From Software Dark Souls 3

[Damned Registrations]

Scub, real men beat the game without rolling OR using a shield. Walking only. At SL1. With fists. And calamity ring.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Scub, real men beat the game without rolling OR using a shield. Walking only. At SL1. With fists. And calamity ring.

The funny thing is this is actually true.


The main goal of this senseless run that Im doing is see how viable is a "tank build" in this game in PvE. And it is, mostly. Without considering that tanks can fatroll when necessary, with is fault of my retardation.

 

[cvv]

Scub, real men beat the game without rolling OR using a shield. Walking only. At SL1. With fists. And calamity ring.

The funny thing is this is actually true.


The main goal of this senseless run that Im doing is see how viable is a "tank build" in this game in PvE. And it is, mostly. Without considering that tanks can fatroll when necessary, with is fault of my retardation.

I assume you're using Glory?

 

[baturinsky]

Scub, real men beat the game without rolling OR using a shield. Walking only. At SL1. With fists. And calamity ring.

For that you have to learn bosses movesets perfectly.

 

[Elwro]

of course. and the precise sizes of the invisible and weird hitboxes

 

[toro]

Scub, real men beat the game without rolling OR using a shield. Walking only. At SL1. With fists. And calamity ring.

Real men don't post on codex. They are too busy fucking a real woman. No condom. No ring. No commitments.

 

[baturinsky]

Watching no-roll-no-damage boss kills helped me git gud a bit, though. In them, player is super-defensive, only attacking after certain patterns in enemy attacks. It helped me to get past Abyss Watchers (second time) and hopefully will help with Dragonslayer Armor too... A.W. is vulnerable after dash - jump - jump move, Armor after shield dash.

 

[toro]

Watching no-roll-no-damage boss kills helped me git gud a bit, though. In them, player is super-defensive, only attacking after certain patterns in enemy attacks. It helped me to get past Abyss Watchers (second time) and hopefully will help with Dragonslayer Armor too... A.W. is vulnerable after dash - jump - jump move, Armor after shield dash.

The entire game is a roll-fest. Whoever says otherwise is a fucking moron - the entire purpose of iframes is not to get hit during rolls.

There is another way to beat every boss (with a few exceptions) - always stay close and move to its back. Shield is optional.

The thing with the no roll/no parry/no backstabbing videos is that you don't see how many tries they had before they actually did it.

In reality, the number of tries is something like 100+ (maybe more) for each boss. And the sad part is that luck >>> skill.

Now think if you want to spend so much time stroking your ego or you want to have fun. I say use whatever fits you better and enjoy the game.

You will never be as good as no-lifers which masturbate about Fashions Souls or similar shit.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Watching no-roll-no-damage boss kills helped me git gud a bit, though. In them, player is super-defensive, only attacking after certain patterns in enemy attacks. It helped me to get past Abyss Watchers (second time) and hopefully will help with Dragonslayer Armor too... A.W. is vulnerable after dash - jump - jump move, Armor after shield dash.

Enemies are always vulnerable after certain attacks or combos, the most safe thing you can do to beat them is wait for punish their mistakes while you avoid their attacks, using a shield or simply by rolling.

Abysswatchers are easy to me. Wait the opportunity and then punish because their tend to stagger, they're almost as NPC enemies. Dragonslayer armor is about punishing that three hits combo that finish in a vertical attack on the ground mainly.

This game benefits more an active playstyle than a passive one (Rolling cost a very small amount of stamina as an example), but this method is effective as always in every Muhzaki game. DS2 included. I can confirm it after defeating almost every enemy and boss without rolling in a easy way (Except Soul of cinder and Nameless king).

 

[toro]

Watching no-roll-no-damage boss kills helped me git gud a bit, though. In them, player is super-defensive, only attacking after certain patterns in enemy attacks. It helped me to get past Abyss Watchers (second time) and hopefully will help with Dragonslayer Armor too... A.W. is vulnerable after dash - jump - jump move, Armor after shield dash.

Enemies are always vulnerable after certain attacks or combos, the most safe thing you can do to beat them is wait for punish their mistakes while you avoid their attacks, using a shield or simply by rolling.

