LogFAQs > #927951677

Fought and defeated Manus.

Interesting fight, but probably my least favorite of the trio (I am discounting Sanctuary Guardian here arbitrarily because it almost feels like a mini-boss fight in comparison to Artorias/Kalameet/Manus.) Unlike the others I don't really felt like I learned this fight properly. I identified very early the effectiveness of staying close, rolling forward towards him and to the side on his melee attacks, and then being able to usually land some punishing hits on him while he recovered. That said it still took a bit because I never truly figured out the optimal timing or tells for many of his different moves. Some of it was the arena being very dark, some was just me not figuring it out. His magic attacks could range from "not too bad" to "oh god instant death."

The strategy I eventually settled on (beyond the general outline I had up there) was to go full glass cannon. 2H weapon, the stamina regen shield "there", Great Magic Weapon enchant, and The Power Within both being cast right before the fog door. I could land some pretty devastating combos on him with all that, over 1000 damage per "counterattack" phase (not the individual attacks lol but the hits added up) if I was lucky. I did notice before I decided on that that I could block some of his blows, so it's possible I could have gone with a block strategy like I tackle most of the game with as my first response/default behavior but my objective was to try and end things before he could whip out some devastating magic or combo on me so yeah.
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xp1337: Don't you wish there was a spell-checker that told you when you a word out?