The Official Dark Souls Thread - .....It Begins

[lestatdark]

Parasitic said:

Ugh, stats and scaling are so broken in this game. It really ruins the experience of developing your character into higher levels.

777 damage on a +5 lightning Greataxe? About 720 on a +5 Zweihander? This is pretty stupid. I picked bandit cause it focuses on strength, yet after a certain level there's really no point into further specing when it's better to just lightning everything. I jacked up my vitality to 40 cause I really had no idea what else to spend it on.

Being able to lightning-mod dex weapons on a strength guy and use them just as effectively as a dex char just isn't right. Magic and Miracle based chars get the option to do A ratings on weapons but strength/dex chars don't?

I know the 1.04 patch mentions "balancing" it out but to be honest, I don't have faith in From to be able to fix things like this.

 

Chrizum said:
Thanks again lest. And now for the million dollar question guys: how exactly does scaling work?

No one seems to know. How much extra damage per point of strength does your weapon do with a D rank? C rank? etc. I understand C is better than D but by how much? I want to know this because currently I can't make up my mind if I should level up for the Drake Sword or for the Astoria's Straight Sword.

Scaling in this game is more inconsistent than ever. There's imbalances all over the place. E and D ratings are the worst, giving you negligible amounts of extra damage. Avoid having these as long-term weapons. C rating on it's own is also pretty bad, while dual C's are ok at best.

A, B, and the rare S (much more common in Demon's Souls) are good weapons, but the huge problem is that lightning will still outdamage even these unless you invest an unreasonable amount of points in them.

As for the imbalances with ratings, one of the most obvious I noticed:  Black Knight greataxe and Black Knight greatsword both have B's in strength, yet the greataxe ends up outdamaging it by a decent amount. It's kinda awkward considering that the greatsword swings as slow as a Zwei and is a stamina hog. Makes it completely obsolete.

I agree, they need to tone down the Lightning damage as everyone's taking advantage of it on PVP. Couple that with the lack of a decent Lightning absorption shield and it's pretty much a game of who attacks first on PVP. It's even worse when it's a Lightning Shotel +5, as Shotel's go through shields and attack bloody fast. And don't get me started on Lightning Avelyn's with Lightning Bolts...

There's also a lot of re-balances they need to do, especially on the PVP portion. Tranquil Walk of Peace shouldn't be an aura but an instant cast AOE, if the enemy isn't within the AOE you miss the cast. It's almost impossible to defeat a Tranquil Walk of Peace + Ring of Fog phantom/player online as you can't turn fast enough to avoid a backstab (couple that with the near-invisibility and that the aura of TWOP makes it even harder to see the user).

The scalability is all over the place, I totally agree, although your point with the BK's Greataxe and BK's Greatsword isn't a good one, since their base Scalability is the same (B for Strength and E for Dexterity) and the Greataxe has a higher base attack at +5 (319) than the Greatsword (307). I've been trying to figure scalability out, but it doesn't seem to follow any fixed formula just like in Demon's Souls. My BK GreatAxe sometimes gains 2 points for each strenght, sometimes gains 3 and sometimes gains none. Also, as far as I know, there's no S scalability for Strength, in contrast with a S for Dex (Black Bow of Pharis) and a S for Intelligence (Tin Crystalization Catalyst).

Also, I hope 1.04 address some of the worst glitches, like infinite souls and magic glitching (you can permanently buff a non-buff weapon such as Quelaag's Furysword or BK's weaponry with magic weapon spells, that's how the number 1 guilty player has a Quelaag's with 880 attack power).