on my Dark Souls 2 Company of Champions run. They essentially functions as O&S 2.0 with the added bonus of immortality unless you can kill them both in the last 15 seconds of the fight. Maybe sleep will help me think of better strategy instead of this whole battle of attrition we have going because I was a few seconds away from winning the fight twice, but I didn't have the DPS and stamina to get the job done. I even unleashed a Chaos Storm and 1200 dmg in a few seconds still wasn't enough.

For those of you who don't know I've been chronicling my Dark Souls 2 journey in the topic Company of Champions. Are you in?

I saw Northernlion beat them, and to me it seemed like they lack the charm of O&S, like much of the game, to be honest. I'm not sure I'll get it on PC. :/

Looked tough indeed.

Backwards roll is OP vs the dude as his sword is very short range, and the woman attacks very rarely. To compensate for having two enemies, they both have massive lag after an attack string. Just get one hit after an attack string wearing them both down to half HP, kill one, then you can kill the other while its trying to revive.

Also the lighting effects they put on their swords wears off, so if you wanna play super safe, just run away till it goes.

You can poison them nicely, should help if you are able to get that set up. Let the Watcher take that poison medicine while you concentrate on the Defender, who has better defence. Then once the Defender goes down you should have a squishy Throne Watcher to beat up with your highest DPS.

Admittedly I'm playing a tanky build, but I found them pretty easy on the normal difficulty. I only died three times to them (once by falling off the edge and twice more from impatience). How much harder is the game as a part of the Company of Champions?

It's a circle strafe fight. Keep your shield up and strafe and hit them individually when you can. Try and strafe in a manner that keeps them lined up. Poison works pretty well but your best bet is a war of attrition, taking em both down equally. The ghost sells a ring that slows down equipment degradation if you are feeling like your stuff is breaking too quickly.

I killed them in maybe 10 hits. They bunched up and i wrecked their faces with my Ultra Greatsword

Isn't the fight super-easy if you just don't kill either before both are low and finish off the big guy first ? Or does it add new mechnics on NG+ that makes it tougher ? I've done it quite a few times on normal (both solo and coop) and all it really requires is some kiting and patience.

Which one? I find the tracking on those ultra great swords horrendous. Pursuer scales beautifully with STR but my lord that overhead swing is garbage.

I think a lot of people are missing that he's doing this while in the Company of Champions.

That fight has no new mechanics while in that covenant. They only have higher defense and damage output. You can make the Watcher fall off the map for an instant kill. You can also cheese them with poison. A few casts of Flame Swathe solves any boss problem. You can beat them with a standard melee build if you're patient enough to wait for safe openings.

That is definitely not true. I've seen videos of the fight on normal game and the only fight of them in the Company of Champions was done by a dude that had a 100% block shield (I can't use any 100% shield), used butterfly poison, and forced them to fall off the stage. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAdq_izznlA

If you've seen them killed legit while in the Company of Champions please link to that video. The fact that they ONLY have higher def and damage output is one of the issues. I can get stunlocked by the Watcher's combo and die. Defender can kill me in two hits. Both of them like to attack in unison and that forces me to waste all my stamina on dodging their attacks. The AI aggression boost is no joke as the videos I've seen on normal mode shows that they'll just let you wail on one Throne boss while the other is off smelling roses.

The fact that they are weak to fire can be the DPS boost I'll need. It's surprising that they're weak to poison, but that's a road I'm not willing to take. A few casts of Flame Swathe WILL NOT solve the problem as I tried that as a test. I tried nuking them with 4 and they were still kicking. They will block the cast. I managed to hit Defender with two shots of my Chaos Storm as he was reviving throne, but he barely survived and Watcher killed me as I was still in the animation.

The plan I've been going with is to have 1 Throne at half health (I don't want them to get the buff) while I focused on killing the other one. I tried blitzing Watcher when she was the only one left (I hit her around 12 times during that 15 second window), but I didn't have the DPS and stamina to finish her in time. Like I said, the Fire buff might be the DPS boost I was looking for. I'll see how that goes.

