Kind of a shitty boss ngl. Just way too much health for no reason. Looks rad tho
I hate to be this person but midir’s attack patterns are pretty easy to avoid once you learn them all. I wouldn’t say it compares to a humanoid boss, example, nameless, pontiff, sister friede, soul of cinder because these attacks are more random because they all have much more of a variety of attacks along with abilities that are harder to avoid and take more time to learn than midir who you only have to watch out for the head, arm swings very avoidable, you can avoid fire by rolling back and then running towards for an attack.
I understand the boss is hard no doubt, probably took me around 25 attempts my first time. After that though, I just started getting better and midir became my favorite boss fight, definitely the best dragon boss fight in the souls series.
I find it surprising that more often than not I see people criticizing midir for having lots of health when slave knight Gael has much more and his second and third phases are without a doubt the hardest in soulsborne in my opinion. Gael on NG+4 onwards is a challenge even for seasoned souls players. With max health and 80 strength, using fume ultra great sword meaning slower attacks not enough to get consecutive hits in, I only do 300 damage because he is very full on health and has a lot of damage absorption, as the last boss in the finale of the series should. Midir takes around 5-6 minutes, Gael takes me many more attempts, all my estus, and about 10+ minutes.
Yeah the Gael fight does have a certain rhythm to it. It's almost Sekiroesque in a way, which is a cool accomplishment given how different the mechanics of each game are.
According to Fextralife Midit has about 800 more health than Gael. Maybe it's a resistances thing? Anyway, it just feels very tedious. You're right in that the attacks aren't that hard to avoid, but I found myself doing way way more avoiding than actually swinging my weapon. And the fight goes all over the place in a pretty big arena - at some points his charge attacks would just completely blow past me and I'd have to spend all my stamina to run after him for a single poke before he attacked again. Contrast that with Gael, which is a pretty tight fight in that you're rarely far away from each other and there's lots of opportunities to get a quick hit in without completely emptying your stam. Overall just much more satisfying, and plays better into the strengths of DS3 as a game
I personally fight close combat, you just need to know where to go in order to avoid flame and the laser attack. If you stay right by him he will never do the laser spray attack which by my experience is game over at that point. It is really just learning midir’s patterns, for me I used to fight midir for fun basically doing small challenge runs trying to not get hit and if I did I would spawn back to the bonfire and try again. I’ve overplayed the game but just found Midir to be one of my go to bosses if I wanna have fun. I know a lot of people don’t wanna play past ng and that’s fine because when you get to ng+7 it’s pretty much torture
Wait, Gael has more health? It absolutely doesn't feel like it. For comparison, I frequently run out of estus on Midir, and if I'm in co-op, definitely will. Midir is the only boss that I'll skip when replaying, and I've beat every DS like 5 times (though never past NG+2, and then only to grab achievements so I don't usually finish).
It makes sense that a slower weapon like an UGS would have problems with Gael considering he moves around a lot more.
it's because midir has little to none physical absorbtion whereas gael has around 30% so he has high defense stats which reduces the ammount of attack damage you give out.
sources:
http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/bosses:slave-knight-gael
http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/bosses:darkeater-midir
Pro tip - the pestilent mist sorcery deals damage based on a percentage of a target's health as opposed to an absolute value. Midir is easy to melt down with mist + slumbering dragoncrest ring. Just plop the mist and bait him into attacks that keep him stationary like his laser.
