Xenom

depending on what the player finds more difficult in terms of bosses its potentially more optimal to skip the judge, after needolin (12) you go up sinners road to phantom, out to the grand bellway and up to cogwork dancers, then back down through the bellway to reach clawline and then the sacred cylinder, it swaps the last judge for phantom, the blasted steps for sinners road, and skips trobbio completely since the exit to the exhaust organ gets you into that part of the underworks.

So instead of (14) judge (15) dancers (16) key (17) clawline (20) trobbio (21) cylinder youd end up with

(14) phantom (15) dancers (16) clawline (17) cylinder

whether this is better or not really depends on what the player finds harder honestly, judge vs phantom and steps vs sinners, but it *seems* shorter on paper at least to me. Good article, really helps lay out what abilities you actually need and which you can live without