Dark Souls III topic.

This is a completely different game than the previous games. I had to adapt my playing style to suit this game. I never ran high armor + tanky characters in the other games, but they've taken away the incentive not to in this, so I've decided to go full tank mode in DS3.

Here is REK MACHINE:

REK MACHINE is a MASSIVE troll when he invades. He likes to taunt his foes. Particularly fun way I like trolling people is to leave them with a sliver of HP left after they've ran out of estus, and I'll run away and lure them into mobs just for the lolz. I gotta spice things up a little bit just to keep it interesting.

The weapon art on Havel's Shield surrounds you in rocks and gives you super armor + poise. I got like 60ish absorb across physical when its up. Its particularly funny to use when you invade and they got multiple phantoms. With a 177 stamina bar, I can swing that Butcher's knife 8 times. Yeah, its possible to face tank 3 players while they're getting rekt at the same time.

Last night was particularly hilarious. This host had 2 phantoms, one of them died almost immediately, and the other ran away and crystal'd out lmao. The host was scrambling to summon more phantoms and I spent probably 20 minutes in that session trolling the host. The host was a total nub. Holds up a shield and turtles, could have kicked that shield to the side and done a finisher at any time, but taunting with gestures and tossing dung was more fun.

Anyway, there is my Dark Souls 3 experience. Love terrorizing people as an invader. In Dark Souls 2, before they nerfed acid pots, I would invade and break people's gear before I killed them. Because if a single piece of their gear had just 1 durability, that was 1 too much IMO.

They severely nerfed parry and backstab damage in this game, you won't even do 1000 damage against another player with one. I've been parried before and was only hit for like 400ish. 2 swipes with my butcher's knife does more than that. So yeah, cool bro, u can parry? Bet ya can't do it every time though. Parry would be an almost guaranteed 1hko in the other souls games unless you have seriously jacked HP. I know because I used to be a parry & backstab fisherman. Its just not worth doing anymore. Now the PVP meta is R1 masher tanks. Non R1 masher tanks who try to melee R1 masher tanks typically lose. Badly. Some freaking dex weeaboo sub 30% equip load build outfitted with an Uchi can't beat REK MACHINE. I've noticed the complete lack of people running those builds in DS3. Probably because someone with a REK MACHINE type build completely destroyed them, or they got 2 shotted by a boss with 50 VIG, because they got little to no armor.

Let me put effectiveness of 'defense' and 'absorbtion' into perspective. My first build was a dex/pyro. Had 115 defense on physical and 20ish physical absorbtion on armor. He got hit even harder in NG than my tank does by the same enemies in NG++. With pyromancer base VIT of 8, even if you wear the same armor as REK MACHINE, you're gonna get hit considerably harder due to the low defense stat. Running low VIT builds in higher NG+ cycles means you're gonna get oneshotted by a whole lot of stuff even with 50 in VIG and medium weight armor. Attacks that would oneshot those players would do about 40-50% of my HP bar. That's still fine, I can flask that up and be back to full HP. If you think VIT is optional, then post your video boss run of every boss in NG++ or higher with you winning every fight without getting hit. Because unless you're *that* good, VIT is not optional. And HP would be just as useless if you never got hit.

Thing is that enemy damage does not seem to scale all tha much on NG+ and beyond. I played a character running naked to get the most ou of Flynn's ring, and i did not really see much difference between the damage i was receiving in NG and in NG++(which i finished today). So to me it was another Souls game, no difference at all. Not that i am complaining. It's more of the same but still great.

Katanas are severely nerfed this time around. Straight swords are pretty damn powerfull. The Dark Sword is propably the most OP weapon in souls history(only Ricard's rapier paired with a big magic buff in DS1 can compare).

Straight swords have always been good in every Souls game.

Rapiers are deceptively powerful in Dark Souls 3 due to the lack of poise, they can interrupt a lot of attacks they couldn't in DS1 and 2. People are using the leo ring with rapiers for the counter damage.

People still can't really figure out exactly what poise stat does in this game. Some weapons, like GCs and UGS, GA, have hyper armor during their swings even with no armor and zero poise. Regardless, its possible for a rapier to interrupt a UGS swing if they catch it near the startup frames. Personally, I think that's bullshit. Some weapons don't get hyper armor frames, and poise doesn't give weapons that don't have hyper armor frames hyper armor. Full havel's + Yhorm's Greatshield, and I couldn't notice any difference as far as being staggered or interrupted compared to no armor. So if poise doesn't keep you from getting interrupted in some way, then its clearly broken IMO, and they need to fix it.

