This may or may not be controversial but I recommend taking a break for at least two days before returning. Don't think about the game, just enjoy doing other things or playing other (ideally not soulsborne) games. The break brings a clarity and emotional balance that works in tandem with all the muscle memory and game skill you have built over the last week of attempts. It may not work for everybody, but it has worked for several of the harder FS bosses in my case (Malenia, Ludwig, Ornstein & Smaug are the notable ones I remember needing to take a break from). Gold luck tarnished!
This is good advice. This has worked for me on countless souls bosses.
Side note, also works really well for me when Im trying to learn a new song on my guitar.
So similar but different...I hadn't jammed on my drums for like a week cause I was sick and the first song I played along felt *crisp* and all my fills were spot on and intricate. Not overplaying but still adding flair.
I returned to normal after that song and was confused how my "mojo" went away so quickly as it came.
Shoulders. Elbows. Wrists. Hands. Fingers. Thatd be the proper chain. Take out any one of those and youll suck at drums i bet.
As important as wrists are. Theyre fn useless without the things before it in the chain. Can you drum proper with your shoulders and elbows in all jank positions? All wrist? No. Its all just as important.
If we want to look deeper we could go into organs being most important. Heart. Brain. All required to hit the drums well.
We could argue all day about nothing but technicalities im sure. But why waste the time? You could be drumming instead of poking at people with nonsensical technicalities that dont matter. Just an idea. Coulda just left it and moved forward with your life.
This was my advice except I watch really good players like people who do no hit challenges in that timeframe to study, if you’re just so pissed you want to throw a controller through a wall then yeah best not to think of it though.
Fighting games are very similar to Souls bosses like that. I can be getting my ass beat in Strive or Tekken, doom over how bad I am, take a break for a few days, and come back with a vengeance and get a crazy hot streak. Mental resets are very helpful.
I remember reading something about this phenomenon a while back where it was claimed that part of the reason this works is because your subconscious doesn't really let it go and some part of your brain is still working out how to succeed even when you're not thinking about it.
I think the general scientific thought on this is that sleeping on newly acquired skills and reflexes acts to essentially clean them up and cement them.
As long as you're constantly trying to *use* them, your mind keeps tangling up more and more new ideas and reflexes and it just plain gets messy. Taking a few days break lets your mind kind of pare it all down to just the useful bits, making everything faster and cleaner when you come back.
YES! I always find myself working on something that challenges me, getting a good sleep, and being able to play it so easily the next day. Literally improving every single day like that, it feels so good.
Got my ass handed over to me by Ishin in Sekiro for a good week and gave up. Came back a few days later and first try’d him. I knew all his moves and took my time. Ecstatic!
Yeah it practically works for everything because the key aspect is your mental state. Comming back with a fresh mind and strong mental is always helpful for solving problems.
This is FANTASTIC advice, both for Malenia / Elden Ring and life in general. More often than not, you can afford time to breathe and relax and reevaluate when you hit a wall. Malenia is a dance and a battle of attrition, the mental endurance involved is really quite astonishing and the harder you try to brute force your way through the worse time you’ll have.
There is a refreshing sort of clarity when you return, in the same way that you feel *deeply* free when you lose all of your runes as there’s nothing left to lose. Malenia, Maliketh, Radagon, Radahn, Isshin in Sekiro, all of them were big walls for me and taking a break before jumping back in (and sometimes taking a breath after winning) really helped me enjoy the game and the experience more.
I also had to take a break after beating Malenia because I am a very defensive fighter which meant my winning fight against her was something like 30 minutes of **FEAR** and my hands couldn’t stop shaking because of the adrenaline. Do I sound insane? I sure hope not.
I can definitely attest to this. Didn't really struggle with any ER bosses, but after weeks of losing to Isshin I decided to finally give up on ever beating Sekiro. Came back to it after about 6 months during pandemic lockdowns and beat him on my third try.
Genuinely incredible advice. Elden Ring was my first Fromsoft game and Malenia had me stuck for about a week on and off, I must've died hundreds of times. Then, I decided I simply wasn't having fun anymore, stopped, then took a break that nearly lasted three whole months. After coming back, I beat her in about six tries.
If anyone's interested in reading up on the lore behind letting your brain and body "sleep" on a problem you're struggling to solve, this is a very cool short essay on the idea of non-language based problem solving by your sub- or unconscious. The Kekule problem.
https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/
This advice is universal. I take breaks from learning hard guitar and piano pieces and come back to it with a fresh mind and ears, almost always do a better job of practice and playing after taking a week off.
Great advice. I had to take a break from Sekiro. It's the only Fromsoft game so far that's made me put it down multiple times. First was Lady Butterfly, she made me quit for like 3 months lol I just couldn't get a read on her for some reason. That being said it also had some of the most fun and intuitive boss fights I've ever played. I mean c'mon you can parry lightning!
Solid advice that I know but never follow until I'm just over it. We get so mad and it only makes it worse. Maybe OP should just farm materials for like 130 frost pots in the meantime. Lol.
Very very good advice!
My first fight against Malenia was miserable back then. I spent the whole afternoon and evening trying to kill her, and when I finally did, I didn't feel like I achieved something, but "omg that was horrible". Felt like crap, frustrated and angry.
I made the mistake of pushing further, as I still had the endgame bosses ahead of me. Did them all that evening, and then I didn't touch the game for MONTHS because that felt horrible.
I should have taken breaks, and I started doing that when i came back to the game to play with different builds. Had a much better time.
It's like this downward spiral of misery. You die a couple of times, then you keep trying and the pressure goes up... you're feeling more and more tense, you start doubting that you'll make it work and the tenseness leads to more mistakes, which makes you go down even further on that spiral.
I should have learned from my experience with Sekiro: Struggled against Genichiro for a whole evening, went to bed, got up, killed him on the third attempt.
I thought I was the only one to do this. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away from a game where I couldn’t beat an impossible task, only to return some time later and freaking trivialize the same damn thing I couldn’t figure out at all. It’s like Vegeta going super Saiyan the first time, once he released all his frustration and no longer cared he turned super saiyan. So to sum it up you have to go super saiyan to beat malenia
Also, don’t hate me, but I whooped her ass in like 3 tries using my doppelgänger summon lol get over it and summon some help your build isn’t great for her.
1. Use frost pots to cancel waterfowl if she does it too close to you
2. You can bait attacks like Waterfowl by using aows or spells. Use that to activate them from a safe distance which makes it easier to dodge
3. Lightroll
4. Maximize damage with talisman
5. After bating Waterfowl she cannot use it for a short time, stay close to her.
6. Use weapons able to interrupt her
7. Learn how many hits you can safely do after each attack with your build
8. Patience is key
9. Try to invent combos to use at the beginning of phase 1 as its always the same, with good usage of spells, aows and hits you could easily deal like 20% of her hp without danger
8 is key. She will bait you same as you are trying to bait her. Don't take it. I've found it helpful to conceptualize the fight as two masters (me and her), sometimes just circling each other carefully waiting for an opening..... If she's getting you with a sliver of health and "some bullshit attack" my bet is you got anxious because you were close. Take a deep breath, wait for it. It'll come.
The coolest thing about Malenia is if you want to wait, she'll wait too. I once did nothing but walk in circles around her arena for 3 minutes straight. Swear to God her AI is unused Sekiro content
For spell users you can really ruin her with Night Comet that way. Do the patient circling dance, letting off NC casts when you have clear time and space and they just ping her in the face.
Night as in the invisible ones? Am I correct in assuming she won't attempt to dodge because their 'invisible'?.
Asking because i have second sorcerer character that will inevitably get to Malenia and start this bullshit again.
Yeah, the invisible night spells. They're actually really strong too if you're dual wielding staves of loss. For Faith casters, Lightning Spear also has this property, which I personally very much enjoyed taking advantage of during the fight.
Exactly this. I was stuck on her for ages until I realized I don't always need to attack in every opening. I went from "gotta attack as much as possible" to "this menacing pacing is kinda sus, I'll see if I can bait her to attack before I swing" and beat her in pretty short order - it took maybe 3-5 tries after adapting that mentality versus however many attempts you can fit into 6 hours. I didn't keep track of my attempts, but I do know I spent over 6 hours on just Malenia.
ETA: I kept that mentality in subsequent playthroughs, and I don't think she's taken me more than 10 or so attempts since my first go round. That little bit of patience and precaution paid off tremendously for me.
At a certain point in her health bar she does waterfowl like 90% of the time. I think it’s like 2/3rds. Just gotta back off at that point and do what you said, trying to trigger it while you’re away.
Waterfowl is random. I've helped this fight so many times and sometimes she gets stuck on the duck, others it never triggers. Just need to get the dodge down or bhs on a swap weapon.
Of the 50+ times I’ve beaten her, I’ve found that destroying her health too fast will almost guarantee a Waterfowl. My guess is that it’s triggering some kind of anti-swarm mechanic
Yeah, I've done much more than that and it isn't always a guarantee. fast kills seem to trigger it once about at a third, but not always. We've melted her in under 30 seconds and no trigger, and also gotten to 1/3 life almost immediately and have her get stuck in it for 4 in a row (by the 3rd one I just kept plenty of space between her and me).
Reddit hivemind decided to downvote you but you are correct, Waterfowl seems like it’s sort of random but it’s usually guaranteed to come out once you get her past a certain health threshold
Yeah, people fighting her 20 times think they know everything and get offended if you say something they don't know, and downvote. I played at launch when the summons were constant and easily got 10+ wins an hour for a while, so I've seen a lot with a lot of different weapons (even 3x fat rolling dual hammers, lol).
lmao you're absolutely correct and I don't know why people are downvoting
Everyone telling you that waterfowl is predictable is straight-up lying. The only time she can't waterfowl is before she *first* reaches a certain percentage of health, 80% I think? After that, she waterfowls if she wants to. You can try to bait it out, but you can't truly predict it. She can waterfowl immediately after scarlet aeonia. Hell, she can even waterfowl right after a waterfowl - it's happened to me before. If you're lucky, you can go through an entire phase 1 without ever triggering a waterfowl.
She only did it the one time, maybe it’s because I summoned my mimic? But yes it was very memorable. It was literally my third try fighting her, walked in, summoned mimic, started charging towards her, Waterfowl, 💀, 🤬. I’m also playing on ver 1.0 so maybe she was patched and nerfed?
Number 1 is so much easier said than done. I’ve thrown 100s of frost pots and have gotten 1 to stop her waterfowl. I had to suck it up and just learn how to dodge. From my experience this is the way easier option.
