I’ve been trying to make strength work while leveling, but so many of the weapons are incredibly slow, and so many enemies dodge these slow attacks. Now that my strength boi has gotten to end game, I’ve been able to compensate for the slowness with enchantments, but being able to do this effectively is not available while leveling. I started with the claymore, which is usable with a long range charge attack, decent speed combos, and a quick running attack. Every 2H sword I tried otherwise was slower and less usable. Broken fang has a very usable neutral infinite chain, but the rest of the moveset is slow with lots of recovery. Almost every 2H sword I tried was way worse than the claymore. I eventually stuck with the paddle, and now that I have maxed it out for attack speed, the parts of the kit which are absolutely worthless, like the running attack, now feel worth using at least. If the slow attacks did significantly more damage, there might be incentive to use them. I just wonder if the intent behind all the strength weapons is to start slow, and be enchanted for speed to actually be effective. Because at their base stats, many of them feel highly ineffective. A lot other weapons get stronger with attack speed, but this is the first time I felt like I had to use it just to make every part of a weapon moveset viable.
Not just the regular attack chains.
I use Cinder and Stone unique 2H hammer.
Anything but Eruption is quickly input read by mobs and bosses and dodged out of because of the humongous wind up time. And if they don’t dodge, they just interrupt you out of the rune attack due to how long the vulnerable period is with the animation and how overbuffed enemy poise now is at lv30 solo.
I just cannot believe a prisoner witch can facetank my 30 poise damage hammer twice and still continue casting or teleport out.
It also kind of kills any weapon or rune sets that aren’t frontloaded quick animations because baseline player poise is abysmal while enemy poise is overbuffed solo.
I was looking at wands vs. staves and there is no point whatsoever to using staves when they are way slower, lack a shield for block+poise+slightly longer parry window and extra affixes from shield like extra % damage for y seconds on parry and % health restore on parry.
Staves do marginally more damage but hit much slower while wands hit quicker with more hits and some of them even have built in projectiles while for staves it’s only the single frost staff.
It’s all very similar to the balance between 2H weapons and the 1h swords and maces.
Slower weapons should have hyperarmor and built in damage reduction just like the greatsword on Khazan, the last Berserker.
Rune attacks also should have significantly higher poise, and the input read dodge spam on mobs feels pretty cheap after the parry nerfs which at least used to create a long enough opening to secure a rune attack punish.
It’s the lack of of stagger that gets me. I can work around the wind-up, but the payoff for spacing and landing a heavy slow hit should stagger the enemy. Right now, you have to play heavy weapons like they are dex weapons and only attack when the enemy is in recovery.