LoL… it doesn’t have to be ultra detailed… for instance I’m not looking for anything with numbers…
An example is Spearfal Technique for the Spear… its a High Stance Combo Ender, I believe its uninterruptable, it doesn’t bounce of walls or guards and the last hit knocks down on hit guaranteeing a final blow.
And thats pretty much all I know because thats the only move I’ve been abusing the entire game…
LoL… so I pop open youtube… and see some dude’s Odachi is doing 4000 Damage Per Hit… NO BUFFS… that’s just the Raw damage output…
Mine does 400 Per Hit.
So now I know there’s something I’m suppose to be doing to increase my damage output… but it seems like its all just RNG…
Edit : yeah I just checked the Wiki… Stat Scaling only adds 300 Damage at best… so we still 3000 Damage Shy of the target.
LoL… if I could simply do that much damage then I literally wouldn’t even be bothering with Jutsus and Cheese Methods… I would gladly try to take on these bosses with just me and my dodge… but Team Ninja hide all the good ■■■■ behind RNG so now I’m using Cheese Loops and Debuffs… this game… I don’t even know anymore.
Edit 2: So there’s nothing I can do about the RNG at the forge. Well… I mean there is but it would take too long.
So I’l focus on the crap I can control…
Lets start with Armor and Stances… so by default I know The Axe & Odachi don’t ricochet off the enemie’s guard… and they can armor through some attacks… However I’ve had my Axe interupted by everything from Swords to Tonfas in mid stance. And I don’t know whats causing it.
So I’m going to test drive how armor affects which weapons are uninterruptable in which stance by what weapons.
I don’t think this will be particularly useful because of all the one shot Kills in this game but its always good to have an ace up your sleeve just in case.
Then I can go about test driving weapon skills.
Edit 3:
Ayt so first things first… Armor and Health are ■■■■■■■ Useless…
99 Body
50 Stamina
And 30 Heart
Medium Armor
All that and I still get one shotted and Guard Broken like a ■■■■■■■ GG Character… this is good to know because now I can look back at my light armor playthrough with no regrets. I was afraid I’ve been suffering unnecessary deaths but it seems like my initial assessment was correct… I was going to die alot no matter what… so thats a load off my mind
Ayt so second things second.
For all my testing I’ve developed the Tachibana Muneshige Benchmark… yeah I know… I’m a Genius. Simply put… because this ■■■■■■ is so Cheap… he makes for a great measuring stick to determine Viable Builds… what with his extended evasion distance invulnerability and Mega Poise… I was originally going to use Naomasa Ii because I like him more but he’s too fair… doesn’t have any cheap bull ■■■■ that I can’t avoid.
Date Masamune would be even better but the Infinite Living Weapon Spamming makes Testing the non living weapon stuff impossible… plus he’s pretty much nothing without Living Weapon… he needs it… that doesn’t make dying to it any less cheap though.
Okay… so I began the first round of Weapon Skill Tests… And already made some interesting finds… explains why some weapons are more popular than others…
I want to see what the Axe is like with Skills… because without skills its already pretty good…its only lacking in two things… Reach and Damage…
The Odachi is basically like the Axe but without the reach problem… I’ve Dead Angled many NPCs with Mid Stance Normal Attacks… weave some Stance Switching in there and you can blow up any NPC that isn’t in Low Stance.
Im pretty sure that dude is running some super epic gear with bonus stats that allows him to reach that high of a damage output.
You can ask some one on the NIOH Facebook group and they will share away all the details. All day its lists of posts of ppl bragging about gear and damage out put.
They should skip the action all together and make an entire game out of Optimizing Builds.
Meanwhile in other news… I made a few discoveries.
Katana’s in this game seem to only specialise in one thing only… Parrying !!!
I bought all the Katana skills… lol… remember all that OP Crap Muneshige likes to spam… Tiger Sprint and Iai Quick Draw ?
Yeah william’s version gets none of those properties… When you use it, it is:
Slower
Has less range and doesn’t track
Its blockable and doesn’t guard break
Its vulnerable for the entire animation
Can be interupted at any point.
Doesn’t always grant you the knockdown… I got it like 1 time out of every 15 Tries and thats if I actually do get a chance to whip it out and if it actually hits.
