@@deka4038ds2 was fine if you knew how adp worked. Glad they removed it but dumping a few levels into it saves a bunch of headache. Also learning that you need to dodge into the attack rather than away from it.
@@odious5317 when she’s in the air, run away and when she begins the second part roll into her and again when the third part of the waterfowl dance beginst. 1-2 seconds of running + 2 dodges into her = waterfowl countered
@@bolle1929 I’ve done it that way, and it’s still very hard for me. I’ve only not gotten hit once, or twice with that method. I appreciate your advice, though! Thank you.
It's great *in isolation* It's terrible once you realize she can INSTANTLY cancel out of a stagger and begin the windup during your attack animation at point blank. Which is manageable And then you realize your default sprint keybind only registers after holding the button down for a second or so. Which is still manageable And then you realize heavier weapons have recovery frames you can only cancel out of by dodging, which in turn delays the startup of your sprint input. At some point you add so much stuff together it stops being manageable once the right conditions align. And they WILL align. It's perfectly ok in isolation, going by just the math, when both sides of the equation are starting from neutral. That forces the player to stay at neutral until they bait it out, which some people like But for me it creates this "waterfowl baiting break" that interrups the flow of the fight and is completely RNG based after a certain HP threshold Death by a thousand cuts, the irony is beautiful tl;dr: skill issue, use frost pots, run in circles around her, use bhs, blah blah blah reddit blabering blah blah
Yep my thought aswell. The Design in itself is not the sole problem. Its what you as a player can do. Elden Ring player moveset is basically DS1 + jumping. Thats the FS Formluar since Demon Souls. And thats totally fine. But if you compare every Boss fight from every game they released so far, they where never as close that complicated as in Elden Ring. You cant put us against these kind of bosses with that moveset we have. Thats just not good design. Its hard yes, but its also extremely frustrating. And please dont come up with summons and shit. This system should be scraped at the very beginning. Who enjoys getting carried by a mindless ai? Summons where always a noob carrier in FS games and never got out of this.
@@threedog27exactly, I haven’t played sekiro but I heard the parry is essential and if this was in sekiro and you’d be able to parry it for a devastating blow but an insurmountable risk of death then it would be good design but in ER you can’t do much without requiring a consumable or a non essential gameplay mechanic. TL;DR, it’s just bad.
@@usernameig975because they actually give a thought out representation of why the move is unfair instead of just openly complaining about it and not actually realizing how it’s unfair? Like the comment says, in a neutral state the move is fine, but when you’re unprepared for it, it gets you.
@@Darkwing709The amount of times I've yelled out "BULLSH1T" or "CHEATER!!" while fighting malenia is ridiculous 🤣 despite that I still think she's the best boss fight in the game especially with a parry shield
One time, I was co-op'ing with a friend against Malenia, first phase, going well, 50% hp, then I made the dastardly mistake of saying "fight back b1tch", then she done 3 back to back water fowl dances which I barely survived and then a few seconds after, another one for good measure.
If you fight Malenia without reviewing UA-cam footage of waterfowl, the amount of trial and error it takes is beyond a reasonable number because of how unreadable the move is. It's simply hard to know when to press dodge.
that would be the case if the only way to counter the attack was a dodge, but there are many other ways like blocking everything (she regen but that doesn't matter if you know the rest of the moveset), frost pot (only work 2-3 time cause she become resistant to frost), bloodhound step (just spam it), vow of the indomitable and running away.
As someone who has completely mastered the waterfowl, absolutely 100%. I've helped and observed a lot of summons, and the main take away I have is something is seriously wrong if majority of host's death come from the same move. Even after performing the dodge in front of them, 99% of hosts do not learn anything the next time it happens because learning it is unintuitive without instructions. Take away waterfowl and Malenia has been stripped of half her difficulty. It's both her and Fromsoft's crutch, and people acting like it's fine is why we got crap like the DLC's final boss. And the worst part? Malenia is a genuinely great fight that most people will never realize because of this one move. No other rememberance boss in the game feels like a duel as much as Malenia does because she lets you be equally as aggressive. But she ends up as a bad boss because of waterfowl's learning curve.
Crap like dlc boss? Tell me you just suck without telling me. Radahn is easy to dodge and way easier to figure out than malenia. You're just bad if you think radahn is a problem. I got you at malenias waterfowl dance, but the follow-up just proofed you know nothing more than to copy the common opinion.
@@jesushomeboi The irony of a Fromsoft fanboy trying to call out others for being unable to form their own opinion. I literally don't care what other people think about the game. I think Bayle is a mediocre dragon boss despite the overwhelming praise for him. My problems with phase 2 Radahn aren't even about difficulty and I never even brought up specifics, but your brain is rotted if your first thought is to immediately go "gIT gUd!!!".
@@avez-ch1np Eh. I get your point but i think the one cool ultimate move is part of what makes these characters so cool you know? If i was a powerful magical being i would probably develop some sort of ultimate attack for destroying my enemies too...
@@asoul3919 Yes, but ultimate moves shouldn't be unintuitive to learn. Placidusax's nuke, Radagon's hammer smash, Rellana's double moon, Divine Lion's triple elemental switch, etc. All of those can easily be figured out on your own. Where waterfowl fails is communicating to the player how to dodge it. Another example of a bad ultimate move is Elden Beast's golden stars or Metyr's double laser beam who's first beam is undodgeable without an AOW. Malenia also has two other ultimate moves, scarlet aeonia and her clone attack, both of which are possible to figure out on your own.
have to hard disagree with you - practicing and getting it down was very fun and made me feel super cool, especially when i got summoned and did it in front of people
@@pygmalyon Not really, dodging that shit is like when you play whit your cousin that cheats all the time. He still cheats, you just got used to it. This is why i use freeze pots. It cancels her crap entirely.
Yeah, as if it’s not a huge relief to dodge waterfowl unscathed for the first time. It’s super rewarding haha (I know people have different opinions :D)
@@josephbornman8462 So many different things go into how a game feels to play that it's different for everyone else. I'm glad to see that some people clearly enjoy it and kinda wish I could too
10 second anime animation that insta stunlocks you to death if it touches you, and requires you to quit your job and earn a phd in fromsoft to learn how to dodge it. And its punishable for like 10 frames. Seems fair.
the problem is- it's not fair. every ultimate move rewards you if you managed to dodge them. take example of messmer's flurry. it's punishing and rewarding at the same time. if you dodged it you can deal huge damage to him. the only reward for dodging waterfowl is you get to live
I don’t see that as a problem tbh. And they did that again with new radahn It gives a switchup from the typical videogame-y vibe That’s at least the experience I had with her. I went in with no spoilers. And when I processed that she said “I have never lost”, while also processing that she heals on hitting me, and attacks the way she does… chills. Whereas every other boss, I may like, but they didn’t give me chills like that
the reward is that its fun to dodge. A bullshit or unfair attack to me is something which can't be dodged consistently which is definetely not waterfowl. Its hard to dodge sure but once you get it it can be consistently avoided. However fromsoft should have definetely reduced the damage it does by atleast 30%.
I KNOOOW RIGHT!!! Goddamn man the amount if times iv talked about these games issues just to get shutdown bc "im bad" or "you clearly never played it" BRO IV BEATEN THEM ALL SEVERAL TIMES ESPECIALLY ELDEN RING, these games really aint that hard either so the git gud thing is corny unless ur memeing or if the person truely is bad and there isnt much to say to help them
@@DexGen2002 it’s my favorite game series/company of all time and i think the majority of the fanbase are actually chill lore nerds but a LOUD group is the very annoying ones. the games (to me) only really get HARD around ng+5.
I saw a comment the other day where someone was complaining that switching between spells by repeatedly hitting the d-pad is poor design, which FromSoft has kept in their games since Demon's Souls, and predictably someone replied saying it's a "skill issue". Like yeah, you can get good at it, that doesn't mean it's a good system.
True, but we can also just disagree with the criticism. I have lots of complaints about Elden Ring, hell, any "dog" type boss or enemy tends to be so fast I can't react in time and they also tend to hit way harder than I think they should which gets on my nerves - but Malenia, yeah, I didn't have a particularly unusual challenge with her and found her fight to be one of the more enjoyable in the whole game. It's equally possible for people to have favorite bosses and least favorite bosses, and sometimes your least favorite is someone's favorite, that's life! 😊
Or to explain better, assuming that we are convincing ourselves that every single little aspect of the game is perfect is an extremely unfair statement. Most fans have gripes and complaints about various issues. And yes, some fans are certainly obnoxious. The "git gud" thing is very, very old.
I am 150% sure this attack was supposed to be in Sekiro, but the guys scraped it, and them found out just to use it here. This is reinforced by the fact that all her sword attacks are heavy. She can do 2 or 3 cuts at once, and that's it. With some combos with a maximum of 6 hits. But here is like she summoned a combat art from Sekiro, since her movements look exactly like the Spiral Cloud Passage Combat Art, but with more motion and area. She would have been a great Sekiro boss, but I think she is a really strange Elden Ring boss.
There's an Elden Ring mod that makes it play like Sekiro, and it makes Malenia a lot more fun and interesting.. so you might just be correct about that.
Probably Tomoe, who would likely have been a boss for a DLC (Activision supposedly saw as unprofitable.) She’s written about in the description of the Spiral Cloud Passage (original Waterfowl Dance), also in the Fragrant Flower (Malenia’s Scarlet Flower), Emma mentions a former spreader of the Dragon Rot epidemic, who would be the previous Divine Heir (Takeru)’s defender (Tomoe), and she taught Genichiro lightning combat, which if you look closely, Waterfowl Dance begins suspending in midair nearly identical to a lightning attack in Sekiro. Perhaps I’m reaching, but a lot of correlations for sure
It’s absurd that anyone defends how broken that is. I honestly don’t think From put anywhere near as much thought into her mechanics as they needed to. She’s definitely no Lady Maria.
@@sekiro_the_one-armed_wolf Bingo, this is basically what I did on my first run. I dodged when I was SURE I could safely dodge and if I wasn't sure I blocked and just ate her HP regen. Took around 5 tries which is normal for any of the higher level new bosses, for me.
@@seanbean3070TBH considering that I beat her basically eating all of her waterfowl to my shield, I think without the HP from shield she would be way too easy.
Weird hyper armor, life steal, and an almost unavoidable one-shot movement that requires to be evaded in an especific way. This means a lot of deaths and a lot of loading screens, even for Souls standards. "Your stubbornness, extraordinary"
She doesn't have "weird hyperarmor" just hyperarmor, she's easy to stun so if she didn't have that you would be able to stun lock her very easily. Lifesteal is good, it reward aggressivity. Waterfowl dance isn't "almost unavoidable", there are many ways to counter it like frost pot, blocking, bloodhound step, vow of the indomitable and running away, you don't need to learn the dodge. load screen are fast
@@ni9274 Lifesteal punishes being aggressive? You go in too much get hit and she heals, it doesn't really reward anything just enforces perfect dodging or using strategies that involve immobilising her
It's not wholesale bad design, they just made dodging it too unintuitive. You have to make some pretty specific and wack movements to not just die, and that's pretty lame.
I'm curious what their idea was for the design. i did just learned you can toss shit at her in the air, more of a limitation on myself cause we don't typically do that in sekiro. I've always felt that you should be able to avoid or address a move with the core mechanics built in. Which i guess the dodge is that one. Nihil is another one that annoys me, just not being able to dodge the blood attack.
@spicywe1ner Nihil is totally a gimmick they intended you to have the crystal tear for, so I can forgive that one. I'm wondering if there's an npc that let's you know on that one. As for waterfowl dance, the rumor is that Malenia is unused Sekiro dlc content which to me would make complete sense. You plop her into that game with exactly 0 changes, self heal and everything, and she slots in like a dream. I just think they didn't tune her to the dark souls gameplay well enough if the rumor is the truth. And of course I don't know how to design in it well enough to suggest changes, they just should have made sure that fighting with the camera wasn't part of the process to dodging it.
@@peco595 I'm not sure about the NPC for Nihil. I'm such an asshole when it comes to searching for dialogue or ideas, and just get smashed in the face over and over find a way. only to realize the sign literally outside the boss tells you how to do it ROFL. I have try the malenia mod for sekiro, i heard people really enjoy it. I'm curious how it feels as a 3k hour sekiro player. great info :) thank you for the comment.
