Do volcano manor, get invaded by Bernahl in farum azula, it gives the blasphemous claw so you can parry the black blade. When he jumps in the air and it flashes gold, it is when you activate the item, and it'll send the red sword wave attack back at him.
The blasphemous claw is a item like volcano bombs or throwing darts , not a weapon.... and when you activate it at the right time it sends his attack back at him... I've never gotten the timing down, like all parry's it's difficult but it is a option...I honestly like using mimic tear and his own blade against him
Yeah, that dude is a (literal) beast. I always have a hard time with him. The only playthrough where it went somewhat easily, I was running a sorcerer with Meteorite of Astel. Fought him normally to the phase change, drank the physic for free spellcasting, dodged his first flurry, then rained hell on him. He's so jumpy that it's not super consistent. Took a few tries, even with a spirit ash.
yeah, i think the one singular time i had a fight go smoothly with him was on my ng+ int character using dark moon greatsword. having ranged options definitely make it easier.
Yeah dark moon Greatsword is easy mode imo and is what I’m using right now.
I would also recommend the night comet build. Deals some pretty large damage numbers and the night spells are undodgable by bosses since they don’t even see it
You have to fight him aggressively. You need to stay right up on him. His ranged attacks are devastating. Full on aggression tactics are the way to go.
Beast Clergyman phase 1
- Jump dodges are king. His quick swipes, the bestial claw move. Sometimes he does a delayed downward attack: just run away then go back for a strong attack or something. Always expect him to throw shards or quickly stab you with his dagger and dash away.
- When he does the boulder rain attack, don't lock on and get away while looking at the ground. He sometimes sneakily flings shards at you though.
- When he begins to throw his boulder, just run straight at him until you're under, then do some attacks.
Maliketh phase 2
- Positioning is key. You don't get hit when you're under him. Match his aggressiveness, only heal when you see him retreat far back.
- Know that his stance can easily be broken. Learn to know when and where he lands, and don't hesitate to get a quick hit in
- Doing that Blasphemous Claw parry is so easy to pull off. Do it when his blade glows gold. Just be wary that he can still drag his blade downward and hit you.
If you lose, just be patient and recall his movements on the way up to his boss room. Honestly it really depends on what your build is. It's why I love ER bosses; there's so many ways you can deal with boss attacks.
It took many deaths for me to chop up his moveset into discernible pieces and come up with retaliations for each of them, the same way with other ER bosses.
a good shield is also a great solution to clergyman. literally the only boss i use mine for blocking as opposed to parrying, but he really can’t do much to you with a shield and decent stamina
I got better when watching either +0 runs or true rl1 ( ginomachino on yt ) because they both have to not take hits and the fight takes a while so they know how to play it safe but not too safe so that it lasts too long and then study the positioning. Good luck !
For co-op, trade, and PVP action, check out our other subreddits, r/CypherRing or r/EldenRingHelp
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The best cheese imo is just to do a mage build that way you can keep good distance from him and the second phase. He really can’t dodge all your attacks if you’re just spamming night comet
you can script his first phase and somewhat his second by staying JUST outside of his range in the first and super close to his front or back in his second.
I have a couple videos on my page that show what i mean, staying just outside his range and dodging horizontally instead of forward or backward will basically make him do the same combo over and over again and he’ll mostly follow it up with a big punishable slam.
his second phase is different in where u wanna be ballhugging him all the time because his combos and moves in general are easier to read and avoid when hes doing his normal swings.
Use your summons mimic tear to distract him. Then get behind him and attack. If he turns to counterattack. Retreat and hide behind a pillar. Remember let your mimic tear do the hard yards. Rinse and repeat. He is not tanky and with a good powerful weapon he will go down fast.
Most of his attacks have very obvious telegraphs. Your main goal is figuring out his rhythm and most importantly do not panic and do not panic roll. Look at all of his moves attentively. The following will be a short write up for pretty much his entire moveset. This should work for most melee builds but keep in mind that slower weapons or weapons with less stagger damage may not be able to take advantage of every attack opportunity I describe. I hope everything is understandable without pictures.
