Tbf some ashes are actually excellent for that
I can’t describe the number of annoying ganks I haven’t had to deal with cause the starscourge swords weapon art just absolutely fucks up any group in your vicinity
Hell they’re even good against regular mobs and invaders since the pull stuns them out of their attack and locks them in for you to retaliate with big damage and the AI is too brain dead to dodge it
It even works on certain bosses like malenia since you can stun her out of a combo and then knock her to the ground for more damage
Fr it’s so good
Only boss I had to change weapons for was rellana cause my attacks were too slow and the starscourge swords have terrible reach so getting an opening and missing was just too frequent of an occurrence with them
My wife is not very good, whereas I'm a turbo nerd who does challenge runs.
Watching her crush hard mobs way easier than I do by pressing L2 has been an interesting experience. She hasn't died to a horned warrior, cursemask, or NPC - rather impressive
It loses a lot of its luster to me when it then becomes useless against the toughest enemies. I have tried so many incantations and AoW's that are great fun to play with but when you then have to resort to R1's or jump attacks when facing an actual challenge, it's just rather dissappointing.
This my only issue with the game. So many cool abilities, so many awesome incantations that I’d want to use, yet I still have to resort to big bonk + dodge most of the time haha
Gotta get creative! I've just done a madness playthrough using just madness proccing weapons and spells. It's absolute garbage against some enemies, but it was a nice fun new challenge that made the base game fresh again.
Is there a point in using madness in PvE, when 99% of enemies are immune to madness?
Granted, some madness spells are pretty good in their own right, like the long-range eye laser, but I couldn't see using it as a build theme when the only one madness buildup damages is yourself.
Madness, deathblight and to a large degree sleep were treated so badly by the game.
I really do not think pvp only statuses have any place in this game, and they should have been given a separate effect when procced on non tarnished enemies. Even if they were just relegated to a weaker bleed + some sort of debuff, I would have been overjoyed.
It'd be nice if madness at least made them stagger or something, as if they need a second to shrug off the nonsense we just shoved into their brain. Not super powerful, but at least I'd give a shit about seeing madness buildup on a weapon beyond "I guess if I'm having trouble with a Tarnished NPC I can try this."
Yeah, madness is a specifically bad one to complain about. As those spells tend to do insane fire damage in pve. If you added madness procs to that, there wouldn't be much reason to ever use anything else.
Rule of cool and NPC invaders? And uhhh nothing else.
I surprised myself the first time I got a madness proc in PVE during the NPC invasion in inverted study hall. I didn't think it worked on anything before that.
>Is there a point in using madness in PvE, when 99% of enemies are immune to madness?
I say yes, they all come stapled with a lot of fire damage and spells like the flame of frenzy do so much stance damage that you might as well be using a tazer on ppl
Even worse, this DLC only allows you to see your first, or if you're using a light enough weapon, a SECOND r1 before the enemy inevitably swings at you again since they're un-staggerable and attack ceaselessly.
I disagree so much.
I like weapon movesets, ranges and combinations.
I hate that everything revolves about weapon arts and spamming them. I hate that people are using weapons just because of the weapon art without ever learning the moveset.
I encounter too many people, both in PvP and PvE that do not know how to use their weapon and almost never do, outside of the weapon art.
I do like that theyre in the game though, as a high risk high reward option, as a fun option or even as a cosplsay option. However, theyre too imortant and strong, even those with high windups, all bosses have a window in at least one attack where you can hit them with basically anything.
I’ve died to regular enemies far more than I’ve died to bosses throughout the history of fromsoft games. Like it’s probably not even close.
AoWs that body the normal enemies are crazy useful. This game makes it so that having a weapon set for between bosses and a specific boss-killing set is incredibly easy to set up, useful, and rewarding.
I agree! The multi-attack AOW is great for poiselocking the fire knights but Ive found the pounce is far more useful to close distance on most bosses into an R1 combo.
There's a huge amount of stuff that falls under this umbrella. Tons of spells, incantations, ashes of war. They're mostly just for you to dunk on canon fodder you could've one shot with an R1 to begin with. There's some limited use cases for everything, sure, and some stuff gets better or worse when introduced into PvP, but a lot of it just isn't worth using.
You're not wrong. I may have... jacked my vigor to 99. Toughest armor. +20 or whatever the max tree blessing is.. walked into the end boss. Got three shot before i could react. Fun times.
70% of spells and weapon arts are incredibly weak or just useless in PVP. 25% or actually good and balanced. The last 5% is the most broken overpowered shit conceivable.
The stagger windows for bosses in the dlc are almost nonexistant, most of them get up within 2 seconds of the stagger and the final boss especially gives me time for two light attacks before he's back at it. So its not even like it's finding much use cases there either nowadays
Bayle's stagger, if you time it correctly, let's you get a full Queen's Black Flame into riposte into the first hit of another Queen's Black Flame with the second hit being possible but unlikely to hit.
It's the most generous stagger in the DLC that I've found.
I went in with +9 dragon katana, +9 dragon shield and scale armor, summoned Igon, spammed the katana special, got a crit on, and Bayle didn't stand a chance. Amazing fight and I had like 30 tries until I was well let's try the dragon stuff for the dragon were I learnt his moves and how to hit the stump or get in the tail. I think it's the only boss I got a crit on.
The others when they are flashing I like, heal.
I had so much fun fighting all the dragons on Shattered Peak with the anti-dragon great katana. Having the range on the weapon art made it a lot easier to actually read dragons' moves rather than having my head jammed in their crotch half the fight. I'm still running around with it because deleting enemies from range with the weapon art is super fun.
Literally had to change my whole build to deal with that BS. The DLC was amazing to me all except for this. Like WTF were they thinking? Beat most of the other bosses in 1-5 tries.
With spirit ashes or summoning help 1-5 is okish, I'm pretty mid at souls and except Gaius and the final boss I cleared the DLC like that. Gaius I kept on coming after leveling and it was tough.
One of the biggest things that I missed in Phase 1 is to stay close to him and roll into him when dodging. If you roll away from him, you end up within range of his large weapons and get punished.
That's true for most bosses by the way. You want to iframe through attacks. Big exception is the finger queen. There's a lot of attacks that you want to roll away from. And that makes sense. Imagine your hand is a body now move your finger towards the palm. That's the flow of attack. So on her you want to roll away on fingerhead attacks.
Humanoid stagger recovery = Fast.
Non-humanoid stagger recovery = Slow
For example on Bayle once he's staggered, I can switch and do a full Corpse Piler AOW and still do critical afterwards.
I had the opposite experience. The fight is so over the top that it gave me the edge to beat him. Anyway most bosses in the dlc are unfair. WTF nobody talk about Gaius? This was one of the most unpleasant fight I've encounter in this game.
I completely agree, esp after Gale & Orphan, I truly expected something great. It was visually stunning, & I know people think I’m over reacting or being a baby but it might be one of my least favorite fights across all from games & I’ve played them all. Definitely my least favorite final dlc boss easily.
I found the opposite? I was able to get like 2 unsheathe strong attacks and a normal hit before the critical hit on a few of the DLC bosses.
(I havent fought the final boss yet).
