Another strategy for bosses that let you use Torrent is to take advantage of that to get higher jump dodges and to quickly reposition. Just get on and off torrent frequently and don't stay on him too long as it's risky. Torrent also has a dismount that allows you to either get a jump dodge (and do a jumping r2) as well as massive i-frames on the standing dismount so you can dodge anything. Bonus tip: if you see bosses doing long combos with very fast attacks that come out faster than a roll, immediately you should be thinking about trying to strafe or jump it. If it's just one fast follwop, then sometimes the solution is rolling the first hit earlier or rolling both in roll or rolling a specific direction to positionally avoid the followup. Also, if you dont believe me about combo flowcharts in previous games, here is the chart of Soul of Cinder's possible moves JUST from his sword phase imgur.com/a/soc-sword-phase-re-upload-S3jAeeG
It's important to realize that in most fights Torrent is best used for a dragoon playstyle, mounting to move and dismounting to fight. It's very viable and very fun to play fully mounted against Night's Cavalry and Tree Sentinels, but especially for fights like the overworld dragons or Fire Giant, it's important to make use of this core part of your toolkit in a way that meshes well with the game. Personally, I don't like dragoon-style as much as I like pure mounted combat, and wish it was viable against more bosses but that's not technically a game quality issue.
If a fight allowed for Torrent I beat it mounted on Torrent, not wasting that opportunity, I'm probably one of the few people besides Rurikhan who loves mounted combat in Elden Ring 😅
@@AscendantStoic I love it visually and thematically though find the fight style itself kind of annoying (mostly because for some reason I'm just terrible at stamina management while mounted). But riding into battle on a glorious steed facing a giant fire-breathing dragon made the child in me scream in excitement. So goddamn epic.
As a 70 year old Mouse and Keyboard user with stiff finger joints and geezer reflexes, I found Elden Ring ridiculously difficult. The only way I was able to play the game with any possibility of survival was thanks to the hundreds of RUclipsrs that suggested many different types of builds, and explained how buffs, talismans, ashes of war, etc worked, and gave directions on where to find resources needed. It has been a long, painful learning curve but now I am reasonably competent at several different builds. I have found that what I thought were bullshit fights with particular bosses were really just a difficulty with my build, weapons, and setup. I have learned to respec my character to suit different bosses and am actually enjoying the game with less worry of a heart attack. I fear that the combat in all other games will disappoint me now.
Yea I’m 50 and I certainly don’t have the reflex’s that I did when I was young plus arthritis in my left hand. Elden ring is possible to complete solo if ur willing to try to use what’s at ur disposal. Most bosses are weak to strike slash or pierce and a particular debuff. I tried to always vary my defence not just rolling but blocking parrying and jumping which is amazingly effective in this game. Yeah it can get frustrating at times but that’s what makes success real. Nothing good is ever easy. We old people know that. I played the game blind so I never found the summons bell on first playthrough. I’m going to use it with my magic build tho as it seems apposite
I didn’t engage too much with the online discourse until after I finished the dlc. I no lifed the whole thing over the weekend in my little bubble alongside my friends. I played the whole thing without summons and had a wonderful time learning the boss movesets, exploring the world, found the whole thing really fair (with some very minor exceptions), and thought this was the strongest boss roster from software has ever put out. So imagine my surprise when I go online and see people whining about how hard it is, getting one shot, and saying you have to use summons because every boss is overtuned to hell and back. I didn’t find it easy, I died to some bosses for upwards of five hours, but I knew what I was getting into, stayed patient, and learned from my mistakes. The discourse around this dlc has been nothing short of awful, but finding this video gives me some hope that there is still people out there that are still people out there willing to engage with the games and find fun in the struggle to overcome the challenge.
Well put. I very much enjoyed the difficulty of the dlc, even if on some bosses I summoned (like Rellana phase 2, Gaius and final boss phase 2) to have a bit of a break. Aside from a fight here or there, they felt aggressive but had enough downtime to get in a heal or another attack. Some fights weren’t even aggressive at all, they were much more slow (Putrescent, Romina, Gaius, and those are just remembrances). My biggest issue lies not with the difficulty but with the barrenness of the world. Sure the areas look neat but often it’s a lot of trekking on Torrent. I don’t even know why Charo’s Grave has to exist, it’s such a nothing area. Same with the abyssal woods. I think a lot of the fat of the world could’ve been cut and it would’ve helped a lot. Also, some of the weapons seem pretty underpowered, but I bet a future patch will buff things like we saw in the base game. The dlc gets a solid 8/10 for me.
Completely agree, theres people already doing rl1, no blessings, and people still think the dlc is "too hard". They played even ring too many times and got used to memorizing the base game boss movesets and forgot they have to do it again with the dlc bosses. The whole fun of souls games to me isn't defeating a boss in under 5 tries, but defeating a boss after 5 hours.
"Staying upwards of five hours" is what people are complaining about. Boss movesets aren't hard to learn, they just take too much time to learn because of how many combos they have. More of the same is not necessarily better. The puzzle is not harder or more complex by having you do the same thing more. This is simply a memorisation and patience challenge, which is not fun.
@raizan1526 Learning and understanding complex boss patterns and figuring out how to counter them with your own build and playstyle is very enjoyable to a lot of Souls fans, those who aren't interested in that can always summon other players/spirit ashes or use any of the popular broken builds.
Yo i just want to thank you for being a voice of reason throughout ER's lifetime. Listening to the community has been a depressing experience, but your videos have helped reaffirm my love for thia game and especially helped me to learn to love even the bosses I once believed were total bullshit.
Somehow using game mechanics is now a "cheese" in the souls community. Use a shield poke, you cheesed the boss. Use a bleed build, you cheesed the boss. I always thought cheesing a boss was when people would sneak up to and poison the tree sentinel. Or go to the edge of Radahns arena and let him phase 2 crash into the ocean. Now it is apparently doing anything but dodging your way around the arena.
I get where they’re coming from Shieldpoking can be very braindead as you just hold up a shield and attack instead of engaging with the boss And bleed can dramatically shorten a fight by taking chunks of healthbar But they’re not cheesing Exploiting game mechanics in an unintended fashion like drowning radahn and poisoning the tree sentinel are cheesing, in radahn’s case you’re making him fall out of bounds by forcing him to land there, and the tree sentinel I guess is a gray area, but personally quitting out is the only way I’ve been able to get behind him so that’s abusing the fact enemies lose aggro when you quit out
I just had a funny imagine of someone who calls all of the stronger builds, consumables, spells/incants, AoWs, weaps, etc cheese, watch another play Witcher 3 on Death March and say that they're cheesing cause they're using alchemy to capitalize on the weaknesses of each monster that they've read up IN GAME AS PART OF ITS LORE, lmao. Funny times we live in.
Shield poking is fantastic, where else am I gonna live my Roman centurion fantasies? The spear was always the best weapon during this period, besides, it’s revenge, DS3 royally screwed spears and thrusting swords with a bug that never got fixed, it’s high time that STR got alternatives from the naked Barbarian with a giant hammer rolling like the thief
Man, the first 5 minutes define my experience with this community since I started getting deep into it. Without spoiling anything, Messmer is literally one of the best bosses in Elden Ring for a lot of reasons shared with the best bosses in the main game, and some people are talking about him like if he was Bed of Chaos, it's crazy. I've been hearing this takes about Sekiro and Elden Ring for years, turning, as you said, into "We wer wrong, but the game didn't teach us well" or just "Yeah, we were just wrong". It's so exhausting to see people saying that "you are not able to keep up with this bosses", the same people that roll Margit's poke into him, get hit by the daggers and get angry, instead of learning that you can strafe it and safely do a lot of damage in a big punish window. They are scrubs, and if you call them out, they starts calling you an "elitist" or a "freak". Man, how the fuck does it make sense to call me a freak for showing you factual evidence about why you are wrong and bad at the game? I can't with this people man ☠. This are the same guys that say "Elden Ring gives you the same moveset and options and ds3 while having much harder bosses". This is not true, in fact, you are just showing that you are playing this game as Ds3, which is a horrible mistake that makes bosses much harder than they should be
There’s a horrible post on the Elden Ring subreddit right now that does exactly what you’re describing, it has like 12k upvotes and the amount of brainrot in the comments is unbelievable
@@anonymous01201 I may have seen it, but there where a lot of them so idk, this whole thing with the DLC has gone crazy. Do you remember the title of the post? I want to laugh a little lmao
@@rayzu4380 " Elden ring players attempting to "punish" a boss with two consecutive light attacks after dodging 10 second long 15+ attack chain combos with AOE spam" and a picture of a tarnished with the caption "Damn, I got greedy". It has 43k upvotes now lmao
Addendum: Iron Pineapple, in a pinned comment from his Shadow lf The Erdtree review, he stated that the whole debate about difficulty and bosses in ER made him feel jaded. I think this is why many content creators and commenters are criticizing those saying that ER is overtuned and bosses are bad. This is the same dance I saw since DS2 DLCs, and it's been the constant trend for these games. Thankfully we're showing critical thinking and refuting, respectfully, when there's space for discussion.
God I love that you’re here to quickly bring some sanity into the mix. Seeing people immediately fall back on the “wah wah input reading long combos etc” whining after quite literally a fucking day of the DLC being out was astonishing. I don’t understand these bosses yet either, even the ones I’ve beaten, but isn’t that a good thing? Thank you for doing what you do and combating the consistent laziness, entitlement and misinformation spouted by so many the community.
I’m willing to bet a lot of these people who are whining treated the dlc as a boss rush mode and refused to explore, and when they got one shot by the last few bosses at blessing level 6 they blamed the game for it.
@@drphilsranch6782 I thought that not having to explore because you may find it boring was a positive of the base game. Now you're stupid if you still don't find the exploration fun, but the game forces it on you?
I beat the DLC and think both the base game and the dlc are 10/10, but input reading, long ass combos, delayed attacks and borderline undodgeable attacks (radahn's cross slash), are simply ludicrous and unexcusable, there are some impecable boss designs in this game, buth others are just utter shit, miyazaki tried too much to stretch the fine line between difficult and dumb
On your points about why you did the challenge run... You were right. You and Nathan's Radagon win you showcased in your original video were what inspired me to start doing my own challenge runs. And on that note, I did my first RL1 run blind. I didn't look up anything or ask anyone for help at all until Malenia where I asked Brian for help. I went through the area before Maliketh with the birds and dragon WITHOUT GAMBIT! It was brutal and my point is DON'T DO THIS! What you said about watching your favorite challenge runners and applying their tactics is so on point. I've done at least a dozen RL1 runs since including +0 and it's so much more fun and easy when you talk to the community. Every single person I've talked to in the challenge run community has been incredibly gracious and helpful. No one has ever shamed me or called skill issue on me for asking questions. I've gotten tons of really good advice. I was struggling super hard with Radagon RL1+0 and someone said you're getting in your head about it, back up your save do it at +15 just to get a win and give yourself a confidence boost then try again. Genius! I did this and got the kill within the day! Moral of the story is absolutely NOBODY can learn it all on their own and even the worlds best players share strategies and help each other AND it's more fun that way so don't hold yourself to an absurd and unnecessary standard.
Glad to see you asking for help. It's difficult to be humble at times, when you're susceptible to dismissive comments. It's why I love the co-op experience in these games, helping others through tribulation gives meaning to the challenge you endured. I think asking for help is the same.
Yea mang, its not just challenge runs either. Anything we do in life we learn from and are inspired by the greats. Noone is expected to learn the piano devoid from any other input.
Real life sparring made me better in Elden Ring because it helped me get away from the "health is the number of mistakes you're allowed" mentality. Real life sparring taught me that getting hit sucks, especially hard in the face. But the worst thing you can do is to focus on "not getting hit" because that will just let the other person pummel you. You need to hit back, but if you just focus on hitting your opponent you'll be left wide open. Instead you need to hit and protect at the same time. Move to their blindside where they can't hit you, and lay it on them. Move, defend and attack all in one motion. And sometimes you want to take a hit so that you can counter it. If you prepare for the punch or kick, then you know where to strike, where they now are weak. HP and flasks are not the number of mistakes you are allowed. They are a resource that you can choose to spend. Take a hit so that you can hit back twice as hard. Take a gamble. Defend by attacking, defend when attacking, position to attack and defend at the same time. Just like in real life.
Killed Consort Radahn this way. I could not see the posture bar and the attacks that were coming did not give me windows big enough for anything more than a Greatspear R1, but I knew when he was close to breaking. And so I just did my biggest attacks, got hit, got massive damage on him and even had flasks to spare at the end of the fight.
Yes that’s what makes the game so good u need to mix defence and offence up. Jump and attack attacking out of a roll etc. why would a boss just stand there allowing u to whale on him? That makes no sense
@@mynamejef7963 I'm not talking about poise and hit trading. I'm talking about not viewing getting hit as making a mistake, and about focusing on killing the boss instead of avoiding damage.
Souls vets love to tell people to "git gud" until they have to git gud themselves. The response to the DLC from Souls vets saying it's too hard has really soured my view on the community.
These “souls vets” have no backbone. All they want is for the game they like to seem difficult and hardcore to people who don’t play it, but actually be easy and mindless for them. That’s why everyone who complains about Elden Ring being “unfair” seems to put DS3 as their favorite in the series, because it’s by far the easiest (aside from maybe Demon’s Souls, but I haven’t played that one, so I wouldn’t know.)
@@drphilsranch6782The dlc was meant to humble the souls vets. They thought they were gonna go in with their level 400 builds and one shot all the bosses 💀 got humbled real fast
I am convinced people do not want a dynamic moveset that feels different and fresh everytime you fight a boss. People want predictable ds3 movesets that just requires roll attack roll attack repeatedly. LEARN THE DAMN FIGHT 👏👏👏
@@bigsmall2842 you cannot be serious, you cannot get by the final boss by spam rolling and attacking. It’s probably the most mechanic intensive fight, with regards to knowing positioning and dodge timing.
A lot of the fun comes from making an inconsistent boss consistent, forcing them down flowchart branches that keep you in control. Isshin is probably the most severe example, with like a hundred moves you don't ever have to see.
@@rohansensei5708 Messmer is better than any boss from DS3 (including Gael) and Bayle as a Dragon fight is on par with Midir. Just because Elden Ring fight tend to be more aggressive doesn’t mean they in any way lack quality
About the DLC difficulty rant, let's not forget that Bandai Namco had to LITERALLY officially remind people to use the DLC scaling blessings. Miyazaki already said that we'll feel weak in the DLC, and DLC would have it's own scaling to help raise our damage and defense. They had to OFFICIALLY remind people to use the DLC scaling because people just didn't use them and kept smashing their heads against a brick wall and then complained "It's too difficult and unfair!!" They had to officially remind people to engage with a mechanic that Miyazai SAID would be necessary and was heavily advertised. You ignore the core fundamental mechanic you're gonna get your a*s beat. And people refuse to just accept that fact.
