Dark Souls PvP SL Soft Caps

Version 0.7

- Updated on 5/31/2013

- Needs proofreading

- Needs a little more info

 

There have been a lot of debates about why people play at SL 120, why it wouldn't be better to stay at SL 100, why not go all the way to 712 and so forth. There are a lot of opinions flying about which is better, but what we need are facts. So, here I'll explain why people began to PvP at SL 120, why some people do it at 100 and why most don't go all the way to max SL. First, know that this is based on research I've done and not my opinion.

 

A brief history for people who haven't played much Demon's Souls PvP: most of the meta you see in Dark Souls was pioneered by Demon's Souls veterans. In Demon's Souls there was a time called the "Golden Age" in PvP. Put simply, the Golden Age was about having the most OP build by reaching or even exceeding the soft cap (which was 50) on most stats. So, More often than not, people would go all the way to 99 in a scaling stat. This means that during the Golden Age, people didn't care about which SL to stop at for PvP. Some would be 200, some 300, some lower and some higher.

 

For example, during the Golden Age, a Strength build would have 50 Vitality, 40 Endurance (or more to fastroll with heavier armor), 50+ Strength, 30 Intelligence, some Magic and Faith. This build has everything it needs. However, it has too much and required too many souls to reach.

 

So, people decided that the community needs to have a uniform SL and this SL should be low enough to be easily reachable and the build itself needs to have everything. It needed to have everything in the sense that if you put it against a build of much higher SL, it wouldn't make much of a difference. This means, people were effectively minimizing all dependency on "artificial strengths" and focusing more on skills.

 

SL 120 said the people. 120 was perfect. You can have enough Vitality, Endurance, Intelligence, Magic, Faith and other scaling stats to be OP in PvP. But know that in Demon's Souls, many build would use "cracked" talismans and catalysts. Cracked means that you can casts spells without meeting the minimum requirements of the talisman. For example, I'd cast Cursed Weapon with only 6 Magic because this buff boosts weapon damage by 50% and doesn't scale with anything. Same with other buffs that "just work". The level up costs for SL 120 is 92115 souls which isn't hard to get if you go NG+. This means SL 120 was very accessible and had everything. When you compare a SL 120 build with a SL 200 for example, you'll notice that the SL 200 has little benefits over the 120. This means SL 120 is perfect for Black Phantoms who invade people of higher SL than them most of the time because they stand a fair chance of winning whatever the SL of their opponent is.

 

So, people don't go max SL simply because of the level up cost and because it won't offer much benefits over a SL 120 build. Even if there are glitches that can net you infinite souls, there's no real reason to level all the way up to max SL because the artificial strengths starts to suffer diminishing returns as from SL 120 and also, cheating is never a viable option.

 

Artificial strengths are the attributes and gear of your build. For example, you might not be able to 1shot the skeletons in the graveyard in Dark Souls right after the crow drops you in Firelink. But come back after you have upgraded your weapon and leveled up, you'll 1shot them. These things don't require skills, there's nothing skillful about leveling up and upgrading gear to have an easier time with skeletons.

 

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Now for Dark Souls. In Dark Souls, scaling starts to get ugly at 40 unlike 50 in Demon's Souls. Some people will use this as an argument to claim that since this is the case, SL 100 is a better cap for PvP. But remember, a PvP build isn't about scarcity, it's about having everything at the least possible cost. When playing, your artificial strengths need to be the least of your worries and you should focus more on your skills. This means you have to have the best stats possible while making the build as accessible as possible.

 

In Dark Souls, there's Armor. You can minmax for poise and defense. In Demon's, you didn't have to min max and you didn't have to wear heavy armor to have decent defense. Even if you decided to wear heavy armor, the armor was light enough for you to fast roll around because there was only 2 roll speeds in Demon's. This means that in Dark Souls, there's a good reason to go above 40 Endurance on most builds.

