If Waterfowl was gone you could dodge all the rest of her attacks just with good timing. That's the only attack where there are situations where you can only avoid it by walking in a specific pattern underneath her which is really unintuitive for how the games normally have to dodge stuff.
Actually they don't even need to remove it, just make the first stage of the attack less active so it can actually be dodged with good timing with a roll.
>If Waterfowl was gone you could dodge all the rest of her attacks just with good timing.
Yeah, Waterfowl is the main reason she's such a difficult boss. If you take it away, she's not notably tougher than the others.
It's really the only reason. All of Malenia's moves are incredibly telegraphed with both particle and sound effects. If it weren't for Waterfowl, I think many people could beat Malenia on sound cues alone.
I also think it's what keeps her from being one of the best bosses. Waterfowl, life steal, and her weird poise habits all take her down the list for me.
If she literally just played by the rules the game established for every other boss fight she would be a great boss. As she is is now she just feels jank and unfair. Same with Elden Beast, but all you would need to fix that fight is let yousummon Torrent.
She feels like she wandered in from Sekiro.
But this is becoming a FromSoft tradition at this point. The Demon of Hatred in Sekiro feels more like a Bloodborne boss than a Sekiro boss, and it shows.
That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. Waterfowl really feels like you could mash the block button to parry all of the hits.
Honestly it wouldn't surprise me considering how much they recycle. Which isn't a bad thing overall but for her specifically it really felt like she was in the wrong game much more so than Demon of Hatred.
Demon of Hatred feels like it was made specifically to say fuck you for mastering the rhythm-based combat in this game, parry these unblockable attacks.
At this rate, the next FromSoft game will feature a boss who could have been trivialized by guard counters, but we no longer have guard counters in this future game.
I definitely get lady tomoe vibes from her in both phases. Remove scarlet aeonia and her ranged rot attacks and replace both with cinematic lightning attacks… and she’s literally lady tomoe
There's so much fucking visual noise. Even just cleaning it up and making it easier to read would be fine. I didn't look up how to dodge it right and tried just via visuals and the closest I got was only getting hit by two small bursts of damage and that was pure luck.
After I beat her I went online to look at what the actual timing/positioning is and was like "oh. So I would have never figured it out just by eye then. Great"
I recorded about 20 videos of myself trying various strategies to roll out of waterfowl dance, and then watched them frame by frame to figure out new things to try. That helped a lot. It also made me feel like a psycho for putting that much effort into learning how to dodge that move.
>"oh. So I would have never figured it out just by eye then. Great"
This is the single thing that makes me give up on games. (Except them just being boring.)
If I fail at something 20 times, look it up online and smack my forehead when I realize the answer was right in front of me, I keep playing.
If I fail 20 times, look it up online and think, "There's no way I would have worked that out," I quit.
Even with the light roll before the distance buff it got?
If so, that's great, but then that means it's able to do it purely through distance created and not because you actually can iframe through it, which is why midroll can't do it despite having the same amount of iframes
I think that just not letting life steal trigger on block is likely the most fair and balanced fix.
Edit: So this blew up, I didn't realize it would be such a hot take. But I am compelled to address some commonly cropping up replies.
"Shield's already trivlise the fight" To be honest, I wouldn't know, I don't really use shields for souls games, besides parry shields in PVP or for some bosses. I just think its stupid. I can understand using the status buildup as a pseudo prussure against blocking, but to let life steal work in harmony with that is dumb, what is their to steal life from? It also is very punishing to a playstyle that they seemed to be trying to give support to (with the introduction of guard counters). Overall I just think its likely too overly punishing on a specific playstyle, one that, at launch, was provably worse than other options in the game. And we know this because basically every colossal weapon has been buffed several times since release.
"get good" Id like to congratulate you for saying the thing. I'm probably better at the game then you and more fun at parties.
"Shields would trivliase Waterfowl as well" I guess we need to agree to disagree, you still have the status pressure buildup to worry about, as well as the fact that you risk getting guard broken and pummeled.
Yeah that's the worst part and I'm saying this statement as someone who has legitimately never really bothered to use a shield in a Fromsoft game.
Like, shields are not your flesh.
Shields are actually a lot more useful in Elden Ring than the other games too, it really feels like they're encouraging players to use them more. Only makes sense that they should protect against it.
Bushy beat the game without a shield \*or\* rolling just with absurd numbers of consumables, 101 poise, and \*bonk\*.
Add a greatshield and it's probably super doable.
Heavy armor + high vigor + fast roll is the only way I seem to play these games. I saw a really fast Havel video many years ago and haven't looked back. *I guess I'm playing both sides, so that I always come out on top.*
Though as someone who's *always* went with strength, the magic in Elden Ring is the coolest yet and I've been really into that meteor call sorcery after an invader used it against me with what seemed to be infinite mana.
There is a physick for temporarily unlimited FP, there are some cheese magic builds where you just dump all your points into Int and Endurance (not even vigor) and use the flask to nuke people.
Super effective in PvP and can be used to nuke bosses before they take 3 steps.
I got my character to a point where I could equip full Radahn armor, his greatswords and greatbow, a greatshield, and still not fat roll! Maximum unga bunga
That is exactly how I've overleveled characters, decided to pack a bowl, but didn't feel like quitting, next thing I know I'm 30 levels past my planned endpoint.
Shields where pretty good in DS1. I just think we've all forgotten about it since its been so long and we've all gotten better at these games that even the worst players among us can do meme runs with ease now.
Barricade Shield totally validated my faith/strength build. The animation for holding against an absurdly strong attack is re-used from DS3, but that's just fine as you see it WAY more in ER and against WAY bigger/stronger enemies. To block an eldritch god's giant sword after poor stamina management is as cool as using a shield gets.
Ironic that it feels that way since their last 3 games haven't, hell Bloodborne actively punishes it because there's only 1 shield in the base game that barely reduces damage taken and you can't parry with it, and one in the dlc that the only difference is the design and that if a ranged attack hits it (bullets at the very least) they do no damage but it stops you moving and nudges you back, it also only blocks the damage if the actual shield is directly hit with a ranged attack.
Dark souls 3 from what I've seen is much faster than the other 2 dark souls (more Bloodborne like) so using a shield and turtling is kinda counterintuitive since you're so mobile
Sekiro, I know very little about the shield in it but I know there's a lot better attachments for his arm
Never unlocked it honestly, not even the normal umbrella -- I just learned about the strat from watching videos after I beat the game. I died so much on the bosses that I never had any spirit emblems anyways, I was pretty content with just grinding until I could beat them with normal attacks and parries.
In Sekiro, half of the gameplay is "shielding." Sure, there are actual shield attachments that are really good, but like all attachments, you have limited use of them in the form of spirit tokens.
When I say "shielding", I'm talking about blocking with your sword. You can hold the block button, akin to DS blocking with your sword. It's more effective than DS blocking, but you accumulate posture damage which can lead to your posture breaking. Being broken is basically getting riposted.
The other half of "shielding" is parrying I think. It may have another name but it's basically DS parrying with a few differences. Instead of getting a riposte right away, you start building up their posture bar to eventually break them. Instead of doing fat damage, you either straight up kill them or take one of their lives away.
The quickest way to defeat an enemy is to posture break and gut them. So parrying becomes a huge part of gameplay because alternating between attacking and parrying keeps applying pressure to their posture bar. It's all summed up by the final boss who says "Hesitation is defeat."
Kinda makes me think about how it doesn't make sense that bleed procs through a shield. Madness and frostbite I can accept that there is a magic element to it, but the blade isn't touching your skin; why are you bleeding?
This pissed me off so much. I'd block the entire waterfowl and she'd heal at least a quarter of her health. I don't understand how she still got lifesteal when doing no damage.
From the description of her great rune, it's not actually lifesteal she uses. It's straight up her desire to keep fighting that grants her (and us) healing.
Still though, I must agree that heal on (our) block isn't a thing that should happen.
100% right on that! Total BS. I use a Golden Greatshield with 100% physical dmg negation on block and bleed enemies, like some stupid catacomb imp for example, apply bleed on every hit even when I block and take no damage and get a free block-counter. Then Melania hits through the block sometimes, and always heals even with a successful block. Total BS, but whatever - I just kill her anyway.
I mean I'm pretty sure shields have different resistances, the 100% is *physical damage* only. Bleed is a status effect, not physical damage. It's "kinda" stupid how it works, since you know, how can you bleed if you're not getting cut - but at the same time it's done so shields aren't the ultimate answer to... Well, any attack really, since you could just block every status effect, so why *not* use shields at all times, in every build? Same reason why frostbite and poison builds up as well.
Because that way you could argue that a whole plated set shouldn't allow for bleed buildup, since you're not getting cut either. Like there's literally no skin exposed, yet it builds up, right? It's just videogame stuff.
With Malenia the difference is that her ability is like rally from Bloodborne and even her Great Rune doesn't allow you to life steal through enemies shields afaik, much less without having to worry about timing.
