tl;dr - if game too hard, look around some more until not hard (Edit: Just to clarify, Radahn's visual effects 100% needed to be tuned down. The thumbnail is referring to damage adjustments and recovery windows.) CROWDMADE: crowdmade.com/collections/rusty FOURTHWALL: rusty-3-shop.fourthwall.com/
No I don’t think I will subscribe. Why do people think this is funny or cool? It’s like people making memes asking for likes and whatnot. If someone does a good job or something they deserve that like and subscription, if not they don’t. Simple as that.
I recently started Dark Souls III and I really enjoy it. I just wish you made more Dark Souls III videos, or even Demon’s Souls videos, but I don’t mind.
As someone who played through the dlc and consort radahn pre nerf I'm upset at the nerf. I only had like level 17 of the fragments and like 9 for the spirits and it still only took like 10 lions claws to bring him down lmao
@@hodgindaylon The biggest problem with radahn was the obnoxious visuals. They actually hurt my eyes and it sucked ass. (the triple cross slash was bad too)
Not only Souls lifecycle, any game's life cycle. It gets released, people fight against the game, they get accustomed to its weaknesses and strengths, and a while later (now, it seems) people have mostly become familiar with it. But you know, every time someone publishes a hard game, or even something mildly hard, normal human learning gets mystified like crazy. Like it's something that cannot happen with that particular game because oh my god it's so hard! And also, over the years, people have gotten pretty good at complaining too.
That's how I played all of Elden Ring and it really does work. For the most part breaks make sureI don't get legitimately angry at the game except for a few things (Kindred of the Rot just aren't any fun to deal with and are just bad game design).
I'm pretty sure that's an actual scientific fact, I had somebody tell me that when you sleep your brain actually rewires itself to make you better at the thing you were trying to do before you went to bed
The more I fought Radahn, the more I learned to dodge his attacks. Except for the cross slash. I could never figure out how to dodge that one, and all the stuff online either said that was about luck or positioning. Eventually I would basically only take damage from the cross slash, which still came out often enough to kill me quite a few times before I beat him. The necessarity of the nerf as a whole is debatable, but I absolutely think that the changes to the brightness and the cross slash were necessary.
I lucky know how to dodge that because I use blind spot of backhand blade, but I think the improvement of brightness is necessary, this fight was so bright that it hurt my eyes
Only consistent way of dodging that shit was with stuff like blind spot, glad they listened to us and fixed that move, that was like 80% of my issues with the consort fight
If you want to roll it You had to be on the outer side of one of his knees and try to roll behind him basically making the second hit miss you the hit box isn’t all the way back there found this out on UA-cam it was working for me though I didn’t like it but that’s just what it was
I think the divine lion beasts are weak to thrust and fire, not so much because of the poking stick, but because lore wise it makes sense. They were massacred by Messmer the impaler, it checks out that they'd be weak to his main damage types, thrust and fire.
Radahn's increased visual clarity was a BIG improvement for me. My issue was that with my eye condition all the on screen noise was too much that I just straight up couldn't learn because I couldn't tell what was happening.
It's silly how much easier the Dancing Lion became for me when I moved particles effects from ultra to minimum. Still kicked my ass a bunch, but at least I saw it kicking my ass, rather than turning into Ohio tornado simulator
I really have a hard time understanding people who are saying visual clarity was a problem, do you play the game in an old ps4 or an old beat up pc with a 480p square monitor or sometging? I really have a hard time believing, and seriously rykard too? Have you tried turning up or down the brightness or sometging? Lol
I don't know, even Ongbal whose whole YT channel is about styling on bosses and making them look like jokes, thought that Consort Radahn was a bit much. But he was also talking about particle effects, not just damage and how there was one move he basically was only able to dodge using that one AoW for his no-hit video.
Design aside, difficult or not, I think Consort Radahn is just kinda boring for a dlc final boss. I like the concept, but the moveset itself imo was not the best it could’ve been
@@theFORZA66 first phase is fine as a starter, but it doesn’t really escalate in an interesting way. Most of his moves in phase 2 are the same as 1 but with holy damage and the new moves he does get are kinda lame imo. I just think the fundamental design of consort is extremely plain especially compared to some of the other bosses in the dlc
You'll never convince me the nerfs to Radahn weren't warranted. He was just... too much. Too aggressive, too quick, too flashy, too everything. He's still brutally hard now, but he doesn't feel like he's in the wrong game anymore.
He definitely needed nerfs to the visuals cos he had 3 days' worth of fireworks shows after each swing, and the left-right-onigiri slash that was undodgeable 90% of the time. I do believe a lot of the other nerfs were a bit too far but I'm not denying he needed the former ones.
radahn deserved the nerfs simply because the triple cross and the light after effects were overkill and legitimately broken. You can NOT convince me that the fucking triple cross hitbox was ever intended, that you literally cant dodge it unless your right at his left leg. he was terrible, nows he great but these people keep complaining
Yeah, being able to roll through his quick double slash (the one followed by a cross-slash) more consistently now feels refreshing. And overall, the boss is still hard as fuck. But he feels mostly fair overall.
The one thing I don't get is why is Rusty using quickstep (with mods?) to demonstrate how to deal with combos. Also, PCR can do the gravity thrust at point blank even when the player is behind him. It happens if the player uses projectiles. PCR usually reacts to the projectiles with ranged attack (e.g. gravity thrust, lion's claw, gravity pull, layered rings of light, Radagon's ring of light, or the clone attack where he jumps right). If the player uses the projectiles when he is ready to commit to another attack, the attack reacting to the projectile will be saved. The reacting attack will then be used immediately after the original attack without the punish window which should be there. So something like this could happen: PCR at range --> the player used a projectile while he was going to do an attack (let's say gravity thrust) --> the player dodged and punished PCR --> PCR immediately followed with savage lion's claw In which case, the player would be stuck in the attack animation and savage lion's claw had a hitbox that came out instantly, making it impossible to dodge the sequence. Some other bullsh*t would be gravity thrust at point blank (also turning 180 degrees) or gravity pull at point blank (which always follows up with the gravity vortex at point blank no matter how the player dodged). Some might ask if using projectiles is causing so much issues in the PCR fight, why still use them? My reason would be while PCR has 120 poise, his poise starts to recover after only 6 seconds wtihout being attacked. The normal time for a 120 poise boss to start to recover poise should be 9.23 seconds. With PCR's tendency to love to run away from the player, I consider the use of projectiles to reset the poise recovery time very neccessary if one wants to consistently poise break him.
it's not quickstep, it's a modded roll that's functionally identical ( 'cept for the post-s hitboxes being possibly worse due to the different pose ) based on bloodborne's dodge animation
@@梅友仁-m3p worse, but only to a slight degree. afaik, it has the exact same distance and s as the roll ( and there _is_ a medium roll version of it, but elden ring's medium roll is identical to light roll in all but distance to begin with ) but because hitboxes in these games are tied to animation bones, attacks that the rolls would low-profile in their recovery frames are just gonna slam into your upright upper body with the bloodborne step granted, it's possible that the mod author was cognizant of that and made sure to turn the upper body hitboxes intangible during the appropriate frames, but there's still going to be incongruities between the two because the hitboxes are just in different places and "rising from curling into a ball" is _so_ much more compact than "landing upright from a quick hop"
Another example of terrible attack queueing is that PCR can queue his clone. This means that he can do the clone attack at a distance and the attack become undodgeable because you end up directly under him when he summons the gravity rocks
I’m glad someone is talking about his janky input reading and input queuing. It has gotten me killed several times while throwing kukris at him to keep his poise from regenerating. It sucks and needs to be fixed.
I hate this conversation because my take has never been that the game is too hard but rather some ways its difficulty is expressed just aren't fun to deal with. I love the game, but some bosses just aren't fun to fight.
I dont think I enjoyed a single shadow of the erdtree remembrance boss outside of midra. Too much spam across the board with the exception of Romina who was just not terribly interesting lore wise or in gameplay or design. Fromsoft has a nasty habit of adding difficulty to its games with number trickery instead of design. Boss too easy? double their health and speed up their entire moveset by 0.5. Its boring honestly. None of the bosses in erdtree felt substantially different from basegame bosses with the exception of easily tweakable values.
While i personally struggle with a couple bosses from the "newer" Fromsoft design philosophy, i don't think it's bad overall. The games need to be more challenging, and considering how we feel about elden ring basegame bosses nowadays, they're still very much fine. If we got another Gael fight in the Elden Ring DLC there would be absolutely no challenge at all, since we already figured out that dance and moved past it. Elden Ring is just a new dance that players need some time to figure out, but ultimately it's a necessary evolution of the combat system.
"you are being influenced" yes, by influencers.. and i'm going to put my hand on the primordial fire, but i think Rusty is an influencer oh and if by you, fighting a boss that can make your graphics card go sepukku is something that shouldn't have been nerfed or the cross-slash of hell shouldn't as well, um.. idk man, but the rest of us dont fight bosses head on with a preset plan
Fun fact: Getting hit by the golden showers in Radahn's second phase is often inconsistent not because of the attacks themselves, but because the back portion of the arena is uneven and they're progressive AOE hitboxes that cover both vertical and horizontal distance. So you can be standing right next to him on a flat section of the arena and the AOE can pass right over you, while if there's any elevation difference between you, you'll be hit by it.
I noticed this early on during my tries back when first playing the DLC, and that became a reason I make a point to fight phase 1 near the entrance and try to finish that one off with a critical (stunning him and crit into 2nd phase will always start you off where you did it, rather than near the Gate of Divinity), or just trying to move the fight towards the entrance if I missed that. Trying to fight on all those bodies that make the arena uneven is a massive pain during phase 2, being in flat terrain helps keep you close to him during combos since the golden rays will always end up behind you there.
I mean, it's also extremely clear why the "iT's WAy tOo HaRd" phase happened, the same people that thought the main game was too hard came back for the dlc unironically thinking they wouldn't get their asses kicked all over again...
@@rigel9228 it's so incredibly formulaic and expected. Like everyone thinks it's different this time but no this shit has been happening with fromsoft games for eons.
@@felipeguedescampos851 i personally think the end game criticisms are still valid. It's fine now that we're all collectively used to it, but the difficulty curve is still more of a mountain than a hill.
Okay but you don't have to beat a single boss to shatter the rune fragment. Get close to Shadow Keep and the rune fragment shatters allowing you to enter Stone Coffin Fissure
@drewengel7073 you are completely right. But from the point of view of a new player, they may not know that unless they look up a specific walkthrough. Plus, if they found out that they can just skip the boss for later, then they'll just come back for it when they are ready.
@@drewengel7073I was collecting map fragments and had this happen within my first 2hs of playing that along with me attacking a pest and Moore invading right after ruined a few quest lines
I mean as soon as you step into the shadow keep you get that message, and if you get to the stone coffin fissure and saw the miquella's seal he will probably think about checking that out, specially if they remember morgott's two seals in leyndell And like, getting to the shadow keep is the main objective of the player once he steps into scadu altus
@@bagredecartola1289 That segment of the video is specifically outlining a way a player might wander if they aren't ready to face rellanna, and not using the route around castle ensis
I had to force myself to pick the DLC up multiple times because I just wasn't having fun but I wanted to be done with it. Is the DLC beatable? Of course. Is it too hard? For me it was at the time. The camera literally gave me a headache. I've beaten the DLC multiple times since then but my first playthrough felt like going to work.
Same actually especially in co-op I'm scared to actually take any of the new punish windows bc it's hard to gauge how long they are, and the hesitation before I commit just makes me eat a sword the size of a freight train to the face.
The issue isn’t how hard the bosses hit, it’s how frequently they attack. Another video broke down attack frequency by boss and Radahn was only behind Malenia in terms of attack frequency. And when you ignore all the time wasted in the insanely long phase 2 grab attack, Radahn has the highest attack frequency by a mile. Bosses like Radahn are difficult because they hit hard and have insanely high attack frequency. Bosses like Astel that can 1 shot you with a grab or Fire Giant that can one shot you with pretty much anything are still easy fights because their attack frequency is so low. Morgott is able to be tolerable with a relatively high attack frequency because his damage is so low. None of the DLC bosses compromise on attack frequency or damage. Even looking at the base game, the hardest bosses are the ones that attack the most frequently while also hitting hard, like Malenia and Maliketh. The scaling being comparable to the base game doesn’t matter when Radahn can still 2-3 shot you and is mathematically the most aggressive boss in the game whenever he’s not using the dumb grab attack.
Fantastic point. I don't know why this is such an esoteric concept for people; balancing isn't rocket science. You want an enemy with lots of poise and a very flashy, long-winded moveset? Don't make him hit for half my healthbar, please.
@@parkergosman5476because this take is trash and Demod, who the original commenter obviously got his info from, is completely garbage and shouldn't be taken seriously. That video is god awful.
@@darththork99 I don't have to explain shit because it's already been pointed out. He intentionally bloated promised Radhan's attacks per minute or whatever when he compared him to Ishin. It's objectively false and completely ignores that while both being Fromsoft games, Sekiro and Elden Ring are different games. It's why porting Elden Ring bosses to Sekiro nerfs the shit out of them because you can just tank most of their hits with your Infinite stamina. Even *if* Radhan attacked more than bosses in Sekiro it's still a shit take because there's so many other ways to dodge or mitigate damage in Elden Ring. Sekiro has damage and health upgrades and you unlock moves and tools but that's nothing on the variety you have access to in Elden Ring. Gear, spells, weapons, summons and everything else can be utilized. The fact that you can jump in Elden Ring *can't be ignored* because it allows you to high profile *on top of low profiling* and gives you access to jump attacks which are massive sources of poise damage. I think Radhan was bullshit but Demod *refused* to dodge *in to him* making him get hit by everything. Radhan's basic combo is one of his most fair moves as you just have to dodge into it yet because he refused he raged more than he should've had. Also Demod made a follow up video saying he was way too harsh so why The ever loving fuck are people *still* quoting it when *DeMod HIMSELF* no longer stands by what he said?
@@DwWarWolf "I don't have to explain myself!" *explains himself poorly* Demod did not say he doesn't stand by what he said. He still does minus the scadutree fragment segment. What Demod's video was about was to apologize for having such a negative focus for so many videos in a row and promising to make more positive videos. Not to walk back his criticisms. Elden Ring's design philosophy has glaring flaws that should be addressed. Just like every other one of these games had flaws.
Idk man, radahn having that triple slash nigh guaranteed to hit and saying "its not bad just already have all the skadoosh fragments" feels like a bit of a cop out. I scoured every nook and cranny and i wasn't even at 18 level for the end fight, most players don't find them on a first or even secons play of the dlc without a guide.
I've done the DLC 4 times now.... NEVER got to level 20. I just can NOT find all the fragments on my own. I did beat Consort Radahn in all the runs.... But, 2 out of 4 characters needed the Mimic to win. (And one of the ones I didn't summon for fought him post nerf.) But... yeah, I feel the nerfs were overall a good thing. Don't even challenge runners agree on this? Since it opens up more playstyles that don't get fucked by the cross slash.
I reached the final boss at lvl 18, and the last 2 I looked up a guide, which PSA it okay to look up guides! People get to hard headed to not look up guides and fight the final boss and get their ass beat and not look up guides to find the last two levels. If looking up guides is bad than imagine playing PoE one of my favorite games ever and say I'm never using guides. It's okay it's lart of gaming. There's no shame in that. What I do is I finished the game 100% In my mind but I havnt found the last 2 level, so I look up guides and see if where to find them, because you can't search every inches of t map to find soemtging you missed, and also what I do is look up guides to see if I missed any bosses. There's nothing wrong with that.
Rusty thinks it’s not that bad because he’s sunk 200+ hours into reviewing every weapon, spell, and incantation in the DLC; as evidenced by assuming the player base is a collective hivemind pathfinding the optimal route to hunt down fragments. Of course if you adventure optimally with a guide, you’re going to have an easier time. I cant really validate his opinion on this one for the same reason I’m subscribed. He’s not your average casual, which is fun to watch, but kinda out of touch from the experience of the median skilled playerbase.
I think most of the complainers were those who didn't bother searching for scadu fragments at all. Many people said that the gaol knight with the solitude set is super hard... I mean yeah with 0 blessing level he can 2 shot you at 60 vigor. With a level 2 blessing he is just a slightly above average NPC fight. I mean it was already a telltale sign that many players reached the Divine Beast in an hour or 2 after starting the DLC. I spent like 6 hours exploring before I fought that boss so I had a level 3 blessing.
You don't really need to "pathfind the optimal route", you just have to, well, play the game. A large part of both Elden Ring and the DLC is exploration. Disregarding exploration and just focus on progressing would be akin to not exploring (and therefore not fighting) in the basegame, which would result in getting less runes, which would result in having lower stats. And as Rusty explained in the video, you really don't even have to get the blessing to 20 to get most of the effect, meaning that it's fine to miss a few. The DLC also gives the player new and better talismans and consumables to negate even more damage. With a decent armour set you can get 60-70% dmg negation for any given element, boosting that even further with spells and consumables. The new pickled turtle neck consumables are basically shoved into the players face before Balurat. Overall the game gives the player plenty of new ways to help with the dmg boost, while really not requiring them to find all of the scadu fragments, but, for the most parts, merely to explore the map and check out landmarks. The "hivemind" part of the community is only really necessary if someone is really struggling, which of course can always happen, and in that case it's perfectly fine to look for help online.
@tsunamie1015 I have the same mentality however since ER sold close to 30m copies at this point I realized that some players just don't want to explore. Even though the entire game is heavily built around that. Especially the anti open world crowd.
@@valentinvas6454 "... some players just don't want to explore." Yeah, and i mean that's fine. Everyone has their own preferences and i'm not gonna tell anyone that they're wrong for wanting/wishing that Elden Ring were more linear. But it's still crazy to expect and criticise Elden Ring for something that part of its core aspects. It's like playing Call of Duty and then criticising the game for being too much of a shooter.
@ believe me I went in blind; and found enough fragments to get to +12 or +16. Had a great time with the DLC up until Radahn. I’m due for another playthrough in a couple months, and will see if the patches and changes smooth the experience out a bit
Truth be told, my problem with the DLC on release was that by the end of it I got overwhelmed, Radahn, Metyr (because adds) and Gaius turned the game for me from "Yeah, I died now but I learned something, next time I will win!" to "Fuck this, I'm gonna assemble the most gross, overpowered shit this game has to offer and destroy this motherfucka, they aint playing fair so I'm not gonna!" And that last approach wasn't as fun for me personally. And I single out those bosses specifically, because with others it still felt like they were "fair", I still don't know really why. Now, I can almost no-hit Radahn but still that first impression made it so I don't really enjoy fighting him which is really a bummer, 'cause he's supposed to be an epic sendoff to this beautiful gem of a game.
"I don't enjoy this boss so I spent a ton of extra time learning all it's moves and patterns instead of just killing it and moving on" - insane person whose opinions can't be taken seriously
@@forwardmoving8252 I think you misunderstand or didn't read the whole comment. 1. I'm mostly talking about how my personal first experience with some bosses, which was a blind playthrough on release with a lvl 200 character, affected my personal enjoyment of fighting those bosses and how then I felt that compared to the other DLC bosses they were arbitrarily "unfair". 2. I only recently got to the point of almost "no-hit" (3 hits) and that was after nerfs, practice and watching a lot of no-hit videos and Gino's streams. 3. I don't hate those bosses, I just don't love them unlike Messmer or Rellana, or Lion, or Bayle (Igon is a G.O.A.T.) And, considering how Consort Radahn is THE last boss that ER is ever going to get, I expected to love him, like Gael or Orphan and I didn't.
I'm there with you. Some bosses felt unfair because of moves that I just looked at and went "I don't understand what is going on and where the danger is". Even hours later I still often had no clue how certain boss moves worked until I went and looked up a no-hit guide. That's just not a fun experience. It's funny that Rusty spends time talking through Messmer, because I think he has some of the most readable moves and least amount of camera/arena fuckery of all the bosses in the DLC. That's why he's the true star of the DLC. Meanwhile I couldn't figure out how to dodge/punish half of PCR's moves without a guide. The blades of stone move that he shares with Gaius really threw me for a loop because you can't use Torrent to out-space it. Instead, you need to figure out that there's just barely enough time to start running away and then jump at the last second (which as far as I can tell doesn't work on Gaius' version of the move). I like that some of the bosses seem to be using moves that encourage more than just mindless dodge-rolling, but the game needs to either a) communicate the correct strategies better for certain types of moves (similar to ground attacks being dodge-able with a jump) or b) make the moves significantly more telegraphed to give players the time to think of a solution other than reflexively dodging.
I will always find incredibly fun how some people are just uncapable of accepting any criticism towards these games and how they will always try to do the mental exercise to vindicate every single aspect and say you just have skill issue if you disagree even in the slighterst thing, as if that made them ''true fans'' or something. Just for the record, guys, you can love something while accepting it has room for improvement, it is the healthiest way to enjoy things I'd say.
this is a big reason why I have grown to really *really* dislike the Elden Ring community as a long time souls player. It was already kinda bad sometimes with older players, but Elden Ring brought a lot of people (I feel) who just don't understand what constructive criticism is.
