@humanity: I'm gonna guess you didn't play aggressively enough. If you just dash attack into enemies with the blades they rip things apart (almost every attack other than the default R1 hits with both blades, dealing close to double damage). My main char ran with a +9 cane and +10 blades and while the cane is great for it's aoe potential it can't compete on damage, it's just too slow. I ended up using the cane on a handful of bosses due to hitbox issues, but even with the magic buff on it barely hits harder than the blades' dual attacks.

@ares42: I guess I was just playing the game wrong.

@humanity: heh, not saying that, you probably just didn't experiment enough with the weapon, since it gave a bad first impression.

@humanity: Next to nothing but the slowest, biggest hits stunlocks the Cathedral Ward guys with the sticks. I recommend you give the weapon another go fully upgraded in dual wield mode, it's just beastly. The cane doesn't compare imo. I've tried almost every other weapon in the game (praise the dupe glitch) but I've yet to find a combo I like more than Blades and Ludwig's.

@development: He's a dude who has one move that is actually worth anything; unfortunately, it's really hard to dodge. He doesn't earn his victory and my own felt shallow as a result. Also, yeah: chasing around an enemy for ten minutes is cool and atmospheric the very first time, then never, ever again.

I think that was among the coolest boss-fights in any Souls game. So weird, so unique, and so many ways to beat him.

I feel like I want to appreciate those aspects of it, but I was so frustrated by the end that all I feel is annoyance. I'm sure my second and third etc. playthroughs will shine new light on the fight.

You can sheep herd him to go where you want him to go. I didn't think that part of the fight was hard at all. As for these trick bosses go, I appreciated it actually.

Yeah, his Call Beyond is damn powerful though. You can dodge it, but it's tough. A decent boss fight I thought.

My Cheese Strategy: (Poison Knives)

1. Chase him into the first room where he starts attacking.

2. Damage him to 50%, which triggers him to run to the next location. At one point he will drop down to the lower level and typically you fall down and he continues running. DO NOT DROP DOWN.

3. Hit him with two poison knives. This will poison him and he'll have a spastic gas attack while the poison whittles his health. Once the poison wears off, just hit him again. (I think it's 1% health damage per tick, so you need around 12-14 knives).

Beast Roar + Blade of Mercy = Micolash failing to attack you a single time. He doesn't even try.

As long as the Belfry Gargoyles continue to exist in Dark Souls 2, I'm going to have a hard time believing that there is a worse Souls boss out there.
There is no defending the Belfry Gargoyles as a boss fight.

@adequatelyprepared: the hardest part of that boss fight was getting to it without being invaded 4 times.

Just never stop moving and try to keep them all together in the middle do they don't get behind you.

@oni: I don't know dude, I do more damage with a single charged R2 Ludwig's than I do with like 5-6 r1 hits of the Mercy blades. Their range is also crap. They are just like the claw, a "niche" weapon that works really well for some people but most people don't like. Ludwig's in my opinion is easily the overall best weapon in the game due to it's great scaling with pretty much everything, good speed/power options, varied moveset, and nice range.

@humanity is pretty much correct. The Chikage and Burial Blade are easily the most stand out skill weapons. The threaded cane is okay though thanks to it's range options. Mercy blades? Like I said very niche.

@karkarov: Claw does ridiculously insane damage relative to basically everything, not good in pvp but if you ever want to rip apart some otherwise difficult bosses the claws are pretty good for that.

I never found Micolash difficult at all, I beat him on my first try but it could just be because I was wearing the Students Uniform just for fun at the at time and I'd recently started buffing VIT, so even his AOE attack couldn't 1KO me, I just kept close and dodged through his attacks. I do agree it was a bit of a shitty boss-fight though, interesting in theory but totally unpleasant to actually play. After about 10 minutes of chasing him around in circles and hitting him once or twice in the back with the BoM each time I caught up, I ended up just standing still in a place with no mannequins and looking up the battle on the wiki just to make sure it wasn't bugged out. After that I followed him a bit slower and he eventually made it to the first room and the battle proceeded as intended I suppose?

