Someone seriously argued that instead tracking is a good thing?
Yes, because I value nondegenerate gameplay against enemies that can actually pose a threat to players who mindlessly circlestrafe over having slightly more believable animations. I understand you probably just watched Matthewmatosis' video and took it as gospel, but this is the
direction of the series as a whole because it simply leads to better combat, the only difference is that the later games have better animation blending.
Not really the case. You can just turn on the higher difficulty covenant and it forces respawn of everything forever. Or use the bonfire ascetics to respawn stuff. It's completely trivial to farm absurd amounts of souls very quickly with ascetics.
Not relevant for the majority of players. Covenants are just as poorly communicated as in the first game and I can't imagine many players will randomly join that covenant. You only start to get bonfire ascetics towards the end of the game, and I never used them anyway.
Not a valid argument. You might as well say that life gems are balanced if players don't know they can buy them. Which was the case for me my first entire playthrough (along with not knowing how to upgrade my equipment for the first third of the game).
These are not analogous situations. If only a small fraction of players used lifegems, then I would concur that they don't strongly influence the design for most players, but not that they're completely fine as-is (i.e. how badly does the game's difficulty suffer for people who do spam lifegems?). Souls will be functionally finite for most players, so that
is one of the effects of despawning. The abusability of systems by more knowledgable players should be considered, but it is also important to consider what the effect will be on average players. My argument is, that for most players, losing souls actually feels like a loss where it quickly became a non-issue in DS1. That's my experience, and I'm extrapolating what I believe to be the design intent and effect for players at large. The existence of tools to respawn enemies doesn't change this in my view (and moreover, the fact is that DS2's level curve is fairly forgiving as you point out, so this is not something that most players will likely turn to). Further, the Covenant of Champions and Bonfire Ascetics both increase difficulty, somewhat counteracting the incentive to grind, so I believe my point stands.
In my experience, thrusting swords are the only truly great pure DEX weapons, but they also have the massive downside of being unable stagger enemies worth a damn (unless you use the Stone Ring I suppose). Everything else has mediocre damage (base + scaling) which drops too heavily with infusions to be worth it. I was frequently exhausting my entire stamina bar with my scimitar to kill individual mobs, without always staggering them. By contrast, I watched somebody steamroll the entire game's content with a quality build using the Mace, Grand Lance and a Great Club, and he was able to twoshot essentially every mob in the game all the way through the DLC while also having the benefits I mentioned (stagger, better damage types, attacks that hit multiple enemies). I accept that it may be a different story with bosses, but the game's difficulty seems more centered around the level encounters anyway.
Were you two-handing weapons and using the stone ring? You stagger basically everything staggerable even with a simple dagger. It's hilarious. At most you need two hits for the bigger enemies (not including the ones that are just unstaggerable).
No, because I got that ring late into the game and wasn't frequently experimenting. I now recognize that certain on-hit effects make fast attacking weapons quite potent, but as per my previous arguments, this wasn't relevant to most of my playthrough. Frankly the ring itself sounds busted.
Also your analysis is totally backwards -- flat damage reduction hurts lower damage numbers much more than higher damage numbers, in that adding e.g. 100 attack to 300 attack effectively doubles your damage against an enemy with 200 protections (numbers drawn out of thin air, but you get my point). A scaling in DEX frequently means just over half of the added attack value of A scaling in STR (45% vs 80%), which amounts to much less damage overall due to flat damage reduction. The fact that split magic damage isn't godawful in this way due to being percentage based is actually a major mechanical improvement, if you ask me. Maybe I just wasn't minmaxing flat bonuses enough, even though I was constantly applying variants of Magic Weapon (I only ever found up to Ring of Blades +1 and I was most of the way through the game before I found Flynn's Ring).
I think you're missing the point. Physical damage reduction in DS2 caps at around 100-200ish. So at early levels when your dagger does 250 and heavy weapon does 400, it matters a lot. At higher levels where your buffed dagger does 1000 and your heavy weapon 1150, the dagger is way, way better for DPS. Of course a great hammer or w/e also has better arc but the simple dagger isn't the only dex weapon.
This is true, though I don't think this really starts to matter until the DLC when you can have a character buffed out with all manner of rings and potent infusions.
Sorceries and all spells in general are complete shit for DS2, don't even try to get through the DLC areas with them.
Fake news, sorceries are just terrible in the Ivory King. My Great Soul Arrow twoshot (unbuffed) mobs in Iron King and did respectable damage in the Sunken King, for which judicious use of spells was invaluable.
Nah mate, it's trash.
Here's some quick damage tests.
[snip]
All weapons are +10 magic (except chime which is obviously dark), flynn ring/ring of blades/old leo ring/sorcery clutch ring equipped. Stats are 50/50 str/dex and 70/70 int/faith. This is bonfire intensity 1 and an absurdly overleveled caster build can't effectively kill these guys, unless you count "spend 2 minutes backpeddling while casting a dozen soul arrows or dark orbs" as a good way to play (not a smart plan when you have to deal with groups either). Meanwhile melee takes about 4-8 swings.
Yes, the DLC enemies are rather resistant to magic. These guys in particular. Still, 3 shots on the normal mobs (I misremembered as 2 shots) isn't useless. And before the DLC, magic can be stupidly potent.
I did some testing of my own, and I discovered that it's mostly just Rapier counter damage that's broken. Makes a difference of about 230 damage on those same enemies with Ring of Blades +1, Flynn's Ring, Cystal Magic Weapon, and Sorcery Clutch Ring with a magic-infused Ice rapier, and the period to get it is super lenient (I found it hard to NOT get counter damage). With Old Leo Ring it's even more ridiculous. This is indeed a problem, but did not characterize the majority of my experience with the game (and it didn't help much with the Ivory King DLC in particular anyway). Is the ceiling for DEX builds in DS2 probably higher for the reasons you mentioned? Yes, but I don't know if that would lead me to the conclusion that DEX is better overall. For the majority of the game it can struggle against PvE content, at least if you're a schmuck using curved swords like I was. Maybe there are similar clunker STR weapon classes, I wouldn't know. As a final point, I don't know if it makes much sense to claim that magic builds suck and DEX weapons are OP when your magic infusion and Crystal Magic Weapon are partly responsible for putting your damage numbers into the stratosphere. Pure casters may fall off (though having more spell casts may help), but you just made the point that the game floods you with levels to hybridize! That's where the kind of melee bonuses we're talking about come in, I'd think. By contrast, I'd I imagine that a STR focused character could rely on better innate damage and utility and dedicate ring slots to other useful effects like stamina regeneration and better defense without losing much in PvE. There are other factors at play than raw DPS, even if I concede your point about the endgame potential. It took me a long time to get there, and for most of the game I found myself rather gimped by my low STR and mediocre weapon selection since I prioritized sorceries after bringing DEX to the first soft cap. Maybe my opinion will change in subsequent playthroughs, who knows.
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