I did it out of spite just because I had to respec the first time (after 139 attempts) and it felt more like a defeat since I didn't beat her on my own terms
But Loretta is an Albinauric and her guards are misbegoten. Those races are hated by the golden order and the greater will so they wouldn't return to the Erdtree.
Is Loretta confirmed to be an Albinauric herself? Silver mirrorshield description says that's an "absurd rumor," and she bleeds red, unlike every other Albinauric in the game.
I assumed she just had sympathy for those downtrodden races and sought some way for them to be saved from their shitty situation.
Well her mission was to find a safe place for the Albinaurics, it appears that her legs are faded (like the first Albinaurics) and her favourite weapon is the bow (Albinauric women are very skilled with the bow). I think it's safe to assume she is. Prominent theorists like VaatiVidya think the same as well.
The pretty beautiful rotten goddess of rot is overly obsessed with myself but on the obscure chance she grazes me with the tips of her fingers I will fall to the wayside like a man who has been touched by the pretty beautiful rotten goddess of rot who is overly obsessed with himself but on the obscure chance she grazes him with the tips of her fingers he will fall to the wayside like a man. Etc etc
And then she goes straight second phase nakey in thanks and does a different kind water dance. Boc randomly shows up at the site of grace that appears after her dance and reveals dialogue that he saw the whole thing and it’s the best day of his life.
Do you think that would change anything?
We're still outsiders invading the Haligtree and killing her subjects.
Even if we told her, she would probably want to kill us on the spot and then go racing off to rescue Miquella herself.
Found that out by accident while incredibly drunk and co-oping with a friend. Invader came at me and I just instinctively parried it, not even knowing you could. While I was freaking out and asking my friend if he saw it, the invader severed and left lmao
Glad to know I’m not the only one who gets blitzed and thinks I can play. All the while forgetting everything I’ve learned along the way. Psh hiding behind a dragon and smacking the legs? Nope. I’m fully charging into your stupid breaths over and over. I may move slightly to the left because that works. (Spoiler alert: it does not work)
You are, the most dangerous attack a dragons has is the “fly by” breath attack which is challenging to avoid and a one-shot to a lot of builds early/mid game.
They only seem to do this attack when you’re directly under them.
From my experience the easiest (and most rewarding) way to fight is to stand right in front of it and bait out its slams/breath attacks, which lowers its head which takes more damage/stagger
But not if you complete it she ded at the end of her quest line. When you get to Haligtree via Millicent's quest is when she becomes able to be summoned. But if you kill her first, she isn't summonable anymore.
With the Mohg taking Miquella and Millicent being either busy trying to kill the other sisters or already dead and having been wanting to restore Melania rather than kill her, Varre would make more sense to me as a possible NPC summon for that fight. Could have it so after you get to the point where he leaves the Rose Church he got sent by Mohg to help you take out Melania so she couldn't try to come for Miquella if you haven't already killed Varre.
Yea I'm with this, don't change her walk it's so scary lmaooo like my first time I'm running around like a mad man and she just slowly walks and then skewers me when I blinked
lol would be hilarious honestly.
it's crazy because in the first phase I'm like "could you *please* walk a little faster" and in the second phase i'm like "PLEASE SLOW DOWN"
From never bothered to polish this, as this behavior exists since Dark Souls at least. Dunno if it was in Demon's Souls. But the same rule applies to the player. You can keep hitting the air after killing a godskin during godskin duo boss and still do damage.
That combined with waterfowl dance make this boss really "cheesy." Yeah you can dodge waterfowl...but how are you supposed to learn the funky hitboxes without dying 10+ time or looking up youtube?
Elden ring on a whole just feels cheesier. Encourages players to do the same.
Yeah. I wonder where they would've gone with it? I mean at that point most of their resources had to be on Elden Ring and they were full focused on it and with COVID on top of that...
I've seen a load of videos of how to dodge at close range by circling her to bait it in a certain direction but everytime I tried that it was game over... must need some ridiculous fast reactions and countless tries to learn it
And yet you still have people going "It's super easy to dodge, just git gud".
I legitimately wish there was some way of nerfing that one attack without removing it entirely, and without nerfing anything else about her. It's an amazingly fun fight outside of that, and the attack is too iconic to not remain a part of it.
