Can we after all these years agree that Malenia is example of bad designed boss?

[Anonym]

I know there are gonna be guys claiming life steal is a fair mechanic but I still think its example of poor mechanic. No boss ever should have ability to life steal through shield. Lets also ignore the fact that her life steal mechanic doesnt make any lore sense. And dont even get me started on her anime spin attack.

[Key]

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

Publicado originalmente por Key:

I never mentioned a spear, just the shield, on my first attempt I was using a greathammer with it. Is using a greatshield cheesing now?

Can't use bleed, can't use shields, can't use spears, can't use magic, can't use summons, can't use rot, can't do this, can't do that. "WTF why is the game so impossibly hard?"

If you need to remove options to call something OP, that something isn't OP, you're just ignoring part of your toolset and then complaining.

Secondly, the hippo shares 80% of its moveset with Sullyvahn beasts, that were minibosses in DS3, and DS3 threw you in a room with two of them.

Lastly Hippo does not one hit unless you have low vigor and no armor, even if you encounter it the first time at blessing level 4.

When did I say any of those things? We're talking about bad boss design here, and the hippo is a badly designed ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss. That's it.

The ♥♥♥♥ I am talking about is ♥♥♥♥ like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUxWIRerD0U

Here, you did it here:

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

Publicado originalmente por Key:

Hippo is litterally made useless by a haligtree greatshield.

"*insert boss* is made useless by turtling up"

yeah, great, you can also literally no-hit DLC radahn with a big shield and a rapier. Fact is that hippo is a bad boss that's not fun to play against, same as fire giant

You said rapier instead of spear but same principle applies, I wasn't talking about block-poking.

[Vinnolo]

the only arguably badly designed boss is consort, there shouldnt be an attack that is a garanteed hit unless you frameperfect dodge or have very specific ashes, malenia have big glaring weaknesses, low poise, waterflow is the only thing that can even be considered hard about her and it has terrible turning after the first 2 atacks, if you learn how to dodge waterflow malenia becomes a complete joke, not to mention dlc added alot of ashes that can stunlock malenia, like the palm blast

[gaming]

Publicado originalmente por Key:

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

When did I say any of those things? We're talking about bad boss design here, and the hippo is a badly designed ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ boss. That's it.

The ♥♥♥♥ I am talking about is ♥♥♥♥ like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUxWIRerD0U

Here, you did it here:

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

"*insert boss* is made useless by turtling up"

yeah, great, you can also literally no-hit DLC radahn with a big shield and a rapier. Fact is that hippo is a bad boss that's not fun to play against, same as fire giant

You said rapier instead of spear but same principle applies, I wasn't talking about block-poking.

Yeah, I mentioned a spear. Not removing bleed, summons, or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you mentioned in your sobby ass reply.

[gaming]

Publicado originalmente por Vinnolo:

the only arguably badly designed boss is consort, there shouldnt be an attack that is a garanteed hit unless you frameperfect dodge or have very specific ashes, malenia have big glaring weaknesses, low poise, waterflow is the only thing that can even be considered hard about her and it has terrible turning after the first 2 atacks, if you learn how to dodge waterflow malenia becomes a complete joke, not to mention dlc added alot of ashes that can stunlock malenia, like the palm blast

There's no way you're calling consort badly designed lmao, but agreed on the Malenia part. Malenia becomes utterly trivial when using blood or frost on her it's a complete joke

[zero]

i see the thread had fundamentally moved to the hippo but to give my own opinion

there is nothing wrong with bosses having things that cause certain builds to have worse times then others, malenia counters poke builds that are slow, in turn, consort is insanely weak to the very same build, two side of the same coins.

i always used big weapons in this game, never felt the need to switch, some bosses gave me an easier time and some harder, thats rpgs for you.

[Fripposo]

Publicado originalmente por Key:

No, we can't, because she isn't. Waterfowl is the only debatably ufair attack she has, and even then, there's no rule that states every attack should be dodgeable.

even waterfowl is completely dodgeable once u get the hang of it, shes the best fakin boss in the game

[Key]

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

Publicado originalmente por Key:

Here, you did it here:

You said rapier instead of spear but same principle applies, I wasn't talking about block-poking.

Yeah, I mentioned a spear. Not removing bleed, summons, or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you mentioned in your sobby ass reply.

Because I was comparing it to the rest of the pile of arbitrary stuff people b*tch about.

[gaming]

Publicado originalmente por Key:

Publicado originalmente por my bals:

Yeah, I mentioned a spear. Not removing bleed, summons, or whatever the ♥♥♥♥ you mentioned in your sobby ass reply.

Because I was comparing it to the rest of the pile of arbitrary stuff people b*tch about.

ok

[xunlaiAgent]

Just defeated this boss a hour ago.

I disliked that aoe attack whirl that she does. Otherwise she felt fair, as she was one of the few bosses that could be actually knocked down. Well, with summon ashes (I used some bad-ass knight) she wasn't that bad even with the whirl, so whatever.

