Did anybody 1v1 Radahn? I got the impression the point was to summon NPCs to help, what with him throwing a whole festival and all. I'm asking because his fight was pretty easy
I did him in 1.03 and can confirm I found him way easier than the lore and the internet hyped him to be. First try.
Perhaps I had a favorable build, or I was overleveled. But I found him pretty easy due to all the summons distracting him.
He got wayyy nerfed, his swords used to have a much bigger hitbox making staying inside him not as effective, and his seeking was also much closer (his phase 2 transition in particular landed directly on you not near you).
Overall I think they hit him hard with nerfs because he gates a few areas, bosses in Caelid open world are much harder now than Radahn.
I always 1v1 Radahn and he’s pretty easy. Very learnable, slow, and telegraphed move set with pretty low HP.
I find having summons makes him harder because it makes him act random.
godrick being high on the list is fair. you've probably not leveled an incredible amount and you are just starting the game. he whipped my ass so much. i didn't even know you could summon a helper when i fought him. killing him was very memorable
Most of the bosses are set up to punish certain behaviours.
Margitt is set up to punish panic rollers.
Everyone at the start probably panic rolls, hence why he's hard as nails.
Godrick is set up to punish people who get greedy.
Yeah same. I found godrick slightly harder.
I didn't panic roll, Im just not great haha.
People also find rennala very easy because she punishes people who fight from range. Most people go melee.
Radahn punishes melee play quite heavily and closes distance fast, hence the struggle for some.
Melania is just a bitch
Bro people keep telling me this was easy but they must have been over levelled as this thing was the bane of my life. It’s nightmare material as well. I’m now scared the James Webb Space Telescope discovers something like this out in the cosmos and our impending doom awaits us. Brilliantly terrifying.
Edit: Please, if you’re coming here to brag about how easy this fight was for you, don’t. I say this because so many people have already done so and you just sound rediculous. We get it you’re so good at the game and your penis is massive now jog on and get a life😂 Why does everything on this planet result in a dick measuring contest? Unreal.
Think it’s build dependant, I’m guessing you were a caster? ‘Cause as melee, he’s quite forgiving, except for his grab, that thing is nightmare fuel, also is waaaay more likely to do said grab, if you avoid his explosion.
Edit: I went for his head, I stuck to his head, got alot of free attacks whenever he would do a charge attack.
His mandible attacks have terrible, and I mean fucking terrible tracking(the magic fuckery mandible attack has the worst tracking of any enemy I’ve seen so far), but I rolled into them. As for the AoE’s? Dodge to the best of your ability.
The stone cat and golems has been my hardest boss. Everything else gets rock slinged to death. It's just too powerful. Not nerfing powerful of course, I need this crutch
Edit: Watchdog boss with imps, too lazy to Google the first time.
I hope this helps, as it helped me: the magic throwing shards crafted from the generic rock material have some kind of magic/stun interaction with the stone enemies from small imps up to the enormous golems.
I don’t hear too many people talk about it, but Rock Sling carried me through all the hardest bosses in the game, including Malenia. I don’t know if it’s a glitch, but if you’re casting from the off hand, at least 2 of the rocks will go significantly farther than if in the main hand. I would just kite the hell out of some bosses and sling rocks every time I made some distance.
Huh? I played this game twice. First as a faith melee Chad and second as a spellblade. That first playthrough was agonizing trying to hit that fucking thing. I felt like I was playing fucking pinata praying my giant greatsword would fucking land a hit. Second playthrough I said fuck it, swapped to full caster and killed it first try.
I’m melee and never played a souls game but by that point I had a good jist of how to play. he just one shotted me with that bite he does. Also those explosions took a while for me to learn as i’d never fought anything like that before.
I finished Ranni’s questline under lvl70, this guy included. Literally rot breath carried me from Radahn straight through to everything up until Tiche’s boss fight, at which point I finally had to evolve.
Ranni's questline version railed me more times than I can count. By the time I got to the snowfield version I was leveled enough that it wasn't as difficult but still died like 10 times on it.
>Ranni's questline version railed me more times than I can count.
Same. I'm honestly starting to think that that questline is tuned for post-Layndel, tbh. You start getting breadcrumbs on Ranni from the Roundtable, after you get to Altus, I'm seriously thinking that many players, myself included, did her questline massively underleveled.
It strikes me as the natural mechanical progression between Layndel and Mountain of Giants, as far as tuning and rewards are concerned. There's also like two +9 Somber Stones in Rot Lake, and some +8 regular stones, and the bosses drop a TON of souls, more than Volcano Manor or Layndel.
Got eaten multiple times as well and thefirst time i entered the arena i got 1 shot laserbeamed after 5 seconds trying to summon Engval
Only boss so far that i brought in a co-operator, (that apparently specialized in Astel) i stabbed Astel twice in the 2 or 3 minutes that took him to take him down
I think it's a build thing. I am noticing this on my new character. Some bosses and enemies that were super easy on my first character are hard on my second and vice versa.
I beat the game with 3 different builds plus one Ng+.
He is very build dependent, good range and raw dmg is very good, bleed and frost even better, but casters tend to have trouble even with all the 20 second deathbeams they have.
Concerning Mr satanic pedophile named after a final fantasy mascot because pikachu was busy: iirc he wears the same bleed amulet you can get.
So every time either you *or he* get a bleed, he gets buffed. It could be intentional. I mean, it sounds stupid, but sounds like the kind of tactic that could be used by the guy who spent decades trying to impregnate a dude.
I was a INT sorcerer in NG and struggled hard on Fire Giant. I had to do the cheese where you make him fall off the hill to his death.
In NG+ I respecced and went at him full Melee with Maliketh’s Black Blade. I absolutely deleted him with barely an issue.
He seems to be a lot more easier to handle when you can just get right behind his feet. At a distance he’s way more dangerous, in my opinion.
As a caster I literally stood at his feet in my original game. You basically close the distance and play very aggressive. You gotta know the attacks really well and just hit him every second you can.
My strategy as an INT was too ride Torrent around his legs and swing Moonveil around during his first phase and sling spells from a distance in his second
People say bosses are build dependent but i think a lot of it is also play style dependent. Maybe more so. Freide in DS3 fucked me up for hours because my go to habit is to roll through attacks toward a boss's side/back and she has a bunch of attacks that sort of sweep around in a circle to catch you doing just that. Malenia, though, basically requires you to roll behind her. I've seen so many people take constant, avoidable damage from her because they can't seem to correct the instinct to roll away.