BTW, there is something you missed. SOTE enemies attacks base damage is overall higher than original ER ones. For example, a regular castle soldier in original has attacks with base damage from 120 to 250, whilst a similar castle soldier (messmer army) in SOTE has attacks with base damage from 160 to 250. This also contributes significantly to the feeling that they hit harder, because most of their attacks at the end hit around a 40% harder
honestly the scaling was never an issue for me my issue was that promised consorts attacks had/have massively overinflated hitboxes that are not properly shown to the player
Yeeaaa, I’m gonna have to disagree Mr UA-camr, I think that the nerfs were needed. Even beyond the required visual nerfs, I think the gameplay nerfs make the boss flow much better, ESPECIALLY the cross slash nerf. Playing around that one attack ruined the flow. Granted, the move is now trivial to dodge, but I’ll take an easy dodge over an unfair attack any day of the week.
I disagree with the idea that people can't suggest improvements unless they stick around for them to be made. how long? 1 month? i'm not allowed to move onto any other games or immediately need to drop what i'm doing, and run back to radahn to see all the balance changes? that's absurd. Some people, when they say a game is too difficult, probably just mean, it's not fun to deal with the challenge. Divine Lion was the first time i swore on stream in 5 years because of how laggy the fight was on top of the camera issues and no weapon to read attacks from. When i see people complain about the DLC it's almost never "to much damage." It's laggy. which it was. Divine Lion's headbutt always lagged for me. A friend stopped playing on PC and switched to console because they timing on parrying Renalla kept changing. Another issue is various builds will have a lot more problems with 1 boss and simply be told to "get good" well I had a poison build and ran into 3 ghostflame dragons, deathrite bird, and something else that were just immune to poison. getting good doesn't change that. There is also the power of "bonk" taking a fist weapon, with no staggering against flame knights is a world of difference vs anything that hits them out of their combos. It's effectively a different game entirely. One, you can ignore what half the enemies are doing and just jump r2 them. the other, you do have to get get, or just avoid encounters. Something being too difficult with ALWAYS be relative. "no i did the math" so what. People can physically or mentally perform at certain levels. Someone who sunk 5,000 hours into souls-like will have an easier time than someone playing elden ring for the first time. The new player will put forth 100% their abilities and fail more often than a veteran just clowning around. "what do you mean it's hard, i beat the boss is only 5 attempts."
I still dislike Consort Radahn and Gaius a lot, no matter the nerfs and I'm 100% convinced that, if these bosses were from a non-fromsoft souls like, everybody would just agree that they are poorly designed, but since it's fromsoft, it's just a matter of "git gud".
That's a brainless comment 😂 non fromsoft soulslikes get meatrided into oblivion by the same types of fanboys. The reality is LOTS of people dislike those 2 bosses and you'll find people being more openly critical of elden ring than basically ANY of the ripoffs other studios have made
@@forwardmoving8252 Me when i can't deduce the heightened critique is simply because ER is more popular by about 10x of it's best competitor Thinking required ahead, therefore seek thoughts You are for sure a From Softer with how you worded your comment, sorry the best game they've made since BloodBorne is AC6. Your magic sword games still matter!
the problem with the radahn fight was that you could never judge him based on how he moves because his hitboxes did not match his visual. paired with the flashbangs and high damage meant you often found yourself dying to things you didn't see, and when you see them you still end up getting hit because of the weird hitboxes
Honestly as usual the nerfs are over exaggerated. This is how people always act with nerfs. People did the same thing with OG Radahn, and even to this day people are still saying things about him that are untrue. And I’m willing to bet the people that say Radahn is easy af now, “look how they massacred my boy” etc are people who just fought the boss so many times that he gradually became easier naturally, but the nerfs are skewing people’s perceptions much more sharply. Kind of how practice and learning works lol. Bosses get easier the more you fight them, they will also get easier with a few nerfs, but people tend to over exaggerate the influence of built up skill and practice vs nerfs. Also whether people want to admit it or not a lot of it *can be* an ego thing. Not saying it always IS, but it can be. You beat PCR pre nerf? Cool I did too, many times, hitless and at RL1. I still think most of the nerfs were needed, especially cross slash. Having to play around an entire attack and making it a guaranteed frame trap if you weren’t humping his left leg made it a bullshit move plain and simple. It’s also wild how nerfing just this one attack opened up the fight so much more (even though I think Radahn is still fundamentally a much more restrictive and less player expressive fight than the majority of ER bosses) People may make the argument to “use a shield” and by extension “use the tools the game gives you” and my response to that is just as you’re entitled to play your way, others are as well. Some people don’t like using greatshields and turtling to play. We shouldn’t need to change our play style to better counter one move. And not using it isn’t “limiting ourselves to what the game is offering” it’s a personal choice. It doesn’t mean people can’t complain or take issue with it. It’s a weak argument imo As for recovery frames I don’t see anything wrong with them. Oh no now I can get more time to get 1-2 more hits after the 6 hit combo. Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course, and I think people just get attached to what they’ve learned prior. I just genuinely find it hard to wrap my head around this fight being worse with the nerfs unless it’s 1) what I just said above, 2) ego/eltitism or 3) just personal preference. But hey that’s subjective so it’s valid
@@Scowleasy I would agree he wasn’t really nerfed but that also kind of goes with my point of people over exaggerating it. People still say he was. I see people are still to this day saying that his damage is lower even though they’ve fixed that.
Really all they needed to do was tone down the visual clutter and make that bietch ass cross slash attack consistent to dodge without humping his right knee, and they did, so i'm happy with the nerfs overall
Even with the nerfs the boss is still as difficult as malenia (i still think she is slightly more difficult). The people who say the nerfs were unneeded dont even explain why they are bad. "you have 2 more seconds to punish him after the bloodflame attack. Entire fight ruined now even babies can beat it." No that recovery window is still tight and can easily be missed if you dont quickly take advantage of it, but that it actually became an opening makes the fight a lot more engaging than before.
I'm not sure I'd call correcting basic form-fits-function feedback a "nerf" so much as it is just fixing broken game design. The pre-patch fight wasn't mechanically difficult; any DKART evaluation proves that conclusively, but the feedback was so atrociously bad that you could hardly tell what was going on or where the attacks actually hit.
I feel like this video is entirely missing the point of why people would say that the dlc bosses are too hard, almost the point where it feels intentional. Noone is saying its "impossible" to beat the dlc or that there are not ways of easily adjusting to the difficulty of the boss, Weve all seen the no roll, fist only, monitor turned off , etc challenge videos. This is just like the discourse surrounding waterfowl dance. of course, 2 years later there are dozens of ways to dodge waterfowl and most players, including myself, don't have any issue beating her. however, I think we can all agree that the move is disproportionately punishing and requires the player to interact with the game in an overly restrictive, unfun way. if you are using a colossal weapon close range there's just always going to be a possibility that you will be hit, bar unlocking and attempting to break her tracking. This is how the DLC feels, While fighting many of the bosses throughout the DLC I had what you described, every attempt I would progress a little bit and feel some of that classic fromsoft satisfaction. Then, multiple times, I would hit the wall. All of a sudden I would be able to dance with the boss for most of the fight, but more often than not there would be that one aspect that I would always be hit by. Divine beast dancing lion having lightning all over the ground forcing the player to do nothing for 2/3 phases. Bayle using his laser breath attack requiring ???? idk running away after the first dodge. Messmer is goated idc. Commander Gauis shitty hitbox on charge, and more. Every boss was giving me that malenia feeling like it was designed for light load, which is fine for a superboss, but an entire dlc? There is a clear disconnect between the amount of choice in terms of arsenal that the player has now, and the actual viability of their movesets. what good is a cool flashy ash of war or incantation if you never get a chance to cast it? people criticized DS3 for its simplistic gameplay loop of dodge r1 dodge r1, but we are circling back around to this style of gameplay now that there are no longer enough openings to use slower attacks. even after big difficult moves, bosses regularly chain in mix-ups that make no hitting incredibly tedious. I actually downloaded a mod of nexus that simply increased the distance I was getting from my rolls and immediately everything clicked into place, making me believe that these bosses are designed for a game where the player can dodge faster and has faster attacks.
Its like for some reason the souls community just holds these games to a different standard of quality than any other game. Just because you can make something easy with gear, scadu, or eventually figure out a contrived way of dodging them, DOES NOT mean that the fight is well designed or fun.
Honestly I think the biggest thing is that most Ashes of War are too slow to pop out except for your evasive ones which are the fastest in the game. Everything else I have no real idea whatcha mean since almost everything in the game can be dodged with a Medium load and most bosses have a large enough opening to get a R1 out for all but the slowest of weapons. Charged heavy is debatable, but with the sheer amount of damage you can pump out if you do it right, it's a fair trade. This argument of yours only really seems to kick in at the higher NG+ levels where it just becomes more economical to use faster weapons that can dish out enough damage because the game modifiers AR just that insane
Nothing in the DLC is even as remotely difficult to dodge than Malenia's waterfowl dance except for Radahn's weird three hit cross slash thing that got patched out. And even when it was in the game, it was one hit, not instant death. Also you can block super Radahn's attacks without having your progress undone. So in short, stop crying over content that's only hard because you haven't practiced it yet
Rusty, this is coming from a place of love: Don't be "that" souls player... it's ok if people get pissy over the difficulty. They can get good. This seems like more of a response vid to strangers online being scared of souls difficulty.
17:42 -- See, this is the problem. Measuring a game's difficulty based on information you can (mostly) only access OUTSIDE of the game is kind of wild. Sure, SotE gets a lot less difficult if you have access to a good wiki, a personal coach, and 6 Souls games worth of experience under your belt, but those things REALLY aren't part of the game's difficulty -- and aren't universally applicable to the player base. Just going off of your Scadutree Blessing comparisons alone, IF someone had access to all of the fragments you listed at the points in the game you described these are mostly even fights. The problem is that a lot of those fragments are hidden away in areas that can be pretty easy to miss. Some fragments are out in the open and along the main path, but that will only get you so far... and even with taking the extra time to explore you might not find all of the less-accessible fragments without access to a wiki.
Or you can just play the game organically and naturally, use your brain for a change aswell, and explore in this exploration game, and you'll find the fragments, making your character stronger. No, you dont need to know the exact numbers or any specifics of anything, because you'll feel it the moment you play the actual game. People bitching about this either dont want to explore, suck at exploring, or simply want to whine that they cant farm and grind until they're overleveled. In any of case: skill issue. Nice strawman, though.
@@basementreviewer788 I literally played the DLC as you described for my first playthrough. -_- Level 150 character, blind and solo playthrough. It might not seem it from the philosophical stances I take, but I'm pretty much the standard Souls veteran. Nice set of ignorant assertions, though.
@@basementreviewer788 The base game encouraged exploration by letting you naturally increase your power level, through leveling up and finding important items for a build. SOTE takes that natural power increase and throws it out the window, shoving the fragments down your throat as a jarring "you're just stronger now" buff, and if you can't find them, you're boned.
that's always been a point that's irked me in regards to discussion about this game. There have been times where I have gone days, weeks, sometimes months without internet, so if I don't have access to a guide to know where every obscure location for each and every scadu fragment was, what would I do if I got stuck? and if I wasn't a longtime veteran for a majority of these games, how long would it have taken before I just gave up and never came back?
@@senounatsuru6453 But in the base game you "naturally increase your power level" by exploring, fighting side bosses and accumulating runes. The scadu fragments accomplish the exact same thing, while you also continue to get benefits from leveling up normally. But the base method of "explore to find materials to get stronger" is the exact same, whether it's through runes or scadu fragments.
I made a comment about this elsewhere and can't find it now for some reason... Really jumped out to me too that he just conveniently didn't mention the move in Radahn's moveset that was 100% unfair. Not "hard," but legitimately unfair.
@@LongknifeI fought him pre nerf and could dodge it just fine. It wasn't even a luck thing if it's the move I'm remembering, you just dodged towards the attack
@@forthencho1577 I never said they didn't exist, but existing =/= the move isn't unfair. Put "Radahn, Consort of Miquella - How to Ruin a Perfect Boss" in your search bar and you will find a no-hitter saying exactly what I'm saying about the double slash move.
You're right that the people complaining that it's too hard are likely just not scadutree blessed enough, but you're wrong that Radahn's "nerf" was unecessary. Pre-nerf his hit boxes made no sense and his attacks were so blindingly bright that you couldn't even tell where anything was.
I collected them all and I still think it was way harder than the base game. However it wasn’t something I really complained about. I didn’t expect them to make it easy.
Radahn nerf were unnecessary?! I dont know about it, since its only boss that managed to OVERCOOK my already aging PC. Maybe you are right, because majority of Consort Radahn haters would still not like his fight even after the nerfs, so they didn't brought increase in his popularity.
I mean clearly Fromsoft thought they were necessary, and I trust the opinion of the people that made the game more than someone that wasn’t involved at all.
@@Rusty._ Not sure if you've seen the in depth analysis video with 100k views that went fighting game level analysis by literally comparing each frame *EVERY SINGLE ATTACK ANIMATION* of Radahn has been slowed down, not just cross slash
I saw a lot of no hit runners complain about pre nerf radahn and, his nerf was definetely needed and a lot of his openings were inconsistent. Even after the nerf some of his problems were not fixed.
I feel like you've missed parts of what makes the DLC hard on this video. Of course, the scaling is well designed for the bosses you fight, everyone who interacts with the skadoodle mechanic will know that. All you did is expose the fact that From knows how to do their game design balancing well. What makes the DLC hard imo, and what should've been taken into account, relates more to s, animation length, visual feedback, and the camera. Stuff that isn't tied to balancing (because it is perfect in this game), but rather limitations that were not taken into account when the bosses were designed. Gaius shit hitbox for example isn't due to balancing, it's a fallback of the hitbox placement being way too tight for the frames window the player character has to correctly dodge it, forcing a frame perfect dodge or risking taking the damage of 1, or sometimes 2 hitboxes. The skadoodle shit can't help with that, bc it's an oversight. The same can be said about the Dancing Beast attacks. They must have been beautiful to look at in a Maya viewport, but their speed and the distance they cover behaves poorly with both the arena and the camera, forcing the player towards walls and causing the cam to go crazy and clip into a never ending flurry of attacks, and leading to deaths by cam rather than skill. On paper, those attacks SHOULD be dodgable, but they aren't, or at least not always, because external factors are hindering the player's capacity to dodge them properly. As a result, the player may feel like the attacks are chaining too quickly for them to react properly, leading to a feeling of unfairness. You also have to take into account the fact that multiple boss combos will lock you into a stun state where the number of frames it takes you to cancel that state is significantly greater than the numbers of frames it takes the boss to continue their combo. In short, missing a singular dodge can put you in a whole world of pain that depletes a good chunk of your hp with no recovery window ahead. Some may call it hard, but i think it is unfair. Everything is dodgeable, yes, but i personally question the enjoyment you get from missing one dodge by a frame and getting hit 4 times in a row after that because you got stunlocked to death. So far, it seems to be more frustrating than anything else. This artificially inflates the difficulty of a boss by chaining attacks seemingly relentlessly (which is true, your health and stun animations are all a bit longer frame wise than the DLC bosses attack chains so they can be chaining attacks faster than you can dodge them). What i'm trying to say is that the DLC becomes overtly difficult because of stuff that your video just didn't cover, so it's disingenuous to say that it "was never that bad" when looking at the obviously well designed part of it ! The DLC is unfairly difficult bc all of From's limitations and oversights are put well on display : not really accounting for frame and input speed, and the camera forcing "faith dodges" where you pray you got the timing right despite not seeing shit on your screen...
This is well articulated; I'm really glad you brought up Gaius's charge and Divine Beast's insane forward momentum pushing your camera into a wall. I don't at all agree that the balancing is "perfect", but I hope this comment gets more likes because the number sliders are a comparatively small part of the issues with ER's bosses/enemies.
Eh, i think the hippo is the only problem with camera, really. The dancing lion is solved easily by not locking on to him at certain points. Fromsoftware doesnt have a limitation with camera, when they already made games like Sekiro whose camera is dynamic, or bloodborne who also made the camera go farther from the player in certain bosses like Ludwig. They have the tech for it, and its inside the engine they are using for elden ring(since its the same one used in bloodborne, just updated). It's a conscious decision to let the player control that aspect of the game, you're not supposed to rely fully in the locked-on camera, because not only would that lead to camera problems, but it also impacts your movement in the game. Anyone that plays without lock on will tell you that your directional movement is much better, since your axis is not locked to the enemy anymore. You can use that to great advantege for better positioning, which grants you better oportunities for damage that you might not have found if you were just fighting with lock on. This is probably the reason why they havent implemented a dynamic camera system in elden ring at all, since you still had ''problems'' with the camera in the base game, especially with larger enemies like the putrid avatars in enclosed spaces. Fighting the death rite birds with lock on is also complete trash, same with ancient dragons. The ideal way to play these games has always been to know when to turn on and off the lock-on feature. If you do this, then the dancing lion will not only become easier, you will barely have visibility problems. The hippo is a worse offender, because he's simply too big, so you cant see what he's doing properly if you dont lock on, but if you do lock on, then you have to deal with a bad camera. There's simply no winning. The dancing lion is not big enough to lose sight of his movements without the lock-on.
@basementreviewer788 I personally find it insane to, from a game mechanic perspective, entertain the idea that "you shouldn't use this QoL feature in certain fights because it'll make them harder despite it being a QoL". Why should Fromsoft's outdated camera interactions with the lock on system be seen as a feature rather than what it actually is, an oversight ? If the lock on system behaved that way in any other franchises, they would get shat on into oblivion for it, but From gets a pass everytime ! What you're suggesting (delocking for big fights) is what i'd call a work around a mechanic that isn't behaving properly rather than an actual fix, and personally I don't think we should keep acting like purposefully not interacting with certain QoL features at certains points in the game is somehow genius and what "From intended all along".
The DLC isn't "too hard" but when what bosses ask for from you is to spend ages dodging for a punish window that merely chips their enormous health bar (and yes, your scaling stays on par with theirs, but the base game health bars are already pretty enormous and Malenia has similar problems. This is an Elden Ring problem, not just an Elden Ring DLC problem), it's just... less fun than the more back-and-forth of the previous games.
There's nothing wrong with that it's what the games before it did too, unless you're overleveled and have a broken weapon. It's the fun of the game, and I never once thought that the attack strings are too long or too much I always find opening after and during strings. But I gotta be honest if you're using a collosal weapon or sword it would be kind hard hitting him during combos, which is tye entire point of the build, you have a slower weapon and you wouldn't attack as often but when you do you get bigger damage numbers. It's just playstyles and doffrent weapon, try using varying your build and playstyles you'll have more fun. Ps. I really do think you have more back and forth in elden ring than previous games, you don't have it as much in previous games because you find an opening you hit the boss and stun him until he's dead.
@@xvor_tex8577 ??? What previous games involving stun-locking bosses. Elden Ring is by far the most prone to that with its stance breaks. There's a few outlier bosses in Bloodborne which can be stunlocked if you have high DPS and know where to hit them, but they're the exception. I've beaten DS3 at SL1 using nothing but the club. That was much more of a tight back and forth than Elden Ring, without any "overleveled" or "OP weapon". With the majority of bosses it was "they swing once or twice, I swing once, they do a big hit, I get to swing two or even three times." And like, as for "trying to vary my build" I basically killed every DLC boss with a different DLC weapon. Not quite literally, but I assure you, I varied my build constantly. I did not find the DLC _hard_ until Radahn (though even he was an entirely brainless fight with a greatshield, which I tried out and got him to like 5% HP basically without taking damage before letting him kill me to fight him more "fairly"). I also didn't find the long attack chains _too_ bad, because I was wearing heavy armor and pretty tanky, so if Rellana clipped me a bit with her combo or whatever, I could just walk it off, and so I forced the game to be a back and forth by setting up a build that could trade a little. But in Bloodborne, for example, it is a game of constant aggression. The boss is flailing around and you are always sticking close to it and attacking constantly. It was my first FromSoft game and I loved the pace of it. Elden Ring feels much slower, no matter the build. The DLC was mostly not worse than the base game in this regard, and it wasn't all that hard (and, indeed, I loved the DLC), but I do think the digression from readable movesets that give you windows after every one or two attacks to endless combos that have to be memorized rather than just read has been to the series's detriment.
@@leadfaun It is possible to get very OP in Elden Ring and kill bosses in several hits, yes, but this is hardly a back-and-forth either, this is the same "wait for ages for the combo to end" but you only need to do it a few times instead of repeatedly.
@ it isn't ages. The average combo takes like 5 seconds. Longer ones have openings during the combo. If your damage is too low, there are plenty of ways to increase damage.
