Ah my old good friend. I've been playing through Dark Souls on my NG+ something more than 8 character (which is way more difficult than the equivalent version in Demon's Souls; having played and "mastered" both, and rekindled my love for both as well, took like 6 or 7 hours just to die once in Demon's Souls) and one of the joys I find here is getting invaded, since I can just squash almost every invader in like 2 hits; but who needs to do that. Instead, summon Leeroy and watch as he hits the opponent for 2400 damage or wraths them for 1400; good ol' Leeroy knows how to do it. And of course there's no way to reach his platform without taking damage so I could also just kill them outright; but that's not quite as amusing. You can pretty much just afk on that platform and probably kill about 95% of the invaders, such is the pristine power of this paladin sage. As overpowered as Leeroy in Hearthstone is he is but a faint echo of the magnificence of Leeroy in Dark Souls.

Leeroy, Leeroy, Leeroy!

I still don't understand why they decided to give him a giant Flintstones club instead of just a regular mace.

@connerthekewlkid: Callback to Garl Vinland of course (I think it's faster than Bramd though as most heavy weapons are in Dark Souls). Regular maces don't hit like that.

I get the feeling you posted this thread partly to brag about how mega badass awesome you are at the Souls games.

Sure sounds like it.

@yummylee: No, Leeroy is awesome and I felt like I needed to share the Leeroy experience. I have death counts up here and here for my original blind run, which isn't anything particularly amazing except that it was legitimately blind with a not particularly cheap character and I don't die in combat particularly often (but I did fall a lot originally). I fought Super Manus (melee character) yesterday and it took like 6 or 7 tries; granted the windup on the frontal shot is like half a second and your animation speed on the pendant is around .25 seconds so you have to respond within a quarter of a second and not be in a situation where you have to Estus or recover stamina (becasue the 5 hit combo will get you), and he has like 15000 health. Wouldn't be too bad if I had 32 strength for a Crystal Black Iron Shield+4 but with Eagle+15 it gets dicey. I seem to recall doing it quickly every time through back when I was farming with the character though, cursed 6 or 7 months off.

Fredchuckdave is the best Starcraft player, best injustice player, best Last Of Us player, etc. He posted poor results for the Lightning Returns demo, though (damn). He also completed Dark Souls without dying on his first playthrough (at soul level 1 no less). He is simply adorable.

@groin: I did fine at Lightning Returns thank you very much; I just didn't spend an inordinate amount of time figuring out the best possible way to do it. This is some trolling comedy though, ah the good ol times. In Starcraft I was top 5 in an exclusive group which is not the best of course, I miss that guy, I just miss competent people in general.

@fredchuckdave: Are you going to enter the Injustice tournament at EVO this year? You will win, free.

@groin: Supes will win. I don't live in EVO land and I don't really care that much about fighting games (except KoF I suppose). It will be pretty funny if Injustice gets booed again though, I was a prophet on that front. You should've seen the Warhammer Online server forums, it was literally nothing but dudes like me of varying skill levels; that was trolling heaven. Granted I'm pretty good at this shtick by now, adversity breeds competence as they say.

*sniff*

Is @golguin around somewhere to talk Manus strats with?

Just curious, what Starcraft group were you top 5 in? I used to follow the BW scene, never got particularly good at it myself (was able to beat everyone in college at BW though).

@belegorm: LotR, which I guess if you want a comparison is basically DoTA on steroids (though no RPG elements). There were maybe 25,000 players to start with and basically if I pick a random person from that group and play Starcraft 2 with them we're guaranteed to do extremely well. They actually did try reviving the community in SC2 for a bit but region locking killed it and the original maps were actually better because of the limitations of the map editor; giving someone a limited range of options will ensure the most innovative result; giving someone infinite options will just dull the effort (though of course having indy games as an option just killed it off entirely). I've actually met basically every mapmaker from Brood War including the maker of Aeon of Strife. Melkor(WC) was the best mapmaker out of the aforementioned group. LotR had several different sub genres of which naturally there was a lot of shit but if you stuck to the good, skill based maps where every element was relevant to success you got some really crazy intense games. I guess technically losing a game because of a single misclick is a little hard edged but that kind of just elevated the proceedings.

What about Manus? Dodging his physical or dark magic attacks?

@golguin: I'm aware you can dodge Manus, but dodging is something that easily decays over time whereas learning when and where to block is fairly repeatable even months after the fact. For example dodging Flamelurker's left hand strike/explosion is an extremely tight dodge but just using the Large Brushwood Shield makes it fairly trivial. Thus in a "revival" sort of situation the best approach is not dodging but blocking. Obviously if I played Dark Souls continuously then I would focus more on dodging. Artorias is not as vicious as Manus on the blocking front so he's fairly easy to repeat even months after the fact. Gwyn without parrying is faster than either so that's always an interesting fight. Naturally I'm talking about the maximum difficulty level of these fights; as there is some brute force leeway on NG and early NG+ runs (Manus always being a 4-5 minute fight with a melee character not using the red tearstone ring, missing a dodge can lose you the entire fight but blocking is fine as long as you remember to dodge out of the jumping strike portion of the combo).

You can't block Manus or Artorias at low level/low equipment runs or 1 lv runs. With enough Vitality, Endurance, and a high Stability shield you can tank anything in the game.

@golguin: You can't tank Kalameet, doesn't matter what shield you have (not dealing damage at any rate). Manus on NG+7 is sketchy without the ideal shield as even an 84 stability shield falters (my character has 24 strength). Level 1 runs don't utilize melee for the most part and thus aren't really part of the question. I'm pretty sure there are very low level shields with which you can block Artorias, he doesn't hit very hard on NG. Amusingly Quelaag's explosion hits for well over 2200 damage on NG+7.

