From Software Dark Souls 3

[Cowboy Moment]

I'd consider using a shield if it made all the shit enemies like harpies or mutants fun to fight, but I somehow doubt it.

 

[sullynathan]

DS2 has better speed than DS1. I just hated the stun locking shit.

 

[Makabb]

Miyazaki trolled whole fan base of DS by giving this stupid bloodborne shyt.

Seriously this game should be called Blood Souls to avoid confusion. I'm waiting for real Dark Souls 3 like this would have never happened. Where is my inter connected world ?

 

[Villagkouras]

Man, holding a shield and strafing is the most boring way to play souls games.

It's just a playstyle, for me playing as a sorcerer is the most boring way. That's not the point though. All I'm saying is that this particular boss can be easily defeated that way. OTOH, Dancer's attacks should be roll-dodged... Different boss, different approach.

 

[Metro]

Solaire cosplay, the only way to go!

 

[sullynathan]

Man, holding a shield and strafing is the most boring way to play souls games.

It's not boring, I primarily played like this in DS1 & 2 and switched it up with some rolls here and there.

 

[Murk]

Jesus, I need to make a list of all you guys so I can disregard your views on the game.

Shield scum, just the worst. Worse than parry spammers. Almost as bad as "chug at 70% hp". Almost.

 

[sullynathan]

how the fuck do you play then?

 

[Damned Registrations]

At 1 hp, never getting hit, always landing parry/ripostes of course. With bare hands. Git gud casul scum.

 

[praetor]

You're going to love Dancer.

I didn't find Sullivan that bad though, he's a bit like the Fume Knight in that if you hug him and circle around him counterclockwise a good amount of his attacks will go above your head. I also found that the blue sword doesn't hit very hard so it's often preferable to eat a swing and keep attacking. And phase 2 you can kinda just mash R1.

even his grunts are pretty much the same as Fume's

i hate him because he's a spammer that rewards more perfect timing of rolls (i.e. twitch skills) than actually learning patterns and acting accordingly (i found the opposite to be true with Fume. just my opinion). fortunately, he's relatively easy to parry, and his clone succumbs rather fast to buffed weapons so...

Also, don't hate on DMC, attacking effectively actually takes skill in that game, unlike Souls. And you actually get strong reactive defensive options, making aggression very profitable for skilled players.

definitely not hating on DMC, i love that game. i just don't want any DMC in my Souls game

 

[Murk]

Exactly Damned Registrations . You limp dicked bastards aren't even worth the time.

(in all seriousness, I avoid using a shield as much as I can becomes it turns the game into a purely reactive shitting competition. I prefer to go completely shieldless, or only use it in very specific instances. DS 2 was much more fun about this with the movement being smoother, but it's still doable. Really helps you appreciate rolls and enemy attack patterns.)

 

[Damned Registrations]

I did pretty much the same thing. I think they might have done something to make shields more active in DS3, by making the ideal usage of them blocking the first hit then parrying or bashing for the second, but I honestly couldn't be bothered to investigate that aspect further, because parrying is some aggravatingly finicky shit at the best of times, and blocking in general means stamina spent on blocking instead of attacking and therefore slower, longer fights. I've got no patience for that shit, and would much rather trade or dodge blows to end fights ASAP.

Annoyingly, two-handed attacks tend to use so much more stamina that they're often not worth using either (except to break shield guards, since one handed strikes get deflected) so I spent a lot of the game spamming one handed R1 attacks with a rapier.

 

[sullynathan]

I use shield and sword or two hand and evade when I want maximum damage or if I know that the enemy can easily break through my shield defense.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention the real reason greatshields shields are crap now: deflection. You know when you swing one-handed and hit a shield, and go reeling back almost like you got parried? That shit used to depend on how heavy the shield was. Light/wooden shields would basically never do it, medium/kite shields would do it to lighter weapons when one handed (things like spears, rapiers, etc.) and greatshields would do it to almost anything that wasn't a heavy two handed strike (or two handed katanas, because katanas were OP.) You could even make things like capra demons reel back in this way. Now, it seems to just matter whether the swing was one or two handed. One handed greatsword vs flimsy busted wooden shield? Reel back like you hit a brick wall! Two handed rapier vs an impentreble shield that puts you over 50% by itself? No problem! Whale away, you're wearing his stamina down and his guard will break before you exhaust yourself! Total horseshit.

 

[Anthedon]

Annoyingly, two-handed attacks tend to use so much more stamina that they're often not worth using either (except to break shield guards, since one handed strikes get deflected) so I spent a lot of the game spamming one handed R1 attacks with a rapier.

That's an issue that all of the very large weapons I've tried have. The Dragonslayer Greataxe hits for an ungodly amount, but in the end I went back to the Butcher Knife. Some of the enemies/bosses don't leave a lot of room for error when you are swinging an enormous weapon. The BK doesn't consume a lot of stamina (comparatively) and hits reasonably fast thus allowing for easy rolling around. And it can still stagger most creatures.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Butcher Knife is a great R1 spam weapon, no wonder it's good in DS3.

You're going to love Dancer.

I didn't find Sullivan that bad though, he's a bit like the Fume Knight in that if you hug him and circle around him counterclockwise a good amount of his attacks will go above your head. I also found that the blue sword doesn't hit very hard so it's often preferable to eat a swing and keep attacking. And phase 2 you can kinda just mash R1.

even his grunts are pretty much the same as Fume's

i hate him because he's a spammer that rewards more perfect timing of rolls (i.e. twitch skills) than actually learning patterns and acting accordingly (i found the opposite to be true with Fume. just my opinion). fortunately, he's relatively easy to parry, and his clone succumbs rather fast to buffed weapons so...