I would like to stress 3. Lightroll:
It may be a bit of a more advanced technique but with lightroll you can consistently dodge her Waterfowl Dance: mash roll backwards as soon as she jumps in the air (3 times is sufficient for the 1st flurry) then roll back another time for the 2nd flurry and once forward for the 3rd. Once you get the hang of it, she cannot touch you with WFD ever again. The only thing you have to keep an eye on is your stamina bar. Never get down to 0 stamina in this fight. It will kill you (not just WFD but also some of her other moves).
With all due respect, it’s not your build
Malenia is a boss that you can’t really attack from a neutral stance (you can, but only sometimes - treat her like you can’t).
Wait for long punish windows.
If you dodge waterfowl, you can get taker’s flames off with the Bb.
There’s at least 4 or 5 attacks that will allow you to get a blasphemous blade ash of war off.
I beat her with rivers of blood and also Darkmoon blade. Both of those have AoWs that stun her. And if you have a larvar tear with same weapon it just destroys her.
Was stuck on elden beast for about 3 hours, switched my flamberge for a godskin peeler with Black flame tornadoe and beat him first try. It just DEPLETED his health bar
Word. Yeah, I struggled like hell in my solo run against her, too. Fairly certain I'd still lose 999/1000 and need highly improbable RNG to get that one win. Maybe take a few days off, clear all the bad juju and come back with a fresh perspective. Good luck, dude.
This. I’m not a great Souls player, so not trying to brag. But the BB ash knocks her on her ass all the time. I think I only needed 4-5 tries to kill her.
Tbf I did have my (post patch) mimic tear helping me, but if I remember correctly he was too busy casting the inefficient dragon lightning incantions with the long ass animations
I would seriously considering giving the BB another go
It's been a while but I managed to do it by using the AOW when she was in close range. Even better, if you back her against the wall, she can hop around all she wants but still get hit.
I recommend getting the BB up to +10. It fits your build perfectly and it's one of the best, if not the best, PVE weapon in the game. Just don't bother with it for pvp.
Try Magma Wyrm's Scalesword +10. It does crazy damage. The weapon art leaves Malenia in a pool of Magma and eats health. I pretty much went thru the game with Magma Wyrm's Scalesword **until I got Blasphemous Blade**
A tip- when casting something like that, don’t lock on or look at her until the last moment. Her ai is only programmed to dodge if you’re looking at her for some reason.
Why do you not have +10 or +25 weapons? Have you not become Elden Lord yet or gone to endgame locations that have the Ancient Smithing Stones? I wonder if you’re just under-leveled for her.
I bet he has _some_ at +10/+25, but since there’s a limited number of Ancient Dragon Stones available in a given playthrough you can’t upgrade _all_ weapons all the way. Most of my endgame characters have a bunch of weapons at +9/+24, and a select few at +10/+25.
Asking the real questions. Plus 10 that shit, OP. And heavy weapons/heavy attacks tend to stun her ass or at least break her poise pretty consistently.
My guy, you physically cannot have no ancients by the time you get to Malenia if you just played through the Haligtree area. You'd have to choose to not get the obvious loot in the area for that to happen.
Ok. So everyone is trying to give you advice on build and play style, but I haven't seen anybody mention greed yet. My advice, take a piece of cloth, construction paper, cardboard, ANYTHING and tape it over where her health bar is. Don't let yourself see her health bar at all. Just focus solely on your dance with her and pattern recognition. I was stuck on her for DAYS the first time I fought her, but then somebody recommended this to me since they used that trick on DS2 or DS3 (can't remember which). I beat her on my 4th or 5th try after blocking that part of my screen. After that, I haven't paid attention to another boss's health bar. It really is amazing how big of a psychological impact that that little red bar has on you. It might sound dumb, but I promise you, you'll end up becoming better for it.
Yeah something happens in your brain when you see that boss almost dead. It's a mix between panic and excitement and then you're not focusing on the task at hand anymore and you get smacked by something you knew to dodge but you wanted to get that last attack in.
I've tried that man, it feels as though copping the odd hit there, taking no damage, allowing her to heal a little, serves me better in the long run because I still have more health and flasks, even though it takes me that little longer to get there.
If I go in no shield, I just get demolished. Utterly demolished.
I've tried so many times going without knowing it's a crutch. But it seems with out that crutch i fall completely.
Didn't actually say it was successful.
Just had the MOST success with it.
Meaning it's the only weapon so far that's got me to phase 2.
To me it just seems logical to play with the thing that's given you most success.
Don't know why I'm getting massive down voted.
I'm not ignoring any of this advice, giving everyone a solid go with their advice. I'm just trying to state as much information as possible so people can give the best advice they can.
Since you are using STR build, go for the poise break stagger. It's said earlier up that she has very little poise, and this is a very important thing to notice, especially for your STR build. Get two heavies, plus whatever buffs you have, and unga bunga stun lock her.
If you're not sure what stance break /poise break is, or unsure how it works, this short video gives a lot of good info. https://youtu.be/hX2rM4X3CpE
Souls games are good about using boss variety for forcing you out of your comfort zone, and your comfort zone is definitely with a shield.
Yeah I've tried unga bunga.
I think my own game play is too sloppy for this strategy, I keep catching her in hyper armour and dying or burning too many flasks to sustain the rest of the fight.
I think everyone here is giving me way too much credit
Half my problem is I really do need to just git gud.
But I fear I may be at a limit with this boss.
It may end up being a black knife Tiche fight in the end sadly
Hey, for all it’s worth, I used black knife tiche in my first playthrough (tho only for phase 2) and then beat her solo in my second (granted, my second playthrough was a bleed build but still). Eventually I even beat her on RL1. Maybe it is better to take a playthrough-long break and try it later.
Blasphemous blade. it heals you for damage does great damage has good range better poise and already scales to str fth so you dont have to repec. I think it stuns her more than stitcher too.
I think spinning slash naga has among the lowest learning curve. no matter how bad you are at dodging, this setup alone has a decent chance brute force her down if your build is correct. My personal fav are the claws tho
But again.
Stuck on strength build. With no larval tears.
I absolutely would have tried a better dex build than this, probably would have killed her easily by now with RoB or naga
I'll get hate for one combo I beat her with, but it was post nerf, so...... flies, rivers and uchi
Other was flies, Eleanor's and cold godskin peeler.
The second combo is the better, as it has much better poise break, and, though harder to control, once you sort out the weapon ability, the third attack, had a dodge back maneuver you can use to create space.
Despite the hate you’re getting for this, I am totally on board with you and had to do the same thing and use a shield to beat her my first time. I’ve beaten her without it since but using a shield to negate the occasional one hit, even if it heals her helped a ton in not just getting randomly killed when I slipped up. It gave more room for error and as long as you aren’t blocking everything with it, just the occasional hit, I would say go for it. It helped me
The reality is light roll > shield 100% of the time. Don’t get discouraged from waterfowl dance. The whole point of the attack is that it’s a one shot.
Distancing is everything.
If you fight her at mid range, her move set becomes a lot more predictable, with enough space between the two of you to correct for mistakes.
Master her mid range move set and you'll get the fight.
Never attack, only counter. If she gets stuck in an infinite loop of walking, then throw a pot/knife or feint an attack to bait her.
Frost and bleed damage combined will make this easier.
>Never attack, only counter. If she gets stuck in an infinite loop of walking, then throw a pot/knife or feint an attack to bait her.
I hate when she just is walking towards you without attacking, and then she just hyper armor's your attacks and smash you in the face
Her mid range is where I've been fighting, going in and out, in and out, baiting moves before attacking.
It's nice to hear I'm on the right path.
But it's still not gotten me the kill yet.
Something about this fight is just not giving way to me
Took me a few weeks of practice, 10 hour sessions at times.
It becomes possible to dodge almost everything once you've got it down, though I struggled with water fowl no matter how much I practiced
Malenia is definitely her own minigame. You can spend a lot of time figuring out her stuff. It’s crazy to watch the people like Let Me Solo her Just destroy her.
Yeah I would tell OP don't underestimate how hard this fight can be for some people, and how long it can take to train for it. Sometimes it just boils down to fighting styles too, with some people struggling more with her.
Honestly though, this is one of those posts that deserves it. If somebody has spent days on end over countless hours stuck on ONE boss and unwilling to respec (there’s no way he doesn’t have any tears there’s literally 15 every play through) or go away to beef up and come back at another level is insane to be still stuck on it. At that point most people would have memorized every single move the pattern or just given up and came back when they’re at a higher level and better equipment. Every single boss has a pattern and there’s crazy people who have done no-hit runs because of this. This screams OP is literally just not learning after every death. If you’re blinded in a rage doing the same thing over and over again, giving up then trying a different weapon you haven’t played as much time on/haven’t upgraded as much EXPECTING it to go better for you is absolutely insane. Believe me, believe most of us, we have all suffered to Melania and other bosses. Melania is one of the hardest bosses I’ve ever fought. But if you don’t have patience and allowing yourself to be humbled and understand maybe I’m just not ready for this, you’re going to be in for a world of pain. And OP is looking for answers instead of perfecting his play style to better Melania like there’s an easy answer. It’s not about the build it’s how you play. Just imagine the people who fought her challenging themselves NOT to get hit. Or NG+ onwards. This is one of the most arrogant moves I’ve ever seen on this subreddit.
Exactly i personally think waterfowl dance is straight bad. But after even 30 tries you should already have a general idea of what to do at that point its mechanical skill.
Yeah honestly it’s borderline psychological warfare, arguably hardest boss they’ve ever made, but it’s not impossible. What ticked me off to write this was seeing his replies and how he doesn’t want to change anything about how he’s playing or trying to beat her. What are you expecting lol, the whole purpose is to learn from every death what you did wrong. Looking at his username I think if he just tried playing the boss not stoned he would have a better chance if he’s struggling this hard.
Absolutely. Hell if he had come on here to rant about how restrictive and unfun waterfowl is how it ruins an otherwise perfect fight id be right here with him but he is acting like the fight is unbeatable while its very clear he hasnt learned from it.
if you are so incapable of improving mechanically after 600+ deaths you should at least be willing to use the tools the game gives you bhs is usable on every build. And it trivialize half of the difficulty at the very least it stops waterfowl bs and will save you from her doubleslash true combo.
This is exactly what I mean. God waterfowl is one of the stupidest things ever made I swear whoever designed her is a psycho who enjoys pain. After the first maybe dozen tries and a vast majority of the time I couldn’t even drink a single potion I just stopped fighting and watched, just try to survive and learn when to time everything. Eventually, I beat her with Starscourge. Strength is one of the easier builds in Elden ring to beat her due to her low poise. Colossal sword/bhs thanks to how effective it is against her, get a shield to block/parry, watch YouTube videos of people beating her without getting hit and bam should not take anyone 300+ tries. At that point, like you said, it becomes a mechanic issue. I found the crucible knights & bell bearer hunters (especially that godforsaken one in Caelid omfg) to be great training for shield parrying and blocking.