"Radahn nerfs unnecessary" sorry rusty love you bro but thats an instant dislike from me Radahn nerfs made an incredibly unfair and blinding fight into a still incredibly difficult and unfair fight but one that is actually enjoyable and viewable. They were incredibly necessary
Rusty, I usually love your content, but you have fallen into the trap of "it was never that hard" that infects this community every single time and, without fail, ends up creating a more hostile environment for newcomers with every new release. Even if I agreed with you - and the comments are pretty unanimous in disagreeing - that doesn't make PCR or some of the other most oft-complained bosses any more fun to fight. And that is the sticking point for me. In so many of the main bossfights of this DLC, I felt like fighting the boss was such a chore. You either cheesed them completely or learned how to fall into a very rigid and non-player-expressive pattern. Even after PCR was 'learned' and became easier, he still became a joyless slog that ended this entire game with a feeling of 'I'm glad it's over'. The Scadutree Fragment system, while I don't dislike it in principle, doesn't help in that regard. Assuming that the player will lick the corners of the map before meaningfully attempting to play the videogame doesn't strengthen your argument, and is honestly just a boring chore even when playing with a wiki map by your side. Honestly, FromSoftware got way too high off of their own supply with every new installment. Turning every fight into a dodgeroll-pattern-neverending-attack-chain simulator is perhaps something I can blame Bloodborne for. Something that my Dark Souls-1-nostalgic-ass has never quite managed to enjoy.
Hard agree with everything except the dig at Bloodborne. Bloodborne was my first Soulsborne game. It absolutely gave you the tools you need to keep up with hyper aggressive bosses and long combos. Gun parries, the rally mechanics, a whopping 20+ blood vials to heal with... All those things meant the player could not only punish a boss for being too aggressive, the player themself could be hyperaggressive without being punished too hard. You really felt like a HUNTER, not some chump up against impossible odds. Elden Ring has none of that- Melania's rune gives you a pale shadow of the rally mechanic at the cost of healing flask effectiveness, you will only ever have 14 healing flasks at most, and parrying is a chore now - and a difficult chore at that.
Not Bloodbornes fault what happened to the rest of the games. Sekiro bosses is even faster than Elden Ring bosses but it feels fair because we are just as fast with tools such as animation cancelling to compensate. In Elden Ring you are playing Dark Souls 3 while the bosses play DMC5
@@colesontaylor1231 But that is my point. Later installments kept Bloodborne boss aggressiveness whilst not giving the player Bloodborne defensive mechanics (speed, gun parries, rally mechanic...)
I (as someone who loves bloodborne) agree with your sentiment. A lot of the bosses in Elden Ring aren't fun to fight because we are stuck with the same toolset from DS3 and placed in an enviornment with Sekiro or Bloodborne levels of aggresiveness with none of the tools to manage it. That feeling of "glad that's over" was ever present throughout my time with both Base game and DLC, and this is coming from someone who has beaten the game multiple times over trying to find the fun again. and your point about the bosses feeling rigid and non-player-expressive I think actually puts into words how i've been feeling with a lot of my time with this game. It feels like i'm forced to play in one way, and if I don't play in that way i'm punished for it.
It might be better to just admit that it is that hard. The best advice in this video is to practice dodging. The second best advice is to put 50 endurance on a character, use the great shield talisman, equip the fingerprint shield, and a thrusting sword of some sort with bleed.
I'm ready to agree that maybe the game was never that hard, but I won't give you that finding most fragments without just looking them up is reasonable. Which I think is fair to assume most people don't want to do, since it feels like cheating. I just think that "Just explore correctly" doesn't make for a very satisfying levelling experience, and I think the hosts that kept summoning me to Midra at SL8 and 10 agree with me.
Really? I explored organically and found 48 of them by the time I reached Radahn. I mean, it's an open world game where exploration is strongly encouraged.
Right, the "just explore more" argument doesn't work because, without an outside guide, you have no way of knowing if there are any more fragments to find in the area to begin with. Exploring the map with a fine-tooth comb, without even knowing if there is anything to find, isn't a fun player experience. Exploration is one thing, this is something else.
It's interesting that you mention summoning because that's one of my big issues with the DLC. Summoning is supposed to be "easy" mode (maybe assistance mode would be a better term) but in many cases it either did not help and made the fight significantly more chaotic or flat out made it harder. PCR is a great example because mimic and the 2 NPC summons simply don't do enough damage to the boss and die too quickly. Before the nerf, Radahn gave you basically no opportunity to summon meaning you had to summon spirit ashes in second phase (which is not the worst, but still annoying). And Thiollier/Ansbach both bloat his health pool to such an extent that no one wants to summon them (which is a shame considering their quests). IDK I think that a mode that is meant to help players overcome the challenge should not make the boss worse.
@@1925683 I fully agree, I think they should have made the ansbach and thiollier summons not increase radahns hp, at this point I only ever summon ansbach to hear his schpeal and then I die and fight radahn for real
I love difficulty discussions because it's fascinating how subjective difficulty can be. I beat Messmer on my 3rd attempt, and Maliketh on my 2nd, who are considered difficult. However, it took me much longer to beat Rykard and the Dancing Lion, even though they rarely are mentioned in hardest boss discussions. Rellana took me over an hour alone.
The DLC wasn't too bad. Yeah there are moments like Commander Gaius and his steed charge (still bullshit when it hits) is not bad when you know the exact pixel to dodge at. My biggest issue is the feeling I receive when I arrive in the final area in Enir-Ilim. What is this all worth? A final boss fight that leads to nothing but a remembrance? An unapologetically starved conclusion? I check out at this point and give my lowest effort.
@@ChosekLazzaria Clarification: I'm not talking about "lore" when I say storytelling; Elden Ring obviously has amazing lore/worldbuilding ETC. The premise of ER's story is fascinating and compelling, but I steadfastly assert that very little was done to actually flesh that premise out through quest design and NPC dialogue. Even some of the most involved, like Ranni's, still requires me to fill in the massive blanks with my imagination to get any sort of catharsis from it. Rogier was one of my favorite NPCs, not just because he's a likable character, but because his questline involved asking pertinent questions about the world and digging for answers. But his inevitable death brings all that to an abrupt halt. And are we really going to pretend like Melina's character felt finished? Girl straight up vanishes for most of the game. The DLC went way further than the base game to make NPCs more involved in the overarching story, and I really appreciated that, but that new overarching story is also extremely anemic. I know I don't need to convince you of that part, but I'm surprised you don't see the similarities between the base game and the DLC. Because I walked into the erdtree for my first time wondering the exact same thing: "What is this all worth?"
The main reason why SOE is generally considered harder is because the enemies in most cases are much more aggressive and fast. As far as I know, there is no stats that measures this...
@@HeyTarnished well, not for me. For example, I had a lot of trouble to confront the mother of fingers, even if I am hyperleveled...I am not the best player in the world but that thing has no weak points, she attacks with speed and brutality at 360 degree. I haven't had so much difficulties with any of the basic elden ring bosses, not even Malenia. At the end, after many tries with different strategies, I got sick of her and ended up summoning external help just to get my beloved staff of great beyond...
@@GreenHoleSun This…I don’t know what to say honestly, saying that you had a harder time against her than Malenia is something I have not heard being said anywhere. I’m talking about the normal enemies, they’re not much harder than any of the end-game base game Elden Ring, that can be proven objectively, I think you’re misremembering them.
@@HeyTarnished I just give you my opinion and my experience, and I remember perfectly. Malenia is strong but all his strenght come from her selfhealing capabilities and from the scarlet of Aeonia. Actually she has her weak points, first of all she is very vulnerable to breaking stance. There are plenty of ways to get rid of her, especially with new equipment. Mother of fingers? No, keep yourself informed, there are plenty of videos on YT.
@@HeyTarnished about normal enemies: for me it's never have been a great problem, if there are some particularly pesky ones the general rule is to confront them one at a time. Anyway in the DLC mesmer soldiers are much stronger and fast, and they cooperate very well in groups. Then there are particularly annoying enemies, like that kind of leeches that paralyze you from afar...
Oh yeah math ain't real, right up to the point where you learn the difference between one apple falling on your head, and one billion apples falling on your head in the space of 1 second.
For me it's no "hard", it's annoying and unfun because of the overtuned aggressiveness, endless enemy combos, erratic movements and particle effects on certain bosses.
Being scaled up to fourteen times the toughness of the base game absolutely counts as 'that hard'. Wtf are you smoking, Rusty? Also, saying that content isn't 'too hard' because you can buff up before boss fights is disproving your point. Pushing one button, one time, to give myself 15% attack and 10% dmg reduction is literally just a difficulty slider. Which you've suggested we all turn down. Because the content is too easy, maybe? But the reason this was a problem is simple: When Margit hands me my ass, I go explore a cool world for some cool weapon or cool spell or cool ash that is a literal active ability I have to use. When Rellana hands me my ass, I get to go ride around the map for 2 hours picking up tree bark. That's literally why the scadutree fragment system was tweaked. You need fewer fragments, so you end up engaging in the boring 'content' less. This really isn't rocket surgery.
Radahn is 14X. You are 2X. So Radahn is actually 7X, same as Malenia. You're crying because you refuse to just practice the boss a little and get more used to it. Just like you do with every From game or DLC. People said the same things about Malenia and Isshin and Gael and Friede and Pontiff and Raime and the Ruin Sentinals and Artorias. Any time you get mildly challenged you throw a tantrum, then you actually learn the boss and use it as some bar of quality that the next new piece of content alledgedly doesn't beat because you don't know it yet and actually have to try again.
Mfw this same commenter feels the need to go around replying to everyone who rightfully calls out Rusty for being wrong and the DLC for being unreasonably difficult and/or boring. Like, seriously man, is this what you do with your life? Play FS games and go around online attacking people who criticize them? It's pathetic. I mean, what, did your parents "dodge roll" spending time with you as a child so now you have to fill the empty void inside yourself by sucking Michael Zaki's peen? Ignore this idiot, OP. You're in the right.
You ever try to juggle? I found out I have a basic talent for it and picked it up fairy easy after about 5 minutes of watching someone else do it even though I can only juggle spheres. That may seem random but telling someone that something isn't hard when they don't have a talent for it is honestly something the souls community doesn't seem to understand. You finding it easy doesn't mean it is. There also a thing called time and with time people can pick skills when they don't have the talent but that takes, guess what? time that not everyone has.
I think you are missing the point. Hardness is entirely subjective. He isn’t saying the bosses are easy, in fact he says the exact opposite multiple times in the video. His point is that the bosses are not necessarily harder than the base game. He points out the scadu level counteracts most of the extra leveling stats bosses get in the dlc, and that upon closer analysis the bosses all still have the same basic weakness is their attack patterns that have been prevalent all the way back when you fought Margit.
So why do you HAVE to play something difficult that takes time to master and demand that it be made easier for your particular time schedule and skill level? Oh, that's right, because you want the clout of having played "the experience" without having to meet the basic requirements of participation. Play something else.
@@winxwest2964they are objectively harder than the base game on ave though because scaduland bosses are much more aggressive than most erdland bosses For example, malenia is still my fav boss fight. But now rellana and messmer are my top 3 right after her. Why? Because rellana and messmer are similair to malenia in that they are all very aggressive (why they are my fav tho is that despite being aggressive there are still tons of openings to deal damage if you are creative making it a fun duel, they have my favorite 'dances' so to speak)
Missed the whole point of the video and he doesn't even say the bosses are easy for him. There's a whole section talking about attack patterns and how there's no way to measure how easy or hard this is for a player.
Your argument about the skibidi fragments assume that you collect all of them or most of them, which most people wont do on their first playthrough. Quite a few of them are easily missable, especially if you dont want to search absolutely everywhere. I don't think telling someone to look around more is a fair argument. If you were underleveled in the base game you do some more dungeons that you could spot from just looking at the map, or even farm. Also the a lot of the attack windows you talk about are often too short if you use a larger weapon. A lot of the boss moves also look very similar making it harder too memorize them. A few of the bosses also had issues beyond stats and moves, like Hippo and gaius having terrible spawns, and dancing lion constantly pushing you into the wall. I never thought the dlc was too hard for me personally, only getting annoyed on rellana, gaius(because of the spawn and having the most difficult to dodge move in the entire game by far) and Radahn, but saying it wasn't that hard when it was obviously significantly harder than the base game is disingenuous. All the DLC bosses were a heck of a lot more aggressive and had way longer attack chains than the base game. Their moves were less telegraphed, had shorter dodge windows between moves and had shorter attack windows. also this from @ClassyReviews "I've always had an issue with the reasoning of the Scadutrees and how "you're supposed to collect the seeds, forehead." This is an argument that can be made with hindsight, when you know where all of them are and just how much they add to your damage/resistences. But when you're first starting... How are you supposed to know there are 10 scadutree fragments you can collect before the first boss?"
I think you made a good point but I think having around blessing level 15 before final boss is normal and I did have around blessing 3 before divine beast which is enough to counter its scaling. Except for the pot guys with fragment, the others fragments are easy to get if you explore a bit.
@@MinhTuHa-ry4fe This is such bs, if you didn't note down every skibidi fragment you got and aren't using a guide it's impossible to just explore a bit. Do you know how big the map is? Might as well ask me to find a single needle in 200 haystacks. From my pov I scoured the map, and not only did I not find all the dungeons, I barely made it to level 16. Not that it made the boss any more fun than when I got to him at level 12.
@@JanVerny: I found 49 fragments all on my own just by exploring without any guide. However, I get that not everyone is going to play the game as meticulously as I do. Still, especially after the first balancing, a player doesn't need anywhere close to all of then. Just 26 fragments is enough to reach the level 12 soft cap with a boost of 85%. The remaining 8 levels of diminishing returns are only an extra 20% over that. Reaching max blessing is really something only completionists need to worry about.
@@JanVernySelf-report that you don't explore the map in any capacity. I think I was level 14 just by wandering around by the time I got to PCR and then 18 when I decided to double down and look for them
Because first phase is way easier and the moveset isnt anywhere near as unfair First phase radahn is like godfrey/hoarah while second phase radahn is like malenia if malenia had a massive stagger bar and a twink boy on her shoulders adding staggered magic attacks to every swing
@@theFORZA66 You should be able to roll the same way in both phases facing the same combos, except the ground slam, which becomes mandatory to roll in phase 2. The light pillar won’t be a problem as long as you’re rolling around him clockwise and be very close to him.
Aight for my 2 cents i beat him pre nerf no summons with a greatsword and lions claw at scadutree level 19. What angered me was a hippo did not spawn, so I couldn't max out my blessing, and for colossal weapons the openings to attack were severely limited. This is in addition to him having insane poise and poise recovery, so stance breaks also weren't viable. What bothered me about the dlc was how the bosses move too fast, like Rellana and Radahn, with too much poise. It's not good for all weapon types, and I feel the main game was great for all weapon types.
I beat him RL1 pre nerf and all the other bosses in the DLC and I agree with you completely. Relanna is seriously to quick for most charged R2s which is dumb. The bosses are just to overturned, the time in between attacks is way too quick and they over did it.
Yeah, I'm on this team as well. And my problem even has a potential caveat: if you're gonna give an enemy infinite stamina, at least make it so when I connect an attack, THE ENEMY FLINCHES. Either the boss creates an opening for me, or I risk myself and force him to. Almost no souls boss (well, the small ones in ER do, but those are exceptions) works like that, and the aforementioned Problem Trio definitely don't, so they need "more fair" cooldown windows.
you basicly have the same infinite stamina with how often they delay attacks(if you don't panicroll). stamina buffs are in their on category. the game is at its best when it's not just rolling and hitting and running away to heal like in ds
@@hitlord i mean, thats objectively wrong. A huge amount of bosses DO flinch from attacks. It just depends on how heavy your attack is (damageLevel). But I get what you mean, you want them to flinch like a player and be completely interrupted, which just too much, you can find other ways to get easy mode instead.
@@ТесакВнаушнике it's not even close, I can't do 5 attacks in a row and recover my whole stamina bar in 2 seconds to do another 5 attacks in a row. Also, if a delay an attack by doing a charged heavy, my stamina doesn't regenarate during that animation, unlike them.
I really like your point about Radahns "Fuck you I win" meteor attack only really working once, and I think it highlights something about Malenia that made her as infamously difficult as she was, and its that Waterfowl Dance being her "Fuck you I win" attack is so much more dangerous than any of the other similar attacks - with the only one that comes close in my opinion being Bayles aerial laser combo.
Real talk, the non stop attacking, gap closers, input reading, and delayed attacks make the game harder then it should be. As much as I like ER, it's the game that goes the most against the idea of why they originally designed dark souls.
Delayed attacks do not exist. The attacks come out exactly when they are meant to. Don't panic, and you'll be fine. These attacks shouldn't hit you more than once if you have eyes and basic memory.
@@UnknownRayDar They are jarring and weird, i kinda learned Morgott's moveset (i don't have ER so i play with friends) and how to dodge them. Do these attacks come when they "are meant to"? Yes, if we define "are meant to" as "are coded to hit". But i think that calling them delayed attacks is also right: there is a variable amount of time between the startup of the animation and the ending of it. And i think that's a good definition of delayed attacks that distinguish them from rollcatching attacks (which have fixed animations but that come slightly later to punish a early dodge). And while i don't think they make the game that harder (just wait for the smack not the startup) alongside other thing it can be quite taxing for some. And to me both the delayed attacks and 100% imput read dodge look quite jarring and ugly. For example Morgott just having his stick over his head for 5 seconds just waiting for you to press circle on your coontroller so he can hit you after your roll
I disagree that it makes the game harder. Just more frustrating. Standing a distance from the boss while it's not attacking, hitting the heal button, and then instantly being gap closed and combo'd while you're unable to respond doesn't make the boss harder. It just makes it feel cheap and frustrating. If the boss did it every single time, that would be one thing. But these bosses rarely behave consistently, so it's usually a gamble to heal at any other time than a guaranteed punish window, and guaranteed punish windows are rarer and shorter thanks to the long combos and combo stringing. So for anyone who's not using an exceptionally powerful build, some of these bosses are just irritating. They're just as beatable as ones in previous games. Just less fun. This boss design would have worked better in Sekiro or Bloodborne.
Radahns average opening time frame was .34 seconds per 6 seconds. Sword saint ishin is .64 per 6 seconds. Mother fucker what? Now, granted, strap on a great shield and trivialize the game but I don't think the play style of fucking DODGE ROLLING should be this heavily punished.
Pulling numbers out of your ass lmao, radahn has multiple charged heavy windows, and sekiro openings work completely differently to openings in other fromsoft games
I wouldn't phrase it as "dodge rolling is punished" more so than "your main option is no longer consistently viable" (which it never really was, in fairness) That's still a crazy comparison, though.
Yes obviously Isshin is going to have more openings because you can literally stop his combos, like any other sekiro boss. Sekiro bosses have like triple the ammount of openings of any dark souls boss lol Radahn pre nerf was a bad fight, it still has less openings than any other boss in the game even after the nerf, but this comparison is ass.
Honestly, I avoided spoilers for the DLC until I beat it. I know people didn't like the final boss but I didn't read any of the reasons why A lot of my problems to the fight (this is all post-nerf btw) were about how the holy meteor attack was pretty much an auto-loss unless you knew exactly how to dodge it, camera issues, and the fact that once you beat the boss, it was very anti climatic, with the only things being a memory that stated what you already knew. I was surprised that people complained about the imfamous cross slash attack, which people still complain about even post nerf. I guess my playstyle just naturally dodged the attack but the reasons why people hated the fight I never would've guessed from my experience.
I replayed Dark Souls 1 in september and one thing that I realised is that I want that Elden Ring enemies wouldn't be so much hp. Some ER regular enemies have more hp thand DS1 bosses. Because of this, sometimes fight feels extremely exhausting. I have no problem learning movesets, but holy fuck I's tiring to repeat everything 20-40 times per fight. And I believe that's one of the reasons people minmaxing their build.
Yeah, a lot of people misunderstand that it's not about being too hard to beat. But about being so hard that it's tedious to beat. Try to go against these DLC bosses without some min-maxed bleed build and the single attack windows you get between the overwhelming combos barely nudge some boss healthbars. Attempts drag on for a long time and can end from a single mistake. Gets pretty tedious at some points. Like playing Skyrim on legendary difficulty.
@@falcoon_f_zero9450At that point I think it's an indicator that you're too low level. Plus any build is minmaxed if you build it right- yes even a standard quality build with Dex and Strength evened out. You don't need to be a Contagion shield, Kindred Rot Talisman, Bleed weapon, all the buffs slinger to beat most of these bosses. Maybe Golden Vow for some extra gas in the tank and talismans that compliment what you're doing.
@@venandisicarius32 If around level 200 character, 60str/60fth stats with a +25 heavy great stars and +25 beastclaw talisman, plus most available scadutree fragments is considered under equipped now then I don't know what to tell you. That weapon is barely nudging some of those boss healthbars. Spells would hit for bigger damage if 90% of them weren't too slow for the hyper aggressive bosses and the rest will likely miss because of their mobility anyway. So if you're not a fan of summoning you'll have to resort to mainly doing minimal damage R1s. Buffs help a bit too... for the first 1/5th of the fight before they run out and can't be used again since there's never time to get the animation off with these boss speeds. Just a tedious experience sometimes. That easily happens when you try to keep a themed character going in Elden Ring despite it being an RPG. If the character doesn't fall in the few overpowered archetypes you'll end up getting very underwhelming results in the endgame. But take some double twinblade bleed build and spam jumping attacks and the bosses crumble completely. The game just has such severe issues with unbalance. You either destroy a boss without any effort with summons or a broken setup. Or slowly tickle the enemy health away without a min-maxed setup, only to get one-shot far into the fight. There's much less of that satisfying in-between the earlier games were able to hit consistently.
