Dark Souls 2 Covenants - Some thoughts on changes
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Oh hai host, is that an estus flask I see in your hand? GRS IN THE FACE ******! "Invasion succesfull, returning to your world". Seriously each time I see a noobish piece of shit ghost who tries to heal after I show myself to them and bow and face both him and his phantom in a duel gets a Great Resonant Soul in the face and goes to ponder just how much of a scrub they are. And the tears of buthurt rage of these newbies makes my day everytimeAzure23 said:
. OT: My previous paragraph proofs why the Pilgrims are the most OP covenant in the game right now: they give the most OP spell to punish newbies and honorless trolls both in invasions and in the arena (though their last reward is shite no one uses. Also allow me to elaborate for just a bit: this is strictly a PvE covenant. It is not designed to allow PvP, it's meant a asvqs a practice covenant before actual PvP with some decent rewards and a nice lore friendly way of putting in a neat optional boss (not like the gargoyles and the fucking Bell Keepers ... they are actualy interesting lore-wise too, but suck in implementation ... like so many other things in the game)
Later edit: Hello brotherhood of blood members and sadistic fucks in general, as well as masochistic hardcore DS players. Are you familiar with the Mirror Squires? As in a covenant that has the pleasure of beeing summoned via the shield of the Looking Glass Knight? This is done by putting down your red soapstone sign in the hallway before the bossfight. And when the fight starts, your gracious lord the Looking Glass Kngight shall summon you through his shield to face those who seek pasage to the Undead Crypt and the resting King. You know, in case you really like beeing a sick person/enjoy extra challenge. From what I read you can also take a cracked red eye orb and use it before the fog gate and bam: thorugh the shield and into the game of a future pile of rage and tears >
. I am a sick bastard.
I honestly can't tell if you for or against invasions.XDSkyFreak said:Oh hai host, is that an estus flask I see in your hand? GRS IN THE FACE ******! "Invasion succesfull, returning to your world". Seriously each time I see a noobish piece of shit ghost who tries to heal after I show myself to them and bow and face both him and his phantom in a duel gets a Great Resonant Soul in the face and goes to ponder just how much of a scrub they are. And the tears of buthurt rage of these newbies makes my day everytimeAzure23 said:
OT: My previous paragraph proofs why the Pilgrims are the most OP covenant in the game right now: they give the most OP spell to punish newbies and honorless trolls both in invasions and in the arena (though their last reward is shite no one uses. Also allow me to elaborate for just a bit: this is strictly a PvE covenant. It is not designed to allow PvP, it's meant a asvqs a practice covenant before actual PvP with some decent rewards and a nice lore friendly way of putting in a neat optional boss (not like the gargoyles and the fucking Bell Keepers ... they are actualy interesting lore-wise too, but suck in implementation ... like so many other things in the game)
Later edit: Hello brotherhood of blood members and sadistic fucks in general, as well as masochistic hardcore DS players. Are you familiar with the Mirror Squires? As in a covenant that has the pleasure of beeing summoned via the shield of the Looking Glass Knight? This is done by putting down your red soapstone sign in the hallway before the bossfight. And when the fight starts, your gracious lord the Looking Glass Kngight shall summon you through his shield to face those who seek pasage to the Undead Crypt and the resting King. You know, in case you really like beeing a sick person/enjoy extra challenge. From what I read you can also take a cracked red eye orb and use it before the fog gate and bam: thorugh the shield and into the game of a future pile of rage and tears >
But yes, mirror knight squire invasions are fun as hell lol Make it really trolly? Drop a warmth on the mirror knight and watch his health come back
i'm a dick lol
I love invanding, I love getting invaded (especialy in new and surprising ways like the mirror knight fight. Lord knows the boses in this game need all the help they can get) and I love dueling other players. Unfortunatly I had a really bad run with the PvP in DS 2 ... very few actualy nice games and the rest a parade of rule breaking fools (estus in the arena? heresy I say) or of grindtastic op scrubs (if I see another full Havel's with a mundane Santier's I will kill the nearest innocent creature I can find)WWmelb said:I honestly can't tell if you for or against invasions.
But yes, mirror knight squire invasions are fun as hell lol Make it really trolly? Drop a warmth on the mirror knight and watch his health come back
Gotcha. And yes i agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. Full havels and santiers.. no doubt with 2 avelyns to back it up...XDSkyFreak said:I love invanding, I love getting invaded (especialy in new and surprising ways like the mirror knight fight. Lord knows the boses in this game need all the help they can get) and I love dueling other players. Unfortunatly I had a really bad run with the PvP in DS 2 ... very few actualy nice games and the rest a parade of rule breaking fools (estus in the arena? heresy I say) or of grindtastic op scrubs (if I see another full Havel's with a mundane Santier's I will kill the nearest innocent creature I can find)WWmelb said:I honestly can't tell if you for or against invasions.
