Commissar Budgie posted:

Real talk: Are whips any good in this game? A few friends of mine are making castlevania-themed characters and I've had moderate luck pairing the whip mainhand with the rapier offhand since the whip seems to do fuckall to anything with a shield or aggressive move sets, like the Lothric Knights. Is there any hope for a purely whip Alvin and the Belmonts or is he to be a rapier pokeboy from here on out?

turtlecrunch posted:

Tykero posted:

The weapon skill on most Whips is actually quite good. It hits three times at range, ignores shields, and in PvP is pretty difficult to avoid if you aren't keenly aware of how it works. PvE Whips scale pretty decently.
You can't backstab or riposte with them, however.

Commissar Budgie posted:

Real talk: Are whips any good in this game? A few friends of mine are making castlevania-themed characters and I've had moderate luck pairing the whip mainhand with the rapier offhand since the whip seems to do fuckall to anything with a shield or aggressive move sets, like the Lothric Knights. Is there any hope for a purely whip Alvin and the Belmonts or is he to be a rapier pokeboy from here on out?

Einwand posted:

Guy who keeps posting their videos of punching dudes, any advice on punching weapons? I'm doing a gimmick setup of "is Gundyr" and I feel having the option to bring out much faster punches along with the halberd is incredibly fitting.

Harrow posted:

Changes to skills in the "Magic" category which is a phrasing I love. That is so insanely vague and far-reaching and could be anything from across-the-board sorcery buffs to nerfing Sunlight Spear into the ground because it one-shots in melee range.

Babe Magnet posted:

Dagger users don't exist.

Harrow posted:

Armchair game designer time! Feel free to make fun of me for being the worst.

What I'd do to magic:

• Speed up base casting times on all sorceries, but keep the max casting speed where it is. Basically, lessen reliance on the Sage's Ring and make early-game sorcery less slow and painful. Miracles and pyromancies are fine, speed-wise.
  
• Buff all damage spells, across the board. All of them. Every last one. But...
  
• ...nerf all damage-boosting rings, like the Ring of the Sun's First Born or Witch's Ring or Bellowing Dragoncrest Ring.
  

In the end, the point would be to make magic stronger in the early- and mid-game, but about the same as it is now in the late game, by reducing reliance on speed- and damage-boosting rings. The rings suck because, if you want to use attack spells at all beyond throwing a Great Chaos Fire Orb into a group of basilisks or something, all four of your ring slots are spoken for: you need the Sage's Ring so your casts aren't painfully slow, and you need three damage-boosting rings because two 15% boosts and a 25% boost are a big loving deal. Until you get all of those it sorta sucks to cast, and once you do get them all it's suddenly fine.

Oh, and move Lightning Spear earlier, like High Wall of Lothric early.

Lovely Senorita posted:

we exist, you just never hear about us because why do 46 damage on two hits when you can just clobber someone with a plank for a sword

(Twinspears, on the other hand, are pretty scary with that rolling L1; it comes out fast enough to poke someone with both at the same time, which is dang good for bleed)

HaB posted:

I realize that's probably near impossible to balance and is completely a pipe dream, but there it is. Instead we get "spam R1 with a straight sword or a rapier" which will be every invader you see until someone finds a counter, then we'll be on to the next generic build.

Babe Magnet posted:

Yo das me

Advice on punching weapons: don't

For real though, they're really fun but super gimmicky because poise is garbage in its current implementation, if it isn't bugged outright. This makes the caestus weapon art useless. The defense boost it gives is negligible, you're still going to get killed in two hits from a greatsword or get chain hit to death by an 8 hit combo from a irithyll straight sword (both happened to me within the last hour)

If you insist because you want to be an incredibly handsome and big-wienered dude such as myself, here's what I've gathered so far form doing tons of pvping while beasting through the whole game with just caestus/demon fists so far.

