Arcane vs Strength

[T.Lightning]

Having played both and completed apocalyptic with it i just wanted to share my thoughts and i hope you guys will to !

Arcane: man arcane is cool, it's gota be my favorite but there are a few things wrong with it; you have to dodge attacks in order to dps which can be hard to get used to but has some very powerful effects, you will NEED the Obscurus enhancement and Shade (both max IMHO) in order to make full use of it.
Timed Charge attacks are cool but they take too long and have too little impact damage wise also the wrath attacks could use some tweaking or even completely change some of them.

Fire Hollow: Immolation, this looks badass although i was hoping for it to be some initial damage with a DoT with a radius on the enemy instead of an aura around you. As for the charge effect i think it's fine the way it is. Initial damage should be higher and the DoT should be lower.

Storm Hollow: Storm spear, the charged attack could be changed into something with a bit more range than the whip instead of a gap closer. The evade counter is also quite flashy looking good damage wise and has some chain lightning built in to it, the damage could be a bit higher on the charge attack and the air charge attack.

Force Hollow: Wrath attack, i wasn't really sure what this did but i guess it makes you pull all enemies towards you and then explode knocking them all back inflicting damage, this is quite a nice ability it actually saved my life many times vs larger packs of enemies. also useful against enemies who constantly block. The charged attack could use a bigger hit radius something like a whirlwind also air charged attack is very nice looking althought i didn't use it so much because the others looked better imo.

Stasis Hollow: Ice armor, i want to see somet thorn effect added to it, or maybe even Freeze a single target and then you can shatter the iceblock for AoE damage. This wrath attack makes you immune to melee (maybe arcane to?) damage and it drains your wrath bar per hit taken, i think this is the wrath power Strength users want to use with something like a fortification shard or frenzy shard to go full ham. The charge attack could use a bigger hit radius (hitting enemies behind you) and should be more consistent in rewarding the timed release(somtimes it hits 2 times but mostly once) also the air charged is cool af. evade counter is also nice for larger fast enemies.

All in all Arcane is my favorite thing to use it gets incredibly strong if you can dodge good and it looks amazing

Strength: I liked strength on my first playtrough, it's definitely easier to handle than arcane but it gets really boring after a while, dealing 400+ damage auto attacks is nice yeah but you hardly use any of the flashy things which feel so nice to use. I found myself using hardly any wrath attacks or havoc form, basically only for the i-frame.
The game could use a smoother transition between hollows while LMB/RMB-ing you can create some cool combos but there is too little payoff for too much trouble especially when there is alot going on.
you can only swap between hollows after a whip attack which needs to be changed
I like all the moves RMB has to offer but i think there could be a bit more variety and more skills for LMB and RMB attacks, also you need to have an option to lift enemie(s) and add 1 or 2 more air attacks. Wrath and charge attacks are almost nonexistent in strength and thus for me was very boring gameplay

Final conclusion: Arcane is more fun, but could use some damage boost on things.
Strength is better and easier but less diversion and almost no flashy moves(and if you do they deal no damage compared to your auto attacks).

Great game! Can't wait for the DLC and/or additions of new weapons, skills, armor, chosen bossfights, adding more content for maxing out weapons and enhancements(?!) i guess i may have went a little overboard with the wall of text. ENJOY!

[Kadra]

Arcane can provide very high burst DPS, particularly if you combine a counter attack with a Wrath attack. Works wonders on fat mobs. But most (or maybe even all) bosses are resistant to arcane damage, so the benefit is much lower.

However, since you're supposed to dodge boss attacks anyway, it doesn't hurt to invest into Arcane even on a Strength build once you've reached a certain level and the diminishing returns start to kick in.

I finished the game with a build shifted towards Arcane. Can't remember the exact numbers, but it was something like 16/19/36.

A few examples:

First, I set upon killing Pride using counter and Wrath attacks almost exclusively and noticed how high her arcane damage reduction was even though I was using a fully upgraded Enoch enhancement with +85% TOTAL damage.
Ironically, out of pride, while I saw that my plan to blow the boss away outright with insane Arcane damage pretty much failed, I proceeded anyway and it took me about an hour or even more to prevail since any hit was lethal for me and naturally I couldn't heal or I would lose the bonus damage from the enhancement, which was the whole point of the battle. Her laser was most annoying stealing away my victory when she was down to one hit more than once.

The takeaway: using mostly regular attacks would have yielded higher damage, although it would have required me to sabotage some perfect dodges on purpose.

Second, despite failing to achieve any spectacular results with Arcane damage in the previous fight, I set upon killing the last boss also trying to stick exclusively to counter and Wrath attacks with only occasional one or two regulars here and there during the fight.

The limitation this time was to use no heals from either consumables, enhancements or Havoc form alike, so this time I could take maybe 4 hits or so, depending on what kind of hits.

Also, this time I figured that I don't want to use the Enoch because it was much harder to set up before the fight quickly as compared to the Pride battle where you'd simply jump down into the abyss but a few steps away from the spawn a couple of times. Also, a no hit run with Enoch on this one would have taken somewhat longer because of more variety in the attacks. (Still, perfectly doable, only a pain in the ass to set up before every attempt because of running back to the cliff edge outside the Forge).

The takeaway is the same. Most bosses simply have high Arcane DR (although I wonder if that DR is different on lower difficulty levels, I'm talking Apocalyptic here). So the best way to fight them would probably be to use a mix of occasional Arcane counters where desirable or necessary and regular attacks whenever you can afford at least three in a row. A good example of why you might want to use counters at all and not just stick to regular attacks only is to interrupt boss' combos.

So, I still believe that I ended up with a good build there, just add a little bit more STR - up to 24 or so (because of diminishing returns).

That's all just my opinion of course.

[Warbreaker]

That is why I increased strength while it was giving me +3% per stat, once it decreased to +2% I thought it was too diminishing to continue with strength, hence I ended with +115% strength and +148% arcane, here is a screenshot: https://cdn.pbrd.co/images/HVm1qKA.jpg