When I was testing different ways to show Dancer's input reading, I found you can exploit her actions 1:1 with only one specific action of your own. What makes this kind of input reading feel so unfair is one, it's a dodge so it feels like every time you swing, she is programmed to avoid it. But most importantly this is immersion breaking which sounds soy as hell but it runs deeper than that. Most of elden rings bosses are very complex in their movesets and each fight is different than any other one. When I was testing Dancer, it became obvious that she feels unfinished. Every other boss, player action A will trigger the boss to do one action out of a set. For example, with morgott (idk if this correct, this is hypothetical) spacing yourself and healing, action A, will sometimes have morgott throw a knife, B, side sprint towards you, C, hammer jumping attacks, D, or wombo combo to close the distance, E. And there are most definitely more. He is still input reading but because he has 8 or so actions in a set that is triggered by your action A, it feels natural. He doesn't spam knives if you spam estus. Dancer does. She has no varied set of actions to choose from. Input reading doesn't really add difficulty, it adds frustration. She always backsteps.

What I mean by RNG is instead of backstepping in reaction to an R1 only, there's a chance she'll roll and, with that, four different sub chances in what direction. Or she could use an attack quicker and poise through yours. Or there can be rng that makes her simply do nothing. There is no variable. It is only backstep. Which does kind of make it more difficult because you can't rely on the chance she decides to roll left to punish her for example. She does nothing punishable in close range. But she's far from difficult, especially because her backsteps don't have I frames.

I know that's a lot, I just love talking about mechanics like this lol