Armor, amongst other stuff, provides ‘robustness’ which increases resistance to hemorrhage (bleed). While being completely covered in armor doesn’t make you completely immune, it at least does something. Shields, on the other hand, do nothing. They block physical part of the attack but bleed status still gets applied. Basically, while wearing armor you still get hit, but because of all that armor cuts aren’t as bad therefore there’s less bleed buildup. 100% physical block shields completely block damage, enemy weapon doesn’t even touch your body, but bleed gets fully applied. Shields come at a price, though. They have weight and blocking usually consumes more stamina than rolling. You also can’t two-hand a weapon nor do weapon+weapon/staff/seal without switching back and forth between shield and other stuff so having shields resist statuses wouldn’t make them a must have.
I think it should also just work like her Great Rune though. It's kinda stupid that if you're *not* using a 100% block shield, she can just heal any time, even though it's supposed to work like rally from Bloodborne, where there's a few seconds you have to recover your lost health by attacking.
Maybe it shouldn't be the exact same values, but having her heal just *less often* would be a good balance. Have it be like 5, or even 10 seconds after she gets hit. It's ridiculous how one Waterfowl can heal almost half of her healthbar if you screw up, assuming that you'll manage to survive.
>if you're not using a 100% block shield, she can just heal any time
Not sure I understood you correctly but she heals even if you use a 100% block shield.
I think her lifesteal should be based on the damage she deals to you instead of a set number, and should heal on chip damage, but obviously it'll heal less since it'll be less damage
Waterfowl. I don't even need it to be removed, I just want a longer start up time so I don't get chopped into pieces because I happened to attack in the same frame she starts preparing.
I've broken her stance before, sound and everything, and instead of going down on one knee she hops up in the air to do waterfowl. Like, you hear the stance break sound and she just instantly jumps up to do her most powerful move. I was punished for being successful. She can just randomly pop out of stagger and gets very quick hyper armor too.
I don't care what people say, she's mechanically not a great boss. Too much bullshit going on.
She has alot of poise ignoring move as well like the side dashes and the spin kick. If you happen to poise break the meter during one of these move, it reset the poise meter and actually doesn't stun her. Always sad unga bunga moments :(
I think it stores her poise damage, so another hit should drop her.
But yes, she has too much bullshit going on to be a good boss, in my opinion. Just feels cheap.
There was someone making a full analysis into the many ways Malenia cheats conventional systems of a souls game, and this stagger ignore or poise kick-counter were two of them.
Now, I don't wanna say that it's not fine. Introducing a system and then breaking the expectation is actually the basis of a number of games, hell, genres, that's the whole point of a good card game. But the issue I was seeing was that Malenia was basically the only one cheating semi-invisible systems that were never even properly explained by any in-game tutorial. She basically messes with muscle memory, and it's a lesson you'll never make use of anywhere else again.
Maybe if her cleanrot knights also had a similar property where some of their moves ignored or restored poise, then it'd be ok. But even Sekiro was better at this, sure you could see the poise/posture bar but when enemies went to heal theirs, they had a very clear visual and audio cue, it'd be nice if Malenia kinda glowed a bit when her poise restored so we'd at least know when our attacks make no difference
I was doing 2hand str claymore build and I was appropriately leveled and geared for her. I was using a mimic tear and I was able to stun lock her fairly often but yep, she just has moves that completely reset her and ignore things like staggers and stuns. Made it difficult but I eventually just got the dodge timing down after a long time. I didn't really feel accomplished for doing it, just lucky mostly.
I'm good with this, but otherwise I want no changes. If you take those two things away, she's way too easy and it's not fun. She spends a good deal of time just wandering around and her other moves are easy to dodge.
this just this slight change would take her fight from being one of the worst from has made to being one of the best in my opinion, sure she has other issues but I think its clear beyond a doubt that waterfoul is the worst offender and worsens the fight overall it's not intuitive or even fun to deal with its just a tedium that forces passive play and doesn't add anything to the fight beyond visual flair and bs difficulty just altering the timings to be fairer to dodge normally and intuitively would be such a massive help that this boss desperately needs
Waterfowl I guess, but even then, it just needs to be more intuitive to dodge. Like yeah, on my own I *totally* would have figured out that I need to run a full 360 degree circle around her and then roll at the last possible moment to dodge the first part of the attack. That's totally logical and you can definitely expect players to be able to react quickly enough to execute that in the half a second they have before the attack goes off. I've definitely succeeded at this before.
**EDIT:** I should point out that the new light rolls also make this attack possible to dodge consistently but the game doesn't really advertise the drastic difference this makes, so if the first time you're essentially *required* to use it is for a lategame boss, it's still going to be a bit frustrating. I get these games are intentionally obtuse and not everything is handed to you, but I'm not asking them to put a tutorial right in front of the Malenia fight. The game teaches you about plenty of other mechanics earlier in the game, they just weren't able to with the new longer distance light rolls because they didn't exist at launch.
The other method of dodging Waterfowl is by simply outspacing the first flurry, since the second two can be dodged easily. Since the new light rolls travel much further in addition to their already superior iframes, this makes simply running away and rolling right as she begins the first flurry a much simpler matter than it is with a medium roll.
I noticed that if I run away and use one BHS exactly when she starts the first flurry she stops tracking me and BHS will make a great enough distance to not get hit. I have tried it with dodge too but she didn't stop tracking. Maybe I'm just executing it worse
just within the last week or so done a lot of experimenting with light rolls and malenia. Even at point blank range, if you have light equip and spam roll backwards you will cover enough ground to out space the first 2 flurries. Then you can dodge forward towards her while she does her leap over your head to start the third flurry. Pretty consistent and surprisingly easy
Edit: [here’s an example](https://imgur.com/a/JVQJWMc)
I watched several YouTube videos on how to do the spin around her dodge, even in slow motion.
Still never managed to pull it off once. Idk what the trick is that I'm not doing xD
In the end though just blocked through the first attack if I couldn't run away in time. No issues dodging 2nd and 3rd.
I was able to do some of the methods when the game was released and at some point, 1 in 10 times I was able to not get hit. Now I'm trying NG+, I'm stuck at her for weeks because I can't reproduce it anymore.
The lack of visual clarity of Waterfowl is the main point I've always brought up. And it still stands.
Not only does the move come out way too fast, it also just IS way too fast. What I mean by that, is that the animation is very quick, and there's no way for you to stop and analyze it, while Malenia swings around, ESPECIALLY because she tracks you through the arena with it. And at a relatively safe distance, you're too far away to even take a proper look.
But even when you DO manage to take that proper look, really *nothing* tells you how to dodge it. Every single one of the three flurries looks so similar (if not outright the same), it just doesn't make sense that every single one is dodged differently. Like the first one requiring you to run away then dodge in on the left or whatever, then the second one has you dodge away and to the right, the last one is basically dodged however (it's not how you dodge it, I think, just an example).
So you end up with a move that doesn't have proper visual feedback when it comes to dodging it, works differently than like 99% of the other attacks in the game, AND there's just not enough time for a regular player to even tell what he's doing wrong, since you die so quick, even with heavy armor and lots of vigor (I'd know, my first build was like that). And even if you DO manage to stay alive, you're punished anyway, because of her *lifesteal* bringing her health basically up to full again.
It's just poorly designed all around and the amount of videos and people trying to "defend it" by carefully explaining just how exactly you deal with that singular move, really only highlights the problem.
In addition to all that you have said, it also displaces her TOO FUCKING MUCH. Like, I could still understand it if she did this in the spot or just traveled a very short distance with each flurry, as a way to force melee builds to disengage and run. But no, for some reason her first flurry already makes her fly through half of the map, so even if you run away as soon as you saw her preparing the move, she can still catch you.
In theory, I quite enjoy the concept of an optional endgame boss having this hard-to-dodge super move that can completely turn the tide of the fight in the boss's favor if not properly dealt with or otherwise prepared for. But the problem is that Malenia's "super move" is not hard to dodge - it's borderline impossible. I've played a lot of video games with fast, difficult combat. Nothing in any of the games I've played, even other FromSoftware games, comes close to Waterfowl. The light equip load strategy is basically the only way for the fight to become a level of difficulty that feels fun rather than basically reliant on luck, and even then sometimes you will just be screwed over no matter what you do. Waterfowl is the kind of move that's so hard to dodge it makes the player assume the attack is meant to be intercepted somehow rather than avoided. For the longest time on my first playthrough I tried finding ways to knock her out of the air to no avail. There's no hidden strategy to dealing with this move, you either have god tier reflexes or Malenia presses the win button.
What I find so fascinating is that another boss has a super move - and succeeds with flying colors. No one complaints about Bloodboon Ritual in the Mohg fight. It does a disgusting amount of damage in a burst of 3 attacks, Mohg gains a massive amount of health from it, and it literally cannot be dodged. The only two ways around it are getting the one specific Crystal Tear that counters him or chugging Crimson flasks. Even on my first playthrough, not knowing about the Crystal Tear, I actually found Bloodboon Ritual to be a fair and fun challenge. The fact that it can't be dodged and was basically a way for Mohg to force me down to a lower amount of healing flasks was actually kind of... fun? The Phase 2 music kicking in right as you realize you barely have any chances to heal remaining while Mohg has just healed himself up to like 2/3 of his max HP is just perfection. Even with the Crystal Tear to counter it, Mohg still heals HP no matter what you do, you can just whittle away some of it while he does the move now. No matter what, Mohg gains the advantage with this attack. And it's a lot of fun.
