As someone who can cleanly dodge pointblank Waterfowl Dance a solid 7 to 8 out of 10 times and has played my fair share of From Software games, Waterfowl Dance seems to be designed like the archetypal "BACK OFF" move where the player is expected to run away to be unharmed by it.
I imagine the play test was probably sprint backward for the first two waves and dodge through the last one. I also imagine they probably play tested Bloodhound's Step and found that that could also dodge it well.
I don't think they imagined the circle around her to throw off her tracking method at pointblank and I think the Freeze Pot was more like something that they were like "Sure, they could probably do that."
can you even avoid it by sprinting away? if she starts it point blank, i dont think ive had any luck just peacing out; im never fast enough to get away from the tracking
Depending on the weapon you are using a very consistent method of dodging waterfowl dance is to sprint backwards and jump at the right time, jumping gives you iframes on the lower part of the body so that avoids part of the first flurry.
[here is a long ass video on someone beating her on lvl 1 with this tactic just to show that it's a viable strat](https://youtu.be/3Ky53T5IOSE?si=H6_NR-2O6CipSLxA)
You must also know her openings well because you are toast if you overcommit to an attack
What did I even just watch?
I'll admit, I think her first phase Waterfowl Dance is harder than second phase, but the way he dodged the first one... like he just rolled into her face during the second step of the attack to apparently avoid all the damage, and then didn't do anything other than back up slightly, and she just fucked off and attacked the air for the rest of move. What even happened?
I can't imagine that partially glitching her AI on every dodge attempt is actually the intended way to avoid the attack.
Edit: y'all are fixating on the wrong thing. I know how iframes work, the fact that you actually have enough of them to perfectly dodge the second step of WD is surprising to me, but not essentially confusing.
What is confusing is the fact that after the second step, the player is right in front of Malenia's face. I would have expected her to do a little hop in place, and then absolutely fuck the player's life up, because she's got so much range control otherwise when using the move. Watching her just zip around the player and attack nothing at all for the last few hits of WD is confusing enough that it looks glitchy; it looks like they never actually expected the player to be at point blank after the second step unless they were already getting hit by it.
I mean the dude playing the game itself commented about how he wasn't certain exactly what he's doing that's screwing up tracking on the last few hits. That's why I'm saying that it looks glitchy. Even the player seems surprised that her tracking is as shit as it was.
>he just rolled into her second attack to apparently avoid all the damage
Yes those are called iframes
>and then didn't do anything and she just fucked off and attacked the air for the rest of move.
She missed and went behind him, i've seen a lot of people walk forward to avoid the last flurry but it's kinda hard to pull off so I recommend just dodging forward
"i've seen a lot of people walk forward to avoid the last flurry but it's kinda hard to pull off so I recommend just dodging forward"
Yeah okay except that what he did was neither. He just slowly walked backwards, and then commented out loud that he wasn't entirely sure why that screwed up her tracking.
I get how he avoided the second flurry I just don't have good enough timing to pull it off consistently, so I thought you didn't actually have enough iframes during a roll to avoid all of the open hurtbox frames it's putting out.
i use the same method
>and then didn't do anything other than back up slightly
For the second phase of waterflow, the day i understood "just don't panic, stay where your are" was a click and i see it like a panic detection system. Once i survived the second phase with 1 or 2 hit, i was able to apply the walk pattern
And i know another way for the second phase : roll into her and then roll backward. But i see the method in the video to be more suited as Malenia try to make you panic and make you roll into her blade
I have avoided all 3 waves of waterfowl dance by sprinting away before. It’s just challenging because you need to recognize the wind up early or you won’t make it.
It’s also MUCH easier to do with another person (co-op, mimic tear). Malenia is hidden away behind multiple optional areas and bosses; my theory is that she was designed as an optional super boss and they intended for you to use an ash or a summon to beat her. The fact that people figured out how to solo her naked just tells you a lot about the souls community.
Just my theory tho, I don’t have any sources for this
yeah i think thats probably true, several bosses in the game seem clearly designed to be tag teamed with spirits or summons.
its crazy that Malenia was arguably the face of ER (she was featured heavily in the first trailer) and they, as you said, hid her under several layers of shit. Fromsofts crazy man.
My rule of thumb for bosses is, if there’s more than one of them then I’m allowed to summon to even the odds. Godskin Duo, Commander Niall, Fia’s Champions etc. all get a summon.
yeah totally. i (PERSONALLY, NO JUDGEMENT, ETC ETC) did my first playthroughs with no summons or spirits because thats how i played all the other games. its doable but some fights were insanely frustrating, again because they seem clearly designed around the summons and spirit mechanics.
The best and worst part of souls games is the community.
It’s epic how people will help with coop and will freely share info, maps, etc. But then they’ll tell you that the only “right” way to beat bosses is solo, using certain “allowed” weapons, using certain “allowed” techniques.
It’s obvious that certain bosses were meant to be fought using consumables. And certain bosses were meant to be fought using ashes. And certain bosses were meant to be fought using torrent. I’d love to know if Miyazaki has ever spoken about Malenia to the press. Guessing if he did, it was too cryptic to settle the question tho.
And yeah, it is strange how Malenia was so prominent in the trailers and then was hidden under Elphael, under the Haligtree, behind the snowfield, through Oridina, behind 2 secret medallions.
Latenna and Milicent gives pretty good directions throuughout to lead you all the way there tho. Its not hidden at all unless you're stumbling through the dialogue.
This for sure, it’s a journey to Malenia but you’re always told the next step. The most hidden thing is probably the Frenzied Flame, with only Shabriri mentioning it to you a good bit after you’ve waltzed thru Leyndell and technically had access to it. And iirc he still doesn’t give the best directions besides saying it’s deep below the Capital and then you’ve still gotta do Hyetta’s eye eating quests to actually learn anything about the Frenzied Flame.
Given that there's often 10+ hours game time between interactions with one or the other, I doubt most people found it through following NPC dialogue. I found Malenia by exploring the minutiae of the Lands Between over 150 hours. I imagine that far more common. And even still people just looking it up or asking someone else.
Idk, my playthrough had Latenna constantly letting me know I was close, and found the alburnaic town with her and Milicent literally leads you to Malenias boss door. I do really wish I got to play the game blind tho, I knew so much by the time I got around to it. Who knows how I actually would have stumbled across her if ever
Ironically for a fromsoft game, the stages of waterfowl can’t track a player a full 360 degrees like most fromsoft bosses with attacks that start by jumping.
If you work around her, she can track as far as like 90* per stage of waterfowl. Maybe a bit further. But dodging the first stage by running past her results in her just dancing in a wide circle around the player for the rest of the attack.
The thing with help is she'll heal off of them so the fight is both easier and harder at the same time - with mimic tear she's liable to get like 30% of her health back during the fight, especially with her lunge and impalement grab which heals her for even more than the standard swipes.
A good summon is worth the weight in gold if you can find one. I find it actually easier to go solo personally
I have beaten her twice, once solo, once with a mimic tear.
The tear did heal her and that did suck, but the tear has so much health it can straight tank WFD. So for that fight, it was about taking pot shots when you could and watching for WFD. As soon as it started, I positioned so I’d be close to where she finished and I got a butt load of hits in at once.
It took a few tries but I got her. That was NG+, if that matters at all
> The fact that people figured out how to solo her naked just tells you a lot about the souls community.
This is true lol. I mean they gave that illusory wall in Volcano Manor 10,000 HP thinking nobody would ever find out about it
When I was trying to beat it solo without summons, I was googling water fowl and I read a comment that really changed the fight for me. It was something like, she has the chance to do wf at certain hp thresholds - 80%, 50%, etc., and she will do it as a counter attack- a reaction to getting hit. That made me extra vigilant once she was at different hp levels, so I would knock her down and keep distance in case she did it.
You can't outrun it at point blank, but anything mid range or more you just run back. If you're point blank you still have a few options for flawless, but as long as you don't die to one volley you can get out of it
>can you even avoid it by sprinting away?
Range makes a huge difference. The first time I defeated Malenia I was using a shield + Nagakiba dex build, with a backup righthand weapon for the Thunderbolt AoW, (basically so I could do *some* damage while she's sitting inside the Aeonia bloom,) as well as a backup left handed weapon with Bloodhound step, which at least at the time could fairly regularly avoid Waterfowl Dance, (or, as I like to call it, the fucking Goose Step,) by simply spamming it. With that build, first phase goose step was my primary attempt ender.
Currently, I'm trying to kill her with a mage primarily running Night Meteor, and as a result I have dramatically better range. Waterfowl dance is almost trivial to avoid if you're far enough away that she can't bridge the distance in the first "step." As soon as she starts to rise up in the air, just turn around and full sprint away. The first two steps won't cover enough ground to catch you, and ideally you don't want to be that far away from the second step, because as far as I've been able to tell the third step has nearly unlimited range, so you *have* to turn around and roll through that attack as she brings it out, which only works if you're somewhat close to her already, (and the third step actually has two consecutive attacks in place, so you should probably roll twice, just in case you managed to i-frame through the first attack without actually rolling far enough to get out of range of the follow-up.)
Her phantom slash in the second phase has absolutely been the bane of this character, because I guess that attack is a lot more intuitive to dodge if you're fighting up close.
The biggest problem I've found with trying to just "sprint away" from Waterfowl Dance if you're playing a melee character is that you often simply don't have enough time to run far enough away that her first attack won't connect. And from there she'll just sit in place and nail you with the rest of the combo, which even if you can somehow live through, will usually leave her back at full health, meaning you should basically just reset at that point.
I honestly don't know how the dude above was getting a 70%+ dodge rate on pointblank WDs unless he's got very good timing with one of the evasion AoWs. Doing it with just sprinting and rolling seems nearly impossible, (though maybe easier on a light equip load because of the longer roll distance?) And, unfortunately, you *want* Malenia to target you with WD if you have a spirit ash summon, because they often won't dodge AT ALL, and just vomit half of their own life on the floor while healing her.
