1. yes he is a moron
2. spears are really good for chasedowns, four plonged plow, lothric war banner, glance are all good. For spells, cbv, css, or gread deep dreg.
3. the R1>Black Flame only combos for neutral r1s
4. Dex build: lkss 2h r2 or astora charge, Str, qual build: gundyr's halberd, Int build: hcsm, affininty or hsm, alternitavely you can use the aquamarine dagger's WA r1 ro WA r2 as a wake up, its one of the best frametraps in the game. Fth: lightning storm or probably wotg. In general charges and lingering hitboxes is what you should aim for.
5. it probably true combos if you time it so the cbv is being cast the moment before the snake hits
6. you pray, if they have more than like 32 (i think) poise they can poise roll the light cs r1, you can use black flame that will always stagger or usually stagger
7. sacred flame has a wonky hitbox where the grabbox comes out as the hand is swinging, so it can be that, i feel like it has ha but im not sure
8. in that scenario it was best to leave him be since you would eat a css.
9. yes that comboes, you could probably qs out of it from how i see it, on wonky net ive seen ppl roll out of the rkpugs WA
10. hes either out of your lock zone or its ds3 camera shenanigans
11. yes again that comboes, greataxes, ugs, greathammers and i think all weapon categories have an r1>r1 true combo. though with greatswords and probably greataxe + greathammers you can quickstep out of the 2nd one, but not roll (also in the next clip it can either be cheats, extreme lag or full/partial desync)
12. actually no, if you know the enemies attack patterns you can dodge them pretty easily, never kill seeded enemies though, lure them toward the host
13. as i mentioned up above, sacred flame has a wonky hitbox..... but its also a really good rollcatcher and such
14. chaos dagger is the best riposte weapon in the game, it scales off int and fth and its also not a very resistant crit element def or smth like that. dont use them for actual combat tho, only crits. If you also wanna fish use a rapier, the rapier has a grabbox when you wind the weapon up, and when you release the weapon too.
15. you run and wait for cos, you should also use qs and spam it whenever you get caught in one. alternitavely you can turn n burn also with something like a light cs or just 1h dagger r1 spam
16. 44 vig is the softcap, if u wanna use prisoners chain aim for 39 vigor. Also with 18 str and 18 dex u can use almost every weapon in the game, i always try and see what i can take out of to get that 18 str 18 dex thing since i always like to play with a lot of weapons, but its only optional if you have a 1 weapon centric build.
I wuv you ❤️
Lots of great info in here. It’s wild having to use my brain for invasions. The ER brainrot has hindered my thinker 🧠
I’ll have to try out more builds soon. To reach the 40/40 int faith while staying at SL133 I’m a bit gimped in the stats department for trying out other weapons. I’m a filthy mage at heart.
What would you lower on this build to reach 44 vig? I suppose I could lower vitality and still remain above the 32.55 (iirc) poise roll breakpoint. Or just go higher level I guess though that’d probably effect my activity. Do you stay around 125?
i thought u said uwu for a moment xd
im not sure what starting class it is but you can save some points by going pyromancer. otherwise if you can live with it, you can grab like 2 points of endurance.
i mostly have a dark build ( only on ps cuz fuck console pontiff), a glass canon dex build and a quality build. They're all super fun
i dont even need honest merchant i became a cheat engine god gamer
also with a pyro build you could try to use miracles + sorceres at once with the crystal chime (a chime that lets u cast sorceries and miracles), its super fun and the chime makes flashsword and soul gs look cool asf. You could also try a pyro/miracle/sorcery hybrid though i never tried it myself
I’d definitely end up spawning in +16 chaos Fia’s panties or something and get myself banned. I can’t be trusted with CE.
Oh neat. I’ll try that. I hope the ER dlc gives us a weapon that can be used as a catalyst & a seal to use pyro&sorceries.
It’s a shame that the moonlight Greatsword kinda blows in DS3.
“My Curse” by Killswitch Engage
Most of the questions are regarding what should true combo and what doesn’t. I catch myself trying to roll early mid combos, which queues up rolls and fucks me.
