Yeah, I never did the Velstadt helm on accident or anything, but I knew it does that. I like little touches like that. And in general, Fume is very tough for heavily armored characters. I'd venture to say heavy armor tower shield builds are probably the worst builds in the game to fight him with.
Are you guys really hating on Fume knight? The best boss in Ds 2? For shame gentlemen , for shame.
Fume Knight would be a great boss
In a different game
As it is he relies too much on quick reflexes and perfect execution
Neither of these things mesh well in the Souls environment, which are designed to allow you become better at a boss through practice and learning their moveset. Skill is a very distant third requirement.
Fume Knight is about execution and skill and nothing else, and I think that is bad design in a Souls game. He'd be great in a character action game.
Artorias is the perfect example of a fight that is tightly tuned but does not rely on perfect execution and raw reflexes. You just have to learn and practice. Fume Knight is a boss you can bang your head again 50 or 60 times and never win unless your reflexes are good enough or you get lucky.
All of this but also he has way too much health, so these quick reflexes and perfect execution have to be sustained over an incredibly long period. Artorias is definitely what they were going for, but Artorias has better tells for his attacks and you can mess up a couple of times and still be able to pull off a win.
Ok I understand but that's the freaking point guys. I've been memorizing movesets since the nes. I think knowing the attacks should help you , not give you the win
Are you guys really hating on Fume knight? The best boss in Ds 2? For shame gentlemen , for shame.
Fume Knight would be a great boss
In a different game
As it is he relies too much on quick reflexes and perfect execution
Neither of these things mesh well in the Souls environment, which are designed to allow you become better at a boss through practice and learning their moveset. Skill is a very distant third requirement.
Fume Knight is about execution and skill and nothing else, and I think that is bad design in a Souls game. He'd be great in a character action game.
Artorias is the perfect example of a fight that is tightly tuned but does not rely on perfect execution and raw reflexes. You just have to learn and practice. Fume Knight is a boss you can bang your head again 50 or 60 times and never win unless your reflexes are good enough or you get lucky.
All of this but also he has way too much health, so these quick reflexes and perfect execution have to be sustained over an incredibly long period. Artorias is definitely what they were going for, but Artorias has better tells for his attacks and you can mess up a couple of times and still be able to pull off a win.
Ok I understand but that's the freaking point guys. I've been memorizing movesets since the nes. I think knowing the attacks should help you , not give you the win
You don't really need to memorize movesets for a vast majority of the bosses in Dark Souls 2. A lot of the time if you just continually circle strafe left or right, you dodge their attacks.
Are you guys really hating on Fume knight? The best boss in Ds 2? For shame gentlemen , for shame.
Fume Knight would be a great boss
In a different game
As it is he relies too much on quick reflexes and perfect execution
Neither of these things mesh well in the Souls environment, which are designed to allow you become better at a boss through practice and learning their moveset. Skill is a very distant third requirement.
Fume Knight is about execution and skill and nothing else, and I think that is bad design in a Souls game. He'd be great in a character action game.
Artorias is the perfect example of a fight that is tightly tuned but does not rely on perfect execution and raw reflexes. You just have to learn and practice. Fume Knight is a boss you can bang your head again 50 or 60 times and never win unless your reflexes are good enough or you get lucky.
All of this but also he has way too much health, so these quick reflexes and perfect execution have to be sustained over an incredibly long period. Artorias is definitely what they were going for, but Artorias has better tells for his attacks and you can mess up a couple of times and still be able to pull off a win.
Ok I understand but that's the freaking point guys. I've been memorizing movesets since the nes. I think knowing the attacks should help you , not give you the win
You don't really need to memorize movesets for a vast majority of the bosses in Dark Souls 2. A lot of the time if you just continually circle strafe left or right, you dodge their attacks.
The games are mostly knowing about how your character works and then adapting that knowledge to the enemies you're facing. Knowing boss "tells" isn't that big of a deal, neither is knowing when you get invincibility frames and how long an attack is "active". They aren't character action games, they are action rpgs. Fume Knight pushed too far towards the former category.
And yeah I admit most of my criticism of the Fume Knight comes from me just not enjoying fighting him.
How weird. Seems I did. I haven't looked at this thread in months.
@GoodKingJayIII You can bookmark threads from the thread listing page (like G&T) by clicking the ribbon on the far right of the page. No need to go into the thread.
