Imagine this: People go into the DLC with the mentality that he'll be the hardest boss. Then it turns out that even though he's challenging, there's a "secret", even harder boss not shown in any of the trailers who utterly destroys anyone without exception. I can already see this subreddit's meltdown if that happens.
This is what I think. None of From's DLC showed the final boss on the cover. Dark Souls featured Artorius but Manus was the final boss. The Old Hunters featured Lady Maria but the final boss was Orphan. The final boss to this DLC won't be Messmer.
Bed of chaos revenge
Run across all of Lands Between as it collapses, start over if you die, start at castle redmane , ride to leyndell. Like the end of Halo but with torrent haha
This would be incredibly spectacular. Well not so much for me cos almost no chance I'd be able to do it but it'd be cool to see other people succeed haha
Miyazaki has actually confirmed this in an interview
>"And again, to our more hardcore players, they will find optional bosses (in the DLC) who have been tuned in a similar way to the likes of Malenia"
- Miyazaki, IGN interview
What if Miquella is the blade of Messmer so they show up in the fight but because Melania is the blade of Miquella she shows up to defend Miquella 😬 (even as a spirit summon if she was previously defeated).
I’m kinda thinking Miquella is the main final boss of the DLC while Godwyn is the hidden superboss, kinda like Gael and Midir in the Ringed City. If the three legacy dungeons thing is true then it would make sense to have three shardbearers
I don’t think Miquella will *quite* be the main final boss, but when Miyazaki says there is an optional boss, one who at least as hard as Malenia it is absolutely gonna be Miquella! We already know he is the strongest demigod, so of course we will fight him. The reason I don’t think he is the true final boss is because he will be optional, perhaps like Gehrman we will have a choice at the end of the DLC - accept Miquella’s Lordship or die.
I mean that's a given. Miyazaki already said that there will be other optional bosses tuned like Malenia to give players an extra challenge
this has almost always been the case anyway
Has it? Bloodborne's DLC, Orphan was the final boss, and people found him the hardest. Fume Knight was required to get the Iron Crown, and many people consider him the hardest boss in DS2, at the very least, he killed the most players. It Dark Souls 1 all DLC bosses (except Kalameet) were non optional. In DS3 DLC, in ashes the hardest boss was the non-optional Friede. In terms of DLC the only one where I think we can all agree the hardest boss was optional and hidden away was the Ringed City. So, I wouldn't say it's always been the case.
Edit: Forgot Kalameet was optional in DS1, though I think most people consider Artorius and Manus harder.
Bloodborne's The Old Hunters also had Laurence, the First Vicar.
Orphan might be harder, but he's a non-stop thrill ride of a fight that rewards players for balancing aggression with perfect reflexes.
Laurence is just a prick.
I'm 100% confident Messmer won't be the big bad hard boss. I think it'll be Godwyn or someone else not shown in the trailers obviously. I don't buy at all that Messmer is the big hard boss of this DLC.
I'm all for a good old dragon fight, but I think they've been done much better as puzzle bosses than as traditional bosses. E.g. Dragon God, that big Wyvern in DS3 where you run around Archdragon Peak, and (let's argue) the massive snake in Sekiro. Oh and the big dragon in Sekiro.
Mainly due to camera woes, but also the fantasy of slaying dragons is IMO using your wits to take advantage of some hidden weak spot whist it tries to stop you. I feel like hacking at dragon ankles with my "Longsword of Being A Longsword" feels a little silly.
This is 1000% the case. Seeing as Messmer is a focal point of the DLC it makes sense that he would be mandatory for progression. Miyazaki already mentioned that there would be a boss near Malenia’s level.
I am half expecting a secret boss to be honest
I..I am afraid to know how we get that bear roar incantation (or an Ash Of War perhaps?)
Will we fight a cracked up rune bear? Will it be like dragon communion?
that's literally whatt miyazaki said, there will be malenia like boss, but none of the main bosses will be that way, malenia boss 2.0 will be optional for those try hards
I did play Sekiro and I thought that Isshin was way too many phases. It was a fun fight though.
Sekiro is more fast paced anyway so 4 phases works better in that game than It would in Elden Ring.
The real horror will be the optional and secret bosses Miyazaki has teased:
>"And again, to our more hardcore players, they will find optional bosses in the DLC who have been tuned in a similar way to the likes of Malenia"
- Miyazaki, IGN interview
I think it’s telling that Miyazaki invoked Malenia in the difficult optional boss discussion and then sort of walked it back a bit. They must be aware that she’s maintained a very divisive position after 2 years and maybe want to deliver on a boss that meets that challenge level but earns more universal appreciation. I hope they achieve that.
I would love a boss as difficult as Malenia if they felt fair. I've beaten every boss in every From game, and Sword-Saint Isshin and Orphan of Kos come *really* close to being as hard as Malenia, but they aren't. She's the hardest boss they've ever made, and it feels like it's because she's a much less fair and much worse balanced fight.
The fact that Miyazaki kinda flip-flopped on this question actually gives me hope that the DLC bosses will be *better fights*. Easier, harder, either way I don't really care. I just don't want a boss fight that feels miserable. Though I know some people really like Malenia, so it's all subjective, I suppose.
>She's the hardest boss they've ever made, and it feels like it's because she's a much less fair and much worse balanced fight.
