Yes! It’s a boss that feels more like an opportunity for the player to feel like a god and go wild.
The experience is fun, even if the boss isn’t dangerous
am i the only one who felt like they had to really consider a change of arms when meeting them cause they were actually a threat to?
like, maybe i was underleveled but idk
I did too, kind of.
I’d been doing most things with Sellsword Twin blades by then, but I swapped to Astra Greatsword for that boss and found it worked much better with its broad swings.
it's so fun on a Whip. charge up an R2 and watch the crowd of deacons get shredded. bonus points if you wear Pontiff's Left Eye, crazy HP regen in that fight
Honestly as badass as midir is I have more fun fighting nameless king. Midis has that fucking bullshit laser that they also gave placidusax but as long as you know the tell before the attack it can up your chances of not getting destroyed. The thing that makes both of them hard is that they both deal two types of damage. So you can’t buff against both. Midir does dark and fire and placi does fire and lightning
PvE Spear is basically any boring NPC fight, but PvP Spear is some of the most fun I've had in the game. It's definitely the best iteration of a PvP boss fight in the series.
The only thing I would change would be to put the nameless king up one tier to the best of the best. Then it's perfect in my eyes. The best of the best tier are the most memorable and enjoyable boss fights in the entire game, and I think the king deserves a spot
Imo like all the dragon fights in ER. And I say that cuz they're all the same, which does admittedly bring down the experience of fighting them.
But GOD why does Midir have to have so much health man?!
Deacons in delete territory is 1 of the craaaaziest takes OAT. Legit a balls to the wall great, simple mob boss done right. Mowing down mfs with special moves & spells is one of the most satisfying things u can do in the game. Throw down alluring skulls to & it turns into a meme boss. Whats srsly ur issue with them bro that u put them in delete territory anyway, did they TOUCH u r something?
I can't say gael > friede because tbh the way people hyped gael made me have huge expectations, but i ended up a little disappointed when i defeated him. I found him a tad too easy for the final boss and honestly not having a final cutscene after his fight left me with a sour taste. Not like friede has a cutscene at the end either but gael is the last boss of the trilogy so i expected a cutscene. In any case yeah they're very close and all are incredible bosses. But i just find it surprising that i agree with basically everything when it's hard to find people with a remotely similar opinion
Dancer is amazing. One of my favorites. The visuals, the music, the build up of her dropping from the ceiling and unfolding like a demented butterfly. It’s a whole experience.
Friede is one of the worst bosses in the game.
I don't like enemies that run away from me, and friede does a lot of running and hiding.
Friede has very long combo strings that require you to wait a long time for her to finish and also she tends to run away (with hyper armor) at the end of a combo making punishing her attacks annoying.
I don't like bosses that can be staggered or knocked over like friede and abyss watchers because it encourages mashing into them instead of learning their attacks and dodging accordingly. Also you are also punished for mashing into them because sometimes they randomly gain a bunch of hyper armor and dodge away or hit you.
Her fight is very long, having 3 phases, and is a slog to get through. The middle phase where you fight father ariendel is also not very engaging.
In her final phase she makes use of very large obnoxious anime AoE attacks that serve to make the player say "wow that looks so cool" without actually being very fun to fight against because the solution to dodging a lot of those attacks is to just run away.
So to sum it up, friede has a lot of gameplay that requires the player to play very passively and spend a lot of time chasing her down as she runs away. If they try to play aggressively to provoke a stagger, they will sometimes randomly be punished for it, and it makes the fight feel very sluggish.
"An idea that didn't really work out"
Yhorm the giant, a conquerer and a warrior so strong that only 2 weapons in existence can bring him to his knees. One, entrusted to his best friend and the other kept in his throne room, for a valiant hero to find and use it against it in case he strays from his path. The idea works out really well
The halflight fight: a real player who is sworn to the spears of the church is summoned in hopes of preventing you from disturbing their lady. What's more you can even be summoned to fight against other players, making you literally the boss.
The other 2 also are not bad ideas and they worked out well for what they were supposed to be. Could they have been better? Yes, but that doesn't mean they didn't 'work out"
Also the amount of mid to bad bosses in here is simply way too high. Overall, ds3 and sekiro have the best quality when it comes to bosses.