The discussion of the fume knight is really making me want to finish this game. Some how i never got around to it. Artorias is my fav dark souls boss.
So I have been away from this thread for ... oh, 45 pages or so? Sorry for not updating the thread title at all. Just took care of that. I've been away from DS2 for so long that I last played it before the first Lost Crown was released. I really should pick up Scholar of the First Sin.
Came back to finish off Dark souls II after the third game was announced. I reached a new area called Harvest Valley, and saw that the ground was poison, with giants casting dark magic that nearly kills me.
I have hopes that it won't be as bad as the Gutter, or Black Gulch at least.
Came back to finish off Dark souls II after the third game was announced. I reached a new area called Harvest Valley, and saw that the ground was poison, with giants casting dark magic that nearly kills me.
I have hopes that it won't be as bad as the Gutter, or Black Gulch at least.
The side areas can be mean and shit. The main path through is short and easy.
As in all Souls games, moveset preference is subjective, but I'm with the people who love the longsword moveset, not that I use the weapon past early game. To me the vertical R1s of the heide sword are much worse than horizontal R1s of a longsword just for general versatility and crowd management. The fact that the longsword has a luscious decent range thrust R2 when you 2 hand it is what really gives it the versatility that's so good.
I get that its versatility makes it a really strong weapon, objectively. The wide horizontal slashes just drive me nuts. I constantly feel like I'm banging it into walls.
That's why you switch to two handed for enclosed places.
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I disagree that Fume isn't a great boss. He's great for the same reasons Artorias was great. He's unpredictable. For me, most Souls bosses it's hard to lose to them more than a few times. Because once you learn the pattern it's over. The execution isn't very hard in and of itself.
But of all the bosses in both Dark Souls games, Artorias and Fume are the only ones that really brick walled me. The only ones that ever required double digit attempts to learn. With Artorias, it was his branching flip attacks. So many of my deaths against him were me thinking it was only going to be 2 flips and then he used the third. Being able to interrupt his power up was a great addition to the fight and made it much more manageable, but depending on your positioning when he started it, it was hard to do so every time so it added a danger to the fight having to survive it.
Fume is the same way. During the first phase, it feels like you should never take any damage, but you end up doing so because of his branching combos. It's very hard not to get greedy and anticipate the wrong thing. And then when he transforms he's actually quite simple and predictable, but does so much damage that your execution needs to be very good. Miss a dodge and you probably aren't dead, but if you panic and try to estus without waiting for a good opening and you're going to get hit again and die.
The beauty of the fight is that phase 1 it's basically impossible to die, but if you fail at dodging too much and spend too much time in phase one healing yourself and playing passive, phase 2 will be too long and you'll probably die. You beat the fight by not getting hit at all in phase one, which is no small task but is not that hard. You just have to respect the unpredictability and never get greedy. Then, in phase 2 his HP should be low enough that you can burn him before he burns you. Fantastic fight.
I agree with most everything you say except I think it contributes to being a bad boss for a Souls game
The thing about Artorias is that his damage isn't very high. Even if you get hit with his spinny blade attack, it's maybe 60% of your health, if that, assuming he's not powered up. You're supposed to get down the timing for dodging his attacks, which is only going to be done with practice, so they wanted you to be able to take enough damage to want to avoid the attacks, but not so much you can only ever get hit twice.
Fume Knight is much more liable to do 70 or 80% of your health. If you fuck up, you're so much more likely to be in a bad position than Artorias, which means you'll be starting all over again much more often, and becoming frustrated much more often.
Furthermore, Artorias' attacks had a sublime rhythm to them. Learning to dodge his three hit became completely natural incredibly quickly and easily because it hit at a rhythm in the same way every time. Fume Knight flows much worse, and he has several attacks which will hit you with flame even if you get through the blade itself.
You call Artorias unpredictable, but he isn't really. He's just like every other Souls boss: very predictable. You just have to learn how to predict him. Fume Knight is predictable too, but relies too much on skill and perfection instead of learning. You need to be so much more frame perfect with dodges and for such a longer time than Artorias, and it is a bad thing.
