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If you were wondering how to pronounce "Varangian..." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUvCFW6SfIQ (Update 25 at the bottom of the last page)
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Jul 19, 2016 00:24
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 14:04 |
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While pyromancy does scale on intelligence and faith, they're generally perfectly usable without any investment in those stats. Pyromancy base damage is insane, is what I'm saying.
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Jul 19, 2016 00:26
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Pyromancy still requires no levels to actually cast the spells. It's just that in DS2 all the damage elements get additional scaling from some function of your intelligence and faith, which you see on your character sheet.
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Jul 19, 2016 00:48
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"Examine" is not "Use/Activate", From!  It's a bit of a pet peeve of mine, and they do it a lot in DS2; when faced with a mysterious device, I want to examine it to get some idea of what it does before I mess with it. Fortunately, the prompt says "Examine" - great! Oh wait my character's just jumping right in and poking the thing now there's a cutscene what's happening  Ah, the Greatsword though. That was my weapon of choice when I played this game - even if it did take ages to get my stats high enough to not fat-roll with it. However I do wish they hadn't changed the greatsword animations compared to DS1.
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Jul 19, 2016 01:05
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inthesto posted:While pyromancy does scale on intelligence and faith, they're generally perfectly usable without any investment in those stats. Pyromancy base damage is insane, is what I'm saying. From what I understand, the scaling bonus is flimsy if not practically non-existant. Geop can throw powerful fireballs all day every day if he pumps up his flame.
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Jul 19, 2016 01:22
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oh yes oh god yes form the head FORM THE HEAD unghhhh...
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IronSaber posted:From what I understand, the scaling bonus is flimsy if not practically non-existant. Geop can throw powerful fireballs all day every day if he pumps up his flame. The scaling is more to benefit other sources of the damage types but you know what happens when a lot of small numbers add up over a very long time...
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Jul 19, 2016 01:26
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Danaru posted:"A note about Pyromancy in this game, is that it actually does scale off Intelligence" It actually scales off Intelligence AND Faith. I made a post to the effect earlier on; Fire damage is affected by adding up the Faith and Intelligence bonuses, while Dark (hexes) also uses both but scales off of whichever one is lowest. Pyromancy does retain the attribute of not needing any stats to use any of the actual spells, however, so it is still useful regardless. Pyromancy is alive and well. Also hey, the Lost Bastille. gently caress this area. With a Great Club. It was bad in the base game, and it's even worse in SOTFS. (Un?)fortunately we haven't quite seen why but yeah, I did not appreciate the additions. Like, at all. That Covetous Silver Serpent Ring +1 from Melentia is pretty great, also. Just having it on most of the time is a good idea since it'll let you get souls significantly faster for leveling and buying cool poo poo. I mean there's Soul Memory fuckery as well but oh well. Also also, I'm pretty sure the Drangleic armour, while heavy, is statistically far better than anything you can find for quite some time. It kinda weirds me out but I guess it being heavy was the attempt at balancing it statistically in the early game. I'm not sure it really succeeded. Also hey, you pulled out the Greatsword! It's pretty loving silly. I wasn't a fan of it at first but then I kinda bought in to the "rule of cool" factor. Though I'm generally not a huge fan of overly large buster sword things. Bobbin Threadbare posted:If you were wondering how to pronounce "Varangian..." This is pretty nice to know actually. I was pronouncing it with a hard "g" this whole time. Pretty cool little tune, too. Thank you! MGlBlaze fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Jul 20, 2016 |
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Jul 19, 2016 01:57
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Midnight Voyager posted:GEOP YOU PLAYED UO TOO??? YOU BETCHA. FREQUENTLY. SINCE 1997.
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Jul 19, 2016 02:25
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There's more backstory on the Flexile Sentry if you attempt to trade its boss soul for gear. Your Fire Bonus (which in turn feeds the pyromancy glove) scales with the average of your Intelligence and Faith, but you never need too much investment to make it pretty good and levels are plentiful in DS2 besides. In addition, the glove natively has a significant amount of flat damage bonus which goes all the way up to 250 at +10. Effectively, pyromancy is always useful; having good Int+Faith just makes it even more useful. I'm a fan of ultra greatswords in this game, considering that unlike DS1 they've actually got a realistic amount of speed to them. (The weight still isn't realistic, but that's medieval fantasy for you.  ) The vertical two-handed moveset that's on most can sometimes not be what you're looking for, but by the same token most have a sweeping horizontal moveset in one-handed mode.
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Jul 19, 2016 02:41
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The physics on that cape are awkward.