 

Also, in Dark Souls there's a lot of additional PvP opportunities. In DeS, you could either host or invade with the Black Eye Stone/Red Eye Stone. But in Dark Souls, there a lot of other ways: Forest Covenant, Darkwraiths, Dark Anor Londo, Darkmoon and Gravelording. This means you have a wide range of choices when trying to figure out which SL you want to stop at. Your decision will probably come from experience because you'll want to use the cap that works best for you. Let's now talk about when artificial strengths start to matter.

 

And in Dark Souls PvP, your mobility and ability to not get staggered by at least the smallest weapons is key to your success. This means that fastroll and at least 21 poise is a must on most builds. You can go midroll or even fat if you want which will give you more poise and possible more defense, but it's always better to dodge hits than to tank them. Then being fast means you're able to adopt both an offensive and defensive playstyle with the ability to punish and dodge most moves. Some builds go by without poise just fine but the only reason to go 0 poise is if you can't invest enough in endurance to wear poise armor.

 

Take a look at this build for example http://mmdks.com/2ely. It has everything. It's fast, powerful and cannot get staggered by small weapons. It also has a spare ring slot you can use to switch rings depending on the situation you're in. This is a properly minmaxed dexterity build. If you put it against max SL builds, with enough skills you'll have a fair chance of coming out victorious.

 

But this build has everything and thus, some people would say that this isn't the way to do PvP. If you reduce the SL for this build to 100, you'll have to forego a ring slot. Take a look http://mmdks.com/2em0. You probably think that a ring slot isn't really something to worry about. However, ring switching is a very good strategy in PvP. When fighting gank squads for example, you can switch to your Dark Wood Grain Ring to run away from them and strike at the right time. With the fast roll you'd get backstabbed a lot especially with lag in play. In FCs, if you are facing an opponent who is dealing a lot of damage to you, you can't run away. You can switch to the Red Tearstone Ring while low on health and have a chance at killing this person in 1 or 2 hits. These are some strategies involving ring switching. As you can see, if you didn't have the spare ring slot, you'd lose this strategy and would be crippled by your artificial strengths and you'd have a hard time in PvP not because you're bad but because your build doesn't have enough.

 

But most importantly, when you compare the SL 120 and the 100 versions, you don't see much of a difference. It requires approximately 1995851 souls to reach SL 100 and about 3504732 souls till 120. As you can see, the amount is kind of doubled. But souls become very accessible in NG+ and you can get at least 1.5 million just by clearing NG+ without any farming. And with online play, you'll get even more if you co-op or pvp. One of the most popular ways to get a massive amount of souls very quickly is by hosting in the forest. It doesn't take much to level up to SL 100 and it gets a little daunting to level up past that because the cost per SL is quite steep. However, once you reach 120 you'll never have to spend souls to level up again (in most cases) which is reassuring. After 125 it gets ridiculous with a whopping 100k soul requirement per SL.

 

The build uses Pyromancy which is something that doesn't require investment in any stats other than attunement. I did level up dexterity for fast casting but that's it. It also uses Dexterity weapons, which are light. This means that some builds would require more. Especially Strength builds that use heavy weaponry.

 

Take a look at this Strength build for example http://mmdks.com/2em5. It uses the Demon's Greataxe, one of the heaviest weapons in the game. As you can see, it will be impossible to get fast roll without both the Havel's and Ring of Favor and Protection. If we reduce this to SL 100, we'd have to forego some strength. This means it won't be possible to 1hand the Demon's Greataxe. This Greataxe has one of the best 1handed R2s. And you'll also lose the ability to switch to Havel's shield in cases where you can't dodge magic because of lag. So, in the end you're just making it hard on yourself by staying at SL 100.

 

The 2 builds I've shown won't fit the playstyle of many players as well. Some people would want to have at least 56 poise for example and more poise means more endurance or less defense. Some people use Faith and Intelligence too which require further investment.

