Random thoughts on bosses and other things

[gungadin22000]

Like I did in my first Nioh 2 playthrough, this thread will be for me to express my highly qualified and interesting opinions regarding bosses and challenges I encounter during my time in Elden Ring with no discernable sequence in the matter.

I am running a heavy armour + greatshield + greatclub/axe/hammer build, so my experience with bosses may not mirror yours.

Night Cavalry
Probably my favourite boss in the game. Repeated a bunch of times, but having them only show up at night at random stretches of road is a very nice touch, and the character design is very cool in an Arthurian legend kind of way, so I never get bored fighting black knights.

The fight itself is an extremely stylish horseback duel, landing blows and evading huge swings before zooming in for another hit, and managing to knock a knight off his horse in order to land a crit is extremely satisfying.

It's also fairly comical fighting him on foot. With a strong shield, you can just tank all his strikes and then counter with a long weapon for huge damage. I found that this was actually the easiest way to kill them, but why would you want to miss out on a cool horseback joust?

[gungadin22000]

Wow, I managed to beat the Crucible Knight duo in the Auriza Hero's Grave single-handedly and without summons. Wasn't even close, considering I've been fighting a half dozen of these SOBs by now and have their moveset memorised. Being able to deflect attacks due to the Reforged mod also helps immensely and makes CKs actually fun to fight. They did seem to be a lot less aggressive than solo CKs and seemed content to come at me one at a time.

Now I just gotta figure out a way to reliably beat the Valiant Gargoyles. Individually I find the gargoyles to be fun to fight, but two of them at once just tax my healing resources too much for me to beat, and on an arcane/dex build, my options for strike damage are limited, and stone doesn't bleed. I leveled the Night RIder's flail to +14, but it's just too damn short to land consistent hits and stuns.

Not had to summon anything so far for this arc/dex playthrough. I have gotten much godder than I used to - will still be interesting to see if I can get past Malikith, who was the most frustrating boss of my greathammer + shield playthrough.

[gungadin22000]

Progressed quite a bit in my ERR playthrough, now managed to defeat Maliketh as a dodgeroller wielding Bloody Helice.

Turns the entire fight a bit on its head compared to my previous greathammer/greatshield playthrough, really.

When using a greatshield, the Clergyman phase is pretty trivial, considering you can just guard through all his attacks and counter him for a victory with next to no damage taken. Now, against Maliketh proper, this strategy will only result in his BS DoT and HP reducing attacks passing right through your shield and likely killing you in the end.

Now, wanting to make an attempt with no ashes or shields, I had to dodge pretty much all his attacks.

This did not go well - the Clergyman has a good number of attacks, but the dodge timing is often either tricky or downright wonky. The Beast Claw in particular is.....nearly impossible to dodge and will often hit you twice when coupled with his ground slam attack, resulting in me taking a large number of annoying hits I felt I shoulda I-framed through. In the end, I felt that the best way to beat the first phase was to go all-out offensive, as he will often completely miss attacks when you're standing next to him, and he is not one of the irritating bosses that input read your flask uses, allowing you to facetank him for the most effective victory.

Malekith Main Event, on the other hand, had what I felt were far more fair dodge timing windows and fairly well telegraphed attacks for the most part.

But he just has so, SO MANY OF THEM! As one of ER's trademark Super Spastic Bosses, the attacks are completely relentless, are often chained and will sometimes hit you in seemingly unavoidable combos for 70% of your HP bar. Couple this with extremely high mobility making him hard to actually hit and the aforementioned DoT and HP bar reducing curses and you have one real ♥♥♥♥ sandwich of a boss to dodgeroll through.

Once again, I had to get creative - realising I had to dodge roughly 500000 attacks per second, I felt too slow and clunky to do so, but I didn't want to unequip my trusty bullgoat armour either. The windy crystal tear came to my rescue, allowing me to wear most of the BG set for damage reduction while being able to light roll.

Lo and behold, with light rolling, the fight was now manageable. I could now actually dodge the Beast Claw in phase 1 as well as most of phase 2 Mal's machine gun combos and was actually having fun in the end.

Mal remains a boss that's a bit too overtuned on the speed and BS DoTs for me to like, but working out how to beat him solo felt like quite an accomplishment. One of the best aspects of ER is the way the huge variety of gear and spells you find give you many different strategic options for defeating tough challenges, and discovering the value of the windy tear which I'd never used even once before to beat one of the hardest bosses in the game felt very rewarding indeed. I just wish you could skip straight to phase 2, as I don't particularly enjoy the Clergyman due to his weird-ass dodge windows.

