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What they need to do is increase the elemental defensive values on all armour to be consistent with physical values (in full Havel's with Dragon Tooth and Resistance Ring, I top out at around 300 elemental defense, in comparison to physical defenses well over 1000). That's going to do nothing to stop incoming damage.
They also need to make poise actually do something (I shouldn't be interrupted mid swing of a weapon by a single hit from a katana while wearing full havel's), remove the ability to enchant weapons that are already infused (with elemental damage), improve stat scaling of physical weapons, and change weapon buff spells to have their bonuses scale off of your relevant stats (right now, they're all fixed bonuses).
Lastly, the ghost range on the Moonlight needs to be removed (it's still far and away the longest greatsword, even without it), the recovery on its attacks needs to be increased, and the amount of stamina used for each attack needs to be drastically increased.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/04/07 11:39:50
Supposedly, it's only supposed to take effect during "active" frames, such as when you're swinging a weapon or rolling. In my experience, that's patently false.
What's more, the breakpoints for poise are insanely high, with a single hit from a one-handed dagger doing as much as 30 poise damage.
Supposedly, it can also take up to 20 seconds to regenerate your pose after being hit/having your poise broken.
Regardless of what the real data is, what we do know is that poise is completely gutted, and that the loss of value in poise has done some serious damage to the value of heavy weapons.
The first thing needed is some consistency.
First off, I'd make it so that, as I noted above, poise continued to only have an effect during actions (rolling, attacking, backstepping, the use of items).
Poise would take no time to regenerate, instead refreshing instantly in a period where actions aren't being committed (comboing with attacks would count as a single action for poise purposes).
Each action would have its own poise modifier. For example, a heavy two-handed attack with a great club would provide a fairly sizable multiplier to poise, while an action like rolling might give you a negative one.
Additionally, while super heavy weapons (ultra greatswords, great hammers) would always break poise (there's really no excuse for being able to face tank these), poise damage from other weapon types would be significantly reduced, by a third to a half, depending on the attack (typically reduced by half for R1 attacks, and a third for R2 attacks).
Regulation 1.04 patch notes, including a possible Moonlight nerf (is it enough?)
Note: It seems people are confusing what kind of patch this is. There is Game Patch (currently v1.02, and v1.03 has been announced and will be released with Online Regulation Patch v1.04) and there is online regulation (currently v1.03, and v1.04 is this one). The difference is, online regulation most likely affects the PvP/co-op, or in other words the online community, in general. So this influences the balancing issues, etc. Game patch influences more on the bugs and exploits, such as the Drangleic Castle glitch, etc.
Throwing motion for Acid Urns changed to heavy throwing motion; effects of acid toned down.
Durability of Twin Blade category improved.
Moonlight Great Sword revised to be unenchantable, attack speed reduced.
Gyrm Warrior’s Helm weight, poise and defense increased.
Thorn Ring damage reduced.
Old Sun Ring damage reduced.
Soul Spear and Crystal Soul Spear revised to pierce and damage multiple enemies.
Soul Great Sword casting time revised.
Stamina reduction of Homing Soul Mass, Homing Crystal Soul Mass and Affinity reduced and orb speed increased.
Soul Geyser damage reduced.
Healing spell casting speed reduced.
Wrath of God damage effect period shortened.
Firestorm, Fire Tempest, Chaos Storm and Forbidden Sun damages reduced.
Firestorm, Fire Tempest and Chaos Storm duration time increased.
Defense of Lucatiel, Bellclaire, Benhart and Tark increased.
Health of exploding undead reduced.
Homing capability of spells casted by White Undead Sorcers and Amana Priestesses reduced.
Fire ball spitting frequency of Fire Lizards reduced.
Shockwave duration period caused by the attacks of Hammer Wielders (probably ones in Earthen Peak?) reduced.
Last Giant damage reduced.
Lost Sinner health and damage reduced.
Royal Rat Authority damage reduced.
Duke’s Dear Freja’s laser breath damage reduced.
NG+ Lost Sinner pyromancers health and damage reduced.
NG+ Flexile Sentry shadow assassins health and damage reduced.
The moonlight will still remain a top tier weapon, thanks to it's fantastic base stats/scaling, amazing range, and incredibly wide sweeps. But hopefully it'll no longer remain the most dominant weapon in the game, and the best weapon to build for on any build.
