To be clear, by 'figure out patterns' do you mean knowing that you can dodge roll towards waterfowl between the second and third step to evade it, or knowing how to make her do nothing but kicks in phase 2 and never using her ground combo in the entire fight.
You are not arguing in good faith. I already mentioned that Waterfowl is an exception, so why bring that up? Is it because you know it's the ONLY legit bullshit move FromSoft came up with?
Ditto for learning to parry like... any fucking boss? Because half their shit can't be parried and there's no way to tell the difference between a bad timing and a move that just ignores parries.
This is actually not true. FromSoft gives you plenty of clues and even go out of their way to indicate that something is parriable when you wouldn't expect it.
Look at my fight with Morgott:
His attacks have a very long wind up for a reason, same for Crucible Knights where the game is actually begging you to parry them since it's such a pain in the ass to kill them any other way. Another example is the spear Crystalians, or those fat Godskin Nobles, which even have a double parriable attack, obviously to give you the chance to parry the second swing if you miss the first. And don't forget the one you encounter on the bridge, where you have no room to dodge his stabbing strikes which is another clue you are expected to parry him.
But to return to Morgott, check what happens at the 1:00 mark. He lounges forward for his first "undodgeable" flurry combo right after his rain of knives or whatever that is and if you pay attention his sword flashes right as he is about to rush towards you, which is a big give away (he actually attacks with his sword thrusting forward while his magic hammer is over his shoulder and it's really obvious what FromSoft is expecting you to do). A single well placed parry can stop the entire sequence in its tracks, and i'm pretty sure that was always the intended way.
The second undodgeable combo is even easier, all you need to do is get behind him as soon as you see him raise his sword and magic knife and you can roll out of his attack pretty much through the entire sequence, which you can see at around 2:30.
This is one of the things i think that is tripping people up a bit in Elden Ring. After Dark Souls 3 they probably figured they had to go beyond the roll-fu stuff otherwise the combat would start to feel trivial. All the delayed attacks, the long combos, the use of hyperarmor, attacks that need to be either parried or jumped over, the use of positioning etc, the exploitation of the stagger mechanic, it's all factored in now. I suspect they also did this to try to make it feel this game is not exactly the same as Dark Souls all though i'm not sure how successful that was.