So true. Not to mention all of the geniuses that not only ignored the fragments but did so with a new game plus 5 or more character. Think about that. Fromsoft is notorious for their DLC upping the challenge. They warned people they would need these fragments and these guys still came in by the thousands with new game plus 7 characters, ignored the core scaling mechanic that they would have missed 7 times in a row and said "games trash, bad design, unbalanced, I get one shotted by everything". I mean, how do you even prepare for these guys? And there are so many. So many with viewers even. It's irritating.
Ppl stupid, as soon as i started the dlc I seen the scadu say it makes you more powerful, so then I upgraded that to like 6-8 right out the gate just exploring. And I beat most of the dlc bosses prenerf, but then again I have giant crusher build so I just stun lock most bosses. 😂
@@jamesbarnett5157it might be too late, but if you are getting two shoted try raise your damage absortion. I'm not kidding, it makes a really big difference and you shouldn't be getting 2 shoted often
@@jamesbarnett5157No boss two shotted me, not even Radahn at +15 fragments. Damage absorption via talismans and just leveling up is enough to endure 3 or 4 hits, maybe even more.
Thanks for the video. I am playing through the DLC at level 137 with a quality build (whose infusion gets the worst damage overall) and my friends who are at levels way higher than mine (200+) are having way more trouble than me. It ultimately boils down to thoroughly exploring the open world to get stronger (via the new leveling system), using defense talismans and learning the patterns of a boss. There's a boss (no spoilers) that has a very weird to dodge attack, but it will happen every time after an attack from a distance; so ultimately dodge in one direction twice. And yet there are tons of complaints about said boss online, many comments deeming him the "worst fromsoftware boss by far". And I was able to defeat him with an average weapon in like 30 minutes. Moral of the story: fromsoftware fans usually enjoy easier games paradoxically
I can't dodge the attack consistently on a mid roll and I've been told by several people better than I it isn't consistent in a light roll either. I've talked to people who have hitless the boss and they said it's not consistent. Although I saw Aly mention you can backstep it with the new talismans for backsteps so that might be a solution. Ongbal deflected it but for some reason the deflection year expires after 5 minutes so that's not going to be a viable solution for low damage runs.
@@BBQcheese it's a weird case, I remember dodging it to the side, it might have been the terrain. Also maybe torrents s may help, but it's just a hypothesis. Maybe it's also possible to jump away from it
@@lorenzo8208 We're talking about a different attack lol. It's hard tip toeing around because Lupine hasn't played and I don't wanna spoil it but the boss I'm referring to doesn't have torrent available.
You have single handedly changed my mindset on ER. I’ve since been able to do no summon runs and even started working on RL1 runs and I’m having a blast. Honestly the DLC is challenging but not much more than late bosses in the base game.
Radahn was definitely nerfed, but the changes were not nearly as significant as players make it out to be. As for Malenia... she was never nerfed in any way. The only changes were a bug being added, and then fixed. Her max hp is the same as it has always been. The only way she got nerfed is indirectly -- When light roll was massively buffed, it became much easier to dodge certain attacks such as the fast double slash, triple slash and waterfowl dance.
Thanks. Btw for the people who is getting one shot on the DLC (I havent found any real one shot move, but yes very poweful attacks) 1-60 Vigor. You should afford it once you beat Mogh. 2- DragonCrest Greatshield. 3-Opaline Crystal Tear. 4-Crimson Medallion +3 5-(Optional) But armour is recommended. 6- Use the fragments for the sake of god, that lately had been buffed. 200% Damage you deal and 50% Damage received is too good. With this setup I often tank along 4 hits, and at the very very very worst 2.
Btw, something I noted about the DLC is the complain that bosses have "way more posture". Thing is, if you still use your base game weapons you might not get a difference, but I noted that a lot of the new weapons like a magic and fire greatsword (I wont say the name to avoid spoilers as it is a remembrance weapon) are the new kind of "light greatswords" and wont do as much posture damage as a greatsword, and not even close to a ultragreatsword.
Holy shit... YES. I think I've never agreed this much with every word spoken in a video about this topic before. I'm tired of the bandwagon opinions that aren't even self founded but rather copycat comments from "bigger" personalities of the past. Each game is different and Elden Ring has a lot of different approaches that are viable, perhaps not as much as DS2, but almost equally as such. This is not rollapalloza fro DS3 (which, don't get me wrong, I also love), this isn't Sekiro (although many fundamentals apply), this isn't counter city Bloodborne (although the focus on posture breaks and criticals are probably mostly resembling this)... this is _Elden Ring_ and it is balanced. Only move I find unbalanced is Waterfowl Dance, and yeah, I can dodge it, but it really does feel like a Sekiro attack in Elden Ring, but that's a topic for another day. I've done challenge runs of all kinds and I have to agree with everything you said here.
To that point, like half of the main bosses in the DLC have already been done base level, no Shadowrealm Blessing, hitless and no roll. So yeah Super impossible
I loved the video. I think the problem is that you won’t get the audience that needs to hear this. There are so many people who just want to get the reward since so many games taught us that you just get a reward. And so those people aren’t interested in learning and improving, because that means to fail a lot as we all know. They just want to be good and in my opinion these games always gave that option. They were always easy to cheese, easy to overlevel, and the dlc is no exception. It’s all there, people just haven’t realized it yet. Doing M as the 4th boss is problematic and the dlc is literally build to punish rushing.
What's so crazy is that I've literally seen comments talking about how they shouldn't be forced to spend hours "learning a boss and all its combos cause its too tedious and unfun to memorize". This would be fine if it was coming from someone who never touched hard games and mostly plays games like Mario, Zelda, Cod, etc. But it is baffling hearing it from a fanbase who has been doing this type of thing for years. Like no shit you're gonna need to strap in and sink in an hour or two to learn a boss. Its nothing new! Not to mention, lies about "random combos and delayed attacks" as well as "aoe spam" and "no punishment windows for heavy builds" is being perpretrated as usual. Insane stuff. Doesnt help that a lot of the videos saying this type of schlop have millions of views and come from popular video essayers(who honestly arent that great to begin with maybe outside of Demod and that's only cause the dude is one of the few who tends to go indepth with his personal boss rankings).
Underrated comment. Learning the boss move set & slowly making progress has always been the most fun part of their games. Crazy that people just can’t accept a game as it is and have to blame it instead of admitting maybe it isn’t for them.
@@dawsong5208It gets worse. Saw parts of a video(it was called something along the lines of why the er dlc seems so hard) and he literally says two of the most ridiculous things I've heard(he likes the dlc btw but that's not gonna prevent me from calling out the bs). He says stuff like how it's super unrealistic for Soe bosses to spam their alleged invulnerable insta wins and brings up Lady Maria as an example of how "balanced" she was as you both could do so much damage to each other and how her moves were grounded and realistic. Also says the bosses don't give enough opportunities to hit them cause they "extend combos"(the same lie that was told in the base game, which he praises btw). Also says stuff like how a lot of dlc fights are just riffs of what came before and aren't "fresh" like Bloodborne bosses were. Which again is absurd. He legit implies that the petruscent knight is just orphan of Kos on a horse which is MEANT to be a JOKE, not an actual statement regarding how the boss plays.
Radahn phase 2 is the only exception. Phase 1 is mostly fine. Definitely took a minute to get good at it, but I could get to phase 2 nearly every try without too much difficulty. Then I'd almost immediately die. Even after trying for days and completely memorizing the moveset and how to deal with it. There was a lot of precision required to dodge all of the phase 1 attacks, then they went and said "okay do that, but while being flash banged and blinded" Consort Radahn is a completely ridiculous boss depending on how you like to play. I don't want to shield poke, I shouldn't be getting 2 shot on a boss with 100k health, constantly blinds you in phase 2, and requires extreme patience and super high precision to not get hit by things like the cross slash attack.
You're my Elden Ring guru, dude. People are dead wrong about this game. It's like they don't understand that, when they try to play it like it's Dark Souls 3, they're essentially doing a challenge run. If you want to smash bosses in Elden Ring, you gotta be even more aggressive than in Bloodborne.
100% true, I love this comment. Elden Ring is faster than Bloodborne even and I think there’s a misconception around that, it’s always been faster than Bloodborne and it’s why I love it the most between all Souls games.
You can play the game like ds3, as long as you optimize your build which is way too hard for people who complain. Just grab two curved swords and combine it with multi hit buffs and spam L1 like you’re back in ds3.
@@HeyTarnished also, elden ring gives you even faster stamina regen than bloodborne, objectively proving that fromsoft want you to be mindfully aggressive in this game, and not mindlessly aggressive, like bb, bb lost the actual strategy part of souls combat if you ask me, especially in areas where most enemies dont have poise and most of its combat devolved into you just walking up to an enemy and wacking R1 till it stops moving, no consequences, no fighting back, you can count the enemies in bb that dont stagger on one hand, the rest? just mindless gameplay. im glad elden ring got back ds1s strategic combat into the mix and made it even faster than bb.
@@flamingmanure Absolutely! And there’s a very big common misconception I see people mentioning about Bloodborne & that is how the rally system is the reason the that makes the game fast & aggressive, and it couldn’t be further from the truth, what makes you aggressive in BB is not by taking your heath back, but by your character’s speed & the bosses’ speed, they attack fast, and so are you, this is also much truer in Elden Ring, not only by mindlessly button mashing R1, but being aggressive in finding positioning, attacking them during their delays, doing a charged R2, breaking their posture etc, fights like Rellana, Radagon, Malenia, Maliketh, Mohg, Messmer and many others when you get so aggressive against them can produce a much faster combat than Bloodborne could ever hope to achieve.
“There will always be people who don’t want to help themselves, and would rather just hate what they don’t want to understand.” This has always been the crux of the issue. Commenting at the moment you say this as you talk about Saint, because I doubt anything more would need to be said. At ER’s launch, you have people going “Crucible Knights/Godskins are input reading!!” No, you just didn’t care to notice that positioning affects what attacks an enemy will use. People came to understand better generally over time. It’s happening again now with the DLC. I beat it after having apparently rushed it. I left about half the map unexplored. My Scadutree blessing had reached +12 at the final boss. I assumed the max would be +15. It’s actually +20. If I can beat it at lv150, no summons and minimal tool use, at +12-always within 3-4-hits to death range-and I’m just some loser who doesn’t even spend more than $100 a year on games, then you, reader, and anyone else, also can. I doubt my reaction time is much better than the average grandparent. A lot of the complaints are, you know, still false, but *understandable* because the game is indeed dense despite having many ways you can strategize, and how even regular movement takes time to learn, like a bike. But there are two common sentiments I’ve seen recently which baffle me. The first is one that’s provably untrue. “This boss is bullshit, because he can just attack you the moment you walk through the fog, and you can’t do anything about it.” This refers to a new, large dragon boss. I fought him for three hours. Not once did he make an attack like that. Nothing you can’t time a roll for. I simply do not believe we, as two different people, are figuring two different bosses. I don’t see how someone can just choose not to put thought behind their button presses and then say “why did the boss hit me? I rolled at the first opportunity!” The second is what’s currently driving me insane. People don’t seem to find dodging fun anymore. Are we playing the same game? Does nobody remember, like, Pontiff? Or fucking Midir? This DLC, crafted to be harder than the base-game end-game areas, isn’t the first time we’ve had bosses with long combos. If you are engaging with the game, pressing buttons informed by what you see, performing any sort of hand-eye coordination, you aren’t fucking “waiting.” Waiting is when you are doing nothing. Waiting is when nothing is asked of you. I can concede someone riding around the open world as boring, long stretches of just moving, waiting for your destination to crest the hill, but *dodging a boss?* Feeling like a frenzied maniac rabid animal? You’re telling me the boss standing there expecting you to get a hit in is *more* exciting than learning attacks by avoiding them? In the *one* series of games where your customizable character’s superpower is not defined by their affinities, but their sheer evasion? Really? This is why I think “combos are too long *fow my tiwed bwain”* is a categorically false complaint. If that’s your point of contention, you’re looking for a game that isn’t what Elden Ring is known for.
Holy fk the gameplay behind is sublime. I'm pretty sure I will never be this good, cuz I will not invest enough time and put enough effort into it, but the fact that you did it is quite amazing. PS: Also really good commentary. That info is gold and the opinion part was on point aswell.
Thanks. Honestly i am a buffoon compared to guys like MouseinaTutu, BDBrian, and NathanSavageDamage just to name a few. Those guys won't even upload a boss fight at rl1+0 no roll if they so much as do a suboptimal punish on any attack window.
Very helpful video! Footage illustrating the specific examples you gave would’ve been appreciated but it’s a lot of additional editing so totally understandable if you didn’t have the time or even just didn’t want to
When I went into the DLC I hadn't played Elden Ring for quite a while and because I was extremely rusty I died to almost all bosses 30+ times, bashing my head repeatedly until something worked. However, when I got to putrescent knight I took a good step back. and when I came back I managed to beat it. I sat down and appreciated the moveset and took my time with it. So essentially I used this quote It's going down now in Persona 3 Reload very seriously: Some things may break me But always get back up New perspective gained From all of the pain and stress And when I do come back I’m stronger than ever before so Kneel down I don't know why but it resonated with me and made me play better.
In the base game there's so many OP builds and in the dlc most of those don't work, so those ppl actually have to learn the boss instead of cheesing them in 1 try
@@JoseViktor4099 the bosses in the dlc are more agressive and powerfull. most bosses can 2 tap you with the right attacks, its also a dlc so the bosses are made to be in general more mechanically difficult. There are exceptions of course. But i can say that eldering is nothing compared to the speed of some of these bosses.
Thank you for these videos. The amount of times I heard "er boss bad" is crazy. It always comes down to "Boss too fast, bad camera, bad hitbox, unfair and badly designed". I just really appreciate the difficulty of ER bosses and think they are the most well-designed bosses in a souls rpg because I actually have to pay attention. I will never forget how empty I felt when I killed Demon Prince first try, facetanking every single hit because the game allowed me to (I had completely basic starter equipment).
@@treasurewuji8740 Depends, ofc its bad when you get cornered. Ancient Dragons have pretty bad camera because you often get under them. Other than that I very rarely had any problems with it
@@TheGlowingManYT I don't know man, for me it does what its supposed to. There are actually bad ones like the Ancient Dragons but 90% of the time, camera just gets disorienting because you are either under the boss or got cornered by it
Your videos are so quality it's insane you don't have a bigger following. My ears perked up when you said you played fighting games as I'm coming from that side. I didnt really engage with ER mechanics my first playthrough so I'm basically learning about everything again via the DLC and am really happy with this vid. Trying to be Rellanna rn and the just observe step helped and it reminded me of mental stack in FG, where all of my attention is just trying to find out how to fight them instead of trying to land hits, really cool throughlines through both genres. Also been a huge fan of BGE and they're a big inspiration of mine, def looking forward to following more of your stuff as I try to get better at this game.