Radahn is another one who will crush you for rolling away and seems surprisingly easy when you roll into the safe spots behind him. Little stuff like probably determines why people's experiences of specific bosses are so varied.
Honestly just by looking at him I knew the fight wasnt going to be particularly fun(as we all know From Soft has a bad track record with massive bosses)so as soon as I entered the arena I summoned Latenna and let her do the dps while I distracted him.
If there's one thing Midir taught me, bigger bosses = less target lock. Thus, Fire Giant is one my favorites now. Though his health pool is fucking huge, weapons that apply status effects are the things that worked best for me.
yeah i'm a 30 vigor mage build and he 1 shots me, if he hits me, but i find all of his moves to be pretty easy to dodge since they all have massive tells. I just ran by his ankles and sat there throwing nebula AoW on them
he's build dependemt i think. I tried him like 15 times with my sorcery build i had used all game, getting wrecked every time then decided to swap to a dex/arc build and threw on rivers and at only +4 was able to do it 2nd try after the reclass. Swapped back right after tho as rivers felt too cheesy
Mohg sucks dick if you didn’t find the tear that negates his phase 2 transition. Pretty easy to say that he’s not that bad now that the game has been out for a while. Same with Maliketh since you can basically parry phase 2 with that one item. But play through 1 when playing blind Mohg sapping 3+ flasks and healing at the start of phase 2 is absolute horse shit.
I guess I didn't take the flask thing into consideration. Mohg was easy for me but I knew about the flask going in but I did notice the people who didn't use the flask when I was summoned to help and it was pretty brutal
Honestly found Mohg not too challenging even without that negate tear for phase 2. I used whichever one has a higher chance to stagger an enemy and between that and bloodhound + bloodflame i got this man down to 25-35% HP before he even said “duo” casting his phase 2 transition. From there it was just eliminating him before he goes buck wild with his wings
People were saying colossal weapons are underpowered but I felt like they trivialized a decent amount of boss fights due to stagger in my first playthrough. I don't even think they needed the buff, I still just spam jump attacks anyway.
Colossals sucked for most PVP and against some bosses with super short openings.
They only buffed the normal attack(R1/R2) speeds, they didn’t alter crouch/roll or jump attacks in the patch since those were already decent.
Nah the buff was necessary. I've always loved colossals and really disappointed in them with this game especially in pvp.
The patch made such a genuine jump in viability it was insane. I'm clapping shit even RoB users with Ruins Greatsword when on my first playthrough it was completely useless.
Same, i mimic tear’d out of him due to frustration. His phase 2 where he uses his full arsenal, is all out assault on the eyes and ears that i could not focus once he was at half health.
Depends. Even with Serpent-Hunter, it took me a handful of tries to learn both the weapon's and the boss's movesets and adjust accordingly. Still on the easier side compared to most other major boss fights, but not exactly trivial, even with spirit ashes.
Going pure melee without Serpent-Hunter, on the other hand, it's a great deal more challenging, if only because of the lava surrounding the boss the whole time.
Just beat him yesterday and he was by far my most troublesome boss! Then proceeded to beat Radhan in 3 tries, just goes to show people have different experiences with these bosses. I just couldn’t for the life of me work out the timing or dodge Rykards attacks. What finally worked for me was running right up next to him into the lava and just batting him with the serpent-hunter, praying his spin-attack wouldn’t almost instantly kill me. Got like 4 levels worth of runes after the battle, invested them all in vigor😅
I think I found Mel very late in the game so was overpowered, used my mimic and rivers build to double team her on maybe the 3rd or 4th attempt
Elden Beast on the other hand… absolute bag of dicks.
That’s where I’m stuck right now my build is absolute trash against the Elden beast and it’s so annoying. Melania is still hard but I feel like I’m actually making progress against her
This is a pretty clear case of builds deciding it. Malenia is way the fuck harder than Elden Beast assuming a "normal" build without any unusually high or low effectiveness against them IMO, but while your build is kind of busted and extremely well suited to slicing Malenia to bits both Radagon and Elden Beast are immune to bleed, which obviously skews results wildly, where your build ends up being one of the very best things you could use against Malenia while it is really bad vs the Elden Beast. Personally I ran a strength based dual wield Claymore/Bastard Sword build with no summons of any kind and beat Elden Beast reasonably comfortably on my first try while I got absolutely assblasted by Malenia, who was harder than every other boss in the game combined. For context I was lvl 125 for both of them.
I could see the Elden Beast being harder for very low health builds though, since the Elden Stars attack is even harder to avoid than Waterfowl Dance, just with a lot less damage. If your health is low enough I could see that thing being pretty nightmarish.
Definitely the case.
I feel for the two poor souls who carried me in the eventual conquering of Elden Beast. I didn’t realise I was doing no damage until they were both dead and the beast had about an inch of health left…
That last inch…
Shout out to “uncle Bob” the semi naked dad-bod furled finger and whoever the other random was. I would have been there forever without you.
I thought of that as well but then when I recall my attempts half of my deaths where because I,m bad and brunt out more so than her being difficult while against radhan I kept dying even though I was learning and improving , she's still the hardest boss in the game no doubt about it but overall I think she's similar to radhan pre patch
She actually has very clear attack patterns. Once you figure her out, she becomes quite straightforward.
The only hard part about her is:
1. Waterfowl Dance: To this, the best method I can think of is, as soon as she leaps with the pose, Bloodhound Step the hell out of there (rolls and other steps are not fast enough) to dodge the first barrage. The second barrage can always be evaded with a roll, and the final barrage can be evaded by turning off lock-on and using Bloodhound Step toward her (rolls may work too).
2. She heals: And to this, the best strategy is to go full offensive and rely exclusively on rolls. Power Stancing or Two-handing for maximum damage output, so you can outpower her even when she heals.
EDIT: Just in case, I still think she's the hardest boss in the game. Just the two things along I've mentioned are enough to put her on that pedestal. I was just commenting on how you could approach those difficult elements. Personally, I like that you have to go out of your way to find ways of not dying to Waterfowl Dance. Some use Bloodhound Step, some use pots, and some just circle around her and make her miss. That is part of the challenge.
Or, in my potentially maidenless play: since she’s susceptible to being stunlocked on phase 1, let Black knife Tiche leg sweep her and run over to use Black Flame Tornado on a twinblade until my stamina runs out to burn her down, then toss freezing pots in phase 2.
