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tweet my meat posted:The big secret to shields is that 100% physical block is massively overrated and you can defend just fine without it at 80%+ as long as you have decent stability. I think things like that and consumable use(like divine blessings) are very similar psychologically, and if you can get over the idea of "I am making a sacrifice here, which carries risk", you become a much better player as a result. Rubellavator posted:Sometimes your best punish comes from blocking an attack, sometimes it comes from rolling, and sometimes it just comes from calmly walking to the right position.
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Jul 9, 2019 22:21
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2010: Magic is for scrubs. Keeping your shield up and being careful is where it's at. 2014: Shields are for scrubs. Rolling through everything with a 2h is where it's at. 2019: Rolling is for scrubs. Shields and facetanking are where it's at. I can't wait for 2023 when the subversive position is that actually magic is good again. 
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Jul 9, 2019 23:48
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That joke might work if A) anyone had ever thought that magic was bad (nobody has ever thought this (except some people in ds3 but they're wrong)) B) anyone had actually said that rolling is bad on these last pages. Nobody said that. Sorry, but your joke is officially judged bad.
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Jul 10, 2019 11:57
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Amppelix posted:Sorry, but your joke is officially judged bad. 
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Jul 10, 2019 16:44
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He didn't say those things are "bad," he said they're "for scrubs."
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Jul 10, 2019 16:49
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Nobody ever said rolling was for scrubs either, just that people who besmirch the good name of shields are scrubs.
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Jul 10, 2019 16:55
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Shields, iframes, and positioning are all useful tools, and it's good to have all of them at your disposal to utilize whichever is most appropriate to the situation rather than exclusively relying on one and dismissing the others. Telling new players to dump all their stats into ADP is probably not the best advice, because if their understanding of the timing of attacks isn't fully developed yet the benefit of iframes will only be seen sporadically. Whereas if they are likely to get hit on a semi-regular basis, then increasing their HP will do more to improve survivability by reducing the chances of getting BTFO by a big attack (which, iirc, is more likely to happen if you botch your roll and take increased damage). If they only have 85 AGL, then they'll see a big improvement from getting to 86, and some improvement at 88, but after that they need to invest 7 levels into ADP each for their next two roll frames with only minimal other benefits. If their VIG is below 20, they'll get 30 HP per point, which is going to have a larger effect.
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Jul 10, 2019 23:16
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Right, but if they're used to dark souls 1 iframes letting them get back in their comfort zone will improve their performance by a lot.
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Jul 10, 2019 23:33
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Follow you’re heart
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Jul 10, 2019 23:36
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I'm seeing people saying that you don't need a shield you just need rolling and then seeing people saying that you don't need your rolling to be good you just need to do positioning and I'm wondering if we played the same game. Come the gently caress on, even if you do think that you can just use rolling for positioning and avoiding attacks that's not always going to be an option and if you are depending on rolling for defence you are going to need i-frames. i-frames are to rolling as stability is to shields, yes you can technically get by without it, but you will still need it for the cases when your usual tactics are no longer an option. Otherwise you are just gimping yourself and taking tools and options away from you.IronicDongz posted:I think things like that and consumable use(like divine blessings) are very similar psychologically, and if you can get over the idea of "I am making a sacrifice here, which carries risk", you become a much better player as a result. It's not quite similar to divine blessings because those are too rare to be able to rely on them. A shield with ~80% block is reliable. Closer to lifegems, really; I hoarded them for a while because of the "what if I need it later" mentality but eventually just realised the game is throwing enough at me that I don't need to worry about that. I don't play fighting games but having a shield with high but not 100% damage absorption is what you get when playing a game where blocking does chip damage; yeah, you get damaged, but you'd still rather block than eat the attack head-on. Hyperfocusing on completely nullifying damage is counterproductive but I don't think it's as steep a mental wall for people to leap over as you think.
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Jul 12, 2019 12:52
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Obviously you can't just precisely walk around every attack. But you can a lot of them, and learning which is part of being better at the game. I don't think there's anything objectionable in that statement?
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Jul 12, 2019 13:16
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some people took that dark souls 1 jojo stand mod very seriously and now all the souls games are shounen animes
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Jul 12, 2019 16:44
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IronicDongz posted:Right, but if they're used to dark souls 1 iframes letting them get back in their comfort zone will improve their performance by a lot. i think that's the main difference now. when DS2 came out most people playing it had played DS1, so the difference in roll functionality was very obvious to everybody and so the main advice became "rush your ADP to 20" because everybody also had a decent knowledge of how the game worked otherwise, so the roll was an obvious thing to fix. enough time has passed now though that you probably have people playing DS2 that have never touched DS1, so to them the roll being "worse" isn't obvious at all, and for them it probably does make more sense to level their first character more normally, since they have no point of comparison for what the DS1 > DS2 roll changes did.