@@falcoon_f_zero9450 Have you considered the possibility that you are unironically just bad at the game? Because with stats/gear like that you're either lying or are genuinely just bad. And like, there's nothing wrong with just being bad at a game. What IS wrong is not improving and then saying anyone who is contrary to this perspective is wrong.
I disagree with the Thumbnail. The Radahn nerfs were necessary, at least to me. Not because he was as hard as he was, but because he was too frustrating. Now he is fun, but still hard as balls Still a shame Elden Beast and Radagon give more runes despite being significantly easier, but that might just be the time I had to learns their Movesets
For me, it was less about it being too hard and more about it being unfun. I hated how aggressive the adds and most of the bosses were in the dlc and how many combo moves they could pull off before I finally had a fraction of a second to retaliate. Let's not forget that the bosses were sometimes so aggressive that sometimes they immediately hit you in the midst of walking through the boss fog, possibly even murking you instantly, too. For most boss fights, it felt like a never-ending slog of a fight where most of the time, I'm just trying not to die. (That's all boss fights, i get that, but tbh base game fights felt more enjoyable without them needing to be a never-ending chain of combos and barely any time to get a hit in) Hell, at times, I legitimately forgot I was even playing a souls game and mistook it for a dodging simulator. Then, around 5 to 10 minutes in, I get stomped by some backhanded whole arena AoE or some other move outta nowhere. I get it, I'm arse and all, gotta "GeT gUD" but fuck man it feels like fun took a backseat in the dlc. The Shadutree fragments were kinda unnecessary, too. Just increase the dlc difficulty from 7x (base end game) to around 9x or 10x on the scale and then boom, done. The only reason that was put in was to help you, but God forbid you miss any. Otherwise, say goodbye to your kneecaps. This is just my opinion, though. It doesn't matter how difficult the game is, I just want to enjoy the experience. I just felt at the end "thank fuck that's over" which is a shame since this is a great dlc. Sadly for me, though, I'm just not playing it again. Feel free to join in and chat about it, or berate me. Whichever works for you.
@@OknahidwinMaliketh is the only one of those three you can make an argumet for. The only problems with Malenia are WFD and clones attack and the only problems with Mohg are the bloodflame and the delayed attacks which aren't very hard to get used to. Most(if not all) of the DLC main bosses has attack patterns which are at least somewhat harder to learn than any of the base game's bosses and at most a lot harder to learn.
No one wants to tackle the math in the video? Ok. I will👍 Not a single calculation has any meaning at all. The entire math section is irrelevant in the way Rusty delivered the information. Because the only thing covered was scalings and modifiers, we don't see the actual damage output of the enemies and bosses. Here's an example of what I mean: We have two bosses, with their scalings below: Boss 1: 80% damage modifier Boss 2: 110% damage modifier Now if Rusty was to present this information to you, he'd state that this conclusively proves that Boss 1 is less difficult than Boss 2. But if we introduce their actual base damage: Boss 1: 80% x 1 billion damage Boss 2: 110% × 10 damage See how the weaker scaling of Boss 1 doesn't matter because its still going to be atomising you with hundreds of millions of damage? Comical that so much time was devoted to the scalings and we didn't see a comparison of the damage output of DLC bosses vs base game bosses. Confusing us simple folk with these multiplers and defense values is a cheap trick. Just show the actual damage output and let the people decide.
this is the epitome of yap for too long and repeat back what was said in a stupid way and people think you're smart. you just admitted you don't understand math.
@ilyskyless You are agreeing with me. If my hyperbolic example is meaningless because it isn't literal, then this video is meaningless because boss damage wasn't touched, just scaling.
@@jeff3221no, your hyperbolic example is pointless because it’s so hyperbolic that it basically doesn’t at all relate to the conversation. Messmer’s grab is the only attack in the DLC that can consistently oneshot you if you are either A.) wearing light armor or B) have less than 50ish vigor. Yes, the bosses do a lot of damage. You’re playing a late game dlc, no shit. the DLC gives you the tools you need to mitigate that damage. PCR only took me around 60-70 tries at blessing level 14, which is beyond the softcap anyways. He’s a hard ass boss, but he is objectively not unfair. Messmer is probably a top 3 boss in all of souls for me. Romina is peak, Rellana is great.
very poor video, completely misses the point of why people complained about the dlc, personally i didnt find it as hard as others cuz I grabbed the skibdi fragments yeah, but to claim that the movesets are comparable to the base game is so laughable. Every single dlc boss has movesets as complex as malekith and Malenia, so thats just not true. and the radhan nerfs were not unnecessary , terrible take by a youtuber who usually has good ones
Maybe if they want us fighting bloodborne level bosses, they should give us the bloodborne parrying guns because fuck these endless combo attacks from bosses that will two shot you at max hp and blessings
Without using any of the cheese builds, Radahn would immediately 180 and face plant you after a melee hit. Any ash of war that had more then one hit on it guarenteed you were going to trade damage. Who wanted to play the whole game on their favorite build and get to Consort and resort to some lame cheese. half you pros probably chicken winged or ant spured him to death. lame.
I don't think Rsty understood why people didn't like the DLC, and it's an issue with the game design from Elden Ring as a whole. Bosses are way more aggressive, but you do not have any newer mechanics to deal with those moves, which made it tedious to do. Could I fuck around for like 8 hours on one boss and eventually get the dodging right? Sure. Most people did. But holy SHIT Fromsoftware could've so much better when it comes to the player mechanics. Yes, I can roll for 1 minute straight to get a few attack windows, maybe shorter if I have a light weapon, but is this really all they gave us? They literally made Sekiro, they could've easily given us an extra option to match the aggression, deflecting. Playing Elden Ring in general, but the DLC in particular with a mod that allows deflection is SO much fun, and it's still difficult, because if I miss a deflect I'm getting rolled since I'm so close, but I'm so close s if I succeed, I can attack more, I can match the bosses aggression. My options vanilla, are to parry, which is sort of like deflecting only it causes a pretty huge break in the action, dodge, whch as we discussed is fucking boring as shit and makes the game tedious because I don't interact much with the boss directly, or block with a shield. Which is okay, I'll give it that.
So we're just going to ignore the deflecting hardtear? That makes it so you can deflect and get a more powerful guard counter on a successful reflect, with a stacking effect for multiple successful deflects and counters in row?
@@lmtalpha6382 it's an optional item that takes up space in your physic and only lasts 5 minutes. Compare that to the sekiro deflect or bloodborne rally. I feel like it's the same thing as "bhs counters waterfowl!" as if there shouldn't be another way for all players to do so.
@@NottSaying It's another option besides rolling which OP said they needed to use a mod for when it's in the game in some form. I didn't say that it counters everything because normal rolling and jumping are perfectly viable and the way the game and its bosses are designed around. Everything can be dodged with a roll or a jump (or by running away in the few instances where a boss leaves a lingering aoe or something), if that's boring to some people then that means they just don't like the combat system, not that it's a bad combat system in the first place.
Counter point: The Scooby Doo Fragment are just a badly designed form of player progression. And if your "first, last, and only counter to the power creep" is to reach level 10 Scooby Snacks by the time you reach the cowardly lion, you've already fumbled the ball completely.
I was not looking at my screen whilst listening to this, the audio cut and i thought the video just ended, so i just sat in silence and the dark. You accidentally made my day somehow when you started talking again.
Could you explain why you refer to Cerulean Coast as the "successive area" to Charo's Hidden Grave when you access it via the river, entirely independently of the entrance to Charo's?
You can reach the Cerulean Coast through the Charo’s hidden grave by hopping down onto one of the boats. That was the path I took on my first play through, so I think that’s what he had in mind
That's fair, I just feel like it's a bit weird to call it successive to Charo's, since the path via Ellac is accessible from roughly the same point as the path via Charo's, just without a boss in the middle. That combined with the scaling makes me think that accessing it via the Ellac River is what the designers had in mind. For the record, that was how I found it on my first playthrough, but I also missed the path to Charo's until much later.
On my first play through I got to the coast by following a path that leads to dropping down onto one of the massive coffins. There are multiple ways to get there
Lmao. I got destroyed at Castle Enis and just said "Game doesn't want me here. Time to explore." So I did exactly that. Going to Charro's grave and stuff. By the time I came back to fight Rellana. She was sadly too weak. I got her on my second try. Her fight was really cool and I kinda wished she kicked my ass a bit longer. But it makes me wonder how many other players have the same mindset that if an area claps you really hard, it's time to explore other areas. I mean... That was more or less the first lesson of Elden Ring brought to the players by Margit.
12:35 Come on that's not fair. You can't give me massive weapons that have bonus effects on guard counters and expect me not to use those. Yes, I feel guilty, no I will not confess further sins
What is that math.... 26% dmg reduction does not mean you need 52% more damage... 1x(1+0,52)x(1-0,26) = 1.1248, so that would be 12.5% extra damage... You can't just multiply by 2... It works only for 50% damage reduction. For 26% damage reduction you need 35.14% atk power boost. 1x(1+0.351351351)x(1-0,26) = 1
@@Erden99 nah the backstep makes you step back. In the clip he is stepping sideways. Its modded gameplay but like the other guy said, it doesnt have anything to do with what he is saying.
it's a mostly-visual mod that replaces the roll animation with bloodborne's step animation, modified so that the distance and framedata match elden ring's roll tech the difference in pose on the recovery _should_ alter the hitboxes during it ... but considering the default animation can effectively get extra s against a lot of attacks by low-profiling 'em, while the step has the character upright through the entire thing ... yeah any gameplay impact the mod has is not in _rusty's_ favor
Luckily I never complained about the difficulty in the DLC. I was complaining about the difficulty in base game because I've felt everything past DS1 has picked up enormous amounts of speed that I struggle to deal with.
And you got your ego hurt not able to beat him or that you had a hard time beating him and thinking that everyone else should be affected by his nerf just because you didn't have a good time?
@@xvor_tex8577 no i beat him and i think that the nerf genuinely makes radahn a better fight as he now has more openings and thus you can get into a dance with him like you can with every other boss instead of just watching radahn show off his moves for 10 hours before doing 1 hit radahn nerf makes him slightly easier yes but it also makes radahn more enjoyable and thus was completely justified. old radahn just not fun, the only benefit to old radahn are the bragging rights nerds get. current radahn is just objectively better from a game design standpoint
@@theFORZA66 you should go see the patch notes about the nerf, because dude I think the boss's difficulty is only mental to you, because the nerf dosent introduce new openings and the attack strings isn't shorter, it's just the one double swipe and slahs attack is a bit slower and an aoe attack is smaller. And you think all the things you said is true then maybe you just fought the boss with a doffrent mentality and enjoyed it. Well good for you That changes only changed minor things that slightly inconveniences your fight with radahn, and now people that had a hard time woth him before say that the boss is way easier now, which is not true. So I think people just had their ego hurt when fighting the boss pre nerf, and when the nerf happened in their mind the boss should be way easier now, so they fought him with a diffrent mentality, and had a better time with him. But in truth the nerf didn't touch and change 95% of the moves that makes the boss difficult.
@xvor_tex8577 yes the blindiness and that one nerf make the fight 100x better lmao thats the point i agree though the nerf doesnt make him that much easier. i just think it was warranted is all, i think its a good change
As someone who's been utter dogshit at these games for a decade, and still is... one of these days, I'll get good. Hopefully. I just wish the discourse didn't always shift to putting people down or patronizing them for having frustrations with a boss. It's worth noting just how utterly demoralizing it can be to have someone say "Well it was easy for me" if you're in the headspace of just having slammed your head against Maliketh or something for your literal entire evening. *further yapping below* I very nearly gave up on Elden Ring during my first playthrough, because Maliketh seemed that impossible to me. 9 hours of getting ground to paste by Maliketh had left me pretty much broken. I couldn't understand a thing about how to deal with his attacks in first or second phase (first phase is still a complete mystery to me), knowledge of the Blasphemous Claw hadn't widely proliferated yet, and people online were either just colossally unhelpful or condescending. When you're at the end of your rope like that, it just makes you feel like absolute shit and it sticks with you. After days of on-and-off attempts, I finally did get through Maliketh, but it was a complete fluke. I understood Maliketh no better, felt no satisfaction, and my self-esteem had been pretty much ground down to nothing. Then Godfrey kicked my ass as well, albeit to a mercifully lesser extent. The whole experience just left me feeling extremely bitter and defeated, even when I reached the credits. What you say absolutely _can_ affect people's experience, and there is nothing less helpful or more harmful to someone else's experience than saying "It wasn't even that hard" So if someone is having trouble, if they indeed are having a skill issue, just have some sympathy and don't be an asshole.
Umm, rusty how are your characters are capable of using quickstep as a dodge while clearly it is shown in the screen that you are using some other weapon art? Is this video an acknowledgement of the fact that dlc bosses are too fast to dodge with the basic rolls😂
From the video title I was really hoping for more math as it relates to difficulty. Would love to know how many frames does the player have before an attack lands, how many directional inputs will result in successfully avoiding the attack, how many attacks need to be dodged in a combo, how many seconds do guaranteed punish windows last, etc. I was hoping for that info because I think it would go a long way to facilitate more in-depth discussions of difficulty. As a challenge runner and John Unofficial Bloodborne I get the feeling that comparing Manus to Orphan to Gael to Radahn would show a steady increase in difficulty, at least through that lens. Whether content is hard or Easy, Actually doesn't address whether the challenge that's being presented is the good and fun kind, but I get that's not the point of the vid.
Bless your heart Rusty for assuming that I didn't do my first playthrough with a wiki in hand precisely to find every single shadowtree fragment as early as possible, you believe in me more than i believe in myself.
The shared knowledge point at the end is something I've thought about a lot in SotE criticism. I think veteran Souls players are used to the fact that these games are kinda meant to be played as a community. That's why the message system exists, as clunky as it is. That's why actually piecing together the lore of these games amounts to archaeology, why (spoiler warning) critical lore that recontextualizes all of DS1 and doesn't get paid off until DS3 is locked behind ignoring explicit instructions and beating a boss out of order. Almost nobody does that by accident and they're probably not intended to. I think that despite its difficulty, Elden Ring is probably the most approachable of the Souls games. It generally offers a path of least resistance and very rarely puts a solid wall in front of you that you can't somehow go around or detour until your character can just face-tank it. I think that led to a lot of people who weren't prepared for the game to slap them down and force them to meet it on very specific terms, which may include seeking help or taking advantage of all those buff items you've been collecting. When I made an NG character for the DLC after having not played for a year or so, I bounced back and forth between SotE content and the Haligtree because I wanted to play with the new toys, but I didn't want to go through Haligtree overpowered. Maybe it's because I was approaching SotE with a lot more caution, but honestly the Haligtree often gave me more trouble. The biggest difference really in my opinion is that Malenia's low poise makes her easier to cheese. One thing I am curious about is I hear a lot of people say that their sorc builds were made unviable by how relentlessly the bosses close distance and how narrow their recovery windows are, but I suspect that it's more that flashy ranged builds can't get away with nearly as much as they can in the base game.
16:06 No he's not. Messmer's moveset is not unpredictable like Morgott or the Godskin Duo, you just need to study his strings that occur due to your position. That's why I've been able to no-hit him consistently. 🙂
Messmer is honestly one of the my top favorites, his attacks are very learnable and not to say that he's easy, he's not not. But it was so fun learning him, and it it took me like 14 tries to beat him, not terrible compared to other people who spends hours or days and swear that he's impossible.
tl;dr - if game too hard, look around some more until not hard (Edit: Just to clarify, Radahn's visual effects 100% needed to be tuned down. The thumbnail is referring to damage adjustments and recovery windows.)
CROWDMADE: crowdmade.com/collections/rusty
FOURTHWALL: rusty-3-shop.fourthwall.com/
Not sure if CROWDMADE and FOURTHWALL will be very happy with the plug-in
Stat difficulty isnt elden rings problem. Theo does a good job of it
No I don’t think I will subscribe.
Why do people think this is funny or cool?
It’s like people making memes asking for likes and whatnot.
If someone does a good job or something they deserve that like and subscription, if not they don’t.
Simple as that.
I recently started Dark Souls III and I really enjoy it. I just wish you made more Dark Souls III videos, or even Demon’s Souls videos, but I don’t mind.
The riff in the beginning goes so fucking hard
Maybe they should have made an enemy that uses frost damage and fire damage to reset the the frostbite
@RonnieMcnutt-z8o what does that even mean
@RonnieMcnutt-z8o you rly think i would sub you just by reading this?
@@lol_phillip6072 Their username is literally named after a person who commited suicide on livestream. It's just a ragebait bot, ignore it.
@@lol_phillip6072 that means its a bot comment and you should report it
@lol_phillip6072 it's a spam bot
And so the "it was never that hard" phase of the elden ring dlc started. Classic souls game lifecycle.
As someone who played through the dlc and consort radahn pre nerf I'm upset at the nerf. I only had like level 17 of the fragments and like 9 for the spirits and it still only took like 10 lions claws to bring him down lmao
@@hodgindaylon The biggest problem with radahn was the obnoxious visuals. They actually hurt my eyes and it sucked ass. (the triple cross slash was bad too)
@@amintronthe visuals hurt my PC much worse than my eyes lol
Classic Elden Ring discussion lifecycle. People were calling Margit overtuned and unfair day 1.
Not only Souls lifecycle, any game's life cycle. It gets released, people fight against the game, they get accustomed to its weaknesses and strengths, and a while later (now, it seems) people have mostly become familiar with it. But you know, every time someone publishes a hard game, or even something mildly hard, normal human learning gets mystified like crazy. Like it's something that cannot happen with that particular game because oh my god it's so hard!
And also, over the years, people have gotten pretty good at complaining too.
“The game is not that hard mathematically proven” if that’s true why do I suck so much ass at it then? Checkmate, liberals.
The technical term for your dilemma is 'Skill Issue', mate.
@@shadowarchivist2382 and yours is not getting irony
@@shadowarchivist2382 if it needs skill, isn't it difficult?
It's obvious
You are bad at math
@@kwamemwangs2173
Only if you lack skill.
"If the game seems too hard, calm the fuck down and go to bed..." this is the best advice imo. Surprising what a night of rest does for your reflexes.
Exactly, and no one said you should finish the dlc in one sitting, space out your sessions and have more fun, it's not a job, it's a game.
That's how I played all of Elden Ring and it really does work. For the most part breaks make sureI don't get legitimately angry at the game except for a few things (Kindred of the Rot just aren't any fun to deal with and are just bad game design).
I remember a while ago getting stuck on Malenia for two hours. went to bed and beat her in two attempts the next morning lol
I'm pretty sure that's an actual scientific fact, I had somebody tell me that when you sleep your brain actually rewires itself to make you better at the thing you were trying to do before you went to bed
The more I fought Radahn, the more I learned to dodge his attacks. Except for the cross slash. I could never figure out how to dodge that one, and all the stuff online either said that was about luck or positioning. Eventually I would basically only take damage from the cross slash, which still came out often enough to kill me quite a few times before I beat him.
The necessarity of the nerf as a whole is debatable, but I absolutely think that the changes to the brightness and the cross slash were necessary.
yeah it was a bullshit move, you had to be quite literally frame perfect, use an aow, or use the backstep talisman
I lucky know how to dodge that because I use blind spot of backhand blade, but I think the improvement of brightness is necessary, this fight was so bright that it hurt my eyes
I never had problems with it.
The shadow clones I did for a while.
Only consistent way of dodging that shit was with stuff like blind spot, glad they listened to us and fixed that move, that was like 80% of my issues with the consort fight
If you want to roll it You had to be on the outer side of one of his knees and try to roll behind him basically making the second hit miss you the hit box isn’t all the way back there found this out on UA-cam it was working for me though I didn’t like it but that’s just what it was
I think the divine lion beasts are weak to thrust and fire, not so much because of the poking stick, but because lore wise it makes sense. They were massacred by Messmer the impaler, it checks out that they'd be weak to his main damage types, thrust and fire.
it's also two humans piloted by a divine spirit.
So not Mohg's poking stick but Messmer's poking stick.
Messmer be excating some fire Thrusting on them Lions
This is definitely it
Hot thrusts!
Radahn's increased visual clarity was a BIG improvement for me. My issue was that with my eye condition all the on screen noise was too much that I just straight up couldn't learn because I couldn't tell what was happening.
Yeah this was something I struggled with. Rykard still gives me a struggle with it, but Radahn's is the far more challenging one that needed it.
cool that the fight is now better for you
It's silly how much easier the Dancing Lion became for me when I moved particles effects from ultra to minimum. Still kicked my ass a bunch, but at least I saw it kicking my ass, rather than turning into Ohio tornado simulator
What condition? If you don't mind my asking. Also what attacks are you talking about? His 5 phantom strike thing? Or his 2nd phase holy attack?
I really have a hard time understanding people who are saying visual clarity was a problem, do you play the game in an old ps4 or an old beat up pc with a 480p square monitor or sometging? I really have a hard time believing, and seriously rykard too? Have you tried turning up or down the brightness or sometging? Lol
The visual noise being reduced for phase 2 Radahn was absolutely deserved. The cross slash being fixed was also absolutely deserved.
I'll also add, that Radahn was the only boss I didn't feel good about beating. I felt exhausted and just glad it was over. I was not having fun.