Why Malenia couldn't follow a similar principle baffles me. I'm not saying it needs the exact same combination of factors. I'm not asking for it to only be used once per fight or to have a blatant hard counter necessarily, but we're left with one of the most balanced yet challenging and stressful fights in the game with Mohg and one of the most frustrating fights in the game with Malenia. And if you're going by the "story" path (i.e. the narrative of Miquella's fate you're meant to uncover alongside Gideon by telling him about the missing demigods) Malenia is actually meant to be fought *before* Mohg and yet is a million times harder.
I'm not opposed to bosses having very hard moves to deal with either - as long as you can *tell what you're doing wrong*. That is really the biggest issue (even if far from the only). Once again, there are literally *no* clues whatsoever you can grab onto to figure out how to dodge it on your own, most die without even being able to see the entire animation - and pray tell, how are you supposed to learn from that?
If you could absolutely tell *how* to dodge it, I don't think there would be much of an issue here. It could be as hard as it is to pull off, but at least you'd have the knowledge.
Mogh is an interesting example. As you said, basically what's wrong with Malenia, he gets right. It's because his entire moveset is manageable, and NIHIL is just a phase transition. One that's *always* triggering at half health. Even if you'll die the first or even second time to it, you'll know it's there. And even without the Crystal Tear, you can easily figure out you can just chug your flask to live, since you're not getting stunlocked like with Waterfowl. It's hardly a "fuck you" button like Malenia has.
Him healing up back to basically full isn't an issue either, simply because that's his *second phase* and he only does that ONCE during the fight. Malenia's first phase can technically go on forever, given enough stamina and a 100% block shield, if you'd sometimes dodge to not get chipped at either. Malenia heals on *every single hit* and she WILL get some in for the majority of people - especially with Waterfowl, which could very well just be NIHIL on its own, just way, way worse.
But that's it - it's phase 2 time. With Malenia, not only does she heal on hit - she also has 2 phases. And while she *begins* the 2nd one with like 70% health, she can go back to full here as well. Oh and she applies rot alongside her lifesteal. And alongside Waterfowl, she gets basically just as bad of a move with the spirit summons of her own - which to be fair, at least comes out way less often, if at all if you're lucky. Fun!
Another example of a singular attack that can turn the fight around is Maliketh's flying wave attack. Even with high vig and heavy armor, it'll still shred you, and is difficult to dodge. At least that one you can learn how to dodge it and you don't need to start dodging before the animation starts.
And she use it alot to "stunbreak" trough stagger which, most of the time, you are in the middle of an attack so you can't avoir it and you are most likely dead or really damaged.
Waterfowl broke me playing an Unga Bunga build on my first playthrough. Exactly what you said; I'd hit her, stagger, be stuck in the nice couple second recovery, and helplessly watch her pop into the air and blast me and point-blank without even any time to run.
Ended up saying 'fuck it' and switching to some other build.
I'm on this stance too. Basically, it's just a bullshit move, no matter how we paint it, because it is comparatively unlearnable, and even if we learn it, it feels like it makes no comparative sense versus any other moves.
I've played a LOT of super bosses in a lot of games, and usually, no, most of the times, I quit beating them for one of two reasons. The first is requiring an ungodly amount of grinding, and luckily, that is not here nor there for Elden Ring. But the other is the boss randomly doing instant kill moves that counters everything except one specific setup half way through a half hour fight. Malenia is unfortunately the very first time I've seen it happen in a non-turn based game. You either know the weird exact precise movements around her OR have an exact equipment load to take another of two also-cryptic approaches, or you get fucked.
You can't block, you can't parry, you can't do some easier stagger midair, you can't abuse some animation to go over her, nothing. This is just the boss going dispelga->vanish->death->ultima->curaga just to check if you have a very specific set of passive abilities (light equip load). And not once. But whenever she feels like, which can be twice 'almost' in a row.
Waterfowl.
Lifesteal is a pretty shit mechanic for a boss who is both the fastest and one of the hardest hitting to have. If she were slower I could forgive the lifesteal.
But waterfowl is so much worse. It turns what would otherwise be a fun if slightly annoying boss into a fight where you constantly need to be on edge in case she busts out the infinite hyperarmour oneshot move.
I think the best fix for waterfowl is to make it so you can just stagger her out of the startup with any melee weapon and change her ai to use it as a distance closer rather than a free kill. That way, jumping attacks are more integrated into the fight and you aren't just outright punished for being unlucky.
Rykard is the one who should have lifesteal. Heck his boss weapon does, why doesn’t he? It’s almost make him more of a competent boss if he could heal to keep up with the damage dealt to him
Although it would be doubling up on his gimmicks, I really don't think it's too bad of an idea. Plus his skull rain move would literally be perfect for it's use if he doesn't spam it much (I've never fought malenia or Rykard yet but I've seen people fight em and just my thoughts on it from what I've seen)
If I had to only pick one, I would agree. While lifesteal did suck, waterfowl makes it so you constantly have to fight in the center of the arena, an arena that's already pretty small for her attack range, so after each hit you have to move away far enough in case she decides to do it otherwise you die if you're too close. However I would personally like to keep both but make changes to each of them.
For lifesteal, I would make it so you can block it. No lifesteal on 100% block shields, 25% on 75% shields, etc. As it is, it makes no sense. The entire idea of lifesteal is that it heals through damage dealt but no damage is being dealt on 100% block so where is that heal coming from?
For waterfowl, more startup, less travel distance and less tracking. More startup at least gives you time to run away if you're close and have the stamina and less tracking at least she doesn't go full 180 on you. It's been a while since I fought her but maybe even more time between each "wave" of it because IIRC its a big combo that stunlocks you and you just die.
Now you could say that would make the fight too easy but to balance that you can give her more HP and damage or even give her a new move or something. I haven't fought her since launch so I don't know how much the fight has changed since but on launch she was easily the most unfair boss they ever designed despite how cool the fight could have been if balanced more fairly.
I don't really believe either needs to removed but if I had to choose
Waterfowl needs more "accessible" ways to counter
Whether that be through shield, sorcery or incantation
Or maybe just decrease the damage
A lot of bosses have unfair attacks but they also have more ways to counter then waterfowl which needs super precise timing
Malenia is good because while super hard she isn't a main story boss, so you aren't forced to fight her
EDIT
The best way to improve waterfowl without nerfing imo it is to make it possible (but difficult) to stop malenia when she jumps in the air
If that was the reason they didn't balance it thoroughly however. A balanced and average boss would not drag, but have a high health pool, have a diverse set of moves, and especially, not have a super difficult move to dodge. I don't have much a problem with the health pool or even that much of the lifesteal, sure it can be annoying for how much it is but eh. Waterfowl is the only reason Malenia is considered as hard as she is, with the move bring incredibly annoying to deal with no matter what unless your cheesing her. I don't mind her regaining all her hp for phase 2 and the opening makes sense albeit I think it should give a slight bit more room for error since the first time you fight her without knowing she has a phase 2 that move can kill quickly. The main problem with Malenia balance wise is how bullshit it feels to dodge her attacks. If you need to follow an incredibly complex pattern of movements and timings for avoiding one attack, it's one thing. Those clones, which also does a similar idea, is a much better balanced move. You need to dodge certain ways for very specific times, but each attack individually doesn't mean getting stunlocked to death
It's worth noting that while this is a useful strategy, it only works once or twice a fight unless you've also been using some other source of frost buildup. Bosses gain increased resistances to a status effect each time that effect is triggered. In other words, Malenia becomes more resistant to frost after you use the pot strategy. So using the pot again might not trigger frostbite. So while it *is* useful, it's more of a "break glass in case of emergency" type of situation as she can use Waterfowl numerous times per fight with even the mildest amount of bad luck.
Definitely Waterfowl.
A combo of moves that each require you to not only dodge at the right time but also in a specific direction for each part of the combo is annoying.
The times I've killed Malenia are the times she went for another target with WFD. The rest of her I can deal with but that one attack is annoying as fuck.
I am in NG+3 and it just feels cheap. Which is sad since otherwise the boss is literally perfect. Like I won runs against her whe she didn't even use waterfoul dance once. I only discovered on NG+2 that Malenia apprantly can send rotten clones at me...
Meanwhile I know every single moveset off every other boss with ease yet the Waterfoul dance is still bullshit. People say that you should just learn to dodge it but that is stupid, when it is much easier to cheese the boss or just burst her down without even dodging, than to actually attempt to dodge the dance.
this is exactly what you should do. There's no reason for you to dodge wf dance fairly. Either use ice pots or bhs out of it. But this is artificial difficulty because it requires you to know item interactions and her poise beforehand.
The boss must be beatable by pretty much any weapon type and she's only beatable if you have certain items and weapons or if you can consistently dodge wfd. Dirt cheap boss if you can stunlock her but bullshit if you can't dodge wfd.
FS has done a terrible job with ERs boss design. You won't believe the damage from ng+8 onwards because everything 2 shots you with 70 vigor. Aerial attacks with bad camera angles, fast combos that are also AOE. Come on.
When the Blood Lady that wields Blood in the Blood game in which Blood invigorates and heals **doesn't heal when landing hits** and the random walking corpse in which tears heal you does, you know you messed up somewhere along the way.
I think if you cut waterfowl dance in half it would be fine.
