Elden Ring (George RR Martin and From Software)

The main thing is being able to recognise her biggest attack, and making sure you're not spamming attacks as if you're mid-attack and she jumps up to start her attack, it's pretty much already too late to avoid it.

I also think using a summon might actually be a bad idea, as a lot of her attacks are avoidable, but she very easily switches who she's going to attack and that can be hard to read. Plus she gets health back when she hits someone, and while it's easier for the player to avoid the hits, the summons tend to just tank them and she gets health back.

Golden Vow + FGMS + maybe a weapon buff is plenty for me.

Can't be arsed being there buffing for 30-40 seconds.

Got through the Haligtree area using Mohg's spear and finally made it to Malenia. Knew it might take a few tries to get the timing right with the spear and having lost familiarity with her attack patterns.

Got her first try. The spear is just insane. I know she's weaker to bloodloss anyway, but good god damn... Feels like I cheated.

Just going to barrel through to the end now. Need to finish up the other endings for the platinum. Even just hopped on Torrent and sped through Deeproot Depths to fight the main boss there just to close it out. I think if DLC comes I'll probably jump back to my first playthrough character, though might level it up a bit more once I know DLC is coming to refamiliarise myself with the game and do some farming.

If I can do it anyone can, tbh I went farming for specific gear - Halligtree shield, raised holy defence and summoned to get past it

GET IN YA BEAUTYYYYYY

Lvl 159, 73 hours, and Hard-Carried across the finish line by the greatest man I've ever met in a video game, whoever you are 'Neil', you just helped me finish my first Souls game. Now i'm going outside to touch grass

I'm level 85 with 71 hours played. how can you be that level with that many hours? what am I doing wrong as I didn't think I was taking it slow. currently at Leyndell, Capital of Ash

Man I hate the snow place. It’s a pain

That hateful feeling when you run to avoid one of Elden Beast's AOE attacks, look back towards him, and he's shifted to the entire other side of the arena...

You're doing it wrong: farm runes up to the point where you have enough to level up, and then proceed to wonder without a care.

Summoning another player also increases the Bosses' health AFAIK. Though if the person you summon is decently strong and knows the best strats/weapons for the boss they should be able to more than negate that.

Gave up on this guy after about 3 days. Checked a walkthrough to see how much I had to play and realised I missed about 5 areas before Atlas plateau! Finished Nokron last night and starting Deeproot depths now. I'm miles from the end I realised and starting to feel burnt out. Only getting an hour most days if even so might just leave it for weekends

The game changes when you reach mountain top of the giants, there is a big spike in difficulty from there on in...everything is super tanky and areas are littered with bullshit and tedium, the fire giant was the first boss of the game that gave me real trouble, his first phase is fine, but second phase he takes almost no damage, going for his hands is the best option but they're on fire and he uses them as weapons so it's very risky, he can also one shot you with that roll he does and he has an instant kill AOE attack if you get caught in it, it took me well into double figures to beat him.

But the worst was yet to come, that commander O Niall in castle sol was just a troll boss, the whole castle was just a pain but he was the icing on the cake, he spams AOE attacks constantly and I mean constantly, 99.9% of his attacks are AOE's and I honestly couldn't find a way to punish him, I'm using a mele build and I just found it impossible, my attacks even the quick attacks were simply too slow, by the time I'd land he'd instantly catch me with something.

I ended up cheesing him with the arrow method.

I'm starting to think the game is just too big and tries to do too much, the later stages are just lazy with very artificial difficulty, they reuse bosses and sometimes combine them just to make it extra hard, it feels lazy, I mean by all means make a boss fight challenging but shoehorning a second one in just because is not the way to go imo.

Black Knife Tiche if you have her, helped me enormously. That and hiding behind an enormous shield poking him with a spear.

I was roughly the same as you at that point, and took a week away from the game, it actually made all the difference, as i was excited to be exploring again afterwards.

as for Elmer, he was tough enough I found, left him alone and went back to him when I was over 100 and had a mimic tear and gave im a proper sorting!