From Software Dark Souls 3

[cvv]

Yeah, apparently the only way FromSoft can make a boss challenging is to make him constantly spin and frantically flail about. It'd be a fun thing if it was rare but so many bosses from DS3+DLCs and Bloodborne+DLC share this gimmick. The most hilarious examples are Gael and Orphan of Kos, they went balls to the wall with the flailing on those ones. I get a lot of people love the process of figuring the timings and minuscule windows but I couldn't stop rolling my eyes when I first saw those fights. Personally they bore me to tears. But they sure are by far the most difficult bosses and that's why some people like them I guess. Whatever.

 

[Arnust]

"Minuscule timings" you mean "wait for the three milliseconds of break time during animations then run away", right? Cos' with your fancy 13 rolls per stamina bar you don't need to sim shit, just go ham in a general direction.

Sullyvahn? I don't get anyone who has beat Gwyn having trouble with it. He's just a buffed version of him. His shadow clone is only a handicap for him. You can even pull some parries out of your ass and abuse them, just like with his daddy.

 

[Raghar]

I don't remember any specific weapon being so completely dominant in DS2. There was the Monastery Scimitar that was first banned from most fight clubs and subsequently patched because its parry frames were bugged.

DUAL AVELYNS massacre.

 

[Arnust]

HAVELYNS

 

[thesheeep]

I had the idea to play through the game with a heaviest armor, heaviest shield & heaviest weapon* build.
Blocking my way through encounters and whacking things on the head with the speed of a thunder... snail.

* Actually, I was using the great club. Couldn't stand the moves of the actually heaviest weapon.

I don't think I ever was that glad having finished a game, what a nightmare that was
Barely able to roll (2nd worst rolling animation), barely any point spent on health (as all was needed in strength and some others for the equipment), blocking just sucks against most bosses.
Also, imagine my disappointment after spending dozens of hours investing in stats to be able to equip all that stuff and then: Armor is fucking worthless in DS3. Can't even upgrade it.
What probably annoyed me most, though, was the constantly bugging out camera focus. 2 meter wide enemy has its "center" behind a 10cm wide lamppost - focus is gone, because the enemy totally cannot be seen .
Trying to regain focus just makes the camera look in whatever direction your character is accidentally facing right now, making you lose orientation instantly. I'd estimate about 20-30% of my deaths came from this shit.

I really wish they had kept more from DS2, it was a better game to me in all things except level design.
Proper tank builds were possible and the camera was less fucked up.


Anyway, planning my next build: I want to go for a magic slinger (curiously, didn't attempt that in DS2) or a dual whip (for the lulz), any hints for that?

 

[Blaine]

The level design in DS3 is nothing to write home about. I have no idea why it's so praised. "Oh, the areas are interconnected! You can see that castle you'll be visiting way off in the distance!" Holy shit dude, that's amazing. Let me just get my dick out here, because I'm about to start masturbating.

If getting a preview of the next area in the distance considered a huge plus, then the linearity of DS3 is an equally huge minus. Even numale gaming "journalists" noticed that shit. They're sprawling enough that you can get turned around a bit if you're new to the area, but otherwise, it's corridors with treasure nooks all the way down.

Also, this game should actually be called Light Souls 1, because it's light everywhere. The first actual darkness I encountered was in the rafters of a single stable full of sneeki breeki smoking-eyed invisible dudes. I'd completely forgotten about torches until we climbed into the rafters there. The next instance was during the Magic Bracelets Big Skellington boss fight. I can't remember any others.

It doesn't always have to be pitch-black, but in Dark Souls 2 for example, you begin the game in a very dark area, work your way through, turn the corner coming through a long tunnel, and there all of a sudden is dazzling sunlight leading to the game's main hub. What a great moment. In DS3, it's just slightly overcast for the first several areas of the game.

DS2 saw a reduction in torch necessity, though. DS1 did it best. The torch probably ended up being my most-used weapon. Hey, remember how you could use torches to ward off the Hollow? Yeah me neither, because everything's LIGHT now.

