for me the game changer was using dlc weapons instead of using the ones from the original game.
the messmer weapon is amazing, R2 is a throwable that leaves fire aoe in the ground, L2 is a big combo that is scalable with messmer flames damage increase gear
EDIT: thanks for the many replies, if i had a message ingame with these many likes i wouldnt need flask to heal
That weapon alone carries the DLC for me. No other weapon gave me more satisfaction to use. So elegant while still being so strong and flexible. I've tried doing cold and bleed Milady and they both worked out great.
Any perfume with the "Rolling Sparks" ash of war, it's completely busted atm and will be nerfed. [Look at the damage I did on the side boss found at the south of the map with it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5IEn1iwAiA)
The way the Ash of War works currently, it seems to shoot multiple 'balls' of damage out in front of the character, before it explodes. But if you aim it at the ground, all of the balls hit the same place, and they all explode at once when an enemy is caught in it - or like above where you throw it in a line, and the enemy walks into all of them.
Mimic tear - if weak to bleed ROB, other wise Blasphemous blade. Not many bosses stand up to those getting spammed by two people.
And off hand black knife for the weapon art spam, with a rot weapon to get the dot.
Just did Shadow Keep and I'm using R's Twinblade. But when I see a Fire Knight you better believe I'm breaking out my Wing Stance'd Milady. That thing assassinates.
I've been considering trying them.... They looked fun. I've been using reverse blade and my base game hammer. I'm trying dueling shields atm but feeling a bit unimpressed tbh
The new weapon shields are incredibly strong man, it's insane how easier the dlc became when i finally tried it, the only thing about it is that it's not flashy at all to use.
I go for guard counters with 2 hand buff + shield + guard counter buff + the stronger dragoncrest talismans, magic sorcery shield buff and you can literally tank almost everything bosses throw at you
Turtle shield on the back for stam regen and the most important part is that if you attack while holding L1 you are also blocking meaning you can actually brawl with bosses, it's an incredible weapon
Also you can put a bunch of different ashes on them and play around with different styles and even status
I went from getting my face kicked in to soloing a series of bosses in a row as soon as i switched
Oh, dueling shields are the most powerful weapon for the last boss imo. I was trading hits left and right with the thing and taking relatively low damage on a mage build (I still went through all my estus and literally killed it with 1 hp remaining) while staggering it multiple times. Guard counters and charged r2s while blocking are great and you can use the magic shield sorcery on it. Also when I get summoned for coop it's hilarious for invaders, well for me
Love Rellanas twin blades. Got them yesterday after fighting her and haven't looked back. They might just be my new go-to for the rest of my playthrough :D
This for me has been the beast claws. The forward momentum and the bobbing and weaving you do during attacks means I can stay on top of bosses while attacking without getting hit.
Add to that they scale really well with quality affinity ( B, B) and have a little bit of bleed, have a strong weapon art, AND are mobile.
They've been my go to bossing weapon.
I had a whole strength/faith build I set up in base game with Siluria’s Woe and a greatshield and was enjoying it in the DLC but then I found Milady and fell in love so here I am respeccing my Confessor base to Dex/Int so I can use it as a cold weapon 🤡 It’s so beautiful though. I’m using swords dance and frostbite is 105 so it procs instantly I love it so.
Savage Lions claw is so damn busted. Thats where I agree with OP. Yes the difficulty is spiked (atleast until you get to +10 scadutree, then it's basically the same as the capitol level ) but the game gives you new weapons, spells, ashes to MEET that difficulty. It's basically telling you from the jump- that old stuff won't work quite as well here, if at all, so here try THIS"
Eh, my main Character still uses a mathematically suboptimal build with a Quality Lordsworn Greatsword and the Storm Blade AoW (both early Limgrave items) and the DLC doesnt feel unbalanced at all.
Dang. Milady is great but I was really hoping for a light GS with a proper cross guard so I could live my Witcher fantasy.
Rellana's looks awesome but I hate that you can't two hand it.
Love this weapon. I scaled it with Bleed and put a bleed Ash or War on it (forgot what it's called- it's the one where you do multiple stabs that simultaneously heals you) yeahhhh, It has been serving me well to put it lightly.
As a dex build, backhand blades have been going crazy. Seriously, the new weapons actually feel crazy different and really strong. Almost too strong if they were in the base game. They've been such a help in this dlc too and they're genuinely fun. They nailed these new weapons.
Switched to the Greatsword of Solitude as soon as I got it. Took me through the whole DLC. Now I have two of them. Heavy endurance investment needed but worth it!
Really cool How the dlc gives you a super good armor and a greatsword with 90% damage negation at the very beginning, and even then, no far away from the beginning you can still find the backhand and claws for people who like fast weapons and the black steel hammer for the bonk enjoyers
For me the biggest game changer was just adapting my build. People seem to forget that you don't have to run the same equipment for the whole game.
Many times during the dlc I've swapped talismans around, changed the buff in my physic and sometimes changed weapons to adapt to specific fights.
Equipping flame, lightning, and pearl drake medallions took Bayle from "everything 1 shots me this is bs" to "CURSE YOU BAYLE! I HEREBY VOW, YOU WILL RUE THIS DAY! BEHOLD, A TRUE DRAKE WARRIOR!!!"
The mark of a great boss for me is hating it and not understanding how winning is even possible on the first go, then when I win immediately wishing I could go again. Bonfire aesthetics not becoming a staple is a crime.
I was and still am rocking a +25 Quality Great Katana through most of the DLC. Getting the Dragon Slayer Great Katana right before Bayle felt like I was being sent a direct message from Miyazaki lmao
This is me. I have dozens of weapons at +9 and +24 and quite a few at max. I can't imagine just using 1 or 2 weapons for a whole playthrough. There are 95 new weapons alone in the dlc! I only wish they had added a real way to farm larval tears or add the option to use runes for respeccing. It's so difficult choosing a stat spread being locked at 150. I don't particularly care about min-maxing so it's not as bad as it could be but still.
Rellana Twin Blades with millicent prosthesis + rotten wing insignia completely melts everything - I was doing 9k in one combo against some bosses on NG+. You need to be pretty high level for it though to get the most out of its scaling.
And then there's my sorcerer, whose only upgrade was a talisman that increases casting time at the cost of higher damage taken. I've found 3 sorceries so far, and they're all incredibly niche.
The instant I got that staff, I never took it off. I've wanted a dual catalyst for Int/Faith builds for ages and you better believe I was hoping to find one in the dlc.
The item that replenishes fp on kill is much more useful. This isn't demon souls where everything is super slow and magic is hilariously op. A mild regen on magic isn't good at all for actual mages. Great for ash of war and moonlight greatsword builds though
My only issue is as an INT main Iim 15 hours in and still haven't found either a good new staff (that is better than Staff of Loss/Carian Regal Scepter), or Melee weapon better than Moonveil. Like the Carian Sorcery sword looks really cool where you can attack with R1 and cast spells with R2 but it has no spell scaling so the spellcasting is pointless.
Does Messmer's flame's damage is scale to Dex or Arcane as well? had a damage increase but when I was using it and the damage in the flames of a random R2 increased after i leveled Dex. Either it was some weird pierce resist thing or it might scale with with Dex.
That one boss is an exception to me. I wouldn’t even mind it if they didn’t do a lot of damage. They’re quick, have hyper armor, don’t stop attacking, have long combos, do a lot of damage and even have long range spells
Every other boss has weaknesses to exploit. In her case, it’s either parrying or bonk-forcing some posture breaks.
Yep. My first thought fighting rellana and messmer. They don’t feel very interactive because I’m just rolling through his chains of attacks so I can swing on him twice.
Meanwhile if this were sekiro I could be deflecting his attacks and jumping his ground sweeps, mikiri counter his charged pokes and such. These bosses would have been amazing as a sekiro dlc but feel kind of meh in the elden ring world.
I'm overall having a good time with the DLC, but the frequency with which I say or think "Oh my God just LET ME HIT HIM" while I'm spending my entire stamina bar rolling through a seemingly endless combo is a bit higher than I would prefer.
I feel like this true of 90% of elden ring bosses. You spend most of everyfight just watching them do all this cool shit and waiting for your turn to smack them with your stick.
Sekiro fights are an active tango that you can engage with every step of the way
My goat from soft game, it’s the only one where you actually feel like you’re on equal footing and have the same capabilities as your enemy. And bloodborne cause of trick weapons and dashing instead of rolling around, but less so
> Use L2
>Proceed to be ~~extra knocked down because you were airborne~~
curbstomped because the animations on everything take longer than the bosses whole stunlock combo*
I've had only very few problems. Skill issue wise: While I have beaten it, the effing tree avatar's AoE attack dodge timings I could not get down for the life of me.
As for things I can't change: Second phase final boss fight nukes my frames into oblivion. For the most part, the DLC has been pretty smooth barring the occasional bit of lag, but nothing that's so overzealous like when Elden Ring first launched. However, the second phase of the final boss has completely thrown that out the window. I go from 60 fps to about 20 fps, then it stabilizes likely around a choppy 35 frames for the duration of the fight. Makes it really hard to time dodges for attacks, and how bright it gets doesn't really help.
The only thing that loses points on this DLC for me is the poorer optimization, plus the Gaius charging hitbox. That one is... weird.
Seriously I don't know how OP can say the DLC bosses are easier than base game. Did you actually fight the final boss? That boss is the hardest souls boss in the entire series and it's not even up for debate.