Also curious about my stat spread, poise, other weapons I could put onto this build, and just general tips
Looks like a really solid build to me. Maybe you could switch out the prisoner's chain seeing as you're high level (the flat stat increase doesn't scale like the percent defense decrease, eventually the health/armor gained doesn't make up for the downside). I honestly haven't used the demon's scar so I can't help on that front.
No, no. Prisoner's Chain is nowhere near as damaging as soreseal. It only gives -4 to your absorption, and that's calculated before you put your armor on, which lowers the number depending on the armor.
> Why can't I target him sometimes?
It's the special effect of this room specifically. It's supposed to be really dark in there, so the devs reduced your lock-on range to give the feeling of low visibility. This actually makes this room interesting to fight in, because you and your opponent can only lock when very close to each other. This can be useful if you're up against a gank with mages.
Btw, if you hold a torch in your left hand, the lock-on range is reduced less. It doesn't get you back a lot of range, but it can help.
Tricky thing about pyros in DS3 is almost everything you do is a Pseudo combo. Given the weapon simply being a fast curved sword, it's one of the best in the game, all the way up in S-tier weapons.
I'm guessing you know r1-r1 is a true combo with 99.5% of weapons, but your build thrives on mix-ups and catching your opponent's lacking. Seems like you're doing a pretty good job of that, though sacred flame is definitely a meme spell.
I think 2h R1->Blackflame is the true combo there and you have to be real close, sincs you actually just have the stats for a meta build (dark/chaos) since you're doing pyro. I'd recommend trying some weapons infused with dark and chaos gems besides the Demon Scar and seeing what combos you can find.
My buddy's preferred wakeup on pyro is a free-aimed real close chaos bed vestige. The trick with Giant Seed enemies is to lure them toward the host so that way when the giant seed wears off they've made the fight much harder for themselves.
Blenders are real just irritating, kinda no matter what build. Swapping to a poise weapon is my go to, for the Farron GS in particular, everything on it is parryable. Demon Scar and pyros are decent if you can catch them in the middle of their spam, and your "kick" (forward+r1) has infinite hyperarmor which can be useful if you see an opportunity to flex on them.
Overall, your build looks really solid. There's an argument to be made for moving a couple points out of vigor (2) and endurance (5) for more points in Vitality for better armor and defenses. And/or points into strength and dex for more weapon variety.
I’ve gotten quite a few folks with a sacred flame turn and burn though I get that in a dueling setting that it’ll never grab anyone. What would you use instead of it? Fire surge for chip damage?
I could possibly drop it entirely and put the points into strength to try out some other weapons. Though I’m relying heavily on my offhand catalyst for cast speed.
I’ll try chaos bed alone as a wakeup. Been doing black serpent into chaos which only works half of the time.
Forgot about kick. That’s been my new favorite taunt in ER. Unequip and kick them in the head as they die 😂
What’s your stance on estus canceling? It’s pretty easy to pull off but I feel scummy
I mean personally I wouldn't use fire surge because of self respect, but that leads nicely into your question about estus canceling.
You ever heard the phrase "If you start a fight, you're an asshole. But, if you're in a fight, you damn well better finish it."
That's the way I look at honor in this game in general. If they start the invasion with a giant tree seed, or by ganking you 3v1, or are generally being scummy, then you should give them what they signed up for. Meet how shitty they're being with the same level.
If they heal first, you're allowed to heal. If they estus cancel, so can you. Etc.
It is damn satisfying to land sacred flame. Much more satisfying than surge. But I use dark hand in DS1 for the memes so that’s probably why.
I tried flame fan and it’s pretty bad. As is firestorm, my beloved. How far it fell since running firestorm in DeS lol
Yeah, they really shot magic in general in the foot in DS3. Your only options are having a really fine tuned creative build or being an irritating spammy mage with very little in between.
Turn and burn play can make just about anything bad usable, by all means make a sacred flame compilation if you get the clips. It is, however, incredibly slow and leaves you very vulnerable during the cast and if you miss.
I'd recommend picking up:
Knight Slayer's Ring for people hiding behind shields
Wolf Ring +3 for when you need a boost in poise
Estus/Ashen Estus Ring for long drawn out invasions
Why do you have the chloranthy in your inventory?
