Ok Dodge changed, yes? I either have to be guarding or press X twice to Dodge now, wasn't it just one press before or am I thinking of all the other souls games?
You sure you aren't mixing up the dodge roll with the normal dodge dash. High stance has an immediate roll. Medium does a dash and then if you press again you do the roll. Low just has infinite dashes. They all have iframes.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
I really need to get back into the DLC. I picked up the season pass for my birthday but haven’t sat down with it for long periods of time. Just beat the first zone, which was super easy because I was far over leveled for it on strong.
I was thinking about skipping straight to demon, but there’s probably stuff like new guardians I should get first.
rolled up a new set. it's 6 pc warrior the west + 5 pc inari grace. inari gives me damage when my weapon is buffed, wotw gives melee vs. shocked. got an accessory with the shock star effect.
nice thing about is that it's a grace set, so i can run any weapon on it. been using it with tonfas and it's cleaning up. respecced my build to meet requirements for my stuff then dumped my stats into constitution, courage, and heart so I can run both builds with the same stats. think i'll run dual swords as secondary.
it's also a fresh set and not one farmed up mid NG+ like my spear set, so i've really been able to load up on attack inheritables and star skills. i did update a couple pieces of my spear set because i found a set of boots with bonus evade (seems to be a light armor exclusive roll?)
if you're forging new armor i think the star skill to shoot for is probably ki damage, as skill damage can be tempered, though it's a lower roll.
Started the second game, and while I'm liking a lot of the differences the sheer number of mid-sized yokai it expects me to fight as regular respawning enemies is kind of daunting.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
You know, I didn't even consider that. I've fought so many of those enemies in the original game, so many times, over so many difficulties (and I particularly like twilight missions) that it just didn't occur to me that yeah they do throw a lot of them at you.
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they feel weaker in nioh 2, even if only because yokai abilities can be used to blow through them to a degree you couldn't in nioh 1
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
Yeah they're much easier to chow through.
In some ways they're slightly tougher though. Some of their weakpoints don't remove as much ki. Breaking oni horns used to always collapse them, but now it just removes a lot of ki. If their ki isn't fully removed they don't collapse.
But you are so much more powerful as a player character now. And they all got given a move or two you can counter for huge ki damage.
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GoodKingJayIIIThey wanna get mygold on the ceilingRegistered Userregular
When I started the game that first Enki you fight completely pushed my shit in. Like I just felt like I had no recourse against that thing other than basically dodging perfectly and getting in a few attacks (having absolutely no skills at the beginning of the game). It also didn't help that the game does not explain Burst Counter in any meaningful way, so I didn't figure that out until much later in the game.
But yeah, it feels like in the early game the amount of Yokai you see is kind of overwhelming, but it quickly tips the other way where you are carving through them with ease.
it definitely feels fiddly starting out, particularly for feral and phantom
feral still feels weird. fortunately feral spirits suck basically across the board lmao
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
I still use the first Feral Spirit because it has Ki regen speed. I've looked at all the others (Feral, Phantom and Brute) that I have so far and none of them are particularly interesting.
And Feral is one of the more useful spirits because the dodge is able to dodge anything, and you can dodge out of ki broken stagger. I almost never use devil trigger mode for any spirit so I don't really care about it.
I'm playing only very light armor, so I cannot unequip a feral spirit.
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I've run a few characters through the two main missions area trying different weapons (I know I can and maybe should just use one but I don't) and I've found different things easier for different Burst Counters.
As far as I can tell, Brute's smash them before they smash you, I imagine you'll need to hit the button before you even see the red flash for certain faster attacks. Phantom is more like a normal parry, be in active frames when it hits you. Feral's similar, you need to i-frame dash into the attack. Is that correct?
I struggle sometimes to kill yokai with the switchglaive compared to the other weapons I've tried, maybe it's just unfamiliarity and how some of its combos commit really hard without chewing up ki. Hatchets are solid but I feel goofy sometimes, the way the high stance throw trivializes certain challenges. Single sword and odachi are still fine. I imagine all of it will feel different with more skills.
...speaking of skills, I'm a bit put off that instead of making the dodge pulse baseline, they instead made your basic pulse skills take way longer to unlock than in the first game.
i'd really like to run a feral spirit again but i'm halfway through dream of the wise and the ferals have been kinda dead weight statwise since playthrough 1
nekomata and yatagarasu are the only real ones i think you could make a case for in terms of offense, but they're niche
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Maybe it changes later but Im about 3/4 through playthrough 1 and none of the stats on other spirits are worth losing ki regen speed.
