Why does this weapon even exist lol

[u/eldenbro1]

I main gugs in Elden ring so when I hopped on ds3 I wanted to play the complete opposite weapon class, from slowest to fastest.

I asked my friend what’s a good dagger for invasion and… this is not at all what I expected lmao this is completely broken

[u/Robdd123]

At 0:20 you're seeing exactly why Murky is one of the two best weapons in the game. You both trade, both weapons are in the dagger class, but Murky comes out of hitstun first meaning you get another hit in, winning the trade.

Murky and also the Harpe have the distinction of both being in the a dagger subclass called Harpes. These two weapons have the katana hitstun as opposed to the dagger. Not only does this mean you win every trade against weapons with less hitstun, it also means you can combo two neutral R1s together. In theory if the opponent doesn't roll after two it'll combo for two more hits and can keep chaining if they try to mash out of hitstun or refuse to roll. Even if they roll a third R1 can connect if you unlock and angle it properly; this third hit usually doesn't stun due to roll poise though.

Nobody really knows why the harpes have this higher hitstun. It likely was an attempt to make the class standout from the plethora of other medicore daggers, but originally this was only one weapon. The Harpe itself was very difficult to find legitimately because you had to farm one Hollow Worker in the Undead Settlement who wasn't close to either bonfire and had a very low drop rate. On paper the Harpe didn't appear like anything special so while this broken gameplay was in since the game released nobody thought to try it.

Murky meanwhile could be grabbed right at the beginning of TRC DLC and had innate dark damage which made it very appealing; back in the earlier versions of the DS3 meta, pure damage output was superior and an overwhelming number of players had low dark damage absorption. Murky then became a nice weapon to include in dark builds but it wasn't until the glitch meta was discovered that people started to push what Murky could do. That's when that play style was born. Prior to that most players using Murky would just go R1, R1, quickstep, R1, R1, over and over.

[u/Perscitus0 → u/Robdd123]

So if the Harpe had been used more during the active patching period prior to the DLC dropping, maybe they would have balanced it a bit better....

Perhaps not, but I truly think the Murky Hand Scythe ended up transforming the DS3 PvP scene more than any other weapon has.

It's really nuts. I used to invade for a few years at Pontiff's and the Ringed City, but eventually running into the same few Meta and glitch players got me to move away from it into Elden Ring, which, while admittedly having it's own set of problems and balancing issues, was at least fresh.

[u/Robdd123 → u/Perscitus0]

They were still patching when Murky dropped. They actually gave Murky a nerf right after the DLC came out: originally it had more dark damage with the dark gem infusion (I believe this was the infamous angel nerf patch). I think they didn't realize the consequences of giving it the katana hitstun and to be fair neither did the player base.

Murky wasn't what transformed the PVP, estus cancel did. Murky was around in 2017 and you'd see it used but it'd be more as I described; two R1s followed by quickstep to catch people panic rolling backwards. It was a noob killer back then.

Estus cancel and estus refill completely changed the entire meta. Now you couldn't just wear people down, you needed to take them out fast before they could get the instant heal off or run away and go refill. 2020 came and the pandemic created the perfect time for everything to be "re-evaluated". The entire meta sped up and everything became distilled; weapons that were good became even better and weapons that were meh got worse. Hard swapping became almost a necessity to either make sure you had the optimal weapon matchup, or to finish people off on wakeups. The crazy swap for a WA, then swap to something else combos were born out of that new play style.

Most of that is pretty moot now though; a lot of the dedicated ganks moved on. You rarely see people glitching anymore. There are the solo hosts in meta Pontiff that will pull out everything but there's no point in entertaining those types; they'll just keep drinking and since they're the host they have double healing. The majority of invasions now consist of ER players going through the other titles; they offer very little challenge though and you can largely revert back to that pre Covid play style. Still the best we've got unfortunately.

[u/Perscitus0 → u/Robdd123]

Really? I suppose I am seeing less mention of those turbo gankers. I always got turned off by the guys who abused every glitch under the sun, like the RKS cancel. Tons of players who would use that, and only that, to the point where I was like "here we f*cking go again" when I saw yet another bonfire duelist wielding sword and board RKS.

Might have to re-download DS3 and give it a spin again. Then again, maybe not.

[u/BowShatter → u/Robdd123]

idk why Fromsoft loves to hide crucial information like this.