Abysswatchers are easy to me. Wait the opportunity and then punish because their tend to stagger, they're almost as NPC enemies. Dragonslayer armor is about punishing that three hits combo that finish in a vertical attack on the ground mainly.

This game benefits more an active playstyle than a passive one (Rolling cost a very small amount of stamina as an example), but this method is effective as always in every Muhzaki game. DS2 included. I can confirm it after defeating almost every enemy and boss without rolling in a easy way (Except Soul of cinder and Nameless king).

Non issue here. He can confirm ...

 

[Raghar]

The entire game is a roll-fest.

There are only few bosses where rolling is important. If you looked at images I posted carefully you'd see I didn't rolled too much.



(I used keyboard only anyway, perhaps gamepad is better for rolling and parrying.)

 

[toro]

The entire game is a roll-fest.

There are only few bosses where rolling is important. If you looked at images I posted carefully you'd see I didn't rolled too much.

(I used keyboard only anyway, perhaps gamepad is better for rolling and parrying.)

There are only few bosses where rolling is important.

There are only few bosses where rolling is important.

There are only few bosses where rolling is important.

HODOR! HODOR! HODOR!

I also play with keyboard + mouse but you are missing the point. I was not talking about you personally.

 

[Raghar]

I play keyboard only. Why would I use mouse?

And if DS3 would be roll fest, I wouldn't be able to finish it. It's less about positioning than DS, but still it's about quick decisions and doing stuff right.

Or you learn boss patterns and can finish it even without quick decisions and correctly reacting on stuff you don't know boss would do.

 

[toro]

I play keyboard only. Why would I use mouse?

I don't answer rhetorical questions.

And if DS3 would be roll fest, I wouldn't be able to finish it.

What has this to do with the "fact" that the majority of players are using rolling !?

It's less about positioning than DS, but still it's about quick decisions and doing stuff right.

Or you learn boss patterns and can finish it even without quick decisions and correctly reacting on stuff you don't know boss would do.

Did we cross into Prosper-Land?

 

[baturinsky]

I was thinking about what minimal Dark Souls game would be, so here is an idea of one-button Dark Souls.

You have one button - Attack. Attack takes some time (~1sec), during which you are vulnerable. If during this time enemy does not attack too, you score and enemy loses HP. If he DOES attack, then your attack is interrupted, and YOU are damaged. If you are attacked when not attacking yourself, you automatically block, receiving no damage.

Enemy attacks in pattern - same one each time, or he can have several patterns that he uses back-to-back, choosing randomly. Patterns can be generated procedurally.

Gameplay is basically learning the patterns and finding openings in them.

Graphics can be very simple, or there can be no graphics at all - it can be all done with just sounds.

 

[toro]

I was thinking about what minimal Dark Souls game would be, so here is an idea of one-button Dark Souls.

You have one button - Attack. Attack takes some time (~1sec), during which you are vulnerable. If during this time enemy does not attack too, you score and enemy loses HP. If he DOES attack, then your attack is interrupted, and YOU are damaged. If you are attacked when not attacking yourself, you automatically block, receiving no damage.

Enemy attacks in pattern - same one each time, or he can have several patterns that he uses back-to-back, choosing randomly. Patterns can be generated procedurally.

Gameplay is basically learning the patterns and finding openings in them.

Graphics can be very simple, or there can be no graphics at all - it can be all done with just sounds.

Not a bad idea. You can do it.

One-Click-Souls

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

Yesterdsy I completed my run about killing all enemies without rolling, only tanking. I killed all bosses, DLC included, I spent 15 hours. Overall it wasn't very difficult. Those bosses who I thougt that they would be imposible to defeat without rolling (Soul of cinder and Nameless king) fell. The exceptions were Champion Gundyr and Friede.

- Champion Gundyr always connects his attacks with the wake up animation of the character, so you are forced to roll to avoid the attack, because your character has no time to rise the shield due the animation.

- I had to roll once against Friede to avoid her grab attack in her third phase. I felt dirty, but it was neccesary because otherwise it was an instant kill.