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Oh hey the kusarigama, especially its high stance, still annihilates everything with a fraction of the effort I'd put in with anything else, and still scales alongside ninjutsu for those situations where you need a different flavor of cheese.
Though I'll admit I never really built for or got good at abusing skills or did NG+ runs so my view of the weapons is probably warped.
edit: On a different subject, now I understand why I couldn't ever get dash iframes to work for me reliably. Dashes have 10 frames at 60fps (so 5 at 30, if you're comparing to Soulsborne iframes).
High stance roll is 20. Mid stance roll is 18, with a gap between the dash and the roll unless you have something giving you more iframes, which covers that gap and turns it into a big beefy wall of iframes.
Source didn't have any info on chaining low stance dashes or what kind of gap they might have between them.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Yes dodging is tight. You have to dodge against the path of many attacks so you arent still inside the hitbox when the iframes end.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
My 970 is too but it's starting to get a little nervous it can't keep up with modern titles. Can't complain it's been great.
I should probably finish Nioh again. Got a bit drained last time before reaching Saika Magoichi and he got in my head for a bit because I was playing like crap. Haven't gone back to that run since.
man i just cannot make an element grace work in wise
i been trying to combo them with other damage sources like the corruption grace and versatility and that shit still doesn't wanna work
my kingo's set for some reason is like an anima fountain, just dropping gozuki every 4 second
this fire/corruption set takes like five minutes to get enough anima for kasha, she comes out, scorches for like three seconds and i'm out again wtf i don't undrrstand it. i'm trying out a feral on it, is anima bonus consecutive hits just ass? i'm usually running phantom (anima on ranged) with melee and it still seems to work better
back to the ki damage/purity/corruption hole i suppose
I sort of hate trying to find information on what combos/stances/active abilities for a weapon work well in these games.
For the weapons that aren't heavy on stance switch mechanics I can't find a convincing reason to leave high stance, unless the enemy is really fast and I need to use medium stance to tag them then flux to high stance. Best damage for most weapons even before the pulse buff seems to be either a high stance combo or a high stance skill, and it also has the best dodge.
Maybe if I blocked more I'd like high stance less but I've lost that instinct completely.
edit: As a bonus, I don't even like high stance for any of the weapons. It's just that eventually when I go along fighting with mid or low stance because I prefer it, I reach a hard fight end up leaning on high stance to clear it.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited November 2020
It's more about what special abilities the weapon have and their movesets, including dodging abilities.
For example, many weapons have a ki stripping move on their medium or low stance. You use the ki stripping move to clear ki, and then you can use the high stance to deal damage.
Generally speaking high is slow and clumsy but high damage. It's abilities are usually hugely offensive and leave you open if you pick the wrong time to do them.
Medium is a mix of defensive and offensive. The strong is usually a decent mix of power and recovery, the normal attack is usually decently fast and damaging. It's a great balanced stance. It's abilities are usually defensive (such as parries) or suited for quickly stripping ki. The dodge allows you to reposition quickly or if you tap it twice get a long roll with decent iframes, but also prevents you from chaining it to zip around the place at high speed.
Low is a mobility and evasive stance for most weapons. It has fast attacks, allowing you to get in and out and hit and run tougher enemies. This is massively important on higher difficulties, where simply trying to overpower with high stance all the time will get you armored through and killed very quickly. It's dodge is often very fast and easy to chain, allowing you to get in and out quickly, and combined with all its attacks being fast with good recovery pretty much letting you become untouchable. It sometimes also allows you to put a ki stripper special ability on. The specials are usually evasive or defensive in some way. Low stance attacks are extremely quick, and allow you to interrupt enemies without superarmor very easily.
To match all this a perfect ki pulse in each stance gives a buff that boosts the effectiveness in each stance.
A perfect ki pulse in high stance boost these damage of your next attack.
A perfect ki pulse in medium stance makes your next block free. (The tooltip lies)
Perfect ki pulse in low stance makes your next dodge free. (The tooltip lies)
You are meant to swap repeatedly between each stance to use the associated abilities, dodges and various movesets to deal with different situations in a fight. For example if an enemy is very fast and hard to hit, or they are using a move that you need to make absolutely sure you get the hell out of the way of, or they're so dangerous you simply can't afford to take a hit, you may switch to low stance to deal with that situation. Another situation might be a dangerous yokai that is best dealt with by first methodically striping its ki so it loses its superarmor. You can stay in low stance and simply focus on ki striping, not damage. Once its armor is stripped, you switch to high stance to finish it off.