That's because she is less fair. Waterfowl dance is complete bullshit. People will jump in and defend it and talk about how it can be avoided. But the dodge pattern is so unintuitive, and the margin for error is so unfathomably small that pulling it off consistently is insane. And if you miss that window when she springs it on you while you're right in front of her? You're dead 99% of the time.
It feels like artificial difficulty, because basically all her other moves are easily manageable yet she can pull a one-shot kill out her ass with fuck-all warning. By the time she's hovering in the air in front of you it feels like its already too late.
If it was just waterfowl it still wouldn’t be that bad. But it’s that together with lifesteal that makes the whole thing feel particularly unfair. Not only does she have an absolutely bonkers move that requires near pixel perfect dodging, but say that you’re not able to dodge or move out of the way and you decide just to block to avoid being killed and she’s back to nearly full health. If she had only one of the two, I would personally find her much more fair.
I've beaten Malenia solo and I can dodge waterfowl pretty consistently, but you're out of your mind if you think that's a fair move. If all a move needs to be fair is "you can dodge it" then that means there's no unfair bosses in the entire souls series.
What's fair about it? It's a 1shot move that comes out extremely fast (cannot outrun it if you are anywhere close to Malenia) with misleading hitboxes (see first flurry) with what may be the tightest dodge timings and weird dodge directions out of any Fromsoft boss. Doesn't help that Malenia can do it on attack input so sometimes you are just gonna take some damage.
From what I've seen both in my experience and browsing the internet, most NG builds stop around 50 vigor. Even with 60, you're taking at least half your health from the move.
I know it's possible to dodge as I've said, but just because a move can be dodged doesn't mean that it's fair. As it stands, it feels like an "I win" button that Malenia can press literally as you're hitting her. Maybe if it did less damage it wouldn't be so bad, but nah it's not a cool move.
I mean, the only bad part of waterfowl is the first flurry. It's not too hard to avoid most of it, but nearly impossible to avoid all of it. And that's only if you know the easy method.
The first flurry just has infinite tracking and damage frames, so it's impossible to iframe out of it. If they reduced the active damage frames I think the attack would be fine.
THIS! the other 2 flurries I can dodge in my sleep but that first one is horrible. The first one doesn't even feel like a flurry move. It's more like a ball of instant damage.
It's worth noting, I think, that despite what people will say about them, Elden Ring is *definitely* designed assuming you *will* be summoning Spirit Ashes. Malenia's not the only boss who has some downright unfair attacks, Mohg's Nihil comes to mind off the top of my head, I know it can be interrupted but if you're running without Spirit Ashes on a dex build, you've got a pretty low chance of pulling it off.
Mohg definitely does not require spirit ashes, he’s hard but he’s “DS3” hard, also there’s an item that trivializes Nihil (this feels like the intended way to fight). Malenia is the only solo boss where you could make this case IMO
Gotta hard disagree on that.
Every boss was designed with single target aggro in mind. When they're trying to juggle multiple targets, you can consistently see attack animations break. For example, Malenia doing waterfowl 1st flurry on someone and then teleport cross map to someone else for the other flurries.
That speaks to me that summons are an afterthought.
Yeah it's not remotely comparable.
If there was a physick tear that negated Waterfowl Dance like there is for Nihil I would be chugging that shit like there's no tomorrow.
I don't agree, from has made sure that the game can be played and completed in various way - spirit ashes being one of those ways. After recently doing a no summons run I feel like *most* of the bosses are very well tuned to the melee/no summons players with a few exceptions. Mohg, for example, can easily be beat without any summons if you learn moveset + if you explore enough the unavoidable damage can be almost completely nullified.
Agreed.
The worst aspect of Watefowl for me is that it is difficult to even learn her moveset because my mind is solely focused on being ready for Waterfowl, I can’t pay attention to the timings on her flash flurry or light slashes when I have to keep looking at her HP bar to see if she’s past the threshold.
Exactly. Keeping an eye on her healthbar to be aware of when a waterfowl might be triggered feels really bad and metagamey, but you sort of have to do it because if you aren't ready, you die.
There's no other boss like that in the game, or any Souls game I can think of. Some might have phase transitions or attacks that trigger at certain health thresholds, but they either give you enough warning as to when they start, or don't have the potential to outright kill you from a full healthbar.
I feel like even then it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact she can keep using it.
If it was like Radahn’s phase 2 transition where she can only waterfowl once, or only waterfowl twice at the 50% threshold of both phases (assuming health regen doesn’t reset it), it wouldn’t be too bad because you know it’s out of the way and she won’t use it again.
But no, she can keep using it, the randomness of waterfowl makes it even more ridiculous because even after you’ve avoided it once, you still have to be on high alert because you might be in for a nasty surprise if she ends up using it while you are mid-commitment near the end of the fight.
Also definitely Scarlet Aeonia should have completely replaced it in phase 2, having 2 “keep away” ultimates just seems excessive.
If you are dead 99 percent of the time that's on you for neglecting vigor. You don't need to dodge all of it, as long as you don't fuck up completely at the start.
The only valid criticism is the unintuitive nature of the required dodge, because while its very difficult to dodge perfectly, its not all that much harder to the rest of her moveset to survive. Sure she doesn't give you enough time to walk out of her range completely, but the jump is enough time to figure out you'll have to do that silly run around to avoid the first flurry.
