I love Rom. I love the area where you fight it. I like the mechanics of the fight. I love the story surrounding why s(he's) there and what it represents to be killing it.
The area is cool, definitely. I can't say I know enough of the story to understand half of what's going on though. Even for one of Miyazaki's games it seems cryptic. I'll read up on lore once I finish it though. Have been avoiding it for fear of spoilers.
Undead Giant. I died about 10-20 times before I learned all his moves, and still it feels like a cheap victory: All I did was stay behind him. The only moves he has to reach you back there are a spin, some arm swings - both of which are easy to dodge - and a ground slam which barely left me alive at full HP.
I'm really, really curious though, who else has beaten this boss and if so, how? It's the only fight so far that I thought was cheap.
His attacks are both extremely strong and really fast. Couple that with the fact that some of them look really similar during windup and you've got a really frustrating experience.
Yeah, Bloodborne was in development alongside Dark Souls 2, but beyond that, it's entirely possible Miyazaki just has no interest in letting people respec ever in the Souls games he designs. If I wanted one thing from Dark Souls 2, it'd be being able to map jump to L3, but alas.
Hmmm. One thing I do understand and agree with is the change to starting classes, as in there is no more "best" starting class aka Deprived. This gives you more options without feeling like you could've made an objectively better choice.
Somehow I've missed BSB and found Vicar Amelie(?). She wrecked me good, so next time I scouted around her door instead and ran into two Hunter baddies that completely wreck me. I killed one but the other has a shotgun that just hits me out of everything.
Not sure how to proceed from here. I could take on Vicar, the hunters, or go back and look for BSB
Undead Giant. I died about 10-20 times before I learned all his moves, and still it feels like a cheap victory: All I did was stay behind him. The only moves he has to reach you back there are a spin, some arm swings - both of which are easy to dodge - and a ground slam which barely left me alive at full HP.
I'm really, really curious though, who else has beaten this boss and if so, how? It's the only fight so far that I thought was cheap.
His attacks are both extremely strong and really fast. Couple that with the fact that some of them look really similar during windup and you've got a really frustrating experience.
AAAGH!
I hate that fucker. I ended up trying to backpedal and use the reach of my whip against him while using fire papers. That works... until the chains on his back start bitch-smacking you into oblivion. Then it becomes seemingly impossible.
Undead Giant. I died about 10-20 times before I learned all his moves, and still it feels like a cheap victory: All I did was stay behind him. The only moves he has to reach you back there are a spin, some arm swings - both of which are easy to dodge - and a ground slam which barely left me alive at full HP.
I'm really, really curious though, who else has beaten this boss and if so, how? It's the only fight so far that I thought was cheap.
His attacks are both extremely strong and really fast. Couple that with the fact that some of them look really similar during windup and you've got a really frustrating experience.
Which variant was this? Nasty spike hands was the most unpredictable, cannon was silly, and chains was easy to bait into doing the spin move. They've not got much in the way of options if you just stay behind them and dodge away after a couple of swings.
Speaking of Bloodborne and health related stuff, I'm starting to feel like as you get deeper in Bloodborne the regain mechanic kind of falls apart at least a little. Like, maybe it's on purpose, and it's only really supposed to be used to aggressively trade back early game, but late game some enemies will A) hit you for half your health or more in one hit, and you simply will not regain much of it back even if you immediately start to trade back freely, and Won't be staggered out of their attacks anyway so if you try to go agro and regain quickly you'll sometimes just get hit again and die for your trouble.
Perhaps the idea with regain late game is that you use it in conjunction with parry/visceral since no matter how much you've lost, a visceral will regain it all back if done quickly and your skill should be high enough to get parries on regular enemies by that point, but I dunno. It just feels like the mechanic doesn't hold up as much as I thought it might.
Not that I mind, because the idea is just to dodge and take no damage and i've always got my vials if I need to heal, but still.
Depends on your weapon, honestly. Against normal sized enemies, you can burn your entire stamina bar with saw without them getting an opening, and even without stagger it still has amazingly good frame data so you can dodge out really well, so it maintains its regain ability pretty well. Threaded cane is ridiculously hard to handle, and hunter axe can use its range and gigantic stagger to not get hit as often in the first place.
Honestly, the difference between the starting weapons is pretty vast. Really changes how you play the game.