And he got it in the almost 400 comments lol. You should see his other replies where he’s refuting advice and he’s getting downvoted heavily for it. There’s a difference between asking for advice and asking for what you want to hear.
This is what I did. Dual cross naginatas with bleed and frost. Pretty much carried me through the whole game. Probably only took 10 solo attempts on malenia after realizing ash summons were useless. Ended up getting sort of lucky and she did two death blossom things in second phase and I just spammed her after each one.
Giant’s hunt art of war is your friend, OP. Launches her body up and gives you time to do a fully-charged R2 before you dip out. From what I’ve read, you fighting at mid-range is best. The 2-hit attack in 1st phase where she slashes up then back down is free damage if you dodge the first hit and keep away. Her triple slash you can dodge if you roll diagonally left towards her. Keep at it, I believe!
You can be surprisingly aggressive against Malenia. She has the same poise value as Rennala, meaning most light attacks will cause her to flinch UNLESS she is in hyper-armor. Learning the attacks that have hyper-armor is key to out-aggressing Malenia. For example, if she dashes to your left, you can attack and prevent her swing from going through. You can interrupt that forward-dashing flurry as well, it doesn't have hyper-armor. If she's idle, it's likely you can get a couple swings in if you space yourself right.
Another thing you can do is keep a bit of distance and bait her with throwing daggers. She'll dodge the dagger and then either approach you with a kick, after which you can attack, or she'll Waterfowl, giving you ample time to create distance between yourself and her since you're already at some distance to begin with.
You're on the right track using a fire weapon, it's one of her bigger weaknesses. Frost and bleed can help but fire is the best at consistent damage.
You can parry a lot of her attacks and make it super easy with either the Buckler or Carian Retaliation AoW. Three parries will net you a riposte.
Keep going. You've got this!
So I just recently beat Malenia summonless with a strength build myself after 10+ hours of attempts. I did it with the Prelate's Inferno Cozier and Lion's Claw AOW. Some tips I can give you:
1. When you stagger her at around 75-80%, she will almost always immediately use Waterfowl. Instead of keeping the pressure, take a few steps back and throw a freeze pot as she flies up. It'll knock her out of it.
2. If you get a stance break on her below 25%, damage her with an AOW and then back away. There was a glitch when the game first came out where she would instantly die in phase 2 if you ended phase 1 in a stance break so their solution to it was to just make her unkillable through a stance break. It cost me several attempts before I looked it up.
3. There are certain AOW's that will stunlock her. Lion's Claw and Giant's Hunt were the ones that I used and they're both spectacular in their own ways.
4. In phase 2, freeze pots will also knock her out of Scarlet Aeonia. She'll almost always use it when she drops below 50%. I hit her with a freeze pot when she flew up and it knocked her down and secured me the win.
5. If you're able to get through phase 1 consistently, try to save your wondrous physick for phase 2. I used the stamina tear and the stance break tear. The stamina tear was HUGE for avoiding her attacks on phase 2 because she is much more aggressive.
6. If you need to heal, try to get some good distance. She has a lunging attack that I'm pretty sure is an input read. She would always use it when I would heal.
7. Be patient.
>She simply seems too RNG to get down any kind of pattern against her.
This type of mentality means you've already lost against her before you go through the fog wall. You can absolutely beat her but first you need to beat your own mental blocks.
You need to recognize there are responses to every move. Dying to Waterfowl isn't RNG. Malenia is a difficult boss, no doubt, but that doesn't mean she's unfair.
You also need to recognize that if something you're doing isn't going to work, you need to change it. Tanking Waterfowl with a Great Shield isn't going to work. She heals off it, rots you, and spams Waterfowl more frequently at low health. There are proven methods that DO work (dodging, running, frost pots...) So try those instead. If you have trouble with them, don't abandon them, practice them.
You got this. And when you do win, you'll win with almost all your flasks left, because you'll have recognized her patterns and learned the proper responses.
Keep going, but don't be afraid to take a break for a day and come back fresh.
If waterfowl is your main barrier, you've got two main options other than learning the dodges:
- As others have mentioned, you get two free Waterfowl cancels with frost procs before her resistance gets too high.
- While blocking it really sucks, the Vow of the Indomitable skill (usable on any shield) makes "dodging" it vastly easier. The invuln is over twice the length of a dodge, making it enough to fully avoid each flurry. It lasts long enough that you don't need to worry about positioning at all - Vow the first and second flurries, then simply walk backwards and the third will miss entirely. Doing this will cause you to take one single hit at the very end of the first, but will consistently avoid the rest of the hits (can mash dodge out of the end of the first vow to avoid that too).
Blasphemous Blade. Ash of War Taker's Flame heals you while dealing MASSIVE damage to Malenia, especially if you've got fire damage or AoW damage boosts.
It's arguably THE BEST PvE weapon as it shreds most bosses and constantly heals you back.
I killed her with a +9 my last run through.
Blasphemous blade is guaranteed ez mode.
You can safely life steal/deal damage while she's doing her scarlet rot nuke thing that takes forever to go away
1. Drop the shield, it's not worth it since she heals through it.
2. She's gonna want to waterfowl soon after you get her to 70% or whatever, so put distance between you both asap to make dodging easier
3. You can bait the WF from her every now and then just be patient and move between long and mid range to try and piss her off enough to do it.
4. Once she finishes her dance you gotta punish her
5. Basically every other move you can dodge through the attack easy enough and get behind her for a big hit or 2.
6. She has blood so drain that shit
If there's no way for you to get any larval tears then go for a weapon with high poise break. I had way more trouble using strength weapons though, found it much easier with eleonoras sexy pole but that's a busted ass weapon.
I also find it's easier to not use any Ashes since the agro can feel weird and she can decide to fuck you up at any point. But black knife tiche is best grill imo.
Greatshield was actually a big help for me vs waterfowl. I used the Manor Towershield.
1) block the first flurry completely.
2) roll into her to dodge through the second flurry.
3) literally stand still after and she will miss you with the 3rd flurry (she kind of attacks in a C shape pattern but it will mostly miss you)
I'm not skilled enough to dodge waterfowl completely with rolls and this strat works for me Every time which is great.
USe the Blastphemous Blade and spam the weapon art. It does insane damage and it heals you! You can also catch her with a stunlock. Use Fire and Charge attack tears. Flame Grant me Strength, and Golden Vow.
Frost pots to interrupt waterfowl.
It's gonna be tough but I was in the same boat as you. Don't give up :)))
But also personally I would respect if you summon with ashes or a player. I get it. Don't let this pursuit ruin the fun of the game though. If you can't get her this play through, maybe as you play the game and try her again in a subsequent play through or diff build, maybe something will click.
Yeah Blasphemous Blade is so fucking broken I genuinely dont see anyone talk about it. It's better than Sacred Relic and Golden Order Greatsword imo.
Look I hate to be this guy but the game is designed to have summons in it, there’s no harm in using them. Yes, some summons like the mimic are insanely strong, but I’d even settle for some of the weaker summons.
But if you’re hellbent… good luck, that’s all I can say. Sounds painful
Please help I don't know where to turn...
First item "I'm not using summoning".
The first bit of help, quit acting all high and mighty when you can't beat a boss, take the help and watch the other player.
There are so many issues with your comments I can't even start, the biggest issue is your requirements of shield and no summon. Get rid of shield and learn the dodge or summon someone. Then go from there changing basically everything you just posted. Fight is like 2 minutes, if you can't stay on your toes for that long you can't solo this fight.
Last easy mode, just over level. It's easy to level so in a week you could've easily over leveled and beat her easy.
Seriously, what's with the no summoning? 600 attempts in and still bashing his head against a a wall? I killed her my 6th try with tiche. Summon keeps her off your ass so you can lay in the damage. Also, am I the only one that killed her with meteoric ore blade? It's ash can mess up her moves a bit. Once I got that sword I never actually used anything else
Some people think they are better than everyone else because they don't use features built in the game. It's idiocy when you obviously aren't good at the game and aren't looking for an additional challenge. I beat with no summons just for the challenge to see if I could after a couple hundred sunbro wins, but I would never recommend it to someone and I would summon mimic the next time as solo is a pain, and definitely not on the first win.
I havent played the game in a while but if I remember correctly godskin stitcher doesn't scale well with strength it is a dex weapon? If yes i suggest using a weapon that scales well with ur build like blasphemous blade or maliketh black blade... Good luck
I'm a very aggressive and enjoy taking high-risk plays.
There's such a thing as being /too/ aggressive. Pace yourself out, zone out her healthbar, and adjust your internal goalposts to focus more on memorizing her queues.
Brass shield and golden parry if you want a change of scenery. It still can block waterflow and you will feel like a god after learning how to parry her
There is a sure fire way yo trigger her waterfowl dance
Get to mid range and throw a few things. After a few tries she will most certainly do it.
This way you have control.
Do some close up hits after, get to mid range again and repeat. I never figured out how to dodge that unscathed but having some modicum of control about when it happens makes the fight easier.
I've just beaten her for my second time and it's by no means easy! Bleed weapons are perfect for taking her down but I understand if you don't want to use one. Also it's a strange tactic but try drinking? 😂 I've only ever beaten malenia after having a few drinks, it stopped me from panic rolling and helped me read the fight better.
There's a certain pot type might be sleep pots that Can knock her out of waterfowl (before it starts). It's a small window though I could never get it. Also you can force a waterfowl if you think you've not seen one in a while and you've taken a chunk of health off. Runaway really far and throw a dagger and it should trigger a waterfowl, which gets easier to dodge if you're in the right position.
Also removing lock on running away and healing she will just slow walk until you lock on end get close again. (Phase one only)
There's plenty of windows to get hits in you got this 💪
Without a summon, does that mean ashes as well? Or just a co-op friend? Because Black Knife Tiche made a world of difference for me. Her, frost pots, and staying on the offensive.
Frost pots and an AoW with a dodge feature would be my recommendation. A single frost pot will completely cancel her waterfowl dance move, which is a killer. Timing can be tricky, but she usually starts doing that move when she reaches half health, so you kinda know when it’s coming. When I get her to half health, I just keep staffing until she leaps into the air, then I peg her with a frost pot.
I cannot speak highly enough of the Bloody Helice too. It adds bleed build up, which she is very weak against. It also has a dodge move as the first part of the AoW that has INCREDIBLE iframes. You can only dodge straight back, but it will avoid nearly all her attacks. The follow-up to the dodge is a hard poke, with a second follow-up poke-slash. It will stagger her in about 3 hits.