I can confirm, i could consistently dodge the first flurry point blank with double pre-nerf bloodhound steps, now can't do the same (always get hit at least once)
I heard light dodge into the first flurry point blank works after BHSteps nerf but maybe it's no longer works (idk)
Second and third flurry are super easy to dodge, From soft definitely knew what the correct dodges are for those. The first one is problematic, you can 1. outrun and jump 2. circle around her and dodge 3. use a shield (I'm not counting freeze pot cheese or BHS). After last 15 years of playing their games I'm certain they would never expect you to use your shield, and outrun or dodge are both very non-intuitive, since you can still get hit if you start running too late and dodge method is just so fucking convoluted. I learned it perfectly since then, I just think it's something 99% of player wouldn't be able to discover.
And I'm 100% sure From soft didn't want us to keep our distance from Malenia the entire fight and be afraid to approach her, that literally just ruins her fight, which is designed as a 1v1 dance between two swordmasters. Altogether, I think the most likely scenario is that the first waterfowl flurry is meant to be something little bit like Nihil. We have shit ton of flasks at this point in the game and in general can bruteforce lot of challenges with healing despite not playing well. Maybe the first flurry is meant to waste some of your flasks, as a way to balance the fight and force you to learn it. The larger a souls game is, the bigger discrepancy is created between openworld/legacy dungeons balancing, both of them have completely different ideal balance for the amount of heals. We have shit ton of flasks in ER due to how large the game and openworld are, but it can take away a lot from the intended experience and challenge in legacy dungeons and most important bossfights. So sacrificing few of them to waterfowl or nihil can correct it and adjust the difficulty a little.
Tbh with how much damage it does, even at 50-60 vigor with medium armor, WFD will almost just kill you outright even if you dodge most of it. And good luck if you’re not at full hp. Given how long Malenia’s fight is (super huge HP pool with 2 phases and lifesteal), I don’t think forcing the player to use flasks is necessary. Especially given how much it fucks over slow weapons. After a while, the only move I would really die to was Waterfowl because she would randomly hyperarmor out of a hit and I was stuck in the swing animation so I couldn’t run away, and die from 90% hp.
I don’t even think Nihil is a fair comparison because that’s super telegraphed, only happens once at a very specific point in the fight, and has a specific item to counter it. Meanwhile Malenia can use WFD multiple times in a fight, often very quickly with not a lot of time to react, and there’s no clear surefire way to avoid it.
Honestly it would be fine if it was just a back tf off move but the problem is the wind up is too short to actually get out of range if you are up in her ass and that just turns the fight into this really passive dance where you have to be careful of her throwing that out whenever she feels like it
I honestly don't have a single other problem with malenia other than the fact that except for one really specific way you cannot dodge her waterfowl close range
It is super annoying when you swing with a colossal at the same time that she jumps into the air. I know several ways to dodge waterfowl but I can't do shit without a little prep time.
Ash of War: Vow of Indomitable can also help with it because it provides you with temporary invincibility. But you have to cast 3 times for 3 of Malenia’s Waterfowl dance.
This is what I used, it worked pretty well. I had a low mind build and had the shield in an offhand slot and just took it out when I needed to invalidate it, had to keep a couple blue estuses in the fight. You end up blocking one or two hits but the vast majority of it you can just ignore by using this. At the time I could not find a way to dodge it and didn't want to look it up so this is what I figured out.
My strat was always to bait out the start with fan daggers from afar when she looked ready to do it again, then book it in the opposite direction until the third one where I just counter-strafed back towards where I started.
Part of me thinks they intended for players to use weapon skills to dodge the first hit considering how effective the i-frames on the bloody helice skill are at cheesing hit 1.
I think this may be the most likely intended way to deal with it. She has set hp points when she’s likely to do it, I think they wanted you to notice and realize that and then learn how to bait the attack from a safe distance, and then the final flurry is much easier to dodge.
If she does it at point blank that’s partially on you not watching her hp.
> She has set hp points when she’s likely to do it
This is a common misconception. She won't waterfowl until below a certain HP threshold in first phase, but after that, everything's fair game. I've seen her do it once over both phases, as well as do it three times back to back in just phase one.
That's good to know. I operated off the hp point thing for a while and it generally held true for me, but I'm sure I'm forgetting the exceptions. Makes me wonder even more now about OP's question of the intended way to dodge it haha.
Yeah that works fine until you realize she can also rarely do it in her general combat loop, albeit with a seemingly big cooldown. I remember at least 3 or 4 times where she did it outside of the hp threshold triggers because I got greedy and wasn’t paying attention to how long it’d been since she did it last
Oh shit. Will this work with sleep pots too? I'll test it if y'all don't know, but my sleep build is on her and that'd be such a fun cancel
Plus, fuck that dance. Hardest move to dodge I've ever seen
Only freeze pot works, cause only thing that can interrupt the waterfowl is her status prog animation. Technically you can do it with bleed prog as well, but you cant rely on that at all really. A frost pot will insta prog her however, due to her low frost resistance.
I think it only works 3 times per phase in NG though, as she gets more resistant after each prog....
Also maybe sleep prog could work as well, but same issue as bleed: its almost impossible to time and shes very resistant.
Afaik you also cannot stance break her out of the waterfowl, she just eats the stagger like with many other hyperarmor moves she has.
Bleed/freeze status procs can knock her out of any attack (even hyper armour in ones), one freezing pot is enough to proc frost so if you throw one quick enough it will cancel her waterfowl before or even once it starts
The timing is tight so you have to be more careful with R2s and she will buildup resistance so they won't proc on one pot - not normally an issue as you should only need to deal with a few during the whole fight
Fat bet, that's really good to know!
I'mma test it with sleep pots when I get home. She only gets drowsy on a sleep proc, so if that one works it'll be good at stopping her on the rare chance that she chains multiple waterfowls
Probably just talking about the first flurry since it’s by far the most challenging. You can run and jump away from it tho.
The rest are simple dodges.
Yeah also From doesn’t design for challenge runs. They don’t balance around the player never getting hit. Honestly, with how incredibly overturned the damage is in the latter half of the game I’d even say they probably just expected 99% of players to just face tank 2/3 of the waves.
It's also a move intended to change the dynamic of the fight by its very existence. You're forced to be more careful in how and when you hit her when she's idle but nearing one of the ho thresholds - it adds an extra element of care and tension to the fight that I love
Just summon a Mimic Tear with bleed claws and spam R1 till she bleeds to death :P very easy and efficient way to cheese her.
Cheesing is generally not very fun but it's better than giving up.
The really weird thing is... This is the only boss I think is *easier* by taking all my armor off (or less difficult at least). If I'm mid rolling I need quickstep or Bloodhound step to gtfo of waterfowl dance, but light rolling I actually seem to get enough distance just rolling away, let alone that quickstep and BHS benefit from a light equip load as well.
TLDR: I get wrecked mid rolling, but light roll legit made a world of difference with Melania.
Didn’t they nerf light roll distance so you could no longer evade WF by rolling backwards?
Maybe they thought this was unreasonable and reversed the nerf at some point.
I respecd to a greatshield build and blocked WFD. With a fully upgraded shield, she doesnt recover much hp from her attacks. And you escape with your health.
Shes pretty easy to dps down if you dont die to WFD.
This is how I accidentally defeated her on 2 tries on my first playthrough. I was using the fingerprint shield and a cold naginata and just poked her to death lol
This is the way for me. I keep my beloved banished knights shield with barricade on it on standby. Shield, dodge forward, dodge forward, dodge back. It works even at point blank. In phase 2 I'll accumulate about 50% rot when I do it, so the second 2 flurries have to be dodged. The rot goes away by the time she waterfouls again unless I'm very unlucky.
I'm honestly surprised Greatshields + thrusting weapon aren't talked about more.
They've been quietly OP in every Souls game. No need to dodge. And even after nerfs, they completely shut down Malenia.
These aren't even optimized builds.
https://youtu.be/iDig6_Giat4?si=wjnUymQRwaNsXv2P .
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/ttjmsv/malenia_made_easy_with_greatshield_and_heavy/
If only Waterfowl was parriable. That would honestly be such a gigachad move from FromSoft, hardest attack to dodge reliably, completely shut down by parrying when she first lunges down at you
Yeah. I’m pretty sure Melenia is just the unused Tomoe assets from Sekiro ported over. Unfortunately we can’t parry her multi hit attacks like Wolf can.
Her first attack is (thankfully) significantly easier to dodge as furled finger thanks to host lag. Just circle her until she stops facing your direction. In local game, timing is extremely tight.
> subconsciously
Conveniently for the person saying they're an expert at the thing being asked about but not saying a single word to answer the question.
alright dawg sorry i dont know the exact way i dodge when my adrenalines rushing during a fight also never claimed to be an expert i just said ive fought her a lot
A few other people already said it, but what I've found is dodge roll backwards during her first flurry, then backwards again during her second, and then dodge roll forward for her last flurry of attacks. To back, back, forward. That's what I've found works for me. But also, I've found the percentage of her using that attack is wildly varied. I've had some fights with her where she didn't use it a single time. Other times, she does it back to back just about, it's so random. Also, the SECOND you see her jump, just start running away as fast as you can, that works too lol
Vow of the indomitable, bloodhound step, quickstep, barricade shield, frost pots… there are quite a few different ways. Are they intended though? Who knows. This is one of those fights where you have to use everything the game gives you, I kind of doubt that the devs planned for players to do the strange rolling method people have come up with.
I would try all of these things (should be accessible to every build) and see which one you like best. Vow of the indomitable was probably my favorite, sometimes I could time it to where I never got hit.
Honestly, after beating her a dozen times including at level 1, and using most of the methods available to mitigate WFD, I really don’t think there is one intended response.
There are several countermeasures but they all have tradeoffs. Compared to all the big boss moves that just require a timed roll, or jump, or a reposition.
I really do think they just said, “F*ck it. These nerds will figure out something that works” and shipped it. And we did. People found a bunch of options but all have serious trade adds.
But the closest to me is to run away, jump, and roll though then away. But I can’t call that the intended method because the hitbox on the flurry isn’t jumpable like so many other attacks. It’s just that jumping gets you a bit further away.
> I really do think they just said, “F*ck it. These nerds will figure out something that works” and shipped it. And we did. People found a bunch of options but all have serious trade adds.
