I LOVE the Crucible Knight duo battle.

[Fried Noodles]

Edit:
Took a couple of tries, but I managed to take 'em down in my usual sloppy, noobish fashion!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlQGF_BbY0

--

I just hate the slightly annoying skeletons between the boss door and the statue of whosit that I'm constantly respawning at.

I never liked fighting Crucible Knights in the past. Throughout my entire playthrough so far (still on my first character at Lv.109), I've only used smaller, nimble weapons. Nothing big and chonky that can do hefty jumping attacks.

Since Crucible Knights seem to have perfect super-armor, my pokes with the Rapier, Dagger, or Whip felt extremely ineffective. And their long-range pokes were way better at punishing me than anything I could do to them.

So I cheesed them.
I cheesed 'em all.
Found a high place and blasted 'em with Rock Fling or Loretta's Magic Bow.

Can't do that in this boss arena.
I've known all along that they can be parried but never really took the time to learn 'em.

Then I found this dungeon.
I knew that this boss battle existed, but I didn't know where.
And of course it had to be in a somewhat annoying dungeon.
I had a thought of returning to the Site of Grace to swap around my Flask allotment or change my Ash of War on my weapons... But I don't care to dance around those Chariots again.

So I'm "stuck" at the Stake/Statue.

And I'm trying to parry 'em until they stop wriggling.

I'm actually kinda "built" for Parrying. I try to Parry anything I can (but many monsters are giant things that seemingly cannot be parried so I don't get a lot of practice!)

My Misericorde+23 is the perfect weapon for this arena... Mostly. I dunno if the Crucible Knights are resistant to magic or if my scaling could be better. I'm able to get just under 1K damage per crit.
But often because of how the Knights like to cuddle, they do a good job of covering each other. I'd parry one, but get hit by the other before I can riposte. It is a hassle trying to separate them!

I'm getting better at this battle... But then I get worse. Rapidly.
So I take a break. Then I come back and I'm awful. But then I get better again... Then I get worse. ;)

The best I've done so far is knocking out Ordovis and having the polearm Crucible Knight reduced to about 15% before screwing up and misreading his attacks.

Also not going to summon the Ash friend.
I have a Mimic Tear and Black Knife Tiche at +10... but they're staying in their Pokeballs for this one.

[Raigavin]

You like getting owned repeatedly eh, I won't fight your preference.
Enjoy.

[Sgt. Flaw]

Cool story...

Yea I'm not a fan of the rng of the bosses..or the fact it's so random...

I'll get better but still can die after 10 seconds...like I'll kill the boss and could still die easily if I went again...

Other DSs weren't like this...I'd slowly get better at chipping away more dmg over time till I finally got it to 0. And once I was good at a boss...I'd be good.

Elden Ring I'll get 10% dmg 50% dmg 5% dmg then win...makes me feel like I'm not making progress when I really am. Its all rng...I'll be better at some move set combos than others...and eventually get the one I got the best at and win.

Feels weird

[Fried Noodles]

Did bosses in other DS titles always repeat the same pattern of moves in the same order all the time or something?
I never played any other Souls games before Elden Ring. But kinda RNG behavior of bosses seems like a bit of a common/obvious thing.
Threshold abilities as well, when they reach a certain percentage of health.

[Humpenstilzchen]

This fight sucks so hard I didn´t have the nerves to do it tbh. I gave up after a couple tries.

What a stupid idea to put two of them in a small room.. I find this even more difficult than the two gargoiles.

[Sgt. Flaw]

Originally posted by Fried Noodles:

Did bosses in other DS titles always repeat the same pattern of moves in the same order all the time or something?
I never played any other Souls games before Elden Ring. But kinda RNG behavior of bosses seems like a bit of a common/obvious thing.
Threshold abilities as well, when they reach a certain percentage of health.

Yea...maybe not so much rng but the learning curve was more of a curve than a wiggly line...hard to describe really.

And the threshold abilities of lower than 10% health are terrible...I'll spend my last few tears just to get in one hit when I was wrecking up until that point.

[Fried Noodles]

Well, didn't have much luck last night.
But as soon as I got off work this afternoon, I had a go at 'em again.
Took only three tries today but I managed to bring 'em down.

