praetor have you actually finished game ?
you're a colossal retard and the worst possible example of the irrational, unthinking fanboy. i'm literally having trouble comprehending how you have the mental capacity to breathe and type at the same time
It least i am not DS2 faggot.
define "better"? how about something that actually fucking works? how about covenants that aren't literal copypastes of each other? how's that for "better"? jesus, even the netcode right now is about an order of magnitude worse than DaS1. yeah, summonings/invasions are faster, but about half the time when you enter into somebody else's world, you're either instantly sent back due to connection errors or timeouts or are in one of those bugged sessions where nobody has animations. it's unreliable and buggy as fuck. and that's an indisputable fact
Seems like you never played DS2 at start when whole bunch of people played and it didn't work properly. So far when i summon or invade rarely it doesn't work. It is either unable to summon which means that sign was used by someone or .... nothing else. Mentioned by you animations problem i saw literally twice and after few seconds it started to work. Maybe you should check out region you play because it seems to check per country not per region and if you switch on matchmaking then you are literally connected to people from wholeworld.
Unreliable and buggy my ass.
poise exists but doesn't work. pretty much every single dude who analyses PvP mechanics more time and more accurately than you could possibly comprehend has confirmed this: poise doesn't do shit. it doesn't extend hyperarmour frames and has no bearing on staggering while not attacking. it's either broken or so obscure as to be useless. and that's an indisputable fact
"Hyperpoise" not "hyperarmor". Hyperarmor is for things like when you miss parry. You are given then hyperarmor and receive less damage than normally.
Hyperpoise=/= poise=/= stagger.
Stagger depends on both poise defense and weapon poise damage.
If you attack someone with dagger he will still do stagger animation but he will be able to super quickly roll or attack himself despite animation of being staggered still playing.
If you attack someone with estoc you will be able to string more R1 hits (especially since it is fast) and monster or enemy won't be able to quickly respond.
You can easily see this if you will test R1 vs charged R2 attack. In R1 case monster like pot guy will quickly shrug it off where in case of R2 he will stagger a lot longer.
With bigger weapons you can do antistagger moves that give you hyperpoise and punish R1 spammers or monsters that attack quick.
Finally we arrive at poise defense which gives you simply quicker response to being staggered. The more poise you have the faster you can response after being attacked by any attack. With high enough poise you will be able shrug smaller attacks and quickly regain control after attack which does take away control from you.
Monsters still have poise break points. You can not only stagger them by each attack but also accumulate on them poise damage to ensue looong stagger (usually with its own animation) for both bosses and normal monsters.
people with singlehanded weapons don't dominate PvP? wtf are you talking about? stunlocking with fast small weapons is still the number one strategy in PvP, by far. and when it isn't, it's 1-shot parries with the hornet ring (how fucking stupid do you have to be to bring that piece of shit ring back? B-team? more like Z-team level of idiocy). and that's an indisputable fact
popularity =/= dominance and this is why you are faggot.
Single handed weapons are currently popular because they are easy to use and there are shitload of noobs who play and noobs can't deal with someone using quick weapon
If you actually watch PVP by someone who actually can play you will see that all of those estoc and katana guys are getting smashed like nothing by two handers or other types of weapons.
Only reason estoc is popular is because of group mentiality going for cookie cutter builds they think are the best. You posted that greatshield build and you already have people doing it. Someone else will find something else and horde of other people will move onto next thing. That is how it works since forever in online games.
But that doesn't mean something is automatically better which is why despite that fact that "estoc spam is superior" i can easily dispatch those retards when they invade me because i can predict what they will do and i have my own style to counter those idiots.
On hornet ring i agree but it isn't as known or used by most (due to most of people in pvp being casuls).
Still game isn't out even a month so they will probably patch it out quickly.
And i love how you were the one who started whole " DS3 will be backstab fest because they bring back DS1 backstab !!! LOLZ" and this is the hardest DS3 to pull off backstab for both monsters and pvp.
Too see completely if this will be better than any DS game or worse we need time.
who the fuck claimed mad phantoms don't work? a) you don't understand how they work. they can't help hosts if they invade, only if they're summoned through the purple sign, and reds can kill reds since forever. the only difference (other than the rewards, obviously) between purple and red invasions is that the purple can accomplish his goal by killing phantoms. b) it doesn't "work" as in "it's designed by a bunch of retards who would make you proud" because nobody in their right mind would ever summon a purple sign when there's a metric shitton of white/gold, and the purples can't help you with the boss... so in the end you're left with a copypasted red covenant (i'm sensing a theme here...).
Mad phantom can "win" by killing ANY phantom. blue sentinel, white, red even other mad. And this is why i meant by "help". If you invade as red phantom you can only kill host to acomplish your goal while mad phantom it is unknown he can help you now by killing red phantom and defending you from red phantoms (which is actually good tactic to play as mad phantom due to finger item which puts you on the top of targets list)
And this is why that covenant works.
Because in case of red phantom + mad phantom both host and red phantom don't know what mad phantom will do where in case of another red phantom first red phantom knows than that other guy won't win anything by dueling with each other.
So what mad phantom will do then ?:
- join red phantom ?
- join host ?
- wait for them to go at each other and then strike when someone is down ?
In all of those cases mad phantom "wins" so they are all equally viable ways.
This is why this covenant works and it is actually fun to play.
ironic how you accuse others of not understanding mechanics while you're the biggest moron around here who doesn't even begin to understand them (not to mention often praises the game for trivial stuff that was done just as good if not better in the previous ones)
I am not the one that takes on any mechanic that isn't yet figured out and starts to say bullshit that hasn't had any proper research into it.
Same with armor being useless. Turns out armor also does work. It isn't just broken like it used to in DS1 and DS2 where it mitigated shitload of armor and most of armor came from armor not vitality+armor like in DS3 case
and when it comes to combat, balance and online, DaS2 is about seven orders of magnitude better than DaS3 right now (in before the "lololo DaS2 was also shit balance at release": does that mean that every Souls game needs to be at this level of dumbfuckery for at least a year [DaS2 was actually fixed and at an excellent place much sooner]? does this in some twisted, fanboyish way excuse the sorry state of affairs of DaS3 currently? if you answered "yes", you should not be wasting oxygen and polluting the gene pool)
DS2 was shit at release and it wasn't magically fixed in few weeks.
This is why again you are faggot.
Not only you claim idiotic things like DS2 magically being teh best online game since start where it clearly wasn't by a long shot for a long time but also you claim DS3 online being broken where it is clearly better place as it were with DS2. IT works, pvp works, covenants even work but due to share number of people playing some covenants are simply way to staffed (like in case of blue sentinels ). It will normalize once casuls will go to next new thing.