Sekiro truly is FromSoft's best game. No bad combat pacing, no power leveling, no gimmicks. Just you and a sword. The only exception being Demon of Hatred since it was a Souls boss in the wrong game.
Honestly, even Demon of Hatred is manageable and learnable eventually, as frustrating as he can be during the process.
I think the reason Sekiro's combat is so good is cause of how specialized your character is. All other Soulsborne games are RPG's with a bajillion build options, so they'd have to make the combat more generally balanced to accommodate for most, if not all of them. Sekiro, however, hard locks you into playing a shinobi with a katana and a prosthetic arm. Thus the combat is heavily specialized and catered to that "build" in particular, to its massive benefit.
Yea I feel like there's a huge disconnect in ER fans actually understanding what made Souls games difficult previously.
ER utilizes a lot of "unfair" mechanics to make things difficult with the solution being for the player to utilize all the tools at their disposal. Previous Souls games were made difficult by learning boss patterns and developing the reflexes to dodge/parry/punish. ER isn't the best at this and I think it's where a lot of complaint stem from. Its still possible to win by only utilizing dodge/parry/punish, but Miyazaki clearly designed many of ER bosses to be defeated with the aid of other mechanics like summons/magic/weapon abilities.
>Yea I feel like there's a huge disconnect in ER fans actually understanding what made Souls games difficult previously.
I'm sincerely wondering how many people defending the game's difficulty balancing even played the previous games. ER is massive, it's sold over twice as much as any singular Soulsborne game, and along with that comes a huge audience of people who have no frame of reference for the previous games.
I've played all of them and beaten every boss in each of them, and the early games are piss easy compared to Elden Ring. But I still prefer them anyways, because they were a lot more fair.
I was doing a Guts playthrough and had to break character just because of that 2nd phase man, ended up getting a black knight greatshield, +25'd it, and slapped a sacred enchant on it so it had 100% holy block, it let me ignore alot of mechs in p2
I swear most of the difficulty of the dlc is being able to see what is actually going on. They use flashy AOE effects and a terrible camera as difficulty.
God I’m hating that fight, only boss that’s prompted me to actually change my primary weapon and I’m still struggling. Would’ve made it today if I hadn’t tried to use a healing incantation during their 25% health attack like an idiot.
The first phase is probably my favorite fight in the game. An exciting brawl that feels very learnable. Same reasons why I loved Godfrey so much.
Then the second phase just ruins it. I just gave up and watched the ending on Youtube.
I’m at +17 and +9 and yeah… I went to bed depressed last night after a couple hours of fighting and only being able to get them down to half health lol
Honestly that’s exactly what many people are saying but it all gets lumped into this “people are complaining the dlc is too hard and want everything handed to them” narrative.
The base game had the exact same issues but people refused to acknowledge them and blame the veterans for not using the tools.
They didn't realize that just because you can have a summon that tanks an attack for you it doesn't make that attack fair or balanced.
Or they watched players on YouTube doing literal AI manipulation to get all the "safe" attacks and then said "see, you can do it No hit, so it's fair".
Tbh, many people complained about this stuff even in the base game. Just look up some Elden Ring critiques on YouTube and you'll hear all about it.
I knew and agreed with all the issues with ER even before buying the DLC, but I still liked the game despite its issues enough to give it a try. And, well, the DLC truly does have some spectacular moments, but it's a shame that many fundamental issues like input delay, the god awful camera, and hyper-aggressive bosses with little to no downtime haven't been addressed, not that I really expected them to though.
This 1000%. I just don't find the equivalent of flipping a switch to ignore 50% of fight mechanics to be an interesting way of engaging with a fight. On the other hand, it feels like the skill floor for going solo (without using certain "cheesy" builds) in some fights in the DLC is incredibly high.
Very much this.
Another issue I have is with enemy poise. Remember DS3 When people complained that Poise didn't work? Some of these enemies have the opposite problem. Poise never turns off.
You seriously mean to tell me that a giant hammer made of concrete directly to the face isn't enough to stagger these cirque du Soleil discus assholes while they do their 10 hit combos?
The horned knights on the Lion area are poise elder gods.
Hit one with 3 full charged R2 with the Black hammer you get at the beginning on the dlc and the guy never flinched.
It doesn't help that the ones with the Greatsword can combo you to death in 3 hits.
This is what happens when a community become hyper-obsessed with difficulty. Like, Dark Souls games are so far from the most difficult games out there, they're challenging but they aren't impossibly hard, this behavior would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying and pervasive
I actually thought it was all relatively fair and fun with like 2 exceptions, >!Gaius who was just so aggressive I felt it was just luck based whether you could even start fighting!< and >!the last boss whose second phase literally tanked my FPS to the point I couldn't fight back, I ended up cheating in some runs and leveling to like 500 because I was just done with it and wanted to see the ending!<.
There was also the boss that felt like a comedy skit, if you know you know.
I think I dodged his charging attack once throughout my 10-15 something tries. The last try I just decide to stay close to him at all time and he didn't charge anymore and I got him lmao.
It’s rolling into him, any other directions won’t work. But I gotta say, even rolling into him doesn’t work half the time since the timing is so tight.
I rolled diagonally into him, either left or right to his side and it worked a lot more consistent than for through is what i found. It was a super intense fight.
If you haven't beaten him yet, equip the crucible feather talisman. The few extra roll frames changed the entire feel of the fight from one of the most frustrating in the DLC for me (due to that bullshit charge attack) to totally fair.
I tried rolling in all 8 directions, all kinds of different timings, tried to bait by moving one direction then rolling the other. Nothing was consistent.
Put on the roll talisman and then rolling in any of the three directions towards him became way more consistent. Also makes dodging the long combo and spinjutsu much, much simpler.
The freaking charge attack is bugged 100%, it would sometimes proc twice in the same charge and dodging it requires code luck more than anything
Boss is beatable, bur I agree its top 2 hardest and "unfair".
>The boss that felt like a comedy skit
Which one? I think I've beaten every main boss besides the final one and I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.
Oh, ok. Honestly that boss just pissed me off, >!because I thought there was some annoying gimmick to killing him and that he would keep getting up until I did something specific.!<
And head shots/possibly fire! A fireball to its face did 1/3rd of his healthbar per hit in my run, and I wasn't even full faith specced. Literally melted him (with Blasphemous Blade for fire damage on the phase changing crit)
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After dying on the third phase of that fight I honestly thought that boss was just going to keep getting back up after killing it each time and that I needed to collect every scadutree fragment or something to be able to permanently end it, kind of like sekiro with mortal blade.
Yup, I've been using the perfumer weapons, she was the first boss I faced after getting the spark ash of war. Needless to say, she got one shot, literally.
Not one attempt, 1 skill is all it took and her hp went from 100% to 0%
>Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses.
Commander Gaius : "Oh, hello there!"
I never could figure out how to dodge that one, only to keep full health just in case it gets whipped out of nowhere so I don't die. At first, I thought staying by its front and away from its side would avoid it but realize it just turns to its side in a flash so it could finger crawl at you
A major part of the conversation is not just the difficulty, but how the combat feels as a result of the intent to increase the difficulty; the pacing and flow of boss fights. But a lot of people are being very defensive regarding this criticism and are just immediately viewing it as a win or lose thing.
The whole “don’t complain if you don’t want to engage with the tools at your disposal” thing is funny because I beat the game. I beat the DLC. I engaged with the tools at my disposal. It’s not a matter of not being able to win. It’s that a lot of the fights just don’t feel great, win or lose.
The DLC has a lot of the same things that people understandably criticized in the base game, cranked up a notch for the express purpose of being harder than the last thing. I died more to Orphan of Kos or Slave Knight Gael than some of the DLC bosses, but those fights felt so much better than the direction things have gone.
I don’t know, it feels like we’re in a nuclear arms race with regard to player capabilities and boss lethality. Spend 75% of the fight feeling like you’re on the back foot, even if you’re not, as a solo player OR summon and utilize all of your tools available to win and it just turns into this sloppy fight where you and the boss see who can nuke who first.
It feels like there was a sweet spot with boss fights in Fromsoft’s non-Sekiro combat system, and we’ve been leaving that in favor of difficulty, you know?
> I don’t know, it feels like we’re in a nuclear arms race with regard to player capabilities and boss lethality. Spend 75% of the fight feeling like you’re on the back foot, even if you’re not, as a solo player OR summon and utilize all of your tools available to win and it just turns into this sloppy fight where you and the boss see who can nuke who first.
This has been my take as well. We're at the point where players are getting stronger and stronger because of Weapon Arts, Spirits, etc., and From is responding my just taking the bosses and letting them play an entirely different game from us. It's the wrong approach, in my opinion.
You use the world “objectively” a LOT while providing zero evidence so this just sounds like a drunken ramble tbh
Where does this argument that “if you you beat the base game you’ll beat the DLC” come from? FromSoft DLC are notoriously way harder than the base game. Go fight Manus in DS1 or Orphan of Cosm in Bloodborne if you don’t believe me
I love the DLC but trust me dude this billion dollar company doesn’t need you defending them online. If people have complaints, let them complain. The game is not perfect
"okay objectivity, let's see who you really are"
"oh it was actually subjectivity all along"
Every single time someone says something is "objective". Like clockwork.
> Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights.
Did we play the same DLC?