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Jul 19, 2016 02:47
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Geop posted:SLAMS OPEN A NEARBY DOOR Man, I started playing when I was a teenager and played for like ten years. I miss the hell out of that game.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:18
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Geop posted:SLAMS OPEN A NEARBY DOOR I still insist that only redeeming factor about Ultima 9 was that it came with a UO CD and a free month which introduced me to the game.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:23
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So did you figure out why lights were important in the pirate bay? You dont rest at a bonfire to light your torch either, you just go up to it and switch to the light torch action.
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Jul 19, 2016 03:39
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Midnight Voyager posted:Man, I started playing when I was a teenager and played for like ten years. I miss the hell out of that game.
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Jul 19, 2016 05:24
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Your pyromancy catalyst strength can be upgraded like in DS1, but now it requires a special upgrade material to gate progress and prevent early maxed-out flames. IIRC, the benefit from maxing your Fire ATK at a total of 60 in both stats is ~50%. Good, but not necessary to make effective use of the spells if you don't want to invest in the stats. DS3 kinda wrenched pyromancy out of its role as the universal spellcasting school by adding stat requirements to spells (one of which is utterly baffling), having upgrading the flame only improve the scaling a bit, and using regular titanite to upgrade the flame which will compete with upgrading your weapons rather than happening in parallel.
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Jul 19, 2016 07:02
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I have it on good authority that Geop's UO name was B0N3D00D.
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Jul 19, 2016 07:05
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Bastille is weird. It's a pretty big area and SotFS made an effort it slightly less boring (castle. cell. walls. castle. cell. waslls. castle. cell. cell. exit.) that might've backfired slightly. It doesn't help that you access it from two of the best-looking areas in the game, it's going to end up disappointing pretty much no matter what.
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Jul 19, 2016 07:43
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Antistar01 posted:"Examine" is not "Use/Activate", From! This is the reason I had to go back to the ship and get the pyromancy flame in my first playthrough. "Oh hey, a strange device - poo poo"
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Jul 19, 2016 07:57
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I'm actually quite surprised Geop's chosen to allocate his spare weight to donning the drangleic armour, rather than equipping the shield for its 100% physical block stat. On the other hand, that is a pretty sweet cape and we all know that armours with capes are the best armours. Are there breakpoints below 70% that affect roll distance, or is it a sliding scale? I might have to go change some of my own gear in that case. I think that boss fight with the flexile sums up one of my big gripes about the game, which is that having someone to distract the boss can kind of trivialise the fight. Often there doesn't really seem to be an in-between, either you go it alone and it's really hard or you summon a bro and it's really easy.
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Jul 19, 2016 08:51
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The NPC phantoms have absolutely insane HP and defenses, too. God help you if you invade someone carting one around.
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Jul 19, 2016 08:55
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Rubberduke posted:This is the reason I had to go back to the ship and get the pyromancy flame in my first playthrough. "Oh hey, a strange device - poo poo" Same. Also regarding the flame, I first went to a different area and met the NPC who upgrades the flame. I was really confused because they didn't give me the flame so I thought I had missed something or possibly even hosed things up so that I couldn't even get the flame anymore. Then I found the pirate cove. That's one thing that's pretty baffling actually. You save the person who upgrades the flame, but unlike in the first game, they don't just give you the flame as thanks, you have to find the flame from some completely different area.
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Jul 19, 2016 08:56
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Crazy Achmed posted:I'm actually quite surprised Geop's chosen to allocate his spare weight to donning the drangleic armour, rather than equipping the shield for its 100% physical block stat. On the other hand, that is a pretty sweet cape and we all know that armours with capes are the best armours. Are there breakpoints below 70% that affect roll distance, or is it a sliding scale? I might have to go change some of my own gear in that case. quote:I think that boss fight with the flexile sums up one of my big gripes about the game, which is that having someone to distract the boss can kind of trivialise the fight. Often there doesn't really seem to be an in-between, either you go it alone and it's really hard or you summon a bro and it's really easy. There is one fight way later on that is incredibly fun if you fill up your summon slots, though.
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Jul 19, 2016 09:13
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Not sure why some people hate Lost Bastille, I thought it was one of the better made and more memorable areas in the game.
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Jul 19, 2016 10:11
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PSWII60 posted:Not sure why some people hate Lost Bastille, I thought it was one of the better made and more memorable areas in the game.
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Jul 19, 2016 10:14
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To me it just feels really boring. There's a couple good bits I'll comment on when Geop gets there but it's just really underwhelming; think of how a prison area was done in 3 or even Demon's, and the bastille just comes out bland.