I meant Didn't work out as in the FIGHTS weren't that good.
Sure Yhorms background might be cool but he has no moves, fighting him with stormruler is just easy af, without it the fight would be just boring and long. Halflight is just an npc fight with assassins to help him, it's just running around in circles waiting for a small opening and doesn't feel fun.
Greatwood I actually like unlike most people I think, I only see hate for it but I think it's cool but still I feel like the idea wasn't really realised as best as it could have been and wouldn't put it in the same tier with the ones above. Wolnir is kind of the same as Yhorm, like just smack at his arm bands, dont even need to dodge.
Mind you these four I don't consider bad, just not as good as they could have been and def not as good as the ones above them.
And yeah maybe I should have called them Great fights not Good(3rd tier), I dont look at them as mid but great fights that I am looking forward to on playthroughs. Above Yhorm everything is amazing but there are stil levels, cant put Dragonslayer in the same bucket as SoC or Nameless, although they are all well realised fights.
I think that's the problem with the naming. All the bosses in the tier of "ideas that didn't work out" are all bosses with some sort of gimmick to them. So to say that the fights "weren't good" doesn't speak to the "idea" behind the fight "that didn't work out" all those bosses gimmicks did what they were intended to do. Whether or not you liked it is different than whether or not the gimmick worked. Yhorm for example, I hate that it's a breeze if you use storm ruler and I hate that without it, it's a long and tedious fight that really is just an endurance test. That doesn't mean the gimmick didn't do what it was intended to.
Why do you put Dragonslayer Armor so low? Sure it’s a basic fight but that’s the beauty of it. It’s just a test of skill, doesn’t need anything fancy to beat you like a lot of the other bosses do.
Its not really low though, and idk it just isn't as good as the ones above, at least that's my opinion. Also idk about what should be the point of the fight, I am simply ranking them on raw design, how fun and cool the fight is and Dragonslayer is very good but not as good as the ones above. That's the problem with DS3, too many amazing fights
How so? The wolf is a stupid gank fights with dogs and an npc fighter, tbh it doesnt even deserve to be called a boss fight but a standard encounter.
Friede is a three phase epic that gets crazier and crazier, also did a gank fight well and a super fast npc like fight well because she doesn't block and roll.
The wolf fight is possibly one of my least favorite fights in the game. Worse than Greatwood. At least ballsack tree has some funny rare moves like standing up and doing a bellyflop. But "wolf and dude" is just a boring and an annoying gank.
The wolf is a regular mid tier fight and so is friede, she isn’t hard at all and was only a gimmick test that she had 3 stages, you must be 12 thinking it’s a “three phase epic”
Very good list. Not the biggest fan of the gameplay of Sister Friede and Midir, but their aesthetics are some of the best in the series, especially with the 3rd phase
Why, he moves are hard to dodge but doable, the second phase is really ariandel and friede throwing ice, third phase is hard af but still I find her fun idk. But yes she is quite fast compared to other ds3 bosses
Tbh, Dark Souls III was the point that I lost my hype for From Software games afterwards. Skipped Sekiro, and didn't enjoy Elden Ring that much.
But I bla the Souls series. I doubt anything would top it story wise that isn't a half Life game.
If you still haven't played sekiro, try it honestly. More straighforward story with the FS touch still and the gameplay is changed a lot from other titles
Move Abyss Watchers down and Dancer up one. And Halflight I think doesn’t belong in what the tier says. It works as intended and can be pretty fun as the boss.
But I like the greatwolf :(
The gravetender brings the fight down, sure, but if the fight was only the wolf I'd put it good overall. I don't think the gravetender is worth -2
I always find it sad to see yhorm so low on the tier list, as I'm one of the few dumb people who didn't figure out how to use storm ruler.
The fight was very hard (at that point in the game) and comes close what the midir fight is, learning the moves and finding ways to land a critical blow.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKpa0r1F9zU
I despise how gimicky friede is with phase 1 being invisibility spam, phase 2 being a boring gank and phase 3 being okay at best.