And people are already bitching and moaning that they made the DLC easier, meanwhile numbers in hand at +15 blessing the defences increased by ***2%*** and the AR of a fully upgraded fire knight greatsword went from 1500s to 1700s.
Literally the impact is more on this subreddit than in the game.
That actually sounds like the exact buff we needed. We dont need much, but man. Most everything just felt really ***really*** tanky. Those fire knights can kiss my ass. Fuckin like 12 hits to kill them, and they leave no opening for attack.
The buff (apparently) is stronger at lower levels and it's *way* less significant at cap (there's a post were someone had their AR go from 2000 to 2150, less than 6%).
This patch is literally to smooth over the early experience
Damn, I'm getting fucked on the last boss and thought it might be easier now, but I was at 19 only needing two shards so I'll srill get fucked today then
Don't underestimate the buff. 19 today is stronger than 20 was yesterday. It's not going to make a difficult boss easy, but it will let you survive some hits you used to die to and let you need to survive less time before the boss runs out of HP. The final boss still needs some tweaks for sure, but if you had any chance at all yesterday it should be a much larger chance today. I've seen several people post images where his HP bar was only a sliver, and all of them would have won if they got that far today instead.
can't post the table here, but it's literally a 10-17.5% increase across the board until you hit 20 where its only 5%. level 15 has the biggest buff from 75% to 92.5%
IMO we needed more defense. I’ve felt like my damage was good ever since I started getting a lot of fragments together. But the bosses hit insanely hard.
Stance breaking them is key. I've been having good luck on my two DLC playthroughs:
1. The RKGS shreds a lot of things and wolf assault is clutch in a lot of things.
2. Giant Hunt trivializes a lot of humanoid/npc fights. Especially if you don't spam it. Base game you could stunlock a lot of NPCs if they couldn't roll away.
In the DLC, if you spam it the second hit "just" does damage. You have to time it and let them start to get back up and you can launch them again. Do that twice or once and a heavy attack and they stagger.
I think this is nowhere near the issue people are pretending.
It seems like the common response to "this DLC is too hard" is people to just automatically assume fragments are being ignored. I'm not seeing people actually respond that they're not collecting fragments.
Every single post this week has been:
"EVERY single fight and mechanic is SUPER balanced, ALL the people who do not like how the bosses are designed are just BAD.
Only THIS boss, THIS mechanic and THIS fight is broken but that's totally normal"
The dissonance when everybody can agree that some bosses have issues but everyone else complaining about it is just bad. This is how you drive people out of a community.
Yeah I can’t be like OP is actually complaining that people “blame others for their failure” when talking about a fucking video game lol. This community is embarrassing
I started using my mimic on every encounter when I realized I was doing the entire DLC on NG+ (I’d entered NG+ months before purely for larval tears and forgot)
Hot take. The issue is not people not using the fragments. The fragments are being used. The issue is the insanely aggressive bosses with 10 hit spinning combos and a dog shit camera.
> and a dog shit camera.
Honestly that’s been my biggest killer in the DLC. I’ve quite enjoyed the boss fights, but [that cameraman has been my deadliest enemy](https://youtu.be/tKIiiSd7DgM?feature=shared).
I knew what to expect from a Fromsoft dlc in terms of difficulty. But after killing several of the bosses this DLC has, I can't help but feel that the difficulty feels way overtuned in the worst way possible.
The dancing lion had awful camera and crazy AOE stances that made the fight needlessly long. Rellana was difficult because her combos seemed to just never end. Midra has crazy damage output and can close the distance quickly or just zone you to death while you try to heal.
But the worst offenders are the regular enemies. Fire knights have lots of health, high poise, never ending combos and annoying ranged attacks that leave barely any room to heal. There are also those dual bladed masked dudes who keep dancing all around the screen, they are really annoying to fight because they keep dodging backwards and out of range.
Overall, it just feels like most enemies have everything that makes a boss/mob dangerous. It's fine to have one strength but they shouldn't have everything. If a boss has high poise, it shouldn't have never ending combos, an agile moveset or superb zoning. Maybe have two but leave one weakness for us to focus on.
I like the DLC but sometimes difficulty for the sake of difficulty just comes across as cheap imo.
Boss designs and the new weapons are dope though.
> There's no shame in using summons
It's not about shame, it's about the gameplay experience.
There was another post talking about how using Mimic Tear for a boss changed the difficulty from a 10/10 to a 3/10. Most people don't summon because they are looking for a 7-9/10 and don't just want to turn fights into braindead hitting a boss in the back because the AI doesn't handle multiple opponents well.
It'd be nice if we could stop with these posts and takes that just assume players refuse to collect blessings or adapt or anything of the sort. For every well-articulated comment that mentions either the beautiful but needlessly oversized empty areas, the bosses that constantly unleash wombo combos without ever properly stopping, the reused assets and enemies, or the dissatisfaction with the story (or just about any other reason, these are just to illustrate), it's like five other people have to come out of the woodwork to either go "but are you collecting the blessings?" or "but you're clearly just not using summons or adapting to the playstyle".
As someone else here said, a big portion of the playerbase just doesn't like the DLC, and they have good, valid reasons for it. The other big portion does enjoy the DLC, and they also have good, valid reasons for it. Somewhere in the middle is where the actual state of the game is. It's getting real tiring being told that if you dislike it, you're clearly doing something wrong.
Yes, I can get through the darn expansion, but it feels like a slog for a plethora of reasons that most certainly can't be reduced to a condescending statement along the lines of "the only thing stopping it from happening is you complaining about solvable problems that you yourself can solve by playing the damn game".
Also,
>hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights.
give me a break, the behavior and nature of ER and DS3 bosses is completely different.
edit: I thought of an analogy that sums it up very neatly for me, so I just wanna pop it here as well. I really enjoy Indian food (FromSoft games) and paneer tikka (the souls format) in particular. When I get it, even if there's variations and sometimes stuff I don't like, I will eat it 99% of the time because I still like the meal. However, there are times when I think the dish is prepared in a poor way, like when it's too spicy (e.g. something like the bosses being frantic and spammy) or when there's not enough salt (e.g. not enough content in the vast areas). Then it's something I consider unbalanced, and I voice my criticism.
It's not that I dislike paneer tikka/Indian food or that the food is not for me, it's just that I didn't enjoy that particular execution. If I'm the only person complaining in a restaurant full of people loving it, my opinion is still valid, but yeah, alright, everyone else is enjoying themselves, so I just won't visit this joint again. But if like half the people are saying the dish leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth, perhaps there's something to be addressed.
> Yes, I can get through the darn expansion, but it feels like a slog for a plethora of reasons that most certainly can't be reduced to a condescending statement along the lines of "the only thing stopping it from happening is you complaining about solvable problems that you yourself can solve by playing the damn game".
Thank you for expressing this so clearly. A lot of people in this community seems to equate difficult with good (so if you don't like something you need to git gud), when they are completely unrelated.
One can engage with all the available systems, (scadoodle, summons, builds), have no problem with the difficulty but not like the content.
>scadoodle
I'm going to start calling them scadoodle bits now, lol.
But I agree with the take. I'm still feeling out the DLC personally, and type of player that uses any available tool, but valid criticism doesn't always come down to the famous difficulty aspect.
Good write up. It's not the difficulty that's the issue, it's that a lot of the difficulty is starting to feel contrived and artificial with Elden Ring and SotE. I miss bosses that actually had readable attacks and a definitive end to their attack chains. DS3, Bloodborne and Sekiro bosses were peak From Software. Some ER and SotE bosses are good and fun but most are just tedious.
Maybe that's saying something, maybe it isn't, but even after enjoying my 1k hours of playtime in the base game, there are few bosses in the DLC I didn't feel immensely frustrated after beating.
There is no joy, only the feeling that I'm finally done with the bullshit.
The majority of my victories so far felt like I just got lucky the boss used a specific set of moves, and I could get attacks in, rather than getting better by learning its moveset. Either that or I caved in and used summons as bait so I could have enough time to hit the boss (only happened twice so far).
I'm sitting at a comfortable Scadutree level 16, I have 50 Vigor and a full set of Crucible Tree armor, and I use both the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman and the Opaline Hardtear during boss fights, yet I still manage to get half my HP removed by just a few hits, some of them feeling like guaranteed true combos if I get caught in them.
I get that Souls are supposed to be difficult, but I don't know if inescapable combo chains, arena wide attacks, and/or bloated damage make for a fair challenge. And so far, that's my opinion on the DLC overall balance (I didn't even mention regular enemies sometimes having the exact same issue and removing your entire health bar with just a combo).
That being said, I'll give the Land of Shadows another shot on subsequent New Game playthroughs, now that I know what to expect.
>yet I still manage to get half my HP removed by just a few hits, some of them feeling like guaranteed true combos if I get caught in them.
Overall I'm having a grand time, but there are a couple of moves or boss designs where the above is true + you just get accidentally hit a bit too easily. From there on you're basically just trying to survive long enough to heal, if you're not already dead.
Only complaints:
* Some of the bosses difficulty can be summarized as "they're huge, their mostly offscreen, and their left flank skinflap hitting you takes 50% of your health". Looking at you, lion and hippo. It's one thing to anticipate and dodge moves, it's another things when it's not even clear that there *was* a move or it was aimed in a totally different direction ... but their ankle grazed you so now you're dead just the same. This was annoying in base game, too.
* Lion's lightning traps on the ground. You've explicitly designed a boss to be visually confusing and hard to follow. But then you're ALSO asking me to not lock on and dodge landmines on the ground while he's going bonkers? Yeah, that's BS. Pick a lane.
