Delayed attacks as a form of increasing difficult are just extremely unfun. Yeah, you made the boss harder, you also made it extremely frustrating, congratz.
It's literally helping you actually learn to dodge perfectly instead of just spamming it and getting lucky. Like instead of rolling when they do the back swing, you now have to actually wait for them to swing their attack.
If this was the first game like this you played, it wouldn't even be that much harder to learn. It's actually harder having played all the games prior to Elden Ring that conditioned you to dodge on the back swing.
It’s usually not a matter of just waiting - it’s a matter of memorizing. I get the impression if the AI bosses could manually set different delays on their swings after winding up each time, they would literally be impossible.
They can do that. And one of the first dudes you'll see doing it is Margit. They only delay the time between back swing and the actual attack. So you'll know it's coming, you just need to dodge (or parry) when they take a swing at you, not when they bring their hand back. Shit, sometimes Margit will just do the back swing and if you stay away or calm long enough, he just goes back to an idle animation and doesn't attack you.
The first measuring stick dude, he makes sure you learn the mechanics. I feel like Margit and morgott are the exclusively to make sure you have a handle on them. Hell I didn't realize jumping could dodge attacks until godfrey.
The weird thing I found in the dlc with jumping is that, for whatever reason, when the Putrescent Knight does that blue fire attack, you can jump it but not roll it. Or at least, I can't figure out how to avoid damage by rolling it. Rolling forward should avoid a hit, but I still take one; jumping it avoids it totally. It doesn't even seem jumpable because the flames still touch your upper body while doing it and you only have i-frames from the waist down.
The fire is a persistent hitbox that lasts longer than a roll gives iframes. The airtime of the jump lasts long enough when timed right.
Some of the channels of blue fire can also be avoided outright but I never got a handle on how that worked. And the visuals, like a lot of fires in Elden Ring, don't look like you should be able to jump it. Looks super edgy though when you do though.
The one he shoots at a single target in a straight line can be strafed if you're at the furthest it can reach. But you can also roll left or right and not be in it anymore.
The weird one is the first time he busts it out. There's like 1 big wave that goes everywhere. A small one that can be left or right of you, and then another big wave in front of him (which is usually facing you if you're solo). Later on he might do something similar to the Elden Beast where he created a large ring that gets smaller so it comes at you from behind. That one always fucks me up because I expect the other one.
This dude is my arch nemesis, and just like the Nameless King in DS3 I am starting to get to a point where I can avoid him forever. Not quite, though. He has this weird hitbox on one of his ride by swings where I dodge completely away from the blade and he is like 5 yards away when my i-frames end and then I take a hit seemingly from nothing.
If it is the one where he holds it one handed as a windup: that driveby swing is where he drags his hitbox as he turns and I hate it. It would trip me up so much.
strat
IIRC you unintuitively have to roll into the blade and along the path of his swing since it is 'C' shaped. Since he is turning that's like sideways I think, depending on camera/assuming lockon.
His throw attack, for some reason, I could never get the hang of though.
That's my biggest problem with FromSoft games. They are not challenging, they're just slow HP sponges that can one-shot you. That is not challenging, it's just unfair, and frankly boring.
I think the game would be funner even with the simple tweak of making the animations faster. No fighter EVER wins IRL by telegraphing their attacks for three seconds.
Sekiro is much faster paced; it pays to be aggressive after all. The only time I felt like having to delay my reaction time was with the snake eyes with her weird grab iirc.
I didn't like elden ring much, combat felt more plodding and frustrating to me (and I plat "difficult" games: HK, sekiro, STS).
Coming from someone who shares your frustration with morgott or morgit or the 3 other copy-paste boss's stick that hovers in the air for 5 business days...