Summoning Tiche is a godsend for this fight. She can dodge well, has decent dps and can knockdown Malenia with some of her moves too. Swarm of Flies seems to have been nerfed to the ground and is practically useless now

I really HATE her Waterfowl Dance. She would be otherwise enjoyable boss, may be one of the best in the game, if not for this move. Yes, nowdays I know, that you can use bloodhound step, or freezing pots, but still.

Just want to share a bit of my experience, 2 dragonmaws hitting almost consecutively can poise-break and cancel her dancing waterfowl, tested doing it with mimic tear. Rejection will also definitely knock her down in phase 1, haven't tested on her phase 2. Ancient dragon knight kristoff use rejection quite often and it can always knock her down during phase 1, I didn't get time to observe this phenomena in her phase 2. Future testing may need to test if rejection can knock her down or cancel her waterfowl dance. Hope this helps and give people some idea.

After about 80 attempts I finally beat this boss solo. Faith/arc build lvl 139, used a combination of lightning spear, honed bolt, borealis mist and golden vow. Interesting how most of the criticism is aimed at WFD; don’t get me wrong that attack is blatantly stupid but I had more trouble with the phantom attack in second phase.

I really don’t understand what FS was going for with this design, nothing about this encounter felt fun or rewarding. Ridiculously aggressive and bizarre AI behaviour. So much interesting lore, this demigod is hyped up throughout the entire game and then you have to deal with this garbage. Glad I got the achievement but can’t imagine I’ll torture myself again in subsequent playthroughs.

After about 30 tries with Rivers of Blood and Bolt of Gransax I decided to respec with Arcane and used an Occult Nagakiba and Uchigatana. I had Double Slash on the Nagakiba, and the extra range and bleed from Occult really made a huge difference. I used the turtle talisman and Greenburst Crystal Tear in my Physick and chugged it at the start of the battle so I didn't have to wait for my stamina to come back. Took her out the first try.

So if you struggle with her try a dedicated bleed build. Since proccing bleed stuns her out of her combos you can avoid a lot of misery. Relentlessly attacking keeps her from doing Waterfowl Dance in her first phase too.

god she's incredible

My main gripe with this boss is that in NG+ Co-OP she has way too much health. I got summoned once by a host that wanted me to solo her on NG+3 at SL125 and it legit took me about 10 minutes straight to kill her.

it took me forever but i finally got her i just had to post that lol she was the only boss my first playthru i couldnt beat but i finally got her

I don't really understand why people want to judge other player's gameplay... I mean, it doesn't really matters if you're using build A or build B as long as you're having fun.
Malenia is the coolest boss I've faced so far (- E.R. only), she is pretty strong yet not impossible (some RNG involved too).

Once you get her HP to Waterfowl territory run away and throw any consumable at her. She will dodge it and do Waterfowl 99% of the time and you will be far away ready to run/dodge into last combo. Do the same thing again once she is below 40% HP to dodge the second one. Not sure how this works in second phase as she is way more aggressive and she mix up Waterfowl with new charged up attacks.

The combat information's tips and strategies for Malenia recommends anyone finding her exceptionally difficult should consider a respec so they can use ROB. But I've just noticed that Mohg's sacred spear and Morgott's cursed sword aren't mentioned at all as being viable or otherwise to use against her. I got the sacred spear and cursed sword from their respective remembrances but before I respec so I can use them in NG+ I'm hoping anyone who has used either weapon to beat Malenia or anyone who found them a bad choice for this fight will reply with their experience of using them against her.