Dark Souls II

[Nicolas]

(SPOILER)i killed ornstein on the first attempt.

i'm going to be the last person to NG+ and i'm okay with that. taking my time to enjoy what trumps Chrono Trigger as video game perfection is why we still have cords hanging from the back of the TV.

Nice. Did you change your character from the Sorcerer?

One a side note, I started a second character as a Swordsman for my DEX/INT build. I'm just before No Man's Wharf after clearing out Heide's Tower and Forest of Fallen Giants. Not using a shield at all or summoning is a decent challenge. Power stance is pretty great too.

[Fonzie]

Currently PvPing with my faith/dex build in Iron Keep at sl 150.

[Quindiana Jones]

*clicks Last Page*
*shuts eyes*
*scrolls down*

I'm just here to say that I refuse to read or participate in this thread and I hate all of you for having the game that I still don't have.

[TrollHunter]

*clicks Last Page*
*shuts eyes*
*scrolls down*

I'm just here to say that I refuse to read or participate in this thread and I hate all of you for having the game that I still don't have.

[Pete for President]

So many things to try, so little time. But made good progress on a new Str/Fai character.

Me and fellow invader in (SPOILER)Belfry Luna got our butts handed to us by a naked dual Caestus power stance character. Trout is real.

Question for whoever is pvp-ing on 150; (SPOILER) Is sorcery really one or two-shotting everything? Watched a couple video's and it looked like a buffed Moonlight Greatsword is ultimate wreckage. Can anyone give me the heads up on tactics I should know?

[TrollHunter]

So many things to try, so little time. But made good progress on a new Str/Fai character.

Me and fellow invader in (SPOILER)Belfry Luna got our butts handed to us by a naked dual Caestus power stance character. Trout is real.

Question for whoever is pvp-ing on 150; (SPOILER) Is sorcery really one or two-shotting everything? Watched a couple video's and it looked like a buffed Moonlight Greatsword is ultimate wreckage. Can anyone give me the heads up on tactics I should know?

Do you believe in magic? Well, I have a character at like... 138 and another at 120. On my 120... if I decided to buff my moonlight dubstep sword with CMW... it would rip through people like butter. I've experienced wrath of gods a few times and it 1-shots both of my characters with 35/40 vigor. Great Resonant Soul does well over 1k damage in most cases, and many other hexes absolutely destroy people if they get caught offguard.

Magic right now is ABSURDLY power, but there are distinct counters. My counter for CMW MLGS builds is a little shield called the magic shield. It requires next to nothing to equip, and if it is infused with magic it acquires 100% magic damage blocking. This renders the builds quite a lot less scary, and many of the mages I've faced tend to get a bit confused when they're death beams do nothing to me. The rebel shield is another alternative that can have 100% in any element depending on what you infuse it with, and it has more stability as well at the cost of a far higher strength requirement.

And also, magic in general is still really easy to read and dodge. It becomes terrifying when lag is involved, but thats no different from it in DkS1. You really just have to get up in the mages face and bait out the magics. Many mages are actually garbage at pvp and they panic once you just roll through all of their stuff. So really, for mages, stay super aggressive and never let your guard down... and if you arent confident in your baiting/reading/dodging abilities... it really cannot hurt to pick up one of the two shields mentioned earlier.

That's really the basics of dealing with mages. I was one myself for a little while so I primarily analyzed the things that worked and didnt work in different environments. Mages are easily neutered in a proper duel environment, but in an invasion setting they can truly be a nightmare to face. Hell, even in a dueling environment they're terrifying. If you get hit by a CMW dubstep sword you'll know what I mean. I'm improving at fighting them, but getting 1-2shot results in any mistake I make ending in my doom. As time goes on though magic should become less and less of an issue.

The real issue is buff builds/the crappiness that is quality/non-buff builds. Scaling means extremely little from what I've seen, and even with my MLGS it's simply been better for me to lower my int down to the point where I can use my favorite sorceries and invest the points elsewhere. My quality build is utter garbage right now, and I really need to tinker with his stats to make him not horrible (By tinker, I mean find my main weapon... get base stats for it... and put the rest in other stats). Going down elemental paths is just the best way to go right now, and if you can use a buff... use it. Resins at least are really good now, so if you lack the stats/spices to use a buff you can just use those.
But yeah, you're sadly gimping yourself by not buffing right now. It's really a shame as I've always been a fan of not buffing my equipment.

I will go more in depth later, but I really need to sleep. Hopefully this was decently helpful though.