@g.henriquecosta983 Getting good is unreasonably difficult if the task is made unintuitive. Looking up a guide on dodging waterfowl being a recommendation for this boss fight means that they didn't fine tune it enough given that attack is guarenteed death if you fail to dodge it properly. Either that, or you give the boss like 40% of her health back should you choose to try and block it.
What i hate about Waterfowl is how it COMPLETELY kills your momentum AND how random it is. Malenia can at ANY point just do it, no queue, no warning. And worse of all? Sometimes she DOESN'T DO IT?!?!?!? When i fight Mohg i KNOW he will Nihil. When i fight Margit/Morgott i know he will phase 2. When i fight Loretta i know she will power up. When i fight Malenia she MIGHT Waterfowl, and YOU DON'T FKING KNOW WHEN. That makes colossals completely unreliable entirely.
At her 1st stage, I think she can do the waterfowl dance 4 or 5 times. If you distance yourself from her and throw a dagger, you can bait her into doing it. If you dodge it, she will have a cool down for a while.if she doesn't do the waterfowl dance, throw a few more daggers or you have to deal more damage first. This helps defeat the randomness of her special move.
Shadow of Erdtree added the deflecting tear which adds a perfect block mechanic like in Sekiro, if the base game had this then I would say that this isn't bad design. I suspect perfect block/deflect will be a feature of future souls games if this is the direction bosses are going in. It will also speed up combat quite a bit.
If they just gave that to everyone and indicated that it must be part of your build, I would be completely fine with this and other unavoidable/nearly unavoidable attacks.
This is what I'm thinking too. With how fast the combat is getting and with how little people use parrying, they will eventually implement sekiro esque parrying into base game souls combat
I do not believe the inputs required to dodge this are a reasonable expectation from the player, let alone something we are expected to perform consistently.
it's a poor design. I get that she's supposed to be very strong, considering she's the hidden boss but that move specifically is so unintuitive to react. Without youtube videos and other forums, I would never guess which way to roll, what kind of status weaknesses she has. The most annoying thing is that she heals even when you block, essentially making your shield build sort of useless. Not only that, she can cancel any stun to trigger Waterfowl. That's insane.. There's even youtube video that shows how broken she is. If the player character is given 0.25x more speed and attack cancel, it won't be a problem but this boss is not designed for elden ring combat system. Another problem is that, there's no reward for you after you successfully dodge waterfowl, she can quickly do any other attack or even trigger another Waterfowl
I guess it's all about the determination, skill, and knowledge you have. I didn't need any help, I just tried it until I found a small hole to fit in. And it worked. You can also just predict when she'll do the waterfowl and immediately retreat before it happened. Honestly, elden ring brought so many beginners into the game, yall started to become entitled asf. FromSoftware games were always supposed to be hard! And it wasnt as nearly as forgiving as it is now, cuz now, you can just summon a stupid spirit and have op builds, but yall still complain. It introduced a lot of things into the gaming world. You don't even know how hard dark souls 1 was. When it first came out, people were struggling the same way you guys are struggling now! Because it was a new experience that surpassed the familiar difficulty everyone had at that time. But humans have this amazing ability to adapt. Many will quit and give up, but others... others will stay to face the pressure and challenge in order to adapt. Malenia is already considered to not be that hard after the new dlc came out. Why? Cuz we adapted. We became better. But now people are going to cry about the dlc. It's a never ending cycle because new people come to play the game and throw their uneducated opinion into the mix. We will adapt, while the rest of you will give up.
It is not a poor design you guys just have shit intuition, i died twice to that move and i already come up with a way to dodge, you just dodge the first flurry of the first strike and get hit by it once or twice ( it does like 600 dmg at most ) so that your dodge roll is timed with the second one, then just dodge into her the moment the second strike start, the third strike will just miss on its own. Its that easy, or maybe most people just never played the game and just repeat what the bad player said
I can see what they were going for. They wanted an attack that tests your ability to manage it. After all, the rest of her moveset is super manageable, basic even, but the inclusion of something as obscene as Waterfowl Dance makes the fight become Player vs. Waterfowl instead of Player vs. Malenia. The bad design part comes from the way players WANT to play, with play styles that Fromsoft no doubt is already aware of. It's an RPG, so a lot of builds have a theme around them. But if your theme has no tools for dealing with Waterfowl, then you may have to start breaking theme just to win. That's the conflict worth critiquing.
They just needed to make her start up animation longer or the first strike slower. The only problem is that right now, if you are stuck in an attack animation the moment she does the move it's pretty much impossible for the average player to dodge the move or at least the first strike, which is always at least 50% of your healthbar. The move can somewhat easily be dodged if you are a few meters away when she starts it, and my only issue with the fight is that this forces you to stay back and wait for her to do her move first, which isn't very engaging or fun.
I agree with everything you said. I'm a very aggressive player, I prefer to parry everything when i can, I'm not expecting to parry water fowl, but having a way to punish it with core mechanics is something I would hope for more. Lies of P watchman has an attack that bothers me in the same way with the lighting AOE on the ground after a parry you cant hit back.
What? That's not true. If you're close to her when she starts the animation in the air, you should have enough time to run in a circle beneath her to bait her into going in one direction while you go the other. I'm surprised people don't know this tactic at this point.
@@CelestialDraconis If you are talking about this ua-cam.com/video/m9ge0nP12Pw/v-deo.html That's not an intuitive response at all, and even with practice it's still very hard to pull off. As I said, an average player won't ever do this, especially without looking it up online, and even then, if you are using a heavy weapon and you are stuck in an attack animation when she does the move, you still won't have enough time to position yourself for this.
@@KingOfMalevolence You are vastly overstating how fast her windup is. You are given several seconds to move. If you're too slow then that's just a skill issue honestly. And why is learning about it online such a a bad thing? Most Soulsborne boss tactics are shared by the community and learned online. This isn't just limited to boss fights either. I reckon you had to use the wiki several times just to find out how to continue a quest line in this game. Stop making excuses.
@@CelestialDraconis I mean you are literally just wrong on your 1st point, and about the second, if you have to look up online how to do something it's just bad design, I don't know why you point out the dumb quest system like that's a good thing. Finally, I clearly stated that the AVERAGE player can't do this shit, if you are good enough to do it consistently, good for you, but no one's gonna give you a medal for saying things like "skill issue", people just think you are cringe af.
@@spicywe1ner Activate the first Vow as soon as she hits the ground. Then immediately follow up with the 2nd and 3rd vow. Once the third vow is finished, flip backwards to avoid the latter part of her third flurry.
@@spicywe1ner It can be truly impressive when used correctly, can be used to evade basically every signature attack in the game including rykards takers flame strike, waterfoul obviously, and even malikeths black blade explosions.
@@guardianvalor962ur do one and hold the block button before its even done, vow into immediate block. Shell heal a bit but the rest of her moveset is easy.
dude i've seen this at 0.25 but didnt notice a few things. for example the reason for the second part (third roll) being more consistent if you go to her left seems clear here that its cause of the lingering hitbox on her sword ty!
Yea I spent an hour fucking with this. And I hate it even more. I have some questions for you about this ahhaab. also the tracking might not be 100% on this being slowed down. So it might clear. But F this move
ive been testing it at slowed speed, does seem like for the second & third parts of WFD straight to the right into a backstep is much safer than forwards right like i had been doing... would've saved a fight today if i knew it sooner Sadge
In the 1.0 version Malenia deflects like a Sekiro boss, which leads credace that she was a cut lady Tomoe boss, so Sekiro was totally going to have something like this
@@biggreen1456 that is not some removed 1.0 feature. Malenia always deflects if you keep hitting her. Sekiro would never have a boss that you have to look up how to dodge because in Sekiro you wouldn't have to dodge at all.
If waterfowl was a guaranteed cast at a certain %, like the aeonia is at the start of phase 2, it'd be a lot better in my opinion. As of now, there are too many variables to keep track of. You could bait it, be a decent enough distance away and do the easy dodge, great. Maybe you're better and can always pull off the close up dodge, great. Yet when all variables align against you, you WILL get hit. "Ehm, but you can just freeze pot" yes, yet in my opinion that cheapens the fight. E.G. I don't think most people are willing to excuse the godskin duo's design just because you can use sleep pots.
The only unintuitive part of the water fowl dance is the first flury. that requires you to circle arround so the hit box misses, the second and third are quite straight forward and easy to dodge
But if the first one hits you, you can’t move and you’re going to eat the rest of it. I’ve sunk over a thousand hours into these games. And while I did beat this boss, I was not happy about it. It feels like Bed of Chaos
You don't have to do that, there are tons of other way to counter it. the dodge isn't "tricking the AI", it's just strafing which people have been doing since DS1. There are also a dodge that doesn't require to trick the AI, run away on the first flurry and jump at the end to get more i-frame.
@@ni9274 what i mean by tricking the ai is throwing a dagger/ a spell to force her to dodge, Most of the time if her ai want to do waterfall next and you force her to dodge she will do the waterfall after it and from a safe distance. Otherwise the fight is umbearable with how much she waterfall dance from point blank
I personally like the fact that she is susceptible to being tricked. It makes the fight more even and also a real opponent could also be tricked. The design of this move is great as it seems undodgeable at first but with training you can learn to dodge it every time. The design and quality of Malenia are exceptional.
@@yamatoryuumaki5222There is no "using your brain" on this attack dude, you can see it in the video. The attack animations do not communicate when you are supposed to dodge. The only options are extensive trial and error, or guides.
Too much damage at the start of the move, so learning this is super painful because you die to the first two hits and then watch her go sicko mode on your corpse. Demoralizing.
If you have enough time to run away like...a 3 second lead, I suggest you do this: 1. Run away and let her finish the first barrage, she can't cover enough distance to catch you. She covers a set amount of meters/feet, she doesn't teleport behind you. 2. Keep running on the second barrage, no rolling needed for the same reason as before. Always on a straight line away from her. 3. The moment she finishes the second one, you turn around and choose a direction to go: Towards her left or towards her right (forward + a side). 4. You walk for a second and then turn to the other side (if you chose left, stop moving forward and continue straight to the right, and viceversa), this will juke her into committing her last barrage into a position you have already left. 5. Just when you see her going into the third barrage, roll like crazy towards the direction you changed into. The last cuts (before that souble "ghost" slash) can still hit you.
I had her entire fight down to being almost entirely hitless by the time I beat her the first time, and literally the only thing that was killing me at that point was waterfowl dance.
Aesthetically it is good but it does push the fantasy a bit with the strikes that appear where the blade did not go. I think that if there was a wind effect at the start up then the multiple strikes would fit the aoe attack.
in real time does seem pretty impressive, as you slow it down it does seem to fall apart a little bit. I guess you might notice it if she isn't up your ass when its going on HAHA
ive had people describe malenia to me as a gimmick boss ala rykard but instead of the serpent hunter you need bloodhound step and i think thats just a complete and utter failure on froms part
The only thing fouling an otherwise great bossfight is this move, the flower is easily strafed and you can see the clones coming at you from far away enough to instinctively click dodge (you can also kind of spam b through the whole thing lol), the rest of the fight is actually fun to learn Then waterfowl happens
more like black knife tiche or mimic tear spirit ashes make this fight even the amount of moves and healing of her is ridiculous fighting her the "normal" way feels too difficult
@@soulslasher7890midrange with lightroll. the ONLY guaranteed way to 100% avoid waterfowl without bloodhounds is with lightroll and some pre-existing distance, which is very restrictive on builds
VERY piss-poor design at best. This is such a stupid move, that even when you dodge it successfully, you’ll still wonder where the fuck it all went wrong. Worse, is I HATE that they had the gall to combine this not just with Malenia’s lifesteal, but also her damn Scarlet Rot. I get what FromSoft was going for, making the fight more epic, but in doing so, they forgot what makes most fights good without being so damn flashy, like most of the development team still haven’t let go of Sekiro’s fast & fluid movesets.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I tend to not care about theatrical moves, but man the lifesteal, seeing her health jump like 20%, hurts far more than me just getting one shot from it. After spending a significant amount of time on her. I do enjoy that difficulty of her, but i dont share a hitless mentality most of the time where you have to fight perfect and never trade. I enjoy trading hits and its a big slap to the face in this battle. Not in a poise buttgoat smashy smashy way. just greed in an extra hit here or there or that last smack for poise breaks. I'm also a huge sekiro fan, so im cool with the faced paced everything, i just want to feel capable enough to punish those styles not, well time to find a frame perfect strrafe or dodge to be able to do so.
