Got to her second phase twice in about 30 attempts

It's going to take me about 10 hours to even learn how to dodge that attack though given it's taken me two hours to get to her second phase twice and both times I got hit by it when rolling

I don't agree at all. Elden Ring is actually a lot more fair than previous Souls-type games, Elden Ring has crafting, which you can make items that apply status effects, it has summoning ashes which are usually completely insane at +10(especially the legendary ones), and you also have wondrous physick which can give massive buffs, AND you can switch affinities on your weapons so you can always have the element that the boss has a weakness to on your weapon.

The other Souls-games are unfair as fuck compared to this.

You can dodge her barges, it's 4 dodges to avoid her fu combo, on her first phase dodge sideways, on the second dodged towards her, you can stagger out of her combo with a counter as well.
Or just get bloodhound step, it will almost trivialize her Waterflow combo.

>use summon ash on malenia
>she now has a free mook to farm a full heal on whenever she wants

True, but you can also get in a bunch of free hits against her back/side because she is focused on the summon.

you wont be able to outdamage the healing she gets from the summon, and she would eventually turn around and smack you anyway

Yeah the health regen is easily the worst part of the fight. Even the anime bullshit move is manageable by itself to a degree. I'm convinced no one playtested this bitch and their pride will prevent them from actually nerfing her. Sad because there are some decent bosses in the game like Morgott and Godfrey but Malenia is just pure cancer.

Believe it or not Barricade Shield lasts just long enough to block that, though she'll still get some health back because of course she should regen health even when hitting your shield.

>you wont be able to outdamage the healing she gets from the summon

Yes you do, because that's exactly what I did you dumb-dumb.

well i cant and i dont have the runes or the stones to fully upgrade another weapon

Summoned, beat her, uninstalled, will never play again.

am I just stupid, or does elden ring really just drop you in with no help? I genuinely have no idea where the fuck to go at which level. I just spent an more than an hour killing godric at level 21. First time I've played a fromsoft game where I genuinely have no idea where to go next.

It's so fucking fun bros

I switched to Blasphemous Sword in the middle of my playthrough and staggered her to death. It took a good few tries because she's an insane cunt regardless, but it worked eventually.

You either have to do something similar, or you have to learn to parry her to death.

Unlike the Souls games, ER rewards exploration a lot more. So for your own piece of mind I would recommend you just clear tombs and caves and anything else you find, you'll have a better experience through the game than banging your head on a boss that seems way too hard.

what moves can you parry?

It’s intentionally designed for you to explore around, if you want guidance then follow where the grace points on the map

You can easily, because thanks to the double team you can stagger the shit out of her and get her to second phase quickly. Then it is just a matter of abusing all her down time after she does that massive drop or after she spawns the flower.

I just got to the forge. Should I tell Melina to proceed or will that lock me out of some content. Basically, what is the point of no return?

her sidestep swing for one.

But I should perhaps preface this by saying that it took a souls veteran I've been watching like 15 hours of straight tries to learn to do this so. You might not have that kind of patience since you're not getting paid to do it.

>you wont be able to outdamage the healing she gets from the summon

you're telling me you didn't use a meta dex weapon or hoarfrost stomp? it's your own fault for not realizing that only 10% of the weapons and skills in the game do damage even at max upgrade and that most of the gear in the game is filler

>you'll have a better experience through the game than banging your head on a boss that seems way too hard
yeah, only reason I went back to godric is that I kept dying to that big guy in the bloody rot swamp with summons. Gave up when I realized I was doing chip damage to him. Exploration's fun as fuck though, seeing random shit while travelling is so comfy

im not speaking for phase one since i trivialize it by just spamming wild strikes, i can get to phase 2 very easily

the capital will be gone

I feel like when I did finally win it was more due to luck than anything else really, which wouldn't be a great feeling normally but in this case I was just happy to be done with her.

It gives you enough direction to know the general direction but otherwise let's you do whatever. It's pretty nice overall. Makes me wonder how many people who struggled with Margit even found Patches.

Ive heard the forge is the point of no return

don't listen to people telling you to explore you will run into brick wall after brick wall and get burned out. Here's what you should do: Look up where to find smithing stones you need to upgrade your weapon of choice and keep doing that until you can't get the stones you need without entering areas you need to progress the story to access (anything after the capital basically). You should be able to get a +10 unique weapon pretty easily or a ~+20 common weapon. Now that you have paid the smithing stone tax you can go explore and have fun

>will that lock me out of some content.

it will change the royal capital into an ashladen heap, so you can't go to certain places in it, like roundtable, but other than, no

Phase 2 has even more openings compared to Phase 1 though. And your summon is still taking her focus making it easier to punish those openings.

moghs trident and rivers of blood nuke her health bar she has no poise so the weapon arts just cheese her to death

Anyone know if I can still use the unalloyed gold needle to get rid of frenzied flame after I use the forge? I heard you can keep melina alive that way

Going past the forge doesn't lock you out of anything save for maybe a few quests I believe. The point where something major changes is when you beat the main boss of the subsequent area, which is when the royal capital changes to the ashen version, meaning you won't be able to explore the old version anymore.

You cant use it before you advance from there.

You roll towards her, I'm not sure if it's because she can't go straight down or what. But if you roll behind her in the air she won't ever hit you. You can't run/roll opposite she will always hit

I didn't upgrade my zweihander beyond +7 until after Radahn because I kept waiting to get a better greatsword that never came and I didn't want to waste my stones - wasn't that hard other than the big man himself

You know when she jumps in the air? Just run away and you can evade the first cuts completely, then roll the others.

Yes you use it at some boss in azula

You get a shit ton of free stones and there's bells to buy an infinite amount. There's just a limited amount of the dragon smithing stone