Now, on to Godfrey and his Wrestlemania shenanigans.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Well, this is a first.

Keep going! You're about to fight what is in my opinion the best boss in the game.

[gungadin22000]

I beat him on my first playthrough, I like Godfrey a lot as a fight, mainly due to it feeling very much like a duel between warriors rather than like trying to French kiss a hornet's nest like Malekith does. Beat his 1st phase easily with a greatshield character, curious to see how messy the dodge timings are going to be.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Diposting pertama kali oleh gungadin22000:

I beat him on my first playthrough, I like Godfrey a lot as a fight, mainly due to it feeling very much like a duel between warriors rather than like trying to French kiss a hornet's nest like Malekith does. Beat his 1st phase easily with a greatshield character, curious to see how messy the dodge timings are going to be.

I think I used Quickstep on Vulgar Militia halberd to basically skip the fight. I don't shield anymore, not since like hour 2,000 in souls games. Since they added the guard counters I've tried it here and there, realizing I'm missing out by not using shields in this game. Blocking with a weapon ain't always pretty, but that's where knowing the lighter attacks of the boss' moveset comes in handy.

[gungadin22000]

I recommend the ERR mod. With correct timing, you can perfect block for zero damage or stamina cost, allowing you to counter your way to victories like a boss. Very satisfying against beefy bruisers like Crucible Knights.

[CazadorDeLobo]

Diposting pertama kali oleh gungadin22000:

I recommend the ERR mod. With correct timing, you can perfect block for zero damage or stamina cost, allowing you to counter your way to victories like a boss. Very satisfying against beefy bruisers like Crucible Knights.

Good shout. I'm in the process of studying and mastering various aspects of Sekiro for the purpose of modifying some things at the moment, so I've missed a bunch of mods for ER. Thanks. Sorry for interrupting the journaling!

[gungadin22000]

Diposting pertama kali oleh CazadorDeLobo:

Well, this is a first.

Keep going! You're about to fight what is in my opinion the best boss in the game.

Not a bad call - way more fun without the shield, particularly with ERR's deflection mechanic. Standing in front of Godfrey and deflecting his berserk axe fury like Agent Smith was awesome and very effective in beating him, and his giant footstomps needing to be jumped over or rolled through added some nice variety to the fight. I really enjoy this first phase as the pace is pleasing, gives you windows to counter that are not too generous or too short and he doesn't zoom out of range constantly like a certain furry SOB.

The Wrestlemania phase is also entertaining, although a little less so than the first phase, considering I didn't dare even try to deflect his wild clawing attacks, but light rolling won the day once again after using some more windy crysteal tear drinks. The pace here is a bit more hectic, but Horah Loux does have slight pauses are finishing his giant combos, making him a lot fairer and fun to fight than Mal.

Now, on to the final boss. According to ERR, I am actually undereleveled for it. At level 160, after finishing pretty much all content in the game apart from Mohg's areas, Consecrated Snowfield and Haligtree and Volcano manor. A bit odd if the mod expects me to either grind levels like mad or go to what is essentially post-game content in the Haligtree in order to be appropriately leveled for the final boss, but hey, some folks can beat Elden Beast blindfolded with a stick at level 1.

[gungadin22000]

Well, I managed to beat Elden Ring without summons, ashes or shields.

Radagon is Rada-gone and the Elden Beast got Elden Beat. This was horrendously difficult compared to my first playthrough with ashes and a greatshield, but not really due to clever and challenging boss design.

Which is a massive shame. I didn't really notice in my previous playthrough, since a greatshield trivialises the fight, but Radagon is actually a hellishly cool boss. Epic music, cool arena, bizarre and interesting character design and a very varied moveset with funky timings and non-obvious methods of dodging that were very challenging to figure out. I thought the giant flying golden slam was unavoidable, but it turns out it's you can just run away when he is winding it up and then leap over the gargantuan AoE for a free hit. His grab move is ultra annoying as well, considering that the dodge timing is super awkward, but the exact same method works pretty well here. I realised that my Bloody Helice just wasn't getting the job done here, as Radagon and EB are bleed immune, and had to go kill the Godskin Noble in Volcano Manor for his stitcher, just so I could dual-wield it with my Helice. This turned the fight into a crazed DPS race, which turned out to be a more effective way of beating Radagon than trying to dodge his huge variety of attacks.

