Do crit/lw builds still work?

[AH-1 Cobra]

For example, this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=369IpN_rG9M

Or did it get nerfed? They're nerfed so much ♥♥♥♥ that I don't even know which guides a few months old are still good or not?

[Norbac]

Patch 1.20 (October 12, 2017)

Special effects that depend on the player being in critical condition will no longer activate while using a Living Weapon. This includes the following effects:

Close Combat Damage (Critical)
Damage Reduction (Critical)
Parry (Critical)
Close Combat Attack Ki Reduction (Critical)
Guard Ki Usage (Critical)
Dash Ki Usage (Critical)
Dodge Ki Usage (Critical)
Ki Recovery Speed (Critical)
No Guard Break (Critical)
Luck (Critical)
Elixir Boost (Critical)
Also, the following special effect will no longer count enemies defeated while using Living Weapon in critical condition:
Increase Damage (Enemies Defeated When Critical)

Afaik the only benefit you get now is the amrita gauge draining slower the lower your hp is.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Does anything similar still work? I'd be OK with 30-50k kusarigama swings in LW. It would still completely crap all over the odachi/spear build I'm using. So yeah, even a fraction of the damage he was doing, at this point I'll take it because it's better than anything I got on the drawing board.

I've got no viable way to beat some of these abyss bosses without Iai looping them a dozen times (can't execute it), or spend 10 minutes ticking them to death with an Odachi. I'm done playing ♥♥♥♥ builds that people claim are tanky that still get OHKO'd, and don't really do that much damage (without stacking buffs/debuffs to the extreme). I'm done. I'm looking for OP, trivialize the game's content at this point. If that build isn't crit-lw, then does anyone know the build I'm looking for?

[Royta15]

It still works, they patched the wrong stats and didn't really understood how Crit LW works. Crit LW's biggest strength is the Tenacity stat of the Guardian Spirit. Kato has an A+ in Tenacity, a stat that means how big of a buff the spirit gets in LW when you are in low health. If you equip Kato, a Kusarigama, stack Strong Attack Damage, CCD, CTA and some attack buffs, go into crit and then LW and you will LAUGH as the whole game just dies in one or two hits.

Just please, if you do decide to walk this dark path - don't do co-op. Most players of this build don't know how to play the game and are really hard to babysit in a co-op run. You'll also run into players who'll just ignore you and try to get you killed, at least that's how it was on PS4.

[AH-1 Cobra]

I intend to backup my save and use a different build for coop. My Odachi tank does decent enough in coop. I don't see me progressing very far into the abyss with an Odachi tank though. They just don't do enough damage, and tank goes out the window vs too many bosses. I literally have to buff with carnage, hit them with weakness AND hit them in the back, or grapple/final blow to do even 5 digits of damage. SoTC builds can crap out 5 digits like its nothing with no buffs, just an SoTC to the face hits for more than my carnage buffed Odachi does, even with the same or slightly higher attack value.

Someone did a level 1 run (not level 1 gear), but they were doing 10-20k+ (10k from the front, 20k from the back) Iai draws with no scaling stats, and no items, just raw gear, and that's considerably better than my level 400 build does with an Odachi.

I still have difficulties breaking many human bosses, even with mid attack break %, +break while using leveled up Enko guardian. Literally the only way I win some of those fights is to break loop them, and if I can't reliably break loop them, well then I just can't reliably win, either. I feel like that's playing the game the hard way. I'm not good enough to play the game the hard way anymore.

[awanderingswordsman]

You can break human enemies with odachi using mid stance quick>charging bull>evade foward to punish their evade>repeat. I end up doing that with about half the masters in marobashi (the kusari guy has no counter to this as long as you make sure he actually dodges, if he doesn't just flux and do it again). Helps to have pierce guard as well. Still, chipping away with an odachi is never going to be a fast strategy. Crit gear for living weapon is useless but tenacity works and so do flat damage boosts. If team ninja were smart they would add a buff to high level abyss bosses that capped single hit damage against them and gave them hyper armor if they are disabled for more than 4 seconds. Oh well.

