Its also hard to get a DA on her becase of the shadows, which tend to block the path to her. Since the DA bar for her drains pretty quickly, you have to 'jump' to her as quickly as possible, but dodge her clones as much as possible, since although they aren't such a worry attack wise they do waste a lot of time.

Getting DAs on Dirna is a lot harder than a lot of the other bosses, even without the armor/ breakable the Ethereal Queen wears.