Mid stance is usually one of the best stances for people and small to medium sized yokai. It usually has a parry or some other defensive move of that kind you can use to deal with swordsmen, and often has a ki damage special. The normals are often fast enough to deal with most enemies, the strongs can usually finish off smaller enemies safely and efficiently, and its dodges are very balanced. It's a very versatile stance able to handle many situations, including multiple enemy fights. It's usually one of the best stances for enemy swordsmen.
High stance is what you swap to when you see an opportunity to deal a lot of damage. It's completely normal to end a fight in high stance. Most fights in Nioh are about setting an enemy up for a killing combo or high damage attack that will finish them off. If you strip the ki off a large yokai and don't swap to high stance, in most cases you are completely wasting your opportunity to deal damage.
Some enemies you can kill outright in high stance if you have good timing, but its by no means the safest stance to stay in, as its recoveries are often extremely slow. It's especially bad for multiple enemy fights. You will get tagged if you try to high stance the whole group. Depending on difficulty and gear, this could get you killed in short order.
Some bosses also just don't give you much time to hit them, so high stance involves a lot of whiffing. You have to first strip their ki to give you an opportunity to deal a lot of damage.
You don't have to pick a stance to stick in. There is no such thing as "the one stance" that is best for all situations.
True mastery and effectivness of a weapon is understanding all the various situations and abilities the weapon has, and when is the best time to flow between them.
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Really, I think my problem's more with not getting low stance than with high stance being dominant, I use mid more often than my rant suggested.
Instead of feeling like the safe stance, Low Stance feels like it's the most risk and the least reward for nearly every weapon. The least forgiving iframes options, a more or less pointless pulse buff, and for most weapons damage so low that it's barely worth the openings you do get. Mid's never too slow to work, it's better for blocking and dodging, and it usually has decent damage and ki damaging options. I guess if you're going to go really, really safe and really, really slow you can hit and run with low, but I don't feel like I'd learn the fights doing that and that'd make reclearing areas with enemies I had to fight that way a huge slog.
I use low a lot on switchglaive because I like it, and it seems better than something like low single sword or odachi, but I always feel in the back of my head that everything would be easier if I just used used transitions to and from high and mid or spammed the high active skills.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
Really, I think my problem's more with not getting low stance than with high stance being dominant, I use mid more often than my rant suggested.
Instead of feeling like the safe stance, Low Stance feels like it's the most risk and the least reward for nearly every weapon. The least forgiving iframes options, a more or less pointless pulse buff, and for most weapons damage so low that it's barely worth the openings you do get. Mid's never too slow to work, it's better for blocking and dodging, and it usually has decent damage and ki damaging options. I guess if you're going to go really, really safe and really, really slow you can hit and run with low, but I don't feel like I'd learn the fights doing that and that'd make reclearing areas with enemies I had to fight that way a huge slog.
I use low a lot on switchglaive because I like it, and it seems better than something like low single sword or odachi, but I always feel in the back of my head that everything would be easier if I just used used transitions to and from high and mid or spammed the high active skills.
I use low a lot. It's not that low damage, the dodge isn't that bad, the fact you can chain it makes up for everything, and you can dodge INTO them as well to get in faster after you've backed out. And you can also usually use your your ki remover on that stance.
Low is not really for damage, or even particularly for dodging (in the sense of actually trying to iframe through attacks), although despite how badly you seem to think it is it's still pretty good at that. It's for good movement and control of space and whittling down enemies ki.
A really good example is dual swords. Normal attack-> special I forget its name but you do a slash, then a kick, then there's a just frame double sword strike.
1). This attack is utterly amazing and the workhorse of the entire weapon. If you don't spam the fuck out of this you aren't really using this weapon properly.
2). You can do this in low stance, so you can hover out of range, get in, do the attack, get out. Nothing touches you. This is how you defeat large yokai effectively. You don't have to try and dodge their attacks with iframes. You just dodge up after their attack, do the just frame attack, and double dodge away. They'll do a close range "get out of my face" attack and it will whiff. Repeat until they're out of ki. A couple of repetitions will usually strip their ki. Then you can switch to high stance and start wrecking them. You don't have to worry about your iframes, because you aren't even where the attack is in the first place. In fact the damn stance could have no iframes and for the most part this would still be ridiculously effective.