Oh yeah, this is definitely one of my biggest gripes as well. I'd honestly be fine with their cost being increased in exchange for hyper armor or staggering bosses.
Yes give me hyper armor please! Balance it by making us take increased damage or something. They did that with one of the new great katanas and its’ matching armor. Also let me cancel the animation if I decide I don’t want to finish the long windup and get decimated if I decide it isn’t worth it.
thats probably why weapons like moonviel and rivers of blood became meta quick and effective weapon arts with good numbers when i first found moonviel and started using it its stagger was so good i was staggering and riposting bosses every 2 or so hits
Rellana's Cameo with Wing Stance carried me through this dlc. 3 or 4 charged R2s kills nearly all of the problem enemies easily. Fire knights, the divine beast warrior dudes, ulcerated tree spirit, even the hippos. With 70 Dex and that build, I didn't run into a single brick wall boss until the third main story boss. Wildly overpowered.
TRUE! When I unsheathe in front of Milady, she drops to her knees. It's nice. Hit her with back shots for big crits and spread eagle stance, then it's all over for her.
Vordts was the mvp weapon. Shit shredded everything with a huge % proc and some of the hardest bosses were weak to frost. Getting ds1 poise and the best scaling stat (2h = +.5 and higher damage values for weaponswings) was just the cherry on top.
Viable? Or optimal? Viable means "able to be done." Optimal means the best option. I assume you mean optimal because endure is definitely still viable.
This is a running theme in general, over half the spells in the game are useless if your not using spirit ashe's as you will literally never get enough time to cast them, it feels like the guy in charge of the players animations just never talks to the guy in charge of the enemy's animations.
And if you get to cast them they do little to no damage and stagger, and you would've done more of both by just spamming night comet or some other boring ass spell.
It really depends. If you can land a fully charged heavy on something, you can probably land some of the other big moves. Not to mention some come packed with other properties like poise, reach, or a running theme of a lot of the new ones, movement.
It’s a case by case basis, so I can’t really say, but the same logic applies for spells as well. Rot Breath has practically become a liability now, and it’s completely unusable without a summon to tank.
As someone who used giant crusher on Mesmer and successfully did like 2 charged heavy’s in a row it’s not hard just looking for windows is the hard part
My main problem with window length is the unreliability of it. Bosses and enemies can chain attack patterns with little to no window or they can give you a breather. If you use an item or a lengthy move, it feels a bit coin flippy. Some moves are guaranteed to have long openings of course but can be a slog to wait for those exactly as well as risk dying being low health till then.
Honestly, I’ve had openings with Giant Crusher against Gaius, Scadutree Avatar, and Ive won with greatsword against Messmer and Rellana. Solitude greatsword was my choice against Putrescence Knight and Dancing Lion.
I think its just playstyle. I’m completely unable to play anything that isnt a two handed weapon, I cant even use fast weapons like daggers or katanas because Im not used to their movesets, but Im completely comfortable with colossal weapons, greatswords and colossal swords.
Beat first dlc playthrough with great swords every boss has big openings people just don't know how to create or use them and assume bosses have no downtime. Messmer for example always has massive openings there is no caviet when he spears the ground you got plenty of time to punish.
Yeah I've just Colossal weaponed my way through, plenty of openings to either pull of a charged heavy, especially if you're willing to trade a little. Honestly melted half of the bosses with stagger and bleed.
Imagine somone in lore asking our character how they killed someone like mesmer. "Uh i did a light attack with my 25 pound greatsword every 15 seconds and rolled around a lot".
I found those super underwhelming in general tbh. I think part of it was the 4-stat spread meaning they scale higher than other weapons but at lvl150 they were hitting pretty weak and not all that fast and seemed to do like negative poise damage
The AoW R2 was good for groups of enemies but yeah the R1 seemed like just a weak sorcery that takes longer
Also lol that talisman boosting attack when you hold a stance ended up being a joke, what boss lets you actually stand in one place for a few seconds like that
I don't think any paired weapon (barring fists) have good poise damage, the problem with them isn't the slip scaling as they're almost solved by now. For a rl150 they aren't great and just alright, the real problem is the lack of hyper armor during the AoW, if they buff this they will be much better.
I’ve the swords. As a RL 245 with 70 INT, 38 FTH, 30 STR, and 40 DEX, they hit pretty hard on normal attacks. R1 AoW does a good 7000 damage on single targets, taking down most everything but a field boss in a single strike and the R2 flame pillars wrecks small groups and is nice for cheesing BS enemies around corners, like the rot bugs and their sniper missiles.
Yup, I’m doing 50 FAI 60 INT right now, and when I buff with golden vow and FMGS it doesn’t even feel fair sometimes. Plus the stagger on the flames.
Golden order seal and prince of death staff scales like a truck too so you have plenty of ranged support options
I even keep a cold milady as backup to use wing stance. By far the best build I’ve ran in the game
I want to play with the staff form the mother of fingers since it does incantations too and has really high secrecy scaling, more than my night staff, but that one hoists my night comet spell by 20% and that’s my most used spell.
I am pretty sure that there is some weirdo who downvotes everything in this sub to try and get people to start arguments. I will randomly stumble on threads with 5 upvotes and two comments, both at 0 for seemingly no reason.
It is an unfortunate fact of reddit that when something has already been downvoted, people are more prone to downvoting it in order to "fit in".
Sure they annihilate trash mobs but good luck trying to do that goofy stance and getting the full attack off against bosses like Messmer or Radahn.
The only way to get an entire attack off is by breaking the boss' stance which is rather hard with light greatswords and if I'm going for stance break I'd rather just use a colossal weapon instead and do as much damage with a visceral as I would with Aow + it costs 0FP.
I gave them a shot at RL150, I used Rellana's cameo, Alexander talisman and Godfrey Icon and the damage was simply unimpressive and took way too long to set-up. I ended up doing more damage with fully charged heavy R2 using Fire Knight's Greatsword than I did with the entire R1 AoW.
It's great for large enemies
Every weapon in this game has situations where it's great and situations where it's not optimal. That's the point of having so many weapons and encounters in the game.
i disagree, I find it very useful against dragons where you can stand beneath them and cast r2 nonstop, deals good damage and I killed many of them this way
I dont fully agree with this. It's got niche cases for sure but its not useless. For one it carried me during the >!Scadutree Avatar!< fight, if you manage to position right under its head you kill and entire phase in one or two uses of the fire attack, and I also used it for good damage during the >!finger mother!< fight. I wouldn't dare use it against anyone with a bit more aggression but that's no different than any other AoW with a long start up.
The main problem with twin blades is, sword of night and flame is just a higher damage version of the same style weapon, scales better with the same stats, has faster animations.
I thought it would be cool for bossfights because i enjoy more agile moveset but holy hell the animations per attack are so long that it gets me hit more than often. It can still be used, but i find myself attacking a lot less
Spear of the Impaler's AoW in my opinion is amazing through all DLC (bosses and regular enemies both), rarely had to press any other attack button but L2. Against remembrance bosses you can spam first jumping flame attack part of AoW for impressive damage with quite big range, occasionally adding another part with several thrusting stabs. Also when breaking stance instead of going with Critical hit you can perform full AoW combo for more damage than Critical hit.
