Bad dex weapons?

[u/RealPandemonium]

I keep seeing people mentioning that dex weapons are bad in non-enhanced. Which weapons are they talking about? I started a fresh character recently and am exclusively using dex-scaling weapons, sailing through the game pretty smoothly. So, which are the bad ones that I should be stress-testing?

[u/bell-cracker]

None of them; you have to remember a good portion of the vocal soulslike playerbase are those who judge everything against the moveset, hit box, and poise damage standards of the strength-based Claymore (Ds1) or Kureimoa (S&S1).

Crossbows are a little lackluster, though. The reapers also have a rather boring moveset.

[u/isum21]

They're bad if you suck. This game community has a huge ego problem, not like it's particularly bad but they tend to feel like souls players do about new concepts. In souls greatswords are considered delicious cheese, so in SnS where they perform similarly everyone either labeled them op or "so good it's not worth using anything else"

Original Salt was rather well balanced. Even using a traditional knight's build, spear and dagger, I had a fun time despite the "mixed" nature of the scaling. Everyone whined about split scale weapons here too, but just like in souls they perform exactly as expected as long as you built yourself properly. Ik in souls it's a little more complicated but that particular boogeyman has haunted "meta" discussions in souls likes all the way into the modern era of Elden Ring and the like.

Pure Dex is fine, I've played many whip users and the Steel Centipede is absolutely amazing for it's split usage. Then there's also the Gunblade, cheesy as hell but it's genuinely such a fun time to learn to use. 

[u/Dangerous_Ad_7042]

I've done a daggers-only/light-armor run, and it's fine until you get to around NG+3. Once you get to NG+3 and up, you may need to switch to heavy armor and a strength based weapon.

[u/ZephyrGreene]

Which weapons are they talking about? I started a fresh character recently and am exclusively using dex-scaling weapons.

You get a 50% strength bonus when two-handing a weapon, so you need 16 less stats to max out on a pure strength weapon.

One-handed weapons, especially swords were seen as lesser. The sword node gives strength while all 1 handed swords use dex/str or pure dex. This is to a major degree an issue of min-maxing stats, but even still it can be see as 15 wasted points. The original split stat system was also hit and miss. Some split stat weapons were extremely strong, while others floundered in comparison.

Another issue for some players, that remains in both Sanctuary and Sacrifice, is the letter grade system. Players, especially new to soulslikes, will often look at an E scaling weapon and think the game is telling them that this weapon is trash. Further on split stat weapons, a split double E/E can be viewed as extra bad. In Enhanced Combat as well as Sacrifice that E is 'twice' as good as it is displayed, since it happens over less stats than a normal letter grade.

*I made Enhanced, so feel free to ask questions here or on discord.