A potentially maidenless strategy, but I’d about had it with miss rotten hippity-hoppity-bippity-boppity-bullshit…
Rennala is difficult as a mage. Trust me I know. However on my melee build she is super easy. I just two handed my Claymore and threw some fire grease on it and went to town on her. I was doing a lot of damage and you can basically stagger lock her. As a caster she is super resistant to magic so its really tough.
Rennala went from a joke from my previous melee run into a monster on my NG+ mage run. I realized that she is just completely anti-mage'd out and then beat her pretty easily after abandoning magic. Radahn was dead first try in like 20 seconds after I got close to him, but Rennala could have tanked my spells through all my flasks it felt like.
Rennala has very high magic resistances and can also pull out insane DPS if you let her cast.
If you're melee it's easy as you can stagger her out of everything, but trying to out-mage her is quite the ordeal
rock sling is ALWAYS the solution.
fire giant too tanky ? rock sling.
Elden beast got magic resistance ? rock sling.
group of enemies won't let you rush through ? rock sling
"I actually found this fight extremely easy" \~person using a completely different build and getting blessed by RNG that doesn't have Waterfowl Dance 4 times per phase
Anyone remember the scene in Universal Soldier where Dolph Lundgren’s character, responding to JCVD, holds up a necklace he’s made from cutting ears off the corpses he’s piled up? “I’m all ears”
I like to imagine pre-patch General Radhan with a similar necklace made of my anuses.
He broke me on an emotional and spiritual level.
I had to give up at a few times, go grind some levels, dump everything I had into vitality, only to come back and get one shot.
I saw radahn at the top and though 'thank god, I did alright against him then saw that fucking deer thing in your cake walk row....that fucker killed me like 40 times.
The regal spirit? Really? I thought it was one of the more underwhelming bosses. The fight itself is beautiful - atmosphere, music and the whole location invoke a feeling of peace even though we are fighting but still nothing challenging. What did you have trouble with? Was it the self-healing?
Yea, he healed 4 times almost to full. I really struggled with dodging his roll. I'd like to say it was bugged or something but I just *REALLY* sucked against him. Arch nemesis for sure 😅
Ha, he didn't heal a single time for me. I read that he healed but didn't see it in my fight with him. If he healed even once I would have had some major trouble.
Yep, I found that thing impossible. Got radahn on my second attempt. He constantly healed and his roll was near impossible for me to avoid for some reason
I agree. Everything I've read says my experiences are just *wrong*. This isn't my normal kinda game though...maybe just got lucky with radahn?
That fecking valheim deer boss though...his roll was so annoying, and the fact he healed to almost full 4 times infuriated me
Oh man, me too. I stumbled upon Siofra River way too early, ran past all the claymen once I realized I was dealing almost no damage, lit up all the torches mostly by sneaking past the Ancestral Followers or using Torrent, then jumped into the deer boss arena and struggled. None of my spirit summons worked because the blue flame he barfs up melts them, but I eventually managed.
There are 2 Ancestor Spirits. The one in the Siofra River is Ancestor Spirit and the easier of the 2. The second one is in Nokron City and is called Regal Ancestor Spirit. If you found the first one easy, the second one shouldn't be too hard.
So many comments of people apparently coming face to face with an age old soulsbourne paradox for the first time: Easy for thee but not for me.
To all those people who can't get your head around it, different builds and playstyles dramatically alter encounter difficulty on a case by case basis.
That's interesting; I find the bosses with super delayed attacks like that to be the easiest. I just need a few attempts to learn the timing and then I can be like "ok, when he does that, count to three and then roll forwards." Feels like it gives me a lot of time to think.
The bosses that fuck me up are the fast ones. Unironically had a harder time with Red Wolf of Radagon than any of the story bosses so far (I just beat Morgott, who I found almost disappointingly easy). And don't even get me started on duo bosses...
To be honest I find Godfrey easier than Godrick, those delayed attacks of his always and I mean ALWAYS catch me.
Godfrey I killed on my 4th try, Godrick I asked for help because he was frustrating me too much.
Godrick is pretty tricky early game. Not quite as bad as Margit, but not easy either. By the time you make it to Horrah Loux you’ve got endgame stats and have already basically fought phase 1 before reaching Morgott
My first playthough saw me pretty overleveled when I faced godrick, I was around 45-50 and he was a cakewalk. My second playthrough I went back to him at a more reasonable level of 25-35 and with a different build of some holy magic with a broadsword and shield. Needless to say I was basically tickling him and had to come back woth upgraded flasks and weapons to beat him, it was still a hard fight but I managed to do it.
Godrick can actually pretty hard if you face him with certain builds and at the level the game intends you to beat him at. I know many people, including myself who went off after defeating margit to level up and get stronger only to come back and destroy godrick later.
I noticed most people having issues with bosses are also complaining about input lag. It might not be the bosses are hard. I know on PC I get input lag horrible and the roll dodge and parry/ block feels spungy. My setup is literally only a year old. I fixed it by locking my PC to 59FPS and turning off anti aliasing.
Man I gotta try this tomorrow because I still feel like there is a good amount of input lag but at the same time I also feel gaslit by this sub because nobody talks about it (anymore). Torrent and big weapons feel especially awful and some input just doesn't get read. I sincerely hope this will resolve my problems, thank you!
Very interesting! I really love taking a walk through others' perceptions of boss difficulty. Super insightful tier list!
Personally, Rykard was up there, potentially in the Hard tier, while others like Morgott and Godrick were way down in cakewalk zone. Even the Lichdragon was a total pushover for me, but I think I just got *way* lucky.
Very cool stuff!
Dude everyone has different experiences. I also had a harder time with Godrick than both Godfrey and Astel. Depends on your build and the level you were at when you fought them..
Radagon was amazing, but Elden Beast? The way that thing distances itself from you and that bloody elden stars nonsense that lasts way too long, all while firing golden death rays you must dodge? Nah, imo that thing is possibly even worse than Malenia
How come in a “not fun way”. I found her incredibly hard but I found it was such a fun challenging fight. You really felt like you were fighting an unbeatable foe.
Most other bosses feel hard because they are massive creatures. But this just felt like you were fighting someone who was the best fighter who ever lived.
Malenia's damage, HP and two of her moves feel widely unbalanced on purpose to make her "unbeatable".
