Deflection, Reflection, and Everything Inbetween

As someone who loves the feel of greatshields, I feel restricted in PvP using them. Since parries in Dark Souls II have an unconfirmed knockdown instead of a simple riposte, I feel greatshields have an opportunity to become a major contender in PvP. Perhaps the window could be shorter for a stronger riposte, or longer for a weaker riposte. 

Now on the topic of deflection and reflection. Deflection in PvP needs some tweaking. Deflection is non-existent in PvP currently, but I feel it should be strongly implemented in Dark Souls II because it would give strength users, or greatshield users specifically, a slight edge.

Now reflection is tricky. When it's done in games it's either terribly weak, or unbearably overpowered. I feel Karmic Justice was a well done way of using reflection. However, and I'm 100% sure somebody has thought of this, but the Mirror Knight shield could be a boss weapon capable of shattering damage into an opponent's face. Perhaps a charge attack or something like Karmic Justice.

Or in Demon's Souls fashion, the souls could be used for a Karmic Justice like spell.

First post in a week, back from vacation. I'm back 

Funnily enough, I talked about something like this recently. The deflection in Dark Souls, where you send a spell back when you use force or Wrath of the Gods, does not damage the enemy. If they were to throw a great fireball at you, and you were to deflect it with Wrath of the Gods and send it flying back at their face, they would take no damage. I want them to get burned by their own spell if it gets sent back to them in Dark Souls 2. Tested this out on sorceries also. Same thing. No killing the enemy by deflecting their own soul spear at their face.

In Dark Souls 2 if I can do something like hurting someone with their own spell with deflection, I will be  glad.

Reflection however? Not sure. Like you said it could be great or it could be horrible. No real opinion on the matter, but I will say that I want greatshield bashes to be like better versions of kicks - Knock people back no matter their poise and do a bit of damage as well.

I am a str focused player, love the idea of greatshields, and agree they need to include some form of deflection in pvp while using one. Shield bash is currently rather useless..

I think it would be best implemented performing a shield-bash timed just right when an opponent lands a blow, which results in them being staggered for a shorter time than parry/riposte, and cannot land a critical. Perhaps it would just drain their stamina.

However, simply staggering them from their connected hit while shield is raised may be a little too OP

In one of the interviews, they said that Mirror Knight's shield deflects spells. That, the spells "bounce" off the shield.
Thies feature would be cool to have in PvP, but there are few problems with it.

What will stop you from simply turtling away all spells like this?
How can the shield deflect AoE spells like WoG and Firestorm?
What happens if the deflected spells hit something else, or it's caster?

These three have potential to strongly affect PvP, if there will be an option to deflect spells.

If we're going to get Mirror Knights shield, it will either be a Crest Shield variant. Meaning a Medium Shield with very high Magic Resistance, or a Greatshield with big Stat requirements and either very high, or maximum Magic resistance, or the deflection abilty. Still there needs to be something disabling the shield's user from deflecting everything. Perhaps big Durability/Stamina drain on deflection, need to block the spell with some L2 move and very precise timing, etc.

There are many ways to do this and even more ways to screw this up.

Just adding this small bit in, but wouldn't the spell deflection work great as a special r2 bash. Add a reason to bash with a great shield.

I accidentally posted this to the wrong thread, but if you watch the comic con gameplay footage uploaded by Senthra, 

mirror knight fight:

They could allow us to parry spells and reflect them back. Would be pretty cool to do that.

Deflection can be done with Havel's shield buff.

Sorry for that rant

SirArchmage wrote:Reflection however? Not sure. Like you said it could be great or it could be horrible. No real opinion on the matter, but I will say that I want greatshield bashes to be like better versions of kicks - Knock people back no matter their poise and do a bit of damage as well.

What if bash poise damage/damage was based on your weight? >50% might have a purpose other then watching your character fat roll.