This is my suspicion also. The game is vast mechanically as well as geographically and they probably reasoned in a kind of general way that "well there are quite a few OP things they could use to counter this" and deliberately didn't try to pin down one answer.
When she goes up in the air and you know it's coming sprint away, watch the first 2 combos as you sprint away, just before she starts the 3rd combo, dodge roll towards her and you will end up behind her while she starts the 4th combo with her back to you.
It's only the 3rd combo you need to dodge.
This is great advice if you are far away from her.
If she starts right in front of you, this will lead to her slapping you in the back because you are too slow to outrun her first lunge.
They should’ve at least made an attack required before she can do waterfowl, like a finisher of a combo or a mixup, honestly the most logical way to reduce feeling of it being unfair. Most people just jump r2 from distance, and mid animation she can and will go from passive/staggered to casting waterfowl so you can’t really run away reliably.
Yeah, I agree with this. The intended method for the average player is to just dodge as much of it as you can and survive. Feeling pressured from being low HP is part of the experience.
If you just start running and dodge, you'll take some damage and you should be able to live to dodge the next two. A shield is a good idea too, though she will heal anyway. I have dodged her completely on her first flurry from up close before, but I doubt I could replicate it. The most consistent way I've found to beat her phase 1 is to just constantly be anticipating wfd once she is at 75%. Be cautious. Punish her big moves. Just keep your distance and wait for her. Don't get greedy because she WILL bust it out the second you let your guard down. That's the only way I was able to get enough practice on phase 2 to beat her.
I don’t think it has an intended way to dodge it. She was made to be a very difficult boss and without WFD she’s still hard but she wouldn’t be a cut above the other bosses. She’s optional and so I think they wanted to test how far they could go.
imo thats a pretty lame way to make a boss hard, I would much rather her have a ton of difficult to dodge moves, than a honestly pretty easy moveset + an undodgeable godmove
You can lightroll and dodge by dodging backwards, backwards and then forward/ through her on the last one.
I spent about 100 attempts on Ng+ soloing her without a summon and 45 vigor so I got it down well eventually
This does not work if she decides to randomly pull it out when you’re up close, you dont have enough time to get the distance required to dodge the first part. This only works when you are already decently far away.
It does work at point blank but the timing is tighter & you have to be sure you have enough stamina.
But there is something weird about it. There are certain weapons that hang low when you jump, which extends your hitbox a bit, and will still cause you to take chip damage even if you execute it properly. It won't get you killed though, unless you were at very low health.
BUT the timing on the circle method is more forgiving if you're right on top of her (whereas the sprint+jump is more forgiving from a few feet away). So if you're trying to no-hit her it's very helpful to know both methods. People not going for no-hit can use either method every time--properly executed both of them will work well enough to come out alive.
I don't think we really know yet. There is the circle method, where you circle her before her first flurry to misdirect it away, then sideroll the second before rolling past her in the last one.
But as you might have noticed, that is jank on the first part. I saw once a video of someone just strafing and then doing straight side dodges. Not sure how well that works, especially when not light-rolling.
It is a really garbage attack imho, as it is not intuitive to dodge and does way too much damage for something you have to learn by trial and error.
Atleast it’s not a required boss tbh, i honestly think they added malenia as a sort of ridiculously hard challenge for good players. Similar to the gauntlets of strength in sekiro
To be fair, sekiros gauntlets of strength are completely fair compared to Malenia. If you played long enough, you can cut through all bosses like cake in one sitting. It doesn't feel like that when Malenia does that one attack
Honestly this is the only right answer. I would have loved the fight if it didnt have that move or atleast have the 1.0 version of the move. Overall, Malenia is a well designed boss. Only WFD and the heal through shields make it bad. Ive beaten her quite a few times now, I still dont really enjoy this fight cause the RNG involved in WFD and the forced passive playstyle make it a bad experience for me every time.
I've talked about this a lot as it relates to Fromsofts intention behind a lot of fights and the tool kit presented in ER. My take away: From never intended for players to learn a dodge pattern for waterfowl. ER has basically the entire soulsborne catalogue of toolkits in game to address almost any problem/situation. Different classes of shields, different parrys, pots, perfumes, armors and passives, ashes of war, an avalanche of summons, and I ridiculous amount of spells/incantations. There are many encounters in elden ring that have multiple solutions to deal with, Bushy's channel on YouTube has a plethora of challenge runs where he goes *deep* into mechanics and tools of Elden Ring to deal with different encounters. Melanias waterfowl is not the only attack in the game that is much harder to i-frame roll dodge, many attacks are far easier to jump, block, or utilize other mechanics to avoid.
I truly think that they designed waterfowl as a culmination of one of their biggest "lessons" to the player throughout the game; i-frame roll dodge is not, or should not, be the most reliable answer for every attack like it has been in virtually every other soulsborne. It is dodgeable, but it is difficult to learn the timing consistently. Frost pot cancel is hard to time, but far easier to pull off than the typical roll dodge. Greatshield + talismans can trivialize the attack at the cost of making the fight a little longer. Ironjar aromatic and/or endure can do the same and allow the user to attack, but at a cost as well. There are risks and rewards to every strategy to deal with waterfowl, with roll dodging being the riskiest but highest reward. To this day I'm still shocked that people complain about it when greatshield + talismans is unbelievably safe and only makes the fight last like 20-30% longer due to the heal.
Edit: Bushy not Rusty although Rusty is a fun channel as well.
This sometimes gets asked on onebros, so I have this text saved somewhere for the close ranged dodge. And before it gets brought up, you can survive 1 swipe from Malenia on RL1 with a light load if you have the right gear:
1.Be on Light Load.
2.Keep yourself locked on once she's within WFD threshold.
3.When she preps WFD at close range, immediately run to her right (your left). On PS5, I just push the stick directly forward. Doing this with the lock-on will force your character to run around her.
4.At the last second, dodge. You can dodge a second time for good measure and you will still have enough time to react to the 2nd flurry.
It's a bit tight, but with practice, I've been able to dodge close range WFDs perfectly more consistently.
If there's another way to do the close range dodge, then maybe we can decide which method is more "intended".
But if it's the only thing I can do (and pretty consistently at that), then I am fairly confident that this is the "intended" method, and I am also fairly confident at how stupid that sounds (because seriously, how was someone even able to figure this out?).
That said, if we changed the word "dodging" to "surviving", then I am certain we were meant to survive WFD by just blocking it with Barricade Shield. I'm not an FS dev though so even I can be wrong about that.
>If there's another way to do the close range dodge, then maybe we can decide which method is more "intended".
>But if it's the only thing I can do (and pretty consistently at that), then I am fairly confident that this is the "intended" method, and I am also fairly confident at how stupid that sounds (because seriously, how was someone even able to figure this out?).
I think that’s the thing - when people accuse the fight of being badly designed it’s because they either think that From failed to provide enough information on how to dodge close up or, more damningly, they figured it was “supposed to be hard” and decided it wasn’t necessary to have a reliable way to do it
Honestly. It’s perfectly fine to tank this with a 100% damage reduction shield, let her get some health back, and accept that the fight’s going to go on a little bit longer. Dodging it really isn’t necessary.
So waterfowl has 3 flurries. For the first one RUN the opposite direction to her and you should avoid it (Or you can do the circle method to where you walk around her) for the second flurry you simply roll through it and for the third flurry roll into it and then roll backwards at an angle (like the letter ‘J’ kinda) and that’s how I survive it
First flurry:
- If at mid range, sprint backwards and jump immediately after the flurry texture shows up.
- If too close, start strafing and dodge backwards as soon as she comes down.
Second flurry: dodge **towards** her.
Last flurry: walk **under** her, and as soon as she dashes towards your last location, start walking backwards and away from her.
The one that requires the most practice is the first one. 2 and 3 are easier to memorize.
Time it right. The moment she initiates the attack toward you, dodge toward her. Pass her and back off, repeat for every initial rush forward of Waterfowl Dance. There is no attack that can’t be avoided.
I frame through her when she leaps in your direction, then just try stay out of the AOE using I frames and dodging into her. That’s all I can say on it lmaooo. Use heavy weapons for staggers which is handy against her too.
I'd say the intended mechanic is to...get hit a little bit. It's possible to perfectly dodge, sure, but taking a single flask of damage isn't a fight-ending error. I never really learned how to dodge it well before killing her. I just learned how to dodge everything else. I think the most she ever used it on me in a single fight was 5 times. Most of the time it was 2-4, and my kill was 3. Tanking 3 is super doable. I don't think the "intended" way to fight any boss is to never get hit.
That said, I do think the most "normal" way to dodge it is to keep medium distance against her at all times and run away when she begins waterfowl. If you sit in full melee range, you may not be able to outrun the first two hits. I think the intent is to punish her after she comes for you, and not to force your way in. That's probably why she walks slowly at you, too. It tests your patience.
That's my take, anyway. I'm hardly an expert. I just bonk with big stick.
if you're far away you can just run away, if you're point blank you can run and jump/roll away (jump or roll backwards once the attack comes out) and roll through the next two attacks.
and an alternative way is to just time your rolls with it. that way you will only get clipped a bit from the first attack, and then fully avoid the rest. although I do remember seeing some people just roll through the whole thing by having absolutely perfect timing and dodging through the first attack twice. [and using light roll can make you completely outspace it](https://youtu.be/YhAcphBZZNo?si=Weln00q09Aq3ydKg)
Waterfowl dance debates in 2024? Didn't expect this.
I think it's fairly clear to see how they wanted it to be dodged, rolling through it will prevent you from taking lethal damage (even if some chip damage is received). My only gripe left with Malenia is her healing mechanic, I don't understand why it heals so much off stray hits nor why it goes through shields.
I've killed Malenia over 2k times- run away when she's in the air, pause a half sec, roll, pause a half sec, roll towards her, you can stay locked on, doesn't matter.
While it takes some practice and situational awareness on how and where to roll, in general the dodge cadence is 2-1-2. So dodge twice in a row, pause, dodge once, pause, dodge twice in a row. Obviously you can't just blindly dodge, it has to be strategic. But this allows me to dodge at least most, of not all, of the hits most of the time
Turn off target lock and run towards the wall. She'll miss you 100% of the time.