@Gankstomper After seeing your miserable traces in this comment section I'm pretty convinced you're either just a straight up troll or a basement dweller... maybe both even.
I've beaten her but I never really learnt to dodge that attack, at least not the whole thing. The problem with it is that, it's difficult to dodge and it kills you if it hits you, so you get very few chances to practice how to evade it. Imo, any attack designed like this is poor design, either the attack one shots you or it's hard to dodge, but not both. Hell, give her one of each, but a hard boss should also give the player a chance to practice. Something similar happens with a lot of bosses in the DLC, your first few tries boil down to learning to dodge the massive blast thrown at you the second you cross the mist, then you can actually, you know, fight the boss. Other than that attack, Malenia is a really cool boss, but I only feel I beat her because I got lucky and didn't get caught in her dance.
That damn Dancing Lion decided to meta‐game and attack the camera instead. I could not beat that thing until I decided to play with the camera unlocked. Attacking twice in a row with lightning strikes in‐between was something I could never figure out how to dodge either....
The git gud crowd when they cant just spam roll: "unfair!" ... She was the end game optional challenge boss. She was the strongest demigod still alive in the lore. Why shouldnt she be able to tear you apart? There is an entire youtube channel damn near dedicated to curb stomping her with a variety of builds. So yes. Skill issue.
I'm *okay* with it. Not my favourite move to deal with, but I don't hate it as much as I used to. I learned a lot about the hitboxes from this video and how there's way less going on here than I thought. It's her ONLY "screw you" move she has. Everything else is actually pretty easy to deal with (if you know her moveset, of course). And I think she's nerfed WAY down from Launch Version. So... yeah. I'll take the bad with the good in this situation. I don't love this move, again, but I don't hate it.
I'll have to look into the nerfing. I played a lot on launch then took a significant break when the speedrun was very Zip dominant, and i just didnt want to roll the dice over and over. but i did miss a few updates here and there. her movement speed during it is insanity in my opinion. from start up to the last hit on the first flurry, you cannot outspace with a full sprint and dodge at the right time.
Ive fought malenia for 600 hours. Mastering waterfowl is the most rewarding part about this. Even with all those hours against her, waterfowl keeps things interesting. Even as i became capable of beating her hitless. I think its fine given most people are not trying to beat her hitless, they only need to survive waterfowl.
"Skill Issue that you complain about this perfect game design bro!" Fromsoft fanboys are likely the kind of players that love to get pegged. In fact, i will give you a perfect boss. This boss is called Pegger the Pegmaster, when this guy enters the fight does an attack that can only be dodged doing a frame perfect dodge (If you are midrolling you are dead) if he hits you he takes away 99% of your total HP, this attack cannot be blocked. Pegmaster's attacks are all AoE massive extremelly long and exaggerated and if you attack him he inmediatelly counters you. Pegmaster also has 5 phases, all of them whit more HP than the last. Every phases change he does a massive AoE explosion that literally covers the entire Arena (the Arena is 30 cm total) If you run away or jump he instantly kills you and pegs you IRL, just like that. (You guys would probably love that tho) Honestly i know this is too easy for your absolute proplayers, i apologize for my lack of challenge, so i think Pegger the Pegmaster should also force you to kill him bare handed. If you equip any weapon he deletes your entire inventory. I think this is AT LEAST a decent challenge. Oh, and if you manage to kill him whitout taking damage, his last attack just bricks your PC/Console forever. Denying you the win you want, like a true Souls fan likes it.
Its good conceptually but the execution is somewhat off. Its meant to be an attack that allows Malenia to have something to still be challenging to players who have realized that being aggressive is rewarding in this fight due to how easy it is to hitstun her to get more openings while also offsetting her healing. Plus Waterfowl also breaks the Souls convention of rolling being dominant and encourages players to use other options as stuff like Bloodhound's Step or shields are better options to defend against it compared to the usual rolling which requires much more trial and error. It also encourages other tactics like using bleed or frostbite status buildup or outright stunlocking her with perfectly timed chain of magic spells to never give her the chance to pull it off or other attacks. I really love how Malenia is so well designed overall as a endgame tactics check that tests whether or not the players have engaged more deeply with the combat system and gotten used to using more advanced tactics. But the problem I see is how the difficulty comes only from the first 3 flurries and its tracking that makes it difficult to dodge in close range. The later flurries after her pause are easily dodged by rolling towards her and then away. The common tactic of rotating her looks unnatural and feels like an AI exploit where you mess up her AI's tracking to dodge the early flurries. If I had to redesign it, I'd gladly remove the tight tracking early flurries that makes her Waterfowl so deadly. To compensate, I'd modify her Waterfowl to a form that you can dodge intuitively but you'll still have to be alert and make no mistakes. I'd make Waterfowl a series of individual flurries and attacks that she can mix up depending on the players actions and relative positioning to keep the player on guard the entire time to properly react to which attack variant she uses and also allow Malenia to pull it off in between her regular attacks and further chain combos. It will still serve the role it has in the fight but now its not unintuitive while being more of a threat for the entire duration. All of Malenia's other attacks are distinct and well designed (barring that slow jump up and down slash) and will flow really well together to give players a deadly dance to enjoy. Oh and I'd make one of her Waterfowl attacks be slashes that deal damage in a circle around her with higher range to turn the rotate Malenia AI exploit obsolete by making her always do it if the player circles her to mess up her tracking.
Good design! 1. Boss is intended to be challenging for late game players, 2. To create a challenge for OP players they played with the mechanics a bit, namely HP regen, 3. This forces the player to adapt or tweak their playstyle to deal with the boss. For my greatshield/zwei build I had to be much more efficient than usual; I actually blocked most of her attacks and let her heal to avoid taking damage. The fight was very drawn out but I won at around 5 tries, which is a bit on the high side but nothing extreme for a boss I had never seen before. It's definitely less forgiving against more frail builds, but on subsequent playthroughs I was able to win with several other builds and it felt like each one played the fight very differently. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no hate if you didn't enjoy the fight - there are many things I didn't care for in Elden Ring but Malenia is one of my favorite fights in the whole franchise 😊
Some things I would consider changing: * 10-20 reduced damage per waterfowl hit. To be less punishing to lighter characters who don't shield. * Slightly longer windup between each "phase" of waterfowl so you have just a little more time to interpret each section of the attack. * Don't let her chain waterfowl into waterfowl. Most bosses have issues with a particularly aggravating move and they sometimes choose to spam it. My partner and I call this "The Algorithm." Sometimes the AI is God and sometimes it's an idiot. That's it, I think. I still think it's good without these changes but I do think it could be even better with minor adjustments.
That's a normal amount of tracking. You can literally beat every boss in Elden Ring without using i-frame, spacing and strafing attack is as viable as dodging them.
@@ni9274didn't pull that shit, it takes insane amount of luck and patience to have a run like that, i know enough challenge runners and they hate this game for the amount of retries required
Malenia really is the Demon of Hatred of Elden Ring, swap those two bosses and we would be in the perfect timeline 😭😭 I swear DoH was supposed to be a Dark Souls boss that they just threw in (despite all the lore surrounding the boss ofc) And I hate that this video actually makes me think this attack is dodge-able instead of an instant run away warning. My idea is that you dodge into her during those times where her arm has the hitbox, to preemptively dodge the aoe of the attack but I know that would probably never work 😂
After fight Consort Radahn, I can say that Malenia is still harder, and it’s because of this single move. Consort Radahn has tons of moves that constantly combo into each other, add in the second phase with the light clones and light pillars and it’s just even crazier. The light pillars are manageable, the clones I’ve yet to find a way to completely dodge them all, I’ve managed to run from them but I can’t seem to replicate when that happens, but over all I’m still able to look at the moves and think “ok I might be able to dodge if I do this”. Waterfowl is fast, active for tons of frames, and you can’t outrun it, it is guaranteed to hit unless you are able to find the incredibly minute sweet spot. Radahns clone attacks don’t even kill if you have max vigor, waterfowl WILL KILL even if you are only hit by 2 of the damage balls. It’s just a ridiculous move.
People putting up with waterfowl was why we got attacks like that, and stuff like consort's 1-2-cross slash. That thing is basically another waterfowl but does a little less damage. Again, god help you if blocking isn't a part of your build.
@@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS The fact I've seen more people complain about the 1-2-cross slash attack than the clones is amazing lol. But yeah I don't think waterfowl would be as bad if she didn't HEAL from it even if you're blocking, I'd at least be willing to tolerate it.
The use of “cheese” in relation to Elden Ring accomplishments is so lame. You beat the boss with tools provided by the game, so great job. That’s supposed to happen 😂
@@CancunMimosapretty much. Redditors are incapable of grasping beating a boss without making it a challenge run. I don't think the fromsoft PvE community was this toxic before Elden ring broke mainstream
I think a lot of attacks in the game are poorly designed. They hard punish you, have insane trackin with the gimmick of delayed strikes into lightning quick release and combo. If you want to repeat the fight over and over like it's math homework you will learn it but the reality is that it promotes cheesing over learning the fight.
The worst part is even normal enemies have this problem. In earlier games normal enemies werent easy but they felt fair and not too strong but in this game they not only gank you like in dark souls 2 but they also have ridiculous moveset and insanely strong attacks while you cant even start to swing your weapon because its like they stick to you like glue and always hit you first with insanely fast attacks.
Makes sense that the middle flurry is always the easiest to dodge since it's only 1 swing, 1 dome hitbox, 1 swing, and then even though there's the usual animation for it, no final dome hitbox
I know some people know how to 100% avoid the attack and props to them. But for me, if anything, this move encourages trying to cheese against it somehow. Like, either use a summon, vow of indomitable, etc. I've killed Malenia many many times without knowing how to dodge this, because I just assume it will hit me and prepare a lot for the rest of the fight by trying to melt her some way or tanking through anything with shields and skills. Funny thing is I never get hit by the first 2 attacks, only the 3rd one almost always gets me, even if by just a bit.
it looks soooo good when you get a swaggy dodge on it too. thats funny about getting hit to the last attack. the first one is always the struggle. I do stay up on her though, since i like to play ultra agressive. Great info :)
And that's probably the intended design by miyazaki. This move is probably literally supposed to be impossible to dodge. It's a gear check, not a skill check.
I can dodge it pretty regularly, but I never really thought about it until now. If I'm not already far away to dodge the first attack normally, the only one you need to actually worry about, here's what I do: When Malenia takes the pose to signal the beginning of the Waterfowl Dance, I get right under her, positioning myself on her right side. Then I *roll behind her in a diagonal motion to her left side behind her* , and then *roll around her again to her front side, then roll one more time as if I was just trying to roll away to get as much distance as possible* This "tricks" her into thinking I'm moving one way, but I quickly change direction around her in a circle. This makes the first step of the Waterfowl Dance try to chase me in a way that's not possible, since it mostly moves in a *direct* line towards you. Not a straight line, but directly towards you. Since I position myself and roll in the way I described earlier, the first step of Waterfowl Dance is try to move directly towards me, but I'm already in the opposite direction, in a turn too sharp to follow. The other two steps of Waterfowl Dance are simple to dodge, provided you aren't just spamming the dodge button. I'm going to sound like a prick here, but I am assuming most people reading this are indeed just trying to push the dodge button as fast as possible, simply pointing the stick away from Malenia the whole time. Don't do that. That doesn't work, and in fact has never worked before, it's just pure luck that pressing the dodge button over and over again and not thinking about the direction you're going has worked for you in the past before. What about the other two steps pf Waterfowl Dance? Just roll towards Malenia, go right through it, simple. This does mean for the last step, stop pressing dodge for moment, stop moving, and look at the direction the last step of Waterfowl Dance is coming from, and roll through it again. Simple.
it's neither good nor bad it's neither their best work nor their worst it does what it's supposed to do, it's a death move made to keep the pressure up and make the player aways think "she might do that one shot move any time so I need to play slower and more methodical" It makes it so you play Malenia like a death duel where one wrong move and one wrong trade means death, and it achieves that. It could have had better hitboxes, it could've have better startups and shared cooldowns with her other super moves, but it's serviceable and does what it sets out to do.
that is a very good point. creates a massive amount of tension or fear in the fight. I do really enjoy that feeling while playing games. as a hitless or speedrunner, im kind of eh on it.
She's ok in world of elden ring if they got rid of the multiple omnidirectional ultra fast slash attacks that hit you even tho her arm and sword isnt there. She mostly moves like a sekiro boss
In isolation, it isn’t a bad thing. But with heavier weapons, you lose frames to recovery. AND the sprint button takes time to register. And it’s basically an insta kill even with 70 vgr.
