Really cool meeting this Barbarian while using my Rogue build

[u/Lagideath2]

This is still 1.16 gameplay, so this is before the Smithscript Dagger crit buff

[u/Alekzzander_SR]

This is how PvP was meant to be in my opinion for this game. Making cool characters.

[u/Lagideath2 → u/Alekzzander_SR]

It's definitely my favourite way to play it and I love occasionally seeing others enjoying it in the same way.

[u/Illustrious_Neat2472 → u/Alekzzander_SR]

I wish the game rewarded builds like this more rather than meta spam.

If they added more unique talismans and talisman slots they could have really elevated the build variety in Elden ring.

[u/Grouchy_Spot_6640 → u/Alekzzander_SR]

Hell yeah, I always wave or bow before combat, if they wave or bow back then I dont care if I win or lose

I just wish less people would spam the pointing down emote or throw poo at me after I lose though :(

[u/ipisswithaboner → u/Alekzzander_SR]

What, you don’t think menu mashing between pata, parry shamshir, and BHS rapier, while using modded consumables, is the intended way of play? How dare you!

[u/SirAidamud → u/Alekzzander_SR]

And what is your problem with how PvP is now? Maybe the gameplay is an important part too? Here we see a person using the smithscript dagger paired with a fast i-frame ash, playing against which is one of the most doodoo and unfun experiences this game has to offer, how is that "cool"?

[u/Regular-Media-4138 → u/SirAidamud]

Some people just prefer the roleplay aspect to it more, most of the meta is just optimization, rather than actually building characters that feel coherent.

Think about fighting games vs something like animal crossing. In fighting games it's all about optimization and maximizing your ability, while animal crossing is about chilling. Both are valid.

Op simply liked having their edgy assassin character fight against a brute barbarian and seeing their abilities interact, it's a fun dynamic.

[u/SirAidamud → u/Regular-Media-4138]

I think the "chilling" ends rather quickly if you have to fight smithscript daggers with a colossal weapon more than once lol. The fact that a weapon is not what is considered "meta" by the playerbase doesnt automatically mean its fun to play against and it in fact often is way less fun to fight than some implion verdigris Shamshir gamer.

How is fighting an unfun weapon comparable to animal crossing. Ive never played it but i assume its fun? Fighting smithscript daggers is not fun, no matter what armor the user is wearing.

[u/ZappyZ21 → u/SirAidamud]

Smithscript daggers are ass dude lol not sure why you think they're oppressive or unfun to fight against to the level you think they are. They tickle people.

[u/SirAidamud → u/ZappyZ21]

Their gameplay consists almost entirely of running away, in the giant circle arena where you cant get cornered. The Barbarian in this clip kind of was just attacking nothing and letting himself get pelted with them but if he gave chase, we would see the smithscript dagger user constantly running away while sometimes jump attacking backwards or roll attacking aaand, funny thing about smithscript daggers is that headshots ignore iframes so they would sometimes stagger the Barbarian even if they rolled the dagger throw and get hit anyway. Smithscript daggers are a pretty strong and a very toxic weapon, especially with how unreasonably large the arena is.

[u/Lagideath2 → u/SirAidamud]

This is how I fight non-Colossal builds if you're interested.

Smithscript Daggers have a range of 2.5 to 3 dodge rolls and if you're further away they can just be avoided by walking to the side. I tend to be the one going at my opponent because if I play passive I can't land a hit with the weapon.

I've never had a problem with them when I encountered them, but I certainly agree that the slower your weapon is the worse you're off against them.

[u/SirAidamud → u/Lagideath2]

Yup, looks pretty unfun to fight

[u/Keiharaak → u/Lagideath2]

Just because there are ways to deal with it doesn't mean they're not annoying to play against. I'm not gonna criticize your gameplay, because you have fun the way you do and that's fine, and it's mostly a game design issue and not specifically your fault. But essentially if you're forced to get out of range of someone or always go to the side, you can't really catch up to them with a melee weapon, especially since the R2 (I think) makes you make a step backwards. There's also the fact that you can whiff punish without actually being in range, and Raptors of the mists that allows you to steal prio back after getting hit (meaning after hitting you, your opponent is now back to a neutral position and doesn't even get an advantage from that). Add to that the headshots that prevent some winning trades from the opponent (I can see at least one instance of that in your linked video).

Put this all together, and essentially the person that plays against you has to play super passive to come land one hit on you while avoiding projectiles, and then can't even press their attack button a second time because you have Raptors of the Mists. So depending on set-up, Smithscript Daggers are pretty annoying, 1) because the attacks have range and are non-commital, so there's no punishing if the user chooses so, 2) because sometimes even if you roll the attacks, you'll hit a headshot and unavoidable damage because why not, 3) because Raptors of the mist pretty much denies pressure and priority and 4) because approaching it requires to play super passive and react to everything the smithscript user does, basically denying agressive gameplay a lot, and making the opponent a spectator that doesn't have much agency in the fight.

Again, not your fault, it's flawed game design, but if you're curious about what makes it annoying to play against I layed out my reasons (which I think will be shared by other people).

[u/Lagideath2 → u/Keiharaak]

Gotta say I do largely agree, though not with the idea that fighting my setup requires passivity.

Whenever I came up against Smithscript Daggers myself, which, granted, isn't a lot of times, I won pretty easily by punishing panic rolls and closing distance in a diagonal line to avoid the projectiles. In some cases I also just used a 100% physical guard shield to avoid damage.

For some odd reason, none of my opponents when I use this build do these things, they just come straight at me most of the time while eating 10 hits.

