Hey Wicked Folks,
today I wanna share my experience I had with the update “The Breach” - I played it around 60 hours by now. First and foremost, I enjoyed the update a lot despite having some rough edges esp. the first few days. In my two Playthrough I tried a pure Faith Build focused on Maces/Axes with Shield and a Pure Wand/Staff Build focused on Int. To split my feedback a bit, I will continue with sections.
Weapons:
I would love to have an early game spear option - this class lacks choices in my opinion and has some other problems I will describe below.
Stat Requirements on Weapons are a Problem in my PoV esp. on those that have a split requirement (f.e. 27 Faith / 27 Dex vs a 42 Faith Weapon) which drains relative power (esp. in Points you can invest in Health f.e.) from the player for a minimal offensive gain + the access to said weapon. This made me not wanna use those weapons despite looking interesting which is esp. a shame as most spears had a split requirement.
I enjoyed alot of the Onehanded Mace Weapon Class even before the buff to Poise Damage. For most of the Faith Run I picked the Weapon Malice which had a really satisfying feel to it and later on picked up Shourdcleaver a Pickaxe Onehanded Axe. Esp. the Shroudcleaver felt really good to apply ailments to enemies with its fast moves.
When it comes to my Int Run I tried couple of different Wands and Staffs. While the payoff focus spells felt great, the acuiqsition didn’t of said focus. It felt pretty tiresome with the slow attack patterns of those weapons. While I love the spells it felt more of a melee class than an actual caster - I may would tweak the focus gain of wands and staffs a bit to compensate their slow moveset and support more the caster feeling.
Shield and Blocking just feel terrible - I would love to block a hit without receiving damage and have a penality when I can block again instead. Esp. with the new healing system this chip damage is terrible. Maybe have also some attacks that are not blockable. Parry shouldn’t be the solo use case for them.
Ailments:
Ailements feel pretty underwhelming on slow Weapons and pretty strong on fast ones. I would love if some ailments are better on slow weapons and others prefer fast ones f.e. to give different use cases.
Plague felt pretty underwhelming to me.
Fire was my default choice as it felt great overall.
Ice had some great use cases esp. vs group of enemies.
Lightning felt busted esp. if paired with the Weapon Art Frontflip Kick as it applied high poise dmg and a big amount of the ailment.
Crafting:
I liked the increased options that were offered in this update - yet I would love to have some more random pattern drops and maybe for every more generic weapon while keeping some special only drops (f.e. Spirit Edge).
Bear Paws are still way to uncommon and every blue moon you encounter a bear it never drops it paw despite being able to trade for it later on you would need several encounters.
Access to Infuse Stones feel a bit too limited keeping you stuck on items and weapons.
Plague System:
I like the general idea of them however they present a pretty tall roadblock at first as it feels esp. with a level 30 character that it is designed on having some highlevel drops.
Also in some areas there are way too many enemies at onces.
Boss Fights:
I enjoyed most of the new encounters, however it became clear that the combat gets to it its limit every time more then one target is present. It esp. felt awful every time you wanna dodge an attack by running away the camera doesn’t follow you and keep the whole both boss enemies in camera center. This often means that dodging the next attack felt a lot harder than it should be - please make the camera more centered towards the player in those occasions.
Some Bosses chain 7 attacks (hello riven twins) which seems very unreasonable to dodge every time making it atleast one guranteed hit on average.
Difficult Curve:
As I enjoy challenges it may be very tainted towards that yet I think it is much better overall esp. after the recent update to the zones.