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Jul 12, 2019 16:56
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Amppelix posted:Obviously you can't just precisely walk around every attack. But you can a lot of them, and learning which is part of being better at the game. I don't think there's anything objectionable in that statement? It's intentionally gimping yourself by refusing to use a tool the game gives you. You might as well say "well if you just get good at the game you can beat it at SL1 so I don't see why people keep insisting on levelling up as a strategy". That's technically true! You can get good enough at the game to beat it at SL1! But unless you are purposefully trying to handicap yourself there's no reason to do that. Having a roll with good i-frames, a reliable roll, is a tool, and learning how to use it is also part of becoming better at the game.
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Jul 12, 2019 22:44
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Personally I found the more long-ranged rolls you get at low weight more trouble than they're worth. I prefer a short-ranged roll with more i-frames. That way I can do the roll and still be close enough to whack the enemy I just dodged when I get back up. Longer ranger rolls meant my character would launch himself a couple of meters away regardless of which direction I dodged and then I had to get back into range. It's especially not useful when fighting near cliffs.
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Jul 13, 2019 01:30
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lmao if you don't have this game's level geometry burned into your head, i say, having lost my last deathless run in earthen peak to walking off the side of the poison pit where lucatiel is
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Jul 13, 2019 02:25
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YF-23 posted:It's intentionally gimping yourself by refusing to use a tool the game gives you. You might as well say "well if you just get good at the game you can beat it at SL1 so I don't see why people keep insisting on levelling up as a strategy". That's technically true! You can get good enough at the game to beat it at SL1! But unless you are purposefully trying to handicap yourself there's no reason to do that. Having a roll with good i-frames, a reliable roll, is a tool, and learning how to use it is also part of becoming better at the game.
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Jul 13, 2019 02:44
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Amppelix posted:I didn't say anything about gimping anything! Where did you read that! The conversation was in the context of not needing to raise ADP to have a roll with reliable i-frames. If you meant that statement as something unrelated to that, apologies, but that's what I thought you were talking about.
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Jul 13, 2019 11:49
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The conversation kind of got away from that, yeah. But also: what i was saying about adp is that it's not a stat to be ignored, but you also don't need to rush it to 20 immediately like some think. A lot of the game is totally designed so enemies don't actually ask you to have iframes in your roll (unless you deliberately try to roll through attacks when you don't need to). You'll want them for tough fights later on.
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Jul 13, 2019 16:45
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It's not an absolute requirement but I can't think of a better use for your first dozen or so levels than giving you a one-button reaction to avoid damage.
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Jul 13, 2019 23:04
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Mailer posted:It's not an absolute requirement but I can't think of a better use for your first dozen or so levels than giving you a one-button reaction to avoid damage. You have that one-button reaction regardless, it just loosens up the timing a little. If your starting ADP isn't low, then you're getting 2 more iframes out of those dozen levels. And that's presuming you're willing to completely put off things like equipping the weapons you want that your starting stats aren't high enough for. Sometimes you miss your cue to roll, or sometimes you roll too early, sometimes you get hit from offscreen. Then you really want that HP. And all of those are going to happen a bunch to new players or ones who still need to adjust to DS2.
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Jul 14, 2019 21:36
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Yeah I've played with lower ADP and yikes the timing gets pretty drat precise. You still do have iframes though Anyways I'm also a dodge master 5000, but there's no reason not to have a shield on you for any of the following reasons: -parrying(!!) -blocking of course, not always needed -passive bonuses afforded by the shield -FASHION(!!!!)
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Jul 15, 2019 17:50
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Counterpoint: having a shield visible on your character means you're not powerstancing, which is a major fail
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Jul 15, 2019 17:57
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parrying is for cowards and I've never understood the timing in any game other than bloodborne
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Jul 15, 2019 20:50
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I don't use shields at all in Souls games anymore. In 3 its just more efficient imo to roll constantly and in 1 and 2 it just feels like easy mode to use one. It was actually a huge struggle to get to Sekiro and have to train myself to block attacks again instead of spam the dodge button. gently caress parrying too.