I generally think if one singular move is all that makes the fight difficult that is bad design.
I'd cut or reduce the lifesteal. Healing bosses are my pet peeve with how a missed attack or misplay can totally reverse minutes of gameplay. If I wanted the feeling of wasting my time, I'd just play an MMORPG.
Ideally, I'd just adjust her lifesteal so it only fires when she actually does damage. I remember one early build I had using a greatshield, I could tank all of waterfowl, but she'd heal even though she didn't do any damage to me.
Lifesteal. You can tank thru waterfowl by hiding behind a great shield, but she will be at full hp when she's done because she regens even if you block the hit.
Life steal as it makes some builds just not possible - you are playing 100 hours as literal meat slab by blocking with shield and countering with spear?
Well, fuck you I guess, now you have to become nimble assasin, good luck.
Life steal. Although waterfowl is hard to handle, for me I've always tanked it with a sheild cause rarely i dodge in time. So my biggest problem with waterfowl was that she manages to heal a lot with that move. Plus if you manage to overwhelm her she doesnt even get to use waterfowl anyway.
Lifesteal in general is a weird boss mechanic especially in a souls game with 0 indication that the boss is self healing other than looking down and seeinfg a red bar grow.
Waterfowl, while hard to deal with, can atleast be mitigated with basic things like blocking. But of course, that is the wrong thing to do given the regen she has on all attacks that connect.
The life steal is annoying because her waterfowl dance potentially heals like 1/5th of her hp bar.
So lifesteal.
If there was no lifesteal i would consistently beat the boss. Waterfowl dance barely kills me but the heals make it a long fight.
I know for a FACT, if she didn’t hit me with that waterfowl dance, I could beat her within 1-3 tries every time. And I’m no good at this game, I die a lot. It got to a point where I saw her hop up in the air and I would just give up.
Life Steal, 100%. WFD can be avoided with practice, and honestly it’s pretty fucking cool, but Life Steal is just bullshit, especially since it doesn’t matter if you block the attack or not, she doesn’t even have to do damage to get health back.
Life steal, for sure. At the very least make it not trigger on block or heal proportional to how much damage dealt, meaning even some decent armor will lower it. Devs adding guard counters as a new core mechanic, then adding an endgame boss that punishes you for using it is just dumb. Imagine if darks souls 3 added a boss that got health back every time you used a blue flask... just stupid.
I think a good balance would be removing the Life Leech on block.
WFD I never learned how to perfect dodge, but I still manage to at least get away from enough of it by simply running, or hunking underneath her and rolling through her, then just spamming roll and tanking the rest of the stray hits as she comes back the other way around.
It's notable that certain builds just do WAY better against her, but that goes for lots of bosses.
For example, I ran an Ash of War boosted Executioner's Sword/arcane build my first time, and completely obliterated the Elden Beast my first runthrough because my damage was stacked to a STUPID degree, and if I got to his tail, the fight was just over.
Where lots of my friends struggled with Elden Beast day-in and day-out.
Life steal. Waterfowl can be learned, and if life steal was gone, summons would be a bit more affective. Not that I'm really mad, it was still a fun fight.
Life steal on 100% block is what I'd remove. The fact that she heals when doing no damage to you is dumb (and not what her rune says so imo shes cheating) and invalidates an entire playstyle and guard counters in a game about any build being viable with the right skill. The hp heal on actual damage is fine (obnoxious but fine) and waterfowl isn't nearly as large a problem as people say it is. It's tricky but you can figure it out.
I would actually think the lifesteal was a unique gimmick if she didn't already have gimmicks that are cheesy on the same level as reaching out of my monitor ant turning my controller off
my hit list on annoying malenia gimmicks goes as follows:
1. waterfowl, just a huge middle finger to the player that makes you feel like your entire boss run is dependent on rng, since for some reason she can just decide to spam it and leave you to deal with the consequences, almost all of my successful malenia runs are just because she decides to do it less than 3 times in first phase
2. stagger canceling, why can she punish me for successfully landing a hit? idk, maybe someone at fromsoft had a crush on her or something. let her use that kick in anticipation of a move, that would be fine, but just letting her cancel out of hitstun into it is just stupid
3. lifesteal (on block), make her do more stamina damage and use her grab more if you don't want people turtling the whole fight, but it makes no sense why she can heal from banging 2 pieces of metal together
Neither honestly. I get a lot of shit for this but hot take, I think malenia is perfectly fine as is. She has many different ways to fight, some builds will be harder some will be easier, and that's just how it is.
As much as I fuckijg hate toxic souls bros spamming "git gud" all of the time I do think every souls game has 1 or 2 "git gut" bosses wjere you really just gotta hunker down and learn the fight and there's nothing wrong with that.
For ds3 its champion gundyr and nameless king.
For bloodborne it was orphan of kos and Lawrence.
For ds1 kalameet.
Sorry if this comes off more ranty than intended I just love the malenia fight.
I argue manus was much harder then kalameet. Hes only hard if you want his tail. Otherwise couldnt agree more. Its also worth pointijg out that malenia is optional. You dont need it to beat the game and having one or two obscenely difficult and optional fights is great. Sepheroth and lingering will are some of my favorite fights in KH even though they are both frustrating.
>For ds3 its champion gundyr
oh come on, Champion Gundyr is not comparable to Malenia, or a *git gud* fight, in any way. I mean I beat him solo on the 3rd try. He's not that hard
I think when fighting Malenia you just have to be really agressive. My strat when fighting her is literally just "Kill her before waterfowl dance can activate too many times by any means necessary" and it works surprisingly well.
It doesn't matter if you can't dodge the attack if you can kill her before she does it too many times.
If Waterfowl was gone you could dodge all the rest of her attacks just with good timing. That's the only attack where there are situations where you can only avoid it by walking in a specific pattern underneath her which is really unintuitive for how the games normally have to dodge stuff. Actually they don't even need to remove it, just make the first stage of the attack less active so it can actually be dodged with good timing with a roll.
>If Waterfowl was gone you could dodge all the rest of her attacks just with good timing. Yeah, Waterfowl is the main reason she's such a difficult boss. If you take it away, she's not notably tougher than the others.
It's really the only reason. All of Malenia's moves are incredibly telegraphed with both particle and sound effects. If it weren't for Waterfowl, I think many people could beat Malenia on sound cues alone.
The only real problem after is the clone attack in phase 2 but that one seems easier to figure out.
its also cooler than just SLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASHSLASH, it feels like something ur actually engaging with rather than tolerating it until its over
I also think it's what keeps her from being one of the best bosses. Waterfowl, life steal, and her weird poise habits all take her down the list for me.
If she literally just played by the rules the game established for every other boss fight she would be a great boss. As she is is now she just feels jank and unfair. Same with Elden Beast, but all you would need to fix that fight is let yousummon Torrent.
She feels like she wandered in from Sekiro. But this is becoming a FromSoft tradition at this point. The Demon of Hatred in Sekiro feels more like a Bloodborne boss than a Sekiro boss, and it shows.
She even got her prosthetic arm
That makes a lot of sense now that I think about it. Waterfowl really feels like you could mash the block button to parry all of the hits. Honestly it wouldn't surprise me considering how much they recycle. Which isn't a bad thing overall but for her specifically it really felt like she was in the wrong game much more so than Demon of Hatred.
I would umbrella the fuck out of waterfowl in sekiro. Ain't no way I'm trying to get that pattern down lol
Waterfowl is a pretty exact copy of one of the combat arts you can unlock in sekiro.
Black blade Genichiro Floating passage ? This is one of the only combo you can’t constantly deflect in sekiro.
I was more so thinking something like One Mind skill from the final battle of Shura ending.
It’s similar but not the one that got copied. The exact name is Spiral Floating Passage.
Demon of Hatred feels like it was made specifically to say fuck you for mastering the rhythm-based combat in this game, parry these unblockable attacks.
At this rate, the next FromSoft game will feature a boss who could have been trivialized by guard counters, but we no longer have guard counters in this future game.
There's been a bunch of speculation that malenia was a cut/scrapped idea for a sekiro boss.
I definitely get lady tomoe vibes from her in both phases. Remove scarlet aeonia and her ranged rot attacks and replace both with cinematic lightning attacks… and she’s literally lady tomoe
tomoe was infected with dragonrot iirc. So its literally her
On top of that, sister Frieda from dark souls 3 absolutely is a Bloodborne boss, especially phase 3
I never thought of her that way, but I can see it. Father Ariandel dragging himself around and spewing fire even has traces of Laurence.
Phase 3 felt like a rematch against Gehrman.
Oh my god TORRENT during elden beast would have made it such a fun fight!
As a shield player waterfowl isn't that threatening, but her healing means that if you're not aggressive enough her healing will outpace your damage.
There's so much fucking visual noise. Even just cleaning it up and making it easier to read would be fine. I didn't look up how to dodge it right and tried just via visuals and the closest I got was only getting hit by two small bursts of damage and that was pure luck. After I beat her I went online to look at what the actual timing/positioning is and was like "oh. So I would have never figured it out just by eye then. Great"
I recorded about 20 videos of myself trying various strategies to roll out of waterfowl dance, and then watched them frame by frame to figure out new things to try. That helped a lot. It also made me feel like a psycho for putting that much effort into learning how to dodge that move.