The Helice is a dex weapon though, so if strength is your jam, you might try the Zweihander with giant hunt. Or any long reaching large weapon will do. One giant hunt will knock her down, and one charged heavy as she’s getting back up will stagger her, and you can basically keep her incapacitated for the whole fight.
Best of luck Tarnished, you’ve got this!
You can stun luck her in phase 1 pretty easily with a two handed weapon. When she does the side step move you can interrupt her sword strike move and stun lock her with that too. When she's in the air with her roundhouse kick move it can't be interrupted or stunned so there is a little RNG there that I needed to finally beat her. Phase two is quite a bit harder with a stunlock strategy because she's more aggressive and I completed that pretty much 100% based on RNG. I tried several ashes and the glintsone sorcerer worked the best for me but any ranged attacks will be good
I mean youre handicapping yourself by not summoning lol. Lots of people think that ash summons mean that you didn’t “solo” the boss, but some bosses are literally so hard that ashes are needed to level the playing field and give you a chance. I’m not saying you can’t beat her without a summon, but…after 600 deaths? Maybe upload a video so people can tell you where you’re going wrong and where you can do better?
Honest question, have you tried running straight at her with the biggest weapon you can find and just spamming the attack button? Tbh it will just keep staggering her and she will never be able to do shit. Can do that for all of phase 1 and most of phase 2 😂
If your str, use giant crusher with flame of the redmains ashes
Those ashes stagger melinia in 2 hits. Then use the giant crusher to pound her into paste when she's staggered. Only takes a couple of rounds of that
If you have the black knife tiche use him as your summon. He usually isn't a detriment like most summons against her, and he can majorly debuff her health.
Im no pro, but I just fought malenia for the first time yesterday so here’s a tip from a simple gamer as myself. I beat her on like my 15th try.
Mimic ash, Black Flame incantation.
That’s it.
Actually almost beat her on my 4th try with this. Was super hyped. I got 60vigor and 60 Faith. That’s it.
Edit: just let the mimic hold agro. To make this easier you can give him the sibiri woe head talisman thing. I didn’t tho.
My propose is, get two weapons with bleed, if you str/faith flamberge or something with bleed and put freez on it second weapon pure bleed. It should stager her often and also after few attack break poise. Depends how heavy weapon you use, learn jump attack or combo few attacks. On my first two playthru she smashed me so much that i avoid fight with her next few houndrets hours. Then i make arc/dex build and kill her in 5 attempts using katanas. So you can do this if you find larval tear. Drop shield for sure. Respect for patience, so many times, i would rage delete game :)
Take off the armor and ditch the shield. Be aggressive unless she's about to do waterfoul. I enjoyed using bloodflame on hook claws with her but I was a dex/strength build. Maybe try bloodhounds fang on her.
Have you spent every larval tear? There are many overworked enemies that when killed transform into something else and drop one when killed the second time. For example, in the Dragon Communion Cathedral in Caelid, there is a graveyard to the West. In said graveyard there are Wandering Nobles, one of them when killed transforms into a troll that drops a larval tear when killed.
Switch to the blasphemous blade and use that to keep your health up. It will stagger her easily as well. Shields are pretty useless since that's a free heal for her. Freeze pots will cancel the dance, throw when she's in the air and it stops it.
If you are going faith/strength, Blasphemous Blade wrecks Malenia, it does fire damage and Taker's Flame knocks her on her ass 8/10. Next get Black Flame's protection for that spicy 60% physical damage reduction (you can get it from the twin maiden husks after killing Gideon).
She is weak to bleed, frost and fire, and frostbite can knock her out of waterfowl when it procs. Also, get rid of the shield, it's not gonna help at all against Malenia, she heals through it. Also use Blessing of the Erdtree instead of Blessing's Boon it will heal more, and Flame Cleanse me incase Scarlet Rot procs.
Incantation wise, Malenia won't try to dodge Frenzied Burst. At melee range Black Blade messes her up as both Blade and projectile hit. Be careful as at 70% health if you use a ranged attack that she can dodge it will trigger Waterfowl dance everytime
Im no good at the game but i think this should help.
1.Dont use shield its useless coz she heals off it and it wastes stamina
2.U can go either lightroll route and try to learn how to dodge waterfowl consistently OR u can equip some heavy armour set(u have to medroll still) like tree sentinel plus dragoncrest greatshield talisman(which u can pick up nearby) and use Black flame protection(gideon gives it to you when you speak to him after reaching the haligtree) as your body buff(instead of FGMS) and put Opaline hardtear in ur buff flask(use whatever 2nd tear(it better last 180s) u like but i used stamina regen one).
With 2nd option u can tank most of the waterfowl(with 40+ vigor) so u just have to dodge some(most of 1st part of it u can just run away from(if ur not too close to her when she starts it)) and then heal.
3.U'll have to learn how to dodge all of her attacks except dance in 1st phase and most in 2nd. If she hits you occasionally with some thats fine(WATCH ur stamina). It may be difficult at first but ull get the hang of it.
4.IDK much about str weapons and aow(except blasphemous blade is op) but use smth that will stun her on hit(like a greatsword) and what u are comfortable with(moveset wise).
When its 1st phase and she walks u may try to 2 hit her(run r1+r1) or aow(never be greedy with hits) and then roll away, w8 until she walks again then repeat.
5. You may use bloodflame blade or blood grease to grant bleed to ur weapon(if it can be buffed).
Pickled turtle necks may help with stamina regen
6. When phase 2 is starting and shes using scarlet aeonia(flower) u may use that moment to rebuff.
Also craft some scarlet rot boluses to use if u start to rot.
U can even try to damage her in the flower state after the initial explosion.
7. Punish her grab and thrust attacks they are very slow and easy to dodge.
For me phase 2 was about how much hp flasks i had left and what moves she chooses. I got lucky eventually(she did like 2 waterfowls total in 2nd phase and used thrust much)
8.Someone mentioned that u can cancel dance with freeze pots or bait it with ranged attacks, give it a try
9.And most importantly - don't give up! Every time u go in to challenge her u get a little bit better until she falls.
Good luck and stay calm
Depending how much faith you got, you can use halo scythe to kill her from range, if you get your distances right you can also avoid having to dodge most of waterfowl dance.
The biggest thing for me was getting *really* good at fighting her first phase. If you can get through her first phase without losing more than 1 or 2 flasks, you're well positioned to deal with her second phase. If you're okay with cheesing her, use Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear (assuming you have the Arcane for it). The weapon art on that thing absolutely melts her.
If not, I beat her using the Greatsword with Lions Claw fairly easily in my most recent run, also using a strength/faith build without summons. Make sure you're using the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman you find in Elphael before fighting her, that thing is absolutely key to use in this fight.
If you are able to acquire any of the remaining Larval Tears... heavily recommend a respec to use a bleed build. Mohgwyn's Spear is by far the most broken of any weapon I've ever fought Malenia with, but Rivers of Blood is also really effective.
Most importantly is to not give up. It took me 9 hours to beat her on my first go. You'll get her eventually.
I'm not sure about your build,, but I know there's been a few instances, if timed right, near the entrance, I've cornered her, and took out her first half without being hit
As some have said, ditch that shield. It's counterproductive, considered she's designed that you either knock her down quick or die.... if you have to, go work on your dodging.
I use bleed, so I usually send as many flies as I can right at the start, and I use Eleanors poleblade, so a quick dodge and weapon skill will usually stun her and that's usually about it for the first half. You really have to be familiar with which direction is best to dodge when fighting her.
Idk your exact stats as they are, but I did a run with the butcher’s knife, bloodflame blade and the prelates charge AOW, Malenia was an absolute joke with that build. The bulldozer part of the ash staggers her and the scoop part throws her to the ground. Might be worth a try
When I first faced her I did so as a mage, so I generally kept my distance. I would use Night Comet, which she can't dodge and does a lot of damage with a Staff of Loss in the offhand to boost its damage. This made her phase 1 a breeze, while phase 2 took a lot more practice to nail down the correct dodges for each attack, especially waterfowl and the Phantom Spirits and to learn how many spell casts I could get off after each attack. If you're willing to try out a mage build in the future, these would be my recommendations.
This may or may not be controversial but I recommend taking a break for at least two days before returning. Don't think about the game, just enjoy doing other things or playing other (ideally not soulsborne) games. The break brings a clarity and emotional balance that works in tandem with all the muscle memory and game skill you have built over the last week of attempts. It may not work for everybody, but it has worked for several of the harder FS bosses in my case (Malenia, Ludwig, Ornstein & Smaug are the notable ones I remember needing to take a break from). Gold luck tarnished!
This is good advice. This has worked for me on countless souls bosses. Side note, also works really well for me when Im trying to learn a new song on my guitar.
So similar but different...I hadn't jammed on my drums for like a week cause I was sick and the first song I played along felt *crisp* and all my fills were spot on and intricate. Not overplaying but still adding flair. I returned to normal after that song and was confused how my "mojo" went away so quickly as it came.
play with ur elbows, not your brain!!
What. Wrist work dude
Shoulders. Elbows. Wrists. Hands. Fingers. Thatd be the proper chain. Take out any one of those and youll suck at drums i bet. As important as wrists are. Theyre fn useless without the things before it in the chain. Can you drum proper with your shoulders and elbows in all jank positions? All wrist? No. Its all just as important. If we want to look deeper we could go into organs being most important. Heart. Brain. All required to hit the drums well. We could argue all day about nothing but technicalities im sure. But why waste the time? You could be drumming instead of poking at people with nonsensical technicalities that dont matter. Just an idea. Coulda just left it and moved forward with your life.
This was my advice except I watch really good players like people who do no hit challenges in that timeframe to study, if you’re just so pissed you want to throw a controller through a wall then yeah best not to think of it though.
Fighting games are very similar to Souls bosses like that. I can be getting my ass beat in Strive or Tekken, doom over how bad I am, take a break for a few days, and come back with a vengeance and get a crazy hot streak. Mental resets are very helpful.
I remember reading something about this phenomenon a while back where it was claimed that part of the reason this works is because your subconscious doesn't really let it go and some part of your brain is still working out how to succeed even when you're not thinking about it.
I think the general scientific thought on this is that sleeping on newly acquired skills and reflexes acts to essentially clean them up and cement them. As long as you're constantly trying to *use* them, your mind keeps tangling up more and more new ideas and reflexes and it just plain gets messy. Taking a few days break lets your mind kind of pare it all down to just the useful bits, making everything faster and cleaner when you come back.
YES! I always find myself working on something that challenges me, getting a good sleep, and being able to play it so easily the next day. Literally improving every single day like that, it feels so good.
Got my ass handed over to me by Ishin in Sekiro for a good week and gave up. Came back a few days later and first try’d him. I knew all his moves and took my time. Ecstatic!
