Malenia is already famous as one of FromSoftware’s most evil boss encounters. But worry naught, foul tarnished. We have your back with this How to fight Malenia guide.
The Basics
The poster-girl of Elden Ring will introduce herself as undefeated in battle. Remember Caelid? That horror region and the fight against Radahn the Starscourge? She’s responsible for both, so feel free to let your anger out towards her. But fair warning at first, this boss comes in two phases, so be reasonable with your resources. Lucky for you, the closes grace is just a short spring away so you can demand a rematch instantly.
Malenia is a bit of an oddity compared to most bosses. She hits hard and regenerates 400 HP on every hit she lands, yes that also applies to hits against shields or ash summons. But she trades that for low poise and lots of openings. You can pretty safely knock her out her prosthetics, provided you have the means. Spells, incantations and weapon arts that do continuous damage, stagger and or do burst damage are the way to go. Fishing for the bleed effect with a fast weapon or applying poison, frost or anything that isn’t scarlet rot should also work.
What you are looking for is a high and fast damage output while also being able to easily create distance. The fight gets even easier if you summon other players or use ash summons. Its just important to keep the pressure up. Don’t try to slowly take turns attacking her, you just need to go all in to make sure she doesn’t even get to do her big attacks. You can also parry most of her standard moves to break her stance, this applies for both phases.
The Blade of Miquella
Most of Malenia’s standard moves are fairly easy to doge. Just keep in mind to always roll into an attack instead of away from it. Her blade is fairly long, and miss timing a roll might end up with you getting hacked into pieces from the back. She has a few long charge-up animations, which you can exploit with heavy weapons or anything that stuns and staggers. You can knock her out of pretty much everything. And it just turns into a matter of timing these right.
The move that I see people get hung up with the most, is her Waterflow dance. This is usually initiated by her jumping up and holding the attack for a moment. It’s very punishing if you are used to spamming your dodge roll, so timing is of the essence here. Once she jumps up, start running away from her while keeping her targeted. That way you should at least consistently avoid her first flurry of blows. She’ll then follow up with a second combo, roll towards her to avoid the combo. Roll towards her again to avoid the next combo and move a little bit away from her to avoid the third pulse. With a medium equipment load, this should be doable. The timing is just very specific. So you might need a few tries to get it down.
If you get caught, this attack can easily do over 1000 damage. It’ll also fill up hers. What might save you is a high poise value, which will give you some leniency when messing up one of her combos. That doesn’t save you from learning her combos.
Goddess of Rot
Once you finish her first phase, after a cutscene, Malenia will see a little make-over. She’ll always open this phase with her Scarlet Eeonia. To avoid, just run away from her till the flower has dissolved. Within the flower, she’ll apply the scarlet rot effect and continuous damage. But she’ll also sit still inside for a good while. If you have any magic, ranged status effects to apply, or throwing items use them now. She’s still fairly easy to knock down now. So make use of it. Keep in mind that her Waterflow dance will also now apply scarlet rot.
In addition to her divebomb, she can now also jump up to bombard you with scarlet rot butterflies. These track the player so make sure to mix up your rolls and don’t roll into the same direction over and over again. Best run away from her and dodge to the left then/or to the right to avoid. After that, she’ll always charge at you.
Keep in mind, while she’ll start the fight at 80% health, she can still recover it by landing hits on you or allies. So don’t get hit and attack her with the most broken spells, weapon ashes and useable in her inventory. She’s not exactly as tough as many people make her out to be. Malenia is a glass cannon that has many moves that can kill you if you just get caught once. But you can mess with her the same way.
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