ARMOR AND ENDURANCE TRAP RUINED MY CHARACTER

[imdavidfindley]

failing miserably at great jar's PVP challenge, I finally realized that my 28 points in endurance was a miserable mistake. I thought armor and stamina behind barricade shield would help me win a stamina game -- I was stupid. and then with a 500 damage sacred pike I do MINISCULE damage to them, while they kill me in 2-3 hits. WHAT'S WORST IS THEY WIN THE STAMINA GAME, EVEN THROUGH MY BARRICADE SHIELD STRATEGY, THEY BREAK DOWN MY SHIELD AND RIPOSTE HALF THE TIME.

It takes me until level 82 to FINALLY test armor efficacy against a solider. I tested damage taken. I am wearing RADAHN ARMOR, and when I take off ALL my armor the increased damage I take is NEGLIGIBLE to an EXTREME.

sucks big time dudes. can you patch it to make my character competitive, make endurance, armor, and stamina MEAN something. I dumped 100 hours into my character only to discover the balance is wrecked O_O ..........and the great jar talisman is most crucial to my (sucky!) build more so than any of these meta-builds, to add insult to injury !

grr

[H3llF!r3]

GIT GUD

[Jones]

There is a cheese for it, go to the rock on the far left, there is a tiny ledge that you can crouch on, 90% of them will try to attack you from above then just roll to their deaths

[Skeleton Minion]

For the record, Great Jar NPCs are actual player characters so they're like level 150+ more often than not.

[sophAur]

Originally posted by imdavidfindley:

can you patch it to make my character competitive

lol

[anotherland]

Originally posted by H3llF!r3:

GIT GUD :praisesun:

can't have a post without this overused comment. (then people read this and post it again like a 12 year old cause it "bothers" them)

[<:)]

just respec

[EmoRevenger]

Originally posted by xsirbelmont:

Originally posted by H3llF!r3:

GIT GUD :praisesun:

can't have a post without this overused comment. (then people read this and post it again like a 12 year old cause it "bothers" them)

No u, noob git gud.
Taking your comment into my Elder Ring Cringe Montage

[EmoRevenger]

You can respec at the reborn boss lady.

[anotherland]

Originally posted by EmoRevenger:

Originally posted by xsirbelmont:

can't have a post without this overused comment. (then people read this and post it again like a 12 year old cause it "bothers" them)

No u, noob git gud.
Taking your comment into my Elder Ring Cringe Montage

thank you for proving me right typing it again. so predictable.

[frowningmirror]

28 really isn't even that much endurance. My end game build has 25 for the equip load. oh well, time for a new game or respec at 2nd main boss.

On the subject of them out racing your stamina...I'm thinking you have a shield with low guard boost? Barricade + high stamina shield should allow you to handle it....could it be that you hold the shield button too long, preventing you from recovering stamina? idk even *I* break my opponents guard. Somethings sus

[Quadsword]

Originally posted by Jones:

There is a cheese for it, go to the rock on the far left, there is a tiny ledge that you can crouch on, 90% of them will try to attack you from above then just roll to their deaths

That ledge seems to completely break the AI's pathfinding. They'll just mash their faces against the fog wall for several seconds before realizing they can't get to you that way and then most likely yeet themselves off the cliff.

[Donoghu]

If you want to win against the Great Jar 3 challenges, one possibility is to play offline. That ensure the 3 NPCs summoned are always the same and not random players' which might have OP builds and stats.

With that said, they WILL be strong as heck either way.
- One of the left is a Medium armored Knight which cast floating swords sorcery spells.
- The one in the middle is your usual light assassin with a buckler that you must NEVER attack while it got its shield up since it will riposte and 1-shot you.
- The one one the right is an heavy armored knight with a Heavy Mace as a weapon. Obviously, it will mostly 1-shot you with its mace, but it's a slow weapon.

In case you wonder why those NPC are so strong, the reason is that their level are automatically set to a certain value depending on which game you're on. (First game is like around level 200. NG+ is around 250 and so on.)

If you want a good value in Endurance, 25 to 30 is just right to ensure you're never reaching the end of it even in the worse scenario. Your point on armor is not wrong, but also not true either. It's just that the amount of damage these NPC deal is so big that the damage reduction feels negligible. The game utterly fails at explaining its mechanisms.
The formula that seems to be the closest to the results online is the following:
Damage Dealt/Received = (Attack - Defense) * ((100 - Damage negation)/100)

This means that an physical attack of 600 against 132/26.5 in Physical DEF/DN would result as (600 - 132) * ((100 - 26.5)/100) or 468 * 0.735 = 343.98. This exclude the damage bonus if the head is hit.