[AH-1 Cobra]

The only one in Marobachi I have issues with is the spear dude. I dunno why, but I feel like he hits me for way too much damage, and he frequently evades back when I try to break loop him, and if I chase him down, he stuffs me. He's the only one I can't consistently break loop.

[Akutare]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

I literally have to buff with carnage, hit them with weakness AND hit them in the back, or grapple/final blow to do even 5 digits of damage. SoTC builds can crap out 5 digits like its nothing with no buffs, just an SoTC to the face hits for more than my carnage buffed Odachi does, even with the same or slightly higher attack value.

A bit of a tangent, but reading this thread gives me a few questions since even though I played a bit of Nioh on PS4 before playing on PC, I still don't understand how some of the damage scaling works.

I can use my Ninjutsu build with the right TWD inheritables and I'm already hitting harder, faster, and at a range than most of the melee builds I try even when trying to build as much damage as I can with rolls, talismans, and buffs, with the only thing beating it is backstab lumber chops when I can actually land them.

Is there something I'm missing? I've got, from what I understand, all the "essentials" for doing damage (CTAs, CCD, Fam Dam Bonus, Agility on ranged, etc.) but still feels like it's way lower than some of the other stuff I see. The only thing I can think of is the divine levels which does make a difference but does a couple make a major difference since I've been trying out WotN ethereal weapon drops with huge divine level amounts.

[awanderingswordsman]

An easy way to odachi kill spear guy is to just get him to go into high stance and then running attack him. If he isn't in high stance get near his attack range to bait an attack and then back off. He will generally do a full combo (many of which you can punish) and then switch stances. If you keep interrupting him in high stance by running attacking him then he won't swtich stances for a long time allowing you to keep doing it. In high stance he ALWAYS does the overhead (i think it's the strong attack but I don't use spear) so the timing to running stab him is pretty large. I probably have more trouble with dual sword guy and hanzo with the tonfas. Yagyu used to give me trouble until I realized unlike muneshige you can actually block his his tiger sprint iai no problem.

[awanderingswordsman]

+value is actually worth quite a lot on weapons. A lot more than base levels. I think one +level is about 5 times more than a base level. That means the difference between a 300+40 and a 300+35 is the same as between a 300+35 and 325+35. I'm sure my numbers aren't quite correct but its a lot.

You can also pump the thousands of samurai skill points you should be racking up into melee mastery for another 100-200 base damage. Kunai is a cheese build though so it's generally going to outperform standard builds.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Yagyu takes a lot of break damage, and has no toughness stat, which means I can attack while he's attacking and not get hit. His Iai draws are surprisingly weak compared to Munishiges. They don't OHKO me. Even though Marobashi is a higher level mission. Munishige is honestly one of the harder human opponents in WoTW. He's most definitely harder than regular masamune, Ii, hanzo, warrior of the east, nobunaga, onyx samurai, any of the masters, and quite a few others. The only ones that are harder are the DLC spear dudes, Lw-spam-amune, and Hayabusa. With lots of firearms % reduction, and 100% elemental reduction on guarding, spam-amune is an easier fight than Munishige is, IMO. The only attack you gotta really watch out for is his grab.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

You can also pump the thousands of samurai skill points you should be racking up into melee mastery for another 100-200 base damage. Kunai is a cheese build though so it's generally going to outperform standard builds.

I was told kunais do junk damage in WoTN. And most of the spammer builds use it to ki break stuff, or use it with the dragon ninja set for the attack buff.

I got 2 pieces of ethereal dragon ninja. It looks like it'll be an easier set to farm than susanoo, because Hayabusa can drop the dragon set. Someone posted a flowing shadow build that OHKOs, but I don't know if the build exploited critical mods or not (probably). The guy had a leeching talisman in his loadout, so I'm assuming he used leeching + tenacity to go crit and quick change scrolls to stay alive. With mods like no guard break (critical) etc, to be able to block some of those annoying attacks.

[awanderingswordsman]

No guard break is a mistranslation. It just gives hyper armor. You can still have your guard broken if your ki is depleted while blocking.

