With a build focused on charged attacks and a greatsword, I’m extremely frustrated. My charged attacks do less DPS than chaining normal attacks…
Beyond that, slow weapons are terribly weak, especially considering their already significant mobility penalty… They have absolutely NO advantages, not even for breaking stances, which they should at least have, given their lack of consistent DPS.
It’s a real shame because it creates a large category of weapons that will never be used due to a catastrophic lack of balance.
Yet, it’s a completely different gameplay style that deserves consideration. It’s not right that you can destroy everything in your path with a ranged build while melee builds with heavy weapons, which are far more technical to play, are so completely neglected.
I really hope this playstyle gets a significant boost because I’ve clearly wasted a huge amount of embers on a build that, while highly optimized, is way, way, way, way below those of my other three characters.
I understand better now why nobody on Twitch plays with these weapons. The gameplay is so depressingly weak. And we play games to get satisfaction from them.
Might want to try the stamina based hand to hand runes. The runes take on the poise damage of the weapon they are on, but not the attack speed. So slapping these on a fat 2H does a lot of stagger and quickly, and also gives you quick attack options for some of the more evasive enemies. Allows you to stagger and then charge up the beaf.
Which is really dumb because my gauntlet monk should not be having a significantly worse swipe kick rune than some plate knight whose theme isn’t martial art.
They overnerfed the stamina runes and now it’s pretty useless on gauntlets because a swipe or front flip kick now takes 40 stamina, almost half your stamina bar, to do less damage than your running gauntlet attack which does the same frontflip kick for more damage at a fraction of the stamina cost and no different poise damage.
I hate that because of weapon type abuse gauntlet builds constantly end up eating the collateral damage because this isn’t the first time a 2H build gets stamina martial runes nerfed and it affects gauntlets just the same.
Front flip kick is 20 stamina for me. The others are def more costly than a regular attack, though do slightly more poise damage with less range and slightly slower.
Yeah the 40 is for the swipe kick, which now does totally negligible damage on a gauntlet build. The stamina runes are a total waste of stamina on a gauntlet build now.
Swipe Kick costs almost the same as a shoulder barge, requires sacrificing a rune slot, and it can’t even stagger regular chaff enemies let alone an elite while shoulder barge does a single target knockdown that lasts for over 3+ seconds on anything but a boss and comes bundled into fat roll natively but while fat roll is slightly worse than normal roll, you also sit at 65-70% physical DR and 70%+ elemental resistances in exchange for that slight inconvenience.
This is also the case for ranged charge attacks. The regular attack spam is just objectively better. There’s more dps on regular attacks, more status buildup, you can reposition better . . . The only advantage a charge attacks have is costing less overall stamina per damage point, which is a very slight advantage at the cost of needing to find a perfect, very long opening.
I do feel charge attacks in general should be revisited and retuned. At the cost of taking roughly three times as long as a normal attack, it should feel chunky and rewarding to land a charge attack. I won’t touch on the need to nerf ranged so melee has a better place in the game, but charged attacks should have some tangible advantage. At the very least it should feel like it’s worth more than spamming regular attacks for the same amount of time.
If you can land three regular attacks in the time it takes to launch one fully charged attack as an example, I feel it would be fair for that charged attack to hit like four regular ones. More damage, more stagger, more elemental status. That’s a tradeoff for the challenge of actually charging and landing the big hit in real combat. This would encourage a charge build, rather than leaving it as an irrelevant quirk.
I’d prefer charged attacks have a separate niche from normal attacks, so if they balance them to be strong it doesn’t become a degenerate playstyle of just dodge and charge attack on repeat.
It’s OK for charged attacks to not be the DPS move, but at the very least successful charged attacks should apply a lot of poise damage and maybe bleed or the elemental effect of the weapon/stamina rune on top to the full elemental/bleed bar, so it serves as a powerful status and poise pressure tool without taking away the role of normal attacks in DPS.
Maybe charged attacks could apply a unique concussed/wounded status that makes enemies deal less damage or take more poise damage for its duration.
For weapons that don’t have charged attacks, which I dislike because it makes their playstyle a lot more flat and repetitive, you have to probably bake the benefit of charged attack into completing a normal attack sequence with the final part of the attack chain.
I appreciate this perspective. It would result in a meaningful choice for the player. Either more dps or more status. There would even be a good reason to weave regular attacks and charged attacks together. Charge attacks to build status, regular attacks while they are under the effects of said status. Or regular attacks when the status is unnecessary.
It’s just rather disappointing that there is no reason right now to use charge attacks at all. The only situation where I find myself charging an attack is when I am sneaking up on an enemy with a bow and I can’t get close enough to sneak attack. Open the fight with one (kinda) big hit, never charge an attack again. I look at enchants that give bonuses on charge attacks and roll over them, since the charge takes so long to build up and getting a conditional damage bonus after the charge attack would probably still result in a dps drop for how long the charge takes. (testing required)
(Oh no, now I have another weak mechanic to do experiments on. Someone send help)
Also Charged attacks allow you to hold the Attack when your reposition to line up the attack.. its probably more useful in Co-op.
