From Software The Dark Souls II Megathread™

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, the pursuer, like most bosses in DS2, can be beaten by just stepping slightly to the right.
Like Dragonrider. I wasn't too impressed by either of those, really. Pursuer has a weird design too. I never liked how he's basically a floating fat guy in Warhammer Chaos Warrior armor.

 

[Seaking4]

Gaping Dragon a good boss fight? It literally just runs into the wall and then you destroy it.

The Pursuer at least requires you to be awake when you're fighting it. Plus that double Pursuer fight in the throne room in NG+ is fun. But it's not really fair to compare what is essentially a tutorial boss to one you meet halfway through the game.

 

[Teut Busnet]

Gaping Dragon a good boss fight? It literally just runs into the wall and then you destroy it.

The 'WOW' factor is pretty high with ol' Gape.

You also have to watch out for / cut his tail, run from the vomit attack, keep track of him while he jumps, dodge the claw.

The Pursuer is a knight wich you circle-strafe right and counter.

 

[praetor]

Yeah, the pursuer, like most bosses in DS2, can be beaten by just stepping slightly to the right.

most DS1 bosses also have simple tactics that trivialise them (although most of them are trivial in the first place).

and the pursuer was one of the few (only?) bosses which was bettered in one of the patches (sotfs only? can't be bothered to check), where they upped the likelihood of him using his other attacks rather than repeating the dash&stab and the 3hit combo ad nauseam. i'd say it's an excellent early boss fight, like the gargoyles

that said, i'll say that the DS1 boss bestiary at least feels more diverse because of also the more varied boss rooms that have a more prominent "role" in the fights, and that visually they work much better because a lot of them have great intro cutscenes (and, on average, a better visual design). but purely mechanically...

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Gaping Dragon a good boss fight? It literally just runs into the wall and then you destroy it.

In my first playthrough of Dark Souls, I died more times against the Gaping Dragon than I have against any other boss in Demon's Souls (3 playthroughs), Dark Souls (2 playthroughs), Dark Souls II, or Bloodborne.

On the other hand, I beat Ornstein & Smough on my first try.

 

[sullynathan]

If you don't count the DS1 DLC then the game barely has any bosses worth mentioning at all. DS2 has more forgettable bosses but it never gets as bad or tedious as DS1.

If you don't count DLC at all Dark Souls has 3 great bosses, Dark Souls 2 only has 1. If you do count DLC, Dark Souls has 7 great bosses, Dark Souls 2 only has 5. Bed of Chaos might be the worst boss in the series but even at that, it won't take you as long to beat as most of the tedious Dark Souls 2 bosses.

 

[Arnust]

Long ago, in an island, far to the east, a great director made a great game.
I believe they called it Dark Souls.
Perhaps you're familiar.
No, how could you be.​

Soon.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

So I tried using miracles.
Is lightning spear supposed to deal piss poor damage? It dealt like 200 damage against those corrosive bugs in shrine of amana, and like 50 damage against the demon of song.

 

[darthaegis]

Beat Darklurker but failed to realise that its clone had cast a Homing Soul Arrow just before dying. Didn't see that coming.
Fucking kill me

 

[Arnust]

So I tried using miracles.
Is lightning spear supposed to deal piss poor damage? It dealt like 200 damage against those corrosive bugs in shrine of amana, and like 50 damage against the demon of song.

The lowest kind at base stats is pretty meager without any gear, yeah. Corrosive Bugs, as well as Hollows probably, are the kind of mib in Souls that have extremely low defenses so you can see how much would you fo before it calculating how much it goes through.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

I had a +6 divine shield thing though and 22 faith. How much do I need to deal damage?
My pyromancies are much stronger. Except against demon of song. It dealy 70 damage against her.
Like, does she have high elemental stats all around or something?

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

Best Soulsborne game, without question. Only faggots try to sell this beast as an inferior sequel. The real Souls fans know what's best, bitch.

The agility stat is the only legit problem with this game otherwise it was a giant leap forward for the franchise. A giant leap that subsequent games chose to ignore, and fuck em for it.