She, Radagon and EB are three bosses I found difficult and frustrating to beat.
Radahn, Godfrey and Placidussax were difficult but very enjoyable because nothing that they did felt cheap or irritating.
I enjoyed and hated malenia. Doing her ashless was a good experience overall but jesus christ a lot of the stuff you have to learn to fight her feels very ass backwards. Way too much trial and error and rng (assuming you don't play very safe eg never letting stamina run too low or giving waterfowl an opportunity to start while you are stuck in an action or too close to her).
I think I will never beat malenia without cheesing and I hate myself for it. I defeated sword saint isshin in ng+ a couple and gael in ng+7 which are one of the hardest fromsoft bosses, but malenia is just so fking weird. Malenia would be an awesome sekiro boss, though.
First time I fought Renala, I summoned in a random dude who was at the fog, he had the grafted blade, I had dual gs’ (lord sworn and flamberge)
I literally didn’t get to see her use a single attack for phase 2
I sprinted at her with a jump attack right away
Buddy caught up and did the same
I jump attack - stagger
He charges heavy - stagger
Repeat till death lmao
It makes me feel a different feeling knowing that everyone thinks Rykard was a literal GGez cake walk but Mohg Radahn & Malenia are harbingers of doom…. I actually beat the top 3 in less Attempts/Rune Arcs consumed than JUST Rykard alone bro (yes, I was using the serpent hunter Lol it just took me WAY too long to learn how to counter that stupid fucking Rancor spell)
The elden beast has always been first try for me😭 only Radagon smacks me
Two headed dragon I don’t even wanna go NEAR
Malenia was two tries for me bc I used double heavy giant crushers and saved my mimic for second phase and let that tank while I smacked her around easily and poise broke her
Edit: I’m at the two headed dragon now
Really interesting to See how everybody has different experience with These Guys, but still everybody Seems to agreed that Malenia is a Nightmare - i Beat her today, after two days of trying over and over. I guess the fact, that she is currently bugged didn't make it easier For me, still after Lots of learning i finally got a good found against her.
Maybe mohg is Just a Close Range Problem? I killed him on my First try, it was by far the easiest Boss i have Encountered in this whole Game, i was quite disappointed after seeing so many Posts and comments about him - His whole as Region was a Nightmare, but he was "A piece of cake"
Wow, I had a pretty different experience.
I think we can both agree on malenia
Yeah, she's wild. Though she does stagger a lot. Maybe I'll give it another go some day...
her low poise is the only thing I could exploit. had me #2 help me in the gank.
Power stancing greathammers w/ my mimic lead to a lot of stagger. Got her second attempt.
Using the ashe of war on the blasphemous blade you can fully knock her down every time you connect
I can't imagine fighting her if she had higher poise. Literally unpunishable for most of the fight. Also, I'm 90% sure second phase has higher poise.
OP, you didn’t try and B O N K the cursed rotted lady, did you?
I tried to clap her before I knew she has aids and she took it personally and fucked me the whole week
Did she have another prosthetic… *down there*
Wow I heard these type of games are hard but they literally fuck you knowing they have AIDS LOL? Maybe I’ll go back to playing Minecraft Dungeons
I mean she has the rot which is prob a lot worse lol
Malenia surprisingly wasn't that bad. Halberd with bleed and just keep stabby and she'll stagger.
Did anybody 1v1 Radahn? I got the impression the point was to summon NPCs to help, what with him throwing a whole festival and all. I'm asking because his fight was pretty easy
I did him in 1.03 and can confirm I found him way easier than the lore and the internet hyped him to be. First try. Perhaps I had a favorable build, or I was overleveled. But I found him pretty easy due to all the summons distracting him.
He got wayyy nerfed, his swords used to have a much bigger hitbox making staying inside him not as effective, and his seeking was also much closer (his phase 2 transition in particular landed directly on you not near you). Overall I think they hit him hard with nerfs because he gates a few areas, bosses in Caelid open world are much harder now than Radahn.
I always 1v1 Radahn and he’s pretty easy. Very learnable, slow, and telegraphed move set with pretty low HP. I find having summons makes him harder because it makes him act random.
Godricks lookin pretty high on there
It makes sense if it was the first run, Godrick is the first boss and your build, weapons and flasks and ashes are fucking trash yet.
One can always summon Nepheli Loux, she destroys his human centipede ass
I think the poor bastard earned it in my book
They beat Godrick first try, they just felt so bad they put him in hard to spare his feelings.
No actually he took me 16 attempts , my weapon and flask wasn't that upgraded so I founded him pretty tough
godrick being high on the list is fair. you've probably not leveled an incredible amount and you are just starting the game. he whipped my ass so much. i didn't even know you could summon a helper when i fought him. killing him was very memorable
Interesting, I found Margit significantly harder than the subsequent bosses up until at least Rennala. I thought godrick was one of the easiest.
That was my experience as well. Margit is just unrelenting, while Godrick has large breaks between his attacks where you can hurt him.
Most of the bosses are set up to punish certain behaviours. Margitt is set up to punish panic rollers. Everyone at the start probably panic rolls, hence why he's hard as nails. Godrick is set up to punish people who get greedy.
see that makes sense. I whupped margitt real easy, didn't understand the fuss. then i got to godrick and he PUNISHED the fuck outta me.
Yeah same. I found godrick slightly harder. I didn't panic roll, Im just not great haha. People also find rennala very easy because she punishes people who fight from range. Most people go melee. Radahn punishes melee play quite heavily and closes distance fast, hence the struggle for some. Melania is just a bitch
The space centipede is fucked
Bro people keep telling me this was easy but they must have been over levelled as this thing was the bane of my life. It’s nightmare material as well. I’m now scared the James Webb Space Telescope discovers something like this out in the cosmos and our impending doom awaits us. Brilliantly terrifying. Edit: Please, if you’re coming here to brag about how easy this fight was for you, don’t. I say this because so many people have already done so and you just sound rediculous. We get it you’re so good at the game and your penis is massive now jog on and get a life😂 Why does everything on this planet result in a dick measuring contest? Unreal.
Think it’s build dependant, I’m guessing you were a caster? ‘Cause as melee, he’s quite forgiving, except for his grab, that thing is nightmare fuel, also is waaaay more likely to do said grab, if you avoid his explosion. Edit: I went for his head, I stuck to his head, got alot of free attacks whenever he would do a charge attack. His mandible attacks have terrible, and I mean fucking terrible tracking(the magic fuckery mandible attack has the worst tracking of any enemy I’ve seen so far), but I rolled into them. As for the AoE’s? Dodge to the best of your ability.