@@ZeroExilleriusOpposite, even after fighting him for 10 hours total split between two days,I was sad it was over.
AHHHHHHHH THE STORE IS FINALLY UP!
Hope you guys like my work! There's a hell of a lot more where that came from!
They’re genuinely really great, looking forward to seeing more.
YAY! Rusty has MERCH now! Looks cool AF!
I cannot stress this enough: *it's really really good stuff*
I don't know, even Ongbal whose whole YT channel is about styling on bosses and making them look like jokes, thought that Consort Radahn was a bit much. But he was also talking about particle effects, not just damage and how there was one move he basically was only able to dodge using that one AoW for his no-hit video.
Yeah, I don't think he said the fight was "a bit much." He didn't seem to mind.
"I bet Miyazaki can't beat him" he said.
Design aside, difficult or not, I think Consort Radahn is just kinda boring for a dlc final boss. I like the concept, but the moveset itself imo was not the best it could’ve been
@@epsilon1372wdym the moveset is really fun. At least the first phase is perfect anyway
@@theFORZA66 first phase is fine as a starter, but it doesn’t really escalate in an interesting way. Most of his moves in phase 2 are the same as 1 but with holy damage and the new moves he does get are kinda lame imo. I just think the fundamental design of consort is extremely plain especially compared to some of the other bosses in the dlc
You'll never convince me the nerfs to Radahn weren't warranted. He was just... too much. Too aggressive, too quick, too flashy, too everything. He's still brutally hard now, but he doesn't feel like he's in the wrong game anymore.
@@kurtgomez4171 Different strokes for different folks I suppose.
He definitely needed nerfs to the visuals cos he had 3 days' worth of fireworks shows after each swing, and the left-right-onigiri slash that was undodgeable 90% of the time.
I do believe a lot of the other nerfs were a bit too far but I'm not denying he needed the former ones.
radahn deserved the nerfs simply because the triple cross and the light after effects were overkill and legitimately broken.
You can NOT convince me that the fucking triple cross hitbox was ever intended, that you literally cant dodge it unless your right at his left leg. he was terrible, nows he great but these people keep complaining
@@Qreaper Also his sword hitboxes were fucked.
Yeah, being able to roll through his quick double slash (the one followed by a cross-slash) more consistently now feels refreshing. And overall, the boss is still hard as fuck. But he feels mostly fair overall.
The one thing I don't get is why is Rusty using quickstep (with mods?) to demonstrate how to deal with combos.
Also, PCR can do the gravity thrust at point blank even when the player is behind him. It happens if the player uses projectiles. PCR usually reacts to the projectiles with ranged attack (e.g. gravity thrust, lion's claw, gravity pull, layered rings of light, Radagon's ring of light, or the clone attack where he jumps right). If the player uses the projectiles when he is ready to commit to another attack, the attack reacting to the projectile will be saved. The reacting attack will then be used immediately after the original attack without the punish window which should be there. So something like this could happen:
PCR at range --> the player used a projectile while he was going to do an attack (let's say gravity thrust) --> the player dodged and punished PCR --> PCR immediately followed with savage lion's claw
In which case, the player would be stuck in the attack animation and savage lion's claw had a hitbox that came out instantly, making it impossible to dodge the sequence. Some other bullsh*t would be gravity thrust at point blank (also turning 180 degrees) or gravity pull at point blank (which always follows up with the gravity vortex at point blank no matter how the player dodged).
Some might ask if using projectiles is causing so much issues in the PCR fight, why still use them? My reason would be while PCR has 120 poise, his poise starts to recover after only 6 seconds wtihout being attacked. The normal time for a 120 poise boss to start to recover poise should be 9.23 seconds. With PCR's tendency to love to run away from the player, I consider the use of projectiles to reset the poise recovery time very neccessary if one wants to consistently poise break him.
it's not quickstep, it's a modded roll that's functionally identical ( 'cept for the post-s hitboxes being possibly worse due to the different pose ) based on bloodborne's dodge animation
@@hi-i-am-atan Thanks for the information. Does it have better or worse dodging ability compared to a light roll (dodging distance, s etc.)?
@@梅友仁-m3p worse, but only to a slight degree. afaik, it has the exact same distance and s as the roll ( and there _is_ a medium roll version of it, but elden ring's medium roll is identical to light roll in all but distance to begin with ) but because hitboxes in these games are tied to animation bones, attacks that the rolls would low-profile in their recovery frames are just gonna slam into your upright upper body with the bloodborne step
granted, it's possible that the mod author was cognizant of that and made sure to turn the upper body hitboxes intangible during the appropriate frames, but there's still going to be incongruities between the two because the hitboxes are just in different places and "rising from curling into a ball" is _so_ much more compact than "landing upright from a quick hop"
Another example of terrible attack queueing is that PCR can queue his clone. This means that he can do the clone attack at a distance and the attack become undodgeable because you end up directly under him when he summons the gravity rocks
I’m glad someone is talking about his janky input reading and input queuing. It has gotten me killed several times while throwing kukris at him to keep his poise from regenerating. It sucks and needs to be fixed.
I hate this conversation because my take has never been that the game is too hard but rather some ways its difficulty is expressed just aren't fun to deal with. I love the game, but some bosses just aren't fun to fight.
I dont think I enjoyed a single shadow of the erdtree remembrance boss outside of midra. Too much spam across the board with the exception of Romina who was just not terribly interesting lore wise or in gameplay or design. Fromsoft has a nasty habit of adding difficulty to its games with number trickery instead of design. Boss too easy? double their health and speed up their entire moveset by 0.5. Its boring honestly. None of the bosses in erdtree felt substantially different from basegame bosses with the exception of easily tweakable values.
@@OfficialChrissums Bloodborne chalice dungeon flashbacks. I still refuse to fight that praal clone in Loran again.
I loved it. Needing to space enemy attacks, dodge in certain directions, and stuff like that is more fun than just rolling everything.
While i personally struggle with a couple bosses from the "newer" Fromsoft design philosophy, i don't think it's bad overall. The games need to be more challenging, and considering how we feel about elden ring basegame bosses nowadays, they're still very much fine. If we got another Gael fight in the Elden Ring DLC there would be absolutely no challenge at all, since we already figured out that dance and moved past it. Elden Ring is just a new dance that players need some time to figure out, but ultimately it's a necessary evolution of the combat system.
"you are being influenced"
yes, by influencers.. and i'm going to put my hand on the primordial fire, but i think Rusty is an influencer
oh and if by you, fighting a boss that can make your graphics card go sepukku is something that shouldn't have been nerfed or the cross-slash of hell shouldn't as well, um.. idk man, but the rest of us dont fight bosses head on with a preset plan
Maybe start? Or don't but don't bich about it after?
@@joxerrrrr pot, meet kettle
Miyazaki in recent interview: “in the dlc we pushed how much a player can tolerate”
🤷♂️
Fun fact: Getting hit by the golden showers in Radahn's second phase is often inconsistent not because of the attacks themselves, but because the back portion of the arena is uneven and they're progressive AOE hitboxes that cover both vertical and horizontal distance. So you can be standing right next to him on a flat section of the arena and the AOE can pass right over you, while if there's any elevation difference between you, you'll be hit by it.
I noticed this early on during my tries back when first playing the DLC, and that became a reason I make a point to fight phase 1 near the entrance and try to finish that one off with a critical (stunning him and crit into 2nd phase will always start you off where you did it, rather than near the Gate of Divinity), or just trying to move the fight towards the entrance if I missed that. Trying to fight on all those bodies that make the arena uneven is a massive pain during phase 2, being in flat terrain helps keep you close to him during combos since the golden rays will always end up behind you there.
I can see we have entered the "it wasn't that hard" phase of the From cycle. Frequency seems to increase with each release.
Given the scale and anticipation of elden ring as a whole, that's to be expected it'll be even bigger tbh
I mean, it's also extremely clear why the "iT's WAy tOo HaRd" phase happened, the same people that thought the main game was too hard came back for the dlc unironically thinking they wouldn't get their asses kicked all over again...
@@rigel9228 it's so incredibly formulaic and expected. Like everyone thinks it's different this time but no this shit has been happening with fromsoft games for eons.
@@rigel9228yeah, the criticisms about the dlc were basic the same as the criticisms about the end game difficult when the game launched
@@felipeguedescampos851 i personally think the end game criticisms are still valid. It's fine now that we're all collectively used to it, but the difficulty curve is still more of a mountain than a hill.
13:30
That fragment in the Stone Coffin Fissure can't be grabbed until Miquella's rune fragment is shattered. If my memory is correct that is.
Okay but you don't have to beat a single boss to shatter the rune fragment. Get close to Shadow Keep and the rune fragment shatters allowing you to enter Stone Coffin Fissure
@drewengel7073 you are completely right. But from the point of view of a new player, they may not know that unless they look up a specific walkthrough. Plus, if they found out that they can just skip the boss for later, then they'll just come back for it when they are ready.
@@drewengel7073I was collecting map fragments and had this happen within my first 2hs of playing that along with me attacking a pest and Moore invading right after ruined a few quest lines
I mean as soon as you step into the shadow keep you get that message, and if you get to the stone coffin fissure and saw the miquella's seal he will probably think about checking that out, specially if they remember morgott's two seals in leyndell
And like, getting to the shadow keep is the main objective of the player once he steps into scadu altus
@@bagredecartola1289 That segment of the video is specifically outlining a way a player might wander if they aren't ready to face rellanna, and not using the route around castle ensis
Theres still one thing i will never forgive, them giving radahn 15X the hp pool while sticking you with arguably cool old guy and tweedle dumb.
I had to force myself to pick the DLC up multiple times because I just wasn't having fun but I wanted to be done with it. Is the DLC beatable? Of course. Is it too hard? For me it was at the time. The camera literally gave me a headache. I've beaten the DLC multiple times since then but my first playthrough felt like going to work.
4:09 dont be shy, share the body sliders
I'm gonna be honest here, the attack speed nerfs to radahn actually made the fight harder for me because I'm so use to the timing of pre nerf radahn
Same actually especially in co-op I'm scared to actually take any of the new punish windows bc it's hard to gauge how long they are, and the hesitation before I commit just makes me eat a sword the size of a freight train to the face.
it's just how isshin said: hesitation is defeat @@Anteraska
@@proto-type3201 lmfao tested and verified by yours truly. you can find my paper about it engraved onto my tarnished's headstone.
I almost killed him in a challenge run and then the update happened the next day. Completely threw me off.
That's just a matter of relearning the timings, then. It didnt become harder, just unfamiliar.
The issue isn’t how hard the bosses hit, it’s how frequently they attack. Another video broke down attack frequency by boss and Radahn was only behind Malenia in terms of attack frequency. And when you ignore all the time wasted in the insanely long phase 2 grab attack, Radahn has the highest attack frequency by a mile. Bosses like Radahn are difficult because they hit hard and have insanely high attack frequency. Bosses like Astel that can 1 shot you with a grab or Fire Giant that can one shot you with pretty much anything are still easy fights because their attack frequency is so low. Morgott is able to be tolerable with a relatively high attack frequency because his damage is so low. None of the DLC bosses compromise on attack frequency or damage. Even looking at the base game, the hardest bosses are the ones that attack the most frequently while also hitting hard, like Malenia and Maliketh. The scaling being comparable to the base game doesn’t matter when Radahn can still 2-3 shot you and is mathematically the most aggressive boss in the game whenever he’s not using the dumb grab attack.
Fantastic point. I don't know why this is such an esoteric concept for people; balancing isn't rocket science. You want an enemy with lots of poise and a very flashy, long-winded moveset? Don't make him hit for half my healthbar, please.
@@parkergosman5476because this take is trash and Demod, who the original commenter obviously got his info from, is completely garbage and shouldn't be taken seriously. That video is god awful.
@@DwWarWolf If you are unable to explain what's wrong with a take, the take is valid.
@@darththork99 I don't have to explain shit because it's already been pointed out. He intentionally bloated promised Radhan's attacks per minute or whatever when he compared him to Ishin. It's objectively false and completely ignores that while both being Fromsoft games, Sekiro and Elden Ring are different games. It's why porting Elden Ring bosses to Sekiro nerfs the shit out of them because you can just tank most of their hits with your Infinite stamina. Even *if* Radhan attacked more than bosses in Sekiro it's still a shit take because there's so many other ways to dodge or mitigate damage in Elden Ring. Sekiro has damage and health upgrades and you unlock moves and tools but that's nothing on the variety you have access to in Elden Ring. Gear, spells, weapons, summons and everything else can be utilized. The fact that you can jump in Elden Ring *can't be ignored* because it allows you to high profile *on top of low profiling* and gives you access to jump attacks which are massive sources of poise damage. I think Radhan was bullshit but Demod *refused* to dodge *in to him* making him get hit by everything. Radhan's basic combo is one of his most fair moves as you just have to dodge into it yet because he refused he raged more than he should've had.
Also Demod made a follow up video saying he was way too harsh so why The ever loving fuck are people *still* quoting it when *DeMod HIMSELF* no longer stands by what he said?
@@DwWarWolf "I don't have to explain myself!" *explains himself poorly*
Demod did not say he doesn't stand by what he said. He still does minus the scadutree fragment segment. What Demod's video was about was to apologize for having such a negative focus for so many videos in a row and promising to make more positive videos. Not to walk back his criticisms. Elden Ring's design philosophy has glaring flaws that should be addressed. Just like every other one of these games had flaws.
Idk man, radahn having that triple slash nigh guaranteed to hit and saying "its not bad just already have all the skadoosh fragments" feels like a bit of a cop out. I scoured every nook and cranny and i wasn't even at 18 level for the end fight, most players don't find them on a first or even secons play of the dlc without a guide.
Basically this, they should’ve put in more scadutree fragments like how the estus flask upgrade had more than enough in the base game
Then you didn’t scour every nook and cranny.
Shmexcuses
I've done the DLC 4 times now.... NEVER got to level 20. I just can NOT find all the fragments on my own.
I did beat Consort Radahn in all the runs.... But, 2 out of 4 characters needed the Mimic to win. (And one of the ones I didn't summon for fought him post nerf.)
But... yeah, I feel the nerfs were overall a good thing. Don't even challenge runners agree on this? Since it opens up more playstyles that don't get fucked by the cross slash.
I reached the final boss at lvl 18, and the last 2 I looked up a guide, which PSA it okay to look up guides! People get to hard headed to not look up guides and fight the final boss and get their ass beat and not look up guides to find the last two levels. If looking up guides is bad than imagine playing PoE one of my favorite games ever and say I'm never using guides. It's okay it's lart of gaming. There's no shame in that.
What I do is I finished the game 100% In my mind but I havnt found the last 2 level, so I look up guides and see if where to find them, because you can't search every inches of t map to find soemtging you missed, and also what I do is look up guides to see if I missed any bosses. There's nothing wrong with that.
Rusty thinks it’s not that bad because he’s sunk 200+ hours into reviewing every weapon, spell, and incantation in the DLC; as evidenced by assuming the player base is a collective hivemind pathfinding the optimal route to hunt down fragments. Of course if you adventure optimally with a guide, you’re going to have an easier time.
I cant really validate his opinion on this one for the same reason I’m subscribed. He’s not your average casual, which is fun to watch, but kinda out of touch from the experience of the median skilled playerbase.
I think most of the complainers were those who didn't bother searching for scadu fragments at all.
Many people said that the gaol knight with the solitude set is super hard... I mean yeah with 0 blessing level he can 2 shot you at 60 vigor. With a level 2 blessing he is just a slightly above average NPC fight.
I mean it was already a telltale sign that many players reached the Divine Beast in an hour or 2 after starting the DLC. I spent like 6 hours exploring before I fought that boss so I had a level 3 blessing.
You don't really need to "pathfind the optimal route", you just have to, well, play the game. A large part of both Elden Ring and the DLC is exploration. Disregarding exploration and just focus on progressing would be akin to not exploring (and therefore not fighting) in the basegame, which would result in getting less runes, which would result in having lower stats. And as Rusty explained in the video, you really don't even have to get the blessing to 20 to get most of the effect, meaning that it's fine to miss a few.
The DLC also gives the player new and better talismans and consumables to negate even more damage. With a decent armour set you can get 60-70% dmg negation for any given element, boosting that even further with spells and consumables. The new pickled turtle neck consumables are basically shoved into the players face before Balurat.
Overall the game gives the player plenty of new ways to help with the dmg boost, while really not requiring them to find all of the scadu fragments, but, for the most parts, merely to explore the map and check out landmarks. The "hivemind" part of the community is only really necessary if someone is really struggling, which of course can always happen, and in that case it's perfectly fine to look for help online.
@tsunamie1015 I have the same mentality however since ER sold close to 30m copies at this point I realized that some players just don't want to explore. Even though the entire game is heavily built around that. Especially the anti open world crowd.
@@valentinvas6454 "... some players just don't want to explore."
Yeah, and i mean that's fine. Everyone has their own preferences and i'm not gonna tell anyone that they're wrong for wanting/wishing that Elden Ring were more linear.
But it's still crazy to expect and criticise Elden Ring for something that part of its core aspects. It's like playing Call of Duty and then criticising the game for being too much of a shooter.
@ believe me I went in blind; and found enough fragments to get to +12 or +16. Had a great time with the DLC up until Radahn. I’m due for another playthrough in a couple months, and will see if the patches and changes smooth the experience out a bit
Truth be told, my problem with the DLC on release was that by the end of it I got overwhelmed, Radahn, Metyr (because adds) and Gaius turned the game for me from "Yeah, I died now but I learned something, next time I will win!" to "Fuck this, I'm gonna assemble the most gross, overpowered shit this game has to offer and destroy this motherfucka, they aint playing fair so I'm not gonna!" And that last approach wasn't as fun for me personally. And I single out those bosses specifically, because with others it still felt like they were "fair", I still don't know really why.
Now, I can almost no-hit Radahn but still that first impression made it so I don't really enjoy fighting him which is really a bummer, 'cause he's supposed to be an epic sendoff to this beautiful gem of a game.
"I don't enjoy this boss so I spent a ton of extra time learning all it's moves and patterns instead of just killing it and moving on" - insane person whose opinions can't be taken seriously
@@forwardmoving8252 I think you misunderstand or didn't read the whole comment.
1. I'm mostly talking about how my personal first experience with some bosses, which was a blind playthrough on release with a lvl 200 character, affected my personal enjoyment of fighting those bosses and how then I felt that compared to the other DLC bosses they were arbitrarily "unfair".
2. I only recently got to the point of almost "no-hit" (3 hits) and that was after nerfs, practice and watching a lot of no-hit videos and Gino's streams.
3. I don't hate those bosses, I just don't love them unlike Messmer or Rellana, or Lion, or Bayle (Igon is a G.O.A.T.)
And, considering how Consort Radahn is THE last boss that ER is ever going to get, I expected to love him, like Gael or Orphan and I didn't.
I'm there with you. Some bosses felt unfair because of moves that I just looked at and went "I don't understand what is going on and where the danger is". Even hours later I still often had no clue how certain boss moves worked until I went and looked up a no-hit guide. That's just not a fun experience. It's funny that Rusty spends time talking through Messmer, because I think he has some of the most readable moves and least amount of camera/arena fuckery of all the bosses in the DLC. That's why he's the true star of the DLC.
Meanwhile I couldn't figure out how to dodge/punish half of PCR's moves without a guide. The blades of stone move that he shares with Gaius really threw me for a loop because you can't use Torrent to out-space it. Instead, you need to figure out that there's just barely enough time to start running away and then jump at the last second (which as far as I can tell doesn't work on Gaius' version of the move). I like that some of the bosses seem to be using moves that encourage more than just mindless dodge-rolling, but the game needs to either a) communicate the correct strategies better for certain types of moves (similar to ground attacks being dodge-able with a jump) or b) make the moves significantly more telegraphed to give players the time to think of a solution other than reflexively dodging.
Don't gaslight me, by the time I finally beat Radahn pre-patch at Scadu level 18 I was pretty much numb
I will always find incredibly fun how some people are just uncapable of accepting any criticism towards these games and how they will always try to do the mental exercise to vindicate every single aspect and say you just have skill issue if you disagree even in the slighterst thing, as if that made them ''true fans'' or something.
Just for the record, guys, you can love something while accepting it has room for improvement, it is the healthiest way to enjoy things I'd say.
this is a big reason why I have grown to really *really* dislike the Elden Ring community as a long time souls player. It was already kinda bad sometimes with older players, but Elden Ring brought a lot of people (I feel) who just don't understand what constructive criticism is.
@@synical69 Constructive critique can not exist in the mind of a Frommer. Expect the discourse to only decline.
BTW, there is something you missed. SOTE enemies attacks base damage is overall higher than original ER ones. For example, a regular castle soldier in original has attacks with base damage from 120 to 250, whilst a similar castle soldier (messmer army) in SOTE has attacks with base damage from 160 to 250. This also contributes significantly to the feeling that they hit harder, because most of their attacks at the end hit around a 40% harder
honestly the scaling was never an issue for me my issue was that promised consorts attacks had/have massively overinflated hitboxes that are not properly shown to the player
Yeeaaa, I’m gonna have to disagree Mr UA-camr, I think that the nerfs were needed. Even beyond the required visual nerfs, I think the gameplay nerfs make the boss flow much better, ESPECIALLY the cross slash nerf. Playing around that one attack ruined the flow. Granted, the move is now trivial to dodge, but I’ll take an easy dodge over an unfair attack any day of the week.