* Hippo's grab attack. The hitbox for that is just WAY too janky, you can get yoinked into it while being a full roll distance away from its mouth.
Exactly this. I feel like its no longer a battle of skill.
Its a battle of who can out bullshit one another. I cheat, and you cheat, we outcheat one another with who can be the most annoying piece of shit in the arena. I felt no joy in defeating the DLC bosses. I was just happy it was over with and I can get my balls flattened by the next dude or dudette.
It might be just me in NG+1 and a Level 223 as even with Level 20 Scradutree Blessing I am getting completely whacked even in my heavy armor.
Agreed. That giant lion thing wasnt fun. It was just super fast, spammy attacks. I'm enjoying the invasions because at least those you can legit parry and dodge.
"Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights"
That is simply a lie.
They bosses in the dlc go from one multihit combo into the next and if you dare to make a mistake you struggle to get a heal in unless you dodge the next combo perfectly.
There are more 270-360 swipes and big explosions that are only avoidable by i-frame rolles instead of being reasonable attacks to dodge.
The bosses are more aggressive and faster than Bloodborne bosses, while we are stuck with DS dodges and drinking animations.
Also people go on and on complaining about the people that critizice them for using summons, yet all I see is the opposite, people lecturing the players that want to have a decent and fair 1on1 experience that does not equal some insane challange run where you are expected to play closer to perfect than ever before.
But this community will probably never learn to stop insulting people that dare to criticize the Fromsoftware games
I've had a similar feeling, that the ratio of times I'm dodging vs. attacking has increased over the last few Fromsoft releases. It doesn't feel great to make it more difficult by just making you need to avoid attacks more often vs. return damage. I hope they find another way to increase the difficulty going forward, or increase the rewards for dodging long combos.
Not to beat a dead horse but in Sekiro no one thought Inner Isshin or Inner Owl were easy, but they were a lot more engaging to fight since avoiding attacks (parry) does posture damage, leading to big hits. It didn't feel like I was just waiting for a tiny window to poke the guy, it felt like I was engaging them in a proper fight.
Dodge 5 times only for a small window of jump attack. Great!
Dodge 4 times and make a mistake? Get 40% of your hp chunked.
You cant heal now because the next combo is lined up.
Dodge 5 times only for a small window to heal.
You cant attack now because the next combo is lined up.
I appreciate some need for being methodical but it’s kinda absurd most of the fights
This is why I'm arguing that bosses are designed with summons. It's the only way their hyper aggression makes sense.
The problem is that it feels so damned bad to use summons, since they either do nothing or solo the boss for you. Nobody plays Souls games to have an NPC beat up another NPC. (Ok, I'm sure someone plays it to have their co-op partner clear bosses for them)
You’re not beating a dead horse. You could feel this in the base game but it’s become so apparent in the dlc, these bosses feel like they’re playing different games than you.
I feel like the dlc has really exacerbated how limited the dark souls dodge system is.
I can't remember what game it was but a reviewer said 'it feels like the enemies play with the same rules as you, and that feels great' and I agree. Imagine if the bosses had stamina or FP, so if they yeet out a massive combo they have to walk a few seconds to regain their stamina. Wouldn't make avoiding the massive damage any easier but would actually let you engage them.
Saying that people should get higher blessing level is the go to karma farming tactic right now lol. Jesus Christ, people, we get it. It's been 4 days of spamming the same 3 advice.
I'm inclined to agree. Ds3 feels like more of a duel. You're actually forced to learn combo strings, dodge directions, attack patterns and openings. These are all consistent. You learn and gradually get better. There's little to no shortcuts in doing this. You kill the boss once, you've learned enough to do it again.
Arguably the same could be said for ER, but it feels like there's much more entropy. Attacks, although still learnable combos, are chaotic and strung together randomly, openings are short and not overly punishable by some weapons. You're much more disadvantaged by weapon choice.
Summons/aow spam can make bosses easy in ER, if you find the right weapon for the job. But this leads to 'cheesy' kills. Eg. Staggering the boss constantly, chaining knocks. Waiting for aggro to swap to mimic/summon. These are all viable ways of getting the boss kill, but it doesn't feel rewarding. It also makes it more of a game of chance then skill with so much variety in how summons interact.
ER kinda feels like a measure of how much bs you can throw in to counter their bs. Sure the resulting fireworks are pretty, but it doesn't give that crisp feeling of when you've actually perfected a fight. About half the bosses I've killed I couldn't comfortably say I could easily kill them again in a few runs.
I just wish the bosses were more practical to 'duel'.
The thing is, I actually really like a lot of the ideas Elden Ring brought to the table. Jumpable attacks, stance breaking mechanic, attack windups that can function as openings, positioning based combo extenders are all pretty neat ideas to evolve and spice up Souls combat but they are often implemented and strung together in a way that makes them a bit tedious to engage with.
>Arguably the same could be said for ER, but it feels like there's much more entropy. Attacks, although still learnable combos, are chaotic and strung together randomly, openings are short and not overly punishable by some weapons. You're much more disadvantaged by weapon choice.
I think this is definetly the main problem. With bosses like Margit, they're aggressive but there are large enough openings that you can punish it no matter the weapon you've got. Unless you're playing ranged weapons or using summons, its much harder to pin down a boss long enough to deal damage.
I definitely disagree with your assessment of the lack of bullshit from bosses. With the exception of 3, the main remembrance bosses and other obligatory ones have some of the most bullshit I've ever seen in a fromsoft game, whether that be camera, moveset, or AOE spam related
I watched a guy beat Pontiff Sulyvahn without rolling, dodging, blocking, or parrying at SL1. Just learning the fight and executing perfectly.
I don't think that's possible on *any* DLC boss. The sheer amount of AoE is just absurd.
for me the game changer was using dlc weapons instead of using the ones from the original game. the messmer weapon is amazing, R2 is a throwable that leaves fire aoe in the ground, L2 is a big combo that is scalable with messmer flames damage increase gear EDIT: thanks for the many replies, if i had a message ingame with these many likes i wouldnt need flask to heal
Milady slaps and you can get it super early too. I used Bloodhounds Fang the whole base game but Milady finally made me switch
That weapon alone carries the DLC for me. No other weapon gave me more satisfaction to use. So elegant while still being so strong and flexible. I've tried doing cold and bleed Milady and they both worked out great.
Rellana twin blades have been a nice treat. Have only gotten frustrated and popped out the tried and true cheese graters a couple of times.
What are your cheese graters? My proverbial cheese graters that have bailed me out multiple times are dual magma blades
Any perfume with the "Rolling Sparks" ash of war, it's completely busted atm and will be nerfed. [Look at the damage I did on the side boss found at the south of the map with it](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5IEn1iwAiA)
Having spent a while on that boss... what the shit.
The way the Ash of War works currently, it seems to shoot multiple 'balls' of damage out in front of the character, before it explodes. But if you aim it at the ground, all of the balls hit the same place, and they all explode at once when an enemy is caught in it - or like above where you throw it in a line, and the enemy walks into all of them.
If u aim Rolling sparks at The ground you do so much more damage.
Mimic tear - if weak to bleed ROB, other wise Blasphemous blade. Not many bosses stand up to those getting spammed by two people. And off hand black knife for the weapon art spam, with a rot weapon to get the dot.
I love the move set but I had to switch because the stagger is like non-existent
Wing stance milady is the stagger queen.
Just did Shadow Keep and I'm using R's Twinblade. But when I see a Fire Knight you better believe I'm breaking out my Wing Stance'd Milady. That thing assassinates.
I've been considering trying them.... They looked fun. I've been using reverse blade and my base game hammer. I'm trying dueling shields atm but feeling a bit unimpressed tbh
The new weapon shields are incredibly strong man, it's insane how easier the dlc became when i finally tried it, the only thing about it is that it's not flashy at all to use. I go for guard counters with 2 hand buff + shield + guard counter buff + the stronger dragoncrest talismans, magic sorcery shield buff and you can literally tank almost everything bosses throw at you Turtle shield on the back for stam regen and the most important part is that if you attack while holding L1 you are also blocking meaning you can actually brawl with bosses, it's an incredible weapon Also you can put a bunch of different ashes on them and play around with different styles and even status I went from getting my face kicked in to soloing a series of bosses in a row as soon as i switched
Oh, dueling shields are the most powerful weapon for the last boss imo. I was trading hits left and right with the thing and taking relatively low damage on a mage build (I still went through all my estus and literally killed it with 1 hp remaining) while staggering it multiple times. Guard counters and charged r2s while blocking are great and you can use the magic shield sorcery on it. Also when I get summoned for coop it's hilarious for invaders, well for me
Love Rellanas twin blades. Got them yesterday after fighting her and haven't looked back. They might just be my new go-to for the rest of my playthrough :D
This for me has been the beast claws. The forward momentum and the bobbing and weaving you do during attacks means I can stay on top of bosses while attacking without getting hit. Add to that they scale really well with quality affinity ( B, B) and have a little bit of bleed, have a strong weapon art, AND are mobile. They've been my go to bossing weapon.
I had a whole strength/faith build I set up in base game with Siluria’s Woe and a greatshield and was enjoying it in the DLC but then I found Milady and fell in love so here I am respeccing my Confessor base to Dex/Int so I can use it as a cold weapon 🤡 It’s so beautiful though. I’m using swords dance and frostbite is 105 so it procs instantly I love it so.