I'm just curious what your thoughts are on this, not trying to be inflammatory.

Vinny tanked Kalameet during his stream.

I've seen plenty of lv 1 fights against Manus that only used melee. Most are glass cannons with the red tearstone ring so blocking is impossible and everything needs to be dodged. What do you mean that SL 1 runs don't utilize melee for the most part?

I recently played through the game with a SL 30 character and Artorias can easily one shot players when he's buffed. I believe he one shotted Vinny through his shield and his character was at SL 70+. He was able to one shot my SL 30 character without his buff.

@golguin: Not tanked with a shield, tanked with Iron Flesh (I don't use Iron Flesh personally); different things. Again Red Tearstone negates the purpose of the SL1 run; though SL1 runs have always been extremely flawed in Dark Souls because of Pyromancy. Artorias will never be buffed against a good melee player/character. Here's an example of an SL 1 run requiring a fair amount of skill but not really an exalted amount of skill (like say, Tactical Challenge 6 in Vanquish):

Iron Flesh is literally part of the tanking strategy. Cast Iron Flesh, two hand your weapon, and chug estus when you need it.

It's impossible to interrupt Artorias when he's powering up his Buff if you can't deal enough damage with your melee weapon. Trust me. I tried that with my low powered Uchigatana. I believe I had a Lightning Uchigatana +2 and dealt 45 dmg per hit.

Using the Red Tearstone Ring with Pyromancy does kill the point of a SL1 run since the damage output is greater than most people can generate with any other normal build that doesn't use the Red Tearstone Ring.

@golguin: Iron Flesh is a cheesy strategy not really a "tanking" strategy; stacking poise is a tanking strategy; blocking efficiently is a tanking strategy. It's not as cheesy as it used to be but it is more cheesy than just playing normally. GMB isn't overly cheesy for comparison but still relatively useful (A Four Kings fight using GMB is "fair" compared to an Iron Flesh bout). I'm reasonably sure (through past experience) Artorias doesn't respond to damage he responds to hits (poise damage), so 3 2 handed strikes will knock him out of it prototypically; or 2 with a big enough weapon. I believe I fought him incorrectly to start with and would land several 1 handed hits fruitlessly; but then I landed fewer but more precise 2 handed strikes with a fairly weak weapon and that was enough to knock him out of it (believe I had Iaito +10 or something at the time). As his stats go up the number of hits you have to land doesn't increase which is another indicator. Actually I'm pretty sure every enemy in the game responds to poise damage not actual damage, which is why it's so easy to stagger things with an unupgraded Zweihander.

I've probably killed Artorias 30+ times (solo in my own games and helping as a white phantom) with characters at various Soul Levels (45, 50, 80, 96, and 120) and I've never had any problems with interrupting the Artorias buff. My SL 30 character with a Lightning Uchi + 2 was never able to knock him out of it. I'd die trying to interrupt the buff. I've never seen a confirmation on if it's based on damage or poise.

I seriously doubt it's as simple as a set poise break because he wouldn't immediately break when he was getting smacked by me and another guy during his buff.

From what I've heard, it's based on poise break. It takes two or three hits with certain weapons and more for others. Though, a known way to break it is one arrow to the head. It's just difficult to pull off that quick.

I found a video that shows that it required 4 two handed katana strikes to break the buff (3:40 in the video). That would explain why my SL 30 character couldn't pull it off. I didn't have the stamina for it. I think it would be doable of I stacked stamina regen with the grass crest shield, cloranthy ring, and green blossom.

hm. That seems plausible. I'd be curious to see you try!

@fredchuckdave:

You can't tank Kalameet? I find that a weird statement, I just tanked him by stacking poise and using the black iron greatshield. If by tanking you mean "block everything" then I guess you wouldn't consider me tanking, but I did block all his physical attacks with my shield (blocking one of his head swipes sets you up for an easy couple of hits), and simply got out of the way of the fire; no rolls involved.

Also interesting, about LotR, I was aware of Aeon of Strife but never personally tried it, my only experiences with maps with custom rules were the ones included in vanilla and BW. Mostly I either attempted competitive style 1v1 games (got D+ on iccup, not that that's anything to brag about), or played BGH with a bunch of friends.

@belegorm: Nice thing about those old communities is there wasn't any like visual reward or achievement or even a scoreboard, you had to prove yourself and you had to know where you stood through your own accomplishments. Most people were extremely elitist so there wasn't much friendly complimenting going on unless the person wasn't present (a frequent practice amongst elitists); but I sort of tried to buck that trend and helped train up some random people from other groups then managed to consistently beat a team of older, supposedly "better" players with my trainees and myself (though I was the best at that particular map so that might have skewed it a bit).

@golguin: It actually breaks on the third strike (he stands up), a bit hard to notice visually (the aura doesn't dissipate for a second or so) but you can see it/repeat it. If I'm fighting Artorias and I need to heal I'll always land the 3 strikes then back off and pop an estus/humanity (since it's fairly difficult to heal for the rest of the fight).

I've been trying to experiment with breaking the Artorias buff, but players haven't given me the chance to hit him cleanly 3 times without joining in with their attacks. It does appear that he broke on the 3rd strike, but another player was able to attack 2 more times before it fully disappeared.

@sterling: That gif is pretty mesmerizing; I guess Tarkus chilling in the chair is my favorite part; though the two offscreen appearances are good too.

How 'bout that portrait of Hitler?

And Paladin Leeroy peeking in on the far right?

Smough through the door?

@psylah: They aren't as badass as Tarkus in badass confirmed posture.