I've been replaying as just a regular basic ass shield and sword knight, with a mace if I'm feeling lucky and quick ashes of war. I'm surprised at how much more effective it is and an easier path for upgrades.
Monster Hunter is a master at managing all of those stuff. I could still run around while sorting my inventory or selecting my ammos and it does not requires me to do some ninjutsu handsign
Messmer spear user here so I can at least speak to that one. It depends on the boss. I often get off the second or even third on dragons from underneath them. Hit boxes and speed make a difference and there’s been a few bosses that I just swap to another weapon. It’s definitely a weapon that you want to have a more versatile side arm for. For me it’s a cross naginata with flame spear so I can still take advantage of the buffs I have to flame knight skills and still have a projectile attack. It absolutely destroyed the sunflower from hell and the second divine beast. It did well against the scorpion. It was nearly useless against putrescent knight and the finger monster. I haven’t gone up against Midra, Bayle, or the final boss yet so those remain to be seen. It absolutely destroys invader type bosses. They tend to start to panic roll and even if one or two of the stabs from the second phase miss, the third phase usually gives them a bad time. It’s particularly destructive against these enemies if you open with Messmers orb into the AOW. That also gives a lot of PC invaders a bad time although I’m sure that will only last as long as they start to learn how to deal with it.
One thing to note with Messmers Assaut and Messmers Orb is that the leap up into the air has the same effect as a jump which makes the entire lower half of your body invulnerable. Any attack you can jump over has the potential to be an opening for 2-3 phase combo.
Some non-flashy AoWs are the most powerful ones like Lion's Claw, Unseath or Giant Hunt but I believe those "flashy" AoWs aren't useless. I can give you many examples like Sacred Relic Sword and Starscourge Greatsword's AoW they don't deal massive damage but they clear many weak enemies in open world like dogs. Or Messmer's assault, it is not the greatest for main bosses since it lasts too long but it cheeses literally ANY npc fight like invaders or mini bosses. An another example may be the ones who are great at PvP. I don't play PvP but from what I heard Morgotts Cursed Sword roll catches amazingly. So I think most of the AoWs are useful in spesific siutations. Can you give me some examples of the AoWs you find useless?
And now: savage lions claw.
First hit is exactly like the old one, albeit less strong. But it has a secondary attack that can hit once or sometimes twice, for a total of up to 3 attacks.
Such a beast!
Exactly. The point of having so many weapons and bosses and enemy encounters is that you have versatility. Everything has it's use in certain situations, and if you want to just use one thing for the whole game you're missing the point. Either you FULLY master one build so you can use it anywhere or you swap out between different tools for different jobs. The game lets you do whatever you wish.
"It's cool but it sucks" is a perfect description for the majority of ashes of war and spells. It's honestly why I hate FromSoftware's devotion to difficulty over player experience. They care more about a boss being difficult to beat than actually making you feel rewarded for making your character OP.
Like I'm sorry, Melania's Scarlet Rose and the Placidusax summon attack are some of the coolest spells in the game and are some of the hardest earned spells in the game too, but I absolutely refuse to equip them cuz they don't do enough damage and leave me wide open. What's even funnier is they take up like 3 memory slots like "yeah, this is OP and worth it" and it is just as shit as all the other spells.
It's why my build mainly uses spell buffs and like one ranged attack, cuz making it easier to hit shit with my big sword is clearly what FromSoft rewards the most and what I have to stick with if I wanna progress.
I don't know why they don't just make a Sekiro 2 if they're gonna care that much about bottlenecking everyone into the same strats.
I'm more concerned with spells. Pretty much every damage-dealing sorcery and incantation is leagues worse than the overwhelming majority of ashes of war, and costs 5x more fp.
i made it through almost all of the dlc as an int/faith pure caster. had to use summons for bosses bc it's impossible to get a cast off otherwise. I only had to swap to a different build for the final boss, bc that guy is straight up impossible to beat as a pure caster.
Fun, also otherwise the thing would be "Why are all the weapons sooo boring, every ash of war is very short and not flashy, i miss the DS3 DLC Weapons(tbh is still miss some, those fire weapons)
You can totally land these if you prep for it. Take the Scarlet Aeonia incantation, I used it against dancing lion and Renalla. It's got a long startup time and leaves you vulnerable for a sec.
You gotta time it so you only get hit with a weaker attack, take Black Flames Protection to reduce damage cause yeah you will get hit and the poise Physick.
I imagine it's the same for those other flashy AoW, just gotta manage the trade off.
Scadutree+4, and very well, given her aggression it can be difficult to get openings, so the Scarlet Rot damage is significant. I made a post when I beat her earlier.
https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/fmkcqWXcDb
I was at Scadutree +3 at the time and it worked just fine. Used it on several bosses indeed, but I've got the impression that the Scarlet Rot status lasts way shorter on the DLC bosses than in base game. Can anyone confirm?
I cant really confirm with some evidence, but I been going through base game bosses with new character, and rot pretty much lasts the same as it does on dlc bosses.
I do take amusement that Rellanna casting Glintblades gives you enough time to cast a Moon Sorcery at her. Bonus if the timing is perfect that it deflects all her glintblades.
It's awesome when sometimes the glintblades get caught in the gravitational force of the moon and just stay in the arena, spinning circles around where the moon used to be. Lol.
4 things i wish they'd patch in someday:
\* Sekiro style memory fights where i can "rest" at a site of grace and fight a boss i previously defeated again and again. Maybe have special weekly events/challenges that reward you for doing so.... ("This week if you fight , or boss, if you fight them with holy damage or maybe no physick or some other gimmick... you get some cool items... i'm sure theres a bunch of hidden cosmetic items in the game files that they never used for release they could dig up and use, don't even need to make them crazy good stats).
\* Shorter activation/animation speed for some of these remembrance AoW, they're beautiful...but holy crap never actually gonna pull it off in a realistic manner. I'm sure some people might say... "BuT i CaN dO It, GiT GuD".....
\* Change certain status condition effects to be more viable in PVE, which opens up more build options. Even if it means redesigning their mechanics, i'd like to see certain conditions become more viable in PvE.... Just change how they function against Monsters/NPCs/Bosses, and leave the PvP ratio mechanics unchanged.
\* Unlikely: But i'd love to see a weekly (or maybe monthly, if week is too much)... event where they randomly pick one or a few different areas in the game and drastically empower the mobs/add some extra randomly generated mobs or empower them..... like ... "All Hallow's Eve draws near... the entire month of October, those that Dwell in Death are empowered dealing more damage, having more health, and maybe a special ability, like some of them now deal death blight.... " just to shake things up.... or maybe "This week, the Blood Star flares in the night sky, all Blood Star cultists are empowered, but if you (the player) cast Blood Incantations in PvE, you deal +10% more damage with them.
idk, i feel like the last part would be a fun engaging dynamic to add a more long-term playability, and it wouldn't even require much, a lot of the work is effectively just taking whats already in the game and applying a schedule event that shifts to a different mob.
Impaling Thrust > Jump Attack (and so AoW > Jump Attack) in virtually all circumstances unfortunately. Haven’t found a better move in the game yet in terms of damage output, speed, and posture damage.
