Limiting Build and Player Creativity?

TWOP + Spell counters...
Force or WoTG; both are heavily in use for faith builds.
Shields with 70% or higher magic block; most builds have these.
Parries deflect 50% of all damage if you do not; just parry it.
Great Magic Barrier.
Jumping attacks in a direction sideways from the caster are an effective roll that can be done during TWoP.
Hitting them if they have low poise.
....not being an idiot.

DoughGuy wrote:I have one small thing against your use of Twop + sorceries. As much as people complain most things have a counter as long as you have the skill to counter it. However magic + Twop is not one of those things. Look at melee + Twop. You can parry that easily since they will either spam r1 or go for a BS. Using magic + twop you cant counter. There is no way to learn how to fight against that. You can try to parry a WoG but its a lot harder and if you miss once you're probably gone. Sorceries too. Im not sure if you can parry them but even if you can 4 CSSs is gonna deal too much.

The counter is Force. I've gotten good at deflecting sorceries with Force, and even managed to send a CHSM back in to the caster. Problem, most people don't have force

Because I dont have spare slots to put force in on my builds, for such a small thing. Same for GMB. nhor do I allow extra weight for a heavy crossbow that will likely not break their poise before I eat an unblocked CSS.
Thanks for being civil and not going straight to childish name calling Rynn.

I love how this thread has become a build ideas discussion
also is there any way to get consistent locked on headshots with a crossbow? or with any ranged weapon without the whole aiming stuff.

dancash1808 wrote:I love how this thread has become a build ideas discussion
also is there any way to get consistent locked on headshots with a crossbow? or with any ranged weapon without the whole aiming stuff.

No. So use lightning bolts, they stun.

Hmm, in that case does avelyn do triple the poise damage than the other crossbows if all shots hit? I have very little experience with these weapons so idk...

dancash1808 wrote:Hmm, in that case does avelyn do triple the poise damage than the other crossbows if all shots hit? I have very little experience with these weapons so idk...

Don't know about the poise hit, however on my builds that use a crossbow I avoid avelyn. The fire & reload animation is too long and every miss will get punished. With a light or heavy crossbow I can usually roll out before I get punished for a miss.

DoughGuy wrote:Because I dont have spare slots to put force in on my builds, for such a small thing. Same for GMB. nhor do I allow extra weight for a heavy crossbow that will likely not break their poise before I eat an unblocked CSS.
Thanks for being civil and not going straight to childish name calling Rynn.

Whatever your weapon is, I garentee you have a jumping attack that moves fast enough to get away from Crystal soul spear. Force is great for any spell caster, not just this.

If you didn't build with counters in mind dough, its not the other players fualt. Its why I always have a cross bow. I menu swap it in if I need it. As Fed said, lightning bolts stun anyways.

You also said theres nothing to be done about twop+spells. If its really so dangerous (it is) then having a counter available is no small thing. It would be like not having a counter strategy for roll bsing available, its so dangerous that a counter, be it gear, spells or just tactics, is vital to success against a skilled user.

dancash1808 wrote:I love how this thread has become a build ideas discussion Also, is there any way to get consistent locked on headshots with a crossbow? Or with any ranged weapon without the whole aiming stuff.

Fun Fact! The crossbow can be aimed if you use the Binoculars to line it up to your target. Here is a video to watch to show it. Might need a willing opponent to test it on to begin with, but with some practice who knows? You could be getting headshots like a sniper. Also, with a bow, if they cast a Tempest spell, you'll always get a headshot if you are lined up to their front. Unfortunately, that's the only way to get headshots with a lock-on 100% of the time I know of.

Video:

Skip to 5:22 to the theory in practice.

On topic: very educating video once again! I am already waiting for more

FrEyes wrote:On topic: very educating video once again! I am already waiting for more

Thanks!

I've been thinking some more about what you said, and I wonder what percentage of people actually adhere to the 120-125 SL cap. I've always stuck to it religiously, even to the detriment of my builds because I always prefer to make somewhat unrestricted builds, rather than min/maxed ones simply because I prefer having a choice of what I use. However I've been noticing more and more from looking at what combinations of spells and weapons people I PvP with are using, and how much damage they are doing with them, that there's just no way a decent portion of them are 125 or under.

Over the past day I took one of my level 120s up to 220 in increments of 20 and visited Kiln, Ariamis, the Burg and the bonfire area of Darkroot at each increment. Up until SL160, there was always at least one summon sign waiting for me when I arrived. After this, things dropped of quite steeply, but the longest I had to wait for a summon sign to appear was 24 minutes in Ariamis at SL200.

