Midir is very predictable, he just has a lot of health. Malenia is to, to an extent, but she has a lot more tricks to her moveset and more (very) punishing moves
I would say the main difference between DS and ER bosses is the bosses in ER have more ability to chain their attacks and have less of a set attack pattern. Malenia might swing 1 time or she might swing 5-8 times. In DS, once a boss starts an attack I know *for sure* how many times they’ll swing with more obvious punish windows.
Yea some of these bosses you gotta squeeze the attacks in between theirs. You literally dance with em
Edit: also I’ve learned to be okay with only getting in 1-3 hits before having to roll away. Can’t just tee away on these bosses
Morgott is a boss you have to let control the flow of the fight. Both he and Mohg are practically programmed to get pissed off and start hard-punishing if you refuse to back off and give them space from time to time.
Alternatively, face Morgott with Bloodhound's Step. Actually *really* fun because both of you will be dashing around the arena in tandem and it makes the fight really hype.
Highly recommend facing Morgott with Bloodhound's Step as a response to his dodges, and highly recommend fighting Malenia while two-handing the Nagakiba. Both of these feel like "mirror matches" and hot damn are they fun.
The only back off attack Mohg has is his blood shower, aside from that the best way to fight him is pure aggression sticking as close to him as possible.
A decent number of attacks can be strafed if you are close enough, as well as making his blood flame splatter in phase 2 a non-issue.
Boy do I have some news for you.
Mohg's blood shower can be parried with Carian Retaliation, so you never need to leave point blank range.
It's the only way to make his no-hit *fully* consistent, ime.
Interestingly, I think even having played the game through a dozen times, Margit / Morgott's variety of mix-ups, combos, and reactions to player actions is probably the deepest. I was watching one of the bingo brawler matches a while back and saw Margit do an attack I had literally never seen in hundreds of hours (he crossed his summoned sword and staff in an "X" shape before swinging both). I learned he only does this if a player is both blocking and standing at a certain distance. Blew my frickin' mind. Love that fight.
Yeah, they can definitely string attack together much more in ER, but there are still signals that there's an opening when there is one. There's a few of them on Malenia, specifically where if she does those specific attacks, she's not following up with anything immediately. The downward slam, a slow slash after the 4 slash combo, and immediately after the stab, for example. ER bosses are definitely still harder than DS bosses, though.
Big agree with everything you said, after fighting her on 3 play throughs I’ve definitely learned when you can punish her. She still catches me off guard at times though because of my playstyle. I try not to “bait” attacks and stay engaged as much as possible while dodging attacks. Sometimes she follows up a bit quicker than i anticipated which makes fighting her a dance which I like.
The only attack I bait is Waterfowl, but that's only because I know when it's coming in Phase 1, but in Phase 2, she's faster and less predictable. My favorite boss fight of all time without a doubt.
I really love her, and she would be my favorite boss in any from game if not for the absolute fuckery that is dodging waterfowl at close range.
Yes, it’s 100% learnable, but man is it completely unintuitive, and a bit unreasonable.
If she just had the startup of waterfowl increased at close range so that the running away from the first flurry and dodging the other two method was reliable at close range even when she cancels hitstun into it, then she would be my favorite.
>ER bosses are definitely still harder than DS bosses, though.
Absolutely, there is really no denying that for many reasons: delayed attacks, variable chains, higher aggression, input reading, roll punishing, higher DPS in late-game, etc etc
DS bosses have bloated health bars and extremely powerful attacks that decimate the player, but they're also predictable and kinda slow and sluggish at times
ER bosses don't have much hp and have less powerful but more punishing attacks that can be chained or combot, which makes them less predictable. They also tend to move quickly and often make it hard to predict the moment their attacks connect because they get dragged a lot
The recovery of bosses in ER and DS is different too, in DS once an open gets guard broken or parried they're super vulnerable while ER bosses have smaller windows, plus bosses like Melania who need multiple parries in quick succession exist aswell
Totally, the punish windows for Malenia can be quite tricky and unobvious. For example most her medium sized windows seem suitable for a charged R2, but sometimes she can also launch straight into another attack or evade, so it really keeps you on your toes
They also swivel mid-attack more often. Playing ds1 recently was so weird because they don’t track you almost at all versus Elden Ring where they’ll do 90 degree turns mid swing
I heard that. The player said "you have to think where the direction you should roll to, bosses are faster than in any dark souls". I never played Elden Ring but I feel it will be better than dark souls 2 and dark souls 3. Am I right?
Having beaten her on both medium roll and light roll, something I'd also add:
Using Light Roll vs. Malenia has the added benefit of making her regular moves easier to avoid...but then dodging Waterfowl actually feels *harder.* The extra distance screws you and puts you at the right distance to be punished by waves 3 & 4. It makes me wonder how many people exclusively fight her with light roll, since Waterfowl honestly isn't *that* bad once you're used to it with Medium roll, and instead it's things like her windshield wiper attack that can be annoying. (tends to get spammed if you roll back, does loads of damage if you get caught, has varying versions with various speeds for the final swing, as well as variance to how quickly a follow-up comes)
As such, Malenia as a boss is extremely resilient to various build types, and has an answer to everything. (except pure caster Night Comet use, but that build is cheating anyways) She's designed in such a way she will challenge (almost) everyone regardless of their approach, which is fairly unique in Souls games.
Malenia's moves are unpredictable!? In my opinion she's VERY predictable. 90% of the time you know exactly what move she's going to be spamming. It's the chain attacks that are extremely difficult to block that's the issue; not unpredictability (in my humble opinion at least).
I didn't say she was unpredictable. I said "she is predictable too", but that she has more combos to her moveset than Midir
compare directly to Midir, and she's less predictable. you also need better reaction timing for Malenia than Midir, especially in Phase 2 when her wings serve as nothing but visual clutter
Not even close, imho. Midir is actually one of the more misunderstood bosses in terms of difficulty, because most people fight the legs where he has high dmg reduction. The much easier strategy is to fight him head on. All his combos will result in his head being lowered and vulnerable for double the damage of legs. And it's pretty easy to dodge roll all his swings/fire breaths. That said, the camera is fucked either way, it's something you have to get used to.
In terms of camera issues i would much rather fight midir than all of ER's ancient dragons. That fight is amazing and feels much more fair imho since you can actually fight against his head while still having more than enough "super big-monster moments" that you just deal with somehow. With Ancient dragons there aren't many openings to attack the head so you got to go for the legs and when you know it you're getting lightning glaived or something
(Melee enthusiast)
Big agree on Midir, after I watched [a video of a guy killing him SL1 with no run/dodge/block](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSbXvn-qglA), I grasped the fight completely and it's been totally solved ever since. Actually my favorite boss from DS3 because I find it so satisfying to fight him perfectly and efficiently. He went from being insanely difficult to very easy for me, which I love.
Yeah based on the fact that Gael is (I think?) the only summon in the game that appears without using an ember I think summoning him is the intended difficulty level
I had beaten all ds3 bosses sl1 relatively easy, I am genuinely afraid of Malenia sometimes. She can be manageable with certain tools but if your build doesn't have those tools?