One more thing...it seems like I'm not suppose to try to fight them yet because stuff will happen? It's the first King Gate boss I'm attempting. Should I head over to Aldia's place instead?

@golguin: I would personally strongly recommend trying to take them out first. You can definitely do other stuff first though if they're proving to be too tough. I don't want to spoil anything, but just don't wait too long to fight them.

How can you not have a 100% cut shield? You can use some standard shields at full physical cut with as little as 15-16 strength. It takes 12 just to use most weapons in the game. Surely you can toss 4-5 more points in there?

That said the best thing to do is stay at range and be excruciatingly patient, wait for them to attack at the same time and both be open. Try not to focus one of them down but whittle on each of them. Once they are both around 25% then lay the poison on both of them then finish off one of them. If you get both down low enough you should be able to finish it before the res. It is just a question of patience and not doing anything risky.

That and I would seriously look at getting a 100% cut shield. Plenty of shields in the game can pull it off, not just the tower shields.

EDIT: Fighting them first is fine, in fact I recommend it. There is a reason beating them now will be helpful, because if you wait until you are "supposed" to it only creates a greater risk. Also it deprives you of using their souls sooner rather than later.

I only have 10 STR and I've already reached my SL 99 limit so I can't use 100% shields. A shield wouldn't matter anyway. Watcher has the ability to pierce my shield for 100% damage. I haven't seen her do it in any videos I've seen, but she did it often enough during my fight with her (4 different occasions she killed me that way) that I have ruled out shielding her attacks. Company of Champions must increase her shield piercing percentage.

If I'm hearing you guys right I should kill them first before attempting Aldia's place. Is that correct? Am I doing some sequence breaking or is it the natural order of things? I still haven't found the dragon cov and I only stepped into the Abyss for a second before falling to my death.

What's not true? You did not describe any new mechanics. The bosses are just as aggressive in NG mode. Fighting them as melee requires extreme patience to wait for safe openings. You can impose all the arbitrary restrictions on your build (SL 99, 10 STR, etc) but that only allows people to give you Gary Whitta advice. If they are blocking Flame Swathe then you do not have enough cast speed and/or are not punishing their whiffed combos properly.

A lot of the bosses in this game scale up in difficulty a fair amount just with raw stats, Throne Watcher/Defender being one of the more obvious ones. Conversely something like Vendrick doesn't really get harder at all.

That Company of Champions damage debuff must be ROUGH! The only thing I could do as Sword and Shield Melee with low burst damage was trade hits, one hit on watcher, one hit on Defender, and go back and forth keeping them at the same HP as much as possible. Satisfying as HELL to deal the kill strike on one than the other back to back. I loved that fight.

@golguin: Lobos is doing it with the ladle right now if you want some companionship.

Wow. I just finished fighting them on normal mode by myself and the decrease in aggression and general stats is palpable. I walked into the room and immediately nuked Watcher with 3 Flame Swathes. You know what Defender did? Nothing. He just let Watcher die and he was also caught in the blast radius of one of the hits. I fought him 1 on 1 for around 30 seconds (no buff to my Uchigatana) and I had the power to end him right there, but I didn't because our real fight is happening under the Company of Champions.

...And I just tried it again, but this time I nuked Defender. I almost ruined everything because Watcher ran into the blast radius of two Flame Swathes and nearly committed suicide. I so close to accidentally winning the fight right now. I was bashing my head against them with more than 10 attempts last time and now I have to babysit them with no buff to make sure they don't double KO?

You asked me what's not true. It's not true that they are the same boss with enhanced stats. Their AI is enhanced to be more aggressive and to punish me for my mistakes. This has been true for every boss I've fought so far. Have you fought the Throne bosses under a normal game and under the Company of Champions?