Speaking of Bloodborne and health related stuff, I'm starting to feel like as you get deeper in Bloodborne the regain mechanic kind of falls apart at least a little. Like, maybe it's on purpose, and it's only really supposed to be used to aggressively trade back early game, but late game some enemies will A) hit you for half your health or more in one hit, and you simply will not regain much of it back even if you immediately start to trade back freely, and Won't be staggered out of their attacks anyway so if you try to go agro and regain quickly you'll sometimes just get hit again and die for your trouble.
Perhaps the idea with regain late game is that you use it in conjunction with parry/visceral since no matter how much you've lost, a visceral will regain it all back if done quickly and your skill should be high enough to get parries on regular enemies by that point, but I dunno. It just feels like the mechanic doesn't hold up as much as I thought it might.
Not that I mind, because the idea is just to dodge and take no damage and i've always got my vials if I need to heal, but still.
Yeah... I noticed this too and it happens relatively early on. I've rationalized that it's not supposed to keep you fully healed but to mitigate SOME of the damage.
Still it kinda sucks though because the game sets your expectations of how the mechanic will work rather high at the start of the game. It got to the point that I was dying a lot and I didn't fully understand why until I watched just how little each attack was re-filling my bar.
Once I realized what was going on, I scaled back my aggressiveness a bit.
The damage healed is proportional to damage done, so the greatsword can capitalize on the mechanic very well, making up for the lack of parry. In a lot of cases I could just start a swing, knowing I'd get hit but not staggered, then get all my life back from my combo. But the inflated damage the mechanic forces led to fights vs multiple opponents being even less fun then prior. If two things hit at once, it's almost always gg.
FWIW, the speed runner who got the < 3 hr time had over 30 VIT when he finished the game, so maybe most of us are just keeping our Vit too low. especially because Vit scales with itself due to the generic defense increase on level up.
The only area I felt like normal enemies were stupidly dangerous in was Unseen Village, and no small part of that is due to not being able to take your time at all.
Somehow I've missed BSB and found Vicar Amelie(?). She wrecked me good, so next time I scouted around her door instead and ran into two Hunter baddies that completely wreck me. I killed one but the other has a shotgun that just hits me out of everything.
Not sure how to proceed from here. I could take on Vicar, the hunters, or go back and look for BSB
IMHO, go left from Vicar's door and do the witches. You'll get your weapon to +6 in a comparatively easy area.
BSB is in Old Yarnham, so a different area entirely.
My PS4 says this when it turns on: Cannot start PS4. Connect a USB storage device that contains an update file for installation for version 2.50 or later
Speaking of Bloodborne and health related stuff, I'm starting to feel like as you get deeper in Bloodborne the regain mechanic kind of falls apart at least a little. Like, maybe it's on purpose, and it's only really supposed to be used to aggressively trade back early game, but late game some enemies will A) hit you for half your health or more in one hit, and you simply will not regain much of it back even if you immediately start to trade back freely, and Won't be staggered out of their attacks anyway so if you try to go agro and regain quickly you'll sometimes just get hit again and die for your trouble.
Perhaps the idea with regain late game is that you use it in conjunction with parry/visceral since no matter how much you've lost, a visceral will regain it all back if done quickly and your skill should be high enough to get parries on regular enemies by that point, but I dunno. It just feels like the mechanic doesn't hold up as much as I thought it might.
Not that I mind, because the idea is just to dodge and take no damage and i've always got my vials if I need to heal, but still.
Depends on your weapon, honestly. Against normal sized enemies, you can burn your entire stamina bar with saw without them getting an opening, and even without stagger it still has amazingly good frame data so you can dodge out really well, so it maintains its regain ability pretty well. Threaded cane is ridiculously hard to handle, and hunter axe can use its range and gigantic stagger to not get hit as often in the first place.
Honestly, the difference between the starting weapons is pretty vast. Really changes how you play the game.
Speaking of Bloodborne and health related stuff, I'm starting to feel like as you get deeper in Bloodborne the regain mechanic kind of falls apart at least a little. Like, maybe it's on purpose, and it's only really supposed to be used to aggressively trade back early game, but late game some enemies will A) hit you for half your health or more in one hit, and you simply will not regain much of it back even if you immediately start to trade back freely, and Won't be staggered out of their attacks anyway so if you try to go agro and regain quickly you'll sometimes just get hit again and die for your trouble.