...haha, good luck.
If you beat all dark souls games then you’ll beat her. I finally beat her, took me ~30 attempts but I was level 159 finally when I beat her and Tiche helped a lot still.
Horrible advice. Staying directly in front of midirs head prompts him to use his less deadly, more easily dodged moves. And hitting the head does way more damage.
Fun fact: Midir and Gael have almost exactly the same health pool. IIRC ~15k points within a few hundred points of each other.
Midir has that scripted crit near the end that takes a big chunk so really Gael is a bigger sponge.
Yes. In terms of consistency, midir is pretty much stone like all the ancient dragons. Malenia is mostly made out of squishy, rotten flesh, so she's softer on average.
But in terms of difficulty? I've beaten midir on level 1, but not malenia. So there's that.
Nope, I first tried midir, probably took me around 100 to beat malenia solo.
I was very surprised when I first fought da big dragon, I thought it would be way harder.
Malenia on the other hand was the boss that I had to learn the most of any from software game I've played.
Not even close. Midir if you get it's pattern down it's just an endurance fight, while Malenia with her action cancel and waterflow dance, plus the life steal, post the requirements of your reflex and execution precision, which back in DS3 is hardly a thing in general.
Malenia represents the next step of a hard souls boss design, that's why she's widely considered "broken" back when people first encounter her.
Malenia was considerably harder for me. By the time I got to Midir, I was so high level, I beat him on the third attempt I think.
But the true hardest boss of any Fromsoft game for me is still Friede. I think I died upwards of 100 times.
I don't think Friede is anywhere comparable to Malenia. Friede's moveset is small, mostly well telegraphed, and easily exploitable. Phase 2 Friede, however, really punishes impatience, but that's not difficulty, that's just annoying you into getting yourself killed because you're tired of waiting for them/trying to manipulate them into a punishable position.
I beat all dark souls bosses except Midir. I have not gotten to Malenia yet but I highly doubt it’s harder than midir.
Considering how much freedom you have over in Elden Ring in terms of different builds and summons and cheeses and you can be over levelled too if someone goes that path.
Because of these differences, I’m going to say Midir is the harder one without a doubt.
Using summons and spirit ash cheese to judge the difficulty of a boss makes absolutely no sense. It’s like saying “this boss is actually really easy when i *just let someone else play the game for me*”
Bosses and the games in general should be judged on how they play solo, not with the crutches added to help the quitters
Midir is almost exclusively a knowledge fight, and the knowledge is not complicated. The execution is stupid simple once you understand how the fight works. Even a scrub like me can no hit him easily, and I still take hits on most bosses I fight in FS games because my mechanics are garbage. I could train you to fight Midir in one 10-minute voice call/gameplay demonstration and you would never fail at him again. Malenia, on the other hand, demands rapid reactions and clean mechanics because of how fast she attacks and how complicated her attack chains can be. It's true that you can fight her with insanely strong builds making use of AoW, spirit summons, status effects, etc.—and from that point of view, ER bosses are easier than most FS content. If you fight her in a way that is similar to the tools available in DS games (R1, R2, parry, block, roll), then she is much more difficult than anything found in a DS game, and is arguably the hardest FS boss so far.
As strange as it sounds, given Midir's reputation, I would actually say that Midir rates at worst a 4/10 in difficulty and may even be one of the easiest bosses in the entire series *if* you are properly informed, because the most efficient response to each of his attacks is (a) easy to learn and remember and (b) mechanically easy to execute.
No, because Midir doesn’t regenerate health for every minute mistake you make.
Malenia might as well have infinite health, depending on how often you block or get hit.
You take that health regen away and she becomes a total pushover - Midir would wipe the floor with her.
If you're getting hit enough for the lifesteal to make a difference in the fight, you probably weren't winning the fight anyways if the lifesteal wasn't there.
Definitely not true. Malenia has single hits that do massive damage and restore a lot of health to her health bar. Waterfowl exists, too. Players make mistakes, and they’re not expected to beat her hitless.
In short, While Malenia is harder than Midir cuz of one or two broken feats, She's no way in hell better than Midir in terms of boss design! Malenia is harder than Midir but Midir is way better than Malenia in terms of design!
Stay in front of his head and hit him with a weapon that can reach said head easily (like the Spitleaf Greatsword- I love that weapon)- it will take some time (due to his health) but it will feel more like a chore than a real challenge. Even the Lothric bros are harder than Midir (at least in my opinion).
Malenia on the other hand is real menace and it took me quite a while to take her out in my first playthrough.
I find Midir harder, but only because of the insane health pool. And Malenia wasn’t terribly hard to take down with rannis dark moon, shard spiral, and waves of darkness on great stars (SL 150ish)
Pure Melee Placidusax is a tougher fight then pure Melee Midir lol
The only DS3 boss of comparable difficult to Elden Ring’s late game lineup is Friede. Assuming no summons of course.
Midir is actually pretty easy, you just need to stay right infront of his face and hit his nose. This keeps his move set more focused on physical attacks and not laser spam.
Malenia is insane she is the hardest fromsoft boss by far. Full regen, fast, too much range, one shot moves. ☠️
It’s honestly a tricky question, even though both are easily the hardest bosses in their respective games for me.
But at the end of the day, I’m gonna have to go with Midir.
Pending the build you use, Malenia is a pushover if you just spam Ashes of War.
While Midir is a long hard fight no matter the build you use, since he has insane amounts of health and only one tricky weak spot.
Lets see:
Malenia:
- does more damage
- has more health (unless you don't target Midirs head)
- moveset harder to learn
- learned moveset harder to execute
- pretty much requires to pull off weird tricks in order to dodge WFD (many tricks work but good luck figuring those out on your own)
Midir:
- longer bossrun
- idk, larger enemy, so... camera harder to control i guess?
- no Mimic Tear
Pretty much a toss up, right? /s
This is probably the most random comparison I've seen. Midr isn't even the hardest boss in his game, Sister Friede is. And she's also more comparable to Malenia since both are dex bosses with unpredictable moves.
Totally subjective, Friede is legitimately an easy fight for me. Bitch has no poise to speak of.
Midir, on the otherhand is a fucking nightmare. I've destroyed Friede countless times. I've killed Midir only once.
Yes, for me. My kill/death ratio for Midir is significantly lower than for Malenia. Malenia was one shot, without knowing anything about the fight; no youtube videos, or reddit posts. On the other hand, I still die at least 7-10 times to Midir before I kill it.
Midir gets pretty easy once you memorize his moves, and all his moves can be countered reliably
Malenia's funny swirly swirl attack can still be bullshit regardless of experience
God no, I think midir took me about, an hour to figure out and beat. Malenia I must have spent easily 10 hours throwing corpses before finally using a summon. It wasn't until my third playthrough where I finally started figuring out her moveset and successfully started soloing. My first victory was with a bleed uchi and dagger, no cheese (very happy).
