1.) Difficulty is extremely build dependent per boss because of the small margins for error. Past games had strong/weak match ups but this is the first time some builds just felt completely unusable in certain boss fights. The build I used to one shot Dancing Lion and a bunch of other DLC bosses blind just didn't work against Messmer because of his attack patterns and mobility. Like I couldn't land a single meaningful attack with the build even when using Mimic Tears. This is largely the result of issue #2 though:
2.) The DLC suffers from the same"anti-Souls Player" boss design philosophy as the base game did but dialed up to 11. Instead of learning the boss, we have to learn how the boss intends to kill players engaging with ERs combat mechanics, more specifically: How does it intend to hit you for dodge rolling.
As a community we generally "got gud" so all the bosses are designed with anti player attacks or patterns. In the base game this was mostly attacks that delayed the swing after the tell animation to mess up your timing, or attacks that had bizarre follow through hitboxes to roll catch players at the end of their iFrames.
In the DLC, they still use these patterns but also sprinkle in "dodge this pattern for 10 secs" on highly mobile and aggressive enemies. If you get hit glass cannon builds just die, and any other build has to choose between healing or attacking with such a small window a lot of slower abilities won't actually hit the boss. Assuming you're even in range after dodging the sequence because bosses in the DLC have a tendency to fly all over the screen.
I was able the finish the DLC last night and only really was slowed down by Messmer (until I respeced) and the final boss. But I had to sacrifice playing a fun build I was enjoying (Sword of Night and Flame, Holy) for an anti-anti-Souls Player build (Fingerprint Shield Bull Goat Butchering Knife Tank) and it just felt bad.
Difficulty is fine but I think the complaints about it are valid for the DLC because of how the difficulty was achieved.
