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On January 26 2013 05:15 sc4k wrote: So my pyromancing wanderer was very fun, didn't really need any pyromancy in the end because dat black knight sword got the job done. Well that is to say I beat Gwyn on 'normal mode'. I was very annoyed however because I didn't realise it would immediately end the game. I spent about 10 tries to beat him and I could easily have gone and tried to kill that hydra or the dragon. I didn't even get to see the painted world of ariamis. Drat!!!! Gona have to do the god damn thing on the second time round. Which should be fun.
The Hydra thing is pretty annoying, and so far the only thing in this game i encountered that i would classify as bullshit. There is an about 5m thick circle around the lake between "uses stupid waterballs" and "you fall to your death in an invisible hole in the lake", which you have to navigate for the whole fight.
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You can arrow cheese the heads from the forest area above it no problem.
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I have already killed that thing now, once i noticed that you can actually block the giant snake head without taking damage it just became a tedious work of standing in the water, blocking once it attacks, and hitting whatever head is next to you 1-2 times, then slowly crawling around the place and very carefully keeping an eye out for the edge of the cliff under water while you try to kill those last 1-2 heads that strike nowhere near you. I still nearly fell of the edge two times doing that. So far, the rest of the bosses were fun and fair fights, but that one was just annoying.
I am also not exactly sure how ranged weaponry is supposed to work, maybe it is just that i am too focussed on strength when compared to agility, but every time i hit something with an arrow or bolt it does about 5 damage.
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I don't know how the Hydra can be more bullshit than the Capra Demon in the lower undead burg.
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Dunno, Capra Demon was slightly annoying with the small room and no time to study his moves, but not really that bullshit. Probably depends on how good your PC is if you can load into the room fast enough before he starts killing you.
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On January 25 2013 17:05 Simberto wrote: How does parrying/blocking work?
Somehow, if i do it, i still take damage, so i just stopped doing it and try to evade all attack through running around and/or rolling, but there must be some point to it. This is also why i stopped using a shield, because i don't see the point in it, except against archers.
The parry starts shortly after you press the button, then most of the animation is recovery, similar to the invincibilty frames for rolls. If you get very close but just missed it, it is possible to get a partial parry, which makes you take greatly reduced damage and no poise damage, and it works on all attacks. It takes some practice to get used to, but parrying is good. The main point of parrying though is that you can do a riposte counterattack after a parry for increased damage, more than backstab damage even. Dodging is way op in this game though, it's almost always better than just standard blocking, you should really practice dodge roll. Parry is situationally useful, but more risky than just dodging.
Also if your ranged weapons aren't doing any damage it's because you don't have the minimum dex stat to wield the bow properly(it should even have a red x on the hud). Arrows also have some falloff damage for really long range.
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What i just noticed which is apparently absurdly important is weight. In my Elite Knight Armor, i was always very slow. I just assumed that this is normal, and how this game works, making dodging anything pretty hard. Then i saw the videos posted by people who moved way faster then me, and read somewhere that weight even below 100% has effects, so i put some points in endurance to get my encumbrance below 50%, and this game just suddenly became so much easier due to that. I still like my Knights armor, but i am thinking about whether i should put even more points into Endurance to try to get my weight below 25% with that +50% weight ring i found.
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On January 27 2013 02:52 Simberto wrote: What i just noticed which is apparently absurdly important is weight. In my Elite Knight Armor, i was always very slow. I just assumed that this is normal, and how this game works, making dodging anything pretty hard. Then i saw the videos posted by people who moved way faster then me, and read somewhere that weight even below 100% has effects, so i put some points in endurance to get my encumbrance below 50%, and this game just suddenly became so much easier due to that. I still like my Knights armor, but i am thinking about whether i should put even more points into Endurance to try to get my weight below 25% with that +50% weight ring i found. Not sure if you can wear elites and be below 25%. If you can't them imo it's better to just strip off some armor and get below 25%, because it makes the game so much easier. Id rather wear no armor at all and be able to flip than full havels or something like that.
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Dunno, i still fail quite a lot at simple blocks/dodges/parries, so having some armor to absorb that damage is quite useful. I think it should be possible if i invest a bit more into Endurance, as i was below 50% even before i found that ring that gives you +50% weight. With the ring, i am at 31.8/96 now, which means that with each point of endurance giving me 1.5 weight, i would need to put 22 more levels into endurance. Which is actually quite a lot given that i am at level 40 or so. So, probably not really possible.
