You can't learn a boss by fighting them anymore

[Chris1]

Playing the DLC more and this sticks out to me. You can't really learn the bosses by fighting them anymore. All the DLC bosses follow all the same trends - infinite poise, multiple hit endless combos, wide AoE attacks that have small dodge windows, ability to instantly teleport exactly to where the player is - and most attacks are enough to one or two shot the player. The DLC is basically an exercise in running back to the enemy that killed you and hoping to learn a single attack and then rinse and repeat.

It's really just an exercise in bashing your head against the wall over and over. Bosses in souls games didn't use to be like this. Orphan of Kos is one of my favorite bosses of all time, and you could actually learn his moves as the fight went on. Same with Dancer of Boreal Valley and Slave Knight Gael. Go back and revisit those fights and it was more of a chess match where you could learn and adapt during the fight as it was going on.

The Elden Ring "difficulty" mainly just comes from multiple attacks strung together with hyper aggression and those attacks basically designed to one-shot the player with little to no predictability and no ability to use basic tools such as distance management or poise breaking - fundamental game play concepts. What happened From Soft? It's fine in small doses, but when it's your only trick for every single boss, it's just lacking.

Just go through the DLC and count how many enemies have these attributes - wide AoE, endless multiple-hit combos, infinite poise, ability to teleport exactly where you are negating any distance management, and how many attacks can one/two shot you.

We can all "git gud" but if the way to do it is like this, is it really fun? I think FromSoft hyper focused on giving a challenge to "die hard players" and forgot to actually make a fun game. It's disappointing because most of the content between the ridiculous boss fights is actually a lot of fun.

[Nerevar]

i kinda feel like the dlc bosses got balanced with spirit ashes in mind.

any boss gets trivial with ashes. so if you get probelms with any boss just summon a spirit ash.

some bosses are also alot easier with certain builds than others.

[Agravain]

"Getting experience in fighting the boss doesn't get you experience in fighting the boss". Ah yes, of course, naturally. Just like in real life.

[Nauct]

Originally posted by Nerevar:

i kinda feel like the dlc bosses got balanced with spirit ashes in mind.

any boss gets trivial with ashes. so if you get probelms with any boss just summon a spirit ash.

some bosses are also alot easier with certain builds than others.

Spirit Ashes make it harder, don't they halve your poise damage? That's how you kill bosses, attack them at least once every 6 seconds, learn your maximum punish for moves, stagger twice and ded

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Nauct:

OP you're so out of your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mind. The bosses have a limited amount of attacks. Run in there, watch what they're doing, memorize it = learning. What do you mean you can't learn by fighting them?

That literally doesn't work.

In the older games, you could bait out an attack, back off, watch it, learn it, and formulate a counter to it.

In ER, you run in, bait out an attack, see where it ends... then you bait it out again, run in where it ended, and the enemy extends it into a touch of death wombo combo.

[Nauct]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Nauct:

OP you're so out of your ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ mind. The bosses have a limited amount of attacks. Run in there, watch what they're doing, memorize it = learning. What do you mean you can't learn by fighting them?

That literally doesn't work.

In the older games, you could bait out an attack, back off, watch it, learn it, and formulate a counter to it.

In ER, you run in, bait out an attack, see where it ends... then you bait it out again, run in where it ended, and the enemy extends it into a touch of death wombo combo.

For me I see it coming, roll right away, get hit, next time I see it and I wait to dodge. Old souls games you just dodge instantly and you avoid 95% of attacks

[Coin]

Objectively false.

Originally posted by D. Flame:

That literally doesn't work.

In the older games, you could bait out an attack, back off, watch it, learn it, and formulate a counter to it.

In ER, you run in, bait out an attack, see where it ends... then you bait it out again, run in where it ended, and the enemy extends it into a touch of death wombo combo.

You either need to be more aggressive or use summon and it take aggro.