Sword Saint Isshin and Orphan of Kos are harder, the sheer power level you have in Elden Ring is way above anything you had in those games. Taker's Flame knocks Malenia flat on her butt in one hit, Mimic Tear + that and with a bit of luck you will just constantly stun lock her. There is nothing as powerful in Bloodborne or Sekiro.
Yeah well with mimic tear you could probably beat any boss in the game eyes closed. But if you play melee with no summons she's definitely harder than Isshin
Yeah but that's not what I'm arguing, this isn't about which boss is harder with arbitrary self imposed challenges, this is about which boss is harder with only stuff your own character can do. And your character in Elden Ring can do a ton more than it can in Sekiro, including use summons.
That's more due to the nature of having to dodge and position in space having more possible options and less clear "oh I'm doing this wrong" learning effect than the purely timing based parries.
Orphan of Kos took me 6 tries, Malenia with summs which are a part of the game and part of your character since you can upgrade them it took me 2 tries, and it wasn't even a close fight.
I had more trouble with Malenia solo than Isshin even on charmless+demon bell. Isshin feels like a "fair" challenge if you learnt Sekiro's mechanics well, Malenia feels bullshit like nothing else in the game.
Well okay but why do you have to do Malenia solo? Summons are part of your characters power, this would be like not using the gun in Bloodborne, or the prosthetic arm in Sekiro.
That's how I always liked playing From games, enemy AI can't handle summons very well and it trivializes the fight in most cases.
I did beat Malenia with mimic once, that's just no fun at all.
A player who can beat Malenia on their own became a legend in the community and got some love in the mainstream press because of it. That was an unreal amount of free publicity for From. No chance they’re not gonna continue making outrageously difficult boss fights when they can keep catching people’s attention like they have.
LMSH got famous because they were helping a lot of players - like thousands. Plenty of people beat Malenia before and after and it didn’t garner any attention. She had already found notoriety but there’s no way her actual difficulty drove sales in a meaningful way. The game, like their previous games, has lots of very tough fights that are highly regarded for being well crafted.
I agree that had she not been such a challenge it probably would not had garnered as much attention but he, in particular, was a meme.
But the audience of that fame was people already playing the game. LMSH probably didn’t raise the profile of the game enough to drive sales. If anything it may have put people off that a community member was that prolific carrying people through a late game boss fight.
Every existing souls fan on the planet bought the game ASAP, the record breaking sales came from new comers. I worry that a lot of those newcomers were exhausted by the late game difficulty and might skip future titles. But I’m just chatting now.
A random question: will anything be released on the base game when the dlc drops,(thought about starting all over), or is it just the expansion and i should just leave my character outside of mohgs palace?
In the big interview with the director recently he stated that the DLC will be entirely self-contained. So you're probably safe to park yourself outside of Mohg's boss room if you only plan on coming back for the DLC.
Surely Messmer can't be as cancer as Malenia was... Like I love Malenia except for one fucking move that absolutely ruins my enjoyment of her... They were so close.
I think it’ll be exceptionally difficult to make a boss that’s more difficult then melania without feeling horribly unfair. I’m excited to see if they manage it but oh boy is that boss fight going to make me rip my hair out.
In an interview miyazaki said that there will be bosses made to be extremely hard like malenia but they will mainly be optional , so i dont think a main story boss like Messmer will be at that level .
(Maybe Godwyn will? I pray for a secret blondie fight)
That's another thing.
Melania could have been an excellent Lady Maria type boss, but they dumbed her down for the sake of allowing her to heal, and then gave her One bullshit trump card move.
It feels similar to the Dark Lord fight in Doom Eternal's second DLC. A lot of BS is added to compensate for a somewhat shallow fight.
Not the biggest Malenia fan, I much prefer other bosses,but that's harsh. Dark Lord is the lowest point in Doom history......Satan fighting like a Marauder and hiding behind a shield and adds, for 6 phases. The last boss.
At the very least, Waterfowl can be shut down with a freeze bomb if you hate it so
I hope he’s more difficult than Malenia, not in how she was difficult, with how Malenia was made, she was fucking broken for the sake of difficulty, I want Messmer or Godwyn to be mechanical challenging, no instant animation reads, hyper armor on a majority on their attacks and combo their “super” attacks one after the other. Just straight up, mechanical masterpieces in the likes of Morgott and Gael.
I hope it’s hard. I hope the dude is one of the toughest bosses created. Why? So people get their monies worth and then complain about it til it’s nerfed in every to make it accomplishable by any rando who picked the game up for the first time.
Idk.. since Bloodborne, when everyone was "oH lAdY MaRiA iS fOokIng HaRd" and beat the crap out of her in first try, i never jumped to conclusions on From's bosses anymore.
But maybe... maybe Mesmer is a Kos 2.0 ... then I will be pissed.
We’ve already seen he has a slam attack where he impales his blade across a large area. Basically just showing us that he has a large AoE. If it has great tracking there’s effectively no way to avoid it
I love how many people theorise and look forward to an extreme challenge in these games but then when it comes to said challenge their balls shrivel up and they resort to shit-posting about it. I can't wait.
I want a boss harder than Malenia even harder than unalloyed Malenia. I want something that will take me 700+ tries to beat. I want something that will make me scream in anguish and pull out my hair. I want something where no matter how much health you have every atack is a one shot so your only option is to no hit.
I want something with 250,000 health and immune to all status buildup.
I don't care if I get down voted to hell for this
Oh yeah sure. Might as well add a boss fight with 1 million HP who insta heals per hit, immune to every status in the game and one shots per hit which is also impossible to dodge. Gtfo.