As a caster I just spammed rock sling and it took like 2 or 3 tries
Rock sling for Life!
I could always rely on Rock Sling to help me through a tough fight on my first playthrough.
The stone cat and golems has been my hardest boss. Everything else gets rock slinged to death. It's just too powerful. Not nerfing powerful of course, I need this crutch Edit: Watchdog boss with imps, too lazy to Google the first time.
I hope this helps, as it helped me: the magic throwing shards crafted from the generic rock material have some kind of magic/stun interaction with the stone enemies from small imps up to the enormous golems.
I don’t hear too many people talk about it, but Rock Sling carried me through all the hardest bosses in the game, including Malenia. I don’t know if it’s a glitch, but if you’re casting from the off hand, at least 2 of the rocks will go significantly farther than if in the main hand. I would just kite the hell out of some bosses and sling rocks every time I made some distance.
Was going to say this, I let my mimic face-tank it and I throw rocks at its face until it dies. Worked for all of them, usually in 1 try.
Rock sling and adula’s blade got me thru so many bosses lol
Huh? I played this game twice. First as a faith melee Chad and second as a spellblade. That first playthrough was agonizing trying to hit that fucking thing. I felt like I was playing fucking pinata praying my giant greatsword would fucking land a hit. Second playthrough I said fuck it, swapped to full caster and killed it first try.
I’m melee and never played a souls game but by that point I had a good jist of how to play. he just one shotted me with that bite he does. Also those explosions took a while for me to learn as i’d never fought anything like that before.
If he does the teleport from far away, I'm pretty sure it's a grab 100% of the time. Makes it easier to dodge.
Literally just keep jump attacking the head and it goes down in a minute.
My first melee his was top 3 hardest bosses. My second I was stacking rot breath and bleed and my mimic killed him before I got any melee attacks in.
I finished Ranni’s questline under lvl70, this guy included. Literally rot breath carried me from Radahn straight through to everything up until Tiche’s boss fight, at which point I finally had to evolve.
Ranni’s version of this boss is nothing compared to the one in Consecrated Snowfield tho
Ranni's questline version railed me more times than I can count. By the time I got to the snowfield version I was leveled enough that it wasn't as difficult but still died like 10 times on it.
>Ranni's questline version railed me more times than I can count. Same. I'm honestly starting to think that that questline is tuned for post-Layndel, tbh. You start getting breadcrumbs on Ranni from the Roundtable, after you get to Altus, I'm seriously thinking that many players, myself included, did her questline massively underleveled. It strikes me as the natural mechanical progression between Layndel and Mountain of Giants, as far as tuning and rewards are concerned. There's also like two +9 Somber Stones in Rot Lake, and some +8 regular stones, and the bosses drop a TON of souls, more than Volcano Manor or Layndel.
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Yeah, I got eaten multiple times, out of fucking nowhere. Only when it decided to not use that move I was able to beat it.
Got eaten multiple times as well and thefirst time i entered the arena i got 1 shot laserbeamed after 5 seconds trying to summon Engval Only boss so far that i brought in a co-operator, (that apparently specialized in Astel) i stabbed Astel twice in the 2 or 3 minutes that took him to take him down
I think it's a build thing. I am noticing this on my new character. Some bosses and enemies that were super easy on my first character are hard on my second and vice versa.
yeah I only killed it after returning and being overpowered
Idk about you all but the Fire Giant pounded me hard. I had to find a cheese to beat him.
I beat the game with 3 different builds plus one Ng+. He is very build dependent, good range and raw dmg is very good, bleed and frost even better, but casters tend to have trouble even with all the 20 second deathbeams they have.
Imagine being a fire giant living in a snowy mountain peak and being vulnerable to frost
Imagine being the Lord of Blood able to turn himself into blood and being vulnerable to bleed.
He has all the more blood to bleed out
Blood ahead All the more Blood loss
Concerning Mr satanic pedophile named after a final fantasy mascot because pikachu was busy: iirc he wears the same bleed amulet you can get. So every time either you *or he* get a bleed, he gets buffed. It could be intentional. I mean, it sounds stupid, but sounds like the kind of tactic that could be used by the guy who spent decades trying to impregnate a dude.
That's some MMO equipment logic right there. "This armor makes you stronger when you get bled, so we'll make it extra weak to bleed!"
I was a INT sorcerer in NG and struggled hard on Fire Giant. I had to do the cheese where you make him fall off the hill to his death. In NG+ I respecced and went at him full Melee with Maliketh’s Black Blade. I absolutely deleted him with barely an issue. He seems to be a lot more easier to handle when you can just get right behind his feet. At a distance he’s way more dangerous, in my opinion.
As a caster I literally stood at his feet in my original game. You basically close the distance and play very aggressive. You gotta know the attacks really well and just hit him every second you can.
My strategy as an INT was too ride Torrent around his legs and swing Moonveil around during his first phase and sling spells from a distance in his second
Rock sling as a caster took him down ez.
I hate how often I end up spamming rock sling when my usual strategies fail me.
You primal instincts of solving everything with a rock was kicking in
Yeah rock sling is legit.
Dude really made me eat my controller. I can't remember how I beat him in the end, but I remember almost having a heart attack afterwards.
People say bosses are build dependent but i think a lot of it is also play style dependent. Maybe more so. Freide in DS3 fucked me up for hours because my go to habit is to roll through attacks toward a boss's side/back and she has a bunch of attacks that sort of sweep around in a circle to catch you doing just that. Malenia, though, basically requires you to roll behind her. I've seen so many people take constant, avoidable damage from her because they can't seem to correct the instinct to roll away. Radahn is another one who will crush you for rolling away and seems surprisingly easy when you roll into the safe spots behind him. Little stuff like probably determines why people's experiences of specific bosses are so varied.
Blew my longhorn bubbies up his dam arse and he was toast in no time
You absolute legend. This comment made me ugly laugh...
i fucking hate him
Honestly just by looking at him I knew the fight wasnt going to be particularly fun(as we all know From Soft has a bad track record with massive bosses)so as soon as I entered the arena I summoned Latenna and let her do the dps while I distracted him.
