[Character info: I'm SL 53, started as a Cleric, pumped souls into STR, VIT, END, FAITH. Using the Eagle Shield +10 and upgraded Elite Knight Armor set to +8 with Havel's Gauntlets and either a Lightning Spear (not upgraded) or Occult Club (also not upgraded). I can't find any Titanite Chunks to upgrade my weapons to lightning.]

Allow me to vent: I've just used up the last of my humanity (a "twin" humanity no less) on this damned Anor Londo bossfight. It's my first playthrough, and I haven't played Demon Souls, so needless to say I'm struggling with the game at the best of times, and getting filthily side-f***ed at the blurst of times. Using my last humanity from the bonfire at the start (where the woman in the armor chills) so I get the 10 Estus, I decide to take out the two giants guarding the door and the guy with the bow on the stairs before taking on the two healing giants in the middle of the hall. I figure if I can kill those guys before I summon the guy from the sunlight covenant (a stalwart hero, in my eyes) he won't waste his lifebar fighting them before we tackle Smough and Ornstein.

All goes well and I end up summoning him to take out the last healing giant because he keeps healing, but Sunlight guy loses only 5% of his health so all's well and good. I go up the stairs and, having fought alongside a few players beating Smough and Ornstein through being summoned myself, I start trying to summon others to help me pummel Little and Large into oblivion. This is going to be awesome.

Except no, because, and I know there's plenty of people raving about this so I'll try not to go on about it too much, the summoning keeps failing. I must've tried 30-40 times, trying to catch different people to summon in case their connections were better or something but nothing worked. And you know what? If anything goes wrong for me in this game like that, anything to disturb my rhythm for the upcoming bossfight or whatever, I just can't shake it, and I'll go into that bossfight with a negative feeling, unable to fathom why the game has such a problem letting me summon people to my game, and then I'll die (which I did). I've been summoned, twice, on the same bossfight, and I've invaded others' games just fine and vice versa. The only time this retched bastard decides to f*** with me is now and I have a hard time staying patient, to say the least.

And I walked through the white light thinking hey at least I have Sunlight guy, but who am I kidding, he stays alive just long enough for me to take out Ornstein before he's toast, and though I know I should effectively be able to kill lightning Smough alone, the idea that there should be at least another player helping me kick this fat f***'s ass into next week is in my head and I f*** up and die. The reason I die is solely down to that jumping lightning attack that, cheaply, throws off the targeting system, and, because I'm backing away with the shield up, turns me around once I un-target him, landing him a whopping 60% damage hit on my exposed, but shapely, back. You bastard.

So now? I've got no humanity, I pretty much can't beat these guys alone, and even with sunlight guy it's a stretch to see me beating Lightning Fatso without some serious practise. Basically, the road ahead is as follows: I'm going all the way back to Darkroot Forest to farm some souls, I'm taking the souls to the merchant before the depths, and I'm buying all her damn humanity. Then it's back to Anor Londo to do this shit all, over, again.

Sometimes I think if I ever beat this game I will seriously consider retiring from any sort of competitive activity as the self-styled Undisputed Champion of Everything. God how I want to beat it.

Thanks for letting me rant. Words of encouragement?

Get back in there and man the fuck up.
Encourage that.
 
Seriously, I'm beating all bosses solo and when I start up Dark Souls again, after Skyrim and Saints 3 that is, I will murder them both, no matter how many deaths its gonna take!

Firstly don't take out Ornstein first, that's mistake number one.

Kill Smough first then try and stay right under Super-Ornstein the whole time, only move away when he jumps up, dodge his attacks when he jumps away and get under him asap.

If you still can't do it then grind some souls and level up the pyromancy flame and spam combustion/greater combustion on them.

The giants outside are a pain, but if you kite them up then stairs then to a falling attack on them with a good weapon you can take most if not all of their health off, this doesn't always work though.

And to the other reply, shut up, i beat the game at Soul Level 1, the guy want's help not your bullshit.

@TaliciaDragonsong: That's fair enough, but no amount of advice is going to make you better at actually playing the game, that is where the real skill is, so I don't see a point in not giving people advice.

I am not sure which would be cheaper depending on what shards and stuff you have lying around but the bosses do have a weakness to fire damage so it might be cheaper to instead of leveling pyromancy to instead get a good fire damage sword like Quellags Furysword which I used when dealing with this boss and it made the fight much easier. The sword can be made from a +10 curved sword and then upgraded further with demon titanite after making the Furysword (dropped by the enemies big demon enemies like the one outside the blacksmith before darkroot). Although when I did it it wasn't as simple as spamming some pryomancy spells like i have seen in some videos I was able to kill Smough with the sunlight guy having enough health that I got decent damage on the big guy before he went down.

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Get back in there and man the fuck up. Encourage that. Seriously, I'm beating all bosses solo and when I start up Dark Souls again, after Skyrim and Saints 3 that is, I will murder them both, no matter how many deaths its gonna take!

Ignore this. People who just say "Man up" only do so because they have no actual advice.

The best thing to do is just practice. Do you have more problems fighting the faster, less damaging guy, or the slower, very powerful guy? Kill the other one accordingly, and just take it slow, you have all the time in the world. Abuse pillars and line of sight the best you can.

S&O problems? Get some help or if you really need to just kite big dude. He can easily be kited around the rooms with a bow and arrows.  
 
 
That or get a column between you and him. He cant attack though it and just beat on him right after his attacks. 

Try beating them ALONE and not even knowing that you could summon NPCs until a few bosses later... like me.

Oh, and the merchant in Sen's Fortress sells a ring that raises your Lightning Defense. It was invaluable to me during that fight. And I beat them alone.