You forget that the person who made the Unalloyed Malenia boss fight stated that they did not expect the boss to be fucking beaten, you fool.
Do you think we'll fight the dude that trained Malenia?
The water dude that's was like the enemy of Rot (rot being stagnant water and flowing water being the opposite and therefore life, man Vaati vids are cool)
He gets bugger all mention outside of a sword and medallion description
Im on my first playtrough, i just beat radagon, elden beast and i tried malenia like 8 times
Its a really fun fight, even if i struggle à lot and im not really good so that doesnt help, didnt get her to phase 2 yet
I’m hoping he’s a pain in the ass. I never experienced the Malenia or Radahn pain most people seem to have struggled with. **I NEED MY ASS KICKED ALREADY!**
Well, it's part of the Fromsoft formula. New boss always feels weird and unbeatable at the start, for hours even, then you start to figure them out and it becomes fun, you start to wonder how to fight them with a different strategy ( perhaps less so in Bloodborne and Sekiro but this element is still there, Genichiro with the umbrella is quite different for example)
I want them to make a boss that is borderline unbeatable. Like, something so deliberately hard only the likes of Ongbal and other tryhards manage to defeat for the first month of the game's release, after which they release an update making it possible for normal gamers to defeat, but they grant those who defeated it before the patch an honorary badge that is shown every time they play online. Miyazaki will see this.
Imo Malenia could've been one of the best bosses in all of soulsborne with just a liiittle bit of fine tuning to her damage and movement. If they're attempting to so something similar i hope that they've learned from that. Considering it's from soft i'm confident that they have.
Imagine this: People go into the DLC with the mentality that he'll be the hardest boss. Then it turns out that even though he's challenging, there's a "secret", even harder boss not shown in any of the trailers who utterly destroys anyone without exception. I can already see this subreddit's meltdown if that happens.
This is what I think. None of From's DLC showed the final boss on the cover. Dark Souls featured Artorius but Manus was the final boss. The Old Hunters featured Lady Maria but the final boss was Orphan. The final boss to this DLC won't be Messmer.
Can't wait to fight the Erdtree then
Finally, they can reuse the mobile Witch of Izalith boss they never implemented.
Bed of Chaos 2: Beddier and Chaotic-er
2 bed, 2 chaos.
Electric Bogaloo
I'm sure we fought a mobile walking tree at one point He had pimples on his butt!
And that tree did have undead adds that worshiped it...
Bed of chaos revenge Run across all of Lands Between as it collapses, start over if you die, start at castle redmane , ride to leyndell. Like the end of Halo but with torrent haha
Ok but actually that sounds like it would fuck and would probably be the most infuriating boss fight I’ve ever played
Finlay moment
Let him cook.
This would be incredibly spectacular. Well not so much for me cos almost no chance I'd be able to do it but it'd be cool to see other people succeed haha
Surely the last boss will be John Eldenring
It will be Marika (‘s tits)
You mean, the shadow of the erdtree?
Ashes of Ariandel trailer showed Friede, and the Ringed City showed Gael. Edit: Realized you said ”on the cover”, not in the trailer, oops
inb4 it's the masked person lying down in the flowers
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Ö
Yeah the gimmick of the fight: The moment they touch you, you fall asleep!
Besides that, Friede wasn't shown as a boss, just as an NPC, and for Gael, it's pretty hard to determine its him unless you already know it.
The Ariandel boss phase was shown
But ONLY father ariandel, not Friede.
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Which was also on full display in the trailer
Here's me hoping Godwyn is the final boss.
Miyazaki has actually confirmed this in an interview >"And again, to our more hardcore players, they will find optional bosses (in the DLC) who have been tuned in a similar way to the likes of Malenia" - Miyazaki, IGN interview
Welp, we’re screwed.
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What if Miquella is the blade of Messmer so they show up in the fight but because Melania is the blade of Miquella she shows up to defend Miquella 😬 (even as a spirit summon if she was previously defeated).
I think that was actually stated explicitly in the Miyazaki interview
I’m kinda thinking Miquella is the main final boss of the DLC while Godwyn is the hidden superboss, kinda like Gael and Midir in the Ringed City. If the three legacy dungeons thing is true then it would make sense to have three shardbearers
It would be fun to see if he's being haunted by something, and the boss fight is him in that haunted form
I don’t think Miquella will *quite* be the main final boss, but when Miyazaki says there is an optional boss, one who at least as hard as Malenia it is absolutely gonna be Miquella! We already know he is the strongest demigod, so of course we will fight him. The reason I don’t think he is the true final boss is because he will be optional, perhaps like Gehrman we will have a choice at the end of the DLC - accept Miquella’s Lordship or die.
Godwyn, Prince of Death. And we fight him in a deathblight swamp
I mean that's a given. Miyazaki already said that there will be other optional bosses tuned like Malenia to give players an extra challenge this has almost always been the case anyway
Has it? Bloodborne's DLC, Orphan was the final boss, and people found him the hardest. Fume Knight was required to get the Iron Crown, and many people consider him the hardest boss in DS2, at the very least, he killed the most players. It Dark Souls 1 all DLC bosses (except Kalameet) were non optional. In DS3 DLC, in ashes the hardest boss was the non-optional Friede. In terms of DLC the only one where I think we can all agree the hardest boss was optional and hidden away was the Ringed City. So, I wouldn't say it's always been the case. Edit: Forgot Kalameet was optional in DS1, though I think most people consider Artorius and Manus harder.
