>>713596558
>retards who had zero creativity were attracted to those builds
No you stupid faggot, anyone who didn't want to lose out on the ridicolous DPS race did.
>>lingering flame
>>any shield with spell parry
>>bow + dagger + stone ring
>>fire snake
>And so on.
None of this shit matter because the gameplay is literally having an infusion + buff that matches your dedicated damage stats. In Dark Souls 3/Elden Ring each build has multiple sources of damage all avaiable and infusions and buffs are mutually exclusive because they are different options for different builds with different stat distributions

Dark Souls 2 wasn't an RPG. There was zero incentive to the concept of build variety when it all came to stacking buffs. Pure physical builds didn't exist because who's the retards that would give up casting Resonant Weapon and have massive AR increase over any kind of weapon. There's no tradeoffs, no

Invaders were all pidgeonholed into spiced up heals or using warmth, while twinking was all time high due to the sheer buff insanity and players not even having to take a non scaling infusions. You would do more damage against a lava boss with fire infusion + fire buff + balm spam than with a correct elemental counter.
Nevermind armor being useless and absorbtion buffs not scaling and stacking additively on flat reduced damage values, rendering them pointless spells.