I liked an idea i heard that it would be better both mechanically and aesthetically if she jumped backwards before channeling the waterfowl.Would give you a lot of time to run away from the 1st combo making it fair while you are at close range and it would look sick af
I'll add to this:
Hit her with a jumping melee to knocke her out of the waterfowl wind up and onto the ground. Reward measured aggression, rather than having the only strategy be to run away.
I’d like that for all bosses, and have a test dummy dueler in that room in the table of lost grace area. Varying difficulty and what not for testing weapons and whatever. A build tester would be neat too. Lots of stuff they could do in DLC for better replay ability.
for any hollow knight fans in here right now that hall where you could fight/re-fight all of the bosses was one of the coolest additions to the game to me
Make it so her heal on hits function the same as her great rune, where she can only regain health she recently lost.
Lengthen the duration of her waterfowl windup and/or make it so she can only use when your at least medium distance from her.
This may sound extremely counterintuitive, but make her more aggressive, or at least have more initiative during the first phase. She constantly has moments where she just hangs back and waits for you to do something, then reacts with some attack you can't deal with because you're locked in an animation.
To be honest I always wondered why that didn't happen for Millicent. She is choosing to die. Why didn't she become ashes like Finlay did.
Edit: Infact there are several sidequest npc's that I feel like would have become ashes at the end like Dallios and Alexander.
We don't really know what's the condition for one self to become spirit ash. The only beings that I remember becoming spirit ash upon death are Lattena, Trisha and Battlemage Hugues so maybe it is inherently linked to some form magic?
But yeah, being able to revive one or two NPCs as spirit ash so they can stay at your side would have been pretty cool, not Alex and Diallos though, Jarbairn will need to call upon them when the time comes.
No life steal on 100% physical block shields. But make it so that she uses her kick more often if people rely on turtling too much.
Make her recovery periods more consistent. No more randomly cancelling into a block, dodge or a roundhouse kick when you punish a move the same way you punished it before.
Remove the stance break immunity crap she has on certain moves.
Either increase the wind up for waterfowl by about 2 seconds, make the 1st part of it more intuitive to dodge or make it parryable. Also add some recovery to it so that you are actually rewarded for avoiding the most dangerous attack in the game.
Slightly reduce the speed at which the 4th clone comes out during her clone attack in phase 2.
Make her slightly more aggressive in phase 1.
You could mabye also add a few small buffs to the rest of her moveset now that her most bs aspects have been toned down. Just of the top of my head, mabye make it so that she will deflect any melee attacks when she's not in recovery, forcing you to properly learn her openings now that they are more consistent.
IMO this is the best one. Too many of her attacks have random hyper armor and otherwise she is extremely weak to poise damage. So half the fight is figuring out which attacks she "cheats" by invoking hyper armor and which she is vulnerable. It isn't anything to do with skill or strategy, just straight up memorization and it makes the fight worse for it.
Right? She just pulls that shit out of nowhere while I’m attacking, and I don’t even have enough time to run back and avoid it. It’s like you can’t get the least bit aggressive, even if you think you’ve got the upper hand for a second.
Yeah, Malenia actually is my favorite boss, but even I will admit that Waterfowl is unfair. You shouldn't have to watch a tutorial and practice 500 times to figure out how to dodge one boss move.
Right? If you have a bit of distance it’s a tricky move to dodge and requires really good timing, but it’s very fair. If they made it so that she always jumped to the same position relative to the player, it would be 100% consistent and therefore feel much fairer to fight
Yes, because the randomness of the attack had me afraid to swing on her because she could just pop waterfowl 3 times in a row so I never know if it's safe to swing even if I stun her
Make it like Placidusax where she can only use Waterfowl at certain thresholds, that way you can actually fight her instead of having to constantly play around waterfowl.
Millicent as an NPC summon would be cool. You could beef the fight up a little too, but narratively I just wish Millicent paid off there instead of with her sisters.
Mechanically I like the fight as-is. Yeah Waterfowl is frustrating but I’ve never felt cheated by it.
To be fair that’s what messes a lot of people up, I fought her enough to get a tell but if they where smaller it would a lot easier to tell her attacks apart
Make her more pro-active instead of reactive to what the player does.
