Let's break down where it all went wrong with Malenia, Phase 1 vs Phase 2.
Phase 1: The fight plays out like an actual duel. She waits for you to act, and you have to try to trick her or counter her counter in time. If you try to rush her she'll counter with a hyper-armor punish. If you try to normally approach her she'll jump to the side and counter you. Combat becomes very push and pull, but if you have the tempo of it you can consistently and quickly punish her and bring her down. Almost all of her attacks leave openings that can be safely exploited if you're quick to hit and doge the counter.
Phase 2: Malenia no longer gives a shit what you're doing, is hyper aggressive. You can't see what she's doing because giant bullshit wings cover the whole screen. Almost all her moves are now hyper-armor to prevent you from forcing an opening, and all of her previous openings are now closed to due new AoE damage. On top of this, she will now suddenly spam insta-kill waterfowl and ghost clones attacks, and she has a massive range input-read flask drinking punish.
Phase 1 Malenia is a cool, fun, more or less fair (waterfowl is still bullshit) boss. Phase 2 Malenia is, appropriately, fucking cancer.
Why? Why does fromsoft constantly hurt its own games by creating something good and then coating it with bullshit to ruin it?
sorry OP but fromshills will forever defend her fucking atrocious design because they'll just respond "git gud" you wasted your time writing all that
Eli Parker
her fight is a check to see if the player is making use of the quickstep dodge, a good spirit and % based damage weapons
Mason Nelson
I don't think it's a check for anything considering it's a tucked away optional superboss. But it is weird how nearly essential bloodhound's step is.
Henry Gutierrez
If an old balding armenian man with a big beard can beat her with two frost morningstars on an arcane build with nothing else, then she cant be that hard, user.
Asher Adams
>phase 2 of a boss is harder than phase 1 stop the fucking presses
Ethan Fisher
I beat her with a Claymore and the dorito shield. No shit you beat her if you cheated.
Elijah Green
if you have a long weapon you can hard punish her very often when she does that stupid standoff thing.
anyway, phase 2 is not harder at all. it's easier APART from the fact that you have no idea when she can waterfowl or when she does he sprites attack.
as for why it's easier. she does the slam which is so so fucking punishable. just don't forget the explode. every other attack is the same and can be punished just as bad. the she also has the free hard punish after her scarlet fart. i like to tank the scarlet rot a bit to get an extra hit in.
Malenia is the most fun fight in the game, and if you think otherwise you are dogshit garbage with retard brain.
Jace Allen
u r dumb bitch motherfuck
Jeremiah Gray
I just thought that supermove of hers was bullshit. Unless there's something I'm missing, the only way to avoid the first two "bursts" is to just put a lot of distance between you and her. Except, sometimes she just whips it out when you're right underneath her, and there's no fucking way to avoid the first two bursts. It takes what should be a really fun, free-flowing fight and makes me constantly paranoid and want to keep my distance, because for all I know, she might go psycho-mode at any moment and use her gay anime attack. The hyper aggression in the 2nd stage would really wear me out and I'd start to make mistakes, but maybe that's just me being a bitch, I dunno.
Dylan Gutierrez
with the pace of phase 1, the visual clarity, and the rarity with which she uses waterfowl in that phase, it's pretty manageable. In phase 2 she's hyper aggressive so you're constantly reacting to something, her rot wings block your view of what she's doing, and she uses waterfowl way more readily. It makes for extremely sudden insta-death. I had many good runs fail just because I literally ran out of FP dodging waterfowl that she spammed so much. Worst I ever saw in phase 1 was 3 waterfowls, and that was a very long phase 1 that I was deliberately just watching her moveset on.
Mason Myers
>level 1 >no upgrades >no armor >no talismans >no healing >no consumables >no magic / incantations >no ashes of war >no spirits >no summons >no infusion >no ranged weapons >no rolling >no blocking >+0 club only Now you are ready to fight her properly.
Kayden Campbell
youtube.com/watch?v=v1PiNr8Rq08 there's this and the unlock camera + move around her in a circle method but yes living in fear of that move really damages the boss fight, especially phase 2 when she can decide to do it whenever.
Jacob Fisher
Yeah, I got a feel for when she did it the first time during phase one, and generally she'd only do it one or (if I was unlucky) two more times, so even if it caught me off guard I could survive it. I was able to no-hit her first stage pretty consistently, but then the 2nd one I'd always get nuked by that bullshit. I didn't really think about it, but you're right about the clarity aspect, too, I had a hard time telling what the fuck she was doing half the time with those shitty wings in the way.
In that 2nd example, it looked like he started running back the exact nanosecond she went into that move. I did the fight with a colossal weapon and mostly using jump attacks, and given how long the recovery is on those, and how close I'd typically be to her, if she whipped out that move there was no way I'd be getting away in time.
Carson Carter
yeah sadly colossals are in another category of fucked when it comes to that move
Brayden Sanchez
I stuck exclusively with my greatsword for her, and the timings on everything were razor thin. I wonder how much more lenient it is with smaller weapons, and what the tradeoff is with staggering her. I didn't find staggering her out of attacks to actually be useful, so I feel like Colossal weapons maybe are just a straight disadvantage.