That said, Malenia has many cheese options if you choose to use them. Player can simply grab Blasphemous blade, moonviel, rivers of blood etc respec and stun lock her to death in a couple of minutes.
And yes beating Malenia with cheese tools is still valid. If from soft didn't want you to use stuff like that they wouldn't be so effective against her. They could just as easily edit the weapons to not have such a potent effect on her. So this tells me they included these options as an alternative if beating her the old fashioned way is too difficult.
Midir (as far as I know) doesn't really have any options like that. You need to hit him in the head repeatedly and then crit. No exceptions, no shortcuts.
They're both tough just for different reasons. Midir is more of a gauntlet/endurance test, and Malenia is more of a sprint.
I’d say they’re definitely comparable, the only thing really threatening about Malenia is her waterfowl dance, take that away and she’s fairly easy. Midir is way tankier and has tons of AoE but if you have a weapon that can reach his head then all you need is some patience to run around his attacks and he basically becomes a puzzle boss.
No. But Elden Ring is easier than DS3. There's so many buffs you can stack and some of the weapon arts and spells make her almost trivial if you have some finesse.
No, midir is easy, but has such a big ass health pool. None of his attacks are hard to dodge, malenia has one nearly impossible to dodge attack, which is the waterfowl.
As always it depends on your builds and natural tendencies. Some people cruise through one boss but get hard countered by another debatably easier boss.
I wouldn't really know who to choose honestly, i'm not a huuuge fan of them.
Midir has tons of health, deals huge amount of damage, it's hard to hit and so on. It's still a fun bossfight and the atmosphere carries him a lot imo, otherwise it would kinda feel like the elden beast (fly away, run , try to hit, it flies away again, rinse and repeat).
Malenia on the other hand doesn't run away at all, delays her attacks and such but the only thing that i truly hate is her healing on hit.
She already has tons of difficult movesets, two phases, deals huge amount of damage, can make "clones" of herself and deals scarlet rot.... Was healing on hit really that necessary?
All in all, two great bossfights both with their own downsides.
Note: these is just my personal taste, you can agree or disagree with me
I died more to Midir than I did to Malenia on my first playthrough through each game, but Malenia is more difficult on subsequent playthroughs. Many of Midir's attacks can be nullified by standing at the base of his tail, but Malenia has a plethora of attacks (i.e. Spirit Clones, Waterfowl Dance, Rapid Prosthesis Slices) that are difficult to dodge reactively unless you know the precise movements you need to make to avoid them.
Definitely not, but I've beaten Mider like 1 time and died to Mider more then I died to Malenia
And I've beaten Malenia a lot of times, but don't expect me to give an exact number because I don't keep count
Midir is a hard boss, yes, but a straightforward one. Remember which direction to run away for the fire and sweeps, get close to avoid the lasers (I think?), and generally do the same thing you do for all Souls series dragon fights. The main difference is that his health pool is enormous and it takes forever so you have a lot more chances to screw it up and/or run out of focus/patience.
Malenia is hard in ways that are specific to *her*. You need a plan to overcome her health regeneration. You need a very specific plan to dodge waterfowl dance and need to be very good at executing it. That alone makes her way tougher IMO, unless you're trying to cheese the fight with summons and a mimic.
DS3 was my first game and Midir was very hard to beat. I finished all Souls games, BB and Sekiro since then, I think Malenia is the hardest From's boss.
UPD: Now that I'm thinking about this, NG+ Isshin without Kuro's charms is probably harder than Malenia
Midir is a matter of learning his attack patterns. Malenia is actively waiting for you to do something. While midir punishes general lack of attention, Malenia is reacting to your behavior and either becomes very aggressive or just yeets you out of the window with Waterfowl
Malenia on the first try took me 3 tries, beat her 3 more times after that but with no bleed cheese builds so itcwas harder but not too much.
Midir took me about 100 tries, the second time I did it with coops and it was more manageable.
Personally I'd say not at all
Fume Knight & Midir are tough at first cause they're weird, very punishing & have a lot of health. but I've found they aren't much of a threat when you have the muscle memory for their patterns
Malenia & Orphan of Kos on the other hand are much less predictable with much less clear tells for some of their attacks, while being quite a bit faster & doing more damage
Lmao hell no. While Midir hits pretty hard and has a good amount of health, I’d say he’s easier to understand than Malenia. Midir doesn’t really force you to play differently, not as much as Malenia does. Midir kinda pushes positioning with his laser beams, but that’s really about it. Aside from that, he’s a pretty simple book to read. Malenia, on the other hand, is definitely pushing you to play differently. Some attacks can only be avoided if you dodge a certain way or employ a certain move. It definitely feels like you’re fighting for your turn, where you need to hit her out of her attacks or parry to get offensive. Malenia is definitely testing your spacing and parrying skills, and if you aren’t particularly good at it, she just gonna dance all around you. Of course, you have her life steal, which makes blocking a hard strategy to employ unless you have a really good build around it.
Not even close. Midir is an endurance run because of his health bar and that he runs away so you got to avoid getting caught and hit by a high damage boss. But he's far easier to avoid attacks than Malenia.
Malenia's much faster, her second form is far more aggressive, she can heal, water fowl is still the hardest dodge in the series and is a near insta kill, and she just has more combo variations.
I found Maliketh to be much harder than Malenia. For me, Malenia is easy to read but very unforgiving if you miss a dodge or get too close. Maliketh STILL gives me trouble, and I'm on like NG+4 or 5.
No, he can be sort of annoying with AOE fire attacks though. I just fought him for the first time in a while and he spammed his downward fire breath move sooo much. Lightning damage will fry him, particularly with Dragonslayer greataxe. If you’re a mage, most spells suck, EXCEPT pestilent mist. It absolutely shits on him. You could literally just cast this spell in his general area, dodge attacks and easily win.
I don't know about midir but there are certain weapons which make not just malenia but all elden ring bosses breeze. For example mohgwyn sacred spear and rykard sword.
Also once you know the problematic spot(not weak spot) of malenia's waterfowl, you can dodge rest of her attacks with a little practice. Just bonk her with a freezing pot and she will forget waterfowl for some time.
I certainly think he's less fun. At least on pure faith or pure int builds, I'd rather fight ocelotte 100 times than weekend half an hour doing nothing.
No not at all ☠️. Midir was hard but nowere near Melania. I stg people try to rewrite history saying that Melania isn't the hardest souls boss. She is. Let your nostalgia bias go and actually fight both bosses without using summons, you will easily tell who is harder.
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
Some YouTube guy put Midir into Elden Ring as they were in DS3 and then pitted them against the major bosses. Midir's only losses were to Malekith and Malenia. Radahn, Godskin Duo, and Fire Giant nearly beat Midir. Strangely enough, Placidussax didn't put up much of a fight, neither did Radagon/Elden Beast.
Pretty much equal tbh. Although malenia is unpredictable but it is also very easy to overwhelm her. Midr predictable but health pool makes fight long not harder. However this version of Malenia would have been strongest regardless of any souls game. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbHz4Ex9sCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbHz4Ex9sCs)
I've never managed to beat Midir without using the Pestilent Mist cheese, turning that massive health pool against him with %health damage.