The way I see this problem in general, is that the faster an attack is (in terms of how much time it takes to hit you after the enemy starts swinging), the more "perfect timing" it requires. The attack may be part of a weird and confusing movement patterns which you don't know, but if it's not too fast, you can dodge it on reaction alone, and then when you do actually learn the pattern, this allows for larger margin of error on your end. You can also have a simple attack pattern, where the individual swings are nonetheless so fast that you need to memorize the timing and press the roll button before the enemy starts moving. This is what makes the dog on the Irithyll bridge difficult - and unfun.

Sullivan isn't that bad, but he is quite fast, significantly faster than the typical Souls boss in this respect. This game in general is faster than its predecessors in this sense. Still, I'd say that a better way of expressing what you're talking about is that he's more about memorizing roll timings, while a boss like Fume is more about memorizing attack patterns.

Fume was difficult to read not because he was fast or his movements were weird, but because he didn't have predefined combos, and you needed to constantly pay attention to what he was actually doing rather than going on autopilot - he even had some intentionally slow swings thrown in there to catch players off guard. But what really made him work were the general DS2 mechanics, which heavily punished rolling wastefully, even if you didn't get hit in the end. With DS3 mechanics he'd be a pushover, since you'd be able to spam roll through his whole combo and still have enough stamina to spam R1 at the end.

 

[Damned Registrations]

I don't really recall stamina being an issue in DS2, you got a ridiculous number of souls really early so cranking your stamina up was no big deal. Rolling in DS3 does seem to use very little stamina, but your pool is tiny anyways unless you've totally neglected something important like vigor or whatever you're relying on for damage.

 

[Immortal]

Jesus, I need to make a list of all you guys so I can disregard your views on the game.

Shield scum, just the worst. Worse than parry spammers. Almost as bad as "chug at 70% hp". Almost.

Nothing wrong with a safety estus. It sounds like someone is a little salty popcorn about a failed invasion or 10.

How Dare you parry me! Stop fishing for backstabs.!!!!. Is that a BBS?! ARMOR?! Spells? GOD... Why can't you just play the game exactly how I want!


In other news, Assassin starts with one of the longest ranged thrusting weapons (especially among swords) in the game. That weapon is fucking hilarious in pvp.

 

[Malpercio]

Did the Catacombs,

Spoiler

Lost Izalith Redeux

, the Cathedral.

Spoiler

The lake was especially amazing, pure dungeon crawling experience

Overall the game really shines in the interiors, but jesus, every "open" location feel like I'm playing BB. I cringed when I entered the frigid valley or what the fuck only to be meet by a mob that I guess was from BB scrapped assets.

 

[caveat]

has anyone else felt like kicks are extremely overpowered so far? I only just defeated sulyvahn and feel like all the "tough" mobs they throw at you get destroyed by kicks. you can rush down the pontiff knights and kick and immediately critical hit and never get hit.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I don't really recall stamina being an issue in DS2, you got a ridiculous number of souls really early so cranking your stamina up was no big deal. Rolling in DS3 does seem to use very little stamina, but your pool is tiny anyways unless you've totally neglected something important like vigor or whatever you're relying on for damage.

Stamina in terms of max value not so much, but stamina regen was inversely proportional to equip load, so if you wanted to wear any kind of decent armor, a roll would cost you significantly more regen time than it does in DS3, where regen is (afaik) static and quite fast.

 

[Murk]

Jesus, I need to make a list of all you guys so I can disregard your views on the game.

Shield scum, just the worst. Worse than parry spammers. Almost as bad as "chug at 70% hp". Almost.

Nothing wrong with a safety estus. It sounds like someone is a little salty popcorn about a failed invasion or 10.

How Dare you parry me! Stop fishing for backstabs.!!!!. Is that a BBS?! ARMOR?! Spells? GOD... Why can't you just play the game exactly how I want!

Yeah, I'm not being serious here buddy.

In other news, Assassin starts with one of the longest ranged thrusting weapons (especially among swords) in the game. That weapon is fucking hilarious in pvp.

estoc is bestoc, or whatever /dsg/ calls it now

 

[Seethe]

Poise is broken this time. Looks like you have to rely a lot on the hyper armor from weapons and the weapon arts. BULLSHIT. I want my heavy armor to reflect what it is: heavy.

Aside of being a shitty port, the game is pretty good. DS 1 has a better interconnected world, DS 3 has more variety, but I hate how everything is so fast. They tried making the game be like Shitborne, and it retained some dumb mechanics from the abomination that was Dark Souls 2, but overall it's decent. At least it didn't retain the worst mechanics.

One extra thing that annoys me is how everything two shots you at the end of the game. What's up with that? Must I invest everything in health and stamina for my first playthrough? Because the magic is GARBAGE otherwise.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

I wish DS3 retained some "dumb mechanics" from DS2, which had the best core combat mechanics in the series. Instead, it's basically the reverse, an attempt to make the combat faster and scrappier rather than slow and methodical like DS2 clearly attempted. Given that poise basically not existing is in-line with this approach, I wouldn't expect it to be fixed.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Poise was kind of a shitty mechanic to begin with imo- the AI can't deal with it for obvious reasons, and in pvp it turned everything into a backstabbing fishing contest because it took less time to roll behind someone than it did to finish a swing so anything that wasn't a backstab was basically suicide. Nevermind the horseshit of that stagger canceling weapon swap crap being mandatory for a high end pvp fight.

From what I've seen, DS3 pvp is a lot more tactical and relies more on managing stamina and estus (at least until people start hacking in 99 divine blessings again) to win a battle of attrition.