For it to be viable against the oomph that enchanted weapons bring is probably why blood dmg scales with Phys runes.

We'll have to agree to disagree that bloodtinge and/or the chikage are op, especially when the mets of the game is so young. My only point is that the only option for a bloodtinge-scaling melee weapon actively damages us, can't be enchanted/papered, and we can't party and thus become parrybait without some serious trickery.

As someone who uses it I gotta say I'll argue to the death that it's not op. Its powerful sure, but in terms of comparing it to other weapons? No way, not when you consider papers/enchanting, movesets, utility a la weapons that can fire a surprising shot and parry, the Chikage does not outshine in a way that makes it 'OP'. Things that are OP in a souls game end up used and abused by 90% of the pvp community, which leads me to my next point.

There's a wide range of pros and cons to each play style and as someone who's put in an irresponsible amount of time into pvp on the Frontier on two characters (level 60, so not even with a fully upgraded loadout. And also a level 110, to check the 'level cap' meta), there is variety and balance on all levels of play. In my time with the level 110 character I fought a fair few people using starting weapons and weapons not considered by the community to be viable pvp tactics. And I've been wrecked by players who use those weapons well. I've even had one person pull off a sneaky poison.

Point is, the level of variety seen at all levels of pvp play on the Frontier leads me to think that there is not one outstanding OP strategy or loadout. There are some that are quite strong or effective, and some that can even oneshot you if you're not careful. But that's the bottom line here. Be careful, know your counters, and nothing is OP. Except lag, lag is OP as hell.

Bottom line, yeah lots of people are going to go for the bone marrow cannon oneshot, or the cheesy arcane/bloodtinge 'can't touch this' build, but there are counters to everything. Nothing I've seen is what I'd consider OP and I welcome challenges to that statement.