I just finished a "No Summons"-lite run of the base game and the DLC. I say "lite" because I made a couple exceptions for the DLC.
Welp. I'm going to jump on the side of those here who are calling bullshit on the DLC. I guess it's *possible" to commit to a build and make it work for the duration of the Land of Shadow, but hell if I could manage it.
I ran STR/FAI with a Banished Knight Greatsword/Blasphemous Blade until I gave up and went 100% Unga Bunga with the Giant Smasher. More on that later.
Impressions: the amount of roll catching is really too much. Some of the hit-boxes are complete bullshit (Radahn). The number of 20 hit combos some of these guys use ensures I'll never visit the Land of Shadow again. Also, I probably just suck.
Anyway, here's my after-game breakdown:
Dancing Lion --- hard, but once you get his moves down he's manageable. Good boss.
Knight in Gaol --- stun-locked with Giant Hunt. This worked for almost all of the bosses using the NPC model, and Death Knights.
Magic Demi-Human Guy --- went in there buffed up to all hell and burned him down with Taker's Flame. He got me a couple times, tho.
Golden Hippopotamus --- okay. these guys are manageable with decent positioning and some range. I spammed Taker's Flame and dodged. The big one got me a couple times.
Rellanna --- hard. but like Dancing Lion she's manageable once you learn her moves.
Furnace Golems suck and are un-fun. I killed the first one for the shield tear and ignored the rest.
Ghost-flame Dragons. I actually enjoyed fighting these. The dragons overall were fine. I never beat Bayle.
Metyr --- never beat her.
Midra --- OMG. This is where I started to be tempted to summon the Mimic Tear. I had to watch a couple YouTubes to figure him out. He went down without assistance but it was close.
Putrescent --- I had to get a great shield out for him. That's another thing: I'm sure I suck but there are quite a few nearly unavoidable attacks this time around that I simply had to figure out how to tank.
Messmer --- Fuck this guy. He flies across the arena as soon as you walk through the fog gate and has 3/4 different ways to be a wanna-be Malenia. Phase 2 is even worse with the camera flying all over the place.
This is where I gave up. I upgraded the Giant Smasher, respeced to full STR, summoned the Mimic and went to town on this nerd. You know what's better than 2 stun-locking, poise breaking, giant hammer wielding cavemen? Two of them.
I didn't summon for Gaius or that Giant Sunflower. I think I only ever summoned Mimic again at the final boss. But, I don't regret it, not for one damn second.
I put Prayerful Strike on the Hammer and tried to trade with him. Nope. Well, Mimic somehow could. I know it's cheesy as hell but I giggled like the Lord of Frenzy Flame himself while watching Mimic solo him across the arena with the HP regenerating Ash on his hammer. I really wanted this to be a fair fight but I lost my patience with From's bullshit during this fight. I noticed all the same problems everyone else has described: screen garbage all over the place, input reading, enlarged hit-boxes, FPS drops from Miquella's holy attack, etc. etc. So, I figured out how to survive his first couple 20 hit combos, ran the fuck away and summoned Mimic armed with the powered up HP regeneration hammer. I still had to dodge him if Mimic lost aggro, but Mimic miraculously survived all of his bullshit better than I ever could. It took a couple tries, but this got me through.
So, I persevered until the end with it, and I enjoyed the feeling of *almost* winning without summoning, but I'm not sure I enjoyed it overall. The silver lining here is that I went back to the base game and curb stomped Maliketh, Godfrey and Radagon/Elden Beast easily. So, not a total loss.