Dark Souls II: The Thread, AND the Game!

[Surrealistik]

'dat reaction after beating the hacker though

Lol, felt pretty much the same way while I was watching this play out in real time.

[Tome]

Of the leaked DLC items, I like the shield the most. Weapon catalysts are just so much cooler, so having a shield I can cast sorcery hexes with is great.

Now if only there were a weapon that you could cast pyromancies with...

[Surrealistik]

I sometimes feel that way too. The only magic on the Dual Zwei build is Great magic Weapon. However, I've always been infatuated with the concept.

Sometimes, a volley of Blinding Bolts will change the tide for me. The extra points in faith for buffs feel kind of worthless, otherwise. I have so many attunement slots right now that I can do both gish buffs and carry a couple of offensive spells.

So I tried a spell packing variant of my melee lightning build.... and it sucked in comparison to Oath + pure melee.

Miracle cast times are way too slow; even on a 50 attunement build with Blue Clearstone they are too slow, and the new Force is disappointing to say the least.

Back to 3-4 shotting people with an uber buffed Thorned Greatsword I guess.

So yeah, pure caster/melee still seems to be the way to go, with the exception of stuff like Great Combustion wake ups/anti-parry.

[Surrealistik]

Man, Drakekeeper just went from weapon I like to a straight up fav; amazing speed, tracking, sweeps, poise damage and respectable output.

[Stuebi]

I was really freaking pissed at the Lighting Spear nerfs. I started a Paladin build and played him up to Vendrick to get ready to tackle the DLC, and now they basically made half of my build useless.

Probably gonna use a Soul Vessel to reset and go full Knight or something, and stay clear of Faith for now. Either that or i'll give the DLC a pass entirely, because I allready spent quite a lot of souls and items on upgrading my Chime and investing in Miracles, and those I cant get back. Besides, I dont think im in the mood to go back to "Hit thing with Black Knight-Halberd until dead"-routine. And I honestly cant be bothered to start ANOTHER new Character for a Dex built jsut for the DLC.

[Surrealistik]

The fact that Monastery Scimitar's parrying was reduced to its imbal prenerf status is infinitely worse than any changes to lightning spear; once again it is the cancer plaguing PvP, conscripting everyone and their extended family into using it (I've given into the temptation finally), because instant parry frames are way too good. It became ubiquitous almost instantaneously as a result; literally the same day of the patch.

It doesn't affect me nearly as much because I've always packed an Old Whip specifically for anti-parry, but anyone without that weapon is in for a _miserable_ time.

That said, melee Faith is still one of the very best builds in the game, if not potentially the best if done right; it's all about the buffs and lightning scaling, not the offensive spells.

[TechnOkami]

Oh, I just realized.

50 PAGES REACHED, WE REQUIRE ADDITIONAL THREADS

[SKarious]

Eeyup. Need a new thread to celebrate the DLC.
How about: "Dark Souls thread 3: Heavy is the head..."? Or "Dark Souls thread 3: Nerf my lightning, will you?"

[Dusk Eclipse]

Nominating: Dark Souls 3 kings, not the game

[TechnOkami]

Nominating: Dark Souls 3 kings, not the game

There's a "We Three Kings" joke to be had here, but it's not coming to me.

[Rodin]

Heh, weird - the Soul Vessel in the house has been replaced by a Murakumo. Judging by the baffled messages by the chest, I'm not the only one who's surprised by this.

Just looked it up - it's part of the DLC release event. It's a special black Murakumo - no special stats, but colored nifty.

[chainer1216]

the newb is back! and not so nooby anymore, i beat the game a few weeks ago on my "paladin" build, it was fun, but i gotta say, this games bark is worse than its bite, maybe all my years of devil may crying has honed my rolling and slashing skills.

after i beat gwyn, in honor of Solaire, i started a new character, a sorcerer! the idea was to be a sort of sorcerer/swashbuckler Gish, and it was working great till Sen's fortress, then things got real rough, real quick, but i evenually toughed my way through it, and then...anor londo...*shudder* the giants and the imps? no problem, but those archer knights...i died to them one too many times, i rage quit and started a new character, powered leveled my str till i got strong enough to use the zwei, and then i breezed through the game, many pancakes were made, it eventually turned into an Iron Tarkus cosplay, so that was fun, carrying around three maxed out greatswords of different flavors.

then i went back to my mage, in my tarkus playthrough i found Dusk, hidden body and the slumbering dragoncrest ring allowed me to advance through anor londo, from there i power leveled all my equipment and bought all the spells/pyromancies, i was feeling great!

then i joined the forest hunter covenant.

dear GOD!!! all the gankers, every single time i got summoned it was either another bluebro there, who would try and lead me to the host, who was cheating (the guy had a tearstone ring active, so he was at "low health" and i got a back stab on him with a crystal magic weaponed +15 partisan, i didn't see the damage but it had to of been 800+, plus two more regular hits before he killed me) OR the more simple two dudes ganking me, i kept going for at least an hour, it was awful.

in other news, when i beat this playthrough i'm going to probably go out and buy the game i'm SUPPOSED to be talking about in this thread, other than the way hallowing works in that game, any other major differences i should know about?

[Snowbluff]

Guard Breaks now give a critical hit.

Backstabs are not longer instant hit quickscope-level exploits.

Scaling works differently. You have a derived stat for your damage types (Str Bonus, Lightning Bonus, etc). Weapons scale off of these. The letter gives a rough estimate of the percentage of scaling. Different damage types do scale differently.

Dex scaling sucks. It's scales roughly half as well as str scale.

Faith is the best PvE spec, faith-melee is the best PvP spec AFAIK.

Whips are good now.

Roll distance is based on equip load. Rolling invisibility frames are based on Agility, which is derived from .75 of Adaptability and .25 Attunement. 100 is a good agility score to aim for, IMO.

Dual wielding is cool now.

Attunement improves casting speed. Catalysts can now be upgraded (do it!). Weapliments (4e speak for catalyst weapons) are a thing.

What else...

[Surrealistik]

I'd say Int Casters are better at PvE than Faith Casters.

In terms of PvP, overall Faith melee seems the best, but I don't have a lot of conviction in that between same SL melee Raw and Dark builds. Also I suppose there's an argument to be made for Mundane (outside of lame Shadow/Thief Dagger/Bandit Knife one shot builds that abuse Flynn's Ring + RoB + Oath + Magic buff of choice and Monastery Scimitar), but the buff duration changes hit them hard.

Also 105 Agility is probably the best amount to aim for; may as well snag the extra roll iframe at minimal SL cost.

[Dusk Eclipse]

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