I disagree with the idea that people can't suggest improvements unless they stick around for them to be made. how long? 1 month? i'm not allowed to move onto any other games or immediately need to drop what i'm doing, and run back to radahn to see all the balance changes? that's absurd.
Some people, when they say a game is too difficult, probably just mean, it's not fun to deal with the challenge. Divine Lion was the first time i swore on stream in 5 years because of how laggy the fight was on top of the camera issues and no weapon to read attacks from. When i see people complain about the DLC it's almost never "to much damage." It's laggy. which it was. Divine Lion's headbutt always lagged for me. A friend stopped playing on PC and switched to console because they timing on parrying Renalla kept changing. Another issue is various builds will have a lot more problems with 1 boss and simply be told to "get good" well I had a poison build and ran into 3 ghostflame dragons, deathrite bird, and something else that were just immune to poison. getting good doesn't change that. There is also the power of "bonk" taking a fist weapon, with no staggering against flame knights is a world of difference vs anything that hits them out of their combos. It's effectively a different game entirely. One, you can ignore what half the enemies are doing and just jump r2 them. the other, you do have to get get, or just avoid encounters.
Something being too difficult with ALWAYS be relative. "no i did the math" so what. People can physically or mentally perform at certain levels. Someone who sunk 5,000 hours into souls-like will have an easier time than someone playing elden ring for the first time. The new player will put forth 100% their abilities and fail more often than a veteran just clowning around. "what do you mean it's hard, i beat the boss is only 5 attempts."
I still dislike Consort Radahn and Gaius a lot, no matter the nerfs and I'm 100% convinced that, if these bosses were from a non-fromsoft souls like, everybody would just agree that they are poorly designed, but since it's fromsoft, it's just a matter of "git gud".
agree
That's a brainless comment 😂 non fromsoft soulslikes get meatrided into oblivion by the same types of fanboys. The reality is LOTS of people dislike those 2 bosses and you'll find people being more openly critical of elden ring than basically ANY of the ripoffs other studios have made
@@abdelrahmanasal9906because you're clueless af 😂😂
Think we might've found a FS fanboy, guys.
@@forwardmoving8252 Me when i can't deduce the heightened critique is simply because ER is more popular by about 10x of it's best competitor
Thinking required ahead, therefore seek thoughts
You are for sure a From Softer with how you worded your comment, sorry the best game they've made since BloodBorne is AC6. Your magic sword games still matter!
the problem with the radahn fight was that you could never judge him based on how he moves because his hitboxes did not match his visual. paired with the flashbangs and high damage meant you often found yourself dying to things you didn't see, and when you see them you still end up getting hit because of the weird hitboxes
Honestly as usual the nerfs are over exaggerated. This is how people always act with nerfs. People did the same thing with OG Radahn, and even to this day people are still saying things about him that are untrue. And I’m willing to bet the people that say Radahn is easy af now, “look how they massacred my boy” etc are people who just fought the boss so many times that he gradually became easier naturally, but the nerfs are skewing people’s perceptions much more sharply. Kind of how practice and learning works lol. Bosses get easier the more you fight them, they will also get easier with a few nerfs, but people tend to over exaggerate the influence of built up skill and practice vs nerfs.
Also whether people want to admit it or not a lot of it *can be* an ego thing. Not saying it always IS, but it can be. You beat PCR pre nerf? Cool I did too, many times, hitless and at RL1. I still think most of the nerfs were needed, especially cross slash. Having to play around an entire attack and making it a guaranteed frame trap if you weren’t humping his left leg made it a bullshit move plain and simple. It’s also wild how nerfing just this one attack opened up the fight so much more (even though I think Radahn is still fundamentally a much more restrictive and less player expressive fight than the majority of ER bosses) People may make the argument to “use a shield” and by extension “use the tools the game gives you” and my response to that is just as you’re entitled to play your way, others are as well. Some people don’t like using greatshields and turtling to play. We shouldn’t need to change our play style to better counter one move. And not using it isn’t “limiting ourselves to what the game is offering” it’s a personal choice. It doesn’t mean people can’t complain or take issue with it. It’s a weak argument imo
As for recovery frames I don’t see anything wrong with them. Oh no now I can get more time to get 1-2 more hits after the 6 hit combo.
Everyone is entitled to their opinions of course, and I think people just get attached to what they’ve learned prior. I just genuinely find it hard to wrap my head around this fight being worse with the nerfs unless it’s 1) what I just said above, 2) ego/eltitism or 3) just personal preference. But hey that’s subjective so it’s valid
Base game Radahn wasn’t even nerfed, his health and damage were never altered. It was just his hitboxes that were changed
@@Scowleasy I would agree he wasn’t really nerfed but that also kind of goes with my point of people over exaggerating it. People still say he was. I see people are still to this day saying that his damage is lower even though they’ve fixed that.
Really all they needed to do was tone down the visual clutter and make that bietch ass cross slash attack consistent to dodge without humping his right knee, and they did, so i'm happy with the nerfs overall
Even with the nerfs the boss is still as difficult as malenia (i still think she is slightly more difficult). The people who say the nerfs were unneeded dont even explain why they are bad. "you have 2 more seconds to punish him after the bloodflame attack. Entire fight ruined now even babies can beat it." No that recovery window is still tight and can easily be missed if you dont quickly take advantage of it, but that it actually became an opening makes the fight a lot more engaging than before.
I'm not sure I'd call correcting basic form-fits-function feedback a "nerf" so much as it is just fixing broken game design. The pre-patch fight wasn't mechanically difficult; any DKART evaluation proves that conclusively, but the feedback was so atrociously bad that you could hardly tell what was going on or where the attacks actually hit.
Radahn didn’t get “nerfed”, he got fixed.
I feel like this video is entirely missing the point of why people would say that the dlc bosses are too hard, almost the point where it feels intentional. Noone is saying its "impossible" to beat the dlc or that there are not ways of easily adjusting to the difficulty of the boss, Weve all seen the no roll, fist only, monitor turned off , etc challenge videos. This is just like the discourse surrounding waterfowl dance. of course, 2 years later there are dozens of ways to dodge waterfowl and most players, including myself, don't have any issue beating her. however, I think we can all agree that the move is disproportionately punishing and requires the player to interact with the game in an overly restrictive, unfun way. if you are using a colossal weapon close range there's just always going to be a possibility that you will be hit, bar unlocking and attempting to break her tracking. This is how the DLC feels, While fighting many of the bosses throughout the DLC I had what you described, every attempt I would progress a little bit and feel some of that classic fromsoft satisfaction. Then, multiple times, I would hit the wall. All of a sudden I would be able to dance with the boss for most of the fight, but more often than not there would be that one aspect that I would always be hit by. Divine beast dancing lion having lightning all over the ground forcing the player to do nothing for 2/3 phases. Bayle using his laser breath attack requiring ???? idk running away after the first dodge. Messmer is goated idc. Commander Gauis shitty hitbox on charge, and more. Every boss was giving me that malenia feeling like it was designed for light load, which is fine for a superboss, but an entire dlc? There is a clear disconnect between the amount of choice in terms of arsenal that the player has now, and the actual viability of their movesets. what good is a cool flashy ash of war or incantation if you never get a chance to cast it? people criticized DS3 for its simplistic gameplay loop of dodge r1 dodge r1, but we are circling back around to this style of gameplay now that there are no longer enough openings to use slower attacks. even after big difficult moves, bosses regularly chain in mix-ups that make no hitting incredibly tedious. I actually downloaded a mod of nexus that simply increased the distance I was getting from my rolls and immediately everything clicked into place, making me believe that these bosses are designed for a game where the player can dodge faster and has faster attacks.
Its like for some reason the souls community just holds these games to a different standard of quality than any other game. Just because you can make something easy with gear, scadu, or eventually figure out a contrived way of dodging them, DOES NOT mean that the fight is well designed or fun.
Honestly I think the biggest thing is that most Ashes of War are too slow to pop out except for your evasive ones which are the fastest in the game.
Everything else I have no real idea whatcha mean since almost everything in the game can be dodged with a Medium load and most bosses have a large enough opening to get a R1 out for all but the slowest of weapons. Charged heavy is debatable, but with the sheer amount of damage you can pump out if you do it right, it's a fair trade.
This argument of yours only really seems to kick in at the higher NG+ levels where it just becomes more economical to use faster weapons that can dish out enough damage because the game modifiers AR just that insane
Nothing in the DLC is even as remotely difficult to dodge than Malenia's waterfowl dance except for Radahn's weird three hit cross slash thing that got patched out. And even when it was in the game, it was one hit, not instant death. Also you can block super Radahn's attacks without having your progress undone. So in short, stop crying over content that's only hard because you haven't practiced it yet
@@jonharkins1719people should hold every game to this standard, that it's okay to force the player to actually be good to progress
simply get good my friend
Rusty, this is coming from a place of love: Don't be "that" souls player... it's ok if people get pissy over the difficulty. They can get good. This seems like more of a response vid to strangers online being scared of souls difficulty.
17:42 -- See, this is the problem. Measuring a game's difficulty based on information you can (mostly) only access OUTSIDE of the game is kind of wild. Sure, SotE gets a lot less difficult if you have access to a good wiki, a personal coach, and 6 Souls games worth of experience under your belt, but those things REALLY aren't part of the game's difficulty -- and aren't universally applicable to the player base.
Just going off of your Scadutree Blessing comparisons alone, IF someone had access to all of the fragments you listed at the points in the game you described these are mostly even fights. The problem is that a lot of those fragments are hidden away in areas that can be pretty easy to miss. Some fragments are out in the open and along the main path, but that will only get you so far... and even with taking the extra time to explore you might not find all of the less-accessible fragments without access to a wiki.
Or you can just play the game organically and naturally, use your brain for a change aswell, and explore in this exploration game, and you'll find the fragments, making your character stronger. No, you dont need to know the exact numbers or any specifics of anything, because you'll feel it the moment you play the actual game.
People bitching about this either dont want to explore, suck at exploring, or simply want to whine that they cant farm and grind until they're overleveled. In any of case: skill issue.
Nice strawman, though.
@@basementreviewer788 I literally played the DLC as you described for my first playthrough. -_-
Level 150 character, blind and solo playthrough. It might not seem it from the philosophical stances I take, but I'm pretty much the standard Souls veteran.
Nice set of ignorant assertions, though.
@@basementreviewer788 The base game encouraged exploration by letting you naturally increase your power level, through leveling up and finding important items for a build.
SOTE takes that natural power increase and throws it out the window, shoving the fragments down your throat as a jarring "you're just stronger now" buff, and if you can't find them, you're boned.
that's always been a point that's irked me in regards to discussion about this game. There have been times where I have gone days, weeks, sometimes months without internet, so if I don't have access to a guide to know where every obscure location for each and every scadu fragment was, what would I do if I got stuck?
and if I wasn't a longtime veteran for a majority of these games, how long would it have taken before I just gave up and never came back?
@@senounatsuru6453 But in the base game you "naturally increase your power level" by exploring, fighting side bosses and accumulating runes. The scadu fragments accomplish the exact same thing, while you also continue to get benefits from leveling up normally. But the base method of "explore to find materials to get stronger" is the exact same, whether it's through runes or scadu fragments.
so we're not talking about radahn's undodgeable criss cross combo pre nerf huh
I made a comment about this elsewhere and can't find it now for some reason...
Really jumped out to me too that he just conveniently didn't mention the move in Radahn's moveset that was 100% unfair. Not "hard," but legitimately unfair.
@@LongknifeI fought him pre nerf and could dodge it just fine. It wasn't even a luck thing if it's the move I'm remembering, you just dodged towards the attack
No hit videos of Radahn were out long before the nerfs, AS RUSTY SHOWED IN THIS VIDEO. Stop lying.
@@venandisicarius32 nah you need to stick to his right leg constantly. That's the only consistent way to dodge it
@@forthencho1577 I never said they didn't exist, but existing =/= the move isn't unfair. Put "Radahn, Consort of Miquella - How to Ruin a Perfect Boss" in your search bar and you will find a no-hitter saying exactly what I'm saying about the double slash move.
You're right that the people complaining that it's too hard are likely just not scadutree blessed enough, but you're wrong that Radahn's "nerf" was unecessary. Pre-nerf his hit boxes made no sense and his attacks were so blindingly bright that you couldn't even tell where anything was.
I collected them all and I still think it was way harder than the base game. However it wasn’t something I really complained about. I didn’t expect them to make it easy.
Radahn nerf were unnecessary?! I dont know about it, since its only boss that managed to OVERCOOK my already aging PC. Maybe you are right, because majority of Consort Radahn haters would still not like his fight even after the nerfs, so they didn't brought increase in his popularity.
Visibility nerfs were needed, sure. But they also nerfed his recovery windows quite a bit.
I mean clearly Fromsoft thought they were necessary, and I trust the opinion of the people that made the game more than someone that wasn’t involved at all.
They even nerf stamina damage so shield player can have even easier time, so I think he is really over-nerf.
@@Rusty._ Not sure if you've seen the in depth analysis video with 100k views that went fighting game level analysis by literally comparing each frame
*EVERY SINGLE ATTACK ANIMATION* of Radahn has been slowed down, not just cross slash
I saw a lot of no hit runners complain about pre nerf radahn and, his nerf was definetely needed and a lot of his openings were inconsistent. Even after the nerf some of his problems were not fixed.
I like the radahn nerf only because if the visibility changes. It makes some attacks easier to see coming
I feel like you've missed parts of what makes the DLC hard on this video. Of course, the scaling is well designed for the bosses you fight, everyone who interacts with the skadoodle mechanic will know that. All you did is expose the fact that From knows how to do their game design balancing well.
What makes the DLC hard imo, and what should've been taken into account, relates more to s, animation length, visual feedback, and the camera. Stuff that isn't tied to balancing (because it is perfect in this game), but rather limitations that were not taken into account when the bosses were designed.
Gaius shit hitbox for example isn't due to balancing, it's a fallback of the hitbox placement being way too tight for the frames window the player character has to correctly dodge it, forcing a frame perfect dodge or risking taking the damage of 1, or sometimes 2 hitboxes. The skadoodle shit can't help with that, bc it's an oversight. The same can be said about the Dancing Beast attacks. They must have been beautiful to look at in a Maya viewport, but their speed and the distance they cover behaves poorly with both the arena and the camera, forcing the player towards walls and causing the cam to go crazy and clip into a never ending flurry of attacks, and leading to deaths by cam rather than skill. On paper, those attacks SHOULD be dodgable, but they aren't, or at least not always, because external factors are hindering the player's capacity to dodge them properly. As a result, the player may feel like the attacks are chaining too quickly for them to react properly, leading to a feeling of unfairness.
You also have to take into account the fact that multiple boss combos will lock you into a stun state where the number of frames it takes you to cancel that state is significantly greater than the numbers of frames it takes the boss to continue their combo. In short, missing a singular dodge can put you in a whole world of pain that depletes a good chunk of your hp with no recovery window ahead. Some may call it hard, but i think it is unfair. Everything is dodgeable, yes, but i personally question the enjoyment you get from missing one dodge by a frame and getting hit 4 times in a row after that because you got stunlocked to death. So far, it seems to be more frustrating than anything else. This artificially inflates the difficulty of a boss by chaining attacks seemingly relentlessly (which is true, your health and stun animations are all a bit longer frame wise than the DLC bosses attack chains so they can be chaining attacks faster than you can dodge them).
What i'm trying to say is that the DLC becomes overtly difficult because of stuff that your video just didn't cover, so it's disingenuous to say that it "was never that bad" when looking at the obviously well designed part of it ! The DLC is unfairly difficult bc all of From's limitations and oversights are put well on display : not really accounting for frame and input speed, and the camera forcing "faith dodges" where you pray you got the timing right despite not seeing shit on your screen...
This is well articulated; I'm really glad you brought up Gaius's charge and Divine Beast's insane forward momentum pushing your camera into a wall. I don't at all agree that the balancing is "perfect", but I hope this comment gets more likes because the number sliders are a comparatively small part of the issues with ER's bosses/enemies.
Eh, i think the hippo is the only problem with camera, really. The dancing lion is solved easily by not locking on to him at certain points. Fromsoftware doesnt have a limitation with camera, when they already made games like Sekiro whose camera is dynamic, or bloodborne who also made the camera go farther from the player in certain bosses like Ludwig. They have the tech for it, and its inside the engine they are using for elden ring(since its the same one used in bloodborne, just updated).
It's a conscious decision to let the player control that aspect of the game, you're not supposed to rely fully in the locked-on camera, because not only would that lead to camera problems, but it also impacts your movement in the game. Anyone that plays without lock on will tell you that your directional movement is much better, since your axis is not locked to the enemy anymore. You can use that to great advantege for better positioning, which grants you better oportunities for damage that you might not have found if you were just fighting with lock on.
This is probably the reason why they havent implemented a dynamic camera system in elden ring at all, since you still had ''problems'' with the camera in the base game, especially with larger enemies like the putrid avatars in enclosed spaces. Fighting the death rite birds with lock on is also complete trash, same with ancient dragons.
The ideal way to play these games has always been to know when to turn on and off the lock-on feature. If you do this, then the dancing lion will not only become easier, you will barely have visibility problems.
The hippo is a worse offender, because he's simply too big, so you cant see what he's doing properly if you dont lock on, but if you do lock on, then you have to deal with a bad camera. There's simply no winning.
The dancing lion is not big enough to lose sight of his movements without the lock-on.
@basementreviewer788 I personally find it insane to, from a game mechanic perspective, entertain the idea that "you shouldn't use this QoL feature in certain fights because it'll make them harder despite it being a QoL". Why should Fromsoft's outdated camera interactions with the lock on system be seen as a feature rather than what it actually is, an oversight ? If the lock on system behaved that way in any other franchises, they would get shat on into oblivion for it, but From gets a pass everytime ! What you're suggesting (delocking for big fights) is what i'd call a work around a mechanic that isn't behaving properly rather than an actual fix, and personally I don't think we should keep acting like purposefully not interacting with certain QoL features at certains points in the game is somehow genius and what "From intended all along".
Yo, Einstein, you missed T3 tier scaling at 4:37, now explain Gaius's hitboxes.
The DLC isn't "too hard" but when what bosses ask for from you is to spend ages dodging for a punish window that merely chips their enormous health bar (and yes, your scaling stays on par with theirs, but the base game health bars are already pretty enormous and Malenia has similar problems. This is an Elden Ring problem, not just an Elden Ring DLC problem), it's just... less fun than the more back-and-forth of the previous games.
There's nothing wrong with that it's what the games before it did too, unless you're overleveled and have a broken weapon. It's the fun of the game, and I never once thought that the attack strings are too long or too much I always find opening after and during strings. But I gotta be honest if you're using a collosal weapon or sword it would be kind hard hitting him during combos, which is tye entire point of the build, you have a slower weapon and you wouldn't attack as often but when you do you get bigger damage numbers. It's just playstyles and doffrent weapon, try using varying your build and playstyles you'll have more fun.
Ps. I really do think you have more back and forth in elden ring than previous games, you don't have it as much in previous games because you find an opening you hit the boss and stun him until he's dead.
@@xvor_tex8577 ??? What previous games involving stun-locking bosses. Elden Ring is by far the most prone to that with its stance breaks. There's a few outlier bosses in Bloodborne which can be stunlocked if you have high DPS and know where to hit them, but they're the exception.
I've beaten DS3 at SL1 using nothing but the club. That was much more of a tight back and forth than Elden Ring, without any "overleveled" or "OP weapon". With the majority of bosses it was "they swing once or twice, I swing once, they do a big hit, I get to swing two or even three times."
And like, as for "trying to vary my build" I basically killed every DLC boss with a different DLC weapon. Not quite literally, but I assure you, I varied my build constantly.
I did not find the DLC _hard_ until Radahn (though even he was an entirely brainless fight with a greatshield, which I tried out and got him to like 5% HP basically without taking damage before letting him kill me to fight him more "fairly").
I also didn't find the long attack chains _too_ bad, because I was wearing heavy armor and pretty tanky, so if Rellana clipped me a bit with her combo or whatever, I could just walk it off, and so I forced the game to be a back and forth by setting up a build that could trade a little.
But in Bloodborne, for example, it is a game of constant aggression. The boss is flailing around and you are always sticking close to it and attacking constantly. It was my first FromSoft game and I loved the pace of it. Elden Ring feels much slower, no matter the build.
The DLC was mostly not worse than the base game in this regard, and it wasn't all that hard (and, indeed, I loved the DLC), but I do think the digression from readable movesets that give you windows after every one or two attacks to endless combos that have to be memorized rather than just read has been to the series's detriment.
I don’t agree. Bosses take the same amount of time if you just get good damage (3-5 minutes).
@@leadfaun It is possible to get very OP in Elden Ring and kill bosses in several hits, yes, but this is hardly a back-and-forth either, this is the same "wait for ages for the combo to end" but you only need to do it a few times instead of repeatedly.
@ it isn't ages. The average combo takes like 5 seconds. Longer ones have openings during the combo. If your damage is too low, there are plenty of ways to increase damage.
