I enjoy that another poster can come in and we can engage in a conversation and actually discuss the game for once. Shows the difference between the good posters and bad ones.
I have personally always felt like 'perfect balance' was imperfect. I like that some options are better than others so players can pick their own difficulty.
If you want a difficulty selector that doesn't completely compromise a significant number of items, why not just have an actual difficulty selector?
I know the idea of "adding difficulty selectors" to souls is controversial, because every hack fraud journalist who can't complete the game has claimed that not having a difficulty selector is racist or something.
But the reality is, Dark Souls (and elden ring) already have a difficulty selector. Instead of being a menu option, you instead have to find the correct series of items or spells that will immediately trivialise the game, usually through degenerate cheese like standing in a doorway and killing a boss with magic while they try to attack you but can't due to their size. Every game in the series can be made significantly easier, but not in a compelling or fun way, usually it just boils down to doing the right thing or knowing when a specific ambush is coming and avoiding it or finding ways to completely break the AI. That's not strategic or fun gameplay, it's just breaking the game as a cheap way of "beating the difficulty". FROM should instead focus on fixing all these loopholes, provide balanced weapon choices, and then if they want to let people choose difficulty, add some modifiers or mutators or whatever that players can enable on a new playthrough to restrict themselves in some way. Then, everyone is happy and nobody has a compromised playthrough.
I know retards like to whine about "the intended experience!!!!!!" but their argument is stupid and can be safely ignored. Ever played DS1 with DSFix? Congrats, you've undermined "the intended experience!!!!!". When the intended experience is bad you fix it. Adding difficulty options wouldn't compromise this vision, especially if one difficulty is labelled as the "intended" one.
The parrying dagger is specifically intended to be a try hard tool. Read the description:
"A knife with curved handguards. Designed to parry, turning foes' attacks against them.
For master of combat who anticipate every enemy strike and counter accordingly, this weapon is all they need."
It's a flavor weapon for "masters" who are so good they don't need anything other than this.
The fact that you posted this shows you don't understand my argument.
It being a "tryhard weapon for masters" doesn't change the fact that it's objectively and provably useless compared to virtually any other dagger with the same ash, so no sane player will ever use it, so it only ever wastes inventory space.
Being a "tryhard weapon" is a stupid reason to release it in an unbalanced state.
Please stop posting.