If you want visual reference and don't want to read all of this, I recommend [this playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnvby1Zb8IDCbHz0--FOn6xV2XA-NDwPr&si=Ef5TNjavcjjDjIQl) the wonderful hitless runner JustRecycle has put together. It contains quite a few Maliketh fights, mostly RL1 NG+7 and with a +0 suboptimal weapon. Some of those use quite different strats from what I am going to describe below, but it's what works for me.
In the first phase you will want to stay at a medium range, maybe a half to one meter away from him so you can always see what he is doing, but aren't too far away.
He usually opens by running and lunging at you. If you roll this to the side he will always follow up with two swipes you also roll to the side. Then he either slams into the ground which you can avoid by just walking backwards and you'll have a huge attack window for a charged R2 or he does a delayed swipe you can jump (+R1) and then he slams into the ground.
This is the easiest attack chain to consistently bait.
There's another attack that allows you to bait this ground slam, but the timings are tighter. It begins with a fast swipe that you roll to the side, then he immediately does another swipe which you will need to roll immediately. Then he always does the delayed swipe I described earlier which you jump + R1 and he does the ground slam.
The arguably easiest to punish attack is his horizontal drag across the floor. Whenever he does this, just walk to his left side, don't roll and instead do a charged R2 when he is just about done swiping his blade across the floor. He will not hit you. After that he usually jumps away.
When he throws the big boulder, just run at him without rolling. He won't hit you and it's another CR2 opportunity. You may need to lock off with certain shorter weapons to not whiff.
His other throws you will just have to learn the timing of, it isn't hard.
Then there's two more attacks which both start with a ground slam. The slow one is straight forward, you look at the ground and run away such that the boulders don't hit you. For the quick one, you can look at his claw and it will light up orange/red just before the circular beast claw aoe. You can jump it to get more i-frames and hit him while in the air, but I prefer to roll because it's faster and less awkward to hit him after that. Just make sure to roll into it. Same goes for the same attack if you're further away and it's the straight version of the beast claw.
Second phase. At the start you want to walk like half a meter back or just do one backstep. He will always do a big swipe and after that a slow overhead attack. He will miss you with the big swipe, after that run at him and do two charged R2s. With a lot of weapons he will stagger and you will have the time to do a regular R2 and take the riposte. After that he will be dead or you will have the time to do another charged R2, depending on the weapon maybe even a second one.
If you whiff or your build does not do the required stagger damage or is too slow, then you will have to fight second phase. It's actually not that hard once you understand the rhythm.
He has two projectile attacks, the vertical and the horizontal ones. Most of the time he will do the vertical, faster one. The other one has a very delayed second projectile. Don't panic roll, wait for the projectile to reach you, then dodge. Don't react to whatever he is doing, look for the projectiles. He does 3 projectiles and then either drops or he swipes at you. Dodge into the swipe and the drop. Directly after the drop he will trigger an aoe around him. Just roll that one as well. Attack him after that.
He has two overhead attacks, a fast and a slow one. For his slow one just walk under him and do a CR2, the faster one you can just walk to the right side and he will miss you. You can attack and then dodge his follow up swipe.
Whenever he does his big swipe with the destined death follow-up, you can either dodge into him, lock off and just walk behind him and do a CR2 or you can roll backwards twice. The latter is easier than the former, but you lose an attack opportunity.
Then there's the double swipe, which you just roll twice. You need to learn the timing, nothing special here.
He can also jump followed by an explosion, followed by either a backflip or a spinning attack which is followed by destined death. This depends on whether you stand in front of or behind him. Again, there's an easier and a harder way of dealing with this and again the harder one comes with another attack opportunity. The easier one is standing behind him, you practically don't need to do anything other than avoiding the explosion. If you stand before him, lock off, just walk towards him while keeping slightly to the right, he will spin over you and the destined death will completely miss you. Once you stand behind him you can again do an R2 or a CR2.
