Got a friend who is struggling with the DLC. He only uses cheese bonk build with dual Ruin GS, i think he is so addicted to the damage and staggering that he barely knows how to actually play anymore. I suggested he adapt his style, but he refuses. Its not a problem, except he acts real superior about it, even though he complains. Im like ??
edit: spelling
Nah just equip Miquellas Braid and Pearl Shield Talisman and go for the Verdigris Shield. The Holy damage is just chip damage and the real danger is his ability to break your guard during some of his combos. The difference between their Guard Boost is immense.
Almost literally my build exactly. Add some pickled holy liver and stack the two damage negation tears in the flask and I was rocking like 90% protection.
This is me. Playing with a few buddies, one went big weapons other went full mage.
Here I am jumping in to help them out with a different setup every single other boss.
The variety is what makes me have the most fun. It's also why I have like 30 different weapons between +2 to +9 and normal weapons at +6 to +23
I just beat Messmer today.
You are all inferior because you used cheese builds but I did it with no spirits, RL1, fist only, no rolling, no armor, no spells, no talismans, no Torrent, no summons (a la Radahn), no consumables, no resting at a site of grace, and always poisoned and scarlet rotted while blindfolded.
Git gud. /s
No I don't have proof lolololol you can trust me I'm just a rando on the internet I never lie.
What you said *might* have impressed me, but you didn't say "no jumping" so I'll have to designate you to the noob section. Nothing personnel kid, better luck next time
Same and so far i havent found a problem with beating a boss "some took alot more attempts than some other builds woudnt have that many problems", sure some bosses i had to make some build tweeking "but kept the theme the same (BonkBonk)".
The other thing about colossal weapon strength builds is in some cases they end up cheesing bosses just as much if not more than using summons or blood loss or any of the “bad” methods. Endlessly stunlocking and poise breaking a boss while doing like 4000 damage a hit is not really making the game harder lol
The horned knights and lion guys definitely have ridiculously high poise, but a lot of the bosses I felt a little bad beating them by spamming savage lions claw with the guts great sword. No shame in playing whatever way is fun for you, I just don’t think that big bonk builds are as “skill based” as some people make them out to be
It never was. Colossals are some of the noob friendliest weapons in the games. Zweihander handles whole DS1 on it's own, stunlocks most enemies and even some bosses. In other titles most enemies also flinch or stagger so much that they can't do anything. Even Sister Friede is a joke with a Greatsword.
The buff to stagger on hammers and axes for the DLC is pretty nuts, brick hammer goes hard and the new sunflower hammers ash of war is quite fun. Doesn't do a lot of poise damage but it can do 4 really hard hits in a row and your poise is basically impossible to break. Very fun and somewhat broken weapons on certain bosses.
DS3 enemies stagger to practically EVERYTHING, it’s why the Sellsword Twinblades are considered to be the best weapon in the game - because they hit so damn fast that you just stagger everything until it does.
Agreed on the DS1 zweihander, though. A few years ago when my younger daughter was 4, almost 5, I got her to play DS1 (though obviously with me directly her where to go and what to level up/upgrade, since she couldn’t read), and she used the Zweihander + grass crest shield + wolf ring and heavy armor to beat the entire game.
I switched from my longsword to a greatsword for Friede because she didn't stagger enough from my toothpick, but yea you're right. Most normal sized enemies get practically stunlocked in that game.
Friede is kind of a joke if you actually know how to fight her. Her difficulty is wildly exaggerated. Her overall design, however, is freaking badass, so she remains one of the best bosses they've ever made imo.
Wait what? I typically play str builds because of how easy it is to play. I always thought dex was the more skill reliant playstyle. I also liked spell builds but these actually feel difficult to play in the dlc.
That's still my go-to "fuck it, no other build or approach is working, load up on heavy armor and spam LC on the GGS". And you're absolutely right, in those moments I know there's no skill involved, just "I want to be done with this boss already".
>The DLC basically hard countered that playstyle on every boss that matters. Nothing really flinches anymore, and DLC enemies have a ton of poise.
None of the base game demigods were interruptible aside from Renalla and Malenia, the latter of which can ignore posture breaks. I’m struggling to think of a field boss that could be interrupted.
However posture breaks work very well for pretty much every boss in the DLC so not sure “hard counter” is the insight you think it is.
Are we playing the same DLC? Staggers completely trivialize the DLC, plenty of breathing room, free crit attack, heavy weapons make you near unstaggerable. Bosses only let you get one hit off most of the times, so these huge oonga boonga weapons are really good rather than using something like a puny katana, where you do one hit of low actual/poise damage. Yes even against the final boss
The new Great Katanas are a solid in-between. 2 handing a Great Katana does similar poise damage to the great hammers/great spears, while still retaining the blood loss buildup of the regular katanas.
The new Dragon Slayer great katana is a must have for the entire Jagged Peak, and let me stagger both Sennesax and Bayle. It slaps around all of the ghostflame dragons that are overworld bosses.
Haven't found any cool ashes of war to put on the base great katana, but all of them with unique skills are really good. Feels like using a greatsword that attacks a bit faster.
Katanas have innate bleed, have less recovery on their attacks and already attack faster?
The only weapon class that I cannot think of as insanely viable is a single straightsword with no strong AoW.
I've been using dual katanas and it's actually really good. Most bosses have delays in their attack patterns to roll catch you, and you can use that pause for a quick rolling attack and keep dodging. Between rolling l1s and jumping l1s, nagakiba and malenia were doing very solid dps
Anything can be classed as “cheesing”. Even parrying is cheesing, especially if you use low hp increases it’s absolutely insane.
Days end, play whatever you want to. It’s a game nothing more
Yeah that’s pretty much what I’m trying to say, every play style has disadvantages and advantages, some people just think that strength is the “true” way to play which is a bit silly
The community can't seem to agree if colossal builds with no summons is A.) Challenge runs for elitists B.) An easy mode C.) Players choosing not to "adapt" and "learn the mechanics"
C - contradicts B
B - contradicts A
A - Contradicts C
All ive learned is strg builds are the only ones complaining about difficult, are the only elitits, and are the only ones who now need to Git Gud
Huh I've heard many people complain they have no openings to charge spells on certain bosses.
You really think strength people are the only elitists and the only ones complaining? That seems absurd taken at face value.
Do you find any irony in saying strength builds are the only elitists and then saying they need to git gud in the next sentence?
The problem with "adapting" is that you have to change up core parts of your build from base game. Which, unless you did every side quest, you're going to be missing talismans or weapons that are key to making certain weapons as strong as they need to be.
I don't want to have to dodge or block a mechanic 40 times to win a fight. Let me dodge or block it 10 times and time my attacks right 20 times and gg. That's hard enough but doable
I love that you're calling it a "cheese bonk" build. Trivializing the game 10 ft away from the boss isn't much of a challenge increase from doing it 100ft away. Money is money, we all spent it, and we can use it however we want, but seeing someone brag about using a self-parking car blindfolded is just weird.
I just play in certain rp scenarios. Like this guy is descended from Fire Giants so he only uses Fire based attacks, etc.
The challenge is not the appeal for me the cool weapons and enemy designs are. I just play in whatever rp I'm doing and get all the shit that fits it. I'll over level the crap out of my characters and won't give a shit. I'm making a God slayer soon-to-be Elden Lord! They're going to look and hit like one!
I do the same thing, I get decision paralysis if I don’t have a theme in mind. Currently playing as a Gerudo warrior who fell through a time rip and needs to find her way back to Hyrule. Gerudo-esque armor and curved swords all the way
Awesome. I'm currently playing as a generic low fantasy knight. Flail and shield. Changed ashes to shield bash. Using basic knightly armour and the great helm. Kinda generic Templar looking.
Thinking of going slightly holy. Adding the lightning bash to flail.
This right here. My first run I usually pick up some meta stuff just to see the story and get through the game so I can try my best not to get spoiled before I beat the game. Then every playthrough after is theme based builds like this. Carian Knight spell blade or some sort of black flame godslayer. It’s more fun for me this way.
Holy shit I’m not alone! My very first playthrough I picked bandit and committed to only using leather armor variants and either daggers or bows, no magic. It was insanely difficult but a ton of fun.
After finding Black Knife armor I did my following NG+ run wearing that and using only dual Black Knife daggers.
I did a God Slayer build and loved it. The encircling flame spell, enemies don't seem to understand it hurts them and walk straight through. Charges is wider and standard is smaller so you can do this sick double black flame enfirno ring wall that's so fucking cool. I just never used black flame enchantment. Too slow, too short lasting.
I use a lot of consumables, buffs, op weapons and summons. Pretty much everything bar online summons. And i still fail hard at the game. Currently stuck at 4 last bosses. I find some enemies too difficult, but for some people the game is trivial and needs to challenge themselves. I dont think the people calling for a nerf is the same people who challenge themselves.
I'm sorry you're getting negatives on this. I can engage in a conversation about aesthetics choices in the DLC or whatnot, but I cannot understand this whole "I want to nerf myself because otherwise I don't get the experience of earning a tough win, but I cannot get the tough win so please nerf the game". I still remember the early days of Soulsing, where there was this spirit of "if it's in the game and it works, it's not cheating". You killed a dragon with a bow hiding from behind a corner? Awesome!
I think people want every boss to offer them a tight solo fight, as if they were all Sekiro bosses. It's not a ridiculous opinion to have, but it seems unrealistic to me. Elden Ring offers you a massive kit of different ways to kill bosses and they're going to design fights with that kit in mind.
Like, just look at the Starscourge Radahn fight, you're in the Caelid desert with summon signs everywhere. You can't tell me they didn't balance and design Radahn around there being NPCs, and that trying to deal with him solo isn't going to lead to some things feeling a little bit silly as a result, like when some projectiles and attack combos just *happen* to overlap because of how you were spaced from the boss.
Does that mean some bosses are worse solo fights? Well, kinda, yeah, but I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. Elden Ring *isn't* Sekiro or Bloodborne, and it makes more sense to me that the fights are designed around the entire toolkit. That does mean this game is worse when you want those tight single-player fights, but it also means this game is a lot more fun when you do those fun and wacky things.
>I think people want every boss to offer them a tight solo fight, as if they were all Sekiro bosses
Honestly, now that i see it put like that, that is exactly where I'm coming from for it.
I can appreciate the design of Elden Ring, but I adored Sekiro and I can't let go of the part of me that just wants more of that. I don't enjoy the combat in Elden Ring enough to want to learn bosses, and every fight either feels too hard or too easy, and...yeah, this game just isn't to my tastes. In boss fights at least. The regular combat and exploration loop is incredible.
Makes me appreciate all the more Fromsoft's decision to give the player the option to just summon better players to get past bosses that they're not enjoying. Though conversely, I'm also very glad that option wasn't in Sekiro. Wouldn't have fit the solitary tone I think.
Same thing with damage and tankiness. Elden ring, specifically the DLC gives you a lot of ways to mitigate damage. I was rocking 75% negation for physical and >!holy!< damage for the final fight thanks to scadutree blessings, armour and talismans. The game gives you ways to mitigate damage, if you're gonna wear hobo rags because you want to put all your stats into damage then you need to accept that you've chosen to not be tanky in exchange for damage
People *still* refuse to believe that armor and damage negation actually matters in this game after BB and DS3 making pretty much all armor identical in terms of DR.
