This is what I thought. I even tried different settings but I am too impatient and sooner or later he gets me with two or three hits, draining my stamina and making me vulnerable for an easy one for him.
I have been playing the PC version of Dark Souls, and I just discovered that Divine weapons hit HARD. Evidently a patch gave it a major buff since I've played it regularly. Within a couple of hours of getting my hands on the Divine Ember, my Halberd went from doing around 197 damage to roughly 380 as a Divine weapon. Savage. Every point in Faith seems to add 2 or 3 points of damage to this thing. Enemies that used to take 2 or 3 hits now die if I just hit their shield with the Divine Halberd. This weapon is going to be really nasty when I have it upgraded beyond +5. Undead enemies are getting obliterated. I'll probably make an Occult weapon of some sort as well when I get my hands on the right materials. Knights take extra damage from Occult apparently, including Ornstein. I'm dreading that battle, as I have to kill Ornstein second in order to get the Faith scaling weapon I need. I can't bring in phantoms to help because they might kill Ornstein first and screw everything up. Overall, I'd say Faith characters are slow starters but pick up speed considerably once you kill the Moonlight Butterfly, grab the Divine Ember, and start upgrading to Divine. Slimes in The Depths drop Green Titanite for your upgrades to +5. I wish I could get my hands on that Pyromancer bastard invader who sabotaged my game the other day right before a boss door (well, fog). Things would have gone much differently if he got tagged a couple of times with my new weapon.
I failed to cut the damn tail off of Priscilla. What a pain in the ass. I can't see this getting any easier in NG+. Cutting the tail off of something that is friggin' invisible? I didn't realize you could be invaded in The Painted World of Artemis. Some guy with a large club invaded me and was lurking behind a pillar. I just walked into the room and stared at him for awhile until he figured out he had been spotted. I kicked the crap out of him, regardless. My Divine Claymore chopped him up, and trying to hide behind a pillar isn't going to stop Wrath of the Gods. The NPC black phantom, Jeremiah, was actually much tougher than the human invader. That guy has insanely high defense and started unleashing all sorts of pyromancy attacks. He had the crazy headgear I used on my mage in Demon's Souls. I was shocked at how much punishment he took from my Claymore before he finally croaked. I had skipped this guy inadvertently using my PS3 character.
I thought Anor Londo would be home of endless invasions, but I wouldn't have thought Painted World would be an invasion hotspot because you get stuck in there for awhile. I actually felt a bit of sympathy for the guy I thrashed because I thought perhaps he was stuck in there with no humanity and was just trying to get some phantoms to help him escape. In reality, he was probably just trying to victimize travelers caught in there and steal their souls. BTW, I looked up Jeremiah, and he has extremely high MAGIC resistance. The majority of the damage I do with my Divine is magic damage, so I made this much harder for myself than it should have been apparently.
Things went much better with the rest of Anor Londo. I went into human form to kindle the fire a couple of times before the dreaded Ornstein and Smough battle, but I started to get invaded before I could even kindle a second time. This pissed me off a great deal, so I summoned a phantom from a summon sign nearby. Then a second summon. Both ended up being Sunbros. The invader actually never even showed. So what to do with two Sunbros? I decided I might as well charge into the Ornstein and Smough battle even though I wasn't quite prepared in terms of upgrades I was going to do before the battle. We killed a couple of knights and it dropped the Silver Knight Shield, which I really needed. We tore through everything to get to the boss battle and jumped in. As I feared, they started attacking Ornstein first. I two-handed my Divine Claymore and went berzerk on Smough, killing him just in time. Of course, now I had a real problem on my hand with superpowered Ornstein, who killed a Sunbro within 30 seconds or so. We whittled away at him, but the other guy was getting too low in power and started running. I managed to land a couple of hard shots to finish him off. Now I have all the goodies from this boss that I wanted. I then invaded Lautrec and flattened those tools with Wrath of the Gods before much happened. So the Firekeeper has been revived, too, and I have the Set of Favor. It's nice to have a session go completely your way in this game. Pretty rewarding considering you get punished most of the time.
