How the HECK do you deal with Mara'lenna?!

[GEL]

Okay, I have been ADORING this game. One of the best beat 'em ups I've ever played and I have played a LOT.

...and then Mara'lenna happened.

This boss is NOT okay and absolutely needs to be reworked. I can plow through her entire stage but once I get to her? It's over. I've never felt so helpless against a boss in a game.

Simply put she has armor that REQUIRES the player to parry. She's a parry challenge. Immediately I hate this. Never liked forced parry encounters, but Mara'lenna is special because she decides it's not enough that it's almost impossible to hit her without parrying. Oh no. SHE has to TRICK you. Not only do I have to be careful of the exploding ice clones while waiting for her to attack so I can parry, but sometimes she just decides to slide behind me and attack from behind and I can barely struggle to turn around and block her when she does this and even when I do the timing window to do a Counter Move is super tiny AND she keeps hitting me with more moves that do an OBSCENE amount of damage!

I'm STUMPED. I do not know how to deal with this boss and the power meter just keeps rising.

So any hints would be helpful but seeing a run go from solid to impossible INSTANTLY because of one absolutely VILE boss is disheartening.

If you're wondering, I'm playing as Grapple Sheep...I really need to learn her name but she's my best character thus far.

[Lesserred]

All you have to do is get 1 parry+counter hit off to break her armor.

[Lurkemeyer]

Setting aside whether a boss that requires perfect block is fair or unfair (not interested in that convo, not touching it, not acknowledging it), there are a couple things that come to mind:

* direction doesn't actually affect block. If an enemy is behind you and press block, when the attack lands you'll magically flip to face it

* if you have at least one mana you can use an Escape Guard instead of a Perfect Guard. This is when you have taken at least one hit during an enemy combo sequence, and you hold the guard button to flash yellow and break the combo. You can press attack here to Counter.

* Irena has a combo move called Iron Stance, if you upgrade that in the skill tree then it becomes a Perfect Block skill. You press forward + square and while you hold that charge, any attack that hits gets perfect blocked. There's another upgrade to this tree that includes additional lightning on Iron Stance Perfect Block, making it easier to hit the attacker.

* Irena's charged weapon attack has a slight amount of step-up toward the enemy, which is useful to land the hit

* free training mode doesn't do bosses, but it does offer the perfect-guard variant of the deer enemy, which is useful for getting the timing down in a no-stakes environment

* if you attack Mara Lenna while she's guarding, she'll flash yellow and do her own Escape Guard Counter. This actually works in your favor because it presents a relatively straightforward attack to use perfect block against, yourself. Way easier than her teleporting around and using bombs & thrown weapons.

* some mythic equipment and level 10/15 elemental ratings produce additional effects on Perfect Block which can help increase your range to land the hit.

[GEL]

Thanks for the replies and tips! I just looked on YouTube for videos of the fight and EGAD it looks worse than I thought! Like I'm seeing this person get off their perfect blocks and Mara just goes "LOL NOPE! ICE CLONE!"

My jaw is on the FLOOR with how excessively nasty this stupid thing is! If you wanna see the video, I time stamped it:
https://youtu.be/84h7meHpBYE?t=4316

THAT SAID I will try these hints and see if it helps. You say I only need to counter her ONCE? You SURE?!

[GEL]

Alright so trying it again, I get it much better. Two major things:

#1) You only have to perfect parry her once PER TURN. Like when she leaps away and comes back? Gotta do it again but...

#2) Dash at her to attempt a grab and this forces her into an attack immediately so just immediately press block and you'll counter it.

So right now the problem is dealing with the ice clones in the middle of struggling to open her up. I still kinda think the difficulty on this fight is obscene but I'm "getting" it.

[Lurkemeyer]

you have to break armor once per phase like every boss -- so, one counter per phase.

Good luck, it's very achievable. If you feel like your timing with counters is weird, the Basic Training tutorializes perfect guard, escape guard, counter, and perfect armor.

[Lurkemeyer]

using a grab attempt to trigger her counter and countering that like you mentioned is probably the cleanest setup. Iron Stance can work well for the followup if you're comfortable with the combo controls.

[TheDarkness73]

Yeah, Im a big fan of grab into counter. That's how I do it.