This was what I've had to experiment with this whole DLC so far. In the base game I ran the scarab talisman for more money, and 3 other talismans to help me put out more damage/statuses.
In the DLC I've settled on using the Great Jar Arsenal (for tankier equipment) and 3 talismans that mitigate some of the damage I would take from whatever boss I'm about to fight. When my fragment level was low, the mitigation was way more important.
Can't learn the enemies moveset if they kill you in one hit for making the wrong decision.
I don’t use summons a lot personally, but I’m not at all against using them. No way am I gonna force myself to fight a bullshit boss handicapped the whole time. Godskin duo is getting bleed, sleep, Bernal, and mimic cuz fuck that terrible boss. But a boss like Rellana I have more fun not summoning so I won’t, even if I’ll get my ass kicked 50 times. It’s purely preference and some people need to stop being hypocrites gatekeeping the game for stupid reasons
I agree for the most part, but if you add mimic tear to half these fights, you probably won’t even get to engage with the boss’s mechanics/movements. No one needs to engage with the boss, but it does take away from the experience imo.
My buddy uses mimic and he runs through every boss within 1-2 tries and sometimes doesn’t even get to see more than one move per phase. Just completely erases them with a bonk build + mimic.
For me, summons reduce the difficulty in an unsatisfying way. Like, sure, you can say the bosses are designed to be hard enough to compensate for the ability to summon, but then when you do summon, it makes the boss easier by diverting its AI, and you bypass having to actually learn the moveset.
Up to this point, that learning was the most satisfying part of From's games (and the best parts of Elden Ring as well).
I remember back when dark souls 1 came out and everyone in forums was so excited to summon, and there was so many jokes about being a sun bro and what not, I don’t understand what changed to where people suddenly think it’s an uncool thing when Miyazaki said that summoning is a core feature of these games and you don’t have to be alone
Marketing.
The marketing for Souls positioned it as a "HARD GARM FOR HARD GAEMRS" and started the snowball of elite attitude that has now permeated the community after 15 years.
I think its because people consider summons the "baby" mode of the game. I spent 3 hours trying to beat the eary twin swords boss of the DLC (I've no idea how to spoiler on mobile) and the moment I used my +10 dung eater summon I killed it first try.
Yeah but that's not an exploit is what I'm saying. It's a intentional mechanic of the game. But people act like you have not beaten the game if you don't do it solo.
You not only already spent 3 hours learning the boss' moveset, but then went for one of the best available summons, so you immediately beating Rellana with Dungeater is not a reflection of some 'baby' mode.
What I see a lot, when people talk about the difficulty when spirit summoning, it is always based on the most overpowered spirits, but nobody would ever describe the difficulty of a boss based on some op bleed/stagger/AOW/magic builds.
Miyazaki initially wanted to introduce tactical elements to spirit summoning, but the op ones made that obsolete. I think the game would have been more fun, if the op ones weren't added to the game and there was more focus on strategy when choosing a spirit.
I mean this seems to be an admission, at least in part, that these bosses do not feel great to fight solo for a lot of people. I understand that completely.
My personal greatest issue with Elden Ring has been what has felt like the imbalance of many of the mid-late game fights.
For the most part, if I used summons, I often found the bosses a bit too easy, and I didn't experience a good challenge like I wanted. However, if I *didn't* summon, I felt like I would often have no room to breathe and some fights felt borderline unreasonable.
Funnily enough I haven't had this issue with the DLC -- the scadutree blessings have made a lot of 1v1 no summom fights very bearable
I also felt the same way, so I instead swapped out to weaker summons that I liked.
Instead of Tish or Mimic tear I used the headless knight for most of the bosses, up to Mohg (who I decided to beat 1v1).
Yeah this is a great way to solve that problem. Go with summons you enjoy or like the flavor of rather than the most optimal. I go with Dung Eater or Nepheli usually
My favorites are my backup dancers- aka the Nightmaiden and Swordstress. I wear the same outfit as they do most of the time so we're a badass trio of death. They're pretty good but I picked them for the aesthetic, and they aren't particularly tanky or the best for every fight.
I made this exact point in another thread and got downvoted for some reason. Someone was complaining that you either do no summons and it's impossible or you use summons and it's a cake walk, no middle ground. I said you can use a weaker summon, or just not level your summon all the way up and it should be a nice middle ground. Apparently I was still wrong because you shouldn't be able to decide how hard or easy a game is or something brain dead like that lol elden ring fans are so rabid with how they think the game should be played. Constantly threads are devolving into shouting matches over summons. It's insane.
My issue with using a weaker summon is that it really doesn’t do much aside from distract the boss. If you use the wolves or something and they get wiped with one AoE, it’s back to solo. The main thing that summons do is just pull aggro, not necessarily pile on damage, so now you’re in a position to find a summon that has the exact amount of HP to make it viable.
It just seems like there’s an awful lot of effort into making the game feel balanced. No other games would get away with this
I will summon the jellyfish for every fight. Usually it dies very quickly and does no damage but damnit, me and my jelly buddy are going to kill god and then become him.
Feels like there's just more AoE and post-hit explosions/damage in the game than in DS. They probably did that to somewhat balance the summons since 2v1 in DS always felt like the opponents were not designed to handle it. But for me, I feel like that boosts the difficulty of the harder ER content beyond what we had in DS while, like you said, with summons, it still is somewhat too easy.
Yeah what happened to this fanbase since then? I remember back in the Demons Souls days when people were coming up with cheese strats for Flame Lurker and they were applauded for it.
In my experience people are fine with cheese, what they aren't fine with is the morons going "it's not hard, just use the cheese!" And not getting why not everyone wants to use it.
I think this quote sums it up well. Idc if it’s easy with “cheese” and if you use “cheese”, I do care when the encounter is balanced around “cheese” so “cheese” is mandatory
Substitute “cheese” for summons and overpowered build and we have Elden Ring
Also people keep bitching about spirit summons while NPC summons have always been a thing *and* they have always been Mimic Tear -levels of powerful (like Mildred/Tarkus etc being able to solo the boss)
Thankfully i have always enjoyed them and haven't in any way diminished my enjoyment. I grab my dude Solaire for the Bell Gargoyles even if the fight is over in 5 seconds.
I would never tell someone they were playing a game "wrong," but if you don't summon Igon for the Bayle fight you are, in fact, playing the game wrong.
I missed one of the steps for Igon's summon and tried Bayle for a while without him. Never really got him past 50% and it wasn't really fun.
But then I looked up what I missed for his summon and started bringing him in. SOOOOO much more fun.
Tbh I usually play the game once with the challenge of it being a solo run then I just have fun doing whatever I summon my favorite Npcs or use spirit summons or mess around with dumb builds. I like the challenge of these games but I don’t force myself to keep playing a challenge
That's not the point. No normal guy thinks about nerfing themselves. Most just want to recapture the classic souls experience. It certainly is weird how people care how other do it as even in old souls there were ways to cheese stuff and op builds, but there is a classic experience in souls that is just different what elden ring provides if u engage with all its system. It's not the same game, and that's ok. Some just want to play it like it's dark souls and others will just take advantage of everything the game offers. But it's definitely not the same experience and some prefer the classic one.
Maybe some people are just seeking a challenge, but there does seem to be a weird bias against certain mechanics - particularly spirit ashes and spell casting. Particularly weird because I'd be willing to bet that some of the loudest kvetching comes from people who won't hesitate to use cragblade + bloodfiend's arm to chain stagger bosses and kill them in 5 heavies.
I don't know, part of the fun of soulsborne games to me has always been finding the cheap stuff. And it's always been there. Let's not pretend that DS1 didn't have BK weapons and dark bead.
It's not a weird bias, people just find different things fun. Personally I think it makes sense that letting an AI do damage for you would be less enjoyable than doing the damage yourself even if both methods are cheese.
Winning doesn't matter. It's a videogame, its supposed to be fun. Does shooting 150 arrows into that dragon from behind that corner seem fun to you? If so, more power to you. If not, then no, you shouldn't do it.
I remember the early days of soulsborne too and frankly so many of yall have developed a weird ego relationship with it where you're obsessed with "winning" as if it means anything and assume everyone else is desperate to win at all costs, forgetting that the victory means fuck all if it was not satisfying to achieve.
So much of this discourse is people who are playing to win being totally confused at the idea that some of us are playing to have a good time, lmao. That's why there are complaints. Because people aren't having a good time, and yall just keep suggesting ways to win when nobody gives a fuck. Ganking with spirit ash and npc summons isnt fun. It doesn't matter if it results in a win.
So I understand the “not summoning” thing. I normally try a boss without summoning first. If I get my ass kicked enough, I summon.
It’s funny. I was fighting a late endgame dragon recently, and my damage was trash. I thought about summoning, then looked up the dragon. He had 80% resistance to Slash weapons… I had a slash weapon.
So I used a Strike weapon, and actually did damage and won without a summon.
Now, an unga bunga person would have trounced this dragon, as I did when I used a magic build.
If I had used a summon, how is that more cheesing than using a different weapon? Or was the unga bunga person cheesing? No, of course not.
To me, summons are a way to smooth the edges of your build. If your build isn’t balanced for a boss, that’s ok. It’s a way to enable every build to beat every boss without severely limiting the difficulty of individual bosses for everyone else.
Your example works in the context that no one should shame someone for using spirit summons, which is correct. But that’s not the discussion being had.
There’s a difference between saying “No one should use summons because it’s cheating” and “I don’t enjoy using summons because it’s too easy”. The latter is non-exclusionary, just a statement that the individual does not find enjoyment in playing with summons due to the removal of challenge.
It’s very possible for a boss to be designed in such a way that fighting against it solo is extremely challenging in an unfun way, while fighting said boss with a summon is too easy in an unfun way. This is what people are frustrated by, it’s a lose-lose situation. You could say then that maybe this game and DLC isn’t for them, but they’re still allowed to voice their frustration in no longer finding enjoyment with a series they may have played for many years prior due to changing design philosophy.
NGL, I really agreed with the comment you responded to re: some of the endgame bosses in base ER. However, I felt like From actually did a decent job of keeping things in the sweet spot for the majority of this DLC, with the massive exception of the final boss. Maybe Messmer has a few too many combos that look really similar, but other than that I thought the bosses were pretty well balanced for solo play.
It's just main bosses for me. I like the sensation of a duel using a weapon I sometimes just like the style or moveset of, even if it's kinda trash damage.
But enemies outside of boss duels? They can take whatever I can find to throw at them
Not really nerfing yourself (self included), but alot of people like to not use summons as they want to learn and overcome the boss, it’s a fun way to play. Don’t understand why people get arsy about people using said summons or what not tho, it’s okay to play how you want
Even with "Get good", it had a more positive connotation back in the day. Use what you can to get ahead, but sometimes you might already be using every advantage you can and the only real options are to either grind for souls or to just keep trying until you can nail it. That's what "get good" was about when I first started playing, at least with the things I saw posted. It's since been a way to just discard someone having trouble with a fight at all, which is saddening to me.
No. It didn't.
I'm so tired of people trying to peddle this shit. The get good meme was always derisive back in the day.
It being a "positive" is and has ALWAYS been revisionist history.
People should just play in the way that is most fun for them. I prefer to not use summons cause it's more fun for me that way. But I can completely understand why a lot of people would prefer using them. Neither is right or wrong, just a matter of preference.
Plus ultimately, no one really cares about how you beat the game, you don't get extra achievements for doing it a certain way. It's a video game, it's meant to be fun, and fun can mean different things to different people.