Single katana has a similar thing. You can do the large aoe ki release that strips ki (hold block and press strong) in any stance, but its just more effective while being defensive to do it in low stance. You have more maneouverability. You can literally run rings around your enemies. It's particularly fantastic in a large group fight where you do not really have the time to mess around. You only really have the time to do this specific move in those kinds of fights. Once they're down you can swap to whatever stance you want after all. You can also use the dodges to clear ki pools. You dodge over to the ki pool, do a single attack, and perfect dodge away. It will clear the ki pool.
Axe ditto. It has a normal attack-> strong special attack that does good ki removal. For enemies where you simply do not have time to do anything else, you can still duck in, do this attack, and get out, patiently whittling down the yokai ki that gives them super armor until they're stunlockable, and then you switch to high and finish them.
Low is the anti big yokai stance. It's not about damage. Forget about damage until their ki is gone. It's about getting rid of that ki safely, and staying mobile in a way that lets you quickly get back in to capitalise on their whiffs.
It basically has tighter iframes on its dodges because otherwise it would be completely overpowered holy crap do you have any idea how easy it is to kill all the yokai like this already?
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That makes sense, and having someone explain why it's useful helps. For example, it honestly hadn't occurred to me that I could spam the kick the way I can off (even deflected) first swings of low stance for single sword, vs using it for a little more oomph after a few swings.
Maybe I'll make myself redo some areas with weapons in low stance only to make myself figure it out a little better.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
That makes sense, and having someone explain why it's useful helps. For example, it honestly hadn't occurred to me that I could spam the kick the way I can off (even deflected) first swings of low stance for single sword, vs using it for a little more oomph after a few swings.
Maybe I'll make myself redo some areas with weapons in low stance only to make myself figure it out a little better.
Get that ki release skill and stick it on your low stance (and honestly I stick it on every stance, its just that good). It's much more effective than the kick. The kick will work until you get it if you don't have that yet tho. I forget its name.
Also the low stance strong combo is very effective at killing smaller quicker enemies. I use that more than the regular attack. It can be done easily out of a dodge as well. I usually put the big leaping attack where the kick is on low, since I just use that aoe ki stripper instead. The big leap does decent damage.
The regular attacks aren't completely worthless tho. If you have the time to wail on an enemy with it, they make up for their weak damage by having a ridiculously long combo string before your ki resets, and you can regain the entire set of ki from it. Very ki efficient.
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I finally got back to the last 2 DLCs after I finished Cyberpunk, and they are pretty cool. I really like the new Corruption and Purity spirits. I was also have a devil of a time on Dream of the Wise until I turned off my Penance +9 thing and realized I had been playing on ultra hard mode for a while. Pretty cool that it's an unlock too, there are so many nice usability features in this game.
Getting back into this, I've been playing PoE again recently and it clicked for me that outside of the combat, Nioh's very much an ARPG series in that vein, not just in loot. Not just the combat, the way you're supposed to repeat playthroughs and maps to farm for loot, mechanics being unveiled only in the post-game, the way you're expected to build a particular type of attack up instead of using your full toolset all the time, etc.
Also, realizing that I shouldn't exhaust myself full clearing every single map if I don't want to, because unlike a normal Soulslike there's nothing special hidden there (unless I need a specific weapon or armor piece with a fixed loot location to start them dropping frequently), has also helped me enjoy the game more.
Man I played 2 like a year ago, never finished it on PS4, just got it for PC. When the hell did they add fists?! That's amazing. Kind of makes that build that's been my go-to of getting Talisman of the Fist seem kind of pointless, though.
I'll probably still end up going heavily Magic this run, just probably Magic+Strength instead of Magic+Skill. Because Sloth talismans are probably still broken, and boosting your attack and lowering enemy defense while turning them into a snail is not going to get old.
Oh we have a Nioh thread. I guess I should stop cross contaminating the Souls thread.
I'm enjoying 2 quite a bit. Just beat the furnace boss, then went back to the first area to find the final spirit dude and holy crap what a difference better equipment, levels, and familiarity with the controls makes.
I'm a big fan of the high stance switchglaive. Basic as hell, but chunks stuff, the vertical swing is great for breaking horns, and the human AI has a hard time dealing with the X+X+Y (always tries to block the two-hit Y, sunders their stamina like crazy).