Joseph anderson is suck an overrated "critique" channel. His critique are so bad and I have no idea why people like him. There are very few youtubers I dislike but he's one of them.
I have to admit, I misjudged you. I did take you to be an elitist who looked down on casual players at first, and that was with me agreeing that the complaints about ER's bosses are often exaggerated or outright false. But you talking about why these games are so fun and why their reputation as "hard" games does them such a disservice made me realize that we're on the exact same page. I've always hated the idea that a player is "ruining" their experience by deciding to play in a way that's less mechanically demanding because yes, one can always go back and play it in a different way. That experience is always there for those who want to seek it out.
I think the funniest thing about Elden Ring in this 2 years is the "meta", people complaining about the pve meta. It was super funny, because even when there was no new patch, the "meta" changed EVERY FUCKING DAY. Colosal weapons are the best option by fa- Oh wait, no, the actual meta is bleed and fros- Oh wait, dual wielding is so OP! The only way to deal with the bosses is by using that because- Wait, have you seen how OP quick weapons are, because they give you more punish window?!?!?!?! No one knew what they were talking about, they were just saying that only 1 or 2 playstyles were the good ones while constantly contradicting themselves and showing how they actually had no idea of what was actually "the best" in the game. This was also a good demonstration about how almost any playstyle in this game is viable and can be even really OP if you actually know that you are doing, which means that all the complainers saying that "their build was just wrong and not the intended one" were just WRONG.
I'll say that considering the disparity between Demon Souls Remake and Elden Ring, I believe this game would've had a portion of DSRs new coat of paint had it been an exclusive next-gen title, better easing the playerbase into Elden Rings language akin to what bloodborne did for PS4, but alas, it was immediately compared to DS3 due to what I can only assume is the carried over rust from DS3s visual DNA having a placebo effect on how the game should be played. Elden Ring is much more active (not faster) than DS3 with greater defensive and offensive depth and versatility than said experience as well. A dedicated jump with s, guard counters, stance breaks, Ashes of War that can be cycled in a vast assortment of ways, crafting, horseback, etc. It should stand to reason that bosses should give you every opportunity to use these new toys, which means gameplay is tighter; more aggressive and varied - one size does not fit all this time around and you're expected to experiment with these new mechanics. As we know, A LOT of people did not engage with the mechanics and played it as a perceived "Open World DS3", which led to intense frustration. For something so miniscule as visual DNA in a souls experience, I think the hardware limitations that prevented Elden Ring from next-gen exclusivity hurt the presentation and acceptance of this game being distinctly different beast than the DS series.
You have given a clear voice to my perspective on the community and discussion around everything about these games difficulty and I can't appreciate it enough. More people need to see this.
I was struggling with the dragon that swoops into the curve at farum azula for a while now and watching your video really helped me out. You really dont think about how much mindset helps with these games. Thanks!
It helps the very most and to me, it's even part of the story (at least for Dark Souls) 😁 Like the moment you give up, you become one of the other mindless undead, broken and without purpose. These games really aren't about reflexes, perfect memorization and execution etc, they are about observation and determination and that way, they can not only improve us as players but as human beings, also 😊
It’s remarkable how rare the “learn the boss” mindset is. You would think that actually engaging with the game and learning from mistakes would be the obvious default approach, but spend 5 minutes on the subreddit and it becomes clear that this is hopelessly naïve. The majority of players essentially expect to win for free, and become indignant when this doesn’t work. They don’t realize this, but this is the mindset. People don’t want to hear it. You can phrase it as tactfully as possible, “you can do it, it’s not as hard as you think” etc, but they’re simply not prepared to engage. I saw a comment the other day about how to cheese a basic mid-level mob, and it just struck me how badly this missed the point. Just play the game ffs
Yea it’s honestly baffling to me. It’s like there’s a certain population of players that just want to beat the bosses to maybe say they’ve beaten the game, but aren’t willing to put the effort in to use trial & error. They just want to blow through the bosses & be done, but as From has made the games more interestingly difficult & unique, these people can’t just face roll and abuse boss mechanics as easily as before. I also think it’s an ego thing with some because they can’t possibly see how they could be at fault for dying when a boss does a final villain anime attack at them. Like guys, we all died too. It’s hard. But it’s possible. Lots of people just need a perspective or mindset shift, but unfortunately they’ll just continue to shit talk the game and/or leave bad reviews.
Coming from a non-action game background, and Elden being my first souls game, I'm surprised at how many veteran players called Malenia unfair. I just got to her a few days back, and man, it's so much fun I backed up my data so I can fight her even after beating her. Finally a boss that teaches me how to play the game.
I think cheese is ok in some situations. Like the horse dude guarding Lyndell, he never stops jumping around and attacking for the level you are when trying to first go to Lyndell (I used poison mist cheese). Also, the bell bearing hunter that spawns at the Caelid isolated merchant shack. He also never stops attacking, but there are other mobs in the area so you can be trying to fight and just get dropped by the giant dog, and his attacks hit like a truck (so I did the cheese where I jump to the roof just shoot him with crossbow😂). I beat the game and most of the DLC but these two gave me problems, I was prob underleveled. Some ashes of war are not used enough, like vow of indomitable (timing it right allows you to negate one shot mechanics, kind of like cheese lol).
@@xdarthpool6463 Chessing is always okay. People can play however they want. I only have a problem when players act like Fromsoft made the bosses “unfair” or “bullshit” and is forcing them to play a certain way. Like nahh, if you lack the skill or patience or time to beat a boss & have to adapt in ways that make it easier to manage, then that’s on the player. The fact that ER was beaten hitless in far less time compared to the older games says enough. Took years & years before someone did it with Dark Souls. ER was like maybe a couple months at most. The boss telegraphs are super on point & adding in many other ways to dodge or avoid dmg like the different skills & jumping makes the combat even more dynamic for me.
@@dawsong5208Not to take away from your comment. I will always argue the 'let people play how they want' argument because these are the same people that watch a video being told how to play the game and play in a certain way, so they aren't playing how they want and they don't even realise it.
Great video! Hopefully it'll help people! Personally, I've always treated these games as RPGs and hard roleplayed a character, which typically meant my first char was a rogue with daggers and a bunch of self-imposed restrictions on playstyle (e.g., light load, no shields, no magic, etc.). If I ever felt stuck and wanted to speed up the boss learning process, I'd watch someone on youtube do a hitless kill and adapt their strategy to my character. That's it.
Very inspirational content. Thanks. Elden Ring is my first Soulsborne and I freaking am in love. I use Ashes sometimes but going through DLC on NG2 around lvl170 at the moment and freaking loving how "difficult" it is.
@@loopinefought fortissax for the first time ever earlier and I melted him. Granted, I was 150 with the dragon katana, but idk, insert the “I thought you were stronger” meme.
Coming from Monster Hunter, I developed a mantra that I carried back when Demon Souls released and it carried me through all of Fromsoft's games, and it is always my creed to defeat Souls bosses alone first with the heaviest, clunkiest and slowest weapon imaginable. A simple mantra of "If it doesn't work, how about this one?", basically trial and error, memorization and patience, every boss had a loophole, every move they had had a window to punish, every boss attack had a distinct way of avoiding it. Just this simple rule for me made these games enjoyable, experimental and fun.
This is one of the best videos I've seen breaking down FromSoftware core mechanics. I have a job, a child for which I am primary caretaker, and a writing hobby that I'm trying to turn into a side job or full time career. I still have time to play Elden Ring, going deep into role playing and fashion souls without summons or shields. Now to be fair, I definitely don't have any time to play anything else, this has been my only new game since it came out, but I've gotten into the DLC and I'm having a blast. I slogged and grinded through Bloodborne when I was a single guy with zero dependents, and I probably couldn't have learned how to play these games any other way, but there's no excuse for not having enough time. It took me a long time to beat the base game and it'll take me a long time to beat SOTE because I can only play so much. I've already sacrificed about an hour of sleep each night just to get back into the game, and in a few weeks I'll have to pretty much sideline it for the rest of the summer, but Elden Ring is by far the best $100 I've spent gaming wise between the base game and expansion. It'll satisfy me for years, even more than Bloodborne did. Getting into that "read and react" flow and dance of these games is the best gaming feeling I've had outside of playing New Vegas.
Well put. I will be interested to see your DLC content considering the discourse surrounding it. I think what frustrates me with these debates is just the degree of hyperbole coming from people that don’t like the new style of bosses. You’ll often hear people talk about every boss having “literally no punish windows” or “90 second combo strings with a single R1 punish” when that’s never the case. These things are just objectively wrong and represent a lack of real experimentation. I honestly think it’s understandable for some people to prefer reaction based rolling and more naturalistic animation timing (as Anderson prefers), but I can’t stand when those people attempt to spin it as some kind of malfunction on the boss’s end.
there are several bosses in the DLC that I would say are Malenia's level of difficulty, but they all are doable and I beat them all with claymore and medium load. Some took 3-4 hours ofc, but that is ok.
My favorite is "Armor doesn't matter" 🤣 This was only partly true in the old defense system fromsoft used pre ds3 days that was only flat defense. In DS1 for example a fully upgraded regular titanite light armor at higher levels was like 250 phys defense, medium armor at same level around 325-350, Giant's armor is 400+. Now you take progressively more damage and you start to see the difference between them gets very small the higher damage you take. Now add ng+es and even small hits start doing big damage. This is of course ignoring passive poise. DS2 armor actually mattered but only because the defense numbers were giga bloated compared to other flat defense games. Light armor 350 but heaviest armors could go like 1350. Fast forward to the modern defense system they use in DS3/ER you now get flat defense from your stats and level up to a cap and %damage reduction from armor/rings/buffs etc. This system reduces damage via flat defense first and then %DR effectively making sure the 1 damage hollows in undead burg never happen again (unless extreme scenario). But also now you take lets say 500-900-1300 damage respectively with both light and heavy armor. 130 flat def on both, 15% light armor, 40% heavy. Light takes: 315-658-995 damage Heavy takes: 222-482-662 damage It's already a huge difference and it's only using armors as base. No rings, no buffs no nothing. This is how I've been able to facetank hyper armor through every boss in the ER DLC IN NG+7 while people complain it's too hard 😂 And unlike others who use this type of setup to trivialise and learn nothing, it just helps me learn the bosses faster since I'm alive for more mechanics. Messmer was a masterclass boss in this DLC so far, best in the whole game with very fair moveset (Haven't done top left part of the map yet after messmer but did everything else) I think Bayle was the worst so far but only because the long range fire breath he does would bounce off the ground randomly hitting me. Just because of that I stacked 93% fire res... There must be a way to avoid that though.
To clarify: defense in DS1 was excellent in NG0, starting from NG+1 even common soldiers were doing a lot. DS2 is the worst in the equation because the physical defense you see is a lie (elemental was a % boost where if you reach 900 you would nullify everything, I say 900 instead of 1,000 because there’s an invisible 100 defense stat in you no matter what) Physical defense, however, was actually a detriment! If you see 1,250 in an armor, for example, the actual damage that would be eaten up was just 250, 1/5 of the actual number shown, so by the time you enter the DLC at ng0, you would still take lots of damage. It doesn’t end there though, stamina regeneration has several tiers, basically everytime you go to a multiplier of 10, like 20, 30, 40 etc on your equip load, you’d get a different stamina regeneration speed, the higher the number, the slower the regeneration. Basically, if you were wearing armor, you were nerfing yourself. DS3’s overhaul was needed, BY FAR.
Bayle's long range fire breath just has good tracking and you need to put more effort in moving away to the side, especially with the aid of a sprinting jump. I bet what happens is that the tracking has a degree range relative to his body it can move in, so you could theoretically start at one side of the range and dodge towards the other side of the range, giving him double the tracking distance you'd expect. But that's just a the--
It's laughable how people are pretending that learning boss patterns is a new thing and hasn't been a stable of games for decades, I have a 9 to 5 job and I'm not that much of a peak gamer but I can beat six remembrance bosses in the DLC with no spirit ashes and no summons or guides of any kind.
Anderson is going to fellate himself so much like with the Radahn nerf because they now allow Torrent for Elden Beast. "I was right, they just forgot to turn it on. I'm genius!"
18:08 I agree. Having just finished a run in which I often used a shield I learned this. Similarly, instead of holding block during an entire combo, only blocking when an attack came in turned getting guard broken in 2 hits into being able to tank twice as many and have some stamina leftover for a punish
Only halfway through but great video! The section about the history of soulsborne difficulty complaints was well done. I think it’s interesting how the people who complain about the difficulty are almost always people who are too prideful to use the tools fromsoft has put in to make the game easier, yet not determined enough to learn bosses and see them through.
I think another thing people don't use is consumables. they are far more common, versatile, and powerful than many previous games, to the point that in my opinion, your typical build should be running them as a ranged option, even if just to keep poise on. there is a consumable for every build imaginable, so every build has a ranged option.
An obscure phenomenon that also funnels in this mentality is that a lot of bosses' attacks can be avoided by both crouching and jumping but everyone insisting that rolling is the only evasion method
people who don't like the difficulty just don't like the game and are upset that from will not cater to their power fantasy, and their egos are too fragile to admit this. thank you loopine
I’m surprised at the amount of people that were expecting from to “learn from their mistakes in the base game” and make a bunch of DS3 bosses. There’s a decent amount of people that think Elden ring boss design was a mistake and fromsoft was supposed to fix this in the dlc lol
In the DLC, with max scadurtree blessing, the verdigris armor, dragoncrest shield talisman, boiled crab and the defense tear, you get over 80 damage absorption on every type of physical damage. That allows to survive plenty of hits, even against the last boss. You do that, learn the moveset of hard bosses, and when you feel confident enough, you can switch to something else if you want.
Comment for algorithm! I love these videos, now the DLC bosses are making people cope more. Some people want the mind numbing DS3 bosses, it’s why I’m happy Sekiro & ER exist, they’re levels above DS3 & BB, and DLC takes it up a notch, it has some of the best bosses ever made. I can get behind almost every boss Elden Ring throws at you, except that 2nd phase of the final DLC boss, one of the worst designed moveset/aggression I’ve ever seen.
The best tip I've ever gotten was from one of my buddies who is a long time souls vet was "Don't get hit." Now, it sounds simple and like a "yeah, duh" kinda phrase, but it really is that easy. It's all about the engagement of your brain and what is going on with the enemies/boss on screen.