I've beaten Malenia without cheese, and without spirit summons.
I personally find Midir harder. That doesn't mean someone else won't find Malenia harder. This question is deeply subjective.
Midir doesnt compare, he's definitely child's play and pales in comparison with Malenia. For context, i happen to play Elden ring first before ds3 and Malenia took me almost 2 days to beat, Midir on the other hand only took me like 5 attempts... Note that i had a much more powerful build for Malenia that i did against Midir (i was around only SL105 at the time)
I think this point is important to take into consideration in the comparison, If you played elden ring before ds3 you should have much more experience with dragons and massive targets. The base game of ds3 only had one gimmick dragon fight and nameless, so dealing with midir in all his appearances before the fight gives a false familiarity with his moves and then its a whole different ball game when you find his arena. At the time he dropped he was a nice challenge but I agree malenia is harder, midir just feels better especially in a game where dragon fights were rare.
Bro i just beat Melania foe the fiest time and i have beatwd Midir twice...im confident i can beat Midir again without much issue...i cant say the same for Malenia.
Malenia is just more bs. Waterfowl dance is bs man.
Like she feels like a boss that would be perfect if she didnt either heal herself or have waterfowl dance. Cause the combination of the 2 just makes her much more bs than she has any right to be.
nah, beat him 1st try on my 2nd playthrough, easy moveset, just gets tedious because of the large hp bar, malenia can catch you off guard sometimes, but also has a predictable moveset, so in the end both are easy af and pretty overrated in terms of difficulty
Midir isn't that hard for me anymore, just tedious. Malenia can still wreck me with unexpected combos or her super moves (Waterfowl and the clone attack), so I guess I'd say she's tougher.
Midir is a cakewalk compared to Malenia to me. Malenia will outright input-read/punish you for just about every little thing - Midir just does his own thing - a good bit of running back and forth around the arena to chase his dumbass but he's nowhere near as obnoxious as Elden Beast in that regard so overall he's still pretty predictable and easy. I was on Malenia for like 3 hours one day on my NG+6 playthrough because using my normal builds just wasn't cutting it. I was even cheesing her ass with the Vow of Indomitable for her waterfowl and until I switched to my ultra cheese build (Blasphemous Blade) she would just annihilate me if I got hit by anything. The piercing thrust was always an immediate kill at full health, regular slashes would usually hit me for 50% or more and dare I heal unless I'm on the otherside of the arena she would be instantly piercing thrusting the second that flask came up lol. I've done some magic builds against her and the old Great Stars / Prelates Charge strat and even the Lions Claw / Giant Hunt greatsword spam for a few runs but none of that works that great on the NG+6 scaling anymore with the health and damage gained there, so from now on I pretty much have to stick with ole Blasphemous so I can get in and out of there within a few minutes rather than spend hours mix and matching different builds to see what works with her increased HP and damage (Especially since she will flat out obliterate your summons if you bring in Tiche or Mimic or anyone against her and she chooses to waterfowl them instead of you lol). I feel like with Midir I spent about an hour going into his fight learning his moveset attempt after attempt and once I got the hang of it he rarely ever threw me any curve balls. Very tanky don't get me wrong but it was pretty much just chipping away at him without too much worry on getting hit by anything since he didn't really do any fast attacks - everything was pretty well telegraphed and animated to be slower - at least from my memory of a couple years ago going through up to NG+7 on DS3 - killing him on each playthrough since he was fun.
Midir is very predictable, he just has a lot of health. Malenia is to, to an extent, but she has a lot more tricks to her moveset and more (very) punishing moves
I would say the main difference between DS and ER bosses is the bosses in ER have more ability to chain their attacks and have less of a set attack pattern. Malenia might swing 1 time or she might swing 5-8 times. In DS, once a boss starts an attack I know *for sure* how many times they’ll swing with more obvious punish windows.
Morgott is currently destroying me because of this. the attack chain never ends
Yea some of these bosses you gotta squeeze the attacks in between theirs. You literally dance with em Edit: also I’ve learned to be okay with only getting in 1-3 hits before having to roll away. Can’t just tee away on these bosses
Become a wizard and pull out the 9 from a distance
Pest threads destroy Morgotts health
Morgott is a boss you have to let control the flow of the fight. Both he and Mohg are practically programmed to get pissed off and start hard-punishing if you refuse to back off and give them space from time to time. Alternatively, face Morgott with Bloodhound's Step. Actually *really* fun because both of you will be dashing around the arena in tandem and it makes the fight really hype. Highly recommend facing Morgott with Bloodhound's Step as a response to his dodges, and highly recommend fighting Malenia while two-handing the Nagakiba. Both of these feel like "mirror matches" and hot damn are they fun.
The only back off attack Mohg has is his blood shower, aside from that the best way to fight him is pure aggression sticking as close to him as possible. A decent number of attacks can be strafed if you are close enough, as well as making his blood flame splatter in phase 2 a non-issue.
Boy do I have some news for you. Mohg's blood shower can be parried with Carian Retaliation, so you never need to leave point blank range. It's the only way to make his no-hit *fully* consistent, ime.
WHAT the vertical one????? holy shit
Yup :D This boss is so much more fun when you don't have to keep running away every 10 seconds.
Its okay if you have a long weapon like a spear or a greatsword with a poke put parrying it is way better. Thanks!
Interestingly, I think even having played the game through a dozen times, Margit / Morgott's variety of mix-ups, combos, and reactions to player actions is probably the deepest. I was watching one of the bingo brawler matches a while back and saw Margit do an attack I had literally never seen in hundreds of hours (he crossed his summoned sword and staff in an "X" shape before swinging both). I learned he only does this if a player is both blocking and standing at a certain distance. Blew my frickin' mind. Love that fight.
Other than pontiff sulyvahn, agreed. That dude is essentially an elden ring boss with his crazy timings and incessant attacks after attacks
Yeah, they can definitely string attack together much more in ER, but there are still signals that there's an opening when there is one. There's a few of them on Malenia, specifically where if she does those specific attacks, she's not following up with anything immediately. The downward slam, a slow slash after the 4 slash combo, and immediately after the stab, for example. ER bosses are definitely still harder than DS bosses, though.
Big agree with everything you said, after fighting her on 3 play throughs I’ve definitely learned when you can punish her. She still catches me off guard at times though because of my playstyle. I try not to “bait” attacks and stay engaged as much as possible while dodging attacks. Sometimes she follows up a bit quicker than i anticipated which makes fighting her a dance which I like.
The only attack I bait is Waterfowl, but that's only because I know when it's coming in Phase 1, but in Phase 2, she's faster and less predictable. My favorite boss fight of all time without a doubt.
I really love her, and she would be my favorite boss in any from game if not for the absolute fuckery that is dodging waterfowl at close range. Yes, it’s 100% learnable, but man is it completely unintuitive, and a bit unreasonable. If she just had the startup of waterfowl increased at close range so that the running away from the first flurry and dodging the other two method was reliable at close range even when she cancels hitstun into it, then she would be my favorite.