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You sure you aren't mixing up the dodge roll with the normal dodge dash. High stance has an immediate roll. Medium does a dash and then if you press again you do the roll. Low just has infinite dashes. They all have iframes.
I was thinking about skipping straight to demon, but there’s probably stuff like new guardians I should get first.
nice thing about is that it's a grace set, so i can run any weapon on it. been using it with tonfas and it's cleaning up. respecced my build to meet requirements for my stuff then dumped my stats into constitution, courage, and heart so I can run both builds with the same stats. think i'll run dual swords as secondary.
it's also a fresh set and not one farmed up mid NG+ like my spear set, so i've really been able to load up on attack inheritables and star skills. i did update a couple pieces of my spear set because i found a set of boots with bonus evade (seems to be a light armor exclusive roll?)
if you're forging new armor i think the star skill to shoot for is probably ki damage, as skill damage can be tempered, though it's a lower roll.
edit: ki damage is medium only.
In some ways they're slightly tougher though. Some of their weakpoints don't remove as much ki. Breaking oni horns used to always collapse them, but now it just removes a lot of ki. If their ki isn't fully removed they don't collapse.
But you are so much more powerful as a player character now. And they all got given a move or two you can counter for huge ki damage.
But yeah, it feels like in the early game the amount of Yokai you see is kind of overwhelming, but it quickly tips the other way where you are carving through them with ease.
feral still feels weird. fortunately feral spirits suck basically across the board lmao
And Feral is one of the more useful spirits because the dodge is able to dodge anything, and you can dodge out of ki broken stagger. I almost never use devil trigger mode for any spirit so I don't really care about it.
I'm playing only very light armor, so I cannot unequip a feral spirit.
As far as I can tell, Brute's smash them before they smash you, I imagine you'll need to hit the button before you even see the red flash for certain faster attacks. Phantom is more like a normal parry, be in active frames when it hits you. Feral's similar, you need to i-frame dash into the attack. Is that correct?
I struggle sometimes to kill yokai with the switchglaive compared to the other weapons I've tried, maybe it's just unfamiliarity and how some of its combos commit really hard without chewing up ki. Hatchets are solid but I feel goofy sometimes, the way the high stance throw trivializes certain challenges. Single sword and odachi are still fine. I imagine all of it will feel different with more skills.
...speaking of skills, I'm a bit put off that instead of making the dodge pulse baseline, they instead made your basic pulse skills take way longer to unlock than in the first game.
nekomata and yatagarasu are the only real ones i think you could make a case for in terms of offense, but they're niche
tengen
atlas bear
isanagami
yumehami
+ a bunch from DLC
Though I'll admit I never really built for or got good at abusing skills or did NG+ runs so my view of the weapons is probably warped.
edit: On a different subject, now I understand why I couldn't ever get dash iframes to work for me reliably. Dashes have 10 frames at 60fps (so 5 at 30, if you're comparing to Soulsborne iframes).
High stance roll is 20. Mid stance roll is 18, with a gap between the dash and the roll unless you have something giving you more iframes, which covers that gap and turns it into a big beefy wall of iframes.
Source didn't have any info on chaining low stance dashes or what kind of gap they might have between them.
Just now, though, I clearly saw my character animate eating an elixir when I tapped the d-pad, without expending an elixir or getting healed.
So that's not ideal.
Yeah, I haven't seen anyone else complaining about it. I imagine I'm doing something to make it happen, but I'm not sure what.
i think it's just something fucky with animation canceling
Wonder if I'll get a 3080 by then.
My 970 is too but it's starting to get a little nervous it can't keep up with modern titles. Can't complain it's been great.
I should probably finish Nioh again. Got a bit drained last time before reaching Saika Magoichi and he got in my head for a bit because I was playing like crap. Haven't gone back to that run since.
i been trying to combo them with other damage sources like the corruption grace and versatility and that shit still doesn't wanna work
my kingo's set for some reason is like an anima fountain, just dropping gozuki every 4 second
this fire/corruption set takes like five minutes to get enough anima for kasha, she comes out, scorches for like three seconds and i'm out again wtf i don't undrrstand it. i'm trying out a feral on it, is anima bonus consecutive hits just ass? i'm usually running phantom (anima on ranged) with melee and it still seems to work better
back to the ki damage/purity/corruption hole i suppose
For the weapons that aren't heavy on stance switch mechanics I can't find a convincing reason to leave high stance, unless the enemy is really fast and I need to use medium stance to tag them then flux to high stance. Best damage for most weapons even before the pulse buff seems to be either a high stance combo or a high stance skill, and it also has the best dodge.