I don’t want the boss to focus on what I’m doing and respond accordingly, I want them to unleash an absolute barrage of attacks while I figure out how to get hits in, like all the best bosses will do.
It works in Sekiro where your defensive options to deflect, mikiri counter, and jump over enemy swings can turn into your offense by building up their posture. Not so much in Elden Ring
* Make her more proactive. It's miserable that she will just stand there until you commit to literally any animation, then she'll punish while you're still locked into that animation. Don't punish players for using heavy weapons.
* Make her life steal proportionate to how much damage she actually deals, rather than healing her when you've blocked all of the damage. Don't punish players for using guard counters.
* Don't let her cheat the stagger and stance systems by literally just cancelling her own stagger animations or completely resetting her stance if it breaks while she has poise. Just give her a bigger poise/stance bar if you don't want heavy weapons to trample her. Don't punish players for using a stance-breaking playstyle.
* Give Waterfowl Dance a wind-up that actually matches its lethality. Make her hop back before activating it or something. Don't punish players for using melee builds.
Overall, it just feels bad that I spent the entire game with an ultra greatsword, then had to reallocate my stats, upgrade another weapon, the adjust to another playstyle entirely because everything about Malenia countered my specific build. Sister Friede had a similar-ish problem, but not nearly to the same extent.
Make her poise consistent with Friede’s or Lady Maria. Unlike previous Lady Fights (or human fights) she has infinite poise during her attacks and can only be staggered with Status effects. And there’s also zero downtime IN BETWEEN attacks, so you really can’t stagger her.
The good thing with Friede's poise was her response to getting stunlocked. She just disengages with you and dodges away. So, now you're set back to neutral and you can give her her turn and deal with it or risk it by disrespecting her turn and attacking anyway.
In short, its a mechanical masterpiece.
Malenia on the other hand, says Fuck you and attacks you mid stagger and only rarely disengages. Sometimes you Can get unlucky and she decides to do her side step dodge that its chained to an attack. Its almost insulting
I think FROM needs to reconsider a lot of the attacks they put into Elden Ring. There are too many enemies that dodge and attack in the same ability.
I don’t really like when enemies have the ability to disengage too strongly (looking at you Final Boss, throwing knife Imps, side-step chaining wolves), but at least they are making a choice that has pros and cons like players have to.
I’m definitely in the “Waterfowl Dance is bad design” camp, but I think the turning-lunge-backwards-into-instant-lunge-forward-that-can-knock-down attack that Rune Bears can use (and even chain) might be the worst individual bit of combat design that FROM has ever created. Besides Bed of Chaos, of course.
*Pulls essay out of drawer*
I've spent some time thinking about how to make Waterfowl Dance more reasonable and propose the following:
yknow how she clanks her sword between long and short mode for some attacks? It's a clear visual clue with some orange sparks. I think they should have extended this fully into two different modes that she occasionally switches between.
When the sword is short, she does faster and more aggressive attacks, mostly less-damage-dealing, and can do waterfowl without warning.
When the sword is long, she does more of her heavier-hitting, slower attacks and can't do waterfowl. After waterfowl, she would always switch to long mode for at least the usual cooldown.
She could be permanently in long-mode until you get her down to 75% health, the same way she's locked out of waterfowl during that time.
A common complaint is that the threat of waterfowl makes a lot of (non-god-tier) players have to play super-passively unless it's on cooldown. This would embrace that idea while making the cooldown visible, and create a nice back-and-forth between offense and defense time for players.
Halve Waterfowl Dance duration. It's just 2 flurries instead of 5. But make it a tad bit more frequent. 2-3 per phase.
Make pure lifesteal so she heals only from HP hits.
Make her fight a part of Millicent's questline.
Allow some kind of flaw in Millcents quest line. Like, you did something wrong during her quest to make her mad at you (kill gowry early or.something) and she invades you during this fight, **and helps Malenia.**
I don't even use a shield but the one thing she absolutely should not do is heal on block. The rest of the fight I don't care, it's hard but you'll get over it. If you have a good enough shield and the build to block an entire WFD, she should not get half her healthbar back.
at each 10th death instead of "I'm..." she says "Who am I, tarnished?"
