Gear Discussion

Ah, ok. Thanks!

I was just thinking you could do it with binos and a crossbow, but I wouldn't say I'd particularly want to.

Yea, I don't consider that feasible. :-P

I have an urge to do it with lightning spears just to see how many it takes. Two or maybe three is my guess.

I used the dragonslayer bow to try and chop the tail (for Knights Honor) and I ended up killing the fucker. That bow lives up to its name!

It's actually pretty easy. I did it on principle in my SL1 build using the light crossbow and the binoculars, the principle being that I always want to maim that son of a bitch before I kill him. The thing about crossbows is that they generally have a flatter arc than most bows, so it's a lot easier to bracket in your shots than you'd think. Once you have a hawk ring and the fog ring (so you don't block your own view of the impact), it's feasible to kill things on the very edge of your range of vision.

Getting everything lined up right was a bit tricky, but I chopped the tail off with a +5 light crossbow and binocs without too much trouble. Didn't even have a hawk ring or fog ring on. It took less time than an unupgraded small bow would have, I think--more setup, but substantially fewer shots.

Dear Murakumo,

I know this is going to be hard for you to read and it's even harder for me to write, but it needs to be said: it's over between us. I tried to make our relationship work, really I did, but I think deep down we both knew that we just weren't right for each other. You're a tricky PvP schemer, and I'm just a normal guy who likes to beat up on AI opponents. You're a big, heavy slow-starter and I'm an under 25% loyalist with no room for poise if I'm carrying you with me.

I held on for a long time--longer than I should have. But Murakumo, it was just too hard to hit things with your R1s, and you have to admit that relying to heavily on R2s can't be healthy. By the time I got to Anor Londo and found myself learning to parry silver knights most of the time because it was the surest way to actually hit them, I knew our time together was coming to an end.

I don't want you to bear me any ill will or regret our time together. I won't do either. I'll always remember the good times we shared: saving Siegmeyer from those silver knights, winning that invasion after we were summoned to help someone, beating Ornstein and Smough. And I hope that, after some time has passed and the sting has worn off a little bit, we'll be able to meet again as friends, catch up, and maybe kill a few monsters for old times' sake.

Your friend,

extarbags

My alt had a ton of Titanite around so I upgraded the Crossbow to +10... man that thing hits like a (relatively small) truck now. In Anor Londo against a lot of things it actually does more damage than my +4 Demon's Spear. It will also stagger some guys, which made it hilarious to just shoot gargoyles off the ramparts.

FWIW any bow can knock off a gargoyle (depending on the original positioning). The key is to trigger the "light stagger" by shooting them in the body rather than the head, which triggers the more stable headshot animation.

But yes, the crossbow is a fantastic secondary weapon, and I find myself having a hard time going back to the bow.

Other thing it's useful for: mosquitos in the Blighttown swamp. I had several sessions of jolly coop where I'd watch my summoner flail around at a couple of bugs, only to have me quickly and calmly shoot them down.

So I built a DEX based character who, for variety's sake, owns all three katanas. My original plan was to take washing pole to normal 15+, and then divine and something else fun for the other two swords. Upon getting it, I realized I needed 20(!) strength to use it one-handed. Suggestions for upgrade paths and statting are welcome.

If you really want to be a katana completionist you still need the fourth one.

Anyway you had it backwards. The Washing Pole is the one you want to make elemental or whatever because it has crappy scaling. The Uchi and Iaito are almost the same weapon damage-wise, so just pick your preferred moveset and make that +15. You're unlikely to find any other upgrade path more useful than that.

Exactly the advice I needed, thanks. I'll leave the washing pole to the side for now, then, since I've got a demon spear for lightning...would it be a waste to make Iaito divine? Is there another path that would be useful?

If you're talking about a proper high dex build, divine is going to be the only even marginally useful upgrade path besides normal.

So the Gold Tracer is pretty cool. I've been using it on my quality build which I think will eventually be (finally) an excuse to bust out the Great Lord Greatsword, and while I'm not sure it's really my kind of weapon it's pretty fun. It also sure did kill the Stray Demon in a hurry.

Bleed is your friend on that fight.

