Bloodborne - Ludwig the Accursed & Holy Blade No Hit w/ Beasthunter Saif (No Blood Gems).

Ludwig might be my favorite boss in the series. The best way to fight him in a No Hit is two-fold: 1. When dodging into him, make sure you end your attacks at the side of him, otherwise he can do more combos or his dreaded stomp move, which if you're under him will guarantee hit you unless you dodge directly through his back legs, which is finnicky. 2. When looking for attack opportunities it is best to back away from him, as you can bait moves that you'll space, wherein you can hit the head, and eventually get a riposte as shown in the video. This is easier with the Saif, but can be done with any weapon. For special moves to look out for, there are 3. 1. When he scrapes the ground do not go in for a hit. He can do stomps right after. 2. When he swipes and then scrapes and then does two more swipes, that is your primary attack opportunity. You can see in the video that a majority of my hits come from this, walking/ Beast Hunter Saif R1-ing into the end of this attack. 3. His bites. If you're in a corner then you must unlock and dodge to the right of him to dodge hit. However, if you're in the open there is some tech. Dodge 3 times backwards and then depending on your weapon, instantly charge a full heavy. His last bite in the chain will just barely miss and you'll hit his head. One more Note on this though: In the actual video I do 4 dodges back and miss my R2 specifically because this strategy becomes inconsistent on the stairs, so I was being safe. Which leads into . . . As for issues I have with the fight, in spite of my bias, there are also 2. The first is that I think the arena is too small, and the stairs are a poor design choice, ie: Enlarge/ change the arena. Ludwig is one of the most insane, well designed, complex boss fights they've ever done, and you'll be doing some wonderful spacing/ positioning tech, then WHAM, you are on a wall and get hit. Furthermore, as seen in the video, his AI breaks on the stairs, interrupting and making the fight more difficult in a bad way. Then in Phase 2, he can have some Camera/ Moveset Issues (as seen in the video), purely because the arena is definitely too small. There's a reason the best fights in the series tend to have large arenas (Like with Gael/ Midir). The second is a single move he has in Phase 2 which unfortunately was not captured in this No Hit, but which I had to deal with constantly and in most attempts! If I had to change one thing about this amazing fight captured here, it would be to include that move. I say this because in my shallow research, this move is also not really captured in most of the popular Ludwig No Hits, such as Ongbals. What is it and why am I nitpicking it as annoying? Well, It is an extremely fast double swipe downwards, which requires a precise directly to the right (I mean DIRECTLY 90 degrees) dodge, or it will frame-trap you. There are two ways to avoid this move. The first is to simply fight him "correctly". If you're always strafing and not in front of him, then this move is rare. The second is the aforementioned way to dodge, but it is quite jarring to be doing this fight in a way where dodge direction doesn't quite matter, and then BOOM extremely strict move just comes out and sightly interrupts the rhythm. But this is just a personal preference: I don't like these kinds of instant, strict attacks you have to look out for in a boss fight. Now for Phase 2 most of what you do is captured in the video, except that I made a deliberate decision to not do tech. When you dodge his horizontal- on the ground swipe from the left, which then goes into a light- up sword vertical swipe from the right (shown at 2:47), you can actually position yourself slightly in front of him, slightly to the side of him, and the move will completely miss. In fact I probably didn't even need to dodge it at that timestamp. However, while I did this tech many times in other attempts, it is also kind of risky, so I was too paranoid to do it here in what my mind was calling a "Great Attempt" even before I knew it was the No Hit. Anyways, those nitpicks are truly nitpicks, and with some minor tweaking he'd actually be a perfect boss with 0 issues like Midir. I still prefer Ludwig though, just because I find his fight more engaging and like his soundtrack. #bloodborne #fromsoftware #nohit