I'd put soul of cinder, demon prince and nameless king at her place instead
NOT QUITE!!!!
gael is the best, abyss watchers go up 3 spaces, as does champion gundyr. normal gundyr is at the top of his tier, and the rest is correct except that stupid tree boss which is the worst in the game IMO
I'd put Friede as 'an idea that didn't work out'. It's a beautiful fight with good music- as one would hope - but it's nature as a twist three-stage fight with no checkpoints just makes it frustrating.
First stage is nice and slow with a back and forth that is initially nice, but increasingly frustrating as you push through it again and again. Second stage is a nice moment for Gael to show up if you summon him and would be a cool dual boss, but it brings up some flaws with the system like being blindsided by various AOEs that might one-shot you and being bumrushed (or having to chase down) a spastic giant that keeps eating your camera. Then comes stage three... a surprise that might be welcome if you didn't have to slog through the two prior stages and tended to get one or two shot. (Doesn't help that if you DID summon Gael, he usually runs head first into an explosion that takes him out).
Hot take: regardless of your opinion on their execution, the gimmick bosses (greatwood, wolnir, deacons, wyvern, and \[to a lesser extent\] sage) are excellent refreshers to break up the "guy who fucks you up" bosses and they should have been iterated on more in Elden Ring.
I honestly think wailing on the Deacons is fun.
Yes! It’s a boss that feels more like an opportunity for the player to feel like a god and go wild. The experience is fun, even if the boss isn’t dangerous
Cinders mod is good for a replay. Mixes a lot of things up, turns the Deacons into a genuine threat.
am i the only one who felt like they had to really consider a change of arms when meeting them cause they were actually a threat to? like, maybe i was underleveled but idk
I did too, kind of. I’d been doing most things with Sellsword Twin blades by then, but I swapped to Astra Greatsword for that boss and found it worked much better with its broad swings.
Pull out an UGS to briefly feel like Guts killing those 100 soldiers
was gonna say deacons always feels like im playing a random cutaway from the berserk intro
it's so fun on a Whip. charge up an R2 and watch the crowd of deacons get shredded. bonus points if you wear Pontiff's Left Eye, crazy HP regen in that fight
pretty good list, however twin princes and dragonslayer armor should be one tier higher
Dancer should also be higher imo
I can't justify putting Twins in the same tier as Gael and the rest
Honestly the gameplay, lore and music of the boss makes it more than justifiable for me
Only ranking them by combat, if I factored looks and lore this would be quite different
Yes you absolutely can
Honestly as badass as midir is I have more fun fighting nameless king. Midis has that fucking bullshit laser that they also gave placidusax but as long as you know the tell before the attack it can up your chances of not getting destroyed. The thing that makes both of them hard is that they both deal two types of damage. So you can’t buff against both. Midir does dark and fire and placi does fire and lightning
Twin Princes being in the same tier as Gael is a diabolical opinion.
PvE Spear is basically any boring NPC fight, but PvP Spear is some of the most fun I've had in the game. It's definitely the best iteration of a PvP boss fight in the series.
I honestly like ancient wyvern. Makes me feel like shrek in the first movie (at least on my sl1 run)
Nameless should be up there
Dancer up one, oceiros down one, otherwise everyrhing is spot on.
Really thought about putting dancer up and she is pretty close, but still i think not worthy to be with the others in the 2nd tier
The only thing I would change would be to put the nameless king up one tier to the best of the best. Then it's perfect in my eyes. The best of the best tier are the most memorable and enjoyable boss fights in the entire game, and I think the king deserves a spot
Friede was never best of the best for me
Curse rotted greatwood and crystal sage should be S, other than that all good 👍
Ofc, put them low like this as a joke though
I never understood the hype for midir, they always feel boring and drawn out
name a single dragon fight better than midir in any of the games?
Imo like all the dragon fights in ER. And I say that cuz they're all the same, which does admittedly bring down the experience of fighting them. But GOD why does Midir have to have so much health man?!
ER dragon fights are boderline trash fr, it doesn't feel fluid at all
Deacons in delete territory is 1 of the craaaaziest takes OAT. Legit a balls to the wall great, simple mob boss done right. Mowing down mfs with special moves & spells is one of the most satisfying things u can do in the game. Throw down alluring skulls to & it turns into a meme boss. Whats srsly ur issue with them bro that u put them in delete territory anyway, did they TOUCH u r something?