NG+ successes and woes
Beat the ruined sentinels in like... 3 tries. The NPC phantom has a tendency to go rambo and get himself killed, so I had to pump as much damage into the 2 sentinel gonkers as I could before my magebro died. After that it was all about taking it nice and slow, this fight is so much easier for me on NG+.

Beat the gargoyles, no summons no nothing. Hell, I beat them first try with like half of my spells/estus left just to try and see how tough they were NG+. They were terrifying actually, but I screamed and panicked my way to victory. As much flack as this weapon gets, the MLGS is just a glorious weapon. Being able to safely back away and shoot dubstep waves made that fight so much less insane and allowed me to maintain a safe distance while still doing some solid damage. Covetous gold ring +2 get.

So, about that lost sinner in NG+
This will be SO FUN TO SOLO. /sarcasm
The pyros that come in to backup the sinner deal insane amounts of damage, and since I murdered lucatiel in cold blood for her sweet-ass armor (NO REGRETS) I have no NPC phantom to keep aggro off me. Oh boy, this will be interesting to beat. Might put it off till after I beat the old iron king and have some new weapons upgraded to try out new strats.

So, as with everything I decided to co-op and learn how the fight goes. I also took this as an opportunity to try a new strat based around proper tanking.

Protip for co-oping that fight:
If you're the phantom and arent an absurdly heavy hitter you should do two things.
>Get the red-eye ring. (From shalquoir, this ring makes enemies prioritize you as the main target)
>Two-hand a 100% physical shield. (Two-handing it allows for more stability, probably not necessary if you have a greatshield)

I've been doing this and oh my god. This has allowed me to safely kite the sinner around the room while the host and other phantom deal with the pyros. It's not full-proof as you can attract the aggro of the pyros and they hurt... but it gives your two allies some insanely nice breathing room and allows for the two other guys to get some really easy hits on the boss once the pyro's are gone. I highly recommend this for a ton of bosses actually, it's a really cool and fun strategy.

But yeah, beating the sinner myself will be interesting. Might try a rapier or a spear to allow for some safe pokey damage that doesnt leave me super open. Hrmmmm.... It's all about killing the pyros without getting killed myself. This will be tricky.

[Unbreakable Will]

I beat the game, and I'm halfway through my second play-through (I'm in Tseldora now), my soul level is around 185 (I think I've leveled since then) and I'm a Heavy Armored Cleric. Havel's Armor and Shield with a Lightning Idol's Chime+5, Fire Sunsword+10 and a troutload of lightning spear spells.

tumblr_m6l6o8EiMJ1r0bbrto1_1280.png

[Ultima Shadow]

Currently PvPing with my faith/dex build in Iron Keep at sl 150.

"I'm currently doing one those myself!
Sunlight Blade with Lightning Washing Pole.
But I really like the other katanas too,
and for PvE I switch to Blacksteel for
the better durability. For armour I just
run some really light stuff like the
Black Leather because it looks cool.
Hardly any need for vitality investment."











"You're actually trying to play too, n00b?
And PvP in Iron Castle? Psh! You gotta
invade in the Shrine of Amana and snipe
them with high-speed Binocular castings
of Greater Resonant Soul. That's where the
true fun lies. The only problem I have is
that I can't invade new players early on and
ruin their experience with a Wrath of the Gods
to the face midway through a level. Ahhhhh,
doing that would have been sooo satisfying."











"You are more rotten than The Rotten."
"Also... Slumbering Dragoncrest Ring so that
the host won't get any invasion notifications."

[Pete for President]

So many things to try, so little time. But made good progress on a new Str/Fai character.

Me and fellow invader in (SPOILER)Belfry Luna got our butts handed to us by a naked dual Caestus power stance character. Trout is real.

Question for whoever is pvp-ing on 150; (SPOILER) Is sorcery really one or two-shotting everything? Watched a couple video's and it looked like a buffed Moonlight Greatsword is ultimate wreckage. Can anyone give me the heads up on tactics I should know?

Do you believe in magic? Well, I have a character at like... 138 and another at 120. On my 120... if I decided to buff my moonlight dubstep sword with CMW... it would rip through people like butter. I've experienced wrath of gods a few times and it 1-shots both of my characters with 35/40 vigor. Great Resonant Soul does well over 1k damage in most cases, and many other hexes absolutely destroy people if they get caught offguard.

Magic right now is ABSURDLY power, but there are distinct counters. My counter for CMW MLGS builds is a little shield called the magic shield. It requires next to nothing to equip, and if it is infused with magic it acquires 100% magic damage blocking. This renders the builds quite a lot less scary, and many of the mages I've faced tend to get a bit confused when they're death beams do nothing to me. The rebel shield is another alternative that can have 100% in any element depending on what you infuse it with, and it has more stability as well at the cost of a far higher strength requirement.