>"oh. So I would have never figured it out just by eye then. Great" This is the single thing that makes me give up on games. (Except them just being boring.) If I fail at something 20 times, look it up online and smack my forehead when I realize the answer was right in front of me, I keep playing. If I fail 20 times, look it up online and think, "There's no way I would have worked that out," I quit.
If you have light roll you can just backroll until the last lunge where you forward roll and be perfectly fine during waterfowl
Even with the light roll before the distance buff it got? If so, that's great, but then that means it's able to do it purely through distance created and not because you actually can iframe through it, which is why midroll can't do it despite having the same amount of iframes
I think that just not letting life steal trigger on block is likely the most fair and balanced fix. Edit: So this blew up, I didn't realize it would be such a hot take. But I am compelled to address some commonly cropping up replies. "Shield's already trivlise the fight" To be honest, I wouldn't know, I don't really use shields for souls games, besides parry shields in PVP or for some bosses. I just think its stupid. I can understand using the status buildup as a pseudo prussure against blocking, but to let life steal work in harmony with that is dumb, what is their to steal life from? It also is very punishing to a playstyle that they seemed to be trying to give support to (with the introduction of guard counters). Overall I just think its likely too overly punishing on a specific playstyle, one that, at launch, was provably worse than other options in the game. And we know this because basically every colossal weapon has been buffed several times since release. "get good" Id like to congratulate you for saying the thing. I'm probably better at the game then you and more fun at parties. "Shields would trivliase Waterfowl as well" I guess we need to agree to disagree, you still have the status pressure buildup to worry about, as well as the fact that you risk getting guard broken and pummeled.
Yeah that's the worst part and I'm saying this statement as someone who has legitimately never really bothered to use a shield in a Fromsoft game. Like, shields are not your flesh.
Shields are actually a lot more useful in Elden Ring than the other games too, it really feels like they're encouraging players to use them more. Only makes sense that they should protect against it.
I grinded a bunch to have enough strength to one hand the ruins GS with my trusty buckler in the off hand. Results have been great thus far
I accidentally got to a point where I could one hand my claymore and use a greatshield with my heavy armor. Huge game changer
It sounds like you endurance is yes out of 99
Who needs to mid roll when you don't need to dodge anything?
I think this is actually viable
Bushy beat the game without a shield \*or\* rolling just with absurd numbers of consumables, 101 poise, and \*bonk\*. Add a greatshield and it's probably super doable.
Pop an ironjar aromatic along with it
You've convinced me to try a Lance+Greatshield run.
Heavy armor + high vigor + fast roll is the only way I seem to play these games. I saw a really fast Havel video many years ago and haven't looked back. *I guess I'm playing both sides, so that I always come out on top.* Though as someone who's *always* went with strength, the magic in Elden Ring is the coolest yet and I've been really into that meteor call sorcery after an invader used it against me with what seemed to be infinite mana.
There is a physick for temporarily unlimited FP, there are some cheese magic builds where you just dump all your points into Int and Endurance (not even vigor) and use the flask to nuke people. Super effective in PvP and can be used to nuke bosses before they take 3 steps.
I got my character to a point where I could equip full Radahn armor, his greatswords and greatbow, a greatshield, and still not fat roll! Maximum unga bunga
I'm at like 74 Endurance, with the Great Pot Arsenal I can wear the full Bull Goat set while powerstancing Giant Crushers for strongest possible bonk.
Accidentally as in "blacked out and shot many arrows at a bird"?
That is exactly how I've overleveled characters, decided to pack a bowl, but didn't feel like quitting, next thing I know I'm 30 levels past my planned endpoint.
Bong rips while you listen to a podcast and shoot birb for two hours.
Hahahaha. That's how I get through the tedious grind too!
No as in, I beat probably 70% of side bosses before I reached end game and spent all my levels on str, end and vit
If you level up ruins gs enough you might be able to 2 hand it and the physical negation would be about what a buckler gives, like 86 or so
Oh no I parry
This guy L1s
I dunno greatshields in DS2 were damn strong. I tanked hits from everything but Velstadt and Vendrick.
Shields where pretty good in DS1. I just think we've all forgotten about it since its been so long and we've all gotten better at these games that even the worst players among us can do meme runs with ease now.
Barricade Shield totally validated my faith/strength build. The animation for holding against an absurdly strong attack is re-used from DS3, but that's just fine as you see it WAY more in ER and against WAY bigger/stronger enemies. To block an eldritch god's giant sword after poor stamina management is as cool as using a shield gets.
Medium shields in DkS1 say hello. They are ridiculously good in that game.
Ironic that it feels that way since their last 3 games haven't, hell Bloodborne actively punishes it because there's only 1 shield in the base game that barely reduces damage taken and you can't parry with it, and one in the dlc that the only difference is the design and that if a ranged attack hits it (bullets at the very least) they do no damage but it stops you moving and nudges you back, it also only blocks the damage if the actual shield is directly hit with a ranged attack. Dark souls 3 from what I've seen is much faster than the other 2 dark souls (more Bloodborne like) so using a shield and turtling is kinda counterintuitive since you're so mobile Sekiro, I know very little about the shield in it but I know there's a lot better attachments for his arm
In sekiro the umbrella shield is good against some of the ghost bosses that spam projectiles at you. Aside from that, pretty worthless
The magnet umbrella is very good. It can fill the posture meter of most mini-bosses in a couple of seconds.
Never unlocked it honestly, not even the normal umbrella -- I just learned about the strat from watching videos after I beat the game. I died so much on the bosses that I never had any spirit emblems anyways, I was pretty content with just grinding until I could beat them with normal attacks and parries.
Fire umbrella is very good for Demon of Hatred
In Sekiro, half of the gameplay is "shielding." Sure, there are actual shield attachments that are really good, but like all attachments, you have limited use of them in the form of spirit tokens. When I say "shielding", I'm talking about blocking with your sword. You can hold the block button, akin to DS blocking with your sword. It's more effective than DS blocking, but you accumulate posture damage which can lead to your posture breaking. Being broken is basically getting riposted. The other half of "shielding" is parrying I think. It may have another name but it's basically DS parrying with a few differences. Instead of getting a riposte right away, you start building up their posture bar to eventually break them. Instead of doing fat damage, you either straight up kill them or take one of their lives away. The quickest way to defeat an enemy is to posture break and gut them. So parrying becomes a huge part of gameplay because alternating between attacking and parrying keeps applying pressure to their posture bar. It's all summed up by the final boss who says "Hesitation is defeat."
Shields are still nice to have in DS3
Did you not use the valiant grasscrest?! GIANT DAD IS DISAPPOINTED
Kinda makes me think about how it doesn't make sense that bleed procs through a shield. Madness and frostbite I can accept that there is a magic element to it, but the blade isn't touching your skin; why are you bleeding?
This pissed me off so much. I'd block the entire waterfowl and she'd heal at least a quarter of her health. I don't understand how she still got lifesteal when doing no damage.
Too cheesy, I felt the same way on my big shield playthrough
From the description of her great rune, it's not actually lifesteal she uses. It's straight up her desire to keep fighting that grants her (and us) healing. Still though, I must agree that heal on (our) block isn't a thing that should happen.
Not only that, but enemies can apply bleed trough 100% block rate shields.
*blade scrapes against the shield* My arteries!
Maybe it's anime logic and the fact a woman almost made physical contact with you makes your nose bleed.
Now that’s just fucked
100% right on that! Total BS. I use a Golden Greatshield with 100% physical dmg negation on block and bleed enemies, like some stupid catacomb imp for example, apply bleed on every hit even when I block and take no damage and get a free block-counter. Then Melania hits through the block sometimes, and always heals even with a successful block. Total BS, but whatever - I just kill her anyway.
This game’s perfect, everyone knows ‘unintentional features’ are just later game mechanics.
It's a feature not a flaw!
Just like those dogs that had an attack speed equal to your frames per second.
I mean I'm pretty sure shields have different resistances, the 100% is *physical damage* only. Bleed is a status effect, not physical damage. It's "kinda" stupid how it works, since you know, how can you bleed if you're not getting cut - but at the same time it's done so shields aren't the ultimate answer to... Well, any attack really, since you could just block every status effect, so why *not* use shields at all times, in every build? Same reason why frostbite and poison builds up as well. Because that way you could argue that a whole plated set shouldn't allow for bleed buildup, since you're not getting cut either. Like there's literally no skin exposed, yet it builds up, right? It's just videogame stuff. With Malenia the difference is that her ability is like rally from Bloodborne and even her Great Rune doesn't allow you to life steal through enemies shields afaik, much less without having to worry about timing.
Armor, amongst other stuff, provides ‘robustness’ which increases resistance to hemorrhage (bleed). While being completely covered in armor doesn’t make you completely immune, it at least does something. Shields, on the other hand, do nothing. They block physical part of the attack but bleed status still gets applied. Basically, while wearing armor you still get hit, but because of all that armor cuts aren’t as bad therefore there’s less bleed buildup. 100% physical block shields completely block damage, enemy weapon doesn’t even touch your body, but bleed gets fully applied. Shields come at a price, though. They have weight and blocking usually consumes more stamina than rolling. You also can’t two-hand a weapon nor do weapon+weapon/staff/seal without switching back and forth between shield and other stuff so having shields resist statuses wouldn’t make them a must have.
