AWKWARD ZOMBIE

Man, it's unfortunate the dark armour clips with the Manikin Mask.

welp

Ok, I don't know if it's a bug or intended, but when I hit an enemy who's in a dying animation, it takes a shitton of durability of my weapon. This is quite annoying.

Enemy corpses take the same amount of durability as if you'd hit a wall. But, instead of clanging off, it just goes through, so it drains durability for the whole of the time it's moving through the corpse. It's probably a bug.

Ah that explains it, if I fuck up once and do it with the halberd it's pretty much guaranteed the weapon won't last till the boss.

Well luckily most bosses have a bonfire like right in front of em (or very close)

This hex build is ripping things to shreds. The lord souls gave me more trouble, aside from Sinner, than any of these "end-game" bosses. I accidentally found, and killed, the Throne Watcher/Guardian immediately after getting the ring. Guardian Dragon went down in four GRS. Ancient Dragon was a matter of circle-strafing. Giant Lord was roll to dodge then two GRS to the face and repeat until dead. And now I'm just figuring out the sweet spot to stand to dodge the King in the crypts.

Think for my next playthrough I'll give a STR/FAI, pure Sorcery (I've got 10 Bonfire Ascetics to burn on Aldia's Keep for tons of Soul Geysers), or pure STR build a shot. May even re-roll a Deprived so I have more free stat points to spend.

Yah, but some bosses with a lot of mobs (especially Royal Rat Authority) it breaks in the fight itself cause you're hitting multiple dead ones at once, plus you want to take out the mobs as fast as possible so waiting for the corpses to dissapear has its own downsides. Fortunately none of those were particularly hard so I had time to go into the menu and take a back up weapon.

That's because goddamned nothing is weak to dark and as a general rule hexes cast so fast and do so much damage they're OP beyond belief.

Hexes cast just as fast as Sorceries and Miracles. To get the high cast speed and damage is a gear + Attunement thing; it's not baseline. I've got the full Lion's Mage set, 40 Attunement, and my staff + chime are Dark-infused.

Also if hexes are OP then so are fast-rolling Havels and pyromancers and swordsmen and faith builds and Soul Geyser sorcerors and...

climax can oneshot anything, bodaciously 3000+ damage, for only 5000 souls.

easily dodged, but used when not expected to results in instant victory

nothing else can do that

I had never even heard of that spell, so I looked it up and found out why. Yes, that spell can do a large amount of damage, though I only saw it hit for 1610 on the video, but it's at the cost of ALL your souls. That means if you use it, you better hit because GSR just became useless. GSR is deadly because you have multiple casts and so you can fire them off faster than people can roll, but you get one shot with Climax.

I wouldn't even use it to be honest. I specialize in ambush PvP through Chameleon in the Belltower. If the person walks by me I tap them twice in the back with GSR. 1000 souls for a kill generally, and I can pull off more without having to go farm some fuel. Not limited to hexes either. You can backstab while in Chameleon and launch Sorceries/Pyromancies so if they're not looking behind them that pot/barrel/torch is gonna make short work of them.

bodaciously false. Great Resonant Soul fires off significantly quicker than just about every sorcery. It also does about 1500 damage per hit at the cost of 5000 souls, an extraordinarily trivial amount in NG+, meaning it can 2-shot people.

I have run a full int sorcerer, and the only thing that can do that much damage at any decent speed is Soul Spear. Soul Spear fires off very slowly, while it does have some tracking ability it's also got a relatively small hitbox and slow movement and it can be dodged without much issue. Soul Geyser is fucking worthless because it's the easiest thing in the world to dodge and casts even slower, with the extra projectiles on that one lucky hit every ten matches almost always missing due to poor tracking. Soul Vortex casts even slower, and the projectile is incredibly easy to avoid due to it's very slow movement, you can bodaciously just turn and run away and you will outrun it.

However, GRS fires off faster than any of those. In fact, it fires off very minorly faster than the base soul arrow spells, which seem to be the fastest magic. It's hitbox is actually larger than the projectile (making it an ultra super bitch in pvp) and it travels at a very good speed. It also has a BASE cast number of EIGHT. That's six more casts than Soul Spear. In fact, that's just generally more casts than most of the high-damage spells. Great Heavy Soul Arrow has a decent hit, and 15 casts, but it's not anywhere close to the damage of GRS at 5000 souls.

Not to mention the catalists. The strongest sorcery catalist is a +5 Staff of Wisdom with a magic infusion for 297 base damage. With S scaling, at 50 int, it has a base damage of over 400. However, it has a casting speed of 110, meaning it's on the slower end of things.

GRS is cast with chimes. The highest dark chime is a Chime of Want, which at +5 with a dark infusion hits 287 base damage. Only a minor amount of damage lost as compared to the Staff of Wisdom, as it also has an S scaling in dark. The Chime of Want casts at a fucking significant speed of 130, which hilariously, most staffs don't hit. The Sorcerer's Staff casts for 135 but has poor damage and only C scaling in magic and dark. Hilariously, the only other staff to go any higher is the Witchtree Branch, which casts for 140 and is a staff focused around casting dark.

Dark magic, at the moment, is not just better than Int, it's better than fucking everything. It's insanely overpowered in PvE, where nothing is weak to dark damage, and even worse in PvP, where getting dark defense means you're vulnerable to everything else.

It's trivial to get Physical resistance, so Dark damage beats out physical weapons. Pretty easy to get fire resist, so Dark beats out Pyromancy (also pyromancies aren't really affected by cast speeds, i have tested this at both the lowest cast speed i can get and the highest, if there's any change it's so minute it's hardly worth the time.) I just wrote an essay on why Magic dosen't even come close to Dark, though getting magic defense can be pretty difficult, and finally, most miracles are HEALING spells and the only two that can do even comparable damage to GRS are Wrath of the Gods and Sunlight Spear. WotG can one shot people right now but was nerfed so it's much easier to dodge, and Sunlight Spear does fairly comperable damage. The kicker is, neither still come close to having the cast amount, and Sunlight Spear has a very long and very obvious casting speed.

Hexes are bullshit, and the idea that you think fucking swordsman or pyromancers or mages are even fucking comperable in the amount of pure bullshit hexers can put out, you need to maybe rethink some things.

From the way the game is designed, it seems pretty intentional for hexes to be OP at endgame.