Does anyone use the techniques?

I use techniques all the time. If the technique lets you take less damage - it's worth using in that situation. Plus some of them are a good mobility tools.

I can't get most of them to work reliably. Even the simple ones like the haduken only work sometimes, while I haven't been able to get some (up down right left x for example) to work at all. I can't be in the middle of a boss fight depending on a technique only to have it fail to go off, so I rarely count on them.

Out of curioustiy what system is everyone having issues with the techniques using, as well as those not having troubles? PS4 for me

PS4 user and I use the techniques quite often though I mostly use the katana and love jinrai and helmsplitter as well as the eleventh hour counter. I used them often and they are great for quickly grinding through some rooms. Walk in helmspit a flying enemy, grab drops and leave or when I was grinding lili tails in the train hallway I just repeated jinrai til I cleared the hallway and ran back to collect all the tails and mana flowers to replenish my MP. I can't do them reliably in the air though took me way to long to reach early areas using the triple kick with the kungfu shoes, but I eventually got where I wanted to go. I mostly use the D-Pad for all my inputs except when I used the shoes in the air, that input was easier for my with the joystick.

I'm on the PC using a Logitech F310.

Nope cause my weapon of choice, whips, only have one and I get better dps just rapidly swinging with landing cancels.

I only found out recently but if you master techniques, they're applied to ALL weapons of the same type. Katana has an absurd number of techniques you can use if you master them all. My favorite is the parry if you can get it to trigger. Such a satisfying feeling, like I'm playing Sekiro again.

There are some I regularly use, especially the whip tornado one (which, paired with Lethal Ring, was a great tool in doing bosses flawlessly). Some are useful and reliable, others not so much. It's one of my favorite features but it has one big flaw as far as I'm concerned.

One thing I really don't like is the fact that technique don't get added to the archives when you read about them, but only if you've used them. A lot of times I've read about some techniques I didn't have the weapon for and couldn't remember the specific weapons that had it to unlock it in my archives afterwards. That's a pretty nasty annoyance imo, because I'll have to resort to a guide if I want to add all techniques to my archives without creating all weapons and then running to bookcases like a madman.

Wait, so they ARE in the archives after all? I always assumed they'd show up in "techniques" and not in another section ("Journal" I thought was for the lore entries and nothing else). That's great then!