Malenia
3I think daggers are an RNG manipulation necessity. It helps to put beats into the fight where you can actually attempt to visually confirm enemy behavior, it's as helpful against Malenia as it was against Margit.
This is a strength build run where I'm putting together what I learned about the fight in a previous 13 agonizing hours. I know this fight is pretty well explored online, so I'm just muttering to myself more or less, but...
I think my big problem with Malenia isn't really Malenia herself... it's the rest of the game leading up to her. As much hate that there is for Waterfowl Dance, Malenia is a super boss in a game where the legendary hero of the story is a Blue Swordsman who is described as "dancing in combat." For better or worse, this kind of call and response, reflex test stuff is signature of the Souls games since the Artorias DLC.
And the problem is that I don't really think the experience with Malenia, and I'm sure many would disagree... but I think Malenia is a capstone fight in game where lots of enemies essentially do the exact shit she does. The big test is mostly Waterfowl Dance to start with and, frankly, I think the more I thought about how I had to dodge I finally theorized how and why you have to dodge/treat Waterfowl Dance.
I've seen people dodge it, but I never internalized that stuff prior. My initial solutions to Malenia where as follows:
1. Mimic Tear to get that shit over with
2. Morgott's Cursed Blade and Swarm of Flies Patch 1.02
3. Off-hand Bloodhound Step
Bloodhound Step was HILARIOUS to fight Malenia with, I didn't really need to learn shit about how the Waterfowl Dance worked, I just zipped off to freedom. With the nerfs to some of the above stuff, though I think Swarm of Flies would still be decent, I wanted to learn the fight properly.
The big point of frustration I had with this fight is that, like many other fights, you really have to fight the way the game wants you do. If you deviate from the call and response, dodge/take turn gameplay you will probably die. I actually think that magic with the Night class of spells, when you realize that enemies don't input read spells like Night's Comet, I think it's important to see that constructing a working spell deck is, once again, something that you can use to solve this fight.
I saw someone nuke Malenia with a spell oriented build in 2 minutes and 14 seconds. So performing this fight this way, I really think that the big thing about Elden Ring is that combat is supposed to be dynamic and feel like combat in the sense that your opponent has tells and can even feint or trick you...
But the problem is that, there are action games where I am used to being able to do the same and in Elden Ring that doesn't feel robust at all. It's there, there's some really potent, really effective stuff... but for much of those dozens of hours, the game can just end up a dry struggle.
This is probably way past the point of typing, but this fight was due, here's da upload.
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