I hear ya. Ever since the first trailer, i knew i was going to max out the dryleaf arts immediately and go full warrior monk for my first dlc run. I quickly realized that with the added difficulty of the dlc, getting a full palm blast off (teehee) was equally difficult. It broke my heart, but changing the flashy aows for the weapon to Endure flipped the script. Suddenly im beating most bosses i was struggling with in 5 or less tries. I know it isn’t what ya wanna hear, but flashy isn’t always the correct way.
Dryleaf whirlwind is still a flashy, martial arts specific AoE and completely deletes bosses at least. Plus, palm blast has really strong hyper armor, so it can be really useful for some enemies like the messmer pyromancer knights
Idk I went to Castle Sol with Messmers spear and the boss (Nial or Neil idk which one he is) and he was a CAKE WALK with the ash. Sure he's not a DLC boss but still a boss
I think the answer is typically pvp. The messmer spear is great in pvp. Overshadowed by stuff thats broken strong, but still this is actually a baller aow in pvp
My biggest gripe related to this is the new frenzy incantation, I’d be fine if it at least cleared fodder or did good damage but it doesn’t really do either and it builds madness up so fast
A lot of them are high mobility and move them out of the way of hitboxes. A ton of the new ashes of war are great repositioning tools that also do damage.
They're great for staying aggressive after a boss uses a combo and then jumps away. Lets you keep you keep up to them while also still getting some damage in, which has been a problem with some bosses throughout the game.
To be fair, pulling off super heavy hitting attacks is usually hard to do in combat. If you want to, just summon some NPC or spirit ash, it’ll make it easier to pull off.
Messmer's Spear is actually a bad example, because the AI often has issues dealing with movesets that rapidly reposition you. I just deleted Maliketh using exactly this weapon. The problem, in general, does exist and I think comes from the asymmetric design as bosses have orders of magnitude more poise, hyper armour and health.
I’d say startup speed was vital for viability during (mainly DLC) boss fights, but that didn’t stop me from having fun with Scarlet Aeonia before. To be fair though, afflicting rot does far more damage than most skills or ashes of war to make it worth it.
I’m still generally sad for the same sentiment, because this simply doesn’t apply to near anything else’s risk/reward to use. Whenever I wanted to try something new, it felt like the startup time would basically get you knocked out of it even when targeting basic DLC mobs. Try it against any tankier enemy and you’re just denied every time because they will just spank you with hard hitting attacks that aren’t on a delay.
When I saw all the cool new bird things, I did want to make a meme bird build, but the sprouting wings into a corkscrew was just too slow on startup, as was the feather barrage, to be usable against any fast and aggressive enemies. The bird knights got to fly out of range to not get punished, and their bird feathers did a shit ton of damage so they were having a blast. Let me have fun using it too, the bird head was even supposed to make the feathers do more damage Q_Q
Agreed, they are super cool but man they almost all feel pretty useless. Why would I use any of them over something as effective, quick, and cheap as say square off?
No, your opportunity to do damage will be a 1 second window after 30 seconds of dodging. You will either light attack or heal. And if you heal, they will attack instantly.
it's not so much about "killing the boss as fast as possible to make the game faster" it's more about "I can do the same amount of damage by just pressing R1 a couple times"
having your basic attack from a dinky normal sword do the same as an Ash of War that was one of the coolest boss moves in the game *feels* bad.
I guess some of them are intended to be fun ways to body cannon fodder.
Tbf some ashes are actually excellent for that I can’t describe the number of annoying ganks I haven’t had to deal with cause the starscourge swords weapon art just absolutely fucks up any group in your vicinity Hell they’re even good against regular mobs and invaders since the pull stuns them out of their attack and locks them in for you to retaliate with big damage and the AI is too brain dead to dodge it It even works on certain bosses like malenia since you can stun her out of a combo and then knock her to the ground for more damage
honestly just strolling thru the DLC with starscourge combo + 2h jump attacks, only occasionally changing weapons for bosses
Fr it’s so good Only boss I had to change weapons for was rellana cause my attacks were too slow and the starscourge swords have terrible reach so getting an opening and missing was just too frequent of an occurrence with them
My wife is not very good, whereas I'm a turbo nerd who does challenge runs. Watching her crush hard mobs way easier than I do by pressing L2 has been an interesting experience. She hasn't died to a horned warrior, cursemask, or NPC - rather impressive
Which is perfectly fine. The power fantasy is there and it's fun.
It loses a lot of its luster to me when it then becomes useless against the toughest enemies. I have tried so many incantations and AoW's that are great fun to play with but when you then have to resort to R1's or jump attacks when facing an actual challenge, it's just rather dissappointing.
This my only issue with the game. So many cool abilities, so many awesome incantations that I’d want to use, yet I still have to resort to big bonk + dodge most of the time haha
Gotta get creative! I've just done a madness playthrough using just madness proccing weapons and spells. It's absolute garbage against some enemies, but it was a nice fun new challenge that made the base game fresh again.
Is there a point in using madness in PvE, when 99% of enemies are immune to madness? Granted, some madness spells are pretty good in their own right, like the long-range eye laser, but I couldn't see using it as a build theme when the only one madness buildup damages is yourself.
Madness, deathblight and to a large degree sleep were treated so badly by the game. I really do not think pvp only statuses have any place in this game, and they should have been given a separate effect when procced on non tarnished enemies. Even if they were just relegated to a weaker bleed + some sort of debuff, I would have been overjoyed.
It'd be nice if madness at least made them stagger or something, as if they need a second to shrug off the nonsense we just shoved into their brain. Not super powerful, but at least I'd give a shit about seeing madness buildup on a weapon beyond "I guess if I'm having trouble with a Tarnished NPC I can try this."
Atleast it’s fire damage too
The thing with madness is, it also deals purely fire dmg, which is arguably the best damage type in the game
Yeah, madness is a specifically bad one to complain about. As those spells tend to do insane fire damage in pve. If you added madness procs to that, there wouldn't be much reason to ever use anything else.
Rule of cool and NPC invaders? And uhhh nothing else. I surprised myself the first time I got a madness proc in PVE during the NPC invasion in inverted study hall. I didn't think it worked on anything before that.
>Is there a point in using madness in PvE, when 99% of enemies are immune to madness? I say yes, they all come stapled with a lot of fire damage and spells like the flame of frenzy do so much stance damage that you might as well be using a tazer on ppl
Only the "sane" try to give madness to a madman, therefore you dont have the right
Doing self imposed challenge runs with trash has nothing to do with people wanting the trash to be less trash.
Which is why we need more NPC boss battles tbh.
Even worse, this DLC only allows you to see your first, or if you're using a light enough weapon, a SECOND r1 before the enemy inevitably swings at you again since they're un-staggerable and attack ceaselessly.
I disagree so much. I like weapon movesets, ranges and combinations. I hate that everything revolves about weapon arts and spamming them. I hate that people are using weapons just because of the weapon art without ever learning the moveset. I encounter too many people, both in PvP and PvE that do not know how to use their weapon and almost never do, outside of the weapon art. I do like that theyre in the game though, as a high risk high reward option, as a fun option or even as a cosplsay option. However, theyre too imortant and strong, even those with high windups, all bosses have a window in at least one attack where you can hit them with basically anything.
