But that’s the thing—I beelined for Tree Sentinel and Margit on my first playthrough out of contrarianism, and they were INCOMPARABLY easier than fighting Rellana with blessing level 3.
Tree Sentinel hits crazy hard at level one, but his aggression isn’t that high. People who are familiar with souls games can do it with relative ease. Rellana (also, inverted Rennala using swords is kind of funny) hits hard and has high aggression. The aggression seems to just keep increasing with each boss. The Gaol knight acts like a base game boss. Dancing lion is a bit more aggressive. Rellana is where it starts getting a bit wild. Then Messmer is where I’m feeling stuck. The only openings I seem to get are when he’s attacking the mimic, and then as soon as I hit him he just does a 360 fire blast and knocks me back. I just don’t really get where the openings are.
Exactly. I've been slowly learning Rellana's moveset and it's just so fucking painful and slow because she hits like a truck and I die so fast, and it kills momentum because I need to constantly disengage to heal when normally I could've powered through a few more attacks. It also doesn't help that her combos are so fast I'm left utterly clueless what even killed me sometimes.
This is my exact problem with Malenia and her Waterfowl - most people die too fast to it and get no feedback as to what they did wrong, and what to do next time.
I get the same feeling so far from the DLCs new bosses. Even exploring as much as I can and getting all of the blessings I can, 60 vig, Dragoncrest Shield talisman and some decent armor (Mausoleum Knight set + Greathelm), I'm still getting 3-4 shot rather easily.
I haven't been stuck on anything so far for too long, but I also am not having as much fun with major bosses as I thought I would. The spectacle is amazing, but the fight itself is way too messy for my taste.
Rellana for example, while I still don't think she's as hard as Malenia for a couple of reasons, when I finally beat her after maybe 10 minutes of attempts, I don't feel like I've gotten gud at her fight at all. Like... I survived, I killed her but the fight was not clean in any way, shape or form. It worked, but I am not satisfied with it. No boss in the base game made me feel that way. Ever.
I actually just beat Rellana and I definitely have mixed feelings about the fight. For context, I have a lvl 150 primarily strength build and was just using a great katana. I ended up using a shield to parry some of her attacks too. This fight was brutal and I still feel like my earlier criticisms apply.
The worst part of this fight is the learning process, it was just not fun to me. She essentially just throws out a constant flurry of attacks and absurdly long combos that constantly change, with very weird timings, insanely narrow punish windows, and absurd damage. Now all of this is manageable once you start to find find the rhythm of the fight, but getting there was an absolute nightmare. I'd honestly compare it to learning Waterfowl, because when I died, I wouldn't think to myself "oh I dodged too late" or "I need to do this or that next time", I was just utterly clueless and didn't even know what to really do or how to improve. And even when I did make progress, phase 2 just instilled the exact same feeling again.
It also doesn't help that there's some pretty egregious bs in this fight. There were multiple instances where her carian sword projectiles overlapped with her melee attacks which resulted in near unavoidable damage, and there was some pretty blatant input reading too.
Ultimately, beating her was exhilarating and very satisfying, but personally I feel like the mark of a good boss is that I still want to fight them even after I beat them, but I do not feel this way about Rellana, same with Malenia. I definitely intend to summon on a next playthrough.
I don't feel like I've gotten gud at her fight at all. Like... I survived, I killed her but the fight was not clean in any way, shape or form. It worked, but I am not satisfied with it. No boss in the base game made me feel that way. Ever.
I beat the DLC, and this put into words my thoughts perfectly for most bosses I struggled with.
There's something missing about these bosses, it is still overcoming a great challenge, but I don't feel it I got gud I guess. It feels like I cheesed it, even though I didn't.
My best guess is that I don't feel like I'm mastering the boss' movesets. Some attacks I never learn how to deal with, I just trade with them. In the base game, even if I can't execute it every time, I know how to deal with most attacks I see. With DLC bosses and their 6+ strings, I'm rarely sure what the right answer is.
This is my exact problem with Malenia and her Waterfowl - most people die too fast to it and get no feedback as to what they did wrong, and what to do next time.
I mean, I also think the fact that there is basically no way to avoid it up close with a mid roll tanks it a bit.
My victory fight against the Dancing Lion was like this. I actually traded deaths with him. He was in the middle of a lightning attack and I was in the middle of the lion flip move AoW and couldn't roll away in time. The whole fight was a cluster fuck of constantly trading blows and hoping I killed him before running out of estus. I know this strat will not be maintainable long term in the DLC. I have NO CLUE how I could do that fight cleanly with minimal hits taken.
Same, in the base game I felt like I got better and better at fighting them. Rellana in particular I did not even know what was I doing. I survived and beat her but the only move I could read was the moon drops and the Carian Granduer II. Everything else was just panic roll.
I feel like base game bosses are a bit too hard to get good at, and also a bit too easy to beat. The DLC mostly fixes the second problem, at the expense of the first.
i honestly felt rellana had a pretty good moveset. A nice little gap closer where you could easily dodge 3 hits. Not horribly aggressive. And some really sweet fire and ice attacks, which are all dodgeable.
I think one of the major differences is, there is no time to learn the moveset. She's almost constantly aggressive, hits like a freight train loaded with mac trucks, never stops attacking, can hit the whole arena, and has attacks that constantly carry her movement forward.
Rolling away or to the side is almost always a death sentence in this DLC. You have to roll through the enemy and stay aggressive, because the enemy is never not going to be aggressive. And you have to pray for a half a second pause long enough to heal and pray the enemy doesn't grow a cock and balls out of their ass and spear you in the gut with it.
Elden Ring infamously punished poor Souls habits. But now it feels like Shadow of the Erdtree is punishing you for playing the game.
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u/thats_good_bass 10d ago
But that’s the thing—I beelined for Tree Sentinel and Margit on my first playthrough out of contrarianism, and they were INCOMPARABLY easier than fighting Rellana with blessing level 3.