elden-ring-malenia.html
So I like this boss kinda, but I can definitely see how it’s unfair. The guy in this video brings up some awesome points and I only plan to elaborate on that.
Points he brought up:
The boss has some attacks they can’t be stunned in unless damaged by proccing bleed or frost damage.
The boss has animation canceling so she can dodge/block attacks the player does even if she’s mid-attack
Stance-break immunity can last through multiple attacks. If you managed to fill her stun bar while she was attacking you normally she would go into the stance break animation after her attack. However, she can go from one hyper armor attack to another allowing her stance-break to persist to the end of the second attack animation.
I think fromsoft has been updating Malenia, though not in the ways the community was looking for. One update they did made her hyper-aggressive. All good if that’s what they want. Another update did some balance changes but it brought a bug into the game where she would heal if she hit your hitbox while dodging. This broke the game for a bit and they eventually fixed this.
In my opinion, I kind of had fun with this boss. When I decided to try and stop rolling and just start blocking was when I had a blast. This is a problem though.
I remember back in Dark Souls: Remastered there was the Moonlight Butterfly boss fight. As a tanky low-DPS character I had to wait until the butterfly would stop nuking me and recharge on the bridge. I hated this boss fight because while I COULD kill her eventually a lot of it wasn’t fun.
And I can see other builds that aren’t tank-mains having difficulties with Malenia. Especially now that she’s hyper-aggressive a mage strat of casting spells means Malenia does a 60-yard dash to you in .5 seconds. Or if you’re rolling you gotta be god-tier to take virtually no damage. If you were a great sword build then good luck staggering her to crush her skull.
There’s also the odd thing with her thousand-blade attack thing. You usually don’t take damage initially when she does this, meaning you have to plan your roll for a little after the attack starts. Certainly isn’t fun.
It’s a shame, I just made the right character for the job on this one. I think all bosses should be beatable by all class types with multiple strategies. That’s kind of the fun with this.
Just another note to bring up, some people have brought up that Malenia feels like a Sekiro boss because of how she can dodge mid-attack, parry you, and she hunts you down if you start healing. It’s one of the things I agree with kind of, the real missed opportunity is having Sekiro mechanics in this game. It would’ve been so cool if players could see how much poise they have left. It also would have been cool if there was an ash of war that allowed you to engage with the game the same way Sekiro does; quick attacks, animation canceling, blocking, etc.