Talk:Parry and Riposte/@comment-29711892-20160929002935/@comment-4511886-20160929095413

This is caused by, what I personally like to call, the attack's "AR scaling." AR being attack rating, or the total value of all of your weapon's damage types.

Two-handing weapons will always improve damage with the normal attacks, because it will completely change the moveset to one that, usually, scales better with the weapon's attack rating. This is especially easy to test with the Drake Sword or an Uchigatana, since these weapons keep their exact AR but still does more damage when two-handed.

However, critical attack animations are always the same whether you two-hand the weapon or not. As such, two-handing doesn't make the attack scale better with your AR. Meanwhile, standard scaling does take effect in both scenarios, so a weapon scaling with strength will recieve a damage boost, equal to however much the AR increases from you having 50% more strength, for critical attacks as well.