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Jul 19, 2016 10:14
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anilEhilated posted:think of how a prison area was done in 3 The Bastille's pretty good about demonstrating the casual oppression of an ancient prison (hence the name) without being terribly obnoxious to the player.
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Jul 19, 2016 10:48
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NGDBSS posted:Ugh, don't remind me.
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Jul 19, 2016 10:53
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Well, I'm going to be waiting to his reaction to this area's boss eagerly.
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Jul 19, 2016 11:32
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NGDBSS posted:without being terribly obnoxious to the player. I'll put more words into it once more of the area shown but I did not like the Bastille at all. It's aesthetically boring and repetitive and the actual contents not interesting enough to make up for it.
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Jul 19, 2016 12:18
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Prison of Hope is the best prison because of the Phantom NPC with one of the greatest and most fitting frustrated warcry I've ever heard in anything.
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Jul 19, 2016 12:25
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UO was like the military - total bullshit that seems cool and good with nostalgia goggles. I sure as hell wouldn't go back to either.
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Jul 19, 2016 15:05
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PSWII60 posted:Not sure why some people hate Lost Bastille, I thought it was one of the better made and more memorable areas in the game. There are a few areas now that are very "that's scholar for you!"  I, too checked out the device instead of the chest first  Did Geop ever find the other summonable guy in No Man's Wharf? He is a shade instead of a phantom so he doesn't last very long, but you can bring him to the boss or use him to help clean out the long hands dudes. Furthermore, is it fair game to talk about stuff that was missed if Geop has killed the boss to an area and moved on? I'm not talking about stuff like things that a key dropped by a boss opens up that he is probably going back to explore, I mean just stuff like summons or non-gated areas that he didn't check out?
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Jul 19, 2016 15:21
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Related to that, I'm curious if the commentators nudge Geop into doing the sidequests with npcs. I think meeting Lucatiel and then summoning her for the boss battle is one such missable step. Basically it all kind of boils down to that; you have to meet npcs in certain locations at certain times and then summon them for certain boss battles and you have to do these things multiple times in various places. The npcs also have to survive the battles if memory serves, and it can be tricky in certain battles despite their massive HP pools. Failing these quests doesn't affect the main plot at all, but it would be nice to see for example Lucatiel to have a happy (in DS terms) ending. She's cool.
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Jul 19, 2016 15:29
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I personally thought Lost Bastille was one of the better DS2 areas, though it probably helps that i mostly skip the first part - i usually start at the pursuer shortcut, which is a prettier area with more new enemies.Crazy Achmed posted:I'm actually quite surprised Geop's chosen to allocate his spare weight to donning the drangleic armour, rather than equipping the shield for its 100% physical block stat. I suspect he forgot he had a better shield lying around - i know I did. Wasn't the issue with his heavier shield that it required more strength than he had, though?
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Jul 19, 2016 15:32
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I am looking forward to eventually seeing Guts Goonther.
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Jul 19, 2016 15:38
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PleasingFungus posted:I personally thought Lost Bastille was one of the better DS2 areas, though it probably helps that i mostly skip the first part - i usually start at the pursuer shortcut, which is a prettier area with more new enemies.
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Jul 19, 2016 15:45
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This was already said like three times but: PYROMANCY IS COOL AND GOOD EVEN WITH 5 INT & 5 FTH. The scaling it gets from stats is negligible compared to how much you get out of upgrading the hand, in terms of invested souls.
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Jul 19, 2016 17:10
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Grizlor posted:There are a few areas now that are very "that's scholar for you!"
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Jul 19, 2016 17:56
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PleasingFungus posted:I suspect he forgot he had a better shield lying around - i know I did. Wasn't the issue with his heavier shield that it required more strength than he had, though? Attestant posted:This was already said like three times but: PYROMANCY IS COOL AND GOOD EVEN WITH 5 INT & 5 FTH. The scaling it gets from stats is negligible compared to how much you get out of upgrading the hand, in terms of invested souls.  Given how DS1 worked, upping your main driving stats for a weapon/item would make it stand out more, definitely, but in the end, its quality/upgraded level were the biggest details. More than min-maxing, I'd prefer that Goonther just be *really* flexible in what he can use.
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Jul 19, 2016 17:57
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| # ? Jun 11, 2024 14:04 |
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Yes, using pyro is still a very valid option for builds who are otherwise committed but still wanna cast some magic. The scaling is just a bonus for caster builds. Just have enough attunement for 2 slots so you're not locked into one kind of fireball and can use the spells that use two slots at least (Some even use three, I think? It's been a long long while since I played this game)
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Jul 19, 2016 18:12
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