The broken greatspear, the Lance:

[Salty Sis' 4U]

This weapon has been consistently broken for several patches now and I see no real attempts at rebalancing targeting it.

First off, it's one of few high-damage poke-type weapons, meaning absurd counter-poke damage output. Combined with its reach and the fact that as a Greatspear it has amazing chase and roll-catch capabilities, it's already a monster in PvP.

Add the counter-poke damage multiplier to the stupidly wide variety of Ashes of War it has access to and you get something utterly ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ broken.

Endurance? Yep, it can do that.
Flaming Strike? Totally. Why not.
Royal Knight's Resolve? Yeah, onepoke god.

And many more. It's frankly insane how many bloody Ashes of War the Lance can utilize and it's made every nerf aimed at making cheese builds less broken outright useless, since none have been able to prevent it just swapping to the next best Ash of War.

Dual-wielding Lances remains broken as all hell.
It can't be out-traded, you cannot outrun or outmaneuver it.
The Ashes of War it can slap on leaves no weak aspect to exploit, nothing to counter.

Rolling to the sides? Dual-wielded greatlances got dat twin-swing post-roll... And with Flaming Strike, you'll get caught for sure.

Trading? Even without the counter-poke damage multiplier that's a bad idea, with Endurance it's just masochistic.

Not to mention the RKR onepoke builds...


The problem here isn't the Ash of War, they're all useful but hardly broken on most gear... Well, aside from Flaming Strike if ya just spam the fire wave portion of the art, as it's ezpz roll-catching and the follow up is a guaranteed hit if the fire wave hits prior, due to the stagger.

...No, the primary issue here, again, is the fact that the Lance can use such an insane variety of Ashes of War, several of which make little to no sense considering the shape, heft and such of the weapon itself.

[Endymion Gainer]

It's also heavy, using it makes you an easy target for most any ranged build, and the counters are only OP if your opponent is an idiot/CPU-controlled and just keeps attacking you predictably. I played Lance on a knight-type character, and while it's VERY good against lots of things when paired with a greatshield, it tended to suck against enemies that could quickly make distance and pelt you.

[Dragonirian]

You listed every counter attempt except parry

[Salty Sis' 4U]

Originally posted by Endymion Gainer:

It's also heavy, using it makes you an easy target for most any ranged build, and the counters are only OP if your opponent is an idiot/CPU-controlled and just keeps attacking you predictably. I played Lance on a knight-type character, and while it's VERY good against lots of things when paired with a greatshield, it tended to suck against enemies that could quickly make distance and pelt you.

Bruh, any weapon makes you an easy target for most ranged builds.
That's the point of ranged builds: Hitting you from a range which you can't do jack about.

And heavy? Really? Let's compare it to literally any other weapon of its weight class and see how they trade. Get real.

The Lance, as a greatspear, has the best chasing moveset in the game.
As a "heavy" weapon, it also has poke-type damage and benefits from counter-hits.
Compared to literally any weapon of a similar weight, it far outclasses them in terms of trade damage, reach and its moveset simply being superior.
And whilst it's slower than a normal spear, it's by no means difficult to force a trade with it thanks again to its reach and moveset.

Furthermore, the speed of its strikes can be augmented to degrees no ultra-greatsword can match, again, because this thing can be given a metric f*ck-ton of different Ashes of War.


Like, have you never seen it with Flame Strike?
The fire alone can be spammed for low-cost and lingers in the air, allowing you to easily lock down the zone in front and to the sides of you, making it excellent for roll-catching and just catching in general to force a trade on anything shorter than a greatlance.
This flame also staggers easily and has enough force to it that the follow-up strike WILL land if the prior fire wave hit.
This is even more brutal because of the reach of the Lance, making it both incredibly fast as well as buffing the already high-damage poker with fire on top of its innate damage values. For a high physical-damage infusion, this can give it even more insane damage output.

