Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-1961216-20140429234542/@comment-5123071-20140430061146

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DracoHandsome wrote: The only bosses that give me much trouble are the ones that are optional (makes sense, right?) The Pursuer in Smelter Demon's arena can't be reached with phantoms summoned, and the Belfry Gargoyles are difficult because I have the splendid choice of fighting them without a phantom (offline) or getting to them with two other players trying to kill me (online). And also because I only get one phantom and there are up to five of them at a time depending how bad I'm doing.

It seems to me that you have been summoning for almost every single boss in Dark Souls II since your reasons for something being hard are that you can't summon. Most bosses are very easy with summons, especially if a summon is a mage. I'm not saying you can't summon, but everybody knows the game is easy with summons.