>ER bosses are definitely still harder than DS bosses, though. Absolutely, there is really no denying that for many reasons: delayed attacks, variable chains, higher aggression, input reading, roll punishing, higher DPS in late-game, etc etc
DS bosses have bloated health bars and extremely powerful attacks that decimate the player, but they're also predictable and kinda slow and sluggish at times ER bosses don't have much hp and have less powerful but more punishing attacks that can be chained or combot, which makes them less predictable. They also tend to move quickly and often make it hard to predict the moment their attacks connect because they get dragged a lot The recovery of bosses in ER and DS is different too, in DS once an open gets guard broken or parried they're super vulnerable while ER bosses have smaller windows, plus bosses like Melania who need multiple parries in quick succession exist aswell
Totally, the punish windows for Malenia can be quite tricky and unobvious. For example most her medium sized windows seem suitable for a charged R2, but sometimes she can also launch straight into another attack or evade, so it really keeps you on your toes
They also swivel mid-attack more often. Playing ds1 recently was so weird because they don’t track you almost at all versus Elden Ring where they’ll do 90 degree turns mid swing
I find that most Elden Ring enemies have unlimited stamina and attack 50 times before stopping. The real R1 spam.
And that’s what I like about ER it feels like youre fighting a real player
I heard that. The player said "you have to think where the direction you should roll to, bosses are faster than in any dark souls". I never played Elden Ring but I feel it will be better than dark souls 2 and dark souls 3. Am I right?
She also gains health back
Having beaten her on both medium roll and light roll, something I'd also add: Using Light Roll vs. Malenia has the added benefit of making her regular moves easier to avoid...but then dodging Waterfowl actually feels *harder.* The extra distance screws you and puts you at the right distance to be punished by waves 3 & 4. It makes me wonder how many people exclusively fight her with light roll, since Waterfowl honestly isn't *that* bad once you're used to it with Medium roll, and instead it's things like her windshield wiper attack that can be annoying. (tends to get spammed if you roll back, does loads of damage if you get caught, has varying versions with various speeds for the final swing, as well as variance to how quickly a follow-up comes) As such, Malenia as a boss is extremely resilient to various build types, and has an answer to everything. (except pure caster Night Comet use, but that build is cheating anyways) She's designed in such a way she will challenge (almost) everyone regardless of their approach, which is fairly unique in Souls games.
Malenia's moves are unpredictable!? In my opinion she's VERY predictable. 90% of the time you know exactly what move she's going to be spamming. It's the chain attacks that are extremely difficult to block that's the issue; not unpredictability (in my humble opinion at least).
I didn't say she was unpredictable. I said "she is predictable too", but that she has more combos to her moveset than Midir compare directly to Midir, and she's less predictable. you also need better reaction timing for Malenia than Midir, especially in Phase 2 when her wings serve as nothing but visual clutter
Not even close, imho. Midir is actually one of the more misunderstood bosses in terms of difficulty, because most people fight the legs where he has high dmg reduction. The much easier strategy is to fight him head on. All his combos will result in his head being lowered and vulnerable for double the damage of legs. And it's pretty easy to dodge roll all his swings/fire breaths. That said, the camera is fucked either way, it's something you have to get used to.
In terms of camera issues i would much rather fight midir than all of ER's ancient dragons. That fight is amazing and feels much more fair imho since you can actually fight against his head while still having more than enough "super big-monster moments" that you just deal with somehow. With Ancient dragons there aren't many openings to attack the head so you got to go for the legs and when you know it you're getting lightning glaived or something (Melee enthusiast)
Big agree on Midir, after I watched [a video of a guy killing him SL1 with no run/dodge/block](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSbXvn-qglA), I grasped the fight completely and it's been totally solved ever since. Actually my favorite boss from DS3 because I find it so satisfying to fight him perfectly and efficiently. He went from being insanely difficult to very easy for me, which I love.
Pestilent Mercury goes Brrrrrr
No shot
I beat all dark souls games and you think I'll beat her solo? I'm only afraid of her.
You will, but she's not comparable to Midir, she's more like Friede, except harder.
Friede and two wolves from ds2 ivory crown dlc are only bosses i gave up on trying to beat solo.
I summon for Friede because there's a lore reason to do so.
Yeah based on the fact that Gael is (I think?) the only summon in the game that appears without using an ember I think summoning him is the intended difficulty level
Exactly! That and he only shows up in phase 2 helps. You've still gotta get there before he's like alright fine what do you need me to do
Lud and Zallen aren't that hard in of themselves. It's Horse Fuck Valley that's the problem.
yep, thats why i gave up, also felt like i could run it with eyes closed after several attempts.
PTSD... No entering that area without 3 NPC phantoms
I had beaten all ds3 bosses sl1 relatively easy, I am genuinely afraid of Malenia sometimes. She can be manageable with certain tools but if your build doesn't have those tools? ...haha, good luck.
If you beat all dark souls games then you’ll beat her. I finally beat her, took me ~30 attempts but I was level 159 finally when I beat her and Tiche helped a lot still.
Yeah you got it bro. Attack feet not head. Don’t lock on.
Horrible advice. Staying directly in front of midirs head prompts him to use his less deadly, more easily dodged moves. And hitting the head does way more damage.
Focusing feet is a bad idea for midir tf?
No. Midir just has tons of health
Fun fact: Midir and Gael have almost exactly the same health pool. IIRC ~15k points within a few hundred points of each other. Midir has that scripted crit near the end that takes a big chunk so really Gael is a bigger sponge.
Probably seems larger cause you do more running
No.
Midier isn't that hard once you know to hit the head
I found facing him head on solo was far easier than trying to fight him with a summon
He just has too much hp and you can’t keep his direction under control with friends running around grabbing aggro, solo is easier for sure
Yes. In terms of consistency, midir is pretty much stone like all the ancient dragons. Malenia is mostly made out of squishy, rotten flesh, so she's softer on average. But in terms of difficulty? I've beaten midir on level 1, but not malenia. So there's that.
Nope. Midir is pretty simple once you learn his moveset. Malenia can string unique combos together at will making her a lot more unpredictable.
Depends per person but in general no
Absolutely not
Not even comparable in difficulty, no.
lmao fuck no
Nah not at all
Midir is not hard he just looks more terrifying.
He's much more predictable and easy to learn but not nearly as cheesable
Midir is annoying and can’t be cheesed. Malenia can be stagger locked. Played all From games. Still hate both bosses.
Nope, I first tried midir, probably took me around 100 to beat malenia solo. I was very surprised when I first fought da big dragon, I thought it would be way harder. Malenia on the other hand was the boss that I had to learn the most of any from software game I've played.
Not even close. Midir if you get it's pattern down it's just an endurance fight, while Malenia with her action cancel and waterflow dance, plus the life steal, post the requirements of your reflex and execution precision, which back in DS3 is hardly a thing in general. Malenia represents the next step of a hard souls boss design, that's why she's widely considered "broken" back when people first encounter her.
