Regarding poise & strength builds

[mpcgannon]

When is it appropriate to two-hand vs
When is it appropriate to power stance?
How does weapon selection affect this decision?

[Jouni]

If the weapon class happens to have shitty dual moveset then you probably shouldn't dual wield.

[Lord Bob]

I'm not educated enough regarding poise and hyper armor, so take everything here with a grain of salt. I might also mix up some terms and the order of things, but here goes:

The bigger your weapon and the more poise you have, the more hyper armor you will "generate" at a certain point when trying to swing.

Animations are divided into start up frames, the part with the actual animation (here: weapon swing) and recovery frames (which happen to be the same window on which counter damage can be dealt).

The part with the actual swing animation is the one which gets hyper armor, meaning you can not get staggered during it, which is also the reason why you can "trade" with your opponent.

To get to your actual question: twohand whenever you attack an enemy that is wearing a shield (or enemies with a certain hardness, like most miners) so your hit doesn't bounce off and dual wield whenever you want to deal an insane amount of damage, preferably while utilizing jump attacks.

[Nauct]

Always 2H you get extra poise. After the attack startup for even a Greatsword, like the Claymore, you get a bunch of poise

Sometimes you might want a thrusting move or some other move only 1H has or swap to 1H to parry or cast a spell.

[mpcgannon]

Do we know for certain that two-hand gets a poise bonus? I am under the impression that power-stancing gets a poise reduction, which looks similar when comparing.

[echo_ML]

Heres a pretty good breakdown after 1.10: https://youtu.be/Y0cp3XL_ly8?si=uHOXFc9daxEzK3gk

[Nauct]

Originally posted by mpcgannon:

Do we know for certain that two-hand gets a poise bonus? I am under the impression that power-stancing gets a poise reduction, which looks similar when comparing.

Yes after the start up

[mpcgannon]

Originally posted by echo_ML:

Heres a pretty good breakdown after 1.10: https://youtu.be/Y0cp3XL_ly8?si=uHOXFc9daxEzK3gk

Super good. Thanks a bunch.