If FromSoft's vision of the game is to veer people away from a lot of options that are considered broken then that's totally fair. It's their vision and no one can stop them.
As always with that kind of thinking, audiences will always have their own takeaways on what that vision amounts to and what it represents. Designer's intent is always separable from the end result. The fact that people are so apprehensive to nerfs of some dominant options to me at least speaks to some of the weaknesses of how the game is designed in some respects, especially when it comes to its bosses. I know better than to argue about difficulty modes in a FromSoft related thread, but for a lot of people these options were actually a fun "easier mode" in and of itself, and who does it really harm to have some powerful options to default to in a game that will never reach a perfect sense of balance because of how its RPG type builds work? Some people might bring up PvP but some of the tools like Hoarfrost Stomp weren't even that good for it. Others will say that it prevents people from looking up OP builds, but powerful builds will still happen since asking for advice is embedded into the DNA of these games, and usually people only default to looking them up when the game world itself is giving them trouble to attain anything empowering. Personally I say if people want to cheese the game, especially in a vast open world where it can be very menial to figure out what rewards are worth pursuing, then more power to them. This is a single player game after all; one that can take over 70 hours for a first-timer to complete, and for a lot of people, the overpowered options didn't make the game "not challenging".
None of this precludes the notion that some nerfed and unnerfed tools will still remain pretty solid dominant options, but it's also undeniable that people will be getting left in the dust and forced reacclimate, whether it's because their builds are now worse, their materials have been put to waste, or otherwise. As someone who was running a STR build with a Greatsword, I found the Hoarfrost Stomp to be a great complement to a toolset I feel really disadvantaged with in the game. Now I kind of feel like I don't want to continue with this build, and having to shift things towards a different build/strategy is going to take some legwork I kind of wish I wouldn't have to do because the game becomes too tedious for its own good at times.