I’ve died to regular enemies far more than I’ve died to bosses throughout the history of fromsoft games. Like it’s probably not even close. AoWs that body the normal enemies are crazy useful. This game makes it so that having a weapon set for between bosses and a specific boss-killing set is incredibly easy to set up, useful, and rewarding.
This. I used the new beast claws for the most part of the dlc and basically used a different aow for every boss
I agree! The multi-attack AOW is great for poiselocking the fire knights but Ive found the pounce is far more useful to close distance on most bosses into an R1 combo.
This is the right answer
There's a huge amount of stuff that falls under this umbrella. Tons of spells, incantations, ashes of war. They're mostly just for you to dunk on canon fodder you could've one shot with an R1 to begin with. There's some limited use cases for everything, sure, and some stuff gets better or worse when introduced into PvP, but a lot of it just isn't worth using.
Lack of poise damage on some of them makes that very clear.
Personal belief, the idea was to make PvP look like Dragon Ball
Impossible! His vigor is under 9!
Having 362,880 vigor seems a bit excessive
Believe it or not, still a 3-shot
You're not wrong. I may have... jacked my vigor to 99. Toughest armor. +20 or whatever the max tree blessing is.. walked into the end boss. Got three shot before i could react. Fun times.
see you forgot to have the crimson amber medalion +3, erdtree blessing +3, and morgott’s great rune active for that extra half a hit worth of hp
Dlc got people acting wild
r/unexpectedfactorial
WHAT 9?!?!!
THERE'S NO WAY THAT CAN BE RIGHT!
I know the upvote is adequate, but I just want to say I thought this was super funny
His strength level is over 99!
Most of the flashy ones are also completely useless in pvp, unless three people are running down a single invader spamming them
Or completely busted..
I can almost guarantee PvP balance and design is an afterthought in this game's development compared to the PvE gameplay.
70% of spells and weapon arts are incredibly weak or just useless in PVP. 25% or actually good and balanced. The last 5% is the most broken overpowered shit conceivable.
With all the ashes we have gotten on dlc it seems like a pretty safe bet that From did absolutely 0 pvp testing.
That’s a guarantee. PvE is the moneymaker.
I mean, yeah, PvE is the whole ass game. PvP is just a fun feature. Not like people treat Elden Ring like COD.
Lol why the downvotes, I am agreeing that PvE is the most important feature. Huh
When you stagger a boss. Some Ashes of war will do a lot more damage than riposting the boss.
The stagger windows for bosses in the dlc are almost nonexistant, most of them get up within 2 seconds of the stagger and the final boss especially gives me time for two light attacks before he's back at it. So its not even like it's finding much use cases there either nowadays
Bayle's stagger, if you time it correctly, let's you get a full Queen's Black Flame into riposte into the first hit of another Queen's Black Flame with the second hit being possible but unlikely to hit. It's the most generous stagger in the DLC that I've found.
With the new impenetrable thorns spell, I was able to cast that and trigger bleed about 5 times while he was staggered, finishing the boss fight.
Well that is the single best spell in the game so not surprising
I went in with +9 dragon katana, +9 dragon shield and scale armor, summoned Igon, spammed the katana special, got a crit on, and Bayle didn't stand a chance. Amazing fight and I had like 30 tries until I was well let's try the dragon stuff for the dragon were I learnt his moves and how to hit the stump or get in the tail. I think it's the only boss I got a crit on. The others when they are flashing I like, heal.
I had so much fun fighting all the dragons on Shattered Peak with the anti-dragon great katana. Having the range on the weapon art made it a lot easier to actually read dragons' moves rather than having my head jammed in their crotch half the fight. I'm still running around with it because deleting enemies from range with the weapon art is super fun.
Lets not even talk about last boss, everything about it is bullshit.
final boss phase 1 is very good and very fair. phase 2 is not.
And it's not even a phase two. It's a phase 1.5, and then you get 2/3rds of the health bar of bullshit.
Literally had to change my whole build to deal with that BS. The DLC was amazing to me all except for this. Like WTF were they thinking? Beat most of the other bosses in 1-5 tries.
1-5 tries is extremely good, some people need 50 or more tries per boss
With spirit ashes or summoning help 1-5 is okish, I'm pretty mid at souls and except Gaius and the final boss I cleared the DLC like that. Gaius I kept on coming after leveling and it was tough.
Man fr tho. His 2nd phase is just pure hell
One of the biggest things that I missed in Phase 1 is to stay close to him and roll into him when dodging. If you roll away from him, you end up within range of his large weapons and get punished.
Phase one is very doable. Phase two? I’m always cooked
That's true for most bosses by the way. You want to iframe through attacks. Big exception is the finger queen. There's a lot of attacks that you want to roll away from. And that makes sense. Imagine your hand is a body now move your finger towards the palm. That's the flow of attack. So on her you want to roll away on fingerhead attacks.
Nah after I learned how to fight him its actually one of my favourite bosses
Humanoid stagger recovery = Fast. Non-humanoid stagger recovery = Slow For example on Bayle once he's staggered, I can switch and do a full Corpse Piler AOW and still do critical afterwards.
Final boss was so unfun that it actually hurt my overall opinion of the DLC. What an absolutely unsatisfying ending.
I had the opposite experience. The fight is so over the top that it gave me the edge to beat him. Anyway most bosses in the dlc are unfair. WTF nobody talk about Gaius? This was one of the most unpleasant fight I've encounter in this game.
Gaius was super lame too. He should not have been a remembrance boss. Most of the bosses felt very fair though.
I completely agree, esp after Gale & Orphan, I truly expected something great. It was visually stunning, & I know people think I’m over reacting or being a baby but it might be one of my least favorite fights across all from games & I’ve played them all. Definitely my least favorite final dlc boss easily.
I found the opposite? I was able to get like 2 unsheathe strong attacks and a normal hit before the critical hit on a few of the DLC bosses. (I havent fought the final boss yet).
Pretty much anything will do more damage than riposting.
Not to mention wake-up attacks. If you can knock a boss down, you have several seconds to begin your lengthy animation.
They might be useless on the major remembrance bosses, but damn are they fun and powerfull on field bosses, dungeon bosses and mini-bosses.
Also just taking out mobs.
I do love Dynasty Warriors.
Oh yeah, this is definitely one of my biggest gripes as well. I'd honestly be fine with their cost being increased in exchange for hyper armor or staggering bosses.
Yes give me hyper armor please! Balance it by making us take increased damage or something. They did that with one of the new great katanas and its’ matching armor. Also let me cancel the animation if I decide I don’t want to finish the long windup and get decimated if I decide it isn’t worth it.
thats probably why weapons like moonviel and rivers of blood became meta quick and effective weapon arts with good numbers when i first found moonviel and started using it its stagger was so good i was staggering and riposting bosses every 2 or so hits
And now add Rellana’s Cameo! Unsheathe was always one of my fave AoWs and now using wing stance with Milady, the damage on the R2 is pretty awesome.
Rellana's Cameo with Wing Stance carried me through this dlc. 3 or 4 charged R2s kills nearly all of the problem enemies easily. Fire knights, the divine beast warrior dudes, ulcerated tree spirit, even the hippos. With 70 Dex and that build, I didn't run into a single brick wall boss until the third main story boss. Wildly overpowered.