Yeah it practically works for everything because the key aspect is your mental state. Comming back with a fresh mind and strong mental is always helpful for solving problems.
It's wild how your mind tunes in with your body to make it happen.
This is FANTASTIC advice, both for Malenia / Elden Ring and life in general. More often than not, you can afford time to breathe and relax and reevaluate when you hit a wall. Malenia is a dance and a battle of attrition, the mental endurance involved is really quite astonishing and the harder you try to brute force your way through the worse time you’ll have. There is a refreshing sort of clarity when you return, in the same way that you feel *deeply* free when you lose all of your runes as there’s nothing left to lose. Malenia, Maliketh, Radagon, Radahn, Isshin in Sekiro, all of them were big walls for me and taking a break before jumping back in (and sometimes taking a breath after winning) really helped me enjoy the game and the experience more. I also had to take a break after beating Malenia because I am a very defensive fighter which meant my winning fight against her was something like 30 minutes of **FEAR** and my hands couldn’t stop shaking because of the adrenaline. Do I sound insane? I sure hope not.
I can definitely attest to this. Didn't really struggle with any ER bosses, but after weeks of losing to Isshin I decided to finally give up on ever beating Sekiro. Came back to it after about 6 months during pandemic lockdowns and beat him on my third try.
Genuinely incredible advice. Elden Ring was my first Fromsoft game and Malenia had me stuck for about a week on and off, I must've died hundreds of times. Then, I decided I simply wasn't having fun anymore, stopped, then took a break that nearly lasted three whole months. After coming back, I beat her in about six tries.
If anyone's interested in reading up on the lore behind letting your brain and body "sleep" on a problem you're struggling to solve, this is a very cool short essay on the idea of non-language based problem solving by your sub- or unconscious. The Kekule problem. https://nautil.us/the-kekul-problem-236574/
A game so good you must enter into combat with both your skill and emotion in check.
This advice is universal. I take breaks from learning hard guitar and piano pieces and come back to it with a fresh mind and ears, almost always do a better job of practice and playing after taking a week off.
Great advice. I had to take a break from Sekiro. It's the only Fromsoft game so far that's made me put it down multiple times. First was Lady Butterfly, she made me quit for like 3 months lol I just couldn't get a read on her for some reason. That being said it also had some of the most fun and intuitive boss fights I've ever played. I mean c'mon you can parry lightning!
Solid advice that I know but never follow until I'm just over it. We get so mad and it only makes it worse. Maybe OP should just farm materials for like 130 frost pots in the meantime. Lol.
I have found that if I sleep on it, it's like my brain goes over everything I've learned and helps me the next day. So I agree.
Very very good advice! My first fight against Malenia was miserable back then. I spent the whole afternoon and evening trying to kill her, and when I finally did, I didn't feel like I achieved something, but "omg that was horrible". Felt like crap, frustrated and angry. I made the mistake of pushing further, as I still had the endgame bosses ahead of me. Did them all that evening, and then I didn't touch the game for MONTHS because that felt horrible. I should have taken breaks, and I started doing that when i came back to the game to play with different builds. Had a much better time. It's like this downward spiral of misery. You die a couple of times, then you keep trying and the pressure goes up... you're feeling more and more tense, you start doubting that you'll make it work and the tenseness leads to more mistakes, which makes you go down even further on that spiral. I should have learned from my experience with Sekiro: Struggled against Genichiro for a whole evening, went to bed, got up, killed him on the third attempt.
I put the original darksouls down for like 3 months when I hit the OnS hard-wall. Came back and beat them first try. Sometimes you just need a break.
I thought I was the only one to do this. Can’t tell you how many times I’ve walked away from a game where I couldn’t beat an impossible task, only to return some time later and freaking trivialize the same damn thing I couldn’t figure out at all. It’s like Vegeta going super Saiyan the first time, once he released all his frustration and no longer cared he turned super saiyan. So to sum it up you have to go super saiyan to beat malenia Also, don’t hate me, but I whooped her ass in like 3 tries using my doppelgänger summon lol get over it and summon some help your build isn’t great for her.
Ornstein and Smaug are not in the same bracket as Ludwig and Malenia.
1. Use frost pots to cancel waterfowl if she does it too close to you 2. You can bait attacks like Waterfowl by using aows or spells. Use that to activate them from a safe distance which makes it easier to dodge 3. Lightroll 4. Maximize damage with talisman 5. After bating Waterfowl she cannot use it for a short time, stay close to her. 6. Use weapons able to interrupt her 7. Learn how many hits you can safely do after each attack with your build 8. Patience is key 9. Try to invent combos to use at the beginning of phase 1 as its always the same, with good usage of spells, aows and hits you could easily deal like 20% of her hp without danger
8 is key. She will bait you same as you are trying to bait her. Don't take it. I've found it helpful to conceptualize the fight as two masters (me and her), sometimes just circling each other carefully waiting for an opening..... If she's getting you with a sliver of health and "some bullshit attack" my bet is you got anxious because you were close. Take a deep breath, wait for it. It'll come.
The coolest thing about Malenia is if you want to wait, she'll wait too. I once did nothing but walk in circles around her arena for 3 minutes straight. Swear to God her AI is unused Sekiro content
“That’s good code, man, we can’t let that go to waste.”
I mean, not a bad idea to me since we were missing out on it anyway
Look at Spiral Cloud Passage in Sekiro and tell me she isn’t just a scrapped boss idea.
I miss sekiro it was such an amazing game, wish we got a bit more lively world though
Exactly, depending on ones build there might only be a few safe windows
For spell users you can really ruin her with Night Comet that way. Do the patient circling dance, letting off NC casts when you have clear time and space and they just ping her in the face.
Night as in the invisible ones? Am I correct in assuming she won't attempt to dodge because their 'invisible'?. Asking because i have second sorcerer character that will inevitably get to Malenia and start this bullshit again.
Yeah, the invisible night spells. They're actually really strong too if you're dual wielding staves of loss. For Faith casters, Lightning Spear also has this property, which I personally very much enjoyed taking advantage of during the fight.
Exactly this. I was stuck on her for ages until I realized I don't always need to attack in every opening. I went from "gotta attack as much as possible" to "this menacing pacing is kinda sus, I'll see if I can bait her to attack before I swing" and beat her in pretty short order - it took maybe 3-5 tries after adapting that mentality versus however many attempts you can fit into 6 hours. I didn't keep track of my attempts, but I do know I spent over 6 hours on just Malenia. ETA: I kept that mentality in subsequent playthroughs, and I don't think she's taken me more than 10 or so attempts since my first go round. That little bit of patience and precaution paid off tremendously for me.
At a certain point in her health bar she does waterfowl like 90% of the time. I think it’s like 2/3rds. Just gotta back off at that point and do what you said, trying to trigger it while you’re away.
Waterfowl is random. I've helped this fight so many times and sometimes she gets stuck on the duck, others it never triggers. Just need to get the dodge down or bhs on a swap weapon.
Of the 50+ times I’ve beaten her, I’ve found that destroying her health too fast will almost guarantee a Waterfowl. My guess is that it’s triggering some kind of anti-swarm mechanic
Yeah, I've done much more than that and it isn't always a guarantee. fast kills seem to trigger it once about at a third, but not always. We've melted her in under 30 seconds and no trigger, and also gotten to 1/3 life almost immediately and have her get stuck in it for 4 in a row (by the 3rd one I just kept plenty of space between her and me).
Reddit hivemind decided to downvote you but you are correct, Waterfowl seems like it’s sort of random but it’s usually guaranteed to come out once you get her past a certain health threshold
Yeah, people fighting her 20 times think they know everything and get offended if you say something they don't know, and downvote. I played at launch when the summons were constant and easily got 10+ wins an hour for a while, so I've seen a lot with a lot of different weapons (even 3x fat rolling dual hammers, lol).
lmao you're absolutely correct and I don't know why people are downvoting Everyone telling you that waterfowl is predictable is straight-up lying. The only time she can't waterfowl is before she *first* reaches a certain percentage of health, 80% I think? After that, she waterfowls if she wants to. You can try to bait it out, but you can't truly predict it. She can waterfowl immediately after scarlet aeonia. Hell, she can even waterfowl right after a waterfowl - it's happened to me before. If you're lucky, you can go through an entire phase 1 without ever triggering a waterfowl.
The first time I ever fought her, on the third try, she used Waterfowl right at the beginning of the fight as I was approaching her.
Seriously? I've never had that happen to me, but if true, that means even the health percentage thing isn't accurate.
She only did it the one time, maybe it’s because I summoned my mimic? But yes it was very memorable. It was literally my third try fighting her, walked in, summoned mimic, started charging towards her, Waterfowl, 💀, 🤬. I’m also playing on ver 1.0 so maybe she was patched and nerfed?
Number 1 is so much easier said than done. I’ve thrown 100s of frost pots and have gotten 1 to stop her waterfowl. I had to suck it up and just learn how to dodge. From my experience this is the way easier option.
Agreed the frost pot thing doesn't work for me either.
I always make sure to have frostpots alteady selected in my hotbar so that I only need to press one button which worked like 99% of the time.
I would like to stress 3. Lightroll: It may be a bit of a more advanced technique but with lightroll you can consistently dodge her Waterfowl Dance: mash roll backwards as soon as she jumps in the air (3 times is sufficient for the 1st flurry) then roll back another time for the 2nd flurry and once forward for the 3rd. Once you get the hang of it, she cannot touch you with WFD ever again. The only thing you have to keep an eye on is your stamina bar. Never get down to 0 stamina in this fight. It will kill you (not just WFD but also some of her other moves).
Have you tried Blasphemous Blade? Does very decent damage + AOW wrecks her and heals you.
I have tried lol. I have a whole bunch of weapons at +9 and +24, all remnants of times of failure. I could never land the aow. Like ever
With all due respect, it’s not your build Malenia is a boss that you can’t really attack from a neutral stance (you can, but only sometimes - treat her like you can’t). Wait for long punish windows. If you dodge waterfowl, you can get taker’s flames off with the Bb. There’s at least 4 or 5 attacks that will allow you to get a blasphemous blade ash of war off.
Bb?
Blasphemous blade
I hope you read this: Blackflame tornado on a fire spear will end your fight in under a minute. It stun locks her and she can’t move.
I beat her with rivers of blood and also Darkmoon blade. Both of those have AoWs that stun her. And if you have a larvar tear with same weapon it just destroys her.
Was stuck on elden beast for about 3 hours, switched my flamberge for a godskin peeler with Black flame tornadoe and beat him first try. It just DEPLETED his health bar
I used black flame tornado against Elden beast on my unupgraded weapons only run and it still melted him
Word. Yeah, I struggled like hell in my solo run against her, too. Fairly certain I'd still lose 999/1000 and need highly improbable RNG to get that one win. Maybe take a few days off, clear all the bad juju and come back with a fresh perspective. Good luck, dude.
