LogFAQs > #897238567

Elana is one of the strongest bosses in the game. Don't summon AI. When you summon phantoms, enemies and especially bosses get more durable (for each phantom), and they will also hit harder, and have more poise. Bosses in the DLC almost all will also cycle aggression, so they will never focus on one opponent for very long. Further, Elana is quite possibly the single most well-equipped boss in Souls to deal with a host who summoned help. If you're going to summon help, make it humans, and hope they know what they're doing very well.

Magic is sort of nerfed in the DLC. Spell damage is reduced, but just spells. So things like lightning/soul spear, or dark orb, those do reduced damage. Magic damage, like just on a melee weapon or from a buff, that is unaffected.

Elana doesn't particularly have a weakness from what I recall though you'd not want to use dark on her.

An ideal melee setup would be something fast with high DPS for Elana, and then something with strike damage for her summons. The skeletons don't take much to kill if you've got a good strike damage weapon.

A rapier or dagger with ring of blades and Sacred Oath and if you have the space for it, Sunlight Blade too, going in with all that you can put out a lot of DPS if you know her openings and can just fill it with as many R1s as you can safely. You won't get much opportunity to recast buffs once the fight starts though except after her AoE if you got out of range.

You could also try Defender's Greatsword if you have it, though you might need to bring repair powder too. Its self buff makes it a pretty powerful faith greatsword.

Then again sticking with what you're comfortable with might be best. So, red iron twinblade can work. It does have good DPS potential but, yeah, you're gonna need to remove the dark infusion for her. She is a fragment of Manus. Dark's not gonna work.
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