[stacy hamilton]

I wondered how you could best use Undead Rapport. haven't tried it yet, but it sounded like it could be amusing.

it's tough to get chaos storm and firestorm off in time, always seem to get interrupted...

is it worth getting egg burdened to pick up toxic mist from eingyi? seems like a lot of effort for a single use spell...

[OJY]

It has uses in PvP, but pointless for PvE.

[XPidgex Jefferson]

Plus, Eingyi gives you the cure immediately. The only thing you need to do is kick an egg bearer and get infected. Good place to get infected is just before Quelaag.

[Esther Fernandez]

or could continue on as the daughter of one of the witches ? (hence my previous question above the post)

[Nathan Barker]

That might be a bit more plausible. As I kicked around ideas in my head on how to save the RP the one prevailing thought was that perhaps one of the daughters of Izalith was pregnant when the flame of chaos was unleashed killing the unborn child, but sending her soul into an undead. the mother felt the soul transfer and with her last sane breath sent the old witch ring to her daughter to give a clue of her connection to the daughters of chaos hoping that she could set things right.

[D LOpez]

I made this from your char... if you put 50 in to Intell, you can use all the spells in the game.

Also, you need a bit Vit, End and Dex for fast casting... if you have the Favor Ring, it will give you a lot of Vit and End.

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=173806156118586341 => power

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=334956252329684071 => fast roll

[Roberta Obrien]

You don't need that much health, unless you're doing serious pvp. Most of the builds people post are pvp builds. I completed the game with a sorcerer without putting any points into vitality. If you can roll, you can avoid getting hit.

People put points into endurance because it's an important stat. You can roll more, you have more choice in the armor and weapons you can wear without slowing your roll speed, you can do more melee attacks, and you can block more attacks without getting staggered.

[Rudy Paint fingers]

Health can be useful your first time through if you take a lot of damage. my first play through was more of a tank that blocked and countered so vit end and str were all I really took.

subsequent playthroughs I don't really get hit as much and am better at parrying so haven't put much if anything into vit on later builds. I don't play PvP either so no loss there.

endurance is very important for a lot of builds. being able to fast roll can be the difference between life and death for the lightly armored. if you know what gear you're going to wear until endgame and have picked your weapons, etc. you really just need enough endurance to keep you in fast roll territory. usually low to mid 20s will suffice depending on which light armor and weapons you wield.

[Cesar Gomez]

I've heard some disturbing news about Dark Souls 2, such as no invincibility while backstabbing or riposting. If that is true, it will turn those hard-to-beat 1 vs 2 situations nearly impossible to beat. Hopefully the game will try to make as much 1 vs 1 situations as possible, or even 2 vs 2 situations, to balance it. For PvE, the idea of not-invincible backstabs is great, since it makes the game harder. But they need to be aware what it means for PvP too.

[pinar]

From what I gathered, you can get "backstabs" and "partial-backstabs"
A full one will allow invincibility as you do a combo, while a partial one just gives a quick crit hit.

It's too early to really understand it fully, but I'm sure they want to keep combat as balanced as possible. This new method seems to be designed to discourage bs fishing, which is a good thing. Maybe it will force more of a focus on parrying, or other tactics that give the upper hand.

[Kaley X]

In PvE, it might work for the better. It's the PvP that might suffer. Not many players are able to beat 1 vs 2 situations in Demon's Souls or Dark Souls, and if they can no longer do parries -or- backstabs without eating a hit from the second enemy they are fighting...

I hope they know what they're doing. My opinion since Demon's Souls has been that they should balance the game according to PvP, and let PvE become a natural part of it all, rather than focusing on making PvE builds and playing better and making PvP suffer infinitely. It didn't happen with Dark Souls though, and it seems it won't happen in Dark Souls 2 either.

[Rik Douglas]

I stopped with my SL1... i can't even beat Artorias in NG+ with my Dex/Faith... dunno why, i did it before with a much weaker char.

I'm making a fun build instead... Kathe (a Darkwraith) ( yes i know, Darkstalker Kaathe lol) is gonna be a Four Knights of Gwyn build.

http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=229614964424487265 http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=427365364795460974 http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=132714481476379754 http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=364852343221684529 and even http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=463625411280775582 is possible with 2Hand.

Fun?