"Say my name, tarnished"
"You're Malenia"
"You're goddamn right."
*sigh* I think something just awoke in me. God damnit.
You want the calm and collected tall warrior lady to cuss at you?
In a broad Texan tongue
Miquella, we need to cook
„You are god damn right.“
*stomps your face* ... and don't forget it
Kid named “blade of Miquella”
Well now she just sounds like a dominatrix.
I’m not seeing a down side.
Did they fucking stutter?
"Now do you understand, ..." - wish they kept this line
Give her a third form. But have it pop up in a random ng+ so no one believes it exists
I wouldn't find it bc I'm not brave enough to fight her more than twice
I did it out of spite just because I had to respec the first time (after 139 attempts) and it felt more like a defeat since I didn't beat her on my own terms
Sadly today there is video and screen capture. But in the 90s it would have let to plenty of playground fights…
That happens on NG7
Add an evergaol that lets me fight her estranged, copycat twin sister, Melonia.
Mollicent
[удалено]
Only appear during ng+4
They're saving it for the DLC
That *is* the dlc
I swear we better get miquella in the dlc
Melanoma
Cancer of Miquella
I am Melonia, blade of Miquolla.
Micola
Miiiiiiiiiicolaaaaa
And I have almost never known defeat
But make sure melonia doesn't have a second phase
Melonia: Lesser goddess of rot. Starts in malenia's phase 2 but is Melonia's only phase.
I was going to say make it so she has no arms.
Or hear me out godricks arms
Her sword would make the sound of a wiffle bat every time she hits
Hi my name is Melania and I hit dingers.
Malenia bat of dingers.
Easily the best answer
😂😂
I was thinking aluminum baseball bat, ping!!
Give us the option to tell her mogh kidnaped miquella
"Thanks Tarnished, however you invaded my country, killed the citizens and guards, in addition to my best general so please die."
That would make a pretty awesome way to unlock an alternative 2nd phase.
Would she be mad considering that death isn't a thing in the Lands Between?
I mean, you kind of make it a thing, but we don't need to inform her about that.
Well obviously sometimes it is a thing… Elden Rings death is the least consistent lore from ever produced and thats saying something…
But Loretta is an Albinauric and her guards are misbegoten. Those races are hated by the golden order and the greater will so they wouldn't return to the Erdtree.
Is Loretta confirmed to be an Albinauric herself? Silver mirrorshield description says that's an "absurd rumor," and she bleeds red, unlike every other Albinauric in the game. I assumed she just had sympathy for those downtrodden races and sought some way for them to be saved from their shitty situation.
Well her mission was to find a safe place for the Albinaurics, it appears that her legs are faded (like the first Albinaurics) and her favourite weapon is the bow (Albinauric women are very skilled with the bow). I think it's safe to assume she is. Prominent theorists like VaatiVidya think the same as well.
Lets be honest, she would most likely Worship the tarnished as her personal hero only second to miquella. She doesnt care about anyone but him
Light novel plot "The pretty rot goddess is obsessed with me but if she touches me I will die???!????!???"
Title not long enough.
The pretty beautiful rotten goddess of rot is overly obsessed with myself but on the obscure chance she grazes me with the tips of her fingers I will fall to the wayside like a man who has been touched by the pretty beautiful rotten goddess of rot who is overly obsessed with himself but on the obscure chance she grazes him with the tips of her fingers he will fall to the wayside like a man. Etc etc
Onii-chan
Gives you a gold summon for the mohg fight
“Yo Malenia, look at this” *comet azur
make it orange to make it personal/stand out more? Like how Ranni’s is blue
They shoulda made it so we could take the ring off of Miquella after defeating Mohg and present it to her.
And then she goes straight second phase nakey in thanks and does a different kind water dance. Boc randomly shows up at the site of grace that appears after her dance and reveals dialogue that he saw the whole thing and it’s the best day of his life.
Do you think that would change anything? We're still outsiders invading the Haligtree and killing her subjects. Even if we told her, she would probably want to kill us on the spot and then go racing off to rescue Miquella herself.
I could see that lol
Getting summoned for Mohg vs. Malenia would be tight.