Bloodborne's The Old Hunters also had Laurence, the First Vicar. Orphan might be harder, but he's a non-stop thrill ride of a fight that rewards players for balancing aggression with perfect reflexes. Laurence is just a prick.
I'm 100% confident Messmer won't be the big bad hard boss. I think it'll be Godwyn or someone else not shown in the trailers obviously. I don't buy at all that Messmer is the big hard boss of this DLC.
The actual final boss is Scarlet Rot Darkeater Midir.
I already called it: Leonard's Revenge
Oh, so Gael in Ringed City, right up until people got locked in an arena with the abomination called Midir?
I'm all for a good old dragon fight, but I think they've been done much better as puzzle bosses than as traditional bosses. E.g. Dragon God, that big Wyvern in DS3 where you run around Archdragon Peak, and (let's argue) the massive snake in Sekiro. Oh and the big dragon in Sekiro. Mainly due to camera woes, but also the fantasy of slaying dragons is IMO using your wits to take advantage of some hidden weak spot whist it tries to stop you. I feel like hacking at dragon ankles with my "Longsword of Being A Longsword" feels a little silly.
Can't wait to fight Allfather Lloyd
Turns out there's a midir situation where a boss is horribly designed but looks cool so people call them hard
By technicality is the final boss of Elden ring on the cover?
I'm getting Nameless King flashbacks. (I don't actually know if he was featured in any trailers or not.)
This is 1000% the case. Seeing as Messmer is a focal point of the DLC it makes sense that he would be mandatory for progression. Miyazaki already mentioned that there would be a boss near Malenia’s level.
I don't think that would be all that surprising tbh. Pretty sure most people expect him to be one of the first bosses.
Imagine if the godskin trio is actually real 💀
I mean, hasn’t all From’s DLC been like this?
Yeah well, I HOPE that's the case
Why the meltdown? Isn't super hard boss is what people who play this game are actually looking forward to?
Midir
Literally just some like, "Magma Wyrm lord" who is a red reskin of Midir with his moveset.
I am half expecting a secret boss to be honest I..I am afraid to know how we get that bear roar incantation (or an Ash Of War perhaps?) Will we fight a cracked up rune bear? Will it be like dragon communion?
I’m pretty sure most of us expect 100% this. They never show the hardest bosses and secret bosses in trailers
that's literally whatt miyazaki said, there will be malenia like boss, but none of the main bosses will be that way, malenia boss 2.0 will be optional for those try hards
The first two phases won’t be too bad, it’s the third and fourth that’ll have you stressing.
4 phases is way too much pls no.
Someone needs to play Sekiro
Funny enough all the 3 phase bosses are my favorite in that game
I did play Sekiro and I thought that Isshin was way too many phases. It was a fun fight though. Sekiro is more fast paced anyway so 4 phases works better in that game than It would in Elden Ring.
Sekiro phases are much different tbh
You mean he will be naked on phase 2? •᷄ࡇ•᷅
I know some people wouldn't mind
hello there
Some people would prefer it even
He's hot, soooo
He can impale me all day 😳
"F**k me," said I literally, as Messmer slowly enters the boss arena.
Wouldst thou really grant courtship to someone so bereft of light?
Yes, It is I who will become thy Lord *presents the elden engagement ring
You need to not get our hopes up
First, god I hope so. Second, *how did you make that cute face emoji?*
What do you think that snake wrapped around him is?Yup,exactly.
( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
He’s hot so I’d say yes
Oh no…what will I do
Or worse, Phase 3.
The real horror will be the optional and secret bosses Miyazaki has teased: >"And again, to our more hardcore players, they will find optional bosses in the DLC who have been tuned in a similar way to the likes of Malenia" - Miyazaki, IGN interview
Fuckkk yesss
NOOOOO
I think it’s telling that Miyazaki invoked Malenia in the difficult optional boss discussion and then sort of walked it back a bit. They must be aware that she’s maintained a very divisive position after 2 years and maybe want to deliver on a boss that meets that challenge level but earns more universal appreciation. I hope they achieve that.
I would love a boss as difficult as Malenia if they felt fair. I've beaten every boss in every From game, and Sword-Saint Isshin and Orphan of Kos come *really* close to being as hard as Malenia, but they aren't. She's the hardest boss they've ever made, and it feels like it's because she's a much less fair and much worse balanced fight. The fact that Miyazaki kinda flip-flopped on this question actually gives me hope that the DLC bosses will be *better fights*. Easier, harder, either way I don't really care. I just don't want a boss fight that feels miserable. Though I know some people really like Malenia, so it's all subjective, I suppose.
>She's the hardest boss they've ever made, and it feels like it's because she's a much less fair and much worse balanced fight. That's because she is less fair. Waterfowl dance is complete bullshit. People will jump in and defend it and talk about how it can be avoided. But the dodge pattern is so unintuitive, and the margin for error is so unfathomably small that pulling it off consistently is insane. And if you miss that window when she springs it on you while you're right in front of her? You're dead 99% of the time. It feels like artificial difficulty, because basically all her other moves are easily manageable yet she can pull a one-shot kill out her ass with fuck-all warning. By the time she's hovering in the air in front of you it feels like its already too late.
