So... does Pure Vessel have a strat?

[Kalvix]

I'm honestly curious about this one, as I've tried looking it up online and found some people jumping over every attack getting in 1 pogo at a time, but that seems like the pro version to avoid being hit and not realistic for normal people, however after an hour or 2 of fighting him non stop to practise while I can get near the end (at least making him use black tendrils) how far I get isn't even slightly consistent leading me to believe it's currently 100% luck on what attacks he does and how that are deciding how well I do.

So, how are you actually meant to fight this guy as clearly I can't work it out, I try to shadow dash through him but sometimes he'll dash twice before it can charge so that strat relies on luck thus isn't a good option. I've tried staying away from him so he dashes in at me, but sometimes he'll just teleport to a jump/3 swipe which then becomes 10x harder to dodge than normal as you need to judge where he is now and then what he's doing and THEN think of dodging so this strat doesn't work.

Essentially I keep trying different things and nothing works as everything essentially ends up coming down to luck in at least some capacity and I'd rather get rid of it as with 2 masks a hit and only time to heal 1 when he staggers (making healing kinda pointless) relying on luck ends up being far to unreliable as even if I get lucky enough to avoid the attacks you can't dodge I then have to play the rest of the fight perfectly to allow for those attacks.

[Darc Vader]

What ended up helping for me was to just jump in reaction to pretty much everything he does. For the lunge and the triple slash downstrike at the apex of your jump, that seems to be fairly consistent for pogoing off him and usually will parry the first strike of the combo. You have ample time to shadow dash though the daggers as well from a jump, and the void tendrils can be avoided with a double jump.

Pretty much the only times I use the shadow dash are the daggers and to avoid the parry counterattack he does sometimes. Normal dashing is mostly unnecessary since pretty much all of his attacks bring him close to you, so I found it better to just not dash and keep the shade cloak off cooldown for emergencies.

[Noborus]

None of the bosses in hollow knight are luck based, except for maybe Uumuu if you're trying to speedrun that is.
A professional speedrunner could first try most bosses, despite getting bad luck on attacks, it's hard to explain, sure the attacks are random but what matters is how you counter it, for example a player on their first playthrough fighting watcher knights for the first time gets great luck, but still can't beat them, and a player who's played through hollow knight many, many times gets horrible luck and still beats them without too much trouble.
I wouldn't rely on luck, just try to get atleast one hit in every attack, one of the biggest mistakes i kept making on my first playthrough was being too greedy, i played so aggressively and kept taking damage, instead try to get a few hits in and focus more on dodging the attacks then attacking.

[Boksha]

The important part is that you stay somewhat close to him and jump before he even begins an attack. With the exception of his teleport into sword-spikes attack (which he very rarely uses if you stay close to him), all of the attacks can be much more easily dodged if you're in mid-air when he starts them. The time between each attack is pretty constant, so it's mostly a matter of getting in the right rhythm.

If he starts a floor-based attack (charge, slash-combo or void tentacles, which is half his moveset) while you're on the floor you're pretty much always toast, since the attacks are too tall and too fast to jump over on time.

[Kalvix]

The jumping tends to help with the dash ones, but not sure what I'm doing wrong but if I'm in the air I get hit by the air lasers 100% of the time, if I dash into them I get hit, away I get hit, try to get in the gap then from trying to stay close it's barley big enough so I often get hit.

The only solution to that I could think of is not jumping when he does that attack, but the wind up is so small between his attacks that if I don't instantly react to any movement by him he'll be on top of me before the jump animation will carry me over him so I have no choice but to be mid-air during the daggers.

<sigh> well actually jumping is less efficient than shadow dashing I've found as the distancing is so hard to maintain, you need to be JUST on the opposite side of the screen to have time for the jump animation to carry you high enough, any closer he hits you, any further you can't see what he's doing so need to avoid daggers till he dashes over or teleports over you for a slam.

[Kalvix]

Originally posted by Boksha:

The important part is that you stay somewhat close to him and jump before he even begins an attack. With the exception of his teleport into sword-spikes attack (which he very rarely uses if you stay close to him), all of the attacks can be much more easily dodged if you're in mid-air when he starts them. The time between each attack is pretty constant, so it's mostly a matter of getting in the right rhythm.

If he starts a floor-based attack (charge, slash-combo or void tentacles, which is half his moveset) while you're on the floor you're pretty much always toast, since the attacks are too tall and too fast to jump over on time.

