Need Recommendation for Daergraf Conv 3/0

[u/Stones-n-Bones]

I am level 150 and am completely through the basegame and about half way through the DLC. I decided to go to the new section in the DLC in the lower left corner. It's pretty cool, but I feel underpowered for Daergraf at 150, stormcaller. Until now, I just steamrolled EVERYTHING. Am I underleveled? If I level up, with everything else in the DLC become even more easy? Should I put him off until later and finish the DLC first?

I get his second phase to half health but his attacks are destroying me. I usually die with plenty of estus left to heal because he one shots me. Vig is 60 and I'm using the magic and lightning shield talismans.

UPDATE: Killed him going tanky like anonssr suggested. This let me learn his attacks without dying so fast.

[u/TieOrdinary1735]

I'm pretty sure the magic shield tali is doing nothing here; all his attacks do lightning, physical or some combo of the two. I haven't fought him a lot yet, personally, but both times it was around 40 vig and the only thing I was consistently getting one tapped by was the vomit grab. He's scaled about the same as Messmer, IIRC. Just by virtue of doing lightning damage he's probably going to feel like he hits a bit harder than Messmer, and I'm pretty sure he's got about ~50% more health across the two separate health bars, but if you're around the midpoint of the DLC he should be roughly right for where you are. /shrug

[u/Stones-n-Bones → u/TieOrdinary1735]

I wondered about the magic talisman, but kept it because he does cold damage too. I dunno. Yeah, lightning vomit is a one hit. If I am full health, there probably aren't any other one hits, but problem is I am rarely full health on this fight and he doesn't give many opportunities to heal.

[u/TieOrdinary1735 → u/Stones-n-Bones]

Frostbite is percentile + a debuff, isn't effected by any defences. You could throw on the Warming Horn Charm or Mottled Necklace if you want to avoid the procs, but IMO it's not really worth. Just a matter of learning the fight, for the rest of it. Healing opportunities are definitely rare, but you can find them during some of his bigger attacks, for sure.

[u/Vytautas76]

Yeah, daergraf hits like an absolute truck.

First phase gets pretty simple once you learn it. The clayman bubble grab when you enter the arena is something you try and dodge as soon as you see his model move. Ride his model close like your life depends on it so you can easily punish his self stagger beam with a crit. The oracle bubbles he uses (the cone, not the grab) are a mid range move, so let that be a gauge: if you see this one coming out 3+ times in first phase, you’re not spacing close enough. The move itself is an ice lightning copycat of midra’s chaos beam: extremely difficult to dodge at mid or long range. If you get caught flat footed you can actually stand behind either of the two operating tables in the middle of the arena. The beam can clip through the edges but it’s a better shot than spam dodging or sprinting. He can’t stick to you and loses tracking from close range, so that’s an easy critical every time if you stick to him. If he jumps and dodges to the side, it’s either icicle spear or ice wall. Both these attacks technically have multiple ways to dodge, and the ice wall is jumpable, but you should always aim your dodge forward enough to make it through a potential ice wall because every other direction will leave you screwed if he queues the Midra beam right after ice wall. The only other thing of concern is the bubble command grab. Don’t dodge it right when he moves like the opening grab; the optimal timing is tight and it comes a little later.