 

[Seaking4]

There is nothing wrong with agility

 

[Arnust]

The problem with agility is the ~ten levels that you have to invest early to get the olde reliable iFrames. This is an issue for players used to DS1 (couldn't respec) or any of the others (has to invest in a seemingly useless stat). It is outset by making the whole mechanic of dodge rolling optional (I've done No Agility once for a Greatshield build, it easy p. Cool), and how much more and faster you level in this game, with the meta SL being at 150 instead of 120, for one. And if you were to farm, + Souls gain items are avaleible pretty early (Silver Serpent +1, off the top of my mind).

It's about the more Action RPG side of Souls, which I'm in the minority for preferring.

 

[toroid]

ENB is like that thing that was cool back in high school.

He's still cool to me. I don't know about you, but his LPs are the best, especially From the Dark series which is probably the best LP of a Souls game. He's been doing it many times, but FtD is the most polished LP of all. He's not doing Souls content anymore because even 3 is p. bad (plus there's already so many LPs and Lore videos on Youtube, which is why he didn't bother making anything similar with Bloodborne).

I agree about his older LPs. He was really good at pointing out subtle details and connecting them together with the game as a whole. You could tell he put a lot of time and thought into understanding DS1.

These days, unfortunately, he just says whatever the hell comes out of his mouth. He flip-flops on matters of principle on a whim and he doesn't accept criticism gracefully at all. Being thin skinned and hypocritical together makes for terrible entertainment. He has become just another low effort low quality Twitch streamer with a gaggle of childish fanboys to suck his ass and coddle his ego. It's pretty disappointing.

Also, he has just recently been playing through DS2 SotFS on Twitch and uploading it to youtube. If you're interested.

 

[Black Angel]

These days, unfortunately, he just says whatever the hell comes out of his mouth. He flip-flops on matters of principle on a whim and he doesn't accept criticism gracefully at all. Being thin skinned and hypocritical together makes for terrible entertainment. He has become just another low effort low quality Twitch streamer with a gaggle of childish fanboys to suck his ass and coddle his ego. It's pretty disappointing.

Also, he has just recently been playing through DS2 SotFS on Twitch and uploading it to youtube. If you're interested.

I don't know anything about being 'thin-skinned and hypocritical' or not accepting criticism gracefully because ever since he focused on Twitch, I kinda abandon his content altogether, too. However, I know about his SotFS LP since I'm on video (4) now because real life is getting in the way of me catching up to the most recent LP video. Now that he's kinda getting back to Youtube, like I said, he's still pretty cool to me. His criticism of the game is pretty valid, but he's also having lots of fun playing the game.

He also talked about how moving to Twitch was a better financial/life decision for him, so I'm okay with that even though it's disappointing he abandoned Youtube.

 

[Multidirectional]

The problem with agility is the ~ten levels that you have to invest early to get the olde reliable iFrames. This is an issue for players used to DS1 (couldn't respec) or any of the others (has to invest in a seemingly useless stat). It is outset by making the whole mechanic of dodge rolling optional (I've done No Agility once for a Greatshield build, it easy p. Cool), and how much more and faster you level in this game, with the meta SL being at 150 instead of 120, for one. And if you were to farm, + Souls gain items are avaleible pretty early (Silver Serpent +1, off the top of my mind).

It's about the more Action RPG side of Souls, which I'm in the minority for preferring.

I certainly heavily prefer stat system in DS II compared to DS. I do usually pump ADP from very start, but I reach 105 AGL in such early stage of game that it's essentially non issue to me.
By the way, it's probably worth mentioning that AGL also increases consumables use speed, not just iFrames. I don't see it mentioned most of the time.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Time to bitch again about a DS2 feature -
I find it really counter intuitive that they introduce a feature that allows you to skip most of the game (like the master key in DS1), but they link it to souls collected in the current playthrough.
Which means that even if you burn all of the boss souls you've collected, you still won't have enough and will have to play through the game anyway. You could grind, but in the time it takes to grind enough souls I could probably just do a boss rush, and I hate grinding to begin with. I find grinding to be a horrible concept in gaming.
Shouldn't it be total souls collected on your character, not in the current playthrough?

