I love the sound of what you're saying. From what I gather, it seems DS2 didn't go any more mainstream than DS1 did as successor to Demon's Souls.
I finally convinced myself that taking out Manus from outside the white portal was still the most efficient way for my sorcerer to win the boss battle. So I grinded a bit to get the souls and materials for a Magic Light Crossbow+9 and dozens of sniper bolts -- and thus beat Manus.
Not forming a division around this are we? Frankly, while cheating items and souls is easy, I doubt they'll be able to have invincibility in DS2. That's too easy to catch, all you have to do is have both clients' clients communicate with each other about what stats what level at what skill levels can someone have, in addition to scanning for frozen values such as health. If a modded client and an unmodded client try to connect, it should just throw a version mismatch and be done with it. If the devs aren't doing this, then they're morons. If the devs are doing this, then the only thing cheaters can cheat is the time it takes them to level up, not gain a substantially unfair advantage over non-cheaters. What are they gonna do? Spam their 99 Divine Blessings while I'm stabbing them in the ass with my +15 Iaito? Easy victory. Just as a note, duping items was a very common issue on consoles. They duped souls, Divine Blessings, Humanities, Souvenirs of Reprisal, Dragon Scales, Lightning Bolts, Feather Arrows, Moss Clumps, probably Titanite as well. The only thing that was easier on the PC was getting invincibility and that, along with infinite stamina, was already possible on consoles. Lastly, for the mouse & keyboard -- if they implement it right this time around it should be a lot better then a controller. They need to give us a dedicated sprint button, a dedicated roll button, a dedicated jump button, allow binding the mouse without mods, take out in-built acceleration and allow for more sensitivity, stop Alt from pinging Windows (aside from Alt+Tab), allow binding spells and gear to 1-0 keys & F1-F12 keys, allow two-way spell/item scrolling, have heavy attack be holding the attack button instead of a separate button, tapping block should parry instead of having a dedicated button for that, among a few other things. I really hope they consulted someone experienced in PC control schemes for DS2, or I'll have to make a mod for it my self... What was the issue there? You could cancel his dark attacks with the pendant and dodge just about anything else.
It was just too harsh. Being one-shot every time, with almost no decent window of attack for a sorcerer. I'd have to really sit down and learn the attack pattern by heart to beat him or level way up before being able to beat him fair and square. The spool-up for his straight orb attack (dark magic) is also too short to counter with the pendant in time so you often have to just take it if you're near, meaning nigh-death for my character. This match-up couldn't be more unfavorable for a purely INT-based character (glass-cannon sorcerer). Lucky for me, they implemented ways to beat bosses even for classes that need to go ranged and can't take hits in any way whatsoever (while dishing out massive amounts of damage). For certain, the Crown of Dusk was unfavorable to wear in the whole of the DLC, save a few minor sections. I did it nonetheless, out of habit (until I, for a time, switched to the Crown of the Dark Sun only to beat Manus -- to no avail).
Well I only got Dark Souls 1 last week so I have not really experienced all of the playstyles yet. I guess my goal should be to find a way I like to play before the PC release of Dark Souls II. Right now my first char is kind of jacked but it will work either way. I'm level 64 with 33 END/32 STR/20 DEX/20 VIT and everything else wanderer base. I use heavy armor and heavy weapons right now and no magic at all. The magic seems pretty interesting in this game though not sure if I should try pyro, sorc, or faith first.
Sorceries are only really good if you level up your intelligence much. They scale exponentially well at a certain point. Pyromancies are probably the most cost-efficient, with the best EV, since you only need to level up their spell tool with souls, and not any char stats. You can't possibly go wrong with them. I always found miracles very well situated for first playthroughs. The ability to heal without using flasks, or return to the last bonfire rested at, is a huge boon (besides long-range offensive miracles).