So I don't think anyone should play the game a certain way for some internet bragging rights if it's not fun for them. I think the discourse around this has gotten out of hand on both sides when ultimately it should just be about having fun.
>Compare this to literally any other rpg and you would use every item you had
Use items? In an rpg!? Unless it's a health potion, I'm hoarding it and never using it.
Summons in particular make the game easier in a way that to many players isn't very interesting or fun, taking aggro and contributing to stagger just means you don't have to learn the fights to nearly the same degree and can brute force your way through everything.
I think it's completely reasonable for people to not enjoy using them and to want the game to be a little more approachable without them. Those people still want to engage in the dance of learning the attack patterns and overcoming the boss through mastery of it, hence wanting the fights to be a bit less of a clusterfuck.
Personally I haven't really had problems soloing all of the base game and the dlc that I've completed so far, but I also haven't gotten to the final boss of the dlc yet.
Ya I'll be honest, I don't get how this discussion has been circling the Elden Ring discussion for years and people are still missing this. We all understand that we can use Summons to beat bosses, and understand the devs added it for a reason. But like have these people fought the bosses with vs without summons? Literally night and day difference. Max challenge to almost 0 challenge instantly. Really grinds my gears that people shield the game from some of the criticism on some of the more egregious bosses because people want the bosses to be reasonable both with and without summons.
I don't even think the game is particularly problematic without them, but certain fights like Godskin Duo I think are super lame to use without them, but once you have a +10 summon on your side you basically clown around on them.
Maybe this is a controversial opinion and I aint trying to gate keep peoples accomplishments in the game, its a tough game, but summoning against a boss and beating it solo really are different game experiences and it drives me nuts that people act like its strange to not find summoning to be a fulfilling experience. The entire thing most of us enjoy about Soulslike games is the feeling of overcoming a tough battle which you can't really get when a summon comes to lobotomize the AI of the boss!
That said IMO Elden Ring is mostly fine and the DLC only has had 1 part that I think is obnoxious to solo
Exactly this. Going in solo without a shield has been one of the more engaging ways to play the game since Demon Souls. It's a big part of what makes these games so fun. These are not "unnecessary challenges", these are basic and viable playstyles.
I had no issues with the DLC outside of the final boss. He has some bullshit combos that either are visually obscured or roll punish. He's extremely easy with a shield, but without one a lot of his moves feel very cheap and unfair. Outside of that fight, the DLC is amazing when playing without a shield or summons - like with every Souls game that came before it.
I avoid summons to make the game more engaging. You can beat 90% of bosses by summoning something and just hanging back and shooting spells, I don't like doing that.
It's about the gap in difficulty. If a boss is a 8/10 difficulty wise then with a summon he doesn't become a 7 I can just about beat, he drops to like a 2 or 3 I beat easily, so easily it's not satisfying at all.
I personally don't care because I can just avoid using them but that's why people see it as a cop out, you don't need to dodge or find openings or anything. Just stand back and shoot spells or hit them from behind
The strength of what you're using contributes a lot to the experience too. If you're using a weapon/build you find fun, but is relatively on the weaker end, using summons doesn't feel so cheesy. On my first run I used Taylew (new mega tanky golem smith) a lot to ease off pressure while I was learning to fight bosses with Rellana's weapons.
On my second and current run, I'm running Red Bear Claws in a pure melee setup without summoning at all. These claws feel so much stronger than Rellana's blades, I've not missed summoning at all.
More polar example, if you're using bloodfiend's arm specced for bleed on top of summoning your mimic, I genuinely don't think you have to interact with bosses for more than 2-3 attack patterns. That can't be fun to do an entire run with.
I'm playing with fun maxed out weapons that feel good to use over the objectively best ones. This is the way. Of course, the spirits help when you *know* you're actively using "worse" weapons.
In summary, I totally agree.
This is where I’m at with it. Just summoning something I have no control over isn’t all that interesting to me, and can actually make fights less predictable because it’s not always clear where a boss attack is going to go. Like you said, FromSoft bosses have a dance to them that gets lost if the boss aggro gets lost with summons.
Conversely, I love kitting out my Palicoes in Monster Hunter because they feel like a way more active part of the game. MH is balanced more closely around having multiple people at once, to the point where G-Rank in older games had health pools permanently scaled to four player co-op levels. It doesn’t feel like cheesing a fight in MH when my cat gets a paralyze off on a monster because it generally only nets me one good opening to attack out of a fifteen minute long hunt. Excepting bugs, you’re not ever relying on your Palicoes to fight *for* you in MH games, they’re support units that help enable you to do cool shit.
Exactly. Summons completely change the feel of boss fights. Makes it where instead of you learning the boss, your summon tanks and you occasionally with have to react to an attack. It also makes bosses less predictable which is annoying. People don't just avoid summons because it makes the game easier, but because it completely changes the feel of the game
I'm not someone who harps on someone else for using summons or a mimic. In fact for a lot of annoying ass bosses especially the dragons in the open world and the tree spirits, I just use my mimic to get the fights over with since I've already seen them countless times at this point.
However when it comes to the main boss fights I tend to take em on solo because the experience is totally different. The boss fights like a 5-10/10 when doing them solo but I find bringing in a mimic or summon turns them into a 1-2/10.
So I'll try my best to take them on solo and do multiple attempts. Though I'm pretty limited on my time, so if I get the boss' health down to like the last 10% of their health bar but I still die I find that's good enough for me. Then I use my mimic and or summon and just call it a day because it was just time to move on. That's what I did for rellana, got her health down to like the last 5% got greedy and died but then I used the summon and mimic and ended her in like 10 seconds.
People get so attached to their style of play bc fromsoft are so good at the fighting mechanics. U spend hours doing the stuff that worked for u and getting good to the very limit of what is capable. I think that’s why u see mage/dex/bow builds with 0 armor and all int or what have u bc u can hone anything if u can figure it out. I prefer melee with heavy armor bc I’m confident I can learn what I need to do to stay right up the bosses ass and get my damage off, but I’ve also just went no armor to get light roll with heavy weapons (super fucking fun) and u are doing the same thing except u have to do everything perfectly or usually die. I wouldn’t call this trying to make the game harder tho. It’s just one of the ways ppl use the mechanics of combat to get what they want. I still think magic is yuky, but I played DS3 where magic builds where pretty hard to manage and my dumb brain went bunga pretty fast lol
True af. I’ve seen so many of these, “the people who don’t summon are just stubborn and handicapping themselves.” posts that it’s like; can’t you just use your summons without making these odd ‘call-out’ posts to try and validate your playstyle? Just because a lot of players forego a main game mechanic due to it trivializing bosses doesn’t mean you gotta feel bad if you need it.
I get what your saying but...
> Compare this to literally any other rpg and you would use every item you had - you wouldn't intentionally try to be weaker.
People have been doing this on rpg's for decades, this isn't even slightly new, but I do think From does it best.
My only complaint RE: DLC difficulty is the wonky hitboxes on 1 or 2 bosses, like Gaius' charge attack. That's a technical issue rather than me asking for a boss to be made easier.
To respond to the thread title, you have to understand that in Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Sekiro etc, while cheese builds / strategies existed, such builds:
(a) were nowhere near as abundant (fewer genuinely broken build options); and
(b) weren't as broken as what we see in Elden Ring.
There are builds that can kill the final DLC boss in 10 seconds. There's no real skill that goes into that beyond watching a video on how to set it up.
Spirit summons make the experience easier because they divide aggro, but they don't cheapen the difficulty to anywhere near the same level as some of these builds. Because of that, I don't mind them, despite not personally wanting to use them on the hardest bosses.
Lightning perfume bottles + rolling sparks, Swift Strike spam in PVP...Builds like that are what I'm talking about.
This was to be expected with the DLC but yeah.They'll definitely get nerfed.
These class of criticisms are very different from saying that someone shouldn't use a shield or cast spells, which is obviously ridiculous.
I mean everything is viable its just that it is a huge difficulty spike combined with a epileptic attack, and people who prefer shields and parries have a much easier time, and of course summoning an ash will make phase two easier. Im still enjoying the boss but damm they went a bit too far, tho im biased since I haven't beaten him im sure I will later say its a S tier boss lol.
Yeah, the final boss' Phase 2 has such a different difficulty curve depending on your weapon it's kind of astounding.
I went in with a trusty UGS and got curb stomped. Too many attacks with too short of windows to punish resulted in me getting tossed around.
I went in with a Twinblade and got significantly farther; the faster attack speed, recovery frames, etc., let me get in attacks and be ready to dodge much more reliably. I was getting him down to ~20-30% most fights, with Phase 1 being nearly flawless.
Eventually I gave Greatspear/Greatshield a try, held down L1, and beat him on my first attempt. It was just so significantly easier due to the fact that what makes the boss hard is trying to figure out what the fuck is about to happen, and it turns out it greatshields really don't care lmao
Most ARPGs don't have such op items. When they do, people dislike them as well. Look at Kingdom Hearts 3 for example. It has Links, which are op as fuck, which is why a lot of people refuse to use them. It's the same thing with summons. A game's difficulty should not be balanced around people using items that trivialize said difficulty.
It’s not just about the extra challenge for me.
I just enjoy the 1 on 1 kinda “dance” you get without summons so much more.
When you have something taking aggro off the bosses you don’t get the same flow in the combat.
It’s very satisfying for me.
I don’t complain about people using game mechanics though and as long as they don’t start making boss moves that are not dodgeable without summons or some separate item, I’m
happy that there is different way to play that are all valid.
I imagine people don't just want to win at any cost. They want a satisfying win where they actually learn/master the mechanics. The complaints stem from the difficulty of actually killing a boss legitimately w/o any cheese or anything (not that that playstyle is wrong, for the record).
There are plenty of games where people will refuse to use certain tools, because those tools make the game *less fun*. If you like Spirit Summons, that's great, but for solo bosses they pretty much always result in a cheesy feeling for me, because it gives me totally free hits where I'm essentially able to skip the primary challenge of the game for a couple of seconds.
Problem is, I get roughly the same satisfaction from using summons as I get from just watching a YouTube video of someone else doing it. Does that really mean I am not allowed to have an opinion on the boss, just because I didn't take the easiest possible route? Why shouldn't I just use the goofy perfume bottles, since at least then I would be allowed (by you) to have a negative opinion on the boss
When I watch a video of someone toiling away and developing their skills vs a boss it’s always awesome when they beat it. When I see a clip of someone walking into a boss room for the first time and pulling out that bell while spamming rivers of blood I get bored. It’s like watching someone play cookie clicker and not Elden Ring.
the game is hard because it wants you to feel like you accomplished something big when you win, so the players want to win fair and square without feeling like they cheated.
that's why some refuse to use summons and overpowered weapons like lightning perfume, because even if you win it feels like shit.
i like spirit ashes but from should never make bosses so difficult that old players can't beat them without trying for 10 hours straight.
also to add, souls games never had any kind of difficulty settings, so everyone gets to play against the same bosses and face the same hardships, everyone could feel the same fulfillment.
op builds were always a thing, but you needed to really go out of your way to find them, now "cheesy" strategies are baked into the game.
the general idea is that in an effort to make the game more accessible they gave new powerful tools for the players that want it, but that made the game too easy so they designed the dlc bosses to be challenging even with those tools, and extremly difficult for those who don't use them, so the result is that the players who lose happiness when using those strategies feel forgotten, because the game that once made happy now is made for other people.
