So the Coop beta makes a massive change to the way interrupts work on enemies and adds a new poise bar to show the mechanic. This completely upends weapon balance, fixes a bunch of issues and creates a bunch of new issues.
For the sake of readability, I’m going to use the term Flinch to refer to the ministun which happens when the new Poise(Flinch) bar fills, and Stun to refer to the longer posture break which happens when the other bigger Poise bar fills. We used to have a system where enemies had a set amount of Poise Defence and Flinch could only happen when the poise damage of an individual weapon hit was greater than the enemy Poise Defence. This led to an extreme divide where fast hitting weapons which were slightly below the poise damage breakpoint would never flinch an enemy, while weapons slightly above the breakpoint would flinch with every hit and stunlock that enemy.
What we have now is a Flinch bar, where if your attack does not deal enough poise damage to cause Flinch on the first hit it instead partially fills a new bar and Flinch will instead trigger when the bar is full. This seems like a sensible mechanical change to bring multi-hitting weapons more in line with the weapons which could reliably interrupt smaller enemies, however it appears this was done without tweaking the individual attack numbers so we get some nonsense. Many fast hitting or multi-hitting attacks which used to be incapable of flinching anything now permanently staggerlock some of the biggest regular enemies in the game. Pretty much every weapon which hits multiple times in a short period needs looking at.
Specific examples:
Claws/Gauntlets: It used to be the case that the Gauntlets with single hit charged punches gave the best control against normal enemies, as they were the only attacks in this weapon class which could Flinch. Meanwhile the multihit claw attacks had the best range, focus generation and dps but could not interrupt anything, so you would prefer charged punches on flinchable enemies and claw mash on bosses. Now the charged punches do not deal enough poise damage to stagger basic Risen footmen on Perlious, while the multi-hit attacks of the claws build up Flinch so quickly that they lockdown the largest non-boss enemies in the game. Claw poise damage per second is obscene and makes a joke out of a lot of encounters. Proposal: Increase charged attack poise damage a bit for single hitting gauntlets, greatly reduce the poise damage per hit on multi-hitting claws.
Bows: Under the previous system the new multi-hitting bow attacks would have never passed the breakpoint to Flinch anything, but with the new Flinch bar they build Flinch so quickly that all non-boss enemies are permanently flinched and can’t move. The Flinch buildup of these bows needs to be massively reduced AND pro-rata’d for multihitting attacks so that enemies actually get a chance to do something.
Dual Daggers: Most of the Dual Daggers do not put out enough poise damage per second to abuse the change, but it is now possible to Flinch with eg. the 2nd charged attack of Brother’s Keepers which feels great and I wouldn’t change this at all. There is one outlier though, Rogue Messer has always had a weird first normal attack which applies weapon damage and poise damage twice instead of being pro-rata’d. In this build you can push the poise damage of Rogue Messer to the point where the 2 hits of the first normal will flinch regular enemies immediately, and then you just get to stunlock them by walk cancelling this hit. This looks and feels silly, but that first normal is also the only good reason to use Rogue Messer. So maybe keep the inflated damage on the first hit, reduce the poise damage on the first hit, increase the poise damage on the 2nd hit. Then you have to actually do the chain to Flinch. The rest of the attacks on Rogue Messer including the charged attack honestly need some love (It technically deals massive poise damage but pushes everything out of range immediately so never hits)
Although it’s not my ideal solution I’m pretty positive about the new Flinch buildup mechanic because certain underwhelming weapons like Brother’s Keepers now feel much better for it. I like that I can play around the flinch bar by ‘priming’ enemies with a single fast attack so that I know I can stagger on the next hit. We just need a pass over the numbers on an attack-by-attack basis instead of just a top down system change.