 

There are many more cases like those but the only thing you need to ask yourself is why you should go beyond SL 100. The popular Giant Dad build for example has little reason to go beyond that. You could get some more dex and strength to have access to more weapons but that's about it, you can't get any more damage or strategies with this build. So, if you're making a themed build, only get what you need unless you are using it to play competitively.

 

But in the end, whether you want the benefits of a SL 120 over 100 is up to you. You might not need ring switching and all that stuff but my point is, SL 120 is when the artificial strengths start to fall flat.

 

Now look at this SL 366 build. http://mmdks.com/2jj5 His build has absolutely everything. It can use ever weapon, magic and can fastroll with about just any armor. This is the jack of all trades. It's got an advantage over lower SL builds because of it's versatility. However, that advantage isn't worth all the effort needed to reach SL 366. To reach SL 366 you'd have to play on that character for more than 100 hours and go NG+ or higher to get enough souls. But what about strength in combat? I say there isn't much of a difference. Take one of the SL 120 or 100 builds I showed and put it against this SL 366 and you have a fair chance of winning. This is because at lower SLs, even if you don't have access to everything, your build is heavily specialized. The SL 366 can use Strength and Dexterity weapons, at lower SL you can only use 1 of those but you already have the best scaling for the weapon at lower SL, your damage will be the same as the SL 366. Higher SL can use heavier armor and still fastroll as well as have a ton of health. But at lower SL, you already have good armor because you minmaxed but your health isn't that high. However, health is your time in combat, you don't need a lot of time if you can do decent damage. The amount of health you need is proportionate to your damage output. For example, builds using elemental weaponry would do best to get a ton of health because their damage is quite low.

 

That said, there's no point in being a jack of all trades.

 

But SL 100 is good in various cases. For example for Gravelords. Most people do NG+ and higher at SL 80+. By staying at 100, the gravelord would have wide range of worlds to infect. SL 100 is also good for Darkwraiths who like random invasions. SL 100 works in random invasions because in these invasions, you don't owe the host anything. You can heal, use mobs and other tricks to win the fight. Of course, you can do that at SL1 too if some places where the mobs are particularly powerful and host is impatient. However, many people (most?) PvP at 120, so, staying at 100 won't make much of a difference unless you really like to surprise people in the Lord areas. And in duels, you want your skills to be more important than your build.

 

However, on PC it seems like most people play at SL 100 and lower. I hosted in Oolacile Township on my SL 120 and I didn't get invaded by another SL 120 a single time. All of them dropped 30k souls or less when they died. That means most of them were SL 100 and less. And I tried using my Reb Eye Orb to invade and couldn't get a single person. PC doesn't have much people playing and the ones who are playing most likely play at SL 100 and lower. So, if you're a PC player, you might want to stay at SL 100 but only if you intend on invading. I only play on PC to participate in FCs and host sometimes in Kiln and Township, so, I don't do much Darkwraithing. If you intend on hosting, you can go higher but remember, don't get greedy and go past 120.

 

But even then, by being SL 120, gravelords looking for pvp will get a good amount of PvP if they start operating in PvP hotspots like Oolacile Township. Some gravelords operate solely for the purpose of cursing worlds instead of pvp, in that case a lower SL might be favorable. And random darkwraithing is best done at SL 60-80 for maximum "audience".

 

So, the reason why you go SL 120 is because you'll be able to have stats that are decent enough to match builds of higher SL than you and be of a SL low enough to get a decent amount of action.

 

Some people go even higher than 120 because they don't care about random invasions or when they are going to host instead of invading most of the time and of course, they're greedy. But being greedy is a common human trait, so, it's fair.

 

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People have had this misconception that lower is better. This is understandable because people chose SL 120 instead of going higher. Lower means that you have to sacrifice more to make the build work. But as we've seen, it was never about sacrifices, it was about making the build accessible and having everything you need so that in the end your loss or victory is due more to your skills than your build. After all, if you have a good SL 120 build and you lose easily to a max SL build, it means you need to prone your skills.