hornet part 2

[dudemanclassic]

any tips to beat her. i can doge all of her attacks on there own but she overwhelms me.

[Talon]

Long Nail or Mark of Pride can help with clearing the spike traps she sets for you in the air. Quick Focus or Shape of Unn can help when you need to heal.

[Carrier Pidgeons]

Hornet's pattern is pretty easy to get down; iirc the biggest issues I had with her were the needle throw, the thread attack around her, the dashes at you, and the little thornballs for area denial.

An important note for later in the fight is that there can only be a set number of thornballs on the field before she stops using that attack. If you remove the ones in problematic places and leave others where they don't interfere with your dodging, you can effectively make the fight easier.

I personally swear by Nail Arts for this fight, as your window for whacking her is pretty slim. Using Soul offensively is also pretty useful, as when she throws her nail she's going to be sitting in that spot for a good couple seconds until it gets back, which is perfect to unload a couple Shade Souls.

If the dash attack is giving you trouble, make sure to have a bit of a mental note of where she is and where the spikeballs are. It's really easy to move into a corner just to realize you can't go upwards without hitting a spike and going sideways would result in you getting hit, or vice versa.

[Kanra]

I'll toss you my advice from a similar thread:

Originally posted by Kanra:

The one thing you need to keep in mind about her fight is that most of her attacks involve charging at you from range, whether by herself or throwing her weapon. While the fight is not the easiest, it's easy to see a pattern to it that you can follow.

First of all, don't charge at her for no reason. Since her attacks mostly involve charging at you, she's going to end up next to you after attacking a lot of the time. Every time she finishes an attack she's left open for you to hit her. Don't overdo it though, as the next attack is still going to happen. If you were to charge at her, you'd be taking away from your own reaction time window and making it harder to predict her in general. You also don't want to jump for no reason, as it greatly increases the risk of meeting her in the air and taking damage.

As far as individual attacks go:

Ground dash: When she does this, you can jump over her (and pogo to get a hit in) and depending on the distance between you and her after your landing, get a few more hits in before backing away from her.

Weapon throw: If she's on the other side of the room, don't bother trying to get close to her. It's possible, but wouldn't get you nearly as much damage. Use this opportunity to heal instead. If she's closer to you, jump over her weapon and get above her to pogo for a bit, or take the riskier version of doing a small jump to get in front of her, hitting her a bit, then jumping again to dodge the weapon as it comes back. As usual, back away from her after this attack is over.

Air dash: Typically makes a high jump then proceeds to dash towards your current location. The second she starts the dash, her location is fixed, therefore moving away from the spot a little bit is enough to dodge her and gives you time to get in a few hits before she does her next move.

Needle whip: This is either done on the air or ground. For the ground version, staying away is easier as you are naturally backing away from her after every attack. The air version is slightly predictable as she stops for a split second before doing it. However, for an easy way to be able to dodge both air dash and air needle whip, all you actually need to do is always be positioned diagonally from her when she jumps rather than straight below her. This is because she doesn't move much in the air when doing a normal jump, therefore won't be able to reach you unless she dashes, and if she does the needle whip instead, you'll already be out of range and be able to heal safely.

Spike traps: You have two options. Trying to take them out all the time or manipulating the fight in your favor. By this I mean taking the fight to one half of the room if the other half is tedious to clear out. While it is generally better to clear out all the spikes, they only really matter when you find yourself in their vicinity, so going out of your way to clear them isn't going to help you, it's going to leave you open to her attacks. However, if you want to make the fight go further in your favor, you can always do things among the lines of shooting a spell that hits both her and at least a few spikes.

She will also sometimes attempt to counter swipe at you, so I would recommend not attacking too much at once.

While all of the above works with any build, using a facetank build is also likely to get you through the fight. My personal way of fighting her involves a lot more patience.

[Fracastador]

I haven't seen anyone agree with me on this, but I found dashmaster helpful in this fight for when I mistimed a dash by misreading a move telegraph, as it would sometimes allow me to recover fast enough to dodge anyway.