I got a bit burnt out on Souls style stuff in general trying to juggle SotFS and the tail end of BB, so I had to take a few months off. Still don't feel like going back to mop up the last couple bosses on BB, but I started back into Scholar and I have now gone through pretty much the entire vanilla portion. I just started into the dlc last night, trying to go though in the release order, which I think is Sunken > Iron > Ivory? Anyway, looking forward to getting to Fume Knight. I've heard so much about him since the dlc came out, mostly negatively, or in just an awe type of way.
I ended up running a Str/Fth build, which for how common they are I've never played through either DS or DS2 as one. It might as well be a Str build for me though, I find I rarely use any of the miracles. The utility ones are nice, but the damage dealing ones seem pretty underwhelming so far.
I disagree that Fume isn't a great boss. He's great for the same reasons Artorias was great. He's unpredictable. For me, most Souls bosses it's hard to lose to them more than a few times. Because once you learn the pattern it's over. The execution isn't very hard in and of itself.
But of all the bosses in both Dark Souls games, Artorias and Fume are the only ones that really brick walled me. The only ones that ever required double digit attempts to learn. With Artorias, it was his branching flip attacks. So many of my deaths against him were me thinking it was only going to be 2 flips and then he used the third. Being able to interrupt his power up was a great addition to the fight and made it much more manageable, but depending on your positioning when he started it, it was hard to do so every time so it added a danger to the fight having to survive it.
Fume is the same way. During the first phase, it feels like you should never take any damage, but you end up doing so because of his branching combos. It's very hard not to get greedy and anticipate the wrong thing. And then when he transforms he's actually quite simple and predictable, but does so much damage that your execution needs to be very good. Miss a dodge and you probably aren't dead, but if you panic and try to estus without waiting for a good opening and you're going to get hit again and die.
The beauty of the fight is that phase 1 it's basically impossible to die, but if you fail at dodging too much and spend too much time in phase one healing yourself and playing passive, phase 2 will be too long and you'll probably die. You beat the fight by not getting hit at all in phase one, which is no small task but is not that hard. You just have to respect the unpredictability and never get greedy. Then, in phase 2 his HP should be low enough that you can burn him before he burns you. Fantastic fight.
I agree with most everything you say except I think it contributes to being a bad boss for a Souls game
The thing about Artorias is that his damage isn't very high. Even if you get hit with his spinny blade attack, it's maybe 60% of your health, if that, assuming he's not powered up. You're supposed to get down the timing for dodging his attacks, which is only going to be done with practice, so they wanted you to be able to take enough damage to want to avoid the attacks, but not so much you can only ever get hit twice.
Fume Knight is much more liable to do 70 or 80% of your health. If you fuck up, you're so much more likely to be in a bad position than Artorias, which means you'll be starting all over again much more often, and becoming frustrated much more often.
Furthermore, Artorias' attacks had a sublime rhythm to them. Learning to dodge his three hit became completely natural incredibly quickly and easily because it hit at a rhythm in the same way every time. Fume Knight flows much worse, and he has several attacks which will hit you with flame even if you get through the blade itself.
You call Artorias unpredictable, but he isn't really. He's just like every other Souls boss: very predictable. You just have to learn how to predict him. Fume Knight is predictable too, but relies too much on skill and perfection instead of learning. You need to be so much more frame perfect with dodges and for such a longer time than Artorias, and it is a bad thing.
I appreciate your post, though I do think Artorias is just as unpredictable as Fume. He's the first boss I fought in a Souls game that ever surprised me with a branching combo. His flip combo sometimes ends after one, two, or three flips, and because of the tracking it has if you guess wrong and dodge too early you get squished.
I suppose it depends on how much health and what not you have, but I don't think Fume in phase 1 does very much damage at all. That's why I always say in that fight it's all about not getting chipped down in phase 1 and having to estus, which leads to a longer phase 2 where the real challenge is.
I think Fume is a fantastic Souls boss, but I completely respect your opinion that he's not.
Dang, Darklurker was a nightmare to beat as a pure physical build. I remember doing it with other characters that had access to lightning spear spells, and it was a piece of cake. Having to evade all the BS coming from two Darklurkers, whilst whittling away at the final 50% of the boss' life with a shortsword, that's been quite the opposite. Ugh. The elation of pulling it off after like 20 tries was somewhat closer to relief, rather than properly rewarding, but it was a good feeling nonetheless.
