Concerns regarding DLC weapons

[marbeltoast]

I worry that, unlike dlcs of past fromsoft rpgs, the dlc's placement of being behind Mogh would mean that most players are arriving at the shadow realm with a pretty solid build already.
Old Hunters in bloodborne was pretty easy to get into early, so you could scavenge from it's impressive pool of fun new toys and actually get a chance to use them on NG, and the same can be said for 2 from DS2 and 1 from DS3's DLC pool, but... after a boss in what is statted as an endgame area? People are going to (more often than not) have endgame builds.

Now, the adventurous few will slot out old reliable tools for fancy new weapons, but honestly, is going to the trouble of maxing out a new weapon just to find out the damage isn't up to snuff really something most players are doing? With spells, it's a slightly different story, those make a lot more sense to me from a game design perspective.

Not a critique of how they did it, really, just curious what you folks think about this, and if you've actually bothered experimenting with the new weapons (if there are any stand outs, do let me know)

[Zylth]

In general, yes. You will find a weapon and need to know beforehand if it's worth investing in or not. There's a lot of weapons that fall into the "This is like your other weapon but with a unique weapon art" that you can practice, but as far as the new weapon types those are riskier.

For myself have found a new weapon archtype (Renella's twin blades) which feels amazing. I like the idea of perfumes but seem terrible for bosses.

[Krazy Wallet]

With the abundance of smithing stones in the DLC and generous runes, I didn't find it hard to experiment. Since your player level doesn't matter quite as much in the DLC, I also ended up having a weird quality build form all the excess levels to experiment with katanas, Renalla's twinblade, and the Putrescence Cleaver. I found the experimenting fun and still have plenty of ancient smithing stones (somber and regular).

Given the variety of bosses here, having different weapons to try was also super useful for me to prevent getting hard countered by weapon types.