Maybe if I blocked more I'd like high stance less but I've lost that instinct completely.
edit: As a bonus, I don't even like high stance for any of the weapons. It's just that eventually when I go along fighting with mid or low stance because I prefer it, I reach a hard fight end up leaning on high stance to clear it.
For example, many weapons have a ki stripping move on their medium or low stance. You use the ki stripping move to clear ki, and then you can use the high stance to deal damage.
Generally speaking high is slow and clumsy but high damage. It's abilities are usually hugely offensive and leave you open if you pick the wrong time to do them.
Medium is a mix of defensive and offensive. The strong is usually a decent mix of power and recovery, the normal attack is usually decently fast and damaging. It's a great balanced stance. It's abilities are usually defensive (such as parries) or suited for quickly stripping ki. The dodge allows you to reposition quickly or if you tap it twice get a long roll with decent iframes, but also prevents you from chaining it to zip around the place at high speed.
Low is a mobility and evasive stance for most weapons. It has fast attacks, allowing you to get in and out and hit and run tougher enemies. This is massively important on higher difficulties, where simply trying to overpower with high stance all the time will get you armored through and killed very quickly. It's dodge is often very fast and easy to chain, allowing you to get in and out quickly, and combined with all its attacks being fast with good recovery pretty much letting you become untouchable. It sometimes also allows you to put a ki stripper special ability on. The specials are usually evasive or defensive in some way. Low stance attacks are extremely quick, and allow you to interrupt enemies without superarmor very easily.
To match all this a perfect ki pulse in each stance gives a buff that boosts the effectiveness in each stance.
A perfect ki pulse in high stance boost these damage of your next attack.
A perfect ki pulse in medium stance makes your next block free. (The tooltip lies)
Perfect ki pulse in low stance makes your next dodge free. (The tooltip lies)
You are meant to swap repeatedly between each stance to use the associated abilities, dodges and various movesets to deal with different situations in a fight. For example if an enemy is very fast and hard to hit, or they are using a move that you need to make absolutely sure you get the hell out of the way of, or they're so dangerous you simply can't afford to take a hit, you may switch to low stance to deal with that situation. Another situation might be a dangerous yokai that is best dealt with by first methodically striping its ki so it loses its superarmor. You can stay in low stance and simply focus on ki striping, not damage. Once its armor is stripped, you switch to high stance to finish it off.
Mid stance is usually one of the best stances for people and small to medium sized yokai. It usually has a parry or some other defensive move of that kind you can use to deal with swordsmen, and often has a ki damage special. The normals are often fast enough to deal with most enemies, the strongs can usually finish off smaller enemies safely and efficiently, and its dodges are very balanced. It's a very versatile stance able to handle many situations, including multiple enemy fights. It's usually one of the best stances for enemy swordsmen.
High stance is what you swap to when you see an opportunity to deal a lot of damage. It's completely normal to end a fight in high stance. Most fights in Nioh are about setting an enemy up for a killing combo or high damage attack that will finish them off. If you strip the ki off a large yokai and don't swap to high stance, in most cases you are completely wasting your opportunity to deal damage.
Some enemies you can kill outright in high stance if you have good timing, but its by no means the safest stance to stay in, as its recoveries are often extremely slow. It's especially bad for multiple enemy fights. You will get tagged if you try to high stance the whole group. Depending on difficulty and gear, this could get you killed in short order.
Some bosses also just don't give you much time to hit them, so high stance involves a lot of whiffing. You have to first strip their ki to give you an opportunity to deal a lot of damage.
You don't have to pick a stance to stick in. There is no such thing as "the one stance" that is best for all situations.
True mastery and effectivness of a weapon is understanding all the various situations and abilities the weapon has, and when is the best time to flow between them.
Instead of feeling like the safe stance, Low Stance feels like it's the most risk and the least reward for nearly every weapon. The least forgiving iframes options, a more or less pointless pulse buff, and for most weapons damage so low that it's barely worth the openings you do get. Mid's never too slow to work, it's better for blocking and dodging, and it usually has decent damage and ki damaging options. I guess if you're going to go really, really safe and really, really slow you can hit and run with low, but I don't feel like I'd learn the fights doing that and that'd make reclearing areas with enemies I had to fight that way a huge slog.