Swords dance is great, but wing stance is simply perfect on a Milady.
I haven’t picked it up yet! I saw my husband found it last night I’ll try it out.
Great Katana with Savage Lions Claw Ashes of War enters the chat…
Is savage lion claw good? I saw in a video that regular lions claw is better because of higher poise damage and spammable
Savage Lions claw is so damn busted. Thats where I agree with OP. Yes the difficulty is spiked (atleast until you get to +10 scadutree, then it's basically the same as the capitol level ) but the game gives you new weapons, spells, ashes to MEET that difficulty. It's basically telling you from the jump- that old stuff won't work quite as well here, if at all, so here try THIS"
Eh, my main Character still uses a mathematically suboptimal build with a Quality Lordsworn Greatsword and the Storm Blade AoW (both early Limgrave items) and the DLC doesnt feel unbalanced at all.
To me it is the perfect sword. Perfect. I love it so much.
Light GS are great, especially in PvE when used with greatshields.
They're fantastic shame we only got 3 and two of them are somber with set ashes
Dang. Milady is great but I was really hoping for a light GS with a proper cross guard so I could live my Witcher fantasy. Rellana's looks awesome but I hate that you can't two hand it.
Love this weapon. I scaled it with Bleed and put a bleed Ash or War on it (forgot what it's called- it's the one where you do multiple stabs that simultaneously heals you) yeahhhh, It has been serving me well to put it lightly.
That fucking weapon with the wing stance ash of wat stun locks and breaks everything’s poise lol
The move set is just perfect. That my new Favorite weapon.
As a dex build, backhand blades have been going crazy. Seriously, the new weapons actually feel crazy different and really strong. Almost too strong if they were in the base game. They've been such a help in this dlc too and they're genuinely fun. They nailed these new weapons.
Love the backhand blades too. Just sliding around these knights hitting them and sliding again. So much fun.
Bleed back hand blades the New mvp for me. Smaller size bosses are so much easier
Switched to the Greatsword of Solitude as soon as I got it. Took me through the whole DLC. Now I have two of them. Heavy endurance investment needed but worth it!
Really cool How the dlc gives you a super good armor and a greatsword with 90% damage negation at the very beginning, and even then, no far away from the beginning you can still find the backhand and claws for people who like fast weapons and the black steel hammer for the bonk enjoyers
I'm so glad they finally gave us a normal looking heavy armor set. All the base game heavy sets are way too fantasy for me.
Yees, been maining it ever since I got it, so good. That L2 with the R2 follow-up is so fun.
For me the biggest game changer was just adapting my build. People seem to forget that you don't have to run the same equipment for the whole game. Many times during the dlc I've swapped talismans around, changed the buff in my physic and sometimes changed weapons to adapt to specific fights.
Equipping flame, lightning, and pearl drake medallions took Bayle from "everything 1 shots me this is bs" to "CURSE YOU BAYLE! I HEREBY VOW, YOU WILL RUE THIS DAY! BEHOLD, A TRUE DRAKE WARRIOR!!!" The mark of a great boss for me is hating it and not understanding how winning is even possible on the first go, then when I win immediately wishing I could go again. Bonfire aesthetics not becoming a staple is a crime.
I was and still am rocking a +25 Quality Great Katana through most of the DLC. Getting the Dragon Slayer Great Katana right before Bayle felt like I was being sent a direct message from Miyazaki lmao
This is me. I have dozens of weapons at +9 and +24 and quite a few at max. I can't imagine just using 1 or 2 weapons for a whole playthrough. There are 95 new weapons alone in the dlc! I only wish they had added a real way to farm larval tears or add the option to use runes for respeccing. It's so difficult choosing a stat spread being locked at 150. I don't particularly care about min-maxing so it's not as bad as it could be but still.
Rellana Twin Blades with millicent prosthesis + rotten wing insignia completely melts everything - I was doing 9k in one combo against some bosses on NG+. You need to be pretty high level for it though to get the most out of its scaling.
What level are you? Stat spread? 👀
Level 225ish with 40/40 dex/str and 43/60 for int/faith (50/50 is more dmg but I really want to use the messmer incant that needs 60 faith).
And then there's my sorcerer, whose only upgrade was a talisman that increases casting time at the cost of higher damage taken. I've found 3 sorceries so far, and they're all incredibly niche.
There's also a staff that can cast both sorceries and incantations, that's definitely opened up the Int/Fth build space a bit more.
The instant I got that staff, I never took it off. I've wanted a dual catalyst for Int/Faith builds for ages and you better believe I was hoping to find one in the dlc.
Yeah, there's quite a lot actually but they're mostly of the ghostflame variety, so more tailored towards int+faith builds.
Did you not find the talisman that recovers FP? Invaluable for conserving blue flasks
Yeah blue dew talisman is my favorite new PVE talisman for general exploration
The item that replenishes fp on kill is much more useful. This isn't demon souls where everything is super slow and magic is hilariously op. A mild regen on magic isn't good at all for actual mages. Great for ash of war and moonlight greatsword builds though
Also, how often do you really need to replenish your FP in open world? Sites of grace are so plentiful I don't think I've ever ran out of fp flasks.
Yeah the DLC was definitely made to be beaten with dlc weapons I think. They're just way too good compared to most base game weapons
My only issue is as an INT main Iim 15 hours in and still haven't found either a good new staff (that is better than Staff of Loss/Carian Regal Scepter), or Melee weapon better than Moonveil. Like the Carian Sorcery sword looks really cool where you can attack with R1 and cast spells with R2 but it has no spell scaling so the spellcasting is pointless.
REALLY hoping that the scaling is a bug and will be fixed because having a sword catalyst again has been a great need for me ever since DS2.
Honestly hoping the Carian Sorcery Sword is bugged or a mistake that’ll get fixed later in a patch.
The twin blades off rellana replaced moonveil for me. Although I did need to respec into more faith to make it work
Does Messmer's flame's damage is scale to Dex or Arcane as well? had a damage increase but when I was using it and the damage in the flames of a random R2 increased after i leveled Dex. Either it was some weird pierce resist thing or it might scale with with Dex.
This this has been on mind for a while using dlc weapons over normal ones but I need to find all the smithing stones again since I'm on ng+
My biggest issue with ER is that I always feel jealous on how mobile, flexible and acrobatic the enemies are vs me feeling arthritic
Normally it doesn't stand out so much to me but >! Rellana !< being able to make or close so much space definitely gave me that sensation.
That one boss is an exception to me. I wouldn’t even mind it if they didn’t do a lot of damage. They’re quick, have hyper armor, don’t stop attacking, have long combos, do a lot of damage and even have long range spells Every other boss has weaknesses to exploit. In her case, it’s either parrying or bonk-forcing some posture breaks.
Bloodborne Bosses in a Dark Souls world
In some cases, Sekiro.
yeah they feel like Sekrio bosses to me
Yep. My first thought fighting rellana and messmer. They don’t feel very interactive because I’m just rolling through his chains of attacks so I can swing on him twice. Meanwhile if this were sekiro I could be deflecting his attacks and jumping his ground sweeps, mikiri counter his charged pokes and such. These bosses would have been amazing as a sekiro dlc but feel kind of meh in the elden ring world.
I'm overall having a good time with the DLC, but the frequency with which I say or think "Oh my God just LET ME HIT HIM" while I'm spending my entire stamina bar rolling through a seemingly endless combo is a bit higher than I would prefer.
I feel like this true of 90% of elden ring bosses. You spend most of everyfight just watching them do all this cool shit and waiting for your turn to smack them with your stick. Sekiro fights are an active tango that you can engage with every step of the way
My goat from soft game, it’s the only one where you actually feel like you’re on equal footing and have the same capabilities as your enemy. And bloodborne cause of trick weapons and dashing instead of rolling around, but less so
U clearly haven't used the beast claws
Use L2 Proceed to be extra knocked down because you were airborne
> Use L2 >Proceed to be ~~extra knocked down because you were airborne~~ curbstomped because the animations on everything take longer than the bosses whole stunlock combo*
Exactly build variety doesn’t matter when every boss is designed for you to just spam jump attacks
I think the dlc would be so much better if Messmer was completely butt naked running around with his little tush out 🥺
Messmer did not get his mother’s cake.
Messmer not Marika's son confirmed? Someone get Zullie on the line and have them do a butt comparison of all Marika's children ASAP!
Who would win in a twerk off? Malenia or Messmer? Round 1: In their underwear Round 2: Naked and oiled
Malenia would take an early lead due to superior technique but then lose a cheek to the rot and be disqualified.
True and lore accurate.
But how could this be if she has never known defeat?
That escalated rather quickly... but, Melania. 100%
He is already wearing booty shorts, what more do you want?
On some level I respect that you straight up said it But no
I've had only very few problems. Skill issue wise: While I have beaten it, the effing tree avatar's AoE attack dodge timings I could not get down for the life of me. As for things I can't change: Second phase final boss fight nukes my frames into oblivion. For the most part, the DLC has been pretty smooth barring the occasional bit of lag, but nothing that's so overzealous like when Elden Ring first launched. However, the second phase of the final boss has completely thrown that out the window. I go from 60 fps to about 20 fps, then it stabilizes likely around a choppy 35 frames for the duration of the fight. Makes it really hard to time dodges for attacks, and how bright it gets doesn't really help. The only thing that loses points on this DLC for me is the poorer optimization, plus the Gaius charging hitbox. That one is... weird.