And if you don heavy armor with dual-wielded Lances?
Yeah, you're not gonna be slapped out of a trade. Even if they bypass your first jab, they can't keep dodging NEARER to you and will, at some point, roll away to some degree...
And inevitably be caught by the lingering lengthy hitbox, a feature unique to greatlances.
A feature that greathammers, colossal swords and the like do not benefit from as they merely slam the dirt and their hitbox fades in an instant.



Now, lemme make this clear.
I hate the weapon for its variety of Ashes of War making it god-tier.
I do not hate the weapon itself, though it's incredibly powerful when compared to other weapons of its weight class.


The variety of Ashes of War it has access to is insane and nonsensical. Many of the ways you attack with them equipped is blatantly stupid when slapped on a bloody LANCE.

It's be like if straight swords could be given Prelate's Charge.
The fact that these Ashes of War are bull in logic and common-sense only adds to the fact, as the variety also makes the Lance incredibly hard to balance compared to other weapons.

There's simply no way to scale its already absurd damage potential against the Ashes of War it can equip. It's got everything from buffs to hard-hitting attacks and speedy multi-hit attacks.
It's stupid.

Whomever decided wot Ashes of War the Lance can equip needs their head checked for dents.

[Endymion Gainer]

You clearly are not as good at the game as you think you are if you think every weapon is equally vulnerable to ranged tactics.

[Omastar]

Originally posted by Dragonirian:

You listed every counter attempt except parry

Parry is not an effective counter to anything in PvP really, due to latency.

Additionally the jumping L1 on powerstanced lances cannot be parried, it's pretty fast, and you take a LOT of damage if they punish your parry attempt with that.

I personally don't consider lances, or even powerstanced lances to be "broken", but they are certainly extremely strong, I also main HTS - so I just jump the CRL1 and punish so I don't have so much of a problem against it I suppose.

[𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃]

It will get balanced along with the dual great spear crouch pokes because people are starting to mention it more and more after the UGS crouch poke nerf ( thank god ) cause the people who used the crouch poke are switching to dual greatspears

[Narm]

Originally posted by 𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃:

It will get balanced along with the dual great spear crouch pokes because people are starting to mention it more and more after the UGS crouch poke nerf ( thank god ) cause the people who used the crouch poke are switching to dual greatspears

Yep, they all switched to serpent hunter, lance, or treespear (might be the wrong name, the holy colossal spear). That or a heavy thrusting sword for the stupidly long distance sprint R2. Or banished knight halberd. Basically, anything with long distance poking to prevent people from getting space, and a quick poke that can easily be used to roll catch in close range. The lance sideswipe to catch people trying to roll past them is just terrible icing on the cake.

I dream of a day where I don't have to keep my own cheese-y poke weapon just to have an actual fight with these folks. The worst part is that a lot of them are really quite good and I can tell it'd be super fun to duel them with non-meta weapons, yet they insist on the lazy meta poke build.

I hope it gets nerfed just so that there's more weapon diversity in duels and PVP in general.

[𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃]

Originally posted by Narm:

Originally posted by 𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃:

It will get balanced along with the dual great spear crouch pokes because people are starting to mention it more and more after the UGS crouch poke nerf ( thank god ) cause the people who used the crouch poke are switching to dual greatspears

Yep, they all switched to serpent hunter, lance, or treespear (might be the wrong name, the holy colossal spear). That or a heavy thrusting sword for the stupidly long distance sprint R2. Or banished knight halberd. Basically, anything with long distance poking to prevent people from getting space, and a quick poke that can easily be used to roll catch in close range. The lance sideswipe to catch people trying to roll past them is just terrible icing on the cake.

I dream of a day where I don't have to keep my own cheese-y poke weapon just to have an actual fight with these folks. The worst part is that a lot of them are really quite good and I can tell it'd be super fun to duel them with non-meta weapons, yet they insist on the lazy meta poke build.