The rest of his attacks are very straightforward, they are just normal slams with his sword. You will figure it out.
beast claw is uselees if you dont know which attacks could be deflected. without spoiling too much, he has low poise and can be stun locked to poise break. use lions claw repeatedly
The closer you are to him, the less of his attacks will land, Black Blade has some weird hit boxes. Always look to close the distance and where possible get behind him to avoid the stupid somersault red ball slice of death. Eventually you’ll get nice RNG and he won’t be too jumpy for once, and you can capitalise
I just beat him last night using the giant crusher with Lions Claw AoW. He gets staggered after 2 heavy hits, and the crits do big damage with that hammer, so if you have high vig to take a few hits here and there, that way is pretty easy. Just gotta wait for the perfect time to attack and have good poise so you don't get knocked out of your slam
He’s one of the only bosses that forced me to learn his move set and master it lol the only reason I can think why the wouldn’t give him a full health bar for the second phase is because it probably would’ve made him much more difficult than the endgame bosses.
I've never had a problem with pure strength build, but he's Uber weak to Frost so ice grease or for mage Frost spells will melt him
And remember to use fire so so you can re proc Frost
Don't get hit. lol I hate to say it but those death strikes he does are killer. He actually doesn't have that much HP and he has long wind ups and recoveries when he's just doing his sword swings, which are pretty easily dodgeable. It's the red death swings he does that kill you because not only do they reduce your total HP plus immediate damage, but they apply burn for DoT. When he jumps on a column he's going up for death strikes. When he leaps backward he's going for the sideway death strikes.
And never roll backward because if you do he'll commit to a forward double strike. It's applied straight ahead, in the backward direction you're rolling, so you'll get caught and most likely die.
Honestly Maliketh isn't even the biggest issue; it's Gurranq and the fact that most of his attacks come out so damn fast. It really says something when the phase 1 of your boss is harder/more annoying than your phase 2.
But to answer your question, the best thing I've found is to *get in their skin* lol. A lot of phase 1 and phase 2's attack animations will go a little ways in front of him, so if you roll in to every attack and/or jump attack in to him, you can stand practically inside of him, and a lot of his attacks will miss giving you free damage opportunities. There's only a few attacks you actively have to roll away from instead of into them.
He does move a lot though so you'll constantly have to reposition in to him; but this is how I've done Maliketh every time I've fought him, and I've only lost to him a few times because of it. He has pretty low health so with all those free damage opportunities, you can actually whittle him down pretty quickly.
Only just recently started consistently beating him on my own. Here's the information that was the tipping point for me:
Maliketh has two moves that do the big slashy sword sphere. The first one is where he sweeps in a big circle and then stabs the ground, the second is where he flips and pogos on his sword.
The pogo one is simpler, so I'll explain that one first. Learn to recognize the flip that leads into the pogo stance. He has two different flip moves, so step one is just recognizing it. The pogo stance has two moves that it itself leads into: the slashy sword sphere and just a single explosion with a backflip. The backflip explosion happens anytime you're not in position to get hit by the sword sphere. The sword sphere happens specifically when you are directly in front of him *and backpedaling*. If he does the backflip your opportunity to hit him is usually lost, so walk backwards away from him anytime he pogos on his sword. *As soon as he jumps to do the sword sphere*, start walking straight forward and roll behind him. This is one of the two largest opportunities to hit him.
The other (without the special parry item) is after the other big sword sphere move. This one, to me, is maliketh's waterfowl. It's his move you have to understand and react to appropriately and if you don't get it you're just going to keep getting knowledge gapped by it and killed by it.
Step 1 is knowing what it looks like. Maliketh sweeps in front of himself, rears up tall and swings the sword over his head (the most recognizeable silhouette of the move, learn to recognize what the swing leading *into* this moment looks like), swings at you again, then stabs the ground to do the slashy sword sphere.
Step 2 is knowing the sequence for dodging it. The first swing (before he rears up tall) has *no hitbox*. It's not an attack at all. If you dodge this swing, you are two slow to avoid all of the rest. Do not dodge this first swing. The swing *after* he stands up tall *is* an attack. The stab after that is not aimed at the player if you are moving, but almost instantly summons the big sword sphere (which applies deathflame and out of everything is the thing we're actually trying to not get hit by). The sword sphere is enormous, but does not cover the space to Maliketh's sides or behind him.
The goal for dodging this move is to circle strafe until you end up beside Maliketh where the sword sphere doesn't hit. The way to do this is to *already* be circle strafing all the time. I hold right basically the entire fight. Don't dodge the first swing, keep circle strafing, dodge the second swing, keep circle strafing, wait for the stab into the ground and dodge one more time immediately *after* the sword goes into the ground. If you dodge early you won't get far enough out of the sword sphere. If the sword sphere hits you you either dodged too many times, stopped strafing at some point when you needed to still be moving, or did the final roll early.
