God of War (2018) - GMGOW NG+ - Killing Valkyrie Queen Sigrun at Level 1, No Damage

Early on I could tell this wasn't going to be one of the hardest Valkyries, for a couple of reasons. 1. Several of the other Valkyries had attack patterns that, if they chose to do them, there was no consistent defense against. These were rare, but frustrating. 2. Similarly, some Valkyries had "50/50" moments, where you had to guess what they were about to do, and if you guessed wrong you'd die. No such moments exist with Sigrun, though this may partly be because I've gotten better at finding patterns that option-select these moments. 3. There's no time element like there was with Hildr. 4. There are no resource demands, like with Hildr (Rage) or Kara (Runic Attacks). 5. There is a large arena, with plenty of space to work and not feel cramped or get backed into a corner. So Sigrun just didn't seem like a big obstacle, and knew it was only a matter of time before I got this victory. That said, she still wound up taking me longer than any of the other fights, and maybe as long as all of them combined. This is mainly due to Sigrun's immense life bar, which I always knew was going to be a problem. This means I have to play perfect for a much longer timeframe than any of the others. It took days of attempts to finally get familiar enough with her that enough things became instinct so I could focus on a couple of major problems. Once you really learn her, there are three main scenarios where Sigrun will kill you: 1. She can perform the Valkyrie unblockable dash raw. You can see her do this at 3:10. Whenever she's in neutral you must focus on anticipating this attack, it's too hard to react to visually if you're not watching for it. 2. When she's performing "Valhalla", I have a simple rule: tap dash once to dodge the incoming hit. If a fireball lands, pause for half a second and then do a dash+roll. If it's Sigrun herself, wait until she goes back up and perform a short dash only again. Sometimes, however, there's some pattern she does that breaks this timing and she winds up landing on you. It was too much for me to decipher on top of everything else happening, so I started using flashes of Rage activation to knock her out of loop and reduce the odds of it happening. You can see me first do this at 5:15. 3. There is a moment in Sigrun's pattern where she'll either go for her scythe or her mace. You can see this play out at 3:45, and my positioning here is super dangerous. If you watch closely, you can use short dashes to either side, depending on which weapon she draws. This was proving too difficult to do consistently, so I developed a method where I dash+roll backward. This successfully dodges the first hit of either. At that point if I see it's the scythe, I do another dash to the left. However if Sigrun performs this move when you're backed into a wall--or god forbid, Atreus gets in your way--you can't get away from the scythe in time. Speaking of, I played this entire game multiple times and it wasn't until this fight, under these run conditions, that I realized Atreus can block your dodges. it's incredibly infuriating and there's no good reason for it to exist as a mechanic. As previously, there's too much to cover with Sigrun, so I'll just call out a couple of interesting moments: At 4:38 I make my first major mistake, using a Runic Attack when she's not locked down. This is why I'm using Spartan Charge, as it's one of the few Runic Attacks with substantial iframes. In this instance, it saves me from my error. At 5:50 I make the same mistake again, under even worse timing. This time I bail myself out with a flash of Rage. Rage doesn't serve a lot of purpose against Sigrun at level 1, as even a full bar won't deal much damage, so it's primarily a defensive tool to erase mistakes like this. At 6:00 she does the unblockable dash, and I swear I'm late on my dodge. I'm not sure why she missed, probably a terrain detail saving my life. At 7:45 Sigrun goes into a lengthy series of wing spins, like Olrun. This is one of the best things she can do. Not only is it incredibly safe and easy to react to and control--as she has no real deviation other than how long it lasts--but the longer she goes the more her Wing Shield cooldown resets (which is my best opportunity to damage her), the more her stun timers reset, and the more my own Runic Attacks recharge. At 8:20 she goes into the air for her AOE slam. I hesitate because I'm at awkward range and have the Blades of Chaos equipped. I need to either dash in close to hit her, or retreat to a safe distance. Since I hesitated either avenue will result in death, so I use a Rage flash to cover my mistake. At 9:20 I finally make a critical error and get punished. Fortunately Rage is still barely active, so it absorbs this grab and prevents me from losing the run. I don't love that this happened and would have liked to have a truly clean "no hit" run... but since I'm using Rage to cover other moments I don't think this is truly distinct from those.