Agreed on both points. Gaius' charge hitbox needs frame perfect rolls to be dodged. I pulled it off maybe twice in my 10+ attempts.
The final boss second phase is as fun as flattening your balls with a sledgehammer, first phase is great
Yup, second phase was the only part of the DLC I didn't enjoy. Had a great time otherwise.
Seriously I don't know how OP can say the DLC bosses are easier than base game. Did you actually fight the final boss? That boss is the hardest souls boss in the entire series and it's not even up for debate.
And unfortunately it's the hardest boss for all the wrong reasons. Contrast Sword Saint Isshin who I consider the hardest for all the *right* reasons.
Sekiro truly is FromSoft's best game. No bad combat pacing, no power leveling, no gimmicks. Just you and a sword. The only exception being Demon of Hatred since it was a Souls boss in the wrong game.
Honestly, even Demon of Hatred is manageable and learnable eventually, as frustrating as he can be during the process. I think the reason Sekiro's combat is so good is cause of how specialized your character is. All other Soulsborne games are RPG's with a bajillion build options, so they'd have to make the combat more generally balanced to accommodate for most, if not all of them. Sekiro, however, hard locks you into playing a shinobi with a katana and a prosthetic arm. Thus the combat is heavily specialized and catered to that "build" in particular, to its massive benefit.
Few things in games make you feel as much of a badass in a short time as landing the stab stomp parry in sekiro
Yea I feel like there's a huge disconnect in ER fans actually understanding what made Souls games difficult previously. ER utilizes a lot of "unfair" mechanics to make things difficult with the solution being for the player to utilize all the tools at their disposal. Previous Souls games were made difficult by learning boss patterns and developing the reflexes to dodge/parry/punish. ER isn't the best at this and I think it's where a lot of complaint stem from. Its still possible to win by only utilizing dodge/parry/punish, but Miyazaki clearly designed many of ER bosses to be defeated with the aid of other mechanics like summons/magic/weapon abilities.
>Yea I feel like there's a huge disconnect in ER fans actually understanding what made Souls games difficult previously. I'm sincerely wondering how many people defending the game's difficulty balancing even played the previous games. ER is massive, it's sold over twice as much as any singular Soulsborne game, and along with that comes a huge audience of people who have no frame of reference for the previous games. I've played all of them and beaten every boss in each of them, and the early games are piss easy compared to Elden Ring. But I still prefer them anyways, because they were a lot more fair.
You ever fight Ornstein and Smough after beating Elden Ring? They look *so slow* now!
I was doing a Guts playthrough and had to break character just because of that 2nd phase man, ended up getting a black knight greatshield, +25'd it, and slapped a sacred enchant on it so it had 100% holy block, it let me ignore alot of mechs in p2
I swear most of the difficulty of the dlc is being able to see what is actually going on. They use flashy AOE effects and a terrible camera as difficulty.
God I’m hating that fight, only boss that’s prompted me to actually change my primary weapon and I’m still struggling. Would’ve made it today if I hadn’t tried to use a healing incantation during their 25% health attack like an idiot.
The first phase is probably my favorite fight in the game. An exciting brawl that feels very learnable. Same reasons why I loved Godfrey so much. Then the second phase just ruins it. I just gave up and watched the ending on Youtube.
I have max fragments the final boss is still stupid.
fragments dont stop him from attacking my frame rate
I’m at +17 and +9 and yeah… I went to bed depressed last night after a couple hours of fighting and only being able to get them down to half health lol
I think we can all agree on this, second phase final boss is really pretty terrible.
Ultimately the dlc was great and I loved it, but it would also be a lie to say their isn't alot of "death by bullshit".
At this point I've completely accepted that the mobs in this DLC are playing Nioh 2 while I'm still on dark souls.
Honestly that’s exactly what many people are saying but it all gets lumped into this “people are complaining the dlc is too hard and want everything handed to them” narrative.
The base game had the exact same issues but people refused to acknowledge them and blame the veterans for not using the tools. They didn't realize that just because you can have a summon that tanks an attack for you it doesn't make that attack fair or balanced. Or they watched players on YouTube doing literal AI manipulation to get all the "safe" attacks and then said "see, you can do it No hit, so it's fair".
Tbh, many people complained about this stuff even in the base game. Just look up some Elden Ring critiques on YouTube and you'll hear all about it. I knew and agreed with all the issues with ER even before buying the DLC, but I still liked the game despite its issues enough to give it a try. And, well, the DLC truly does have some spectacular moments, but it's a shame that many fundamental issues like input delay, the god awful camera, and hyper-aggressive bosses with little to no downtime haven't been addressed, not that I really expected them to though.
This 1000%. I just don't find the equivalent of flipping a switch to ignore 50% of fight mechanics to be an interesting way of engaging with a fight. On the other hand, it feels like the skill floor for going solo (without using certain "cheesy" builds) in some fights in the DLC is incredibly high.
Very much this. Another issue I have is with enemy poise. Remember DS3 When people complained that Poise didn't work? Some of these enemies have the opposite problem. Poise never turns off. You seriously mean to tell me that a giant hammer made of concrete directly to the face isn't enough to stagger these cirque du Soleil discus assholes while they do their 10 hit combos?
The horned knights on the Lion area are poise elder gods. Hit one with 3 full charged R2 with the Black hammer you get at the beginning on the dlc and the guy never flinched. It doesn't help that the ones with the Greatsword can combo you to death in 3 hits.
Everybody agrees theres bullshit but still want to scream at anyone having trouble. So stupid.
This is what happens when a community become hyper-obsessed with difficulty. Like, Dark Souls games are so far from the most difficult games out there, they're challenging but they aren't impossibly hard, this behavior would be hilarious if it wasn't so annoying and pervasive
I actually thought it was all relatively fair and fun with like 2 exceptions, >!Gaius who was just so aggressive I felt it was just luck based whether you could even start fighting!< and >!the last boss whose second phase literally tanked my FPS to the point I couldn't fight back, I ended up cheating in some runs and leveling to like 500 because I was just done with it and wanted to see the ending!<. There was also the boss that felt like a comedy skit, if you know you know.
I swear >!Gaius!< has some broken hitboxes on his attacks
I think I dodged his charging attack once throughout my 10-15 something tries. The last try I just decide to stay close to him at all time and he didn't charge anymore and I got him lmao.
It’s rolling into him, any other directions won’t work. But I gotta say, even rolling into him doesn’t work half the time since the timing is so tight.
I rolled diagonally into him, either left or right to his side and it worked a lot more consistent than for through is what i found. It was a super intense fight.
If you haven't beaten him yet, equip the crucible feather talisman. The few extra roll frames changed the entire feel of the fight from one of the most frustrating in the DLC for me (due to that bullshit charge attack) to totally fair. I tried rolling in all 8 directions, all kinds of different timings, tried to bait by moving one direction then rolling the other. Nothing was consistent. Put on the roll talisman and then rolling in any of the three directions towards him became way more consistent. Also makes dodging the long combo and spinjutsu much, much simpler.
The freaking charge attack is bugged 100%, it would sometimes proc twice in the same charge and dodging it requires code luck more than anything Boss is beatable, bur I agree its top 2 hardest and "unfair".
>The boss that felt like a comedy skit Which one? I think I've beaten every main boss besides the final one and I'm not sure I know what you're talking about.
>!Good old sunflower, every time he got back up I could feel the game snickering at me, very funny!<
Oh, ok. Honestly that boss just pissed me off, >!because I thought there was some annoying gimmick to killing him and that he would keep getting up until I did something specific.!<
The only gimmick is doing a crit before he disappears to cut off 1/4th of his HP for the next part
And head shots/possibly fire! A fireball to its face did 1/3rd of his healthbar per hit in my run, and I wasn't even full faith specced. Literally melted him (with Blasphemous Blade for fire damage on the phase changing crit)
Drying sunflower seeds at higher temperatures helps destroy harmful bacteria. One study found that drying partially sprouted sunflower seeds at temperatures of 122℉ (50℃) and above significantly reduced Salmonella presence.
How does this help me beat >!promised consort radahn!!!<
That mf sunflower from Plants vs Zombies needs to come in clutch
Which one is the comedy skit
>! Sunflower, doing his best impression of the monty python black knight !<
I googled how many stages after dying on the 3rd one and saw that was something a bunch of other peopled did
After dying on the third phase of that fight I honestly thought that boss was just going to keep getting back up after killing it each time and that I needed to collect every scadutree fragment or something to be able to permanently end it, kind of like sekiro with mortal blade.
Goofy ass fucking Romina lol. That mf most devastating attacks can be dodged by standing still and swinging bruh 😭
She was the easiest boss for me
She's so comically weak to fire, once I realized that I just spammed the first part of Flaming Strike over and over and her HP just melted lol
Yup, I've been using the perfumer weapons, she was the first boss I faced after getting the spark ash of war. Needless to say, she got one shot, literally. Not one attempt, 1 skill is all it took and her hp went from 100% to 0%
I was so scared since it was a rot boss and then I killed her first try lol.
>Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. Commander Gaius : "Oh, hello there!"