Wall of text to assist your choice in magic: Spoiler Sorceries and Miracles are both dependent on stats: intelligence and faith respectively. Pyromancies aren't dependent on stats, but need the Pyromancy Flame to be upgraded in order to boost your power. Upgrading the Flame from +0 to Ascended +5 (max) costs as much as it does to level up from SL1 to SL55. Sorceries are the most diverse of the three: they have support spells like Cast Light, Repair, Aural Decoy and Remedy, they have augmenting spells like Crystal Magic Weapon and Strong Magic Shield, and a plethora offensive spells like Dark Bead, White Dragon Breath and Soul Spear. Miracles are mostly support (Great Heal, Homeward, Great Magic Barrier, etc.), but they also have two augmenting spells (Sunlight Blade and Darkmoon Blade), as well as some offensive stuff (Wrath of the Gods, Sunlight Spear and Great Gravelord Sword Dance). Pyromancies are mostly offensive AoE spells (Great Combustion, Chaos Fire Whip, Chaos Storm, etc.), but they do have some exceptions, namely: Power Within, Iron Flesh, Flash Sweat and Undead Rapport. Of the three, Sorceries have the largest library of spells to choose from and have some of the most useful spells in general. Their best weapon augment has less multiplier on the magic adjust of the casting item, compared to the Miracles', but their catalysts have a lot higher magic adjusts, making Crystal Magic Weapon stronger then Sunlight Blade, but weaker then Darkmoon Blade. However, Darkmoon Blade can only be used if you're in the Darkmoon covenant and it's status as the best depends on you having a high rank in that covenant, otherwise it's just a copy of Sunlight Blade. Miracles has the community's favorite AoE -- Wrath of the Gods. It's the only AoE that has a sizable amount of casts, is easy to obtain and has a reasonably fast cast. Pyromancies' AoEs either have a long cast time, very limited number of uses or don't deal any real damage. In fact, Pyromancies' two top AoE (Chaos Storm and Fire Tempest) can only be attuned into one slot at a time, further lessening their usefulness. In general, Pyromancies are for anyone that can spent the souls to get them, but lack capabilities of Miracles and Sorceries, yet because they don't need you to level up to use them, they're very popular in PvP, where you can generally only fight people +-10% your soul level. Miracles are considered the best for PvP (assuming your char is based around it), because Sunlight Blade does lightning damage instead of magic damage, while most players lack resistance to it (as opposed to Pyromancies' fire damage, which people have the most elemental resistance against generally), in addition to Wrath of the Gods, which either send the other player flying (low poise) or staggers them (high poise), allowing you to chain the miracle to cheese them. Sorceries are considered to be best for PvE, because their weapon augments can be augmented themselves by the +50% duration ring, have the most casts and their spells are effective against stupid targets in general. In addition to all the amazing support spells. My current char is a self-made build based on evasion and reasonably high damage. In the end, I plan for him to look like this. The three weapons that I use interchangeably are Iaito, Balder Side Sword and Great Scythe. Hopefully I'll be able to create something similar in Dark Souls II. It's fairly amusing that you took the Wanderer class at the start, but remade it into a heavy tank. What are you wielding with those stats? Halberds? Greatswords?
Thanks for all of the info. I pretty much wield whatever I want lmao. I switch between my +10 claymore, black knight halberd, black knight greatsword, and black knight sword. I use a crystal halberd occasionally as well. I usually use full stone armor with havel's ring and ring of favor and protection. In some fights I use wanderers armor instead if I need the fast fast roll for that boss fight. Currently I am in anor londo but I made a sorc and Pyromancer yesterday. I am intrigued slightly by faith/str possibilities also they seem pretty fun but haven't tried it yet. Might pump faith into my current character for a bit to try that out.
Out of the weapons you mentioned, I always wanted to try the Black Knight Greatsword. It seems to have a fun two-handed strong attack, but the only character that it dropped on doesn't have the strength to wield it... Faith/Strength possibilities? You mean in weapons? I tried those on my weapon testing character and had disappointing results. Greatsword of Artorias has amazing scaling and damage, yet because it's damage is divided into two types of damage it does less then you would expect. Same with Astora's Straight Sword +5 (max is +5) -- it did 120 physical and 120 magical damage (+ C scaling with 40str, 45dex, 40fai), yet it did significantly less damage then my Iaito +9 (max is +15), that at the time did 167 pure physical damage (+ B scaling with 45dex), against Balder Knights no less and the Straight Sword is supposed to get bonus damage against them from it's divine auxiliary. I've no idea how the game calculates resistance values, but it seems that pure weapons always win over mixed weapons. Even worse -- you can't augment any weapons that scale with faith because all of them have auxiliary effects or are boss soul weapons, which means that as a caster type you can't even cast buffs on your own weapons. In fact, you might as well use normal weapons, such as Balder Side Sword that at +15 and blanket-40 stats does 401 physical damage (scaling included) and can be buffed with Sunlight Blade for 343 additional lightning damage, as opposed to Greatsword of Artorias, which does 353 physical and 310 magical damage with those same stats and swings three times slower. Also keeping in mind that lightning damage is the best elemental damage because very few things have resistance against it.
