Messmer vs Malenia Boss Comparison

[Dracula Flow]

After having enough time to see the differences on why Malenia works and why Messmer doesn't I'm going to list off what works and what doesn't, because there is absolutely some elements put into the fight with Messmer to try and tack on a layer of artificial difficulty.

Malenia works for multiple reasons and most of the time you'll die to her it's due to greeding attacks or just bad positioning. Her arena is also generous considering that her biggest two attacks for the majority aren't taking up even 1/4 of it. Malenia's second phase incorporates Scarlet Rot with one (or two) abilities at most, her combos aren't super long and drawn out along with having a pretty recognizable pattern after enough times fighting her. Another thing in her favor is her not flying across the room at the start of the fight and being directly in your face so you have time to get off a Spirit Ash Summon or Buff.

Messmer DOES NOT work because on top of dealing a gross amount of physical damage, you also have an equally gross amount of fire damage with very long drawn out combos back to back. His arena is far too small for the amount of space his attacks are taking up and his ability to chain combos. His second phase is also just ALOT of spamming and giving the player almost no time to breathe or decide their next move beyond rolling in an attempt to not get hit by absurdly large damage combos that can 2-3 shot you. On top of the ridiculously small arena, Messmer will constantly fly across it to get directly in your face and give you almost no time to even get off a Spirit Ash Summon.

I could drone on about the differences between these two but Malenia was challenging but fair with an understandable AI aggro system. Messmer is just a weird mess who ignores the previous understanding of bosses and aggro just to have an extra layer of difficulty tacked on. Messmer is capable of being a very challenging but fair boss fight but there's too much that works against him to make it feel fair. The fight feels less about being prepared and understanding him and more just bashing your head against a wall until you finally get lucky enough to take him down.

TL:DR Messmer's fight just doesn't work, Malenia's fight works well.

[Tenz]

Malenia is top tier trash fight.

[Dracula Flow]

Originally posted by Tenz:

Malenia is top tier trash fight.

She can be hard but by comparison to Messmer I don't think there's all too much that works against her besides Waterfowl Dance having the same start up animation as 2 other attacks.