But yes, mirror knight squire invasions are fun as hell lol Make it really trolly? Drop a warmth on the mirror knight and watch his health come back
just.. ugh.
Cheap ass weapons.
OH god ... the Avelyns ... I remember when pvp was fun ... and you had crazy cossplaying all around or just nice fights that needed skill, not cheap tactics and bullshit grind (reminds me why I stoped playing MMO's). Free tip for nice pvp: do not go into NG+. In NG+ you can get a player anywhere in your SM range no matter what NG he is on and SM ranges are wider. Also predictably people have figured how to alter their SM so that even though they are 838-ers they get placed into games with people who have nowhere near the SM they have.WWmelb said:Gotcha. And yes i agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. Full havels and santiers.. no doubt with 2 avelyns to back it up...XDSkyFreak said:I love invanding, I love getting invaded (especialy in new and surprising ways like the mirror knight fight. Lord knows the boses in this game need all the help they can get) and I love dueling other players. Unfortunatly I had a really bad run with the PvP in DS 2 ... very few actualy nice games and the rest a parade of rule breaking fools (estus in the arena? heresy I say) or of grindtastic op scrubs (if I see another full Havel's with a mundane Santier's I will kill the nearest innocent creature I can find)WWmelb said:I honestly can't tell if you for or against invasions.
But yes, mirror knight squire invasions are fun as hell lol Make it really trolly? Drop a warmth on the mirror knight and watch his health come back
just.. ugh.
Cheap ass weapons.
No no no, do not add a PVP element to the Pilgrims of Dark. There need to be at least a few PVE only covenants, and since the covenant of champions requires killing invaders to rank up that pretty much leaves the Pilgrims of Dark as the only one. The only thing I think that needs to be fixed about it is that the guy should not talk so much each time you enter the areas (costing a human effigy to enter is fine imo) and it would be nice if you didn't have to fight through a dungeon every time you wanted to face the darklurker.
As for the others definitely lower ranking requirements for Blue Sentinels and Brotherhood of blood, I would say get rid of the ability to lose progress for the brotherhood as well. I would keep duels as a viable method of ranking for each though, as they're fun and removing them as useful for ranking up would really reduce how many people spend time doing them. Way of Blue is mostly ignored because invasions are so rarely a threat, so maybe give the brotherhood a full red eye orb as well. Also red sign soapstone invaders should be made to count up towards rankings for both the brotherhood and the blue sentinels, they really aren't very useful otherwise.
Bell Keepers is fine by me, maybe buff the armor a bit but other than that its about perfect. Its got some fun completely optional PVP areas and gives a nice reward for each victory, making blue sentinels able to appear against them wouldn't do anything as if people want to camp against bell keepers they already summon white phantoms all the time.
Rat King covenant is too unbalanced in favor of the Rat, especially at doors of Pharos, it would be more interesting if the rat had to actually direct the enemies and traps in the area to make a deadly maze the trespasser had to navigate but as it is its not too bad as the trespasser doesn't lose anything but time.
Covenant of champions is mostly fine but I do think there should be more ways to get awestones (maybe by beating certain bosses as well?) and lower rank up requirements.
Dragon covenant is also fine, though as you said it would be nice if the dragon scales had more uses. Heirs of sunlight are similarly fine, though both suffer from a problem that almost all the covenants have that is the rewards kinda suck. Heirs of sunlight has exactly one good reward with sunlight spear but its pretty restrictive in terms of stat requirements. The dragon gear is better but the sword you get is pretty worthless. Other covenants suffer similar problems and even worse the rewards very frequently aren't really tied to the covenant in any real way, there are no spells you need to be in a covenant to cast, and some of the equipment doesn't even have much in the way of lore ties to the covenants, it just makes them all feel rather weak.
As a final complaint I've run into way too many gank squads as a blue sentinel, I'm not exactly sure how one would fix this but even so its really annoying especially since its already so hard to rank up in the covenant. As other have also pointed out there are a few weapons and maybe some spells (dark fog is particularly annoying) that could stand to be nerfed for PVP.
Edit: Also for everyone whining about hosts healing when you invade them, deal with it its as much part of the game as invading is and its your job to stay on them and not give them enough room to heal up. Is it a pain when they do? Sure, but they're just making use of every tactic at their disposal the same as any phantom that lures a player into enemies. Expecting someone to follow some set of rules you have in your head when you barge into their game (and this is not to hate on invaders, I've done plenty of invading myself) is ludicrous.