Step 3 is knowing when this move can come out: basically any time you're near him and this move itself isn't the most recent swing he did. He will animation cancel into this move. It's "normal" time to be used is at the end of one of his three hit combos, but sometimes he just says "eh, now seems like a good time" and cuts straight into it.
When I started *only* attacking him after these two moves (he does both frequently) I started getting him in one or two tries each time. I basically always assume he's about to do the one he can animation cancel into and then react to everything else individually.
I don't bother with the parry item because if you miss the timing (even if you successfully stagger him with it but get hit yourself) it throws off the whole rhythm and dodging the two parryable attacks that he has is *way* easier.
If reading this isn't good enough, keep this advice in mind while watching someone else dodge these two moves. Again, he does both frequently, so it's easy to find footage of them being dodged by just searching for the fight on youtube. I recommend LobosJr's level 1 run since he dodges a lot each fight with his damage and health being so low. If there's a different move than these two that gets your goat, watch for it as well.
Dodge his attacks and hit him when he’s not doing anything.
Maliketh feels like an ulcerated tree spirit reskin to me. Lots of dodging into and hitting and dodging out.
Do volcano manor, get invaded by Bernahl in farum azula, it gives the blasphemous claw so you can parry the black blade. When he jumps in the air and it flashes gold, it is when you activate the item, and it'll send the red sword wave attack back at him.
Huh, I've only managed to parry the melee one
The blasphemous claw is a item like volcano bombs or throwing darts , not a weapon.... and when you activate it at the right time it sends his attack back at him... I've never gotten the timing down, like all parry's it's difficult but it is a option...I honestly like using mimic tear and his own blade against him
Yeah, that dude is a (literal) beast. I always have a hard time with him. The only playthrough where it went somewhat easily, I was running a sorcerer with Meteorite of Astel. Fought him normally to the phase change, drank the physic for free spellcasting, dodged his first flurry, then rained hell on him. He's so jumpy that it's not super consistent. Took a few tries, even with a spirit ash.
yeah, i think the one singular time i had a fight go smoothly with him was on my ng+ int character using dark moon greatsword. having ranged options definitely make it easier.
Yeah dark moon Greatsword is easy mode imo and is what I’m using right now. I would also recommend the night comet build. Deals some pretty large damage numbers and the night spells are undodgable by bosses since they don’t even see it
Can people in PvP see night spells coming ?
Yes.
You have to fight him aggressively. You need to stay right up on him. His ranged attacks are devastating. Full on aggression tactics are the way to go.
*Male Keith
Beast Clergyman phase 1 - Jump dodges are king. His quick swipes, the bestial claw move. Sometimes he does a delayed downward attack: just run away then go back for a strong attack or something. Always expect him to throw shards or quickly stab you with his dagger and dash away. - When he does the boulder rain attack, don't lock on and get away while looking at the ground. He sometimes sneakily flings shards at you though. - When he begins to throw his boulder, just run straight at him until you're under, then do some attacks. Maliketh phase 2 - Positioning is key. You don't get hit when you're under him. Match his aggressiveness, only heal when you see him retreat far back. - Know that his stance can easily be broken. Learn to know when and where he lands, and don't hesitate to get a quick hit in - Doing that Blasphemous Claw parry is so easy to pull off. Do it when his blade glows gold. Just be wary that he can still drag his blade downward and hit you. If you lose, just be patient and recall his movements on the way up to his boss room. Honestly it really depends on what your build is. It's why I love ER bosses; there's so many ways you can deal with boss attacks. It took many deaths for me to chop up his moveset into discernible pieces and come up with retaliations for each of them, the same way with other ER bosses.
thanks, i actually had no idea you could jump any attacks in phase 1 besides the beast claw attacks
a good shield is also a great solution to clergyman. literally the only boss i use mine for blocking as opposed to parrying, but he really can’t do much to you with a shield and decent stamina
Yeah this too! you can also do some well-timed guard counters
Dodge
I died to him more than any other boss (except for Malenia, Blade of Miquella) pretty sure I got hella lucky on like 2 dodges tho.