And also, magic in general is still really easy to read and dodge. It becomes terrifying when lag is involved, but thats no different from it in DkS1. You really just have to get up in the mages face and bait out the magics. Many mages are actually garbage at pvp and they panic once you just roll through all of their stuff. So really, for mages, stay super aggressive and never let your guard down... and if you arent confident in your baiting/reading/dodging abilities... it really cannot hurt to pick up one of the two shields mentioned earlier.

That's really the basics of dealing with mages. I was one myself for a little while so I primarily analyzed the things that worked and didnt work in different environments. Mages are easily neutered in a proper duel environment, but in an invasion setting they can truly be a nightmare to face. Hell, even in a dueling environment they're terrifying. If you get hit by a CMW dubstep sword you'll know what I mean. I'm improving at fighting them, but getting 1-2shot results in any mistake I make ending in my doom. As time goes on though magic should become less and less of an issue.

The real issue is buff builds/the crappiness that is quality/non-buff builds. Scaling means extremely little from what I've seen, and even with my MLGS it's simply been better for me to lower my int down to the point where I can use my favorite sorceries and invest the points elsewhere. My quality build is utter garbage right now, and I really need to tinker with his stats to make him not horrible (By tinker, I mean find my main weapon... get base stats for it... and put the rest in other stats). Going down elemental paths is just the best way to go right now, and if you can use a buff... use it. Resins at least are really good now, so if you lack the stats/spices to use a buff you can just use those.
But yeah, you're sadly gimping yourself by not buffing right now. It's really a shame as I've always been a fan of not buffing my equipment.

I will go more in depth later, but I really need to sleep. Hopefully this was decently helpful though.

NG+ successes and woes
Beat the ruined sentinels in like... 3 tries. The NPC phantom has a tendency to go rambo and get himself killed, so I had to pump as much damage into the 2 sentinel gonkers as I could before my magebro died. After that it was all about taking it nice and slow, this fight is so much easier for me on NG+.

Beat the gargoyles, no summons no nothing. Hell, I beat them first try with like half of my spells/estus left just to try and see how tough they were NG+. They were terrifying actually, but I screamed and panicked my way to victory. As much flack as this weapon gets, the MLGS is just a glorious weapon. Being able to safely back away and shoot dubstep waves made that fight so much less insane and allowed me to maintain a safe distance while still doing some solid damage. Covetous gold ring +2 get.

So, about that lost sinner in NG+
This will be SO FUN TO SOLO. /sarcasm
The pyros that come in to backup the sinner deal insane amounts of damage, and since I murdered lucatiel in cold blood for her sweet-ass armor (NO REGRETS) I have no NPC phantom to keep aggro off me. Oh boy, this will be interesting to beat. Might put it off till after I beat the old iron king and have some new weapons upgraded to try out new strats.

So, as with everything I decided to co-op and learn how the fight goes. I also took this as an opportunity to try a new strat based around proper tanking.

Protip for co-oping that fight:
If you're the phantom and arent an absurdly heavy hitter you should do two things.
>Get the red-eye ring. (From shalquoir, this ring makes enemies prioritize you as the main target)
>Two-hand a 100% physical shield. (Two-handing it allows for more stability, probably not necessary if you have a greatshield)

I've been doing this and oh my god. This has allowed me to safely kite the sinner around the room while the host and other phantom deal with the pyros. It's not full-proof as you can attract the aggro of the pyros and they hurt... but it gives your two allies some insanely nice breathing room and allows for the two other guys to get some really easy hits on the boss once the pyro's are gone. I highly recommend this for a ton of bosses actually, it's a really cool and fun strategy.

But yeah, beating the sinner myself will be interesting. Might try a rapier or a spear to allow for some safe pokey damage that doesnt leave me super open. Hrmmmm.... It's all about killing the pyros without getting killed myself. This will be tricky.

Thanks so much, very detailed and in-depth! Going to get my hands on that Magic Magic Shield. I've been looking at (Great) Magic Barrier and got stoked that these now reduce damage by all types of magic, but their damage reduction % is disappointingly low compared to Dark Souls 1. It was probably the best defensive spell for PvP in 1 :0

[Fonzie]

God, made my blacksteel katana plus 10+/lightning and I enchant it with SLB. Does insane damage now. I've raised my winning chances back to 70%.

[Pete for President]

Has anyone tried powerstance twinblades yet? Must be epic.

Currently (SPOILER)Sun-bro-ing to max out the covenant while two-handing a Raw Greataxe +9. The other day I helped someone out with the (SPOILER)Gargoyles and got a message: "thanks so ****ing much, been stuck here for hours!". Co-op in this early stage of release is glorious

[TrollHunter]

Has anyone tried powerstance twinblades yet? Must be epic.