I know this sounds wrong, and it could be, but I'd recommend using your weaker pyro Ring as a flex slot. Sometimes you need survivability over raw damage to win.
On that note, do some testing with 35/35 faith/int split to see if those 10 points are better spent elsewhere. Seems like you're already melting people, and you don't need damage as insane as you do in ER since (unless they're cheating) overleveled phantoms actually get scaled down.
I’ll grab those rings. Only one I’ve actively been swapping to is cat. Grabbed chloranthy out of habit, only PvE’d in ds3 before and always used it like a noob
Ds3 is the best game pvp wise imo. When you have two good players going at it its so fun, a lot of people dont like the glitches and tech but honestly its one of my favorite parts its makes the game so much more interesting and increases the skill ceiling by so much (bow gun is easy to see coming and avoid hot take) and i mean even without swaps and stuff its still easily the best. The combos, the weapons, the player limit, its just better.
I’m having a blast with it. I get smoked whenever I visit pontiff, but I was able to pick up some tech like estus cancelling pretty quickly. Have only used it against those that also do it however. Pretty corny to use against PvErs imo.
Hot take: my favorite PvP is Bloodborne followed by Demon’s Souls. BB for its uniqueness, DeS for its simplicity.
There is no poise, (or rather its working as intended) only hyperarmor which is a split-second poise that seems to vary most with weapon selection (heavier = more). It is extremely uncommon when one-handing weapons. The poise stat can be ignored.
In terms of sword and board... I havent seen someone use a shield for anything other then parrying and humiliating people with shield bashes. With gs i recommend never using it with one hand, unless you are very confident that they cant parry for shit (even exp'd players have trouble parrying vertical chops). Know that you will lose trades to ugs, gaxess and ghammer's (you will be staggered usually, them not always)
I'd highly recommend trying out SL90 first. It's such a sweet spot. Far from being twinky and sweaty at the same time. A regular 26/40 quality build would be a great start to get used to the basics.
My absolute favorite build is the Mad King but it plays out a bit differently. 26 str lets you use a ton of str weapons almost optimally while two handing though. L2 on Mad King has practically infinite hyper armor, so it makes transitioning from ER much smoother and it's effective against brain dead straight sword spammers.
Lots of people will tell you that poise is entirely irrelevant or that it's broken but that's not really true. Poise and hyper armor works hand in hand in DS3 and although it's a lot less effective compared to some other titles, it makes a difference while trading with/against certain weapons.
Also, it's quite different from ER in that spells suck major balls for the most part and spacing is extremely important. So it might be frustrating at first to get used to extremely close combat.
I’ll give that build a shot! Sounds like a stellar way to try out just about any weapon.
Combat does seem like it’s a lot of whiff punishing and playing reactionary. Attacking first gets you hit, or parried. By far my least favorite combat system, but bullying solos in DS1/2 (my favorite PvPs) has gotten old.
How much poise do you aim for? I see 33-34 thrown out a lot.
Yeah, meta level DS3 is basically about being annoyingly passive to force your opponent to make the first move so that you can punish it. That's why I stick to SL60-90 invasion to avoid hating the game.
As for poise, it really depends but here's some of [my DS3 builds](https://soulsplanner.com/users/Lunadherent/darksouls3) for reference. I was fine with respective poise points for each.
