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This week's episode of back to basics is brought to you in part by the club. Have you ever
been out, by yourself, alone, at night, in a forest, a butterfly forest, on your way
home, when suddenly you are approached by a strange invader? The events you are about
to witness are true and have not been choreographed. Little Sara McDougal was on her way home one
night after having done charity work with poor sick orphans of Indonesian bear attacks,
when suddenly in the distance she was approached by a strange invader. .Aw how sad!! But that's
what happens when you mess with the power of the club. And now for seventy seven payments
of seventy seven seventy seven you too can own your very own edition of the club.
Hello everyone, this is Tearzelus Vandel signing in, the title of this episode of back to basics
is called setting up for success. In this session we will cover three topics. Fashion
versus function. Playing the field
And Swap shop. Now before we begin let's just talk about exactly what it means to set up
for success. Now when you make the choice to engage in pvp you must be mindful of what
your objective is before you start any pvp session. For example, if I load up my game
and hit the burg I might say that my objective today is to win a couple of duels. Now I am
aware of generally what a duel entails. So i am going to equip myself appropriately for
a duel. Perhaps I decide well im going to the forest to get some invasions going, well
I'm going to equip myself appropriately for an invasion environment. So in essence setting
up for success is essentially arming yourself to the teeth with everything you need outside
of skill to position yourself at as little disadvantage to your opponent as is possible,
whomever you opponent might happen to be. Does that make sense? Moving on.
Fashion versus function. In the world of dark souls you have some players who gear up to
look good. They happen to come across a combination of armor that looks good to them regardless
of its ability to defend and they decide to wear it. They find a sword that looks cool
or has a cool move set and they're going to be using it. Or perhaps a ring with an interesting
effect. They are setting up according to what they feel looks good or seems good regardless
of its effectiveness in combat. On the other hand you've got some fighters who prepare
for war. Every piece of armor, every weapon, and every ring has a purpose, place, and function.
Their purpose in setting up is to win battles. They don't care if they look ridiculous. They
care about getting maximum output from their set up and if they happen to look good in
the process than that is a benefit after the fact. Make sense? Now let's move on to playing
the field. Now what this basically means is setting up for success based on the combat
scenario you expect yourself to have to encounter. The easiest way to illustrate this point is
between duels and invasions. Now if you intend to engage in duels there are rules which result
in certain parameters with which you may govern yourself accordingly. While in invasions there
are no obvious parameters you may expect to be in place so you therefore expect for everything.
For example knowing you are an invader and that the possibly exists where you may invade
a world in which gankers may be readily waiting for your appearance, I would not advise wearing
full Havels with a giant club. You might find your back quite exposed to a bs session from
your opponents. Finally the swap. Now all this is essentially, and generally for all
intents and purposes, is going into you menu mid battle and changing a weapon a piece of
armor or a ring with one already equipped to allow for some form of immediate advantage
in a battle scenario. I cannot begin to praise the advantages this can give you in the majority
of combat situations. The standard set up the game allows for you to have will give
you access to four slots in which to make up the variety of your battle set up. Commonly
for most players the right hand slots would be comprised of one or two weapons and the
left hand slots comprised of a shield and something else. There are two disadvantages
to this. One is that when using these slots you are adding more weight to your equipment
load which through the menu swap can be mitigated since you are not in constant need of both
weapons in battle the menu swap will cut down on your equipment load which could allow for
more weight for armor, a heavier weapon that won't inhibit a roll level, or perhaps the
lack of a need to use havels ring or the ring of favor and protection. The second disadvantage
is that you are limiting yourself to just what is in those slots and nothing else. In
all combat the higher your ability is to be versatile, the more effective you will be
in combat at overwhelming your opponent. Make sense? Now after this clip we're going to
go to a few clips to explain this idea a little bit more. Alright everyone, we're going to
go ahead and do some visual examples of what I was talking about in this video. Now say
for example you want to set up for success and you need to choose a weapon okay. And
you're just trying to decide what is the best weapon or the optimal weapon to choose for
whatever session you're going to engage in. This is how I do it, this is how I make a
determination on what's the best weapon. Everyone has their own method; I think this is the
most logical way to do it. Now in this example we're going to choose straight swords okay.