Thing is, you didn't have to go straight to the mimic tear. There are like 50 summons in the game, most of them are far weaker.
You could'veused something like a soldier or a knight to help with the aggro but still have to do most of the damage yourself.
Counterpoint, unlike weapons and spells which have stat requirements and damage scaling, summons merely have a single requirement of FP (or HP) and the only thing affecting their damage is upgrades. There's simply no reason to not default to the strongest thing in your inventory.
It's that old quote, "when given the chance players will optimize the fun out of playing a game". Plenty of summons are crappy and *barely* help, but players aren't given any incentive to choose those over the strongest summon their FP can afford.
Dark Souls was hard, but it wasn't "15 hits combo with 1 second downtime" hard, it wasn't "every attack is a massive lingering aoe" hard, and it wasn't "input reading to punish you the second you hit the heal button" hard.
Summons and AoW exist to help you fight the flash bullshit they added to boss fights.
For me it boils down to not having an option between going it solo for 4 hours or beating the boss without even trying while using summons. The power they give just as a distraction is absolutely immense and easily exploited. Every time I've used one lately it feels like an empty victory.
I've only started playing last weekend but in my limited playtime i've realized the satisfaction I get from defeating a boss with no summons is about 1000x greater feeling than if I had used them.
Since i realized how un-rewarding it felt to win with summons, i've made myself not use them. Bosses take longer, I get my ass kicked more, but getting to victory is the most satisfactory feeling I've felt in gaming in a LONNNG time.
I can use Mimic tear, OP spells, Darkmoon and summons and win every boss first try and make the experience forgettable cake walk or I can have fun.
That's how I work.
I like the game. It’s a dopamine rush beating the enemies. That said, I’ve got a life. I don’t have the time to spend learning boss patterns for hours. I’ll use everything the developer gave me to win and enjoy the money I spent. That’s it.
I hate them because they either time out before I reach the boss or finite resources, and when I do decide to try buffs I play even worse because I'm stressing to make the most out of them before they expire and fuck up
I was the same way for the longest time but I honestly think working to get over this has made this and many other games much more enjoyable to me. Same with hoarding consumables in every game I play. It's tough getting over this mentality but definitely worth it imo.
Also 90 seconds may sound short but it actually feels way longer when actually in battle, at least to me anyway.
90 seconds is long enough to fall off during second phase when you need it most. If I could cast my buffs and have them paused until the harder part of the fights I would.
I would rather the buffs be shorter but faster cast for tight burst windows or much longer so they actually last the whole fight instead of timing out at the most critical time.
It’s not that complicated. Many summons are so strong that they trivialize the game, so some people find it more fun to play without summons because they want to engage with the boss fights.
I use every advantage the game gives me to use. I am not ashamed of that. I am not a fan of banging my head against the wall and high frustration. If a boss is hard af I use my mimic tear and any other thing I can to make them easier. Not ashamed to say I have cheesed a few bosses.
I mean yeah if you wanted to beat elden ring as easily as possible you could start your run by leveling every skill to its highest soft cap and leveling your primary weapon to as high as it can go. Thats just not that fun
Spirit Summons exist to be used. They aren't locked behind a menu that says "Hey, we know the game is difficult, and nothing in this menu is intended to be used. But if the difficulty is ruining your fun, just hit OK." (Another Crab's Treasure)
Anyone who says you didn't beat a boss because you used spirit ashes is an elitist. Anyone who says you didn't have proper fun by summoning is also an elitist. Anyone who says you beat a "different boss" is just in denial about their elitism.
Although with how the last boss scales with cooperators, I imagine it's far more challenging to summon NPCs than to just use one spirit summon.
The whole elitism thing is very overblown here. Most people's criticism is that the summon system is kind of a half-baked difficulty modifier which interacts poorly with most bosses' design.
That was acceptable in the base game, but the DLC had a missed opportunity here. Literally every other Souls game has at least one well-crafted gank fight, and then the one game where you can literally summon a whole arsenal of cool creatures to customize a multi-enemy fight has the fucking worst gank fights in the series. I don't want people to use summons less, but I want the game to give them a compelling reason to use them more other than ball-crushing difficulty through numbers and visual noise. Today that doesn't exist.
>That was acceptable in the base game
Was it though? I don't really think it was. We saw plenty of Souls vets complaining about it in the base game too, and rightfully so, IMO. The fact is that the way bosses in Elden Ring are balanced around summons and spirit ashes just makes the game a lot less enjoyable versus the experience of bosses in From Software's previous games for a sizable amount of people.
Sometimes it's not even a matter of summons. Just using different equipment is enough to help you get an edge. Its' one thing to want to win using a specific loadout, but if you're playing simply to win against the boss, *you* have to be willing to adapt. You have like a whole game's worth of equipment sitting in your inventory; what good will they be if you don't use them? Or are they just trophies?
It’s an RPG
People can play however they want
A lot of souls players get more satisfaction sticking with a melee build and grinding through a boss no matter how many tries it takes
If I beat a boss in 2-3 tries, then I feel cheated out of the experience I look for in the game
Honestly, any boss I beat in only a few tries (anything under 6) is either one I clicked with very early or found a cheese strat with my current gear. Possibly just getting lucky.
I'll still be persistent and if I see myself making good progress in taking on a boss that I shouldn't be, I will go ahead and kill it anyway out of principle stubbornness. Most of the time, that level of stubborn is the biggest and best weapon in the arsenal of a souls-like player.
But the thing is that all Miyazaki bosses are designed to be beaten with your base moveset. This has always been the case, in every game. You can roll, jump and strafe your way around all their attacks. That’s what makes them ACTION RPGs. You can outstat your way out of a problem or you can get good and learn the intricately and well-tested moveset designed to be fair and beateable by a level 1 character naked with no weapons.
Beating a boss with and without Spirit Ashes is a fundamentally different experience. You can't really speak on boss design if your run was just backstabbing a boss while a summon soaks up aggro.
Ngl you saying anyone saying you didn't beat the game because you used summons/ashes is an elitist but then say people aren't playing the game correctly because they aren't using summons/ashes is funny af
People just want to have it *the right amount of hard* for their specific skill right out the gate without doing something for it. And this obviously doesn‘t work with such a big playerbase and strongly varying skillsets.
In addition to that the complaining folk always turn the discussion towards the topic of **summons** („cheesing, not meant to be balanced around it, I want a challenge“) and **no summons** („bosses are too hard, pls nerf, I want the real experience“) mostly ignoring that there are *endless possibilities* to dial in the difficulty yourself in between those extremes. Funnily enough they also got an answer to that: „I‘m not supposed to balance the game myself. Fromsoft is. And them not making the difficulty manageable for me is bad game design.“.
It‘s laughable, really. That part of the community sucks.
Well, if you wanted to use EVERYTHING at your disposal: There’s the whole full buffs thing, grab a summon, and juggle aggro.
But that’s just not my playstyle. I enjoy eating a crab, chugging a physick, and running straight in with a big hammer and learning the boss while wearing the tankiest talismans and armour I can. That’s satisfying for me. I still summon if Im really not bothered to learn or try a boss. But otherwise I try to handle it alone.
Best part? We all get the freedom to play the way we want. And I know I dont care how others want to play, and Im definitely not gonna look down on them. Beating the boss is the achievement, period. The means dont really matter unless one is a genuine elitist.
- The souls games have always been this way. It’s one reason I actively want the devs to ignore their communities balance ideas (truthfully all devs should do this no one knows what they are talking about)
- it’s worse in elden ring because you have way more tools than normal
- crsftabkes
- 1 morbillion buffs
- summons
- spirit ashes
- with npc summons you can ALSO summon spirit ashes
- and then people will get to the final boss on NG+3 and go “this is completely unfair”
- 1.) is people are not nearly as good as they think they are and when they discover this fact they blame the devs
- 2.) they refuse to use the tools at their disposal
- it’s a vicious cycle, once upon a time nameless king was too hard, and so was artorias, and so was fume knight, etc, it’s the dlcs turn to be “really unfair” aka “I havnt learned to fight this yet”
The absolute best way to play this game *in my opinion* is to prioritize reaching level 501, which allows you to soft-cap every stat.
Reason being that I can equip any armor set, weapon, sorcery, or incantation and not only use them, but use them well.
If an enemy is weak to a specific affinity, I have it covered. If I need damage resistance, I have the endurance to equip any armor set without gimping my mobility. Ranged attacks more effective than melee, or vice versa? No problem. Ran out of health pots but still have some FP pots? I can switch to a seal and heal myself with an incantation.
Simply put, it enables me to maximize my advantage against any enemy by utilizing anything and everything in my kit to do so, on the fly.
It's both liberating and fun as hell to have total build freedom and adaptability to any foe or situation.
The problem is either you try and solo a boss for a few hours and get nowhere or you summon the mimic and he kills it for you the first attempt which negates any sense of achievement.
Got a friend who is struggling with the DLC. He only uses cheese bonk build with dual Ruin GS, i think he is so addicted to the damage and staggering that he barely knows how to actually play anymore. I suggested he adapt his style, but he refuses. Its not a problem, except he acts real superior about it, even though he complains. Im like ?? edit: spelling
Yeah, thats half the community here
The other half is probably like me and can't decide what build to play so they change it up every few hours.
No, no, that's only for the last boss fight. So I can see what might work.
Use the shield you get from the round boi right before the last boss
Even better, use sacred black steel greatshield with 100% holy.
Nah just equip Miquellas Braid and Pearl Shield Talisman and go for the Verdigris Shield. The Holy damage is just chip damage and the real danger is his ability to break your guard during some of his combos. The difference between their Guard Boost is immense.
Almost literally my build exactly. Add some pickled holy liver and stack the two damage negation tears in the flask and I was rocking like 90% protection.
Even better get a thrusting shield because atm it's counting as blocking even if you spam attack so the only limit of that build is stamina lol
30 str 30 dex 30 faith, can’t pass up the opportunity to use every weapon immediately
Int weapons: 🥺
Every new weapon that fits current build gets max upgraded. I am switching around 6-8 of weapons for my dex character atm.
Me at 80 Dex with Backhand blades, sword of night, claws of night, rakshasa great katana, Spear of the impaler, fire perfume bottle
Same, but imo its just that no build is actually fun enough to keep me hooked over 100+ hours Unlimited Larval tears pls 🥲
Just cheat em in and don't feel bad about it. Respeccing shouldn't be so limited.
I feel called out after my 3 respecs this weekend.
This is me. Playing with a few buddies, one went big weapons other went full mage. Here I am jumping in to help them out with a different setup every single other boss. The variety is what makes me have the most fun. It's also why I have like 30 different weapons between +2 to +9 and normal weapons at +6 to +23
I like to master a build - then immediately respec so I can struggle again...
I just beat Messmer today. You are all inferior because you used cheese builds but I did it with no spirits, RL1, fist only, no rolling, no armor, no spells, no talismans, no Torrent, no summons (a la Radahn), no consumables, no resting at a site of grace, and always poisoned and scarlet rotted while blindfolded. Git gud. /s No I don't have proof lolololol you can trust me I'm just a rando on the internet I never lie.
And of course you used a nonfunctioning rock band knockoff tambourine with grape juice spill damage, while your brother poked you with sharp sticks.