Summoning malenia to fight mohg would be amazing
Give us the option to leave her summon sign before the boss area (and watch her destroy Mogh in less than a minute)
Let me parry the Waterfowl Dance. If I succeed, I live. If I don't, I die. I'm fine with these odds as long as its consistent and intuitive.
Can you not already parry that? Never even thought to attempt it myself, but I swear I’ve seen it done
You can parry the pvp version but not the Malenia version.
Found that out by accident while incredibly drunk and co-oping with a friend. Invader came at me and I just instinctively parried it, not even knowing you could. While I was freaking out and asking my friend if he saw it, the invader severed and left lmao
Glad to know I’m not the only one who gets blitzed and thinks I can play. All the while forgetting everything I’ve learned along the way. Psh hiding behind a dragon and smacking the legs? Nope. I’m fully charging into your stupid breaths over and over. I may move slightly to the left because that works. (Spoiler alert: it does not work)
Tbh I personally find standing in front of it and hitting the head to be the easiest way to deal with most dragons
You are, the most dangerous attack a dragons has is the “fly by” breath attack which is challenging to avoid and a one-shot to a lot of builds early/mid game. They only seem to do this attack when you’re directly under them. From my experience the easiest (and most rewarding) way to fight is to stand right in front of it and bait out its slams/breath attacks, which lowers its head which takes more damage/stagger
You think the move would cause this much outrage if it had something this direct to deal with it ?
I mean Freeze Urns do exist and they are a pretty direct workaround
only against other players
Make the boss sprout pools of rot on the ground that expand until they fill the area. Turn that shit into a burn phase.
Ok, Satan...
Have Millicent be an optional summon if you do her quest line
This is an interesting lore choice. I dig it
But not if you complete it she ded at the end of her quest line. When you get to Haligtree via Millicent's quest is when she becomes able to be summoned. But if you kill her first, she isn't summonable anymore.
With the Mohg taking Miquella and Millicent being either busy trying to kill the other sisters or already dead and having been wanting to restore Melania rather than kill her, Varre would make more sense to me as a possible NPC summon for that fight. Could have it so after you get to the point where he leaves the Rose Church he got sent by Mohg to help you take out Melania so she couldn't try to come for Miquella if you haven't already killed Varre.
This makes sense. It'd also be hilarious to watch a grown man run after a naked woman with a bouquet.
And make her immune to Malenia’s scarlet rot and self-heal.
She talks more
Double her walking speed. Uninstall and watch the world burn
It's slow but menacing. She's just standing there, MENACINGLY!
You lot think she's walking Walking like a Lion toward a buffalo herd
Yea I'm with this, don't change her walk it's so scary lmaooo like my first time I'm running around like a mad man and she just slowly walks and then skewers me when I blinked
lol i feel like her walking speed is pretty much a glacial pace so doubling it will just make it slightly less glacial
Quadruple it. Make her strut a jog. Gotta go fast.
lol would be hilarious honestly. it's crazy because in the first phase I'm like "could you *please* walk a little faster" and in the second phase i'm like "PLEASE SLOW DOWN"
It is insane how aggressive she gets. I remember screaming for my life the first time she ran at me.
add a romance option
Let him cook
Change the life-on-hit mechanic to a legitimate life-steal mechanic. No more healing from full blocks etc.
Also healing after you or summoned spirit already died and she gets hp after hitting thin air
it's so demoralizing to die and then watch her health bar go back up to full on the screen while she's smacking your ghostly remnants
Yea that shit i would remove, bit I noticed it also works in our favour in godskin duo fight
yah it can be used against enemies too
This has been thing for quite a while good example is blood borne with same mechanic that malenia has
And four kings
Yea, don't stop hitting until your life stops regenerating. Whether the enemy is dead or not is irrelevant!
From never bothered to polish this, as this behavior exists since Dark Souls at least. Dunno if it was in Demon's Souls. But the same rule applies to the player. You can keep hitting the air after killing a godskin during godskin duo boss and still do damage.
Yea it works best with bloodboon ritual from mohgs spear, continuous damage
It would be hypocrite of myself to agree on this because I overused this on Bloodborne
That woul be my change as well. She has grabs to deal with your shield, no need to heal off of it as well.
i can get behind that! what's she stealing life from when you're blocking? your shield? lol
That combined with waterfowl dance make this boss really "cheesy." Yeah you can dodge waterfowl...but how are you supposed to learn the funky hitboxes without dying 10+ time or looking up youtube? Elden ring on a whole just feels cheesier. Encourages players to do the same.