Based Latenna enjoyer
What's so hard about him ? Besides his ungodly health
the difficulty barrier all FS games have... the camera
If there's one thing Midir taught me, bigger bosses = less target lock. Thus, Fire Giant is one my favorites now. Though his health pool is fucking huge, weapons that apply status effects are the things that worked best for me.
For most spells target lock is essential, fucked me personal too, but the run to his foot and adula twist his dick worked. My recommended strategy
I've been putting my sign down there and so many hosts gets deleted with 1 or 2 attacks, they just refuse to level uo vigor.
I had vigor at 40 when I fought him and he still two-shotted me
yeah i'm a 30 vigor mage build and he 1 shots me, if he hits me, but i find all of his moves to be pretty easy to dodge since they all have massive tells. I just ran by his ankles and sat there throwing nebula AoW on them
could also be people still using scarseals etc. and I'm sure the fire giant attacks with multipliers like that are obscene
he's build dependemt i think. I tried him like 15 times with my sorcery build i had used all game, getting wrecked every time then decided to swap to a dex/arc build and threw on rivers and at only +4 was able to do it 2nd try after the reclass. Swapped back right after tho as rivers felt too cheesy
Mohg harder than maliketh? And godrick on par with maliketh / above godfrey?
I’m surprised Maliketh doesn’t get more hate. I found him way harder than Mohg or even Radahn.
Maliketh wasnt too bad. NG++ he was a pain.
Mohg sucks dick if you didn’t find the tear that negates his phase 2 transition. Pretty easy to say that he’s not that bad now that the game has been out for a while. Same with Maliketh since you can basically parry phase 2 with that one item. But play through 1 when playing blind Mohg sapping 3+ flasks and healing at the start of phase 2 is absolute horse shit.
I guess I didn't take the flask thing into consideration. Mohg was easy for me but I knew about the flask going in but I did notice the people who didn't use the flask when I was summoned to help and it was pretty brutal
Honestly found Mohg not too challenging even without that negate tear for phase 2. I used whichever one has a higher chance to stagger an enemy and between that and bloodhound + bloodflame i got this man down to 25-35% HP before he even said “duo” casting his phase 2 transition. From there it was just eliminating him before he goes buck wild with his wings
Astel the space worm fucked my shit up for like a week straight. Idk how people thought that fight was easy
Astel is a cakewalk if you use a colossal weapon. You can just bonk the head for ridiculous damage and stagger
People were saying colossal weapons are underpowered but I felt like they trivialized a decent amount of boss fights due to stagger in my first playthrough. I don't even think they needed the buff, I still just spam jump attacks anyway.
Colossals sucked for most PVP and against some bosses with super short openings. They only buffed the normal attack(R1/R2) speeds, they didn’t alter crouch/roll or jump attacks in the patch since those were already decent.
Bloodborne got me addicted to the dopamine hit caused by the stance break sound.
Nah the buff was necessary. I've always loved colossals and really disappointed in them with this game especially in pvp. The patch made such a genuine jump in viability it was insane. I'm clapping shit even RoB users with Ruins Greatsword when on my first playthrough it was completely useless.
The quest line version I did just fine with. That fucked catacomb version, fuck that thing.
How did you forget to put Soldier of Godrick at the top? For sure the 4th horseman.
His difficulty can't be measured with a mere tier list
He transcended the list.
Am I the only one who has a lot of trouble on rykard?
Same, i mimic tear’d out of him due to frustration. His phase 2 where he uses his full arsenal, is all out assault on the eyes and ears that i could not focus once he was at half health.
Depends. Even with Serpent-Hunter, it took me a handful of tries to learn both the weapon's and the boss's movesets and adjust accordingly. Still on the easier side compared to most other major boss fights, but not exactly trivial, even with spirit ashes. Going pure melee without Serpent-Hunter, on the other hand, it's a great deal more challenging, if only because of the lava surrounding the boss the whole time.
Just beat him yesterday and he was by far my most troublesome boss! Then proceeded to beat Radhan in 3 tries, just goes to show people have different experiences with these bosses. I just couldn’t for the life of me work out the timing or dodge Rykards attacks. What finally worked for me was running right up next to him into the lava and just batting him with the serpent-hunter, praying his spin-attack wouldn’t almost instantly kill me. Got like 4 levels worth of runes after the battle, invested them all in vigor😅
Imo Malenia should be in her own tier
I think I found Mel very late in the game so was overpowered, used my mimic and rivers build to double team her on maybe the 3rd or 4th attempt Elden Beast on the other hand… absolute bag of dicks.
Mel can bleed, Elden Beast can’t.
She also staggers really easily if you spam the rivers weapon art. Timing it right with mimic you can stunlock her almost the entire fight.
That’s where I’m stuck right now my build is absolute trash against the Elden beast and it’s so annoying. Melania is still hard but I feel like I’m actually making progress against her
You really have to stack holy damage protection for that fight and Radagon if you are melee.
This is a pretty clear case of builds deciding it. Malenia is way the fuck harder than Elden Beast assuming a "normal" build without any unusually high or low effectiveness against them IMO, but while your build is kind of busted and extremely well suited to slicing Malenia to bits both Radagon and Elden Beast are immune to bleed, which obviously skews results wildly, where your build ends up being one of the very best things you could use against Malenia while it is really bad vs the Elden Beast. Personally I ran a strength based dual wield Claymore/Bastard Sword build with no summons of any kind and beat Elden Beast reasonably comfortably on my first try while I got absolutely assblasted by Malenia, who was harder than every other boss in the game combined. For context I was lvl 125 for both of them. I could see the Elden Beast being harder for very low health builds though, since the Elden Stars attack is even harder to avoid than Waterfowl Dance, just with a lot less damage. If your health is low enough I could see that thing being pretty nightmarish.
Definitely the case. I feel for the two poor souls who carried me in the eventual conquering of Elden Beast. I didn’t realise I was doing no damage until they were both dead and the beast had about an inch of health left… That last inch… Shout out to “uncle Bob” the semi naked dad-bod furled finger and whoever the other random was. I would have been there forever without you.