-Your openers are the sprinting L1 doublepunch (fast to come out and easy to roll out of for safety) and the sprinting R1 backhand (strong, and the parry timing is strange so its less likely to get you stabbed in the dick).
-If you got a dude who likes to roll whenever he feels like he'll be carressed by the gentlest breeze (this should be you too, btw), if you can predict the roll you can hit them with your sprinting heavy dunk which is your most damaging move.
-Punish people trying to do the same to you with your R2 jab. It has a surprising amount of reach.
-You WILL trade with everything, up to and including the Fume Ultra Greatsword. And since poise is stupid right now, there's nothing you can do about being combo'd. Stay mobile, be patient.
-Off-handing the caestus lets you parry instead of using its terrible weapon art. Tight timing but it's better than nothing.
-Learn the weapons you're fighting against:
Katana users are going to try and sprint-poke you. You can parry this if you can see it coming. If they use their weapon art, you can just sprint at them to try and bait the parry or roll past them if they try to hit you. If you're not sprinting, the timing for the caestus parry on their weapon art attack is to use it when they crouch down to their lowest point.
Spear users are going to try and poke you to death. Sprint to the side, bait the poke, run in and slap, get away. Hit and run tactics. If they're the spinning kind, bait it, stay away, roll into the last spin, R2 uppercut, get out.
Greatswords users are going to make you their bitch, but they're more often than not wearing the pee-pants so it evens out. Stay mobile. If you don't stagger them on the first hit, get the gently caress out. They get to use poise and you don't, so there's nothing you can do to break through their hyper armor and they need to hit you a lot less than you need to hit them. Do not try to parry them (unless they're using one of the dex greatswords). These guys will be your biggest problem.
Straightsword/Thrusting sword users are generally of lower quality stock and lesser class, but they can be a problem since they've gotten really good at just mashing R1 through the entire game. You will be swiped 7 times by a dark sword. your only options here are hit and run or to try and roll through all of their poo poo. Do not try to trade. Pretty easy to parry since they're generally really dumb but poking weapons have double-sized hotboxes so it's not safe to try and get them. They've also generally invested a lot of points into vigor because they'e bad at the game so fighting them is going to be a slog.
Axe/Scythe/Whatever users are generally pretty simple since those weapons take a little finesse to use, which means (like your own weapons) they're not nearly as good as the alternatives listed above. They can be weird sometimes. be patient, hit and run, punish their inevitable big dumb useless move that is the reason no one ever uses these weapons.
Magic users (including faith and pyros) need to be baited into using their spells and then you run up and punch them in the dick. These will usually be straight/thrusting sword users, so head's up.
Dagger users don't exist.
Shield babies need different mindsets depending on their shield type. The types are "Parrying" and "Not Parrying". You will eat Not Parrying shields for breakfast. This is the moment you've been training for. Get your kicks out. Parrying shields can be rough because of your range, you've just got to learn to bait that parry. Get them on the defense, run up to them, pause, and then attack once their animation is playing. Works every time.

e: also if you don't mind some fire shenanigans, the demon fists are so cool. You can break most people's blocks with the spinny-winny-slam-a-ninny if you have the knight-slayer ring on, and it's unparryable. The rest of the moveset is pretty much the same but you'll be doing fire damage on top of physical and it uses a little more stamina.

e2: OH one more important piece of information that I just remembered because I just beat a fool by doing it:

-The double-tap is generally less useful than the backhand BUT if you're chasing after a roller, and you use the sprinting combination punch in the middle of their roll, the second hit will connect. Excellent wait to punish cowards.

Tykero posted:

I haven't tried the Caestus yet because it seemed super lackluster, but doesn't it have the same Weapon Art as the Mace, Black Knight Sword, etc that basically gives you about three seconds of reduced damage taken and super high deflection for enemy attacks?
I saw a video of somebody using the Mace and wrecking up on people with that weapon art, but again I haven't tried it myself.

poptart_fairy posted:

Ugh, torn between using NK's soul for the weapon or the miracle trophy. I dread the idea of fighting himin NG+

Gologle posted:

Is anybody else noticing these regulations/patches are coming out extremely fast? I don't remember too much of vanilla DS2 and nothing at all about DS1, was this the case there?

Giant Isopod posted:

If you want all the trophys good news: you need to fight him on ng++ to get all the rings anyway!

Vermain posted:

It does, yes. It's got a small cast time, though, which generally signals your intentions. Intelligent players will usually watch for it and either prepare a parry or roll away until it's finished.

Giant Isopod posted:

If you want all the trophys good news: you need to fight him on ng++ to get all the rings anyway!

Tykero posted:

The way I saw it used was in reaction to an opponent's attacks, sort of like a wider window parry. Their weapon would get deflected, Perseverance-user would take a small amount of damage and counterattack for a higher value trade. Seems niche and altogether probably not worth it for the lower damage-per-hit of the Caestus, now that I consider it. What a shame.

net cafe scandal posted:

Lmfao... Gona repost this in the IZ.

Jose posted:

I've just got the second coiled sword fragment. Is this area a dead end and is there any reason not to trade it?

Tykero posted:

Use a weapon good for punishing panic rolls in your offhand slots, like a Katana or Curved Sword of some variety, to finish off resilient targets before they can take a sippy.