Ash of War - Severe rebalancing is required.

[Salty Sis' 4U]

For real, so many Ash of War weapon arts are absolutely pathetic...
And others are flat out just better as a result.



Hoarfrost stomp is a wide-reaching, high damage attack WITH a status proc for cold.

Bloody Slash does huge chonky damage on-hit with only a smol loss of HP per cast.

Thunderbolt does TOTAL GARBAGE DAMAGE...

Determination's buff looks good in the status menu, but the actual impact on-hit is extremely lacking to the point that I'd be better off not wasting the time and mana to buff in the first place. A charged melee attack would literally be better in terms of time and mana spent.

Vacuum slice is ♥♥♥♥. No sugar-coating it. It takes too dang long to cast, is super obvious and does less damage than a normal R1 swing of the sword. Not cheap to cast, either.

Endure? It's awful. Horrible. I was thinking "Oh, it's the endure skill from Dark Souls 3 sort of deal. Tank a hit, gain some poise to trade."
It didn't come even close to making that viable. The mana cost was surprisingly high, especially given I was easily flung back by an enemy unit's singular swing...
And nearly died. Not even a huge wind-up swing, even. Just a regular hit.
The skill barely reduced the incoming damage, if it did at all, and I can't say it even allowed me to hyper-armor through the blow to hit back. Doesn't help that the skill lasts for hardly long enough to charge a heavy attack with larger weapons...
It's totally useless.



These are just my personal and firsthand takes of these weapon arts and their god-awful balance, but what about y'all?

Any hot takes of your own or spice to speak about Ashes of War you find either particularly broken or utterly unworthy of even touching with a rotting ten foot pole?

[Air]

To be honest hoarfrost stomp is so terribly busted I can spam it on Any enemy and win in 3 seconds. When I face an enemy that is cheesy or obnoxious I just use that cause Why not since they are annoying and 1-2 shot us so can I lol.

Along with the blood blade dagger and Moonveil Katana some Ashes of War are very over tuned.

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Oh, yeah the bloody Katana ash of war with the vertical slash and the blue wave.

That ♥♥♥♥ oneshots me FFS. Broken as hell. Moonveil Katana, huh? Didn't know the name.

[MrSoul]

dont be hacking on determination.
That word on bottom left corner of my screen only thing keeping me going in some battles.

[MrSoul]

also i agree, at very least the sell amounts should be balanced based on their effectiveness, way it is suggests all the same when many of basic ones wont even give a better class of weapon when applied.

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mr.Soul:

dont be hacking on determination.
That word on bottom left corner of my screen only thing keeping me going in some battles.

As an STR main that uses an ultra greatsword, I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over Determination.
You're better off using a charged melee attack. The cast time of the Ash of War is legit not worth using it.

The damage boost it gives is barely on par with a charged heavy attack. It just looks better because of how it shows up in your status.

[MrSoul]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Salty Sis' 4U:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Mr.Soul:

dont be hacking on determination.
That word on bottom left corner of my screen only thing keeping me going in some battles.

As an STR main that uses an ultra greatsword, I am ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ all over Determination.
You're better off using a charged melee attack. The cast time of the Ash of War is legit not worth using it.

The damage boost it gives is barely on par with a charged heavy attack. It just looks better because of how it shows up in your status.

more talking about the "emotional" buff it gives xD

[Salty Sis' 4U]

IMO, a lot of the STR-oriented weapon arts need heavy buffing...
"Kick" is about as effective as an ultra greatsword / (Colossal) Greatsword's singular swing...
But only deals significant poise damage on shield hits and comes out far too slow.

The "Stamp" Ash of War skills for Sweep and Upward Cut also need work.
Sweep deals way too little damage and the upward cut variant doesn't do nearly enough poise damage to make it worthwhile. Neither grants particularly decent poise to the user either, their primary defensive benefit is the low stance allowing you to avoid high blows.

"Ground Slam" is... A joke skill. It has to be. It's just bad. So bad.

"War Cry" has a nice change-up to the charged heavy attacks, but can kinda ruin weapons that previously benefits from wide swings that could hit multiple enemies at once...
The damage boost is okay, if not very impressive... But the skill's effects are far too brief even when you have mana to burn to cast it, let alone when you haven't.
It's just too damn short-spanning to make use of effectively without it shutting down in the midst of an assault.

"Wild Strikes" is okay depending on the weapon, but needs better poise bonuses to make use of... It really feels like it gets nerfed when not being used by NPC invaders, whom seemingly cannot be staggered whilst using it.
Meanwhile, I stagger in one or two blows most of the time? What gives?
As for why it depends on the weapon... Well, anything that isn't a bit on the larger side kinda suffers for using it, as typically there are faster-swinging skills than this that hit just as hard (if not harder) per swing.

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Honestly, what surprises me is the fact that all Ashes of War more or less scale weapons the same.

I set them to "Heavy", they all give my big fat greatsword the exact same damage scaling bonus.

You'd think that it'd be easy to balance weapon arts that suck by simply giving them far better stat scaling... That's what I thought they were gonna do, judging by what was said back during the dev' cycles and demos.

[Nyctophilic Eyeball]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Salty Sis' 4U:

Honestly, what surprises me is the fact that all Ashes of War more or less scale weapons the same.

I set them to "Heavy", they all give my big fat greatsword the exact same damage scaling bonus.

You'd think that it'd be easy to balance weapon arts that suck by simply giving them far better stat scaling... That's what I thought they were gonna do, judging by what was said back during the dev' cycles and demos.

that's because the scaling thing basically works the same as the infusion system from previous games

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Nyctophilic Eyeball:

Ursprünglich geschrieben von Salty Sis' 4U:

Honestly, what surprises me is the fact that all Ashes of War more or less scale weapons the same.

I set them to "Heavy", they all give my big fat greatsword the exact same damage scaling bonus.

You'd think that it'd be easy to balance weapon arts that suck by simply giving them far better stat scaling... That's what I thought they were gonna do, judging by what was said back during the dev' cycles and demos.

that's because the scaling thing basically works the same as the infusion system from previous games

Yeah, I get it... But it's disappointing, given the fact that everyone from back when this was in development was talking about how different Ashes of War would scale differently; so those with less amazing weapon arts might have much higher scaling to compensate, or those with strong weapon arts would scale less effectively.

[Graf Vigah]

and now all Ash of War are trash

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von HayJaa:

and now all Ash of War are trash

IMO, they're getting better? Far less broken, so now other Ashes of War have a chance to shine.

Lotta fun ones that are overshadowed by a few very specific ones... Some of which were nerfed in the most recent patch, rather fairly if ya ask me.
I'd have given Hoarfrost Stomp more post-cast idle frames, rather than a longer pre-cast time... But that's just my take.

[DAWN OF THE DEAD]

Blood splash still goes wosh wosh

[Onni]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von HayJaa:

and now all Ash of War are trash

Obviously someone doesn't know the power of Lightning Ram.

[Timbermaw]

Wow this man was a visionary