From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[praetor]

So how come all the leet playes are complaining about being matched with havel mages if you can keep SM low?

you can't keep your SM low unless all you do is keep fighting in the BoB arena 24/7 (but even then you'll likely have to restock on consumables), you fucking dumbass. you cannot keep your SM at an arbitrary number (other than entering the final 15+mil bracket). the point was, which of course flew right over your empty head, that the SM has all the problems of the SL matching system (it will match your average joe with "pro pvp optimized builds" just like SL would), and it introduces new problems for everybody (so your "average joe" from being matched with "optimized pro pvp builds" will go to being matched with "overlevelled, scratch my ass while i murder you in 15 different ways in less than 1 second SL300+" "builds". i can see why you would see that as an amazing improvement)

 

[abija]

Yes, you can't keep SM low and invade so unless there are a lot of bored fuckers out there who start chars all over again there's less abuse than in DS1.
I didn't say the system is good, I said it gives "closer" fights than SL for your average joes who aren't aware of the "pvp meta". It fixes some problems in the area that concerned them the most.
In my experience it was an improvement over DS1 during standard NG runs. Been invaded plenty and faced a lot less overfarmed try hards.

 

[Shadenuat]

The answer is clear. Everyone gotta get to level 500 and we all be happy.

Btw I heard damage on high levels (250+) actually outclasses defence to the point when wearing havel's or just a bathrobe is same deal. Since resonant weapons don't care. Dat true?

 

[Hobo Elf]

I'd say that it's useless even at SL1 unless it has some good magic resistances. My dude in full Looking Glass armor (over 1100 defense) still takes heaps of damage when he gets hit. It doesn't make much of a difference.

 

[praetor]

The answer is clear. Everyone gotta get to level 500 and we all be happy.

Btw I heard damage on high levels (250+) actually outclasses defence to the point when wearing havel's or just a bathrobe is same deal. Since resonant weapons don't care. Dat true?

the opposite is true. at high levels SL defence is OTT

Yes, you can't keep SM low and invade so unless there are a lot of bored fuckers out there who start chars all over again there's less abuse than in DS1.
I didn't say the system is good, I said it gives "closer" fights than SL for your average joes who aren't aware of the "pvp meta". It fixes some problems in the area that concerned them the most.
In my experience it was an improvement over DS1 during standard NG runs. Been invaded plenty and faced a lot less overfarmed try hards.

that's not true. it doesn't give closer fights, quite the contrary. the only thing it's good at, is preventing legitimate low-level twinks in the early game. for everything else, it's a worse system than SL only in every way possible, for everyone

 

[Visperas]

SM sucks. If it was based on souls spent it may work but being souls earned is incredibly stupid.

 

[abija]

that's not true. it doesn't give closer fights, quite the contrary. the only thing it's good at, is preventing legitimate low-level twinks in the early game. for everything else, it's a worse system than SL only in every way possible, for everyone

Yeah that's exactly what it does, if by early game you mean almost a full NG run. And that's where most of the player base is.

If they cared for fair balanced pvp at arbitrary levels they'd have implemented a lot more options.

 

[darkpatriot]

SM sucks. If it was based on souls spent it may work but being souls earned is incredibly stupid.

Yeah, I don't understand why they did it that way. I can't think of much in the way of downsides that basing it on souls spent instead would bring. Presumably there is some reason they did it that way.

Is there ever an advantage you gain by having souls that are lost/not spent?

The only possible ones I can think of is that you can access the shrine of winter while still spending very few souls and might have access to more powerful weapons found there compared to people that only have access to weapons before the shrine of winter. Also king Vendrick's sword is more powerful if you have held souls(up to 1.5 million I think). Those are the only situations I can think of and they hardly seem enough of a drawback to not just base it on souls spent instead.

Maybe it was lazy implementation since they were already tracking souls earned for the purpose of opening the shrine of winter and didn't want to implement tracking another number(souls spent) so they just based it off the number they were already tracking.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Spices. I dunno what the cap on them is, but it'd be pretty fucking lame to have a sorceror twink wrecking your shit with massively OP spells.

 

[Visperas]

Spells scale wiht int, so a heavily spiced sorcery wouldn't be massively op. I think.
And you need to spend souls to spice spells.