A thing is A vocal part of the community are adamant about no summons I am more than willing to summon and be summoned for fights When i did an early boss, i tried the fight solo for a while, starting to consistently hit phase 2 And when i could comfortably get down to their name in health. I tried with the mimic tear and won Now i like being summoned for the fight since its a gatekeepr to the dlc, and i think its a really fun fight
One piece of advice I tell new friends trying out these games, is not to have your muscle memory default to r1’s as a basic attack. Nope. Your r2 is your basic attack you want to try to use against everything. Your lights are there for when you need a faster attack under a given circumstance, like when you know you can follow up with one. If you know you have the time to pull off a slower, stronger attack, like literally any time an enemy is running at you from 10’ away, charge your basic r2. And Rolling r1’s work great for most weapons for getting hits off mid combo. Mohg can really teach you how to do this. Good thing his amazing, challenging fight (when you don’t “comet azur lol” him) a prerequisite for the dlc. Once you learn these, you can then learn how great jump attacks are for openers, and when to do them in other places. Every person’s gameplay I recommended that to improved. You know all it took for them to feel better? Getting more staggers and ripostes. Who would’ve thunk? Greater engagement with the game leads to a better feeling.
I can't wait 'till you play and talk about Mesmer and Bayle. Those represent the ultimate Soulsborne boss archetype: various branches for combos, different positions to punish or bait them and multiple actions to avoid attacks. Even the less interesting main bosses do explore those ideas in eloquent ways. And also, they made Elden Beast so much better.
Bro if you want to see some shit that will make you endlessly cringe go on Anderson's video check recent comments and see all the people saying 'omg you were right they added Torrent to EB!' as if Anderson was the only one that mentioned that...😂 They definitely listened to his boss criticisms lol. They dialed all that shit up to 11!
As a hot take I would say that Torrent wouldn't necesarily be the ideal solution, as some attacks would be completely pointless when you use It. It wasnt really a fight though for Torrent usage, despite what Anderson and 60% of the community says. Although its interesting that this changes the niche of the fight from hard to an espectacle one, which seeing It like this, could be seen as better as It removes tedium considering its fought after Radagon.
@@BBQcheese I found it cute. As if no one else had that complaint. Thankfully the bosses are even more relentless. Can't wait to see him blame them while the average player (like myself) has already learned how to consistently fight most of them. Btw, how has your journey been through the Lands of Shadows?
@@JoseViktor4099 Well articulated take. I think some attacks make Torrent a bad idea, like the sword slashes or whenever it jumps over you. Closing gaps and using mounted combat gives more layers of depth and adds another main boss that utilizes Torrent. I think it overall improves the fight and makes it undeniably good.
@@enman009 It was great up until the end. I genuinely hate the final boss. One of the worst experiences I've had in gaming. It's a damn shame too because it was like 11/10 up until that point.
If anything, this video was a real eye opener. I struggled with the dlc even with mimic and instead of blaming the game I’ve decided to take the time to actually learn the bosses. I’m still gonna use summons to finish the dlc but I’m slowly incorporating what you said into my gameplay and my very next run will be all bosses with no summons(minus npc summons cuz they are fun)
@@loopine I won’t go into details since you haven’t played it yet but there was a boss in the dlc that really hammered home that I need to start learning. It would punish the hell out of you for healing in the Neutral. Very few games make me feel good leaving my comfort zone. DMCV, doom eternal and now elden ring.
I’m not surprised. He used the same meta build and the same attack during his playthrough of the base game. I’d get so bored doing that. I tried everything I could apart from summons as I wanted to solo it
Actually watched this video this time. Incoming long comment. I really enjoyed the video. I've been playing through the DLC (no spoilers) and recently thought to myself that Elden Ring has my favorite combat system in any Fromsoft game now that I've adjusted my mindset to the game (very much aligned with what you described in the video.) A common reddit meme was that in Elden Ring, the bosses get to have all the fun while players are now just stuck idling while watching a bunch of bullshit anime attacks while the player doesn't get any tools of their own. It's total bullshit! As you describe Elden Ring gives you so many dynamic options for fighting bosses and the long combos and delayed attacks are meant to be opportunities for the player to *actively* participate in the fight instead of waiting for their turn. When a boss has a long combo with some sort of delayed attack in the middle, that's supposed to be an opening for the player to get a quick attack in, recover stamina, or move to a better position to punish during the combo's end recovery. Unlike in Dark Souls, I actually feel like a seasoned warrior squaring up against literal Gods on my own merits. One thing I think you left out was Guard Counters. Not ideal if you don't have a shield, but you can use them with any two-handed weapon to get the full posture damage of a charged R2 without needing to commit to that long animation. Incorporating that into my play style opened up a lot of opportunities for keeping pressure on bosses. And because Parry posture is a different meter than Posture damage, if you can incorporate both you can pull off repostes left and right. Anyways I hope this video takes off because the reddit consensus on this game frustrates me with how eager people are to throw around claims of "bad game design". I hope Fromsoft continues to refine and iterate in what they've done in Elden Ring on future Soulslikes.
@@loopine Hell yeah. And btw because I respect your taste you introduced me to a lot of new music in your Elden Ring soundtrack video, so thanks for that.
Not to mention whenever you call them out for their sophistry, they play the victim card and call you a normie fromsoft fanboy, who is the sole reason why they can't make good games anymore and how people like you just keep shutting them down cause apparently, you're just a fanboy who don't want to see their game "come under criticism".
I used to really struggle with Elden Rings boss difficulty. I managed to beat the game but it was by using OP weapons like Moonveil and Rivers of blood. I still had fun but thought the old games were better. I though the bosses attacks were too fast, too often and too damaging. But after watching some high level elden ring gameplay I realised I had completely discarded most of the games moveset. I never jumped in boss fights which is why I found some attacks unfair. I never tried to charged heavy instead either jump attack spamming of ash of war spamming and I also completely ignored Vgr and good armour for the most part since I could do that in the previous games. But the dlc made me take a step back and learn the mechanics and now I believe that without a doubt Elden Ring has the best combat in fromsoft games. Its just so modular and can fit almost every build. And while some are stronger than other its fun to just experiment and have fun, not just worry about pure damage. Also quick side note you're gameplay in this video was so satisfying to watch. I aspire to be able to play elden ring as good as you.
It has been absolutely mind boggling watching people try to pick apart Elden Rings boss design without them even trying to learn how to approach the bosses. Even wilder how many people have said it over and over about how bosses cheat, input read, and have no openings to go on and say that they are "objectively" badly designed bosses when their reasoning can easily be disproved by numerous kill videos. Really grinds my goat too how many people are just straight up disrespectful to the developers thinking they're creating artificially difficult bosses to keep up fromsofts appearances. So thanks for this great video that stabs at the heart of the problem, where people need to address how the approach and learn bosses before becoming backseat game devs making reasons why these "impossible" bosses cant be fairly beaten. i love you
OMG, I do love the game, but you just made it a lot easier and more fun. I tried the method on the onyx lord and three times and done. This and I didn't understand half of what you said. Thank you.
There’s nothing better then getting 2hit by a boss you are fighting for the first time, then surviving 4 hits, then 6, and then eventually you can dodge everything.
I have to admit, the repetition of bosses and enemies never bothered me as it just allows me to improve in those fights. And what you're saying is 100% true, I most dislike having to fight enemies I've never properly learned to fight, but it's just a mindset issue at that point.
For whatever reason, i never realized the bosses were reacting to my positioning DURING their combos. This resulted in my believing there were more random combination chains than a boss actually has. I legit can't believe my ignorance to this, as I've been playing souls games since ds2
This video is great, I was one of those people who whined about ER on launch, and I also whined about the DLC damage without even knowing what scadutree did so I went through 20% of the dlc whilst getting two tapped.
I’m still surprised that so many people have gotten mixed up by the scadutree blessings. Maybe it’s just because I’ve always been inclined explore as much as possible before taking on legacy dungeons, so the new upgrade system fit right into place.
My Watchdog’s Greatsword with barbaric roar run is going great 👍 A certain (typically second remembrance, no spoilers) boss gave me the Malenia treatment again, just had to grit my teeth and learn their move set. And I had a blast! I love spacing attacks and the (barring a few) clean asf hitboxes. This game was made for me
So I know this video is dealing with the combat part but I just want to add a personal anecdote in relation to Elden Ring particularly the dlc. My biggest challenge in the dlc so far has been trying to figure out how to reach a spot that I could view from a side of the cliff (not giving names to avoid spoilers). Point is, I tried to approach that spot of the map from 5 or 6 different wild direction, in hopes that Id find a cave or a ledge or an upwards curve that leads me to it. In that process though I discovered parts of the map, of the lands that were artistically stunning but also just very fun to play on. Some combat, some new gear and some more power ups. I guess my point is that the game really does reward your observations and your patience. I pieced out realizations about the game’s world based on where I ended up going to. It was and still is quite fun (not done with dlc). I guess I am saying that it would be nice if we could talk about how this game genuinely encourages experimentation in so many ways including combat. The fact that people are concluding so fast without experimentation that the game is too hard, is a bit disheartening. The bosses are manageable honestly. Im okay as a Souls player. I am just keeping some alternate weapons and have a build themed to optimise them. It helps with boss encounters that might not be ideal for one type of weapon.
My favorite game as a kid was megaman 2. I loved figuring out what weapon to use on the bosses, even though dying and having to redo the whole level each time was a pain, learning the levels was part of the fun. I remember being able to easily get to the castle without dying at one point and feeling like an absolute badass gamer. Then i worked to beating the whole game without dying. This is what elden ring reminds me of. I hadnt played games in almost 15 years and elden ring brought me back. Now i play as many of these types of games as i can, people need to see the feeling you get when you accomplish something that feels impossible.
There’s no excuse to not beat this game all by your own except not liking it. I am a neurosurgery resident who have beaten the entire game at level 1 including the dlc with no scadutres blessing
So cool to hear you compare souls and fighting games. I came from fighting games and I found it scratching a similar itch. great work as always man, greetings!
I use my mimic tier to get the boss into 2nd phase quickly then return them. Once I have the second phase down decently I will start soloing and eventually beat it solo.
Like Gino says learn and *then* win, people always try to win first and then get frustrated, instead of going in not expecting to beat the boss but just gather data and practice. Then after a while you’ll be much better equipped and confident you can take out the boss. Great video again bro! All of these principles you mention apply in the DLC. I think you’re going to enjoy it
This is a fantastic video. I’d just like to add that cutting yourself off from help, at least to some degree, and puzzling and persevering through the challenges posed, is a vastly more fun and rewarding way to play the game. One of the things that makes FromSoft games so special is Miyazaki is willing to forego a certain amount of mass market appeal to make a game that is challenging and that rewards you for overcoming the challenge. These experiences are rare in today’s world, but important, because bringing that same attitude to LIFE is actually crucial. If people can use these games as an opportunity, or training, on how to meet challenges, and on how to build confidence in the face of tough challenges, then that becomes a remarkable, positive legacy for them.
Some people will say this mega guide is too over-bloated and clickbait for a rant video, but I think the first half of the video is essential in setting up your frame of mind to receive and actually make use of the advice that comes in the second half of the video
This is a terrible video. He is talking about specific situations, which need visual clues, yet he is showing completely unrelated game footage meanwhile. And he yet he is the calling others morons...
@@viktordoe1636 How the hell is he talking about specific situations? Taking time to observe the boss, learning their different responses to your reactions, that's as general advice as possible
Bro, thank you so much! This video is spoken beautifully. It's exactly what I needed to help reset my mindset and beat Mesmer. Thank you very Much! I really appreciate voices like yours in the fromsoft community. You have an excellent way of explaining the aspects and functions of these games that can't be misunderstood, in my opinion. I look forward to watching your playthrough of the dlc it's amazing!
Another strategy for bosses that let you use Torrent is to take advantage of that to get higher jump dodges and to quickly reposition. Just get on and off torrent frequently and don't stay on him too long as it's risky. Torrent also has a dismount that allows you to either get a jump dodge (and do a jumping r2) as well as massive i-frames on the standing dismount so you can dodge anything.
Bonus tip: if you see bosses doing long combos with very fast attacks that come out faster than a roll, immediately you should be thinking about trying to strafe or jump it. If it's just one fast follwop, then sometimes the solution is rolling the first hit earlier or rolling both in roll or rolling a specific direction to positionally avoid the followup.
Also, if you dont believe me about combo flowcharts in previous games, here is the chart of Soul of Cinder's possible moves JUST from his sword phase
imgur.com/a/soc-sword-phase-re-upload-S3jAeeG
It's important to realize that in most fights Torrent is best used for a dragoon playstyle, mounting to move and dismounting to fight. It's very viable and very fun to play fully mounted against Night's Cavalry and Tree Sentinels, but especially for fights like the overworld dragons or Fire Giant, it's important to make use of this core part of your toolkit in a way that meshes well with the game.
Personally, I don't like dragoon-style as much as I like pure mounted combat, and wish it was viable against more bosses but that's not technically a game quality issue.
If a fight allowed for Torrent I beat it mounted on Torrent, not wasting that opportunity, I'm probably one of the few people besides Rurikhan who loves mounted combat in Elden Ring 😅
@@AscendantStoic I love it visually and thematically though find the fight style itself kind of annoying (mostly because for some reason I'm just terrible at stamina management while mounted). But riding into battle on a glorious steed facing a giant fire-breathing dragon made the child in me scream in excitement. So goddamn epic.
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As a 70 year old Mouse and Keyboard user with stiff finger joints and geezer reflexes, I found Elden Ring ridiculously difficult. The only way I was able to play the game with any possibility of survival was thanks to the hundreds of RUclipsrs that suggested many different types of builds, and explained how buffs, talismans, ashes of war, etc worked, and gave directions on where to find resources needed. It has been a long, painful learning curve but now I am reasonably competent at several different builds. I have found that what I thought were bullshit fights with particular bosses were really just a difficulty with my build, weapons, and setup. I have learned to respec my character to suit different bosses and am actually enjoying the game with less worry of a heart attack. I fear that the combat in all other games will disappoint me now.
Yea I’m 50 and I certainly don’t have the reflex’s that I did when I was young plus arthritis in my left hand. Elden ring is possible to complete solo if ur willing to try to use what’s at ur disposal. Most bosses are weak to strike slash or pierce and a particular debuff. I tried to always vary my defence not just rolling but blocking parrying and jumping which is amazingly effective in this game. Yeah it can get frustrating at times but that’s what makes success real. Nothing good is ever easy. We old people know that. I played the game blind so I never found the summons bell on first playthrough. I’m going to use it with my magic build tho as it seems apposite
You sir are an absolute legend. Keep the fight alive!
🫡
I just turned 48 and I want to be like you when I grow up.