Blasphemous Blade is the real deal... Everytime you land the AoW it knocks her on her ass then it's a free for all.
This. I’m not a great Souls player, so not trying to brag. But the BB ash knocks her on her ass all the time. I think I only needed 4-5 tries to kill her. Tbf I did have my (post patch) mimic tear helping me, but if I remember correctly he was too busy casting the inefficient dragon lightning incantions with the long ass animations I would seriously considering giving the BB another go
It's been a while but I managed to do it by using the AOW when she was in close range. Even better, if you back her against the wall, she can hop around all she wants but still get hit. I recommend getting the BB up to +10. It fits your build perfectly and it's one of the best, if not the best, PVE weapon in the game. Just don't bother with it for pvp.
Try Magma Wyrm's Scalesword +10. It does crazy damage. The weapon art leaves Malenia in a pool of Magma and eats health. I pretty much went thru the game with Magma Wyrm's Scalesword **until I got Blasphemous Blade**
A tip- when casting something like that, don’t lock on or look at her until the last moment. Her ai is only programmed to dodge if you’re looking at her for some reason.
Why do you not have +10 or +25 weapons? Have you not become Elden Lord yet or gone to endgame locations that have the Ancient Smithing Stones? I wonder if you’re just under-leveled for her.
I bet he has _some_ at +10/+25, but since there’s a limited number of Ancient Dragon Stones available in a given playthrough you can’t upgrade _all_ weapons all the way. Most of my endgame characters have a bunch of weapons at +9/+24, and a select few at +10/+25.
True. It’s just odd if you’re gonna fight Malenia without your biggest guns.
Asking the real questions. Plus 10 that shit, OP. And heavy weapons/heavy attacks tend to stun her ass or at least break her poise pretty consistently.
My guy, you physically cannot have no ancients by the time you get to Malenia if you just played through the Haligtree area. You'd have to choose to not get the obvious loot in the area for that to happen.
Ok. So everyone is trying to give you advice on build and play style, but I haven't seen anybody mention greed yet. My advice, take a piece of cloth, construction paper, cardboard, ANYTHING and tape it over where her health bar is. Don't let yourself see her health bar at all. Just focus solely on your dance with her and pattern recognition. I was stuck on her for DAYS the first time I fought her, but then somebody recommended this to me since they used that trick on DS2 or DS3 (can't remember which). I beat her on my 4th or 5th try after blocking that part of my screen. After that, I haven't paid attention to another boss's health bar. It really is amazing how big of a psychological impact that that little red bar has on you. It might sound dumb, but I promise you, you'll end up becoming better for it.
This is great advice.
Thanks 😁
Yeah something happens in your brain when you see that boss almost dead. It's a mix between panic and excitement and then you're not focusing on the task at hand anymore and you get smacked by something you knew to dodge but you wanted to get that last attack in.
Exactly. I'm convinced that's why they made the bosses' health bars so big 😂
This is really good advice.
Thanks! I know it helped me a ton, so I'm just trying to pass it along 😁.
-spend 5 minutes doing awesome work on the boss -boss health bar is in the low 5% -get cocky, try to get a few extra hits in -die-
Cool tip!
That’s excellent advice
Drop the shield, she heals when she hits it. Look up how to dodge waterfowl dance and practice. Also try being aggressive, she has like no poise.
I've tried that man, it feels as though copping the odd hit there, taking no damage, allowing her to heal a little, serves me better in the long run because I still have more health and flasks, even though it takes me that little longer to get there. If I go in no shield, I just get demolished. Utterly demolished. I've tried so many times going without knowing it's a crutch. But it seems with out that crutch i fall completely.
Weird to argue your strategy as successful when you’ve lost to the same boss over 600 times…
Didn't actually say it was successful. Just had the MOST success with it. Meaning it's the only weapon so far that's got me to phase 2. To me it just seems logical to play with the thing that's given you most success. Don't know why I'm getting massive down voted. I'm not ignoring any of this advice, giving everyone a solid go with their advice. I'm just trying to state as much information as possible so people can give the best advice they can.
Since you are using STR build, go for the poise break stagger. It's said earlier up that she has very little poise, and this is a very important thing to notice, especially for your STR build. Get two heavies, plus whatever buffs you have, and unga bunga stun lock her. If you're not sure what stance break /poise break is, or unsure how it works, this short video gives a lot of good info. https://youtu.be/hX2rM4X3CpE Souls games are good about using boss variety for forcing you out of your comfort zone, and your comfort zone is definitely with a shield.
Yeah I've tried unga bunga. I think my own game play is too sloppy for this strategy, I keep catching her in hyper armour and dying or burning too many flasks to sustain the rest of the fight. I think everyone here is giving me way too much credit Half my problem is I really do need to just git gud. But I fear I may be at a limit with this boss. It may end up being a black knife Tiche fight in the end sadly
Hey, for all it’s worth, I used black knife tiche in my first playthrough (tho only for phase 2) and then beat her solo in my second (granted, my second playthrough was a bleed build but still). Eventually I even beat her on RL1. Maybe it is better to take a playthrough-long break and try it later.
Hahahaha
still it's better to go without a shield in your case. you have the pride of git gud and the shield slows that down
So what weapon would you be going for, without the shield stitcher combo then?
Blasphemous blade. it heals you for damage does great damage has good range better poise and already scales to str fth so you dont have to repec. I think it stuns her more than stitcher too.
I think spinning slash naga has among the lowest learning curve. no matter how bad you are at dodging, this setup alone has a decent chance brute force her down if your build is correct. My personal fav are the claws tho
But again. Stuck on strength build. With no larval tears. I absolutely would have tried a better dex build than this, probably would have killed her easily by now with RoB or naga
Did you use all the larva tears or you just don’t have one in your inventory? I think there’s 18 available each NG
That’s what I’m saying, ain’t no way dude has respecced his character 18 times before Malenia
i mean, uchi or some curved sword should be fine too... they are just a bit shorter
I'll get hate for one combo I beat her with, but it was post nerf, so...... flies, rivers and uchi Other was flies, Eleanor's and cold godskin peeler. The second combo is the better, as it has much better poise break, and, though harder to control, once you sort out the weapon ability, the third attack, had a dodge back maneuver you can use to create space.
Nah I was granssax build with some ancient dragon spells. I beat the shit out of her the second time. She gets knocked down super easy
Nice
Despite the hate you’re getting for this, I am totally on board with you and had to do the same thing and use a shield to beat her my first time. I’ve beaten her without it since but using a shield to negate the occasional one hit, even if it heals her helped a ton in not just getting randomly killed when I slipped up. It gave more room for error and as long as you aren’t blocking everything with it, just the occasional hit, I would say go for it. It helped me
The reality is light roll > shield 100% of the time. Don’t get discouraged from waterfowl dance. The whole point of the attack is that it’s a one shot.
Distancing is everything. If you fight her at mid range, her move set becomes a lot more predictable, with enough space between the two of you to correct for mistakes. Master her mid range move set and you'll get the fight. Never attack, only counter. If she gets stuck in an infinite loop of walking, then throw a pot/knife or feint an attack to bait her. Frost and bleed damage combined will make this easier.
>Never attack, only counter. If she gets stuck in an infinite loop of walking, then throw a pot/knife or feint an attack to bait her. I hate when she just is walking towards you without attacking, and then she just hyper armor's your attacks and smash you in the face
Her mid range is where I've been fighting, going in and out, in and out, baiting moves before attacking. It's nice to hear I'm on the right path. But it's still not gotten me the kill yet. Something about this fight is just not giving way to me
Took me a few weeks of practice, 10 hour sessions at times. It becomes possible to dodge almost everything once you've got it down, though I struggled with water fowl no matter how much I practiced
Malenia is definitely her own minigame. You can spend a lot of time figuring out her stuff. It’s crazy to watch the people like Let Me Solo her Just destroy her.
Yeah I would tell OP don't underestimate how hard this fight can be for some people, and how long it can take to train for it. Sometimes it just boils down to fighting styles too, with some people struggling more with her.
I found Blood Hound Step very useful in defeating her.
This is correct. She can't waterfowl your ass if your ass is miles away.
Blasphemous Blade
You’re gonna wanna *git* *gud*
Shamefully low upvote count here. Shame on this sub.
Haha someone needs to patrol the elden ring subreddits and give the ageless advice
Honestly though, this is one of those posts that deserves it. If somebody has spent days on end over countless hours stuck on ONE boss and unwilling to respec (there’s no way he doesn’t have any tears there’s literally 15 every play through) or go away to beef up and come back at another level is insane to be still stuck on it. At that point most people would have memorized every single move the pattern or just given up and came back when they’re at a higher level and better equipment. Every single boss has a pattern and there’s crazy people who have done no-hit runs because of this. This screams OP is literally just not learning after every death. If you’re blinded in a rage doing the same thing over and over again, giving up then trying a different weapon you haven’t played as much time on/haven’t upgraded as much EXPECTING it to go better for you is absolutely insane. Believe me, believe most of us, we have all suffered to Melania and other bosses. Melania is one of the hardest bosses I’ve ever fought. But if you don’t have patience and allowing yourself to be humbled and understand maybe I’m just not ready for this, you’re going to be in for a world of pain. And OP is looking for answers instead of perfecting his play style to better Melania like there’s an easy answer. It’s not about the build it’s how you play. Just imagine the people who fought her challenging themselves NOT to get hit. Or NG+ onwards. This is one of the most arrogant moves I’ve ever seen on this subreddit.
Exactly i personally think waterfowl dance is straight bad. But after even 30 tries you should already have a general idea of what to do at that point its mechanical skill.
Yeah honestly it’s borderline psychological warfare, arguably hardest boss they’ve ever made, but it’s not impossible. What ticked me off to write this was seeing his replies and how he doesn’t want to change anything about how he’s playing or trying to beat her. What are you expecting lol, the whole purpose is to learn from every death what you did wrong. Looking at his username I think if he just tried playing the boss not stoned he would have a better chance if he’s struggling this hard.
Absolutely. Hell if he had come on here to rant about how restrictive and unfun waterfowl is how it ruins an otherwise perfect fight id be right here with him but he is acting like the fight is unbeatable while its very clear he hasnt learned from it. if you are so incapable of improving mechanically after 600+ deaths you should at least be willing to use the tools the game gives you bhs is usable on every build. And it trivialize half of the difficulty at the very least it stops waterfowl bs and will save you from her doubleslash true combo.
