Playing through the dlc I was wondering are spirit ashes the easy mode or are the bosses actually balanced around them? I had an issue with elden ring bosses being so hyper aggressive in fights with attack chains that last 3 months giving you a window for like 5 seconds to attack which as a strength user seemingly was impossible to do anything without a not strength build. Taking any boss head on feels like a challenge run in an older fromsoft games some elden ring bosses gave me more shit than sekiro.
But when I summon the fight actually kinda feels balanced around it. The attack chain agro being taken away momentarily so you can deliver some damage then playing a kind of hot potato until the fight ends.
Usually easy modes in fromsoft games are a limited resource, humanity for summoning players that also puts you at risk of invasion or finite use healing items to use when you run out of flasks (not ds2) the concept was to make the game easier there needed to be a risk nothing was given for free.
Now that’s what’s strange about spirit summons, they’re practically free. Outside of a little fp/hp cost there is no risk and no drawback to summoning them. Which makes me wonder if the game was intentionally balanced around players using them for every boss fight.
Thoughts?
I feel like the game was absolutely balanced to an extent around spirit summons - especially the NPC companion ones you can get for certain bosses like Rogier for Margrit. If a NPC has a summon, I’m summoning them every time if I have trouble soloing the boss but I will usually rarely also do a spirit ash; but I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with doing so.
dlc spoiler
and if I’m being honest, I went into the DLC with a lvl150 fucking dex/faith/int build and the goddamn moonveil katana because I’d apparently been fucking around with a really annoying blackflame pvp build at some point in between putting the game down like a year ago and picking it back up for the DLC this weekend. And I got so mad dying to Rellana for the like 30th time in a row that I went ‘ok fine fuck it’, equipped Mimic Tear +8, summoned Leda the NPC and used Golden Vow on her, walked into the boss and immediately summoned my mimic. watched in awe as they fucking ganged up on her as I just used the Magma Breath incantation, rolled 15 feet away and spammed black flame/blade & spinning disc incantations with the occasional flask refill at her until she died. kinda trivialized like 90% of the fight because I would just camp on the sides throwing blackflame and when she’d attack, run away from her going ‘help help!!!’ until she realized Leda and my mimic were still throwing shit at her & resumed fighting them. Immediately clipped it and sent it to my tryhard friends & they were actually irate with me but fuck it I’ve fully embraced the ‘useless priest’ RP I’m doing through the DLC. There’s nothing wrong with doing this - the game was built with these mechanics in mind. If Miyazaki cared about me spamming Black Blade that much, he’d patch it out of the game!!! Hope this helps: https://streamable.com/lp6gwy
This is pretty much what I did with Malenia when I had enough with the bullshit. Black knife tiche and some black flame buff just deletes health and I actually had to not use her in the DLC cos the DLC buff things made her a bit too powerful.
Mimic is nicely balanced atm and provides a nice companion who isn’t too op.
Also that boss looks suspiciously like Pontiff Sullyvhan
Yeah her weapon is literally just his combined into a single greatsword that can be two-handed, ash of war and all. it has become my main weapon sadly because rule of cool (and because light greatswords are fucking op!!!)