Imagine if the Master Key went away like the others and you had to kill Ornstein and Smough to get it. What's the point? You've already killed every other boss in the game.

 

[Arnust]

Time to bitch again about a DS2 feature -
I find it really counter intuitive that they introduce a feature that allows you to skip most of the game (like the master key in DS1), but they link it to souls collected in the current playthrough.
Which means that even if you burn all of the boss souls you've collected, you still won't have enough and will have to play through the game anyway. You could grind, but in the time it takes to grind enough souls I could probably just do a boss rush, and I hate grinding to begin with. I find grinding to be a horrible concept in gaming.
Shouldn't it be total souls collected on your character, not in the current playthrough?

Imagine if the Master Key went away like the others and you had to kill Ornstein and Smough to get it. What's the point? You've already killed every other boss in the game.

You can just do "everything" as for content goes, but not killing any Great Ones (maybe one or two for important items), and go up to a million. I've done it a ton of times as I take my sweet time. Grinding, as per killing The Rotten around three times, isn't exactly the most time consuming thing in these games by a mile. You can also do the Lucatiel Questline right there, too.

 

[CthuluIsSpy]

Yeah, but it increases by a million each time. For NG++ you need 3 million.
I don't see how I can gain that much without killing all of the great souls and the bosses that leads up to them (which sucks. I hate that you have to kill a boss to reach an important boss. In DS1 that wasn't really a thing, you can get to the bells without killing the bosses in between). Unless NG++ dramatically increases the souls they give you. Like triples them or something.

 

[Crimson_Striker]

The problem with agility is the ~ten levels that you have to invest early to get the olde reliable iFrames. This is an issue for players used to DS1 (couldn't respec) or any of the others (has to invest in a seemingly useless stat). It is outset by making the whole mechanic of dodge rolling optional (I've done No Agility once for a Greatshield build, it easy p. Cool), and how much more and faster you level in this game, with the meta SL being at 150 instead of 120, for one. And if you were to farm, + Souls gain items are avaleible pretty early (Silver Serpent +1, off the top of my mind).

It's about the more Action RPG side of Souls, which I'm in the minority for preferring.

I'm actually doing a No Agility Greatshield run at the moment and the game has honestly been easier than my other builds that relied on rolling. I love how strong Shields are in 2, which is very refreshing after playing 3, where Greatshields are just dead weight.
The only roadblock I've had so far is Fume Knight, he was extremely easy when i could roll but now I cant and he hits so insanely hard.

 

[Arnust]

Been using them as offensive means? Or just paired with a weapon? (I do love that they allow you to make a Greatshield, and a bit later some of the best ones, super early)

 

[SumDrunkGuy]

There is nothing wrong with agility

If you're gonna pass on a shield and go two handed or better yet dual wield weapons (and why would you not? Dual wielding is fucking amazing in this game, unlike in the other Souls games where it's absolutely pointless) then raising AGL is all but mandatory.

Sure, you can ignore it, but you'd be a fucking retard for doing so because you're putting yourself at a HUGE disadvantage in PVE and an even bigger one in PVP. You realize AGL affects not only iframes but also healing speed and shit like that? Of course you could always be a shield user instead, but that ain't no fun.

 

[Crimson_Striker]

Been using them as offensive means? Or just paired with a weapon? (I do love that they allow you to make a Greatshield, and a bit later some of the best ones, super early)

Just paired with a weapon but I havent been bothered to get the paired shields yet. My weapon of choice right now are Lances.

 

[Seaking4]

There is nothing wrong with agility

If you're gonna pass on a shield and go two handed or better yet dual wield weapons (and why would you not? Dual wielding is fucking amazing in this game, unlike in the other Souls games where it's absolutely pointless) then raising AGL is all but mandatory.

Sure, you can ignore it, but you'd be a fucking retard for doing so because you're putting yourself at a HUGE disadvantage in PVE and an even bigger one in PVP. You realize AGL affects not only iframes but also healing speed and shit like that? Of course you could always be a shield user instead, but that ain't no fun.

Ok but ... what the's problem with the agility stat then? What you're saying is that the build you want needs to have agility raised. It's an RPG. Raise the stats you need. That's why they are there.