Unfortunately, as cool as Radagon is, he is only the first in a 2 boss gauntlet, which is a damn shame, since the Elden Beast suffers from some of the worst Giant Boss Syndrome in a game full of GBS: not only is it so humongous it's impossible to see what attack it is winding up to do when you're in melee range, half its attacks are also super heavy on the particle effects and take up 99% of the screen, making it impossible to dodge the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ things. Couple this with EeeBee's infuriating habit of spending half the fight running away and you have a boss that I soured on considerably. It's not especially hard, but with Radagon as an actually cool and challenging boss as the appetiser this duo bossfight became a battle of attrition that I was ultimately happy to be over and done with.

For I have now gotten gud. I have beaten Elden Ring without summons, ashes or overpowered BS builds, relying on dex, arcane and the glory of a 2handed Bloody Helice and had a lot of enjoyment out of it. I do, however, not think I will be going to Malenialand - when it took me 30 tries or so to beat Radagon/EB, I shudder to think of how long it would take me to beat Mel with this playstyle.

This is actually a great game, despite all the irritating BS it throws at you and awful quest design, and easily one of the most impressive games ever created due to its sheer staggering scale. ERR mod makes it even better, and with a new edition of this mod released today, I am even considering making yet another playthrough.

[gungadin22000]

Oh, and I also went to beat Mohg in his Menstrual Palace, just because he was on my to-do list.

What a complete trainwreck of a boss. I beat him last year and he was even more annoying than I remembered. Area denial attacks are never fun in any type of bossfight and that's really all this dude has, considering half his close range attacks just....miss if you stand right next to him. But once he starts throwing out HIV infested firey crap, I really only beat him by constantly running out of the firey patches and just waiting for him to walk towards me ever so slowly or bait his easily avoidable flying slams to punish. This drags out an already mechanically unenjoyable bossfight, and that's not even going into the utter, utter garbage that is the "get completely unrelated crystal tear or take unavoidable damage" tripe.

It's like several elements were thrown together that coulda been made for an enjoyable boss, but somehow ended up as an abomination of a bossfight. Mohg would be a decent boss if he only had crazy AOE attacks, as they tend to be telegraphed well in advance and have very fair dodge windows, but the lingering damage patches and crystal tear idiocy was a mistake.

[gungadin22000]

So, went back and made ANOTHER character for an Elden Ring Reforged sorcery playthrough.

I shoulda done this ages ago - compared to my faith playthrough, casting sorceries feels smoother, faster, deal more stagger damage and seem far more FP-efficient. One of ERR's gimmicks are the "generator" spells, which do very little damage but give you FP when they hit an enemy. The incantation generators are almost uniformly awkward, slow and do little damage whereas even the basic sorcery glintstone pebble generator has much better range and casting speed and even has a habit of stopping a lot of enemies in their tracks when they're trying to close in on you.

So far so good, early magicking was a lot more satisfying than incantations. Things did, however, only really come together after I discovered two helpful pieces of kit:

1. The Carian Knight's sword, allowing me to use its super-slow but obscenely hard-hitting Big Magic Swinging ♥♥♥♥ Sword AoW.

2. The Greatblade Phalanx spell.

1 + 2 in this case equals roughly 10.000. Any remotely hard encounter now boils down to casting Greatblade Phalanx and then rushing in with a jumping attack. This opener alone is quite likely to poise break any human enemy, minibosses and invaders included, opening them for a critical hit. Take the critical and then Carian Grandeur them in the face when they're getting up from the ground. Tadaa, 70+% HP deleted before they get a chance to move.

This character is thus a burst damage machine and pretty much all content so far has been a breeze. Currently at about level 70, killed Godrick, Rennala and Makar and made my way to the Altus plateau. Curious to see if I can find any spells that can compete with my Greatblade Phalanx girlfriend, probably going to see if I can find Ranni's greatsword for maximum lazy cheese potential.

So in summary, sorcery rules, faith drools. But I think part of that is due to the fact that there really doesn't seem to be very many faith-scaling weapons that don't do holy damage (massively resisted by everybody and their grandma) or have really awkward and annoying movesets. Int has some decently scaling straight swords as well as Moonveil for that sweet katana playstyle. I found no faith weapon I even remotely liked, the closest probably being the winged scythe.

[cheetah1546]

Nioh 2 sounds loved good thing i got it for free with playstation plus that month