Guys, I never said I have a hard time against O'Neil or Niall (though I did get pancaked by O'Neil the first time, but getting there fresh by accident at circa level 20 was too soon).
Only that since the game gives you summons, and these bosses are two amongst the four ones to summon aids as soon as the fight starts, it clearly seems they're meant to be fought with your very own summons.
Seriously? The swamp one is trivial if you stay mounted and just wipe out his adds and then beat on him and it's not much more challenging if you do it while staying on foot.
use torrent to kill adds and then dismount
Wait... what? You can ride Torrent against O'Neil? I swear to god, I can never intuit where I can or can't ride the horse. Makes no sense. I can ride it when on the bridge where Godskin Noble spawns, but not on another bridge, and I can ride it inside the temple where Gurranq resides but not inside a walking mausoleum, and I can ride it against the Fire Giant but not when Alexander is there, and I can't ride it against Elden Beast but I can against O'Neill. Jesus christ, some consistency, please.
But those attacks have infinite windups that clearly tell you it's time to get the fuck away.
I wasn't saying that for me. What I meant was that upon entering his arena Niall instantly summons two knights, so I'm guessing a lot of players, like me, also summoned as a response; and almost all of Niall's attacks consist of some massive aoe that is guaranteed to obliterate most summons, who aren't really know to dodge save for the likes of Luthel and Tiche.
What I'm wondering is how the conversation at FromSoft went.
Like this:
Some random dev – "Hey boss, what if we gave the player the ability to summon their own aids?"
Miyazaki, tearing his eyes from a foot fetish site – "Cool, cool. But then we need to tool the bosses with tons of area-of-effect attack to deal with the summons. Because god knows our A.I. hasn't progressed one bit since 2009 lol."
Or:
– Hey devs, I hear players are starting to consider our games as too predictable, too easy. Don't know how, it's not like we've made the exact same re-skinned game six times in a row now, but whatevs... So what if we gave the bosses tons of area-of-effect attack? That way, even if the player stands behind the boss, he'll get hit! Nyark nyark nyark!
– But boss, please, be merciful. Think of the weak, the handicaped, and the maidenless; give them summons so that even when the players are getting their skulls caved in no matter where they stand, some minion of them might connect with a hit or two.
The commander's aggro and movement are so different from those of his minions that I still haven't found a way to fight them at the same time. For all intents and purposes, unless you're playing an extremely gimped build, both bossfights consist of two separate encounters: one against the minions and one against the commander on his own.
I really can't imagine how you (and many others) experienced these fights.
I think I had to account for the commander while fighting his minions for a grand total of 1 second in total. Rewatching the Niall video, it's clear the commander is programmed to just stand there and watch 99% of the time while you fight his guys.
Yeah, no, the three times I fought him, the dual-wieding knight charged alone but by the time I could attack after his spinny whirlwind, the other knight and Niall had closed the distance and their attacks followed one another with very little breaks.
Each time I got through it by running away, baiting one attack to parry and exploiting the invincibility during the resulting critical attack. Rince and repeat. Wasn't exactly riveting.
