Are 2H weapons a bad choice or I'm just crazy?

[Toka Ghado]

The way i like to play the souls games is fight a huge douche with an even bigger sword. That how i played pretty much every souls games that allowed me to do so.

And I gotta say, I'm getting my bum handed to me in this game, it feels like every boss I've fought so far(SPOILER: Tree sentinel, Margit, Crucible knight and godrick), was harder than nameless king and the bloody orphan!! I don't know if I'm just getting old and rusty but this is the hardest souls game so far IMO.

And after all those beats i took I started noticing that it feels like most of the enemies are not that suitable to fight with a slow 2H weapon, the window of attack is too short and the bosses reacts way too quick to normal attacks.

That became even more clear after I watched a few 1H builds on youtube and tested using a random 1 handed sword. It feels like most of the fights aren't designed taking 2 handed swords at hands, the window of attack pretty much allows 1 proper hit, the second one is already too risky, parrying is not an options(i think?) and the bosses are tanky AF, and the damage done by a 2 handed is not even that strong.

I'm a bit disappointed to be honest, using massive weapons to fight was always my favoritve thing about the souls games, they are slower but usually dealt a significant amount of damage, so every hit had an impact on a fight.

Now on this game I need to strike dozens of times with my claymore feeling like I'm using a bloody dagger!

[Original Gengar]

You just gotta upgrade to 2 heavy weapons. I'm using 2 Curved Greatswords powerstanced and it's definitely very viable despite being quite slow. The initial damage is very good plus both of them do bleed so you can really take a chunk off some boss's health if you stay aggressive.
Before that I used 1 Great Curved Sword 2 handed and still did pretty good damage.

I think overall smaller weapons may be a bit stronger than the big ones in this game, but the big ones are definitely still viable.

[Jimothy]

claymore is a lot less powerful than it was in previous From games. 2handing the UchiKatana is better because of how fast it is.

It's so easy to get stunlocked in Elden Ring the wide arcs of the claymore leave you completely open to locks from fast enemies.

[Losing my sanity]

got same problem in the beginning, tried to kill Godrick with 2h sword and died like 20 times, it was +4 upgraded, then i took my 1 hand sword +2 and got him in first try

[Toka Ghado]

Originally posted by Wolfman:

claymore is a lot less powerful than it was in previous From games. 2handing the UchiKatana is better because of how fast it is.

It's so easy to get stunlocked in Elden Ring the wide arcs of the claymore leave you completely open to locks from fast enemies.

That makes sense, thanks for the tip

[Toka Ghado]

Originally posted by Losing my sanity:

got same problem in the beginning, tried to kill Godrick with 2h sword and died like 20 times, it was +4 upgraded, then i took my 1 hand sword +2 and got him in first try

I'm glad I'm not the only one!

[Toka Ghado]

Originally posted by Original Gengar:

You just gotta upgrade to 2 heavy weapons. I'm using 2 Curved Greatswords powerstanced and it's definitely very viable despite being quite slow. The initial damage is very good plus both of them do bleed so you can really take a chunk off some boss's health if you stay aggressive.
Before that I used 1 Great Curved Sword 2 handed and still did pretty good damage.

I think overall smaller weapons may be a bit stronger than the big ones in this game, but the big ones are definitely still viable.

I'm planning on using the one that's a tribute to the berserk creator, if It's possible to use 2 of the same weapons i might use but i prefer using only one.

[Ashtrails]

Try the curved greatsword from the Evergaol knight (South Limgrave, near the Lake Grace).
It has a build-in Weapon Skill that has a gap closer / backflip, does good damage and the WS is relatively fast. Served me very well on every boss so far : )

But I feel the same, most of the time I don't even try to use regular attacks except crouch or jump attacks.
Every ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ 20 feet tall lumbering monster has some ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ back-hand ♥♥♥♥♥ slap to stagger you if you even _think_ about tapping r1 or r2 , and every dude in armor just combos endlessly anyway, so good luck getting a hit in at all : D

[rkjesseryu]

use a katana. the Japanese love to make their garbage weapons the strongest.
just dex and get some bleed ♥♥♥♥ and you'll be fine.
It's like a step above using magic but at least you get your hands dirty.

[Legendairy2]

Games been a cake walk using the basic "Greatsword". Points are split into Vigor, Str, and End, all of which sit between 50 and 55 at this point. If you arent using jump heavy attack, you are playing great sword wrong. Your whole kit revolves around waiting for you opening and doing a jump heavy until they stagger

[roi]

I feel the same way. They increased enemy movement speed to make it like BloodBorne or something while retaining old Dark Souls attack speed. One thing I'm considering is deviating from the path of just using a big sword, maybe I'll start using spells for once.

[Blitz4]

one issue i have is there's no stamina use outside of combat. this makes it hard to figure dps. in dark souls you take a weapon swing as many as you can for each attack then multiply the swings by damage to get dps.

[Rokynn]

2handed playthrough here and have had no major issues 80 hours in. Just gotta get your spacing right, embrace the jump attack massive stagger, throw in a charged r2 for even more stagger once in a while and don't get greedy for multiple hits when you don't have an opening.

Stagger is your friend.

[BoogieMan]

Weapon upgrades make a huge difference. Focus on that.

[Dunbary]

I'll preface by saying I'm no expert at souls but this game seems very kind to 2h users. I have the +8 halberd you can get early on, and along with a trinket that boosts my stats, I've been able to break the defense of many bosses. My strategy so far has been to wear down anybody with constant barrage of pokes with the halberd until I can break their stance then whittle them down. In past souls games, I've had much more difficulty since all the best scaling weapons were things like the lothric knight sword which forced me into very close combat. As a 2h user, it seems you have to go full berserker mode full attack in order to break defenses to avoid damage, but that doesn't work on all types of enemies like dragons which makes them challenging.

[ℝℯ⊻ℯℵℊ∄❤]

Ruins Greatsword, smash to win