50 str lets you 1hand the dgs. It has good raw base damage, and IMO it's a fun weapon to rush. At only 50 str it probably has more damage than others too (but not good scaling and only 5 upgrades available).


Tanking everything is pretty funny, I found it really hilarious when you go fight whatever boss and you just hold block and they can't do anything. I always preferred heaviest highest damage weapon and no armour, because it's more challenging and rewards timing and skill, which I find more interesting than say, full defensive or fast dex weapons. Zwei has better animation the bkgs or dgs so if you want something easier you can go that (or abandon str entirely and go ez mode dext? :P).


And yeah I'm sure you know how to already, but parry and bs let you kill stuff a lot faster. For a humanoid enemy (except non-final bosses) you can just walk up to them and parry riposte for instagib. It also has invulnerable frames, so you can go all "assassin's creed" and parry riposte or roll bs one at a time, even if you are fighting 20 enemies.

A good way to parry, if you can't be bothered memorizing timings, is to just parry when the enemy's frontswing animation is finished, you can parry any time up until the backswing begins - obviously unless you animation cancel that means you can't parry /after/ you are hit.