Susanoo is actually pretty easy to farm for IMO. You don't have to be in the abyss to get it and I just naturally pick up a bunch even though it's useless for me. I finally changed my set that I built during way of the samurai. I was running 4 swallowtail armor pieces and the dual swords for the piece bonus with luck inhereited on every piece and using a yasakani with 90 luck in living weapon and a fan. Eventually replaced the fan with yata mirror since it has 60 luck and recently found a yata mirror with increased ethereal drop rate C starred effect which is awesome! I'm living the orange life with all these ethereals. The rest of my set was kigetsu odachi and chest for 3 piece bonus and the 2 ranged set bonuses just for the added damage reduction cause why not.

After getting to the farming floors in the abyss I farmed up an izanagi drying pole (monowhatever odachi), and 2 izanagi ranged weapons and switched to an ethereal tate chest. Right now farming money and divine frags to roll AA- cta str and A+ fam on the sword. I still need to switch out most of my set for ethereal. I'm liking the damage bonuses. Can do roughly 14k on low level trash from behind and 8k or so with a running attack to the back for abyss bosses as long as I'm at full life and have my buffs. It was nice to finally have to learn ishidas moveset. I still have no idea what causes him to fall but oh well. Finally managed to push my luck over 550 and over 650 in living weapon.

I'm wondering when I'll have trouble in the abyss. I know masamune is next on floor 38 so perhaps that'll be what gets me but I'm pretty sure I can perfect him with some practice. I did already get crusher on him with level appropriate stuff so I just gotta learn any new WotN moves and get back into the flow of it. I haven't learned sanada yet and a lot of people consider him the toughest so maybe that'll be my wall. I hope I actually hit a wall cause I don't think I should be able to proceed this smoothly with a luck build.

[Akutare]

Originally posted by crimsonedge11:

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

You can also pump the thousands of samurai skill points you should be racking up into melee mastery for another 100-200 base damage. Kunai is a cheese build though so it's generally going to outperform standard builds.

I was told kunais do junk damage in WoTN. And most of the spammer builds use it to ki break stuff, or use it with the dragon ninja set for the attack buff.

My plain kunais can do ~8-10k on backstab on WotN without debuffs so it's not bad if you consider the fact that it's super safe most of the time, and that I don't even have the 100% optimal rolls on it (I have shuriken and Kunai damage instead of TWD for 2 pieces so it's missing about 10% more damage).

I do kind of want a build that's more, well, engaging, but with Nioh updates changing dynamics it's hard to find up to date information and with how wonky the damage scaling is its hard to just make one.

[AH-1 Cobra]

Originally posted by awanderingswordsman:

I'm wondering when I'll have trouble in the abyss. I know masamune is next on floor 38 so perhaps that'll be what gets me but I'm pretty sure I can perfect him with some practice. I did already get crusher on him with level appropriate stuff so I just gotta learn any new WotN moves and get back into the flow of it. I haven't learned sanada yet and a lot of people consider him the toughest so maybe that'll be my wall. I hope I actually hit a wall cause I don't think I should be able to proceed this smoothly with a luck build.

If you got plenty of firearms reduction %, masamune shouldn't be a problem. About the only move you gotta watch out for that's a serious threat is his grab attack. Firearms % works against all the elemental LW attacks from all the bosses it seems. Let's say you got 50%+ damage reduction, an addtional +50% elemental reduction + point based defenses + firearms %. All those defenses combine to check against those attacks. It's possible to get +100% firearms, and those attacks literally do no damage. And that means you don't get hit with the elemental effect, either.

[awanderingswordsman]

Yeah it'd be really nice if we could get real numbers on a lot of the scalings. What is change to attack luck B? Does that mean it scales with luck the exact same way cta skill B does? Cause if so that woul be insane since you can easily get 900+ luck in living weapon. I also want to know how increase luck (defiled items) AA scales. I know it scales with number of defiled items in inventory but does that mean if I have that and luck scaling B I could defile 400 items and end up doing absolutely insane damage. As far as I'm aware AA scaling seems to be like 1 for 5 or so which would mean 2000 luck but it all depends on which AA scaling that even means. Wish we just got percentages instead of letters. Would make theory crafting infinitely easier.