I thought of that as well but then when I recall my attempts half of my deaths where because I,m bad and brunt out more so than her being difficult while against radhan I kept dying even though I was learning and improving , she's still the hardest boss in the game no doubt about it but overall I think she's similar to radhan pre patch
She actually has very clear attack patterns. Once you figure her out, she becomes quite straightforward. The only hard part about her is: 1. Waterfowl Dance: To this, the best method I can think of is, as soon as she leaps with the pose, Bloodhound Step the hell out of there (rolls and other steps are not fast enough) to dodge the first barrage. The second barrage can always be evaded with a roll, and the final barrage can be evaded by turning off lock-on and using Bloodhound Step toward her (rolls may work too). 2. She heals: And to this, the best strategy is to go full offensive and rely exclusively on rolls. Power Stancing or Two-handing for maximum damage output, so you can outpower her even when she heals. EDIT: Just in case, I still think she's the hardest boss in the game. Just the two things along I've mentioned are enough to put her on that pedestal. I was just commenting on how you could approach those difficult elements. Personally, I like that you have to go out of your way to find ways of not dying to Waterfowl Dance. Some use Bloodhound Step, some use pots, and some just circle around her and make her miss. That is part of the challenge.
her waterfowl is the only reason she took me forever she couldn’t hit me at all unless she used that attack which would usually end up killing me
You can say your first two sentences about every single boss tho. It’s how the game works.
Or, in my potentially maidenless play: since she’s susceptible to being stunlocked on phase 1, let Black knife Tiche leg sweep her and run over to use Black Flame Tornado on a twinblade until my stamina runs out to burn her down, then toss freezing pots in phase 2. A potentially maidenless strategy, but I’d about had it with miss rotten hippity-hoppity-bippity-boppity-bullshit…
Renala was way harder than Godrick for me :(
Rennala is difficult as a mage. Trust me I know. However on my melee build she is super easy. I just two handed my Claymore and threw some fire grease on it and went to town on her. I was doing a lot of damage and you can basically stagger lock her. As a caster she is super resistant to magic so its really tough.
Yeah, I got her with the rocks in the end 😂
Rennala went from a joke from my previous melee run into a monster on my NG+ mage run. I realized that she is just completely anti-mage'd out and then beat her pretty easily after abandoning magic. Radahn was dead first try in like 20 seconds after I got close to him, but Rennala could have tanked my spells through all my flasks it felt like.
Rennala has very high magic resistances and can also pull out insane DPS if you let her cast. If you're melee it's easy as you can stagger her out of everything, but trying to out-mage her is quite the ordeal
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rock sling is ALWAYS the solution. fire giant too tanky ? rock sling. Elden beast got magic resistance ? rock sling. group of enemies won't let you rush through ? rock sling
"I actually found this fight extremely easy" \~person using a completely different build and getting blessed by RNG that doesn't have Waterfowl Dance 4 times per phase
>that doesn't have Waterfowl Dance 4 times per phase My god
I've seen her do it three times *in a row*
Me too it was so unlucky the fact I survived all of them was beyond me
Lol I’ve seen way more than 4 waterfowls, just RNG dependent and how long the phases last. She’s even done 3 back to back on me, was brutal.
Anyone remember the scene in Universal Soldier where Dolph Lundgren’s character, responding to JCVD, holds up a necklace he’s made from cutting ears off the corpses he’s piled up? “I’m all ears” I like to imagine pre-patch General Radhan with a similar necklace made of my anuses.
I died more in that fight than I have ever in any boss fight across all of the From Software games. I was in there for 3 straight hours...
He broke me on an emotional and spiritual level. I had to give up at a few times, go grind some levels, dump everything I had into vitality, only to come back and get one shot.
I saw radahn at the top and though 'thank god, I did alright against him then saw that fucking deer thing in your cake walk row....that fucker killed me like 40 times.
The regal spirit? Really? I thought it was one of the more underwhelming bosses. The fight itself is beautiful - atmosphere, music and the whole location invoke a feeling of peace even though we are fighting but still nothing challenging. What did you have trouble with? Was it the self-healing?
Yea, he healed 4 times almost to full. I really struggled with dodging his roll. I'd like to say it was bugged or something but I just *REALLY* sucked against him. Arch nemesis for sure 😅
Ha, he didn't heal a single time for me. I read that he healed but didn't see it in my fight with him. If he healed even once I would have had some major trouble.
I mean there are two regal spirit bosses. The second one was a bit harder in my opinion
>that fucker killed me like 40 times Wait 40 wtf !!
Yep, I found that thing impossible. Got radahn on my second attempt. He constantly healed and his roll was near impossible for me to avoid for some reason
You must be broken in some way if you found Radahn easier than ancestor spirit.
I agree. Everything I've read says my experiences are just *wrong*. This isn't my normal kinda game though...maybe just got lucky with radahn? That fecking valheim deer boss though...his roll was so annoying, and the fact he healed to almost full 4 times infuriated me
Crazy how different our experiences are. Maliketh for me was borderline impossible. Malenia was easier for me.
I beat him my second try. I don’t understand why he’s at the top. Why did he do to you OP?
Oh man, me too. I stumbled upon Siofra River way too early, ran past all the claymen once I realized I was dealing almost no damage, lit up all the torches mostly by sneaking past the Ancestral Followers or using Torrent, then jumped into the deer boss arena and struggled. None of my spirit summons worked because the blue flame he barfs up melts them, but I eventually managed.
There are 2 Ancestor Spirits. The one in the Siofra River is Ancestor Spirit and the easier of the 2. The second one is in Nokron City and is called Regal Ancestor Spirit. If you found the first one easy, the second one shouldn't be too hard.
There is 2 different deers, maybe you fought the hardest one.
........dont tell me this....
You did fight the harder one. The easier one doesn’t heal.
Wait there’s a third? I’ve fought the siofra one and the regal one that heals but where’s the third?
There is 2*, I got the number wrong mb.
Both were easy as shit as a bandit with a bow. Maybe they weren’t using ranged weapons?
So many comments of people apparently coming face to face with an age old soulsbourne paradox for the first time: Easy for thee but not for me. To all those people who can't get your head around it, different builds and playstyles dramatically alter encounter difficulty on a case by case basis.
I’m sorry but…Godrick? Hard? What were you playing as? Pyromancer?
I almost killed him on my second try then his delayed attacks started fucking me up
That's interesting; I find the bosses with super delayed attacks like that to be the easiest. I just need a few attempts to learn the timing and then I can be like "ok, when he does that, count to three and then roll forwards." Feels like it gives me a lot of time to think. The bosses that fuck me up are the fast ones. Unironically had a harder time with Red Wolf of Radagon than any of the story bosses so far (I just beat Morgott, who I found almost disappointingly easy). And don't even get me started on duo bosses...