Bosses are kinda on crack but you can still play around them.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Nauct:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

That literally doesn't work.

In the older games, you could bait out an attack, back off, watch it, learn it, and formulate a counter to it.

In ER, you run in, bait out an attack, see where it ends... then you bait it out again, run in where it ended, and the enemy extends it into a touch of death wombo combo.

For me I see it coming, roll right away, get hit, next time I see it and I wait to dodge. Old souls games you just dodge instantly and you avoid 95% of attacks

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

[Key]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Nauct:

For me I see it coming, roll right away, get hit, next time I see it and I wait to dodge. Old souls games you just dodge instantly and you avoid 95% of attacks

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

I hate that I'm agreeing with you, D. Flame. It's unsettling.

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Coin:

Objectively false.

Originally posted by D. Flame:

That literally doesn't work.

In the older games, you could bait out an attack, back off, watch it, learn it, and formulate a counter to it.

In ER, you run in, bait out an attack, see where it ends... then you bait it out again, run in where it ended, and the enemy extends it into a touch of death wombo combo.

You either need to be more aggressive or use summon and it take aggro.

Bosses are kinda on crack but you can still play around them.

I beat the base game twice and once more on NG+. I know how to deal with them. But that is irrelevant to the current discussion.

[Nauct]

Originally posted by D. Flame:

Originally posted by Nauct:

For me I see it coming, roll right away, get hit, next time I see it and I wait to dodge. Old souls games you just dodge instantly and you avoid 95% of attacks

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

Call it what you want, no boss took me more than 15 minutes.

[Chris1]

The argument seems to be that if it's possible for someone somewhere on planet earth to no-hit a boss, that must mean it's by definition a good boss design? Is that really the argument?

[D. Flame]

Originally posted by Nauct:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

Call it what you want, no boss took me more than 15 minutes.

I am sure, the modern games favor mindless uunga-buunga over the original games' more methodical and intelligent approach.

Originally posted by Key:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

I hate that I'm agreeing with you, D. Flame. It's unsettling.

Statically speaking, you had to be correct about something eventually. Welcome to the correct side.

[Nauct]

Originally posted by Chris1:

The argument seems to be that if it's possible for someone somewhere on planet earth to no-hit a boss, that must mean it's by definition a good boss design? Is that really the argument?

In the series that got popular with Dark Souls PREPARE TO DIE edition, yes difficulty is the appeal. Did you not know what you were getting yourself into?

[Key]

Originally posted by Nauct:

Originally posted by D. Flame:

So you didn't learn from watching. You learned through trial and error.

When Demon's Souls came out, it was praised for being tough-but-fair, and not being cheap by forcing you to rely on trial and error. Oh how the mighty have fallen. Nu-fans are literally defending the very thing that souls vets use to openly mock. Sad.

Call it what you want, no boss took me more than 15 minutes.

You're telling me that the final boss of this DLC took you less than 15 minutes to beat?

[Ω Arkandor]

Like.. im enjoying the dungeons, following miquella light and the exploration of the map. But some Bosses, they Just dont feel Fun at ALL. I Just beat rellana but It was after 70 tried If not more, i HAD 7 scadutrees but i did so little damage and i HAD so few way to damage her without getting hit that i barely got her to 70% HP.

She IS so fast, so hyper aggressive and has extremely long combos on top of combo extenders and Magic that Just dodging and attacking with a grave scythe was useless. She has the size of malenia but she never stop when attacking and when you finish a combo, shes extremely fast to punish you for punishing her. I only could keep up with her with a great katana and bhs, literally poking her to death.

I die to her and i dont know How i couldve done stuff better, HOW DO I GET BETTER, Then i die to the twin axe death Knight but i can see How to Dodge his moves and How to learn him next time. Some Bosses Just dont feel Fun even If i Win.

Hell i HAD more Fun with the two red rune Bear Bosses than her, i could react to them, i could learn and see my mistakes. Thats How i feel about some Bosses.