Pontiff was pretty fun, didn't find him to be super spammy, except for that one long combo he has in his first phase. He was the first boss to kill me more than 5 times, but I found the difficulty reasonable, there are several things you can do to make his phase 1 significantly easier, and phase 2 can be zerged down easily as he becomes much more passive. Also killed Old Demon King, was a pretty fun "traditional" souls boss with slow combos and a variety of aoes.
Smouldering Lake overall was shit, Irithyll itself was gud, while the dungeon was too small to really comment on the level design, but the jailers are really well designed enemies who force you to play in ways you usually wouldn't. Hoping for more of that as opposed to "try to twitch dodge my fast 5 attack combo scrub".
Surf Solar cvv artorias, manus, Ornstein & Smough, kalameet, fume knight, Capra demon, sir Alonne and more were some of the best bosses of the previous game and we're all in your face all the time and did the spam style attacks with little room for winding down.
... Literally none of those bosses had any kind of spam attacks, with the notable exception of Manus' combo. Some of them were aggressive, yes, but that's not what we're talking about here. I mean, ffs, Kalameet's longest "combo" is like 2 attacks, how in the world is that spam? Fume Knight is actually the reverse of this kind of enemy design in DS3, as he encourages careful and deliberate roll timing (and often just walking around attacks) rather than mashing the roll button in an effort to escape.
Yeah some of them don't fit for "spam" attacks.
Problem here is that "spam" people like to call here is that they are simply way more agressive than in DS1/2 where after each attack most of monsters had HUGE opening. So you combined circling + behind the shield and you "waited out" attacks learned monster pattern and when you felt "safe" you attacked.
This is why Manus fight in DS1 was so great. Because you couldn't fucking do it this time. You had to grab you balls and go all in instead of waiting for opportunities behind your shield.
In DS3 pattern is different. First of all there is level design which often doesn't give you way to freely test out new mobs because you don't fucking know just what will happen now or maybe something new will came up fucking you up so you usually fight in places where you meet new enemies
Secondly each monster comes with pack of !FUN! moveset that prevents usually people from circling monsters then moveset contains few nasty suprises for people who want to "test out" monster. Like mentioned pot guy who throws at you that pot if you wait long enough, then monsters know how to deal with shielded dudes because their moveset usually comes with moves against shield again we use that pot guy which bashes constantly you effectively sapping out completely your stamina and managing to guard brake you.
So yeah unlike rest of DS games this time testing out monsters if far more harder than earlier and so far at least for me going all in instead of wait out and see seems to be more effective strategy for new monsters (and you meet new monsters constantly every like 15 minutes which is amazing by itself).
Imo designer just studied what people where doing ins DS games earlier and said "you know what ? let's use this against them"
This is why this "SPAM" is prevelent in discussion despite fact that almost each monster will get stuned by most of your attacks effectively stoping them from "spaming" attacks.
Bro, really, you keep repeating this mantra about how the changes are meant to target shield-circles, but I never play Souls with a shield, and my first playthrough is always with some kind of very heavy weapon (currently the Profane GS in DS3) - and I find these changes very annoying.
Souls combat IS about waiting for opportunities, whether you have a shield or not - you either block, dodge, try to range attacks, or sometimes just walk into their blindspot. And the same is true in DS3, except now you are presented with the following choice: Either sit out of range, twiddling your thumbs, until the enemy finishes its 5 hit combo, or try to get the first hit in and stunlock it to death. That, in my view, is boring, simply because there's no middle ground between the extremes.
A lot of what you say just doesn't make much sense. Weird movesets, for instance, hurt non-shield playstyles much more, as shields don't require good timing, which is what is most difficult about reading unfamiliar movement patterns. In another post, you talked about how you rediscovered the backstep as a way to range enemy attacks and how this made you understand DS3 combat. Thing is, that is already what you would do in previous Souls games with any kind of heavy weapon, but it's harder in DS3 because it's harder to estimate the range of weird movement patterns, plus said movements often give enemies more range out of nowhere (see dual wielding Pontiff knights for an object lesson).
Finally, you think that "feeling out" enemies having been made more difficult is a good thing? What are you supposed to do instead, charge in hoping to stunlock them before they do anything? That's fucking retarded, and against the base philosophy of Souls, which always promoted caution and patience instead of reckless bravado. If Miyazaki wants to change that now, I daresay he should design a new combat system from scratch, as this one is ill-suited to this kind of change.
In my view, at the very least, "stunlock them before they stunlock you" combat is a serious downgrade from previous Souls games. For the moment (and I obviously haven't finished the game yet), DS3 has the worst combat mechanics in the series, alongside DeS, which is unfortunate, as unlike DeS, the game is much more combat-focused. A pity, really, as the content itself is exceptionally well made for the most part.
and i was wondering on my first playthrough why my estus heals so little and where are some life gems 
with 25 vigor i think i needed like 5 sips to get back to full health