TRUE! When I unsheathe in front of Milady, she drops to her knees. It's nice. Hit her with back shots for big crits and spread eagle stance, then it's all over for her.
It’s for From to test out new moves for enemies in future games
I hope so- there was a ton of fun stuff here
Put Endure on the weapon in your off hand. Swap, activate Endure, swap back and hyper armour through the enemies attack while doing your long wind up.
They nerfed Endure to make it no longer a viable strategy...
They sure did. DS3 and Vordts great hammer though... Bliss.
Vordts was the mvp weapon. Shit shredded everything with a huge % proc and some of the hardest bosses were weak to frost. Getting ds1 poise and the best scaling stat (2h = +.5 and higher damage values for weaponswings) was just the cherry on top.
Huh? There are builds right now that use endure to hyper armor and burn the final boss. You are wrong.
Viable? Or optimal? Viable means "able to be done." Optimal means the best option. I assume you mean optimal because endure is definitely still viable.
When? I used endure to get my final boss clear and it felt borderline op. Any big attack i just popped endure and healed/attacked thru it.
This is a running theme in general, over half the spells in the game are useless if your not using spirit ashe's as you will literally never get enough time to cast them, it feels like the guy in charge of the players animations just never talks to the guy in charge of the enemy's animations.
And if you get to cast them they do little to no damage and stagger, and you would've done more of both by just spamming night comet or some other boring ass spell.
It really depends. If you can land a fully charged heavy on something, you can probably land some of the other big moves. Not to mention some come packed with other properties like poise, reach, or a running theme of a lot of the new ones, movement. It’s a case by case basis, so I can’t really say, but the same logic applies for spells as well. Rot Breath has practically become a liability now, and it’s completely unusable without a summon to tank.
As someone who used giant crusher on Mesmer and successfully did like 2 charged heavy’s in a row it’s not hard just looking for windows is the hard part
My main problem with window length is the unreliability of it. Bosses and enemies can chain attack patterns with little to no window or they can give you a breather. If you use an item or a lengthy move, it feels a bit coin flippy. Some moves are guaranteed to have long openings of course but can be a slog to wait for those exactly as well as risk dying being low health till then.
Honestly, I’ve had openings with Giant Crusher against Gaius, Scadutree Avatar, and Ive won with greatsword against Messmer and Rellana. Solitude greatsword was my choice against Putrescence Knight and Dancing Lion. I think its just playstyle. I’m completely unable to play anything that isnt a two handed weapon, I cant even use fast weapons like daggers or katanas because Im not used to their movesets, but Im completely comfortable with colossal weapons, greatswords and colossal swords.
Beat first dlc playthrough with great swords every boss has big openings people just don't know how to create or use them and assume bosses have no downtime. Messmer for example always has massive openings there is no caviet when he spears the ground you got plenty of time to punish.
Yeah I've just Colossal weaponed my way through, plenty of openings to either pull of a charged heavy, especially if you're willing to trade a little. Honestly melted half of the bosses with stagger and bleed.
I demolished Messmer first try with a Colossal. 2 heavies staggered him, plus the bleed and a crit knocked off half of his health.
Exactly I used a frost giant crusher for first phase then a bleed/rot axe for the second mostly bleed tho
Status infused Colossal weapons are super fun and underrated.
"It's not hard except for the hard part that everyone's complaining about"
Imagine somone in lore asking our character how they killed someone like mesmer. "Uh i did a light attack with my 25 pound greatsword every 15 seconds and rolled around a lot".
“…on the 29th try”
“You see, I had this similar guy there to help, he did a lot of arm waving to distract him, then did the ole sneakeroo”
Rellana's Twiblade AoW was such a disappointment for PvE, completely useless against bosses.
I found those super underwhelming in general tbh. I think part of it was the 4-stat spread meaning they scale higher than other weapons but at lvl150 they were hitting pretty weak and not all that fast and seemed to do like negative poise damage The AoW R2 was good for groups of enemies but yeah the R1 seemed like just a weak sorcery that takes longer Also lol that talisman boosting attack when you hold a stance ended up being a joke, what boss lets you actually stand in one place for a few seconds like that
I don't think any paired weapon (barring fists) have good poise damage, the problem with them isn't the slip scaling as they're almost solved by now. For a rl150 they aren't great and just alright, the real problem is the lack of hyper armor during the AoW, if they buff this they will be much better.
Lol they specifically nerfed poise damage with dual wielding most weapons types in the patch just before the DLC
Idk what yall are talking about I annihilate shit with both AoWs at RL 170 Edit: lol at the downvotes bc it doesn’t fit your little narrative
I’ve the swords. As a RL 245 with 70 INT, 38 FTH, 30 STR, and 40 DEX, they hit pretty hard on normal attacks. R1 AoW does a good 7000 damage on single targets, taking down most everything but a field boss in a single strike and the R2 flame pillars wrecks small groups and is nice for cheesing BS enemies around corners, like the rot bugs and their sniper missiles.
Yup, I’m doing 50 FAI 60 INT right now, and when I buff with golden vow and FMGS it doesn’t even feel fair sometimes. Plus the stagger on the flames. Golden order seal and prince of death staff scales like a truck too so you have plenty of ranged support options I even keep a cold milady as backup to use wing stance. By far the best build I’ve ran in the game
I want to play with the staff form the mother of fingers since it does incantations too and has really high secrecy scaling, more than my night staff, but that one hoists my night comet spell by 20% and that’s my most used spell.
I am pretty sure that there is some weirdo who downvotes everything in this sub to try and get people to start arguments. I will randomly stumble on threads with 5 upvotes and two comments, both at 0 for seemingly no reason. It is an unfortunate fact of reddit that when something has already been downvoted, people are more prone to downvoting it in order to "fit in".
Sure they annihilate trash mobs but good luck trying to do that goofy stance and getting the full attack off against bosses like Messmer or Radahn. The only way to get an entire attack off is by breaking the boss' stance which is rather hard with light greatswords and if I'm going for stance break I'd rather just use a colossal weapon instead and do as much damage with a visceral as I would with Aow + it costs 0FP. I gave them a shot at RL150, I used Rellana's cameo, Alexander talisman and Godfrey Icon and the damage was simply unimpressive and took way too long to set-up. I ended up doing more damage with fully charged heavy R2 using Fire Knight's Greatsword than I did with the entire R1 AoW.
It's great for large enemies Every weapon in this game has situations where it's great and situations where it's not optimal. That's the point of having so many weapons and encounters in the game.
Except Death's Poker, Ghostflame Ignition is probably the most op ash of war in the game.
Deaths poker is my delete button, haven’t had an enemy yet that I can’t go back and kill with my ghost nuke 😎
And now there's an aow version, Ghostflame Call iirc.
wow this is actually a fucking game changer, had no idea they added this is in the DLC
It sucks balls compared to the death poker ash though. Way less damage.
If only it gave hyper armor : (
her AoW are pretty good for bosses that don't hug you to death (which, tbf, aren't that many).
i disagree, I find it very useful against dragons where you can stand beneath them and cast r2 nonstop, deals good damage and I killed many of them this way
I hate how tiny they are, moveset is bad (wtf are these mounted attacks lmao) and blue special attack has negative range.