So all the vanilla DS2 bosses left are Ancient Dragon, the Guardians before Nashandra, and Nashandra herself - then it's finally time to delve into the DLC content. Or should I do it before finishing up the vanilla DS2 content?
The only way I ever managed to beat the Ancient Dragon was by exploiting his move set by staying by his feet, so he just does his stomp over and over again. He still would occasionally breath fire under his belly too and insta kill me so it wasn't fool proof by any means. I only fought him once too, and then never again. So maybe they patched that, because it felt super cheesy.
Beat Elana and then Sihn today. Elana was kind of hard, sort of. Basically if she happened to summon crappy things. Felt like it was sort of just a game of chance on what she decided to pull out of the ground. Sihn was super easy though, almost killed him my first try, and then killed him my second. Now I'm trying to kill the trio of NPC's. It's kind of annoying though because the havel guy and the alda guy both have the same move speed so it's a nightmare trying to separate them for even a second. The archer is pretty easy to kill though, so there's that I guess.
My first excursion into Shulva was a success. Made it to a bonfire without dying. T'was a proper nightmare though. One by one my primary gear started to fall apart. After what felt like 2 hours of painstakingly careful dungeoneering, I finally caught a wiff of a nearby bonfire in the messages. Success. Relief. Finally a break.
Ultimately I ran into a bunch of ghostly dualwielding warriors in some crypt littered with spikes, which were seemingly impervious to my attacks. Luckily I had like 50 Gold Pine Resin in my bag, which enabled me to chip away at their health despite playing a pure melee build. Since that takes forever, even my rings started to break from wear. Thanks to all the helpful notes in the area, I managed to find an extremely well hidden bonfire. Time to regroup. What a flippin' nightmare. So good!
My first excursion into Shulva was a success. Made it to a bonfire without dying. T'was a proper nightmare though. One by one my primary gear started to fall apart. After what felt like 2 hours of painstakingly careful dungeoneering, I finally caught a wiff of a nearby bonfire in the messages. Success. Relief. Finally a break.
Ultimately I ran into a bunch of ghostly dualwielding warriors in some crypt littered with spikes, which were seemingly impervious to my attacks. Luckily I had like 50 Gold Pine Resin in my bag, which enabled me to chip away at their health despite playing a pure melee build. Since that takes forever, even my rings started to break from wear. Thanks to all the helpful notes in the area, I managed to find an extremely well hidden bonfire. Time to regroup. What a flippin' nightmare. So good!
Break the statues with effects on them, some easy to find, some obnoxious. Each one is tied to one of the enemies. Makes them normal.
Because while chipping away at their health without doing that is kind of hilarious, they do respawn.
I finally got to see Fume Knight (the man, the myth, the legend) for myself. I can see the comparisons to Artorias, but his moves don't seem as unforgiving to dodge, as far as timing goes. Mainly just comparing Artorias' jump move he does, as the timing for dodging that one always had to be just so. I've only tried him a handful of times though, so thoughts will likely change as I learn his pattern better. I just remember being stuck on Artorias for what seemed like an age, until I had him down well enough I could probably dodge him with my eyes closed. Was trying Fume Knight with my Wrathful Axe I made, testing it out, but wasn't really doing too hot. Did much better when I switched back to my tried and true double maces. They do decent damage to him, and I don't have to worry about overcommitting to an attack much.
Artorias was very much a, "Here, this is how you play Dark Souls fight".
I mean, sure, you THINK you know after Tom Brady and Gronk.
You THINK you know after you lawl all over a broken, burnt husk of a dead God.
But you don't KNOW Dark Souls until it tells you, "Yes, you have to be damn near PERFECT at nearly every aspect of the game sans parrying on a raw executional level in order to beat this boss. Fuck you, and fuck your freedoms."
Artorias is the reason why there's an experience disparity between Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 2 does it's best to fuck with what you know about Dark Souls coming into Dark Souls 2. To try to make the experience the same. New, and terrifying, and defying expectations.
But it largley falls flat.
Because you ALREADY KNOW Dark Souls. You already know it hates you, with every fiber of it's being. Fume Knight has a bullshit flame sweep that requires I-Frames to dodge? Cool. If you get grabbed by the Pursuer he powers up and becomes a beast? Fine, I just won't be grabbed.
Nothing will ever be as panic inducing as Artorias, ever again.