I actually would prefer if the game had more fights like malenias first form (without the whirl aoe), crucible knights, godskins (including the duos). You know, fights against normal sized enemies with weapons, and not weird nonsense with particle effect spam.
Sometimes less is more.

[Piggums]

Publicado originalmente por Vinnolo:

the only arguably badly designed boss is consort, there shouldnt be an attack that is a garanteed hit unless you frameperfect dodge or have very specific ashes, malenia have big glaring weaknesses, low poise, waterflow is the only thing that can even be considered hard about her and it has terrible turning after the first 2 atacks, if you learn how to dodge waterflow malenia becomes a complete joke, not to mention dlc added alot of ashes that can stunlock malenia, like the palm blast

The main thing I hate about Malenia is her being able to straight up ignore posture breaking by using her hyper armor moves (her posture refills if you reduce it to 0 while she's in hyper armor and doesn't trigger the ripostable animation), waterfowl and lifesteal are a pain but being able to ignore game rules is my issue.

Completely agree with Consort though, Malenia I can find positives for. As soon as Consort hits phase 2 everything just falls apart, which is a shame because besides the cross slash combo, Phase 1 is perfect.

[Seijana]

What pisses me off is that her lifesteal has no bearing on the amount of damage she does so she isn't really stealing it at all. Block all the damage she does with the biggest shield the game offers and she heals just the same as if she straight up impaled you.

I have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue why she was programmed that way.

[zero]

Publicado originalmente por Seijana:

What pisses me off is that her lifesteal has no bearing on the amount of damage she does so she isn't really stealing it at all. Block all the damage she does with the biggest shield the game offers and she heals just the same as if she straight up impaled you.

I have no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ clue why she was programmed that way.

so its 'life/heal on hit' then

which matches her greatrune

Publicado originalmente por malenia's great rune:

attacks made immediately after receiving damage will partially recover HP.

which also doesn't state that its lifesteal.

[1100011]

Publicado originalmente por Sgt. Flaw:

It's a side boss for try hards. She's meant to corner you into beating her by learning how to dodge her.

Good luck trying to learn waterfowl, once per fight (you get killed before a second try), half the time you don't know even know what's going on during the attack.

What would have made so much difference to this fight is an enemy waterfowling you up and down the level. Just a constant barrage of waterfowl. Then you can learn how to dodge or otherwise deal with it.

Maybe they tried to do that with Millicent's invasions; however fighting in a lake of rot does not exactly encourage practicing.

[Tao314zdin]

Publicado originalmente por Anonym:

Can we after all these years agree that Malenia is example of bad designed boss?

No, she is a great boss, she has her clear strength (good against scarcity cat turtles or just giga-passive players) and weaknesses (chain-knockdowns, bleed, parry, homing spells). She can be either defeated by playing to her weak-side or just by pure skill (although of that one needs a considerable amount or a lot of time). That is besides the point that as all other bosses she can be outfatted by a character of sufficiently fat-level to the point she would even lose to the braindead shield-poke.

If you want a bad design example: the 1st (original) encounter with Radahn, he was so hyped in the trailer and story and then appeared to be a slow fatman who just cry loud. On top of that he is given a gimmick where can be just spammed with NPCs for complete faceroll. And on top of that they removed the only thing that was actually going for him in the very beginning of the fight - his arrows that was actually something to deal with rather then ignore by strafing like it is now.

So if you want an example of bad design in ER here it is^ Radahn the lame.

[Tr3m0r]

I suppose based on OP saying that lifesteal works against a shield block that could be something that could change. At least that makes sense to me. However I don't think that because that exists then it's evidence of bad game design.

First I think one would have to establish what good game design or boss design actually is. Most people may point to a boss or a mechanic and then discredit the entire game which is just not effective.

Secondly, ER is in my opinion the most advanced and feature rich Fromsoft experience that allows players to show the MOST skill and be the MOST difficult game to the most easiest. That to me is excellent game design.

In a game that allows players of all skill levels who are able to traverse many points and encounters at random times, that creates numerous challenges. How does the boss deal with player A who leveled up 5X, player B who just sucks, player C who is skilled and not leveled and 50 other possibilities, ensure a relatively challenging and fair experience while maintaining the Fromsoft vision and design language?

They do this incredibly well overall. Not perfect but no one can yet. That's what's difficult to accept with the DLC for some people because they aren't considering how many variables affect how people will approach the game. Level, build, skill, use of mimic or not, etc. So we have bosses input reading aggressively to offset the blasphemous blade users or mimic callers to make them vulnerable. Same with the aggressive flying all over the place and huge AOE. It forces cheese players or OP builds to still be challenged and have to adapt and likely use more tools to overcome what usually wouldn't be an issue.

So yes, I can think of aspects or parts of the experience that could be improved but it still has proven to be my favorite game of all time.