The examples we're going to use is the balder side sword, the broadsword, and the longsword.
If I'm talking a little bit fast I apologize I don't want to take too much time on this.
And if you guys have any questions you can feel free to ask me and I'll do my best to
answer you. Now, all of these have been maxed out and the first thing we want to do is look
at general statistics on the different weapons so we can make a determination based off statistics
at just face value. We're not doing damage formulas; we're not doing armor formulas.
We're just looking at face value information. Okay. Sometimes you don't have to over complicate
things you just look at face value statistics and it will help you make a great choice.
We look at the balder side sword and the physical attack category we're looking at two hundred
and one ninety nine the broadsword is two hundred and five and two hundred and thirteen
and the longsword is two hundred and two hundred and eight that automatically tells you that
the broadsword comes out on top, in this category okay. After this we will look at the parameter
bonus. Now the parameter bonus is only important when deciding how to set up your build for
your character. I'm stressing this again. It is only important when deciding how to
set up your build for your character and can make a very quick difference in which weapon
is going to be better for you. What I mean by this is if you look at my statistic on
this character its a quality build okay. the strength and dexterity is forty and forty
on this character it makes no difference either which one of these weapons I use since the
damage statistics I'm looking at here are going to be pretty much accurate for my particualr
build bbut if you have a dexterity build and have like twelve stregnth you are not going
to get anywhere the amount of damage with the broadsword or the longsword as you would
with the balder side sword because it has an "A" parameter bonus in dexterity , meaning
its going to get the highest boost from dexterity and not stregnth wheras these two need both
strength and dexterity and they have a "C" in both categories okay. So if you look at
my build I am at forty and forty it's going to mean that I can use either one of these
effectively if I decide to So that's not an issue for me okay. And make that something
you think abgout yourself when you're decding what weapion to use okay. Just look at the
parameter bonus , look at the letter and decide how much point you need into what you're using
or if you've already made your build then again use the parameter bonus to determine
which one would be the best weapon for you to use okay. Now durability is one twenty
one the balder side sword its two hundred on the broadsword and the longsword so that's
not going to make much difference especially in pvp. You're not going to wear out the durability
in a battle at these values they're pretty difference so that makes no difference in
choosing your weapon. And the critical rating is the same for all of them also something
of note is the damage reduction values on all of them its exactly the same and it's
fifty. Okay so again you want to take note of that when choosing a weapon because if
you have to block with a weapon if you're two handing it and you're not using a shield
you might want to know how much damage you can stand to take and also you want to look
at stability which is thirty two . The buckler which is a very popular shield but its a very
light shield it's stability is something like forty four. So it's not that far off from
a buckler if you block with this okay. But the physical reduction is only fifty. Looking
at these the broadsword would probably come out on top because almost every other statistic
is exactly the same and I've tested it against pvp opponents does do a little bit more damage
but again by little bit we're talking about maybe twenty thirty points more in damage
it's not that much okay, but it does come out on top. now from here we're going to go
to the actual weapons themselves. let's start off with the broadsword okay. Now the broadsword
this is the length of it we're taking a look at length now reach okay. Now we take a look
at the longsword, this is the length here as you can see it's a little bit longer. And
here's the balder side sword okay. The longest out of all of them. Reach is important because
the longer a weapon is the farther away you can be with from your opponent where you can
still attack them but you don't have to put yourself in harm's range, or in a very very
likely situation , what happens with me a lot when I'm using the balder side sword is
someone will do a thrust attack I'll do a thrust attack also but because my range is
a lot longer then them I'll hit them but they won't hit me back. That's extremely important
something to definitely consider. When you look at the broadsword you have to be up close
and personal on your opponent to hit them with this weapon that's definitely an issue
okay. And again when you look at anything on a weapon anything that's good about it
, anything that's bad you got to ask yourself does the good outweigh the bad . The amount
of additional damage you would do using this weapon over using for example the longsword
or the balder side sword I don't think its enough to warrant me using this over them
because I have to be so close to my opponent all the time when I'm attacking them okay.
