I have no idea what triggers that dark energy attack but I fought him like half a dozen times and one fight he just said "you know what fuck you I'm spamming this every other attack". Also it's absurdly hard to dodge. Like I got hit each time he used it and he used it dozens of times. Used about 40 life gems healing that one attack then died when he was near death.
What surprised me was how guy barely dodged lance hits but was never hit. I mean "barely" with a concept of red phantoms hitboxes in mind and all that. Boy was I stabbed and stabbed people myself with lance at all sorts of weird angles. Somewhat true for PvE too.
I like to swap ironclad for jester's when rolling/stamina regen is more important. Don't forget to numb it up bro!
Since (from what testing other people did) poise fills up like a status effect (e.g. poison), it's easier to stun people with the BSS R1. It usually takes a few straight sword hits before they stop being able to roll away from every single hit. Stunlocks are more dependent on movesets hence R1/L1 seems to stunlock because you are always moving forward. But poise STILL seems broken because a single hit from a greatsword seems to always stun me when other weapons with the same poise damage have no effect. Rapier has 10 poise damage and BSS 20 and yet it has infinite stunlock. I can't stunlock people for shit with two helix halberds (35 poise damage each). This shit just doesn't ever work the way you expect it. For example ALL greatswords with the "Bastard Sword" moveset have that 4 hit stunlock combo (Run R1 > R1 > R2 > R2) and it doesn't matter if you have stone ring or the target has maximum poise.
So the BSS/Rapier combo makes zero sense because I wasn't able to replace the rapier with other straight swords/katanas and still stunlock combo people for 10+ hits.