That Katana is just so bad… which is obvious when you only use Passives but all this time I was under the impression that skills would save it…
The Best Weapon seems to be Dual Swords…
Okay best is not the right word… its the most versatile weapon once you get some skills in there… the one that I see everybody using is the God Wind Combo Ender… its essentially an Abare move… you use it on those pesky NPC style baddies who block every second like clockwork… its no demon dance but it will eventually break the opponents guard after about 5 Loops… 3 or 4 if you get the “Good Timing” Variation that does more Ki damage… for some NPCs that like to slip away it will track them pretty well most of time.
Another move is Sign Of The Cross… this is essentially the Dual Swords version of Iai Quick Draw… except it actually is quick… reaching max charge doesn’t take long at all and doesn’t require a Ki Pulse…
But nobody uses it Raw… I only see people using it after Grapple moves… Dual Swords have seriously good oki… after a grapple I see people immediately charge Sign Of The Cross and for whatever reason the AI never tries to avoid it and this seems to be the most consistent way to get it to knock down… after that you can go for the Final Blow… be quick though… they don’t stay down long.
And then theres Tornado… this the Dual Swords Guard + Heavy Attack move in High Stance… I doesn’t do as much Actual Damage or Ki Damage as I would like but if you need a quick Super Armor hit to trade with then this thing will definitely get it done… its surprisingly quick and can only be interrupted by the Death Animation… because duh… Nioh is the king of One Hit Kills… the upgraded version increases the size of the Hitbox… it can also catch NPCs trying to cicrcle around you…
Theres a bunch of other stuff the Dual Swords can do… its the Akuma of weapons in this game… its got something for ever situation… the only thing I could never get is a good punish move… the spear seems to do this better.
All the Axe skills are are just similar versions of its base moves… its a Guard Break weapon… thats literally all it can do… its awful for punishing, its super slow, its got god awful reach and tracking… but if you need Guard Breaks fast then even without Reforging The Axe can pull it off…
Not suitable for a main weapon but its good to have as an ace up your sleeve…
It also doesn’t require as much Ki usage as you think… its just slow.
My tests with the Odachi, Tonfas and Kusarigama are inconclusive… I’m not good enpugh with these weapons to tell if they work right.
Seriously ■■■■ this game and its RNG ■■■■■■■■…
So right when the DLC Finally adds a Genuinely new boss and new enemies… they went ahead and ruined them by giving them Gigantic Health Pools… I’m talking more health than Khalameet and Midir… COMBINED…
Sigh…
Oh I almost forgot… While doing the Muneshige Benchmarking I managed to get his Smithing Text to drop and guess what… its forget with Demon Horns !!!
So now I have no excuse to keep using the Red Demon Set… well other than the fact that its still better than everything else that craftable.
Edit :
So I got some more smithing texts… I got the text for the Red Demon’s Spear so I’l never have worry about full sets ever again…
I also picked up Mitsunari’s Armor (Gallantry) Smithing Text… but thats not the one I wanted… see… I was actually looking the Justice Ministry Smithing Text… I could farm it in Sekigahara where Otani dies in one combo… but getting there takes too long.
So I decided to do it in that Double Boss Fight where Both Mitsunari And Otani come at you… Mitsunari’s Spawn is staggered so that makes it easier.
After an hour I finally got it to drop.
So I pay a visit to Tome… hand her the texts and… well well well… Justice Ministry Requires no Special Rare Materials… Gallantry Set requires no special Materials either… but ■■■■ that set… its useless. So thats good… Justice Ministry is the most convenient Set… for NG+… its ■■■■■■■ useless for the first playthrough simply because you get it so late… really hate it when games do that… its like Developers are afraid players will have too much fun so they just hide all the good stuff at the end.
Are you using your prestige points and also getting those special points from Tome and her father that allows more tool belt slots, skin, and other additions to your character?
Just checking since a lot of players are not aware of these add ons available.
I’ve always used prestige points… not necessarily because I want to… I do it so that ■■■■ notification icon will stop bothering me everytime I pop open the menu… I have to get rid of those things. They really erk me.
As for Tome… I never get those points because I rarely use the forge and never buy stuff from her… she never has anything usefull.
Do you blame them ?.. its only useful if you can get the game to stop being an RPG once you hit the item level cap… and this doesn’t happen until you kill OrochiMaru (lol… I mean… thats basically who the villain is… right ?) .
And by then alot of people will just bail out because duh… game’s over… there’s entirely way too many games coming out to bother with NG+ modes… very unfortunate because your character in both Nioh and SoulsBorner is pathetic for the entire first playthrough.
Gosh… me and my rants… I need to play something fun one of these days… if only because it will get me to shut up.