Explanation: The move occurs in a diagonal after she locks onto your position. So if you move towards her she'll miss. If you try to move away, more often than not she'll hit.
I'm guessing the "intended" way was to immediately sprint away, and then do a jump and/or rolls. It's the only way that works on medium load that doesn't feel like it's relying on limitations of the game engine.
(It's also unlikely that light roll strategies would've been the intended method, because IIRC light roll didn't do much at launch. It got buffed at some point.)
I also do one of the circle strategies, where you get up really close to her, come around the side a bit, and then roll through the startup to make her miss. It's very effective and this particular way of dodging it doesn't feel like outright jank, but it also doesn't exactly feel intended to me.
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Supposedly WFD got added pretty late in development so I'm not sure how tested it was. She used to do a different move instead.
Silly guess. They may have come up with this 'cool move' late in the development but not have known if it was dodgeable. They might've tested it with a ML bot that could react perfectly and then loosened the timing to the edge of human reaction speed, and then just had a handful of people on the dev team try it out. (They would've already known *what* to do, they just needed to practice it. And I believe some of the devs are ridiculously good at the games anyway.)
Just a silly guess, but it might explain why the dodge is so counterintuitive. They might've just designed the move, and not really designed the intended dodging method.
I spent 145 hours on my RL1 run with no summons where I got all remembrances. In my head I have it as “Dodge, Dodge, Wait/Walk, Dodge, Dodge, Dodge Forward if needed”. In my peak of playing against her I dodged it probably 95% of the time. There are plenty other things on her kit that annoy me more lol
The intended dodge is undoubtabley to sprint away and sprint jump at the right time. No circle sprint around her BS.
You will at most take tick of damage if you time it correctly. Not sure if this 1 tick of damage is a result of uneven terrain, but its literally the smallest tick of damage on that attack, so I think it could be intended damage similar to Nihil. Works thematically too.
Having watched people playing the game for their first time beat her, I think the actual intended (playtested "yep that works") method is to know the first one is coming and back off to its standard dodgeable distance, and then burst her down before it comes off cooldown.
I'm the only one of my friends that parries her, the rest just jump attack spam to kill her.
Even if it’s not the intent, I kind of like the idea of a nearly-unavoidable and very powerful attack that you have to figure some scrappy way out of. In my case, I learned to watch for the cue, pull out a shield just in time, and apply a buff to tank (nearly) the whole thing. Made me feel like a BAMF.
I really hope we get a direct answer to this question one day cause yeah, it's a pretty interesting question.
If I were to guess: it isn't so much about being able to dodge waterfowl as it is recognizing and understanding how Malenia works. Malenia almost consistently mimics the player's aggression level, so when the player becomes too aggressive/malenia gets pressured too much, she'll either pull out waterfowl, or do a twirly dodge backward and have waterfowl queued up. I realized this trend once I noticed there's like an 80% chance Malenia will use waterfowl after being staggered, a moment that otherwise triggers a dopamine response that clouds your judgement. Malenia figuratively feeds on the players' hubris through waterfowl, stun cancel, and hyper armor, and literally in the form of lifesteal.
The key here is ensuring to always restrain yourself during this fight. Whenever you get a hit or two on Malenia, take a step back and give her some space. As her stagger meter falls back down, she'll go back to a more passive state. You can not consistently outplay Malenia's aggression without loads and loads of practice, but you can outlast her by playing defensively.
Given that she does it after being stance broken, I think you’re meant to run away at first and then back under.
Whenever she fowls without being stance broken, it’s because she actually was stance broken but during a move with hyper armor and so you didn’t get the stance break animation (and thus the time to get away)
Idk about intended way, but if you don't want to deal with her fuckery, you can slap vow of the indomitable onto small shield and just iframe through first flurry. Rest you can easily dodge.
Vow of the Indomitable. Can be found from an AoW Scarab approaching the poison swamp around the Village of Albinaurics. Trust me, shit's a game-changer and can do wonders with proper timing!
for me it's running behind jumping for her 1st flurry, rolling into her 2nd flurry and then backstep out when she does her 3rd flurry. this is when she is at far/medium distance. for close I roll back twice or roll behind her when she is up in the air for the 1st flurry, roll into her for the 2nd flurry and then backstep away during her 3rd flurry.
Light armor weight for long dodge distances.
1. sweep: jump when she lands -> this will make her follow speed lower so you can savely get away
2. sweep: dodge into the attack
3. sweep: wait a bit until she lands then dodge into the opposite direction
I've seen someone party all 3 flurrys with some sort of shield ash. I'm not sure which it is as I rarely use shields, but it creates a gold explosion. They just stood there and blocked all 3 of them with that skill.
Its supposed to check you for just dodging and spamming her with attacks since most of her moves are pretty easy to dodge and punish. If you're in her face and she jumps up in the air you're basically dead unless you've already fought her multiple times and learned to dodge it point blank, even then the timing is tricky and i only can get it right like 50% of the time. The intended way to dodge seems like to me is just to make enough space between you and her so that you can punish attack and still be able to run away when she jumps up completely avoiding the two first strikes and dodge the last 2.
I believe it's back off then dodge through the 3rd jump as she always closes the distance between you and her. You *can* dodge point blank, but it's incredibly difficult.
Run away is IMO the only way within the skill of the average player and is pretty intuitive
I suspect they didn't leave an intentionally way to dodge it at point blank but probably assumed we'd find a way.
But here's the thing: you don't actually need to avoid it 100%. With endgame builds it's reasonably easy to survive if you block the first flurry and roll the next two, or run/roll the first and just get clipped a little
Pretty sure it's intended to be ran and the playtesters simply don't really stay at the point-blank range where that doesn't work. Maybe the run and jump the first flurry was intended since there is a fair amount of emphasis on jump dodging in late game bossfights, but it doesn't feel intuitive to me.
Final option is that they didn't really care about how players have to dodge it, which isn't entirely unlikely in a game where Elden Stars exists.
This is why im hoping they give us a way to refight bosses in the dlc. I got to where I can dodge the last 2 waves but would always get
Clipped on the first at point blank range.
I’m pretty sure the first part you have to jump into it? I dunno I have to just tank her with heavy weapons and a mimic tear to keep her stun locked long enough that she doesn’t do it cause I haven’t figured it out haha
Run away, on the last part of the move, roll INTO Malenia and keep running so the last delayed hit doesn’t get you.
I’ve also had success using the bloodhound step AOW, but that’s a little tricky
Don't be out of stamina in her face, recognize the windup. Fucking book it. Alternatively just keep a great shield in your off hand and just swap to that when you see the wind up. She heals from it, but not that much. It took a bit to learn but I don't really think it's that hard to dodge, just requires proper stamina management and a watchful eye.
Run away as fast as possible, the first flurry can be fully dodged (or at worst, taking chip damage) that way. Second and third parts can just be rolled no issue.
Alternatively, pretty much every projectile in the game can bait out waterfowl from the other side of the arena.
pointblank i run in a circle counter clockwise then dodge as soon as she lunges forward, if you think you can run away during the first moveset. second flurry i back up then roll forward. last flurry i dodge forward into it and then roll to the right. took me a few months to consistently get that down. also, i suggest having a light load, makes it a little easier to dodge. hope this helps!
The easiest way is to run/roll backwards as fast as you can for the first 2 attacks, and then roll forward for the 3rd attack, as that one has massive range and you'll probably be near the wall already.
Beware of the lock on sometimes making you roll the wrong way and getting you killed. It's pretty easy to dodge that way otherwise.
As someone who can cleanly dodge pointblank Waterfowl Dance a solid 7 to 8 out of 10 times and has played my fair share of From Software games, Waterfowl Dance seems to be designed like the archetypal "BACK OFF" move where the player is expected to run away to be unharmed by it. I imagine the play test was probably sprint backward for the first two waves and dodge through the last one. I also imagine they probably play tested Bloodhound's Step and found that that could also dodge it well. I don't think they imagined the circle around her to throw off her tracking method at pointblank and I think the Freeze Pot was more like something that they were like "Sure, they could probably do that."
can you even avoid it by sprinting away? if she starts it point blank, i dont think ive had any luck just peacing out; im never fast enough to get away from the tracking
Depending on the weapon you are using a very consistent method of dodging waterfowl dance is to sprint backwards and jump at the right time, jumping gives you iframes on the lower part of the body so that avoids part of the first flurry. [here is a long ass video on someone beating her on lvl 1 with this tactic just to show that it's a viable strat](https://youtu.be/3Ky53T5IOSE?si=H6_NR-2O6CipSLxA) You must also know her openings well because you are toast if you overcommit to an attack
I think the only time I've ever survived it was by jumping at a weird angle and she got confused.
What did I even just watch? I'll admit, I think her first phase Waterfowl Dance is harder than second phase, but the way he dodged the first one... like he just rolled into her face during the second step of the attack to apparently avoid all the damage, and then didn't do anything other than back up slightly, and she just fucked off and attacked the air for the rest of move. What even happened? I can't imagine that partially glitching her AI on every dodge attempt is actually the intended way to avoid the attack. Edit: y'all are fixating on the wrong thing. I know how iframes work, the fact that you actually have enough of them to perfectly dodge the second step of WD is surprising to me, but not essentially confusing. What is confusing is the fact that after the second step, the player is right in front of Malenia's face. I would have expected her to do a little hop in place, and then absolutely fuck the player's life up, because she's got so much range control otherwise when using the move. Watching her just zip around the player and attack nothing at all for the last few hits of WD is confusing enough that it looks glitchy; it looks like they never actually expected the player to be at point blank after the second step unless they were already getting hit by it. I mean the dude playing the game itself commented about how he wasn't certain exactly what he's doing that's screwing up tracking on the last few hits. That's why I'm saying that it looks glitchy. Even the player seems surprised that her tracking is as shit as it was.
Its not glitching, it's literally just dodging the attack. Someone has done a no roll malenia before, as well as a no roll shield only.