<sigh> sadly ye the tactic seems to be "learn the time between attacks as you can't possibly react in time" as that is the only thing working. The daggers are still an issue as again they are to fast to react to so I need to just learn the timing but at least I know how to improve on this boss now, don't focus on reacting to what he does just practise doing everything before any indication based on having muscle memory from doing the fight over and over.

I didn't like Uumuu in the arena as that fight was annoyingly random, if not hard, but this one is just horribly designed, who thought an enemy you can't react to and just need to grind till you memorise the timings was a good idea?

[kanna]

Originally posted by Boksha:

The important part is that you stay somewhat close to him and jump before he even begins an attack. With the exception of his teleport into sword-spikes attack (which he very rarely uses if you stay close to him), all of the attacks can be much more easily dodged if you're in mid-air when he starts them. The time between each attack is pretty constant, so it's mostly a matter of getting in the right rhythm.

If he starts a floor-based attack (charge, slash-combo or void tentacles, which is half his moveset) while you're on the floor you're pretty much always toast, since the attacks are too tall and too fast to jump over on time.

This. Like with all vessel type (or vessel-like in the case of Hornet) bosses, it pays to stay close to them as much as you can. Jumping just ahead of each attack IS the strat for everyone, because you can't dash through everything on the ground. The attacks come to quickly and you need to save your Shadow Dash for certain attacks only (such as soul daggers in particular, counterattacks from accidentally triggering parries, or as a panic button in certain situations but not as your first go-to defence).

In the beginning, when PV does the big 3-or-so wild nail swings, you might want to jump and Shadow Dash over/through it to be safe, but it pays to learn the timing to do a downswing that starts just before the nail would hit you because you not only get possible damage in but you get more time to position yourself for the next attack than you do if you dash.

This is generally the case for vessel/vessel-like fights (+ Hive Knight actually). Not only can you stay closer to get more attacks in by jumping the attacks you can jump for, but you can ALSO get more time for dodging that way. Otherwise you're leaving yourself little room to react.

Again, maybe you don't need to do it every single time but I wouldn't be shy about learning to pogo when he does a ground attack. I learned the timing for it early on by accident, not from watching videos. PV has a bit more randomness than NKG but it's still a very rhythm-based fight, so you just need to get used to the attacks and their speed for the most part.

Finally, I don't like Sharp Shadow for either HK or PV, because you're screwed if you trigger a parry-and-counter with it. There's pretty much nothing you can do but take the hit in that case.

[Kalvix]

The thing is I can pogo him fine, he's just a very badly designed boss. No boss should be designed around the idea that you can't possibly react fast enough so need to react before he does something, it's a horrible design philosophy. Not only does it just mean that in essence you will always lose until you've fought him enough to learn the timings and couldn't possibly win before that, but it means when you do learn the timings he's no longer even a slight challenge as you do the exact same thing throughout the fight.

Though even then unless there is some secret position to stop him jumping over you it's impossible to not get hit reliably as jumping before he does anything means you need to jump into him jumping at you, giving you even less time to try and react with a shadow dash.

Honestly this boss feels like it was designed for another game and ported into this one, if shadow dash had no CD and jumps always did the max height and faster it could be a fun fight, but right now it doesn't feel rewarding as I don't feel like it's going to be "skill" that beats him, it's going to be purely muscle memory of his timing to the point that people could probably beat this guy with their eyes closed eventually as you don't actually need to see what he's doing as you do the same thing anyway, the only thing that would make that hard is the blades, remove those and you have a boss that could easily be beaten with your eyes closed when you learn to beat him

[Kalvix]

ok I'm going to verify the game to see if its broken... as he's seriously just becoming beyond not fun with lunge lunge teleport smash attacks in very quick succession...

Even trying to act before he does isn't working now as there isn't time between his attacks to jump before the next one begins. Something must be broken if the goal is jump before he moves as that opening doesn't seem to exist for some points in the fight.

[kanna]

It's understandably frustrating at first, but there's nothing wrong with the boss' design.

I would suggest at this point to watch a video or two to compare and be sure if the fight is "broken" or not. Remember it's not expected to beat a pantheon boss the first time you see it. It can seem impossible at first (much like with NKG), but the fight can be learned. It took me several attempts a day for probably 3-4 days with possible breaks in between, but when I had more experience and I decided to do it Ascended, I did it hitless on the first try. I didn't even get to the second stage (first new attack) within the first day. Maybe not even the second? I got the fight pretty quickly once I started seeing the final stage's added attack.