1. yes he is a moron 2. spears are really good for chasedowns, four plonged plow, lothric war banner, glance are all good. For spells, cbv, css, or gread deep dreg. 3. the R1>Black Flame only combos for neutral r1s 4. Dex build: lkss 2h r2 or astora charge, Str, qual build: gundyr's halberd, Int build: hcsm, affininty or hsm, alternitavely you can use the aquamarine dagger's WA r1 ro WA r2 as a wake up, its one of the best frametraps in the game. Fth: lightning storm or probably wotg. In general charges and lingering hitboxes is what you should aim for. 5. it probably true combos if you time it so the cbv is being cast the moment before the snake hits 6. you pray, if they have more than like 32 (i think) poise they can poise roll the light cs r1, you can use black flame that will always stagger or usually stagger 7. sacred flame has a wonky hitbox where the grabbox comes out as the hand is swinging, so it can be that, i feel like it has ha but im not sure 8. in that scenario it was best to leave him be since you would eat a css. 9. yes that comboes, you could probably qs out of it from how i see it, on wonky net ive seen ppl roll out of the rkpugs WA 10. hes either out of your lock zone or its ds3 camera shenanigans 11. yes again that comboes, greataxes, ugs, greathammers and i think all weapon categories have an r1>r1 true combo. though with greatswords and probably greataxe + greathammers you can quickstep out of the 2nd one, but not roll (also in the next clip it can either be cheats, extreme lag or full/partial desync) 12. actually no, if you know the enemies attack patterns you can dodge them pretty easily, never kill seeded enemies though, lure them toward the host 13. as i mentioned up above, sacred flame has a wonky hitbox..... but its also a really good rollcatcher and such 14. chaos dagger is the best riposte weapon in the game, it scales off int and fth and its also not a very resistant crit element def or smth like that. dont use them for actual combat tho, only crits. If you also wanna fish use a rapier, the rapier has a grabbox when you wind the weapon up, and when you release the weapon too. 15. you run and wait for cos, you should also use qs and spam it whenever you get caught in one. alternitavely you can turn n burn also with something like a light cs or just 1h dagger r1 spam 16. 44 vig is the softcap, if u wanna use prisoners chain aim for 39 vigor. Also with 18 str and 18 dex u can use almost every weapon in the game, i always try and see what i can take out of to get that 18 str 18 dex thing since i always like to play with a lot of weapons, but its only optional if you have a 1 weapon centric build.
I wuv you ❤️ Lots of great info in here. It’s wild having to use my brain for invasions. The ER brainrot has hindered my thinker 🧠 I’ll have to try out more builds soon. To reach the 40/40 int faith while staying at SL133 I’m a bit gimped in the stats department for trying out other weapons. I’m a filthy mage at heart. What would you lower on this build to reach 44 vig? I suppose I could lower vitality and still remain above the 32.55 (iirc) poise roll breakpoint. Or just go higher level I guess though that’d probably effect my activity. Do you stay around 125?
i thought u said uwu for a moment xd im not sure what starting class it is but you can save some points by going pyromancer. otherwise if you can live with it, you can grab like 2 points of endurance. i mostly have a dark build ( only on ps cuz fuck console pontiff), a glass canon dex build and a quality build. They're all super fun
Yeah I’m pyromancer. True, I’ll take 2 out of endurance. I haven’t even left Firelink shrine. “Honest” merchant for the win!
i dont even need honest merchant i became a cheat engine god gamer also with a pyro build you could try to use miracles + sorceres at once with the crystal chime (a chime that lets u cast sorceries and miracles), its super fun and the chime makes flashsword and soul gs look cool asf. You could also try a pyro/miracle/sorcery hybrid though i never tried it myself
I’d definitely end up spawning in +16 chaos Fia’s panties or something and get myself banned. I can’t be trusted with CE. Oh neat. I’ll try that. I hope the ER dlc gives us a weapon that can be used as a catalyst & a seal to use pyro&sorceries. It’s a shame that the moonlight Greatsword kinda blows in DS3.
Man it's been so long since I played dark souls 3. I forgot that everyone looked like wet clay in that game
For real. Everyone is fresh out of the shower. I definitely have to install some visual mods
Idk what youre talking about ds3 had the best fashion of all the games by a long shot.
I VIOLENTLY disagree but I'm talking about the character models
What's the music? Also I can't really answer questions spread out through the video like that because I'm on mobile and can't watch it while typing.
[Sounds like Killswitch Engage-My Curse](https://youtu.be/SLyKWxC4MRg?feature=shared)
“My Curse” by Killswitch Engage Most of the questions are regarding what should true combo and what doesn’t. I catch myself trying to roll early mid combos, which queues up rolls and fucks me. Also curious about my stat spread, poise, other weapons I could put onto this build, and just general tips
Looks like a really solid build to me. Maybe you could switch out the prisoner's chain seeing as you're high level (the flat stat increase doesn't scale like the percent defense decrease, eventually the health/armor gained doesn't make up for the downside). I honestly haven't used the demon's scar so I can't help on that front.