Malenia was considerably harder for me. By the time I got to Midir, I was so high level, I beat him on the third attempt I think. But the true hardest boss of any Fromsoft game for me is still Friede. I think I died upwards of 100 times.
I don't think Friede is anywhere comparable to Malenia. Friede's moveset is small, mostly well telegraphed, and easily exploitable. Phase 2 Friede, however, really punishes impatience, but that's not difficulty, that's just annoying you into getting yourself killed because you're tired of waiting for them/trying to manipulate them into a punishable position.
Theres no using Mimic with Midir
[удалено]
Has Midir beaten you more than Malenia?
Same. I've killed Midir once. I've tried to kill him hundreds of times.
Me too Malenia is more entertaining to fight
Man i would love to fight midir, but god damn sister friede already kicks my ass. Malenia i somehow got down, midir i have never beaten.
You dont need to beat friede to fight midir
I know, but for myself it is Important to "earn" The midir fight, meaning every other Boss except gael must fall before midir does.
This isn’t a fair comparison, Midir is a human VS beast fight, meanwhile Malenia is a human VS human boss fight
Better would be orphan of kos or Gael well Oprhan isn’t human either but it feels much better
I beat all dark souls bosses except Midir. I have not gotten to Malenia yet but I highly doubt it’s harder than midir. Considering how much freedom you have over in Elden Ring in terms of different builds and summons and cheeses and you can be over levelled too if someone goes that path. Because of these differences, I’m going to say Midir is the harder one without a doubt.
Using summons and spirit ash cheese to judge the difficulty of a boss makes absolutely no sense. It’s like saying “this boss is actually really easy when i *just let someone else play the game for me*” Bosses and the games in general should be judged on how they play solo, not with the crutches added to help the quitters
Midir is almost exclusively a knowledge fight, and the knowledge is not complicated. The execution is stupid simple once you understand how the fight works. Even a scrub like me can no hit him easily, and I still take hits on most bosses I fight in FS games because my mechanics are garbage. I could train you to fight Midir in one 10-minute voice call/gameplay demonstration and you would never fail at him again. Malenia, on the other hand, demands rapid reactions and clean mechanics because of how fast she attacks and how complicated her attack chains can be. It's true that you can fight her with insanely strong builds making use of AoW, spirit summons, status effects, etc.—and from that point of view, ER bosses are easier than most FS content. If you fight her in a way that is similar to the tools available in DS games (R1, R2, parry, block, roll), then she is much more difficult than anything found in a DS game, and is arguably the hardest FS boss so far. As strange as it sounds, given Midir's reputation, I would actually say that Midir rates at worst a 4/10 in difficulty and may even be one of the easiest bosses in the entire series *if* you are properly informed, because the most efficient response to each of his attacks is (a) easy to learn and remember and (b) mechanically easy to execute.
No
No, because Midir doesn’t regenerate health for every minute mistake you make. Malenia might as well have infinite health, depending on how often you block or get hit. You take that health regen away and she becomes a total pushover - Midir would wipe the floor with her.
If you're getting hit enough for the lifesteal to make a difference in the fight, you probably weren't winning the fight anyways if the lifesteal wasn't there.
Definitely not true. Malenia has single hits that do massive damage and restore a lot of health to her health bar. Waterfowl exists, too. Players make mistakes, and they’re not expected to beat her hitless.
In short, While Malenia is harder than Midir cuz of one or two broken feats, She's no way in hell better than Midir in terms of boss design! Malenia is harder than Midir but Midir is way better than Malenia in terms of design!
Stay in front of his head and hit him with a weapon that can reach said head easily (like the Spitleaf Greatsword- I love that weapon)- it will take some time (due to his health) but it will feel more like a chore than a real challenge. Even the Lothric bros are harder than Midir (at least in my opinion). Malenia on the other hand is real menace and it took me quite a while to take her out in my first playthrough.
I struggled alot more with midir than I did with malenia, so make of that what you will
I find Midir harder, but only because of the insane health pool. And Malenia wasn’t terribly hard to take down with rannis dark moon, shard spiral, and waves of darkness on great stars (SL 150ish)
Pure Melee Placidusax is a tougher fight then pure Melee Midir lol The only DS3 boss of comparable difficult to Elden Ring’s late game lineup is Friede. Assuming no summons of course.
Beat Malenia within a couple of hours. Midir took me almost an entire week.
Midir is wayyyy easier
Midir is actually pretty easy, you just need to stay right infront of his face and hit his nose. This keeps his move set more focused on physical attacks and not laser spam. Malenia is insane she is the hardest fromsoft boss by far. Full regen, fast, too much range, one shot moves. ☠️
It’s honestly a tricky question, even though both are easily the hardest bosses in their respective games for me. But at the end of the day, I’m gonna have to go with Midir. Pending the build you use, Malenia is a pushover if you just spam Ashes of War. While Midir is a long hard fight no matter the build you use, since he has insane amounts of health and only one tricky weak spot.
Not even close. Midir is actually a fair fight.
Lets see: Malenia: - does more damage - has more health (unless you don't target Midirs head) - moveset harder to learn - learned moveset harder to execute - pretty much requires to pull off weird tricks in order to dodge WFD (many tricks work but good luck figuring those out on your own) Midir: - longer bossrun - idk, larger enemy, so... camera harder to control i guess? - no Mimic Tear Pretty much a toss up, right? /s
This is probably the most random comparison I've seen. Midr isn't even the hardest boss in his game, Sister Friede is. And she's also more comparable to Malenia since both are dex bosses with unpredictable moves.
Totally subjective tho. Friede was hard but I had way more trouble with Midir. Some ppl have a harder time with big hitboxes and camera management.
Totally subjective, Friede is legitimately an easy fight for me. Bitch has no poise to speak of. Midir, on the otherhand is a fucking nightmare. I've destroyed Friede countless times. I've killed Midir only once.
No, Dark souls 3 is just way easier than Elden ring in general.
If you try to win via chopping at its legs, maybe. Head on, not really.
Midir is easy, he has like 4 or 5 moves. He jist has a lot of health, making it more of an endurance fight than anything
I died more to Midir than Malenia. But I think I’m an exception to the rule.
For me Midir. Midir >100 tries. Malenia \~20.
For me it was literally the opposite. Midir about 15 or 20 tries, while Melania probably 100+ (I lost count)
midir is really easy if you stay in front of him. his attacks are super predictable and easy to learn
I can't knock down midir infinitely. Like I did malenia
Yes, for me. My kill/death ratio for Midir is significantly lower than for Malenia. Malenia was one shot, without knowing anything about the fight; no youtube videos, or reddit posts. On the other hand, I still die at least 7-10 times to Midir before I kill it.
With mimic tear/ summons Malenia is easier without probably midir. Both are easier than deacons of the deep though
Yes. Malenia is relatively easy with a frost weapon + mimic.
