This is rather unfortunate for weapons with charged attacks in the middle of their attack chain, because there are few opportunities to charge an attack after already attacking a couple of times. The player’s “turn” to attack doesn’t last that long because you usually have to back off after a couple of normal attacks. Even if you break an enemy’s poise during your attack chain you’d much rather punish with a rune attack than a charged attack if you can.
Because of this, weapons that can charge an attack from a neutral stance feel like they have wider movesets because they see much more use of the charged attack.
Edit: I was a bit too emphatic in my statements - I’ve mostly been using 2-handed weapons with a non-endgame build so that’s where I’m coming from. People using tanky builds or fast weapons probably have a different experience, although I suspect a rune attack will almost always be a better choice than a mid-attack-chain charged attack, especially since fast weapons have no problems building focus.
I dont get it, usually strong attacks take time to wind up, so its safe from a distance if you can measure the enemy spacing and release when he approches.
If you are trying to strong attack in the middle of a chain the only safe way is to break the enemy poise first, and have enough stamina to wind up and attack before he recovers, which is hard with big weapons that consume too much stamina but i do it all the time with rapiers, they have the fastest strong attack wind up that i have seen in this game and they cover a lot of ground too.
Maybe it’s just me but I find having a strong attack in the middle of a chain is perfectly viable. The number of times I’ve killed an enemy I’ve whittled down before with my 1st attack, then kept attacking and hit the enemies behind them are way too numerous to count.
Even 1v1 I’ve done it because you might not get a stagger but you can interrupt many many attacks. The witches are the perfect example of this.
It’s an interesting perspective, and it’s quite true. The development team wants to give each weapon cool moves and combos, but in actual gameplay, it’s hard to execute continuous attacks. This is mainly because the enemies have high poise, making it difficult to stagger them, and they often counterattack forcefully. So, the strategy is usually to hit once or twice and then prepare to dodge. This issue is primarily noticeable in the early to mid-game stages for new players. In the late game, once the equipment and build are well-developed, this problem can be ignored, and players can choose to face enemies head-on.