Currently (SPOILER)Sun-bro-ing to max out the covenant while two-handing a Raw Greataxe +9. The other day I helped someone out with the (SPOILER)Gargoyles and got a message: "thanks so ****ing much, been stuck here for hours!". Co-op in this early stage of release is glorious

Is it bad that one of my favorite parts of co-op is getting hosts who don't do anything killed?
I just love watching my cowardly host panic when he realizes that his phantom isnt going to just play the game for him.
...It's not like I'm killing all of my hosts or anything, just the ones that stay back during the boss and turtle by the fog gate while I basically solo the big scawry monster for them.

But on a less homicidal note, I do love the messages of thanks from people who get stuck on bosses. They always make me smile.
Gotta say though, nothing is more memorable than the runs where almost every possible thing goes horribly wrong but the job is done in the end. Everyone out of heals, the other phantom dying early on in the boss room, the only survivors near death. It's that kind of situation that gets the blood pumping and makes success oh so immensely satisfying.

[McLovin']

The best pvpers ive seen are the ones in glowing red auras and they all have either havel armor or this armor with rounded shoulderblades. WTF IS THAT ARMOR!

[TrollHunter]

I've officially found my biggest complaint with dks2 pvp that makes me want to just put it down entirely.
Estus
Estus is absurdly overpowered in this game.

I invade either as a blue phantom or in the bell covenant. I can put a ton of work on an opponent but as soon as they go for the estus.... if they have high adaptibility there really is no real way to punish it. With my SPEARS I cant even reach high adp characters in time... and thats with them estus'ing in my face. My attack always comes out 1 half a second too late. And good luck powering through the absurd amount of hp it recovers. The only weapon I've had success with punishing estus spammers with is the MLGS, and even then its useless if someone hides behind a wall.

This would be less of an issue if invaders could actually heal, but no... there's no option for that here unless you pump into faith. This ends in me destroying the host for the entire fight but losing the battle of attrition due to my inability to heal. It's ridiculous, and it makes this pvp so much more infuriating than dks1 pvp. I don't care about dark magic, it's easy to dodge. I don't care about the MLGS, it's easy to read. I care about estus, and I really do feel that it is a HUGE issue. I'm taking a break from dks2 honestly. I'm going to focus on other games. This just isn't fun to me right now.

[Pete for President]

I've officially found my biggest complaint with dks2 pvp that makes me want to just put it down entirely.
Estus
Estus is absurdly overpowered in this game.

I invade either as a blue phantom or in the bell covenant. I can put a ton of work on an opponent but as soon as they go for the estus.... if they have high adaptibility there really is no real way to punish it. With my SPEARS I cant even reach high adp characters in time... and thats with them estus'ing in my face. My attack always comes out 1 half a second too late. And good luck powering through the absurd amount of hp it recovers. The only weapon I've had success with punishing estus spammers with is the MLGS, and even then its useless if someone hides behind a wall.

This would be less of an issue if invaders could actually heal, but no... there's no option for that here unless you pump into faith. This ends in me destroying the host for the entire fight but losing the battle of attrition due to my inability to heal. It's ridiculous, and it makes this pvp so much more infuriating than dks1 pvp. I don't care about dark magic, it's easy to dodge. I don't care about the MLGS, it's easy to read. I care about estus, and I really do feel that it is a HUGE issue. I'm taking a break from dks2 honestly. I'm going to focus on other games. This just isn't fun to me right now.

What about Lloyd's Talismans? Or poison arrows? Or firebombs/throwing knives that stun?


I've been going through the game with something resembling a Str/Fai build, although I haven't pumped strength high at all. I find two-handing a weapon way more viable in DkS2 compared to 1 and haven't felt the need to raise strength above 20 because of it. My faith is at 37 right now, but I don't think I'll level it any higher either. With (SPOILER)the Ring of Prayer it's high enough to cast Great Lightning Spear and the higher faith miracles seem kinda meh.

I think I'll turn this into a Str/Hex build instead with faith being the higher stat. Might raise Int to 20 and (SPOILER)use spices or Int boost equipment to still be able to use Profound Still.

Loving the smaller axes and blunt weapons this time around. Maybe I'll even keep strength at 20 and just rock these smaller powerhouses or just two-hand the bigger guns while pumping vitality, adp or attunement.

With DkS1 I already got into the habit to not raise endurance but get nifty with stamina management instead, and that seems a big plus in DkS2 where End doesn't raise equipment load anymore. Base endurance ftw.