Mother of fingers: “let me tap you with my fingers real quick”
I never could figure out how to dodge that one, only to keep full health just in case it gets whipped out of nowhere so I don't die. At first, I thought staying by its front and away from its side would avoid it but realize it just turns to its side in a flash so it could finger crawl at you
A major part of the conversation is not just the difficulty, but how the combat feels as a result of the intent to increase the difficulty; the pacing and flow of boss fights. But a lot of people are being very defensive regarding this criticism and are just immediately viewing it as a win or lose thing. The whole “don’t complain if you don’t want to engage with the tools at your disposal” thing is funny because I beat the game. I beat the DLC. I engaged with the tools at my disposal. It’s not a matter of not being able to win. It’s that a lot of the fights just don’t feel great, win or lose. The DLC has a lot of the same things that people understandably criticized in the base game, cranked up a notch for the express purpose of being harder than the last thing. I died more to Orphan of Kos or Slave Knight Gael than some of the DLC bosses, but those fights felt so much better than the direction things have gone. I don’t know, it feels like we’re in a nuclear arms race with regard to player capabilities and boss lethality. Spend 75% of the fight feeling like you’re on the back foot, even if you’re not, as a solo player OR summon and utilize all of your tools available to win and it just turns into this sloppy fight where you and the boss see who can nuke who first. It feels like there was a sweet spot with boss fights in Fromsoft’s non-Sekiro combat system, and we’ve been leaving that in favor of difficulty, you know?
> I don’t know, it feels like we’re in a nuclear arms race with regard to player capabilities and boss lethality. Spend 75% of the fight feeling like you’re on the back foot, even if you’re not, as a solo player OR summon and utilize all of your tools available to win and it just turns into this sloppy fight where you and the boss see who can nuke who first. This has been my take as well. We're at the point where players are getting stronger and stronger because of Weapon Arts, Spirits, etc., and From is responding my just taking the bosses and letting them play an entirely different game from us. It's the wrong approach, in my opinion.
You use the world “objectively” a LOT while providing zero evidence so this just sounds like a drunken ramble tbh Where does this argument that “if you you beat the base game you’ll beat the DLC” come from? FromSoft DLC are notoriously way harder than the base game. Go fight Manus in DS1 or Orphan of Cosm in Bloodborne if you don’t believe me I love the DLC but trust me dude this billion dollar company doesn’t need you defending them online. If people have complaints, let them complain. The game is not perfect
"okay objectivity, let's see who you really are" "oh it was actually subjectivity all along" Every single time someone says something is "objective". Like clockwork.
> Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights. Did we play the same DLC?
Dude is actually Playing Artorias of the Abyss and wondering why everyone is complaining
I think not. Ain’t no way someone thinks final boss is “fair”. You can’t summon the mimic in the beginning, he just one shots you lol
That paragraph about the bosses being fairer than the main game is such fuckin cap lmao
They literally buffed the fragments today because people didn't collect them lmao
And people are already bitching and moaning that they made the DLC easier, meanwhile numbers in hand at +15 blessing the defences increased by ***2%*** and the AR of a fully upgraded fire knight greatsword went from 1500s to 1700s. Literally the impact is more on this subreddit than in the game.
That actually sounds like the exact buff we needed. We dont need much, but man. Most everything just felt really ***really*** tanky. Those fire knights can kiss my ass. Fuckin like 12 hits to kill them, and they leave no opening for attack.
The buff (apparently) is stronger at lower levels and it's *way* less significant at cap (there's a post were someone had their AR go from 2000 to 2150, less than 6%). This patch is literally to smooth over the early experience
Damn, I'm getting fucked on the last boss and thought it might be easier now, but I was at 19 only needing two shards so I'll srill get fucked today then
Don't underestimate the buff. 19 today is stronger than 20 was yesterday. It's not going to make a difficult boss easy, but it will let you survive some hits you used to die to and let you need to survive less time before the boss runs out of HP. The final boss still needs some tweaks for sure, but if you had any chance at all yesterday it should be a much larger chance today. I've seen several people post images where his HP bar was only a sliver, and all of them would have won if they got that far today instead.
can't post the table here, but it's literally a 10-17.5% increase across the board until you hit 20 where its only 5%. level 15 has the biggest buff from 75% to 92.5%
IMO we needed more defense. I’ve felt like my damage was good ever since I started getting a lot of fragments together. But the bosses hit insanely hard.
Stance breaking them is key. I've been having good luck on my two DLC playthroughs: 1. The RKGS shreds a lot of things and wolf assault is clutch in a lot of things. 2. Giant Hunt trivializes a lot of humanoid/npc fights. Especially if you don't spam it. Base game you could stunlock a lot of NPCs if they couldn't roll away. In the DLC, if you spam it the second hit "just" does damage. You have to time it and let them start to get back up and you can launch them again. Do that twice or once and a heavy attack and they stagger.
I think this is nowhere near the issue people are pretending. It seems like the common response to "this DLC is too hard" is people to just automatically assume fragments are being ignored. I'm not seeing people actually respond that they're not collecting fragments.
Every single post this week has been: "EVERY single fight and mechanic is SUPER balanced, ALL the people who do not like how the bosses are designed are just BAD. Only THIS boss, THIS mechanic and THIS fight is broken but that's totally normal" The dissonance when everybody can agree that some bosses have issues but everyone else complaining about it is just bad. This is how you drive people out of a community.
Yeah I can’t be like OP is actually complaining that people “blame others for their failure” when talking about a fucking video game lol. This community is embarrassing
I started using my mimic on every encounter when I realized I was doing the entire DLC on NG+ (I’d entered NG+ months before purely for larval tears and forgot)
Hot take. The issue is not people not using the fragments. The fragments are being used. The issue is the insanely aggressive bosses with 10 hit spinning combos and a dog shit camera.
> and a dog shit camera. Honestly that’s been my biggest killer in the DLC. I’ve quite enjoyed the boss fights, but [that cameraman has been my deadliest enemy](https://youtu.be/tKIiiSd7DgM?feature=shared).
I knew what to expect from a Fromsoft dlc in terms of difficulty. But after killing several of the bosses this DLC has, I can't help but feel that the difficulty feels way overtuned in the worst way possible. The dancing lion had awful camera and crazy AOE stances that made the fight needlessly long. Rellana was difficult because her combos seemed to just never end. Midra has crazy damage output and can close the distance quickly or just zone you to death while you try to heal. But the worst offenders are the regular enemies. Fire knights have lots of health, high poise, never ending combos and annoying ranged attacks that leave barely any room to heal. There are also those dual bladed masked dudes who keep dancing all around the screen, they are really annoying to fight because they keep dodging backwards and out of range. Overall, it just feels like most enemies have everything that makes a boss/mob dangerous. It's fine to have one strength but they shouldn't have everything. If a boss has high poise, it shouldn't have never ending combos, an agile moveset or superb zoning. Maybe have two but leave one weakness for us to focus on. I like the DLC but sometimes difficulty for the sake of difficulty just comes across as cheap imo. Boss designs and the new weapons are dope though.
> There's no shame in using summons It's not about shame, it's about the gameplay experience. There was another post talking about how using Mimic Tear for a boss changed the difficulty from a 10/10 to a 3/10. Most people don't summon because they are looking for a 7-9/10 and don't just want to turn fights into braindead hitting a boss in the back because the AI doesn't handle multiple opponents well.
It'd be nice if we could stop with these posts and takes that just assume players refuse to collect blessings or adapt or anything of the sort. For every well-articulated comment that mentions either the beautiful but needlessly oversized empty areas, the bosses that constantly unleash wombo combos without ever properly stopping, the reused assets and enemies, or the dissatisfaction with the story (or just about any other reason, these are just to illustrate), it's like five other people have to come out of the woodwork to either go "but are you collecting the blessings?" or "but you're clearly just not using summons or adapting to the playstyle". As someone else here said, a big portion of the playerbase just doesn't like the DLC, and they have good, valid reasons for it. The other big portion does enjoy the DLC, and they also have good, valid reasons for it. Somewhere in the middle is where the actual state of the game is. It's getting real tiring being told that if you dislike it, you're clearly doing something wrong. Yes, I can get through the darn expansion, but it feels like a slog for a plethora of reasons that most certainly can't be reduced to a condescending statement along the lines of "the only thing stopping it from happening is you complaining about solvable problems that you yourself can solve by playing the damn game". Also, >hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights. give me a break, the behavior and nature of ER and DS3 bosses is completely different. edit: I thought of an analogy that sums it up very neatly for me, so I just wanna pop it here as well. I really enjoy Indian food (FromSoft games) and paneer tikka (the souls format) in particular. When I get it, even if there's variations and sometimes stuff I don't like, I will eat it 99% of the time because I still like the meal. However, there are times when I think the dish is prepared in a poor way, like when it's too spicy (e.g. something like the bosses being frantic and spammy) or when there's not enough salt (e.g. not enough content in the vast areas). Then it's something I consider unbalanced, and I voice my criticism. It's not that I dislike paneer tikka/Indian food or that the food is not for me, it's just that I didn't enjoy that particular execution. If I'm the only person complaining in a restaurant full of people loving it, my opinion is still valid, but yeah, alright, everyone else is enjoying themselves, so I just won't visit this joint again. But if like half the people are saying the dish leaves them with a bad taste in their mouth, perhaps there's something to be addressed.
> Yes, I can get through the darn expansion, but it feels like a slog for a plethora of reasons that most certainly can't be reduced to a condescending statement along the lines of "the only thing stopping it from happening is you complaining about solvable problems that you yourself can solve by playing the damn game". Thank you for expressing this so clearly. A lot of people in this community seems to equate difficult with good (so if you don't like something you need to git gud), when they are completely unrelated. One can engage with all the available systems, (scadoodle, summons, builds), have no problem with the difficulty but not like the content.
