[Spoilers] Tips on beating the Watcher Knights?

[Bono my tyres are gone]

It may be that it's midnight and I'm tired but I rage quit for the first time in my life because of this freaking boss fight...
These ♥♥♥♥♥ keep attacking perfectly un synced, one rolls on the ground, the other one bounces everywhere, one starts swinging the sword, the other one flattens me like a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ pizza, THEY EVEN CHANGE TRAJECTORY IN MID AIR WHILE ROLLING WTF.
So yeah I spent about 90 minutes trying to beat these ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ but I don't seem to be able to do it, and I dropped the chandelier on that knight's ass.

[Fracastador]

I believe when they initiate their bouncing attack, it specifically targets the spot at which you were standing as its final landing point, meaning that you can avoid it based on that knowledge, rather than trying to read the arc of motion, which is unintuitive.

Watcher Knights were the most difficult mandatory boss in the game for me. I gave up for a while and got better equipment + movement options before returning. (I didn't want to drop the chandelier because I wanted to beat it with my own discoveries, and I had to look up the chandelier. I'm not sure it helps that much because getting past 5 of them isn't that much easier than getting past 6, as you have to have the hang of the fight to make it to 5 anyway.)

Also, if you have a low-end pc, the fight lags. A lot.

Staying away from the walls is also a good idea when possible, because the knights can rebound off of them while spinning either in the air or on the ground, which is difficult to read and predict.

[Fracastador]

I've also seen a particular spell-based-charm build which eats them alive with extreme damage potential, but I never tried it, nor am I very familiar with it.

[Bono my tyres are gone]

Originally posted by Fracastador:

I've also seen a particular spell-based-charm build which eats them alive with extreme damage potential, but I never tried it, nor am I very familiar with it.

luckily my pc is decent enought and game never lags, since I randomly walked into deepnest earlier today I think I'm gonna complete that zone and get as many power ups as I can and then stomp the Knights.

[Fracastador]

I just watched a video to back up my assertion about the bouncing aim, and I was wrong. I think it's the middle bounce which is aimed at your position, not the last one, but there's a range limit on it so the middle bounce can't take a knight the whole way across the room, but the last bounce can.

[Shade]

Personally, I had the most success trying to stay as close to them as I could without getting hit by their melee attacks - not just because they can't surprise you with a sudden roll attack from off-screen if they're on-screen at all times, but also because this made the arc on their bounce attack very easy to predict (it's always aimed at you when possible).

As far as charms go, you'll never get a particularly good opportunity to heal unless you kill both of the knights you're currently fighting in short succession, so Joni's Blessing might be worth considering for the extra health.
Personally, however, I had the most success with a high DPS build, focusing on simply taking them down as quickly as possible. Quick Slash + Fragile Strength eats through their massive HP reasonably quickly, although depending on how good you are at manipulating their AI into taking swings at you instead of rolling around, you might be better off relying on the Great Slash nail art instead (which would make Quick Slash pointless).
That said, don't be too aggressive - focus on dodging, first and foremost, especially if one of the knights is currently off-screen.

[HexaDecimatoR]

I found that when I stayed closer to them, they'd use nail attacks rather than rolling.
There isn't much time to heal in the fight with two of them up and about, so you can get away with using spells freely.

When I last fought them, spells wouldn't do damage while they were rolling, but that apparently changed in a recent update. Because they end up on roughly the same part of the floor pretty often, I found they line up nicely for shade soul. And when one or both decide to go for a nail attack, and your soul is full, that's a chance to use descending dark.
Spells can help quite a bit in the fight, I'd recommend using them quite a bit.

[Jdr_]

They almost ♥♥♥♥♥♥ my speedruns. On steel soul mode i did the nail upgrade to the first pale ore use and also got the black vengeance spirit, that helped a lot. About 11~12 hits to defeat each of them, using fragile strenght.

[Hiro Protagonest]

Watcher Knights were pretty hard. I found some success in staying grounded to make them spindash or swing their nails more, though they'd still do the bouncing moves at times. I definitely remember using Spell Twister, the upgraded Vengeful Spirit was very useful since it hits both of them. Probably used Joni's Blessing since healing was not a thing.

[Jukebox]

I personally wailed on them with Quick Slash and Long Nail, while using Glowing Womb + Defender's Crest to pump out spell damage which stuck around as constant AoE damage while I was hacking and slashing away.
Hard to truly tell it's effectiveness as, when I attempted that build, while I did it first try, I was left with 1 health remaining.
Could be a good build for a bit of luck/trial-and-error.

[Bono my tyres are gone]

Guys I did it! I took a very, very pleasant vacation, I saw The Hive, visited a dead giant worm in the Kingdom's Edge, and spent some quality time in that lively place known as Deepnest (very charming place). I also had some spare time to upgrade my nail to level 4 (?) (the guy carved spirals in the blade idk) , upgraded the vengeful spirit to its black version, randomly got this magnificent charm "quick slash" or something like that, equipped it along witht he one that prolongues immunity after being hit and the stinky one, basically I rushed into them, abused the attack button, took me about a minute, felt weird, thank you and goodbye.
:*

[Fracastador]

That, my friend, is a strategy the community commonly calls "face-tanking."
It works on bosses that don't do things to avoid your attacks much once you have the right charms and high enough damage+health. I don't think it works that well against most of the harder optional bosses, but it will get a few of them.

[arejang]

I remember hating this boss. I did kill it eventually, but I didn't even know you could make the fight easier by dropping the chandelier until after the fact. I killed them all one at a time the harder way, and I think I may have taken the longest to kill this particular fight out of them all so far.

I really enjoyed reading your topic post though, OP. It made me laugh because it matched my sentiments to a tee. It was also just really well worded. Glad you beat it, man.

[Axnor]

Originally posted by Fracastador:

I've also seen a particular spell-based-charm build which eats them alive with extreme damage potential, but I never tried it, nor am I very familiar with it.

Took your advice and equipped the shaman stone. Made this fight a cakewalk. I just spammed the black version of vengeful spirit and won. One of the easiest fights so far.

(On an unrelated note, I decided to ragequit for today because of crystal guardian fight #2)

[zy]

Shamans stone + Grubsong + Weaverlings = you can cheese them.

Id recommend using the chandelier trick, as it helped me in the end. Focus on dodging their attacks, and when you have enough soul from the weaverlings, try and hit both of them with desolate dive or descending dark.

[Violet-111]

Originally posted by NatNatTheBabyShinyVaeporeon:

Shamans stone + Grubsong + Weaverlings = you can cheese them.

Id recommend using the chandelier trick, as it helped me in the end. Focus on dodging their attacks, and when you have enough soul from the weaverlings, try and hit both of them with desolate dive or descending dark.

??? This thread is 2 years old and the problem was already solved?