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Jul 16, 2019 00:18
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equipping a greatshield and shieldpoking giant ornstein's thunderslam is fun (coincidentally, as part of doing this you may realize that shieldpoking negates any and all blockstun/knockback while blocking, which is... kinda nuts)
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Jul 16, 2019 03:47
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I only ever played SOTFS, and I put on LobosJr's first DS2 playthrough while I work today. Man, vanilla DS2 seems really easy. A bunch of these places basically set you up to only have to fight one person at a time, which removes a lot of the crowd control skills you need to use in SOTFS. He enters Sinner's Rise and there's like, three, maybe four guys to take out? The bits of the game I remember were far more populated than what he's been facing, and a lot of the time, he's fighting easier enemies. e: No Flexile Sentry part 2 fight! What the heckkkk was the original version of this game Wungus fucked around with this message at 21:12 on Jul 16, 2019 |
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Jul 16, 2019 21:09
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Whalley posted:e: No Flexile Sentry part 2 fight! What the heckkkk was the original version of this game normal mode run of DS2 is really easy (comparatively). in the early game alone, there's no dragon nor roaming heide knights in heide's tower, there's no bonus ogre in the entrance to FoFG, pursuer doesn't appear in the bastille at all, there's far fewer statue dudes that you need to move with a branch, etc. DS2 does a really good job of actually increasing the challenge of NG+ cycles though, beyond just giving monsters more HP/damage it also starts to mix up monster placement or add different monsters / red phantom invaders, etc. in terms of relative difficulty, i would say normal mode SotFS is about equal to NG+1 on vanilla DS2. i also feel like SotFS was made more to psych-out people that had sunk hours into DS2 because a lot of the most frustrating changes were just messing around with estus and bone dust placements. if you stepped into SotFS with no experience in vanilla DS2 obviously a lot of the changes would be lost on you.
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Jul 17, 2019 15:26
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Whalley posted:Man, vanilla DS2 seems really easy. A bunch of these places basically set you up to only have to fight one person at a time, which removes a lot of the crowd control skills you need to use in SOTFS. This is funny because I remember coming into DS2 from DS1 on release, it felt like there were way more multi-enemy/mob style encounters than in the first game. I'm thinking specifically of the soldiers in Lost Bastille, the "trap" room in Harvest Valley, Skeleton Lords, etc. SOTFS obviously turned those knobs even higher, but in my mind DS2 vanilla is where multi-enemy combat really started being a thing in the series.
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Jul 24, 2019 19:44
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Howdy y'all. Way back when, I got this game for Xbox 360, got about halfway through, then dropped it around the time it asked me to raid a town full of awful spidermonsters. Since then, I've played a poo poo ton of Bloodborne, DS1, DS3, and Sekiro; and, more importantly, I learned that you can just go "lol gently caress off" and grind souls or w/e and you never have to even touch spidertown. And then I saw that it was on sale for 10 bucks. So I got it again, on a non-poo poo console!  My question is: I know about Powerstancing, and have resigned myself to probably just doing a quality build, but I'm wondering: are there any really good weapons I should be beelining towards? Not caring so much about doing the best possible damage, I just want something with a fun moveset, like the Sellsword Twinblades (DS3), Rakuyo (BB), Burial Blade (BB), or Blades of Mercy (BB). Anything in particular I should look for?
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Jul 28, 2019 06:38
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How did you beat bloodborne though if you can't deal with the comparatively mild spider infestation in DS2
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Jul 28, 2019 07:07
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Blaziken386 posted:Howdy y'all. Way back when, I got this game for Xbox 360, got about halfway through, then dropped it around the time it asked me to raid a town full of awful spidermonsters. That really sounds like you want the curved sword powerstance moveset. I've always been a fan of right hand rapier, left hand curved sword, but honestly you'd have fun with two curved swords. Just use the L1/L2 moveset primarily. E: You might also enjoy twinblades, they're pretty flashy. The Red Iron Twinblade (which you don't get until pretty far along, unfortunately) is really good.
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Jul 28, 2019 07:11
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Blaziken386 posted:Howdy y'all. Way back when, I got this game for Xbox 360, got about halfway through, then dropped it around the time it asked me to raid a town full of awful spidermonsters. Also,  the spiders react strongly to torches; if you bring a torch, they're more likely to keep their distance. You can grind 1,000,000 souls to get through the Shrine of Winter, but I think you wind up having to grind bosses with Bonfire Ascetics, it's mostly a speedrun strategy.