I've done coop against Firesage where one person had that and the other a less ridiculous bleed weapon like an uchigatana or great scythe and the fight just turns into fountains of blood. Currently, the bandit's knife character I'm using is far less impressive, due in large part to the embarrassingly short range of the r1. However, I really like that it has a kick instead of a backflip, so I'm giving it a fair shake.

My first character was a thief and I tried to use the Bandit's Knife quite a bit but it simply doesn't hold up when there's more than one enemy and doesn't have great damage output other than the bleed. It's nice because you can get a ton of hits in if the enemy is stunned by your first hit but I found other weapons simply outperformed it, like the various katanas which only require slightly more effort to trigger the bleed.

Well I decided to add 16 int to my quality build for Dark Bead (I just can't quit you, Dark Bead <3 <3 <3) and I picked up the Manus Catalyst, and... wow, what a let-down. I thought this thing was supposed to be TCC-adjacent? It's got around the same magadjust as the Sorcerer's Catalyst at 16 int, and while the strength scaling does kick in and make Dark Bead substantially better it's still not as good as with the Oolacile Ivory Catalyst, which also weights 1/10 as much and doesn't cut the number of casts in half. I wish I could believe that I'm just doing something wrong but I don't know what it could be. Has anyone managed to get good results with this thing?

Never made it myself.

Speaking of gear, how much poise is enough poise?

Oh god not that guy again. The breakpoints to shoot for are 53 and 76. Below 53 just whatever's convenient. No poise is necessary so technically the answer to your question is zero.

Hrm, I'm mostly thinking PvE, but those sound like good numbers anyway. I don't want to get staggered by bosses so I can drink estus all i want and keep beating them down.

Be aware that some boss attacks will knock on your ass regardless of poise, and they would do that even if you block the hit with high stability shields (although to be fair I've never tried anything bigger than the eagle extensively). But avoiding stagger (versus knockdown) is usually 53+ in my experience.

So I'm doing katanas on my int/dex. If I'm not planning on going very high with dex (at least on game zero, I actually plan to take this one to NG so dex will get its turn), should I turn my katanas elemental or stick with regular?

My gut says go elemental for now (dex 20 is the plan) but it almost seems a shame to get rid of that lovely scaling. 'course, I'll get another set of these in NG anyway ...

On the face of it elemental, but it actually mainly depends on what you're planning on taking your int to. If you're going into the thirties I'd probably make one of the katanas enchanted for everyday use and the other one normal for Crystal Magic Weapon.

Mmm, Crystal Magic Weapon. Yeah, pushing INT fulltime now.

I don't think that's necessarily true since the nerfs. Scaling in general has gotten a lot more viable across a much wider range of stats. Looking at the Uchigatana for example (since the wiki seems to have updated numbers for it), fire has a combined AR of 432. If you like the 3/4 rule that I like, the physical version should start winning out at around 325, which only takes 22 dex. That's an estimate but if you got to say 30 dex (368 AR) to be safe you should definitely be out-performing the elemental versions.

It's the two defenses thing. If you're attacking any enemy worth worrying about with an elemental weapon, the damage is going to be reduced twice: once by their physical defense and once by their fire/lightning defense. This means that a weapon that deals 500 physical damage will deal more than one that does 250/250, and it follows that the point where those two weapons will deal the same amount of damage is one where the all-physical weapon lists a lower AR than the elemental one. Just how much lower is impossible to know for sure because it will vary from enemy to enemy, but in my experience the point where all-physical weapons start paying off in general is at around 75% of the AR of their elemental counterparts.

You're right about the nerfs; damage works the same as it always did, and elemental weapons have just had their damage reduced. The reason I brought it up is that since scaling weapons have not been nerfed, the point at which they get to whatever the magic number is that makes them outperform elemental weapons is effectively lower.

So ... after all that, it sounds like even low-end DEX scaling is worth it for at least *one* decent weapon if you consider CMW?

I mean, I got 3 katanas: Iaito, Uchigatana and Washing Pole. I can actually test this out myself, but I was wondering if there was an overall consensus winner. Sounds like not, so I'm gonna go one elemental, one enchanted, and one physical +15 for CMW. Seems like I can't lose as long as I like all 3 movesets (and don't mind the material grind) :D

Now ... fire or lighting? I'm thinking fire for some reason. Oh right, The Law Firm's lightning resistance.