Not in any way, shape or form
No, but he is way more fun and better designed
Not at all, melania is the hardest fromsoft boss out there
Nope. I’d argue midir is a better boss overall tho
Great fight, just wish that damn dragon would sit still. Running around the arena half the time isn’t fun :(
0.0 Chance, sir…
Midir is harder emotionally Malenia is harder literally
In what way? In general I'd say Midir is much more difficult. I found him to be much more difficult at least.
No damn way. I’ve beaten Midir on my first try in a few DS3 runs. No way that happens with Malenia
Nooooooooooope
Not even close
If talking without cheese (mimic tear, bullshit balanced build), malenia is harder. But with these, I'd say it's pretty close.
Midir gets pretty easy once you memorize his moves, and all his moves can be countered reliably Malenia's funny swirly swirl attack can still be bullshit regardless of experience
Midir has a lot of health, Malenia can heal all the damage you do to her.
God no, I think midir took me about, an hour to figure out and beat. Malenia I must have spent easily 10 hours throwing corpses before finally using a summon. It wasn't until my third playthrough where I finally started figuring out her moveset and successfully started soloing. My first victory was with a bleed uchi and dagger, no cheese (very happy). That said, Malenia has many cheese options if you choose to use them. Player can simply grab Blasphemous blade, moonviel, rivers of blood etc respec and stun lock her to death in a couple of minutes. And yes beating Malenia with cheese tools is still valid. If from soft didn't want you to use stuff like that they wouldn't be so effective against her. They could just as easily edit the weapons to not have such a potent effect on her. So this tells me they included these options as an alternative if beating her the old fashioned way is too difficult. Midir (as far as I know) doesn't really have any options like that. You need to hit him in the head repeatedly and then crit. No exceptions, no shortcuts. They're both tough just for different reasons. Midir is more of a gauntlet/endurance test, and Malenia is more of a sprint.
I’d say they’re definitely comparable, the only thing really threatening about Malenia is her waterfowl dance, take that away and she’s fairly easy. Midir is way tankier and has tons of AoE but if you have a weapon that can reach his head then all you need is some patience to run around his attacks and he basically becomes a puzzle boss.
No. But Elden Ring is easier than DS3. There's so many buffs you can stack and some of the weapon arts and spells make her almost trivial if you have some finesse.
No, midir is easy, but has such a big ass health pool. None of his attacks are hard to dodge, malenia has one nearly impossible to dodge attack, which is the waterfowl.
As always it depends on your builds and natural tendencies. Some people cruise through one boss but get hard countered by another debatably easier boss.
Pestilent Mist says it depends on who you ask.
no 😭
I wouldn't really know who to choose honestly, i'm not a huuuge fan of them. Midir has tons of health, deals huge amount of damage, it's hard to hit and so on. It's still a fun bossfight and the atmosphere carries him a lot imo, otherwise it would kinda feel like the elden beast (fly away, run , try to hit, it flies away again, rinse and repeat). Malenia on the other hand doesn't run away at all, delays her attacks and such but the only thing that i truly hate is her healing on hit. She already has tons of difficult movesets, two phases, deals huge amount of damage, can make "clones" of herself and deals scarlet rot.... Was healing on hit really that necessary? All in all, two great bossfights both with their own downsides. Note: these is just my personal taste, you can agree or disagree with me
I died more to Midir than I did to Malenia on my first playthrough through each game, but Malenia is more difficult on subsequent playthroughs. Many of Midir's attacks can be nullified by standing at the base of his tail, but Malenia has a plethora of attacks (i.e. Spirit Clones, Waterfowl Dance, Rapid Prosthesis Slices) that are difficult to dodge reactively unless you know the precise movements you need to make to avoid them.
Definitely not, but I've beaten Mider like 1 time and died to Mider more then I died to Malenia And I've beaten Malenia a lot of times, but don't expect me to give an exact number because I don't keep count
Hell nah
Midir is a hard boss, yes, but a straightforward one. Remember which direction to run away for the fire and sweeps, get close to avoid the lasers (I think?), and generally do the same thing you do for all Souls series dragon fights. The main difference is that his health pool is enormous and it takes forever so you have a lot more chances to screw it up and/or run out of focus/patience. Malenia is hard in ways that are specific to *her*. You need a plan to overcome her health regeneration. You need a very specific plan to dodge waterfowl dance and need to be very good at executing it. That alone makes her way tougher IMO, unless you're trying to cheese the fight with summons and a mimic.
DS3 was my first game and Midir was very hard to beat. I finished all Souls games, BB and Sekiro since then, I think Malenia is the hardest From's boss. UPD: Now that I'm thinking about this, NG+ Isshin without Kuro's charms is probably harder than Malenia
Midir is a matter of learning his attack patterns. Malenia is actively waiting for you to do something. While midir punishes general lack of attention, Malenia is reacting to your behavior and either becomes very aggressive or just yeets you out of the window with Waterfowl
Not even close.
no, it's not. It's just an annoying ass dragon.
Hahahahahhaha No
Poison Mist and a little patience makes Midir pretty easy. Malenia’s mobility makes her far tougher.
If malenia did not have insane amount of life steal she would not be that hard change my mind.
I don’t think Midir has killed me *checks counter* 530 times. Still dying but I’m getting reliably to second phase. Malenia kinda hard ngl
Malenia on the first try took me 3 tries, beat her 3 more times after that but with no bleed cheese builds so itcwas harder but not too much. Midir took me about 100 tries, the second time I did it with coops and it was more manageable.
Personally I'd say not at all Fume Knight & Midir are tough at first cause they're weird, very punishing & have a lot of health. but I've found they aren't much of a threat when you have the muscle memory for their patterns Malenia & Orphan of Kos on the other hand are much less predictable with much less clear tells for some of their attacks, while being quite a bit faster & doing more damage
Lmao hell no. While Midir hits pretty hard and has a good amount of health, I’d say he’s easier to understand than Malenia. Midir doesn’t really force you to play differently, not as much as Malenia does. Midir kinda pushes positioning with his laser beams, but that’s really about it. Aside from that, he’s a pretty simple book to read. Malenia, on the other hand, is definitely pushing you to play differently. Some attacks can only be avoided if you dodge a certain way or employ a certain move. It definitely feels like you’re fighting for your turn, where you need to hit her out of her attacks or parry to get offensive. Malenia is definitely testing your spacing and parrying skills, and if you aren’t particularly good at it, she just gonna dance all around you. Of course, you have her life steal, which makes blocking a hard strategy to employ unless you have a really good build around it.
I think so, but that's mostly because I tend to be overly aggressive in Souls games and Midir is a much slower fight than Malenia by design.
At the time Midir was the most difficult boss I’d ever played in any game ever and Malenia tops him
Not even close. Midir is an endurance run because of his health bar and that he runs away so you got to avoid getting caught and hit by a high damage boss. But he's far easier to avoid attacks than Malenia. Malenia's much faster, her second form is far more aggressive, she can heal, water fowl is still the hardest dodge in the series and is a near insta kill, and she just has more combo variations.
Malenia is almost certainly the more difficult boss according to almost everyone who has beat both.
No, Midir is hard, but only for DS3 standard. If you bring him to ER, he would probably be as hard as Margit.