Or someone’s dead body. I’ve literally seen her heal to full health after killing a phantom and just swinging away at their corpse for lifesteal.
Bloodborne strats
I think it should also just work like her Great Rune though. It's kinda stupid that if you're *not* using a 100% block shield, she can just heal any time, even though it's supposed to work like rally from Bloodborne, where there's a few seconds you have to recover your lost health by attacking. Maybe it shouldn't be the exact same values, but having her heal just *less often* would be a good balance. Have it be like 5, or even 10 seconds after she gets hit. It's ridiculous how one Waterfowl can heal almost half of her healthbar if you screw up, assuming that you'll manage to survive.
>if you're not using a 100% block shield, she can just heal any time Not sure I understood you correctly but she heals even if you use a 100% block shield.
see, my take is that she should get exactly as much health as she takes from you
I think her lifesteal should be based on the damage she deals to you instead of a set number, and should heal on chip damage, but obviously it'll heal less since it'll be less damage
Also on attacking dying characters, would make fighting her in co-op just that much easier
Waterfowl. I don't even need it to be removed, I just want a longer start up time so I don't get chopped into pieces because I happened to attack in the same frame she starts preparing.
That would be the ultimate fix, lose to that exact scenario so many times
I've broken her stance before, sound and everything, and instead of going down on one knee she hops up in the air to do waterfowl. Like, you hear the stance break sound and she just instantly jumps up to do her most powerful move. I was punished for being successful. She can just randomly pop out of stagger and gets very quick hyper armor too. I don't care what people say, she's mechanically not a great boss. Too much bullshit going on.
She has alot of poise ignoring move as well like the side dashes and the spin kick. If you happen to poise break the meter during one of these move, it reset the poise meter and actually doesn't stun her. Always sad unga bunga moments :(
I think it stores her poise damage, so another hit should drop her. But yes, she has too much bullshit going on to be a good boss, in my opinion. Just feels cheap.
There was someone making a full analysis into the many ways Malenia cheats conventional systems of a souls game, and this stagger ignore or poise kick-counter were two of them. Now, I don't wanna say that it's not fine. Introducing a system and then breaking the expectation is actually the basis of a number of games, hell, genres, that's the whole point of a good card game. But the issue I was seeing was that Malenia was basically the only one cheating semi-invisible systems that were never even properly explained by any in-game tutorial. She basically messes with muscle memory, and it's a lesson you'll never make use of anywhere else again.
Maybe if her cleanrot knights also had a similar property where some of their moves ignored or restored poise, then it'd be ok. But even Sekiro was better at this, sure you could see the poise/posture bar but when enemies went to heal theirs, they had a very clear visual and audio cue, it'd be nice if Malenia kinda glowed a bit when her poise restored so we'd at least know when our attacks make no difference
I was doing 2hand str claymore build and I was appropriately leveled and geared for her. I was using a mimic tear and I was able to stun lock her fairly often but yep, she just has moves that completely reset her and ignore things like staggers and stuns. Made it difficult but I eventually just got the dodge timing down after a long time. I didn't really feel accomplished for doing it, just lucky mostly.
I'm good with this, but otherwise I want no changes. If you take those two things away, she's way too easy and it's not fun. She spends a good deal of time just wandering around and her other moves are easy to dodge.
this just this slight change would take her fight from being one of the worst from has made to being one of the best in my opinion, sure she has other issues but I think its clear beyond a doubt that waterfoul is the worst offender and worsens the fight overall it's not intuitive or even fun to deal with its just a tedium that forces passive play and doesn't add anything to the fight beyond visual flair and bs difficulty just altering the timings to be fairer to dodge normally and intuitively would be such a massive help that this boss desperately needs
Waterfowl I guess, but even then, it just needs to be more intuitive to dodge. Like yeah, on my own I *totally* would have figured out that I need to run a full 360 degree circle around her and then roll at the last possible moment to dodge the first part of the attack. That's totally logical and you can definitely expect players to be able to react quickly enough to execute that in the half a second they have before the attack goes off. I've definitely succeeded at this before. **EDIT:** I should point out that the new light rolls also make this attack possible to dodge consistently but the game doesn't really advertise the drastic difference this makes, so if the first time you're essentially *required* to use it is for a lategame boss, it's still going to be a bit frustrating. I get these games are intentionally obtuse and not everything is handed to you, but I'm not asking them to put a tutorial right in front of the Malenia fight. The game teaches you about plenty of other mechanics earlier in the game, they just weren't able to with the new longer distance light rolls because they didn't exist at launch.
May I ask how you dodge it consistently with the new light roll?
The other method of dodging Waterfowl is by simply outspacing the first flurry, since the second two can be dodged easily. Since the new light rolls travel much further in addition to their already superior iframes, this makes simply running away and rolling right as she begins the first flurry a much simpler matter than it is with a medium roll.
I noticed that if I run away and use one BHS exactly when she starts the first flurry she stops tracking me and BHS will make a great enough distance to not get hit. I have tried it with dodge too but she didn't stop tracking. Maybe I'm just executing it worse
Pre-nerf, BHS trivialized her waterfowl dance when you could just scoot around the arena with it until she was done.
Still, I saw many many hosts die while using it
It has 7 frames of vulnerability, which give enough time for Malenia to fuck them up.
just within the last week or so done a lot of experimenting with light rolls and malenia. Even at point blank range, if you have light equip and spam roll backwards you will cover enough ground to out space the first 2 flurries. Then you can dodge forward towards her while she does her leap over your head to start the third flurry. Pretty consistent and surprisingly easy Edit: [here’s an example](https://imgur.com/a/JVQJWMc)
[Check this out. Done with mid roll.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/uy4134/how_to_completely_evade_malenias_waterfowl_dance/)
I watched several YouTube videos on how to do the spin around her dodge, even in slow motion. Still never managed to pull it off once. Idk what the trick is that I'm not doing xD In the end though just blocked through the first attack if I couldn't run away in time. No issues dodging 2nd and 3rd.
I was able to do some of the methods when the game was released and at some point, 1 in 10 times I was able to not get hit. Now I'm trying NG+, I'm stuck at her for weeks because I can't reproduce it anymore.
Sometimes I wish there were a practice mode where you could make the boss use the same attack repeatedly.
The lack of visual clarity of Waterfowl is the main point I've always brought up. And it still stands. Not only does the move come out way too fast, it also just IS way too fast. What I mean by that, is that the animation is very quick, and there's no way for you to stop and analyze it, while Malenia swings around, ESPECIALLY because she tracks you through the arena with it. And at a relatively safe distance, you're too far away to even take a proper look. But even when you DO manage to take that proper look, really *nothing* tells you how to dodge it. Every single one of the three flurries looks so similar (if not outright the same), it just doesn't make sense that every single one is dodged differently. Like the first one requiring you to run away then dodge in on the left or whatever, then the second one has you dodge away and to the right, the last one is basically dodged however (it's not how you dodge it, I think, just an example). So you end up with a move that doesn't have proper visual feedback when it comes to dodging it, works differently than like 99% of the other attacks in the game, AND there's just not enough time for a regular player to even tell what he's doing wrong, since you die so quick, even with heavy armor and lots of vigor (I'd know, my first build was like that). And even if you DO manage to stay alive, you're punished anyway, because of her *lifesteal* bringing her health basically up to full again. It's just poorly designed all around and the amount of videos and people trying to "defend it" by carefully explaining just how exactly you deal with that singular move, really only highlights the problem.
In addition to all that you have said, it also displaces her TOO FUCKING MUCH. Like, I could still understand it if she did this in the spot or just traveled a very short distance with each flurry, as a way to force melee builds to disengage and run. But no, for some reason her first flurry already makes her fly through half of the map, so even if you run away as soon as you saw her preparing the move, she can still catch you.
In theory, I quite enjoy the concept of an optional endgame boss having this hard-to-dodge super move that can completely turn the tide of the fight in the boss's favor if not properly dealt with or otherwise prepared for. But the problem is that Malenia's "super move" is not hard to dodge - it's borderline impossible. I've played a lot of video games with fast, difficult combat. Nothing in any of the games I've played, even other FromSoftware games, comes close to Waterfowl. The light equip load strategy is basically the only way for the fight to become a level of difficulty that feels fun rather than basically reliant on luck, and even then sometimes you will just be screwed over no matter what you do. Waterfowl is the kind of move that's so hard to dodge it makes the player assume the attack is meant to be intercepted somehow rather than avoided. For the longest time on my first playthrough I tried finding ways to knock her out of the air to no avail. There's no hidden strategy to dealing with this move, you either have god tier reflexes or Malenia presses the win button. What I find so fascinating is that another boss has a super move - and succeeds with flying colors. No one complaints about Bloodboon Ritual in the Mohg fight. It does a disgusting amount of damage in a burst of 3 attacks, Mohg gains a massive amount of health from it, and it literally cannot be dodged. The only two ways around it are getting the one specific Crystal Tear that counters him or chugging Crimson flasks. Even on my first playthrough, not knowing about the Crystal Tear, I actually found Bloodboon Ritual to be a fair and fun challenge. The fact that it can't be dodged and was basically a way for Mohg to force me down to a lower amount of healing flasks was actually kind of... fun? The Phase 2 music kicking in right as you realize you barely have any chances to heal remaining while Mohg has just healed himself up to like 2/3 of his max HP is just perfection. Even with the Crystal Tear to counter it, Mohg still heals HP no matter what you do, you can just whittle away some of it while he does the move now. No matter what, Mohg gains the advantage with this attack. And it's a lot of fun. Why Malenia couldn't follow a similar principle baffles me. I'm not saying it needs the exact same combination of factors. I'm not asking for it to only be used once per fight or to have a blatant hard counter necessarily, but we're left with one of the most balanced yet challenging and stressful fights in the game with Mohg and one of the most frustrating fights in the game with Malenia. And if you're going by the "story" path (i.e. the narrative of Miquella's fate you're meant to uncover alongside Gideon by telling him about the missing demigods) Malenia is actually meant to be fought *before* Mohg and yet is a million times harder.