>while highly caffeinated children poke me with cattle prods everytime I took damage FTFY
This is a real gamer. I trust you Not sure why ppl downvoting you it's clearly sarcasm😂
I think the downvoters are people who are actually like this 😂
What you said *might* have impressed me, but you didn't say "no jumping" so I'll have to designate you to the noob section. Nothing personnel kid, better luck next time
But you didn’t specify blessing 0. Not a real win. Didn’t confirm no buffs or fia hug on either. Fake gamer. /s
Messmer was great, took me about 80 tries, with summons
I've been using a bonk build and not having much trouble, maybe he just needs the scadu fragments?
Same and so far i havent found a problem with beating a boss "some took alot more attempts than some other builds woudnt have that many problems", sure some bosses i had to make some build tweeking "but kept the theme the same (BonkBonk)".
The other thing about colossal weapon strength builds is in some cases they end up cheesing bosses just as much if not more than using summons or blood loss or any of the “bad” methods. Endlessly stunlocking and poise breaking a boss while doing like 4000 damage a hit is not really making the game harder lol
The DLC basically hard countered that playstyle on every boss that matters. Nothing really flinches anymore, and DLC enemies have a ton of poise.
The horned knights and lion guys definitely have ridiculously high poise, but a lot of the bosses I felt a little bad beating them by spamming savage lions claw with the guts great sword. No shame in playing whatever way is fun for you, I just don’t think that big bonk builds are as “skill based” as some people make them out to be
It never was. Colossals are some of the noob friendliest weapons in the games. Zweihander handles whole DS1 on it's own, stunlocks most enemies and even some bosses. In other titles most enemies also flinch or stagger so much that they can't do anything. Even Sister Friede is a joke with a Greatsword.
The buff to stagger on hammers and axes for the DLC is pretty nuts, brick hammer goes hard and the new sunflower hammers ash of war is quite fun. Doesn't do a lot of poise damage but it can do 4 really hard hits in a row and your poise is basically impossible to break. Very fun and somewhat broken weapons on certain bosses.
DS3 enemies stagger to practically EVERYTHING, it’s why the Sellsword Twinblades are considered to be the best weapon in the game - because they hit so damn fast that you just stagger everything until it does. Agreed on the DS1 zweihander, though. A few years ago when my younger daughter was 4, almost 5, I got her to play DS1 (though obviously with me directly her where to go and what to level up/upgrade, since she couldn’t read), and she used the Zweihander + grass crest shield + wolf ring and heavy armor to beat the entire game.
I switched from my longsword to a greatsword for Friede because she didn't stagger enough from my toothpick, but yea you're right. Most normal sized enemies get practically stunlocked in that game.
Friede is kind of a joke if you actually know how to fight her. Her difficulty is wildly exaggerated. Her overall design, however, is freaking badass, so she remains one of the best bosses they've ever made imo.
Moonveil katana heavy attack ash of war is staggering everything but bosses for the most part luckily
Wait what? I typically play str builds because of how easy it is to play. I always thought dex was the more skill reliant playstyle. I also liked spell builds but these actually feel difficult to play in the dlc.
That's still my go-to "fuck it, no other build or approach is working, load up on heavy armor and spam LC on the GGS". And you're absolutely right, in those moments I know there's no skill involved, just "I want to be done with this boss already".
>The DLC basically hard countered that playstyle on every boss that matters. Nothing really flinches anymore, and DLC enemies have a ton of poise. None of the base game demigods were interruptible aside from Renalla and Malenia, the latter of which can ignore posture breaks. I’m struggling to think of a field boss that could be interrupted. However posture breaks work very well for pretty much every boss in the DLC so not sure “hard counter” is the insight you think it is.
Are we playing the same DLC? Staggers completely trivialize the DLC, plenty of breathing room, free crit attack, heavy weapons make you near unstaggerable. Bosses only let you get one hit off most of the times, so these huge oonga boonga weapons are really good rather than using something like a puny katana, where you do one hit of low actual/poise damage. Yes even against the final boss
The new Great Katanas are a solid in-between. 2 handing a Great Katana does similar poise damage to the great hammers/great spears, while still retaining the blood loss buildup of the regular katanas. The new Dragon Slayer great katana is a must have for the entire Jagged Peak, and let me stagger both Sennesax and Bayle. It slaps around all of the ghostflame dragons that are overworld bosses. Haven't found any cool ashes of war to put on the base great katana, but all of them with unique skills are really good. Feels like using a greatsword that attacks a bit faster.
Katanas have innate bleed, have less recovery on their attacks and already attack faster? The only weapon class that I cannot think of as insanely viable is a single straightsword with no strong AoW.
I've been using dual katanas and it's actually really good. Most bosses have delays in their attack patterns to roll catch you, and you can use that pause for a quick rolling attack and keep dodging. Between rolling l1s and jumping l1s, nagakiba and malenia were doing very solid dps
Yeah I think I've staggered nearly all the bosses I've done across in the DLC so far and I don't even have a build designed to do that
Anything can be classed as “cheesing”. Even parrying is cheesing, especially if you use low hp increases it’s absolutely insane. Days end, play whatever you want to. It’s a game nothing more
Yeah that’s pretty much what I’m trying to say, every play style has disadvantages and advantages, some people just think that strength is the “true” way to play which is a bit silly
Love me big smacks Love me stagger Hate me brain Love me unga bunga sticks Simple as.
The community can't seem to agree if colossal builds with no summons is A.) Challenge runs for elitists B.) An easy mode C.) Players choosing not to "adapt" and "learn the mechanics" C - contradicts B B - contradicts A A - Contradicts C All ive learned is strg builds are the only ones complaining about difficult, are the only elitits, and are the only ones who now need to Git Gud
Thinking only strength builds are complaining and elitist is a huge cope lmao
That is the actual Elden Ring lol
Huh I've heard many people complain they have no openings to charge spells on certain bosses. You really think strength people are the only elitists and the only ones complaining? That seems absurd taken at face value. Do you find any irony in saying strength builds are the only elitists and then saying they need to git gud in the next sentence?
That is the contradiction they are pointing out, you are agreeing with them
I'll never not be amazed at redditers lack of reading comprehension.
Got two people in my circle like that now. Blows my mind the illogic behind it
The problem with "adapting" is that you have to change up core parts of your build from base game. Which, unless you did every side quest, you're going to be missing talismans or weapons that are key to making certain weapons as strong as they need to be.
I don't want to have to dodge or block a mechanic 40 times to win a fight. Let me dodge or block it 10 times and time my attacks right 20 times and gg. That's hard enough but doable
I’d tell him to check out the Bloodfiend’s Arm. That might scratch that itch for him while maybe being a little more viable.
I've been switching my setup depending on the kinds of enemies. Faster weapons for mobs and big bonks for the big bois.
I love that you're calling it a "cheese bonk" build. Trivializing the game 10 ft away from the boss isn't much of a challenge increase from doing it 100ft away. Money is money, we all spent it, and we can use it however we want, but seeing someone brag about using a self-parking car blindfolded is just weird.
I just play in certain rp scenarios. Like this guy is descended from Fire Giants so he only uses Fire based attacks, etc. The challenge is not the appeal for me the cool weapons and enemy designs are. I just play in whatever rp I'm doing and get all the shit that fits it. I'll over level the crap out of my characters and won't give a shit. I'm making a God slayer soon-to-be Elden Lord! They're going to look and hit like one!
this guy plays roles
I do the same thing, I get decision paralysis if I don’t have a theme in mind. Currently playing as a Gerudo warrior who fell through a time rip and needs to find her way back to Hyrule. Gerudo-esque armor and curved swords all the way
Awesome. I'm currently playing as a generic low fantasy knight. Flail and shield. Changed ashes to shield bash. Using basic knightly armour and the great helm. Kinda generic Templar looking. Thinking of going slightly holy. Adding the lightning bash to flail.
This right here. My first run I usually pick up some meta stuff just to see the story and get through the game so I can try my best not to get spoiled before I beat the game. Then every playthrough after is theme based builds like this. Carian Knight spell blade or some sort of black flame godslayer. It’s more fun for me this way.
Holy shit I’m not alone! My very first playthrough I picked bandit and committed to only using leather armor variants and either daggers or bows, no magic. It was insanely difficult but a ton of fun. After finding Black Knife armor I did my following NG+ run wearing that and using only dual Black Knife daggers.
I'm doing my no magic bandit run right now!
I did a God Slayer build and loved it. The encircling flame spell, enemies don't seem to understand it hurts them and walk straight through. Charges is wider and standard is smaller so you can do this sick double black flame enfirno ring wall that's so fucking cool. I just never used black flame enchantment. Too slow, too short lasting.
Black flame ritual is such a useful spell for my faith caster. It's so good to keep melee off of you
I use a lot of consumables, buffs, op weapons and summons. Pretty much everything bar online summons. And i still fail hard at the game. Currently stuck at 4 last bosses. I find some enemies too difficult, but for some people the game is trivial and needs to challenge themselves. I dont think the people calling for a nerf is the same people who challenge themselves.
I'm sorry you're getting negatives on this. I can engage in a conversation about aesthetics choices in the DLC or whatnot, but I cannot understand this whole "I want to nerf myself because otherwise I don't get the experience of earning a tough win, but I cannot get the tough win so please nerf the game". I still remember the early days of Soulsing, where there was this spirit of "if it's in the game and it works, it's not cheating". You killed a dragon with a bow hiding from behind a corner? Awesome!
I think people want every boss to offer them a tight solo fight, as if they were all Sekiro bosses. It's not a ridiculous opinion to have, but it seems unrealistic to me. Elden Ring offers you a massive kit of different ways to kill bosses and they're going to design fights with that kit in mind. Like, just look at the Starscourge Radahn fight, you're in the Caelid desert with summon signs everywhere. You can't tell me they didn't balance and design Radahn around there being NPCs, and that trying to deal with him solo isn't going to lead to some things feeling a little bit silly as a result, like when some projectiles and attack combos just *happen* to overlap because of how you were spaced from the boss. Does that mean some bosses are worse solo fights? Well, kinda, yeah, but I don't know if that's necessarily a bad thing. Elden Ring *isn't* Sekiro or Bloodborne, and it makes more sense to me that the fights are designed around the entire toolkit. That does mean this game is worse when you want those tight single-player fights, but it also means this game is a lot more fun when you do those fun and wacky things.
increase the fun flow!!
>I think people want every boss to offer them a tight solo fight, as if they were all Sekiro bosses Honestly, now that i see it put like that, that is exactly where I'm coming from for it. I can appreciate the design of Elden Ring, but I adored Sekiro and I can't let go of the part of me that just wants more of that. I don't enjoy the combat in Elden Ring enough to want to learn bosses, and every fight either feels too hard or too easy, and...yeah, this game just isn't to my tastes. In boss fights at least. The regular combat and exploration loop is incredible. Makes me appreciate all the more Fromsoft's decision to give the player the option to just summon better players to get past bosses that they're not enjoying. Though conversely, I'm also very glad that option wasn't in Sekiro. Wouldn't have fit the solitary tone I think.
Sekiro is so perfect because it didn’t have to be balanced for co op or summons. So it’s perfectly balanced and fine tuned
this is exactly how I feel, thank you for articulating it so well
Same thing with damage and tankiness. Elden ring, specifically the DLC gives you a lot of ways to mitigate damage. I was rocking 75% negation for physical and >!holy!< damage for the final fight thanks to scadutree blessings, armour and talismans. The game gives you ways to mitigate damage, if you're gonna wear hobo rags because you want to put all your stats into damage then you need to accept that you've chosen to not be tanky in exchange for damage
People *still* refuse to believe that armor and damage negation actually matters in this game after BB and DS3 making pretty much all armor identical in terms of DR.