[Katey Meyer]

a four knights of Gwyn playthrough does sound fun

I think once I finish with my katana/pyro daughter of chaos i'm going to play an Ornstein based character. The helmet he wears is badass. it's too bad you can't do his bum drop attack, but using lightning sounds fun and his spear moveset is pretty unique. will need to carry a lot of repair powder though... haven't done spears before and going shieldless sounds like a good challenge

[luis dejesus]

Yeah, right? but i don't think i'm gonna include Smough too, so... http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=135536527125872994

Edit: after Kathe, i'm making one last char... http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=390346367234363939

[Milad Hajipour]

I just got around to watching this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XorxHewqtw&feature=youtu.be
Good old Ruirkhan has lots of details about the demo he played at E3.

@Gorbad
You'll definitely want to check out his thoughts on the new BS/parry. Starts at 22:00

[Latisha Fry]

Good. I'm not too keen on the current backstab mechanic in PvP. Most matches are people circling each other trying to get a backstab. It's boring. There's no reason why you should be invincible during a backstab anyway. Shorten the animation so you're not getting beaten on whilst you wait for the animation to finish and I think it's fine.

[Robert DeLarosa]

They should implement a counter attack period that you can hold to automatically counter any physical attack. It should drain stamina very quickly to hold it though. Could be interesting. I can see problems if done incorrectly though.

Thoughts?

[Lucky Girl]

I don't know that having an auto counter would be the way to go, sounds like something that could get exploited. If you just have to hold the button to get a guaranteed hit, it takes skill out of the equation. perhaps having a window to manually counter, provided the attack hasn't staggered you, would work? I don't know what the mechanics would be but something timing based after you've been struck where you might get a quick jab in? would need a lot of checks and balances though based on weapon speed, armor weight, etc or it would become a very annoying tactic to go against if you could always get countered.

interesting idea, but I think it would be hard to implement it in a way that doesn't piss people off.

[cheryl wright]

I was thinking instead of slash, slash, slash, this kind of temporary window would cause you to watch your opponents. It would be like a max 5 sec window with full stamina+drain and any counters would only deal normal damage. Basically a cautionary thing.

But eh, just trying to think of something. I can't brain right now because I have the dumb. (Just got home after 15 hours of airports and airplanes)

[April]

I don't think you understand what the lack of invincibility means in PvP. It doesn't take away circling and constant backstab attempts, not at all. Instead, it makes an outnumbered match nearly impossible to beat, since you cannot go for a backstab youself, while the opponents are both free to circle you as much as they want. In a 1 vs 1 duel with no NPC's or other distractions, the lack of invincibility while backstabbing won't be visible at all. It will only be visible when facing already bad odds, making it infinitely harder for you to beat two or more opponents.

But I can't say at this point if that will truly be the case or not: There's still over half a year left of development. To me it sounds like a good PvE solution, but a poor PvP solution.

I think parries is all the counter-attack we need.

[Tina Tupou]

Guess what? i stopped playing with Kathe... i don't want to go through the whole game to make char, so i deleted that char.... made a new account and used megamule to make PvP chars.

There where 3 chars that had a blue/pink color, so i deleted those, but the other ones are normal, so that gives me 7 PvP builds.

I'm gonna make Kathe on that... already made 2 builds... a http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=198818797701680070 and a http://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=290376691388372797

[Assumptah George]

Well to be honest I'd be qute happy for them to remove backstabs altogether from PvP, although I know a lot of people would disagree. I think it makes for boring encounters. Most 1 v 1 are either circle strafers, or aggressive roll BSers. Either way it's just a case of "trying to get a backstab". You do get turtles hoping a for a riposte opportunity, but I don't mind ripostes as at least it takes a bit of skill (and a fair portion of luck) to get one. I've never been the victim of really obvious lag from a riposte, but I have many times from a backstab. As for those 1 v 2 encounters hopefully they'll still include mechanics which allow for a good player to overcome poor odds.

[SEXY QUEEN]

From what I've understood, the lock-on mechanic on its own has been changed so it's no longer as easy to abuse the backstab system, in PvP or PvE. This is more than either of the two souls games have done. It might be enough to make 1 vs 1 PvP more than just constant backstab fishing, but IMO, backstabs should stay in PvP to punish poor stamina management. And only that. If you have stamina, you should be able to avoid a backstab. In Demon's Souls, this was the case, because a roll would make a backstab attempt do 0 damage on you.

But for 1 vs 2 or 1 vs 3 encounters, the changes to the backstab system don't sound promising. It means the lone person will have a harder time getting backstabs, while the three fighting him can easily circle around him for a BS while he's fighting another player. Not only that, but even -if- the 1 person lands a backstab, he'll die before the animation is finished from a few spam R1's from the other player or players.

In other words, it sounds like they're making 1 vs 1 PvP more fun, but at the cost of making 1 vs 2 fights impossible to beat.

[casey macmillan]

/snip

[Matt Bee]

/snap