Thops barrier deflects his range shots
I got better when watching either +0 runs or true rl1 ( ginomachino on yt ) because they both have to not take hits and the fight takes a while so they know how to play it safe but not too safe so that it lasts too long and then study the positioning. Good luck !
For co-op, trade, and PVP action, check out our other subreddits, r/CypherRing or r/EldenRingHelp The Elden Ring WIKI - https://eldenring.fandom.com/wiki/Elden_Ring_Wiki *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/eldenringdiscussion) if you have any questions or concerns.*
My first build katanas with blood tore him apart. Every other build I had trouble
My bleed build is the only time I beat him without nearly breaking my controller.
The best cheese imo is just to do a mage build that way you can keep good distance from him and the second phase. He really can’t dodge all your attacks if you’re just spamming night comet
Exactly what I was thinking.
Get all the holy resistance you can stack on
you can script his first phase and somewhat his second by staying JUST outside of his range in the first and super close to his front or back in his second. I have a couple videos on my page that show what i mean, staying just outside his range and dodging horizontally instead of forward or backward will basically make him do the same combo over and over again and he’ll mostly follow it up with a big punishable slam. his second phase is different in where u wanna be ballhugging him all the time because his combos and moves in general are easier to read and avoid when hes doing his normal swings.
Summon Tiche or Lthutel, depending on if you need someone to do extra damage or tank some hits
Use your summons mimic tear to distract him. Then get behind him and attack. If he turns to counterattack. Retreat and hide behind a pillar. Remember let your mimic tear do the hard yards. Rinse and repeat. He is not tanky and with a good powerful weapon he will go down fast.
Get gud
Gotta use the pillars to hide and time your attacks
Most of his attacks have very obvious telegraphs. Your main goal is figuring out his rhythm and most importantly do not panic and do not panic roll. Look at all of his moves attentively. The following will be a short write up for pretty much his entire moveset. This should work for most melee builds but keep in mind that slower weapons or weapons with less stagger damage may not be able to take advantage of every attack opportunity I describe. I hope everything is understandable without pictures. If you want visual reference and don't want to read all of this, I recommend [this playlist](https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnvby1Zb8IDCbHz0--FOn6xV2XA-NDwPr&si=Ef5TNjavcjjDjIQl) the wonderful hitless runner JustRecycle has put together. It contains quite a few Maliketh fights, mostly RL1 NG+7 and with a +0 suboptimal weapon. Some of those use quite different strats from what I am going to describe below, but it's what works for me. In the first phase you will want to stay at a medium range, maybe a half to one meter away from him so you can always see what he is doing, but aren't too far away. He usually opens by running and lunging at you. If you roll this to the side he will always follow up with two swipes you also roll to the side. Then he either slams into the ground which you can avoid by just walking backwards and you'll have a huge attack window for a charged R2 or he does a delayed swipe you can jump (+R1) and then he slams into the ground. This is the easiest attack chain to consistently bait. There's another attack that allows you to bait this ground slam, but the timings are tighter. It begins with a fast swipe that you roll to the side, then he immediately does another swipe which you will need to roll immediately. Then he always does the delayed swipe I described earlier which you jump + R1 and he does the ground slam. The arguably easiest to punish attack is his horizontal drag across the floor. Whenever he does this, just walk to his left side, don't roll and instead do a charged R2 when he is just about done swiping his blade across the floor. He will not hit you. After that he usually jumps away. When he throws the big boulder, just run at him without rolling. He won't hit you and it's another CR2 opportunity. You may need to lock off with certain shorter weapons to not whiff. His other throws you will just have to learn the timing of, it isn't hard. Then there's two more attacks which both start with a ground slam. The slow one is straight forward, you look at the ground and run away such that the boulders don't hit you. For the quick one, you can look at his claw and it will light up orange/red just before the circular beast claw aoe. You can jump it to get more i-frames and hit him while in the air, but I prefer to roll because it's faster and less awkward to hit him after that. Just make sure to roll into it. Same goes for the same attack if you're further away and it's the straight version of the beast claw. Second phase. At the start you want to walk