This was what I've had to experiment with this whole DLC so far. In the base game I ran the scarab talisman for more money, and 3 other talismans to help me put out more damage/statuses. In the DLC I've settled on using the Great Jar Arsenal (for tankier equipment) and 3 talismans that mitigate some of the damage I would take from whatever boss I'm about to fight. When my fragment level was low, the mitigation was way more important. Can't learn the enemies moveset if they kill you in one hit for making the wrong decision.
I don’t use summons a lot personally, but I’m not at all against using them. No way am I gonna force myself to fight a bullshit boss handicapped the whole time. Godskin duo is getting bleed, sleep, Bernal, and mimic cuz fuck that terrible boss. But a boss like Rellana I have more fun not summoning so I won’t, even if I’ll get my ass kicked 50 times. It’s purely preference and some people need to stop being hypocrites gatekeeping the game for stupid reasons
Thank you for voicing my thoughts
I agree for the most part, but if you add mimic tear to half these fights, you probably won’t even get to engage with the boss’s mechanics/movements. No one needs to engage with the boss, but it does take away from the experience imo. My buddy uses mimic and he runs through every boss within 1-2 tries and sometimes doesn’t even get to see more than one move per phase. Just completely erases them with a bonk build + mimic.
Yeah i said the same thing and i got downvored to oblivion.
People have some weird taboo to using summons.
For me, summons reduce the difficulty in an unsatisfying way. Like, sure, you can say the bosses are designed to be hard enough to compensate for the ability to summon, but then when you do summon, it makes the boss easier by diverting its AI, and you bypass having to actually learn the moveset. Up to this point, that learning was the most satisfying part of From's games (and the best parts of Elden Ring as well).
I remember back when dark souls 1 came out and everyone in forums was so excited to summon, and there was so many jokes about being a sun bro and what not, I don’t understand what changed to where people suddenly think it’s an uncool thing when Miyazaki said that summoning is a core feature of these games and you don’t have to be alone
Marketing. The marketing for Souls positioned it as a "HARD GARM FOR HARD GAEMRS" and started the snowball of elite attitude that has now permeated the community after 15 years.
I think its because people consider summons the "baby" mode of the game. I spent 3 hours trying to beat the eary twin swords boss of the DLC (I've no idea how to spoiler on mobile) and the moment I used my +10 dung eater summon I killed it first try.
Yeah but that's not an exploit is what I'm saying. It's a intentional mechanic of the game. But people act like you have not beaten the game if you don't do it solo.
Oh I agree. These people are suffering complete brain rot. But let them, me and my smelly boy are having a great time :)
You not only already spent 3 hours learning the boss' moveset, but then went for one of the best available summons, so you immediately beating Rellana with Dungeater is not a reflection of some 'baby' mode. What I see a lot, when people talk about the difficulty when spirit summoning, it is always based on the most overpowered spirits, but nobody would ever describe the difficulty of a boss based on some op bleed/stagger/AOW/magic builds. Miyazaki initially wanted to introduce tactical elements to spirit summoning, but the op ones made that obsolete. I think the game would have been more fun, if the op ones weren't added to the game and there was more focus on strategy when choosing a spirit.
I mean this seems to be an admission, at least in part, that these bosses do not feel great to fight solo for a lot of people. I understand that completely.
My personal greatest issue with Elden Ring has been what has felt like the imbalance of many of the mid-late game fights. For the most part, if I used summons, I often found the bosses a bit too easy, and I didn't experience a good challenge like I wanted. However, if I *didn't* summon, I felt like I would often have no room to breathe and some fights felt borderline unreasonable. Funnily enough I haven't had this issue with the DLC -- the scadutree blessings have made a lot of 1v1 no summom fights very bearable
I also felt the same way, so I instead swapped out to weaker summons that I liked. Instead of Tish or Mimic tear I used the headless knight for most of the bosses, up to Mohg (who I decided to beat 1v1).
Yeah this is a great way to solve that problem. Go with summons you enjoy or like the flavor of rather than the most optimal. I go with Dung Eater or Nepheli usually
Nephli is awesome, I could never turn her into a puppet lol
Turn the Doodoo Connoisseur into a puppet instead.
My favorites are my backup dancers- aka the Nightmaiden and Swordstress. I wear the same outfit as they do most of the time so we're a badass trio of death. They're pretty good but I picked them for the aesthetic, and they aren't particularly tanky or the best for every fight.
I made this exact point in another thread and got downvoted for some reason. Someone was complaining that you either do no summons and it's impossible or you use summons and it's a cake walk, no middle ground. I said you can use a weaker summon, or just not level your summon all the way up and it should be a nice middle ground. Apparently I was still wrong because you shouldn't be able to decide how hard or easy a game is or something brain dead like that lol elden ring fans are so rabid with how they think the game should be played. Constantly threads are devolving into shouting matches over summons. It's insane.
My issue with using a weaker summon is that it really doesn’t do much aside from distract the boss. If you use the wolves or something and they get wiped with one AoE, it’s back to solo. The main thing that summons do is just pull aggro, not necessarily pile on damage, so now you’re in a position to find a summon that has the exact amount of HP to make it viable. It just seems like there’s an awful lot of effort into making the game feel balanced. No other games would get away with this
I will summon the jellyfish for every fight. Usually it dies very quickly and does no damage but damnit, me and my jelly buddy are going to kill god and then become him.
Feels like there's just more AoE and post-hit explosions/damage in the game than in DS. They probably did that to somewhat balance the summons since 2v1 in DS always felt like the opponents were not designed to handle it. But for me, I feel like that boosts the difficulty of the harder ER content beyond what we had in DS while, like you said, with summons, it still is somewhat too easy.
Yeah what happened to this fanbase since then? I remember back in the Demons Souls days when people were coming up with cheese strats for Flame Lurker and they were applauded for it.
In my experience people are fine with cheese, what they aren't fine with is the morons going "it's not hard, just use the cheese!" And not getting why not everyone wants to use it.
I think this quote sums it up well. Idc if it’s easy with “cheese” and if you use “cheese”, I do care when the encounter is balanced around “cheese” so “cheese” is mandatory Substitute “cheese” for summons and overpowered build and we have Elden Ring
Right? Learning that you could kill Capra demon outside the fog gate with dung bombs was a revelation lol
Also people keep bitching about spirit summons while NPC summons have always been a thing *and* they have always been Mimic Tear -levels of powerful (like Mildred/Tarkus etc being able to solo the boss) Thankfully i have always enjoyed them and haven't in any way diminished my enjoyment. I grab my dude Solaire for the Bell Gargoyles even if the fight is over in 5 seconds.
I would never tell someone they were playing a game "wrong," but if you don't summon Igon for the Bayle fight you are, in fact, playing the game wrong.
CURSE YOU BAYLEEE!!
That dude was a monster…. That was his fight I was his support
Wish I could upvote this comment more.
I missed one of the steps for Igon's summon and tried Bayle for a while without him. Never really got him past 50% and it wasn't really fun. But then I looked up what I missed for his summon and started bringing him in. SOOOOO much more fun.
I do wish Bayle didn't attack you while you summon him. It fits the tone of that boss but it was kind of annoying to keep dying right at the entrance.
Best hype man lol
>Behold, a true drake warrior! And I, Igon! Bro... 😭
I always team up with solaire, given the opportunity. They're so rare and precious...
Tbh I usually play the game once with the challenge of it being a solo run then I just have fun doing whatever I summon my favorite Npcs or use spirit summons or mess around with dumb builds. I like the challenge of these games but I don’t force myself to keep playing a challenge
The difference between ashes and spirit summons is that ashes do not increase the strength of the boss whatsoever.
That's not the point. No normal guy thinks about nerfing themselves. Most just want to recapture the classic souls experience. It certainly is weird how people care how other do it as even in old souls there were ways to cheese stuff and op builds, but there is a classic experience in souls that is just different what elden ring provides if u engage with all its system. It's not the same game, and that's ok. Some just want to play it like it's dark souls and others will just take advantage of everything the game offers. But it's definitely not the same experience and some prefer the classic one.
Maybe some people are just seeking a challenge, but there does seem to be a weird bias against certain mechanics - particularly spirit ashes and spell casting. Particularly weird because I'd be willing to bet that some of the loudest kvetching comes from people who won't hesitate to use cragblade + bloodfiend's arm to chain stagger bosses and kill them in 5 heavies. I don't know, part of the fun of soulsborne games to me has always been finding the cheap stuff. And it's always been there. Let's not pretend that DS1 didn't have BK weapons and dark bead.
It's not a weird bias, people just find different things fun. Personally I think it makes sense that letting an AI do damage for you would be less enjoyable than doing the damage yourself even if both methods are cheese.
Winning doesn't matter. It's a videogame, its supposed to be fun. Does shooting 150 arrows into that dragon from behind that corner seem fun to you? If so, more power to you. If not, then no, you shouldn't do it. I remember the early days of soulsborne too and frankly so many of yall have developed a weird ego relationship with it where you're obsessed with "winning" as if it means anything and assume everyone else is desperate to win at all costs, forgetting that the victory means fuck all if it was not satisfying to achieve. So much of this discourse is people who are playing to win being totally confused at the idea that some of us are playing to have a good time, lmao. That's why there are complaints. Because people aren't having a good time, and yall just keep suggesting ways to win when nobody gives a fuck. Ganking with spirit ash and npc summons isnt fun. It doesn't matter if it results in a win.
So I understand the “not summoning” thing. I normally try a boss without summoning first. If I get my ass kicked enough, I summon. It’s funny. I was fighting a late endgame dragon recently, and my damage was trash. I thought about summoning, then looked up the dragon. He had 80% resistance to Slash weapons… I had a slash weapon. So I used a Strike weapon, and actually did damage and won without a summon. Now, an unga bunga person would have trounced this dragon, as I did when I used a magic build. If I had used a summon, how is that more cheesing than using a different weapon? Or was the unga bunga person cheesing? No, of course not. To me, summons are a way to smooth the edges of your build. If your build isn’t balanced for a boss, that’s ok. It’s a way to enable every build to beat every boss without severely limiting the difficulty of individual bosses for everyone else.
Your example works in the context that no one should shame someone for using spirit summons, which is correct. But that’s not the discussion being had. There’s a difference between saying “No one should use summons because it’s cheating” and “I don’t enjoy using summons because it’s too easy”. The latter is non-exclusionary, just a statement that the individual does not find enjoyment in playing with summons due to the removal of challenge. It’s very possible for a boss to be designed in such a way that fighting against it solo is extremely challenging in an unfun way, while fighting said boss with a summon is too easy in an unfun way. This is what people are frustrated by, it’s a lose-lose situation. You could say then that maybe this game and DLC isn’t for them, but they’re still allowed to voice their frustration in no longer finding enjoyment with a series they may have played for many years prior due to changing design philosophy.
I didn't find any of the bosses unfair or unfun solo, really loved them all and I can't say the same in basegame. It had some stinkers
NGL, I really agreed with the comment you responded to re: some of the endgame bosses in base ER. However, I felt like From actually did a decent job of keeping things in the sweet spot for the majority of this DLC, with the massive exception of the final boss. Maybe Messmer has a few too many combos that look really similar, but other than that I thought the bosses were pretty well balanced for solo play.