For the attacks and poise, for the different attacks, I would have the 'Jump' attack still do a hefty amount of poise damage, even with lighter weapons (a lot of momentum in that compared with their normal attacks), and look at the R2s on a case by case as some are slow, large body heavy hitters while others are faster pokes. Maybe make something like the Bastard Sword R2 a poise breaker, compared with the Claymore one which currently has a much longer range and is the (generally superior) pierce type damage.
Maybe increase the drain from Havel's if it gets rather good under the 'new' poise (or nerf it so it's more in-line with it's DaS1 non-upgradable form)
I want Foxeye Black Iron armour back though.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/08 12:21:55
This gives you a access to the Rebel's Greatshield and Drakekeeper's Greatshield. Dropping strength to 30 to increase vitality/endurance can also work, in which case you can't use the Drakekeeper's Greatshield.
For rings, use the Third Dragon Ring, Royal Soldier's Ring+2, Southern Ritual Band+2, and Clear Bluestone Ring+2.
With this combination of stats and equipment, you gain access to the following:
Great Magic Barrier, Sunlight Blade, Wrath of God, Great Lightning Spear (spice down to 36 faith). You can also replace lightning spear with Emit Force.
Alternate loadouts can reduce faith to fuel vitality and endurance. The important thing is that you have Sunlight Blade and Wrath of God.
Your options for weaponry are fairly diverse. First and foremost, this build gives you access to the Avelyn, which always makes for a fantastic offhand option (when you don't have your shield up). As far as other weapon options are concerned, your options are all over the place. Regardless of what you pick, make sure you infuse it with lightning. Notable weapon choices include:
Mastodon Greatsword
Mastodon Halberd
Defender's Greatsword (gets rid of the need for Sunlight Blade, in which case you can drop ATT to 2, and put those 8 stat points into END/VIT)
Thorned Greatsword
Claymore
Zweihander
Drakekeeper's Greatsword
Mace
Great Club
Pickaxe
Mastodon Halberd
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/10 20:15:29
Is there any way of getting more Twinkling? (and Dragon Bones) without Ascetics?
I think I might try Defender's, but I don't have the dragon bones at the moment, so maybe the Lightning +10 Claymore is the way to go.
What about the regular halberd compared with the Mastodon one? (it's kind of annoying to get the 'tip' attacks with it for full damage though, compared with the Sword weapons)
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/11 09:06:53
The only way to get twinkling titanite and petrified dragon bones is to farm with ascetics. You'd think that the developers would have learned a few things from the previous games, but this is what happens when Namco Bandai drops your old dev team for no reason.
Hopefully they'll patch this so that Chloanne will sell at least twinkling in an infinite amount after you've beaten the game, since my bonfire intensity for Dragon Aerie is at around 20 now, and Aldia's Keep isn't too far away either.
As for comparing the Mastodon Halberd to others in its class, if you have the strength and the weight allowance to use it, you really should. Its offensive power is incredible, and its one of the few weapons with actually decent scaling.
Looking at it, the damage is incredible bit it's so heavy (double Claymore). I might get one up to +10, though I find Halberds annoying since you only get max damage from them if you hit them at a certain distance, while Swords are a lot more forgiving in that regard.
2 just strikes me as having a load of awful decisions compared with the previous game.
I'd say that as far as build decisions are concerned, it's actually a lot more one-dimensional.
There might be more options, but there are only a few worth using, and they're really just slightly different flavours of the same thing, at least as far as PvP is concerned.
Stat scaling is just plain awful, so builds are a lot less diverse in terms of stat investment (just get the bare minimum for what you need and VIG/END/VIT gouge the rest).
Every build needs an elemental infusion and the respective weapon buff, but since elemental defenses are so ridiculously low in this game, which one you go with is irrelevant.
The ability to spice any spell down to 10 INT/FTH, combined with the piss poor scaling of almost every spell, means that casters can get away with bloody murder, meaning you have no reason not to invest in magic, especially since it'll 1/2HKO most players easily.
Every build needs an Avelyn, since it's just so good right now.
And while there's a massive pool of weaponry, thanks to that awful stat scaling, your pool of viable and optimal choices is greatly reduced. Additionally, since poise does absolutely nothing of worth and stunlocking is so easy for certain types of weapons, many more weapons, especially heavy weapons, are completely outclassed.
Keep up the good fight brother! Each one of those dead 'insert expletive here' is a victory for humanity
Incidentally, if you use the 'giant seed', does that make the local mobs even attack the covenant people who are protecting the tower? I know it usually makes the mobs attack invaders..
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/04/11 18:31:24
Does it take 15 dragon bones to get a weapon to +5 like it does with Twinkling now?