Damage negation is calculated as the average of the type of damage and the type of attack. That VS Strike/Slash/Pierce works for both physical and magical attacks. Pure magical attack uses 100% its element negation value while a mixed element + physical such as a weapon uses both VS and regular negation.

So having low DEF, but high VS Slash would only be worth half of it against Slash and having high DEF, but low VS of a type would result in the same bad result.

If an attack is both Magical and Pierce (like an magic arrow), the damage negation will be divided between the Magic Damage negation and the Pierce Damage negation. This makes spells somewhat hard to gasp as they lack texts to explain their type if there are any.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Donoghu:

If you want to win against the Great Jar 3 challenges, one possibility is to play offline. That ensure the 3 NPCs summoned are always the same and not random players' which might have OP builds and stats.

With that said, they WILL be strong as heck either way.
- One of the left is a Medium armored Knight which cast floating swords sorcery spells.
- The one in the middle is your usual light assassin with a buckler that you must NEVER attack while it got its shield up since it will riposte and 1-shot you.
- The one one the right is an heavy armored knight with a Heavy Mace as a weapon. Obviously, it will mostly 1-shot you with its mace, but it's a slow weapon.

In case you wonder why those NPC are so strong, the reason is that their level are automatically set to a certain value depending on which game you're on. (First game is like around level 200. NG+ is around 250 and so on.)

If you want a good value in Endurance, 25 to 30 is just right to ensure you're never reaching the end of it even in the worse scenario. Your point on armor is not wrong, but also not true either. It's just that the amount of damage these NPC deal is so big that the damage reduction feels negligible. The game utterly fails at explaining its mechanisms.
The formula that seems to be the closest to the results online is the following:
Damage Dealt/Received = (Attack - Defense) * ((100 - Damage negation)/100)

This means that an physical attack of 600 against 132/26.5 in Physical DEF/DN would result as (600 - 132) * ((100 - 26.5)/100) or 468 * 0.735 = 343.98. This exclude the damage bonus if the head is hit.

Damage negation is calculated as the average of the type of damage and the type of attack. That VS Strike/Slash/Pierce works for both physical and magical attacks. Pure magical attack uses 100% its element negation value while a mixed element + physical such as a weapon uses both VS and regular negation.

So having low DEF, but high VS Slash would only be worth half of it against Slash and having high DEF, but low VS of a type would result in the same bad result.

If an attack is both Magical and Pierce (like an magic arrow), the damage negation will be divided between the Magic Damage negation and the Pierce Damage negation. This makes spells somewhat hard to gasp as they lack texts to explain their type if there are any.

This is a rock solid post.

Don't be like me, a stubborn idiot who kept throwing himself at the jar knights until I entered a lucky hot streak/murder zen state with a +12 club you had in your back pocket because my bigger weapons were too slow to cope with "What if, gigga bleed memes but they have infinity FP and more HP than any player will ever have"

Still meme misery with 50 Vigor (oh no, ONLY 1,700 instead of 1,900 at 60 vig) and enough equip load for the banished knight set with a side of bleed resist talisman when I removed my backup longbow sentry torch and flintstone's lunchbox from my weapon slots.

Also, even if you are not going to try and trick them off a cliff (another hot tip online you see a lot), that particular tree branch can be useful as cover for "oops they are gonna cast lightning bolt... wait no now it is swarm of flies... wait no now it is the rot dragon..." spam moments from the NPCs, but that probably won't apply to Stock Offline NPCs as much.

[imdavidfindley]

I don't cheese or exploit. I complain and demand they patch the game to my liking =p

... Anyways I will see about stacking defense to help make armor valuable, thanks for the math. I have a couple other ideas.

I'll just end this by suggesting better scaling armor efficacy with endurance, including bleed resist as so many people complain about that. Armor could be an alternative to just pure vigor dumping.

[Baron01]

I have realized very early in the game that trying to block series of attacks without A) greatshield or B) Barricade Shield ash of war is going to be very problematic. Brass shield has best guard boost out of medium shields and can be obtain at very first ruins you encounter. I switched to Manor Towershield at around entering Mountaintops of Giants since it was when patch 1.03.02 landed that nerfed Barricade Shield so I wanted to have better shield as a baseline.
Barricade Shield is still necessity to block attacks from heavy enemies and bosses. I have 45 or so Endurance and it still does not give you enough stamina to safely block some of heavy attacks from bosses and leave you with enough stamina left to counter them. This ash of war is also absolutely necessary for dealing with Revenants since their flurry attack will easily drain you out of stamina and break your poise without it even at 45 Endurance and behind fully upgraded Manor Towershield. Another important effect of Barricade Shield on top of eliminating stamina cost of blocking is its ability to make enemy weapon bounce off your block, which gives you great opening for guard counter. This is best way to deal with armored enemies with heavy weapons or those annoying hands enemies.