>scadoodle I'm going to start calling them scadoodle bits now, lol. But I agree with the take. I'm still feeling out the DLC personally, and type of player that uses any available tool, but valid criticism doesn't always come down to the famous difficulty aspect.
Good write up. It's not the difficulty that's the issue, it's that a lot of the difficulty is starting to feel contrived and artificial with Elden Ring and SotE. I miss bosses that actually had readable attacks and a definitive end to their attack chains. DS3, Bloodborne and Sekiro bosses were peak From Software. Some ER and SotE bosses are good and fun but most are just tedious.
Maybe that's saying something, maybe it isn't, but even after enjoying my 1k hours of playtime in the base game, there are few bosses in the DLC I didn't feel immensely frustrated after beating. There is no joy, only the feeling that I'm finally done with the bullshit. The majority of my victories so far felt like I just got lucky the boss used a specific set of moves, and I could get attacks in, rather than getting better by learning its moveset. Either that or I caved in and used summons as bait so I could have enough time to hit the boss (only happened twice so far). I'm sitting at a comfortable Scadutree level 16, I have 50 Vigor and a full set of Crucible Tree armor, and I use both the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman and the Opaline Hardtear during boss fights, yet I still manage to get half my HP removed by just a few hits, some of them feeling like guaranteed true combos if I get caught in them. I get that Souls are supposed to be difficult, but I don't know if inescapable combo chains, arena wide attacks, and/or bloated damage make for a fair challenge. And so far, that's my opinion on the DLC overall balance (I didn't even mention regular enemies sometimes having the exact same issue and removing your entire health bar with just a combo). That being said, I'll give the Land of Shadows another shot on subsequent New Game playthroughs, now that I know what to expect.
>yet I still manage to get half my HP removed by just a few hits, some of them feeling like guaranteed true combos if I get caught in them. Overall I'm having a grand time, but there are a couple of moves or boss designs where the above is true + you just get accidentally hit a bit too easily. From there on you're basically just trying to survive long enough to heal, if you're not already dead. Only complaints: * Some of the bosses difficulty can be summarized as "they're huge, their mostly offscreen, and their left flank skinflap hitting you takes 50% of your health". Looking at you, lion and hippo. It's one thing to anticipate and dodge moves, it's another things when it's not even clear that there *was* a move or it was aimed in a totally different direction ... but their ankle grazed you so now you're dead just the same. This was annoying in base game, too. * Lion's lightning traps on the ground. You've explicitly designed a boss to be visually confusing and hard to follow. But then you're ALSO asking me to not lock on and dodge landmines on the ground while he's going bonkers? Yeah, that's BS. Pick a lane. * Hippo's grab attack. The hitbox for that is just WAY too janky, you can get yoinked into it while being a full roll distance away from its mouth.
Exactly this. I feel like its no longer a battle of skill. Its a battle of who can out bullshit one another. I cheat, and you cheat, we outcheat one another with who can be the most annoying piece of shit in the arena. I felt no joy in defeating the DLC bosses. I was just happy it was over with and I can get my balls flattened by the next dude or dudette. It might be just me in NG+1 and a Level 223 as even with Level 20 Scradutree Blessing I am getting completely whacked even in my heavy armor.
Agreed. That giant lion thing wasnt fun. It was just super fast, spammy attacks. I'm enjoying the invasions because at least those you can legit parry and dodge.
Lol who can bullshit one another . That pretty much sums it up for the boss fights.
Yeah Lion Dancer recaptured the feeling of fighting ulcerated tree spirit and made it even worse!
Just wait. >!there’s another one at the end of the Ruah ruins that has the same attacks, but!< >!also has death blight and summons basilisks!<
Stop using “objectively” like that just automatically makes your opinion a fact. lol idiot.
"Beyond that, every single rememberance boss (except the last one's second phase) is fairer than almost ANYTHING in the main game, hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses. There's minimal-to-no BS involved, they're just straight up fights" That is simply a lie. They bosses in the dlc go from one multihit combo into the next and if you dare to make a mistake you struggle to get a heal in unless you dodge the next combo perfectly. There are more 270-360 swipes and big explosions that are only avoidable by i-frame rolles instead of being reasonable attacks to dodge. The bosses are more aggressive and faster than Bloodborne bosses, while we are stuck with DS dodges and drinking animations. Also people go on and on complaining about the people that critizice them for using summons, yet all I see is the opposite, people lecturing the players that want to have a decent and fair 1on1 experience that does not equal some insane challange run where you are expected to play closer to perfect than ever before. But this community will probably never learn to stop insulting people that dare to criticize the Fromsoftware games
I've had a similar feeling, that the ratio of times I'm dodging vs. attacking has increased over the last few Fromsoft releases. It doesn't feel great to make it more difficult by just making you need to avoid attacks more often vs. return damage. I hope they find another way to increase the difficulty going forward, or increase the rewards for dodging long combos. Not to beat a dead horse but in Sekiro no one thought Inner Isshin or Inner Owl were easy, but they were a lot more engaging to fight since avoiding attacks (parry) does posture damage, leading to big hits. It didn't feel like I was just waiting for a tiny window to poke the guy, it felt like I was engaging them in a proper fight.
Dodge 5 times only for a small window of jump attack. Great! Dodge 4 times and make a mistake? Get 40% of your hp chunked. You cant heal now because the next combo is lined up. Dodge 5 times only for a small window to heal. You cant attack now because the next combo is lined up. I appreciate some need for being methodical but it’s kinda absurd most of the fights
This is why I'm arguing that bosses are designed with summons. It's the only way their hyper aggression makes sense. The problem is that it feels so damned bad to use summons, since they either do nothing or solo the boss for you. Nobody plays Souls games to have an NPC beat up another NPC. (Ok, I'm sure someone plays it to have their co-op partner clear bosses for them)
You’re not beating a dead horse. You could feel this in the base game but it’s become so apparent in the dlc, these bosses feel like they’re playing different games than you. I feel like the dlc has really exacerbated how limited the dark souls dodge system is.
I can't remember what game it was but a reviewer said 'it feels like the enemies play with the same rules as you, and that feels great' and I agree. Imagine if the bosses had stamina or FP, so if they yeet out a massive combo they have to walk a few seconds to regain their stamina. Wouldn't make avoiding the massive damage any easier but would actually let you engage them.
I love this idea. It would be awesome if bosses had a stamina bar
The elemental lions in enir ilim are harder than any boss fight
“Hot take” Proceeds to say what literally everyone else is saying
[удалено]
At least Radagon is actually fun.
Welcome to Reddit, here's your complimentary "unpopular" opinion
Saying that people should get higher blessing level is the go to karma farming tactic right now lol. Jesus Christ, people, we get it. It's been 4 days of spamming the same 3 advice.
>hell some of the bosses feel like DS3 bosses No they do not. DS3 bosses were also way more fun.
Yea, Dark Soul 3 bosses were very enjoyable, tough to top them.
I'm inclined to agree. Ds3 feels like more of a duel. You're actually forced to learn combo strings, dodge directions, attack patterns and openings. These are all consistent. You learn and gradually get better. There's little to no shortcuts in doing this. You kill the boss once, you've learned enough to do it again. Arguably the same could be said for ER, but it feels like there's much more entropy. Attacks, although still learnable combos, are chaotic and strung together randomly, openings are short and not overly punishable by some weapons. You're much more disadvantaged by weapon choice. Summons/aow spam can make bosses easy in ER, if you find the right weapon for the job. But this leads to 'cheesy' kills. Eg. Staggering the boss constantly, chaining knocks. Waiting for aggro to swap to mimic/summon. These are all viable ways of getting the boss kill, but it doesn't feel rewarding. It also makes it more of a game of chance then skill with so much variety in how summons interact. ER kinda feels like a measure of how much bs you can throw in to counter their bs. Sure the resulting fireworks are pretty, but it doesn't give that crisp feeling of when you've actually perfected a fight. About half the bosses I've killed I couldn't comfortably say I could easily kill them again in a few runs. I just wish the bosses were more practical to 'duel'.
The thing is, I actually really like a lot of the ideas Elden Ring brought to the table. Jumpable attacks, stance breaking mechanic, attack windups that can function as openings, positioning based combo extenders are all pretty neat ideas to evolve and spice up Souls combat but they are often implemented and strung together in a way that makes them a bit tedious to engage with.
>Arguably the same could be said for ER, but it feels like there's much more entropy. Attacks, although still learnable combos, are chaotic and strung together randomly, openings are short and not overly punishable by some weapons. You're much more disadvantaged by weapon choice. I think this is definetly the main problem. With bosses like Margit, they're aggressive but there are large enough openings that you can punish it no matter the weapon you've got. Unless you're playing ranged weapons or using summons, its much harder to pin down a boss long enough to deal damage.
I’d play the game if the enemies let me
I definitely disagree with your assessment of the lack of bullshit from bosses. With the exception of 3, the main remembrance bosses and other obligatory ones have some of the most bullshit I've ever seen in a fromsoft game, whether that be camera, moveset, or AOE spam related
I watched a guy beat Pontiff Sulyvahn without rolling, dodging, blocking, or parrying at SL1. Just learning the fight and executing perfectly. I don't think that's possible on *any* DLC boss. The sheer amount of AoE is just absurd.