Thanks to a recent recommendation in my weekend soulslike discussion post, I tried this tear to some success. Had a crack against the Scadutree Avatar and after a lot of frustrating attempts, and fucking third phase (???), I persevered. The flow of combat does remind me a lot of Lies of P that way and that makes me want to finally play the game to the end.

FF to Malenia. The parry is not really viable against her, is it? You can parry most her attacks, of special note is waterfowl dance, but her healing negates all the chip damage you might get in from guard counters. Am I missing something or is she just purposefully built this way?

Edit: Guess I came back home too late :D

Oh well, next time then

  • M.int@lemmy.zip
    0·
    16 hours ago

    The Deflecting Hardtear is very viable on Malenia. It’s not really about the damage, but the stance damage. She has very low stance, 80, and the Deflecting Hardtear doesn’t just increase the damage from guard counter, but also the already high stance damage. So you can stance break her in 3 or even 2 guard counters. Yes, she heals from the guard counter damage, but the real damage is in the critical attacks that you get after stance breaking her.

    Waterfowl Dance is another beast: the Tear creates an interesting gameplay dynamic: if you use guard counters, you survive, but she heals. So the question becomes: Can you dodge Waterfowl sufficiently to survive? Personally, I can dodge the attack decently if I have a bit of distance from her, but struggle at close range.

    Here is the part about Malenia from an RL1 guide. Very informative even for non challenge runners. Here, a couple minutes into the segment, is the part where he talks about the usage of the Deflecting Hardtear against Malenia and why he paticular likes it.

    • GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip
      0·
      14 hours ago

      I tried countless times to do the “circle arround her” move from close range to avoid waterfowl dance and not once have I been able to pull it off. Thank fuck at least it’s easy to predict when it’s coming or bait it.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 🇮 @pawb.socialEnglish
    0·
    1 day ago

    I mean, you’ll take less damage sure. But she heals when she hits you so you really don’t want to just guard or block, you want to not get hit. Use the one that gives you fast rolls (more iframes) no matter what your weight is. Or stuff that just buffs your damage (especially flame or frost damage).

    Parrying is effective, if you can time it right. Completely negates the Waterfowl Dance if you manage it.

    Another viable strat is to just be super aggressive and hit her with something large that deals Strike damage and push her into a wall. She’ll spend the entire fight on the floor.

  • ryven@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    1 day ago

    Yes, she’ll heal on this because it’s a special type of block, and she heals on blocked hits. You need to use a real parry, like you find on shields, etc., and that does reduce the number of parryable attacks (regular parry does not work against Waterfowl Dance, for example).

    She is purposefully built to make you dodge (although I have seen a Youtube video of her being defeated with a tank build and no dodging, with the help of a Spirit Ash to get her pinned against the wall). The easiest way to avoid Waterfowl is to sprint directly away from her, which will work as long as she isn’t too close to you when she initiates the attack. It doesn’t look very heroic, but it’s about 100x easier than rolling, which has to be done in a very specific way to avoid the third flurry.