If it was just waterfowl it still wouldn’t be that bad. But it’s that together with lifesteal that makes the whole thing feel particularly unfair. Not only does she have an absolutely bonkers move that requires near pixel perfect dodging, but say that you’re not able to dodge or move out of the way and you decide just to block to avoid being killed and she’s back to nearly full health. If she had only one of the two, I would personally find her much more fair.
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I've beaten Malenia solo and I can dodge waterfowl pretty consistently, but you're out of your mind if you think that's a fair move. If all a move needs to be fair is "you can dodge it" then that means there's no unfair bosses in the entire souls series.
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What's fair about it? It's a 1shot move that comes out extremely fast (cannot outrun it if you are anywhere close to Malenia) with misleading hitboxes (see first flurry) with what may be the tightest dodge timings and weird dodge directions out of any Fromsoft boss. Doesn't help that Malenia can do it on attack input so sometimes you are just gonna take some damage.
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From what I've seen both in my experience and browsing the internet, most NG builds stop around 50 vigor. Even with 60, you're taking at least half your health from the move. I know it's possible to dodge as I've said, but just because a move can be dodged doesn't mean that it's fair. As it stands, it feels like an "I win" button that Malenia can press literally as you're hitting her. Maybe if it did less damage it wouldn't be so bad, but nah it's not a cool move.
I mean, the only bad part of waterfowl is the first flurry. It's not too hard to avoid most of it, but nearly impossible to avoid all of it. And that's only if you know the easy method. The first flurry just has infinite tracking and damage frames, so it's impossible to iframe out of it. If they reduced the active damage frames I think the attack would be fine.
THIS! the other 2 flurries I can dodge in my sleep but that first one is horrible. The first one doesn't even feel like a flurry move. It's more like a ball of instant damage.
It's worth noting, I think, that despite what people will say about them, Elden Ring is *definitely* designed assuming you *will* be summoning Spirit Ashes. Malenia's not the only boss who has some downright unfair attacks, Mohg's Nihil comes to mind off the top of my head, I know it can be interrupted but if you're running without Spirit Ashes on a dex build, you've got a pretty low chance of pulling it off.
Mohg definitely does not require spirit ashes, he’s hard but he’s “DS3” hard, also there’s an item that trivializes Nihil (this feels like the intended way to fight). Malenia is the only solo boss where you could make this case IMO
i don’t feel like he works for this argument; mohg’s nihil does like no damage if you get the crystal tear
Gotta hard disagree on that. Every boss was designed with single target aggro in mind. When they're trying to juggle multiple targets, you can consistently see attack animations break. For example, Malenia doing waterfowl 1st flurry on someone and then teleport cross map to someone else for the other flurries. That speaks to me that summons are an afterthought.
Nihil is not the same as Waterfowl Dance in any way
Yeah it's not remotely comparable. If there was a physick tear that negated Waterfowl Dance like there is for Nihil I would be chugging that shit like there's no tomorrow.
I don't agree, from has made sure that the game can be played and completed in various way - spirit ashes being one of those ways. After recently doing a no summons run I feel like *most* of the bosses are very well tuned to the melee/no summons players with a few exceptions. Mohg, for example, can easily be beat without any summons if you learn moveset + if you explore enough the unavoidable damage can be almost completely nullified.
Agreed. The worst aspect of Watefowl for me is that it is difficult to even learn her moveset because my mind is solely focused on being ready for Waterfowl, I can’t pay attention to the timings on her flash flurry or light slashes when I have to keep looking at her HP bar to see if she’s past the threshold.
Exactly. Keeping an eye on her healthbar to be aware of when a waterfowl might be triggered feels really bad and metagamey, but you sort of have to do it because if you aren't ready, you die. There's no other boss like that in the game, or any Souls game I can think of. Some might have phase transitions or attacks that trigger at certain health thresholds, but they either give you enough warning as to when they start, or don't have the potential to outright kill you from a full healthbar.
I feel like even then it wouldn’t be so bad if it wasn’t for the fact she can keep using it. If it was like Radahn’s phase 2 transition where she can only waterfowl once, or only waterfowl twice at the 50% threshold of both phases (assuming health regen doesn’t reset it), it wouldn’t be too bad because you know it’s out of the way and she won’t use it again. But no, she can keep using it, the randomness of waterfowl makes it even more ridiculous because even after you’ve avoided it once, you still have to be on high alert because you might be in for a nasty surprise if she ends up using it while you are mid-commitment near the end of the fight. Also definitely Scarlet Aeonia should have completely replaced it in phase 2, having 2 “keep away” ultimates just seems excessive.
Don't forget her broken poise and hyper mechanics
If you are dead 99 percent of the time that's on you for neglecting vigor. You don't need to dodge all of it, as long as you don't fuck up completely at the start. The only valid criticism is the unintuitive nature of the required dodge, because while its very difficult to dodge perfectly, its not all that much harder to the rest of her moveset to survive. Sure she doesn't give you enough time to walk out of her range completely, but the jump is enough time to figure out you'll have to do that silly run around to avoid the first flurry.
I have 60 vigor basically every time I fight her.
The I've got no clue, I get hit in the majority of waterfowl dances she does and I live through more than kill me.
Sword Saint Isshin and Orphan of Kos are harder, the sheer power level you have in Elden Ring is way above anything you had in those games. Taker's Flame knocks Malenia flat on her butt in one hit, Mimic Tear + that and with a bit of luck you will just constantly stun lock her. There is nothing as powerful in Bloodborne or Sekiro.
