My obsession? My favorite weapon in these games are the rapiers so my own thoughts on the weapon are based entirely on the reality of how the game is balanced. I’m also only using daggers and great shields as an example of how you can easily frame things to be convenient for whatever narrative you want to push, not as an actual example of balance. You can make anything sound broken by omitting details which you did for the UGS and are now apparently doing for the great shield too apparently.

Great shields can block attacks well but you can’t two hand while using it, they slow stamina regeneration immensely and for heavy enough attacks it can break through. You could easily paint rolling to be broken as well, just press circle when they swing and it won’t hit. Obviously rolling isn’t broken but when you leave our information like this and simplify you can make it whatever you want. Keep in mind that I prefer rolling, I don’t make out with pictures of great shields either. I just don’t unfairly malign different gear or builds for the simple reason of it not being what I like.

The reason why people use bosses as an example of game balance is because it pushes all of the mechanics to its limit. It can shine a light on somethings that’s broken or significantly underpowered by putting it up against something designed to push players and their build to its max, killing a hundred random enemies doesn’t exactly test out much since these enemies were never designed to push the player to the extreme when it came to their skills. They were still tests of course but in comparison to bosses they are always much more simplistic in the way you have to approach them so they be described in a way to sound easy regardless of whether or not they were ever supposed to be hugely complex.