My boy debunking boss misinformation since day 1. Gimme 3 days and Rellana will be hitless with a zwei
it cant hit you if its dead before it stops being stagger locked. kind of the point of Collossal weapons
@@zeehero7280 Can't do that to bosses tho
Christ he fucking did it lol
I didn’t engage too much with the online discourse until after I finished the dlc. I no lifed the whole thing over the weekend in my little bubble alongside my friends. I played the whole thing without summons and had a wonderful time learning the boss movesets, exploring the world, found the whole thing really fair (with some very minor exceptions), and thought this was the strongest boss roster from software has ever put out. So imagine my surprise when I go online and see people whining about how hard it is, getting one shot, and saying you have to use summons because every boss is overtuned to hell and back. I didn’t find it easy, I died to some bosses for upwards of five hours, but I knew what I was getting into, stayed patient, and learned from my mistakes. The discourse around this dlc has been nothing short of awful, but finding this video gives me some hope that there is still people out there that are still people out there willing to engage with the games and find fun in the struggle to overcome the challenge.
👍👍👍
Well put. I very much enjoyed the difficulty of the dlc, even if on some bosses I summoned (like Rellana phase 2, Gaius and final boss phase 2) to have a bit of a break.
Aside from a fight here or there, they felt aggressive but had enough downtime to get in a heal or another attack. Some fights weren’t even aggressive at all, they were much more slow (Putrescent, Romina, Gaius, and those are just remembrances).
My biggest issue lies not with the difficulty but with the barrenness of the world. Sure the areas look neat but often it’s a lot of trekking on Torrent. I don’t even know why Charo’s Grave has to exist, it’s such a nothing area. Same with the abyssal woods. I think a lot of the fat of the world could’ve been cut and it would’ve helped a lot. Also, some of the weapons seem pretty underpowered, but I bet a future patch will buff things like we saw in the base game. The dlc gets a solid 8/10 for me.
Completely agree, theres people already doing rl1, no blessings, and people still think the dlc is "too hard". They played even ring too many times and got used to memorizing the base game boss movesets and forgot they have to do it again with the dlc bosses. The whole fun of souls games to me isn't defeating a boss in under 5 tries, but defeating a boss after 5 hours.
"Staying upwards of five hours" is what people are complaining about. Boss movesets aren't hard to learn, they just take too much time to learn because of how many combos they have. More of the same is not necessarily better. The puzzle is not harder or more complex by having you do the same thing more. This is simply a memorisation and patience challenge, which is not fun.
@raizan1526 Learning and understanding complex boss patterns and figuring out how to counter them with your own build and playstyle is very enjoyable to a lot of Souls fans, those who aren't interested in that can always summon other players/spirit ashes or use any of the popular broken builds.
Imagine learning a boss smh my head
Couldn't be me 😤
Hey Nathan, do you not stream anymore? I keep checking twitch to see if you were streaming the dlc...
@@BBQcheesedo you have discord? I'll discuss there.
@@NathanSavageDamage
I don't I'm sorry I should really get it because people keep asking...
>not greatshield poking
Yo i just want to thank you for being a voice of reason throughout ER's lifetime. Listening to the community has been a depressing experience, but your videos have helped reaffirm my love for thia game and especially helped me to learn to love even the bosses I once believed were total bullshit.
Somehow using game mechanics is now a "cheese" in the souls community. Use a shield poke, you cheesed the boss. Use a bleed build, you cheesed the boss. I always thought cheesing a boss was when people would sneak up to and poison the tree sentinel. Or go to the edge of Radahns arena and let him phase 2 crash into the ocean. Now it is apparently doing anything but dodging your way around the arena.
I get where they’re coming from
Shieldpoking can be very braindead as you just hold up a shield and attack instead of engaging with the boss
And bleed can dramatically shorten a fight by taking chunks of healthbar
But they’re not cheesing
Exploiting game mechanics in an unintended fashion like drowning radahn and poisoning the tree sentinel are cheesing, in radahn’s case you’re making him fall out of bounds by forcing him to land there, and the tree sentinel I guess is a gray area, but personally quitting out is the only way I’ve been able to get behind him so that’s abusing the fact enemies lose aggro when you quit out
Use whatever you want as long as you’re having fun.
I just had a funny imagine of someone who calls all of the stronger builds, consumables, spells/incants, AoWs, weaps, etc cheese, watch another play Witcher 3 on Death March and say that they're cheesing cause they're using alchemy to capitalize on the weaknesses of each monster that they've read up IN GAME AS PART OF ITS LORE, lmao.
Funny times we live in.
Shield poking is fantastic, where else am I gonna live my Roman centurion fantasies? The spear was always the best weapon during this period, besides, it’s revenge, DS3 royally screwed spears and thrusting swords with a bug that never got fixed, it’s high time that STR got alternatives from the naked Barbarian with a giant hammer rolling like the thief
@@EldenRingBuildsArchive PREACH! We gotta follow the ways of our ancestors ; 3 Hoplite chads arise.
Man, the first 5 minutes define my experience with this community since I started getting deep into it. Without spoiling anything, Messmer is literally one of the best bosses in Elden Ring for a lot of reasons shared with the best bosses in the main game, and some people are talking about him like if he was Bed of Chaos, it's crazy. I've been hearing this takes about Sekiro and Elden Ring for years, turning, as you said, into "We wer wrong, but the game didn't teach us well" or just "Yeah, we were just wrong".
It's so exhausting to see people saying that "you are not able to keep up with this bosses", the same people that roll Margit's poke into him, get hit by the daggers and get angry, instead of learning that you can strafe it and safely do a lot of damage in a big punish window. They are scrubs, and if you call them out, they starts calling you an "elitist" or a "freak". Man, how the fuck does it make sense to call me a freak for showing you factual evidence about why you are wrong and bad at the game? I can't with this people man ☠. This are the same guys that say "Elden Ring gives you the same moveset and options and ds3 while having much harder bosses". This is not true, in fact, you are just showing that you are playing this game as Ds3, which is a horrible mistake that makes bosses much harder than they should be
There’s a horrible post on the Elden Ring subreddit right now that does exactly what you’re describing, it has like 12k upvotes and the amount of brainrot in the comments is unbelievable
@@anonymous01201 I may have seen it, but there where a lot of them so idk, this whole thing with the DLC has gone crazy. Do you remember the title of the post? I want to laugh a little lmao
@@rayzu4380 " Elden ring players attempting to "punish" a boss with two consecutive light attacks after dodging 10 second long 15+ attack chain combos with AOE spam" and a picture of a tarnished with the caption "Damn, I got greedy". It has 43k upvotes now lmao
@@anonymous01201 Lmao ☠, thanks you, I'll check it out
@anonymous01201 So it's clear based on the numbers that the vast majority of players feel a certain way, but you guys are just correct I guess.
Addendum: Iron Pineapple, in a pinned comment from his Shadow lf The Erdtree review, he stated that the whole debate about difficulty and bosses in ER made him feel jaded. I think this is why many content creators and commenters are criticizing those saying that ER is overtuned and bosses are bad. This is the same dance I saw since DS2 DLCs, and it's been the constant trend for these games.
Thankfully we're showing critical thinking and refuting, respectfully, when there's space for discussion.
God I love that you’re here to quickly bring some sanity into the mix. Seeing people immediately fall back on the “wah wah input reading long combos etc” whining after quite literally a fucking day of the DLC being out was astonishing. I don’t understand these bosses yet either, even the ones I’ve beaten, but isn’t that a good thing? Thank you for doing what you do and combating the consistent laziness, entitlement and misinformation spouted by so many the community.
I’m willing to bet a lot of these people who are whining treated the dlc as a boss rush mode and refused to explore, and when they got one shot by the last few bosses at blessing level 6 they blamed the game for it.
It absolutely isn't a good thing in a souls game, but that ship has long since sailed and there's no coming back.
@@drphilsranch6782 I thought that not having to explore because you may find it boring was a positive of the base game. Now you're stupid if you still don't find the exploration fun, but the game forces it on you?
@@drphilsranch6782 send them to the scholar of the first sin
I beat the DLC and think both the base game and the dlc are 10/10, but input reading, long ass combos, delayed attacks and borderline undodgeable attacks (radahn's cross slash), are simply ludicrous and unexcusable, there are some impecable boss designs in this game, buth others are just utter shit, miyazaki tried too much to stretch the fine line between difficult and dumb
On your points about why you did the challenge run... You were right. You and Nathan's Radagon win you showcased in your original video were what inspired me to start doing my own challenge runs.
And on that note, I did my first RL1 run blind. I didn't look up anything or ask anyone for help at all until Malenia where I asked Brian for help. I went through the area before Maliketh with the birds and dragon WITHOUT GAMBIT! It was brutal and my point is DON'T DO THIS!
What you said about watching your favorite challenge runners and applying their tactics is so on point. I've done at least a dozen RL1 runs since including +0 and it's so much more fun and easy when you talk to the community. Every single person I've talked to in the challenge run community has been incredibly gracious and helpful. No one has ever shamed me or called skill issue on me for asking questions.
I've gotten tons of really good advice. I was struggling super hard with Radagon RL1+0 and someone said you're getting in your head about it, back up your save do it at +15 just to get a win and give yourself a confidence boost then try again. Genius! I did this and got the kill within the day!
Moral of the story is absolutely NOBODY can learn it all on their own and even the worlds best players share strategies and help each other AND it's more fun that way so don't hold yourself to an absurd and unnecessary standard.
funny how my choice of a zweihander in my run was also because of loopine lol
@@ramen3643
Yeah I chose the club because of Nathan. Still my favorite weapon also!
Glad to see you asking for help. It's difficult to be humble at times, when you're susceptible to dismissive comments. It's why I love the co-op experience in these games, helping others through tribulation gives meaning to the challenge you endured. I think asking for help is the same.
Yea mang, its not just challenge runs either. Anything we do in life we learn from and are inspired by the greats. Noone is expected to learn the piano devoid from any other input.
@@loopine Exactly.
Real life sparring made me better in Elden Ring because it helped me get away from the "health is the number of mistakes you're allowed" mentality. Real life sparring taught me that getting hit sucks, especially hard in the face. But the worst thing you can do is to focus on "not getting hit" because that will just let the other person pummel you. You need to hit back, but if you just focus on hitting your opponent you'll be left wide open. Instead you need to hit and protect at the same time. Move to their blindside where they can't hit you, and lay it on them. Move, defend and attack all in one motion. And sometimes you want to take a hit so that you can counter it. If you prepare for the punch or kick, then you know where to strike, where they now are weak.
HP and flasks are not the number of mistakes you are allowed. They are a resource that you can choose to spend. Take a hit so that you can hit back twice as hard. Take a gamble. Defend by attacking, defend when attacking, position to attack and defend at the same time. Just like in real life.
Now that's the mentality of a true tarnished warrior.
Killed Consort Radahn this way. I could not see the posture bar and the attacks that were coming did not give me windows big enough for anything more than a Greatspear R1, but I knew when he was close to breaking. And so I just did my biggest attacks, got hit, got massive damage on him and even had flasks to spare at the end of the fight.
Yes that’s what makes the game so good u need to mix defence and offence up. Jump and attack attacking out of a roll etc. why would a boss just stand there allowing u to whale on him? That makes no sense
Dude figured out how poise works before typing all this nonsense
@@mynamejef7963 I'm not talking about poise and hit trading. I'm talking about not viewing getting hit as making a mistake, and about focusing on killing the boss instead of avoiding damage.
Souls vets love to tell people to "git gud" until they have to git gud themselves. The response to the DLC from Souls vets saying it's too hard has really soured my view on the community.
These “souls vets” have no backbone. All they want is for the game they like to seem difficult and hardcore to people who don’t play it, but actually be easy and mindless for them. That’s why everyone who complains about Elden Ring being “unfair” seems to put DS3 as their favorite in the series, because it’s by far the easiest (aside from maybe Demon’s Souls, but I haven’t played that one, so I wouldn’t know.)
Nice generalization bro
@@drphilsranch6782The dlc was meant to humble the souls vets. They thought they were gonna go in with their level 400 builds and one shot all the bosses 💀 got humbled real fast
Asmongold types are NOT "souls vets". JS.
My view was soured already, from the souls vets reception to the base game.
I am convinced people do not want a dynamic moveset that feels different and fresh everytime you fight a boss. People want predictable ds3 movesets that just requires roll attack roll attack repeatedly. LEARN THE DAMN FIGHT 👏👏👏
@@bigsmall2842 you cannot be serious, you cannot get by the final boss by spam rolling and attacking. It’s probably the most mechanic intensive fight, with regards to knowing positioning and dodge timing.
A lot of the fun comes from making an inconsistent boss consistent, forcing them down flowchart branches that keep you in control. Isshin is probably the most severe example, with like a hundred moves you don't ever have to see.
@@jamesarthurkimbell That’s why Isshin still remains my favourite boss FromSoft has made moveset wise
Ds3 bosses are leagues better than any single Elden Ring boss
@@rohansensei5708 Messmer is better than any boss from DS3 (including Gael) and Bayle as a Dragon fight is on par with Midir. Just because Elden Ring fight tend to be more aggressive doesn’t mean they in any way lack quality
About the DLC difficulty rant, let's not forget that Bandai Namco had to LITERALLY officially remind people to use the DLC scaling blessings. Miyazaki already said that we'll feel weak in the DLC, and DLC would have it's own scaling to help raise our damage and defense. They had to OFFICIALLY remind people to use the DLC scaling because people just didn't use them and kept smashing their heads against a brick wall and then complained "It's too difficult and unfair!!" They had to officially remind people to engage with a mechanic that Miyazai SAID would be necessary and was heavily advertised.
You ignore the core fundamental mechanic you're gonna get your a*s beat. And people refuse to just accept that fact.
So true. Not to mention all of the geniuses that not only ignored the fragments but did so with a new game plus 5 or more character.
Think about that. Fromsoft is notorious for their DLC upping the challenge. They warned people they would need these fragments and these guys still came in by the thousands with new game plus 7 characters, ignored the core scaling mechanic that they would have missed 7 times in a row and said "games trash, bad design, unbalanced, I get one shotted by everything".
I mean, how do you even prepare for these guys? And there are so many. So many with viewers even. It's irritating.
Ppl stupid, as soon as i started the dlc I seen the scadu say it makes you more powerful, so then I upgraded that to like 6-8 right out the gate just exploring. And I beat most of the dlc bosses prenerf, but then again I have giant crusher build so I just stun lock most bosses. 😂
@@jamesbarnett5157it might be too late, but if you are getting two shoted try raise your damage absortion. I'm not kidding, it makes a really big difference and you shouldn't be getting 2 shoted often
@@jamesbarnett5157 change your armor, change your talismans. That will solve it for you
@@jamesbarnett5157No boss two shotted me, not even Radahn at +15 fragments. Damage absorption via talismans and just leveling up is enough to endure 3 or 4 hits, maybe even more.
Thanks for the video.
I am playing through the DLC at level 137 with a quality build (whose infusion gets the worst damage overall) and my friends who are at levels way higher than mine (200+) are having way more trouble than me.
