I'm kind of 50/50 on the weapon artes. On one hand, yeah its a little dicky to just take away strength from an item in this kind of game, on the other hand, unlike elemental weapons of DS past, weapon artes are really easy to swap around and there's a whole mechanic for re-speccing that, while creepy, effectively keeps you from every being completely stuck as far as build/loadout. Its annoying that the hoarfrost twostep doesn't work as well, but the game is not set up such that you can really go down a path and be completely unable to adjust your approach so I don't think its that egregious.Actually with this patch, mimic tear is supposedly smarter in the AI department. This is because it can no longer heal itself and to mkae up for reduced damage it got better at avoiding.
Which is one of the reasons why I'm upset by weapon art nerfs and not upset by the mimic nerf. Becuase there is a trade off. They flat out just nerfed some weapons and weapon arts. However with tear they balanced the nerf by making it a smart fighter when you need it.It shouldn't be able to solo a boss for you (which it used to) but it should be good enough to help get you there.
Seeing if the mimic tear is now useful for me will be interesting this weekend, but so much of my playstyle depends on the type of fast hard hit and retreat strategy that I kind of doubt it.
About 40 hours.Got 2 great runes; so far beaten Margit, Godrick, Leonine Misbegotten, Rennala, O'Neil, Makar, Loretta, Dragonkin Soldier, and Ancestral Spirit. Pretty sure I can beat Radahn with a few more tries. And with most of them I've intentionally avoided using summons.
So unless the difficulty curve is nuts, I don't see it overtaking the others.... but you've played further than I have, admittedly, so maybe!
I hate to say it but, I swear in this game you basically don't want to use human summons. Unless you just have a really serious matchup issue where you're a magic-only man and you're going against Rennala who is extremely magic-durable most of the time people are just a liability.
Radahn is the worst example I've found but as you play this kind of thing crops up more and more as bosses get more dangerous and workable strategies thin out. If you summon a human and they don't know exactly what to do they'll get insta-flattened and leave you with an HP buffed enemy. The horse is a way better ally than humans most of the time, and it gets worse and worse as you move forward. You are taking the smart choice here, and a potential skill run for you later would be to try to play against guys like O'Neil with the ball and chain that is a human player trying to tank the rot-splosion.
Maybe as strategies for bosses become more sort of "solved" over time allies will be less useless, but at least for now I really would not bother with people unless you yourself want to beat some runes out of the head of Rennala for some easy levels as a coop summon.
Radahn is the worst example I've found but as you play this kind of thing crops up more and more as bosses get more dangerous and workable strategies thin out. If you summon a human and they don't know exactly what to do they'll get insta-flattened and leave you with an HP buffed enemy. The horse is a way better ally than humans most of the time, and it gets worse and worse as you move forward. You are taking the smart choice here, and a potential skill run for you later would be to try to play against guys like O'Neil with the ball and chain that is a human player trying to tank the rot-splosion.
Maybe as strategies for bosses become more sort of "solved" over time allies will be less useless, but at least for now I really would not bother with people unless you yourself want to beat some runes out of the head of Rennala for some easy levels as a coop summon.