This is a fast fight and it's a little harder than NKG because the challenge ante had to be upped between the Grimm DLC and Godmaster DLC releases. PV *does* teleport. Like with any other rhythm based boss, you can improve on it with practice. Having the music on should help build your memory of this fight too, in case you're playing another soundtrack or have the music off as some people do.

[tintingaroo]

You can react to his attacks (hope your game ain't broke though). It's just that it can feel impossible / super difficult when you're learning him. Similar thing for the other bosses - some may feel totally unreactable, some super-high RNG, or very unfair in some other manner - and then you finally beat them. And again, and again. Then those feelings apply less and less or not at all.
It's time, patience and practise.

[Whiskra]

There are no shortcuts to this boss, it's something you just have to get good at. It has its place in the top 3 for a very good reason. Attacks come quick, reaction windows are very tight, counters are very hard to learn and execute. But I think PV is similar to NKG in some aspects. Just like with NKG, every attack can be countered the same way every time. PV won't just chain attacks together into an impossible to dodge combo, but will do one attack at a time, leaving you at least some room to breath, even if it doesn't feel like that is the case. The biggest difference is that unlike NKG, PV doesn't always teleport away from the arena, meaning you have the liberty of being more agressive if you so choose. The rythm of the fight is thus much more hectic, and you need to be on your toes all the time and never let up.

Like I said, there are no shortcuts to learning this boss since it's very unforgiving. Some general advice though would be I guess to learn to read his position and stance when he teleports/starts his next attack, because it will tell you what attacks he will use. That is the moment you need to react, and it needs to be instantaneous. Jumping before he does anything won't help you a bit, because it risks having you jump straight into his dive attack. For the lunge, you always jump and pogo. For the 3-swing attack, it works to jump and pogo but is much harder to do, so shadow dashing might be the more favorable option, but it depends on your position in relation to the boss when the attack begins. For the sword spread attack, it almost always happens when he teleports far away, to the very edge of the room. Listen to the sound queue to confirm it's the attack in question, and shadow dash through the swords towards the boss as they are spreading out. Also, remember to save the shadow dash as much as you can because it's your "get out of jail-card" when you suddenly find yourself face to face with an otherwise unavoidable 3-swing attack or if you got too agressive and he used his counter. The dive attack can be tricky to avoid, but my best tip is to find a good spot that you can consistently find inbetween the swords, since the sword positions are always consistent in relation to PV's position when he lands. The two attacks he gains as he drops in HP shouldn't be too much trouble to dodge, except it can be easy to confuse the tendrils with the sword spread attack since both attacks are often used off-screen, so it's really useful to learn the sound queues for both attacks so you don't confuse the two.

[Kalvix]

Thanks for advice :( giving it a break for tonight to relax and process what I've learnt so far... hopefully on the morrow can finally get him and move onto Nightmare Grimm so I can finally 112% this dang thing!

[SMJSMOK]

I shadow dash through everything except his void tendrils. It's possible and not luck based at all. I can put up a video if that would help you.
I learned to fight him this way because when I tried to jump, he kept getting me with his air attack...

[Kalvix]

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

I shadow dash through everything except his void tendrils. It's possible and not luck based at all. I can put up a video if that would help you.
I learned to fight him this way because when I tried to jump, he kept getting me with his air attack...

I can shadow dash through most of his attacks and have gotten furthest doing that, the problem is when he does 2 dash attacks 1 after another quickly it doesn't recharge and I can't jump over it in time when that happens :(

[SMJSMOK]

Originally posted by Kalvix:

Originally posted by SMJSMOK:

I shadow dash through everything except his void tendrils. It's possible and not luck based at all. I can put up a video if that would help you.
I learned to fight him this way because when I tried to jump, he kept getting me with his air attack...

I can shadow dash through most of his attacks and have gotten furthest doing that, the problem is when he does 2 dash attacks 1 after another quickly it doesn't recharge and I can't jump over it in time when that happens :(

Yeah, this requires really tight timing. You want to wait until the very last moment before he swings and your shadow dash will be just recharged. It's the most difficult part of this strategy but it's what carried me through the final pantheon.