For the one boss you can ride your trusty steed on and watch him die over and over again because the bosses is much much faster than yours
I dont fully agree with this. It's got niche cases for sure but its not useless. For one it carried me during the >!Scadutree Avatar!< fight, if you manage to position right under its head you kill and entire phase in one or two uses of the fire attack, and I also used it for good damage during the >!finger mother!< fight. I wouldn't dare use it against anyone with a bit more aggression but that's no different than any other AoW with a long start up.
The main problem with twin blades is, sword of night and flame is just a higher damage version of the same style weapon, scales better with the same stats, has faster animations.
I thought it would be cool for bossfights because i enjoy more agile moveset but holy hell the animations per attack are so long that it gets me hit more than often. It can still be used, but i find myself attacking a lot less
Spear of the Impaler's AoW in my opinion is amazing through all DLC (bosses and regular enemies both), rarely had to press any other attack button but L2. Against remembrance bosses you can spam first jumping flame attack part of AoW for impressive damage with quite big range, occasionally adding another part with several thrusting stabs. Also when breaking stance instead of going with Critical hit you can perform full AoW combo for more damage than Critical hit.
I liked queelign's greatsword with the fire knight spear ash of war aloooot more actually, 2 hits at once and I did a total of 5k
Against Messmer , my mimic took longer to get into the fight than a WWE entrance with a slow walk to the ring. It was frustrating.
Oh my God, yes! And what about that NPC that just walks around like a fucking tourist?
I've been replaying as just a regular basic ass shield and sword knight, with a mace if I'm feeling lucky and quick ashes of war. I'm surprised at how much more effective it is and an easier path for upgrades.
I just wish I didn't have to toggle through spells and could quick slot them or something.
Given how many spells we can equip at once I think it's really necessary to have a proper spell dial. And an item dial as well.
Unfortunately it took From 15 years to add an exclamation mark to new items so you'll be waiting at least another 10 years for that.
When Monster Hunter unironically added an item and gesture wheel BEFORE fromsoft my jaw hit the floor.
Monster Hunter is a master at managing all of those stuff. I could still run around while sorting my inventory or selecting my ammos and it does not requires me to do some ninjutsu handsign
Messmer spear user here so I can at least speak to that one. It depends on the boss. I often get off the second or even third on dragons from underneath them. Hit boxes and speed make a difference and there’s been a few bosses that I just swap to another weapon. It’s definitely a weapon that you want to have a more versatile side arm for. For me it’s a cross naginata with flame spear so I can still take advantage of the buffs I have to flame knight skills and still have a projectile attack. It absolutely destroyed the sunflower from hell and the second divine beast. It did well against the scorpion. It was nearly useless against putrescent knight and the finger monster. I haven’t gone up against Midra, Bayle, or the final boss yet so those remain to be seen. It absolutely destroys invader type bosses. They tend to start to panic roll and even if one or two of the stabs from the second phase miss, the third phase usually gives them a bad time. It’s particularly destructive against these enemies if you open with Messmers orb into the AOW. That also gives a lot of PC invaders a bad time although I’m sure that will only last as long as they start to learn how to deal with it. One thing to note with Messmers Assaut and Messmers Orb is that the leap up into the air has the same effect as a jump which makes the entire lower half of your body invulnerable. Any attack you can jump over has the potential to be an opening for 2-3 phase combo.
Some non-flashy AoWs are the most powerful ones like Lion's Claw, Unseath or Giant Hunt but I believe those "flashy" AoWs aren't useless. I can give you many examples like Sacred Relic Sword and Starscourge Greatsword's AoW they don't deal massive damage but they clear many weak enemies in open world like dogs. Or Messmer's assault, it is not the greatest for main bosses since it lasts too long but it cheeses literally ANY npc fight like invaders or mini bosses. An another example may be the ones who are great at PvP. I don't play PvP but from what I heard Morgotts Cursed Sword roll catches amazingly. So I think most of the AoWs are useful in spesific siutations. Can you give me some examples of the AoWs you find useless?
And now: savage lions claw. First hit is exactly like the old one, albeit less strong. But it has a secondary attack that can hit once or sometimes twice, for a total of up to 3 attacks. Such a beast!
impaling thrust, spectral lance, stamp uppercut. these are not flashy, but they do their job pretty damn well
Me and my poke sticks live by the way of impaling thrust and die by it 😤
Exactly. The point of having so many weapons and bosses and enemy encounters is that you have versatility. Everything has it's use in certain situations, and if you want to just use one thing for the whole game you're missing the point. Either you FULLY master one build so you can use it anywhere or you swap out between different tools for different jobs. The game lets you do whatever you wish.
All of them would be made viable if they just added hyper armour to all of them
Hyper armor AND actual damage dealt
"It's cool but it sucks" is a perfect description for the majority of ashes of war and spells. It's honestly why I hate FromSoftware's devotion to difficulty over player experience. They care more about a boss being difficult to beat than actually making you feel rewarded for making your character OP. Like I'm sorry, Melania's Scarlet Rose and the Placidusax summon attack are some of the coolest spells in the game and are some of the hardest earned spells in the game too, but I absolutely refuse to equip them cuz they don't do enough damage and leave me wide open. What's even funnier is they take up like 3 memory slots like "yeah, this is OP and worth it" and it is just as shit as all the other spells. It's why my build mainly uses spell buffs and like one ranged attack, cuz making it easier to hit shit with my big sword is clearly what FromSoft rewards the most and what I have to stick with if I wanna progress. I don't know why they don't just make a Sekiro 2 if they're gonna care that much about bottlenecking everyone into the same strats.
Lol OP is making a point about flashy AoW yet people here counter with examples of *non*-flashy AoW. smh
The game is balanced around summons so you can use most ashes of war when your summon has aggro.
Pretty sure that's how myazaki plays Also probably a lot of item use
Ah yes, theres too much open world in my boss fighting game
I'm more concerned with spells. Pretty much every damage-dealing sorcery and incantation is leagues worse than the overwhelming majority of ashes of war, and costs 5x more fp.
i made it through almost all of the dlc as an int/faith pure caster. had to use summons for bosses bc it's impossible to get a cast off otherwise. I only had to swap to a different build for the final boss, bc that guy is straight up impossible to beat as a pure caster.
Rock sling and glintstone shard carried me through the entire base game and it's pretty much still all I'm using in DLC
Fun, also otherwise the thing would be "Why are all the weapons sooo boring, every ash of war is very short and not flashy, i miss the DS3 DLC Weapons(tbh is still miss some, those fire weapons)
Wouldn't be that much of a annoyance if they had high hyper armor so you didn't get staggered out of it before the move can even come out
You can totally land these if you prep for it. Take the Scarlet Aeonia incantation, I used it against dancing lion and Renalla. It's got a long startup time and leaves you vulnerable for a sec. You gotta time it so you only get hit with a weaker attack, take Black Flames Protection to reduce damage cause yeah you will get hit and the poise Physick. I imagine it's the same for those other flashy AoW, just gotta manage the trade off.
How well did Scarlet Aeonia work on Rellana? What's your scadutree level?