 

[cvv]

The level design in DS3 is nothing to write home about. I have no idea why it's so praised

Goddamn this. DS3 level design is absolutely terrible. Open flat spaces for exteriors and wide halls and rectangular rooms for interiors, right angles everywhere. Plus everything is black, grey and beige. Compared to this playing even the irrationally built DS2 is a pure joy.

Btw I've finally grabbed Lords of the Fallen in the sale and was pleasantly surprised. Sure it's like a dumber and uglier sister of Dark Souls but its world and level design is more interesting and better thought out than most of DS3. Still eminently bangable.

 

[Arnust]

There's a wieldable torch in DS1?

 

[Blaine]

It's a lantern. So sue me.

Point is, the game's too damn light, regardless of visibility.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

When DaS1 gets remastered.

 

[Alienman]

If they use the DS3 engine I hope they don't make all the npcs giants like in that game.

 

[Volrath]

Do you guys think we'll ever get a game as good as the first two dark souls again?

When DaS1 gets remastered.

Nice.

 

[sullynathan]

blocking just sucks against most bosses.

upgrade your shield then. You can block every boss. God, one person in this thread says blocking is too easy another person says blocking sucks. You guys can't make up your mind.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I completed the game without rolling back in the day, only blocking and based in that experience I can say that blocking in ds3 still being a very good option if you pick the adequate shield. Furthermore, there's things in the gaem that can help you a lot, like a spell that improves the shield defense to the point of blocking everything with the cost of 0 health and stamina. Extremely useful to tank bosses like Nameless king.

 

[sullynathan]

Hey, remember how you could use torches to ward off the Hollow?

I know you can ward off beasts in Bloodborne but didn't know or remember you could do this in DS. Huh, the more you know

The level design in DS3 is nothing to write home about.

Dark Souls 3 has no bad level which is a good thing especially compared to Dark Souls & Dark Soul 2 but I have to admit I do miss all the environmental traps and bullshit that Dark Souls had in it's levels.

 

[cvv]

Most DS3 levels boast the excitement and ingenuity of Shaded Woods without the fog.

 

[thesheeep]

blocking just sucks against most bosses.

upgrade your shield then. You can block every boss. God, one person in this thread says blocking is too easy another person says blocking sucks. You guys can't make up your mind.

Upgrading the shield doesn't do shit. It increases its attack damage, which... isn't too useful.
Upgrading its stability value would help, but depending on the source you ask upgrading shield does or does not increase stability. Either way, it can't be too much. Stone Shield starts at a whopping 80 stability, can't get much higher than that.

Boss attacks drain incredible amounts of stamina (stability is a % reduction of that), and even with the Stone Shield, you run out very quickly in boss fights (and remember I couldn't really roll much ).
Sure, I could have grinded like mad to increase my stamina, but by the time all my stats were high enough to actually equip the heaviest everything, I was almost through the game.
And I'm not the type that keeps on playing after that. What for? E-dick comparison via invasion? Playing it all again on NG+? No need, I never do that.

I do agree that shields make normal enemies much easier, but except for very few, they aren't dangerous anyway. And against other players, I've seen most people say that shields are downright useless.

 

[cvv]

Afaik upgrading most shields DOES increase stability. But blocking bosses usually means you don't have much stamina left to actually attack them after they finish their long ass combos. That's prolly the only improvement over DS2 where the stamina drain on blocking was so laughably low in the vanilla (much different story in the DLCs) you could cheese most of the game hidden behind a kite shield with one finger in your ass.

 

[sullynathan]

blocking just sucks against most bosses.

upgrade your shield then. You can block every boss. God, one person in this thread says blocking is too easy another person says blocking sucks. You guys can't make up your mind.

Upgrading the shield doesn't do shit. It increases its attack damage, which... isn't too useful.
Upgrading its stability value would help, but depending on the source you ask upgrading shield does or does not increase stability. Either way, it can't be too much. Stone Shield starts at a whopping 80 stability, can't get much higher than that.

Boss attacks drain incredible amounts of stamina (stability is a % reduction of that), and even with the Stone Shield, you run out very quickly in boss fights (and remember I couldn't really roll much ).
Sure, I could have grinded like mad to increase my stamina, but by the time all my stats were high enough to actually equip the heaviest everything, I was almost through the game.
And I'm not the type that keeps on playing after that. What for? E-dick comparison via invasion? Playing it all again on NG+? No need, I never do that.