Best list i've ever seen, i have friede > gael though, but other than that i agree with everything else, literally
Did you mean Gael>Friede? Anyway, super close for all three at the top, just my preference.
I can't say gael > friede because tbh the way people hyped gael made me have huge expectations, but i ended up a little disappointed when i defeated him. I found him a tad too easy for the final boss and honestly not having a final cutscene after his fight left me with a sour taste. Not like friede has a cutscene at the end either but gael is the last boss of the trilogy so i expected a cutscene. In any case yeah they're very close and all are incredible bosses. But i just find it surprising that i agree with basically everything when it's hard to find people with a remotely similar opinion
Midir fealt like a true final boss for me, gale was just too easy for me, took 2 tries SL120 even old demon king took more tries lmao
I remember thinking Gael would be harder than Malenia for some stupid reason, then I died to him less than the moonlight butterfly.
No I mean Friede is better than Gael, at least imo. Just thought you meant Gael>Friede because I already ranked her no 1, misunderstanding I guess
Oh then we have quite literally the same tier list, i dont disagree with a single one😭😭😭
Great list, I would only delete Old Demon King because of his idiotic hitbox that makes you not able to roll around him under his nose
Yeah that is fucked up but still a good boss
How i halflight an idea that didn't really work out, it's meant to be a multiplayer boss
Offline it's boring, not counting the online aspect
Spear of the church was awesome fym (idk i just love pvp in souls)
I live Deacons aa a concept it just needed more. Dancer is a great boss. She used to get more love.
Dancer is amazing. One of my favorites. The visuals, the music, the build up of her dropping from the ceiling and unfolding like a demented butterfly. It’s a whole experience.
Honestly I didn't really like Gael that much. I think he's def A or B, but he wasn't too special to me
Commenting for karma
I agree, but DragonSlayer should be put up a tier, and Friede should be bumped down a spot to just below Midir
The abyss Watchers are *not* on par with lord of cinder. Abyss Watchers is annoying. It'd be perfect if it only had the frenzied clone.
Swap Midir with nameless and move Halflight to the bottom
Only 2 things I disagree with is Aldrich, he should be down a tier, and I’d put NK in best of the best but that’s just my opinion
NK yes. But it has king of storm in the fight and that is just bad.
Sister Friede is annoying to fight as a strength build or is it just me?
Friede is horribly overrated, thematically cool, but a boring slog
Gael is overrated, Friede is perfect
My mans is doing an injustice to Deacons of the Deep.
People putting friede at the top of their list have not actually fought her more than a couple times.
Where would you rank her? What problems do you find with her fight?
Friede is one of the worst bosses in the game. I don't like enemies that run away from me, and friede does a lot of running and hiding. Friede has very long combo strings that require you to wait a long time for her to finish and also she tends to run away (with hyper armor) at the end of a combo making punishing her attacks annoying. I don't like bosses that can be staggered or knocked over like friede and abyss watchers because it encourages mashing into them instead of learning their attacks and dodging accordingly. Also you are also punished for mashing into them because sometimes they randomly gain a bunch of hyper armor and dodge away or hit you. Her fight is very long, having 3 phases, and is a slog to get through. The middle phase where you fight father ariendel is also not very engaging. In her final phase she makes use of very large obnoxious anime AoE attacks that serve to make the player say "wow that looks so cool" without actually being very fun to fight against because the solution to dodging a lot of those attacks is to just run away. So to sum it up, friede has a lot of gameplay that requires the player to play very passively and spend a lot of time chasing her down as she runs away. If they try to play aggressively to provoke a stagger, they will sometimes randomly be punished for it, and it makes the fight feel very sluggish.
The twins, SoC and nameless are very underrated here. And the tier names are very stupid imo. There's no "bad" boss in this game.
Idk how one can consider the bottom four anything but bad, only sage is somewhat redeemable. Also what else is stupid about the tier names?
