Demon's Souls PvP: Asian Meta 07.06.2015

[musicismath]

Logged into asian server approximately 8 am est.
SL 118-114
No wait time to invade.
Red stone summons in less than 30 seconds.
90% black phantom v. host (1 blue phantom, 1 invader)

Every player still rollin' w/ melee. Straight sword (2h mostly), great axe, mirdan hammer, estoc, dagger, kat+shield. One had baby's nail and shotel as their setup. The vader was the only spell user (firespray) with killij and spiked shield. lol. Scored about a 1:1 win/loss for a change.

Toughest opponents favored straight sword, difficult matchup to my blessed ks spellsword. 2h pra0 style, deadly 2h R1 combos with push. There were some fierce roll bs dropped, and I was getting chain bs'd by a dragon gaxe in one battle. There was one badass who went ONDRA on me with poison cloud... lagged it up and cut me down quick. Almost forgot, large sword of moonlight made a nice appearance, setup was faith/mirdan, main.

I restocked and couldn't find another duel. Switched toons and chipped away at Doran to get eternal warrior ring for my strength build. Session ended around 10 am est, at least 20 or so duels. True quality PvP.

(to be continued...?)

[Juli]

Last time I played JP regularly, it was like 80% knight swords. Not a great weapon IMO, but very high skill cap. Good players are terrifying with it.

[musicismath]

Last time I played JP regularly, it was like 80% knight swords. Not a great weapon IMO, but very high skill cap. Good players are terrifying with it.

Yeah, I believe it's simply the romance of the quintessential sword. I've used it so much that I basically suck with any other weapon. Some of the best who once wielded it:
vector
digi
toast - one of my all time favorite opponents, amazing skill and style with the dragonbone smasher/knight sword setup.

Asian players are also really hardcore with mirdan hammer. But most stunning of all would have to be the magic users. Spell casting on asian Des was, at one time, about a thousand levels above the skill of the best mages most of us will have seen. I swear the pivots had the startup of a katana L1. Guys with epee rapier and weird stuff like that just casting their brains out and winning. It's a shame, it seems to have fallen out of favor.

[bialy0021]

knight swords. Not a great weapon IMO

i always felt that ks was exactly how it should be - well balanced. if youre good enough its good enough.

Spell casting on asian Des was, at one time, about a thousand levels above the skill of the best mages most of us will have seen.(...) It's a shame, it seems to have fallen out of favor.

it prolly still is. i remember pivot boom when it was introduced for the first time to na/eu. everyone had a spellsword or a mage. unfortunately not many players pursued it further than what was know at the time - faster casting and some dbs combos.

[musicismath]

knight swords. Not a great weapon IMO

i always felt that ks was exactly how it should be - well balanced. if youre good enough its good enough.

Spell casting on asian Des was, at one time, about a thousand levels above the skill of the best mages most of us will have seen.(...) It's a shame, it seems to have fallen out of favor.

it prolly still is. i remember pivot boom when it was introduced for the first time to na/eu. everyone had a spellsword or a mage. unfortunately not many players pursued it further than what was know at the time - faster casting and some dbs combos.

It ain't that KS is bad, it just doesn't have the auto-win moves that make the other top tier weapons more competitive, as in non-BS/regular attacks. Most threatening would be the 2h stunlock, I suppose... that's why BBS was so freaking popular on NA. I like to work the shield. I am suggesting that it should be played defensively, and yes that does make me a troll by souls logic. I need to rediscover my inner parry-whore because that's really good for the setup.

If you've any casting strategies to share, new or old, please share. I never actually got on to the DBS Mage but I loved fighting them - thinkin' of jumi and hag esp. When the meta of magic was declared (jumi?) about 70% of my builds were spellswords, generally w/ small weps: KS, spears, katana, broadsword, short sword, epee rapier and the like. Tend to prefer blessed/ToB to go with the turtle/regen approach. Maybe it's a glitch or lag, but I find that I can reliably initiate a "stunlock" with locked on fireballs, no pivot. Oki FB, run R1>ignite, FB>ignite... hell, I'm a novice, that's all I can think of tbh.

In closing, I was recalling the finest mages on NA.

digi and ralph. These guys "rolled" with iron knuckles and literally head-busting spell combos. Both were heavily influenced by pep and the middle age of the asian meta. ah the memories.

Also I have to give another blatant shout to my old sensei, morrigan. She was truly dangerous with a magic build long before it was cool and trendy, but then she was basically good at everything. I know that sounds like ass-kissing but it was just really ggs; I am indebted to all the players I mentioned.

[bialy0021]

well, yh, i dont argue that ks is the best (apart from the moveset, to this day nothing in souls can touch this. dks clay can suck it too ).
imho though it is the most balanced weapon in the series. outclassed in most categories by other things but good enough to compete and with a moveset that allows the player to make up for whatever the weapon lacks (no hyper like gaxe, no ultra fast poke or lock setup, less range/dmg/speed than most things etc.)

there. old, basic stuff that youve prolly seen a lot of times considering you play asia. then again thats all you need to know - basics of how to do things. its up to you how you use or string em together with your weapon of choice.
theres only that much you can do in this game and i feel different setups with different weapons/spells (like fb -> dbs/gs roll r1; or bs -> hsa cast -> lsom hit -> hsa hit) are something that ppl can come up with on their own.
in my last years of ds i was using blessed ks/gs with tob/mako/shield.

ray or fb -> insta run r1 -> push -> stab or r1 or fb etc. etc.

you can mix and match however you like, thats why i enjoyed the playstyle so much. for example throw in a triangle in the middle of the fb (what i called late pivot casting) and youre flying at them with your 2h run r1 while your spell is hitting em or theyre coming out of a roll. you can even make that 2h run r1 a xup and im sure everyone knows that 2h run r1 is a free stunlock.

i remember old hag was sporting knuckle mage quite a bit on eu. good old days of 'honour', naftw and euroscum

[musicismath]

iirc there were some really solid youtube videos of asian techs both melee and casting focused.

I think maybe there was a link somewhere in doom's post history... i may try and dig it up later.

i recorded about 15 min of a mage yesterday on asia who was tearing it up spellsword style, in direct contradiction to my previous comments. awesome. update later.

[Juli]

iirc there were some really solid youtube videos of asian techs both melee and casting focused.

I think maybe there was a link somewhere in doom's post history... i may try and dig it up later.

Unfortunately, that video got taken down. I think it was a sansviedotcom video, and that entire channel got nuked. It included some interesting stuff, though. Hardswapping to Plague Resistance ring to avoid Death Cloud after a KD, a way to toggle escape KD from stuff like DBS or Stormruler, and a sort of budget dead angle for Estoc. The rest was mostly well-known stuff I think. Pivot cast, toggle escape, etc.

[musicismath]

thing i remember was stunlock-swap escape into parry or something like that, i was impressed.

really trying to practice my unlocked, cross-up, pivot bs, stuff like that.

need to improve grass game too

...also, timing and spacing. I'm terrible at both

[musicismath]

crossed paths w/ an old friend on asia today. we dueled a set, then switched to NA. had a full fight club going, hosted by eagle, with tech and type - host, 2 blues and red.

really good session on asia with dragonization and deckard, both fine duelists. tried to record these - if anyone has advice how to do that better, i'm all ears.