I never really bother with that anymore, I just kick Lautrec off the cliff before I do blightown, you don't get the armour but it is no big deal. I also don't really think S+O are really a challenge anymore, once you have played the game for a little while you get quick enough to pretty easily take them down alone. Once you have been up against Sanctuary Guardian, Artorias, Kalameet and Manus quite frankly all of the bosses in the original game seem like childs play. The only boss I still don't like going after is Seath and that is only because it is such a nuisance to get to him. If you do the DLC first and get some of the magic such as Dark Bead combined with Power Within it pretty much wipes out all of the main game bosses in seconds.
You got me playing it again now. Going for a Pyro build. At the moment I am white phantoming the shit out of the gargoyles for lots of early souls. Edit: Got to 25,000 souls and then did it for myself so ended up with 35,000 souls. Charged on and destroyed Havel and then the Capra Demon. Might use the shortcut in the depths to quickly go for gaping as I hate the place but 30k souls is nice. Usually I skip gaping and just got to the second bell via the backdoor but I have to visit depths the free Pyro guy anyway.
The Gargoyle Tail Axe is pretty badass. It's got a nice moveset and gives some bonus resistances when you hold it. The 360-degree strong attack looks like it would have a short range from the animation, but I hit from a greater distance than I would have expected. Also, I didn't realize it's a weapon that can be taken through Divine or Occult paths. I think I'm going to carry this around as my secondary weapon after I upgrade it, especially if I'm in a situation that is likely to poison me. I've also found the Balder Side Sword to be a very good secondary weapon.
Now I see why the "Sunbros" have such a lousy reputation, which is a shame for that covenant considering how much I like co-op in general, as well as my admiration for Solaire. I started doing a little PVP as a member of the Forest Hunter covenant, and the host and some Sunbro buddies apparently just hang out in Darkroot Forest by the spawn points and unleash everything on me immediately. Fucking dirty gankers. I plan on spamming Wrath of God with 47 Faith as a countermeasure next time they get that close to me. They better have >1400 HP and some good magic defense. I'm very rusty in PVP, as I haven't really PVP'ed regularly since Demon's Souls. I'm losing the majority of matches, but on the other hand I have been acting like a tool and trying to fight like I have a STR build and a Dragon Bone Smasher+5 (what I used for PVP in Demon's Souls; I've managed to kill both phantoms and the host before) instead of mixing in my miracles most of the time. I know Wrath of God can be used cheaply, so I try to only use it to catch people off guard when they 2-hand and rush me rather than cheaply spamming it. The exception with be those jackass Sunbro gankers. I have not figured out what I'm going to do to deal with that giant axe. That thing took off over 80% of my health in one swipe. That's a bit of a problem. Despite finding a few jackasses like the Sunbros, most have been pretty pretty good sports. The most amusing exception was some goofball using a halberd of some sort who rolled off a cliff without me touching him and then he indicted me. WTF?
The same joker used Tranquil Walk of Peace in 3 straight fights. Each time he'd TWoP me and wail away with the Great Scythe. I kicked his ass all 3 times. I even managed to land a lightning bolt. Also, as I stated previously, I generally am very much against 2 on 1, but this was a special circumstance. I killed a red phantom just to get to this host. The other Forest Hunter was willing to stand aside for 1 on 1 between me and the host. I use a buff and bow to him, and while I'm bowing this jerkweed takes off like a coward, running for miles while we chase his dumb ass around. He tried to retreat to the boss, so I felt justified just this once in giving him a 2 on 1 beatdown after he wasted 15 minutes of my time chasing him through an empty forest. I have no idea what this numbnuts was trying to do. He nearly rolled off a cliff running like a candyass, too.