I think a lot of what makes Artorias feel so great is just how much he's tied into the lore. It was like meeting your personal hero... only he's crazy and wants to murder you. As far as I know there aren't really any bosses in DS2 that are as well established within the lore and give you a chance to sort of get to know them before you have to fight them. I could be wrong about that though, I have admittedly never found DS2's lore to be near as interesting, and a combination of that and also it being generally more convoluted/confusing has made me not dig into it near as much as DS.
One thing can be said though for sure. Fume Knight has nothing on Artorias' fashion souls.
A big part of Artorias' feeling like part of the world from the start is that in DS1 they had the "benefit" of having to cut the content. Artorias of the Abyss and all its content was meant to be part of the base game, but they had to cut it for time, yet there were references to Gwyn's knights in the base game of course. So when you finally met Artorias it was quite cool.
DS2 didn't have any of the DLC characters pre-tied in to the lore and what not. If they had know what was going to be in the DLC, maybe they would've dropped more Raime references in to the Velstadt/Vendrick base lore, and meeting Fume Knight would've been even cooler, etc.
I still think DS2 has some cool ones, though they were a little TOO subtle in the base game. Like for example, I thought it was pretty obvious that the last giant was the giant lord even prior to SotFS, but it wasn't confirmed until they changed the item descriptions for SotFS. So that one was kind of cool, meeting him again except in the present time, and you don't know why at the time but he already remembers you and screams in rage at you when you enter his chamber.
Nothing as cool as Artorias and the Manus backstory and all that though, for sure.
Whelp, one less Fume Knight in the world. Took quite a few tries though. His basic combos are hella easy to dodge, most of them I could dodge by simply sticking right on his left hand side and sidestepping. The only thing that was really annoying was his little flame orb ground pound. That thing killed me a lot, was always too close to get away, and if I had a chip of hp off my bar it would one shot me.
Overall, cool boss. It was fun, and I never felt frustrated with it even with the tries it took. I technically beat him twice too, but he killed me a tad faster the first time and it didn't count, which was a little disappointing. I definitely feel that Artorias is the harder of the two, not even mentioning Manus (because that guy can take a long walk off a short plank). I ended up killing him two handing a Craftsman's Hammer +5 because my maces were lightning infused and didn't hit him quite as hard.
DesmondPfeiffer on
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited July 2015
If by technically you mean trading hits, trades = boss lives, you die in DS2. Always.
Manus is a complete prick but doesn't require perfection. If you fail to stop Artorias from powering up he will one shot you regardless of health with several of his attacks. Enough health will let you survive manus combo.
Enough health against artorias, you get caught in his triple loop, you still die.
I managed to beat manus while still in the "desperately chugging estus" phase of fighting a boss.
Against Artorias this got me killed. I had to stop healing.
Artorias is almost a joke with a powerful enough weapon and a strong shield.
I walked into him with my giantdad and curb stomped him.
Ditto on my halberd guy. Spun the fucker to death.
My fist weapon user? Even with dragon form? Get out of here. Go home. You aren't good enough. I ended up being able to not get hit for long enough before he finally got me that I could use the red tearstone ring to up my damage and beat him within that window before my concentration could break.
And I still got lucky, because he managed a cheap shot that miraculously barely did any damage.
And then he tried it twice, and I completely lucked out because the second time the attack happened to not hit me.
I hear people talking about how Artorias is perfectly balanced and all I can think is "maybe for your build".
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
I can't trade hits, I'm running with 12 Vigor. I just made the conscious choice of putting in one attack too many on him in an attempt to burn him down before he could get off his next attack. Needless to say it didn't work as planned.
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
edited July 2015
Oh well then that's not a technical win. That's your fault, completely. You lost.
The lesson you take away here is "I goofed up" and don't do it again.
I completely get your pain, because I died so many times that way in dark souls and demon souls before I finally realised it just....wasn't....working....and that when the boss is nearly dead, that is when you really, really, really just focus. Cold blooded concentration. The patience meter goes up. You play it safe.
Cos there ain't no prize for second best.
Morninglord on
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
Oh yeah, I agree. It's one of those things where I know better, just sometimes adrenaline wins out over reason, even as part of you is screaming "don't do anything stupid".
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MorninglordI'm tired of being Batman,so today I'll be Owl.Registered Userregular
"Why did I do that? That was so stupid."
