After beating Malenia (without summons) for the second time, I've come to a relization

[Amins]

She is definitely NOT as hard as people make her out to be. Sure, she's pretty tough. It took me about ten hours the first time and three the second, but I'd much rather fight her than Maliketh or Horah Loux. Super easy to stagger and stunlock, extremely susceptible to bleed, and is very generous with allowing you to create space to heal or take a break. She does have that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where she waits to use Waterfoul in your face when it's impossible to dodge, but if you can avoid that, you have a fair chance.

I definitely couldn't do it without Light Roll, though. Glass Cannon builds are the way to go.

[It is my CAT]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

To me, at least like since 2 months ago, it is 4/5 of her health and 1/5 of her health, no matter how "easy" I go at her. Before I could control the fight pace being easy on her and maybe she would not even pull waterfowl even once, also it was more random, now she pulls every time at 4/5 and 1/5 of her health at both stages.

Yeah, she changed somehow. Also she can start to spam one annoying attack again and again. Also she always do 3 waterflows, no matter, if you already died from first. Or just mashing something after killing. I wish she has a bit more "brains". AI now everywhere, except games.

[Amins]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Originally posted by It is my CAT:

She always use waterflow at 1/2 her health no matter what you do. But others - yeah. It can be just a single waterflow in first phase.

To me, at least like since 2 months ago, it is 4/5 of her health and 1/5 of her health, no matter how "easy" I go at her. Before I could control the fight pace being easy on her and maybe she would not even pull waterfowl even once, also it was more random, now she pulls every time at 4/5 and 1/5 of her health at both stages.

In my experience it feels more like 2/3 and 1/3. But maybe it just works out that way due to my pacing. She almost always gets two of them off per stage. But sometimes I just get lucky and she doesn't do any.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by It is my CAT:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

To me, at least like since 2 months ago, it is 4/5 of her health and 1/5 of her health, no matter how "easy" I go at her. Before I could control the fight pace being easy on her and maybe she would not even pull waterfowl even once, also it was more random, now she pulls every time at 4/5 and 1/5 of her health at both stages.

Yeah, she changed somehow. Also she can start to spam one annoying attack again and again. Also she always do 3 waterflows, no matter, if you already died from first. Or just mashing something after killing. I wish she has a bit more "brains". AI now everywhere, except games.

Originally posted by Senki:

Nothing in these games remains hard if you practice for hours against them. That's the whole point.

The fact that it took you 10 hours to beat her the first time means that she is hard lol

Before, like 1 year ago, when I was too aggressive she pulled 3 consecutive waterfowls (total of 9 consecutive waves) + some extra combo strings ... now Malenia is more chill overall and waterfowl seem to be per HP not per aggression, but my aggression is what was making it harder than needed.

[FafnirChaos]

I find malenia's waterfoul dance is basically just a greed punisher - as long as your not spamming attacks mindlessly then you'll have enough time to run away and dodge.

Of course you can stagger her out of waterfoul dance(at the beginning) if you truly want to use a full greed build - however greed is always risk = reward - thus you could be eating rocks in that event.

[It is my CAT]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Before, like 1 year ago, when I was too aggressive she pulled 3 consecutive waterfowls (total of 9 consecutive waves) + some extra combo strings ... now Malenia is more chill overall and waterfowl seem to be per HP not per aggression, but my aggression is what was making it harder than needed.

I never play aggressive, only if other stuff doesn't work, i can. Even if i let her to do all attacks first and will counter only when she is in recovery animation, and there will be no staggers/punishment, she still will do waterflow at 1/2.
Or i can attack her fast + stagger + punish - it will be same 1/2 and waterflow after)
Only amount of time is different)

[Sonnenbank]

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Originally posted by It is my CAT:

Yeah, she changed somehow. Also she can start to spam one annoying attack again and again. Also she always do 3 waterflows, no matter, if you already died from first. Or just mashing something after killing. I wish she has a bit more "brains". AI now everywhere, except games.

Originally posted by Senki:

Nothing in these games remains hard if you practice for hours against them. That's the whole point.

The fact that it took you 10 hours to beat her the first time means that she is hard lol

Before, like 1 year ago, when I was too aggressive she pulled 3 consecutive waterfowls (total of 9 consecutive waves) + some extra combo strings ... now Malenia is more chill overall and waterfowl seem to be per HP not per aggression, but my aggression is what was making it harder than needed.

I have fought Malenia countless times from 1.02 till 1.10 and she is not different in behaviour. She is the same chill she always was
her Waterfowl was always HP based but could also be triggerd with spells.
and i assume you can still trigger it with spells
i have only fought her melee in 1.10.

Is there a chance you were using swarm of flies ... like many streamers did at that time.