I agree with the core sentiment, but you can definitely survive waterfowl even if you eat the first part. 60 vig, greatshield talisman and the flask tear for +15% defenses let you live through the combo even if you mess it all up
I've been testing this. It's only survivable with: - 60 vigor - Bull-Goat Set - Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman - Ritual Shield Talisman - Iron Jar Aromatic The key ingredient is the Iron Jar Aromatic. Without it you can't survive the full dance, I think it's only two hits, which is helpful, but you will still die.
Description is so right First try she did not use Fowl on me and I died to a lingering Aeonia trying to get greedy to finish her off Then the next fights just ended at Aeonia every time Base moveset for her is like Abyss Watchers level of difficulty, until you just add *that* into the mix
Personally I like it, I think it reflects the essence of the encounter. Malenia is of course an optional boss, one that is meant to be one of, if not the hardest encounter in any from soft game. Considering the sheer catalog of fromsoft bosses, to differentiate and retain that essential difficulty something crazy or even gimmicky is probably necessary. Waterfowl dance is definitely a memorable way to do so. I personally never learned to properly dodge it, but it's easy to dodge it mostly unscathed with some chip damage. Even if you never learned the move the boss is in no way impossible, I think of it more as a testament to mastery, learning waterfowl dance is an achievement rather than a requirement.
i like this take. I do remember running into games and the "superboss" is just kind of meh. It was certainly a learning experience. I spent a fair amount of time with light load and medium load. i really want to see what i can do with heavy load. It is the first move out of any boss that I had to slow down to to see waht the F is going on
This is my main gripe with newer Souls games after Bloodborne. Certain enemies and bosses can just hang in the air for a few seconds while they track your movement DURING their wind up animation. What part of this is fair? This is not how previous games have played, and this is not how physics work.
@@AbdoHany9 git gud taste instead of being a tryhard that only cares about jerking off to being so good at learning one boss for a hour. Dark souls fanboys are truly the worst. You don't even understand what made those games a 10/10 in the first place. Spoiler: it was not having shit like this
Guys you don’t get it. Miyazaki said dark souls’ design is intended for team fortress 2 players, specifically players experienced in dodging market gardener soldiers on hightower.
Poor design. It requires too much effort for the average player to dodge in immaculate fashion. Now, if getting locked into waterfowl brought the player down to exactly 1HP, similar to the attack from the Moon Presence, I think it would level out the playing field a bit.
Well, thing is, this boss is not meant for the average player. It's supposed to be an extra challenge for those committed enough to beat it. If you don't want to, you don't have to. It's completely optional.
@the_seer_0421 The dlc is proof that you don't have to resort to bullshit unintuitive attacks to make a challenging late game boss. It should in theory be *possible* for the average player to dodge any move a boss throws at them on their first time seeing it in isolation, but the likelihood of that happening with this move is astronomically low
@@Squeeble00I disagree with this sentiment, 100%. Why should a move be dodgeable the first time you see it? That sentiment doesn't seem to jive with the entire Souls franchise to me, TBH
Without this move she'd be too easy. If you have trouble with it just go light roll. It covers enough distance that you can basically spam roll away from it only needing to dodge the final one or two parts even at close range. Light roll makes her very manageable in general because you can roll away from all of her attacks very easily and correct positioning is everything against Malenia
Even so, that isn't an excuse for the bad design here and in general with almost all the bosses of elden ring. She still would be a fun boss to fight even seen how easy she is in some aspects given the fact that she is a sekiro boss in a dark souls game, but isn't only this attack, it is also the random hyper armor she gains when you should be able to stun locker easily in some movements or how bad the life steal is used here at difference of bloodborne.
Malenia is the only boss in any of the souls games I have played where I genuinely say I despise the fight. I beat her once with the mimic tear (also the only boss I used a spirit summon against in my first playthrough) and a glass-cannon dps set, then never again because I HATE the fight. This move is 90% of the reason why
I've played all fromsoft games that are available on PC and this is the most BS move in any of them. followed by literally any of fume knight's wonky ass hitboxes
@@hare75as bullshit as that misson is, with as much passion i hate it with. I still had an easier time with it than trying to dodge Water fowl, which is funny because i can easily dodge the rest of her moveset
@@hare75what, that missions is ok, the enemies there should be the standard for most mission in terms of agression, You can S rank it really easy with a Lot of setups
I beat Malenia once, and I attribute that entirely to me just getting lucky she only did this move once the whole fight. I love everything about her fight except this one dumb move. I feel it should either just be removed entirely or regulated more heavily, like she'll only attempt it once per certain health thresholds reached.
The timing for the AoE is unreadable on sight and must be experienced through death, which I do not consider to be particularly good design. However, I found nearly every boss attack in DS3 (save for a couple on Dancer and one on SoC) to be so readable that it did not provide a semblance of a challenge compared to previous titles. I don't know that I would want to _change_ Waterfowl Dance. Don't get me wrong, I do hate facing it, and it is not a fun time, but were it removed, Malenia wouldn't be very difficult.
Bosses in souls games always had attack that are unreadable on sight, and learning the moveset of bosses is literally what make souls games fun not just reacting to attacks. So having a boss that require some trial and error to beat is bad design ? Malenia would still be the most difficult boss without waterfowl.
@@ni9274 The difference is that your first introduction to Waterfowl Dance is a long, drawn out, inevitably lethal finish regardless of your build or equipment. The likelihood of you surviving it and continuing the fight is extremely low. I cannot think of another boss or enemy which does this. Not even the ≤8 frame grab attack from the little skittering Yahargul witches, Artorias' mid-combo triple flip, or the Black Knives' chasing flurry are a guaranteed (dare I say destined) death. Malenia isn't the most difficult boss as is, just the coolest. Her gimmicks may be annoying, but they are part of her, and I wouldn't remove them. I hand the title of most difficult to the version of Astel in Yelough Anix Tunnel- hate fighting that monstrosity. If we're including things other than named bosses, the laser golem near the painting which gives you Rain of Stars is borderline impossible to fight honestly. Reads as a joke even.
its poor design. you can dodge it but its the only move you gotta worry about really. if she only throws out one or 2 during the fight youll likely win. thats what i call artificial difficulty. the run i beat her she hardly used that move. it almost felt undeserved because i just got good RNG
There being no move before it that introduces the concept of not being dodgeable in an intuitive way, its bad design just made to artificially prolong her life while you learn her gimmick
For anyone saying its easy to avoid, take into consideration that for it to be finally easy you've probably watched a guide and fought her countless times. Water fowl is just counter intuitive, spinning around enemies is not a game mechanic and you cant even block it with shield because life steal still works for some reason.
I like it though it fits her personality and lore. She just beyond most people's threshold of how far are people willing to go understanding that makes it reasonable as to why people complain about her but thaat doesn't make her bad.
Yeah it's poorly designed. Firstly, ignoring how "fair" the move is, waterfowl is by far the most oppressive move From has ever put into their game. Because it's so incredibly lethal and difficult to dodge the overwhelming majority of players will simply sit at range if they think she's going to use it because it's simply too dangerous to be near her and resort to either using spells or hit-trading to kill her. Look at pretty much any streamer's first kill of her and chances are this is what they're doing. Secondly, even though you can avoid damage on the first volley up close, that doesn't make it well designed. The run-and-dodge manoeuvre you show here is by far the most complex dodge pattern of any From boss and is so obscure almost no players are gonna figure it out for themselves (it was two weeks before the first video showing this tech was released). The second tech is the frostpot, which again is incredibly obscure (it was a month and a half before someone found this tech). Third and fourth is bloodhound step and blocking. The former requires the player to find one specific item on the other side of a continent and think to use it, and the later results in Malenia healing a bunch and still isn't necessarily safe.
I never managed to dodge this normally. I ended up having to use the bloodhound step skill to run out of range of the attack. That along with her stealing health even if you block an attack are why I think this fight borders on unfair territory
a lot of people are gonna say its poor design but
that includes me
guess u havent seen ds2
@@deka4038ds2 was fine if you knew how adp worked. Glad they removed it but dumping a few levels into it saves a bunch of headache.
Also learning that you need to dodge into the attack rather than away from it.
Ur bad
@@deka4038 hurr durr ds2 le bad!
the worst ds2 had was a overly wide hitbox, on a mid game boss.
>Malenia jumps in the air to start WaterFowl
*ENTER FROSTPOT*
She becomes resistant to frost, and she does the waterfowl multiple times in the first & second phase. It’s not viable long term during the fight.
@@odious5317 when she’s in the air, run away and when she begins the second part roll into her and again when the third part of the waterfowl dance beginst.
1-2 seconds of running + 2 dodges into her = waterfowl countered
@@bolle1929 I’ve done it that way, and it’s still very hard for me. I’ve only not gotten hit once, or twice with that method.
I appreciate your advice, though! Thank you.
It's great *in isolation*
It's terrible once you realize she can INSTANTLY cancel out of a stagger and begin the windup during your attack animation at point blank. Which is manageable
And then you realize your default sprint keybind only registers after holding the button down for a second or so. Which is still manageable
And then you realize heavier weapons have recovery frames you can only cancel out of by dodging, which in turn delays the startup of your sprint input.
At some point you add so much stuff together it stops being manageable once the right conditions align. And they WILL align.
It's perfectly ok in isolation, going by just the math, when both sides of the equation are starting from neutral. That forces the player to stay at neutral until they bait it out, which some people like
But for me it creates this "waterfowl baiting break" that interrups the flow of the fight and is completely RNG based after a certain HP threshold
Death by a thousand cuts, the irony is beautiful
tl;dr: skill issue, use frost pots, run in circles around her, use bhs, blah blah blah reddit blabering blah blah
Best reply
Notice how none of the idiots who say "ur just bad" replied to this one?
Yep my thought aswell. The Design in itself is not the sole problem. Its what you as a player can do. Elden Ring player moveset is basically DS1 + jumping. Thats the FS Formluar since Demon Souls. And thats totally fine. But if you compare every Boss fight from every game they released so far, they where never as close that complicated as in Elden Ring.
You cant put us against these kind of bosses with that moveset we have. Thats just not good design. Its hard yes, but its also extremely frustrating. And please dont come up with summons and shit. This system should be scraped at the very beginning. Who enjoys getting carried by a mindless ai? Summons where always a noob carrier in FS games and never got out of this.
@@threedog27exactly, I haven’t played sekiro but I heard the parry is essential and if this was in sekiro and you’d be able to parry it for a devastating blow but an insurmountable risk of death then it would be good design but in ER you can’t do much without requiring a consumable or a non essential gameplay mechanic. TL;DR, it’s just bad.
@@usernameig975because they actually give a thought out representation of why the move is unfair instead of just openly complaining about it and not actually realizing how it’s unfair? Like the comment says, in a neutral state the move is fine, but when you’re unprepared for it, it gets you.
Her meanest surprise always has been Waterfowl cancel into instant, followup Waterfowl. Pure cancer 😂
Yo she did this to me one time and and I yelled out “BULLSH!!”😆 I thought it was a glitch but she actually did this multiple times before.
@@Darkwing709The amount of times I've yelled out "BULLSH1T" or "CHEATER!!" while fighting malenia is ridiculous 🤣 despite that I still think she's the best boss fight in the game especially with a parry shield
One time, I was co-op'ing with a friend against Malenia, first phase, going well, 50% hp, then I made the dastardly mistake of saying "fight back b1tch", then she done 3 back to back water fowl dances which I barely survived and then a few seconds after, another one for good measure.
I love how she can triangulate your position from mid air.
If you fight Malenia without reviewing UA-cam footage of waterfowl, the amount of trial and error it takes is beyond a reasonable number because of how unreadable the move is. It's simply hard to know when to press dodge.
that would be the case if the only way to counter the attack was a dodge, but there are many other ways like blocking everything (she regen but that doesn't matter if you know the rest of the moveset), frost pot (only work 2-3 time cause she become resistant to frost), bloodhound step (just spam it), vow of the indomitable and running away.
You're just bad.
This got people dancing hard xd
@@Gankstomper impressive if you managed to figure it out in less then 5 times without a guide
@@Gankstomperbro is so smegma
I literally one shot her. If you struggle with this never play sekiro@@MILDMONSTER1234
As someone who has completely mastered the waterfowl, absolutely 100%. I've helped and observed a lot of summons, and the main take away I have is something is seriously wrong if majority of host's death come from the same move.