(PSN: Morninglord) (Steam: Morninglord) (WiiU: Morninglord22) I like to record and toss up a lot of random gaming videos here.
As frustrating as Fume Knight was, I definitely have a lot of love for the guy. I love how he rather sluggishly tries to attack you in the first faze of the fight where he blocks with his big sword, rarely swinging it, and swipes with his small sword, then loses the smaller sword mid-fight and goes straight serious mode with his big sword... it's like he was mostly toying with you up until that point.
As frustrating as Fume Knight was, I definitely have a lot of love for the guy. I love how he rather sluggishly tries to attack you in the first faze of the fight where he blocks with his big sword, rarely swinging it, and swipes with his small sword, then loses the smaller sword mid-fight and goes straight serious mode with his big sword... it's like he was mostly toying with you up until that point.
The thing about Fume Knight I really didn't get was when he would switch over to his second phase. Sometimes it would be when he had a bit over half health. Other times it would be around 2/5's or so. Twice he didn't switch until he was less than a third of his hp bar left. I was trying to figure out if something other than a certain hp threshold triggered it, but it seemed a bit random.
For me though, he used his big sword a lot, even in the first half. Maybe it depends on your positioning. It almost always would whiff over you me though without even really having to dodge. He would occasionally do a lower sweep with it though, so I usually dodged every one just to be safe. The only thing that would really maybe be dangerous for the first half was this quick little leftward swipe he'd do with his little sword. It didn't do a ton of damage (half or so of my hp), but it was fast enough I wouldn't know to dodge it half the time.
The more I think about it, the more I really like the fight. It was fun, a bit challenging, but I made constant progress so I never felt like giving up. Every time I tried him I generally felt like I could do it, and I usually did a bit better than the time before.
I'm on Sir Alonne now. Only had time to try him a couple times. He doesn't seem too bad, but I'm finding myself really bad at the timing on dodging his dashing sword uppercut thing. It hurts. I seem to dodge too early about half the time. If I can get that down, then he shouldn't be too bad at all.
I don't think anybody knows the precise triggers for his switch, and I've heard all sorts of things, like if you get hit by him after he does the ground slam thing and his sword kind of heats up it causes him to transform faster and all other manner of things that may or may not be true.
For me at least, I just treated it like it was based on time passed, and it served me well. If I got hit too much in phase 1 and had to back off to heal or played too passively, he's transform with 50% or more of his health left and I'd usually be screwed. If I nailed phase 1 and had a lot of damage uptime without having to back off to heal much or at all, phase 2 would start with ~30% health left and that's what I needed to survive phase 2 and actually kill him.
Alonne's tricky because he has variable speeds on his dashes, so you have to learn the dodge patterns, but at the same time he doesn't do very much damage, so if you're like me, you may bumble through the fight getting hit by dashes constantly and having to heal, but still win because he doesn't do all that much damage.
Worst part of the entire iron king DLC to me was the path to get to Alonne in the first place. So annoying.
Yeah, I just wussed out and killed all the knights until they stopped respawning. Largely why I haven't tried fighting the boss more. Once I was done with that I was kind of burnt out on playing for the day.
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Ok I understand but that's the freaking point guys. I've been memorizing movesets since the nes. I think knowing the attacks should help you , not give you the win
You don't really need to memorize movesets for a vast majority of the bosses in Dark Souls 2. A lot of the time if you just continually circle strafe left or right, you dodge their attacks.
The games are mostly knowing about how your character works and then adapting that knowledge to the enemies you're facing. Knowing boss "tells" isn't that big of a deal, neither is knowing when you get invincibility frames and how long an attack is "active". They aren't character action games, they are action rpgs. Fume Knight pushed too far towards the former category.
And yeah I admit most of my criticism of the Fume Knight comes from me just not enjoying fighting him.
@GoodKingJayIII You can bookmark threads from the thread listing page (like G&T) by clicking the ribbon on the far right of the page. No need to go into the thread.
The discussion of the fume knight is really making me want to finish this game. Some how i never got around to it. Artorias is my fav dark souls boss.
I have hopes that it won't be as bad as the Gutter, or Black Gulch at least.
The side areas can be mean and shit. The main path through is short and easy.
3DS: 0473-8507-2652
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That's why you switch to two handed for enclosed places.
"Fastest Dark Souls" huh? Is that faster than Bloodborne, I wonder?