 

[Spark Mandriller]

SM sucks. If it was based on souls spent it may work but being souls earned is incredibly stupid.

Souls earned instead of souls spent is the only way it can even sort of work. If it only counted souls spent then you could still do a low level run and be way too powerful for your level. A guy who gets to the end of the game and spends souls on the best equipment is gonna be way better than a new guy who spends the same amount of souls on stuff that seems good now.
Not that I'm trying to say it works well, of course. Just that if it only counted souls spent it would actually be dumber. If you ask me they should just delete the whole thing and go back to SL matching. If twinks start being a problem then more people will want to be blue sentinels to stop them, so any problem would be self correcting.

 

[DragoFireheart]

I'm convinced that Cleric is the best starting class. The Mace is easily one of the best PvE weapons. All of the really good spells require healthy amounts of faith (Great Barrier, Profound Still, Resonant Soul, Great Resonant Soul, Lighting Spear, Great Lightning Spear, Sunlight Spear, Wrath of God), which the Cleric is poised to take advantage of. All of the best damage spells need Faith as faith and dark are the best damage elements (with lightning being best). There exist many faith weapons that are powerful, be it the early game Heide Knight Sword to the late game Defender Greatsword. I might argue that Hex/Faith is the best for pure spell casting, but you can also go pure Faith for a PvE focus or Hex/Mundane for a PvP focus. Because of the above there is almost no reason to use Sorcery and only melee/caster-lite characters should bother with Pyromancy: if you are not using Pyromancy, there's little reason you shouldn't start as a Cleric.

 

[StaticSpine]

 

[DragoFireheart]

crystal dragon heavy arrow soulmass spear looks p dope tho, and it's sort of homing too, isnt it? at least it curves and seems to have massive poise damage

Crystal Soul Spear, Homing Crystal Soul Mass, and Soul Greatsword are about the only things worthwhile in the Sorcery group of spells. Everything else is shit.

 

[praetor]

Spices. I dunno what the cap on them is, but it'd be pretty fucking lame to have a sorceror twink wrecking your shit with massively OP spells.

that's a problem of how stupid scaling in general is. 10/10 spiced spells will still do considerable damage. they should really rethink the whole thing, so that spices serve only to bring down the reqs on some utility spells (chameleon, gmb, cast light etc), massively reduce base damage on everything and upgrade the scaling. there, problem solved. without spending souls you'll do shit damage. make SM souls spent (even better, make it weighted depending on spending category), SL after Shrine of Winter (after that point, nothing can be considered "twinking"). bam, problem solved. everybody happy. time spent to think it up: 20 seconds, probably less

 

[Murk]

Huh? Which areas?

Giant memories, i'd wager

Ohhh, I thought he meant you can't access them at all unless you get there <XX:YY.

 

[Murk]

Visperas

My SL 1 duder used spices to get Great Lightning Spear down to required faith 12 and using the hexer's hood and ring of +5 faith I can hit for 600+ damage (not always, but up to) with a +10 cleric's sacred chime. More faith would scale more, of course, but as of now I can still mess up bosses/enemies/people (tho light spear is p easy to dodge if you're vaguely paying attention).

You could do the same with sorcery. You get a minor penalty from the catalyst, that is outclassed by the upgrades; you lose out on the scaling bonuses too, but you still get the initial damage/power of the spell. Anyway, that's on fuggin' SL1; now imagine if you have a ton of faith but just not enough for the hex in question -- you still get the bonus from scaling, and no penalty from the chim/catalyst, and blah blah blah.

Spices are pretty dumb =(

they go hand in hand with hexes which are already busted as fuck. Now, you don't even need to sacrifice vigor or whatever else for it. You get like 10+ of each spice on a regular playthrough with no farming anyway.

hex moar liek hax amirite

On the topic of spells, why the fuck does the light spell have only 4 charges and last like a minute and half each. What the fuck? How the shit is that 'utility'?

. If you ask me they should just delete the whole thing and go back to SL matching. If twinks start being a problem then more people will want to be blue sentinels to stop them, so any problem would be self correcting.

I like the sound of that. Such a wasted opportunity for a covenant.