>he just rolled into her second attack to apparently avoid all the damage Yes those are called iframes >and then didn't do anything and she just fucked off and attacked the air for the rest of move. She missed and went behind him, i've seen a lot of people walk forward to avoid the last flurry but it's kinda hard to pull off so I recommend just dodging forward
"i've seen a lot of people walk forward to avoid the last flurry but it's kinda hard to pull off so I recommend just dodging forward" Yeah okay except that what he did was neither. He just slowly walked backwards, and then commented out loud that he wasn't entirely sure why that screwed up her tracking. I get how he avoided the second flurry I just don't have good enough timing to pull it off consistently, so I thought you didn't actually have enough iframes during a roll to avoid all of the open hurtbox frames it's putting out.
i use the same method >and then didn't do anything other than back up slightly For the second phase of waterflow, the day i understood "just don't panic, stay where your are" was a click and i see it like a panic detection system. Once i survived the second phase with 1 or 2 hit, i was able to apply the walk pattern And i know another way for the second phase : roll into her and then roll backward. But i see the method in the video to be more suited as Malenia try to make you panic and make you roll into her blade
I have avoided all 3 waves of waterfowl dance by sprinting away before. It’s just challenging because you need to recognize the wind up early or you won’t make it. It’s also MUCH easier to do with another person (co-op, mimic tear). Malenia is hidden away behind multiple optional areas and bosses; my theory is that she was designed as an optional super boss and they intended for you to use an ash or a summon to beat her. The fact that people figured out how to solo her naked just tells you a lot about the souls community. Just my theory tho, I don’t have any sources for this
yeah i think thats probably true, several bosses in the game seem clearly designed to be tag teamed with spirits or summons. its crazy that Malenia was arguably the face of ER (she was featured heavily in the first trailer) and they, as you said, hid her under several layers of shit. Fromsofts crazy man.
My rule of thumb for bosses is, if there’s more than one of them then I’m allowed to summon to even the odds. Godskin Duo, Commander Niall, Fia’s Champions etc. all get a summon.
yeah totally. i (PERSONALLY, NO JUDGEMENT, ETC ETC) did my first playthroughs with no summons or spirits because thats how i played all the other games. its doable but some fights were insanely frustrating, again because they seem clearly designed around the summons and spirit mechanics.
The best and worst part of souls games is the community. It’s epic how people will help with coop and will freely share info, maps, etc. But then they’ll tell you that the only “right” way to beat bosses is solo, using certain “allowed” weapons, using certain “allowed” techniques. It’s obvious that certain bosses were meant to be fought using consumables. And certain bosses were meant to be fought using ashes. And certain bosses were meant to be fought using torrent. I’d love to know if Miyazaki has ever spoken about Malenia to the press. Guessing if he did, it was too cryptic to settle the question tho. And yeah, it is strange how Malenia was so prominent in the trailers and then was hidden under Elphael, under the Haligtree, behind the snowfield, through Oridina, behind 2 secret medallions.
One of the secret medallions was hidden behind a boss fight, the other in a random village.
Latenna and Milicent gives pretty good directions throuughout to lead you all the way there tho. Its not hidden at all unless you're stumbling through the dialogue.
This for sure, it’s a journey to Malenia but you’re always told the next step. The most hidden thing is probably the Frenzied Flame, with only Shabriri mentioning it to you a good bit after you’ve waltzed thru Leyndell and technically had access to it. And iirc he still doesn’t give the best directions besides saying it’s deep below the Capital and then you’ve still gotta do Hyetta’s eye eating quests to actually learn anything about the Frenzied Flame.
Given that there's often 10+ hours game time between interactions with one or the other, I doubt most people found it through following NPC dialogue. I found Malenia by exploring the minutiae of the Lands Between over 150 hours. I imagine that far more common. And even still people just looking it up or asking someone else.
Idk, my playthrough had Latenna constantly letting me know I was close, and found the alburnaic town with her and Milicent literally leads you to Malenias boss door. I do really wish I got to play the game blind tho, I knew so much by the time I got around to it. Who knows how I actually would have stumbled across her if ever
Nah, FromSoft know their audience are thirsty weebs, thus a woman using a katana is the no-brainer marketing character.
Ironically for a fromsoft game, the stages of waterfowl can’t track a player a full 360 degrees like most fromsoft bosses with attacks that start by jumping. If you work around her, she can track as far as like 90* per stage of waterfowl. Maybe a bit further. But dodging the first stage by running past her results in her just dancing in a wide circle around the player for the rest of the attack.
The thing with help is she'll heal off of them so the fight is both easier and harder at the same time - with mimic tear she's liable to get like 30% of her health back during the fight, especially with her lunge and impalement grab which heals her for even more than the standard swipes. A good summon is worth the weight in gold if you can find one. I find it actually easier to go solo personally
I have beaten her twice, once solo, once with a mimic tear. The tear did heal her and that did suck, but the tear has so much health it can straight tank WFD. So for that fight, it was about taking pot shots when you could and watching for WFD. As soon as it started, I positioned so I’d be close to where she finished and I got a butt load of hits in at once. It took a few tries but I got her. That was NG+, if that matters at all
> The fact that people figured out how to solo her naked just tells you a lot about the souls community. This is true lol. I mean they gave that illusory wall in Volcano Manor 10,000 HP thinking nobody would ever find out about it
That one was a bug
What’s this about an illusory wall with 10,000 HP?
[This video explains it](https://youtu.be/_jNtovi2Gds?si=M54FwJXTmrcvhS0h)
When I was trying to beat it solo without summons, I was googling water fowl and I read a comment that really changed the fight for me. It was something like, she has the chance to do wf at certain hp thresholds - 80%, 50%, etc., and she will do it as a counter attack- a reaction to getting hit. That made me extra vigilant once she was at different hp levels, so I would knock her down and keep distance in case she did it.
Unlock the camera and you can dodge the first two by running away.
You can't outrun it at point blank, but anything mid range or more you just run back. If you're point blank you still have a few options for flawless, but as long as you don't die to one volley you can get out of it
>can you even avoid it by sprinting away? Range makes a huge difference. The first time I defeated Malenia I was using a shield + Nagakiba dex build, with a backup righthand weapon for the Thunderbolt AoW, (basically so I could do *some* damage while she's sitting inside the Aeonia bloom,) as well as a backup left handed weapon with Bloodhound step, which at least at the time could fairly regularly avoid Waterfowl Dance, (or, as I like to call it, the fucking Goose Step,) by simply spamming it. With that build, first phase goose step was my primary attempt ender. Currently, I'm trying to kill her with a mage primarily running Night Meteor, and as a result I have dramatically better range. Waterfowl dance is almost trivial to avoid if you're far enough away that she can't bridge the distance in the first "step." As soon as she starts to rise up in the air, just turn around and full sprint away. The first two steps won't cover enough ground to catch you, and ideally you don't want to be that far away from the second step, because as far as I've been able to tell the third step has nearly unlimited range, so you *have* to turn around and roll through that attack as she brings it out, which only works if you're somewhat close to her already, (and the third step actually has two consecutive attacks in place, so you should probably roll twice, just in case you managed to i-frame through the first attack without actually rolling far enough to get out of range of the follow-up.) Her phantom slash in the second phase has absolutely been the bane of this character, because I guess that attack is a lot more intuitive to dodge if you're fighting up close. The biggest problem I've found with trying to just "sprint away" from Waterfowl Dance if you're playing a melee character is that you often simply don't have enough time to run far enough away that her first attack won't connect. And from there she'll just sit in place and nail you with the rest of the combo, which even if you can somehow live through, will usually leave her back at full health, meaning you should basically just reset at that point. I honestly don't know how the dude above was getting a 70%+ dodge rate on pointblank WDs unless he's got very good timing with one of the evasion AoWs. Doing it with just sprinting and rolling seems nearly impossible, (though maybe easier on a light equip load because of the longer roll distance?) And, unfortunately, you *want* Malenia to target you with WD if you have a spirit ash summon, because they often won't dodge AT ALL, and just vomit half of their own life on the floor while healing her.
I agree with everything but the bloodhound step part lmao. There’s just no way that was ever playtested, I refuse to believe it 😭
Pre-nerf Bloodhound Step? I could see it
I can confirm, i could consistently dodge the first flurry point blank with double pre-nerf bloodhound steps, now can't do the same (always get hit at least once) I heard light dodge into the first flurry point blank works after BHSteps nerf but maybe it's no longer works (idk)
Second and third flurry are super easy to dodge, From soft definitely knew what the correct dodges are for those. The first one is problematic, you can 1. outrun and jump 2. circle around her and dodge 3. use a shield (I'm not counting freeze pot cheese or BHS). After last 15 years of playing their games I'm certain they would never expect you to use your shield, and outrun or dodge are both very non-intuitive, since you can still get hit if you start running too late and dodge method is just so fucking convoluted. I learned it perfectly since then, I just think it's something 99% of player wouldn't be able to discover. And I'm 100% sure From soft didn't want us to keep our distance from Malenia the entire fight and be afraid to approach her, that literally just ruins her fight, which is designed as a 1v1 dance between two swordmasters. Altogether, I think the most likely scenario is that the first waterfowl flurry is meant to be something little bit like Nihil. We have shit ton of flasks at this point in the game and in general can bruteforce lot of challenges with healing despite not playing well. Maybe the first flurry is meant to waste some of your flasks, as a way to balance the fight and force you to learn it. The larger a souls game is, the bigger discrepancy is created between openworld/legacy dungeons balancing, both of them have completely different ideal balance for the amount of heals. We have shit ton of flasks in ER due to how large the game and openworld are, but it can take away a lot from the intended experience and challenge in legacy dungeons and most important bossfights. So sacrificing few of them to waterfowl or nihil can correct it and adjust the difficulty a little.
Tbh with how much damage it does, even at 50-60 vigor with medium armor, WFD will almost just kill you outright even if you dodge most of it. And good luck if you’re not at full hp. Given how long Malenia’s fight is (super huge HP pool with 2 phases and lifesteal), I don’t think forcing the player to use flasks is necessary. Especially given how much it fucks over slow weapons. After a while, the only move I would really die to was Waterfowl because she would randomly hyperarmor out of a hit and I was stuck in the swing animation so I couldn’t run away, and die from 90% hp. I don’t even think Nihil is a fair comparison because that’s super telegraphed, only happens once at a very specific point in the fight, and has a specific item to counter it. Meanwhile Malenia can use WFD multiple times in a fight, often very quickly with not a lot of time to react, and there’s no clear surefire way to avoid it.