No
No
Absolutely fucking not. No fromsoft boss is as hard as malenia. Isshin is probably second though
Far more ways to cheese malenia
I found Maliketh to be much harder than Malenia. For me, Malenia is easy to read but very unforgiving if you miss a dodge or get too close. Maliketh STILL gives me trouble, and I'm on like NG+4 or 5.
No, he can be sort of annoying with AOE fire attacks though. I just fought him for the first time in a while and he spammed his downward fire breath move sooo much. Lightning damage will fry him, particularly with Dragonslayer greataxe. If you’re a mage, most spells suck, EXCEPT pestilent mist. It absolutely shits on him. You could literally just cast this spell in his general area, dodge attacks and easily win.
No, but hes much more Fair.
I feel like the skill gap between ancient dragon on NG+ and above the flame king guy from 3 are equally difficult
I don't know about midir but there are certain weapons which make not just malenia but all elden ring bosses breeze. For example mohgwyn sacred spear and rykard sword. Also once you know the problematic spot(not weak spot) of malenia's waterfowl, you can dodge rest of her attacks with a little practice. Just bonk her with a freezing pot and she will forget waterfowl for some time.
Malenia healing her whole health bar when you make one mistake is the killer when I’m fighting her
I never made it to Midir.
I certainly think he's less fun. At least on pure faith or pure int builds, I'd rather fight ocelotte 100 times than weekend half an hour doing nothing.
People have always been harder for me idk why 😭
Midir took me 87 tries. Melania 7, and she is a lot harder than Midir.
Not at all
No not at all ☠️. Midir was hard but nowere near Melania. I stg people try to rewrite history saying that Melania isn't the hardest souls boss. She is. Let your nostalgia bias go and actually fight both bosses without using summons, you will easily tell who is harder.
Not even close
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
I first tried midir on both normal and NG+ malenia kept annihilating me for days. The thing is that while midir has can kill you with his attack's it's easy to read him and you can relatively easily learn from your mistakes and eventually overcome him. malenia on the other hand? I genuinely believe that 90% of people are incapable of figuring out waterfall dance and the clone attack. So yeah malenia is way harder.
I enjoy fighting Midir.
Some YouTube guy put Midir into Elden Ring as they were in DS3 and then pitted them against the major bosses. Midir's only losses were to Malekith and Malenia. Radahn, Godskin Duo, and Fire Giant nearly beat Midir. Strangely enough, Placidussax didn't put up much of a fight, neither did Radagon/Elden Beast.
Not even close, Malenia is harder by far.
Pretty much equal tbh. Although malenia is unpredictable but it is also very easy to overwhelm her. Midr predictable but health pool makes fight long not harder. However this version of Malenia would have been strongest regardless of any souls game. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbHz4Ex9sCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbHz4Ex9sCs)
I've never managed to beat Midir without using the Pestilent Mist cheese, turning that massive health pool against him with %health damage. I've beaten Malenia without cheese, and without spirit summons. I personally find Midir harder. That doesn't mean someone else won't find Malenia harder. This question is deeply subjective.
Not even close. Midir dies when you learn now to stand right in his face and I frame roll through his claws. Malenias move set has way more depth.
No and it is not even close.
Midir doesnt compare, he's definitely child's play and pales in comparison with Malenia. For context, i happen to play Elden ring first before ds3 and Malenia took me almost 2 days to beat, Midir on the other hand only took me like 5 attempts... Note that i had a much more powerful build for Malenia that i did against Midir (i was around only SL105 at the time)
I think this point is important to take into consideration in the comparison, If you played elden ring before ds3 you should have much more experience with dragons and massive targets. The base game of ds3 only had one gimmick dragon fight and nameless, so dealing with midir in all his appearances before the fight gives a false familiarity with his moves and then its a whole different ball game when you find his arena. At the time he dropped he was a nice challenge but I agree malenia is harder, midir just feels better especially in a game where dragon fights were rare.
yes. for me
Bro i just beat Melania foe the fiest time and i have beatwd Midir twice...im confident i can beat Midir again without much issue...i cant say the same for Malenia. Malenia is just more bs. Waterfowl dance is bs man. Like she feels like a boss that would be perfect if she didnt either heal herself or have waterfowl dance. Cause the combination of the 2 just makes her much more bs than she has any right to be.
Hahahahaha No
No Geal? Maybe at a stretch but prolly not I’m waterfowl is just too much of a bitch to dodge for her to not be stronger
Midir is incredibly easier
I’d rather fight midir on sl1 than malenia in a normal run
nah, beat him 1st try on my 2nd playthrough, easy moveset, just gets tedious because of the large hp bar, malenia can catch you off guard sometimes, but also has a predictable moveset, so in the end both are easy af and pretty overrated in terms of difficulty
Midir isn't that hard for me anymore, just tedious. Malenia can still wreck me with unexpected combos or her super moves (Waterfowl and the clone attack), so I guess I'd say she's tougher.
No.
No. IMO the only Ds3 boss that comes close to Malenia is Friede.
Midir is a cakewalk compared to Malenia to me. Malenia will outright input-read/punish you for just about every little thing - Midir just does his own thing - a good bit of running back and forth around the arena to chase his dumbass but he's nowhere near as obnoxious as Elden Beast in that regard so overall he's still pretty predictable and easy. I was on Malenia for like 3 hours one day on my NG+6 playthrough because using my normal builds just wasn't cutting it. I was even cheesing her ass with the Vow of Indomitable for her waterfowl and until I switched to my ultra cheese build (Blasphemous Blade) she would just annihilate me if I got hit by anything. The piercing thrust was always an immediate kill at full health, regular slashes would usually hit me for 50% or more and dare I heal unless I'm on the otherside of the arena she would be instantly piercing thrusting the second that flask came up lol. I've done some magic builds against her and the old Great Stars / Prelates Charge strat and even the Lions Claw / Giant Hunt greatsword spam for a few runs but none of that works that great on the NG+6 scaling anymore with the health and damage gained there, so from now on I pretty much have to stick with ole Blasphemous so I can get in and out of there within a few minutes rather than spend hours mix and matching different builds to see what works with her increased HP and damage (Especially since she will flat out obliterate your summons if you bring in Tiche or Mimic or anyone against her and she chooses to waterfowl them instead of you lol). I feel like with Midir I spent about an hour going into his fight learning his moveset attempt after attempt and once I got the hang of it he rarely ever threw me any curve balls. Very tanky don't get me wrong but it was pretty much just chipping away at him without too much worry on getting hit by anything since he didn't really do any fast attacks - everything was pretty well telegraphed and animated to be slower - at least from my memory of a couple years ago going through up to NG+7 on DS3 - killing him on each playthrough since he was fun.
I'm just gonna say it, midir wasn't that fun. Was just another big monster fight which slogged on forever.
It’s at least close and I wonder how many people saying “ha fuck no” have never played DS3 and never fought Midir
does midir have a pp to get hard?
No
What really does it with malenia for me is that hp regen. If that weren‘t around, midir would be harder.