Well you can get 2 extra tool belts from Tome and her dad. so thats like carrying 24 items in your tool belt. I found that too be too much for me to cycle through in a fight, so I cut it down to 3 tool belts.
Its good to have all those magic shots on hand and other items for tough battles.
Okay I got all the money’s and my inventory is getting full because I’ve been hording Every Divine Gear I pick up…
So now I need to set aside a whole hour to to go through it all and get rid of the stuff that doesn’t give me damage…
Then I need to use Divine Fragments to make my weapons actually scale with the bloody stat I’ve been pouring all my souls into… seriously this is by far the most confusing part…
Strength and Skill are essentially the Nioh equivalents of Dark Souls’s Stength and Dexterity… except in Nioh they do absolutely Nothing unless you get lucky enough to get the Change To Attack special effect on the right weapon to actually make it scale…
So there I am sitting on 80 Skill wondering why my ■■■■ is only doing 300 Damage
What a ■■■■■■■ waste…
■■■■ Ki Pulse and Stances and all that ■■■■… this game is just like every other RPG that has come before and probably every RPG thats coming after it… its all about the numbers and how to make them get bigger.
I can’t tell you how ■■■■■■■ infuriating it is to go through all the effort to learn how to play the game the way I thought the developers wanted me to play it by using all the mechanics only to do peanut levels of damage and die in one hit… then somebody who gets lucky at the forge comes in and does 10 times more damage and never changes stances or uses the Ki Pulse…I mean… good for them… but This bad design… even by RPG Standards… which honestly aren’t even that high.
LoL… and all I want to do is do more damage so I can just finish the game… I’m farming for this ■■■■ so I can play Tome’s Slot Machine and get my damage just so I can finish thw game on normal difficulty… its not even freaking max difficulty… its literally the very first difficulty and I have to farm this crap to balance it all out. I really cannot believe the same studio that made Ninja Gaiden also made this ■■■■■■■■… I mean if it was the same studio that made DoAX Venus Vocation… then yeah sure I could believe that…
LoL… and they wana do it again… sigh…its fine I’ll be playing DoA6 anyway by the time Nioh 2 is out.
Have you ever been in a situation where you try to use an Elixir and then William throws an item or tries to use a spell ? Then you look down and realise you’ve got the wrong menu active…
Yeah imagine that but 4 times as bad… thats why I don’t increase my Short Cut limit… its just another source of frustration.
I already have my eyeballs occupied with looking at the stamina bar so I can time Ki Pulses, Looking at the shortcuts to make sure William is actually applying the buffs (a side effect of the Instant casting Mystic arts and Unlimited Jutsu Special effect)… and looking at the Stance Diagram thing to make I’m in the right stance…
I literally barely have any time to look at the enemies I’m supposed to be fighting because of this game’s Interface Design… so I can’t have more shortcuts… even if I do want them.
I actually made it all the way up to Orochimaru using only Stones and Elixirs in my shortcuts… but as the enemies get spongier I had to start using magic to increase my damage and thats where the shortcut confusion started… I literally didn’t even want to use magic… the game forced me into to beat certain bosses…
@FallofSeraphs76
Have you made use of Buffered Stance Switching ?
I figured out that your potential Ki is not tethered to the attack you performed it from… you can use this to save your self some Samurai Points…
For example… the Tonfas have a Skill called demon dance… its essentially like Living Water (allows you to perform a Ki Pulse while dodging) in that you have to buy this skill 3 times… one for each stance…
But I found that when you attack from High Stance and you begin recovering… the Ki Pulses and Dodges don’t have to be from that stance… so I just use the long animation of High Stance attacks to buffer Stance Changing and the game actually reflects that change in the HUD wgile the animation is going… from there I can do whatever I want from the other stance…
This technique really shines when you use it with Ki Pulse related moves like Spear Stance, Demon Dance and Living Water…
Because those techniques all require you to be in the right stances to use them…
So for Demon Dance I only buy the Low/Mid Stance versions and if I want to Demon Dance from High Stance then I can just buffer a stance change during the animation and Pulse to get the low stance version… and just like that… I save about 4 or 5 Samurai Points using Dexterity alone.