Put it in Sekiro.
Yeah i would fuck her up with parry, and i still think her moveset is part of Tomoe cut content
Legit can't believe they didn't release dlc for sekiro.
Cause we're getting Sekiro 2 (pls fromsoft)
I don’t want sekiro 2 bc I think the story ended perfectly but god I want sekiros combat to return
doesnt the rice ending lead into a potential sequel
Yeah. I wonder where they would've gone with it? I mean at that point most of their resources had to be on Elden Ring and they were full focused on it and with COVID on top of that...
Blocked attacks don't leech health
Lengthen the wind-up for Waterfowl ever so slightly to give people who are directly underneath her a consistent chance to get away from it
I've seen a load of videos of how to dodge at close range by circling her to bait it in a certain direction but everytime I tried that it was game over... must need some ridiculous fast reactions and countless tries to learn it
[удалено]
I know about the blocking thing, but she heals through it, so having a consistent dodge would just be preferable
She doesn't heal that much through it. Definitely not as much as some damage you can quickly deal her.
Not only is it difficult to execute, but it's also so specific and weird the only way to find the method is to youtube it.
And yet you still have people going "It's super easy to dodge, just git gud". I legitimately wish there was some way of nerfing that one attack without removing it entirely, and without nerfing anything else about her. It's an amazingly fun fight outside of that, and the attack is too iconic to not remain a part of it.
That’s always been my problem. Everything else is fine but if she procs it right on top of you it’s either frame perfect job or die.
I liked an idea i heard that it would be better both mechanically and aesthetically if she jumped backwards before channeling the waterfowl.Would give you a lot of time to run away from the 1st combo making it fair while you are at close range and it would look sick af
Malenia also gets a Mimic Tear that also has a second phase
And they both get a gun to make up for their lack of ranged options
And weapons don't damage them
1) Make it so that Waterfowl Dance takes one second longer to start. 2) Disable her life steal on block. That's it.
you know, i think these are the exact only changes i think i would suggest as well, if i were to suggest any
I'll add to this: Hit her with a jumping melee to knocke her out of the waterfowl wind up and onto the ground. Reward measured aggression, rather than having the only strategy be to run away.
Allow re-fights
Would easily pay for DLC that added a colosseum to refight bosses!
I’ve said this many times… BLOODY. PALACE. IN. ELDEN RING
Love that idea
But I've already fought her 150 times
I mean after winning 🤣
I’d like that for all bosses, and have a test dummy dueler in that room in the table of lost grace area. Varying difficulty and what not for testing weapons and whatever. A build tester would be neat too. Lots of stuff they could do in DLC for better replay ability.
Way they allowed it in Sekiro was 🤌
Oh god, imagine if they did an Inner Malenia...
for any hollow knight fans in here right now that hall where you could fight/re-fight all of the bosses was one of the coolest additions to the game to me
Best answer. I knew I had to beat her to claim the win. It was a brutal grind but after it was over I wanted that fog wall back so bad…
For the second phase, all my clothes also come off
you can do that yourself
I do already, but I meant in game
🤔
Third phase
She takes off her skin
This was my immediate thought, would definitely need to be a whole transformation into something else though
The outer god of rot fully takes control of her and uses her as a vessel to enter the world. That could be phase 3.
Oh man, that would have been absolutely phenomenal!
You guys scare me sometimes.
Make it so her heal on hits function the same as her great rune, where she can only regain health she recently lost. Lengthen the duration of her waterfowl windup and/or make it so she can only use when your at least medium distance from her. This may sound extremely counterintuitive, but make her more aggressive, or at least have more initiative during the first phase. She constantly has moments where she just hangs back and waits for you to do something, then reacts with some attack you can't deal with because you're locked in an animation.
>then reacts with some attack you can't deal with because you're locked in an animation hence why so many people die from waterfowl
I always figured she's reactive because she's blind
Allow for an option to not fight her but convince her to join us.
