Great Grey Wolf Sif
HP:3432
Skills: Sword swings, Sprinting lunge*, Uppercut clash, Spinning slash*
Souls:40000
Difficulty:3.5/5
Times dies on 1st play through: 5-ish
Its time again for another Dark souls boss profile! Following on our journey, after the Moonlight butterfly, I ventured deeper in the realm of Darkroot and found the Great Grey Wolf Sif. Now I was amused, this is actually a pretty cool looking boss, and the wolf DOES have the skill to back it up. She (yes its a girl) will slaughter all who are not used to her attack pattern, and those who underestimate her will pay dearly with their lives and souls. She is actually pretty tough, no joke. Sif is the 2nd and final boss of the Darkroot garden.
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| She'll swing a blade at you that's easily 3 times your size. |
So Sif does not have alot of attacks, and she gets easy to read after a few attempts, but she can potentially kill you after landing 2 successful hits with her signature attacks. She does have quite a lot of HP, but she holds a hefty amount of souls. It'll take awhile to cut her down, especially if you don't have a good weapon (Drake sword of Dark knight weapons are good). Now lets get straight down to her attacks.
Sword swings- The least threatening of her attacks. She swings her swords a few times, forming a short combo. While these swings do decent damage, they are slow enough to dodge easily. You can block them as well.
Sprinting lunge*- One of her moves that always gets me. If you stray too far from her, she will sprint to you at an insane speed and lunge at you with her sword. This is supposedly unblockable, since I always get sent flying, and have died a few times to this attack. When you see this coming try to roll away, or even better, completely prevent her from using this by sticking close to her.
Uppercut slash- She swings her blade upwards and back flips away. This does little damage, and this is her "get away" tool when you are slashing her under her belly. Not much to worry about here.
Spinning slash*- Ah, the feared spinning slash. This is her signature move that gets many players. She puts her blade on the ground and spins twice in two full circles. Unless you have godly endurance, you will not be able to block both slashes and will take stupidly high damage. Its hard to see his coming because she pulls this off rather quickly, even more so than her other moves. Roll away, enough said.
Okay, so fighting her at this point is probably a bad idea, but I did it anyway. I died quite a few times, but not as much as I did during the bell gargoyles. There are to key points to take note of when fighting Sif. One is endurance, keep an eye out for stamina and see if you have enough to block for her next attack. If you don't dodge away and recover your stamina, since keeping your stamina UP is crucial for this battle. The second is to get under Sif at all times. When you are under her, you can hack away at her ankles without being in too much danger.
Of course, the problem is getting under her. She'll not sit there and let you run under her to chop her. Depending on what attack she does, you can either have this easy, or have it hard. If you approach her and she begins her sword swinging combo, you're in luck. Block or dodge the 1st hit, then go under her and hit her, you will have time to deal quite some damage before she finishes her combo. If she does spinning slash however...abort mission and roll away.
Most people mistake her spinning slash animation for her sword swings, and get slaughtered as a result. The thing is, Sif's spinning slash does crazy good damage, and is virtually unblockable. If you are hit by it, you'll understand what I mean. One slash can easily cut down 1/2 of your health or more. Dodge the spinning slash, back off, and approach her to try again once she finishes that attack. Either way, once you hack her under her belly for awhile, she'll use uppercut slash to retreat. You'll probably be unharmed by this anyway, since you're under her.
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| If you see this in real life, you would probably shit your pants. |
Her other dangerous move, is the deadly sprinting lunge. This is another reason why you'll want to approach and stay close to Sif at all times. If you wander too far off, whether is it to heal or shoot projectiles, she'll sprint towards you and lunge in your face. Its unblockable (to me anyways), and it does crazy damage. Not to mention if she immediately catches you with spinning slash after the lunge, you can kiss yourself goodbye.
As you can probably tell, ranged attacks won't do you good (unless you have homing soul arrow, which you probably don't at this point), so stick to brawling up close like a man. Arrows are the worst choice for this fight. You have a big area to fight in, so don't worry about space constraint. Concentrate, get used to her patterns and take her down nice and slow.
Note that once she gets exceptionally low, she starts to limp around. This means that her end is near! But don't relax yet, she can still very well kill you as she retains her spinning slash move! When she starts to limp, back off and heal abit just in case something stupid happens (her patterns tend to become a little unstable when she starts to limp). Wait for her to attack (it'll be slower than usual), and take her down. Well done, you have bested a powerful foe!
Overall, he is quite the boss. It'll take awhile to get used to his patterns, but when you do, its all a battle of reflex, and acting appropriately to whatever move he throws at you. This will be quite a fight no matter what method you choose to take him down, so best of luck to you! You get the covenant of Artorias for beating Sif, something you need later on in the game.
Peace for now!