"Radahn nerfs unnecessary" sorry rusty love you bro but thats an instant dislike from me
Radahn nerfs made an incredibly unfair and blinding fight into a still incredibly difficult and unfair fight but one that is actually enjoyable and viewable. They were incredibly necessary
Rusty, I usually love your content, but you have fallen into the trap of "it was never that hard" that infects this community every single time and, without fail, ends up creating a more hostile environment for newcomers with every new release.
Even if I agreed with you - and the comments are pretty unanimous in disagreeing - that doesn't make PCR or some of the other most oft-complained bosses any more fun to fight. And that is the sticking point for me. In so many of the main bossfights of this DLC, I felt like fighting the boss was such a chore. You either cheesed them completely or learned how to fall into a very rigid and non-player-expressive pattern. Even after PCR was 'learned' and became easier, he still became a joyless slog that ended this entire game with a feeling of 'I'm glad it's over'.
The Scadutree Fragment system, while I don't dislike it in principle, doesn't help in that regard. Assuming that the player will lick the corners of the map before meaningfully attempting to play the videogame doesn't strengthen your argument, and is honestly just a boring chore even when playing with a wiki map by your side.
Honestly, FromSoftware got way too high off of their own supply with every new installment. Turning every fight into a dodgeroll-pattern-neverending-attack-chain simulator is perhaps something I can blame Bloodborne for. Something that my Dark Souls-1-nostalgic-ass has never quite managed to enjoy.
Hard agree with everything except the dig at Bloodborne. Bloodborne was my first Soulsborne game. It absolutely gave you the tools you need to keep up with hyper aggressive bosses and long combos. Gun parries, the rally mechanics, a whopping 20+ blood vials to heal with... All those things meant the player could not only punish a boss for being too aggressive, the player themself could be hyperaggressive without being punished too hard. You really felt like a HUNTER, not some chump up against impossible odds. Elden Ring has none of that- Melania's rune gives you a pale shadow of the rally mechanic at the cost of healing flask effectiveness, you will only ever have 14 healing flasks at most, and parrying is a chore now - and a difficult chore at that.
Not Bloodbornes fault what happened to the rest of the games. Sekiro bosses is even faster than Elden Ring bosses but it feels fair because we are just as fast with tools such as animation cancelling to compensate. In Elden Ring you are playing Dark Souls 3 while the bosses play DMC5
@@colesontaylor1231 But that is my point. Later installments kept Bloodborne boss aggressiveness whilst not giving the player Bloodborne defensive mechanics (speed, gun parries, rally mechanic...)
No people have fallen to the trap of blaming anything but themselves in recent years. Get good attitude needs to come back.
I (as someone who loves bloodborne) agree with your sentiment. A lot of the bosses in Elden Ring aren't fun to fight because we are stuck with the same toolset from DS3 and placed in an enviornment with Sekiro or Bloodborne levels of aggresiveness with none of the tools to manage it.
That feeling of "glad that's over" was ever present throughout my time with both Base game and DLC, and this is coming from someone who has beaten the game multiple times over trying to find the fun again.
and your point about the bosses feeling rigid and non-player-expressive I think actually puts into words how i've been feeling with a lot of my time with this game. It feels like i'm forced to play in one way, and if I don't play in that way i'm punished for it.
I mean the stuff with multipliers doesn’t matter too much considering the base stats are just as, if not more important than the multipliers
It might be better to just admit that it is that hard. The best advice in this video is to practice dodging. The second best advice is to put 50 endurance on a character, use the great shield talisman, equip the fingerprint shield, and a thrusting sword of some sort with bleed.
My burned retinas say otherwise.
@RonnieMcnutt-z8oscrew you
@RonnieMcnutt-z8ono
I'm ready to agree that maybe the game was never that hard, but I won't give you that finding most fragments without just looking them up is reasonable. Which I think is fair to assume most people don't want to do, since it feels like cheating.
I just think that "Just explore correctly" doesn't make for a very satisfying levelling experience, and I think the hosts that kept summoning me to Midra at SL8 and 10 agree with me.
Really? I explored organically and found 48 of them by the time I reached Radahn. I mean, it's an open world game where exploration is strongly encouraged.
finding them is pretty organic, and the exploration game expecting the players to explore so they can get stronger is pretty reasonable.
Right, the "just explore more" argument doesn't work because, without an outside guide, you have no way of knowing if there are any more fragments to find in the area to begin with. Exploring the map with a fine-tooth comb, without even knowing if there is anything to find, isn't a fun player experience. Exploration is one thing, this is something else.
It's interesting that you mention summoning because that's one of my big issues with the DLC. Summoning is supposed to be "easy" mode (maybe assistance mode would be a better term) but in many cases it either did not help and made the fight significantly more chaotic or flat out made it harder. PCR is a great example because mimic and the 2 NPC summons simply don't do enough damage to the boss and die too quickly. Before the nerf, Radahn gave you basically no opportunity to summon meaning you had to summon spirit ashes in second phase (which is not the worst, but still annoying). And Thiollier/Ansbach both bloat his health pool to such an extent that no one wants to summon them (which is a shame considering their quests). IDK I think that a mode that is meant to help players overcome the challenge should not make the boss worse.
@@1925683 I fully agree, I think they should have made the ansbach and thiollier summons not increase radahns hp, at this point I only ever summon ansbach to hear his schpeal and then I die and fight radahn for real
I love difficulty discussions because it's fascinating how subjective difficulty can be. I beat Messmer on my 3rd attempt, and Maliketh on my 2nd, who are considered difficult. However, it took me much longer to beat Rykard and the Dancing Lion, even though they rarely are mentioned in hardest boss discussions. Rellana took me over an hour alone.
The DLC wasn't too bad. Yeah there are moments like Commander Gaius and his steed charge (still bullshit when it hits) is not bad when you know the exact pixel to dodge at.
My biggest issue is the feeling I receive when I arrive in the final area in Enir-Ilim.
What is this all worth?
A final boss fight that leads to nothing but a remembrance? An unapologetically starved conclusion? I check out at this point and give my lowest effort.
I can relate to that. i'd have liked a little something more than a cutscene with basically nothing in it.
A remembrance with a dogshit weapon and spell
Oh my god - another person actually feels underwhelmed with Elden Ring's storytelling!? WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN FOR TWO YEARS IT'S BEEN SO LONLEY
@parkergosman5476 DLC ending, sure. But elden ring as a whole? You got me confused with somebody else.
@@ChosekLazzaria Clarification: I'm not talking about "lore" when I say storytelling; Elden Ring obviously has amazing lore/worldbuilding ETC. The premise of ER's story is fascinating and compelling, but I steadfastly assert that very little was done to actually flesh that premise out through quest design and NPC dialogue.
Even some of the most involved, like Ranni's, still requires me to fill in the massive blanks with my imagination to get any sort of catharsis from it. Rogier was one of my favorite NPCs, not just because he's a likable character, but because his questline involved asking pertinent questions about the world and digging for answers. But his inevitable death brings all that to an abrupt halt. And are we really going to pretend like Melina's character felt finished? Girl straight up vanishes for most of the game.
The DLC went way further than the base game to make NPCs more involved in the overarching story, and I really appreciated that, but that new overarching story is also extremely anemic. I know I don't need to convince you of that part, but I'm surprised you don't see the similarities between the base game and the DLC. Because I walked into the erdtree for my first time wondering the exact same thing: "What is this all worth?"
The main reason why SOE is generally considered harder is because the enemies in most cases are much more aggressive and fast.
As far as I know, there is no stats that measures this...
But they aren't though, they are as fast & as aggressive as end-game base game Elden Ring.
@@HeyTarnished well, not for me.
For example, I had a lot of trouble to confront the mother of fingers, even if I am hyperleveled...I am not the best player in the world but that thing has no weak points, she attacks with speed and brutality at 360 degree. I haven't had so much difficulties with any of the basic elden ring bosses, not even Malenia.
At the end, after many tries with different strategies, I got sick of her and ended up summoning external help just to get my beloved staff of great beyond...
@@GreenHoleSun This…I don’t know what to say honestly, saying that you had a harder time against her than Malenia is something I have not heard being said anywhere.
I’m talking about the normal enemies, they’re not much harder than any of the end-game base game Elden Ring, that can be proven objectively, I think you’re misremembering them.
@@HeyTarnished I just give you my opinion and my experience, and I remember perfectly.
Malenia is strong but all his strenght come from her selfhealing capabilities and from the scarlet of Aeonia. Actually she has her weak points, first of all she is very vulnerable to breaking stance. There are plenty of ways to get rid of her, especially with new equipment.
Mother of fingers? No, keep yourself informed, there are plenty of videos on YT.
@@HeyTarnished about normal enemies: for me it's never have been a great problem, if there are some particularly pesky ones the general rule is to confront them one at a time. Anyway in the DLC mesmer soldiers are much stronger and fast, and they cooperate very well in groups. Then there are particularly annoying enemies, like that kind of leeches that paralyze you from afar...
Math isn't real. This doesn't prove anything.
Correct. What is math? Number piles? That’s nonsense. Pure nonsense.
Oh yeah math ain't real, right up to the point where you learn the difference between one apple falling on your head, and one billion apples falling on your head in the space of 1 second.
What is a math? A miserable little pile of numbers
@@bagredecartola1289"but enough studying, HAVE AT YOU"
Way to tell me you don't do finances, without needing to actually tell me you don't do finances.
For me it's no "hard", it's annoying and unfun because of the overtuned aggressiveness, endless enemy combos, erratic movements and particle effects on certain bosses.
Being scaled up to fourteen times the toughness of the base game absolutely counts as 'that hard'. Wtf are you smoking, Rusty? Also, saying that content isn't 'too hard' because you can buff up before boss fights is disproving your point. Pushing one button, one time, to give myself 15% attack and 10% dmg reduction is literally just a difficulty slider. Which you've suggested we all turn down. Because the content is too easy, maybe?
But the reason this was a problem is simple: When Margit hands me my ass, I go explore a cool world for some cool weapon or cool spell or cool ash that is a literal active ability I have to use. When Rellana hands me my ass, I get to go ride around the map for 2 hours picking up tree bark. That's literally why the scadutree fragment system was tweaked. You need fewer fragments, so you end up engaging in the boring 'content' less. This really isn't rocket surgery.
Radahn is 14X.
You are 2X.
So Radahn is actually 7X, same as Malenia.
You're crying because you refuse to just practice the boss a little and get more used to it. Just like you do with every From game or DLC. People said the same things about Malenia and Isshin and Gael and Friede and Pontiff and Raime and the Ruin Sentinals and Artorias. Any time you get mildly challenged you throw a tantrum, then you actually learn the boss and use it as some bar of quality that the next new piece of content alledgedly doesn't beat because you don't know it yet and actually have to try again.
Mfw this same commenter feels the need to go around replying to everyone who rightfully calls out Rusty for being wrong and the DLC for being unreasonably difficult and/or boring.
Like, seriously man, is this what you do with your life? Play FS games and go around online attacking people who criticize them? It's pathetic. I mean, what, did your parents "dodge roll" spending time with you as a child so now you have to fill the empty void inside yourself by sucking Michael Zaki's peen?
Ignore this idiot, OP. You're in the right.
You ever try to juggle? I found out I have a basic talent for it and picked it up fairy easy after about 5 minutes of watching someone else do it even though I can only juggle spheres. That may seem random but telling someone that something isn't hard when they don't have a talent for it is honestly something the souls community doesn't seem to understand. You finding it easy doesn't mean it is. There also a thing called time and with time people can pick skills when they don't have the talent but that takes, guess what? time that not everyone has.
I think you are missing the point. Hardness is entirely subjective. He isn’t saying the bosses are easy, in fact he says the exact opposite multiple times in the video. His point is that the bosses are not necessarily harder than the base game. He points out the scadu level counteracts most of the extra leveling stats bosses get in the dlc, and that upon closer analysis the bosses all still have the same basic weakness is their attack patterns that have been prevalent all the way back when you fought Margit.
So why do you HAVE to play something difficult that takes time to master and demand that it be made easier for your particular time schedule and skill level?
Oh, that's right, because you want the clout of having played "the experience" without having to meet the basic requirements of participation.
Play something else.
@@winxwest2964they are objectively harder than the base game on ave though because scaduland bosses are much more aggressive than most erdland bosses
For example, malenia is still my fav boss fight. But now rellana and messmer are my top 3 right after her. Why? Because rellana and messmer are similair to malenia in that they are all very aggressive (why they are my fav tho is that despite being aggressive there are still tons of openings to deal damage if you are creative making it a fun duel, they have my favorite 'dances' so to speak)
Nah. Git gud.
Missed the whole point of the video and he doesn't even say the bosses are easy for him. There's a whole section talking about attack patterns and how there's no way to measure how easy or hard this is for a player.
Your argument about the skibidi fragments assume that you collect all of them or most of them, which most people wont do on their first playthrough. Quite a few of them are easily missable, especially if you dont want to search absolutely everywhere. I don't think telling someone to look around more is a fair argument. If you were underleveled in the base game you do some more dungeons that you could spot from just looking at the map, or even farm.
Also the a lot of the attack windows you talk about are often too short if you use a larger weapon. A lot of the boss moves also look very similar making it harder too memorize them. A few of the bosses also had issues beyond stats and moves, like Hippo and gaius having terrible spawns, and dancing lion constantly pushing you into the wall.
I never thought the dlc was too hard for me personally, only getting annoyed on rellana, gaius(because of the spawn and having the most difficult to dodge move in the entire game by far) and Radahn, but saying it wasn't that hard when it was obviously significantly harder than the base game is disingenuous. All the DLC bosses were a heck of a lot more aggressive and had way longer attack chains than the base game. Their moves were less telegraphed, had shorter dodge windows between moves and had shorter attack windows.
also this from @ClassyReviews
"I've always had an issue with the reasoning of the Scadutrees and how "you're supposed to collect the seeds, forehead." This is an argument that can be made with hindsight, when you know where all of them are and just how much they add to your damage/resistences.
But when you're first starting... How are you supposed to know there are 10 scadutree fragments you can collect before the first boss?"
I think you made a good point but I think having around blessing level 15 before final boss is normal and I did have around blessing 3 before divine beast which is enough to counter its scaling. Except for the pot guys with fragment, the others fragments are easy to get if you explore a bit.
@@MinhTuHa-ry4fe This is such bs, if you didn't note down every skibidi fragment you got and aren't using a guide it's impossible to just explore a bit. Do you know how big the map is? Might as well ask me to find a single needle in 200 haystacks. From my pov I scoured the map, and not only did I not find all the dungeons, I barely made it to level 16. Not that it made the boss any more fun than when I got to him at level 12.
@@JanVerny: I found 49 fragments all on my own just by exploring without any guide. However, I get that not everyone is going to play the game as meticulously as I do.
Still, especially after the first balancing, a player doesn't need anywhere close to all of then. Just 26 fragments is enough to reach the level 12 soft cap with a boost of 85%. The remaining 8 levels of diminishing returns are only an extra 20% over that.
Reaching max blessing is really something only completionists need to worry about.
@@JanVernySelf-report that you don't explore the map in any capacity. I think I was level 14 just by wandering around by the time I got to PCR and then 18 when I decided to double down and look for them
Lmao I beat the dlc pre nerf on 15 fragments and all my exploration. No guides. So it doesn't matter if a few of them are missable
Now Rusty you put enough effort into your videos for me to say you've never engagement baited
But I gotta say, masterful engagement bait.
Why is Rusty teaching people to dodge away from PCR in the second phase??? It should be dodging around him throughout both phases.
Because first phase is way easier and the moveset isnt anywhere near as unfair
First phase radahn is like godfrey/hoarah while second phase radahn is like malenia if malenia had a massive stagger bar and a twink boy on her shoulders adding staggered magic attacks to every swing
@@theFORZA66 You should be able to roll the same way in both phases facing the same combos, except the ground slam, which becomes mandatory to roll in phase 2. The light pillar won’t be a problem as long as you’re rolling around him clockwise and be very close to him.
Aight for my 2 cents i beat him pre nerf no summons with a greatsword and lions claw at scadutree level 19. What angered me was a hippo did not spawn, so I couldn't max out my blessing, and for colossal weapons the openings to attack were severely limited. This is in addition to him having insane poise and poise recovery, so stance breaks also weren't viable. What bothered me about the dlc was how the bosses move too fast, like Rellana and Radahn, with too much poise. It's not good for all weapon types, and I feel the main game was great for all weapon types.
I beat him RL1 pre nerf and all the other bosses in the DLC and I agree with you completely. Relanna is seriously to quick for most charged R2s which is dumb. The bosses are just to overturned, the time in between attacks is way too quick and they over did it.
For me it's pretty simple, if an enemy or boss has infinite stamina, it's bullshit. The DLC has it's fair share of those.
Yeah, I'm on this team as well.
And my problem even has a potential caveat: if you're gonna give an enemy infinite stamina, at least make it so when I connect an attack, THE ENEMY FLINCHES. Either the boss creates an opening for me, or I risk myself and force him to.
Almost no souls boss (well, the small ones in ER do, but those are exceptions) works like that, and the aforementioned Problem Trio definitely don't, so they need "more fair" cooldown windows.
you basicly have the same infinite stamina with how often they delay attacks(if you don't panicroll). stamina buffs are in their on category. the game is at its best when it's not just rolling and hitting and running away to heal like in ds
@@hitlord i mean, thats objectively wrong. A huge amount of bosses DO flinch from attacks. It just depends on how heavy your attack is (damageLevel). But I get what you mean, you want them to flinch like a player and be completely interrupted, which just too much, you can find other ways to get easy mode instead.
@@ТесакВнаушнике it's not even close, I can't do 5 attacks in a row and recover my whole stamina bar in 2 seconds to do another 5 attacks in a row.
Also, if a delay an attack by doing a charged heavy, my stamina doesn't regenarate during that animation, unlike them.
Your opinion is wrong, infinity stamina also exists since Dark Souls 3.
I really like your point about Radahns "Fuck you I win" meteor attack only really working once, and I think it highlights something about Malenia that made her as infamously difficult as she was, and its that Waterfowl Dance being her "Fuck you I win" attack is so much more dangerous than any of the other similar attacks - with the only one that comes close in my opinion being Bayles aerial laser combo.
The Radahn nerfs were necessary. He was obnoxious and bugged. PLEASE stop being a contrarian.
just a skill issue maybe?
Skill issue dork
@@sundewscrewdrivermove that consistently was a guaranteed hit on most players depending on your weapon follow up which you cannot predict
Particle effects nerf: yes
Cross slash combo nerf: yes
Everything else: hell no
@@melo7038 sure
Real talk, the non stop attacking, gap closers, input reading, and delayed attacks make the game harder then it should be.
As much as I like ER, it's the game that goes the most against the idea of why they originally designed dark souls.
Very true words spoken right there.
Delayed attacks do not exist. The attacks come out exactly when they are meant to. Don't panic, and you'll be fine. These attacks shouldn't hit you more than once if you have eyes and basic memory.
@@UnknownRayDar
They are jarring and weird, i kinda learned Morgott's moveset (i don't have ER so i play with friends) and how to dodge them.
Do these attacks come when they "are meant to"? Yes, if we define "are meant to" as "are coded to hit". But i think that calling them delayed attacks is also right: there is a variable amount of time between the startup of the animation and the ending of it. And i think that's a good definition of delayed attacks that distinguish them from rollcatching attacks (which have fixed animations but that come slightly later to punish a early dodge).
And while i don't think they make the game that harder (just wait for the smack not the startup) alongside other thing it can be quite taxing for some.
And to me both the delayed attacks and 100% imput read dodge look quite jarring and ugly. For example Morgott just having his stick over his head for 5 seconds just waiting for you to press circle on your coontroller so he can hit you after your roll
@@UnknownRayDar Delayed attacks DO exist. If the windup does not immediately lead into the attack, it's delayed. That fuckin simple.
I disagree that it makes the game harder. Just more frustrating. Standing a distance from the boss while it's not attacking, hitting the heal button, and then instantly being gap closed and combo'd while you're unable to respond doesn't make the boss harder. It just makes it feel cheap and frustrating. If the boss did it every single time, that would be one thing. But these bosses rarely behave consistently, so it's usually a gamble to heal at any other time than a guaranteed punish window, and guaranteed punish windows are rarer and shorter thanks to the long combos and combo stringing. So for anyone who's not using an exceptionally powerful build, some of these bosses are just irritating. They're just as beatable as ones in previous games. Just less fun. This boss design would have worked better in Sekiro or Bloodborne.
Radahns average opening time frame was .34 seconds per 6 seconds. Sword saint ishin is .64 per 6 seconds. Mother fucker what?
Now, granted, strap on a great shield and trivialize the game but I don't think the play style of fucking DODGE ROLLING should be this heavily punished.
Pulling numbers out of your ass lmao, radahn has multiple charged heavy windows, and sekiro openings work completely differently to openings in other fromsoft games
it's really not. you're just bad at rolling
Dodge rolling isn't punished. Absolute nonsense.
I wouldn't phrase it as "dodge rolling is punished" more so than "your main option is no longer consistently viable" (which it never really was, in fairness)
That's still a crazy comparison, though.