Even after performing the dodge in front of them, 99% of hosts do not learn anything the next time it happens because learning it is unintuitive without instructions.
Take away waterfowl and Malenia has been stripped of half her difficulty. It's both her and Fromsoft's crutch, and people acting like it's fine is why we got crap like the DLC's final boss.
And the worst part? Malenia is a genuinely great fight that most people will never realize because of this one move. No other rememberance boss in the game feels like a duel as much as Malenia does because she lets you be equally as aggressive. But she ends up as a bad boss because of waterfowl's learning curve.
Crap like dlc boss? Tell me you just suck without telling me. Radahn is easy to dodge and way easier to figure out than malenia. You're just bad if you think radahn is a problem. I got you at malenias waterfowl dance, but the follow-up just proofed you know nothing more than to copy the common opinion.
@@jesushomeboi The irony of a Fromsoft fanboy trying to call out others for being unable to form their own opinion. I literally don't care what other people think about the game. I think Bayle is a mediocre dragon boss despite the overwhelming praise for him.
My problems with phase 2 Radahn aren't even about difficulty and I never even brought up specifics, but your brain is rotted if your first thought is to immediately go "gIT gUd!!!".
@@jesushomeboiproved* not proofed, maybe attach some of your fragile ego to learning better English instead of the game.
@@avez-ch1np Eh. I get your point but i think the one cool ultimate move is part of what makes these characters so cool you know? If i was a powerful magical being i would probably develop some sort of ultimate attack for destroying my enemies too...
@@asoul3919 Yes, but ultimate moves shouldn't be unintuitive to learn. Placidusax's nuke, Radagon's hammer smash, Rellana's double moon, Divine Lion's triple elemental switch, etc. All of those can easily be figured out on your own.
Where waterfowl fails is communicating to the player how to dodge it. Another example of a bad ultimate move is Elden Beast's golden stars or Metyr's double laser beam who's first beam is undodgeable without an AOW. Malenia also has two other ultimate moves, scarlet aeonia and her clone attack, both of which are possible to figure out on your own.
The most fascinating thing about waterfowl is how unsatisfying it is even if you dodge everything successfully.
have to hard disagree with you - practicing and getting it down was very fun and made me feel super cool, especially when i got summoned and did it in front of people
@@pygmalyon Not really, dodging that shit is like when you play whit your cousin that cheats all the time.
He still cheats, you just got used to it.
This is why i use freeze pots.
It cancels her crap entirely.
Yeah, as if it’s not a huge relief to dodge waterfowl unscathed for the first time. It’s super rewarding haha
(I know people have different opinions :D)
@@josephbornman8462 So many different things go into how a game feels to play that it's different for everyone else. I'm glad to see that some people clearly enjoy it and kinda wish I could too
10 second anime animation that insta stunlocks you to death if it touches you, and requires you to quit your job and earn a phd in fromsoft to learn how to dodge it. And its punishable for like 10 frames. Seems fair.
the problem is- it's not fair. every ultimate move rewards you if you managed to dodge them. take example of messmer's flurry. it's punishing and rewarding at the same time. if you dodged it you can deal huge damage to him. the only reward for dodging waterfowl is you get to live
If you block it, she heals.
If you dodge Waterfowl, she creates distance against you forcing you play passive again.
You literally cannot win.
I don’t see that as a problem tbh. And they did that again with new radahn
It gives a switchup from the typical videogame-y vibe
That’s at least the experience I had with her. I went in with no spoilers. And when I processed that she said “I have never lost”, while also processing that she heals on hitting me, and attacks the way she does… chills. Whereas every other boss, I may like, but they didn’t give me chills like that
the reward is that its fun to dodge. A bullshit or unfair attack to me is something which can't be dodged consistently which is definetely not waterfowl. Its hard to dodge sure but once you get it it can be consistently avoided. However fromsoft should have definetely reduced the damage it does by atleast 30%.
You literally can punish it though
@@streptococo4735what distance you end up like 5 feet in front of her
fromsoft game gatekeepers when someone has a single issue with design: “you’re just bad at the game.”
I KNOOOW RIGHT!!! Goddamn man the amount if times iv talked about these games issues just to get shutdown bc "im bad" or "you clearly never played it" BRO IV BEATEN THEM ALL SEVERAL TIMES ESPECIALLY ELDEN RING, these games really aint that hard either so the git gud thing is corny unless ur memeing or if the person truely is bad and there isnt much to say to help them
@@DexGen2002 it’s my favorite game series/company of all time and i think the majority of the fanbase are actually chill lore nerds but a LOUD group is the very annoying ones. the games (to me) only really get HARD around ng+5.
I saw a comment the other day where someone was complaining that switching between spells by repeatedly hitting the d-pad is poor design, which FromSoft has kept in their games since Demon's Souls, and predictably someone replied saying it's a "skill issue". Like yeah, you can get good at it, that doesn't mean it's a good system.
Fking elden ring npc need to stay in their place, pathogens like them shouldnt infect the other souls games tbh ngl
@@TheTrueFool it is a bit annoying but at the same time spells are OP so its kinda of system that sorta balances it out
Literally gave her giant roll-catching spheres for hitboxes on that shit
It's possible to praise this game without convincing yourself that every single little aspect of it is perfect, you know
True, but we can also just disagree with the criticism. I have lots of complaints about Elden Ring, hell, any "dog" type boss or enemy tends to be so fast I can't react in time and they also tend to hit way harder than I think they should which gets on my nerves - but Malenia, yeah, I didn't have a particularly unusual challenge with her and found her fight to be one of the more enjoyable in the whole game. It's equally possible for people to have favorite bosses and least favorite bosses, and sometimes your least favorite is someone's favorite, that's life! 😊
Or to explain better, assuming that we are convincing ourselves that every single little aspect of the game is perfect is an extremely unfair statement. Most fans have gripes and complaints about various issues. And yes, some fans are certainly obnoxious. The "git gud" thing is very, very old.
????
I am 150% sure this attack was supposed to be in Sekiro, but the guys scraped it, and them found out just to use it here. This is reinforced by the fact that all her sword attacks are heavy. She can do 2 or 3 cuts at once, and that's it. With some combos with a maximum of 6 hits. But here is like she summoned a combat art from Sekiro, since her movements look exactly like the Spiral Cloud Passage Combat Art, but with more motion and area. She would have been a great Sekiro boss, but I think she is a really strange Elden Ring boss.
There's an Elden Ring mod that makes it play like Sekiro, and it makes Malenia a lot more fun and interesting.. so you might just be correct about that.
I read somewhere that she was supposed to be a Sekiro DLC boss.
@@AB-vp9mi where?
Probably Tomoe, who would likely have been a boss for a DLC (Activision supposedly saw as unprofitable.) She’s written about in the description of the Spiral Cloud Passage (original Waterfowl Dance), also in the Fragrant Flower (Malenia’s Scarlet Flower), Emma mentions a former spreader of the Dragon Rot epidemic, who would be the previous Divine Heir (Takeru)’s defender (Tomoe), and she taught Genichiro lightning combat, which if you look closely, Waterfowl Dance begins suspending in midair nearly identical to a lightning attack in Sekiro.
Perhaps I’m reaching, but a lot of correlations for sure
@@Big__Sizzle I think you're spot on there
I think if she didn't heal off shields, this move would be a lot more fair.
It’s absurd that anyone defends how broken that is. I honestly don’t think From put anywhere near as much thought into her mechanics as they needed to. She’s definitely no Lady Maria.
Tank builds like me be crying when we saw that.
You can literally eat every single attack malenia hits you with and still kill her through her heals
@@sekiro_the_one-armed_wolf Bingo, this is basically what I did on my first run. I dodged when I was SURE I could safely dodge and if I wasn't sure I blocked and just ate her HP regen. Took around 5 tries which is normal for any of the higher level new bosses, for me.
@@seanbean3070TBH considering that I beat her basically eating all of her waterfowl to my shield, I think without the HP from shield she would be way too easy.
Weird hyper armor, life steal, and an almost unavoidable one-shot movement that requires to be evaded in an especific way. This means a lot of deaths and a lot of loading screens, even for Souls standards. "Your stubbornness, extraordinary"
She doesn't have "weird hyperarmor" just hyperarmor, she's easy to stun so if she didn't have that you would be able to stun lock her very easily. Lifesteal is good, it reward aggressivity. Waterfowl dance isn't "almost unavoidable", there are many ways to counter it like frost pot, blocking, bloodhound step, vow of the indomitable and running away, you don't need to learn the dodge.
load screen are fast
@@ni9274are you f king serious?
Bootlicker extraordinaire @@ni9274
hyper armor? malenia? wtf
@@ni9274 Lifesteal punishes being aggressive? You go in too much get hit and she heals, it doesn't really reward anything just enforces perfect dodging or using strategies that involve immobilising her
It's not wholesale bad design, they just made dodging it too unintuitive. You have to make some pretty specific and wack movements to not just die, and that's pretty lame.
I'm curious what their idea was for the design. i did just learned you can toss shit at her in the air, more of a limitation on myself cause we don't typically do that in sekiro. I've always felt that you should be able to avoid or address a move with the core mechanics built in. Which i guess the dodge is that one. Nihil is another one that annoys me, just not being able to dodge the blood attack.
@spicywe1ner Nihil is totally a gimmick they intended you to have the crystal tear for, so I can forgive that one. I'm wondering if there's an npc that let's you know on that one.
As for waterfowl dance, the rumor is that Malenia is unused Sekiro dlc content which to me would make complete sense. You plop her into that game with exactly 0 changes, self heal and everything, and she slots in like a dream.
I just think they didn't tune her to the dark souls gameplay well enough if the rumor is the truth. And of course I don't know how to design in it well enough to suggest changes, they just should have made sure that fighting with the camera wasn't part of the process to dodging it.
@@peco595 I'm not sure about the NPC for Nihil. I'm such an asshole when it comes to searching for dialogue or ideas, and just get smashed in the face over and over find a way. only to realize the sign literally outside the boss tells you how to do it ROFL. I have try the malenia mod for sekiro, i heard people really enjoy it. I'm curious how it feels as a 3k hour sekiro player. great info :) thank you for the comment.
we need to bully people back with the "get good"
@g.henriquecosta983 Getting good is unreasonably difficult if the task is made unintuitive.
Looking up a guide on dodging waterfowl being a recommendation for this boss fight means that they didn't fine tune it enough given that attack is guarenteed death if you fail to dodge it properly. Either that, or you give the boss like 40% of her health back should you choose to try and block it.
What i hate about Waterfowl is how it COMPLETELY kills your momentum AND how random it is.
Malenia can at ANY point just do it, no queue, no warning.
And worse of all? Sometimes she DOESN'T DO IT?!?!?!?
When i fight Mohg i KNOW he will Nihil.
When i fight Margit/Morgott i know he will phase 2.
When i fight Loretta i know she will power up.
When i fight Malenia she MIGHT Waterfowl, and YOU DON'T FKING KNOW WHEN.
That makes colossals completely unreliable entirely.
It's so funny seeing some BROKEN BUILD AGAINST MALENIA?? video where she barely Waterfowl at all
At her 1st stage, I think she can do the waterfowl dance 4 or 5 times. If you distance yourself from her and throw a dagger, you can bait her into doing it. If you dodge it, she will have a cool down for a while.if she doesn't do the waterfowl dance, throw a few more daggers or you have to deal more damage first. This helps defeat the randomness of her special move.
Shadow of Erdtree added the deflecting tear which adds a perfect block mechanic like in Sekiro, if the base game had this then I would say that this isn't bad design.
I suspect perfect block/deflect will be a feature of future souls games if this is the direction bosses are going in. It will also speed up combat quite a bit.
If they just gave that to everyone and indicated that it must be part of your build, I would be completely fine with this and other unavoidable/nearly unavoidable attacks.
It's still not bad design, you're just bad at the game.
Sorry you had to find out this way.
@@GankstomperNice bait, btw
@@Hunterofbones ty
This is what I'm thinking too. With how fast the combat is getting and with how little people use parrying, they will eventually implement sekiro esque parrying into base game souls combat
I do not believe the inputs required to dodge this are a reasonable expectation from the player, let alone something we are expected to perform consistently.
@@Duskets You're pressing a button on a controller, not having to design a rocket.
Masochist: Great design!