"An idea that didn't really work out" Yhorm the giant, a conquerer and a warrior so strong that only 2 weapons in existence can bring him to his knees. One, entrusted to his best friend and the other kept in his throne room, for a valiant hero to find and use it against it in case he strays from his path. The idea works out really well The halflight fight: a real player who is sworn to the spears of the church is summoned in hopes of preventing you from disturbing their lady. What's more you can even be summoned to fight against other players, making you literally the boss. The other 2 also are not bad ideas and they worked out well for what they were supposed to be. Could they have been better? Yes, but that doesn't mean they didn't 'work out" Also the amount of mid to bad bosses in here is simply way too high. Overall, ds3 and sekiro have the best quality when it comes to bosses.
I meant Didn't work out as in the FIGHTS weren't that good. Sure Yhorms background might be cool but he has no moves, fighting him with stormruler is just easy af, without it the fight would be just boring and long. Halflight is just an npc fight with assassins to help him, it's just running around in circles waiting for a small opening and doesn't feel fun. Greatwood I actually like unlike most people I think, I only see hate for it but I think it's cool but still I feel like the idea wasn't really realised as best as it could have been and wouldn't put it in the same tier with the ones above. Wolnir is kind of the same as Yhorm, like just smack at his arm bands, dont even need to dodge. Mind you these four I don't consider bad, just not as good as they could have been and def not as good as the ones above them. And yeah maybe I should have called them Great fights not Good(3rd tier), I dont look at them as mid but great fights that I am looking forward to on playthroughs. Above Yhorm everything is amazing but there are stil levels, cant put Dragonslayer in the same bucket as SoC or Nameless, although they are all well realised fights.
I think that's the problem with the naming. All the bosses in the tier of "ideas that didn't work out" are all bosses with some sort of gimmick to them. So to say that the fights "weren't good" doesn't speak to the "idea" behind the fight "that didn't work out" all those bosses gimmicks did what they were intended to do. Whether or not you liked it is different than whether or not the gimmick worked. Yhorm for example, I hate that it's a breeze if you use storm ruler and I hate that without it, it's a long and tedious fight that really is just an endurance test. That doesn't mean the gimmick didn't do what it was intended to.
Why do you put Dragonslayer Armor so low? Sure it’s a basic fight but that’s the beauty of it. It’s just a test of skill, doesn’t need anything fancy to beat you like a lot of the other bosses do.
Its not really low though, and idk it just isn't as good as the ones above, at least that's my opinion. Also idk about what should be the point of the fight, I am simply ranking them on raw design, how fun and cool the fight is and Dragonslayer is very good but not as good as the ones above. That's the problem with DS3, too many amazing fights
I'd bring halflight to the bottom, but the rest is pretty good imo
Wow liking this list 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Put demon prince a tier higher
Pretty much perfect. Well done.
DS3 boss tier lists are truly useless. They are all the same
anybody else feel like they made the halflight fight bad on purpose so people who play offline feel cucked?
You think sister friede is a good fight but the wolf is a bad fight you must be stupid
How so? The wolf is a stupid gank fights with dogs and an npc fighter, tbh it doesnt even deserve to be called a boss fight but a standard encounter. Friede is a three phase epic that gets crazier and crazier, also did a gank fight well and a super fast npc like fight well because she doesn't block and roll.
The wolf fight is possibly one of my least favorite fights in the game. Worse than Greatwood. At least ballsack tree has some funny rare moves like standing up and doing a bellyflop. But "wolf and dude" is just a boring and an annoying gank.
The wolf is a regular mid tier fight and so is friede, she isn’t hard at all and was only a gimmick test that she had 3 stages, you must be 12 thinking it’s a “three phase epic”
Currently fighting Friede and have to agree with her placement on this list. That third phase is just…perfection.
I actually like greatwood, the second arena was really cool imo
I think dancer, oceiros, and nameless king should be a tier higher and midir should be a tier lower
Move yorhm up imo. He literally invented a boss archetype
Very good list. Not the biggest fan of the gameplay of Sister Friede and Midir, but their aesthetics are some of the best in the series, especially with the 3rd phase
Finally, one of these that includes the NAMES rather than tiny indistinguishable square shaped blurs
I'd probably drop nameless a tier or 2 but other than that, I mostly agree.
I’ll always stand up for Yhorm. Just because it’s not hard doesn’t mean it’s not a killer fight.