That causes issues for you in combat. So now next let's look at the move sets for the weapons.
Now here's an R1, balder side sword. R2, here's a double R2 okay. Here's a two handed R2 , and
here's the , sorry that was a two handed R1 here's the R2 okay. Now lets take a look at
the broadsword. R1 , R2 , running okay, two handed R1, here's the R2 . Longsword. This
is the okay we'll do the one handed R1, this is the R2 , double R2 okay. That's important
I want you to pay attention to that. That was a double R2 single handed. Now here we
go is the two handed R1 , R2 . Okay. Now I know we went through this quickly and I don't
know if you noticed the main differences that we just observed was that the broadswords
move set has no thrusting attack. If you go into the weapons , the weapon category and
you look at display some more information you'll notice that under attack type which
is at the very top, it say regular for the broadsword but under the balder side sword
it says regular slash thrust and so does the longsword okay. Again that becomes another
issue. The broadsword has no versatility in terms of having two different types of attack
types in order for you to take advantage when choosing this weapon, So now we have that
it's short and only does wing attacks no thrust attacks. And thrust attacks , especially for
counter damage, can be extremely effective ,this to me automatically put the broadsword
out of the running. I'm not even going to consider this weapon anymore okay. And the
considerations that we do have left are the balder side sword and the longsword. Now thrusting
is what put these two on top, then obviously the one that is the longest would be the best
at landing a thrust attack, and that's going to fall with the balder side sword. The longsword
is still a great option but there's one other thing that for me made me end up wanting to
use a balder side sword more than the longsword and what it basically was is that double R2
that I told you to pay attention to. now if you notice when you do the R2 here and you
follow it up the second attack is an upward swing which I have found has horrible tracking
in pvp. Meaning that if someone is moving and you try to , you may possibly land a first
R2 but when you try to land the second R2 usually if they were moving it's going to
miss. When you look at the balder side sword. Hold on Kind of jammed that up. Alright first
one is this, second one is this. If you, I don't know if you saw that but pay attention.
The second R2 actually comes out faster than it took the first R2 to come out. That's very
important because what that means is a lot of the times fi you hit someone with the first
R2 there's a pretty good chance that you'll catch them with the second R2 on this weapon
it's pretty fast comes out quick and it still has very very good tracking. So the chances
that you'll hit them with the double R2 is far greater than you're going to hit them
with the double R2 on the longsword. So then for me that ends up putting the balder side
sword on top and this is just one of the reasons why when you go online, if you do any degree
of pvp you're going to notice that is one of the most used weapons that they have out
there. Especially in the straight sword category okay and the reason why are for the reasons
I just stated. Now we're going to move onto the menu swap okay. Now in using a menu swap
you're using the menu swap to replace what the game is giving you in game which is two
slots. So when menu swapping you definitely don't want to put only two weapons or only
take advantage of only two weapons cause in essence you're doing the same thing that the
game gives you I menu swap about six to seven items sometimes okay. I don't recommend you
start off doing that because sometimes it gets confusing with the placements So what
you want to start off with is three weapons that's my recommendation and then you can
slowly add on a weapon or increase it and again when you're setting this up for yourself
you don't want to choose the same exact type of weapons for your slots because that doesn't
make any sense. You want to have versatility. So now when we're looking at our set up we
go into the item menu we go to the weapon section and you decide what your set up is
going to be. Your first three weapons in your list will be what you're going to be using
to do your menu swap okay. So say for example I want to set up a menu swap weapon selection,
first I got my balder side sword so i say okay I want to choose something for my next
slot i'm not going to put a broadsword and a long sword. We just went over how similar
these weapons are okay. So we want to obviously choose something else to give you variety
so lets take a demon's spear. You're going to hit x on the demon's spear you go down
to change order then you go ahead and click x again on the demon's spear and now it lets
you put the weapon wherever you want okay. Now we're going to put it in the second slot.
Boom it's there it switched places with the broadsword okay. Now for the third slot we
want to choose something else so lets choose a claymore okay. Hit x on the claymore you
go up to right underneath where the demon's spear was and boom you got your claymore.