I'm not sure I'll even bother with a PVP build now, as it's going to be a pain to upgrade the armour, and the matchmaking doesn't care about level apparently either.
Yep, every boss weapon requires 15 bones. I'm getting to the point where ascetics are getting hard to find from farming these items which, by all rights, should be in an NPC shop.
As for PvP, thanks to soul memory, the matchmaking really is garbage. Being above 12m SM (a large part of that definitely came from all that farming...), I can now be matched up with anyone in that range, regardless of level. A lot of my duels in the arena are against people who are obviously several hundred soul levels higher than me.
I took a break from DS 2 i just cannot kill the first giant boss from the memory, my whole built is a wizard that fights at a distance and you have to fight this boss at close range it is like the frikkin Goat boss in DS, you cannot invite help, i talked to all the NPC, but cannot see a sign from the guy with the big blue sword, maybe try again in the weekend.
You can still cast from point blank range. Just stay by his left foot, only really moving away when he starts his stomp. Giants are weak to fire if I remember, and he's vulnerable to poison though the poison didn't do much for me (I used the poison resin on my claymore) I think.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/04/16 11:12:42
You can summon help, both from players, and from Pate (of all the people in the world...). His hitboxes can feel kind of wonky (you're going to find that to be the case for a lot of things in this one, sadly, especially the Giant Lord), but thankfully, the giant's attacks are not too difficult to avoid, especially as a mage. Just keep a basic distance from his feet, while staying mostly between them.
If it's the Giant Lord, Benhart is down the stairs before the fog door. If you summon Drummond, you can't summon Benhart though.
Did you talk to him in the other memory first too? I don't know if that's needed.
I wouldn't summon them though. They made the fight harder, and one of them dragged another giant over to the Giant Lord before the head rolled down and then died, making it a 1v2 Giant fight.
For what it's worth, I've cancelled my PC preorder of the game. Thanks to soul memory, PvP is nothing more than fighting a legion of people at level 838 with an Avelyn and Santier's Spear, and I can't justify buying the same game twice just for the single player, especially when that single player isn't nearly as good as Demon's Souls or Dark Souls 1.
Have you played against Double Avelyn yet? It's ridiculously overpowered and instantly kills most people out there. Another big problem is the Silver ring that transform you into a big jar. Not only can you use it to surprise people, it also lets you skip the attack animation when attacking with the Avelyn in it - you are transformed, attack and the illusion breaks just when you shoot, making it impossible to counter if you do not have your shield up yet.
Once again, From Software has utterly failed at balancing a Souls game.
While the Avelyn itself is too good for its own good, and should be nerfed so that it isn't automatically worth taking for every single build, the dual Avelyn build doesn't strike me as being too bad. The reload time on it is considerable, and the stamina damage it does to shields is quite low. So long as you get close with a shield ready, and dodge any pimp slaps you see coming your way, you can just wait him out until he gets antsy and tries to attack, roll and punish.
Fafnir wrote: While the Avelyn itself is too good for its own good, and should be nerfed so that it isn't automatically worth taking for every single build, the dual Avelyn build doesn't strike me as being too bad. The reload time on it is considerable, and the stamina damage it does to shields is quite low. So long as you get close with a shield ready, and dodge any pimp slaps you see coming your way, you can just wait him out until he gets antsy and tries to attack, roll and punish.
That is precisely the problem - it leads to a very stale and boring battle. As soon as you drop your guard, you are either dead or too far away to attack the Avelyn player, thus allowing him to get in safety, reload his weapons and get back to hiding.
This being kept in mind, though, as there are worse things in PvP you already mentioned, mainly the, again, vastly overpowered magic.
Well.. to be honest, I've now taken to finding somewhere near the bonfire and killing myself just to get back to the game when I get invaded!
I've found as I've gone into the game, I've had less and less chance to kill people that invade, to the point where my attacks (from my +7 flame sword) don't really do any damage. I guess it must be how I've levelled my character, although I am progressing slowly and steadily through the 1-player game. I'm nearly always hollow (using the ring of binding so you don't get too much of an HP hit) so am happy to do this, then add the person to my block list - although don't know it that makes any difference!
Well, I've found that on larger maps with more enemies lag tends to be considerably worse (and it's already pretty bad in the arena), so I get annoyed with invasions myself, although for likely different reasons.
My greatest frustration against other players is when I'm in the arena and someone starts chugging their estus. At that point, I consider it a forfeit on their part and blackstone out. It's not worth my time to fight someone who's willing to turn a duel into a drawn out game of tag.