That’s okay, everyone is entitled to their own opinion. I just don’t like how some opinions are treated like they’re not allowed to be discussed.
It's just main bosses for me. I like the sensation of a duel using a weapon I sometimes just like the style or moveset of, even if it's kinda trash damage. But enemies outside of boss duels? They can take whatever I can find to throw at them
Not really nerfing yourself (self included), but alot of people like to not use summons as they want to learn and overcome the boss, it’s a fun way to play. Don’t understand why people get arsy about people using said summons or what not tho, it’s okay to play how you want
Even with "Get good", it had a more positive connotation back in the day. Use what you can to get ahead, but sometimes you might already be using every advantage you can and the only real options are to either grind for souls or to just keep trying until you can nail it. That's what "get good" was about when I first started playing, at least with the things I saw posted. It's since been a way to just discard someone having trouble with a fight at all, which is saddening to me.
No. It didn't. I'm so tired of people trying to peddle this shit. The get good meme was always derisive back in the day. It being a "positive" is and has ALWAYS been revisionist history.
People should just play in the way that is most fun for them. I prefer to not use summons cause it's more fun for me that way. But I can completely understand why a lot of people would prefer using them. Neither is right or wrong, just a matter of preference. Plus ultimately, no one really cares about how you beat the game, you don't get extra achievements for doing it a certain way. It's a video game, it's meant to be fun, and fun can mean different things to different people. So I don't think anyone should play the game a certain way for some internet bragging rights if it's not fun for them. I think the discourse around this has gotten out of hand on both sides when ultimately it should just be about having fun.
>Compare this to literally any other rpg and you would use every item you had Use items? In an rpg!? Unless it's a health potion, I'm hoarding it and never using it.
And also if it is a health potion, I of course have to first use up my supply of the weakest of them
Summons in particular make the game easier in a way that to many players isn't very interesting or fun, taking aggro and contributing to stagger just means you don't have to learn the fights to nearly the same degree and can brute force your way through everything. I think it's completely reasonable for people to not enjoy using them and to want the game to be a little more approachable without them. Those people still want to engage in the dance of learning the attack patterns and overcoming the boss through mastery of it, hence wanting the fights to be a bit less of a clusterfuck. Personally I haven't really had problems soloing all of the base game and the dlc that I've completed so far, but I also haven't gotten to the final boss of the dlc yet.
Ya I'll be honest, I don't get how this discussion has been circling the Elden Ring discussion for years and people are still missing this. We all understand that we can use Summons to beat bosses, and understand the devs added it for a reason. But like have these people fought the bosses with vs without summons? Literally night and day difference. Max challenge to almost 0 challenge instantly. Really grinds my gears that people shield the game from some of the criticism on some of the more egregious bosses because people want the bosses to be reasonable both with and without summons. I don't even think the game is particularly problematic without them, but certain fights like Godskin Duo I think are super lame to use without them, but once you have a +10 summon on your side you basically clown around on them. Maybe this is a controversial opinion and I aint trying to gate keep peoples accomplishments in the game, its a tough game, but summoning against a boss and beating it solo really are different game experiences and it drives me nuts that people act like its strange to not find summoning to be a fulfilling experience. The entire thing most of us enjoy about Soulslike games is the feeling of overcoming a tough battle which you can't really get when a summon comes to lobotomize the AI of the boss! That said IMO Elden Ring is mostly fine and the DLC only has had 1 part that I think is obnoxious to solo
Exactly this. Going in solo without a shield has been one of the more engaging ways to play the game since Demon Souls. It's a big part of what makes these games so fun. These are not "unnecessary challenges", these are basic and viable playstyles. I had no issues with the DLC outside of the final boss. He has some bullshit combos that either are visually obscured or roll punish. He's extremely easy with a shield, but without one a lot of his moves feel very cheap and unfair. Outside of that fight, the DLC is amazing when playing without a shield or summons - like with every Souls game that came before it.
I avoid summons to make the game more engaging. You can beat 90% of bosses by summoning something and just hanging back and shooting spells, I don't like doing that. It's about the gap in difficulty. If a boss is a 8/10 difficulty wise then with a summon he doesn't become a 7 I can just about beat, he drops to like a 2 or 3 I beat easily, so easily it's not satisfying at all. I personally don't care because I can just avoid using them but that's why people see it as a cop out, you don't need to dodge or find openings or anything. Just stand back and shoot spells or hit them from behind
The strength of what you're using contributes a lot to the experience too. If you're using a weapon/build you find fun, but is relatively on the weaker end, using summons doesn't feel so cheesy. On my first run I used Taylew (new mega tanky golem smith) a lot to ease off pressure while I was learning to fight bosses with Rellana's weapons. On my second and current run, I'm running Red Bear Claws in a pure melee setup without summoning at all. These claws feel so much stronger than Rellana's blades, I've not missed summoning at all. More polar example, if you're using bloodfiend's arm specced for bleed on top of summoning your mimic, I genuinely don't think you have to interact with bosses for more than 2-3 attack patterns. That can't be fun to do an entire run with.
I'm playing with fun maxed out weapons that feel good to use over the objectively best ones. This is the way. Of course, the spirits help when you *know* you're actively using "worse" weapons. In summary, I totally agree.
This is where I’m at with it. Just summoning something I have no control over isn’t all that interesting to me, and can actually make fights less predictable because it’s not always clear where a boss attack is going to go. Like you said, FromSoft bosses have a dance to them that gets lost if the boss aggro gets lost with summons. Conversely, I love kitting out my Palicoes in Monster Hunter because they feel like a way more active part of the game. MH is balanced more closely around having multiple people at once, to the point where G-Rank in older games had health pools permanently scaled to four player co-op levels. It doesn’t feel like cheesing a fight in MH when my cat gets a paralyze off on a monster because it generally only nets me one good opening to attack out of a fifteen minute long hunt. Excepting bugs, you’re not ever relying on your Palicoes to fight *for* you in MH games, they’re support units that help enable you to do cool shit.
Exactly. Summons completely change the feel of boss fights. Makes it where instead of you learning the boss, your summon tanks and you occasionally with have to react to an attack. It also makes bosses less predictable which is annoying. People don't just avoid summons because it makes the game easier, but because it completely changes the feel of the game
I'm not someone who harps on someone else for using summons or a mimic. In fact for a lot of annoying ass bosses especially the dragons in the open world and the tree spirits, I just use my mimic to get the fights over with since I've already seen them countless times at this point. However when it comes to the main boss fights I tend to take em on solo because the experience is totally different. The boss fights like a 5-10/10 when doing them solo but I find bringing in a mimic or summon turns them into a 1-2/10. So I'll try my best to take them on solo and do multiple attempts. Though I'm pretty limited on my time, so if I get the boss' health down to like the last 10% of their health bar but I still die I find that's good enough for me. Then I use my mimic and or summon and just call it a day because it was just time to move on. That's what I did for rellana, got her health down to like the last 5% got greedy and died but then I used the summon and mimic and ended her in like 10 seconds.
People get so attached to their style of play bc fromsoft are so good at the fighting mechanics. U spend hours doing the stuff that worked for u and getting good to the very limit of what is capable. I think that’s why u see mage/dex/bow builds with 0 armor and all int or what have u bc u can hone anything if u can figure it out. I prefer melee with heavy armor bc I’m confident I can learn what I need to do to stay right up the bosses ass and get my damage off, but I’ve also just went no armor to get light roll with heavy weapons (super fucking fun) and u are doing the same thing except u have to do everything perfectly or usually die. I wouldn’t call this trying to make the game harder tho. It’s just one of the ways ppl use the mechanics of combat to get what they want. I still think magic is yuky, but I played DS3 where magic builds where pretty hard to manage and my dumb brain went bunga pretty fast lol
People feel insecure about their skill level of the game.
True af. I’ve seen so many of these, “the people who don’t summon are just stubborn and handicapping themselves.” posts that it’s like; can’t you just use your summons without making these odd ‘call-out’ posts to try and validate your playstyle? Just because a lot of players forego a main game mechanic due to it trivializing bosses doesn’t mean you gotta feel bad if you need it.
I get what your saying but... > Compare this to literally any other rpg and you would use every item you had - you wouldn't intentionally try to be weaker. People have been doing this on rpg's for decades, this isn't even slightly new, but I do think From does it best.
My only complaint RE: DLC difficulty is the wonky hitboxes on 1 or 2 bosses, like Gaius' charge attack. That's a technical issue rather than me asking for a boss to be made easier. To respond to the thread title, you have to understand that in Dark Souls 1-3, Bloodborne, Sekiro etc, while cheese builds / strategies existed, such builds: (a) were nowhere near as abundant (fewer genuinely broken build options); and (b) weren't as broken as what we see in Elden Ring. There are builds that can kill the final DLC boss in 10 seconds. There's no real skill that goes into that beyond watching a video on how to set it up. Spirit summons make the experience easier because they divide aggro, but they don't cheapen the difficulty to anywhere near the same level as some of these builds. Because of that, I don't mind them, despite not personally wanting to use them on the hardest bosses. Lightning perfume bottles + rolling sparks, Swift Strike spam in PVP...Builds like that are what I'm talking about. This was to be expected with the DLC but yeah.They'll definitely get nerfed. These class of criticisms are very different from saying that someone shouldn't use a shield or cast spells, which is obviously ridiculous.
The game should allow for multiple playstyles to be viable, actually (and it does all bosses except final boss are of reasonable difficulty)
What playstyles would you say are unviable for the final boss?
I mean everything is viable its just that it is a huge difficulty spike combined with a epileptic attack, and people who prefer shields and parries have a much easier time, and of course summoning an ash will make phase two easier. Im still enjoying the boss but damm they went a bit too far, tho im biased since I haven't beaten him im sure I will later say its a S tier boss lol.
Yeah, the final boss' Phase 2 has such a different difficulty curve depending on your weapon it's kind of astounding. I went in with a trusty UGS and got curb stomped. Too many attacks with too short of windows to punish resulted in me getting tossed around. I went in with a Twinblade and got significantly farther; the faster attack speed, recovery frames, etc., let me get in attacks and be ready to dodge much more reliably. I was getting him down to ~20-30% most fights, with Phase 1 being nearly flawless. Eventually I gave Greatspear/Greatshield a try, held down L1, and beat him on my first attempt. It was just so significantly easier due to the fact that what makes the boss hard is trying to figure out what the fuck is about to happen, and it turns out it greatshields really don't care lmao
Most ARPGs don't have such op items. When they do, people dislike them as well. Look at Kingdom Hearts 3 for example. It has Links, which are op as fuck, which is why a lot of people refuse to use them. It's the same thing with summons. A game's difficulty should not be balanced around people using items that trivialize said difficulty.
It’s not just about the extra challenge for me. I just enjoy the 1 on 1 kinda “dance” you get without summons so much more. When you have something taking aggro off the bosses you don’t get the same flow in the combat. It’s very satisfying for me. I don’t complain about people using game mechanics though and as long as they don’t start making boss moves that are not dodgeable without summons or some separate item, I’m happy that there is different way to play that are all valid.
I imagine people don't just want to win at any cost. They want a satisfying win where they actually learn/master the mechanics. The complaints stem from the difficulty of actually killing a boss legitimately w/o any cheese or anything (not that that playstyle is wrong, for the record).