So now our swap is going to consist of the balder side sword, the demon's spear, and
the claymore okay. Now we exit out of here.Now this is basically how you're going to execute
the swap. You're going to press start, you're going to press R1, x, x again, and from here
you go down to whatever weapon it is that you're trying to swap to. So if you know it's
demon's spear hit down once hit x and then circle circle. That's it. Start, R1 , x,x
, up or down to whatever weapon you need okay so, we'll go down to claymore ,x, circle circle.
Start, R1, x,x , up, circle circle okay. It's funny it's hard for me to say it because i'm
so use to just doing it . When you have to actually explain it feels a little bit funny.
But basically that's how you're doing it okay. Now when you start off practicing, what you
want to do is just stand still and just practice it. Start, R1, x,x, up for example, circle,
circle, okay. And you just want to do it that way. Now in a real, battle you can't just
stand still and start menu swapping, i mean you can sometimes an opponent won't even attack
you, but you're putting yourself at a little bit of a risk, they can just run around you
and back stab you. You want to kind of be moving. So once you get a little movement
going you just practice, moving around. You don't have to be in a actual pvp situation
to practice this you can just practice this just alone like i'm doing right now. And you
know and then eventually once you feel like you've got the hang of doing it comfortably
where you don't even really have to think about it then you and you just go into pvp
and just start moving around when you have to do it. Now again it's important to stress,
when you have to, because just because you have the option to use a variety of weapons,
does not mean you should always do that. you know what I mean? You want to do it at first
so that way you can get the practice in, but then eventually what you want to do is get
it to where you realize the right time to switch. Like for example if i'm fighting a
guy for the most part the balder side sword is so balanced that you should be able to
take out most opponents with it but say for example if i'm fighting someone, they run
up, as the fight is getting ready to start they use power within, then they buff their
weapon, this guy is going to be doing a tremendous amount of damage, it might be a good idea
for me to keep some distance from him. No matter how great I am I may want to avoid
just getting damaged okay. So i'll go demon's spear and i'll keep my distance and keep him
at bay. You understand what I mean? This allows me to stay away from him and kind of just
wait out these buffs or you can wait for power within or chip away at him you know whatever.
Or if for example you're fighting somebody you notice they got really low poise you may
want to take advantage of a stunlock and you go down to your claymore and you just switch
to your claymore and you just go to attacking them. Okay. You want to ask yourself , why
are you switching the weapons? What is the purpose that you're trying to accomplish?
You don't want to just switch just because you can do it. Okay. Keep those things in
mind and the menu swap will be an amazing amazing tool for you. Case in point because
of the lack of me using these two slots here, i'm able to use a heavier amount of Armour
then someone might normally use in a pvp situation okay. That definitely freed up that extra
equipment load for me and helped me out a lot. Especially with this big heavy hat that
i'm wearing which is three pounds. and back to what I was talking about with fashion versus
function. This is, there is a lot, there's probably a lot better options I could be using
than a this hat okay. I use it just because of the fact that I like it. That is something
that I have accepted okay. I'm aware that this may not be the best option to wear as
a headpiece. I wear it because I like it. I'm never going to, I'm probably never going
to stop wearing it and and of note should be the fact that it does have a extremely
high magic defense on it, like It's sixty six point seven okay. If you look at a lot
of different pieces of helmets you can wear you'll notice that a lot of them don't even
come close to that. I mean just take a look. I'm going down the list here. A lot of them
don't come close to that okay. Even when you look at something as heavy as let me see if
I have Havel's. Look at Havel's. It's twenty two point zero. You look at the stone helm
and these are heavy pieces of armor seventeen. I mean it has a pretty high magic defense
rating. So that does help to mitigate it a little bit it's just heavy. It's three pounds.
But that's a choice that I made and I don't want to discourage anybody from enjoying the
game . Remember this is a game, you're playing it to enjoy it and get the fun out of it.
And I encourage people to definitely do that. But it's also good to have an idea what you
need to maximize your ability and your efficiency in the game. Well I want to thank you all
for watching. This has been part three in the series. I apologize for any delay it took
to come out. and if you like the video don't forget to subscribe. This is Tearzelus Vandel
signing out.