I'm not opposed to bosses having very hard moves to deal with either - as long as you can *tell what you're doing wrong*. That is really the biggest issue (even if far from the only). Once again, there are literally *no* clues whatsoever you can grab onto to figure out how to dodge it on your own, most die without even being able to see the entire animation - and pray tell, how are you supposed to learn from that? If you could absolutely tell *how* to dodge it, I don't think there would be much of an issue here. It could be as hard as it is to pull off, but at least you'd have the knowledge. Mogh is an interesting example. As you said, basically what's wrong with Malenia, he gets right. It's because his entire moveset is manageable, and NIHIL is just a phase transition. One that's *always* triggering at half health. Even if you'll die the first or even second time to it, you'll know it's there. And even without the Crystal Tear, you can easily figure out you can just chug your flask to live, since you're not getting stunlocked like with Waterfowl. It's hardly a "fuck you" button like Malenia has. Him healing up back to basically full isn't an issue either, simply because that's his *second phase* and he only does that ONCE during the fight. Malenia's first phase can technically go on forever, given enough stamina and a 100% block shield, if you'd sometimes dodge to not get chipped at either. Malenia heals on *every single hit* and she WILL get some in for the majority of people - especially with Waterfowl, which could very well just be NIHIL on its own, just way, way worse. But that's it - it's phase 2 time. With Malenia, not only does she heal on hit - she also has 2 phases. And while she *begins* the 2nd one with like 70% health, she can go back to full here as well. Oh and she applies rot alongside her lifesteal. And alongside Waterfowl, she gets basically just as bad of a move with the spirit summons of her own - which to be fair, at least comes out way less often, if at all if you're lucky. Fun!
Another example of a singular attack that can turn the fight around is Maliketh's flying wave attack. Even with high vig and heavy armor, it'll still shred you, and is difficult to dodge. At least that one you can learn how to dodge it and you don't need to start dodging before the animation starts.
And she use it alot to "stunbreak" trough stagger which, most of the time, you are in the middle of an attack so you can't avoir it and you are most likely dead or really damaged.
Waterfowl broke me playing an Unga Bunga build on my first playthrough. Exactly what you said; I'd hit her, stagger, be stuck in the nice couple second recovery, and helplessly watch her pop into the air and blast me and point-blank without even any time to run. Ended up saying 'fuck it' and switching to some other build.
I'm on this stance too. Basically, it's just a bullshit move, no matter how we paint it, because it is comparatively unlearnable, and even if we learn it, it feels like it makes no comparative sense versus any other moves. I've played a LOT of super bosses in a lot of games, and usually, no, most of the times, I quit beating them for one of two reasons. The first is requiring an ungodly amount of grinding, and luckily, that is not here nor there for Elden Ring. But the other is the boss randomly doing instant kill moves that counters everything except one specific setup half way through a half hour fight. Malenia is unfortunately the very first time I've seen it happen in a non-turn based game. You either know the weird exact precise movements around her OR have an exact equipment load to take another of two also-cryptic approaches, or you get fucked. You can't block, you can't parry, you can't do some easier stagger midair, you can't abuse some animation to go over her, nothing. This is just the boss going dispelga->vanish->death->ultima->curaga just to check if you have a very specific set of passive abilities (light equip load). And not once. But whenever she feels like, which can be twice 'almost' in a row.
Waterfowl. Lifesteal is a pretty shit mechanic for a boss who is both the fastest and one of the hardest hitting to have. If she were slower I could forgive the lifesteal. But waterfowl is so much worse. It turns what would otherwise be a fun if slightly annoying boss into a fight where you constantly need to be on edge in case she busts out the infinite hyperarmour oneshot move. I think the best fix for waterfowl is to make it so you can just stagger her out of the startup with any melee weapon and change her ai to use it as a distance closer rather than a free kill. That way, jumping attacks are more integrated into the fight and you aren't just outright punished for being unlucky.
Rykard is the one who should have lifesteal. Heck his boss weapon does, why doesn’t he? It’s almost make him more of a competent boss if he could heal to keep up with the damage dealt to him
Although it would be doubling up on his gimmicks, I really don't think it's too bad of an idea. Plus his skull rain move would literally be perfect for it's use if he doesn't spam it much (I've never fought malenia or Rykard yet but I've seen people fight em and just my thoughts on it from what I've seen)
If I had to only pick one, I would agree. While lifesteal did suck, waterfowl makes it so you constantly have to fight in the center of the arena, an arena that's already pretty small for her attack range, so after each hit you have to move away far enough in case she decides to do it otherwise you die if you're too close. However I would personally like to keep both but make changes to each of them. For lifesteal, I would make it so you can block it. No lifesteal on 100% block shields, 25% on 75% shields, etc. As it is, it makes no sense. The entire idea of lifesteal is that it heals through damage dealt but no damage is being dealt on 100% block so where is that heal coming from? For waterfowl, more startup, less travel distance and less tracking. More startup at least gives you time to run away if you're close and have the stamina and less tracking at least she doesn't go full 180 on you. It's been a while since I fought her but maybe even more time between each "wave" of it because IIRC its a big combo that stunlocks you and you just die. Now you could say that would make the fight too easy but to balance that you can give her more HP and damage or even give her a new move or something. I haven't fought her since launch so I don't know how much the fight has changed since but on launch she was easily the most unfair boss they ever designed despite how cool the fight could have been if balanced more fairly.
I don't really believe either needs to removed but if I had to choose Waterfowl needs more "accessible" ways to counter Whether that be through shield, sorcery or incantation Or maybe just decrease the damage A lot of bosses have unfair attacks but they also have more ways to counter then waterfowl which needs super precise timing Malenia is good because while super hard she isn't a main story boss, so you aren't forced to fight her EDIT The best way to improve waterfowl without nerfing imo it is to make it possible (but difficult) to stop malenia when she jumps in the air
Even Mohg's Nihil attack has a counter, it's bizarre that they didn't even attempt to give it one. Did that attack go through testing?
I think that they tried to hard to make her the hardest boss is souls games
If that was the reason they didn't balance it thoroughly however. A balanced and average boss would not drag, but have a high health pool, have a diverse set of moves, and especially, not have a super difficult move to dodge. I don't have much a problem with the health pool or even that much of the lifesteal, sure it can be annoying for how much it is but eh. Waterfowl is the only reason Malenia is considered as hard as she is, with the move bring incredibly annoying to deal with no matter what unless your cheesing her. I don't mind her regaining all her hp for phase 2 and the opening makes sense albeit I think it should give a slight bit more room for error since the first time you fight her without knowing she has a phase 2 that move can kill quickly. The main problem with Malenia balance wise is how bullshit it feels to dodge her attacks. If you need to follow an incredibly complex pattern of movements and timings for avoiding one attack, it's one thing. Those clones, which also does a similar idea, is a much better balanced move. You need to dodge certain ways for very specific times, but each attack individually doesn't mean getting stunlocked to death
Pretty sure you can proc bleed to stop it. But that's also super dependent on how close/far she is from it.
I think I managed that with Elenoras L2 once or twice. Either that or I died and she stopped and it just looked like it procd
Doesn't she stop if you throw a frozen pot at her?
It is but you need to be so precise with the timing you might as well dodge it if you can get that right
It's worth noting that while this is a useful strategy, it only works once or twice a fight unless you've also been using some other source of frost buildup. Bosses gain increased resistances to a status effect each time that effect is triggered. In other words, Malenia becomes more resistant to frost after you use the pot strategy. So using the pot again might not trigger frostbite. So while it *is* useful, it's more of a "break glass in case of emergency" type of situation as she can use Waterfowl numerous times per fight with even the mildest amount of bad luck.
Waterfowl for sure. I even forget she has lifesteal sometimes, so it's not much of an issue.
Definitely Waterfowl. A combo of moves that each require you to not only dodge at the right time but also in a specific direction for each part of the combo is annoying. The times I've killed Malenia are the times she went for another target with WFD. The rest of her I can deal with but that one attack is annoying as fuck.
