AndrewB

@nezza: That's pretty much what I was looking for. That ridiculous combination of strengths. Combat Master sure is a tricky one when combined with other common strengths. I also always loathed using the bow unless necessary, so I never even became great at aiming and using it effectively unless against explosives :P

@abendlaender: If that's true, I definitely tired to kill him because I didn't even remember that the goal was to brand him at the time. His health in combat would not drop below the halfway point unless due to explosion, which would also eventually regenerate.

I'll also mention the funny note where he came close to single-handedly murdering the entire Uruk army I had branded - his own bodyguards who showed up at the initial attempt on his life and all the others who just happened to be in the path of his destruction along the way.

I wouldn't have posted if I hadn't exhausted every option I could strategically come up with, while wishing I was livestreaming so I had some bit of video evidence to either make me feel like an idiot or justify my madness (funny I was thinking this warchief could probably take on Sauron himself when he was actually a real pansy :P). I just figured the combination of the strengths and weaknesses had produced some kind of super-uruk. I've had nothing but fun with the game up until this one fight... (which happened to take place immediately prior to the end-game quests).

For this particular circumstance, I had the added caveat of not being able to kill them outright. That was the part that made it extra challenging. But you're right... the mid-game is the only real difficult part. Early parts I found I was only ever dying due to pure circumstance. The same held true for the latter parts of the game. Was still satisfying even in the easier moments. I would even have enjoyed the challenge of this warchief if I could be sure I wasn't robbed on my earlier attempts by a bug.

@village_guy: Now I feel bad for posting this and immediately solving it... I re-tried that and it worked. I would swear to you the first time it didn't let me grab him.

I guess I figured I would eventually work it out. That's why I posed the question of other ridiculous combinations people might have run across (also, this isn't a support forum :P).

@ulquiokani: He breaks free of all attempts to brand even if stunned as if he isn't at low enough health, but I also cannot lower his health beyond the halfway point without using an explosion. I'm actually not sure if I've run into a bug at this point.

I remember @rorie mentioning running against a wall with a particularly tough set of enemy strengths/weaknesses in Shadow of Mordor. It seems I've reached that point.

For the sake of my current situation, I'll need to rattle off a light spoiler in that I need to brand him as the last of a series of quests. That complicates things even further.

I can't use combat finishers, so no combat branding. He's invulnerable to stealth, so no stealth branding. He's invulnerable to ranged, so no ranged combos leading to branding and no pinning him as he tries to run away in order to brand him. He has a buff against one of two obscure weaknesses in Monster Slayer. He buffs anyone around him, making the already difficult matter of squaring off against him all the harder. He has a poison weapon which is just a pain for both damage and not being able to see necessary button prompts, and his Battle-Hardened status makes me question if it is actually possible to defeat him given the conflicts with other strengths.

The only real hope I can see in beating him is to get very, very lucky in being able to lead him around sources for explosions, but even then, I *can't* kill him, because keeping him alive is story-critical. I've gone face-to-face against him with a caragor, but despite being afraid of them he just wrecked the thing in combat. I'd have to make a second attempt to see if it even gives him the status effect necessary to grapple him. I remember trying and not being successful. On my last attempt, I was literally chasing him across the entire map with no way of harming him until eventually I got distracted enough for him to escape.

Basically, this went from the most fun game I've played in a very, very long time to a game I'm not sure I'll ever finish in a matter of a day.

So... besides asking for tips, I'd also like to hear about particularly bad picks from the random number generator that others are experiencing.

@otakugamer: That's what I was thinking when I realized through the tinny low quality that it was English.

I'm just not sure I'm ready for and English Miku.

I like the attempt to cover up the spoiler for the Avalon video even though you immediately afterward spoil it in plain text.

Yup. Specifically because a lot of games of that era had crummy password systems or no saves at all and this is a different era and I don't get to sit in front of a TV screen for the length of most NES etc games. Specifically for the 3DS, putting it to sleep might be an option, but that thing drains so much battery even in a low power mode (or at least it seems to if I have to put it down for a whole day or more).

I'll place this in spoiler tags because at the time of this writing the last DLC is fresh, but...

Be it due to budgetary asset re-use or actual lore reasons, Crown of the Ivory King takes place in a world design that looks too much like a copy-paste of the lower bits of Anor Londo (the part you only get to see from afar in Dark Souls) to be coincidence or written off as general architectural design.

After extensive playing, I feel like if the design of the game proper was closer to the first two pieces of DLC, then far fewer people might have felt that Dark Souls 2 was lacking. Say what you will about the one mostly recycled optional boss (who I still died against many, many times because just enough is changed up and he's actually more manageable when soloing due to the health balance - or maybe just more rewarding?), but the rest of the approach, the multi-tiered and explorable area, and the other two boss fights, are all a lot of fun.

I'm typing this after just coming off of duo-ing the other optional boss, and my exuberance is probably colored by just how much I enjoy the bosses which hit hard but swing long (ones you can dodge expertly with good timing and pattern recognition - for example, the Pursuer). Still, I think the design and bosses from the two currently released Dark Souls 2 DLC packs make them a no-brainer buy. And if this is what is seen as a the "B" team then they should keep at it, because if they take what they learned from this and modl it just a bit more with the original Dark Souls then I could see them doing just fine with a Dark Souls 3 if the Bloodborne team doesn't take up the reigns on that.