What I mean is splitting my stats between faith and strength. I would then use weapons that have good strength scaling that don't rely so much on dex like great club and man serpent greatsword and then buff them with faith weapon buffs like sunlight blade or dark moon blade since their effects scale with faith. The black knight greatsword is amazing. Both 1h and 2h strong hits are amazingly satisfying to hit with.
Was messing around with the character builder and made two good looking builds: Dex/Fai and alternatively Str/Fai. The Dex-based one is one that I would prefer -- it has access to a variety of Dex weapons, including the amazingly light bow, the heaviest medium shields, has slightly more Faith for extra power and benefits from Dex increasing casting speed (the increase between 8 and 45 Dex is about half a second, but it still counts). The Str-based build is tweaked to appeal to your heavy weapons criteria. It loses the slight casting speed increase, loses access to the heaviest medium shields (not that it really matters) and weapon variety because of it's extremely low Dex. It can be further modified as to be able to use black knight weapons, which weigh 4 units more then the Serpent GS and need 18 Dex to wield, but in doing so, you sacrifice 426 HP and a bit of Str. Oh and black knight weapons can't be buffed, because they have an innate 20% extra damage against demons. The builds are centered around FaP ring, while the Dex build can be slightly modified to adjust for it not being there without massive losses (aside from the bonuses that the ring it self gives), the Str builds are completely dependent on it if you still want fast rolls and a sizable health bar. The 30 Faith is the requirement for Sunlight Blade and that can't be sacrificed, reducing Strength would cut into your damage quite massively and sacrificing the already-low attunement would lead to very few miracles. On the subject of fast rolls -- keeping your weight under 25% is a fairly big deal (will be raised to 70% in Dark Souls II! ). It allows you to run faster and even though the invincibility frames from medium and fast rolls are the same, medium rolls leave you with a substantial ending lag and cover less distance in a single roll. Dark Souls is more about evading attacks then actually tanking them, as most bosses will insta-kill you if they hit anyway and weaker enemies simply eat through your heals if their attacks land. Because of that, the Dark Wood Grain Ring is considered extremely powerful -- it's ninja flips remove just about all of the ending lag from evading and cover even more distance then fast rolls, in addition -- more invincibility frames. Final note: there's a downside to all of the builds in this post. The downside is that you have to kill Solaire.
Interesting setups thanks for the builds. I imagine in NG+ blocking definitely becomes less viable but most bosses so far I have been able to block without even dropping my guard. Now when they do consecutive hits it is a bit trickier because you can't block too many hits in a row or else you run out of stamina but if you know that going in its usually OK. I would be interested in trying out a dex build as well though because I like the responsiveness of fast weapons. How hard is it to interrupt enemies with dex weapons? Pyromancer dex build seems like it could be good.