I do agree that shields make normal enemies much easier, but except for very few, they aren't dangerous anyway. And against other players, I've seen most people say that shields are downright useless.

lol, what a lie. Upgrading the shield increases stability which means it won't break while you block.

Try playing the game with a black knight or silver knight shield upgraded to +5 and come back or at the very least git gud.

 

[Blaine]

Unless something's changed drastically between DS2 and DS3, stability has nothing to do with durability. It affects the amount of stamina you lose when you block a hit. As far as I can tell, this is a simple percentage reduction, meaning a big boss hit that deals 100 "stamina damage" would drain 51 of your stamina if using a knight shield with 49 stability, whereas the same hit against a greatshield with 85 stability would drain only 15 of your stamina.

That's why greatshields are so effective for blocking bosses and powerful enemies, if they even can be blocked, that is. Normally, even with a goodly-sized knight shield, blocking more than the occasional hit just demolishes your stamina, you stagger, and then they land one of those homosexual 55-hit whirling teleporting auto-tracking combos that have replaced good gameplay and genuine hard but fair difficulty.

 

[thesheeep]

upgrade your shield then. You can block every boss. God, one person in this thread says blocking is too easy another person says blocking sucks. You guys can't make up your mind.

Upgrading the shield doesn't do shit. It increases its attack damage, which... isn't too useful.
Upgrading its stability value would help, but depending on the source you ask upgrading shield does or does not increase stability. Either way, it can't be too much. Stone Shield starts at a whopping 80 stability, can't get much higher than that.

Boss attacks drain incredible amounts of stamina (stability is a % reduction of that), and even with the Stone Shield, you run out very quickly in boss fights (and remember I couldn't really roll much ).
Sure, I could have grinded like mad to increase my stamina, but by the time all my stats were high enough to actually equip the heaviest everything, I was almost through the game.
And I'm not the type that keeps on playing after that. What for? E-dick comparison via invasion? Playing it all again on NG+? No need, I never do that.

I do agree that shields make normal enemies much easier, but except for very few, they aren't dangerous anyway. And against other players, I've seen most people say that shields are downright useless.

lol, what a lie. Upgrading the shield increases stability which means it won't break while you block.

What lie? Look it up yourself. In some forums, people say it does increase stability, looking at wikis looks like it doesn't. I didn't really try since I was too close to the end to bother. All I'm saying is it doesn't matter too much either way if your shield already starts with 80 stability.
And breaking?! I don't think I ever had a shield break. Weapons, yes, but not a shield. What do you have to do to get your shield broken, stand there for an hour?

Either way, you just proved you have no clue about anything so better crawl back under your rock.

Unless something's changed drastically between DS2 and DS3, stability has nothing to do with durability. It affects the amount of stamina you lose when you block a hit. As far as I can tell, this is a simple percentage reduction, meaning a big boss hit that deals 100 "stamina damage" would drain 51 of your stamina if using a knight shield with 49 stability, whereas the same hit against a greatshield with 85 stability would drain only 15 of your stamina.

That's why greatshields are so effective for blocking bosses and powerful enemies, if they even can be blocked, that is.

See, this is what it looks like when someone knows what he is talking about.

Try playing the game with a black knight or silver knight shield upgraded to +5 and come back or at the very least git gud.

... and this is someone not knowing anything, but pretending to.

 

[sullynathan]

What lie? Look it up yourself. In some forums, people say it does increase stability, looking at wikis looks like it doesn't. I didn't really try since I was too close to the end to bother. All I'm saying is it doesn't matter too much either way if your shield already starts with 80 stability.
And breaking?! I don't think I ever had a shield break. Weapons, yes, but not a shield. What do you have to do to get your shield broken, stand there for an hour?

Either way, you just proved you have no clue about anything so better crawl back under your rock.

Why waste time looking shit up on forums when I actually played the game?

I'm not talking about durability either

If you have a shield with 80 stability and you're having problems with a boss yet I beat the game numerous times with a shield that had 60+ stability maybe the problem is you

 

[thesheeep]

If you have a shield with 80 stability and you're having problems with a boss yet I beat the game numerous times with a shield that had 60+ stability maybe the problem is you

Do you ever read things before you post?