Perhaps the idea with regain late game is that you use it in conjunction with parry/visceral since no matter how much you've lost, a visceral will regain it all back if done quickly and your skill should be high enough to get parries on regular enemies by that point, but I dunno. It just feels like the mechanic doesn't hold up as much as I thought it might.
Not that I mind, because the idea is just to dodge and take no damage and i've always got my vials if I need to heal, but still.
Yeah... I noticed this too and it happens relatively early on. I've rationalized that it's not supposed to keep you fully healed but to mitigate SOME of the damage.
Still it kinda sucks though because the game sets your expectations of how the mechanic will work rather high at the start of the game. It got to the point that I was dying a lot and I didn't fully understand why until I watched just how little each attack was re-filling my bar.
Once I realized what was going on, I scaled back my aggressiveness a bit.
The damage healed is proportional to damage done, so the greatsword can capitalize on the mechanic very well, making up for the lack of parry. In a lot of cases I could just start a swing, knowing I'd get hit but not staggered, then get all my life back from my combo. But the inflated damage the mechanic forces led to fights vs multiple opponents being even less fun then prior. If two things hit at once, it's almost always gg.
FWIW, the speed runner who got the < 3 hr time had over 30 VIT when he finished the game, so maybe most of us are just keeping our Vit too low. especially because Vit scales with itself due to the generic defense increase on level up.
The only area I felt like normal enemies were stupidly dangerous in was Unseen Village, and no small part of that is due to not being able to take your time at all.
There is actually a rune which recovers you health after every v.attack
My PS4 says this when it turns on: Cannot start PS4. Connect a USB storage device that contains an update file for installation for version 2.50 or later
Is my save data lost, or will the cloud save me?
Your cloud data should be current to around the last 24 hours.
My PS4 says this when it turns on: Cannot start PS4. Connect a USB storage device that contains an update file for installation for version 2.50 or later
Is my save data lost, or will the cloud save me?
Your cloud data should be current to around the last 24 hours.
Do all games do that? I've checked some of my disk games and there's nothing there
EDIT: OH! I see, you have to manually pull down the backup
My PS4 says this when it turns on: Cannot start PS4. Connect a USB storage device that contains an update file for installation for version 2.50 or later
Is my save data lost, or will the cloud save me?
Your cloud data should be current to around the last 24 hours.
Do all games do that? I've checked some of my disk games and there's nothing there
EDIT: OH! I see, you have to manually pull down the backup
I love modern technology!
It's much more fluid/automatic on Xbox one but it is still nice to have and works well enough on ps4.
the Lecture Building and Nightmare Frontier? Seems like there should be stuff. Also, the poison swamp that leads to the shortcut to the clinic.
Nightmare Frontier has the Bloodborne version of Chameleon somewhere in the poison. If you cleared out the first floor of the Lecture Building, that's it. You get access to the second floor later on. I spent quite a while looking for any stairs or ladders in there to no avail.
I accidentally killed an npc, because I fell down a ladder while fighting something and was disoriented and in an unfamiliar room. First time I think I've unintentionally killed one in a Souls game.
My leveling has been unfocused, to say the least. I went from wanting a quality build, to a strength build, to an arcane/strength build. Pretty much the only stat I haven't given any attention to is Bloodtinge, and even that is relatively high at 13 because I didn't know what it meant during character creation.
I always dither around ending a game that I enjoy so I took my time to finish my second playthrough.
Final Boss spoilers
I wasn't expecting anything... substantial out of the ending this time. I wasn't... really expecting anything substantial out of the ending the first time when the secret final boss ate me cuz I didn't get my cords? I guess I was just angry because I was blindsided by the New Game+.
Questions are always more interesting than answers. Bloodborne makes you ask a lot of questions and lets you figure the answers out through conjecture. That's fine. I think it's a little too vague... but it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game that much.
I will admit I was fooled for a while. Bloodborne, more than any Souls game of the past, has a plot. It has time progression. It has events that change the world. The night of the hunt is filled with thrills as the world inexorably changes around you. The defeat of Rom, despite being a lackluster boss, kicks the game to a new level that was extremely exciting to explore. Something about the fact that there was a plot and the semblance of a story playing out in front of me thought the game's endings would be... something more. Even Dark Souls spells out the endings more than this game does. You at least know what your purpose, as the chosen undead, was. What is the purpose of the hunter really? It's... not really clear. That's sort of the beauty of the game and the Insight system though. What is real? What is... just a bad dream? It questions reality and sanity while being a lot of fun and uses that to go some fun places.