I haven't gotten into NG+ yet, but I don't think that blocking will be completely useless. Currently, I can block just about any attack, including those of bosses, which would likely change in NG+, but I don't think that standard fodder would be able to break it. I found that you shouldn't keep your shield up all the time -- it needlessly slows stamina regen. Just hold up block just as they're about to attack and then release the block right after. As an SL~10 I easily managed to block (and have stamina left over to attack) the first black knight's combos in such a way using a medium shield with 56 stability (which affects how much stamina drain you suffer from damage inflicted). Minimum stability of any unupgraded shield is 30, maximum of the strongest upgraded greatshield is 88. Best from medium shields would be Silver Knight Shield +5 at 76 stability. In fact, why not go one step above blocking and parry instead. If you miss, you'll get hit (if you miss only slightly you'll take heavily reduced damage), but if you manage to land the parry you can deal insane damage with the riposte afterwards. I generally get the enemy's attack timings with the shield, see which combo they're doing by blocking the first blow and then parry the second -- works very well and is easy to do. Here's a great video on the subject. I assume that by "interrupt" you mean "stagger". It depends on the poise damage that your weapon does against the total poise of the enemy. Most weaker enemies can get staggered by a single Iaito slash, but tough ones, such as Knight Artorias don't seem to get staggered at all, whereas I know that if you land 2 hits with the Manserpent GS on him he should break. However, I just used a bow to headshot him instead, as a headshot is a guaranteed stagger against all humanoid enemies. As for pyromancy -- it has great potential in PvP, for getting past defenses of people who just keep their shield up the entire time. Great Combustion or Black Fire spam seems to crack them right open. However, I found it rather lacking in PvE: whenever I could pull off a pyromancy I would just be better off swinging my weapon and doing more damage at no lasting cost. Some of them are even detrimental, such as pyro AoE panic buttons, that take ages to charge up and have severely limited casts. Since pyromancies are short-range only and are based on fire (which is the single most resisted elemental damage type, with the only exception being Black Flame, which deals physical and magical damage) they can't really substitute bows, even though they deal more damage. That said, they're a wonderful substitute for characters who can't cast any sorceries or miracles. And the fireball-type spells are like using Black Firebombs, except more plentiful and powerful. Few enemies can survive being hit by one and even fewer not get staggered by one. They're among the best poise-breakers in the game. If you're thinking of pyromancy, you should definitely check out Power Within (non-scaling self-buff that gives increased stamina regen and grants a 40% damage bonus to all your attacks, but slowly drains your health like poison and can actually kill you if you let it, lasts 100s, can be extended with a certain ring, which also slows the rate at which it drains HP), Undead Rapport (Takes control over most weaker undead (not giant skeletons) it can have some fun uses: Video, might want to mute it though) and Flash Sweat (reduces fire damage taken by 45% for 30s, very useful against some bosses).
Considering that a lot of the bosses are weak to fire (Seath, Gwyn, Stray Demon, Demon Firesage, the list goes on and on), fire-based pyromancy is highly useful in PvE. In fact, only about a fourth of the bosses that you actually have to fight head-on possess a resistance against fire, and even then it's still effective. Blocking is still effective in New Game Plus, no worries.
Hm, don't mix DS1 discussions with DS2 or it'll be ultra confusing It's already hard enough to lookup the right stuff in DS2 online now without being polluted with DS1 (some places and mobs along with items have the same name). So far, Dark Souls 2 is really different than DS1 in terms of build... My first character always tend to suck in all games (Demon's, dark and such) but this time it shoudl've been better (it ain't really), what is different is : - STR builds are working this time, especially in PVP as STR weapons are faster than before and the horizontal slash catches people who roll around (while u were invuln before and DEX builds raped everything) - U have much MORE stats in DS2 than DS1 : For example : END only raises Stamina and u have to lvl up VIT to raise carry weight (meh); on the other hand u're really encumbered only at 70%. DEX builds need DEX / ADP (adaptability raises the speed at which u move and roll and shit and it seems that u get some invuln frames at 25) + END for stamina + VIT for carry weight (in order to move fast) + Health. So it's really more and more stats to raise. - It takes less points to lvl up it seems tho (at lvl 72, only halfway thru NG, it takes around 8k souls to lvl up). - U can wear 4 rings now. They did some very questionnable IMO (and many other people's opinion too) design choice on rewards for phantoms as : - U don't get revived when u kill a boss as a phantom, u only get a token for a covenant that can also heal the host... - Well u don't get revived if u kill a boss solo either... There are still some people offering help but not half as many as the previous games. I find it stupid, totally stupid. Also, the item that revives u is semi rare and quite hard to farm as mobs don't respawn infinitely (not like before); if u kill em 10 times (i think) they are perma dead. They did that to prevent farming... For example, out of the dogs in lost bastille, i managed to farm 1 human effigy (new humanity thing) till i ran out of dogs and that was with items that boost drop rates... On the other hand (i dunno if the devs overlooked it or if it's a design choice), once u arrive in no man's wharf, u can get the lifestone ring, which breaks when u die (u respawn at the bonfire with all ur souls and still as a human) : u can repair the ring for 3000 souls at any blacksmith -> EPIC WIN. NO MO' DEATHS. 