AWKWARD ZOMBIE

There's a reason the term glass cannon exists. They can push out huge amounts of damage but they get broken in the blink of an eye. A fast-rolling Havelyn can wipe me out in one shot while I would need to land several GRS against them while dodging their greatsword or I'm getting my guard broken then I'm dead.

That's another thing, don't complain about something being OP when you can counter it. Raise your dark defense, put on a ring, change your shield to combat magic. You claim that by doing so it makes you vulnerable to the other types of damage but what you're not seeing is that by raising your defenses against those other types of damage you made yourself vulnerable to another one. No one should be impervious to everything.

That's an argument that I often see brought up on AZ in discussions about things being OP: "if you can beat it, it's not OP". That's not really how that works, something is OP when it's better than other things without a significant downside. Only in an incredibly poorly balanced game will somethign be completely unbeatable. On the other hand, very few games are completely balanced and it's pretty unrealistic to expect a big RPG with a ton of different playstyles and just as big a focus on PvE to be completely balanced.

For instance the "you can build defence specifically against it" argument isn't really relevant since you can do that for any type of damage, so it isn't a differentiating factor. So since Galaxy Man already explained the advantages, what are the actual downsides of hexes? You need souls to cast some of the better ones and you need to spec both int and faith. But, neither of those are even close to significant in high level PvP. From what I've heard you get 150k souls after clearing one level in NG+.

havel armor is impervious to everything

but yes hexes are much better than sorceries for pvp. I feel it obvious from the fact that RW is 50% + 50 more dark damage on a weapon, while CMW is 30% + 50, which dark weapon is the same as that but dark. Also, the faith and intelligence being built up for hexes can be used for quite a few sorceries / miracles as well which allows for some diversity that pure intel or pure faith builds somewhat lack. Hexes also have Profound Still, which is a crazy awesome spell against other casters.

weaknesses of hexes? having to use souls for the more powerful spells, for one. Having to invest in two stats, which matters not at late game, since soft caps. I think there'd be a better balance if From removed some soft caps.

an interesting thing I found out is that using CMW on Blue Flame increases the damage of spells cast from it, as CMW increases magic damage dealt by a weapon by 30% + 50. Consider this for builds.

Well to start with most of the high-tier hexes take up 2 slots, so to even make the build successful requires investing a good number of points into attunement, particularly for more casts. It's also heavily gear-dependent. Lion Mage set being practically mandatory along with Sunset Staff and Chime of Want, which is a post-endgame item. Not to mention the rings, at least two of which are NG+ from bosses.

The major stat investment into FAI/INT, and keeping it even, and ATN means there's very little left to spread around other stats, which is a problem if one wants to use any kind of shields or decent weapons. Drangleic for example requires 16 STR and Moonlight Greatsword needs 18 STR and 18 DEX at minimum, along with some points in END to have stamina. Then the infusions are absolutely mandatory, so straight away the hex build doesn't see its real strength until the latter part of the game.

The biggest downside to a hex build though is that a hexer needs to be cautious in PvP and PvE compared to melee. If their guard gets broken or they can't escape melee then they're screwed. Health of a wet paper bag with defenses to match. Even if hexes cast relatively quickly there's still that momentary pause that a fast weapon can mercilessly take advantage of. Running away doesn't work, hexers need that stamina to cast and the opponent is just going to chase.

We were talking specifically about high soul level/super end game though.

Lets go over why all this is wrong.

First off no, nothing in the game is gear dependant. It does not matter what you are wearing even close to ever. Gear helps, it has bonuses, but even if you were stark naked you could easily run a hex build.

Attunement is required for any magic build. Hexes are not being hindered more than any other type of magic like that. All higher level spells start using more and more attunement slots. Forbidden Sun casts fairly quickly but still does less damage than GRS, and it uses THREE SLOTS. Hexes in general use less slots for higher damage! Mind you, Affinity uses three slots, and Climax uses a whopping FOUR, but lets recap what each of those does.

Affinity does a shitton of damage, but moves slowly and can be beaten by running in a wide circle. Climax uses ALL OF YOUR SOULS for a ton of damage but since it uses ALL your souls (and firing it without souls brings it down to 5% of it's max damage) it's really never worthwhile in PvP, where the main issue with hexes comes in.

However, the big damage outputter is GRS, which uses a pathetic two slots, and has an astounding base of EIGHT CASTS. That's about six casts more than you need in PvP. And, reminder, with enough dark defense to make GRS less damaging by more than a very slight margin, you would need to base yourself entirely around stopping dark damage, and proceed to make yourself be useless against every other type of damage. So you can't just say "well get more dark defense" because getting enough to matter would be crippling due to how little dark defense gear ever gives you. Don't even get me on the fucking dark quartz ring, even at +2 that shit only gives you 100 dark defense. Sounds like a lot, and to any other damage type it would be, but you'd need over 500 dark defense to make that any sort of worthwhile, and you can't even get that much dark defense unless you are already a fucking hexer and have kicked int and faith to 40 each.

