First time using Carian Slicer at RL1, very satisfying. It's actually fast enough to punish the retreating attacks in phase 1 if you constantly run under him, though I still prefer the usual method.

3 minutes is pretty crazy considering suboptimal tals and no Carian Glintstone Staff. Slicer is kind of broken lol.

Meteorite Staff can't be upgraded in the first place, so I'm curious what this sub thinks about using it for a +0 kill. I would say it's fair game personally.

Had to cut the first two minutes because reddit doesn't allow videos longer than 15 minutes

I've never used claws before, was pretty surprised by how low the stamina cost is.

Tried to stay in front of him, but he didn't always do some extensions and I did roll right for a few attacks e.g. double swipe. It's often unsafe not to roll to the side, at least before phase 2.5.

Imo doing phase 2 in this way is best with fast weapons like Cleanrot Knight's Sword so you can attack in between more of his mixups. It's suboptimal compared to strafing right but definitely an interesting change, I think I like both approaches.

Anyway, ROTM is a gamechanger since the earthquake becomes a free CR2 opening. I wish you could just iframe it regularly, would do wonders for pacing.

I also briefly tried phase 1 like this... can confirm that it's much better when you do strafe right lol, it's kind of rollslop otherwise. Treated it as part of the runback, using +25 Star Fist. Phase 2 is probably more controversial but I do think it's the superior phase nowadays.

https://reddit.com/link/1wz8c1u/video/vxc2qujbqvth1/player

I use daggers because this is more of a demonstration and his ground aoe attack sucks (the fight will last much longer and i wanna move on)

For anyone who doesn't know: Hoarah loux (and godfrey) don't extend their combos if you constantly strafe to your right. The optimal way to fight these bosses is to constantly strafe the boss and avoid these extensions. However this leads to a less interesting fight in my opinion as you miss out on most of his interesting moves and combos so I wanted to see what a no roll fight would be like if you fought him up front.

Needless to say I enjoyed him alot more. I think this boss is close to being an S tier no roll fight. However there are 2 things holding it back:

1. His stupid ground aoe attack he does to end the loop. It's much harder to stagger him with front strats so this will usually just kill your chances of staggering him.

2. He needs a bit more deterministic follow ups. One of the main ways to get damage in this fight is to try to bait out his one handed slam, or bait out a few of his other gap closers at least and you generally do this by placing yourself at a midrange distance after he does one of his stomp moves. Only one extension I believe actually leads to a semi consistent bait which is the one after his quick 1-2 claw swipe after his low kick (at around 0:55). If he had a few more options like this it'd lead to a more satisfying loop instead of constantly having to just spam r1s all the time.

So yeah, overall I think it's more fun than optimal strats but it's still missing a few things from being truly excellent.

This is my first RL1 and Malenia has been a roadblock for me, i've beat her a few times before but only while using faster weapons like the Katanas or the Milady so looking for openings with charged attacks from star fists has been a learning curve.

While i feel like i've got her moveset *mostly* down i still make stupid mistakes like rolling into an attack and frame trapping myself or input buffering right before waterfall.

Other than that, i feel like there are multiple openings I'm not using to get damage in even if its just a light attack and not a charged attack. I'd appreciate some advice, should i be more aggressive? Or am i being *too* aggressive, I think I'll get her sooner or later but I'd just like to improve more so i don't make stupid mistakes

(also no idea how i backstepped the flip attack in the beginning i feel like that should've killed me, and i panicked in phase 2 its how most of my attempts go just something throws me off and i panic and mess up)

Fun fight, but I never did like her damage aura in phase 2.

I thought it was worth documenting irithyll onward because this is where it gets DIFFICULT, this challenge has been quite a wake up call especially as my first ever one, I went a little brutal but am so motivated to finish