If you want to kill Smough last, make sure to use the broken pillar bases. Space them between Smough and yourself and when he does his jumping attack it'll hinder him. Go around the room in a circle, visiting each pillar base in succession. Personally, I play ranged characters (Black Bow of Pharis +15 ftw!) and the fight was simply evading and getting a shot off when he did a slow attack. I'm not sure about melee in this fight.

For what its worth, I must've died well over a dozen times to S&O.

I eventually went all The Last Starfighter on their ass, and treated them to a good whooping.

I had a hard time with S&O; at first too. I beat them solo with no NPCs after a few tries though. I killed the smaller boss first which wasn't too hard and then I would die a lot to the big guy. I found the trick to beating him was to stay close enough to him that he doesn't do his lightning charge attack. His close attacks are really easy to dodge and all you have to watch out for is when he jumps in the air and does the lightning butt slam move which is also easy to dodge. If you die fighting them I would just sprint from the bonfire, past all enemies back to the boss room so you start the fight with full Estus x 10. That helped a lot. Also, I had a ring that reduced lightning damage that probably helped. I wouldn't bother farming souls/humanity. Once you learn how the two of the bosses attack and their patterns etc. you can win this fight by yourself no problem. Good luck!

Thanks guys, some great advice here. What I will say is I've shot myself in the foot several times throughout the game. Here are a few of the stupid things I've done for your enjoyment:

-I killed the Pyromancy upgrade man (not while he was in the barrel though, I just decided to kill him at Firelink as I didn't intend to use Pyromancy. I thought he might drop some useful items, too, but he didn't)

-I killed the mouthy tw*t in Sens Fortress. Dude kept insulting me, plus his items were crap, except for, you know, the essential chunks that save you farming in Blighttown. Whoops. He got what was comin' to him.

-I haven't given myself any ranged attacks, and have pumped a lot of souls into Faith in the hopes of getting the cool-looking lightning miracles from the opening video. Though xyzygy's advice about the Black Bow of Pharis means I might try upgrading that as high as I can and going down that road. Thanks man!

Having said all that, I think I've got some good ideas of how to beat them. I definitely get impatient during the fight, which is a huge hindrance on my ability to beat them. This game is all about patience as I'm sure those giving me useful advice have by now realised. My approach will be to bite the bullet and go it alone, dusting myself off and picking myself up every time I die and just sprinting back in to the fight past the giants. That way there's no pressure on me because of limited humanity etc. This game really gets in your head in that respect (at least for me). I'm going to see how far I can upgrade my BBoP to try and get some ranged attacks to beat Smough when he's on his own, and avoid that powerful lightning slam altogether (last time I played I got close, but that attack f***s with me every time). Thanks again for everyone's advice!

@TaliciaDragonsong said:

Get back in there and man the fuck up.

This applies to life in general. Always good advice.

You have two choices which both work.

Go farm for humanity and keep summoning, although without the Lord Vessal this might be somewhat annoying because you'll have to take a long trip there and back depending on where you farm.

Or go fight them until you beat them. You will beat them eventually. You made it this far in the game and you're SL53 I'm FULLY confident with enough tries you will finally beat them. It literally takes a bunch of repetition until you will get muscle memory for when to dodge when to strike and how to keep those fucking pillars between you and Ornstein during the first phase.

Don't feel bad, this is a dick fight because anything in Dark Souls that involves you fighting more than 1 opponent at a time is a dick fight no matter what anyone will ever tell you. The lockon system is crap, it's been crap, from what it looks like it's going to be crap, whatever.

I had a tough time on this fight as well. Probably more so than any other in the game. I had a very similar build, though I was using leather gloves and black leather boots, which I believe offered some better stats to elite knight counterparts. I used elite knight armor, and probably Havel's Helm for this fight. I was also rocking the eagle shield and lightning spear. If you're doing the "heavy roll" then you need to either grind up your endurance or get lighter gear, because these dicks will kill you if you're not mobile.

My key was to kill Smough first and be very patient. Take a few shots whenever he drops on his ass, otherwise, keep rotating and keep both guys in front of you.

Killing upgraded Ornstein wasn't tough at all once I got the hang of it. The ticket there is to drop back and keep him at range. Eventually, if you keep ducking behind the shattered columns, he'll get locked into a pattern firing attacks at you. You can then hit him with magic or bow, your choice. I started as a pyromancer character but never got into it, and had switched over to a mage as soon as I could. Once you get him locked into this pattern, you can hit him with whatever you've got.... If you don't have anything in your faith build, then just go with the Pharis Bow, it scales well with dexterity if you need to pump it up further as well, and you can always make it a Divine Black Bow of Pharis as well to take advantage of that stat.

Smough and Ornstein are a pain, but it only took 3 or 4 tries to take them out. The best way to use Solaire is as a distraction. With him around, you'll probably be able to destroy Ornstein or Smough long before his health drains, and then you can use him to get the attention of the surviving boss. If you can get them down to around half health before Solaire bites it, odds are good that you can just rip them up before they get around to killing you. I was using the Gravelord Sword for this fight, though, and it's pretty excellent, so you might have less luck just charging in at them than I did.

Along with the advice above, you should also keep in mind that Ornstein has a resistance to lightning weapons. They are fine for beating up on Smough, but you are putting yourself at a disadvantage if you try to use that on Ornstein in either of his forms.

Also, might I suggest practicing by putting yourself up to be summoned? This is a good way to gain humanity, souls, and experience fighting against the two with no real consequences. I think a lot of people don't understand that you don't need to be in human form to offer yourself to be summoned, but you definitely can. Keep in mind that the 'offical' summoning area of Anor Londo is at the bonfire where you find Solaire sitting, although the stairwell leading up to S&O is just as effective, in reality.