But it is messy as anything (as most of my boss victories are!).
I take a bunch of hits. I miss a bunch of parries. I panic roll.

I do think I got a bit fortunate though. The Crucible Knights usually cuddled much more closely in my other failed runs.
But the spear knight gave me plenty of openings to put Ordovis down nice and quick.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtlQGF_BbY0

[Doma]

Absolutely horrible boss, not because it's a duo boss, but because attack turn no longer applies to duo bosses in Elden Ring, meaning they can now swing at you whenever they want. The worst fight was the triple scarlet rot crystalian boss room, absolutely horrid to do without any npc summons as you get shot at by the magic, the dude that throws these boomerangs thing at you and the spear guy that chases you forever.

[Fried Noodles]

Originally posted by Doma:

Absolutely horrible boss, not because it's a duo boss, but because attack turn no longer applies to duo bosses in Elden Ring, meaning they can now swing at you whenever they want. The worst fight was the triple scarlet rot crystalian boss room, absolutely horrid to do without any npc summons as you get shot at by the magic, the dude that throws these boomerangs thing at you and the spear guy that chases you forever.

Actually I didn't have much trouble with that one.
Because there're so many minor dungeons with Crystallians as the boss, I'd kinda "perfected" parrying the spear guy.
While you're parrying/riposting that guy you cannot be damaged by the other two.

Avoiding the spellcaster was simple: just make sure you use the pillars to stay out of their line of sight.

After the spear guy was downed, I switched to my whips (striking weapon) and quickly broke the other two.

[tim.]

Dumb fight. I don't agree that "all" the boss fights are built around summons, but Duo Crucible is absurdly easy with greatshield summons. If a fight sways on nearly-impossible or ludicrously easy based on whether or not you can get 1 ally to pull aggro, it's a badly balanced fight. Crucible knights are the purest form of artificial difficulty in this game, IMO.

[Sabaithal]

Duo bosses are annoying, those two especially. I basically abused the AoE of moonveil to DPS one of the knights as fast as possible while my ashen summons distracted the other.

The goal is to get them down to one before my summons die. Or at least close. With moonveils wave it is doable, just annoying.

And I can take either one of them solo easy. They're probably one of the easiest enemies to read, and even if you don't, their attacks are slow as hell. Just gotta be patient.

[Fried Noodles]

Yeah using Ash Summons definitely would've made this easier.
But I just kinda got it in my head that I wanted to beat 'em on my own.
I use Ash Summons for plenty of other bosses here and there.
Couldn't be bothered to deal with that Full-Grown Fallingstar Beast in Mt. Gelmir for example.
So I let my summon at it and hurled stones from afar. ;)

I am curious if my Black Knife Tiche could've soloed the Crucible Knight Duo by herself...

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by Fried Noodles:

I am curious if my Black Knife Tiche could've soloed the Crucible Knight Duo by herself...

I'd say about a 50% chance maybe? She's definitely one of the better summons, very survivable due to how she moves.

Though I used bloodhound knight fioh against them, which is also supposed to be quite survivable for the same reason, and it got demolished. So who knows?

[pcdeltalink]

I hated that fight. They don’t stagger and they basically never give you a gap to get a hit in with both of them attacking. They have good reach and aggressively punish healing.

Only way I was able to finish it was summoning Oleg and frantically trying to get one dead before Oleg got massacred by the other one.

[Sabaithal]

Originally posted by pcdeltalink:

I hated that fight. They don’t stagger and they basically never give you a gap to get a hit in with both of them attacking.

They don't have many openings, but they are there. Two specifically.
- Smaller opening: Right after his shield bash. When he's pacing sideways, you can bait him into this attack by approaching close, but not point blank.
- Larger opening: Right after his 2handed combo, either when he slams down (he will stop if you are far away enough) or on the followup double slash.
I can solo these guys without any difficulty now that I've fought them about 30 times lol.

And the spear knight is full of openings between attacks, just gotta be careful of the grab once its health reaches 50%.

[hemorrhage911]

This fight is all about summoning someone to distract until you finish one off. That's it's main purpose (as is a lot of fights in this game, but Dark Souls mindset is still what too many players here are stuck in)

Fighting them any other way is raising difficulty for no good reason. But you do you.