I believe a Charged attack at close distance can lead to a knockback effect on the enemy if they come too close i believe its something that could happen before atleast but theres also a possibility of me talking rubbish/bull..
I won’t lie, I’m a bit more of a noob than most people on this forum.
That said, I’ve been using a two-hander and charge attacks constantly! I would even say it greatly contributed to my success in beating the current story content. I have a super high damage build, so one charge attack followed by a single normal attack kills the vast majority of enemies in the game for me right now. The charge attack is easy for me to perform when approaching an enemy, since they’re usually so slow to first engage (exceptions like the sickle using prisoners do exist), and the follow up normal attack is obviously much swifter than the charge attack. Two hits and most things are gone. Also, often times the first charge attack staggers the enemy, meaning I don’t even have to worry about how fast the second swing is. For bosses, I find that the charge attacks are great after dodging an attack that leaves the boss recovering for a moment. This builds the stagger gauge more and usually allows me to get a stagger in soon after, which gives me enough time for THREE more charge attacks! Chunk, chunk, chunk! I beat a lot of healthier bosses this way.
I wouldn’t say it’s anywhere near as fast as a lot of other optimized builds, so if that’s the type of thing you’re comparing it to then I can understand how you’d want charge attacks to be changed. But I just thought I’d lend a different perspective real quick from a charge attack enjoyer. I’m not as skilled with these games as a lot of players are, and it helped me get through the whole thing.
I did also use charge attacks on my bow for my Fast build. It had the same tendency: the enemy’s health bar would go down so far that one more normal attack would kill them off.
I’m not saying it needs no changes, just stating my own personal experience. I agree that the various ranges and play styles are drastically difference in terms of risk. My dual-dagger Fast character folds in two hits to any boss, while taking MUCH longer to kill them and needing an unreasonable number of perfect dashes to survive. By contrast, my Heavy two-handed greatsword plate build usually tanks seven or eight hits while getting huge hits of his own in. My bow build, however, just blasts things from across the screen and rarely ever suffers a point of damage. It usually takes some kind of large boss AOE to hit me when I’m using a bow. I pump Stamina so I can both dodge and attack for days with my bow.
It greatly depends on the weapon you are using.
Not all weapons have charge attacks and not all weapons with charge attacks perform well. However, there is a great number of weapons that do really well with chrage attacks, to the point I find it difficult to use other weapons.
Atm I use the Scimitar and Pig Sticker, not 2H-weapons, but nevertheless great charge weapons. To the point I 3-shot plague bosses with all downsides.
I’ve used all the Great Swords with the Strength stat. They seemed to me to be the most logical weapons to use on a build with charged attacks and no Rune Attack spam.
Anyway, the problem is precisely the difference between charged attacks and Rune Attacks. It’s possible to have a build that spams Rune Attacks and breaks the game effortlessly, while a build that requires positioning and a minimum of anticipation is infinitely weaker.
With this poorly balanced gameplay, everyone will be making builds with the Ring of Determination or a build with Focus regeneration that allows for this spamming. This considerably reduces the different gameplay possibilities.
But if you have a Great Sword build that competes with this, I’d be very interested. I have my doubts, though.
I agree, those build are fun, just not rewarding.
The biggest problem comes from certain builds that are way too OP, which, by comparison, make some others feel ineffectives.
So, some of the faster weapons are more rewarding with charged attacks. Basically, only the weapons that DON’T feel like the correct power fantasy for a charged attack weapon. Things like rapiers, gauntlets, a few 1h weapons. None of the bows, longbows, or 2h weapons though? Why is this entire power fantasy just gutted?
Play-style incompatibility? I love using 2H charge attacks. It trivialized bosses I otherwise struggled on and helped me overcome others that would have outlasted me if I had tried to trade more often.
Also, bow charge attacks are really good. I can’t imagine why you would think otherwise. Their range is quite good, the charge time on them is entirely reasonable if not outright forgiving, and the damage is good-to-devastating.
Charge attacks help apply statuses really easily as well.
Maybe I just can’t see what people are really looking for from them, but I’m not understanding the disappointment in charge attacks.
Maybe I’m just using exactly the wrong bows/2h weapons. Can you tell me which ones you like, so I can try them out?
In my testing it’s just always better to use regular uncharged attacks, unless I’m using a 1h or gauntlets. I would be very interested in finding a 2h weapon or bow that feels good to charge with.
It’s interesting, because when I try to charge I struggle, but spamming dodge attacks trivializes bosses for me. It could be playstyle incompatibility, but I really want to enjoy the ‘choose your opening/heavy attack’ playstyle.
Rune spam on slower 2H weapons is mostly possible due to RoD. RoD breaks the game for all weaops though and should be removed/reworked.
If you tried “all Strength Great Swords” you have a very small weapon test sample, as there are only Festering Earth and Claymore that have charge attacks. There is also Shattered Sun, but it is Str/Int.
As for the build: max crit chance with as much +damage enchantments as possible. Rapid gloves with +damage for charge attack ench. Sharp Weapon facet, or quick if you think you charge to slow. Willow Cap Ring is a must.