Also, complaining about not being able to use shields? Shields. Shields become bodaciously useless at higher levels of PvP, unless you're specifically trying to block a certain type of magic. No competent hexer, or competent mage, or competent anyone has a shield. It's always better to just roll away, there's no tactical advantage to just standing there and letting someone smash your shield to bits and then guard break critical you. It's always best to roll so nobody has shields, so the fact that hexers might not be able to doesn't matter. I did an entire Int run only ever leveling dex to 20 so I could use a rapier, sword in one hand staff in the other, and at no point did I go "man i wish i had a shield" because shields aren't ever worth it. At no point in PvP did I go "i could have blocked that with a shield" because rolling away is always more strategically worthwhile. So not having a shield is not a downside, in fact, it forces you to play DS2 the way it's fairly clearly expected to be played, by rolling.

Another thing is that hexers have no need to ever run. May I remind you that even if someone has hit the soft cap in HP, Great Resonant Soul can TWO SHOT THEM. It fires off insanely quickly, it does insane damage, you can bodaciously just stand there and wait for your opponent to attack, roll away and cast and that's it you've done 90% of their health, and now they're stunned so you can probably hit them with another GRS because the hitbox is larger than the projectile and will probably hit them even if the actual projectile does not.

Hexers aren't like mages, they're not weak to close combat but strong in long range. They're overly strong, no matter what.

Every point you can list that is a supposed downside of hexes is bodaciously false. It is factually, actually false. Hexes at high level PvP, and hexers are high level PvP, are supremely OP, and if it's really fucking required I will write ten pages of pure solid math to prove it.

That's the second time you've said shields are useless in this thread. They're not. If you truly believe that a shield is worthless then you really have zero excuses to complain about something that can be solved with a shield. I do jack damage against someone with a decent shield when they have it up and they can immediately counter-attack while I'm recovering. They don't roll around and risk getting hit, they instead use the defense of their shield to mitigate the vast majority of the damage and deplete my casts.

So you can keep going without a shield and solve everything by rolling and die and then start whining about something being OP. Meanwhile I'm going to keep using a shield and actually be able to survive, because PvP in all forms is about adaptation. Do I think hexes could use some tuning? Yeah. Do I think they're bullshit OP and outclass absolutely everything with zero downsides? Oh hell no. I've faced down dual-wielders with lightning weapons I couldn't block or roll fast enough to evade. Havelyns can kill me with a single mistake. And I've seen fatties who keep their shields up as they advance on me, baiting out my attacks to take advantage of the mistake. You know, competent PvP'ers.

Except we're back to it can't particularly be solved with a shield.

Because you know.

No shields have 100% dark resistance, in fact most shields have under 50%.

Some higher dark res shields can hit 100% through infusion, but that drops all their other stats. So we're back to you gimping yourself to make sure one damage type isn't completely bullshit, and that's not something that should ever have to happen.

Another bit is with eight casts, most of the shields that CAN reach that 100% through an infusion, are going to drain the fuck out of your stamina because stamina loss is proportional to how much health the attack would have taken. So you'll more than likely take a guard break unless you're using a greatshield, and your opponent will still have casts, and will just continue to cast.

That is, if they have EIGHT casts, and not more because they have multiple copies attuned, along with the spell number boost provided by attunement being leveled.

If you do have a greatshield, congrats you can take the weight, but you've probably got shitty armor, so if you fuck up at any point we're back to you dying in two hits that can easily be shot off.

If you have a greatshield and good armor, it's still more than likely got booty amounts of dark resistance, so you're back to square one but slower.

If you've spec'd a character out to take as minimal damage from dark as possible, good work, but you're either extremely overleveled and contributing to the severe problems PvP has, or you've massively min/max'd and you've got terrible physical defenses for absurd amounts of magic/fire/lightning/dark resistances.

So having a shield doesn't really help much.

So your best chance is to roll at the caster, hope the fucked up hitbox on GRS dosen't get you, and hope your weapon is quick enough to cancel their cast before they jam out another one at a range you can't avoid.

The only downside to hexes is that it takes a little longer to make it worthwhile. That's it. After that, it's all upsides. Guy's got nothing in dark defense? Spam GRS at him. Guy's got okay defense? Spam GRS at him? Guy managed to kick faith and int up to 99 and is wearing black witch armor and the dark arms and legs and chaos helm and has 1000 in dark resistance and thus takes no damage from dark magic? Stab him with the sword in your offhand because his physical defenses are shit. Or throw lightning at him because you did level faith and int and basically have all forms of magic at your disposal.

I repeat, hexes are bullshit.

Guys
Seriously
Let's talk about something other than who's shitty wizardry is the most shitty
Something like this:

I've never had that happen, it might be a PC glitch? If so there's probably a PC patch coming relatively soon.

Though, yeah, compared to DS1 this game's lock-on is awful. It's super short range and has no idea what you're trying to lock onto.

It had never happened to me before, I think it happened a total of 3 times and was most definitely not an accidental button press. It seemed to happen near walls when the boss was attacking and I was maneuvering around him.

I've heard that bossfight is notoriously glitchy, you can get stuck in walls and stuff.

my god invading the undead crypt is ez modo