3000 is a lot at the beginning but it takes 4 kills in the iron keep. Also, they completely changed the way weapons work : U need titanite to lvl up any non boss weapon (i think) U enchant the weapons with magic / lightning / dark / bleed / poison / something else i forgot at another blacksmith for 2000 souls and a special stone. Once enchanted u lvl up the weapon the same way than before (i.e. a lightning +6 weapon would need the same components than a standard +6 weapon to go +7). There are also many many more weapons than before, including kickass twinblades (Darth Maul style), saw some people using it. It seems that everyone favors the halberd tho as it rapes. In the eseence, DS2 is much more balanced, large, hard than DS1. Well harder at the begnning like all DS games... Once u go and do decent dmg it's better. I like it much more than DS as it feels closer to demon's souls. My only issue is with the phantom rewards. That phantom rewards also have 2 consequences : - U almost never get invaded by a black phantom (didn't happen to me so far) - U get less help by full phantoms (but u get some shades) - U get freaking swarmed by grey phantoms at the bell towers, hell fuck. U can only have 1 buddy and u can have a freaking train of invaders one after another, right before the boss. That part was a pain in the ass... Back to back players invading. There's also another fun lvl where u invade other peoples if u're a human and they are hollow... Except that the mobs hunt YOU ! I was like WTFISGOINGON THATMORONHIDESINTHEMIDDLEOFRATS ANDTHEYDONTDOSHITTOHIM. U dont "die" if u get summoned as a grey phantom while human, which is good. Soooo, get ready for DS2, still crap controls, hard content, more open, meaner, with a lot more possibilities than DS1, i think we'll have really kickass builds in the future. Ah yeah, also, u can't dupe in DS2, so far, nobody seems to have found a way (in demon's u could only dupe items on the ground by taking it while being summoned to invade someone, in dark souls 1 u could infinitely lvl up with the dragon head bug but i don't remember about duping), on the other hand u need less griding i think for mats and shit (until u reach titanite chunks and slabs i'd say, as shards and normal can be bought from vendors). Ah yeah and u better have a good C/X because if u drop from Internet or quit the game when getting invaded u get banned... U can use one item to get unbanned but i think it's only once per NG (considering it works twice).
Wait a minute.. wha?! You're telling me that the Lord of Cinder that is engulfed in flames and a demon that has lava flowing all over him are weak to fire? Demons were born from fire, same will all those that carry a lord soul as they found those in the middle of a lake of fire, dragons should have an innate resistance to fire because they literally breathe it, gargoyles are made of stone and stone doesn't burn and they breathe fire as well -- that means that just about every single boss you encounter, save for Prepare to Die Edition content, should have immunity from or at least high resistance to fire. The only enemies from the base game that I'd think to be weak to fire would probably be Pinwheel (who dies in a few hits anyway), Hydra (an extremely predictable, and thus -- easy, boss) and perhaps the Moonlight Butterfly (good luck hitting it with fireballs). Don't forget to mention that most rings got their power cut by two thirds. You have to be joking about the banning part.
Except Superman became strong because he got separated from Crypton, not because he took a bit of it into himself.
Yes, that's exactly what I'm telling you. Even the great lord of sunlight is just a shadow of his former self. One might even argue that he isn't the real thing at all.
Oh yeah in Dark Souls magicians got it easy, in Demon's as well, it was ridiculous how i could one shot the final boss with pyromancy It's always the same tho, even in Dark Souls 2, most mobs are hardened and magic users got it easy again... Not only u don't need to go melee but u do 4x more damage than a hit with a 2h weapon. I remember the naga boss girlie, if u go in as a human u can summon one of the NPCs, the jester mage. He totally destroyed her with his pyromancy i was like "wtf !" About the rings, i didn't check for sure what bonus they give compared to previous games, however u can upgrade them (i think, as my ring of steel protection is "+1"), so it could balance things. I'll check tonight and see. In terms of love for magic users, they had the brilliant idea to add a spell (i think it's a spell or maybe it's an armor piece or a ring, i have to investigate what it is cuz i have no idea atm) that creates a deflagration to whoever is landing a combo on ur face. So, in PVP, u start to destroy a guy and, after 4 hits on his face or so, u get automatically knocked back with a bunch of dmg and no defense for a couple of seconds... game over ... I guess that everyone will run around with this device soon enough. It's like everything they did in DS2 is aimed at screwing over DEX builds, as STR builds don't land 4 or 5 hits... just 1 to 3 devastating zweihander blows, so they should have no knockback (unless it's triggered by the damage done to the carrier of the thingie).