You'll need lots of patience and ADP with this guy. His sweeping 3-hit combo can easily stunlock you to death. The ring of giants +2 actually gave me enough poise to roll away after the first hit and escape.

Most tedious boss in the game, maybe even the series. I know he's technically optional, but still.

No weakness except soul of giants

What does change in the game after I kill him?

No weakness?

The fog is coming

I'm a sorcerer, so my strategy was naturally very similar to the Caster strat from here, but I found it too hard. You can easily roll out of his horizontal swing by just rolling backwards, but I found no way to roll out of his vertical swings. I had to roll exactly at the right time to take advantage of the i-frames and then roll some more because he follows it up. During one lucky try I managed to get him to 20-30%, but all the other tries failed completely. I gave it like 10-20 tries but it was all in vain.

I then changed my strat and switched to my Watcher Greatsword and just tried staying behind his back. It was very easy and I believe I got him on second try. So, unless you really want to challenge yourself, just follow the "stick to his left leg" strategy and win. It's one of those rare boss fights where being a ranged sorcerer is actually harder than going melee.

Oh, and absolutely just hump his left leg the whole fight.

I got him with dual +10 UGS, 56 strength. One was lightning infused but I don’t think that mattered particularly.

I fought him after I did Brume Tower. He’s certainly not as hard as Fume or Alonne in that he doesn’t really have movement patterns you need to learn, and they’re all pretty telegraphed blatantly.

So why did I die 5 or 6 times? The combo of his massive health bar (even with 4 giant souls I counted 26 double UGS smashes to put him down) and massive damage output (hr is the hardest hitter in the game), means you need to work pretty clean for about 5 straight minutes. Taking a single two hit combo is death, even with decent armor, so don’t try tank anything.

Healing is safest after rolling through his attack combos, he’s got a wild reach and tag you from a surprising distance if you get distance to heal.

I never saw the curse orb once, and the jump attack only at the open of two fights.

Goes to show how much of a beast Vendrick is/was when even in this hollowed "fallen from grace" sad state as a complete husk of himself, not doing much better than the random emaciated almost-naked hollows that you find wasting away, he's still so strong that you need to find atleast 4 giant souls to even hurt him decently and even your strongest attacks will barely scratch him otherwise, and he can easily kill even the tankiest of characters in at most 2-3 hits, and he doesn't even acknowledge you until you hit him multiple times, Funny contrast to Gwyn who can be a decent challenge if you fight him without parrying or anything, but if you do parry him you can effortlessly parry his sad burnt behind to death without even taking a single hit and he completely goes out with a sad whimper, Whereas fighting Vendrick even in his lowest state doesn't give a single crap about anything you do if you don't have a bunch of giant souls to weaken him, Vendrick truly is an absolute unit of a king.