Good. I can't go back to Dark Souls 2 post Bloodborne. I couldnt legitimately finish DS1, but I enjoyed DS2 and I utterly stomped Bloodborne.
I agree with most everything you say except I think it contributes to being a bad boss for a Souls game
The thing about Artorias is that his damage isn't very high. Even if you get hit with his spinny blade attack, it's maybe 60% of your health, if that, assuming he's not powered up. You're supposed to get down the timing for dodging his attacks, which is only going to be done with practice, so they wanted you to be able to take enough damage to want to avoid the attacks, but not so much you can only ever get hit twice.
Fume Knight is much more liable to do 70 or 80% of your health. If you fuck up, you're so much more likely to be in a bad position than Artorias, which means you'll be starting all over again much more often, and becoming frustrated much more often.
Furthermore, Artorias' attacks had a sublime rhythm to them. Learning to dodge his three hit became completely natural incredibly quickly and easily because it hit at a rhythm in the same way every time. Fume Knight flows much worse, and he has several attacks which will hit you with flame even if you get through the blade itself.
You call Artorias unpredictable, but he isn't really. He's just like every other Souls boss: very predictable. You just have to learn how to predict him. Fume Knight is predictable too, but relies too much on skill and perfection instead of learning. You need to be so much more frame perfect with dodges and for such a longer time than Artorias, and it is a bad thing.
I ended up running a Str/Fth build, which for how common they are I've never played through either DS or DS2 as one. It might as well be a Str build for me though, I find I rarely use any of the miracles. The utility ones are nice, but the damage dealing ones seem pretty underwhelming so far.
I appreciate your post, though I do think Artorias is just as unpredictable as Fume. He's the first boss I fought in a Souls game that ever surprised me with a branching combo. His flip combo sometimes ends after one, two, or three flips, and because of the tracking it has if you guess wrong and dodge too early you get squished.
I suppose it depends on how much health and what not you have, but I don't think Fume in phase 1 does very much damage at all. That's why I always say in that fight it's all about not getting chipped down in phase 1 and having to estus, which leads to a longer phase 2 where the real challenge is.
I think Fume is a fantastic Souls boss, but I completely respect your opinion that he's not.
So all the vanilla DS2 bosses left are Ancient Dragon, the Guardians before Nashandra, and Nashandra herself - then it's finally time to delve into the DLC content. Or should I do it before finishing up the vanilla DS2 content?
Apart from Ancient Dragon. He's a right royal pain in the goose. I think my win/loss record against him is 0/30+. =/
Beat Elana and then Sihn today. Elana was kind of hard, sort of. Basically if she happened to summon crappy things. Felt like it was sort of just a game of chance on what she decided to pull out of the ground. Sihn was super easy though, almost killed him my first try, and then killed him my second. Now I'm trying to kill the trio of NPC's. It's kind of annoying though because the havel guy and the alda guy both have the same move speed so it's a nightmare trying to separate them for even a second. The archer is pretty easy to kill though, so there's that I guess.
Because while chipping away at their health without doing that is kind of hilarious, they do respawn.
I mean, sure, you THINK you know after Tom Brady and Gronk.
You THINK you know after you lawl all over a broken, burnt husk of a dead God.
But you don't KNOW Dark Souls until it tells you, "Yes, you have to be damn near PERFECT at nearly every aspect of the game sans parrying on a raw executional level in order to beat this boss. Fuck you, and fuck your freedoms."
Artorias is the reason why there's an experience disparity between Dark Souls and Dark Souls 2. Dark Souls 2 does it's best to fuck with what you know about Dark Souls coming into Dark Souls 2. To try to make the experience the same. New, and terrifying, and defying expectations.
But it largley falls flat.
Because you ALREADY KNOW Dark Souls. You already know it hates you, with every fiber of it's being. Fume Knight has a bullshit flame sweep that requires I-Frames to dodge? Cool. If you get grabbed by the Pursuer he powers up and becomes a beast? Fine, I just won't be grabbed.
Nothing will ever be as panic inducing as Artorias, ever again.
Because you ALREADY KNOW.
Now I want to have a tower boss fight.
As in like the tower comes alive and I have to kill it in parts.
One thing can be said though for sure. Fume Knight has nothing on Artorias' fashion souls.
