Respect for Scrapped Watchman
So in my first playthrough, Mad Donkey gave me grief but after eventually besting him, I used that "Star Fragment" thingy on Scrapped Watchman and was all hey, that guy was way easier than the Donkey! By the time I started NG+ I had decided to not use specters anymore and fought him solo in both NG+ and NG++ cycles, no sweat. I think I even one-shotted him solo on NG+.
After getting Platinum I took a few days off but was still feeling that itch, so I started a new save file. Just for variety, decided to try a Motivity build using hard-hitting heavy weapons instead of my usual technique / dodge style.
Parade master was okay, took a little getting used to but with higher guard damage reduction missing the occasional perfect guard is manageable.
Donkey was tougher, still not as bad as first playthrough but he has some ridiculously delayed attacks that are a pain.
They I got to the Scrapped Watchman, expecting it to be a cakewalk. I mean, I've soloed Laxasia, Simon, and Nameless Puppet on NG+ and NG++, how hard can this guy be?
Ho-lee shit.
I probably died 20 times before I finally killed him. It was like facing the endgame bosses for the first time all over again.
It wasn't so much the parries, I could perfect guard him fairly reliably in the first half. It's just that I was doing so, sooo little damage to him, even with the Greatsword of Fate already upgraded to +1 or maybe +2 by then. Once he started throwing electric stuff all over the place it was just a slowly losing battle. And the margin for error... with so little health and pulse cells you can't afford to take more than a couple of unguarded hits from pressing L1 a hair too late.
So yeah, mad respect to this massively underrated boss. I was not expecting a challenge like that. A tip of the hat to you, good sir.
Posted Nov 27, 2023, 8:24 PM UTC
Btw, it is very easy to go behind the donkey’s back and backstab him repeatedly
Lol, yeah that's what I ended up doing the first time around. Though it took a while to figure out that it's much easier to backstab him if you dodge roll toward him instead of to the side.
In my defense I had never played a soulslike before so I didn't know that dodge gives you iframes to safely go right through an attack.