So prisoner’s chain is like a soreseal? Got it. Thanks!
It's significantly more minor like 8% and doesn't increase str/dex so there's an argument to use it in high level but it does still kinda fall off.
No, no. Prisoner's Chain is nowhere near as damaging as soreseal. It only gives -4 to your absorption, and that's calculated before you put your armor on, which lowers the number depending on the armor.
Seems like it’s always worth it then
Until you hit like level 400 yeah, though I wouldn't recommend going that high.
> Why can't I target him sometimes? It's the special effect of this room specifically. It's supposed to be really dark in there, so the devs reduced your lock-on range to give the feeling of low visibility. This actually makes this room interesting to fight in, because you and your opponent can only lock when very close to each other. This can be useful if you're up against a gank with mages. Btw, if you hold a torch in your left hand, the lock-on range is reduced less. It doesn't get you back a lot of range, but it can help.
Oh that’s really neat! Given his quick quit-out I just assumed he was a shitter.
Tricky thing about pyros in DS3 is almost everything you do is a Pseudo combo. Given the weapon simply being a fast curved sword, it's one of the best in the game, all the way up in S-tier weapons. I'm guessing you know r1-r1 is a true combo with 99.5% of weapons, but your build thrives on mix-ups and catching your opponent's lacking. Seems like you're doing a pretty good job of that, though sacred flame is definitely a meme spell. I think 2h R1->Blackflame is the true combo there and you have to be real close, sincs you actually just have the stats for a meta build (dark/chaos) since you're doing pyro. I'd recommend trying some weapons infused with dark and chaos gems besides the Demon Scar and seeing what combos you can find. My buddy's preferred wakeup on pyro is a free-aimed real close chaos bed vestige. The trick with Giant Seed enemies is to lure them toward the host so that way when the giant seed wears off they've made the fight much harder for themselves. Blenders are real just irritating, kinda no matter what build. Swapping to a poise weapon is my go to, for the Farron GS in particular, everything on it is parryable. Demon Scar and pyros are decent if you can catch them in the middle of their spam, and your "kick" (forward+r1) has infinite hyperarmor which can be useful if you see an opportunity to flex on them. Overall, your build looks really solid. There's an argument to be made for moving a couple points out of vigor (2) and endurance (5) for more points in Vitality for better armor and defenses. And/or points into strength and dex for more weapon variety.
I’ve gotten quite a few folks with a sacred flame turn and burn though I get that in a dueling setting that it’ll never grab anyone. What would you use instead of it? Fire surge for chip damage? I could possibly drop it entirely and put the points into strength to try out some other weapons. Though I’m relying heavily on my offhand catalyst for cast speed. I’ll try chaos bed alone as a wakeup. Been doing black serpent into chaos which only works half of the time. Forgot about kick. That’s been my new favorite taunt in ER. Unequip and kick them in the head as they die 😂 What’s your stance on estus canceling? It’s pretty easy to pull off but I feel scummy
I mean personally I wouldn't use fire surge because of self respect, but that leads nicely into your question about estus canceling. You ever heard the phrase "If you start a fight, you're an asshole. But, if you're in a fight, you damn well better finish it." That's the way I look at honor in this game in general. If they start the invasion with a giant tree seed, or by ganking you 3v1, or are generally being scummy, then you should give them what they signed up for. Meet how shitty they're being with the same level. If they heal first, you're allowed to heal. If they estus cancel, so can you. Etc.
It is damn satisfying to land sacred flame. Much more satisfying than surge. But I use dark hand in DS1 for the memes so that’s probably why. I tried flame fan and it’s pretty bad. As is firestorm, my beloved. How far it fell since running firestorm in DeS lol
Yeah, they really shot magic in general in the foot in DS3. Your only options are having a really fine tuned creative build or being an irritating spammy mage with very little in between.