Moon Presence was too easy but because I took my time I had a +10 weapon this time. I was high level from the road to Depth 5 Chalice Dungeons. I was using a far more overpowered build this time with a quality build + Ludwig's Holy Blade.
It took me probably a dozen attempts to kill in my first playthrough Gehrman with a +9 threaded cane. I really had to learn the boss and all of his late-stage anime bullshit (which was fun!). With the Ludwigs +10 though I did like twice as much damage if not more. Just one-hander mode too! I defeated Gehrman and Moon Presence in one consecutive attempt this time. Ludwigs is kinda gross. Such a broken weapon.
Bloodborne's been really fun. I feel pretty content with it. Not sure what I'll do from here. A break from it almost certainly.
Mission Note: "To escape this dreadful Hunter's Dream, halt the source of the spreading scourge of beasts, lest the night carry on forever."
I went in thinking I would be accomplishing such. There are three endings, but really you're choosing between two, neither of which seem to solve this problem.
1. I have my Paleblood cure (somehow.) I'm done. Get me out of here!
2. I crave more power and refuse to leave!
Option 2 depicts the player as power-hungry. Like Micolah, he/she does not want to leave in pursuit of power and eldrich knowledge. The game is "telling" you that you are evil and insane. Without the umbillical cords, the pissed off Moon Presense captures you and has you replace Gehman. With the cords, your eldritch knowledge, insanity and might make you the new Great One, a new monster to rule over the dream world.
Alright I just have no fucking clue how to beat Ebrietas.
Heres a hint.
Have 20 knives, and 20 poison knives. also some molitovs.
when you first arrive, get a few hits on her as shes getting up. run for all your worth to try and get behind her and get a hit in from the back, then keep circling until your behind her again. once you get her down to half or so, you can back off, target her head, and finish her off from range with knives and molitovs. dont throw them fast, you want to hit her right in the center of her head, extra damage there. give her time to get back into the regular motion so you hit her again.
What is the general leveling strategy for this game? I've been dumping most of my points into Skill, but is it better to spread the points out?
I'd say that upping your Vitality and Endurance are very important. More so than putting points into your main damage stat at first.
Yeah, the scaling on weapons is pretty crap early on, so no need to increase your damage stats until you upgrade your weapons a bit.
I have a +3 weapon, is that upgraded enough to take advantage of the damage stat?
Any reason to level Str and Skill?
You need to hit weapon requirements, and the scaling eventually becomes a big deal, but as others note, VIT/END have the most immediately obvious benefits besides hitting a new weapon's requirements.
You're probably getting 2 or 3 points of damage per str or skill, all the weapons at low level have E or D scaling at low levels. You'll be better served having enough endurance to get 1 more swing off before having to roll away then you will high strength. If I wasn't to lazy to start over, I wouldn't go past the requirements for my weapons and pump Vit/End to at least 35 before working Str/Skill any further.
Eventually your weapons will benefit greatly from additional stats, but not getting winded after 3 swings of your axe, or losing half your health to a pitchfork is probably more important to start.
Battletag BYToady#1454
+3
StragintDo Not GiftAlways DeclinesRegistered Userregular
edited April 2015
The first reason that comes to mind for leveling Str or Skill is to determine what kind of weapons you want to use. The cannon itself takes 30 strength to wield. Str and Skill will also be the modifier stats on weapons when looking for scaling.
The stats also have soft and hard caps so after a certain point you don't want to put too much into any one stat.
The +3 weapon depends on what weapon it is. Some don't get a good scaling stat until much later. My +3 Cleaver and Axe have at best a D scaling on Str while the +3 Cane I have has a B scaling for Skill so it scales a lot better a lot earlier. My +4 Kirkhammer has a B scaling for Str. Most Skill based weapons tend to scale higher faster and the Str ones tend to take longer since their base damage is so high but as is the case with Kirkhammer, it isn't always true.
Edit: By the way, the Cannon is a fucking beast. I killed an invader in two hits with it.