So, the conclusion that I obtained is you can survive any attack without rolling except grab attacks and wake up attacks. All this considering that rolling is a key feature of this series and the thing I did was taking it to the extreme. But it helped me a lot to study how viable are the tank builds in Dark souls 3. And they are perfectly valid. All this using the default heavy knight class. Longsword and medium shield. I only changed the shield against certain bosses to get element defense. And in late game I started to use the Great Magical Shield spell that is OP as fuck because allows you to defend yourself against anything with any shield without losing stamina or health by cheap. Strong as fuck. I'm convinced that I would have defeated Gundyr without rolling if I had that spell before.

That's all. Now give me your brofist, your shits or your retardreds. They are all welcome. Except the bird one. I never got what the fuck that bird means.

 

[nomask7]

All this considering that rolling is a key feature of this series

If it's a key feature, why is there fat rolling?

When I started playing Dark Souls, rolling seemed like something strange that only a few nerds would do, and I focused on what seemed sensible: a strong shield and solid foot-work. Real-world knights don't roll!!

That worked pretty well for me in Dark Souls II. Not so much in Dark Souls 1, because you can't actually do fast foot-work if you have heavy burden in that game. That was changed in DS2. Still, I got pretty far in that fashion, only having to roll in Ornstein & Smough (haven't tried the last couple of bosses).

DS3 though is pretty hard for a no-roller, even though it allows fast foot-work. I won't say it's impossible, I'll just say that I couldn't do it with my rather mediocre character build. Had to roll to beat it.

I'm not sure why From seems to go for the rolling thing so much. They should just do Bloodborne when they want dodging goodness, and leave the Souls series to proper knight combat.

 

[Perkel]

I'm not sure why From seems to go for the rolling thing so much. They should just do Bloodborne when they want dodging goodness, and leave the Souls series to proper knight combat.

They should do Witcher 3 style both roll and dodge. Move X to dodge while you roll with O. Backstep kind of works like dodge but work only in one way while most of the time you just want only slight adjustement.

Roll is especially annoying if you run below medium roll and each roll basically makes enemy impossible to counter due to distance traveled.

I really hope mind controlling will became a thing in future. regardless of how many buttons you are using it is always to little for what could be done if actions games weren't limited by controls.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Anything that gives you enough time to walk out of the way also gives you enough time to chug an estus. Hence the spammy nature of the fights, to prevent them from just being a straight up attrition fest between your flask and the boss' healthbar, which you could do very easily in the first 3 souls games.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

All this considering that rolling is a key feature of this series

If it's a key feature, why is there fat rolling?

When I started playing Dark Souls, rolling seemed like something strange that only a few nerds would do, and I focused on what seemed sensible: a strong shield and solid foot-work. Real-world knights don't roll!!

That worked pretty well for me in Dark Souls II. Not so much in Dark Souls 1, because you can't actually do fast foot-work if you have heavy burden in that game. That was changed in DS2. Still, I got pretty far in that fashion, only having to roll in Ornstein & Smough (haven't tried the last couple of bosses).

DS3 though is pretty hard for a no-roller, even though it allows fast foot-work. I won't say it's impossible, I'll just say that I couldn't do it with my rather mediocre character build. Had to roll to beat it.

I'm not sure why From seems to go for the rolling thing so much. They should just do Bloodborne when they want dodging goodness, and leave the Souls series to proper knight combat.

If it isn't a key feature, why the game allows you to roll with a heavy armor in first place? Why stats that lower the character equipment allowing to move faster and mid rolling with heavy armor exists? Why items like Havel's ring exists? Why one of the main improvements of Dark souls 2 was rolling in 360 degrees in any direction?

I remember that the first time I played Demon's souls, I started with the knight class. The one with the armor from the cover art of the game. And then I rolled very little because it was slow and I felt that it was useless. Then I discovered that by changing the character armor and clothing the character moved faster and rolled more quickly. Then I started to know how the game actually worked. I even learned how to use the fat roll. I started to know that rolling was more useful for punishing your enemies and I had more fun than with static shield and armored combat.

There's two reasons because From decided to make the combat more fast paced and aggresive in Bloodborne and in Dark sword 3. One and mainly, because they want to decrease the static and defensive playstyle that existed in the previous games (One of the reasons about why they started to mess up with the poise system since Dark souls). They wanted to add variety to the series and they started by nerfing heavy armors. In Dark souls 2 they created the adaptability, which changed how poise and rolling worked. The second reason is because is more flashy and sell games. From is bigger today than they were back in 2009. In good and bad ways.