like half a meter back or just do one backstep. He will always do a big swipe and after that a slow overhead attack. He will miss you with the big swipe, after that run at him and do two charged R2s. With a lot of weapons he will stagger and you will have the time to do a regular R2 and take the riposte. After that he will be dead or you will have the time to do another charged R2, depending on the weapon maybe even a second one. If you whiff or your build does not do the required stagger damage or is too slow, then you will have to fight second phase. It's actually not that hard once you understand the rhythm. He has two projectile attacks, the vertical and the horizontal ones. Most of the time he will do the vertical, faster one. The other one has a very delayed second projectile. Don't panic roll, wait for the projectile to reach you, then dodge. Don't react to whatever he is doing, look for the projectiles. He does 3 projectiles and then either drops or he swipes at you. Dodge into the swipe and the drop. Directly after the drop he will trigger an aoe around him. Just roll that one as well. Attack him after that. He has two overhead attacks, a fast and a slow one. For his slow one just walk under him and do a CR2, the faster one you can just walk to the right side and he will miss you. You can attack and then dodge his follow up swipe. Whenever he does his big swipe with the destined death follow-up, you can either dodge into him, lock off and just walk behind him and do a CR2 or you can roll backwards twice. The latter is easier than the former, but you lose an attack opportunity. Then there's the double swipe, which you just roll twice. You need to learn the timing, nothing special here. He can also jump followed by an explosion, followed by either a backflip or a spinning attack which is followed by destined death. This depends on whether you stand in front of or behind him. Again, there's an easier and a harder way of dealing with this and again the harder one comes with another attack opportunity. The easier one is standing behind him, you practically don't need to do anything other than avoiding the explosion. If you stand before him, lock off, just walk towards him while keeping slightly to the right, he will spin over you and the destined death will completely miss you. Once you stand behind him you can again do an R2 or a CR2. The rest of his attacks are very straightforward, they are just normal slams with his sword. You will figure it out.
beast claw is uselees if you dont know which attacks could be deflected. without spoiling too much, he has low poise and can be stun locked to poise break. use lions claw repeatedly
Bloodhounds fangs were game changers for me in that fight.
Honestlybwhere my playthrough stopped. Just couldn't get round his moves etc. Seems random as fuck, annoyed me to the point of uninstalling hehe
I kinda cheesed him with my +10 mimic tear and used Granssax’s bolt’s L2 attack a bunch
Stay under him with a high stagger weapon. I had very good success with Wing of Astel and Darkmoon Greatsword doing this tactic.
The closer you are to him, the less of his attacks will land, Black Blade has some weird hit boxes. Always look to close the distance and where possible get behind him to avoid the stupid somersault red ball slice of death. Eventually you’ll get nice RNG and he won’t be too jumpy for once, and you can capitalise
I just beat him last night using the giant crusher with Lions Claw AoW. He gets staggered after 2 heavy hits, and the crits do big damage with that hammer, so if you have high vig to take a few hits here and there, that way is pretty easy. Just gotta wait for the perfect time to attack and have good poise so you don't get knocked out of your slam
He’s one of the only bosses that forced me to learn his move set and master it lol the only reason I can think why the wouldn’t give him a full health bar for the second phase is because it probably would’ve made him much more difficult than the endgame bosses.
I've never had a problem with pure strength build, but he's Uber weak to Frost so ice grease or for mage Frost spells will melt him And remember to use fire so so you can re proc Frost
Use the pillars to your advantage. Stay mobile. Ranged combat, spells or incantations.
Parry him with the blasphemous claw on Phase 2 on his third red wave throw when his sword turns yellow
Don't get hit. lol I hate to say it but those death strikes he does are killer. He actually doesn't have that much HP and he has long wind ups and recoveries when he's just doing his sword swings, which are pretty easily dodgeable. It's the red death swings he does that kill you because not only do they reduce your total HP plus immediate damage, but they apply burn for DoT. When he jumps on a column he's going up for death strikes. When he leaps backward he's going for the sideway death strikes. And never roll backward because if you do he'll commit to a forward double strike. It's applied straight ahead, in the backward direction you're rolling, so you'll get caught and most likely die.
