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.
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u/thats_good_bass 12d ago
Yeah, that’s a good point.
Personally, I’m of the opinion that these attacks are too hard to dodge relative to the damage they do. Makes learning take a while.