 

[nomask7]

If it isn't a key feature, why the game allows you to roll with a heavy armor in first place?

Fat roll is generally speaking useless.

Why stats that lower the character equipment allowing to move faster and mid rolling with heavy armor exists? Why items like Havel's ring exists?

So you can use heavy armor AND heavy shield AND heavy weapon before end boss. Nothing to do with rolling.

I remember that the first time I played Demon's souls, I started with the knight class. The one with the armor from the cover art of the game. And then I rolled very little because it was slow and I felt that it was useless. Then I discovered that by changing the character armor and clothing the character moved faster and rolled more quickly. Then I started to know how the game actually worked. I even learned how to use the fat roll. I started to know that rolling was more useful for punishing your enemies and I had more fun than with static shield and armored combat.

There's two reasons because From decided to make the combat more fast paced and aggresive in Bloodborne and in Dark sword 3. One and mainly, because they want to decrease the static and defensive playstyle that existed in the previous games (One of the reasons about why they started to mess up with the poise system since Dark souls). They wanted to add variety to the series and they started by nerfing heavy armors. In Dark souls 2 they created the adaptability, which changed how poise and rolling worked. The second reason is because is more flashy and sell games. From is bigger today than they were back in 2009. In good and bad ways.

They ruined poise due to multiplayer balance. If they focused on PvE, they'd probably not focus so much on rolling and fast-paced gameplay. For all the talk of "static defensive gameplay" needing to be replaced, playing as a shield tank is actually less shallow and more interesting than playing as a roller, I mean in PvE, but unfortunately From doesn't care about PvE as much as they do about PvP.

 

[Perkel]

They ruined poise due to multiplayer balance. If they focused on PvE, they'd probably not focus so much on rolling and fast-paced gameplay. For all the talk of "static defensive gameplay" needing to be replaced, playing as a shield tank is actually less shallow and more interesting than playing as a roller, I mean in PvE, but unfortunately From doesn't care about PvE as much as they do about PvP.

It is part of PvP part of From wanting people get out of sword and board mentality.
With bloodborne they already removed shields completely.

They couldn't do it with DS3 due to DS being more medevil warfare oriented but DS3 features the least amount of shields with 100% damage reduction from all DS games and shields that do exist usually have lower stability than before.
But if you would look from shield side only that would be only half of the answer.

Most of monsters in DS3 now are waaaay more aggressive than before and most of them punishes dudes with shields. Both DS1 and DS2 featured not really a lot of enemies that could go through your shield just with physical attacks.

Meanwhile in DS3 when you start game Winged Knight, Lothric Knights, those dudes with machetes, clericks all have enough strong chain attacks that will quickly destroy your stamina. Bosses also are grab happy unlike before and many of them mix physical with different elements.

So playing like in DS1 and DS2 sword and board style is much harder than before.
Finally due to changes to combat system (weapon arts made specifically to destroy shields) and poise being attacker is even more effective than hiding behind shield.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The enemies use those weapon arts and often have some of their own as well, and the recoil from hitting shields is much less common. Using a shield is definitely gimping yourself in DS3, aside from a few niche cases. I tried it again on my last playthrough and gave up; even with a greatshield you're basically just begging to get kicked and take massive bonus damage from an attack, it's much riskier than dodging.

 

[Perkel]

The enemies use those weapon arts and often have some of their own as well, and the recoil from hitting shields is much less common. Using a shield is definitely gimping yourself in DS3, aside from a few niche cases. I tried it again on my last playthrough and gave up; even with a greatshield you're basically just begging to get kicked and take massive bonus damage from an attack, it's much riskier than dodging.

I wouldn't say gimped but shields needs to be used now with care instead of hold L1 until you can find attack window.
Kick also been upgraded a lot. You can actually chain kick with normal R1 attack pretty easily now.

So it transformed from passive to active defense. I think fighting games style block type (pressing block in timely fashion that awards less stamina use) would even better upgrade.

Shield is still amazing defense toward all projectiles like bows and shit that chip away life.