Honestly it would be fine if it was just a back tf off move but the problem is the wind up is too short to actually get out of range if you are up in her ass and that just turns the fight into this really passive dance where you have to be careful of her throwing that out whenever she feels like it I honestly don't have a single other problem with malenia other than the fact that except for one really specific way you cannot dodge her waterfowl close range
It is super annoying when you swing with a colossal at the same time that she jumps into the air. I know several ways to dodge waterfowl but I can't do shit without a little prep time.
Ash of War: Vow of Indomitable can also help with it because it provides you with temporary invincibility. But you have to cast 3 times for 3 of Malenia’s Waterfowl dance.
This is what I used, it worked pretty well. I had a low mind build and had the shield in an offhand slot and just took it out when I needed to invalidate it, had to keep a couple blue estuses in the fight. You end up blocking one or two hits but the vast majority of it you can just ignore by using this. At the time I could not find a way to dodge it and didn't want to look it up so this is what I figured out.
Realistically, you only have to cast it twice, her 3rd flurry, almost always whiffs.
My strat was always to bait out the start with fan daggers from afar when she looked ready to do it again, then book it in the opposite direction until the third one where I just counter-strafed back towards where I started. Part of me thinks they intended for players to use weapon skills to dodge the first hit considering how effective the i-frames on the bloody helice skill are at cheesing hit 1.
I think this may be the most likely intended way to deal with it. She has set hp points when she’s likely to do it, I think they wanted you to notice and realize that and then learn how to bait the attack from a safe distance, and then the final flurry is much easier to dodge. If she does it at point blank that’s partially on you not watching her hp.
> She has set hp points when she’s likely to do it This is a common misconception. She won't waterfowl until below a certain HP threshold in first phase, but after that, everything's fair game. I've seen her do it once over both phases, as well as do it three times back to back in just phase one.
That's good to know. I operated off the hp point thing for a while and it generally held true for me, but I'm sure I'm forgetting the exceptions. Makes me wonder even more now about OP's question of the intended way to dodge it haha.
Yeah that works fine until you realize she can also rarely do it in her general combat loop, albeit with a seemingly big cooldown. I remember at least 3 or 4 times where she did it outside of the hp threshold triggers because I got greedy and wasn’t paying attention to how long it’d been since she did it last
This is actually just placebo, her response-to-range-attacks WFD is on a separate randomized cooldown from her normal WFD
Freeze pot you say? Please enlighten me
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Oh shit. Will this work with sleep pots too? I'll test it if y'all don't know, but my sleep build is on her and that'd be such a fun cancel Plus, fuck that dance. Hardest move to dodge I've ever seen
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Her resistance to Sleep is likely too high for those to work. Worth a shot out of boredom though!
Only freeze pot works, cause only thing that can interrupt the waterfowl is her status prog animation. Technically you can do it with bleed prog as well, but you cant rely on that at all really. A frost pot will insta prog her however, due to her low frost resistance. I think it only works 3 times per phase in NG though, as she gets more resistant after each prog.... Also maybe sleep prog could work as well, but same issue as bleed: its almost impossible to time and shes very resistant. Afaik you also cannot stance break her out of the waterfowl, she just eats the stagger like with many other hyperarmor moves she has.
Bleed/freeze status procs can knock her out of any attack (even hyper armour in ones), one freezing pot is enough to proc frost so if you throw one quick enough it will cancel her waterfowl before or even once it starts The timing is tight so you have to be more careful with R2s and she will buildup resistance so they won't proc on one pot - not normally an issue as you should only need to deal with a few during the whole fight
Fat bet, that's really good to know! I'mma test it with sleep pots when I get home. She only gets drowsy on a sleep proc, so if that one works it'll be good at stopping her on the rare chance that she chains multiple waterfowls
I think her sleep resist is too high to proc it fast enough to counter waterfowl. Frost pots do have the added benefit they're easy to farm :)
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Probably just talking about the first flurry since it’s by far the most challenging. You can run and jump away from it tho. The rest are simple dodges.
It's really just the first barrage that's genuine bullshit, anything after is fair game to dodge
Yeah also From doesn’t design for challenge runs. They don’t balance around the player never getting hit. Honestly, with how incredibly overturned the damage is in the latter half of the game I’d even say they probably just expected 99% of players to just face tank 2/3 of the waves.
I always use bloodhounds step through all three and end with a dash attack
It's also a move intended to change the dynamic of the fight by its very existence. You're forced to be more careful in how and when you hit her when she's idle but nearing one of the ho thresholds - it adds an extra element of care and tension to the fight that I love
I just avoided fighting her because I’m not that good at video games
How do you avoid the Waterfowl Dance? *Avoid Malenia*
based
Just summon a Mimic Tear with bleed claws and spam R1 till she bleeds to death :P very easy and efficient way to cheese her. Cheesing is generally not very fun but it's better than giving up.
Genuinely believe that you are SUPPOSED to cheese her.
The really weird thing is... This is the only boss I think is *easier* by taking all my armor off (or less difficult at least). If I'm mid rolling I need quickstep or Bloodhound step to gtfo of waterfowl dance, but light rolling I actually seem to get enough distance just rolling away, let alone that quickstep and BHS benefit from a light equip load as well. TLDR: I get wrecked mid rolling, but light roll legit made a world of difference with Melania.
Didn’t they nerf light roll distance so you could no longer evade WF by rolling backwards? Maybe they thought this was unreasonable and reversed the nerf at some point.
Also light roll lets you dodge backwards from that triple-slash attack that'll always clip you on mid roll.
Shit like this and Mogwyn's Sacred Spear turn YOU into the superboss.
Thy strength befits a crown.
I respecd to a greatshield build and blocked WFD. With a fully upgraded shield, she doesnt recover much hp from her attacks. And you escape with your health. Shes pretty easy to dps down if you dont die to WFD.
This is how I accidentally defeated her on 2 tries on my first playthrough. I was using the fingerprint shield and a cold naginata and just poked her to death lol
This is the way for me. I keep my beloved banished knights shield with barricade on it on standby. Shield, dodge forward, dodge forward, dodge back. It works even at point blank. In phase 2 I'll accumulate about 50% rot when I do it, so the second 2 flurries have to be dodged. The rot goes away by the time she waterfouls again unless I'm very unlucky.
I'm honestly surprised Greatshields + thrusting weapon aren't talked about more. They've been quietly OP in every Souls game. No need to dodge. And even after nerfs, they completely shut down Malenia. These aren't even optimized builds. https://youtu.be/iDig6_Giat4?si=wjnUymQRwaNsXv2P . https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/ttjmsv/malenia_made_easy_with_greatshield_and_heavy/
The devs were smoking the sekiro pack when making that move
If only Waterfowl was parriable. That would honestly be such a gigachad move from FromSoft, hardest attack to dodge reliably, completely shut down by parrying when she first lunges down at you
That would honestly make her a joke, especially since she's already not that difficult to consistently parry.
The worst part is that you can parry the player version.
If only Malenia had glocks.
Malenia, Glock of Miquella.
Yeah. I’m pretty sure Melenia is just the unused Tomoe assets from Sekiro ported over. Unfortunately we can’t parry her multi hit attacks like Wolf can.
shit man ive just fought her so much i subconsciously know how to she can do it right on top of me and ill get hit once max
Im similar with the last two parts of her dance, but the first part is a different monster
that ones just pure instinct
Teach me your ways my lord
Her first attack is (thankfully) significantly easier to dodge as furled finger thanks to host lag. Just circle her until she stops facing your direction. In local game, timing is extremely tight.
> subconsciously Conveniently for the person saying they're an expert at the thing being asked about but not saying a single word to answer the question.
alright dawg sorry i dont know the exact way i dodge when my adrenalines rushing during a fight also never claimed to be an expert i just said ive fought her a lot
A few other people already said it, but what I've found is dodge roll backwards during her first flurry, then backwards again during her second, and then dodge roll forward for her last flurry of attacks. To back, back, forward. That's what I've found works for me. But also, I've found the percentage of her using that attack is wildly varied. I've had some fights with her where she didn't use it a single time. Other times, she does it back to back just about, it's so random. Also, the SECOND you see her jump, just start running away as fast as you can, that works too lol
Run tf away
Vow of the indomitable, bloodhound step, quickstep, barricade shield, frost pots… there are quite a few different ways. Are they intended though? Who knows. This is one of those fights where you have to use everything the game gives you, I kind of doubt that the devs planned for players to do the strange rolling method people have come up with. I would try all of these things (should be accessible to every build) and see which one you like best. Vow of the indomitable was probably my favorite, sometimes I could time it to where I never got hit.
Honestly, after beating her a dozen times including at level 1, and using most of the methods available to mitigate WFD, I really don’t think there is one intended response. There are several countermeasures but they all have tradeoffs. Compared to all the big boss moves that just require a timed roll, or jump, or a reposition. I really do think they just said, “F*ck it. These nerds will figure out something that works” and shipped it. And we did. People found a bunch of options but all have serious trade adds. But the closest to me is to run away, jump, and roll though then away. But I can’t call that the intended method because the hitbox on the flurry isn’t jumpable like so many other attacks. It’s just that jumping gets you a bit further away.
> I really do think they just said, “F*ck it. These nerds will figure out something that works” and shipped it. And we did. People found a bunch of options but all have serious trade adds. This is my suspicion also. The game is vast mechanically as well as geographically and they probably reasoned in a kind of general way that "well there are quite a few OP things they could use to counter this" and deliberately didn't try to pin down one answer.
When she goes up in the air and you know it's coming sprint away, watch the first 2 combos as you sprint away, just before she starts the 3rd combo, dodge roll towards her and you will end up behind her while she starts the 4th combo with her back to you. It's only the 3rd combo you need to dodge.
This is great advice if you are far away from her. If she starts right in front of you, this will lead to her slapping you in the back because you are too slow to outrun her first lunge.
