Why is the Scrapped Watchman boss so ridiculous?

[Leiraion]

This feels extremely early for a boss that can...
2 shot me
has a building affect that drains your fable
Uses rage attacks heavily
takes 0.5% of his HP bar from each hit
and has a lot of varied patterns.

This doesn't feel like an early boss at all.

Am I missing something?

[Svâstîkus]

Originally posted by Leiraion:

Am I missing something?

yeah he also has a grab attack that is unidentifiable, seemingly, to a regular swing attack. And in my experience with it is if you get grabbed, 9 times out of 10 it's gonna do you in.

He also makes a reappearance later on as another boss fight (kinda), so look forward to that :)

[Leiraion]

The grab seems to always be his first attack in P2, I've gotten him pretty low a few times but this boss fight is absolutely ridiculous for how early it is in the game.
This feels like Dancer in DS3 but it's in place of Vordt.
Am I suppose to grind more stats out or something before this?
I have 4 flasks and that equates to 4+ more hits before you die (depending on how many you regen once you get down to 0).

Having to hit the boss 150~ times to kill it seems absolutely ridiculous. Even proccing the stagger early doesn't really help because it just pushes him into P2 and I haven't even seen an opportunity to stagger in p2.

[Heiinz]

The grab only appears in phase 2 an he lifts his right arm for a pretty long time. You can dodge into him once the arm comes down.

For everything else: He is the teaching tool. The bosses only get harder from here.
The lesson is: learn patterns and learn to parry.

Dancer was not a teaching tool she was designed to throw people of that got stuck in the rythem of the game. (like me)

LoP does not do such a thing. once you are in the rythm you can stay in it.

[Zanaki]

Ye I had trouble too, I was using the default STR wepaon, swapped the hilt to the police baton and beat him first try, the swings felt a lot faster so it made it a bit easier to hit and not get hit back

[Leiraion]

Originally posted by Heiinz:

The grab only appears in phase 2 an he lifts his right arm for a pretty long time. You can dodge into him once the arm comes down.

For everything else: He is the teaching tool. The bosses only get harder from here.
The lesson is: learn patterns and learn to parry.

Dancer was not a teaching tool she was designed to throw people of that got stuck in the rythem of the game. (like me)

LoP does not do such a thing. once you are in the rythm you can stay in it.

The thing is, generally in souls games enemies prior to bosses are pretty tough and help you learn some of the upcoming bosses.
The enemies before this boss are laughably easily in comparison and don't prep you at all. The swordsman puppets attack extremely slowly with 2 different slow attack patterns and die in 2-3 hits.
The rhythm of this boss requires dozens of perfect guards / hits PER stagger PER phase.
You die in 2-3 hits. You have 4 flasks. That means you get generally ~6 mistakes before you die.
P2 also lowers your windows for adding to that stagger proc because of the lightning puddles being everywhere.
The difficulty spike from the minibosses/mobs prior to this boss is a wild jump.
The donkey boss, minutes before this, by comparison is hilariously easy.

I actually got the Scrapped Watchmen last night pretty much right after I made this post I logged back in, but I really don't think that takes away from anything I've said.
I'm a super experienced souls player and this boss feels very out of place.
Kind of like fighting the Grafted Scion at the beginning of Elden Ring, except you are meant to win.

[drz30]

Yes, it's weird especially since the boss after him is a cakewalk.

[Krypto]

Originally posted by Svâstîkus:

Originally posted by Leiraion:

Am I missing something?

yeah he also has a grab attack that is unidentifiable, seemingly, to a regular swing attack. And in my experience with it is if you get grabbed, 9 times out of 10 it's gonna do you in.

He also makes a reappearance later on as another boss fight (kinda), so look forward to that :)

The grab attack's tell is holding his arm up and looking like he's getting ready to lunge forward. It's easily readable once you know what to look for.

[gungadin22000]

I really like Scrappy. I feel he is the game's true tutorial boss, as he is way, WAY easier to beat if you take a hint from his enormously telegraphed punch combos and use the entire fight as an opportunity to learn how to perfect guard. I beat him and it was a close thing, but doing so felt that I'd acquired some basic competence in LoP's main defensive mechanism, which differs from Sekiro in timing.

I also recommend putting your blades away and using the policeman's club on a handle that suits it. It isn't specified by the game at all, but puppets tend to resist blade damage and Scrappy even resists electrical damage. But all in all I was disappointed that I couldn't rematch him after the fight - I wanted a rematch.

[Azjaran]

Originally posted by gungadin22000:

But all in all I was disappointed that I couldn't rematch him after the fight - I wanted a rematch.

Later in the Game there will be kind of a rematch.

Many People would like to see a Bossrush, lets hope it comes with the DLC.