From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[praetor]

Company of Champions doesn't spawn the extra enemies; it's not like NG+ it's just bigger numbers. The Vanq seal is pretty tight tho mang, if you plan to punch shit.

As a Blue Sentinel you can just invade people and not build up sin; it's like the safer version of the Brotherhood of Blood. You can play guardian and equip the ring, or you can just use blue eye orbs. Those are easy as fuck to farm off of Old Knights.

plus sentinels don't lose rank from losing matches, and rank is arena+invasions

 

[Kanedias]

The issue with blue sentinels is that getting orbs and tokens of fidelity is incredibly annoying.

For orbs you can either farm the old knights, which is dull (and I burn through the orbs I get very fast) or I can go to NG+ and buy them, skyrocketing my Soul Memory (plus at least in PS3 the NG arena is way better than the NG+ one, which is plagued by overleveller scrubs).

and then I need to coop for Tokens of Fidelity, which is an exercise in frustration sometimes, and it's slow.

 

[Murk]

The worst part about all these backstab fishers is that I now default to jester's robe. Fuck this shit is ugly.

 

[Shadenuat]

Had a game-of-thronish moment a minute ago. I get summoned as red phantom by a guy who looks 100% NuGarret - black leather armor, double knives, all that stuff. I hit him once and get instantly parried by dagger or scimitar spin, he stabs me for 80% hp. So I get up, he tries to spin or stab me again, and I proceed to hit him with an AXE three times. Instant stagger and he dies.

"Because sir Meryn Trant had an armor. And big fucking sword."

By the way, I think double bandit knives is one of a few weapon sets that get cool looking power stance, like dual falchions.

Double estoc stunlock rape just looks ridiculous. L1/R1/L1/R1 etc...

Why do you insist on ruining cool larpy weapons by dual wielding them you havelmonster

The worst part about all these backstab fishers is that I now default to jester's robe. Fuck this shit is ugly.

I just learned to attack using direction keys. Although probably not all weapons have good enough tracking or just wide slashes to catch people sprinting around you.
And it's a bit hard to track people using keyboard, while camera spins around like it likes, I feel like a guy playing Quake 1 with keyboard against people using mouse look.

PvP slowly loses it's charm however. I change weapons every few days, yet I fight same weapons over and over again. I can't count how many katana stabs I got while standing 3 meters away, how many Xantier's I tried to parry and died, how many people I killed who always use double tap on claymore's R2, and little black orbs and GRSs blend in my mind into one same annoying picture. Today I was invaded with magical Ricard's, had a nice sparring match with my estoc, cool; met a female cleric in saint's set with shield and smithing hammer playing defensively... that's it. A few days ago I've met cool chick in royal swordsman's set with flamberge and a Gwyn larper.

But everyone else, it's like I'm fighting a same havelguy every day, duel after duel. Game has probably a hundred weapons, yet I only see ~5. And I'm close to 15 mil souls. I guess interesting PvP will just die when I reach it.

 

[Murk]

p much, yeah.

The only novelty I have is when larpers/cosplayers come in. Otherwise it's generic mix-n-match of mid weight armor + greatsword, havel, or caster in fast-cast gear spamming gsr + affinity (or soul spear + soul greatsword).

Lately I've been sick of getting a turtle butt fucking up my farming/level clearing so now I just powerstance avelyns. I feel dirty, like after masturbating to tranny porn. But it's just so easy.

 

[meanwhileInPoland]

back to my roots and run now with lighting zweihander +10. feels good like a special snowflake with all those faggy Guts wannabe using Greatsword. dumping people on their asses with that stab...if only black flame and giants armour was there

crypt blacksword is nice , hits like a truck only cant hit anything for shit in pvp

also does anyone know how pyromancy scales with stats? how much faith should i have for melee/pyro build if i dont want to use any miracles/hexes?

 

[Elwro]

Does anyone use the bigger clubs in PvP? I tried myself and failed miserably...

 

[abija]

Other than powerstancing them with a quick weapon the only way I could PvP with the big club was doing wierd moves without locking target and masterfully baiting opponents into the swings (translation: swing around like an idiot switching attack angles as fast as possible and hope lag wins the game for you or opponent loses patience).