@@Kamawan0 why did you repeat my comment i dont get it
Hidetaka Miyazaki is a self-confessed masochist so I guess it makes sense haha.
As a masochist who regularly goes for no hit Malenia, yes.
it's a poor design. I get that she's supposed to be very strong, considering she's the hidden boss but that move specifically is so unintuitive to react. Without youtube videos and other forums, I would never guess which way to roll, what kind of status weaknesses she has. The most annoying thing is that she heals even when you block, essentially making your shield build sort of useless. Not only that, she can cancel any stun to trigger Waterfowl. That's insane.. There's even youtube video that shows how broken she is.
If the player character is given 0.25x more speed and attack cancel, it won't be a problem but this boss is not designed for elden ring combat system. Another problem is that, there's no reward for you after you successfully dodge waterfowl, she can quickly do any other attack or even trigger another Waterfowl
I guess it's all about the determination, skill, and knowledge you have.
I didn't need any help, I just tried it until I found a small hole to fit in. And it worked. You can also just predict when she'll do the waterfowl and immediately retreat before it happened.
Honestly, elden ring brought so many beginners into the game, yall started to become entitled asf.
FromSoftware games were always supposed to be hard! And it wasnt as nearly as forgiving as it is now, cuz now, you can just summon a stupid spirit and have op builds, but yall still complain. It introduced a lot of things into the gaming world.
You don't even know how hard dark souls 1 was. When it first came out, people were struggling the same way you guys are struggling now! Because it was a new experience that surpassed the familiar difficulty everyone had at that time.
But humans have this amazing ability to adapt. Many will quit and give up, but others... others will stay to face the pressure and challenge in order to adapt.
Malenia is already considered to not be that hard after the new dlc came out. Why? Cuz we adapted. We became better. But now people are going to cry about the dlc. It's a never ending cycle because new people come to play the game and throw their uneducated opinion into the mix.
We will adapt, while the rest of you will give up.
@@g_g..."entitled" fuck are you talking about?
It is not a poor design you guys just have shit intuition, i died twice to that move and i already come up with a way to dodge, you just dodge the first flurry of the first strike and get hit by it once or twice ( it does like 600 dmg at most ) so that your dodge roll is timed with the second one, then just dodge into her the moment the second strike start, the third strike will just miss on its own. Its that easy, or maybe most people just never played the game and just repeat what the bad player said
@@raccoon-p9h Most likely the latter.
@@raccoon-p9h You're so intuitive, clearly not bad design, your method includes intentionally getting hit lol
I can see what they were going for. They wanted an attack that tests your ability to manage it. After all, the rest of her moveset is super manageable, basic even, but the inclusion of something as obscene as Waterfowl Dance makes the fight become Player vs. Waterfowl instead of Player vs. Malenia.
The bad design part comes from the way players WANT to play, with play styles that Fromsoft no doubt is already aware of. It's an RPG, so a lot of builds have a theme around them. But if your theme has no tools for dealing with Waterfowl, then you may have to start breaking theme just to win. That's the conflict worth critiquing.
well put
They just needed to make her start up animation longer or the first strike slower. The only problem is that right now, if you are stuck in an attack animation the moment she does the move it's pretty much impossible for the average player to dodge the move or at least the first strike, which is always at least 50% of your healthbar. The move can somewhat easily be dodged if you are a few meters away when she starts it, and my only issue with the fight is that this forces you to stay back and wait for her to do her move first, which isn't very engaging or fun.
I agree with everything you said. I'm a very aggressive player, I prefer to parry everything when i can, I'm not expecting to parry water fowl, but having a way to punish it with core mechanics is something I would hope for more. Lies of P watchman has an attack that bothers me in the same way with the lighting AOE on the ground after a parry you cant hit back.
What? That's not true. If you're close to her when she starts the animation in the air, you should have enough time to run in a circle beneath her to bait her into going in one direction while you go the other. I'm surprised people don't know this tactic at this point.
@@CelestialDraconis If you are talking about this ua-cam.com/video/m9ge0nP12Pw/v-deo.html
That's not an intuitive response at all, and even with practice it's still very hard to pull off. As I said, an average player won't ever do this, especially without looking it up online, and even then, if you are using a heavy weapon and you are stuck in an attack animation when she does the move, you still won't have enough time to position yourself for this.
@@KingOfMalevolence You are vastly overstating how fast her windup is. You are given several seconds to move. If you're too slow then that's just a skill issue honestly. And why is learning about it online such a a bad thing? Most Soulsborne boss tactics are shared by the community and learned online. This isn't just limited to boss fights either. I reckon you had to use the wiki several times just to find out how to continue a quest line in this game. Stop making excuses.
@@CelestialDraconis I mean you are literally just wrong on your 1st point, and about the second, if you have to look up online how to do something it's just bad design, I don't know why you point out the dumb quest system like that's a good thing.
Finally, I clearly stated that the AVERAGE player can't do this shit, if you are good enough to do it consistently, good for you, but no one's gonna give you a medal for saying things like "skill issue", people just think you are cringe af.
I thank Vow of the Indomitable for helping me survive this clown attack
you know, ive never really tried vow other than for rykard, need to give it a go. I spent a lot of time on the dodge but im curious how good it works.
@@spicywe1ner
Activate the first Vow as soon as she hits the ground.
Then immediately follow up with the 2nd and 3rd vow.
Once the third vow is finished, flip backwards to avoid the latter part of her third flurry.
@@spicywe1ner
It can be truly impressive when used correctly, can be used to evade basically every signature attack in the game including rykards takers flame strike, waterfoul obviously, and even malikeths black blade explosions.
@@guardianvalor962ur do one and hold the block button before its even done, vow into immediate block. Shell heal a bit but the rest of her moveset is easy.
dude i've seen this at 0.25 but didnt notice a few things.
for example the reason for the second part (third roll) being more consistent if you go to her left seems clear here that its cause of the lingering hitbox on her sword
ty!
Yea I spent an hour fucking with this. And I hate it even more. I have some questions for you about this ahhaab.
also the tracking might not be 100% on this being slowed down. So it might clear. But F this move
ive been testing it at slowed speed, does seem like for the second & third parts of WFD straight to the right into a backstep is much safer than forwards right like i had been doing... would've saved a fight today if i knew it sooner Sadge
The fact that you have too look up a video of the very specific movements needed to dodge it is ridiculous. Sekiro would never
In the 1.0 version Malenia deflects like a Sekiro boss, which leads credace that she was a cut lady Tomoe boss, so Sekiro was totally going to have something like this
@@biggreen1456 that is not some removed 1.0 feature. Malenia always deflects if you keep hitting her. Sekiro would never have a boss that you have to look up how to dodge because in Sekiro you wouldn't have to dodge at all.
I'm a bloodborne player, beat her in 3 tries at level 125
You can run away from the first flurry and roll away from the rest. I learned that through trial and error, in just a couple of attempts.
@@itsasmoker8991no you didn’t
If waterfowl was a guaranteed cast at a certain %, like the aeonia is at the start of phase 2, it'd be a lot better in my opinion. As of now, there are too many variables to keep track of. You could bait it, be a decent enough distance away and do the easy dodge, great. Maybe you're better and can always pull off the close up dodge, great. Yet when all variables align against you, you WILL get hit. "Ehm, but you can just freeze pot" yes, yet in my opinion that cheapens the fight. E.G. I don't think most people are willing to excuse the godskin duo's design just because you can use sleep pots.
The only unintuitive part of the water fowl dance is the first flury. that requires you to circle arround so the hit box misses, the second and third are quite straight forward and easy to dodge
But if the first one hits you, you can’t move and you’re going to eat the rest of it.
I’ve sunk over a thousand hours into these games. And while I did beat this boss, I was not happy about it.
It feels like Bed of Chaos
@@liampezzanoexactly, the brain rotted ER community don’t seem to realize that difficult doesn’t always = fun or fair
@@liampezzanocomparing bed of chaos to malenia is crazy, shes not that bad aside from waterfowl and the healing bro.
If Zack Snyder directed Elden Ring
It's just hard for the sake of being hard
Loser excuse tbh
Having to bait out a move by tricking the ai just to make the fight less miserable is bad design
You don't have to do that, there are tons of other way to counter it. the dodge isn't "tricking the AI", it's just strafing which people have been doing since DS1. There are also a dodge that doesn't require to trick the AI, run away on the first flurry and jump at the end to get more i-frame.
@@ni9274 what i mean by tricking the ai is throwing a dagger/ a spell to force her to dodge, Most of the time if her ai want to do waterfall next and you force her to dodge she will do the waterfall after it and from a safe distance.
Otherwise the fight is umbearable with how much she waterfall dance from point blank
I personally like the fact that she is susceptible to being tricked. It makes the fight more even and also a real opponent could also be tricked. The design of this move is great as it seems undodgeable at first but with training you can learn to dodge it every time. The design and quality of Malenia are exceptional.
people have been strafing attacks since Demons Souls, by your logic baiting attacks is also tricking AI. Stop being slow, use your brain for once
@@yamatoryuumaki5222There is no "using your brain" on this attack dude, you can see it in the video. The attack animations do not communicate when you are supposed to dodge. The only options are extensive trial and error, or guides.
This would’ve been so sick to perfect parry in Sekiro.
Too much damage at the start of the move, so learning this is super painful because you die to the first two hits and then watch her go sicko mode on your corpse. Demoralizing.
Despite watching in 1000fps slowed down, her strikes are still quite fast! Really cool vantage point to see what's she's doing & when. Cheers!
If you have enough time to run away like...a 3 second lead, I suggest you do this:
1. Run away and let her finish the first barrage, she can't cover enough distance to catch you. She covers a set amount of meters/feet, she doesn't teleport behind you.
2. Keep running on the second barrage, no rolling needed for the same reason as before. Always on a straight line away from her.
3. The moment she finishes the second one, you turn around and choose a direction to go: Towards her left or towards her right (forward + a side).
4. You walk for a second and then turn to the other side (if you chose left, stop moving forward and continue straight to the right, and viceversa), this will juke her into committing her last barrage into a position you have already left.
5. Just when you see her going into the third barrage, roll like crazy towards the direction you changed into. The last cuts (before that souble "ghost" slash) can still hit you.
the second and third are really easy to deal with, just dodge into the second and just reposition for the third
The fact that you had to write 5 paragraphs to explain how to dodge one move speaks on the awesome game design
I had her entire fight down to being almost entirely hitless by the time I beat her the first time, and literally the only thing that was killing me at that point was waterfowl dance.
Aesthetically it is good but it does push the fantasy a bit with the strikes that appear where the blade did not go. I think that if there was a wind effect at the start up then the multiple strikes would fit the aoe attack.
in real time does seem pretty impressive, as you slow it down it does seem to fall apart a little bit. I guess you might notice it if she isn't up your ass when its going on HAHA
>does a 360 while hovering in the air
Nothing personell
ive had people describe malenia to me as a gimmick boss ala rykard but instead of the serpent hunter you need bloodhound step and i think thats just a complete and utter failure on froms part
The only thing fouling an otherwise great bossfight is this move, the flower is easily strafed and you can see the clones coming at you from far away enough to instinctively click dodge (you can also kind of spam b through the whole thing lol), the rest of the fight is actually fun to learn
Then waterfowl happens
more like black knife tiche or mimic tear spirit ashes make this fight even
the amount of moves and healing of her is ridiculous fighting her the "normal" way feels too difficult
@@maxhank9314 it's an optional boss, fromsoft purposefully made it hard because you can just not fight her
those people are descriptively wrong. the video literally has the player character dodging from mid range with just rolls.
@@soulslasher7890midrange with lightroll. the ONLY guaranteed way to 100% avoid waterfowl without bloodhounds is with lightroll and some pre-existing distance, which is very restrictive on builds
Nothing a good ol' mimic with rivers of blood can handle 🗿
VERY piss-poor design at best. This is such a stupid move, that even when you dodge it successfully, you’ll still wonder where the fuck it all went wrong. Worse, is I HATE that they had the gall to combine this not just with Malenia’s lifesteal, but also her damn Scarlet Rot. I get what FromSoft was going for, making the fight more epic, but in doing so, they forgot what makes most fights good without being so damn flashy, like most of the development team still haven’t let go of Sekiro’s fast & fluid movesets.