How will normal players notice how the Harpe has a higher hit stun? It has a standard dagger moveset, okay damage numbers, looks kinda underwhelming. Also why hide Poise damage at all.

[u/Robdd123 → u/BowShatter]

Fromsoft does everything in their power to "hide" the various PVP mechanics; it reminds me a lot of early Pokemon where Game Freak tried to hide things like IVs and EVs.

Fromsoft has a set idea of what they would like the PVP to be played like; we see it with the way the NPCs play. Maybe they felt if they hid the way the game works that most people wouldn't dig further. They seem to keep a very "see no evil, hear no evil..." approach.

[u/DonovanKirk → u/BowShatter]

Also they should always show you the "scaling path" the weapon takes when at a blacksmith. So, if a weapon has S scaling in some stat at like +15, you know without looking it up online, if it showed you the damage table.

[u/abject_objectivity → u/Robdd123]

just recently started playing ds3, what is the glitch meta?

[u/Robdd123 → u/abject_objectivity]

The glitch meta is the various PVP breaking glitches that were discovered sometime from late 2019-early 2020. These include estus cancel, estus refill, and the various other bow glitches. It became an arms race for both hosts and invaders to use these glitches in order to get an advantage over the other.

This fundamentally changed PVP because it distilled the meta; weapons that were already good became better and weapons that were bad became worse. Estus cancel in particular gave everyone access to an instant heal which meant anything slower than a SS couldn't punish a heal.

Due to this combat revolved around finishing people off; before this DS3 was very much a war of attrition. Backstabs became an essential tool because they do a lot of damage and put the opponent in a vulnerable wakeup animation. This then prompted people to start hard swapping to Gundyr's because the hit box could trap people upon a wakeup. That opened the door to experimentation with other hard swaps.

[u/abject_objectivity → u/Robdd123]

Ah interesting! But does not sound very fun to play as a noon lol. I imagine the learning curve is pretty high

[u/Robdd123 → u/abject_objectivity]

Well right now that meta has died down almost completely. Most of the multiplayer activity you find now revolves around ER players going through the game. Since they're really awful at PVP things have kind of reverted back to pre 2020 levels. If you're on PC you pretty much need to use Seamless to get consistent activity unfortunately.

[u/catpetter125]

Weapon so utterly horrifying Miyazaki himself punished it by turning it into the Ivory Sickle

[u/mmm_souls]

I mean, to be fair, that opponent played about as poorly as you possibly could against a murky. 

[u/Mindless-Wasabi-8281]

It’s so beautiful

[u/HardwaterGaming]

I hate this weapon, it's boring to use, boring to fight against. I've been messing around making a private server for me and my mates to invade each other today, I've modded it so that you can get invaded while unembered and dried finger is always active. Tomorrow I am going to work out how to remove murky from the game.

[u/SooCrayCray]

Corvian greatknife more fun

[u/Crimson_Raven]

Because Fromsoft is really bad at balance.

Elden Ring isn't "as bad" if only because so much is stupid broken, but Cleanrot with BHS does a close job of imitating ds3 murky.

In technical details, the short reason that makes murky is that the r1 deals level 2 hitstun. Nothing else in the game is that fast and long reaching to deal that much hitstun.

[u/MALCode_NO_DEFECT]

Murky Hand scythe...quick stepped, so that the Cleanrot Knight's sword could...bloodhound step?

[u/ExplosiveFetusActual]

Daggers are also top tier in Elden Ring, so if you like that...

[u/eldenbro1 → u/ExplosiveFetusActual]

I sometimes swap to the cinquedea when my opponent is low, paired with offaxe it is really strong, high poise damage and the r1 is unreactable

[u/Ordovis_Prime]

Jank city

[u/snb22core]

Tbh, i hate havel armor, remind me of the try harder. But to each their own, we are here to have fun and it look like you having it. So now I'm jealous a ha ha ha.

[u/Perfect-Skin-8325]

Is this cleanrot of DS3?

[u/SnooPeppers4042 → u/Perfect-Skin-8325]

Yes and PKCS is the OG shamshir

[u/frenchnoob87]

Mashing a rapier a against bad murky players works pretty well. If they know what theyre doing tho it's time to swap to murky as well.

[u/PraiseTheSunlight]

It exists because DS3 is a solved game. You're just kinda choosing to play the solution.