 

[Elwro]

Yeah, this was to be my brilliant method too ;D Worked for me surprisingly well in Dark Souls 1 with a regular zweihander without lock-on.

 

[praetor]

The worst part about all these backstab fishers is that I now default to jester's robe. Fuck this shit is ugly.

yeah, funny how people thought it would be "better" in DaS2, when (in my experience in the NG arena. i wouldn't be surprised if it's even worse in the NG+ arena) it's actually worse. a shitton of people run shadow/regular daggers and just fish. i've been saying since release the meta will be just as bad if not worse but nobody believed me. yeah, there have been plenty of mechanical improvements, but also huge steps back (no more hornet ring.... would've been cool if some weapons, like the aforementioned daggers, didn't have the hornet ring backstab modifier already, so you don't even have to waste a ring slot. whoever is responsible for balancing at From is a true retard)

 

[Gay-Lussac]

The key to win Dual Sentinel is to bait his mace side. I'm not sure about CoP, but on NG+ there are also 2 more mobs with him, did you get those because of the covenant?

Blue Sentinels suck. You need Blue Eye orbs to do anything there. Join Bellkeepers while you can. Then try Blood bros.

Yeah, as said above, no extra enemies. They do seem to have expanded movesets and better AI though, but that may well be my imagination. Overall, the clan is a good idea, just poorly executed, like most others.

Think I'm gonna stick with the blue bros. Like the idea of punishing scumbag red phantoms.

Also, want to rectfy my previous statement that co-op is for cheating pussies. I felt it was only fair to use it against the boss fight that has those three metallic spear wielding things. And it felt awesome too, not cheap like other boss fights. So I guess it can be used ocasionally - other part that comes to mind is the adjudicator dude, that fight seems like it was meant for at least 2, what with the ballistas and stuff.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

The worst part about all these backstab fishers is that I now default to jester's robe. Fuck this shit is ugly.

yeah, funny how people thought it would be "better" in DaS2, when (in my experience in the NG arena. i wouldn't be surprised if it's even worse in the NG+ arena) it's actually worse. a shitton of people run shadow/regular daggers and just fish. i've been saying since release the meta will be just as bad if not worse but nobody believed me. yeah, there have been plenty of mechanical improvements, but also huge steps back (no more hornet ring.... would've been cool if some weapons, like the aforementioned daggers, didn't have the hornet ring backstab modifier already, so you don't even have to waste a ring slot. whoever is responsible for balancing at From is a true retard)

Every time I decide to try out a different armor set in PvP I get backstabbed from the front. Backstab is probably the worst mechanic in souls series. I just wanna hit someone from behind, not play the failed backstab animation.

 

[Edward_R_Murrow]

Backstab is probably the worst mechanic in souls series.

Of the core combat mechanics, yeah, it really is. It completely warped the PvP meta of two games, trivialized a ton of PvE content, and still remains in DkS2 like a bad case of herpes. If it's not gone* in the fourth Souls game, that's when I'll start kvetching about how incompetent FromSoft are.

*Wouldn't be upset if it only worked on unaware, stationary enemies for a "stealth kill" analogue.

 

[Kanedias]

I don't really feel like backstab fishers are a problem in this game. I use a lance with no backstab protection without much issue. It's just a matter of having a sidearm with good tracking on the r1s to push them away. The best for this is a straight sword. When they want to go to your back, you just spam it and force them away. If everything else fails, I go into my inventory and equip a jester or ironclad chestpiece.

The main issue is that the lagstab exploit makes it easier to backstab someone than it should be. The lagstab exploit is that "technique" where you follow someone who is rolling away and press r1 at the end of their roll, which vacuums them into a backstab for some reason.

P.S.: I hate the backstab mechanic as well. It's much better done in this game, but it just doesn't work like it should in PvP, and it will never work, thanks to how laggy Souls PvP always is.