Yes, I did with a hex build. Obviously hex is easier than melee but I didn't notice anything different about them. BTW, I just watched someone beat them shieldless while 2-handing a ladle that did less than 100 dmg per hit.

You could blitz the hell out of them with a hex build. The fact that you didn't notice a difference doesn't mean that a difference doesn't exist. I'm tempted to film myself as I fight them under each mode (normal and Company of Champions) to prove the AI aggression and how tightly they fight, but it's a known fact that bosses become more aggressive under the Company of Champions. The fact that I needed to try to stop myself from killing them in normal mode and I still haven't beaten them under the Company of Champions is undeniable proof.

I just tried the same Flame Swathe strategy and was punished immediately by Watcher with a quick death. I was more mindful of the 2nd attempt and got off 4 Flame Swathe attacks in between dodges and baited attacks and neither of them would have died if all 4 landed on a single target. One missed, 1 hit both of them, and they each got an additional Flame Swathe. I went for a legit fight after that and they forced me down to 5 Estus flasks before I was finally killed.

Was the ladle run on them during the Lobos stream? Last I saw he was in the Pilgrims of Dark. Did he do it under the Company of Champions?

EDIT: I've been fighting them with a two handed Uchigatana as a shield is essentially useless against Watcher. Blocking has never been a viable option as far as I've seen.

Yes it was Lobos but not under Company of Champions.

Dude, melee in and out of the Company of Champions is not even comparable. I have 4 dodges available to me and I can really only manage a single safe hit at a time because I often find myself punished by the 2nd Throne whenever I get greedy because I don't have enough stamina left to dodge their combo. They are not on your ass in a normal mode game. They give plenty of breathing room for you to heal and gather your stamina.

As far as I can see it's all a matter of executions and patience, but I'm looking at a 15 minute fight here. This is up there with several other bosses that I've fought under the Company of Champions. It's all the constant dodging and the chance of the 1-3 hit deaths that starts to wear you down as the fight goes on.

I beat them both on my first run through the game my first time. I was a level 155+ badass rocking a full +3 Havel set and a fire large club +10 w/ Havel Shield but they were still a first time go for me. I didn't even know about the counter because I was so thoroughly kicking that ass.

I recorded an attempt on the Throne bosses under the Company of Champions. A quick search of youtube shows that it's the only video of that fight up aside from the butterfly poison/cliff fall technique. Video is only 4 minutes long, but I didn't pull any punches and I only took off around 1/5th of each of their health bars. It was very helpful for me to watch it a few times and determine where I could improve my dodging techniques and forcing them to bait an attack.

Let me know what you guys think. All of my attempts have more or less gone like this except I sometimes get one to their buffing stage. I'm saving the 2 Flame Swathe attacks for the end to make sure I can get the kill.

HOLY CRAP IT'S OVER! Throne Defender and Throne Watcher are done! What can I say after 30+ defeats that haven't already been expressed here? About 2 hours ago I got them both down to less than 1/4th of their health and I panicked. I made 1 stupid mistake and I died. I thought I was going to sleep on it, but then the Bombcast came out and the description said they were going to talk about Dark Souls 2. I thought, "Why the hell not?" and I turned on the game again.

As soon as the podcast started I felt myself relax and just zone out. Before I knew it the bosses were at less than 1/4th of their health again and I died. I was "meh" about the game at this point because Brad was talking about playing Dark Souls 1 again and the PC version of Dark Souls 2 and before I knew it the bosses were at less than 1/4th of their health again and I died. I had become extremely loose at this point and I was just going for that 2nd hit knowing full well that the other Throne was going to land a hit. I didn't care. My poise was up to 66 and they weren't going to stun lock me so I just had to dodge that 2nd hit to avoid death. I became extremely liberal with my Estus because I was just letting them smack me to get that extra hit. My main issue was fatigue and that extra hit was making everything go a lot faster.

