Poise is a crutch as well. Properly managing your stamina via blocking isn't.
dude, don't be a fucking moron like gouda:
I have a feeling that dark souls 2 will require a lot less of the twitchy barrel rolling around with little or no armor like a spastic maniac, to be beaten (something that they pushed even more in the expansion). So grinding will be less necessary, I'm guessing, if you like to play dark souls more like an RPG where you actually make use of your stats and manage your resources, rather than an action game, which was the best and most efficient way of playing dark souls (and the reason for why it was even possible to beat the game at SL1 with pyromancy).
read this again and revel in the retard.
I admit that I grinded the phalanx in DS a bit before taking on ornstein and smough, as relying on heavy armor and and a high stability shield, simply did not cut it, unless you were sufficiently high level against them.
see? you just never go full
there's very few attacks that deal massive stamina damage (like smough's running attack), and even having a light shield with decent resistance decently upgraded (heater is solid, towe/caduceus with 3.0 weight and 69 stability at +10 is pretty awesome for pretty much the whole game bar the dlc) will make you lose very little stamina... much less than fucking rolling. rolling needs tighter/more precise timing and stamina management than blocking (unless you use unupgraded shit-tier shields like large leather or something), and you need to be mindful of many more attacks than with a shield (where only a handful are really dangerous), more aware of your surroundings and positioning.
high stability shields, high poise, iron flesh are crutches for noobs (although apparently there are noobs that can't even play with those, like gouda. i've even shown my girlfriend DaS, it's her second game ever [first was Mirrors Edge] and she's already better than him), rolling is for the slightly more skilled (and you really don't require that much skill in DaS... just go look at videos from barely functioning "gamers" like James from gamerfront or that pewdiecunt for proof that rolling is anything but hard or twitchy)
edit:
Regardless of whether this is a good idea, I don't think From think of their games in terms of long-term consequences of failure (as opposed to say, XCOM, where one major fuckup can make the campaign unwinnable). A lot of the content in Dark Souls has built-in easy modes, allowing bad players to overcome the challenge if they persevere. It would be a major change in their design philosophy to make the game unwinnable after a certain volume of repeated failure.
that was kinda my point... there are (very good/excellent) games with much harsher penalties for fucking up, and that's usually considered a plus so i don't see why From doing the same similar would be a bad thing. adjusting the difficulty a bit so that there are no more easy-modes for siberian-room-temperature-IQ-level noobs like gouda (because it really seems this time there won't be easy modes for bosses/levels other than player summons) is a plus in my book.
but "mobs won't respawn after x amount of kills" isn't going to make the game harder, but actually much much easier ('cause now you can clear a whole level... permanently). there was a much much better and more elegant solution to make soul farming less desirable/efficient/viable: make souls dropped from enemies be a function of their distance from the bonfire (and perhaps even adding a death counter so that after X kills all enemies give Y% less souls)