Same thing with Spear Stance change… its smarter to buy the Fluidity Mystic Art so you can get the Stance Change from all stances… it costs about 7 Samurai Skill Points… without it… you can only use Spear Stance Change In High Stance… atleast thats how it seems at first… same deal… buffer changes into high stance before the animation ends and you can use High Stance Pulse Techniques from whatever stance you want…
Now this is tricky because the Pulse Technique for the spear is in High Stance so that means you need to buffer your inputs from low mid or even low stance… they have shorter animations… so its going to require alil more dexterity to pull it off… and not only that… you have buffer another Stance Change again so you don’t accidentally attack using High Stance attacks when you want Mid Stance attacks… LoL… this level of IPS (Inputs Per Second… yes I just made that up) is even worse than Free Cancelling Pai Chan’s Max Damage Juggles in DoA5.
I do use the Ki pulse from dodging a lot…but I didnt know you can buffer it. Thats very interesting and very cool you figured it out. Thanks for sharing.
Its a weird feeling when I take something I learned in Fighting Games and apply it somewhere else…
Also I came up with the idea only because I needes bigger punishes but safe escapes… so I figured… why not… let me change stances while wait for William to Recover…
In President Evil 5 you could reload weapons using the inventory menu… and reloading weapons the normal way takes a while. So why not combine the two… when you reload a weapon… pop open the inventory and reload another weapon simultaneously… or if you’re using a weapon with a long reload time… you can just reload manually way faster using the menu…This is good for Shotguns and Magnum Revolvers that have 3+ seconds reloading animations… you can always do it faster through the menu.
Okay… I’m broke… gonna try the Boss Fight Again and if theres still no chance then theres nothing I can do… because all forms of Prgression have been cut off… and I’m done Grinding… so this better work.
Edit :
FINALLY !!! Change To Attack Dexterity A-
So apparently Tempering Is A Thing… I never bothered with it because tbe game unlocks it long before I can use it and then once again… gets greedy with the Resources needed to use it…
Unfortunately I got the Perk on an Axe instead of one of the weapons I actually have Skills for… but that drives home my argument about why this game is so ■■■■■■… because I went back to that same Boss and using only the Axe’s basic skills got it down to 30% percent compared to the 70% from before using my Odachi… all because one Perk tripples my Damage Output…
So now that make me wonder… why even bother with Strength or Skill ? Because Magic and Dexterity unlock Jutsu and those other two don’t really do anything… so if I can get a weapon that was intented for Strength Builds to scale with my Ninjutsu then why the hell would I bother with levelling Strength ?
Actually you know what… I still have one Book of Reincarnation and I have another Axe that Scales With Strength A-. So I can back up a save… Respec and see if it can scale better with Strength… it will have to because other wise what’s the point ?
Edit 2:
So I have like 90 Umbracites…
How the ■■■■ did that happen ? Because I know I didn’t do 90 Twilight Missions… and how do I get green Umbracite ?
Edit 3:
Okay so I have an Idea… but I need Yagatarasu Set to make it work… which I can forge because it requires a resource I have no clue how to get since I just found out even the Boss dropping isn’t guaranteed.
But if I could get that then I don’t have to worry about Ammo as much.
Edit 4:
Never mind… didn’t need it… two cannon shots and it was over… well obviously it wasn’t over immediately but after the shots the fight badically won itself.
One More Mission Left… So I don’t know what to expect… but I bet its really ■■■■■■■ cheap because the mission description had all 5 Red Swords…
right now I’m using Iga-Style Fire Ninjutsu which is okay against Yokai bosses… It would be better if I could Get Discored to work but stupid resistances keep ■■■■■■■ me over… if the bosses Is human then I’l try some paralysis cheese loops…
If theres two of them then I don’t know… because I’ve never actually completed a two boss mission… so I’l just assume its that… plus Infinite living weapon… again.
@FallofSeraphs76
Have you tried Demon Discord ? Its not easy to setup but It pays off significantly better than Onmyo Debuffs…
I’m going to breed my weapons just for Demon Discord… because you can steam roll Yokais with it… its getting discord to work on humans thats tricky… because they block and dodge.
Not familiar with it…is it a DLC item?
Nope…
Its a Special Effect that gets triggered when you inflict an enemy with two different Status Ailments Simultaneously.
Its situationally usefull.
Edit: oh forgot to mention… You can only trigger Discord with the 5 Elemantal Statuses… so Poison and Paralysis won’t triggered Discord…
That sucks because Ninjutsu’s Primary Statuses are Fire and Poison… luckily I got Daiba-Washi for Wind…
You should consider trying to make a Living Weapon Build… I’m not going to because I only got one Respec Book left but you could if you want to… there’s a couple Onmyo Utility Spells that can make it work… and Tome can hook you up with a Spirit Scaling Perk for your weapons.