 

[praetor]

just met somebody in the BoB arena doing this. it was glorious and super fun

 

[Murk]

So, you basically parry-backstep while viewing the binos?

what in the hell is this button combination even

 

[DragoFireheart]

Spices. I dunno what the cap on them is, but it'd be pretty fucking lame to have a sorceror twink wrecking your shit with massively OP spells.

that's a problem of how stupid scaling in general is. 10/10 spiced spells will still do considerable damage. they should really rethink the whole thing, so that spices serve only to bring down the reqs on some utility spells (chameleon, gmb, cast light etc), massively reduce base damage on everything and upgrade the scaling. there, problem solved. without spending souls you'll do shit damage. make SM souls spent (even better, make it weighted depending on spending category), SL after Shrine of Winter (after that point, nothing can be considered "twinking"). bam, problem solved. everybody happy. time spent to think it up: 20 seconds, probably less

Spices are the dumbest design choice in Dark Souls 2: if they patched it out I would not miss them.

 

[Silva]

New GeDoSaTo version 5 alpha released.

Oh my god, game is beeeaaauuttiiiful.

 

[Shadenuat]

Spent evening/night to level up dragon covenant. Grand lance is a funny weapon I think I had about 7 losses to 30 wins. Some people did feel underleveled a lot though (I'm in my ~150's now), although I did get my share of butthole-havel-mages and even a few guys with resonant xantier's spear (I think it's attack is telegraphed fairly well, but maybe guy was just learning).
But no avellyns! Where are avellyns?!
I did't like fightning poison weapons (like whips) and poison spells. Hexers seem fine though, even GRS is rollable (although it's damage is pure BS).
I can't replicate a few attacks with keyboard&mouse, elbow push happes when earth and sky change places, can't manage jumping attack too.

mini orgasm

Spoiler

Shit doesn't get old.

Agile players are fairly good at avoiding it though, so I often switch between lance and defender's great sword during combat.
I ended up with Llevelyn armor & a hood, cause why not, cool resistances, and I don't want to become too heavy, I'm at 57%, lower would be good but I carry two weapons... rings, it's cloranthy, that dragon super-all-ring, health +2 and stone ring. Not sure if good or not.
Also carry King's Shield, saved me a few times from rapiers and light weapons. People who don't infuse their weapons are at big disadvantage.

I also earned one dragon scale in a quest. A guy with butterfly wings summoned me and made me run through whole iron keep, jumping bridges and dropping on ledges, and then back to bridge. When I catched up with him he said "good job" and jumped into lava.
...

 

[Murk]

I think my favorite PVP is to be a ratbro and be an idiot running people through dumb guantlets, then prostrating and letting them kill me if they succeed. I rarely ever attack other than when there are no NPC enemies.

IMO that's how these silly pvp things are supposed to be. Fucking bellkeepers >;(

 

[mediocrepoet]

I think my favorite PVP is to be a ratbro and be an idiot running people through dumb guantlets, then prostrating and letting them kill me if they succeed. I rarely ever attack other than when there are no NPC enemies.

IMO that's how these silly pvp things are supposed to be. Fucking bellkeepers >;(

Being a bellkeeper is kind of fun for some free chunks and ganking. Every now and again, you meet up with someone who's really good and just wrecks everyone or someone who's already summoned and shows you what the 2 on 1 rapetrain feels like. I actually don't mind that one. I think the rat covenant is lame as hell though. I actually had one guy run away from me after I dodged his spells and smacked him once or twice. He basically led me to the exit of his level and let me win so he wouldn't die. lol

 

[Murk]

Being a bellkeeper is kind of fun for some free chunks and ganking. Every now and again, you meet up with someone who's really good and just wrecks everyone or someone who's already summoned and shows you what the 2 on 1 rapetrain feels like. I actually don't mind that one. I think the rat covenant is lame as hell though. I actually had one guy run away from me after I dodged his spells and smacked him once or twice. He basically led me to the exit of his level and let me win so he wouldn't die. lol

It's obviously up to the individual players; my own experience is that bellkeepers are sanctioned gankers. For the brief time I joined to try to earn some chunks I found that I would always wait and let the other guy (if 2 of us were summoned) do his thing then I'd attack -- tho that's still unfair since there are NPCs and also the loss of resources/health. At some point it's just obnoxious ganking.

In the rat king covenant the same shit can happen -- especially in doors of pharros with a mastodon knight + toxic rat right off. If someone jumps you at that time then they're taking advantage, but my own preference is to let the guy run the gauntlet.