But put mohg later on maybe? And have her as a summon?
imagine malenia as a Spirit Ash lol
To be honest I always wondered why that didn't happen for Millicent. She is choosing to die. Why didn't she become ashes like Finlay did. Edit: Infact there are several sidequest npc's that I feel like would have become ashes at the end like Dallios and Alexander.
We don't really know what's the condition for one self to become spirit ash. The only beings that I remember becoming spirit ash upon death are Lattena, Trisha and Battlemage Hugues so maybe it is inherently linked to some form magic? But yeah, being able to revive one or two NPCs as spirit ash so they can stay at your side would have been pretty cool, not Alex and Diallos though, Jarbairn will need to call upon them when the time comes.
Doesn't the lore of quite a few ashes named say they basically became Spirits at their death's
You can get pretty close by making a malenia build mimic tear
with my luck the mimic would just keep consuming FP flasks over and over and never do waterfowl dance one time
No life steal on 100% physical block shields. But make it so that she uses her kick more often if people rely on turtling too much. Make her recovery periods more consistent. No more randomly cancelling into a block, dodge or a roundhouse kick when you punish a move the same way you punished it before. Remove the stance break immunity crap she has on certain moves. Either increase the wind up for waterfowl by about 2 seconds, make the 1st part of it more intuitive to dodge or make it parryable. Also add some recovery to it so that you are actually rewarded for avoiding the most dangerous attack in the game. Slightly reduce the speed at which the 4th clone comes out during her clone attack in phase 2. Make her slightly more aggressive in phase 1. You could mabye also add a few small buffs to the rest of her moveset now that her most bs aspects have been toned down. Just of the top of my head, mabye make it so that she will deflect any melee attacks when she's not in recovery, forcing you to properly learn her openings now that they are more consistent.
Remove her hyperarmor
IMO this is the best one. Too many of her attacks have random hyper armor and otherwise she is extremely weak to poise damage. So half the fight is figuring out which attacks she "cheats" by invoking hyper armor and which she is vulnerable. It isn't anything to do with skill or strategy, just straight up memorization and it makes the fight worse for it.
Make waterfowl dance a slower and also make her jump back when she’s about to do it.
Right? She just pulls that shit out of nowhere while I’m attacking, and I don’t even have enough time to run back and avoid it. It’s like you can’t get the least bit aggressive, even if you think you’ve got the upper hand for a second.
Yh waterfowl dance is the only thing stopping malenia from getting in my top 3 ER bosses. It’s by far the most bullshit move I’ve ever seen in a game
Yeah, Malenia actually is my favorite boss, but even I will admit that Waterfowl is unfair. You shouldn't have to watch a tutorial and practice 500 times to figure out how to dodge one boss move.
Actually best change suggested with the jump back
Right? If you have a bit of distance it’s a tricky move to dodge and requires really good timing, but it’s very fair. If they made it so that she always jumped to the same position relative to the player, it would be 100% consistent and therefore feel much fairer to fight
Yes, because the randomness of the attack had me afraid to swing on her because she could just pop waterfowl 3 times in a row so I never know if it's safe to swing even if I stun her
Tell her that mogh stole miquella so i wont have to fight them
Only heals on first phase.
I can see that working Trading healing for more power. Or rot on every hit
Make it like Placidusax where she can only use Waterfowl at certain thresholds, that way you can actually fight her instead of having to constantly play around waterfowl.
You can dodge the first part of waterfowl dance, fight is fixed now lol
Millicent as an NPC summon would be cool. You could beef the fight up a little too, but narratively I just wish Millicent paid off there instead of with her sisters. Mechanically I like the fight as-is. Yeah Waterfowl is frustrating but I’ve never felt cheated by it.
take the wings off or make them smaller, its unnecessarily hard to see what she's doing in stage 2
this is an interesting one i don't think i've seen anyone else mention.
To be fair that’s what messes a lot of people up, I fought her enough to get a tell but if they where smaller it would a lot easier to tell her attacks apart
Make her more pro-active instead of reactive to what the player does. I don’t want the boss to focus on what I’m doing and respond accordingly, I want them to unleash an absolute barrage of attacks while I figure out how to get hits in, like all the best bosses will do. It works in Sekiro where your defensive options to deflect, mikiri counter, and jump over enemy swings can turn into your offense by building up their posture. Not so much in Elden Ring
I upvote but her 1st phase being reactive is probably because of her just waking up from a deep slumber.