It ultimately boils down to thoroughly exploring the open world to get stronger (via the new leveling system), using defense talismans and learning the patterns of a boss.
There's a boss (no spoilers) that has a very weird to dodge attack, but it will happen every time after an attack from a distance; so ultimately dodge in one direction twice. And yet there are tons of complaints about said boss online, many comments deeming him the "worst fromsoftware boss by far". And I was able to defeat him with an average weapon in like 30 minutes.
Moral of the story: fromsoftware fans usually enjoy easier games paradoxically
I can't dodge the attack consistently on a mid roll and I've been told by several people better than I it isn't consistent in a light roll either. I've talked to people who have hitless the boss and they said it's not consistent. Although I saw Aly mention you can backstep it with the new talismans for backsteps so that might be a solution. Ongbal deflected it but for some reason the deflection year expires after 5 minutes so that's not going to be a viable solution for low damage runs.
"""fans"""
@@BBQcheese it's a weird case, I remember dodging it to the side, it might have been the terrain. Also maybe torrents s may help, but it's just a hypothesis. Maybe it's also possible to jump away from it
@@lorenzo8208
We're talking about a different attack lol. It's hard tip toeing around because Lupine hasn't played and I don't wanna spoil it but the boss I'm referring to doesn't have torrent available.
@@BBQcheese I thought about Gaius. Then I guess I don't know lol
You have single handedly changed my mindset on ER. I’ve since been able to do no summon runs and even started working on RL1 runs and I’m having a blast. Honestly the DLC is challenging but not much more than late bosses in the base game.
Takes a grown up to admit wrongs. Also rare on the internet. So you're not alone, I am wrong about things too... there I said it.
Radahn was definitely nerfed, but the changes were not nearly as significant as players make it out to be.
As for Malenia... she was never nerfed in any way. The only changes were a bug being added, and then fixed. Her max hp is the same as it has always been.
The only way she got nerfed is indirectly -- When light roll was massively buffed, it became much easier to dodge certain attacks such as the fast double slash, triple slash and waterfowl dance.
Thanks. Btw for the people who is getting one shot on the DLC (I havent found any real one shot move, but yes very poweful attacks)
1-60 Vigor. You should afford it once you beat Mogh.
2- DragonCrest Greatshield.
3-Opaline Crystal Tear.
4-Crimson Medallion +3
5-(Optional) But armour is recommended.
6- Use the fragments for the sake of god, that lately had been buffed. 200% Damage you deal and 50% Damage received is too good.
With this setup I often tank along 4 hits, and at the very very very worst 2.
Btw, something I noted about the DLC is the complain that bosses have "way more posture". Thing is, if you still use your base game weapons you might not get a difference, but I noted that a lot of the new weapons like a magic and fire greatsword (I wont say the name to avoid spoilers as it is a remembrance weapon) are the new kind of "light greatswords" and wont do as much posture damage as a greatsword, and not even close to a ultragreatsword.
don’t forget boiled crabs sold by boggart, I like my low poise dex drip so I’m constantly applying those
@@thesnatcher3616he mentioned those, at step 6
@@darkmatter9643 Wow I'm braindead. My bad. They've been buffed too? Damn.
Or they can just pick up scadutree fragments. You can get a decent amount before even fighting one boss.
Holy shit... YES.
I think I've never agreed this much with every word spoken in a video about this topic before. I'm tired of the bandwagon opinions that aren't even self founded but rather copycat comments from "bigger" personalities of the past. Each game is different and Elden Ring has a lot of different approaches that are viable, perhaps not as much as DS2, but almost equally as such. This is not rollapalloza fro DS3 (which, don't get me wrong, I also love), this isn't Sekiro (although many fundamentals apply), this isn't counter city Bloodborne (although the focus on posture breaks and criticals are probably mostly resembling this)... this is _Elden Ring_ and it is balanced. Only move I find unbalanced is Waterfowl Dance, and yeah, I can dodge it, but it really does feel like a Sekiro attack in Elden Ring, but that's a topic for another day. I've done challenge runs of all kinds and I have to agree with everything you said here.
To that point, like half of the main bosses in the DLC have already been done base level, no Shadowrealm Blessing, hitless and no roll. So yeah Super impossible
I loved the video. I think the problem is that you won’t get the audience that needs to hear this. There are so many people who just want to get the reward since so many games taught us that you just get a reward. And so those people aren’t interested in learning and improving, because that means to fail a lot as we all know. They just want to be good and in my opinion these games always gave that option. They were always easy to cheese, easy to overlevel, and the dlc is no exception. It’s all there, people just haven’t realized it yet. Doing M as the 4th boss is problematic and the dlc is literally build to punish rushing.
What's so crazy is that I've literally seen comments talking about how they shouldn't be forced to spend hours "learning a boss and all its combos cause its too tedious and unfun to memorize". This would be fine if it was coming from someone who never touched hard games and mostly plays games like Mario, Zelda, Cod, etc. But it is baffling hearing it from a fanbase who has been doing this type of thing for years. Like no shit you're gonna need to strap in and sink in an hour or two to learn a boss. Its nothing new! Not to mention, lies about "random combos and delayed attacks" as well as "aoe spam" and "no punishment windows for heavy builds" is being perpretrated as usual. Insane stuff. Doesnt help that a lot of the videos saying this type of schlop have millions of views and come from popular video essayers(who honestly arent that great to begin with maybe outside of Demod and that's only cause the dude is one of the few who tends to go indepth with his personal boss rankings).
Underrated comment.
Learning the boss move set & slowly making progress has always been the most fun part of their games. Crazy that people just can’t accept a game as it is and have to blame it instead of admitting maybe it isn’t for them.
@@dawsong5208It gets worse. Saw parts of a video(it was called something along the lines of why the er dlc seems so hard) and he literally says two of the most ridiculous things I've heard(he likes the dlc btw but that's not gonna prevent me from calling out the bs). He says stuff like how it's super unrealistic for Soe bosses to spam their alleged invulnerable insta wins and brings up Lady Maria as an example of how "balanced" she was as you both could do so much damage to each other and how her moves were grounded and realistic. Also says the bosses don't give enough opportunities to hit them cause they "extend combos"(the same lie that was told in the base game, which he praises btw). Also says stuff like how a lot of dlc fights are just riffs of what came before and aren't "fresh" like Bloodborne bosses were. Which again is absurd. He legit implies that the petruscent knight is just orphan of Kos on a horse which is MEANT to be a JOKE, not an actual statement regarding how the boss plays.
Radahn phase 2 is the only exception.
Phase 1 is mostly fine. Definitely took a minute to get good at it, but I could get to phase 2 nearly every try without too much difficulty.
Then I'd almost immediately die. Even after trying for days and completely memorizing the moveset and how to deal with it. There was a lot of precision required to dodge all of the phase 1 attacks, then they went and said "okay do that, but while being flash banged and blinded"
Consort Radahn is a completely ridiculous boss depending on how you like to play. I don't want to shield poke, I shouldn't be getting 2 shot on a boss with 100k health, constantly blinds you in phase 2, and requires extreme patience and super high precision to not get hit by things like the cross slash attack.
You're my Elden Ring guru, dude. People are dead wrong about this game. It's like they don't understand that, when they try to play it like it's Dark Souls 3, they're essentially doing a challenge run. If you want to smash bosses in Elden Ring, you gotta be even more aggressive than in Bloodborne.
100% true, I love this comment. Elden Ring is faster than Bloodborne even and I think there’s a misconception around that, it’s always been faster than Bloodborne and it’s why I love it the most between all Souls games.
You can play the game like ds3, as long as you optimize your build which is way too hard for people who complain.
Just grab two curved swords and combine it with multi hit buffs and spam L1 like you’re back in ds3.
@@HeyTarnished also, elden ring gives you even faster stamina regen than bloodborne, objectively proving that fromsoft want you to be mindfully aggressive in this game, and not mindlessly aggressive, like bb, bb lost the actual strategy part of souls combat if you ask me, especially in areas where most enemies dont have poise and most of its combat devolved into you just walking up to an enemy and wacking R1 till it stops moving, no consequences, no fighting back, you can count the enemies in bb that dont stagger on one hand, the rest? just mindless gameplay. im glad elden ring got back ds1s strategic combat into the mix and made it even faster than bb.
@@flamingmanure Absolutely! And there’s a very big common misconception I see people mentioning about Bloodborne & that is how the rally system is the reason the that makes the game fast & aggressive, and it couldn’t be further from the truth, what makes you aggressive in BB is not by taking your heath back, but by your character’s speed & the bosses’ speed, they attack fast, and so are you, this is also much truer in Elden Ring, not only by mindlessly button mashing R1, but being aggressive in finding positioning, attacking them during their delays, doing a charged R2, breaking their posture etc, fights like Rellana, Radagon, Malenia, Maliketh, Mohg, Messmer and many others when you get so aggressive against them can produce a much faster combat than Bloodborne could ever hope to achieve.
This video is actual good info for new players who want to introduce themselves into the game. Thank you so much for this.
“There will always be people who don’t want to help themselves, and would rather just hate what they don’t want to understand.”
This has always been the crux of the issue. Commenting at the moment you say this as you talk about Saint, because I doubt anything more would need to be said.
At ER’s launch, you have people going “Crucible Knights/Godskins are input reading!!” No, you just didn’t care to notice that positioning affects what attacks an enemy will use. People came to understand better generally over time. It’s happening again now with the DLC.
I beat it after having apparently rushed it. I left about half the map unexplored. My Scadutree blessing had reached +12 at the final boss. I assumed the max would be +15. It’s actually +20.
If I can beat it at lv150, no summons and minimal tool use, at +12-always within 3-4-hits to death range-and I’m just some loser who doesn’t even spend more than $100 a year on games, then you, reader, and anyone else, also can. I doubt my reaction time is much better than the average grandparent.
A lot of the complaints are, you know, still false, but *understandable* because the game is indeed dense despite having many ways you can strategize, and how even regular movement takes time to learn, like a bike. But there are two common sentiments I’ve seen recently which baffle me.
The first is one that’s provably untrue. “This boss is bullshit, because he can just attack you the moment you walk through the fog, and you can’t do anything about it.” This refers to a new, large dragon boss. I fought him for three hours. Not once did he make an attack like that. Nothing you can’t time a roll for. I simply do not believe we, as two different people, are figuring two different bosses. I don’t see how someone can just choose not to put thought behind their button presses and then say “why did the boss hit me? I rolled at the first opportunity!”
The second is what’s currently driving me insane. People don’t seem to find dodging fun anymore. Are we playing the same game? Does nobody remember, like, Pontiff? Or fucking Midir? This DLC, crafted to be harder than the base-game end-game areas, isn’t the first time we’ve had bosses with long combos. If you are engaging with the game, pressing buttons informed by what you see, performing any sort of hand-eye coordination, you aren’t fucking “waiting.” Waiting is when you are doing nothing. Waiting is when nothing is asked of you. I can concede someone riding around the open world as boring, long stretches of just moving, waiting for your destination to crest the hill, but *dodging a boss?* Feeling like a frenzied maniac rabid animal?
You’re telling me the boss standing there expecting you to get a hit in is *more* exciting than learning attacks by avoiding them? In the *one* series of games where your customizable character’s superpower is not defined by their affinities, but their sheer evasion? Really? This is why I think “combos are too long *fow my tiwed bwain”* is a categorically false complaint. If that’s your point of contention, you’re looking for a game that isn’t what Elden Ring is known for.
Holy fk the gameplay behind is sublime. I'm pretty sure I will never be this good, cuz I will not invest enough time and put enough effort into it, but the fact that you did it is quite amazing.
PS: Also really good commentary. That info is gold and the opinion part was on point aswell.
Thanks. Honestly i am a buffoon compared to guys like MouseinaTutu, BDBrian, and NathanSavageDamage just to name a few. Those guys won't even upload a boss fight at rl1+0 no roll if they so much as do a suboptimal punish on any attack window.
Very helpful video! Footage illustrating the specific examples you gave would’ve been appreciated but it’s a lot of additional editing so totally understandable if you didn’t have the time or even just didn’t want to
I wouldve loved to but i am down to the wire before i fly to japan
@@loopine Fair enough, great video regardless mate
Can confirm that a learning attitude works. I’ve been getting close to beating Putrescent Knight by staying calm and learning from my mistakes
It’s all about keeping a calm and cool mentality when trying to learn anything in life.
When I went into the DLC I hadn't played Elden Ring for quite a while and because I was extremely rusty I died to almost all bosses 30+ times, bashing my head repeatedly until something worked. However, when I got to putrescent knight I took a good step back. and when I came back I managed to beat it. I sat down and appreciated the moveset and took my time with it.
So essentially I used this quote It's going down now in Persona 3 Reload very seriously:
Some things may break me
But always get back up
New perspective gained
From all of the pain and stress
And when I do come back
I’m stronger than ever before so
Kneel down
I don't know why but it resonated with me and made me play better.
In the base game there's so many OP builds and in the dlc most of those don't work, so those ppl actually have to learn the boss instead of cheesing them in 1 try
Im curious because I heard this a lot and im not using anything considered OP. Why would be on the DLC harder to use a cheese strategy?
IDK man I saw Mr. Hunter melt the final boss hitless in under a minute. You can absolutely still be OP in the DLC I think people just like to whine.
@@JoseViktor4099 the bosses in the dlc are more agressive and powerfull. most bosses can 2 tap you with the right attacks, its also a dlc so the bosses are made to be in general more mechanically difficult. There are exceptions of course. But i can say that eldering is nothing compared to the speed of some of these bosses.
@@BBQcheese that's why I said most. Asmongold used the shield cheese build
And this is not even true that much, I've seen a lot of people using OP builds to cheese even the final boss, which is the hardest
Thank you for these videos. The amount of times I heard "er boss bad" is crazy. It always comes down to "Boss too fast, bad camera, bad hitbox, unfair and badly designed". I just really appreciate the difficulty of ER bosses and think they are the most well-designed bosses in a souls rpg because I actually have to pay attention. I will never forget how empty I felt when I killed Demon Prince first try, facetanking every single hit because the game allowed me to (I had completely basic starter equipment).
Yea man, i first tried demon princes and Gael in my first souls game besides bloodborne because i found the havel armor.
