This video is part of a full BL4 guide that I wrote: docs.google.com/document/d/1Z...
Lady Maria of the Astral Clocktower is a fan favorite boss and one of the most cinematic fights in the series, but unfortunately this fight has a few design flaws that get extremely noticeable and annoying at BL4.
When you go through the fog door, Lady Maria will walk towards you and engage when you’re close enough. Buff yourself up with a Beast Blood Pellet and Bolt Paper before she engages and prepare yourself for the first attack.
In the first phase, Lady Maria will always engage you through a gap closer; meaning she will always do an attack that kinda makes her body dash towards you. So, once you get to the distance where she usually does an attack to engage you (just a few meters), you can preemptively dodge the incoming attack by quickstepping diagonally to the right.
Once you dodge her first attack, you can bully her. So, the way Maria’s AI works, is that she will always try to either punish you or quickstep away after getting hit. Whatever she does, it’s gonna be pretty easy to abuse her openings because 99% of her attacks are dodged by simply strafing.
Here’s how first phase is gonna play out: (1) you dodge her opener attack and punish with R1L1, (2) you preemptively strafe to the right before she starts attacking, (3) her attack misses you completely, (4) you walk up to her and R1L1 again, then just repeat steps 2 to 4 to completely bully her while being basically untouchable.
While utilizing this strategy, you should be aware of two things that can go wrong:
1. If Lady Maria quicksteps away from you, you’ll need to dodge her incoming attack just like you dodged the opener. This is easy, though, because she will try to attack you immediately after the quickstep, which means you can preemptively dodge her incoming attack as soon as you see her quickstep animation end, and then engage her with a R1L1 and restart the “loop”.
2. If you attack Lady Maria with a R1L1 and you notice that her body doesn’t flinch while she’s charging an attack, it’s because she will be doing the downcut that gives her hyper armor. Hyper armor is a mechanic in the game where the enemy enters an unflinchable state and you cannot interrupt their incoming attack. If you notice this attack, dodge as soon as she tries to hit you. If you dodge too early, you will get caught by it. This attack is not easily strafeable, so you should quickstep diagonally to the right to avoid it instead of just strafing to the right.
With these tips in mind, it won’t take you long to get really good at the first phase and just completely bully her into the second phase.
When Lady Maria gets below 60%HP, she will dash away from you and stab herself with the Rakuyo and do an AoE explosion after a few seconds. If you follow her when she dashes, you can safely hit her three to four times before the explosion (which also doesn’t have that big of a radius).
After the explosion, second phase will start where Maria’s attacks will now have longer range and higher damage due to the trails of blood they leave behind, but the attacks are still the same and you’ll approach her the same way you did in the first phase, except for a few differences:
1. Instead of strafing, you’ll now be safer if you dodge all attacks diagonally to the right. The reason for this is that, while some attacks are still strafeable, others will start hitting you from now on due to the increased hitbox. Some of these attacks also have a little delay before coming out, so the best way to dodge Maria in phase 2 is to: (1) R1L1, (2) strafe to the right for about 0.5s and (3) dodge diagonally to the right; then repeat these steps. The strafe step is important because it means the faster attacks won’t hit you, and dodging is important because this way you’ll avoid the delayed attacks. What this means is that you’ll never have to react to her attacks. Preemptively dodging like this will avoid her entire moveset in phase 2.
2. The other difference is that she’ll now also get three new moves where she sheaths her Rakuyo and charges up a powerful attack. The three variations can be recognized by looking at where she’s holding the Rakuyo. If it’s on her left side (your right), she’ll do a slash. If it’s on her right side (your left) and pointing towards you, she’ll do a very long range stab that can be followed by a slash if you’re still in front of her when you dodge. If it’s above her head, she’ll do a slam (and this is the attack you should be most careful of, because it comes out faster than the other two).
3. The last difference in her moveset is that now she’ll have a dive bomb attack where she will lunge up in the air and do a plunging AoE attack. This attack has some minimal tracking and you can easily dodge it by either running under her or running away from her.
!THERE'S NO SPACE LEFT IN THE DESCRIPTION, SO I WILL RESUME THE GUIDE IN THE COMMENTS!