Rachis

with the mechanics the way they are, sure mace is strong. otherwise, there's nothing else going for hammer weapons in general. do you have the spare load to throw on a weapon skill shield? that would save you a little time. you could infuse the silver eagle kite shield with simple for your infinite weapon arts.

yeah hornet ring is strong as fuck. i don't think its fair to die after just one mistake. it doesn't give the player on the receiving end the chance to correct their behavior. they just get flat out destroyed with no opportunity to learn.

i'm definitely not arguing that it's shit gameplay. just this is what we have to work with to be successful. really not worth dealing with unless you really enjoy duals.

what's bullshit is black knight glaive. go figure it's my favorite weapon again. at least i have one thing coming from dks1. now if only i could get some freebie pyro to go with.

spacing video. helped me a lot

it is really nice having a str weapon that can alter attack timings so easily. i just want it to not have the nasty side effect of being the only weapon, alongside great machette, with no guaranteed combo.

i can't see you from all the way up here bro...drink some red bull. gives you wings.

yawn... bro like...i've got one character who's already completely more than you. hurry up scrub

every time i see the startup for that juggle combo i literally repeat out loud "nope nope nope nope" as i'm rolling as far away as i can

i don't think it's the size really. if you remember the route it doesn't take longer than a couple minutes to get through. the only annoying thing about it is maybe it's a dangerous couple of minutes?

sisters fo life

i'll give that there's a lot that is good, but it's nothing i want to use so for me the diversity feels shit. the only top weapons i do like are yhorms and profaned. i've never liked katanas. great clubs are easily outshined by great axes. all those weapons you stated got the shaft were pretty much all my shit. would explain my struggle. the hollowslayer greatsword makes for a fantastic quality weapon, but i pretty much just use it as a giant rapier with leo ring. forgot to mention, i did start a pyro the other day to see if i can get something going with chaos curved sword and spear with a couple space control spells. hopefully it works. if not i'll be lost on magic because the only other thing i could really see me using is force, but i already have a poor mans version of it with yhorms on the str character.

magic falchion was def a thing in demons and in ds1 we at least had quaalag spider bitch whatever face sword. there is no standout curved sword in this game that really competes with other tiered weapons. katanas are katanas. curved greatswords are curved greatswords. i wasn't talking about those. carthus seems to be ok, but honestly it, scimitar, and falchion are interchangeable for the most part. pontiff at least has a neat weapon art. the others are just bad. you can't just make a straight dex build with them because quality is king. i like the duals because i will always prefer 1v1's. its just the armored core player in me. that's where you really run into issues with what beats what. of course you can run whatever you like in ganks and invasions because you're generally dealing with people who aren't as committed to you as they are to what they were originally doing and lets be honest..ganking is just not fair in this franchise. parry is your way out and that's not incredibly reliable..at least for me. maybe i suck at parrying and always will, but that's what i have to deal with. when you're in those 1v1's where both dudes are really trying to wreck face though...it's an uphill battle for anything that's not considered OP by the community. which really is a lot because the community is a bunch of dumb people who think strong means op, but i digress. weapon wise, the game is becoming more and more of a let down. all the quality stuff works. profaned greatsword and hollowslayer are a couple of my absolute favorite weapons in the game. i don't get the same feeling with curved greatswords as i did before. i think they're slower with less range. mura retains its range, but its damage is not comparable to exile. a couple halberds are cool, but they made a couple big moveset changes to the black knight glaive which makes it not so good to me even though ironically it's probably the strongest one thanks to it's 2hr2 starter combo and space control. i know a part of it is because dead angling changed so that's on me. i've tried a few things that seemed really cool on paper, but ended up just being complete busts due to inefficient stat requirements, piss poor damage, unreliable weapon arts/movesets or some combination of the 3. the biggest example is def the dragonslayer swordspear. i thought for sure i was going to love that thing, but i absolutely hate the build and the weapon art. that weapon is not nearly as good as the internet claims it is.

i'll let you know. my play has slowed down a bit. and i don't think i'm necessarily comparing this game to any other. it's been a long time since i've played souls. its just irritating from a build perspective when a lot of things just get destroyed by just a couple builds. the diversity isn't really there. quality is king in both capability and weapon selection as in the weapons they can make use of just end up being better than what other builds can run. i really do miss being able to run a normal strength character with some pyro. probably the most fun i've had, but i guess i'll have to make the sacrifice and work with what we got. a ton of spells aren't worth using so it's not like it'll take long to figure that out. not to mention curved swords just straight blow. like wtf happened. straight swords are too good.

the lack of poise is starting to eat away at my enjoyment of pvp. there's literally nothing but hope latency is in your favor so you can actually land the parries or dodge roll til you can't anymore. ganking has been the most fun i've had with the game and that's only because of friends. i don't see ganking as a good long term strategy for playing this game

Stands to reason. That area is one of the big pvp areas.

yeah faces got rekt and many souls were received.

but does kotaku even poise bro?

That 50-60 hours is exactly as much time as I was able to stomach with that game. Have 118 now with my first character and have no plans to slow down.

DS3 is def the game to play if you can

The closest thing there is to that are the great machete and yhorms great machete

man serpent greatsword is no longer in the game. there is a serpent hatchet.

i want to like the git boner swords, but the fact you have to commit to using the weapon art to get the combo is the one reason why i prefer every other dual weapon in the game. i have seen that weapon art do some serious shredding though so if you do happen to connect it might as well be gg

uchi users are dumb in this game because the uchi is trash. if they aren't using the dark sword or washing pole then there is a problem. the connections in this game are way better than before. i'm actually enjoying pvp.

yeah astora can get s scaling for lightning/crystal and then gets a/a for chaos (zwei only gets a lightning/crystal and b/b for chaos) with very similar base damages so astora is clearly the superior go to for non str and quality builds. for quality builds you're obviously going to be running profaned, farron, greatsword, and maybe black knight but i don't see it too often. black knight moveset is inefficient but it's still cool as fuck to golf club people so i just don't get why its not really used. people aren't tired of dark sword yet i guess. the tracking on that profaned stomp r2 is pretty rad. i wasn't getting the launch that many times, but if they mistimed a roll right around me then they were gonna get sent to the moon. shit does so much damage on top of that. its just a perfect weapon. moveset is perfect. stomp weapon art is perfect. self buff on an otherwise non buffable weapon is perfect. def my go to quality weapon. speaking of dark sword, nobody ever tries to get mixups with r2. they only ever wanna r1 spam. i'm waiting to find a good dark sword user with the balls for go for an r1 r2 combo. it would make for a good parry bait punish.