The Grave Warden Duelist is likely a familiar foe by now — heck, if you thoroughly explored the first section of the Consecrated Snowfield, you’ve already fought another of these Scarlet Rot duelist variants. This one is a little tougher than most, thanks to the fact that he’s two-handing his weapon, but we’ve got a simple technique to make this fight easy.
General Tips
Because this boss is two-handing his weapon, he is harder to stagger than most bosses of this size, so don’t rely on interrupting him with jumping attacks.
Every attack this boss has can be avoided by simply sprinting away from him, with the exception of his attack where he charges at you.
If you’re struggling vs the boss’s Rot, equipping the Mottled Necklace can help avoid the Scarlet Rot this boss inflicts with both his weapon and his breath attack. You’ll also want to make sure you have a way to remove status effects like Flame, Cleanse Me, or else have some Preserving Boluses in your quick items.
Strategy
Summons are available in this fight, so naturally you’ll want to call your strongest and/or favorite summon at the start of this fight. There’s no special trick to fighting him with summons, but it is worth noting that lots of his attacks are wide and sweeping, so don’t think just because he’s targeting your summons that it’s safe to attack him in melee range. The techniques below are focused on what you can do if the boss is still alive when your summons die.
This fight is very straightforward, thanks to the duelist’s complete lack of gap-closing combos. If you start sprinting and get close enough to him to trigger an attack, you can then run directly away from him and his attacks will almost always miss (see Charge attack below for the one exception). You can then attack freely if you’re a ranged character — once he starts moving towards you, just repeat the technique of sprinting into and out of range to trigger an attack.
Melee characters can use an identical strategy — the only difference is that you’ll want to wait for his attack to finish before unleashing an attack of your own. Use a jumping heavy attack and then roll away twice, then again start sprinting, trigger an attack, and get out of range. Repeat until the duelist is dead!
As you can see, you can risk attacking early — only do this if you’ve got plenty of healing left
If you’re impatient, you can attack near the end of the combos — a lot (but not all) of his final attacks in the combos will go over your head. However, the safer option is to wait until you’re certain his attack is done. Many of his combos end with an attack where his weapon hits the ground and kicks up lots rocks and dust, so you can use that as an indicator.
The one attack you won’t be able to run away from is his Charge attack. It’s easy to see coming, as he’ll raise his weapon, wait a moment, and then start running after you. You can sprint away from him, and then when roll twice when he starts swinging his axe — he’ll swing it twice, and then you can counter attack.
The only real challenge while using this strategy is keeping your stamina up. Make sure you skip counterattacking and let your stamina recover if you are almost out of stamina.
Unabashed FromSoftware fanboy still learning to take his time with games (and everything else, really). The time he doesn't spend on games is spent on music, books, or occasionally going outside.
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