I died a 3rd time and before I knew it I was on my 4th attempt. I suddenly found myself entranced by Vinny's description of his end game and the lore that he didn't quite get compared to Dark Souls 1. I lost focus on what I was doing as I pondered the Dark Souls 2 lore that I had uncovered so far (those Artorias looking dark colored souls are very reminiscent of a few souls in Dark Souls 1), but my attention was once again focused on what I was doing as I saw both Throne Defender and Throne Watcher at around 1/5th of their health. BOOM! Throne Defender took a Flame Swathe to the face with a few HP left. I rush him and stab him for the kill. Watcher lands a hit and I narrowly escape the combo and death. I'm out of Estus. No boss has ever pushed me to the point of running out of Estus. Watcher keeps that shield up as we dance and I land a single 3 hit combo. I'm out of stamina, my Uchigatana hasn't had a buff for like 3 minutes, and Watcher is running over to revive Defender. I've been planning for this since the past 10 defeats and I'm ready. Watcher stops for the revive and I let loose my final Flame Swathe cast. 1 second. 2 seconds (HURRY UP!). 3 seconds. VICTORY ACHIEVED! *exhale and celebration begins*

This is why I play Dark Souls 2. This is why the Souls series is one of the best things to come out of the last generation consoles.

I'd like to make my write up for the other bosses I've beaten before the Throne Duo. If someone could make a comment in my Company of Champions. Are you in? thread I would really appreciate it as I can't post another consecutive comment.

@groin: Doing Covenant of Champions with Hexes is extremely nonsensical; it's like let's play the game the easiest way possible and then make it slightly harder; pro decision.

Fought them recently on Ascetic NG+7 and it was the first time I realized they respawn with full health when they get revived. That's some shit right there. I guess I somehow prevented them reviving all the other times. If it wasn't for half the ring being surrounded by a pit it'd be my favorite boss fight. Hard, but totally possible. I'd say it's actually easier than Ornstein & Smough, except for the fucking jagged hole with arbitrary collision-placement on the bordering bricks. The "down but not out" regen isn't that bad as long as you know it's there, I guess, because you just know to take their health down equally, rather than one at a time.

I haven't tried them in the CoC, and haven't fought them solo since going into NG+3 or so. I just can't resist summoning one of the dozens of people near the bonfire or Vengarl and Benhart. My dual-avelyn Ruin Sentinel trooper does some pretty crazy damage to Throne Watcher, but the huge vulnerability window after firing makes it super risky. Really fun fight every way I've tried it. Haven't tried magic, because magic wasn't fun at all when I tried it for half the game.

You're so adorable. I would squeeze your cheeks if you were a relative of mine.

@golguin: Let me get this straight, you're doing a company of champions run with a melee build but not even 16 str? You crazy person. You're also in the end game but you don't even have a damage stat at 40? Man, you would be doing so much more damage with good scaling in dex and 40 points. I don't know about the company of champions but I wrecked that game with maximum damage (45 str and 40 faith by the point you're at).

Yeah this game really has some fucking devastating S-scaling Dex weapons.

I had 45 DEX on my Dark Souls 1 build, but when I noticed I could two hand my Uchigatana for around 200-300 DMG with a pine resin buff I thought it was enough to beat the game. I have 25 DEX because it was the minimum I could have to be able to two hand the Black Steel Katana and I only needed 10 STR for the Uchigatana.

I've seen hybrid katana users deal out 500-600 DMG in PVP with their buffs. Once I beat the game I'm going full PVP. I'm going to see how I can get the most DMG out of my Uchigatana and then I'll take on NG+ with the intention to use those NPC summons since I know I lost their sidequests on my Company of Champions run.

@golguin: Good for you. I had a first time go though. So I don't feel your pain.

I found that with +7 Elite Knight Armour and a +10 Raw Zwiehander this fight (and Nashandra) is a breeze. A +8 Pyromancy flame helps, too.