I have an old video
where i practiced her with magic:
This was my 3rd try as sorcerer ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLCSHkMy1Uk

video was from more than 1.5 years ago
as soon as the 60-75% barrier was broken she basically non stop waterfowled me because of ranged spells
but in meele she was calm even 1.5 years ago

you can also see this waterfowl spam behaviour with bows

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Before, like 1 year ago, when I was too aggressive she pulled 3 consecutive waterfowls (total of 9 consecutive waves) + some extra combo strings ... now Malenia is more chill overall and waterfowl seem to be per HP not per aggression, but my aggression is what was making it harder than needed.

I have fought Malenia countless times from 1.02 till 1.10 and she is not different in behaviour. She is the same chill she always was
her Waterfowl was always HP based but could also be triggerd with spells.
and i assume you can still trigger it with spells
i have only fought her melee in 1.10.

Is there a chance you were using swarm of flies ... like many streamers did at that time.

I have an old video
where i practiced her with magic:
This was my 3rd try as sorcerer ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLCSHkMy1Uk

video was from more than 1.5 years ago
as soon as the 60-75% barrier was broken she basically non stop waterfowled me because of ranged spells
but in meele she was calm even 1.5 years ago

you can also see this waterfowl spam behaviour with bows

No, always melee, and rot breath was useless on her since she just dodge it entirely so no even rot breath proc.

I just was too aggressive, also now even being aggressive she is not as aggressive in retaliation as before and her waterfowl was not HP based at all, it was more random and there was actually a couple of times she "started the fight" with it.

Now she definitely is more tame overall and waterfowl definitely is HP based, very rarely I will see her using waterfowl before or after 1/5 and 4/5 of her HP but also very rarely wiil see her not performing at 1/5 and 4/5 of her HP at both stages.

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by It is my CAT:

Originally posted by EF_Neo1st:

Before, like 1 year ago, when I was too aggressive she pulled 3 consecutive waterfowls (total of 9 consecutive waves) + some extra combo strings ... now Malenia is more chill overall and waterfowl seem to be per HP not per aggression, but my aggression is what was making it harder than needed.

I never play aggressive, only if other stuff doesn't work, i can. Even if i let her to do all attacks first and will counter only when she is in recovery animation, and there will be no staggers/punishment, she still will do waterflow at 1/2.
Or i can attack her fast + stagger + punish - it will be same 1/2 and waterflow after)
Only amount of time is different)

Yes, that is how I learned to fight her but innitially (and for a good time) I was being too aggressive on her on my first run.

[BKo]

She is badly designed, and that's a problem, because you're going to get more badly designed ♥♥♥♥ like WFD in the future by praising her. But people already put up with it, so expect to watch three youtube videos in shadows of the erdtree to figure out the exploit to dodge the undodgable attacks next time, and then 10 in the next game, and maybe in 5 years you can just play the entire game with a guide since that's ultimate form of what all the kids think a difficult game is.

[silly]

Originally posted by Amins:

She is definitely NOT as hard as people make her out to be.

Originally posted by Amins:

It took me ten hours

[SotiCoto]

Originally posted by Amins:

She is definitely NOT as hard as people make her out to be.

I feel like I have to stress something here: Just because you got gud at her doesn't mean she isn't hard. It isn't like "hard" is defined for everyone relative to your own personal experience with the game, is it?

[Scuzz]

Originally posted by Amins:

She is definitely NOT as hard as people make her out to be. Sure, she's pretty tough. It took me about ten hours the first time and three the second, but I'd much rather fight her than Maliketh or Horah Loux. Super easy to stagger and stunlock, extremely susceptible to bleed, and is very generous with allowing you to create space to heal or take a break. She does have that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where she waits to use Waterfoul in your face when it's impossible to dodge, but if you can avoid that, you have a fair chance.

I definitely couldn't do it without Light Roll, though. Glass Cannon builds are the way to go.

If 3 hours to beat a boss makes the boss just pretty tough I would hate to fight an actual tough boss. Although I think in DS1 it took me a week to beat Ornstein and Smough the first time. :)

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Scuzz:

Originally posted by Amins:

She is definitely NOT as hard as people make her out to be. Sure, she's pretty tough. It took me about ten hours the first time and three the second, but I'd much rather fight her than Maliketh or Horah Loux. Super easy to stagger and stunlock, extremely susceptible to bleed, and is very generous with allowing you to create space to heal or take a break. She does have that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ where she waits to use Waterfoul in your face when it's impossible to dodge, but if you can avoid that, you have a fair chance.

I definitely couldn't do it without Light Roll, though. Glass Cannon builds are the way to go.

If 3 hours to beat a boss makes the boss just pretty tough I would hate to fight an actual tough boss. Although I think in DS1 it took me a week to beat Ornstein and Smough the first time. :)

Lol, well, I had experience wiith DS3 (beating almost all bosses 1st try by the time I started DS1) and... O&S I think was 3 tries to me, if not less.
It iss what I think to be the best or second best fight, kind of on parr with Artorias, but none of the both boss fights really gave me much trouble.

[VERStile]

Beat it 4th try. Elden beast 10th try... Bought the mosquito spell.

As a mage.

[Mista Dobalina]

i've never spent "ten hours" on a boss.