Yes obviously Isshin is going to have more openings because you can literally stop his combos, like any other sekiro boss. Sekiro bosses have like triple the ammount of openings of any dark souls boss lol
Radahn pre nerf was a bad fight, it still has less openings than any other boss in the game even after the nerf, but this comparison is ass.
Honestly, I avoided spoilers for the DLC until I beat it. I know people didn't like the final boss but I didn't read any of the reasons why
A lot of my problems to the fight (this is all post-nerf btw) were about how the holy meteor attack was pretty much an auto-loss unless you knew exactly how to dodge it, camera issues, and the fact that once you beat the boss, it was very anti climatic, with the only things being a memory that stated what you already knew.
I was surprised that people complained about the imfamous cross slash attack, which people still complain about even post nerf. I guess my playstyle just naturally dodged the attack but the reasons why people hated the fight I never would've guessed from my experience.
I replayed Dark Souls 1 in september and one thing that I realised is that I want that Elden Ring enemies wouldn't be so much hp. Some ER regular enemies have more hp thand DS1 bosses. Because of this, sometimes fight feels extremely exhausting. I have no problem learning movesets, but holy fuck I's tiring to repeat everything 20-40 times per fight. And I believe that's one of the reasons people minmaxing their build.
Yeah, a lot of people misunderstand that it's not about being too hard to beat. But about being so hard that it's tedious to beat.
Try to go against these DLC bosses without some min-maxed bleed build and the single attack windows you get between the overwhelming combos barely nudge some boss healthbars. Attempts drag on for a long time and can end from a single mistake. Gets pretty tedious at some points. Like playing Skyrim on legendary difficulty.
@@falcoon_f_zero9450At that point I think it's an indicator that you're too low level. Plus any build is minmaxed if you build it right- yes even a standard quality build with Dex and Strength evened out. You don't need to be a Contagion shield, Kindred Rot Talisman, Bleed weapon, all the buffs slinger to beat most of these bosses. Maybe Golden Vow for some extra gas in the tank and talismans that compliment what you're doing.
@@venandisicarius32 If around level 200 character, 60str/60fth stats with a +25 heavy great stars and +25 beastclaw talisman, plus most available scadutree fragments is considered under equipped now then I don't know what to tell you. That weapon is barely nudging some of those boss healthbars. Spells would hit for bigger damage if 90% of them weren't too slow for the hyper aggressive bosses and the rest will likely miss because of their mobility anyway. So if you're not a fan of summoning you'll have to resort to mainly doing minimal damage R1s. Buffs help a bit too... for the first 1/5th of the fight before they run out and can't be used again since there's never time to get the animation off with these boss speeds. Just a tedious experience sometimes.
That easily happens when you try to keep a themed character going in Elden Ring despite it being an RPG. If the character doesn't fall in the few overpowered archetypes you'll end up getting very underwhelming results in the endgame. But take some double twinblade bleed build and spam jumping attacks and the bosses crumble completely. The game just has such severe issues with unbalance. You either destroy a boss without any effort with summons or a broken setup. Or slowly tickle the enemy health away without a min-maxed setup, only to get one-shot far into the fight. There's much less of that satisfying in-between the earlier games were able to hit consistently.
@@falcoon_f_zero9450 Have you considered the possibility that you are unironically just bad at the game? Because with stats/gear like that you're either lying or are genuinely just bad.
And like, there's nothing wrong with just being bad at a game. What IS wrong is not improving and then saying anyone who is contrary to this perspective is wrong.
Completely agree. I had the exact same experience with Bloodborne.
I disagree with the Thumbnail. The Radahn nerfs were necessary, at least to me. Not because he was as hard as he was, but because he was too frustrating. Now he is fun, but still hard as balls
Still a shame Elden Beast and Radagon give more runes despite being significantly easier, but that might just be the time I had to learns their Movesets
Consort Radahn drops 500.000 runes, which is the same quantity as Elden Beast.
9:32 That was a reference to the fact that messmer soloed 3 Dancing Lions in the story trailer.
For me, it was less about it being too hard and more about it being unfun. I hated how aggressive the adds and most of the bosses were in the dlc and how many combo moves they could pull off before I finally had a fraction of a second to retaliate. Let's not forget that the bosses were sometimes so aggressive that sometimes they immediately hit you in the midst of walking through the boss fog, possibly even murking you instantly, too. For most boss fights, it felt like a never-ending slog of a fight where most of the time, I'm just trying not to die. (That's all boss fights, i get that, but tbh base game fights felt more enjoyable without them needing to be a never-ending chain of combos and barely any time to get a hit in) Hell, at times, I legitimately forgot I was even playing a souls game and mistook it for a dodging simulator. Then, around 5 to 10 minutes in, I get stomped by some backhanded whole arena AoE or some other move outta nowhere. I get it, I'm arse and all, gotta "GeT gUD" but fuck man it feels like fun took a backseat in the dlc. The Shadutree fragments were kinda unnecessary, too. Just increase the dlc difficulty from 7x (base end game) to around 9x or 10x on the scale and then boom, done. The only reason that was put in was to help you, but God forbid you miss any. Otherwise, say goodbye to your kneecaps. This is just my opinion, though. It doesn't matter how difficult the game is, I just want to enjoy the experience. I just felt at the end "thank fuck that's over" which is a shame since this is a great dlc. Sadly for me, though, I'm just not playing it again. Feel free to join in and chat about it, or berate me. Whichever works for you.
I like how Rusty made sure he can't change the title without a discrepancy since it's word for word within the first minute.
Idc what the video says a boss that is hard and able to be beaten, but isn’t fun, deserves a nerf. No one likes frame trap moves and eye glitterZ
So, how are attack patterns not harder than those of the base game ? You didn't seem to explain that at all.
You see, that wouldn't prove his point
@@falcoon_f_zero9450 attack patterns of bosses like malenia, mogh and maliketh are as hard as any dlc boss
@@OknahidwinMaliketh is the only one of those three you can make an argumet for. The only problems with Malenia are WFD and clones attack and the only problems with Mohg are the bloodflame and the delayed attacks which aren't very hard to get used to. Most(if not all) of the DLC main bosses has attack patterns which are at least somewhat harder to learn than any of the base game's bosses and at most a lot harder to learn.
@@Purple_Pancakes0 and Maliketh's only real problem is the guaranteed DOT that'll snowball like crazy, his actual moveset wasn't that hard day one
Malenia's moveset is far harder than anything in the DLC AND you can't block it.
No one wants to tackle the math in the video?
Ok. I will👍
Not a single calculation has any meaning at all. The entire math section is irrelevant in the way Rusty delivered the information.
Because the only thing covered was scalings and modifiers, we don't see the actual damage output of the enemies and bosses.
Here's an example of what I mean:
We have two bosses, with their scalings below:
Boss 1: 80% damage modifier
Boss 2: 110% damage modifier
Now if Rusty was to present this information to you, he'd state that this conclusively proves that Boss 1 is less difficult than Boss 2.
But if we introduce their actual base damage:
Boss 1: 80% x 1 billion damage
Boss 2: 110% × 10 damage
See how the weaker scaling of Boss 1 doesn't matter because its still going to be atomising you with hundreds of millions of damage?
Comical that so much time was devoted to the scalings and we didn't see a comparison of the damage output of DLC bosses vs base game bosses.
Confusing us simple folk with these multiplers and defense values is a cheap trick. Just show the actual damage output and let the people decide.
this is the epitome of yap for too long and repeat back what was said in a stupid way and people think you're smart. you just admitted you don't understand math.
@@prohikikomo You're welcome to correct me
this means nothing bc no bosses do a billion damage. the only boss that can even consistently 1shot you is messmer with his grab. come on
@ilyskyless You are agreeing with me. If my hyperbolic example is meaningless because it isn't literal, then this video is meaningless because boss damage wasn't touched, just scaling.
@@jeff3221no, your hyperbolic example is pointless because it’s so hyperbolic that it basically doesn’t at all relate to the conversation. Messmer’s grab is the only attack in the DLC that can consistently oneshot you if you are either A.) wearing light armor or B) have less than 50ish vigor. Yes, the bosses do a lot of damage. You’re playing a late game dlc, no shit. the DLC gives you the tools you need to mitigate that damage. PCR only took me around 60-70 tries at blessing level 14, which is beyond the softcap anyways. He’s a hard ass boss, but he is objectively not unfair. Messmer is probably a top 3 boss in all of souls for me. Romina is peak, Rellana is great.
very poor video, completely misses the point of why people complained about the dlc, personally i didnt find it as hard as others cuz I grabbed the skibdi fragments yeah, but to claim that the movesets are comparable to the base game is so laughable. Every single dlc boss has movesets as complex as malekith and Malenia, so thats just not true.
and the radhan nerfs were not unnecessary , terrible take by a youtuber who usually has good ones
Maybe if they want us fighting bloodborne level bosses, they should give us the bloodborne parrying guns because fuck these endless combo attacks from bosses that will two shot you at max hp and blessings
Without using any of the cheese builds, Radahn would immediately 180 and face plant you after a melee hit. Any ash of war that had more then one hit on it guarenteed you were going to trade damage. Who wanted to play the whole game on their favorite build and get to Consort and resort to some lame cheese. half you pros probably chicken winged or ant spured him to death. lame.
I don't think Rsty understood why people didn't like the DLC, and it's an issue with the game design from Elden Ring as a whole. Bosses are way more aggressive, but you do not have any newer mechanics to deal with those moves, which made it tedious to do.
Could I fuck around for like 8 hours on one boss and eventually get the dodging right? Sure. Most people did. But holy SHIT Fromsoftware could've so much better when it comes to the player mechanics. Yes, I can roll for 1 minute straight to get a few attack windows, maybe shorter if I have a light weapon, but is this really all they gave us? They literally made Sekiro, they could've easily given us an extra option to match the aggression, deflecting.
Playing Elden Ring in general, but the DLC in particular with a mod that allows deflection is SO much fun, and it's still difficult, because if I miss a deflect I'm getting rolled since I'm so close, but I'm so close s if I succeed, I can attack more, I can match the bosses aggression.
My options vanilla, are to parry, which is sort of like deflecting only it causes a pretty huge break in the action, dodge, whch as we discussed is fucking boring as shit and makes the game tedious because I don't interact much with the boss directly, or block with a shield. Which is okay, I'll give it that.
hey, which mod is that?
So we're just going to ignore the deflecting hardtear? That makes it so you can deflect and get a more powerful guard counter on a successful reflect, with a stacking effect for multiple successful deflects and counters in row?
@@lmtalpha6382 it's an optional item that takes up space in your physic and only lasts 5 minutes. Compare that to the sekiro deflect or bloodborne rally. I feel like it's the same thing as "bhs counters waterfowl!" as if there shouldn't be another way for all players to do so.
Mods like Elden ring reforged are a godsend, ducking, actually balanced perfect blocking and lower recovery makes pve sooo much more enjoyable
@@NottSaying It's another option besides rolling which OP said they needed to use a mod for when it's in the game in some form. I didn't say that it counters everything because normal rolling and jumping are perfectly viable and the way the game and its bosses are designed around. Everything can be dodged with a roll or a jump (or by running away in the few instances where a boss leaves a lingering aoe or something), if that's boring to some people then that means they just don't like the combat system, not that it's a bad combat system in the first place.
Counter point: The Scooby Doo Fragment are just a badly designed form of player progression. And if your "first, last, and only counter to the power creep" is to reach level 10 Scooby Snacks by the time you reach the cowardly lion, you've already fumbled the ball completely.
13:31 You can't collect the fragment in Stone coffin fissure before breaking Rune of Miquela
You can break the rune without fighting anything if you go up the long way
@@Grizzled_Spacer_2 I am aware of that, but Rusty ruled out bypassing castle Ensis.
@@jeffy4067 Ah. Carry on then.
I was not looking at my screen whilst listening to this, the audio cut and i thought the video just ended, so i just sat in silence and the dark. You accidentally made my day somehow when you started talking again.
Could you explain why you refer to Cerulean Coast as the "successive area" to Charo's Hidden Grave when you access it via the river, entirely independently of the entrance to Charo's?
You can reach the Cerulean Coast through the Charo’s hidden grave by hopping down onto one of the boats. That was the path I took on my first play through, so I think that’s what he had in mind
You can also enter it from jagged peak
That's fair, I just feel like it's a bit weird to call it successive to Charo's, since the path via Ellac is accessible from roughly the same point as the path via Charo's, just without a boss in the middle. That combined with the scaling makes me think that accessing it via the Ellac River is what the designers had in mind. For the record, that was how I found it on my first playthrough, but I also missed the path to Charo's until much later.
On my first play through I got to the coast by following a path that leads to dropping down onto one of the massive coffins. There are multiple ways to get there
@@CyclopsDragon on my first playthrough of the dlc I accesse the hidden grave first then cerulean coast. So yeah it can be called a successive area
Lmao. I got destroyed at Castle Enis and just said "Game doesn't want me here. Time to explore." So I did exactly that. Going to Charro's grave and stuff. By the time I came back to fight Rellana. She was sadly too weak. I got her on my second try. Her fight was really cool and I kinda wished she kicked my ass a bit longer. But it makes me wonder how many other players have the same mindset that if an area claps you really hard, it's time to explore other areas. I mean... That was more or less the first lesson of Elden Ring brought to the players by Margit.
12:35 Come on that's not fair. You can't give me massive weapons that have bonus effects on guard counters and expect me not to use those. Yes, I feel guilty, no I will not confess further sins
What is that math.... 26% dmg reduction does not mean you need 52% more damage...
1x(1+0,52)x(1-0,26) = 1.1248, so that would be 12.5% extra damage... You can't just multiply by 2... It works only for 50% damage reduction.
For 26% damage reduction you need 35.14% atk power boost.
1x(1+0.351351351)x(1-0,26) = 1
18:21 "It's not hard."
-The guy that's somehow using Quickstep while his only equipped weapon has Savage Lion's Claw attached...?
His gameplay is not related
Its just for fun
Something for us to watch while we listen theres no actual need for it
I think it's the talisman that adds I-frames to your backsteps.
@@Erden99 nah the backstep makes you step back. In the clip he is stepping sideways. Its modded gameplay but like the other guy said, it doesnt have anything to do with what he is saying.
I think it’s a mod. Maybe one that makes the dodge look like the blood borne dodge?
it's a mostly-visual mod that replaces the roll animation with bloodborne's step animation, modified so that the distance and framedata match elden ring's roll
tech the difference in pose on the recovery _should_ alter the hitboxes during it ... but considering the default animation can effectively get extra s against a lot of attacks by low-profiling 'em, while the step has the character upright through the entire thing ... yeah any gameplay impact the mod has is not in _rusty's_ favor
Luckily I never complained about the difficulty in the DLC. I was complaining about the difficulty in base game because I've felt everything past DS1 has picked up enormous amounts of speed that I struggle to deal with.
imo the only game that got increased fight speed down was Bloodborne. Haven't tried Sekiro though.
If anyone genuinely thinks the radahn nerf massacred radahn you need to touch grass and stop valuing your own sense of ego based off a video game
And you got your ego hurt not able to beat him or that you had a hard time beating him and thinking that everyone else should be affected by his nerf just because you didn't have a good time?
@@xvor_tex8577 no i beat him and i think that the nerf genuinely makes radahn a better fight as he now has more openings and thus you can get into a dance with him like you can with every other boss instead of just watching radahn show off his moves for 10 hours before doing 1 hit
radahn nerf makes him slightly easier yes but it also makes radahn more enjoyable and thus was completely justified. old radahn just not fun, the only benefit to old radahn are the bragging rights nerds get. current radahn is just objectively better from a game design standpoint
@@theFORZA66 you should go see the patch notes about the nerf, because dude I think the boss's difficulty is only mental to you, because the nerf dosent introduce new openings and the attack strings isn't shorter, it's just the one double swipe and slahs attack is a bit slower and an aoe attack is smaller. And you think all the things you said is true then maybe you just fought the boss with a doffrent mentality and enjoyed it. Well good for you
That changes only changed minor things that slightly inconveniences your fight with radahn, and now people that had a hard time woth him before say that the boss is way easier now, which is not true. So I think people just had their ego hurt when fighting the boss pre nerf, and when the nerf happened in their mind the boss should be way easier now, so they fought him with a diffrent mentality, and had a better time with him. But in truth the nerf didn't touch and change 95% of the moves that makes the boss difficult.
@xvor_tex8577 yes the blindiness and that one nerf make the fight 100x better lmao thats the point
i agree though the nerf doesnt make him that much easier. i just think it was warranted is all, i think its a good change
As someone who's been utter dogshit at these games for a decade, and still is... one of these days, I'll get good. Hopefully.
I just wish the discourse didn't always shift to putting people down or patronizing them for having frustrations with a boss. It's worth noting just how utterly demoralizing it can be to have someone say "Well it was easy for me" if you're in the headspace of just having slammed your head against Maliketh or something for your literal entire evening.
*further yapping below*
I very nearly gave up on Elden Ring during my first playthrough, because Maliketh seemed that impossible to me. 9 hours of getting ground to paste by Maliketh had left me pretty much broken.
I couldn't understand a thing about how to deal with his attacks in first or second phase (first phase is still a complete mystery to me), knowledge of the Blasphemous Claw hadn't widely proliferated yet, and people online were either just colossally unhelpful or condescending. When you're at the end of your rope like that, it just makes you feel like absolute shit and it sticks with you.
After days of on-and-off attempts, I finally did get through Maliketh, but it was a complete fluke. I understood Maliketh no better, felt no satisfaction, and my self-esteem had been pretty much ground down to nothing. Then Godfrey kicked my ass as well, albeit to a mercifully lesser extent. The whole experience just left me feeling extremely bitter and defeated, even when I reached the credits.
What you say absolutely _can_ affect people's experience, and there is nothing less helpful or more harmful to someone else's experience than saying "It wasn't even that hard"
So if someone is having trouble, if they indeed are having a skill issue, just have some sympathy and don't be an asshole.
Umm, rusty how are your characters are capable of using quickstep as a dodge while clearly it is shown in the screen that you are using some other weapon art? Is this video an acknowledgement of the fact that dlc bosses are too fast to dodge with the basic rolls😂
Not quickstep, but a purely visual change via mods to Bloodborne dodge animations
From the video title I was really hoping for more math as it relates to difficulty. Would love to know how many frames does the player have before an attack lands, how many directional inputs will result in successfully avoiding the attack, how many attacks need to be dodged in a combo, how many seconds do guaranteed punish windows last, etc.
I was hoping for that info because I think it would go a long way to facilitate more in-depth discussions of difficulty. As a challenge runner and John Unofficial Bloodborne I get the feeling that comparing Manus to Orphan to Gael to Radahn would show a steady increase in difficulty, at least through that lens.
Whether content is hard or Easy, Actually doesn't address whether the challenge that's being presented is the good and fun kind, but I get that's not the point of the vid.
Bless your heart Rusty for assuming that I didn't do my first playthrough with a wiki in hand precisely to find every single shadowtree fragment as early as possible, you believe in me more than i believe in myself.
The second I heard there was exactly 50 of them I opened Fextralife and was like "goddamnit"
The shared knowledge point at the end is something I've thought about a lot in SotE criticism. I think veteran Souls players are used to the fact that these games are kinda meant to be played as a community. That's why the message system exists, as clunky as it is. That's why actually piecing together the lore of these games amounts to archaeology, why (spoiler warning) critical lore that recontextualizes all of DS1 and doesn't get paid off until DS3 is locked behind ignoring explicit instructions and beating a boss out of order. Almost nobody does that by accident and they're probably not intended to.
I think that despite its difficulty, Elden Ring is probably the most approachable of the Souls games. It generally offers a path of least resistance and very rarely puts a solid wall in front of you that you can't somehow go around or detour until your character can just face-tank it. I think that led to a lot of people who weren't prepared for the game to slap them down and force them to meet it on very specific terms, which may include seeking help or taking advantage of all those buff items you've been collecting.
When I made an NG character for the DLC after having not played for a year or so, I bounced back and forth between SotE content and the Haligtree because I wanted to play with the new toys, but I didn't want to go through Haligtree overpowered. Maybe it's because I was approaching SotE with a lot more caution, but honestly the Haligtree often gave me more trouble. The biggest difference really in my opinion is that Malenia's low poise makes her easier to cheese.
One thing I am curious about is I hear a lot of people say that their sorc builds were made unviable by how relentlessly the bosses close distance and how narrow their recovery windows are, but I suspect that it's more that flashy ranged builds can't get away with nearly as much as they can in the base game.
16:06
No he's not. Messmer's moveset is not unpredictable like Morgott or the Godskin Duo, you just need to study his strings that occur due to your position. That's why I've been able to no-hit him consistently. 🙂
I haven't no hit him or even beat him first try but messmer always was like 3-5 tries depending on build, even day one
Messmer is honestly one of the my top favorites, his attacks are very learnable and not to say that he's easy, he's not not. But it was so fun learning him, and it it took me like 14 tries to beat him, not terrible compared to other people who spends hours or days and swear that he's impossible.
The real challenge fighting Rahdan is not going under 60fps during second phase
Omg . You are so cool. Congratulations. The game wasn’t hard. You are above the curve. I’m sorry the game being nerfed destroyed your pride .