Camera is really bad. That is definitely true😂
@@treasurewuji8740 Depends, ofc its bad when you get cornered. Ancient Dragons have pretty bad camera because you often get under them. Other than that I very rarely had any problems with it
Camera on certain bosses is one of most legitimate complains though haha
@@TheGlowingManYT I don't know man, for me it does what its supposed to. There are actually bad ones like the Ancient Dragons but 90% of the time, camera just gets disorienting because you are either under the boss or got cornered by it
Your videos are so quality it's insane you don't have a bigger following. My ears perked up when you said you played fighting games as I'm coming from that side. I didnt really engage with ER mechanics my first playthrough so I'm basically learning about everything again via the DLC and am really happy with this vid. Trying to be Rellanna rn and the just observe step helped and it reminded me of mental stack in FG, where all of my attention is just trying to find out how to fight them instead of trying to land hits, really cool throughlines through both genres. Also been a huge fan of BGE and they're a big inspiration of mine, def looking forward to following more of your stuff as I try to get better at this game.
I love that people are starting to call out those low effort ‘critiques’
Joseph anderson is suck an overrated "critique" channel. His critique are so bad and I have no idea why people like him. There are very few youtubers I dislike but he's one of them.
I have to admit, I misjudged you. I did take you to be an elitist who looked down on casual players at first, and that was with me agreeing that the complaints about ER's bosses are often exaggerated or outright false. But you talking about why these games are so fun and why their reputation as "hard" games does them such a disservice made me realize that we're on the exact same page. I've always hated the idea that a player is "ruining" their experience by deciding to play in a way that's less mechanically demanding because yes, one can always go back and play it in a different way. That experience is always there for those who want to seek it out.
I think the funniest thing about Elden Ring in this 2 years is the "meta", people complaining about the pve meta. It was super funny, because even when there was no new patch, the "meta" changed EVERY FUCKING DAY. Colosal weapons are the best option by fa- Oh wait, no, the actual meta is bleed and fros- Oh wait, dual wielding is so OP! The only way to deal with the bosses is by using that because- Wait, have you seen how OP quick weapons are, because they give you more punish window?!?!?!?!
No one knew what they were talking about, they were just saying that only 1 or 2 playstyles were the good ones while constantly contradicting themselves and showing how they actually had no idea of what was actually "the best" in the game. This was also a good demonstration about how almost any playstyle in this game is viable and can be even really OP if you actually know that you are doing, which means that all the complainers saying that "their build was just wrong and not the intended one" were just WRONG.
Loopine is pretty much a professional Joseph Anderson hater at this point. Taking jabs at him at every given chance.
He's right in any case
I'll say that considering the disparity between Demon Souls Remake and Elden Ring, I believe this game would've had a portion of DSRs new coat of paint had it been an exclusive next-gen title, better easing the playerbase into Elden Rings language akin to what bloodborne did for PS4, but alas, it was immediately compared to DS3 due to what I can only assume is the carried over rust from DS3s visual DNA having a placebo effect on how the game should be played.
Elden Ring is much more active (not faster) than DS3 with greater defensive and offensive depth and versatility than said experience as well. A dedicated jump with s, guard counters, stance breaks, Ashes of War that can be cycled in a vast assortment of ways, crafting, horseback, etc.
It should stand to reason that bosses should give you every opportunity to use these new toys, which means gameplay is tighter; more aggressive and varied - one size does not fit all this time around and you're expected to experiment with these new mechanics. As we know, A LOT of people did not engage with the mechanics and played it as a perceived "Open World DS3", which led to intense frustration.
For something so miniscule as visual DNA in a souls experience, I think the hardware limitations that prevented Elden Ring from next-gen exclusivity hurt the presentation and acceptance of this game being distinctly different beast than the DS series.
Miyazaki's strongest poster returns! Looking forward to the wise words
You have given a clear voice to my perspective on the community and discussion around everything about these games difficulty and I can't appreciate it enough. More people need to see this.
I was struggling with the dragon that swoops into the curve at farum azula for a while now and watching your video really helped me out. You really dont think about how much mindset helps with these games. Thanks!
It helps the very most and to me, it's even part of the story (at least for Dark Souls) 😁
Like the moment you give up, you become one of the other mindless undead, broken and without purpose.
These games really aren't about reflexes, perfect memorization and execution etc, they are about observation and determination and that way, they can not only improve us as players but as human beings, also 😊
@@w4tch0ut10 True. Now i just have to deal with the pain in the ass Ancient dragon in the DLC xD
It’s remarkable how rare the “learn the boss” mindset is. You would think that actually engaging with the game and learning from mistakes would be the obvious default approach, but spend 5 minutes on the subreddit and it becomes clear that this is hopelessly naïve. The majority of players essentially expect to win for free, and become indignant when this doesn’t work. They don’t realize this, but this is the mindset. People don’t want to hear it. You can phrase it as tactfully as possible, “you can do it, it’s not as hard as you think” etc, but they’re simply not prepared to engage. I saw a comment the other day about how to cheese a basic mid-level mob, and it just struck me how badly this missed the point. Just play the game ffs
Yea it’s honestly baffling to me. It’s like there’s a certain population of players that just want to beat the bosses to maybe say they’ve beaten the game, but aren’t willing to put the effort in to use trial & error. They just want to blow through the bosses & be done, but as From has made the games more interestingly difficult & unique, these people can’t just face roll and abuse boss mechanics as easily as before. I also think it’s an ego thing with some because they can’t possibly see how they could be at fault for dying when a boss does a final villain anime attack at them. Like guys, we all died too. It’s hard. But it’s possible. Lots of people just need a perspective or mindset shift, but unfortunately they’ll just continue to shit talk the game and/or leave bad reviews.
Coming from a non-action game background, and Elden being my first souls game, I'm surprised at how many veteran players called Malenia unfair.
I just got to her a few days back, and man, it's so much fun I backed up my data so I can fight her even after beating her. Finally a boss that teaches me how to play the game.
I think cheese is ok in some situations. Like the horse dude guarding Lyndell, he never stops jumping around and attacking for the level you are when trying to first go to Lyndell (I used poison mist cheese). Also, the bell bearing hunter that spawns at the Caelid isolated merchant shack. He also never stops attacking, but there are other mobs in the area so you can be trying to fight and just get dropped by the giant dog, and his attacks hit like a truck (so I did the cheese where I jump to the roof just shoot him with crossbow😂). I beat the game and most of the DLC but these two gave me problems, I was prob underleveled. Some ashes of war are not used enough, like vow of indomitable (timing it right allows you to negate one shot mechanics, kind of like cheese lol).
@@xdarthpool6463 Chessing is always okay. People can play however they want. I only have a problem when players act like Fromsoft made the bosses “unfair” or “bullshit” and is forcing them to play a certain way. Like nahh, if you lack the skill or patience or time to beat a boss & have to adapt in ways that make it easier to manage, then that’s on the player. The fact that ER was beaten hitless in far less time compared to the older games says enough. Took years & years before someone did it with Dark Souls. ER was like maybe a couple months at most. The boss telegraphs are super on point & adding in many other ways to dodge or avoid dmg like the different skills & jumping makes the combat even more dynamic for me.
@@dawsong5208Not to take away from your comment. I will always argue the 'let people play how they want' argument because these are the same people that watch a video being told how to play the game and play in a certain way, so they aren't playing how they want and they don't even realise it.
Great video! Hopefully it'll help people!
Personally, I've always treated these games as RPGs and hard roleplayed a character, which typically meant my first char was a rogue with daggers and a bunch of self-imposed restrictions on playstyle (e.g., light load, no shields, no magic, etc.). If I ever felt stuck and wanted to speed up the boss learning process, I'd watch someone on youtube do a hitless kill and adapt their strategy to my character. That's it.
Very inspirational content. Thanks. Elden Ring is my first Soulsborne and I freaking am in love. I use Ashes sometimes but going through DLC on NG2 around lvl170 at the moment and freaking loving how "difficult" it is.
Me in the military working longer than a 9-5: Beat Elden Ring and is two remembrance bosses away from beating the DLC 💀
Oh I remember "stRength iSn't viaBle." That was hilarious. 😂
Maliketh is so absurdly easy to posture break and dumpster
Him and Fortissax need health buffs like i need air
I fought him earlier today for the first time in two years and I was appalled by how easy that fight was compared to how I remembered it.
@@loopinefought fortissax for the first time ever earlier and I melted him. Granted, I was 150 with the dragon katana, but idk, insert the “I thought you were stronger” meme.
@@sekiro_the_one-armed_wolf i can just about half health fortissax at rl1+0 with a posture break and no buffs besides talismans
@@loopine let’s not get crazy now!
Coming from Monster Hunter, I developed a mantra that I carried back when Demon Souls released and it carried me through all of Fromsoft's games, and it is always my creed to defeat Souls bosses alone first with the heaviest, clunkiest and slowest weapon imaginable.
A simple mantra of "If it doesn't work, how about this one?", basically trial and error, memorization and patience, every boss had a loophole, every move they had had a window to punish, every boss attack had a distinct way of avoiding it. Just this simple rule for me made these games enjoyable, experimental and fun.
I wish i had all the time in the world, i would definitely jump into monster hunter
I tried MHW after getting into the Souls series and instantly loved it. Can't wait for Wilds! 🤩
As new players pick up elden ring, the FGC mentality of how to not scrub out is an extremely strong tool to have.
This is one of the best videos I've seen breaking down FromSoftware core mechanics. I have a job, a child for which I am primary caretaker, and a writing hobby that I'm trying to turn into a side job or full time career. I still have time to play Elden Ring, going deep into role playing and fashion souls without summons or shields. Now to be fair, I definitely don't have any time to play anything else, this has been my only new game since it came out, but I've gotten into the DLC and I'm having a blast. I slogged and grinded through Bloodborne when I was a single guy with zero dependents, and I probably couldn't have learned how to play these games any other way, but there's no excuse for not having enough time. It took me a long time to beat the base game and it'll take me a long time to beat SOTE because I can only play so much. I've already sacrificed about an hour of sleep each night just to get back into the game, and in a few weeks I'll have to pretty much sideline it for the rest of the summer, but Elden Ring is by far the best $100 I've spent gaming wise between the base game and expansion. It'll satisfy me for years, even more than Bloodborne did. Getting into that "read and react" flow and dance of these games is the best gaming feeling I've had outside of playing New Vegas.
Well put. I will be interested to see your DLC content considering the discourse surrounding it. I think what frustrates me with these debates is just the degree of hyperbole coming from people that don’t like the new style of bosses. You’ll often hear people talk about every boss having “literally no punish windows” or “90 second combo strings with a single R1 punish” when that’s never the case. These things are just objectively wrong and represent a lack of real experimentation. I honestly think it’s understandable for some people to prefer reaction based rolling and more naturalistic animation timing (as Anderson prefers), but I can’t stand when those people attempt to spin it as some kind of malfunction on the boss’s end.
there are several bosses in the DLC that I would say are Malenia's level of difficulty, but they all are doable and I beat them all with claymore and medium load. Some took 3-4 hours ofc, but that is ok.
This might be one of my new favourite souls video since nakeyjakeys and writing on games.
My favorite is "Armor doesn't matter" 🤣
This was only partly true in the old defense system fromsoft used pre ds3 days that was only flat defense. In DS1 for example a fully upgraded regular titanite light armor at higher levels was like 250 phys defense, medium armor at same level around 325-350, Giant's armor is 400+. Now you take progressively more damage and you start to see the difference between them gets very small the higher damage you take. Now add ng+es and even small hits start doing big damage. This is of course ignoring passive poise.
DS2 armor actually mattered but only because the defense numbers were giga bloated compared to other flat defense games. Light armor 350 but heaviest armors could go like 1350.
Fast forward to the modern defense system they use in DS3/ER you now get flat defense from your stats and level up to a cap and %damage reduction from armor/rings/buffs etc. This system reduces damage via flat defense first and then %DR effectively making sure the 1 damage hollows in undead burg never happen again (unless extreme scenario). But also now you take lets say 500-900-1300 damage respectively with both light and heavy armor. 130 flat def on both, 15% light armor, 40% heavy.
Light takes: 315-658-995 damage
Heavy takes: 222-482-662 damage
It's already a huge difference and it's only using armors as base. No rings, no buffs no nothing.
This is how I've been able to facetank hyper armor through every boss in the ER DLC IN NG+7 while people complain it's too hard 😂
And unlike others who use this type of setup to trivialise and learn nothing, it just helps me learn the bosses faster since I'm alive for more mechanics.
Messmer was a masterclass boss in this DLC so far, best in the whole game with very fair moveset (Haven't done top left part of the map yet after messmer but did everything else)
I think Bayle was the worst so far but only because the long range fire breath he does would bounce off the ground randomly hitting me. Just because of that I stacked 93% fire res... There must be a way to avoid that though.
To clarify: defense in DS1 was excellent in NG0, starting from NG+1 even common soldiers were doing a lot.
DS2 is the worst in the equation because the physical defense you see is a lie (elemental was a % boost where if you reach 900 you would nullify everything, I say 900 instead of 1,000 because there’s an invisible 100 defense stat in you no matter what)
Physical defense, however, was actually a detriment! If you see 1,250 in an armor, for example, the actual damage that would be eaten up was just 250, 1/5 of the actual number shown, so by the time you enter the DLC at ng0, you would still take lots of damage. It doesn’t end there though, stamina regeneration has several tiers, basically everytime you go to a multiplier of 10, like 20, 30, 40 etc on your equip load, you’d get a different stamina regeneration speed, the higher the number, the slower the regeneration.
Basically, if you were wearing armor, you were nerfing yourself.
DS3’s overhaul was needed, BY FAR.
Bayle's long range fire breath just has good tracking and you need to put more effort in moving away to the side, especially with the aid of a sprinting jump. I bet what happens is that the tracking has a degree range relative to his body it can move in, so you could theoretically start at one side of the range and dodge towards the other side of the range, giving him double the tracking distance you'd expect. But that's just a the--
It's laughable how people are pretending that learning boss patterns is a new thing and hasn't been a stable of games for decades, I have a 9 to 5 job and I'm not that much of a peak gamer but I can beat six remembrance bosses in the DLC with no spirit ashes and no summons or guides of any kind.
Are you going to be posting your first kills of the DLC bosses? I really want to see the strategies you come up with
Anderson is going to fellate himself so much like with the Radahn nerf because they now allow Torrent for Elden Beast.
"I was right, they just forgot to turn it on. I'm genius!"
18:08 I agree. Having just finished a run in which I often used a shield I learned this. Similarly, instead of holding block during an entire combo, only blocking when an attack came in turned getting guard broken in 2 hits into being able to tank twice as many and have some stamina leftover for a punish
Only halfway through but great video! The section about the history of soulsborne difficulty complaints was well done. I think it’s interesting how the people who complain about the difficulty are almost always people who are too prideful to use the tools fromsoft has put in to make the game easier, yet not determined enough to learn bosses and see them through.
I think another thing people don't use is consumables. they are far more common, versatile, and powerful than many previous games, to the point that in my opinion, your typical build should be running them as a ranged option, even if just to keep poise on. there is a consumable for every build imaginable, so every build has a ranged option.
I don't understand. The godskin flame orb is dodgeable after healing. I heal in neutral against them and rolling all the time
Yeah it was nerfed. It used to hit you.