I agree with pretty much everything you said. I tend to not care about theatrical moves, but man the lifesteal, seeing her health jump like 20%, hurts far more than me just getting one shot from it. After spending a significant amount of time on her. I do enjoy that difficulty of her, but i dont share a hitless mentality most of the time where you have to fight perfect and never trade. I enjoy trading hits and its a big slap to the face in this battle. Not in a poise buttgoat smashy smashy way. just greed in an extra hit here or there or that last smack for poise breaks. I'm also a huge sekiro fan, so im cool with the faced paced everything, i just want to feel capable enough to punish those styles not, well time to find a frame perfect strrafe or dodge to be able to do so.
damn she would have been my favorite base game boss if it werent for fuckin waterfowl
You're just bad at the game dude.
@@Gankstomper Average PVP participator upon being presented with an actual argument that they cant seem to find a proper counterpoint to:
@Gankstomper After seeing your miserable traces in this comment section I'm pretty convinced you're either just a straight up troll or a basement dweller... maybe both even.
I've beaten her but I never really learnt to dodge that attack, at least not the whole thing. The problem with it is that, it's difficult to dodge and it kills you if it hits you, so you get very few chances to practice how to evade it. Imo, any attack designed like this is poor design, either the attack one shots you or it's hard to dodge, but not both. Hell, give her one of each, but a hard boss should also give the player a chance to practice.
Something similar happens with a lot of bosses in the DLC, your first few tries boil down to learning to dodge the massive blast thrown at you the second you cross the mist, then you can actually, you know, fight the boss.
Other than that attack, Malenia is a really cool boss, but I only feel I beat her because I got lucky and didn't get caught in her dance.
Now this feels fair compared to the new dlc bosses
That damn Dancing Lion decided to meta‐game and attack the camera instead. I could not beat that thing until I decided to play with the camera unlocked. Attacking twice in a row with lightning strikes in‐between was something I could never figure out how to dodge either....
No it's still worse than the dlc
The git gud crowd when they cant just spam roll: "unfair!"
...
She was the end game optional challenge boss. She was the strongest demigod still alive in the lore. Why shouldnt she be able to tear you apart?
There is an entire youtube channel damn near dedicated to curb stomping her with a variety of builds. So yes. Skill issue.
I'm *okay* with it.
Not my favourite move to deal with, but I don't hate it as much as I used to.
I learned a lot about the hitboxes from this video and how there's way less going on here than I thought.
It's her ONLY "screw you" move she has. Everything else is actually pretty easy to deal with (if you know her moveset, of course).
And I think she's nerfed WAY down from Launch Version. So... yeah.
I'll take the bad with the good in this situation. I don't love this move, again, but I don't hate it.
I'll have to look into the nerfing. I played a lot on launch then took a significant break when the speedrun was very Zip dominant, and i just didnt want to roll the dice over and over. but i did miss a few updates here and there. her movement speed during it is insanity in my opinion. from start up to the last hit on the first flurry, you cannot outspace with a full sprint and dodge at the right time.
Ive fought malenia for 600 hours. Mastering waterfowl is the most rewarding part about this. Even with all those hours against her, waterfowl keeps things interesting. Even as i became capable of beating her hitless. I think its fine given most people are not trying to beat her hitless, they only need to survive waterfowl.
Except waterfowl for most people isn't a difficult move to dodge, it's a straight up attempt-killer
"Skill Issue that you complain about this perfect game design bro!"
Fromsoft fanboys are likely the kind of players that love to get pegged.
In fact, i will give you a perfect boss.
This boss is called Pegger the Pegmaster, when this guy enters the fight does an attack that can only be dodged doing a frame perfect dodge (If you are midrolling you are dead) if he hits you he takes away 99% of your total HP, this attack cannot be blocked.
Pegmaster's attacks are all AoE massive extremelly long and exaggerated and if you attack him he inmediatelly counters you.
Pegmaster also has 5 phases, all of them whit more HP than the last.
Every phases change he does a massive AoE explosion that literally covers the entire Arena (the Arena is 30 cm total)
If you run away or jump he instantly kills you and pegs you IRL, just like that. (You guys would probably love that tho)
Honestly i know this is too easy for your absolute proplayers, i apologize for my lack of challenge, so i think Pegger the Pegmaster should also force you to kill him bare handed.
If you equip any weapon he deletes your entire inventory.
I think this is AT LEAST a decent challenge.
Oh, and if you manage to kill him whitout taking damage, his last attack just bricks your PC/Console forever.
Denying you the win you want, like a true Souls fan likes it.
"Wow! Such a great boss! Totally perfectly designed and fair. Anyone who complains has a skill issue and should just git gud lul.🤓"
Why are you attacking pegging like that? Lmao
Bro died to tree sentinel
@@Greirat You definitely will love the pegmaster then.
The first time I figured out how the dodging works was so awesome. Such a satisfying fight
Its good conceptually but the execution is somewhat off. Its meant to be an attack that allows Malenia to have something to still be challenging to players who have realized that being aggressive is rewarding in this fight due to how easy it is to hitstun her to get more openings while also offsetting her healing. Plus Waterfowl also breaks the Souls convention of rolling being dominant and encourages players to use other options as stuff like Bloodhound's Step or shields are better options to defend against it compared to the usual rolling which requires much more trial and error. It also encourages other tactics like using bleed or frostbite status buildup or outright stunlocking her with perfectly timed chain of magic spells to never give her the chance to pull it off or other attacks. I really love how Malenia is so well designed overall as a endgame tactics check that tests whether or not the players have engaged more deeply with the combat system and gotten used to using more advanced tactics.
But the problem I see is how the difficulty comes only from the first 3 flurries and its tracking that makes it difficult to dodge in close range. The later flurries after her pause are easily dodged by rolling towards her and then away. The common tactic of rotating her looks unnatural and feels like an AI exploit where you mess up her AI's tracking to dodge the early flurries. If I had to redesign it, I'd gladly remove the tight tracking early flurries that makes her Waterfowl so deadly. To compensate, I'd modify her Waterfowl to a form that you can dodge intuitively but you'll still have to be alert and make no mistakes. I'd make Waterfowl a series of individual flurries and attacks that she can mix up depending on the players actions and relative positioning to keep the player on guard the entire time to properly react to which attack variant she uses and also allow Malenia to pull it off in between her regular attacks and further chain combos. It will still serve the role it has in the fight but now its not unintuitive while being more of a threat for the entire duration. All of Malenia's other attacks are distinct and well designed (barring that slow jump up and down slash) and will flow really well together to give players a deadly dance to enjoy.
Oh and I'd make one of her Waterfowl attacks be slashes that deal damage in a circle around her with higher range to turn the rotate Malenia AI exploit obsolete by making her always do it if the player circles her to mess up her tracking.
Incredible design! How many videos have been made about this one move?? 🤣
Perfection.
Poor design, covering your screen with huge hitboxes and random particles and calling it an "attack" is just lazy
Good design! 1. Boss is intended to be challenging for late game players, 2. To create a challenge for OP players they played with the mechanics a bit, namely HP regen, 3. This forces the player to adapt or tweak their playstyle to deal with the boss. For my greatshield/zwei build I had to be much more efficient than usual; I actually blocked most of her attacks and let her heal to avoid taking damage. The fight was very drawn out but I won at around 5 tries, which is a bit on the high side but nothing extreme for a boss I had never seen before. It's definitely less forgiving against more frail builds, but on subsequent playthroughs I was able to win with several other builds and it felt like each one played the fight very differently.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no hate if you didn't enjoy the fight - there are many things I didn't care for in Elden Ring but Malenia is one of my favorite fights in the whole franchise 😊
Some things I would consider changing:
* 10-20 reduced damage per waterfowl hit. To be less punishing to lighter characters who don't shield.
* Slightly longer windup between each "phase" of waterfowl so you have just a little more time to interpret each section of the attack.
* Don't let her chain waterfowl into waterfowl. Most bosses have issues with a particularly aggravating move and they sometimes choose to spam it. My partner and I call this "The Algorithm." Sometimes the AI is God and sometimes it's an idiot.
That's it, I think. I still think it's good without these changes but I do think it could be even better with minor adjustments.
0:23 jesus wtf is that tracking
im so tired of elden ring bosses just being slop
That's a normal amount of tracking.
You can literally beat every boss in Elden Ring without using i-frame, spacing and strafing attack is as viable as dodging them.
@@ni9274didn't pull that shit, it takes insane amount of luck and patience to have a run like that, i know enough challenge runners and they hate this game for the amount of retries required
@@ni9274 cope
not cope, people have done it. sprinting and spacing is underused. @@TomBombadill85
@@TomBombadill85 stay in /v/ where you belong
Malenia really is the Demon of Hatred of Elden Ring, swap those two bosses and we would be in the perfect timeline 😭😭
I swear DoH was supposed to be a Dark Souls boss that they just threw in (despite all the lore surrounding the boss ofc)
And I hate that this video actually makes me think this attack is dodge-able instead of an instant run away warning. My idea is that you dodge into her during those times where her arm has the hitbox, to preemptively dodge the aoe of the attack but I know that would probably never work 😂
After fight Consort Radahn, I can say that Malenia is still harder, and it’s because of this single move. Consort Radahn has tons of moves that constantly combo into each other, add in the second phase with the light clones and light pillars and it’s just even crazier. The light pillars are manageable, the clones I’ve yet to find a way to completely dodge them all, I’ve managed to run from them but I can’t seem to replicate when that happens, but over all I’m still able to look at the moves and think “ok I might be able to dodge if I do this”. Waterfowl is fast, active for tons of frames, and you can’t outrun it, it is guaranteed to hit unless you are able to find the incredibly minute sweet spot. Radahns clone attacks don’t even kill if you have max vigor, waterfowl WILL KILL even if you are only hit by 2 of the damage balls. It’s just a ridiculous move.
People putting up with waterfowl was why we got attacks like that, and stuff like consort's 1-2-cross slash. That thing is basically another waterfowl but does a little less damage. Again, god help you if blocking isn't a part of your build.
@@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS The fact I've seen more people complain about the 1-2-cross slash attack than the clones is amazing lol. But yeah I don't think waterfowl would be as bad if she didn't HEAL from it even if you're blocking, I'd at least be willing to tolerate it.
Gay lover radahn
if i feel that a boss is unfair, im just going to cheese him
mimmic tear + mogh spear special spam is how i defeated her
The use of “cheese” in relation to Elden Ring accomplishments is so lame. You beat the boss with tools provided by the game, so great job. That’s supposed to happen 😂
@@CancunMimosapretty much. Redditors are incapable of grasping beating a boss without making it a challenge run. I don't think the fromsoft PvE community was this toxic before Elden ring broke mainstream
I think a lot of attacks in the game are poorly designed. They hard punish you, have insane trackin with the gimmick of delayed strikes into lightning quick release and combo. If you want to repeat the fight over and over like it's math homework you will learn it but the reality is that it promotes cheesing over learning the fight.
The worst part is even normal enemies have this problem. In earlier games normal enemies werent easy but they felt fair and not too strong but in this game they not only gank you like in dark souls 2 but they also have ridiculous moveset and insanely strong attacks while you cant even start to swing your weapon because its like they stick to you like glue and always hit you first with insanely fast attacks.
Makes sense that the middle flurry is always the easiest to dodge since it's only 1 swing, 1 dome hitbox, 1 swing, and then even though there's the usual animation for it, no final dome hitbox
Imo they should have left her in sekiro, the fight would make a lot more sense.
It's ok because you can skip her fight entirely by pressing the L2 button with the ordovis greatsword
Wait, you're telling sometimes (such as 1:02) you can see the flurry lines but there's no hitbox???
Yeah I'd say that's poor and unintuitive design.
Only avoided it with pre nerf bloodhounds step lol
I know some people know how to 100% avoid the attack and props to them. But for me, if anything, this move encourages trying to cheese against it somehow. Like, either use a summon, vow of indomitable, etc. I've killed Malenia many many times without knowing how to dodge this, because I just assume it will hit me and prepare a lot for the rest of the fight by trying to melt her some way or tanking through anything with shields and skills. Funny thing is I never get hit by the first 2 attacks, only the 3rd one almost always gets me, even if by just a bit.
it looks soooo good when you get a swaggy dodge on it too. thats funny about getting hit to the last attack. the first one is always the struggle. I do stay up on her though, since i like to play ultra agressive. Great info :)
The first 2 moves her forward, the 3rd actually moves her to the player, so that makes sense
And that's probably the intended design by miyazaki. This move is probably literally supposed to be impossible to dodge. It's a gear check, not a skill check.
