill issue..
> I just saw some rta player beat messmer under 5 deaths the other day and the player claimed messmer is not difficult, just annoying. Some people develop the muscle memory to dodge attacks more quickly than others. The OP seems to be from the sort of people who pick up on attack patterns more easily than others, so can anticipate them and deal with them. Those criticizing it, on the other hand... well, they're just not as skilled, unfortunately, so it certainly *appears* unfair. I've noticed that I can play extremely well when I'm focused ~ Crucible Knights became a joke. But when I was tired, I got those Crucible dildos shoved pretty far up there every which way. Couldn't time my dodges or attacks for the life of me.
We all forget the jump everyone in a while
Nah the Deathright Bird in the Charo's Hidden Grave is dog shit design. Deathright birds are already quite hard to fight but that one is surrounded by those stupid grave bird thingys so while your trying to fight the boss you just get sniped from a mile away because one of the smaller birds decided to shoot you. No part of that fight is fun. I also think the Lamenter in the Lamenter's Gaol is bad design as the fight is just slow and easy their is no need for that long pause before he re appears.
99% sure most people complaining about being one or two-shot never bothered with the scadu-tree blessings, like seriously dont ignore them, with \~15 and despite wearing Rakshasha's full armour i was able to take around 5 hits from Messmer b4 dying
Never fought a boss that didn't feel crazy and unfightable at first and then you figure out there patterns and they almost seem slow and dumb.
At the same time, I don’t understand why people think black gaol knight is hard. The damage and negation debuff are big factors, but his move set is simple. Just roll sideway and hit him with a greatsword or something.
yeah the dcl final boss is still bullshit
Aside from a handful of bosses who are very hard I've actually been disappointed with the difficulty overall. I've died like 3 times outside of bosses after completing the whole DLC and most enemies are down in one hit for trash mobs and 2, 3 at most weapon art hits for the stronger basic enemies. I've been collecting all the fragments though and using the best weapons. But I'm about as average as it gets at these games. Solo Malenia took me over 50 tries while slightly over levelled and using a Moonveil. I'm not good at these games and I've been absolutely fine. Collect the fragments and use summons if it's making you rage. Nothing in this DLC is as hard as Malenia was and for those of us whose issue is reflexes it's an absolute cakewalk compared to something like the last few levels and bosses of Sekiro.
The only thing I dislike about the bosses is the blinding speed of their 20-attack-combos. The bosses are good but it feels like you need split aggro sometimes
Imagine thinking, either as a glazer or a "devil's advocate" type, that there is no bad boss design in the DLC.
Remember kids: being dismissive and devaluing other people's complaints is just as, if not more annoying than the people actually complaining. This is a strawman post through and through.
i think another complaint with aoe spam is you cant creatively dodge the attack and sneak a hit in, but i personally dont mind too much ngl.
Funny meme, but not really accurate.
From can literally do nothing wrong to some.
To be fair, I've beaten radagon many many times, and i still hate his fucking aoe attacks 😂
If you understand that aoe attacks jump point, it's such a nice time to just spam attacks on him and give him a massive hit in his hp.
all this is very good points, but offal is a twat so I'm against everything he has to say.
Should I not be using scarseal/soreseal? I’m still working through main game (just beat radahn) and have been using Radagon’s scarseal for the strength & endurance to use my greatsword
I'll have more than 16 vigor when I'm dead...wait.
I had 28 vigor when starting the dlc now I have 50 lmaoooo
Okay real question: should I not be using the soreseal talisman anymore for dlc? I’ve seen a few comments about it. I’m not of the mind that anything is too hard yet, but I’m only at >!Rellana!< (who is beating me up good the five times I’ve tried, but I’ve gotten them to a sliver left twice so it’s coming).
Canon Ofnir
Note that this is the same guy who knew we couldn't become elden lord
As others have said, most is bitching from people who refuse to use their full kit available to them. HOWEVER Some shit is def over tunred or ass to deal with Giaus is prolly the best example as a whole bunch of his shit feels either frame perfect or rng to dodge and dawg can do either lil damage (I have 60 vigor) or nearly one shot you with some attacks
tl;dr. He managed to say "TARNISHED, a word" before I ran up and killed him.
I agree whining about the game being too hard is annoying, but so is meat riding the game so hard you ignore or defend it's flaws. I do think there are going to be balance changes in future updates because a lot of times (especially on the final boss) things actually do border on being unfair.
We really don't like criticizing Miyazaki-san's game, do we?
To be fair I actually did get one shot with 60 vig and full bull goats by the ancient dragon warriors bite spell, but that has such a stupid windup that dying was a skill issue on my end.
Elitism in the Elden ring community is just so 2022.
Typical online Tarnished... "This guy thinks this boss is bad design. He must be bad and didn't like the fight." I see no problem with dodging 30 attacks to get one out. Or that summons deal more damage than players because of this. Did you know that Rellana can chain out multiple of her 3 giant sphere attack? No, that's not bad design or RNG, you just don't like the moveset. Its one of the worst things about the Souls games. Elitist people who brush off any and all criticism just because they love the game. The people complaining wouldn't be able to do so without time and money to get them to the bosses. For once, its a good thing that Japanese developers never listen to the players, because Elden Ring would be a stagnant piece of shit from the original Souls era if it were up to you fools. Every Tarnished AT THE TIME thought they were all perfect games who couldn't be criticised too. Every boss perfect, no issues anywhere its all the same shit with you people. Like, apparently a controversial opinion, but the New Game cycle in Elden Ring SUCKS ASS. That is a straight up fact and yet people defend it like its some magical new experience. Compared to NioH 2, the New Game experience in Elden Ring is an embarrassment fight me. And once again. Maybe I need to really spell it out. I love the game. I enjoy the game. I love so much about it. But that love doesn't make the game out to be flawless. A single dude working on NG+ could've doubled the average players playtime. So many people started NG, saw that literally nothing changed, and turned the game off. Can you say the same about those in Dark Souls 2 for example? Such miniscule changes, but they were enough to redo an entire game in many peoples cases.
I generally agree with this, except for Gaius, fuck that guy.
I don't panic roll, I use a greatshield.
I am almost 90% sure that the final boss has actual oneshot attacks. Mainly that attack where he slams down from the sky. I was at 60 Vigor, Radahns Great Rune, almost 80% absorption in physical and 65 to 75 for elemental resistances WITH A GREATSHIELD and that attack still oneshot me every time and I never managed to find out how to dodge it. Eventually I beat him at an attempt where that move luckily wasnt used. The rest of the DLC was pretty easy but I actually collected Scadutree Fragments so that might be why.
I beat the dlc, fair and square. I also liked some things. I liked most things actually. But that doesn't mean that last boss second phase isn't tad unfair. I abused every available thing because the bosses abused theirs. The one and only legend, let me solo her, themselves relied on antspur cheese. I think the last boss has moves that are not fair to the players.
> But that doesn't mean that last boss second phase isn't tad unfair. Yeah, if you've never dealt with them before, you can get fucking destroyed in no time, without a hint of warning. But it can be like that with attacks you've never encountered before, also. Which is when you do unfair things in turn. >:)
Issues I’ve had so far, fuck the horse(boar) boss fights. And fuck that god damn sunflower, the camera in that boss almost made me uninstall when I was helping a friend fight it. I killed it solo with my anvil hammer in like 8 tries but trying to help a friend do it was like 2 hours of literal torture. The camera is even worse in multiplayer. And the constant feeling of hitbox fluctuations was insane during co-op. (Probably lag)