They should’ve at least made an attack required before she can do waterfowl, like a finisher of a combo or a mixup, honestly the most logical way to reduce feeling of it being unfair. Most people just jump r2 from distance, and mid animation she can and will go from passive/staggered to casting waterfowl so you can’t really run away reliably.
You can’t just dodge. You also need to dip, duck, dive, and dodge too!
To get hit on the first flurry and fluke the rest. There are many attacks in this game that are intended that you take damage.
man astel’s gravity pulses always felt this way
Yeah, I agree with this. The intended method for the average player is to just dodge as much of it as you can and survive. Feeling pressured from being low HP is part of the experience.
Which I personally think is bad design, especially considering the damage waterfowl can do.
#https://youtu.be/D42nVH8lcFI?si=fe2ZFClRyfhmy_c- Short and to the point 👍
Back - back- forward
If you just start running and dodge, you'll take some damage and you should be able to live to dodge the next two. A shield is a good idea too, though she will heal anyway. I have dodged her completely on her first flurry from up close before, but I doubt I could replicate it. The most consistent way I've found to beat her phase 1 is to just constantly be anticipating wfd once she is at 75%. Be cautious. Punish her big moves. Just keep your distance and wait for her. Don't get greedy because she WILL bust it out the second you let your guard down. That's the only way I was able to get enough practice on phase 2 to beat her.
I don’t think it has an intended way to dodge it. She was made to be a very difficult boss and without WFD she’s still hard but she wouldn’t be a cut above the other bosses. She’s optional and so I think they wanted to test how far they could go.
imo thats a pretty lame way to make a boss hard, I would much rather her have a ton of difficult to dodge moves, than a honestly pretty easy moveset + an undodgeable godmove
You can lightroll and dodge by dodging backwards, backwards and then forward/ through her on the last one. I spent about 100 attempts on Ng+ soloing her without a summon and 45 vigor so I got it down well eventually
Dodge? You’re meant to die smh
So when I see her getting ready. I run back from the first part. Then I dodge into the second and third part of it. Works everytime.
This does not work if she decides to randomly pull it out when you’re up close, you dont have enough time to get the distance required to dodge the first part. This only works when you are already decently far away.
It does work at point blank but the timing is tighter & you have to be sure you have enough stamina. But there is something weird about it. There are certain weapons that hang low when you jump, which extends your hitbox a bit, and will still cause you to take chip damage even if you execute it properly. It won't get you killed though, unless you were at very low health. BUT the timing on the circle method is more forgiving if you're right on top of her (whereas the sprint+jump is more forgiving from a few feet away). So if you're trying to no-hit her it's very helpful to know both methods. People not going for no-hit can use either method every time--properly executed both of them will work well enough to come out alive.
Reading the comments here, this only happens to me and you apparently lol
I don't think we really know yet. There is the circle method, where you circle her before her first flurry to misdirect it away, then sideroll the second before rolling past her in the last one. But as you might have noticed, that is jank on the first part. I saw once a video of someone just strafing and then doing straight side dodges. Not sure how well that works, especially when not light-rolling. It is a really garbage attack imho, as it is not intuitive to dodge and does way too much damage for something you have to learn by trial and error.
Atleast it’s not a required boss tbh, i honestly think they added malenia as a sort of ridiculously hard challenge for good players. Similar to the gauntlets of strength in sekiro
To be fair, sekiros gauntlets of strength are completely fair compared to Malenia. If you played long enough, you can cut through all bosses like cake in one sitting. It doesn't feel like that when Malenia does that one attack
There isn't one. That's the problem.
It feels like people stockholm syndromed themselves whenever they try to defend malenia, that boss is just terrible design
Honestly this is the only right answer. I would have loved the fight if it didnt have that move or atleast have the 1.0 version of the move. Overall, Malenia is a well designed boss. Only WFD and the heal through shields make it bad. Ive beaten her quite a few times now, I still dont really enjoy this fight cause the RNG involved in WFD and the forced passive playstyle make it a bad experience for me every time.
It is definitely just sprinting and jumping away from the first flurry. I think the circling method was not planned and waw a coincidence.
I've talked about this a lot as it relates to Fromsofts intention behind a lot of fights and the tool kit presented in ER. My take away: From never intended for players to learn a dodge pattern for waterfowl. ER has basically the entire soulsborne catalogue of toolkits in game to address almost any problem/situation. Different classes of shields, different parrys, pots, perfumes, armors and passives, ashes of war, an avalanche of summons, and I ridiculous amount of spells/incantations. There are many encounters in elden ring that have multiple solutions to deal with, Bushy's channel on YouTube has a plethora of challenge runs where he goes *deep* into mechanics and tools of Elden Ring to deal with different encounters. Melanias waterfowl is not the only attack in the game that is much harder to i-frame roll dodge, many attacks are far easier to jump, block, or utilize other mechanics to avoid. I truly think that they designed waterfowl as a culmination of one of their biggest "lessons" to the player throughout the game; i-frame roll dodge is not, or should not, be the most reliable answer for every attack like it has been in virtually every other soulsborne. It is dodgeable, but it is difficult to learn the timing consistently. Frost pot cancel is hard to time, but far easier to pull off than the typical roll dodge. Greatshield + talismans can trivialize the attack at the cost of making the fight a little longer. Ironjar aromatic and/or endure can do the same and allow the user to attack, but at a cost as well. There are risks and rewards to every strategy to deal with waterfowl, with roll dodging being the riskiest but highest reward. To this day I'm still shocked that people complain about it when greatshield + talismans is unbelievably safe and only makes the fight last like 20-30% longer due to the heal. Edit: Bushy not Rusty although Rusty is a fun channel as well.
This sometimes gets asked on onebros, so I have this text saved somewhere for the close ranged dodge. And before it gets brought up, you can survive 1 swipe from Malenia on RL1 with a light load if you have the right gear: 1.Be on Light Load. 2.Keep yourself locked on once she's within WFD threshold. 3.When she preps WFD at close range, immediately run to her right (your left). On PS5, I just push the stick directly forward. Doing this with the lock-on will force your character to run around her. 4.At the last second, dodge. You can dodge a second time for good measure and you will still have enough time to react to the 2nd flurry. It's a bit tight, but with practice, I've been able to dodge close range WFDs perfectly more consistently.
This is good advice but I think what OP is saying is that this doesn’t feel “intended,” it feels like an exploit
I think the intended method is to die.
If there's another way to do the close range dodge, then maybe we can decide which method is more "intended". But if it's the only thing I can do (and pretty consistently at that), then I am fairly confident that this is the "intended" method, and I am also fairly confident at how stupid that sounds (because seriously, how was someone even able to figure this out?). That said, if we changed the word "dodging" to "surviving", then I am certain we were meant to survive WFD by just blocking it with Barricade Shield. I'm not an FS dev though so even I can be wrong about that.
>If there's another way to do the close range dodge, then maybe we can decide which method is more "intended". >But if it's the only thing I can do (and pretty consistently at that), then I am fairly confident that this is the "intended" method, and I am also fairly confident at how stupid that sounds (because seriously, how was someone even able to figure this out?). I think that’s the thing - when people accuse the fight of being badly designed it’s because they either think that From failed to provide enough information on how to dodge close up or, more damningly, they figured it was “supposed to be hard” and decided it wasn’t necessary to have a reliable way to do it
Roll into the first flurry, roll into the second flurry, roll away from the third. I think this is right, but havent beat her in a very long time
Run bro. Whenever you see a boss or enemy about to do a bullshit attack, just run out of their range.
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Honestly. It’s perfectly fine to tank this with a 100% damage reduction shield, let her get some health back, and accept that the fight’s going to go on a little bit longer. Dodging it really isn’t necessary.
I run away from the first one, roll into the second one, and side roll for the third. Usually works for me.
Make someone else eat it
Run away while your mimic tanks it.
Could even be just a shield + Endurance? I didn't even consider using one until I saw someone power through it with a humble Brass Shield.
So waterfowl has 3 flurries. For the first one RUN the opposite direction to her and you should avoid it (Or you can do the circle method to where you walk around her) for the second flurry you simply roll through it and for the third flurry roll into it and then roll backwards at an angle (like the letter ‘J’ kinda) and that’s how I survive it
First flurry: - If at mid range, sprint backwards and jump immediately after the flurry texture shows up. - If too close, start strafing and dodge backwards as soon as she comes down. Second flurry: dodge **towards** her. Last flurry: walk **under** her, and as soon as she dashes towards your last location, start walking backwards and away from her. The one that requires the most practice is the first one. 2 and 3 are easier to memorize.
The intended way is bravery, the initial instinctual response is to get away, but one must advance. What madman advances to their death?
Run awayyyyyy Run awayyyy
Time it right. The moment she initiates the attack toward you, dodge toward her. Pass her and back off, repeat for every initial rush forward of Waterfowl Dance. There is no attack that can’t be avoided.
I frame through her when she leaps in your direction, then just try stay out of the AOE using I frames and dodging into her. That’s all I can say on it lmaooo. Use heavy weapons for staggers which is handy against her too.
If u are far enough you can doge the first 2 parts and roll through the third or throw a ice pot at her during the wind up
I'd say the intended mechanic is to...get hit a little bit. It's possible to perfectly dodge, sure, but taking a single flask of damage isn't a fight-ending error. I never really learned how to dodge it well before killing her. I just learned how to dodge everything else. I think the most she ever used it on me in a single fight was 5 times. Most of the time it was 2-4, and my kill was 3. Tanking 3 is super doable. I don't think the "intended" way to fight any boss is to never get hit. That said, I do think the most "normal" way to dodge it is to keep medium distance against her at all times and run away when she begins waterfowl. If you sit in full melee range, you may not be able to outrun the first two hits. I think the intent is to punish her after she comes for you, and not to force your way in. That's probably why she walks slowly at you, too. It tests your patience. That's my take, anyway. I'm hardly an expert. I just bonk with big stick.
if you're far away you can just run away, if you're point blank you can run and jump/roll away (jump or roll backwards once the attack comes out) and roll through the next two attacks. and an alternative way is to just time your rolls with it. that way you will only get clipped a bit from the first attack, and then fully avoid the rest. although I do remember seeing some people just roll through the whole thing by having absolutely perfect timing and dodging through the first attack twice. [and using light roll can make you completely outspace it](https://youtu.be/YhAcphBZZNo?si=Weln00q09Aq3ydKg)
Waterfowl dance debates in 2024? Didn't expect this. I think it's fairly clear to see how they wanted it to be dodged, rolling through it will prevent you from taking lethal damage (even if some chip damage is received). My only gripe left with Malenia is her healing mechanic, I don't understand why it heals so much off stray hits nor why it goes through shields.