I can dodge it pretty regularly, but I never really thought about it until now.
If I'm not already far away to dodge the first attack normally, the only one you need to actually worry about, here's what I do:
When Malenia takes the pose to signal the beginning of the Waterfowl Dance, I get right under her, positioning myself on her right side.
Then I *roll behind her in a diagonal motion to her left side behind her* , and then *roll around her again to her front side, then roll one more time as if I was just trying to roll away to get as much distance as possible*
This "tricks" her into thinking I'm moving one way, but I quickly change direction around her in a circle. This makes the first step of the Waterfowl Dance try to chase me in a way that's not possible, since it mostly moves in a *direct* line towards you.
Not a straight line, but directly towards you. Since I position myself and roll in the way I described earlier, the first step of Waterfowl Dance is try to move directly towards me, but I'm already in the opposite direction, in a turn too sharp to follow.
The other two steps of Waterfowl Dance are simple to dodge, provided you aren't just spamming the dodge button. I'm going to sound like a prick here, but I am assuming most people reading this are indeed just trying to push the dodge button as fast as possible, simply pointing the stick away from Malenia the whole time.
Don't do that. That doesn't work, and in fact has never worked before, it's just pure luck that pressing the dodge button over and over again and not thinking about the direction you're going has worked for you in the past before.
What about the other two steps pf Waterfowl Dance? Just roll towards Malenia, go right through it, simple.
This does mean for the last step, stop pressing dodge for moment, stop moving, and look at the direction the last step of Waterfowl Dance is coming from, and roll through it again. Simple.
it's neither good nor bad
it's neither their best work nor their worst
it does what it's supposed to do, it's a death move made to keep the pressure up and make the player aways think "she might do that one shot move any time so I need to play slower and more methodical"
It makes it so you play Malenia like a death duel where one wrong move and one wrong trade means death, and it achieves that.
It could have had better hitboxes, it could've have better startups and shared cooldowns with her other super moves, but it's serviceable and does what it sets out to do.
that is a very good point. creates a massive amount of tension or fear in the fight. I do really enjoy that feeling while playing games. as a hitless or speedrunner, im kind of eh on it.
True
It is bad
You could still have that tension with attack being actually dodgeable consistently with no bullshit.
@@vazazell5967it is dodgable consistently. It's just hard to learn.
She's ok in world of elden ring if they got rid of the multiple omnidirectional ultra fast slash attacks that hit you even tho her arm and sword isnt there. She mostly moves like a sekiro boss
In isolation, it isn’t a bad thing. But with heavier weapons, you lose frames to recovery. AND the sprint button takes time to register. And it’s basically an insta kill even with 70 vgr.
I agree with the core sentiment, but you can definitely survive waterfowl even if you eat the first part. 60 vig, greatshield talisman and the flask tear for +15% defenses let you live through the combo even if you mess it all up
I've been testing this. It's only survivable with:
- 60 vigor
- Bull-Goat Set
- Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman
- Ritual Shield Talisman
- Iron Jar Aromatic
The key ingredient is the Iron Jar Aromatic. Without it you can't survive the full dance, I think it's only two hits, which is helpful, but you will still die.
What really cool from elden ring is the dev is kindly enough providing bonfire just before the boss room,
I hated it at first nf thought it was horrible design but now I’ve mastered dodging and it’s super satisfying
I honestly prefer the original waterfowl dance because it felt like a phase one Dance
I downloaded a mod that removes her waterfowl dance entirely. That shit doesn’t belong in the game.
You can literally run away for first two, then roll into her on the third. Boom, you successfully didn’t get hit
Based asf
Every time I see her do that move I know I'm cooked 💀
Sekiro really ruined the series by making every boss in wacky arm flailing inflatable tubemen.
Lololololol
I'd crush my balls in a vice and fight 10 chained ogres at once if it meant I never had to see this move again
Description is so right
First try she did not use Fowl on me and I died to a lingering Aeonia trying to get greedy to finish her off
Then the next fights just ended at Aeonia every time
Base moveset for her is like Abyss Watchers level of difficulty, until you just add *that* into the mix
Personally I like it, I think it reflects the essence of the encounter. Malenia is of course an optional boss, one that is meant to be one of, if not the hardest encounter in any from soft game. Considering the sheer catalog of fromsoft bosses, to differentiate and retain that essential difficulty something crazy or even gimmicky is probably necessary. Waterfowl dance is definitely a memorable way to do so. I personally never learned to properly dodge it, but it's easy to dodge it mostly unscathed with some chip damage. Even if you never learned the move the boss is in no way impossible, I think of it more as a testament to mastery, learning waterfowl dance is an achievement rather than a requirement.
i like this take. I do remember running into games and the "superboss" is just kind of meh. It was certainly a learning experience. I spent a fair amount of time with light load and medium load. i really want to see what i can do with heavy load. It is the first move out of any boss that I had to slow down to to see waht the F is going on
ok /r fadass
Light work no reaction
This is my main gripe with newer Souls games after Bloodborne.
Certain enemies and bosses can just hang in the air for a few seconds while they track your movement DURING their wind up animation. What part of this is fair? This is not how previous games have played, and this is not how physics work.
Poor design, and anyone who says it's great or fair is objectively lying
best attack in the game imo
so badass and has fair counterplay if u know what you're doing
Based
Cringe. Your attitude ruined fromsoft games.
@@vazazell5967 git gud
@@AbdoHany9 git gud taste instead of being a tryhard that only cares about jerking off to being so good at learning one boss for a hour. Dark souls fanboys are truly the worst. You don't even understand what made those games a 10/10 in the first place. Spoiler: it was not having shit like this
Based
Guys you don’t get it. Miyazaki said dark souls’ design is intended for team fortress 2 players, specifically players experienced in dodging market gardener soldiers on hightower.
Poor design. It requires too much effort for the average player to dodge in immaculate fashion. Now, if getting locked into waterfowl brought the player down to exactly 1HP, similar to the attack from the Moon Presence, I think it would level out the playing field a bit.
Well, thing is, this boss is not meant for the average player. It's supposed to be an extra challenge for those committed enough to beat it. If you don't want to, you don't have to. It's completely optional.
@the_seer_0421 The dlc is proof that you don't have to resort to bullshit unintuitive attacks to make a challenging late game boss. It should in theory be *possible* for the average player to dodge any move a boss throws at them on their first time seeing it in isolation, but the likelihood of that happening with this move is astronomically low
@@the_seer_0421 the dlc was optional yet majority of the bosses were fun and fair lol
@@Squeeble00I disagree with this sentiment, 100%. Why should a move be dodgeable the first time you see it? That sentiment doesn't seem to jive with the entire Souls franchise to me, TBH
the sekiro boss that never was...
Without this move she'd be too easy. If you have trouble with it just go light roll. It covers enough distance that you can basically spam roll away from it only needing to dodge the final one or two parts even at close range. Light roll makes her very manageable in general because you can roll away from all of her attacks very easily and correct positioning is everything against Malenia
Even so, that isn't an excuse for the bad design here and in general with almost all the bosses of elden ring.
She still would be a fun boss to fight even seen how easy she is in some aspects given the fact that she is a sekiro boss in a dark souls game, but isn't only this attack, it is also the random hyper armor she gains when you should be able to stun locker easily in some movements or how bad the life steal is used here at difference of bloodborne.
Malenia is the only boss in any of the souls games I have played where I genuinely say I despise the fight. I beat her once with the mimic tear (also the only boss I used a spirit summon against in my first playthrough) and a glass-cannon dps set, then never again because I HATE the fight. This move is 90% of the reason why
I've played all fromsoft games that are available on PC and this is the most BS move in any of them. followed by literally any of fume knight's wonky ass hitboxes
You've never played armored core 6 defend strider then
@@hare75 oh God I forgot that fucking mission
@@hare75as bullshit as that misson is, with as much passion i hate it with. I still had an easier time with it than trying to dodge Water fowl, which is funny because i can easily dodge the rest of her moveset
@@hare75 psa, Carla's build absolutly clown this mission, i farmed on it like 20 Times
@@hare75what, that missions is ok, the enemies there should be the standard for most mission in terms of agression, You can S rank it really easy with a Lot of setups
I beat Malenia once, and I attribute that entirely to me just getting lucky she only did this move once the whole fight.
I love everything about her fight except this one dumb move. I feel it should either just be removed entirely or regulated more heavily, like she'll only attempt it once per certain health thresholds reached.
The timing for the AoE is unreadable on sight and must be experienced through death, which I do not consider to be particularly good design. However, I found nearly every boss attack in DS3 (save for a couple on Dancer and one on SoC) to be so readable that it did not provide a semblance of a challenge compared to previous titles.
I don't know that I would want to _change_ Waterfowl Dance. Don't get me wrong, I do hate facing it, and it is not a fun time, but were it removed, Malenia wouldn't be very difficult.
Bosses in souls games always had attack that are unreadable on sight, and learning the moveset of bosses is literally what make souls games fun not just reacting to attacks. So having a boss that require some trial and error to beat is bad design ? Malenia would still be the most difficult boss without waterfowl.
@@ni9274 The difference is that your first introduction to Waterfowl Dance is a long, drawn out, inevitably lethal finish regardless of your build or equipment. The likelihood of you surviving it and continuing the fight is extremely low. I cannot think of another boss or enemy which does this. Not even the ≤8 frame grab attack from the little skittering Yahargul witches, Artorias' mid-combo triple flip, or the Black Knives' chasing flurry are a guaranteed (dare I say destined) death.
Malenia isn't the most difficult boss as is, just the coolest. Her gimmicks may be annoying, but they are part of her, and I wouldn't remove them. I hand the title of most difficult to the version of Astel in Yelough Anix Tunnel- hate fighting that monstrosity. If we're including things other than named bosses, the laser golem near the painting which gives you Rain of Stars is borderline impossible to fight honestly. Reads as a joke even.
@@ni9274what the fuck you are talking about, literally every single game before ER had readeable on sight attacks.
@@ni9274never cook again
the roll s do not feel that long lmao
It's great design for a sekiro boss 👍
its poor design. you can dodge it but its the only move you gotta worry about really. if she only throws out one or 2 during the fight youll likely win. thats what i call artificial difficulty. the run i beat her she hardly used that move. it almost felt undeserved because i just got good RNG
Extremely terrible design
Don't you just run away then dodge at the end? That's what I remember doing.
Not from melee range. The reason I ranged only against here is solely so I can actually run from Waterfowl
There being no move before it that introduces the concept of not being dodgeable in an intuitive way, its bad design just made to artificially prolong her life while you learn her gimmick
Not everyone dies to the same move over and over bud. You're venting about your own bad performance and blaming the game.
@@Gankstomper I can tell from your name that this is all you have lol
Running away from an oncoming attack is not intuitive?? 🤣
I encourage everyone here to watch Dan Gheesling, and his journey thru Malenia
POOR 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥🗣🗣🗣🗣🗣
Me: laughing with a tank spirit summon that has all the aggro
For anyone saying its easy to avoid, take into consideration that for it to be finally easy you've probably watched a guide and fought her countless times. Water fowl is just counter intuitive, spinning around enemies is not a game mechanic and you cant even block it with shield because life steal still works for some reason.
I like it though it fits her personality and lore. She just beyond most people's threshold of how far are people willing to go understanding that makes it reasonable as to why people complain about her but thaat doesn't make her bad.
Yeah it's poorly designed. Firstly, ignoring how "fair" the move is, waterfowl is by far the most oppressive move From has ever put into their game. Because it's so incredibly lethal and difficult to dodge the overwhelming majority of players will simply sit at range if they think she's going to use it because it's simply too dangerous to be near her and resort to either using spells or hit-trading to kill her. Look at pretty much any streamer's first kill of her and chances are this is what they're doing.
Secondly, even though you can avoid damage on the first volley up close, that doesn't make it well designed. The run-and-dodge manoeuvre you show here is by far the most complex dodge pattern of any From boss and is so obscure almost no players are gonna figure it out for themselves (it was two weeks before the first video showing this tech was released). The second tech is the frostpot, which again is incredibly obscure (it was a month and a half before someone found this tech). Third and fourth is bloodhound step and blocking. The former requires the player to find one specific item on the other side of a continent and think to use it, and the later results in Malenia healing a bunch and still isn't necessarily safe.
I never managed to dodge this normally. I ended up having to use the bloodhound step skill to run out of range of the attack. That along with her stealing health even if you block an attack are why I think this fight borders on unfair territory