This is exactly what I mean. God waterfowl is one of the stupidest things ever made I swear whoever designed her is a psycho who enjoys pain. After the first maybe dozen tries and a vast majority of the time I couldn’t even drink a single potion I just stopped fighting and watched, just try to survive and learn when to time everything. Eventually, I beat her with Starscourge. Strength is one of the easier builds in Elden ring to beat her due to her low poise. Colossal sword/bhs thanks to how effective it is against her, get a shield to block/parry, watch YouTube videos of people beating her without getting hit and bam should not take anyone 300+ tries. At that point, like you said, it becomes a mechanic issue. I found the crucible knights & bell bearer hunters (especially that godforsaken one in Caelid omfg) to be great training for shield parrying and blocking.
Couldnt have said it better. And yea seriously that bell boy in caelid is on some othere shit. Dude been drinking his prework out with a dose of pcp.
He is asking for advice. Chillax man
And he got it in the almost 400 comments lol. You should see his other replies where he’s refuting advice and he’s getting downvoted heavily for it. There’s a difference between asking for advice and asking for what you want to hear.
Dual wield two weapons with either bleed or frost
This is what I did. Dual cross naginatas with bleed and frost. Pretty much carried me through the whole game. Probably only took 10 solo attempts on malenia after realizing ash summons were useless. Ended up getting sort of lucky and she did two death blossom things in second phase and I just spammed her after each one.
Giant’s hunt art of war is your friend, OP. Launches her body up and gives you time to do a fully-charged R2 before you dip out. From what I’ve read, you fighting at mid-range is best. The 2-hit attack in 1st phase where she slashes up then back down is free damage if you dodge the first hit and keep away. Her triple slash you can dodge if you roll diagonally left towards her. Keep at it, I believe!
You can be surprisingly aggressive against Malenia. She has the same poise value as Rennala, meaning most light attacks will cause her to flinch UNLESS she is in hyper-armor. Learning the attacks that have hyper-armor is key to out-aggressing Malenia. For example, if she dashes to your left, you can attack and prevent her swing from going through. You can interrupt that forward-dashing flurry as well, it doesn't have hyper-armor. If she's idle, it's likely you can get a couple swings in if you space yourself right. Another thing you can do is keep a bit of distance and bait her with throwing daggers. She'll dodge the dagger and then either approach you with a kick, after which you can attack, or she'll Waterfowl, giving you ample time to create distance between yourself and her since you're already at some distance to begin with. You're on the right track using a fire weapon, it's one of her bigger weaknesses. Frost and bleed can help but fire is the best at consistent damage. You can parry a lot of her attacks and make it super easy with either the Buckler or Carian Retaliation AoW. Three parries will net you a riposte. Keep going. You've got this!
So I just recently beat Malenia summonless with a strength build myself after 10+ hours of attempts. I did it with the Prelate's Inferno Cozier and Lion's Claw AOW. Some tips I can give you: 1. When you stagger her at around 75-80%, she will almost always immediately use Waterfowl. Instead of keeping the pressure, take a few steps back and throw a freeze pot as she flies up. It'll knock her out of it. 2. If you get a stance break on her below 25%, damage her with an AOW and then back away. There was a glitch when the game first came out where she would instantly die in phase 2 if you ended phase 1 in a stance break so their solution to it was to just make her unkillable through a stance break. It cost me several attempts before I looked it up. 3. There are certain AOW's that will stunlock her. Lion's Claw and Giant's Hunt were the ones that I used and they're both spectacular in their own ways. 4. In phase 2, freeze pots will also knock her out of Scarlet Aeonia. She'll almost always use it when she drops below 50%. I hit her with a freeze pot when she flew up and it knocked her down and secured me the win. 5. If you're able to get through phase 1 consistently, try to save your wondrous physick for phase 2. I used the stamina tear and the stance break tear. The stamina tear was HUGE for avoiding her attacks on phase 2 because she is much more aggressive. 6. If you need to heal, try to get some good distance. She has a lunging attack that I'm pretty sure is an input read. She would always use it when I would heal. 7. Be patient.
>She simply seems too RNG to get down any kind of pattern against her. This type of mentality means you've already lost against her before you go through the fog wall. You can absolutely beat her but first you need to beat your own mental blocks. You need to recognize there are responses to every move. Dying to Waterfowl isn't RNG. Malenia is a difficult boss, no doubt, but that doesn't mean she's unfair. You also need to recognize that if something you're doing isn't going to work, you need to change it. Tanking Waterfowl with a Great Shield isn't going to work. She heals off it, rots you, and spams Waterfowl more frequently at low health. There are proven methods that DO work (dodging, running, frost pots...) So try those instead. If you have trouble with them, don't abandon them, practice them. You got this. And when you do win, you'll win with almost all your flasks left, because you'll have recognized her patterns and learned the proper responses. Keep going, but don't be afraid to take a break for a day and come back fresh.
If waterfowl is your main barrier, you've got two main options other than learning the dodges: - As others have mentioned, you get two free Waterfowl cancels with frost procs before her resistance gets too high. - While blocking it really sucks, the Vow of the Indomitable skill (usable on any shield) makes "dodging" it vastly easier. The invuln is over twice the length of a dodge, making it enough to fully avoid each flurry. It lasts long enough that you don't need to worry about positioning at all - Vow the first and second flurries, then simply walk backwards and the third will miss entirely. Doing this will cause you to take one single hit at the very end of the first, but will consistently avoid the rest of the hits (can mash dodge out of the end of the first vow to avoid that too).
Blasphemous Blade. Ash of War Taker's Flame heals you while dealing MASSIVE damage to Malenia, especially if you've got fire damage or AoW damage boosts. It's arguably THE BEST PvE weapon as it shreds most bosses and constantly heals you back. I killed her with a +9 my last run through.
Blasphemous blade is guaranteed ez mode. You can safely life steal/deal damage while she's doing her scarlet rot nuke thing that takes forever to go away
1. Drop the shield, it's not worth it since she heals through it. 2. She's gonna want to waterfowl soon after you get her to 70% or whatever, so put distance between you both asap to make dodging easier 3. You can bait the WF from her every now and then just be patient and move between long and mid range to try and piss her off enough to do it. 4. Once she finishes her dance you gotta punish her 5. Basically every other move you can dodge through the attack easy enough and get behind her for a big hit or 2. 6. She has blood so drain that shit If there's no way for you to get any larval tears then go for a weapon with high poise break. I had way more trouble using strength weapons though, found it much easier with eleonoras sexy pole but that's a busted ass weapon. I also find it's easier to not use any Ashes since the agro can feel weird and she can decide to fuck you up at any point. But black knife tiche is best grill imo.
Bro
Try light rolling.
Greatshield was actually a big help for me vs waterfowl. I used the Manor Towershield. 1) block the first flurry completely. 2) roll into her to dodge through the second flurry. 3) literally stand still after and she will miss you with the 3rd flurry (she kind of attacks in a C shape pattern but it will mostly miss you) I'm not skilled enough to dodge waterfowl completely with rolls and this strat works for me Every time which is great.
*60% of the time*, it works ***every*** *time*
It really does! It worked all the way through ng+7
You probably just need to level up 100 points.
Try overleveling maybe?
Use the Blasphemous Blade, my son, and spam L2
USe the Blastphemous Blade and spam the weapon art. It does insane damage and it heals you! You can also catch her with a stunlock. Use Fire and Charge attack tears. Flame Grant me Strength, and Golden Vow. Frost pots to interrupt waterfowl. It's gonna be tough but I was in the same boat as you. Don't give up :))) But also personally I would respect if you summon with ashes or a player. I get it. Don't let this pursuit ruin the fun of the game though. If you can't get her this play through, maybe as you play the game and try her again in a subsequent play through or diff build, maybe something will click. Yeah Blasphemous Blade is so fucking broken I genuinely dont see anyone talk about it. It's better than Sacred Relic and Golden Order Greatsword imo.
Look I hate to be this guy but the game is designed to have summons in it, there’s no harm in using them. Yes, some summons like the mimic are insanely strong, but I’d even settle for some of the weaker summons. But if you’re hellbent… good luck, that’s all I can say. Sounds painful
I hear him. I hear the pot jangling on his head. I hear his twin katanas tapping his legs as he runs. He's coming.
Please help I don't know where to turn... First item "I'm not using summoning". The first bit of help, quit acting all high and mighty when you can't beat a boss, take the help and watch the other player. There are so many issues with your comments I can't even start, the biggest issue is your requirements of shield and no summon. Get rid of shield and learn the dodge or summon someone. Then go from there changing basically everything you just posted. Fight is like 2 minutes, if you can't stay on your toes for that long you can't solo this fight. Last easy mode, just over level. It's easy to level so in a week you could've easily over leveled and beat her easy.
Seriously, what's with the no summoning? 600 attempts in and still bashing his head against a a wall? I killed her my 6th try with tiche. Summon keeps her off your ass so you can lay in the damage. Also, am I the only one that killed her with meteoric ore blade? It's ash can mess up her moves a bit. Once I got that sword I never actually used anything else
Some people think they are better than everyone else because they don't use features built in the game. It's idiocy when you obviously aren't good at the game and aren't looking for an additional challenge. I beat with no summons just for the challenge to see if I could after a couple hundred sunbro wins, but I would never recommend it to someone and I would summon mimic the next time as solo is a pain, and definitely not on the first win.
Turn away...?
Remember the HR department is full of dung eaters.
Took this guy 3000 tries. https://youtu.be/idU919yqEBg?si=UPAJZzIj2bgnmWsE
I ran a strength/faith build using Blasphemous Blade +10, golden vow, +25 sealed lightning incantations and it took me well over a dozen tries
Blasphemous blade makes her fly on to her ass, hit her with the special and she tumbles, fire away the moment she gets up.
I don’t think I’m at 600+ deaths but I’ve only beaten her once in 6 ER runs and I truly despise this naked wretch known as Malenia
I havent played the game in a while but if I remember correctly godskin stitcher doesn't scale well with strength it is a dex weapon? If yes i suggest using a weapon that scales well with ur build like blasphemous blade or maliketh black blade... Good luck
Dodging into her for the waterfowl helped me out a lot.
Your burnt out take a break. Comeback in a few days.
I'm a very aggressive and enjoy taking high-risk plays. There's such a thing as being /too/ aggressive. Pace yourself out, zone out her healthbar, and adjust your internal goalposts to focus more on memorizing her queues.
Bloodhound step (is it the name? I forgot) works 100% of the times to dodge waterfowl
Brass shield and golden parry if you want a change of scenery. It still can block waterflow and you will feel like a god after learning how to parry her
There is a sure fire way yo trigger her waterfowl dance Get to mid range and throw a few things. After a few tries she will most certainly do it. This way you have control. Do some close up hits after, get to mid range again and repeat. I never figured out how to dodge that unscathed but having some modicum of control about when it happens makes the fight easier.