Has anyone extensively used the Obsidian Greatsword? It has a pretty amazing base damage rather than damage that scales with STR or DEX, which means it would be a really nice choice for a buffed weapon for my Faith melee build assuming it's a decent weapon in general. It looks like it has the Greatsword moveset. By my calculations, Moonlight Blade would buff it to around 954 damage. I also still have Wrath of the Gods to mix in now and then, which seems to be very effective when occasionally mixed into primarily melee battles. They seem to forget about it after awhile and start dropping that shield or 2-handing and get blown into the weeds. Here's my idea for a SL 125 PVP build: https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=138991723461377079 I unfortunately seem to have put 1 point into resistance. I don't know when this happened, but that would have gone into vitality. I don't expect that will be the factor that decides the outcome of most battles. The main problem will be acquiring this thing. It's probably not going to be surrendered without much suffering considering what has to be done to get it.
Never even acquired it sorry. Cutting Kalameet's tail off is probably one of the hardest things to do, the boss on its own one of the biggest challenges in the game. Good luck with that. I have been playing with a Claymore and Magic Sword, thinking of getting it to +15 for a sorcerer build. At +5 with Magic Sword applied it seems to hit harder than the Drake Sword so it is pretty good for early bosses. Been so used to using unique weapons such as the Black Knight Halberd or Quelaag Fury sword in my recent runs that I forgot about the effort it can take to pick the right weapon and to get it upgraded. If I continue with this Sorcery Run the weapon isn't too important anyway as I will likely use Power Within + spells for bosses. Just killed Kapra so can go and get the large ember tonight if I get time to play and see what it can do at +10. Depending on how suicidal I feel I could try and charge through New Londo Ruins, ignoring all of the enemies and try to get the Very Large Ember early.
Another option I could use instead of the Obsidian Greatsword is the Great Lord Greatsword, although that would cockblock me from getting a miracle until NG++, which I'm not keen on. Seems like you should be targeting the Moonlight Greatsword, which SHOULD be a Faith weapon but inexplicably is an INT scaling weapon. Strong INT scaling at that. The Large Sword of Moonlight in Demon's Souls was had an S rating in Faith scaling and was one of the most effective ways to block magic, reducing magic damage by 80%, better than most shields. It also ignored shields like the Shotel when striking. For whatever reason, FROM decided to take a massive crap on Faith characters when it comes to special weapons. Only the Crescent Axe is practical and decent of the Faith weapons. Grant has strong Faith scaling, but it requires 50 STR to use, which is outrageous for a "Faith" weapon. I'm hoping in Dark Souls 2 Faith users get decent gear like they did in Demon's Souls: Anyway, another option for spoiled rotten magic users have to choose from is the Moonlight Butterfly Horn, which would probably be very handy for PVE and has very low stat requirements.
At last, I've done it! At +5, it has 480 base damage with no scaling. The I used the Darkmoon Blade buff on it, which is currently only at level 1. I have low STR and DEX, so I needed a buffable weapon with really high base damage to fully take advantage of Darkmoon Blade and Sunlight Blade. I hit someone with that 1-handed in PVP, and he just started running after he saw how bad it injured him. I had to chase him down.
I put together a mage character for the first time in Dark Souls. I had a pretty badass mage in Demon's Souls, but I don't care for the way they abandoned magic points for limited casts in Dark Souls. I'm still in the 20s in terms of SL, but these early spells seem like they are garbage against invaders. What limit would you recommend for STR and DEX? I'm thinking 16/14. That would let me use the Moonlight Greatsword, Moonlight Butterfly Horn, Gargoyle Tail Axe, basic bows, Warpick, Reinforce Club, Uchigatana, Shotel, Claymore, Flamberge, Balder Side Sword, Great Scythe, Halberd, ect. No Obsidian Greatsword and no Washing Pole, though, which I found I really like with my Faith character (Occult+5). I'm not sure if Velka's Raiper is worth 2 soul levels in DEX.
I've failed for the second consecutive playthrough to get Priscilla's Dagger. I'm feeling a bit sick with disgust about it. She had no visible health bar, and then I swung blindly and hit her a couple of times (literally, considering she turned invisible) and she suddenly died. She is apparently quite weak to Sunlight Blade. Great to know that now that it has autosaved and autofucked me. I chopped that fucking tail with Power Within AND Sunlight Blade right at the beginning while she was standing still and got nothing.