Dark Souls III

[Rising Dragon]

Sorceries and offensive Miracles generally do not have good damage returns until you reach 60 Intelligence or Faith. 40/40 in both is ideal for Pyromancies and Dark spells, however.

[Kafriel]

That explains the difference in damage. 60/60 is rather high for a soft cap though, if I reach that point, it would be at my next end-game...ah well, I may reconsider along the next playthrough.

EDIT: After playing again and solving a few quests I couldn't have done in NG, I have to say that DS3 has a lot of characters with enough backstory, provided you can follow their questlines (Leonhard, Hawkwood, Sirris, Siegward, etc.) and it's also nice to watch the story construct itself with bits and pieces of information you gather from the NPCs. Even the endings have a lot to them (I think I messed up the bad ending, although to be fair that one should be conclusive, with no option to start NG+).

[Tormenk]

Astora Greatsword should be versatile enough for your needs. I'll assume you already have plenty of stats in dex, so once you hit 50 in STR you can infuse it with a refined gem for good returns. Or you can go Chaos infusion since it has a S scaling in faith fully upgraded for triple stat scaling. IIRC it's not too heavy as well so a pretty good all rounder pick.

[Rising Dragon]

Originally Posted by Kafriel

That explains the difference in damage. 60/60 is rather high for a soft cap though, if I reach that point, it would be at my next end-game...ah well, I may reconsider along the next playthrough.

Well, that's because it is well past the soft cap. It's just for Sorceries and Miracles individually, the softcap is pathetic.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

I personally still think the hard cap on Endurance being 40 is dumb, though. It's really hard to build a large-weapon strength-based character that way. Two swings with a UGS and you're pretty out of stamina. And has anyone else had a lot of trouble building a heavy-armor character WITHOUT Havel's Ring? And trying to stay around 130SL. Very, VERY difficult. I pretty much have to go to 150 to even make it viable because of all the Vitality you need.

[Rising Dragon]

Due to the change in how Poise works, there's really no point in investing in heavy armor. Poise now only works by extending the amount of damage you can take before staggering when attacking with certain weapons that provide hyper armor. Due to the lack of upgrading armor and lack of traditional poise, you're better off with lighter armor and practice with dodges.

[Kafriel]

Yeah, I got 11 VIT and my heaviest set is dancer's set...mixed with leather pants. You only get 10 stamina from 40 to 99 endurance, so that's less than useless, but as far as UGS go, they can still be used to send people off ledges with stomp.

Cloranthy ring and green blossoms are your best friends - instead of increasing your max stamina, they provide better stamina regen. I only used Havel's ring when fighting the nameless king (taken down with only bow and sword), beat him with 30 vigor. It would be a better investment IMO (VIG up to 50) than VIT, because it basically allows for more mistakes regardless of damage type - the only downside is that estus flasks recover a set amount of HP, eventually making it less than 30%...but you can just use miracles or other rings to heal instead, so that works out, somehow.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

Due to the change in how Poise works, there's really no point in investing in heavy armor. Poise now only works by extending the amount of damage you can take before staggering when attacking with certain weapons that provide hyper armor. Due to the lack of upgrading armor and lack of traditional poise, you're better off with lighter armor and practice with dodges.

It's not for the poise. It's for the RPG aspect. I like the look of a few of the heavy armor sets. Fashion Souls, man!

[Rising Dragon]

Yeah, I get that. Unfortunately the heavy armors, fashion or not, are basically shooting players in the foot because of how it's set up.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Well, fine. As much as I love the look of the set on female characters, always wearing the Sunless armor set gets old after the fifth playthrough. I miss my Heide Knight set from DS2.

[Rising Dragon]

The one female armor set I'd love to have? The outfit Shanalotte was wearing in Dark Souls 2.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

Oh! Good one. You never know, they might add that stuff as DLC someday.

While they're at it, I'd like the Desert Sorceress set, the Mirrah Hat, and the old Thief mask back, as well. I'm not a big fan of the current Thief mask's hood design.

[Rising Dragon]

I'd definitely like the return of the Fume Sorcerer set and the Desert Sorceress set. Mainly for the hood on the latter and everything but on the former. Hexer set too, though that's already in the files--pretty good chance of it returning as a result.

In DS2, one of my female characters paired the Desert Sorceress Hood with the Alva Armor and a Twinblade. My other female character paired the Hexer Hood with the Fume Sorcerer set.

Definitely want Shanalotte's outfit the most, though. For my main male character I'm more than happy with the Fallen Knight set; it's the female characters I have trouble dressing up.

Speaking of DLC, though, there's a lot of talk on the subreddit that the first DLC is getting released this month.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

That's so funny that you mention the Sorceress hood with the Alva armor. I did the exact same thing until I finally farmed the Heide Knight set (that took FOREVER). I paired that set with the Alva helm and it was amazing.

Yeah I would like it if the armor sets changed a bit more between male/female and small/large physiques. Though, I suppose you can't have everything.

Has anyone heard anything about twinblades making a comeback? They were a cool weapon type that I was sad to see go away in DS3. I'm looking forward to the DLC, in any case. If it's anything like the DLC for DS2, it's going to be awesome.

[ScorchingFlames]

Looks like we might be getting some news about Dark Souls 3 DLC on the 24th, or it could be just Dark Souls 3 related things like merchandise or something else.

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/dar.../1100-6442717/

[Mr Hat and Clogs]

Nice info on the DLC will be great.

[Chaos2Frozen]

If it's DLC I wonder why they didn't announce it during gamescom.

[Spectacular_Insanity]

An announcement about an announcement?

[Kafriel]

Yup, reminds me of P5's May announcement

[RWBladewing]

Originally Posted by Rising Dragon

it's the female characters I have trouble dressing up.

My solution to this issue was to kill Yuria and steal her armor as soon as she showed up. Could tell she was important even though I was playing through blind but Fashion Souls trumps all. Had to smirk a little bit after beating the game and reading HOW important though. I find the concept of a possibly eons-old plot being unraveled by some random murder hobo who really wanted the pretty black dress to be absolutely hilarious.