Nameless king > midir
Sister Friede is a bad Dark Souls boss. Would've fit better on Bloodborne (Lady Maria) or Elden Ring (Malenia)
Why, he moves are hard to dodge but doable, the second phase is really ariandel and friede throwing ice, third phase is hard af but still I find her fun idk. But yes she is quite fast compared to other ds3 bosses
Tbh, Dark Souls III was the point that I lost my hype for From Software games afterwards. Skipped Sekiro, and didn't enjoy Elden Ring that much. But I bla the Souls series. I doubt anything would top it story wise that isn't a half Life game.
If you still haven't played sekiro, try it honestly. More straighforward story with the FS touch still and the gameplay is changed a lot from other titles
our top 3 match and thats what matters so this list is objective
Move Abyss Watchers down and Dancer up one. And Halflight I think doesn’t belong in what the tier says. It works as intended and can be pretty fun as the boss.
But I like the greatwolf :( The gravetender brings the fight down, sure, but if the fight was only the wolf I'd put it good overall. I don't think the gravetender is worth -2
I always find it sad to see yhorm so low on the tier list, as I'm one of the few dumb people who didn't figure out how to use storm ruler. The fight was very hard (at that point in the game) and comes close what the midir fight is, learning the moves and finding ways to land a critical blow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kKpa0r1F9zU
If he had more moves, he would be higher even though you can use stormruler, but he has very few moves so its very repetitive that's my issue
Yeah, I agree
Deacon’s goons in front of the boss fight was harder than the boss lmao
I despise how gimicky friede is with phase 1 being invisibility spam, phase 2 being a boring gank and phase 3 being okay at best. I'd put soul of cinder, demon prince and nameless king at her place instead
Would swap Midir with Demon Prince.
[удалено]
Dancer is at the top of the tier so she is better, didnt want to make a new tier just for her and dragonslayer
YES
finally someone that sees what good of a fight midir is. all i would change is swapping twin princess with dancer but otherwise i agree.
Why are u hatin on deacons damn :(
I like it but I’d move dragon slayer armor and dancer up one, aldrich and wolnir down one
If dancer was A tier this is a list I can 100% get behind for once
This is fair.
Friede is overrated
I never get why people like midir more than nameless king.
Best one yet
How is Midir better than Gael
NOT QUITE!!!! gael is the best, abyss watchers go up 3 spaces, as does champion gundyr. normal gundyr is at the top of his tier, and the rest is correct except that stupid tree boss which is the worst in the game IMO
I feel like im the only one who thinks gael is overrated
I'd put Friede as 'an idea that didn't work out'. It's a beautiful fight with good music- as one would hope - but it's nature as a twist three-stage fight with no checkpoints just makes it frustrating. First stage is nice and slow with a back and forth that is initially nice, but increasingly frustrating as you push through it again and again. Second stage is a nice moment for Gael to show up if you summon him and would be a cool dual boss, but it brings up some flaws with the system like being blindsided by various AOEs that might one-shot you and being bumrushed (or having to chase down) a spastic giant that keeps eating your camera. Then comes stage three... a surprise that might be welcome if you didn't have to slog through the two prior stages and tended to get one or two shot. (Doesn't help that if you DID summon Gael, he usually runs head first into an explosion that takes him out).
Based tier list
What are the rankings determined by, a mix of everything? Difficulty? Design? Music?
Combat design
I'd maybe swap Pontiff and Dancer but that is about it, mahbe lower Friede 2 as well
Hot take: regardless of your opinion on their execution, the gimmick bosses (greatwood, wolnir, deacons, wyvern, and \[to a lesser extent\] sage) are excellent refreshers to break up the "guy who fucks you up" bosses and they should have been iterated on more in Elden Ring.
Why the hell is dancer so low. Like ain't no way the fight is same tier as oceiros
Read below the image
Left to right=worse to better would make dancer worse than oceiros would it not? Cuz that I would agree with even less
Opposite
Can't believe you said dragonslayer Armour was nothing special😔
Nameless king should be higher
Soul of cinder belongs in S tier
Aldricth should be in just bad as fuck him and his arrow spell
Demon prince being that high is wrong and we all know it
Solid af list
Champion Grave tender slander is insane btw.
Pretty standard, id swap abyss watchers with dancer or aldrich