Not Taking Damage
3Showed a friend the previous video and he was like "You totally had that no damage" and so here this stupid shit is lmfao. This is an INCREDIBLY reserved way of using this weapon, you could absolutely just take damage and win with much less agony.
Major manipulation I relied on was throwing a bone dagger then running toward Malenia. There are two attacks I want Malenia to do, either her pursuing slash or her sweeping kick. The pursuit slash I will respond to with a delayed running R1, the horizontal running slash. That's all you get. The sweeping kick, I use a running R2, the vertical chop.
Unlike other weapons, the Colossal Greatsword's heft makes its standing R1s are slow and can root you to the ground so I only use it specifically at moments where I have Malenia's back and can guarantee my safety because of the way she'll respond being fairly reactable.
Second phase is actually where things get dicey. There were two videos I saw on YouTube of people describing how to dodge Waterfowl Dance as a Strength/Colossal Weapon build and guess who can't do it? This guy writing this message. One of the two dinguses was saying it was a "Speed Run Strat" and the other dingus was like "Well I'm not a speed runner so it's something you just do." Two idiots basically.
The major thing is knowing what you can safely create a strategy around, things that allow you to control the consistency of the fight. Basically, overextending in such a way where I would have to perform some advanced dodge is not in the range of interest I have for this game at the moment. The proof of concept is something I can show players that they can use by using their eyes, I can explain how to dodge Waterfowl Dance and why it works in this video 100% consistently about why it works the way it does and the type of attack that it is in a game with a class of attacks that work exactly the same way, save for the fact that a demon isn't performing 2 follow ups after.
That's kind of the secret if you want to extrapolate some meaning there, Malenia I think is a test for a style of play that the game doesn't necessarily force you to perform in such an absolutely punishing and optimized way. Solutions for the Malenia fight are as varied as the designers allowed for. I think it's more interesting than I gave it credit for because I had to learn a thing or two about why it works the way it does in the sense not of "how do I dodge it" but "why do I dodge it that way?"
And we're already talking about something I am VERY apprehensive about in the dodge-take turnology of people's action game brain. The real sauce here is the knives, for real! Waiting for Malenia to do something is a very stupid thing to do, the knives mean you absolutely can control when you're "primed" for an attack, which means less "GOTCHA" moments of the CPU sucker punching you.
This is what allows me to, in both phases, choose the precise moments I want to attack instead of overextending. I know why I'm attacking and I have time to react after those hits.
In phase two, things get dicey because as Malenia becomes more aggressive, it actually helps for the player to become more aggressive... but I can't really talk about that because when you're a huge idiot trying not to take damage, "oh no I might take damage" will stay your hand for a stupid and arbitrary reason. A Challenge Run lmfao.
But we did it, hope you're happy Gillian and hope it entertains ya!
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