An obscure phenomenon that also funnels in this mentality is that a lot of bosses' attacks can be avoided by both crouching and jumping but everyone insisting that rolling is the only evasion method
people who don't like the difficulty just don't like the game and are upset that from will not cater to their power fantasy, and their egos are too fragile to admit this. thank you loopine
I’m surprised at the amount of people that were expecting from to “learn from their mistakes in the base game” and make a bunch of DS3 bosses. There’s a decent amount of people that think Elden ring boss design was a mistake and fromsoft was supposed to fix this in the dlc lol
In the DLC, with max scadurtree blessing, the verdigris armor, dragoncrest shield talisman, boiled crab and the defense tear, you get over 80 damage absorption on every type of physical damage. That allows to survive plenty of hits, even against the last boss. You do that, learn the moveset of hard bosses, and when you feel confident enough, you can switch to something else if you want.
Comment for algorithm! I love these videos, now the DLC bosses are making people cope more. Some people want the mind numbing DS3 bosses, it’s why I’m happy Sekiro & ER exist, they’re levels above DS3 & BB, and DLC takes it up a notch, it has some of the best bosses ever made. I can get behind almost every boss Elden Ring throws at you, except that 2nd phase of the final DLC boss, one of the worst designed moveset/aggression I’ve ever seen.
The best tip I've ever gotten was from one of my buddies who is a long time souls vet was "Don't get hit." Now, it sounds simple and like a "yeah, duh" kinda phrase, but it really is that easy. It's all about the engagement of your brain and what is going on with the enemies/boss on screen.
A thing is
A vocal part of the community are adamant about no summons
I am more than willing to summon and be summoned for fights
When i did an early boss, i tried the fight solo for a while, starting to consistently hit phase 2
And when i could comfortably get down to their name in health.
I tried with the mimic tear and won
Now i like being summoned for the fight since its a gatekeepr to the dlc, and i think its a really fun fight
One piece of advice I tell new friends trying out these games, is not to have your muscle memory default to r1’s as a basic attack. Nope. Your r2 is your basic attack you want to try to use against everything. Your lights are there for when you need a faster attack under a given circumstance, like when you know you can follow up with one. If you know you have the time to pull off a slower, stronger attack, like literally any time an enemy is running at you from 10’ away, charge your basic r2. And Rolling r1’s work great for most weapons for getting hits off mid combo. Mohg can really teach you how to do this. Good thing his amazing, challenging fight (when you don’t “comet azur lol” him) a prerequisite for the dlc. Once you learn these, you can then learn how great jump attacks are for openers, and when to do them in other places.
Every person’s gameplay I recommended that to improved. You know all it took for them to feel better? Getting more staggers and ripostes. Who would’ve thunk? Greater engagement with the game leads to a better feeling.
I can't wait 'till you play and talk about Mesmer and Bayle. Those represent the ultimate Soulsborne boss archetype: various branches for combos, different positions to punish or bait them and multiple actions to avoid attacks. Even the less interesting main bosses do explore those ideas in eloquent ways.
And also, they made Elden Beast so much better.
Bro if you want to see some shit that will make you endlessly cringe go on Anderson's video check recent comments and see all the people saying 'omg you were right they added Torrent to EB!' as if Anderson was the only one that mentioned that...😂
They definitely listened to his boss criticisms lol. They dialed all that shit up to 11!
As a hot take I would say that Torrent wouldn't necesarily be the ideal solution, as some attacks would be completely pointless when you use It.
It wasnt really a fight though for Torrent usage, despite what Anderson and 60% of the community says.
Although its interesting that this changes the niche of the fight from hard to an espectacle one, which seeing It like this, could be seen as better as It removes tedium considering its fought after Radagon.
@@BBQcheese I found it cute. As if no one else had that complaint. Thankfully the bosses are even more relentless. Can't wait to see him blame them while the average player (like myself) has already learned how to consistently fight most of them.
Btw, how has your journey been through the Lands of Shadows?
@@JoseViktor4099 Well articulated take. I think some attacks make Torrent a bad idea, like the sword slashes or whenever it jumps over you. Closing gaps and using mounted combat gives more layers of depth and adds another main boss that utilizes Torrent. I think it overall improves the fight and makes it undeniably good.
@@enman009
It was great up until the end. I genuinely hate the final boss. One of the worst experiences I've had in gaming. It's a damn shame too because it was like 11/10 up until that point.
Always thought you would be the best to make a video like this, good stuff bro
I really enjoyed this video. Underrated af. Idc about the dislikes. They're coping.
Subscribed.
If anything, this video was a real eye opener. I struggled with the dlc even with mimic and instead of blaming the game I’ve decided to take the time to actually learn the bosses. I’m still gonna use summons to finish the dlc but I’m slowly incorporating what you said into my gameplay and my very next run will be all bosses with no summons(minus npc summons cuz they are fun)
Yea honestly just studying the boss animations a little is the biggest part and the rest will just fall into place
@@loopine I won’t go into details since you haven’t played it yet but there was a boss in the dlc that really hammered home that I need to start learning. It would punish the hell out of you for healing in the Neutral.
Very few games make me feel good leaving my comfort zone. DMCV, doom eternal and now elden ring.
Seems TheDemodcracy did not follow your guide...
I think Asmon needs to watch this video.
I’m not surprised. He used the same meta build and the same attack during his playthrough of the base game. I’d get so bored doing that. I tried everything I could apart from summons as I wanted to solo it
Why? All he does is react. Boring shit
Actually watched this video this time. Incoming long comment.
I really enjoyed the video. I've been playing through the DLC (no spoilers) and recently thought to myself that Elden Ring has my favorite combat system in any Fromsoft game now that I've adjusted my mindset to the game (very much aligned with what you described in the video.)
A common reddit meme was that in Elden Ring, the bosses get to have all the fun while players are now just stuck idling while watching a bunch of bullshit anime attacks while the player doesn't get any tools of their own. It's total bullshit!
As you describe Elden Ring gives you so many dynamic options for fighting bosses and the long combos and delayed attacks are meant to be opportunities for the player to *actively* participate in the fight instead of waiting for their turn.
When a boss has a long combo with some sort of delayed attack in the middle, that's supposed to be an opening for the player to get a quick attack in, recover stamina, or move to a better position to punish during the combo's end recovery. Unlike in Dark Souls, I actually feel like a seasoned warrior squaring up against literal Gods on my own merits.
One thing I think you left out was Guard Counters. Not ideal if you don't have a shield, but you can use them with any two-handed weapon to get the full posture damage of a charged R2 without needing to commit to that long animation. Incorporating that into my play style opened up a lot of opportunities for keeping pressure on bosses. And because Parry posture is a different meter than Posture damage, if you can incorporate both you can pull off repostes left and right.
Anyways I hope this video takes off because the reddit consensus on this game frustrates me with how eager people are to throw around claims of "bad game design". I hope Fromsoft continues to refine and iterate in what they've done in Elden Ring on future Soulslikes.
I think I say this everytime i see your username but boa is so based
@@loopine Hell yeah. And btw because I respect your taste you introduced me to a lot of new music in your Elden Ring soundtrack video, so thanks for that.
Not to mention whenever you call them out for their sophistry, they play the victim card and call you a normie fromsoft fanboy, who is the sole reason why they can't make good games anymore and how people like you just keep shutting them down cause apparently, you're just a fanboy who don't want to see their game "come under criticism".
Dark souls is mostly "roll, roll, roll, r1. roll, roll, roll, r1"
Elden Ring is more like "roll left, roll right, sprint around, charged heavy, roll, weapon art, sprint left, jumping attack, riposte, wakeup charged heavy, roll"
@@loopinedo you know what based means
I used to really struggle with Elden Rings boss difficulty. I managed to beat the game but it was by using OP weapons like Moonveil and Rivers of blood. I still had fun but thought the old games were better. I though the bosses attacks were too fast, too often and too damaging. But after watching some high level elden ring gameplay I realised I had completely discarded most of the games moveset. I never jumped in boss fights which is why I found some attacks unfair. I never tried to charged heavy instead either jump attack spamming of ash of war spamming and I also completely ignored Vgr and good armour for the most part since I could do that in the previous games. But the dlc made me take a step back and learn the mechanics and now I believe that without a doubt Elden Ring has the best combat in fromsoft games. Its just so modular and can fit almost every build. And while some are stronger than other its fun to just experiment and have fun, not just worry about pure damage.
Also quick side note you're gameplay in this video was so satisfying to watch. I aspire to be able to play elden ring as good as you.
It has been absolutely mind boggling watching people try to pick apart Elden Rings boss design without them even trying to learn how to approach the bosses. Even wilder how many people have said it over and over about how bosses cheat, input read, and have no openings to go on and say that they are "objectively" badly designed bosses when their reasoning can easily be disproved by numerous kill videos. Really grinds my goat too how many people are just straight up disrespectful to the developers thinking they're creating artificially difficult bosses to keep up fromsofts appearances. So thanks for this great video that stabs at the heart of the problem, where people need to address how the approach and learn bosses before becoming backseat game devs making reasons why these "impossible" bosses cant be fairly beaten.
i love you
OMG, I do love the game, but you just made it a lot easier and more fun. I tried the method on the onyx lord and three times and done. This and I didn't understand half of what you said. Thank you.
There’s nothing better then getting 2hit by a boss you are fighting for the first time, then surviving 4 hits, then 6, and then eventually you can dodge everything.
I have to admit, the repetition of bosses and enemies never bothered me as it just allows me to improve in those fights. And what you're saying is 100% true, I most dislike having to fight enemies I've never properly learned to fight, but it's just a mindset issue at that point.
It's a shame the people who need to hear this the most are too dense to appreciate it.
For whatever reason, i never realized the bosses were reacting to my positioning DURING their combos. This resulted in my believing there were more random combination chains than a boss actually has. I legit can't believe my ignorance to this, as I've been playing souls games since ds2
I work 9-5 and I love learning the bosses. I often don’t complete games because I’m trying to play so many but I love experiencing them!
This video is great, I was one of those people who whined about ER on launch, and I also whined about the DLC damage without even knowing what scadutree did so I went through 20% of the dlc whilst getting two tapped.
I’m still surprised that so many people have gotten mixed up by the scadutree blessings. Maybe it’s just because I’ve always been inclined explore as much as possible before taking on legacy dungeons, so the new upgrade system fit right into place.
@@earic2499 I thought it was a similar system to the bonfire aesthetic from ds2 so I was saving them for whenever I was stuck on a boss.
@@makia3oh lmao
My Watchdog’s Greatsword with barbaric roar run is going great 👍
A certain (typically second remembrance, no spoilers) boss gave me the Malenia treatment again, just had to grit my teeth and learn their move set.
And I had a blast! I love spacing attacks and the (barring a few) clean asf hitboxes. This game was made for me
So I know this video is dealing with the combat part but I just want to add a personal anecdote in relation to Elden Ring particularly the dlc.
My biggest challenge in the dlc so far has been trying to figure out how to reach a spot that I could view from a side of the cliff (not giving names to avoid spoilers). Point is, I tried to approach that spot of the map from 5 or 6 different wild direction, in hopes that Id find a cave or a ledge or an upwards curve that leads me to it. In that process though I discovered parts of the map, of the lands that were artistically stunning but also just very fun to play on. Some combat, some new gear and some more power ups. I guess my point is that the game really does reward your observations and your patience. I pieced out realizations about the game’s world based on where I ended up going to. It was and still is quite fun (not done with dlc).
I guess I am saying that it would be nice if we could talk about how this game genuinely encourages experimentation in so many ways including combat.
The fact that people are concluding so fast without experimentation that the game is too hard, is a bit disheartening.
The bosses are manageable honestly. Im okay as a Souls player. I am just keeping some alternate weapons and have a build themed to optimise them. It helps with boss encounters that might not be ideal for one type of weapon.
Good tips - especially the bit about playing it cool and focusing on observation at first
My favorite game as a kid was megaman 2. I loved figuring out what weapon to use on the bosses, even though dying and having to redo the whole level each time was a pain, learning the levels was part of the fun. I remember being able to easily get to the castle without dying at one point and feeling like an absolute badass gamer. Then i worked to beating the whole game without dying. This is what elden ring reminds me of. I hadnt played games in almost 15 years and elden ring brought me back. Now i play as many of these types of games as i can, people need to see the feeling you get when you accomplish something that feels impossible.
great vid, love people that understand this stuff
There’s no excuse to not beat this game all by your own except not liking it. I am a neurosurgery resident who have beaten the entire game at level 1 including the dlc with no scadutres blessing
AC6 was so funny because I have vivid memories of BALTEUS salt and I beat it in under an hour.
So cool to hear you compare souls and fighting games. I came from fighting games and I found it scratching a similar itch.
great work as always man, greetings!
I use my mimic tier to get the boss into 2nd phase quickly then return them. Once I have the second phase down decently I will start soloing and eventually beat it solo.
Like Gino says learn and *then* win, people always try to win first and then get frustrated, instead of going in not expecting to beat the boss but just gather data and practice. Then after a while you’ll be much better equipped and confident you can take out the boss. Great video again bro! All of these principles you mention apply in the DLC. I think you’re going to enjoy it
Finally somebody who said what needed to be said. Preach my man!!!
Thank you for your positivity, and the great advices! :)
fucking finally someone mentions how bogus the "radahn nerf" is. i'm so tired of hearing that shit
This is a fantastic video. I’d just like to add that cutting yourself off from help, at least to some degree, and puzzling and persevering through the challenges posed, is a vastly more fun and rewarding way to play the game. One of the things that makes FromSoft games so special is Miyazaki is willing to forego a certain amount of mass market appeal to make a game that is challenging and that rewards you for overcoming the challenge. These experiences are rare in today’s world, but important, because bringing that same attitude to LIFE is actually crucial. If people can use these games as an opportunity, or training, on how to meet challenges, and on how to build confidence in the face of tough challenges, then that becomes a remarkable, positive legacy for them.
Some people will say this mega guide is too over-bloated and clickbait for a rant video, but I think the first half of the video is essential in setting up your frame of mind to receive and actually make use of the advice that comes in the second half of the video
This is a terrible video. He is talking about specific situations, which need visual clues, yet he is showing completely unrelated game footage meanwhile. And he yet he is the calling others morons...
@@viktordoe1636 How the hell is he talking about specific situations? Taking time to observe the boss, learning their different responses to your reactions, that's as general advice as possible
Bro, thank you so much! This video is spoken beautifully. It's exactly what I needed to help reset my mindset and beat Mesmer. Thank you very Much! I really appreciate voices like yours in the fromsoft community. You have an excellent way of explaining the aspects and functions of these games that can't be misunderstood, in my opinion. I look forward to watching your playthrough of the dlc it's amazing!