BEHOLD! PIRATE KING!
Stragint on
PSN: Reaper_Stragint, Steam: DoublePitstoChesty
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
+3
Casually HardcoreOnce an Asshole. Trying to be better.Registered Userregular
Man, just dumb into vit. Put end up to 20ish, and just dump and dump into vit.
The game is night and day when you're not dying in 2 hits.
Yeah I didn't shy away from Vitality. It scales up your ability to survive big hits/combos. It scales up your healing effectiveness with vials. It scales up your healing from the Regain system as well to a degree. It is very strong.
It's a super strong stat. My early game builds have always been (stat I want to focus on) + vit. After you hit the soft-cap of 25 with those two you branch out from there and figure the rest out.
The one thing I still want to try out are all of the "spell" items. I never had the arcane to use them in previous playthroughs. Arcane solo seems like suicide though as it takes a while to get a weapon/blood gem so your basic attacks scale with arcane. Spell items are pretty deep too.
Posts
The area is cool, definitely. I can't say I know enough of the story to understand half of what's going on though. Even for one of Miyazaki's games it seems cryptic. I'll read up on lore once I finish it though. Have been avoiding it for fear of spoilers.
it's kind of pointless. also people focus on the spiders for some reason? just kill the main dude!
I mean, it feels like a Dark Souls pendant situation, and the item description even hints as so, but still, I've carried it with me this whole time.
I'm really, really curious though, who else has beaten this boss and if so, how? It's the only fight so far that I thought was cheap.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
Hmmm. One thing I do understand and agree with is the change to starting classes, as in there is no more "best" starting class aka Deprived. This gives you more options without feeling like you could've made an objectively better choice.
Steam ID: 76561198021298113
Origin ID: SR71C_Blackbird
Not sure how to proceed from here. I could take on Vicar, the hunters, or go back and look for BSB
AAAGH!
I hate that fucker. I ended up trying to backpedal and use the reach of my whip against him while using fire papers. That works... until the chains on his back start bitch-smacking you into oblivion. Then it becomes seemingly impossible.
Which variant was this? Nasty spike hands was the most unpredictable, cannon was silly, and chains was easy to bait into doing the spin move. They've not got much in the way of options if you just stay behind them and dodge away after a couple of swings.
Depends on your weapon, honestly. Against normal sized enemies, you can burn your entire stamina bar with saw without them getting an opening, and even without stagger it still has amazingly good frame data so you can dodge out really well, so it maintains its regain ability pretty well. Threaded cane is ridiculously hard to handle, and hunter axe can use its range and gigantic stagger to not get hit as often in the first place.
Honestly, the difference between the starting weapons is pretty vast. Really changes how you play the game.
FWIW, the speed runner who got the < 3 hr time had over 30 VIT when he finished the game, so maybe most of us are just keeping our Vit too low. especially because Vit scales with itself due to the generic defense increase on level up.
The only area I felt like normal enemies were stupidly dangerous in was Unseen Village, and no small part of that is due to not being able to take your time at all.
IMHO, go left from Vicar's door and do the witches. You'll get your weapon to +6 in a comparatively easy area.
BSB is in Old Yarnham, so a different area entirely.
My PS4 says this when it turns on: Cannot start PS4. Connect a USB storage device that contains an update file for installation for version 2.50 or later
Is my save data lost, or will the cloud save me?
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
https://medium.com/@alascii
There is actually a rune which recovers you health after every v.attack
This will be here until I receive an apology or Weedlordvegeta get any consequences for being a bully
Your cloud data should be current to around the last 24 hours.
Do all games do that? I've checked some of my disk games and there's nothing there
EDIT: OH! I see, you have to manually pull down the backup
I love modern technology!
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
Guess that's what ng+ is for though.
I'd say that upping your Vitality and Endurance are very important. More so than putting points into your main damage stat at first.
Yeah, the scaling on weapons is pretty crap early on, so no need to increase your damage stats until you upgrade your weapons a bit.
I always dither around ending a game that I enjoy so I took my time to finish my second playthrough.
Final Boss spoilers
Questions are always more interesting than answers. Bloodborne makes you ask a lot of questions and lets you figure the answers out through conjecture. That's fine. I think it's a little too vague... but it didn't hurt my enjoyment of the game that much.