I just can't agree with all the Rom haters out there though, I found that whole battle super interesting. I really appreciate bosses who seem legitimately reluctant to fight. I could definitely see him becoming a massive pain in the ass if you didn't beat him first try though. I thought the chalice dungeon variant of him was just boring, because it was exactly the same but without the story hooks and it took too long. I found you could dodge his icicles by just moving in one direction without doubling back, and the AOE of his ground icicle attack was just shown on the ground before it hit anyway.

I thought it was a neat fight, in concept, although it totally broke for me (along with the next boss). Having it be in a bunch of hallways instead of some sort of arena really messed with my expectations going in, when you see a boss health bar like that you expect to just be taking something on if that makes sense. I felt like the maze-like foggy hallways matched the lore behind the area and the boss, or at least the lore I could find. Unfortunately due to that stupid memory leak leave your console on over night bug, he never attacked. And then when he went into the room at the end of the second chase sequence, instead of having to run around on top, I just ran up to the gate and he just slowly walked up and stood on the other side, allowing me to just beat him to death. I wish I had found the legitimate way to beat him on my own now. My experience was disappointing, but I feel like the design itself was neat. Actually, the fact that Micolash and Mergo's Wet Nurse completely broke for me is one of my reasons for going through NG+, cause I want to go through those fights for real and I'm concerned that perhaps other bosses also broke from it.

literally stay close, circle left or right around him and hit. all his attacks get stunned and his punches do barley much damage.

People seem to make these fights way harder than they are.

Incorrect, but thanks for playing! Blades>all. The speed and stunlock potential is just unmatched. Like I said, not necessarily great for bosses, but for everything else... Have Mercy.

@oni: I'm really curious, you should record and upload some of this awesome Mercy Blades action because I really have to see it to believe it.

He can't cause there is no such thing :p.

Well @ares42 showed me some of his moves with fully upgraded blades in NG+ and they were indeed stunlocking enemies. So I assume once you reach a certain damage threshold they are decent. The range is still a problem for me.

@oni: What if you add poison gems to the blades? Can bosses be poisoned at all?

This is anecdotal but when I fought The Celestial Emissary with the Blades I stun-lock killed him so fast he existed in his transformed state for at most .4 seconds. I upgraded the blades every chance I got and holy crap does it ever pay off. I was able to catch most bosses in a stun-lock, and even if I didn't the hits are so fast that you can still get a few swings out before dodging. Add on the fact that after the dodge you can attack out of it to close the distance and keep your combo going and you've got some pretty devastating weapons in my opinion. I went through the majority of the game with them an beat every boss in 2-4 tries. And I'm not very good at this game.

Could it be that you never got them to A scaling, or that you were using them in their non-transformed state?

I haven't played Bloodborne yet, but I doubt this boss is worse than Bed of Chaos. What a steaming pile of shit that fight was.

Some can, but that's just not worth it. If you want to poison a boss or something, just bring some poison throwing knives and keep the Blades for damage. Maybe for PvP I can see a use for poison gems in the blades, but for PvE? nah, raw damage>all.

Ye of little faith. I just did a Root Chalice depth 5 (lower Loran) with all modifiers active using only the Blades (except for Amygdala, the last boss, because Ludwigs is too good for hitting the head). I wanted to share it and upload but forgot the PS4 only saves the last 15 minutes, which was mostly me dying to Amygdala. Maybe I'll do another later. In any case I'm sure Youtube has you covered if you want to see how awesome the Blades are. I know I have Epicnamebro in my corner anyway, he loves the Blades!

I found most of the bosses in the main story to be pushovers. Just stun lock to win. I had more trouble with Chalice dungeon Layer 5 bosses to the point I nearly threw my controller at my TV for the first time in a long time..

Dragon God
Bed of Chaos
Pinwheel
Covetous Demon
Skeleton Lords
Prowling Magus and Congregation
and the three assholes from the Sunken Crown DLC

Those are all contenders for worst fight in the serious. The first two are extremely tedious, the next four have a nonexistent level of challenge, and the last one is the laziest and cheapest excuse for a boss fight imaginable. As far as I am concerned, Micolash is an alright fight.

Yeah, seriously. I thought this was immediately going to be about Rom when I saw the thread title. I generally enjoyed the BB bosses, but Rom ranks only second place next to Bed of Chaos when it comes to the worst boss fight in a Souls game.

Micolash was my favourite boss, despite beating him on the first try.