Dark Souls & Other Souls-Likes

lol the Stamina Drain was real 'do. I just like to Blood Knight my way through everything. Cherche should know, were in the same LS and I love playing "How much damage can I eat on DRK with or without dieing"

This was my issue as well, with the cleric beast i was all "amg get it away from me" and died a bunch. I grew out of it by the time I got to Vicar Amilia, curb stomped her and was like "Wasn't she supposed to have a healing move?..."

My tactic in Bloodborne is pretty much to two hand my axe and use the wide long swings to the stagger the monster as it closes in on me. There's quite a few monsters and bosses that you can knock on their *** if you time the R2 spin attack correctly.

I also like using Ludwig's Holyblade a lot, cause it is beefy. The timing for it is harder than the axe, but it deals more damage/looks cooler.

I also like to use guns, and not just for setting up visceral attacks. The church gun or whatever it's called... the one that shoots two bullets at once, it can deal obscene damage even at low bloodtinge if you buff it with Boneyard Ash or whatever that ash is called. You can literally walk into quite a few boss fights that A LOT of people struggle with, and kill(nearly kill) said bosses with your 10 shots, even at very very low bloodtinge levels.

Contains dialogue from an Ashes of Ariandel NPC.

Upcoming Patch! Balancing out the wazoo.

Heh, new boss fight in Ringed City is everything I thought it would be, though I'm sure some people are complaining it's too easy already somehow xD

But did you get to the second boss fight?

This latest patch nerfed the ***outta Great Magic shield's cast time. It takes like twice as long to cast now. -.-;

Yep. They had to do something to it eventually I guess...

Also this DLC is making me laugh. Just cause it feels like, Miyazaki was like, "Ok, so what way can I setup these areas to make even veterans be like, "OH ***!" lol

Well, that was great fun. Not as short as I feared it would be, but not as long as I would have liked it to be.

Major spoilers in these spoiler tags. Do not click the tag if you have not progressed within The Ringed City DLC and care about spoilers. They are boss fights.

Darkeater Midir can suck a ***

Seeing someone play with a Shield is always so different for me. Since I have played with Caestus or a small shield for parrying forever lol

Love my shields in Dark Souls. The only times I haven't relied on them heavily was my first playthrough of Dark Souls 1. I have done shieldless playthroughs though, but I definitely prefer to use one if given the option.

Alright this is giving me a headache, I'm leaving it for now.

Spear of the Church I just summoned for as well, if I want to fight a summoned player I'll use the pre-existing game mechanics for it, don't make that ***a boss, especially aided with a staggering, self healing painting guardian helper.

Demon Prince, can't remember much about, don't remember struggling.

Darkeater can really suck a *** when you're getting used to him, once you get used to his attack patterns he is a lot more manageable but it's a *** move that he is most dangerous at range so you stick by him only for him to fly off, get distance and do his *** ranged attack.

Gael I'm working on, I prefer to ember up but used all mine on Darkeater, he doesn't seem bad, just very erratic.

As an update Gael is very manageable but at the same time very punishing if he pulls a combo off, if you're prone to panic dodging he is likely to cause problems.

Out of curiosity what is your NG+ and level? I only ask because you have relative little difficulty compared to me.

I mean, I honestly think it's probably that you're just better at Souls than I am but I am curious to see if there are any other factors.

EDIT: I just beat Gael, actually a super fun fight, even considering how frustrating I did find him. I think the problem I had was at times I was being too greedy, in the end I would just roll through his combos and get a hit or 2 in when he finished attacking.

I started the DLC with a caster build, lv~105, 30 VIT, 15 END, 60 INT, 25 Faith (for Second ChanceTears of Denial), and enough STR+DEX for the Moonlight Greatsword.
All the bosses were done solo.

I was disappointed though that the I got to really learn the fights though, so I think I'll slaughter all bosses with my melee character the next time I play through the DLC...I think.

After some rest, Midir went down in two more attempts. Also swapped to a faster weapon.

Love my Old Wolf sword, but it just swings too slowly for that fight.

Edgelord build mostly complete. Just need to respec for finality.

I always do DLCs on my first run through on normal NG, because I like to see how strong they are compared to the rest of the game/how they scale later. The one exception being Bloodborne, where I did its DLC on NG+3 from the get go.

I've run through the DLC on both normal NG(level 100) and NG+3(level 165). Though in the NG+3 I went ahead and used NPC summons to boost boss HP, and it actually made things more interesting, particularly in The Demon fight and in Midir, because it changes how they approach you, particularly with Midir. I don't think I've ever gone higher than NG+4 in a Souls game, because I'm not particularly fond of being out strengthed by a great degree/getting oneshot by being clipped or sideswiped.

The character I used for my first run of both DLCs was my jack of trades guy, who originally had like 28 in everything important and 30 faith(for lightning blade, my favorite miracle). He was at level 100 at the start of this DLC and like 98 for Ashes. I could have left him the way he was, be he couldn't deal an appreciable amount of damage, so for the first time ever, I used Rosaria to respec into a more specialized build wherein he had 40 str, 40 vigor, and 37 endurance or whatever. Then the minimum amount of vitality needed to roll fast in the stuff he wore, and 18 INT for GMS. You can still use Tears of Denial with 10 Faith, due to being able to cast it at the bonfire. You just have to swap rings out and it makes each try annoying, so I did that a few times too for bosses I felt it was necessary for.

Also I don't feel like I'm really above par at Souls games. Like, I'm not horrible or bad, but I ain't ever gonna be one of those SL1 junkies. Don't got that kind of patience for it/don't like being weak/don't like exploitation of Raw weapons etc. Usually when I beat bosses the first time, there's a great deal of luck on my side imo. Like, if you watch my Gael video I got lucky when I ran out of Estus, and went into my menu mid fight to use a Divine Blessing lol. On Midir, if I'd been playing on even NG+1, his Dark Laser Amygdala Breath would have killed me, or if I'd had any less HP at all lol. The Demon fight is probably the only one where I didn't really get lucky with it, actually having Estus remaining etc.