I will admit I was fooled for a while. Bloodborne, more than any Souls game of the past, has a plot. It has time progression. It has events that change the world. The night of the hunt is filled with thrills as the world inexorably changes around you. The defeat of Rom, despite being a lackluster boss, kicks the game to a new level that was extremely exciting to explore. Something about the fact that there was a plot and the semblance of a story playing out in front of me thought the game's endings would be... something more. Even Dark Souls spells out the endings more than this game does. You at least know what your purpose, as the chosen undead, was. What is the purpose of the hunter really? It's... not really clear. That's sort of the beauty of the game and the Insight system though. What is real? What is... just a bad dream? It questions reality and sanity while being a lot of fun and uses that to go some fun places.
Moon Presence was too easy but because I took my time I had a +10 weapon this time. I was high level from the road to Depth 5 Chalice Dungeons. I was using a far more overpowered build this time with a quality build + Ludwig's Holy Blade.
It took me probably a dozen attempts to kill in my first playthrough Gehrman with a +9 threaded cane. I really had to learn the boss and all of his late-stage anime bullshit (which was fun!). With the Ludwigs +10 though I did like twice as much damage if not more. Just one-hander mode too! I defeated Gehrman and Moon Presence in one consecutive attempt this time. Ludwigs is kinda gross. Such a broken weapon.
Bloodborne's been really fun. I feel pretty content with it. Not sure what I'll do from here. A break from it almost certainly.
Mission Note: "To escape this dreadful Hunter's Dream, halt the source of the spreading scourge of beasts, lest the night carry on forever."
I went in thinking I would be accomplishing such. There are three endings, but really you're choosing between two, neither of which seem to solve this problem.
1. I have my Paleblood cure (somehow.) I'm done. Get me out of here!
2. I crave more power and refuse to leave!
Option 2 depicts the player as power-hungry. Like Micolah, he/she does not want to leave in pursuit of power and eldrich knowledge. The game is "telling" you that you are evil and insane. Without the umbillical cords, the pissed off Moon Presense captures you and has you replace Gehman. With the cords, your eldritch knowledge, insanity and might make you the new Great One, a new monster to rule over the dream world.
So...where was that source of the plague again?
Heres a hint.
when you first arrive, get a few hits on her as shes getting up. run for all your worth to try and get behind her and get a hit in from the back, then keep circling until your behind her again. once you get her down to half or so, you can back off, target her head, and finish her off from range with knives and molitovs. dont throw them fast, you want to hit her right in the center of her head, extra damage there. give her time to get back into the regular motion so you hit her again.
I have a +3 weapon, is that upgraded enough to take advantage of the damage stat?
Any reason to level Str and Skill?
I'm intrigued. I kind of want an answer to this too. I evenly leveled up VIT, STR and END without really thinking about why.
You need to hit weapon requirements, and the scaling eventually becomes a big deal, but as others note, VIT/END have the most immediately obvious benefits besides hitting a new weapon's requirements.
Eventually your weapons will benefit greatly from additional stats, but not getting winded after 3 swings of your axe, or losing half your health to a pitchfork is probably more important to start.
The stats also have soft and hard caps so after a certain point you don't want to put too much into any one stat.
The +3 weapon depends on what weapon it is. Some don't get a good scaling stat until much later. My +3 Cleaver and Axe have at best a D scaling on Str while the +3 Cane I have has a B scaling for Skill so it scales a lot better a lot earlier. My +4 Kirkhammer has a B scaling for Str. Most Skill based weapons tend to scale higher faster and the Str ones tend to take longer since their base damage is so high but as is the case with Kirkhammer, it isn't always true.
Edit: By the way, the Cannon is a fucking beast. I killed an invader in two hits with it.
BEHOLD! PIRATE KING!
What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable? ~ Mario Novak
I never fear death or dyin', I only fear never trying.
The game is night and day when you're not dying in 2 hits.
It's a super strong stat. My early game builds have always been (stat I want to focus on) + vit. After you hit the soft-cap of 25 with those two you branch out from there and figure the rest out.
The one thing I still want to try out are all of the "spell" items. I never had the arcane to use them in previous playthroughs. Arcane solo seems like suicide though as it takes a while to get a weapon/blood gem so your basic attacks scale with arcane. Spell items are pretty deep too.