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Funnily enough pieces from Havel's armor set have some of the best armor/weight ratios in the game. You just have to mix and match with other stuff to get the weight percentage you want.
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Im still using the wanderers set i got from the beginning of the game, the only item i switched was my helm for the bell gargoyle one (15's across the board ty ty) and im going awesome, i have no idea of weight % or anything as i dont understand the ssymbols or numbers at all, hell i dont even understand what my stats do lmfao.
It works out pretty well though, i can dodge easily and taking hits doesnt hurt that much
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On January 27 2013 03:06 Simberto wrote: Dunno, i still fail quite a lot at simple blocks/dodges/parries, so having some armor to absorb that damage is quite useful. I think it should be possible if i invest a bit more into Endurance, as i was below 50% even before i found that ring that gives you +50% weight. With the ring, i am at 31.8/96 now, which means that with each point of endurance giving me 1.5 weight, i would need to put 22 more levels into endurance. Which is actually quite a lot given that i am at level 40 or so. So, probably not really possible.
Endurance and Vitality are definitely recommended stats for new players as they are guaranteed to make mistakes and those help to mitigate damage taken from those mistakes a lot. Getting good at dodging/parrying just takes practice, practice, and more practice, but it's what separates the good players from the pack. Dodging is the most important move in your arsenal, very few attacks can't be dodged. It just takes a while to get used to the enemy attack timings and the dodge invincibility timings, but it's worth it to learn on later playthroughs once you are comfortable with the game, it's what makes lvl 1 runs of the game possible. If you can't manage the medium rolls, then just lowering weight for the regular fast rolls won't help very much, you'll just have to work on it.
Getting below 25% weight is actually not that easy, as no one levels the Endurance stat past 40(no longer gain stamina, only more equip load, it becomes too much of a waste of precious stat points if you want to stay at pvp levels), and it makes it difficult to get any decent amount of poise. You can stay below 50% with most equipment though, especially if you use havels ring since you'll have 120 max load to play with (80*1.5), though your current setup would still not hit below 25%. There's technically faster tiers of rolls than just under 25%, that's just fastest run speed, but getting weight down to those loads is far too limiting.
There's a much better ring if you plan to stay below 25% though, which changes and vastly improves the dodge roll into a ninja flip/cartwheel, which has significantly longer invincibility frames, distance, and faster recovery.+ Show Spoiler +The Dark Wood Grain Ring, dropped by Shiva's ninja bodyguard (must be in forest hunter covenent, if you level up in covenent they move to blighttown elevator and sell items). It was actually heavily nerfed because it was way too good and now only activates below 25%(down from 50%). It's still good, but it's no longer practically a requirement for pvp.
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The Dark Wood Grain Ring is really not worth it anymore, unless you don't use Ring of Favor and Protection (which you really should). Having either Havel's or Wolf's Ring to actually have some poise is way too important, unless you want to be chain staggered by even those little human dolls in tomb of the giants.
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Indeed, my pvp dueling characters that use dwgr basically have to use the wolf's ring too so they have at least decent poise, pve you can get away with less though if you get good. I did say it was not that easy to get below 25% with several caveats. It's still a fun ring to use though and still useable for experienced players, was mentioning it in case he really does want to make a light armor dodge focused character, even if it's better for new players to be medium load tanky build while learning the game.
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Does anyone know the armor mitigation formula?
I've been trying to derive it for a while now based on some calculator that I found online, but I can't seem to find a site that lists the formula itself. It seems that the % of Attack Power which is converted to damage is a function of the ratio of attack/defense, i.e.
Damage = Attack x f( Attack/Defense)
where f is some function - but for the life of me I can't solve for f.
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United States12235 Posts
On January 30 2013 05:20 Treehead wrote: Does anyone know the armor mitigation formula?
I've been trying to derive it for a while now based on some calculator that I found online, but I can't seem to find a site that lists the formula itself. It seems that the % of Attack Power which is converted to damage is a function of the ratio of attack/defense, i.e.
Damage = Attack x f( Attack/Defense)
where f is some function - but for the life of me I can't solve for f.
I've been trying to research this myself and it is very well hidden. The armor isn't a 1-for-1 reduction, and it's not a percentage reduction either. It's some weird hybrid, or possibly separate formulas based on particular thresholds (like if the reduction would be greater than 75% then use this formula instead of the normal formula, for example).