Yeah. Basically if CMW is in the mix, it changes the equation and what you mostly want is a vehicle for CMW. To give you an idea of how powerful it is, at your 20 dex the normal Uchigatana +15 is at around 320 AR or so, and the enchanted, fire, and lightning ones all come in somewhere in the 425-450 area. The normal one with maxed-out CMW on it will be at like 675.

Well the Washing Pole is very different from the other two: longer, different moves, bad scaling. That's definitely not the one you want to make normal. I think the Uchigatana is more popular than the Iaito but that might just be because it's got lower requirements and is a lot less of a pain to get. What I would do is try out the two normal ones and pick the one you would most like to use in boss fights to be the normal one, since that's when you'll definitely be casting CMW. Then I'd pick my favorite from the other two and make that enchanted and the other one elemental (just for variety I guess).

I would ordinarily say fire, but since I think the enchanted one is actually going to end up being your main one lightning might actually be the better choice here. I'm trying to think of tough enemies that are strong against both magic and lightning and having a hard time. Anyway it doesn't matter much; I really think you're going to be using your elemental weapon extremely rarely with this setup.

Edit: actually if you're interested, the Washing Pole has the best scaling of the enchanted options because it starts with strength scaling and all of the non-int ones get dropped to E on these anyway. I don't think it will make much of a difference, but there you have it.

Thanks for the discussion on this guys. I'm seriously considering making a Dex/Sorcerer for my next guy and this discussion is helping me get excited about it. Temped to just start him now but I want/need to finish off the first playthrough, but the idea of trying out a new build is so tempting!

After a very lucrative swamp run, I ended up with Enchanted Iaito, +9 Uchigatana (normal) and +6 Washing Pole for Lightning when I get there. I kinda got used to the Iaito's R2 rush attack so went with that. Good point about the WP though, maybe I'll make that Enchanted too and pick up another Uchi for lightning (cheaper).

Welp, Great Lord Greatsword acquired. It does in fact stagger like crazy as advertised and is pretty awesome as a result. I honestly don't know how much I'll really use it though; even though I've been targeting it since I started this character the Gold Tracer has just proven to be so god damned much fun that it's hard to put down. Still, it'll be nice to have something to smash the things that need to be smashed instead of bled.

Since we were talking Long Sword a couple weeks back I decided to make it my only weapon on my new sorcerer and see how it went. I was going to wait until I finished NG to talk about it but since I appear to be on a (probably brief) hiatus from Dark Souls, just being most of the way through the game will have to suffice. I've used no other melee weapon since getting it, and I've also made a point of using melee more extensively than I probably normally would on a magic-oriented character in order to get a feel for it in a lot of different circumstances.

It's quite good. Relative to the Balder Side Sword (presumably its main competition) I'd say it's still worse, but it does have two potential advantages. One is the 2hr2, which is a horizontal swipe rather than a thrust. This is a less useful move than the thrust but it does make the Long Sword a little more versatile, because while the BSS's stabs are awesome it's nice to have an additional option while two-handing instead of just duplicating the 1hr2. The other advantage is obvious, and it's the low stat requirements, and to be honest those are the best reasons to use it. Starting as a pyromancer, you only need to spend one (1) level in order to be able to use the Long Sword, and that's pretty sweet.

I actually think it's pretty much ideal in the application I've been using it in: backup melee weapon for a character that is primarily a caster. It's fast, light, versatile, and reasonably high damage, all great features in a fallback weapon, and the low requirements mean you can push int (or faith) incredibly quickly early on and still work in some vit and end. For that reason I'm now disinclined to actually use the special int weapons on straight sorcery characters. I could also see the Long Sword working well for a low level build, probably in rotation with a Reinforced Club, since the two seem to complement each other pretty nicely.

Shields! How do the resistances work?

For example, the Silver Knight Shield has a magic resist of "70" vs. the Crest Shield's "80". These numbers look close, yet if I stand a short distance away from one of the royal guards in Anor Londo while they do their AoE magic fart I take more than twice as much damage using the SKS over the CS. I'm guessing those numbers aren't straight percent values but are more like poise with some kind of breakpoint?

Anyone know the details?