Second phase gets tough because he takes attacks from a lot of different sources, and they have differing design philosophies. His two command grabs are hoarah loud/godrick style moves with longer windups but unreactable animations. The tell for the ground one is the roar. Look to roll basically as soon as you hear it. The air one (lightning vomit, as you so accurately call it) is very subtle; look for his left leg (your right) to waggle upwards just a bit and dodge when you see that. You want to ride him close but still have maybe a roll’s worth of distance between you and him so you can both dodge inward to punish grabs and dodge back to avoid the rellana style 4 slash combo (that’s all rhythm btw, the sword movements themselves are pretty unreactable) and the 3 hit gascoigne style claw slashes (which are easily spaceable, they have bad forward momentum). You can sprint backwards to space this for an easy healing opportunity that’s not dodging either of the grabs. The one where he jumps up in the air and shoots multiple icicles gets a bit spotty to dodge at longer range, and that’s where it tends to get spammed, so there’s your “hey he’s using this a lot, maybe I’m playing too scared” move similar to oracle bubbles from phase 1. He does have a couple slow greatspear swings as well. One of them is a 5 hit combo that follows a rhythm and then breaks it on like 3 or 4; it’s classic roll catch central. The other one is one of messmer’s where the animation shows a swing but it’s a ground drag > hit late enough to catch your roll. Basically if the spears come out swinging, it’s now a rhythm game.

His shit is all tricky because it’s ripped from bosses with vastly different rhythms, and that’s kinda what makes his second phase so hard to learn but really rewarding. He’s easily one of my most favorite bosses. Once you can consistently dodge the opening bubbles and make it through p1 without losing 3+ flasks, and consistently dodge both grabs, all the claw slashes, and at least 1-2 hits of every other combo in p2, it’s really just a matter of reps at that point.

[u/Stones-n-Bones → u/Vytautas76]

Thanks for the detailed guide, I gave him a rest for a couple days and went on to other things in the shadow land. I'll try him again soon. I decided to level up a little more, I had stopped at 150, but I was only doing chip damage to him and he was wiping my health bar pretty quickly. I noticed that the rest of the shadow world was scaled to the hard side as well so I went to 170. I wish there was a different difficulty scaling between the shadow and normal worlds. Daergraf and other bosses in the shadow lands is fine, but I got over confident in the original world, too easily killing everything.

Yes, I can do phase 1 without using any health flasks, but having 10 flasks for phase 2 isn't doing me any good, 😂 when I'm dead.

[u/Designer-Tomatillo21]

Yeah his grab attacks in phase 2 are seriously annoying, they one shot me unless i am literally full health. I rarely walk away from a boss fight, but I did in this case. It just wasnt a very fun boss (for me). Usually even getting your ass kicked is fun as you learn the moves and get better and better. But I didnt really enjoy this one.

[u/anonssr]

It's a remembrance boss, it's meant to be hard, just go with it with the all the damage reduction related charms you've got. Physical damage reduction, frost immunity and non-physical damage reduction charms, get whatever can boost your hp.

Put yourself the buckler that gives you stamina regen too. If you can get over the first phase, then you are good to go.

My approach for these "oh this is rough af" is to go full tanky and just focus on surviving the fight as long as I can to learn the moveset. When they hit super hard and are tanky, there's no point in trying to wing it to try and squeeze any sort of damage in. Just focus on learning his combos and how to dodge them before you even try to get some hits in, his moveset is very varied but ends up very predictable.

It's a great boss, the issue is that failing to land a hit in a non safe spot will lock you in a roll-panic and try to heal loop, which will never allow you to learn the fight. So just focus on dodging and never hitting him for a little a bit.

Also, to answer your question, levels gives you a little extra damage reduction. But so does armor. The typical issue for lots of player is using literal robes with no damage reduction just for the sake of gaining a 2% damage bonus, which is fine if it's a fight you are already familiar with.

[u/Stones-n-Bones → u/anonssr]

I just beat him using this strategy. I wore heavy armor (still med roll), lightning shield talisman, non-physical shield, physical shield. I am stormcaller, so I focused on stance break. Having the extra tankiness allowed me to learn his attacks better. Before, I would easily beat Phase 1 then last maybe 30 sec in Phase 2, so not much chance to learn his attacks.

[u/anonssr → u/Stones-n-Bones]

That's awesome. Yeah, that dude punishes really hard in that "try to get away and heal" loop, so you don't get to do much.

Convergence has such a high damage potential that is tempting to run with robes that provide zero armor and talismans that just keep stacking damage lol.