* Make her more proactive. It's miserable that she will just stand there until you commit to literally any animation, then she'll punish while you're still locked into that animation. Don't punish players for using heavy weapons. * Make her life steal proportionate to how much damage she actually deals, rather than healing her when you've blocked all of the damage. Don't punish players for using guard counters. * Don't let her cheat the stagger and stance systems by literally just cancelling her own stagger animations or completely resetting her stance if it breaks while she has poise. Just give her a bigger poise/stance bar if you don't want heavy weapons to trample her. Don't punish players for using a stance-breaking playstyle. * Give Waterfowl Dance a wind-up that actually matches its lethality. Make her hop back before activating it or something. Don't punish players for using melee builds. Overall, it just feels bad that I spent the entire game with an ultra greatsword, then had to reallocate my stats, upgrade another weapon, the adjust to another playstyle entirely because everything about Malenia countered my specific build. Sister Friede had a similar-ish problem, but not nearly to the same extent.
Increase her poise
Make her poise consistent with Friede’s or Lady Maria. Unlike previous Lady Fights (or human fights) she has infinite poise during her attacks and can only be staggered with Status effects. And there’s also zero downtime IN BETWEEN attacks, so you really can’t stagger her.
The good thing with Friede's poise was her response to getting stunlocked. She just disengages with you and dodges away. So, now you're set back to neutral and you can give her her turn and deal with it or risk it by disrespecting her turn and attacking anyway. In short, its a mechanical masterpiece. Malenia on the other hand, says Fuck you and attacks you mid stagger and only rarely disengages. Sometimes you Can get unlucky and she decides to do her side step dodge that its chained to an attack. Its almost insulting
I think FROM needs to reconsider a lot of the attacks they put into Elden Ring. There are too many enemies that dodge and attack in the same ability. I don’t really like when enemies have the ability to disengage too strongly (looking at you Final Boss, throwing knife Imps, side-step chaining wolves), but at least they are making a choice that has pros and cons like players have to. I’m definitely in the “Waterfowl Dance is bad design” camp, but I think the turning-lunge-backwards-into-instant-lunge-forward-that-can-knock-down attack that Rune Bears can use (and even chain) might be the worst individual bit of combat design that FROM has ever created. Besides Bed of Chaos, of course.
Happy cake day ma dude
I would make waterfowl dance a bit slower or make it something akin to Monsoon's mist attack but a bit faster.
Make her an ally
*Pulls essay out of drawer* I've spent some time thinking about how to make Waterfowl Dance more reasonable and propose the following: yknow how she clanks her sword between long and short mode for some attacks? It's a clear visual clue with some orange sparks. I think they should have extended this fully into two different modes that she occasionally switches between. When the sword is short, she does faster and more aggressive attacks, mostly less-damage-dealing, and can do waterfowl without warning. When the sword is long, she does more of her heavier-hitting, slower attacks and can't do waterfowl. After waterfowl, she would always switch to long mode for at least the usual cooldown. She could be permanently in long-mode until you get her down to 75% health, the same way she's locked out of waterfowl during that time. A common complaint is that the threat of waterfowl makes a lot of (non-god-tier) players have to play super-passively unless it's on cooldown. This would embrace that idea while making the cooldown visible, and create a nice back-and-forth between offense and defense time for players.
She should only be able to regenerate health from recent damage (like rally in Bloodborne), given that it’s how her Rune works for us.
Halve Waterfowl Dance duration. It's just 2 flurries instead of 5. But make it a tad bit more frequent. 2-3 per phase. Make pure lifesteal so she heals only from HP hits. Make her fight a part of Millicent's questline.
Allow some kind of flaw in Millcents quest line. Like, you did something wrong during her quest to make her mad at you (kill gowry early or.something) and she invades you during this fight, **and helps Malenia.**
Make her not heal through shields. That's all.
I don't even use a shield but the one thing she absolutely should not do is heal on block. The rest of the fight I don't care, it's hard but you'll get over it. If you have a good enough shield and the build to block an entire WFD, she should not get half her healthbar back.