I started using Yhorm's Great Machete instead of the Butcher's knife. I noticed the timing on the R1 swings appears to be well suited at stuffing panic rollers. I've boxed people into a corner, and 3-4 swings, they're done. I got enough stamina to swing that thing 4x. Does about 350-500 per swing depending on their defenses with a 1h R1 attack. There is a chain you can do with weapons like this: 2h R2 => kick => 2h R2. If you land that combo, they're done! I've stuffed a parry fishermen with that combo before. Man I wish there was a messaging system for steam to communicate with players you run into in Dark Souls 3, because I wanted to tell that dude how bad he just got rekt. Just in case he didn't comprehend that he just got destroyed in 2 swings. Friendly reminder.

I was never much into PvP into these games, because pretty much, like PoE, you have to change your playstyle to something that is actually viable in PvP. EG. while late game magic is OP in PvE, it is completely shit in PvP because any good player will dodge that shit. Same with dual weilding, both in this game and powerstance in DS2. I loved tha playstyle and it's good in PvE but completely shit in PvP.

Anyway, i think i have figured out what poise does. I think it determines how much damage you can get DURING THE ATTACK ANIMATION, without getting interrupted, even on weapons without hyper armour, or before your hyper armour kicks in.

About Straightswords, the balder side sword was really good in DS1 but definetely not broken. In DS2 straight swords were mediocre for the most part. But here in DS3 the Dark Sword is downright REDICULOUS. My main character now is level 200ish midway on NG+++. He is a testing character and his stats currently are 30 vig, 30end and 99 in both STR and DEX to see what's the deal with weapons. Well the highest damage on a katana is 550ish, most greatswords are around 570 - 600 something, and the damn refined dark sword has an AR of 615, and it is like 25% faster than a katana and 40ish% faster than a greatsword AND it can be buffed. This is something that needs to be adressed. Estoc is also really really powerfull. Other than that the game is fairly balanced i would say.

Havent had the Dark sword drop yet, but My first character I am rolling is a Dex-int Estoc user. Don't have crystal weapon just Greater magic weapon, but damn the Estoc does seem really powerful. The Follow lunge is mean and the hitbox is a little nutty at times.

Estoc is propably the second most powerful weapon in the game. Especially in higher levels on a quality build with some magic. REfined estoc with 40/40 STR/DEX and some magic investment enough to apply a buff is rediculous. Even 12/12 int/faith to use carthus flame arc and carthus beacon, paired with Flynn's ring and Pontiff Right Eye can result in otherwordly DPS.

I haven't played more with my Estoc yet, though It's sharped not refined since I'm going Dex-Int, may lose some overall DPS (though 'm close to getting crystal weapon) but I feel that I'm getting good versatility.

Just started a new character playing around with the dark sword, it's move set is so nice and packs a solid punch when I'm one-handing it. I can definitely see where the idea of it's strength comes from, though I obviously don't have much experience with it yet.

The character I've been using most issing the Great Machete, And just Got Yhorm's Great Machete. It's so fun in PVE, but so hard to use in PVP, still have a good winrate but It's probably due to people sucking less than me lol. My favourite thing to do right now is when people are parry fishing when I'm using it is either do the full charge and they will generally mistime the parry or I just remove lock-on and wheel the attack behind me and do a follow-up when they're in parry animation (sometimes it works, sometimes they roll out)

On a side note, has anyone encountered the Spiked armor rollers? They seem so toxic... though they don't do any poise damage it seems so I'm thinking just equipping a 100% phys mitigation shield and just waiting them out will do. Haven't been able to test it though.

I've been using Yhorm's Great Machete in PVP. It reks in PVP if you know what you're doing. Still using the same build I posted except no greatshield and am now using Yhorm's in my right hand and Butcher's Knife in the left. A dual weapon setup basically.

A few things to note about Yhorms, is the 2h R1s are deceptively fast, the follow up 2h R1 is even faster, and the weapon has longer range than the weapon appears. The hit box is also wider than the weapon.

I make a living in PVP by trading hits with people using weaker weapons than I am. The one major weakness of Yhorm's is its got horizontal swings only, which make it really easy to backstab by itself, which is the reason I'm using the butcher's knife to compliment it.

Yhorm's absolutely destroys pesky R1 spammers. All you gotta do is use the hyper armor on the weapon to your advantage and if you hit them once, you can usually hit them twice.

Did a pretty good session of PVP outside of Sulyvahn's bonfire going into Anor Londo. That's the prime PVP spot where everyone is putting signs down. Did over 40 matches and only lost 3 times. Its not that I'm god tier or anything, its just that most of them suck really, really bad. I've still never lost to a katana user. I see weeaboo katana builds all the time with names like Himegi, these people always get rekt. And seriously, these are some of the worst players in Dark Souls 3.