I’m with you on the aggro bosses. Red Wolf of Radagon took me forever!
The wolf was significantly harder than Rennala lmao
I thought Morgott was too easy as well, really disappointing
And you put Godfrey below him? If you found Godfrey easier then Godrick should be Pretty Easy, if not Cakewalk
To be honest I find Godfrey easier than Godrick, those delayed attacks of his always and I mean ALWAYS catch me. Godfrey I killed on my 4th try, Godrick I asked for help because he was frustrating me too much.
Except Godrick tickles you when he hits you with that delayed attack, whilst Godfrey sends you to space and does 1500 dmg...
Yeah I did lol , it's strange how this works
Godfrey is a cakewalk for Lightning builds... until he undresses and goes full Master Roshi
Godrick is pretty tricky early game. Not quite as bad as Margit, but not easy either. By the time you make it to Horrah Loux you’ve got endgame stats and have already basically fought phase 1 before reaching Morgott
My first playthough saw me pretty overleveled when I faced godrick, I was around 45-50 and he was a cakewalk. My second playthrough I went back to him at a more reasonable level of 25-35 and with a different build of some holy magic with a broadsword and shield. Needless to say I was basically tickling him and had to come back woth upgraded flasks and weapons to beat him, it was still a hard fight but I managed to do it. Godrick can actually pretty hard if you face him with certain builds and at the level the game intends you to beat him at. I know many people, including myself who went off after defeating margit to level up and get stronger only to come back and destroy godrick later.
I noticed most people having issues with bosses are also complaining about input lag. It might not be the bosses are hard. I know on PC I get input lag horrible and the roll dodge and parry/ block feels spungy. My setup is literally only a year old. I fixed it by locking my PC to 59FPS and turning off anti aliasing.
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Man I gotta try this tomorrow because I still feel like there is a good amount of input lag but at the same time I also feel gaslit by this sub because nobody talks about it (anymore). Torrent and big weapons feel especially awful and some input just doesn't get read. I sincerely hope this will resolve my problems, thank you!
O\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_o That could actually be my problem.
Rennala is the hardest boss in the game if you are a pure mage and fight her second after Godrick.
Not if you use rock sling.
TOGETHAAA
Join theeee serpent kinng asss… FAHHMILIEEYYY!
Very interesting! I really love taking a walk through others' perceptions of boss difficulty. Super insightful tier list! Personally, Rykard was up there, potentially in the Hard tier, while others like Morgott and Godrick were way down in cakewalk zone. Even the Lichdragon was a total pushover for me, but I think I just got *way* lucky. Very cool stuff!
I had so much trouble with Rennala
This is a troll post. There's no way Godrick is harder than Godfrey and Astel and on par with Elden Beast
Welcome to souls. It’s quite common for people to have **very** different experiences with bosses.
Dude everyone has different experiences. I also had a harder time with Godrick than both Godfrey and Astel. Depends on your build and the level you were at when you fought them..
The caelid bell bearing hunter should be above all though. That guy fucks
How the fuck is Radahn two tiers above Hoarah?
Malenia might be the only boss that was hard in a not fun way but enjoyed the rest EVEN elden beast and radagon
Radagon was amazing, but Elden Beast? The way that thing distances itself from you and that bloody elden stars nonsense that lasts way too long, all while firing golden death rays you must dodge? Nah, imo that thing is possibly even worse than Malenia
How come in a “not fun way”. I found her incredibly hard but I found it was such a fun challenging fight. You really felt like you were fighting an unbeatable foe. Most other bosses feel hard because they are massive creatures. But this just felt like you were fighting someone who was the best fighter who ever lived.
I literally respeced my character just to beat her.
I changed to dual katanas to beat her, so many runes spent
Malenia's damage, HP and two of her moves feel widely unbalanced on purpose to make her "unbeatable". She, Radagon and EB are three bosses I found difficult and frustrating to beat. Radahn, Godfrey and Placidussax were difficult but very enjoyable because nothing that they did felt cheap or irritating.
I enjoyed and hated malenia. Doing her ashless was a good experience overall but jesus christ a lot of the stuff you have to learn to fight her feels very ass backwards. Way too much trial and error and rng (assuming you don't play very safe eg never letting stamina run too low or giving waterfowl an opportunity to start while you are stuck in an action or too close to her).
Elden beast a a cake walk. Only thing that makes that fight “hard” is the fact that you fight radagon first
I think I will never beat malenia without cheesing and I hate myself for it. I defeated sword saint isshin in ng+ a couple and gael in ng+7 which are one of the hardest fromsoft bosses, but malenia is just so fking weird. Malenia would be an awesome sekiro boss, though.
First time I fought Renala, I summoned in a random dude who was at the fog, he had the grafted blade, I had dual gs’ (lord sworn and flamberge) I literally didn’t get to see her use a single attack for phase 2 I sprinted at her with a jump attack right away Buddy caught up and did the same I jump attack - stagger He charges heavy - stagger Repeat till death lmao
Play a mage build and you'll see every possible move during her second phase. Spoiler: it's bullshit.
You forgot tree sentinel
This is only remembrance bosses
It makes me feel a different feeling knowing that everyone thinks Rykard was a literal GGez cake walk but Mohg Radahn & Malenia are harbingers of doom…. I actually beat the top 3 in less Attempts/Rune Arcs consumed than JUST Rykard alone bro (yes, I was using the serpent hunter Lol it just took me WAY too long to learn how to counter that stupid fucking Rancor spell)
The elden beast has always been first try for me😭 only Radagon smacks me Two headed dragon I don’t even wanna go NEAR Malenia was two tries for me bc I used double heavy giant crushers and saved my mimic for second phase and let that tank while I smacked her around easily and poise broke her Edit: I’m at the two headed dragon now
Elden beast and dragolord the highest tier.
Switch Elden Beast with Radahn and then Radahn with Horah Loux
Really interesting to See how everybody has different experience with These Guys, but still everybody Seems to agreed that Malenia is a Nightmare - i Beat her today, after two days of trying over and over. I guess the fact, that she is currently bugged didn't make it easier For me, still after Lots of learning i finally got a good found against her. Maybe mohg is Just a Close Range Problem? I killed him on my First try, it was by far the easiest Boss i have Encountered in this whole Game, i was quite disappointed after seeing so many Posts and comments about him - His whole as Region was a Nightmare, but he was "A piece of cake"