Spider and Flamelurker are pretty easy to dodge though, especially the spider. Just 2-handed my spear for Flamelurker, I thought he was one of the easiest bosses.

It's about the guard resistance or whatever it's called, so you use less stamina when blocking. Plenty of shields block 100% of damage, but they only have like 50-60% guard resistance. PFS +10 has 82, the only thing higher is a fully upgraded tower shield for 85%, and that weighs like 30 lbs I think? Mostly not worth it, or not even usable by many builds.

What are other weapons/gear do you use?

Yeah, I've been trying to upgrade the shield all the way since I have it at +7. I actually broke a black phantom's weapon with that shield while we were fighting in 3-3. Needless to say, he was sort of pissed at that and he gave up because he didn't have anything left XD.  Anyways, I was wondering if I should switch to the Brushwood Shield instead since it offers 100% Flame Res. I know it's heavy, but it looks like a damn good shield.

The 100% Fire resistance isn't worth the extra 5 lb and  5% less Guard Resistance of a full powered Brushwood shield, trust me. 

Those 90% Fire resistance of the Purple Flame Shield +10 are quite enough to get you through the game, I used it all the way to NG++ and only exchanged it for a full powered Tower Shield +5.

@Luvtospooge

PvP is really going down the drain for what i've seen in the few days that I invaded lately, it's either people waiting to do spawn kills, or people going around with Blue Phantoms and letting them do all the dirty work.

I haven't tried Red Eye PvP yet, but is it really just as bad as BP invasion? >_< 

@lestatdark

so the parrying dagger just makes the timing on the parry less strict? Just curious as I am going to make a crescent weapon and figure crescent parrying dagger and fatal secret shyer may be cool combo

Yes, it effectly doubles the parrying time for mosts attacks, but be mindful on whom you use it, I can't really say if it will work for every enemy since I stopped parrying myself a long time ago. That is an extremely good combo, but you might wanna have another weapon ready for the unparryiable enemies, since Fatal prefix weapons don't do much damage at all, outside parries and backstabs. I recommend a fast attack weapon like a Sharp Uchigatana.

About 3/4 times yes. They will summon helpers to help them then summon you. They run away and waiting in corners to anbush you. It's sad really...

Thats why I prefer having a friend summon me and fight him. You get a true fight.

That's true, that's a guarantee that you can get a fair fight. 

Also, I don't know if you have noticed it, but I think the servers are a bit laggy lately. I've been having some strange things happening to me as well, especially on 1-4, a guy attacked me with a Blueblood, but i put him behind one of the side pillars while I was prepping up Firestorm. Next thing I see, he's doing a backstab on me, like he did a massive jump in frames. 

I think there's countermeasure for that, but I think it's better if you're a Temple Knight: When get summoned, try to lure them out, then cast an area spell like Rage of God/God's Wrath. I don't know if you can use Firestorm though since it has shorter range. But I think it might work

The problem for that strategy is when you get teams that actually work together doing different roles.

I've had a team with one archer, one which was the melee hitter of the team and the Physical player using ranged Homing Soul Arrow. It's kinda hard when those odds are tipped like that against you, even RoG won't hit them all. 

It takes time and if they hit you the spell is interupted...especially when they are always at your tail >.>... and sometimes they cast Anti magic Field, so it's totally 3 vs 1 with a sword and a shield ( Keel Smasher or not, good luck with that)...Plus those dudes were camping to kill BP's, meaning they cleared the level so you can't have enemies to back you up...