dark sauls, too

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > dark sauls, too

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Geop posted:

Suffice it to say that Straid is an all-around magical badass who's capable of making all sorts of crazy things. :allears:

And as for his room, all those Undead Citizens will leave you alone if you don't attack them or get right in their faces in Scholar. (They would in fact rush you in the original game, though.)

I might have said it before, but regardless you shouldn't worry about being able to hit stat requirements unless they're stupid high (60+). DS2 will give you a lot of levels (around 200 by endgame with the DLCs, or around 150 without them) and you can always respec if need be.

I believe Kuvo's confusing the Stone Ring with something else. The Stone Ring applies +30 poise damage to each hit, which as usual won't get around shields but is amazing for builds that use less-powerful-but-faster weapons. The Heide Knights, for instance, can largely be trivialized with the Stone Ring and a two-handed rapier or spear. (Every two R1 pokes will stagger them.)

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 05:01

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 05:40

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Artum posted:

Poise is basically worthless in dark souls 2 sadly geop, as in: stack poo poo tonnes of it and you can take one light hit with a longsword every 30 seconds. Theres a multiplier on 2 hand attacks so that with a dagger in 2 hands even if they're wearing havel's set you'll still stagger them.

RBA Starblade posted:

Poise is really useful and functional you just have to have a fuckload of it.

To expand on this, the deal is that a few things changed in DS2 as compared to DS1, but the broad strokes are the same in that it's still a mechanic intended to mitigate hitstun. In general you will need more poise to accomplish a similar effect, but that's mitigated by the fact that poise-granting armor generally gives more of it. The primary change, however, is that in DS2 poise damage regenerates quite slowly (<1 point per second) as opposed to DS1 (fully regenerates if you haven't been hit within a few seconds). Thus it's possible to wear someone down with poise damage even over a long period of time so long as you're not completely neglecting them. (In either case, you'll regenerate all poise damage if you do eventually get staggered.) To compensate for this, however, DS2 also introduced hyperarmor/Hyper Poise wherein you'd take reduced poise damage while attacking with a heavy weapon. In addition to this specific property, if in general you're hit while attacking but don't take enough poise damage to be staggered, then you'll keep going with that animation without issue. But if you're just standing/walking/running, you'll temporarily move more slowly in an apparent "half stagger".

All this does have one notable upside for the player, that smash attacks are quite reliable with proper attention. See, a number of heavy weapons will knock an opponent down or send them flying with a 2HR2, allowing you to keep them under control so long as they're not some titan with exorbitant amounts of poise. So basically, not a boss or a miniboss. (I've taken to calling these "smash attacks" based on the Super Smash Bros. games but I'm sure that there's some internal name that's more pithy.) Of course they'll always do damage if they connect, but they won't inflict knockdown unless such a hit would stagger the opponent (reduce them to 0 or less effective poise after poise damage) - which can include the smash attack itself. The effect is that if you want to keep flattening someone like a Royal Guard but can't do so in one hit, then you can use some combination of the Stone Ring or otherwise wearing poise down over multiple hits to make up the difference.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 16:26

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

ilmucche posted:

Weren't we specifically banned from talking about poise in the old thread?

I think that may have been durability? The OP explicitly calls it out as a banned topic of conversation.

double nine posted:

I'm not gonna talk about poise, I will however mention that the dragonrider twinblade is fun to use, esp. if a dex spellcaster. Also the barbed club is kinda garbage IMO.

e: I don't think I've ever used any of the halberds; any one have an opinion on those?

Halberds are an odd weapon class in that they have a significant sweet spot. If you can hit in that location on the weapon, you'll do a lot of damage per hit; otherwise you'll only deal about half as much. They're not something I've gotten used to, but if you can do so then you'll profit from it.

# ¿ Apr 30, 2017 18:07

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

There are quite a few ways to handle everything in the DLCs. The only real restriction is in being able to deal good damage, but unless you're clearing each DLC at the first possible moment you'll probably be fine. And even if you do that, you can still grab a +10 weapon with relative ease and effort.

But speaking of the caestus and other sorts of punchyfist runs, I recently completed my second. Now that I had a handle on how short the range of weapons was, I was better equipped to mitigate that and punch the living daylights out of everything. :black101:

# ¿ May 18, 2017 07:13

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

anilEhilated posted:

Dark Souls 2 has fantastically fun pyromanices, it's a shame they got nerfed.

I don't recall any Souls game really nerfing pyromancies, except maybe DS3? There are only a few major differences between DS1 and DS2 pyromancies, and all effectively serve to "smooth" your character progression in DS2 rather than have it be rather modal as in DS1. The first is that you start out with fewer casts in the latter but can end up getting strictly more with sufficient Attunement. (There's also equipment for increasing casts.) The second is that you can't just boost your Pyromancy Flame with sufficient souls, but instead have to use Fire Seeds in return for requiring fewer souls overall. (But you eventually get access to about 20 across an entire playthrough, and you only need 10 to fully upgrade the Flame.) And the last is that Pyromancy Flames get scaling with your fire bonus, accounting for around half the potential spell bonus, so you can't just dump your casting stats like you could in DS1. (But you don't need much investment, relatively speaking, to hit the soft caps for fire in the first place.)

# ¿ May 18, 2017 22:45

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Even that's not as much as some folks claim. (I occasionally show off a picture regarding this but it'll be spoilers for a long while.)

# ¿ May 18, 2017 23:29

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Perhaps you want to put those behind links or something? Or were you in the wrong thread?

# ¿ May 20, 2017 21:23

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# ¿ May 13, 2024 05:40

NGDBSS: Dec 30, 2009

Yeah, if you check the description of the Old Dragonslayer Soul it says that he's "reminiscent of a certain knight that appears in old legends", so OD definitely isn't Ornstein himself. Though the item you can get from said soul is still nifty.

NGDBSS fucked around with this message at 04:56 on Jul 17, 2017

# ¿ Jul 17, 2017 04:52

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Let's Play! > dark sauls, too