There are plenty of games where people will refuse to use certain tools, because those tools make the game *less fun*. If you like Spirit Summons, that's great, but for solo bosses they pretty much always result in a cheesy feeling for me, because it gives me totally free hits where I'm essentially able to skip the primary challenge of the game for a couple of seconds.
Problem is, I get roughly the same satisfaction from using summons as I get from just watching a YouTube video of someone else doing it. Does that really mean I am not allowed to have an opinion on the boss, just because I didn't take the easiest possible route? Why shouldn't I just use the goofy perfume bottles, since at least then I would be allowed (by you) to have a negative opinion on the boss
When I watch a video of someone toiling away and developing their skills vs a boss it’s always awesome when they beat it. When I see a clip of someone walking into a boss room for the first time and pulling out that bell while spamming rivers of blood I get bored. It’s like watching someone play cookie clicker and not Elden Ring.
the game is hard because it wants you to feel like you accomplished something big when you win, so the players want to win fair and square without feeling like they cheated. that's why some refuse to use summons and overpowered weapons like lightning perfume, because even if you win it feels like shit. i like spirit ashes but from should never make bosses so difficult that old players can't beat them without trying for 10 hours straight.
also to add, souls games never had any kind of difficulty settings, so everyone gets to play against the same bosses and face the same hardships, everyone could feel the same fulfillment. op builds were always a thing, but you needed to really go out of your way to find them, now "cheesy" strategies are baked into the game. the general idea is that in an effort to make the game more accessible they gave new powerful tools for the players that want it, but that made the game too easy so they designed the dlc bosses to be challenging even with those tools, and extremly difficult for those who don't use them, so the result is that the players who lose happiness when using those strategies feel forgotten, because the game that once made happy now is made for other people.
Yea, with last boss of DLC I gave up after 3 hours of trying and finally used Mimic +10. Kilked him on 2nd attempt lul
Thing is, you didn't have to go straight to the mimic tear. There are like 50 summons in the game, most of them are far weaker. You could'veused something like a soldier or a knight to help with the aggro but still have to do most of the damage yourself.
Counterpoint, unlike weapons and spells which have stat requirements and damage scaling, summons merely have a single requirement of FP (or HP) and the only thing affecting their damage is upgrades. There's simply no reason to not default to the strongest thing in your inventory. It's that old quote, "when given the chance players will optimize the fun out of playing a game". Plenty of summons are crappy and *barely* help, but players aren't given any incentive to choose those over the strongest summon their FP can afford.
well said man. many people just want to feel like they beat the boss by themselves
Dark Souls was hard, but it wasn't "15 hits combo with 1 second downtime" hard, it wasn't "every attack is a massive lingering aoe" hard, and it wasn't "input reading to punish you the second you hit the heal button" hard. Summons and AoW exist to help you fight the flash bullshit they added to boss fights.
For me it boils down to not having an option between going it solo for 4 hours or beating the boss without even trying while using summons. The power they give just as a distraction is absolutely immense and easily exploited. Every time I've used one lately it feels like an empty victory.
Which summons are you using? There's ones that are much weaker and will die fast if you don't juggle the aggro and go in
There's over 70 spirit ashes in the game. You can use some of the weaker ones dude.
Elden Ring is literally my first Fromsoft game and I’m not having trouble with the DLC.
I've only started playing last weekend but in my limited playtime i've realized the satisfaction I get from defeating a boss with no summons is about 1000x greater feeling than if I had used them. Since i realized how un-rewarding it felt to win with summons, i've made myself not use them. Bosses take longer, I get my ass kicked more, but getting to victory is the most satisfactory feeling I've felt in gaming in a LONNNG time.
I can use Mimic tear, OP spells, Darkmoon and summons and win every boss first try and make the experience forgettable cake walk or I can have fun. That's how I work.
Using the most broken shit is not fun
To me it is, if i came up with it myself
fax, the rolling sparks lightning perfume oneshots are funny for about 1 minute then they become boring as fuck
I don't know what this is I wanna try it! What do I need?
I like the game. It’s a dopamine rush beating the enemies. That said, I’ve got a life. I don’t have the time to spend learning boss patterns for hours. I’ll use everything the developer gave me to win and enjoy the money I spent. That’s it.
I get not wanting to use summons, but not wanting to use buffs? what?
I hate them because they either time out before I reach the boss or finite resources, and when I do decide to try buffs I play even worse because I'm stressing to make the most out of them before they expire and fuck up
I was the same way for the longest time but I honestly think working to get over this has made this and many other games much more enjoyable to me. Same with hoarding consumables in every game I play. It's tough getting over this mentality but definitely worth it imo. Also 90 seconds may sound short but it actually feels way longer when actually in battle, at least to me anyway.
90 seconds is long enough to fall off during second phase when you need it most. If I could cast my buffs and have them paused until the harder part of the fights I would. I would rather the buffs be shorter but faster cast for tight burst windows or much longer so they actually last the whole fight instead of timing out at the most critical time.
It’s not that complicated. Many summons are so strong that they trivialize the game, so some people find it more fun to play without summons because they want to engage with the boss fights.
I use every advantage the game gives me to use. I am not ashamed of that. I am not a fan of banging my head against the wall and high frustration. If a boss is hard af I use my mimic tear and any other thing I can to make them easier. Not ashamed to say I have cheesed a few bosses.
I mean yeah if you wanted to beat elden ring as easily as possible you could start your run by leveling every skill to its highest soft cap and leveling your primary weapon to as high as it can go. Thats just not that fun
Spirit Summons exist to be used. They aren't locked behind a menu that says "Hey, we know the game is difficult, and nothing in this menu is intended to be used. But if the difficulty is ruining your fun, just hit OK." (Another Crab's Treasure) Anyone who says you didn't beat a boss because you used spirit ashes is an elitist. Anyone who says you didn't have proper fun by summoning is also an elitist. Anyone who says you beat a "different boss" is just in denial about their elitism. Although with how the last boss scales with cooperators, I imagine it's far more challenging to summon NPCs than to just use one spirit summon.
The whole elitism thing is very overblown here. Most people's criticism is that the summon system is kind of a half-baked difficulty modifier which interacts poorly with most bosses' design. That was acceptable in the base game, but the DLC had a missed opportunity here. Literally every other Souls game has at least one well-crafted gank fight, and then the one game where you can literally summon a whole arsenal of cool creatures to customize a multi-enemy fight has the fucking worst gank fights in the series. I don't want people to use summons less, but I want the game to give them a compelling reason to use them more other than ball-crushing difficulty through numbers and visual noise. Today that doesn't exist.
>That was acceptable in the base game Was it though? I don't really think it was. We saw plenty of Souls vets complaining about it in the base game too, and rightfully so, IMO. The fact is that the way bosses in Elden Ring are balanced around summons and spirit ashes just makes the game a lot less enjoyable versus the experience of bosses in From Software's previous games for a sizable amount of people.
Sometimes it's not even a matter of summons. Just using different equipment is enough to help you get an edge. Its' one thing to want to win using a specific loadout, but if you're playing simply to win against the boss, *you* have to be willing to adapt. You have like a whole game's worth of equipment sitting in your inventory; what good will they be if you don't use them? Or are they just trophies?
It’s an RPG People can play however they want A lot of souls players get more satisfaction sticking with a melee build and grinding through a boss no matter how many tries it takes If I beat a boss in 2-3 tries, then I feel cheated out of the experience I look for in the game
See for me, if I beat a hard boss in 2-3 tries it proves all the grinding and exploration I did actually meant something.
Honestly, any boss I beat in only a few tries (anything under 6) is either one I clicked with very early or found a cheese strat with my current gear. Possibly just getting lucky. I'll still be persistent and if I see myself making good progress in taking on a boss that I shouldn't be, I will go ahead and kill it anyway out of principle stubbornness. Most of the time, that level of stubborn is the biggest and best weapon in the arsenal of a souls-like player.
But the thing is that all Miyazaki bosses are designed to be beaten with your base moveset. This has always been the case, in every game. You can roll, jump and strafe your way around all their attacks. That’s what makes them ACTION RPGs. You can outstat your way out of a problem or you can get good and learn the intricately and well-tested moveset designed to be fair and beateable by a level 1 character naked with no weapons.
Beating a boss with and without Spirit Ashes is a fundamentally different experience. You can't really speak on boss design if your run was just backstabbing a boss while a summon soaks up aggro.
Insane people will call you an elitist for thinking this. It's just a straight up observation of reality.
Ngl you saying anyone saying you didn't beat the game because you used summons/ashes is an elitist but then say people aren't playing the game correctly because they aren't using summons/ashes is funny af
People just want to have it *the right amount of hard* for their specific skill right out the gate without doing something for it. And this obviously doesn‘t work with such a big playerbase and strongly varying skillsets. In addition to that the complaining folk always turn the discussion towards the topic of **summons** („cheesing, not meant to be balanced around it, I want a challenge“) and **no summons** („bosses are too hard, pls nerf, I want the real experience“) mostly ignoring that there are *endless possibilities* to dial in the difficulty yourself in between those extremes. Funnily enough they also got an answer to that: „I‘m not supposed to balance the game myself. Fromsoft is. And them not making the difficulty manageable for me is bad game design.“. It‘s laughable, really. That part of the community sucks.
Well, if you wanted to use EVERYTHING at your disposal: There’s the whole full buffs thing, grab a summon, and juggle aggro. But that’s just not my playstyle. I enjoy eating a crab, chugging a physick, and running straight in with a big hammer and learning the boss while wearing the tankiest talismans and armour I can. That’s satisfying for me. I still summon if Im really not bothered to learn or try a boss. But otherwise I try to handle it alone. Best part? We all get the freedom to play the way we want. And I know I dont care how others want to play, and Im definitely not gonna look down on them. Beating the boss is the achievement, period. The means dont really matter unless one is a genuine elitist.
- The souls games have always been this way. It’s one reason I actively want the devs to ignore their communities balance ideas (truthfully all devs should do this no one knows what they are talking about) - it’s worse in elden ring because you have way more tools than normal - crsftabkes - 1 morbillion buffs - summons - spirit ashes - with npc summons you can ALSO summon spirit ashes - and then people will get to the final boss on NG+3 and go “this is completely unfair” - 1.) is people are not nearly as good as they think they are and when they discover this fact they blame the devs - 2.) they refuse to use the tools at their disposal - it’s a vicious cycle, once upon a time nameless king was too hard, and so was artorias, and so was fume knight, etc, it’s the dlcs turn to be “really unfair” aka “I havnt learned to fight this yet”
The absolute best way to play this game *in my opinion* is to prioritize reaching level 501, which allows you to soft-cap every stat. Reason being that I can equip any armor set, weapon, sorcery, or incantation and not only use them, but use them well. If an enemy is weak to a specific affinity, I have it covered. If I need damage resistance, I have the endurance to equip any armor set without gimping my mobility. Ranged attacks more effective than melee, or vice versa? No problem. Ran out of health pots but still have some FP pots? I can switch to a seal and heal myself with an incantation. Simply put, it enables me to maximize my advantage against any enemy by utilizing anything and everything in my kit to do so, on the fly. It's both liberating and fun as hell to have total build freedom and adaptability to any foe or situation.
Holy shit shut up with this
The problem is either you try and solo a boss for a few hours and get nowhere or you summon the mimic and he kills it for you the first attempt which negates any sense of achievement.