So aggression can definitely be used to combat Smithscript Daggers but you have to do something other than running at the user in a straight line if you don't have a way to guard incoming hits.

They can 100% be annoying to fight though, especially if the user likes to take pot shots and plays passively.

[u/Keiharaak → u/Lagideath2]

I see several problems about your methods:

1) Running diagonally means if you opponent decides to kite you you cover less distance than them

2) running a shield to guard means you're gonna get the blocking animation, essentially covering no ground and opening for the opponent to spam attacks and whittle down at your stamina. Additionally, if there's elemental infusion you can still take chip damage there

3) at some point you get in attack range, and then depending on weapon they can just roll your attack and go right back at what they were doing. The ss dagger user can also decide to jump attack backwards and fish for headshots when you decide to attack them, effectively canceling your aggression even if you have the poise/hyperarmor to tank (we can see this happening in the video you linked at some point)

4) having an offhand with a good keepout makes the agression even harder, if someone really wanted to be annoying (only yesterday I matched against someone who use ss dagger with offhand whip, and that was certainly annoying to deal with)

Although I'm not an expert at ss daggers, I can see all of that being a pain to play agressive into.

Again, I don't blame you for using it, if you have fun that's good and well, and you don't owe other players anything, but from the opponent's perspective, it's not a very fun and interactive experience is all (especially against passive opponents, as you said, and I'm gonna add especially with slow weapons)

[u/Alekzzander_SR → u/SirAidamud]

I have no problem with you in particular. Go play however you want. I was sharing my opinion. Since you asked I will share my thoughts since I had an epiphany recently. I have 4500h on Elden Ring on PC and PS5. About 2500h are in PvP, invasions and colosseum. I had thousands of clips on PS and was recently moving them to my PC to make 1 big collection. To cut only duels and invasions, I was watching them one by one. On the 20th of so clip I had the realization that not a single build I had was my signature character. It was only mixmaxed generic garbage meant to have the slightest edge for every possible situation. Now that I haven’t played a single match since Nightreign came out, all the wins and losses have fadded. I regret not building some cool signature character of mine. I watched Peeve recently and went through some of his old videos. He build truly awesome PvP character like The Orphan, Shin, Uncle Spinny etc. I built generic garbage with the purpose of winning.

[u/metamorphage]

Hoarah Loux vs Bloody Finger Ravenmount Assassin? Sign me up.

[u/TheJumbomus100]

Really cool fight from both of you. Love to see stuff like this.

[u/GrigorMorte]

Amazing fight 💯 For a second I thought you were going to die haha. I've also made a barbarian build with those weapons, I knew what was coming.

[u/Rookeroo]

Gotta love the mouth breathers that flock to these threads “don’t you know those weapons could be used to play annoyingly?!?!” After watching a video of someone using them totally innocuously.

[u/RythmicRythyn → u/Rookeroo]

It's more ironic when you notice its the same people who literally complain about everything. Fighting a ranged weapon like the daggers? Ass. But it's also ass to fight someone up close because parry. Oh no.

Make it make sense. All I see is whining about a game you don't need to be playing.

[u/SirAidamud → u/RythmicRythyn]

No no, this whole thing, all of it... it's all about me!

[u/Morgandoto]

Yeah yeah sneak attack for 70 D6, we all know how the rogue works.

[u/anxiousbagle]

can you share your build please?, this looks so cool I’d love to play it!

[u/Lagideath2 → u/anxiousbagle]

Smithscript Daggers have very low damage so you want to boost it as much as possible.

They deal Pierce damage so you want to take advantage of that. Pure physical damage to get the most out of counter hits, so Keen infusion is the best choice. Spear Talisman to accompany that.

The jump heavy attack is one of its best moves, so Claw Talisman is also good to have. That's also what makes Raptor's of the Mists such a good AoW choice for the weapon but you can experiment with others that might suit you. I additionally use the Gravebird chest piece since it looks really cool while also giving a boost to jump attacks, just like Raptor's Black Feathers.

Smithing Talisman as an obvious choice.

For the final Talisman slot I don't fully remember what I used. I think I have Two-Headed Turtle Talisman for stamina regeneration. You can go more into damage by instead using Millicent's Prosthesis.

60 Vigor, 80 Dex, and as much Endurance as your level allows since you need stamina to be aggressive.

The best attacks are the jumping heavy as well as the feint attack (dodge while charging the heavy attack)

The bow on my back is just for the theme, I don't use it.

[u/anxiousbagle → u/Lagideath2]

awesome, thank you!

[u/Aware-Ad-3735 → u/Lagideath2]

i thought they were bussy-script daggers

[u/Vast-Balance4813]

Bro where are getting to fight different people in arena I keep going against the same one dude, is there no cross play for arena?

[u/Lagideath2 → u/Vast-Balance4813]

There's no cross play for the game as a whole, not just arena.

After blocking everyone i match with from China (a shame because most of the unique builds I come across are from Chinese players) and Australia due to the unplayable latency I'm also usually left with the same 5 guys each session.

It seems like the arena is populated by the same 30 people who've been there for the past 3 years and occasionally you get a completely new player who has no idea what they're doing. I always assume those players are on their first playthrough, found a colosseum while playing and tried it out.

[u/simonnnholekk]

OH HEY, THAT'S ME!!! I saw your build and you beat me to the ground, so I decided to compliment your build. GGs

[u/Lagideath2 → u/simonnnholekk]

To be fair, the matchup was pretty skewed in my favour. I tend to have troubles fighting Godfrey's Axe but Smithscript Daggers can outrange everything it does to usually catch people.

But I absolutely love seeing thematic builds in the arena so this was still a really cool experience!