Dark Souls 2

You can be really efficient by simply judiciously equipping the Life Protection rings and offsetting major soul losses with those. There are three that I am aware of available by halfway though a standard NG. Paying 3k per death means that you don't bleed souls uselessly (total Souls accumulated is how matchups are determined), but the megamule shit is sort of the fly in the ointment at the moment.

Edit- And for the record, I finished my first run at SL 187 with tons of gear I did not really need. I could most likely have done everything at around 160, but I really enjoyed messing with the various magics and I did a lot of Coop (I enjoy clearing a zone with a partner or two), which means I was able to refarm prime zones without BAs to up the level. The only area I respawned at all was Old Dragonrider, because I wanted to try his other weapon option. Plus, a lot of people are bringing in help on trash clears to help curb the griefers and because the trash tends to be harder than the bosses in this game most of the time.

There are hexes that kill casting, in addition to the short term damage immunity buff. Now, granted the average chump who is busy clearing the level when Dark Phantom AzzRaperzz shows up is not going to have these slotted, but I am seeing a lot of people who help others through the majorly invaded end zones set up for PVP, because Shrine and the Dragon zones are griefer zoos right now.

And my point had nothing to do with the viability of your build. It obviously works because it is optimized in certain areas that a person actually playing the main game is not going to defend against, routinely. It SHOULD plow through those people easily. My point is, if you have already farmed up all the ranks in the PvP covenants, whats the point of picking on people doing PvE with two second kill ambushes? Why go the extra dick mile of breaking all of their gear so that they are not just out whatever souls they held, but also handing them a 10k soul or more repair bill? I am sorry, but there is no real skill in slotting three farmed copies of Jedi Sword (or Geyser) and reefing on sweep attacks, after you chuck a pile of corrosive urns on them any more than the near naked dual fist weapon stunlock shenanigans that is the flipside to this. You are not challenging yourself, you are just making other people miserable to amuse yourself. If you want interesting strategic PvP against prepared opposition for the sake of actual challenge, then go camp the bells or Doors of Pharos. All you are doing is shitting on other (weaker) people's fun for no better reason than to be a dick.

That is what I personally take issue with. And eventually, more and more people are going to do what I have been doing when they see the three super optimized pvp builds come waltzing into the map and either A) drop an earth seed and wait for the zone trash to shit on you, B) just dive off a cliff and eat the 3k loss on repairing the life protection ring to save themselves a huge repair build. Its what people did with the stupid lagrollbackstablol builds in DS1. How the fuck is that any fun? I would rather not, but if I am just going to get bursted down and all my gear blown up for even trying to fight back, why bother?

Angelwatch_sl said:

I wouldn't say the trash is "harder" but it's definitely more annoying. I think the worst are the knights leading up to the Ancient Dragon (one slip up and you can die really easily), all of the trash before the Sentries in Bastille and all of the Shrine of Amana.

With that being said, there were only a couple of truly difficult bosses (and the final boss was not one of those).

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Aside from maybe Smelter, RRA, and Iron King, I can't think of a boss that is actually harder than the trash leading up to it, at least once you know the strategy. The only bosses that ever gave me trouble were either stunlock fests (RRA) or gear checks (Smelter). Granted this assumes you know the enemies.

Iron King is the only fight where you are forced to know the layout of the ground, jedi style, since you can roll right into the lava dodging him. There is no other boss, optional or otherwise (except maybe the chariot) where the terrain is part of the difficulty with him. Every other boss you tend to fight out in the open with lots of room to move (first of the three sentinels being the one exception). He also has the most diverse moveset of anyone. Is he easy once you understand how to make him spawn where you want? Sure. But until you told me how his movement works, I was getting screwed in that fight when I helped other people out. I think he is the hardest of the four primal fire bosses, for certain.

But all that being said, Iron Keep is a really easy area to clear. You almost never have to engage more than one guy at a time and only in one or two spots is the terrain ever a factor. All of the ranged enemies can be taken out completely safely with your own archery. There are ample bonfires in the zone. I think the argument could be made that it is the easiest zone in the game. On top of all of that, you get a bonfire one mob prior to Iron King, making retrying that fight super easy. The zone just gushes XP, too. In my first playthrough, it was the first zone I rendered completely extinct farming.