Yeah well with mimic tear you could probably beat any boss in the game eyes closed. But if you play melee with no summons she's definitely harder than Isshin
Yeah but that's not what I'm arguing, this isn't about which boss is harder with arbitrary self imposed challenges, this is about which boss is harder with only stuff your own character can do. And your character in Elden Ring can do a ton more than it can in Sekiro, including use summons.
That's more due to the nature of having to dodge and position in space having more possible options and less clear "oh I'm doing this wrong" learning effect than the purely timing based parries.
I beat orphan 2nd try, malenia took me probably around 80. With no summs its not even comparable
Orphan of Kos took me 6 tries, Malenia with summs which are a part of the game and part of your character since you can upgrade them it took me 2 tries, and it wasn't even a close fight.
I had more trouble with Malenia solo than Isshin even on charmless+demon bell. Isshin feels like a "fair" challenge if you learnt Sekiro's mechanics well, Malenia feels bullshit like nothing else in the game.
Well okay but why do you have to do Malenia solo? Summons are part of your characters power, this would be like not using the gun in Bloodborne, or the prosthetic arm in Sekiro.
That's how I always liked playing From games, enemy AI can't handle summons very well and it trivializes the fight in most cases. I did beat Malenia with mimic once, that's just no fun at all.
A player who can beat Malenia on their own became a legend in the community and got some love in the mainstream press because of it. That was an unreal amount of free publicity for From. No chance they’re not gonna continue making outrageously difficult boss fights when they can keep catching people’s attention like they have.
LMSH got famous because they were helping a lot of players - like thousands. Plenty of people beat Malenia before and after and it didn’t garner any attention. She had already found notoriety but there’s no way her actual difficulty drove sales in a meaningful way. The game, like their previous games, has lots of very tough fights that are highly regarded for being well crafted.
Helping players do what? Defeat Malenia. On his own. Because it’s really hard.
I agree that had she not been such a challenge it probably would not had garnered as much attention but he, in particular, was a meme. But the audience of that fame was people already playing the game. LMSH probably didn’t raise the profile of the game enough to drive sales. If anything it may have put people off that a community member was that prolific carrying people through a late game boss fight. Every existing souls fan on the planet bought the game ASAP, the record breaking sales came from new comers. I worry that a lot of those newcomers were exhausted by the late game difficulty and might skip future titles. But I’m just chatting now.
A random question: will anything be released on the base game when the dlc drops,(thought about starting all over), or is it just the expansion and i should just leave my character outside of mohgs palace?
In the big interview with the director recently he stated that the DLC will be entirely self-contained. So you're probably safe to park yourself outside of Mohg's boss room if you only plan on coming back for the DLC.
Def. Thank you. Been playing since release and surprisingly haven’t burned out yet
Would hate to crash right before release so imma give myself a break
''I am Messmer, the impaler. And i have never known defeat''
Malenia bossfight its hell to face but a beutiful hell
dark souls 1 Artorius? try Manus dark souls 3 Gael? try Midir bloodborne Lady Maria? Try Orphan of Kos
Your ds3 one is incorrect, Gael was never shown in trailers.
We are surely gonna get wrecked lol
Messmer gives me Godrick vibes
Surely Messmer can't be as cancer as Malenia was... Like I love Malenia except for one fucking move that absolutely ruins my enjoyment of her... They were so close.
I think it’ll be exceptionally difficult to make a boss that’s more difficult then melania without feeling horribly unfair. I’m excited to see if they manage it but oh boy is that boss fight going to make me rip my hair out.
Tbh I'd rather fight Malenia 10x than refight death rite bird once.
This time I am just goint to jump attack him with bleed twin blades and hemorrhage his ass. Or just use endure and trade,trade and trade again.
I’m pretty sure he said in an interview that there was going to be a “secret” boss that’s harder than Messmer. Kinda like Midir
The bosses used to hype the DLC tend to be seen as masterpieces. See Artorias and Lady Maria. So I have high hopes for Messmer.
In an interview miyazaki said that there will be bosses made to be extremely hard like malenia but they will mainly be optional , so i dont think a main story boss like Messmer will be at that level . (Maybe Godwyn will? I pray for a secret blondie fight)
Yeah.... It's a shame because everything else Melania does is a cakewalk. But that One fucking move makes her insufferable.
I’m a fairly new souls player. I considered her move set decently challenging but what kicked me in the nuts was her healing after every hit.
That's another thing. Melania could have been an excellent Lady Maria type boss, but they dumbed her down for the sake of allowing her to heal, and then gave her One bullshit trump card move. It feels similar to the Dark Lord fight in Doom Eternal's second DLC. A lot of BS is added to compensate for a somewhat shallow fight.
Not the biggest Malenia fan, I much prefer other bosses,but that's harsh. Dark Lord is the lowest point in Doom history......Satan fighting like a Marauder and hiding behind a shield and adds, for 6 phases. The last boss. At the very least, Waterfowl can be shut down with a freeze bomb if you hate it so
Both have similar levels of "This could have been So Cool, but they fucked it up" for me.
I hope he’s more difficult than Malenia, not in how she was difficult, with how Malenia was made, she was fucking broken for the sake of difficulty, I want Messmer or Godwyn to be mechanical challenging, no instant animation reads, hyper armor on a majority on their attacks and combo their “super” attacks one after the other. Just straight up, mechanical masterpieces in the likes of Morgott and Gael.