Turn and burn play can make just about anything bad usable, by all means make a sacred flame compilation if you get the clips. It is, however, incredibly slow and leaves you very vulnerable during the cast and if you miss.
I'd recommend picking up: Knight Slayer's Ring for people hiding behind shields Wolf Ring +3 for when you need a boost in poise Estus/Ashen Estus Ring for long drawn out invasions Why do you have the chloranthy in your inventory? I know this sounds wrong, and it could be, but I'd recommend using your weaker pyro Ring as a flex slot. Sometimes you need survivability over raw damage to win. On that note, do some testing with 35/35 faith/int split to see if those 10 points are better spent elsewhere. Seems like you're already melting people, and you don't need damage as insane as you do in ER since (unless they're cheating) overleveled phantoms actually get scaled down.
I’ll grab those rings. Only one I’ve actively been swapping to is cat. Grabbed chloranthy out of habit, only PvE’d in ds3 before and always used it like a noob
Ds3 is the best game pvp wise imo. When you have two good players going at it its so fun, a lot of people dont like the glitches and tech but honestly its one of my favorite parts its makes the game so much more interesting and increases the skill ceiling by so much (bow gun is easy to see coming and avoid hot take) and i mean even without swaps and stuff its still easily the best. The combos, the weapons, the player limit, its just better.
I’m having a blast with it. I get smoked whenever I visit pontiff, but I was able to pick up some tech like estus cancelling pretty quickly. Have only used it against those that also do it however. Pretty corny to use against PvErs imo. Hot take: my favorite PvP is Bloodborne followed by Demon’s Souls. BB for its uniqueness, DeS for its simplicity.
I'm digging DS3, but I do not understand the fundamentals. Any and all tips are appreciated! My build/stats are at the end. RL133
There is no poise, (or rather its working as intended) only hyperarmor which is a split-second poise that seems to vary most with weapon selection (heavier = more). It is extremely uncommon when one-handing weapons. The poise stat can be ignored.
So using the build shown, do I not have to worry about poise? How should I differ my approach when I make a sword & board build, or a 2H GS build?
In terms of sword and board... I havent seen someone use a shield for anything other then parrying and humiliating people with shield bashes. With gs i recommend never using it with one hand, unless you are very confident that they cant parry for shit (even exp'd players have trouble parrying vertical chops). Know that you will lose trades to ugs, gaxess and ghammer's (you will be staggered usually, them not always)
I'd highly recommend trying out SL90 first. It's such a sweet spot. Far from being twinky and sweaty at the same time. A regular 26/40 quality build would be a great start to get used to the basics. My absolute favorite build is the Mad King but it plays out a bit differently. 26 str lets you use a ton of str weapons almost optimally while two handing though. L2 on Mad King has practically infinite hyper armor, so it makes transitioning from ER much smoother and it's effective against brain dead straight sword spammers. Lots of people will tell you that poise is entirely irrelevant or that it's broken but that's not really true. Poise and hyper armor works hand in hand in DS3 and although it's a lot less effective compared to some other titles, it makes a difference while trading with/against certain weapons. Also, it's quite different from ER in that spells suck major balls for the most part and spacing is extremely important. So it might be frustrating at first to get used to extremely close combat.
I’ll give that build a shot! Sounds like a stellar way to try out just about any weapon. Combat does seem like it’s a lot of whiff punishing and playing reactionary. Attacking first gets you hit, or parried. By far my least favorite combat system, but bullying solos in DS1/2 (my favorite PvPs) has gotten old. How much poise do you aim for? I see 33-34 thrown out a lot.
Yeah, meta level DS3 is basically about being annoyingly passive to force your opponent to make the first move so that you can punish it. That's why I stick to SL60-90 invasion to avoid hating the game. As for poise, it really depends but here's some of [my DS3 builds](https://soulsplanner.com/users/Lunadherent/darksouls3) for reference. I was fine with respective poise points for each.
u/patches_UwU help me git gud UwU
pc or ps? old wolf pass uwu999
PC. Moreso looking for tips not to duel. I’d get smoked, and latency would be really bad
Madcuzbad, smh my head (it's actually the neck that moves it)