On a similar note, the resistances for enemies and the stat scaling for players is also pretty secretive. All I can seem to gather about those is that "A" for one weapon doesn't necessarily have the same scaling impact as "A" for another weapon, and that one monster's "C" bleed resistance isn't the same as another monster's "C" bleed resistance (resistance information can be found in the official strategy guide). Instead these letters appear to cover certain number ranges, which makes sense but doesn't make things any easier to calculate.
Unfortunately I don't have anything to really offer here in the way of new information, other than it's difficult to find specifics on this =)
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On January 30 2013 07:42 Excalibur_Z wrote:Show nested quote +On January 30 2013 05:20 Treehead wrote: Does anyone know the armor mitigation formula?
I've been trying to derive it for a while now based on some calculator that I found online, but I can't seem to find a site that lists the formula itself. It seems that the % of Attack Power which is converted to damage is a function of the ratio of attack/defense, i.e.
Damage = Attack x f( Attack/Defense)
where f is some function - but for the life of me I can't solve for f. I've been trying to research this myself and it is very well hidden. The armor isn't a 1-for-1 reduction, and it's not a percentage reduction either. It's some weird hybrid, or possibly separate formulas based on particular thresholds (like if the reduction would be greater than 75% then use this formula instead of the normal formula, for example). On a similar note, the resistances for enemies and the stat scaling for players is also pretty secretive. All I can seem to gather about those is that "A" for one weapon doesn't necessarily have the same scaling impact as "A" for another weapon, and that one monster's "C" bleed resistance isn't the same as another monster's "C" bleed resistance (resistance information can be found in the official strategy guide). Instead these letters appear to cover certain number ranges, which makes sense but doesn't make things any easier to calculate. Unfortunately I don't have anything to really offer here in the way of new information, other than it's difficult to find specifics on this =)
According to https://sites.google.com/site/darksoulstats/dark-souls-calculators/mini-calcs, the damage formula is
When Atk < Def, Damage = 0.4*(Atk^3/ Def^2) - 0.09*(Atk^2/ Def)+0.1*Atk Else Damage = Atk - 0.79* Def*e^(-0.27* Def/Atk)
Now, I haven't tested this formula for accuracy, but it is worth noting that (assuming these coefficients are rounded) this function is actually roughly continuous for all non-zero values of attack and defense, since when Attack = Defense,
0.4*(Atk^3/Def^2) - 0.09*(Atk^2/Def)+0.1*Atk = 0.4 Atk - 0.09 Atk + .1 Atk = .4 Atk Atk - 0.79* Def*e^(-0.27* Def/Atk) = .4 Atk
Again, the numbers aren't nose-on, but close enough to be accounted for by rounding coefficients. This is consistent with (but by no means proven by) the experience I've had, which indicates that the larger your Attack Power is, the closer your damage value comes to your attack power (but never quite gets there), and that when your opponent has a very high attack (think the first Black Knight you hit when you're low level), there is only a small amount (though not 0) of damage which gets through.
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As for coefficients, they're scales and not exact values. So when you see Uchi scaling going from B to A at +14, it doesn't suddenly jump up, but had been going up the range in B the entire time.
One example I'm familiar with is that the Pharis Bow has better dex scaling than Longbow, despite both of them reaching S scaling.
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On January 31 2013 00:38 Sandster wrote: As for coefficients, they're scales and not exact values. So when you see Uchi scaling going from B to A at +14, it doesn't suddenly jump up, but had been going up the range in B the entire time.
One example I'm familiar with is that the Pharis Bow has better dex scaling than Longbow, despite both of them reaching S scaling.
You're talking about how to go from Stats -> AP. We're trying to go from AP + Def -> Damage.
Good info, though.
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for now kinda put the game off. did evrything except the last boss and the end of the addon area. wanted to do pvp but ive grown tired of spending 2 hours of waiting for 20 minutes of fighting. not really excited for ng+ either atm, if there was something to gain outside of soullvls(which seem to make pvp even less likely) i might be more excited for it.
also the last few bosses were a joke. evry boss after ornstein&smough was piss easy. bed of chaos just beeing a matter of how often you have to run there, nito mightve been the easiest boss i fought so far(1st try) , 4kings(1st try) were just zerg one to 50%,dodge once, kill him.seath has a evil way to him and the first time i was surprised and got cursed but after that didnt do much.
dont think i was overleveld or anything (~lvl90, mostly using +5furysword and a +14laito + enchant) but the last bosses were a bit dissapointing compared to the part till anor londo. the way to them was as good as usual tho.
so no real final verdict but overall the game really caught me for its time and it was great. def will instabuy the next, they got me hooked on their concept.
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