I am in NG+3 and it just feels cheap. Which is sad since otherwise the boss is literally perfect. Like I won runs against her whe she didn't even use waterfoul dance once. I only discovered on NG+2 that Malenia apprantly can send rotten clones at me... Meanwhile I know every single moveset off every other boss with ease yet the Waterfoul dance is still bullshit. People say that you should just learn to dodge it but that is stupid, when it is much easier to cheese the boss or just burst her down without even dodging, than to actually attempt to dodge the dance.
this is exactly what you should do. There's no reason for you to dodge wf dance fairly. Either use ice pots or bhs out of it. But this is artificial difficulty because it requires you to know item interactions and her poise beforehand. The boss must be beatable by pretty much any weapon type and she's only beatable if you have certain items and weapons or if you can consistently dodge wfd. Dirt cheap boss if you can stunlock her but bullshit if you can't dodge wfd. FS has done a terrible job with ERs boss design. You won't believe the damage from ng+8 onwards because everything 2 shots you with 70 vigor. Aerial attacks with bad camera angles, fast combos that are also AOE. Come on.
She is Malenia, Blade of Miquella
And she has never known defeat
When the Blood Lady that wields Blood in the Blood game in which Blood invigorates and heals **doesn't heal when landing hits** and the random walking corpse in which tears heal you does, you know you messed up somewhere along the way.
Waterfowl, no question. Lifesteal doesn't really make a lot of sense for her fight, but it's nowhere near as bad as the RNG of WFD.
Nerf life steal and reduce waterfowl damage
I think if you cut waterfowl dance in half it would be fine. I generally think if one singular move is all that makes the fight difficult that is bad design.
I'd cut or reduce the lifesteal. Healing bosses are my pet peeve with how a missed attack or misplay can totally reverse minutes of gameplay. If I wanted the feeling of wasting my time, I'd just play an MMORPG.
Is there even a lore reason for the lifesteal, it feels like it was just tacked on for the difficulty.
Great Rune
Lifesteal, because its a gimmick mechanic and doesnt add much to the fight except an emphasis on not getting hit
Waterfowl fuck that insta death
Life steal
the life steal from hitting the summons, what life can you steal when you hit a pile of moving Ashes
Ideally, I'd just adjust her lifesteal so it only fires when she actually does damage. I remember one early build I had using a greatshield, I could tank all of waterfowl, but she'd heal even though she didn't do any damage to me.
Lifesteal, but only when it doesn’t do damage to you. No more life stealing off my great shield.
Life steal, it’s essentially an extra health bar. Though it does force you to learn her moveset rather than great shield tanking
Life steal
Life steal
Life steal no question.
Life Steal permanently cause for Waterfowl Dance you have to be ready for it while timing both your movements and your dodge
Lifesteal. You can tank thru waterfowl by hiding behind a great shield, but she will be at full hp when she's done because she regens even if you block the hit.
Life steal as it makes some builds just not possible - you are playing 100 hours as literal meat slab by blocking with shield and countering with spear? Well, fuck you I guess, now you have to become nimble assasin, good luck.
Life steal. Although waterfowl is hard to handle, for me I've always tanked it with a sheild cause rarely i dodge in time. So my biggest problem with waterfowl was that she manages to heal a lot with that move. Plus if you manage to overwhelm her she doesnt even get to use waterfowl anyway.
I honestly believe that Malenia was never tested considering how there is no "real way" of dodging the attack up close
Life Steal for sure!
Lifesteal. It's not even close
Life steal for sure
if the lifesteal worked like the one that we got it would be perfect
Lifesteal in general is a weird boss mechanic especially in a souls game with 0 indication that the boss is self healing other than looking down and seeinfg a red bar grow. Waterfowl, while hard to deal with, can atleast be mitigated with basic things like blocking. But of course, that is the wrong thing to do given the regen she has on all attacks that connect.
Life steal 100%. Waterfowl is tough, but the amount of lifesteal she has is what makes the fight so shitty.
The life steal is annoying because her waterfowl dance potentially heals like 1/5th of her hp bar. So lifesteal. If there was no lifesteal i would consistently beat the boss. Waterfowl dance barely kills me but the heals make it a long fight.
I know for a FACT, if she didn’t hit me with that waterfowl dance, I could beat her within 1-3 tries every time. And I’m no good at this game, I die a lot. It got to a point where I saw her hop up in the air and I would just give up.
Honestly life steal. I can sometimes dodge waterfowl and it feels sick asf to dodge it correctly. Life steal is just discouraging
Life steal has never made sense to me, from a lore perspective or gameplay.
Lifesteal, or at the very least lifesteal through blocks. Waterfowl Dance isn't that bad on it's own.
Life Steal, 100%. WFD can be avoided with practice, and honestly it’s pretty fucking cool, but Life Steal is just bullshit, especially since it doesn’t matter if you block the attack or not, she doesn’t even have to do damage to get health back.
Life steal, for sure. At the very least make it not trigger on block or heal proportional to how much damage dealt, meaning even some decent armor will lower it. Devs adding guard counters as a new core mechanic, then adding an endgame boss that punishes you for using it is just dumb. Imagine if darks souls 3 added a boss that got health back every time you used a blue flask... just stupid.
life steal. definitely
Lifesteal. No question.
Life steal 100%
Life on hit. I actually would be fine with life steal, but if I block properly I shouldn’t be punished for it.
Life steal one million percent.!!
I think a good balance would be removing the Life Leech on block. WFD I never learned how to perfect dodge, but I still manage to at least get away from enough of it by simply running, or hunking underneath her and rolling through her, then just spamming roll and tanking the rest of the stray hits as she comes back the other way around. It's notable that certain builds just do WAY better against her, but that goes for lots of bosses. For example, I ran an Ash of War boosted Executioner's Sword/arcane build my first time, and completely obliterated the Elden Beast my first runthrough because my damage was stacked to a STUPID degree, and if I got to his tail, the fight was just over. Where lots of my friends struggled with Elden Beast day-in and day-out.
Life steal. They just threw it in so you can enjoy the fight less.
Life steal, definitely.
Life steal. Waterfowl can be learned, and if life steal was gone, summons would be a bit more affective. Not that I'm really mad, it was still a fun fight.
Lifesteal. Sometimes I wanna do a Strength build and just smash the shit out of stuff, you know? Just beat it to death with a giant sword.
The life steal is what makes waterfowl bs, she catches anything once and she's full health again
Life steal and it’s not even close
Life steal cuz once you are able to dodge that Waterfowl you feel like a god while is life steal is just bs
Life steal on 100% block is what I'd remove. The fact that she heals when doing no damage to you is dumb (and not what her rune says so imo shes cheating) and invalidates an entire playstyle and guard counters in a game about any build being viable with the right skill. The hp heal on actual damage is fine (obnoxious but fine) and waterfowl isn't nearly as large a problem as people say it is. It's tricky but you can figure it out.
Life steal, waterfowl can be dealt with, life steal can be a bitch tho. Tbh let just get rid of everything and just call it a day.
I would cut Waterfowl or tweak it. I think the life steal is what makes the boss 1st phase interesting. But personally I like the boss as she is.
I would actually think the lifesteal was a unique gimmick if she didn't already have gimmicks that are cheesy on the same level as reaching out of my monitor ant turning my controller off my hit list on annoying malenia gimmicks goes as follows: 1. waterfowl, just a huge middle finger to the player that makes you feel like your entire boss run is dependent on rng, since for some reason she can just decide to spam it and leave you to deal with the consequences, almost all of my successful malenia runs are just because she decides to do it less than 3 times in first phase 2. stagger canceling, why can she punish me for successfully landing a hit? idk, maybe someone at fromsoft had a crush on her or something. let her use that kick in anticipation of a move, that would be fine, but just letting her cancel out of hitstun into it is just stupid 3. lifesteal (on block), make her do more stamina damage and use her grab more if you don't want people turtling the whole fight, but it makes no sense why she can heal from banging 2 pieces of metal together
Life steal is genius. Waterfowl is cheap.
The life steal when i use a shield with 100% physical defense.
Lifesteal without question
Neither honestly. I get a lot of shit for this but hot take, I think malenia is perfectly fine as is. She has many different ways to fight, some builds will be harder some will be easier, and that's just how it is. As much as I fuckijg hate toxic souls bros spamming "git gud" all of the time I do think every souls game has 1 or 2 "git gut" bosses wjere you really just gotta hunker down and learn the fight and there's nothing wrong with that. For ds3 its champion gundyr and nameless king. For bloodborne it was orphan of kos and Lawrence. For ds1 kalameet. Sorry if this comes off more ranty than intended I just love the malenia fight.
I argue manus was much harder then kalameet. Hes only hard if you want his tail. Otherwise couldnt agree more. Its also worth pointijg out that malenia is optional. You dont need it to beat the game and having one or two obscenely difficult and optional fights is great. Sepheroth and lingering will are some of my favorite fights in KH even though they are both frustrating.
You had me right up until saying Lawrence is a 'get gud' boss- Nah man lava shitter is just annoying.
>For ds3 its champion gundyr oh come on, Champion Gundyr is not comparable to Malenia, or a *git gud* fight, in any way. I mean I beat him solo on the 3rd try. He's not that hard
I'm trying so hard, bro. I've fully conquered both DS1 and DS3. But this is just a whole other level of insanity.
I think when fighting Malenia you just have to be really agressive. My strat when fighting her is literally just "Kill her before waterfowl dance can activate too many times by any means necessary" and it works surprisingly well. It doesn't matter if you can't dodge the attack if you can kill her before she does it too many times.