I use low a lot on switchglaive because I like it, and it seems better than something like low single sword or odachi, but I always feel in the back of my head that everything would be easier if I just used used transitions to and from high and mid or spammed the high active skills.
I use low a lot. It's not that low damage, the dodge isn't that bad, the fact you can chain it makes up for everything, and you can dodge INTO them as well to get in faster after you've backed out. And you can also usually use your your ki remover on that stance.
Low is not really for damage, or even particularly for dodging (in the sense of actually trying to iframe through attacks), although despite how badly you seem to think it is it's still pretty good at that. It's for good movement and control of space and whittling down enemies ki.
A really good example is dual swords. Normal attack-> special I forget its name but you do a slash, then a kick, then there's a just frame double sword strike.
1). This attack is utterly amazing and the workhorse of the entire weapon. If you don't spam the fuck out of this you aren't really using this weapon properly.
2). You can do this in low stance, so you can hover out of range, get in, do the attack, get out. Nothing touches you. This is how you defeat large yokai effectively. You don't have to try and dodge their attacks with iframes. You just dodge up after their attack, do the just frame attack, and double dodge away. They'll do a close range "get out of my face" attack and it will whiff. Repeat until they're out of ki. A couple of repetitions will usually strip their ki. Then you can switch to high stance and start wrecking them. You don't have to worry about your iframes, because you aren't even where the attack is in the first place. In fact the damn stance could have no iframes and for the most part this would still be ridiculously effective.
Single katana has a similar thing. You can do the large aoe ki release that strips ki (hold block and press strong) in any stance, but its just more effective while being defensive to do it in low stance. You have more maneouverability. You can literally run rings around your enemies. It's particularly fantastic in a large group fight where you do not really have the time to mess around. You only really have the time to do this specific move in those kinds of fights. Once they're down you can swap to whatever stance you want after all. You can also use the dodges to clear ki pools. You dodge over to the ki pool, do a single attack, and perfect dodge away. It will clear the ki pool.
Axe ditto. It has a normal attack-> strong special attack that does good ki removal. For enemies where you simply do not have time to do anything else, you can still duck in, do this attack, and get out, patiently whittling down the yokai ki that gives them super armor until they're stunlockable, and then you switch to high and finish them.
Low is the anti big yokai stance. It's not about damage. Forget about damage until their ki is gone. It's about getting rid of that ki safely, and staying mobile in a way that lets you quickly get back in to capitalise on their whiffs.
It basically has tighter iframes on its dodges because otherwise it would be completely overpowered holy crap do you have any idea how easy it is to kill all the yokai like this already?
Maybe I'll make myself redo some areas with weapons in low stance only to make myself figure it out a little better.
Get that ki release skill and stick it on your low stance (and honestly I stick it on every stance, its just that good). It's much more effective than the kick. The kick will work until you get it if you don't have that yet tho. I forget its name.
Also the low stance strong combo is very effective at killing smaller quicker enemies. I use that more than the regular attack. It can be done easily out of a dodge as well. I usually put the big leaping attack where the kick is on low, since I just use that aoe ki stripper instead. The big leap does decent damage.
The regular attacks aren't completely worthless tho. If you have the time to wail on an enemy with it, they make up for their weak damage by having a ridiculously long combo string before your ki resets, and you can regain the entire set of ki from it. Very ki efficient.
Also, realizing that I shouldn't exhaust myself full clearing every single map if I don't want to, because unlike a normal Soulslike there's nothing special hidden there (unless I need a specific weapon or armor piece with a fixed loot location to start them dropping frequently), has also helped me enjoy the game more.
I'll probably still end up going heavily Magic this run, just probably Magic+Strength instead of Magic+Skill. Because Sloth talismans are probably still broken, and boosting your attack and lowering enemy defense while turning them into a snail is not going to get old.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
I'm enjoying 2 quite a bit. Just beat the furnace boss, then went back to the first area to find the final spirit dude and holy crap what a difference better equipment, levels, and familiarity with the controls makes.
Still took like 10 tries to down the viper boss with his noodle arms because of the stupid tight timing for the burst parry on his charge.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow
Absolutely amazing weapon.
PSN: ShogunGunshow
Origin: ShogunGunshow