What about the rest of your equipment? As I wrote many times, I was doing a "heaviest everything" build. Your 60+ shield doesn't matter shit if you can still roll around wildly - which was not a possibility with my build by the time I was near the end of the game (and I never care for grinding, I just move forward).
I had the full Smough armor, Stone Shield and a Great Club. I could barely do the 2nd worst roll and did not have the spare souls to invest into more stamina (which would make shields more viable).
And with that shield and setup, no, it is not possible to withstand bosses very long, you still rely heavily on dodging even against attacks that could be blocked. And as Blaine said, many attacks aren't even blockable.
Removing the heavy reliance on dodge was the entire point of my build - hence the conclusion that such a "heaviest everything" tank isn't viable without tons of grinding as shields are very weak against bosses if they are main thing you try to rely on.
In addition to shields being a problem, armor is a joke as even the strongest armor is actually pretty damn weak (what's the highest defense value? 19? 20?). See here how armor works. In summary, wearing no armor means you take far more damage, but the difference between shitty armor and the strongest armor is minor, especially against smaller weapons and even more so if you consider the souls spent on increasing armor-relevant stats could have gone into health or other more viable stats.

All of this is knowledge you could have had if you had just read the whole post you quoted instead of jumping at the part you didn't like.

I'd expect a frigging steel coloss like I had to take at least 50% less damage than a char wearing only rags. But... nope.
And I think the game would be better if it was as it used to be in DS2, as right now in DS3 armor is little more than cosmetics.
They really went all in making dodging around the only really viable strategy in melee (not sure about ranged chars), which is a shame - more viable strategies would have increased replayability more.

Black Knight Shield +5 is how I beat Sister Friede (first try, blind) and the Nameless King with a combination of mostly blocking with a side of rolling. It is one the best shields in the game due to its high stability once fully upgraded and low - compared to tower shields - weight.

Again, irrelevant, as I was never arguing about or looking for "best shield". See above.
I'm just not in the habit to precede my posts with a summary of what I'm talking about as I expect people to read that up themselves...

 

[sullynathan]

Do you ever read things before you post?

What about the rest of your equipment? As I wrote many times, I was doing a "heaviest everything" build. Your 60+ shield doesn't matter shit if you can still roll around wildly - which was not a possibility with my build by the time I was near the end of the game (and I never care for grinding, I just move forward).
I had the full Smough armor, Stone Shield and a Great Club. I could barely do the 2nd worst roll and did not have the spare souls to invest into more stamina (which would make shields more viable).
And with that shield and setup, no, it is not possible to withstand bosses very long, you still rely heavily on dodging even against attacks that could be blocked. And as Blaine said, many attacks aren't even blockable.
Removing the heavy reliance on dodge was the entire point of my build - hence the conclusion that such a "heaviest everything" tank isn't viable without tons of grinding as shields are very weak against bosses if they are main thing you try to rely on.
In addition to shields being a problem, armor is a joke as even the strongest armor is actually pretty damn weak (what's the highest defense value? 19? 20?). See here how armor works. In summary, wearing no armor means you take far more damage, but the difference between shitty armor and the strongest armor is minor, especially against smaller weapons and even more so if you consider the souls spent on increasing armor-relevant stats could have gone into health or other more viable stats.

All of this is knowledge you could have had if you had just read the whole post you quoted instead of jumping at the part you didn't like.

I'd expect a frigging steel coloss like I had to take at least 50% less damage than a char wearing only rags. But... nope.
And I think the game would be better if it was as it used to be in DS2, as right now in DS3 armor is little more than cosmetics.
They really went all in making dodging around the only really viable strategy in melee (not sure about ranged chars), which is a shame - more viable strategies would have increased replayability more

You should learn to move while you block.

I didn't have to roll around wildly. I've always played these games first in a more "tanky" sword & shield manner and I got through all of them without rolling much. Especially since rolling was something I didn't find as viable as blocking when I started these games.

I've been hearing this shit about dodging being the only viable strategy since I played the original dark souls, which is a lie.

 

[thesheeep]

You should learn to move while you block.

Ah, thanks.