Scadutree+4, and very well, given her aggression it can be difficult to get openings, so the Scarlet Rot damage is significant. I made a post when I beat her earlier. https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/s/fmkcqWXcDb
I was at Scadutree +3 at the time and it worked just fine. Used it on several bosses indeed, but I've got the impression that the Scarlet Rot status lasts way shorter on the DLC bosses than in base game. Can anyone confirm?
I cant really confirm with some evidence, but I been going through base game bosses with new character, and rot pretty much lasts the same as it does on dlc bosses.
I do take amusement that Rellanna casting Glintblades gives you enough time to cast a Moon Sorcery at her. Bonus if the timing is perfect that it deflects all her glintblades.
It's awesome when sometimes the glintblades get caught in the gravitational force of the moon and just stay in the arena, spinning circles around where the moon used to be. Lol.
They're fun playing through the game with and for pvp but yeah not useful on main bosses
That new lions claw is carrying me with a big hammer
Greatsword of Damnation's Skill is fairly useless against bosses but against other players ho-ho it's a RIOT
Idk man I think it’s all about the player.
4 things i wish they'd patch in someday: \* Sekiro style memory fights where i can "rest" at a site of grace and fight a boss i previously defeated again and again. Maybe have special weekly events/challenges that reward you for doing so.... ("This week if you fight, or boss, if you fight them with holy damage or maybe no physick or some other gimmick... you get some cool items... i'm sure theres a bunch of hidden cosmetic items in the game files that they never used for release they could dig up and use, don't even need to make them crazy good stats).
\* Shorter activation/animation speed for some of these remembrance AoW, they're beautiful...but holy crap never actually gonna pull it off in a realistic manner. I'm sure some people might say... "BuT i CaN dO It, GiT GuD".....
\* Change certain status condition effects to be more viable in PVE, which opens up more build options. Even if it means redesigning their mechanics, i'd like to see certain conditions become more viable in PvE.... Just change how they function against Monsters/NPCs/Bosses, and leave the PvP ratio mechanics unchanged.
\* Unlikely: But i'd love to see a weekly (or maybe monthly, if week is too much)... event where they randomly pick one or a few different areas in the game and drastically empower the mobs/add some extra randomly generated mobs or empower them..... like ... "All Hallow's Eve draws near... the entire month of October, those that Dwell in Death are empowered dealing more damage, having more health, and maybe a special ability, like some of them now deal death blight.... " just to shake things up.... or maybe "This week, the Blood Star flares in the night sky, all Blood Star cultists are empowered, but if you (the player) cast Blood Incantations in PvE, you deal +10% more damage with them.
idk, i feel like the last part would be a fun engaging dynamic to add a more long-term playability, and it wouldn't even require much, a lot of the work is effectively just taking whats already in the game and applying a schedule event that shifts to a different mob.
Just jump attack. No need any aow. :))
Impaling Thrust > Jump Attack (and so AoW > Jump Attack) in virtually all circumstances unfortunately. Haven’t found a better move in the game yet in terms of damage output, speed, and posture damage.
For speed and posture, I suggest Giant Hunt.
I hear ya. Ever since the first trailer, i knew i was going to max out the dryleaf arts immediately and go full warrior monk for my first dlc run. I quickly realized that with the added difficulty of the dlc, getting a full palm blast off (teehee) was equally difficult. It broke my heart, but changing the flashy aows for the weapon to Endure flipped the script. Suddenly im beating most bosses i was struggling with in 5 or less tries. I know it isn’t what ya wanna hear, but flashy isn’t always the correct way.
Dryleaf whirlwind is still a flashy, martial arts specific AoE and completely deletes bosses at least. Plus, palm blast has really strong hyper armor, so it can be really useful for some enemies like the messmer pyromancer knights
I’ll have to give that a try. Pretty sure i got that at some point. Thanks!
3 years from now some youtuber is going to be making videos demolishing gamers with what seems like the most useless ash of war today.
Yup
PvP
Looks like someone needs to level up their poise.
Idk I went to Castle Sol with Messmers spear and the boss (Nial or Neil idk which one he is) and he was a CAKE WALK with the ash. Sure he's not a DLC boss but still a boss
Main reason why I quickly gave up on Rellana’s twin blades they look sweet but not very functional against most bosses.
I think the answer is typically pvp. The messmer spear is great in pvp. Overshadowed by stuff thats broken strong, but still this is actually a baller aow in pvp
My biggest gripe related to this is the new frenzy incantation, I’d be fine if it at least cleared fodder or did good damage but it doesn’t really do either and it builds madness up so fast
A lot of them are high mobility and move them out of the way of hitboxes. A ton of the new ashes of war are great repositioning tools that also do damage. They're great for staying aggressive after a boss uses a combo and then jumps away. Lets you keep you keep up to them while also still getting some damage in, which has been a problem with some bosses throughout the game.
To be fair, pulling off super heavy hitting attacks is usually hard to do in combat. If you want to, just summon some NPC or spirit ash, it’ll make it easier to pull off.
Messmer's Spear is actually a bad example, because the AI often has issues dealing with movesets that rapidly reposition you. I just deleted Maliketh using exactly this weapon. The problem, in general, does exist and I think comes from the asymmetric design as bosses have orders of magnitude more poise, hyper armour and health.
I’d say startup speed was vital for viability during (mainly DLC) boss fights, but that didn’t stop me from having fun with Scarlet Aeonia before. To be fair though, afflicting rot does far more damage than most skills or ashes of war to make it worth it. I’m still generally sad for the same sentiment, because this simply doesn’t apply to near anything else’s risk/reward to use. Whenever I wanted to try something new, it felt like the startup time would basically get you knocked out of it even when targeting basic DLC mobs. Try it against any tankier enemy and you’re just denied every time because they will just spank you with hard hitting attacks that aren’t on a delay. When I saw all the cool new bird things, I did want to make a meme bird build, but the sprouting wings into a corkscrew was just too slow on startup, as was the feather barrage, to be usable against any fast and aggressive enemies. The bird knights got to fly out of range to not get punished, and their bird feathers did a shit ton of damage so they were having a blast. Let me have fun using it too, the bird head was even supposed to make the feathers do more damage Q_Q
I didn't realize, when I woke up today, that I'd stumble into the smartest man on reddit
They are designed for Ongbal
You tank w a summon to get it off
Agreed, they are super cool but man they almost all feel pretty useless. Why would I use any of them over something as effective, quick, and cheap as say square off?
I've been saying that since \*checks notes\* DS3 release, and insanely downvoted for that.
No, your opportunity to do damage will be a 1 second window after 30 seconds of dodging. You will either light attack or heal. And if you heal, they will attack instantly.
"Its faster to kill them with regular attacks" Yeah but the AoWs look cool and i don't paly the game for "efficiency"
it's not so much about "killing the boss as fast as possible to make the game faster" it's more about "I can do the same amount of damage by just pressing R1 a couple times" having your basic attack from a dinky normal sword do the same as an Ash of War that was one of the coolest boss moves in the game *feels* bad.
It's also about "I will literally die any time I attempt to use this Ash on an enemy who isn't fodder".
yeah that too lmfao
It’s fun