With ice clones it is a lil annoying at times, but they are also fairly weak/easy to kill so it's not too hard to deal with them outright or keep distance. Waiting for opening is always a viable option and can be the safest

[ZexxCrine]

she only has a handful of moves and the moves are deliberately designed to be very telegraphed.

in all phases she has her super and a rare jump backwards giant circle aoe when getting up off the floor

phase 1 only attack is a quick slash. every other time she does it she will jump backwards after.

phase 2 only attack is a ribcage burst

phase 3 alternates between slash and ribcage burst. ribcage burst has a second attack after where she jumps up and bursts. slash will sometimes be a feint and she will warp behind you. if timed a parry for the slash and she feints it you have enough time to parry the real hit

phase 4 alternates between ribcage and slash. ribcage burst into air burst now has a falling slash added to it. you should never see this attack because you should parry the ribcage or air burst. slash seems unchanged from phase 3

idk I gut reaction hated her too but she is far and away the easiest of the 3 imo. saleem and aldaan can just open all of your arteries all at once and you bleed to death from a single mistake on nightmare. if you fail a parry you take zero damage as long as you dont get hit again and thats a bit more of a margin of error than the other two.

[GEL]

Thanks for all the advice! I don't think I'd ever want this boss completely nerfed but like...cripes she feels like she should be some kind of super boss! Like there should be a nerfed version in the normal game and a True Mara'lena for those that wanna deal with this monstrosity! I'm sure Aldaan and Saleem are worse ON NIGHTMARE, but on normal?! Mara'lena is just messed up.

On my previous run I kept retrying until the Foreign God Power Meter overflowed and she started summoning TWO ice clones at once. That was my cue to leave. Restarted and took the easy/low road to minimize that meter when I got to her and realized that if you quit out before you Game Over, you can keep your coins and keep the meter low. I now have a low meter and 9 coins (about 3 continues) to retry this boss with but MAN! This boss is still nuts!

Like I SWEAR I am nailing these parry/counters but she just evades the counter hit somehow or just denies it. I DO have Iron Stance beefed up and it helps sometimes but there's just SO MUCH going on it's hard to pay attention. I REALLY feel like something is wrong or bugged with this fight but I can't quite put my finger on it.

...also is healing EVER useful? I have so much heal buffing stuff and even have the heal spell as my soul skill and I'm still not sure if I'm getting much out of it.

[Lurkemeyer]

honestly at this stage there could be some things that are bugged. Can you get video of your fight? the win + G tools work decently for game videos if you're on PC.

I haven't found the heal spell too useful but the equipment that boosts heal % works well with food drops imo

[GEL]

Indeed I should record some of this fight.

Also I found something very strange: When I last played this game, I had 9 Valdinium coins and as long as I quit out before getting a Game Over, my game state was still where I had 9 coins and was just before the fight.

After quitting the game and coming back, my game state was right where I left it, but I lost my coins, having only 2 or 3 (I think I found one mid stage).

[GEL]

Here! Enjoy a run through the stage and fight. Not one of my best runs through the stage, but easily one of my best fights and it's STILL a pretty absurd struggle. I'm not sure if there's any bugs here. Like right at the beginning it looked like I was denied a counter. But otherwise it's just a collection of "How is THIS okay?!"s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxZHjUSJATA

Boss fight is at 4:21

[Von]

You got trolled quite a bit by NPC Gilroy at least at the start - he likes to use the grab counter but does not have the grip strength to grab Mara'Lenna so she just breaks the grab instead of taking damage. It also looks like you are using the normal counter but do not have enough damage to actually break the perfect armor with your normal counter, which is unfortunate (idk why that's the case, but I also tend to use weapon counters in this fight specifically to try and break the perfect armor in 1 counter)

My first bit of advice is don't use NPC Gilroy unless you're confident in your perfect guarding capabilities. Additionally, you can destroy the ice sculptures Mara'Lenna makes (and they don't have much HP), which can be helpful when trying to get the perfect guards. I don't think the NPC tends to attack them at all but they're quite squishy and you can probably take them out in a couple normal attacks. As far as Irena specific advice, taking the Iron Stance skill tree nodes to allow you to perfect guard with Iron Stance can be extremely helpful for this fight, as you can sit at a safe distance and wait to see whether she drops an ice clone prior to dashing in to start your Iron Stance.

Mara'Lenna is definitely the most frustrating of the bosses to learn in an already pretty challenging game, so don't feel too bad if you're struggling. Blue kind of bullies this boss so if you're not attached to playing as Irena you can always swap to her - with her Riposte skill tree buffs to parry window and additional parry window from gear you can make it quite easy to hit the perfect block timing consistently.

[Lurkemeyer]

Yes I believe only the first attack out of perfect guard counts as the "counter" not any part of a combo that it leads into -- so just using the square attack counter won't do as much armor damage as the triangle attack counter. In the third armor sequence of that video the square counter only eats down about 2/3 of her armor

[ZexxCrine]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIwxGgbgShY

on "normal" which im assuming is rookie. i tried to use as little meta progression as possible. didnt complete any skill goals on stage 1 only forged up to green rarity. got a mythic res gauntlet so the boss basically couldn't hurt me.

honestly the worst part of playing rookie was enemies not attacking often enough. im used to the archers that spawned having a higher attack frequency and the waiting threw me for a loop lol.