This does make me wonder if I've been a bit too hasty in restricting myself with the builds that aren't just intended for honour duels. I mean what % of players are actually going to check on a forum like this to find Level Caps, and how many of those that do are actually going to care? Obviously noone is going to be able to say '78% of players adhere to the SL cap', but what are other peoples experience/opinions of this? I'd doesn't seem like I'd be affecting my chances of PvP catastrophically by going up to 130/140 with the intent of invading, not hosting.

I'm pretty sure a lot of people stick around 110-130, after all most builds are finished by then. 120 allows you to get 4 stats to 40, i cant imagine a build that needs more than 4 stats at 40, except maybe a fth/int/dex build. And about the damage after 40 in a stat you start getting diminishing returns so the damages you are seein are possible, you might just might no realise how powerful the weapon/catalyst is.

DoughGuy wrote:I'm pretty sure a lot of people stick around 110-130, after all most builds are finished by then. 120 allows you to get 4 stats to 40, i cant imagine a build that needs more than 4 stats at 40, except maybe a fth/int/dex build. And about the damage after 40 in a stat you start getting diminishing returns so the damages you are seein are possible, you might just might no realise how powerful the weapon/catalyst is.

Yes, but this is what I was referring to. People firing off CSS or WDB and still doing massive damage with a weapon that scales with dex and strength, and or/using the higher end mircales or fast rolling in heavy armour. You can also get a pretty good of what level a user of the GSoA is by what damage they do with it in combination with their vit and armour with roll speed.

There's also quite a lot of builds that I've wanted to do that just weren't viable at 120, and not all using dex/int/faith and not 4x40. Also, just because someone's finished their build doesn't mean they're going to stop leveliing. If the person didn't know or care about the caps, they'd just keep spending the souls, as they wouldn't see any reason not to.

Well the cap came to be from Demon's Souls, as it was the same there and the cross over players brought it with them. Then the rest tend to hang around where the PvP action is at.

Most PvP is in the 120 area, the Burg is obvious evidence of this as it is full of people there and they aren't forum goers. Now this doesn't mean there isn't action up higher of course.

I had one PvP char on SL: 180~ish and I think I was getting more PvP action than on 120. I prefer 120 better though..

Another 3 things.

1. Obviously, the gankers would rather enjoy sitting at level zOMG, to increase their gankiness, this being an example https://youtu.be/y_yjiiIJ7rg

2. Not everyone will have an evolved sense of a 'build'. Lots of people will play through the game finding weapons/armours they like, upgrading the stat to use then scale it, then find something else and repeat so they'll have stats all over the place and then discover PvP. I think this would happen more often than you might think as without knowledge of the BB glitch, people might not bother starting new builds when they have more experience with the game

3. There's a whole community of Xbox users who had never heard of/played DS until DkS came out (unfortunately I'm among them as I don't have a PS3 anymore ), so perhaps this cap isn't as prevalent on xbox.

Obviously the majority of PvP is always going to be around 120 for several reasons, i'm not arguing that, but I think there is also a good case for pushing up a bit higher. Either that, or I'm just trying to justify my desire to make uber-builds

well on my non capped character i still get plenty of activity at SL 200

and thank for that trick roan looks tricky to pull off the binocs during combat but the firestorm pause is fun especially since I have one guy I fight regularly who complains about backstabs...

I still get plenty of action on my 225. I just host more often, so I still get to PvP with the DW's invading up. Invading myself typically results in having to duke it out with ganker squads, since they're typically the dudes camp-farming so they can keep on leveling. And actually that's not really a big deal since my end is at 89, so I can equip all the gear I want and still fastroll without the DWGR, which opens up a slot for the hornet ring. Plus I've got eight pyro slots and a buttload of vitality. It's just cool to have a build that's completely unencumbered by stuff like equip burden and stat requirements.

Not completely equip burden free, with the setup I want I struggle even at 99 to fit it all in

I prefer sl 80. It hampers hybrids like they should be. Either build pure damage stat and lose versatility, or hybrid and be versatile but sacrifice vitality, endurance and some damage.

I don't really buy into the idea of having builds that are limited by a community imposed level cap. I tend to like skill based gameplay more than arbitrary limitations, so I go for character set ups that reflect what I find useful to use or that look good. I'm all for being completely creative with builds, and IMHO, level caps don't really foster creativity - just give the illusion of it since you have to work around a limitation. The builds I most enjoy seeing are the ones that are committed to a certain gameplay style. The Miracle Only PVP that KnewGaming did appeals to me, for example, so I tend to care less about soul level and more about how players use their setups.