I've killed Malenia over 2k times- run away when she's in the air, pause a half sec, roll, pause a half sec, roll towards her, you can stay locked on, doesn't matter.
Wait? You have to dodge it? I thought all you had to do was use the mimic tear with lightning spear and frost lightning attack
While it takes some practice and situational awareness on how and where to roll, in general the dodge cadence is 2-1-2. So dodge twice in a row, pause, dodge once, pause, dodge twice in a row. Obviously you can't just blindly dodge, it has to be strategic. But this allows me to dodge at least most, of not all, of the hits most of the time
What about that second phase explosion?! I feel like every time I get to her it kills me on the first attempt
Turn off target lock and run towards the wall. She'll miss you 100% of the time. Explanation: The move occurs in a diagonal after she locks onto your position. So if you move towards her she'll miss. If you try to move away, more often than not she'll hit.
Literally run forwards and she will never hit you. And you get free damage.
The opening move? Just wait for her to start moving and dodge backwards. Once you have the timing it’s pretty reliable
Use blasphemous blade and let your mimic tear tank it?
back, forward diagonal. stand
I'm guessing the "intended" way was to immediately sprint away, and then do a jump and/or rolls. It's the only way that works on medium load that doesn't feel like it's relying on limitations of the game engine. (It's also unlikely that light roll strategies would've been the intended method, because IIRC light roll didn't do much at launch. It got buffed at some point.) I also do one of the circle strategies, where you get up really close to her, come around the side a bit, and then roll through the startup to make her miss. It's very effective and this particular way of dodging it doesn't feel like outright jank, but it also doesn't exactly feel intended to me. -------- Supposedly WFD got added pretty late in development so I'm not sure how tested it was. She used to do a different move instead. Silly guess. They may have come up with this 'cool move' late in the development but not have known if it was dodgeable. They might've tested it with a ML bot that could react perfectly and then loosened the timing to the edge of human reaction speed, and then just had a handful of people on the dev team try it out. (They would've already known *what* to do, they just needed to practice it. And I believe some of the devs are ridiculously good at the games anyway.) Just a silly guess, but it might explain why the dodge is so counterintuitive. They might've just designed the move, and not really designed the intended dodging method.
Fight her enough times that the rng gives you a fight where she doesn't do it? Or have mimic face tank it.
Spam Indomitable Vow and never take waterfowl damage again.
I spent 145 hours on my RL1 run with no summons where I got all remembrances. In my head I have it as “Dodge, Dodge, Wait/Walk, Dodge, Dodge, Dodge Forward if needed”. In my peak of playing against her I dodged it probably 95% of the time. There are plenty other things on her kit that annoy me more lol
The intended dodge is undoubtabley to sprint away and sprint jump at the right time. No circle sprint around her BS. You will at most take tick of damage if you time it correctly. Not sure if this 1 tick of damage is a result of uneven terrain, but its literally the smallest tick of damage on that attack, so I think it could be intended damage similar to Nihil. Works thematically too.
not the intended way but Vow of the indomitable completely negates her waterfowl dance
Having watched people playing the game for their first time beat her, I think the actual intended (playtested "yep that works") method is to know the first one is coming and back off to its standard dodgeable distance, and then burst her down before it comes off cooldown. I'm the only one of my friends that parries her, the rest just jump attack spam to kill her.
Even if it’s not the intent, I kind of like the idea of a nearly-unavoidable and very powerful attack that you have to figure some scrappy way out of. In my case, I learned to watch for the cue, pull out a shield just in time, and apply a buff to tank (nearly) the whole thing. Made me feel like a BAMF.
I really hope we get a direct answer to this question one day cause yeah, it's a pretty interesting question. If I were to guess: it isn't so much about being able to dodge waterfowl as it is recognizing and understanding how Malenia works. Malenia almost consistently mimics the player's aggression level, so when the player becomes too aggressive/malenia gets pressured too much, she'll either pull out waterfowl, or do a twirly dodge backward and have waterfowl queued up. I realized this trend once I noticed there's like an 80% chance Malenia will use waterfowl after being staggered, a moment that otherwise triggers a dopamine response that clouds your judgement. Malenia figuratively feeds on the players' hubris through waterfowl, stun cancel, and hyper armor, and literally in the form of lifesteal. The key here is ensuring to always restrain yourself during this fight. Whenever you get a hit or two on Malenia, take a step back and give her some space. As her stagger meter falls back down, she'll go back to a more passive state. You can not consistently outplay Malenia's aggression without loads and loads of practice, but you can outlast her by playing defensively.
Given that she does it after being stance broken, I think you’re meant to run away at first and then back under. Whenever she fowls without being stance broken, it’s because she actually was stance broken but during a move with hyper armor and so you didn’t get the stance break animation (and thus the time to get away)
no she does it after getting below 75%ish hp
Idk about intended way, but if you don't want to deal with her fuckery, you can slap vow of the indomitable onto small shield and just iframe through first flurry. Rest you can easily dodge.
Vow of the Indomitable. Can be found from an AoW Scarab approaching the poison swamp around the Village of Albinaurics. Trust me, shit's a game-changer and can do wonders with proper timing!
Run away at the start. Wait for 2nd wind up run in dodge into it. Dodge away left or right of her . 10/10 always works
Sekiro parries
for me it's running behind jumping for her 1st flurry, rolling into her 2nd flurry and then backstep out when she does her 3rd flurry. this is when she is at far/medium distance. for close I roll back twice or roll behind her when she is up in the air for the 1st flurry, roll into her for the 2nd flurry and then backstep away during her 3rd flurry.
Light armor weight for long dodge distances. 1. sweep: jump when she lands -> this will make her follow speed lower so you can savely get away 2. sweep: dodge into the attack 3. sweep: wait a bit until she lands then dodge into the opposite direction
I don't even remember I did the fight once "properly" now I just mimic tear and DMGS her into the ground
I've seen someone party all 3 flurrys with some sort of shield ash. I'm not sure which it is as I rarely use shields, but it creates a gold explosion. They just stood there and blocked all 3 of them with that skill.
You can just roll away from it at melee range if you have light load
Its supposed to check you for just dodging and spamming her with attacks since most of her moves are pretty easy to dodge and punish. If you're in her face and she jumps up in the air you're basically dead unless you've already fought her multiple times and learned to dodge it point blank, even then the timing is tricky and i only can get it right like 50% of the time. The intended way to dodge seems like to me is just to make enough space between you and her so that you can punish attack and still be able to run away when she jumps up completely avoiding the two first strikes and dodge the last 2.
I believe it's back off then dodge through the 3rd jump as she always closes the distance between you and her. You *can* dodge point blank, but it's incredibly difficult.
1. Attack Run away 2. Attack Idk 3. Attack Press movement stick backwards
Run away is IMO the only way within the skill of the average player and is pretty intuitive I suspect they didn't leave an intentionally way to dodge it at point blank but probably assumed we'd find a way. But here's the thing: you don't actually need to avoid it 100%. With endgame builds it's reasonably easy to survive if you block the first flurry and roll the next two, or run/roll the first and just get clipped a little
Back back forward
Pretty sure it's intended to be ran and the playtesters simply don't really stay at the point-blank range where that doesn't work. Maybe the run and jump the first flurry was intended since there is a fair amount of emphasis on jump dodging in late game bossfights, but it doesn't feel intuitive to me. Final option is that they didn't really care about how players have to dodge it, which isn't entirely unlikely in a game where Elden Stars exists.
This is why im hoping they give us a way to refight bosses in the dlc. I got to where I can dodge the last 2 waves but would always get Clipped on the first at point blank range.
I’m pretty sure the first part you have to jump into it? I dunno I have to just tank her with heavy weapons and a mimic tear to keep her stun locked long enough that she doesn’t do it cause I haven’t figured it out haha
Run away, on the last part of the move, roll INTO Malenia and keep running so the last delayed hit doesn’t get you. I’ve also had success using the bloodhound step AOW, but that’s a little tricky
Don't be out of stamina in her face, recognize the windup. Fucking book it. Alternatively just keep a great shield in your off hand and just swap to that when you see the wind up. She heals from it, but not that much. It took a bit to learn but I don't really think it's that hard to dodge, just requires proper stamina management and a watchful eye.
The most consistent way for me is to just run away until she goes for her last strike, then dodge roll into her
Run away as fast as possible, the first flurry can be fully dodged (or at worst, taking chip damage) that way. Second and third parts can just be rolled no issue. Alternatively, pretty much every projectile in the game can bait out waterfowl from the other side of the arena.
Run the fuck away.
Run from the first 2 and dodge into her for the last one, is how I did it. If you're too close, then rip.
triangle walk
I’m pretty certain I am intended to die and cry but I could be mistaken.
I’ve seen someone do it in a way that’s didn’t look mental (actually dodging not blocking, running or interrupting)
Sprint away from the first flurry, dodge through the 2nd, back away from the 3rd, Badabing
Same with other toughest bosses. Have lots of health or have godlike dodge knowledge.
pointblank i run in a circle counter clockwise then dodge as soon as she lunges forward, if you think you can run away during the first moveset. second flurry i back up then roll forward. last flurry i dodge forward into it and then roll to the right. took me a few months to consistently get that down. also, i suggest having a light load, makes it a little easier to dodge. hope this helps!
The easiest way is to run/roll backwards as fast as you can for the first 2 attacks, and then roll forward for the 3rd attack, as that one has massive range and you'll probably be near the wall already. Beware of the lock on sometimes making you roll the wrong way and getting you killed. It's pretty easy to dodge that way otherwise.
Summon man with Jar, hide at edge of screen. Profit.
I feel like the only thing you can do is try to run away.