I got a little more time in Elden Ring. Uchigatana's really are good as ever. Dual-wielding them is FTW. Weeb swords... two great early weeb swords.
The L1 moves you gain wielding two are extremely useful. The jump attacks are especially good, as they land for damage just shy of an R2, but give you significantly more frames to recover in, after getting off quicker in addition. They also cost less stamina. The swords cross and slice out past each other with substantial damage and knockback on a run-and-jump. With no block available, you just move in and out of the fray by using the speed and oomph of the L1's. The hack - slash on the ground is also a good negotiator with mobs. It has a lead-in. You go early and use the forward one-two lunge it has to grab hit priority for a mid-stagger. If they do survive, you can either come right in with another or reposition - the stagger outlasts your recovery. If you roll into someone by mistake, there are windows to roll right out into a crossed sword slash - still ducked. There's a rhythm to it all. You traverse multi-enemy arenas via blood tax, riding the target locking while timing your lunge/jump attacks and dodges, and shifting the target for placement. Pretty satisfying just stitching through situations this way.
I'm keeping up with the side quests this time, too.
They really lull you into wanting to use melee in the early regions. You use range more in mid-game, but a decent ranged weapon suffices. However, I suspect this game is actually made for hybrids. If you really look at the magic/faith/arcane areas, there are things within their scope that benefit any kind of pure 'physical/melee' damage types of builds. It's not just for magey/range/setup types of classes. It's where both your general and specific support for whatever character and peak special weapons you want to use is. Your build isn't only about how much damage you can do with your main attack type and weapon. It's about the range of tricks in your bag - there are a million different ways to add more options for combat and I think it does expect you to pick more than just like, a primary and a secondary up. One thing I learned by the end is that the game expects you to do quite a lot of the content and leveling to complete it. I actually find that refreshing - usually the main line is the easiest part in an ope world but if you skip the exploration in ER, the endgame is excruciatingly punishing. You should be able to have good points in a primary damage stat, with almost as much in vigor, and still be able to have a solid secondary in a non-physical damage/buff/etc stat.
Like, thinking back on int/dex... that can flip either way. You can deal primary damage with sourcery-based stuff pushing int first, benefit from all of the other stuff that comes with it, have dex as a secondary damage stat for some very good melee options that scale with both as well as that boost to casting speed, which... man. You can have a beefy magic blade or something AND all of the wicked badass magic shit flying all lickety split like. Late game bosses dude. Nuff said. Or you could put dex first and get a very solid melee-dominant build buffed by magic - you can really make use of magic ashes as well as some serious ranged options. Diversify your combat options majorly, not even losing damage you don't need.
That's another matter. Damage sits in mathematical pockets. More is not better unless it stacks in the right numerical unit sizes. There are things you do that look like they add significant amounts of damage... and the amount is correct but in the context of the HP of the enemy you need it to count for, it doesn't. I'm not talking about how every stat has a varied curve from across each individual point investment. It's just that with how damage adds up, what comes from other factors such as movement, things that proc, etc, you have that wiggle to put into other stats that can both bring your damage back around and greatly expand the ways you can do damage. Sometimes pushing for a certain damage isn't the right thing, even when it's popping big numbers each level. Later, you may climb there to keep up with area scaling. But in the meantime it might be better to expand it out a little. You don't have to get to nearly everything a stat encompasses for it to become very useful alongside your main stat.
I don't know if I've got the right idea, but I think it might be worth it to think about builds like this in a general sense. Like, whatever you're doing, do like one more stat-related combat thing about as much, or even two more things moderately. Pure dex worked great. But there were definitely plenty of times where I got punished for running something so narrow. This game isn't as 'git-gud' as others before it. This game is also just a lot bigger and wider. You need multiple strategies, and there is enough content in the world to easily facilitate that. It's probably part of why you're always collecting stuff you don't need but sells for relatively... nothing, and can have a handful of larval tears for respecs by the time you get to that point. And again, it seems like for every weapon/combat style, there is something in each of the 'soft and bright, wooey-gooey, timey-wimey' skill areas for them. I really wouldn't be surprised if they didn't have mixing and matching in mind. You've gotta think it through, but it's not all about precision in numbers.