DS2 didn't have any of the DLC characters pre-tied in to the lore and what not. If they had know what was going to be in the DLC, maybe they would've dropped more Raime references in to the Velstadt/Vendrick base lore, and meeting Fume Knight would've been even cooler, etc.
I still think DS2 has some cool ones, though they were a little TOO subtle in the base game. Like for example, I thought it was pretty obvious that the last giant was the giant lord even prior to SotFS, but it wasn't confirmed until they changed the item descriptions for SotFS. So that one was kind of cool, meeting him again except in the present time, and you don't know why at the time but he already remembers you and screams in rage at you when you enter his chamber.
Nothing as cool as Artorias and the Manus backstory and all that though, for sure.
Overall, cool boss. It was fun, and I never felt frustrated with it even with the tries it took. I technically beat him twice too, but he killed me a tad faster the first time and it didn't count, which was a little disappointing. I definitely feel that Artorias is the harder of the two, not even mentioning Manus (because that guy can take a long walk off a short plank). I ended up killing him two handing a Craftsman's Hammer +5 because my maces were lightning infused and didn't hit him quite as hard.
Manus is a complete prick but doesn't require perfection. If you fail to stop Artorias from powering up he will one shot you regardless of health with several of his attacks. Enough health will let you survive manus combo.
Enough health against artorias, you get caught in his triple loop, you still die.
I managed to beat manus while still in the "desperately chugging estus" phase of fighting a boss.
Against Artorias this got me killed. I had to stop healing.
Artorias is almost a joke with a powerful enough weapon and a strong shield.
I walked into him with my giantdad and curb stomped him.
Ditto on my halberd guy. Spun the fucker to death.
My fist weapon user? Even with dragon form? Get out of here. Go home. You aren't good enough. I ended up being able to not get hit for long enough before he finally got me that I could use the red tearstone ring to up my damage and beat him within that window before my concentration could break.
And I still got lucky, because he managed a cheap shot that miraculously barely did any damage.
And then he tried it twice, and I completely lucked out because the second time the attack happened to not hit me.
I hear people talking about how Artorias is perfectly balanced and all I can think is "maybe for your build".
The lesson you take away here is "I goofed up" and don't do it again.
I completely get your pain, because I died so many times that way in dark souls and demon souls before I finally realised it just....wasn't....working....and that when the boss is nearly dead, that is when you really, really, really just focus. Cold blooded concentration. The patience meter goes up. You play it safe.
Cos there ain't no prize for second best.
To push it to the limit?
Armchair: 4098-3704-2012
*Giant weapon to the face.*
"Son of a goose!"
XBL: GamingFreak5514
PSN: GamingFreak1234
I call that the "Kenpachi's eyepatch" moment.
For me though, he used his big sword a lot, even in the first half. Maybe it depends on your positioning. It almost always would whiff over you me though without even really having to dodge. He would occasionally do a lower sweep with it though, so I usually dodged every one just to be safe. The only thing that would really maybe be dangerous for the first half was this quick little leftward swipe he'd do with his little sword. It didn't do a ton of damage (half or so of my hp), but it was fast enough I wouldn't know to dodge it half the time.
The more I think about it, the more I really like the fight. It was fun, a bit challenging, but I made constant progress so I never felt like giving up. Every time I tried him I generally felt like I could do it, and I usually did a bit better than the time before.
I'm on Sir Alonne now. Only had time to try him a couple times. He doesn't seem too bad, but I'm finding myself really bad at the timing on dodging his dashing sword uppercut thing. It hurts. I seem to dodge too early about half the time. If I can get that down, then he shouldn't be too bad at all.
For me at least, I just treated it like it was based on time passed, and it served me well. If I got hit too much in phase 1 and had to back off to heal or played too passively, he's transform with 50% or more of his health left and I'd usually be screwed. If I nailed phase 1 and had a lot of damage uptime without having to back off to heal much or at all, phase 2 would start with ~30% health left and that's what I needed to survive phase 2 and actually kill him.
Alonne's tricky because he has variable speeds on his dashes, so you have to learn the dodge patterns, but at the same time he doesn't do very much damage, so if you're like me, you may bumble through the fight getting hit by dashes constantly and having to heal, but still win because he doesn't do all that much damage.
Worst part of the entire iron king DLC to me was the path to get to Alonne in the first place. So annoying.