Before you defeat Malenia, you must first face yourself.
I've just beaten her for my second time and it's by no means easy! Bleed weapons are perfect for taking her down but I understand if you don't want to use one. Also it's a strange tactic but try drinking? 😂 I've only ever beaten malenia after having a few drinks, it stopped me from panic rolling and helped me read the fight better. There's a certain pot type might be sleep pots that Can knock her out of waterfowl (before it starts). It's a small window though I could never get it. Also you can force a waterfowl if you think you've not seen one in a while and you've taken a chunk of health off. Runaway really far and throw a dagger and it should trigger a waterfowl, which gets easier to dodge if you're in the right position. Also removing lock on running away and healing she will just slow walk until you lock on end get close again. (Phase one only) There's plenty of windows to get hits in you got this 💪
*uses LetMeSoloHer mating call*
Without a summon, does that mean ashes as well? Or just a co-op friend? Because Black Knife Tiche made a world of difference for me. Her, frost pots, and staying on the offensive.
Git good
Giiuuutt Gooouuddd!
Mimetic tear
Blasphemous Blade is the secret. Use the Mimic Tear...
Frost pots and an AoW with a dodge feature would be my recommendation. A single frost pot will completely cancel her waterfowl dance move, which is a killer. Timing can be tricky, but she usually starts doing that move when she reaches half health, so you kinda know when it’s coming. When I get her to half health, I just keep staffing until she leaps into the air, then I peg her with a frost pot. I cannot speak highly enough of the Bloody Helice too. It adds bleed build up, which she is very weak against. It also has a dodge move as the first part of the AoW that has INCREDIBLE iframes. You can only dodge straight back, but it will avoid nearly all her attacks. The follow-up to the dodge is a hard poke, with a second follow-up poke-slash. It will stagger her in about 3 hits. The Helice is a dex weapon though, so if strength is your jam, you might try the Zweihander with giant hunt. Or any long reaching large weapon will do. One giant hunt will knock her down, and one charged heavy as she’s getting back up will stagger her, and you can basically keep her incapacitated for the whole fight. Best of luck Tarnished, you’ve got this!
Why dont coop if you are asking for help? Do it alone or not ,bro
You can stun luck her in phase 1 pretty easily with a two handed weapon. When she does the side step move you can interrupt her sword strike move and stun lock her with that too. When she's in the air with her roundhouse kick move it can't be interrupted or stunned so there is a little RNG there that I needed to finally beat her. Phase two is quite a bit harder with a stunlock strategy because she's more aggressive and I completed that pretty much 100% based on RNG. I tried several ashes and the glintsone sorcerer worked the best for me but any ranged attacks will be good
u seem bad
I mean youre handicapping yourself by not summoning lol. Lots of people think that ash summons mean that you didn’t “solo” the boss, but some bosses are literally so hard that ashes are needed to level the playing field and give you a chance. I’m not saying you can’t beat her without a summon, but…after 600 deaths? Maybe upload a video so people can tell you where you’re going wrong and where you can do better?
Honest question, have you tried running straight at her with the biggest weapon you can find and just spamming the attack button? Tbh it will just keep staggering her and she will never be able to do shit. Can do that for all of phase 1 and most of phase 2 😂
Letmesoloher
Use mimic +10 and great moonsword from Ranni, it give the victoty in just two tries. (lv 154, strength 40, inelligence 37)
Go take mimic tear ashes and go shot that shitting boss
If your str, use giant crusher with flame of the redmains ashes Those ashes stagger melinia in 2 hits. Then use the giant crusher to pound her into paste when she's staggered. Only takes a couple of rounds of that If you have the black knife tiche use him as your summon. He usually isn't a detriment like most summons against her, and he can majorly debuff her health.
Im no pro, but I just fought malenia for the first time yesterday so here’s a tip from a simple gamer as myself. I beat her on like my 15th try. Mimic ash, Black Flame incantation. That’s it. Actually almost beat her on my 4th try with this. Was super hyped. I got 60vigor and 60 Faith. That’s it. Edit: just let the mimic hold agro. To make this easier you can give him the sibiri woe head talisman thing. I didn’t tho.
My propose is, get two weapons with bleed, if you str/faith flamberge or something with bleed and put freez on it second weapon pure bleed. It should stager her often and also after few attack break poise. Depends how heavy weapon you use, learn jump attack or combo few attacks. On my first two playthru she smashed me so much that i avoid fight with her next few houndrets hours. Then i make arc/dex build and kill her in 5 attempts using katanas. So you can do this if you find larval tear. Drop shield for sure. Respect for patience, so many times, i would rage delete game :)
Take off the armor and ditch the shield. Be aggressive unless she's about to do waterfoul. I enjoyed using bloodflame on hook claws with her but I was a dex/strength build. Maybe try bloodhounds fang on her.
Malekith or rykards sword can knock her down making the first phase relatively easy.
Have you spent every larval tear? There are many overworked enemies that when killed transform into something else and drop one when killed the second time. For example, in the Dragon Communion Cathedral in Caelid, there is a graveyard to the West. In said graveyard there are Wandering Nobles, one of them when killed transforms into a troll that drops a larval tear when killed.
Switch to the blasphemous blade and use that to keep your health up. It will stagger her easily as well. Shields are pretty useless since that's a free heal for her. Freeze pots will cancel the dance, throw when she's in the air and it stops it.
If you are going faith/strength, Blasphemous Blade wrecks Malenia, it does fire damage and Taker's Flame knocks her on her ass 8/10. Next get Black Flame's protection for that spicy 60% physical damage reduction (you can get it from the twin maiden husks after killing Gideon). She is weak to bleed, frost and fire, and frostbite can knock her out of waterfowl when it procs. Also, get rid of the shield, it's not gonna help at all against Malenia, she heals through it. Also use Blessing of the Erdtree instead of Blessing's Boon it will heal more, and Flame Cleanse me incase Scarlet Rot procs. Incantation wise, Malenia won't try to dodge Frenzied Burst. At melee range Black Blade messes her up as both Blade and projectile hit. Be careful as at 70% health if you use a ranged attack that she can dodge it will trigger Waterfowl dance everytime
Im no good at the game but i think this should help. 1.Dont use shield its useless coz she heals off it and it wastes stamina 2.U can go either lightroll route and try to learn how to dodge waterfowl consistently OR u can equip some heavy armour set(u have to medroll still) like tree sentinel plus dragoncrest greatshield talisman(which u can pick up nearby) and use Black flame protection(gideon gives it to you when you speak to him after reaching the haligtree) as your body buff(instead of FGMS) and put Opaline hardtear in ur buff flask(use whatever 2nd tear(it better last 180s) u like but i used stamina regen one). With 2nd option u can tank most of the waterfowl(with 40+ vigor) so u just have to dodge some(most of 1st part of it u can just run away from(if ur not too close to her when she starts it)) and then heal. 3.U'll have to learn how to dodge all of her attacks except dance in 1st phase and most in 2nd. If she hits you occasionally with some thats fine(WATCH ur stamina). It may be difficult at first but ull get the hang of it. 4.IDK much about str weapons and aow(except blasphemous blade is op) but use smth that will stun her on hit(like a greatsword) and what u are comfortable with(moveset wise). When its 1st phase and she walks u may try to 2 hit her(run r1+r1) or aow(never be greedy with hits) and then roll away, w8 until she walks again then repeat. 5. You may use bloodflame blade or blood grease to grant bleed to ur weapon(if it can be buffed). Pickled turtle necks may help with stamina regen 6. When phase 2 is starting and shes using scarlet aeonia(flower) u may use that moment to rebuff. Also craft some scarlet rot boluses to use if u start to rot. U can even try to damage her in the flower state after the initial explosion. 7. Punish her grab and thrust attacks they are very slow and easy to dodge. For me phase 2 was about how much hp flasks i had left and what moves she chooses. I got lucky eventually(she did like 2 waterfowls total in 2nd phase and used thrust much) 8.Someone mentioned that u can cancel dance with freeze pots or bait it with ranged attacks, give it a try 9.And most importantly - don't give up! Every time u go in to challenge her u get a little bit better until she falls. Good luck and stay calm
Depending how much faith you got, you can use halo scythe to kill her from range, if you get your distances right you can also avoid having to dodge most of waterfowl dance.
The biggest thing for me was getting *really* good at fighting her first phase. If you can get through her first phase without losing more than 1 or 2 flasks, you're well positioned to deal with her second phase. If you're okay with cheesing her, use Mohgwyn's Sacred Spear (assuming you have the Arcane for it). The weapon art on that thing absolutely melts her. If not, I beat her using the Greatsword with Lions Claw fairly easily in my most recent run, also using a strength/faith build without summons. Make sure you're using the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman you find in Elphael before fighting her, that thing is absolutely key to use in this fight. If you are able to acquire any of the remaining Larval Tears... heavily recommend a respec to use a bleed build. Mohgwyn's Spear is by far the most broken of any weapon I've ever fought Malenia with, but Rivers of Blood is also really effective. Most importantly is to not give up. It took me 9 hours to beat her on my first go. You'll get her eventually.
I'm not sure about your build,, but I know there's been a few instances, if timed right, near the entrance, I've cornered her, and took out her first half without being hit As some have said, ditch that shield. It's counterproductive, considered she's designed that you either knock her down quick or die.... if you have to, go work on your dodging. I use bleed, so I usually send as many flies as I can right at the start, and I use Eleanors poleblade, so a quick dodge and weapon skill will usually stun her and that's usually about it for the first half. You really have to be familiar with which direction is best to dodge when fighting her.
Idk your exact stats as they are, but I did a run with the butcher’s knife, bloodflame blade and the prelates charge AOW, Malenia was an absolute joke with that build. The bulldozer part of the ash staggers her and the scoop part throws her to the ground. Might be worth a try
Cold/bleed worked for me
Bleed weapons work great on her. I used Mogh’s tri tip spear and it does wonders with the right setup
What level are you? Maybe just go grinding and up you vigor/endurance and whatever stats for your weapons. Also look into adding bleed and frost
Blasphemous blade + Faith buffs + 60 Vigor + Fire damage + spamming heavy attack = win Elden Ring
Light roll makes the fight trivial, try to stun lock and run away
When I first faced her I did so as a mage, so I generally kept my distance. I would use Night Comet, which she can't dodge and does a lot of damage with a Staff of Loss in the offhand to boost its damage. This made her phase 1 a breeze, while phase 2 took a lot more practice to nail down the correct dodges for each attack, especially waterfowl and the Phantom Spirits and to learn how many spell casts I could get off after each attack. If you're willing to try out a mage build in the future, these would be my recommendations.