Oh ok, I know what you mean now…Im just not real familiar with all the names of items, weapons, NPCs, status, ect…
Yeah Ive used that before by using earth shot and Water sword, or poison and fire.
Somebody went through the Trouble of making a video describing a few of the techniques I mentioned earlier… and then some.
And they even made a Combo Video…
See ? This is what the game should look and play like… but Team Ninja was like Nooooooooo… lets copy From Software.
LoL… so rather than getting High Octane Sword Ballet… we get this instead:
And I thought Chain Back Stabs Loops in Dark Souls was bad…
Edit :
So I think I found something… so you know when you hit an Human Enemy so hard that they stagger backwards almost falling over but then scramble back up on their feet… it turns out if you hit them during that Animation… They will fall flat on their asses and you can poke them in the belly. Infact… I think I’ve seen this animation before… it looks identical to Sit Down Stuns in DoA…
Becareful though… don’t get it confused with another animation that kinda looks similar. In some cases you’l see human enemies get knocked back so hard that they almost lose grip on their weapon… I mean you might be able to get a free hit but the animation is just so short… this also looks like DoA’s Guard Break Animation.
To get the Sit Down Stun with the Spear… just use the Spear’s Charge Version of the Strong Attack… I forgot its name.
So I’m doing the Ocean Roars Again on way of the strong… Twilight Edition.
I died 8 Times… always by falling into to the water. But rather than raging I burst into laughter… I think it was funny purely because I had already spent my souls so I was like ■■■■ it… YOLO Baby !!!
Okay so now I need to figure out how I’m going to ■■■■ Umi-Bozu’s ■■■■ up using my Ninjutsu because apparently the flame pillars don’t work in Way of the Strong… besides I’d rather not get distracted by the Bozu Juniors in Phase 2…
So all I have is Fire Trap, Shurikens and my Damas… but I can’t equip all of them at the same time… I can also burn Bozu with the good old Quick Change + Touch Me Not Combo…
Touch me not does huge fire Damage…
I really want Discord though… maybe I can just chuck some Guardian Spirits at him…
Edit :
Yeah I need to figure out all the Elemental Shenanigans… because Discored really is good… so I need to find ways of making it work on Humans…
Edit 2:
Well… I managed to grind the difficulty down from 5 swords down to three… and I’m rocking a Discored Build… lets hope I don’t run into anything with a high resistance to Fire or Water… or Wind… time to put this game to bed… hopefully.
Edit 3:
So I get properly ■■■■■■ by one of the new enemies while is was test driving my Water Kusarigama… so I respawn and get my Revenge… only for the Game to crash… lol… next time I boot it up I better remember to pick up that first Kodama.
So I think I may have to change Guardian Spirits again… I’ve been using Diaba-Washi and Raiken for so long… I need a water Spirit with a cheap AoE… its going to be hard to beat Daiba-Washi’s Windstorm… that thing was the Human Killer.
And if my Ninjutsu doesn’t work out… I can switch to Yagatarasu without leaving the mission… I must say… this game is alot more fun when you get to use your Guns…
Edit 4:
So apparently Shadowround doesn’t work… well it does… but it doesn’t Stack with your other unlimited percentages… It simply overwrites it with its own flat percentage. LAME !!!
So I deliberately emptied my Cannon Ammo… just so I can use The Cannon more often with Improvised Munitions Scrolls… I feel like the game is deliberately being greedy just so the scroll seems like its more useful.
You know… like… how a doctor secretly poisons you just so it seems like he’s always necessary for a cure.
Don’t be greedy Team Ninja… just give people more fun.
Edit 5:
One Boss Left… and by golly shes a ■■■■■■■ Damage Sponge… like Even more spongier than the Ogress.
But I did manage to discord her ■■■… I just don’t know how…
More importantly… it wore off very quickly… I had Living Weapon Ready and she only had 20% Health Left but neither of my Guardian Spirits have enough Might to sustain this boss’s Pounding… although… thanks to my iga style Set Bonus I do recover one of each of my Ninjutsus… but what good is that if I can’t kill her…
Oh wait…I know how I Discorded her… I hit her with some Wind Spirits and then she one shotted me while I tossed a bomb… this triggered my Deidara Style Substitution Jutsu and she caught Fire…
LoL… but she recovered after I hit her with one combo…
You know what… ■■■■ It… lets try Some Passive Punishing with Poison… because her ■■■ is so huge I don’t even think I need the Shuriken… I’l manage with Bombs alone…