As for the others definitely lower ranking requirements for Blue Sentinels and Brotherhood of blood, I would say get rid of the ability to lose progress for the brotherhood as well. I would keep duels as a viable method of ranking for each though, as they're fun and removing them as useful for ranking up would really reduce how many people spend time doing them. Way of Blue is mostly ignored because invasions are so rarely a threat, so maybe give the brotherhood a full red eye orb as well. Also red sign soapstone invaders should be made to count up towards rankings for both the brotherhood and the blue sentinels, they really aren't very useful otherwise.
Bell Keepers is fine by me, maybe buff the armor a bit but other than that its about perfect. Its got some fun completely optional PVP areas and gives a nice reward for each victory, making blue sentinels able to appear against them wouldn't do anything as if people want to camp against bell keepers they already summon white phantoms all the time.
Rat King covenant is too unbalanced in favor of the Rat, especially at doors of Pharos, it would be more interesting if the rat had to actually direct the enemies and traps in the area to make a deadly maze the trespasser had to navigate but as it is its not too bad as the trespasser doesn't lose anything but time.
Covenant of champions is mostly fine but I do think there should be more ways to get awestones (maybe by beating certain bosses as well?) and lower rank up requirements.
Dragon covenant is also fine, though as you said it would be nice if the dragon scales had more uses. Heirs of sunlight are similarly fine, though both suffer from a problem that almost all the covenants have that is the rewards kinda suck. Heirs of sunlight has exactly one good reward with sunlight spear but its pretty restrictive in terms of stat requirements. The dragon gear is better but the sword you get is pretty worthless. Other covenants suffer similar problems and even worse the rewards very frequently aren't really tied to the covenant in any real way, there are no spells you need to be in a covenant to cast, and some of the equipment doesn't even have much in the way of lore ties to the covenants, it just makes them all feel rather weak.
As a final complaint I've run into way too many gank squads as a blue sentinel, I'm not exactly sure how one would fix this but even so its really annoying especially since its already so hard to rank up in the covenant. As other have also pointed out there are a few weapons and maybe some spells (dark fog is particularly annoying) that could stand to be nerfed for PVP.
Edit: Also for everyone whining about hosts healing when you invade them, deal with it its as much part of the game as invading is and its your job to stay on them and not give them enough room to heal up. Is it a pain when they do? Sure, but they're just making use of every tactic at their disposal the same as any phantom that lures a player into enemies. Expecting someone to follow some set of rules you have in your head when you barge into their game (and this is not to hate on invaders, I've done plenty of invading myself) is ludicrous.
Yeah totally, and I do utilize healing miracles on my hex and faith builds, and warmth on most of my others. They are very effective, usually only if you have some enemies to hide behind like you said, but a great heal is def nothing to sneeze at. It's only recently that I've run into trouble with healing when using a pure physical, vanquisher seal str build, which is my new pvp main. The ring setup is inflexible, no room for a southern ritual band. And due to the extremely close range nature of the fighting style, I have to be as tanky as possible in terms of health and stamina, so no levels for att or faith either. Don't get me wrong, this is my pvp main for a reason, its fun and effective to play. I'm simply making the argument that say, an invading quality build should have options for healing other than one pyro that heals the host tooMHR said:
edit: for some reason I remember not being able to use herbs while invading. It has been awhile since I've been on a casting pvp build though so ill have to check later.
There are still cosplayers keeping the fun alive! I'm about to ng+ my Charles Atlas look alike and I can't wait to punch those max lvl fucks to death with my carefully crafted, sl 135, unarmed, ultimately manly build. Also I've found 30 adp to be the point where I can pretty reliably dodge dual avelyn volleys with an equip weight of around 25%, I can roll straight through them.XDSkyFreak said:OH god ... the Avelyns ... I remember when pvp was fun ... and you had crazy cossplaying all around or just nice fights that needed skill, not cheap tactics and bullshit grind (reminds me why I stoped playing MMO's). Free tip for nice pvp: do not go into NG+. In NG+ you can get a player anywhere in your SM range no matter what NG he is on and SM ranges are wider. Also predictably people have figured how to alter their SM so that even though they are 838-ers they get placed into games with people who have nowhere near the SM they have.WWmelb said:Gotcha. And yes i agree wholeheartedly with everything you just said. Full havels and santiers.. no doubt with 2 avelyns to back it up...XDSkyFreak said:I love invanding, I love getting invaded (especialy in new and surprising ways like the mirror knight fight. Lord knows the boses in this game need all the help they can get) and I love dueling other players. Unfortunatly I had a really bad run with the PvP in DS 2 ... very few actualy nice games and the rest a parade of rule breaking fools (estus in the arena? heresy I say) or of grindtastic op scrubs (if I see another full Havel's with a mundane Santier's I will kill the nearest innocent creature I can find)WWmelb said:I honestly can't tell if you for or against invasions.
But yes, mirror knight squire invasions are fun as hell lol Make it really trolly? Drop a warmth on the mirror knight and watch his health come back
just.. ugh.
Cheap ass weapons.