 

[praetor]

Kanedias

that got me thinking... perhaps you were right on reddit, in a way, about hitboxes not actually being a problem. they probably are accurate enough, it's just that the game is so incompetently coded, that the hitboxes actually linger at the place you started a roll instead of "following" you (and, f.e. the BS/roll parry glitch pretty much relies on this badly coded part and exploits it). just think about it for a second: pretty much every time i got hit when i shouldn't have (other than the moronic "hitboxes start on the first active frame of the animation". that's just retarded), it's because the enemy hit the spot at the exact place where i was a second ago. hell, with that in mind the actual netcode could even be better than the previous games, but with rarely/never see it because of how stupidly the hitboxes are handled. just by fixing this they'd get rid of a lot of PvE and PvP frustrations

 

[Shadenuat]

Backstabs/ripostes are tolerable in PvE (or at least idea is not bad on paper), but against other players "press 1 button in right time 2win" is nonsense. A modifier to damage if you hit player after his attack (that actually already exists in the game) or in the back would make more sense. And any possible ripostes/critical hits/shield breaks should only happen if you're low on stamina and out of poise. A chance of staggering player should also be tied to how low on stamina he is at the moment, imo.

Think I'm gonna stick with the blue bros. Like the idea of punishing scumbag red phantoms.

I thought that too, "I'm gonna be antiPK and help folks and ppl will respect me and it will feel good". Nothing like that. I never got summoned to help anyone, and as blue phantom you will be killed and ganked as horribly and without mercy as a red phantom.

Not all sinners are PK scumbags, I am one with 250k bounty of souls on my head, and I just use red soapstone to PvP and I killed a bunch of NPCs to check what items they drop.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

BTW blues seem to have stopped invading me but I'm still a wretch. I guess it never goes away?

 

[Kanedias]

Kanedias

that got me thinking... perhaps you were right on reddit, in a way, about hitboxes not actually being a problem. they probably are accurate enough, it's just that the game is so incompetently coded, that the hitboxes actually linger at the place you started a roll instead of "following" you (and, f.e. the BS/roll parry glitch pretty much relies on this badly coded part and exploits it). just think about it for a second: pretty much every time i got hit when i shouldn't have (other than the moronic "hitboxes start on the first active frame of the animation". that's just retarded), it's because the enemy hit the spot at the exact place where i was a second ago. hell, with that in mind the actual netcode could even be better than the previous games, but with rarely/never see it because of how stupidly the hitboxes are handled. just by fixing this they'd get rid of a lot of PvE and PvP frustrations

I have always felt like hitting people during their rolls was too easy, especially at the end of the roll. It does feel like they leave some sort of lingering hitbox sometimes...

The only reason I had made that thread defending hitboxes is that I had noticed a lot of the attacks that people believe have iffy hitboxes can be extremely accurate sometimes, like the katana run attack. And now that I think about it, in all those times the enemy was either idle or moving very slowly, never rolling.

In fact, what I explained as a delay in the damage being registered when you get roll punished could just be this supposed lingering hitbox at work.

 

[Shadenuat]

Hitting people at the end of roll is easy because only 50-60% of roll is invincibility frames. When character stops rolling and "gets up" he is still out of control of his character, but he can already be hit and staggered.

edit
Wanted titanite slabs, went to crows, got channelers trident and demon hammer instead lol.
I also want to replace my greatsword with zweihander.

 

[Kanedias]

But rolls seem to have a massive hitbox, that's what I meant

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

Syan's is (was?) perfect for poking people mid-roll. With stone ring it frequently wacks them out of the roll animation.

 

[Shadenuat]

Tried Zweihander. Talking movesets, I like this sword more than Greatsword. Two-handing this thing makes sense, since you do huge swipes instead of vertical strikes like GS does. Stabbing move has good tracking, and rolling attack is a lot faster than of Greatsword's. It's a bit hard to stagger with this thing because of a delay between swipes - GS vertical strikes are a lot faster in that regard.
All the same, nice sword. But stamina is a big problem.

 

[Kanedias]

Did you try the Drakewing? It's similar to the Zweihander but it has those awesome R2s. They can do massive damage if you hit them with the blade during that attack.

 

[UndetectedButthurt]

I'd go with Drakekeeper UGS for a better dmg zwei.

 

[Cowboy Moment]

Heh, those pyromancers Lost Sinner summons in NG+ have such assholish AI. In DaS2 NG+, enemy circlestrafes you!