I hope it gets nerfed just so that there's more weapon diversity in duels and PVP in general.

You echoed my sentiment friend , just in another thread a DS 3 player was complaining cause the poor sod was getting stomped in invasions and i outright said that bring out the poke and you will 99 % of the time never loose cause pokes are the ultimate crutch in this just like how the running attacks of the curved swords were in DS 3

Btw light rolls can shut down the poke but you really do have to be good , i have been rocking light armor since 1.06 and now with the damage nerf to pvp it's been even more viable for me personally

[Omastar]

Originally posted by 𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃:

Originally posted by Narm:

Yep, they all switched to serpent hunter, lance, or treespear (might be the wrong name, the holy colossal spear). That or a heavy thrusting sword for the stupidly long distance sprint R2. Or banished knight halberd. Basically, anything with long distance poking to prevent people from getting space, and a quick poke that can easily be used to roll catch in close range. The lance sideswipe to catch people trying to roll past them is just terrible icing on the cake.

I dream of a day where I don't have to keep my own cheese-y poke weapon just to have an actual fight with these folks. The worst part is that a lot of them are really quite good and I can tell it'd be super fun to duel them with non-meta weapons, yet they insist on the lazy meta poke build.

I hope it gets nerfed just so that there's more weapon diversity in duels and PVP in general.

You echoed my sentiment friend , just in another thread a DS 3 player was complaining cause the poor sod was getting stomped in invasions and i outright said that bring out the poke and you will 99 % of the time never loose cause pokes are the ultimate crutch in this just like how the running attacks of the curved swords were in DS 3

Btw light rolls can shut down the poke but you really do have to be good , i have been rocking light armor since 1.06 and now with the damage nerf to pvp it's been even more viable for me personally

Curved sword running R1 in ds3? Maybe it's just me but I haven't had much issue with the running attack, just the standing R1s with waggling.

In ds2 curved sword running attacks were very strong, but in ds3 they were fairly easy to avoid, unless we're talking really high latency.

[𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃]

Originally posted by Omastar:

Originally posted by 𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃:

You echoed my sentiment friend , just in another thread a DS 3 player was complaining cause the poor sod was getting stomped in invasions and i outright said that bring out the poke and you will 99 % of the time never loose cause pokes are the ultimate crutch in this just like how the running attacks of the curved swords were in DS 3

Btw light rolls can shut down the poke but you really do have to be good , i have been rocking light armor since 1.06 and now with the damage nerf to pvp it's been even more viable for me personally

Curved sword running R1 in ds3? Maybe it's just me but I haven't had much issue with the running attack, just the standing R1s with waggling.

In ds2 curved sword running attacks were very strong, but in ds3 they were fairly easy to avoid, unless we're talking really high latency.

I actually got used to the running attacks from the pkcs and scimitar in ds 3 but the demon scar and fire surge combo were rough for me , pyromancers in general were scary in ds 3 and ofc lothric knight straight swords r1 spams and the murky hand scythe

[Omastar]

Originally posted by 𝑀𝓊𝑔𝑒𝓃:

Originally posted by Omastar:

Curved sword running R1 in ds3? Maybe it's just me but I haven't had much issue with the running attack, just the standing R1s with waggling.

In ds2 curved sword running attacks were very strong, but in ds3 they were fairly easy to avoid, unless we're talking really high latency.

I actually got used to the running attacks from the pkcs and scimitar in ds 3 but the demon scar and fire surge combo were rough for me , pyromancers in general were scary in ds 3 and ofc lothric knight straight swords r1 spams and the murky hand scythe

Could be I got used to them as well lol, I personally found it to be pretty telegraphed, annoying bit was the low recovery - but everything else on curved swords is basically the same.

All the pyro combos are super strong, I was considering maining demon scar a while ago, but it was just *too* strong to be fun for me.

SS can be quite a pain yeah, but not near as painful as a murky user who knows what they're doing, or just a latent/laggy one haha.