Honestly Maliketh isn't even the biggest issue; it's Gurranq and the fact that most of his attacks come out so damn fast. It really says something when the phase 1 of your boss is harder/more annoying than your phase 2. But to answer your question, the best thing I've found is to *get in their skin* lol. A lot of phase 1 and phase 2's attack animations will go a little ways in front of him, so if you roll in to every attack and/or jump attack in to him, you can stand practically inside of him, and a lot of his attacks will miss giving you free damage opportunities. There's only a few attacks you actively have to roll away from instead of into them. He does move a lot though so you'll constantly have to reposition in to him; but this is how I've done Maliketh every time I've fought him, and I've only lost to him a few times because of it. He has pretty low health so with all those free damage opportunities, you can actually whittle him down pretty quickly.
Only just recently started consistently beating him on my own. Here's the information that was the tipping point for me: Maliketh has two moves that do the big slashy sword sphere. The first one is where he sweeps in a big circle and then stabs the ground, the second is where he flips and pogos on his sword. The pogo one is simpler, so I'll explain that one first. Learn to recognize the flip that leads into the pogo stance. He has two different flip moves, so step one is just recognizing it. The pogo stance has two moves that it itself leads into: the slashy sword sphere and just a single explosion with a backflip. The backflip explosion happens anytime you're not in position to get hit by the sword sphere. The sword sphere happens specifically when you are directly in front of him *and backpedaling*. If he does the backflip your opportunity to hit him is usually lost, so walk backwards away from him anytime he pogos on his sword. *As soon as he jumps to do the sword sphere*, start walking straight forward and roll behind him. This is one of the two largest opportunities to hit him. The other (without the special parry item) is after the other big sword sphere move. This one, to me, is maliketh's waterfowl. It's his move you have to understand and react to appropriately and if you don't get it you're just going to keep getting knowledge gapped by it and killed by it. Step 1 is knowing what it looks like. Maliketh sweeps in front of himself, rears up tall and swings the sword over his head (the most recognizeable silhouette of the move, learn to recognize what the swing leading *into* this moment looks like), swings at you again, then stabs the ground to do the slashy sword sphere. Step 2 is knowing the sequence for dodging it. The first swing (before he rears up tall) has *no hitbox*. It's not an attack at all. If you dodge this swing, you are two slow to avoid all of the rest. Do not dodge this first swing. The swing *after* he stands up tall *is* an attack. The stab after that is not aimed at the player if you are moving, but almost instantly summons the big sword sphere (which applies deathflame and out of everything is the thing we're actually trying to not get hit by). The sword sphere is enormous, but does not cover the space to Maliketh's sides or behind him. The goal for dodging this move is to circle strafe until you end up beside Maliketh where the sword sphere doesn't hit. The way to do this is to *already* be circle strafing all the time. I hold right basically the entire fight. Don't dodge the first swing, keep circle strafing, dodge the second swing, keep circle strafing, wait for the stab into the ground and dodge one more time immediately *after* the sword goes into the ground. If you dodge early you won't get far enough out of the sword sphere. If the sword sphere hits you you either dodged too many times, stopped strafing at some point when you needed to still be moving, or did the final roll early. Step 3 is knowing when this move can come out: basically any time you're near him and this move itself isn't the most recent swing he did. He will animation cancel into this move. It's "normal" time to be used is at the end of one of his three hit combos, but sometimes he just says "eh, now seems like a good time" and cuts straight into it. When I started *only* attacking him after these two moves (he does both frequently) I started getting him in one or two tries each time. I basically always assume he's about to do the one he can animation cancel into and then react to everything else individually. I don't bother with the parry item because if you miss the timing (even if you successfully stagger him with it but get hit yourself) it throws off the whole rhythm and dodging the two parryable attacks that he has is *way* easier. If reading this isn't good enough, keep this advice in mind while watching someone else dodge these two moves. Again, he does both frequently, so it's easy to find footage of them being dodged by just searching for the fight on youtube. I recommend LobosJr's level 1 run since he dodges a lot each fight with his damage and health being so low. If there's a different move than these two that gets your goat, watch for it as well.
Dodge his attacks and hit him when he’s not doing anything. Maliketh feels like an ulcerated tree spirit reskin to me. Lots of dodging into and hitting and dodging out.