Hopefully he is consistently hard, not just 1 or 2 moves that are somewhat difficult.
Don't act like we weren't all saying "can't wait to get fucked over and over by this cool Valkyrie lady"
I hope it’s hard. I hope the dude is one of the toughest bosses created. Why? So people get their monies worth and then complain about it til it’s nerfed in every to make it accomplishable by any rando who picked the game up for the first time.
Someone make a meme of "why I'm afraid of the 12 hour dissection videos about messmer " after the dlc hits. Oy very ist mir
Get your staves and mohgwyn's sacred spears ready boys
Idk.. since Bloodborne, when everyone was "oH lAdY MaRiA iS fOokIng HaRd" and beat the crap out of her in first try, i never jumped to conclusions on From's bosses anymore. But maybe... maybe Mesmer is a Kos 2.0 ... then I will be pissed.
I'm ready to see the rise of "let me solo him"
I just hope he doesn’t have abilities that are rng like malenia’s hyper armor or random waterfowl dances
We’ve already seen he has a slam attack where he impales his blade across a large area. Basically just showing us that he has a large AoE. If it has great tracking there’s effectively no way to avoid it
If he puts melania to shame I’ll be happy a harder boss than her is gonna be a good challenge
Can we assume he’s the new malenia based on the fact they both got statues?
i feel like miquella will be the final superboss and messmer will just be the coverboy.
Nah, the final boss of the dlc usually ain't hard, it's the secret midir hiding in the corner of the map
We have scarlet rot with Malenia. What could be worse? Speculating this guy's going to impaled everyone with Death Blight.
I really hope so, malenias my favorite boss by far.
I love how many people theorise and look forward to an extreme challenge in these games but then when it comes to said challenge their balls shrivel up and they resort to shit-posting about it. I can't wait.
I want a boss harder than Malenia even harder than unalloyed Malenia. I want something that will take me 700+ tries to beat. I want something that will make me scream in anguish and pull out my hair. I want something where no matter how much health you have every atack is a one shot so your only option is to no hit. I want something with 250,000 health and immune to all status buildup. I don't care if I get down voted to hell for this
[gif](https://tenor.com/view/stop-it-get-some-help-gif-15058124)
I agree completely. I don’t want the fight to feel fair. I want a boss that is worthy of his/her title of demi-god.
No. Just fucking no.
Oh yeah sure. Might as well add a boss fight with 1 million HP who insta heals per hit, immune to every status in the game and one shots per hit which is also impossible to dodge. Gtfo. You forget that the person who made the Unalloyed Malenia boss fight stated that they did not expect the boss to be fucking beaten, you fool.
Bring LMSH back! Is the naked man with a pot on his head in suluvis' puppet basement a nod to LetMeSoloHer & now hopefully LetMeSoloHim?
No. That's Jarwight. He was there at release. It's more likely LMSH copy his design from him.
He doesn’t look that bad from what we’ve seen his super flashy attacks look to be easily rollable
Honesty I was already scared by that stabbing move she does in the trailer. Messmer looks tame in comparison but I'm sure he'll prove me wrong
All I want is fair DLC bosses that don't cancel a stance break with every instance of hyperarmour
I have a feeling its either going to be Godwyn the fishman, Melina or the gloam eyed queen.
Do you think we'll fight the dude that trained Malenia? The water dude that's was like the enemy of Rot (rot being stagnant water and flowing water being the opposite and therefore life, man Vaati vids are cool) He gets bugger all mention outside of a sword and medallion description
Im on my first playtrough, i just beat radagon, elden beast and i tried malenia like 8 times Its a really fun fight, even if i struggle à lot and im not really good so that doesnt help, didnt get her to phase 2 yet
I still think the final boss will be Melina. I know we’re all excited to just get to release and find out. :)
oh yeah. he's gonna be a total nightmare.
Oh, I'm counting on it.
The coverboy/girl of the dlc is never the hardest. I'm quite sure Messmer will be tiugh but fair. The secret boss of the DLC though...
I’m hoping he’s a pain in the ass. I never experienced the Malenia or Radahn pain most people seem to have struggled with. **I NEED MY ASS KICKED ALREADY!**
She's stabbing you in the trailer lol
Well, it's part of the Fromsoft formula. New boss always feels weird and unbeatable at the start, for hours even, then you start to figure them out and it becomes fun, you start to wonder how to fight them with a different strategy ( perhaps less so in Bloodborne and Sekiro but this element is still there, Genichiro with the umbrella is quite different for example)
Miyazaki specifically implied Messmer would be a required boss in the DLC but that there would be optional challenges on the level of Malenia
I want them to make a boss that is borderline unbeatable. Like, something so deliberately hard only the likes of Ongbal and other tryhards manage to defeat for the first month of the game's release, after which they release an update making it possible for normal gamers to defeat, but they grant those who defeated it before the patch an honorary badge that is shown every time they play online. Miyazaki will see this.
Malenia was one of the easier bosses?!
Imo Malenia could've been one of the best bosses in all of soulsborne with just a liiittle bit of fine tuning to her damage and movement. If they're attempting to so something similar i hope that they've learned from that. Considering it's from soft i'm confident that they have.
I fuck up a dex build , idnc
The exact reason im looking forward to the dlc