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Jul 28, 2019 07:20
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You can easily end up getting 1kk souls by doing the DLCs (1 and 2) early, grinding for rare drops etc. - it's not something I'd recommend, but the specific speedrun strats are not per se mandatory. Either way, just do Tseldora, it's not that many spiders. DS2 is a game blessed with insanely interesting and varied movesets among its weapons, you will easily find something you love by experimenting a little, and the upgrade materials are plentiful unless you insist on using two boss weapons (possible, but getting enough PDBs early is a huge pain). I recommend trying Twinblades for style, most of their movesets lack a little something to make them actually good, until you find the Red Iron one and win the game. You can start with powerstancing curved swords as recommended, then upgrade to Warped Sword + something compatible and long (e.g. Washing Pole), it's hilarious. There's also a bunch of really unique weapons you might find cool on their own that are beyond everything else in the series. Helix Halberd. Yorgh's Spear. Santier's Spear. Bone Fist powerstanced with a Caestus, or just two of those. The possibilities are endless!
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Jul 28, 2019 07:43
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was looking into twinblades, so I'll probably give those a shot, yeah. Glad to hear that upgrade materials are plentiful. That's always my biggest problem with these games. currently in Heide's Tower and wow I forgot how slow this game is compared to the others. Amppelix posted:How did you beat bloodborne though if you can't deal with the comparatively mild spider infestation in DS2 only beat it for the first time like 2 months ago when a switch flipped in my brain and Rom's kids went from creepy to just annoying. I don't get it either. (I still run past the ones in mensis though)
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Jul 28, 2019 07:49
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Yorgh’s Spear, at the end of the sunken king DLC has a really fun and powerful moveset. Rushing to it might be difficult, but is absolutely doable. I don’t consider myself a great Souls player, but you can do Heide’s Tower of flame for easy early levels, rush down through the gutter and black gulch, which should get you a decent enough weapon to handle the first DLC, then the DLC itself will equip you to handle the bosses. Bone fist unfortunately only comes quite late, but has a really unique moveset for a quality build. You could use it as a switch with Yorgh’s Spear. Puzzling stone sword is lots of fun and is also available in Shulva. Its damage falls off by the late game, but it’s a beast in the early game and the moveset is extremely good. Santier’s Spear has a really fun moveset and can be gotten by mid game. I don’t know if it feels that strong to use anymore. I used it on my first playthrough, when it completely trivialized everything. Rapier + curved sword has already been mentioned, but rapier main hand with a katana or straight sword offhand is also good. Estoc+shortsword is available very early, and can be really nice, because the estoc has a ton of versatility, and the shortsword in the off hand gives your power stance attacks low stamina costs. One of my favorite combos, also only available quite late, unfortunately, is the ice rapier and the blue flame. You get a varied moveset with huge damage output (you can kill any normal enemy in a single combo) and tons of utility with sorceries and the ice rapier’s ranged attacks.
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Jul 28, 2019 08:02
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Just got this game. Played ds1 remastered recently for the first time and had a lot of fun with a strength build. Love landing really damaging hits instead of plinking away with lots of little ones. Is a str build still viable in ds2? Also what weapons should I be looking out for??
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Jul 28, 2019 20:53
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fridge corn posted:Just got this game. Played ds1 remastered recently for the first time and had a lot of fun with a strength build. Love landing really damaging hits instead of plinking away with lots of little ones. Is a str build still viable in ds2? Also what weapons should I be looking out for?? Strength is absolutely still viable in DS2. Grab the mace ASAP (or if you're feeling like some real fun, consider two maces), you can find an ultra greatsword in No Man's Wharf. Don't ignore adaptability.
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Jul 28, 2019 20:56
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Strength is ok in DS2. I wouldn’t say it’s the best game for it, but there are definitely good options. One good thing about DS2 is that there’s loads of weapons, so there’s pretty much at least one good weapon for possibly any niche. Dual mace or dual club can be gotten extremely early (Lenigrast sells the mace, Melentia the club), have low requirements for powerstance, and keep hitting like a truck all the way through NG thanks to great scaling. Large and great clubs are pretty good midgame (ones in the Gutter other one in the Bastille). Late game though, there’s lots of other good strength weapons like King UGS, smelter hammer, Fume UGS, arch drake mace, mastodon halberd, crypt blacksword (having a good bit of faith helps a lot with this one).
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Jul 28, 2019 21:12
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Powerstancing two axes (Bandit Axe and Dragonslayer Crescent Axe was my pair) was a fun as hell strength playthrough
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Jul 28, 2019 21:21
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