[autarch]

It's really not though. At least for me, I find that there's a balance between giving and receiving damage in the boss fights. While having higher vitality (more HP) lets you survive longer, unless you can also dish out a lot of damage the fights can become incredibly difficult.

Basically, the question is how many times you can hit the boss by taking advantage of their timing versus how many times you screw up trying to take advantage of their timing.

If you have more HP you can screw up a few more times but if you're not dealing much damage you end up having to avoid screw ups for a long time in some boss fights.

Then there are the fights like the Four Kings where you really want to be doing higher DPS or else things get really messy.

Personally, I found the easiest build for PvE to be a sorcery build focused on high DPS. With a high enough intelligence you can deal a lot of ranged damage, which makes avoiding being hit that much easier.

[roarroar]

A Fire Uchigatna+6 or +7 makes Four Kings easy if you have 20 estus flasks and plenty of vitality. Since this weapon doesn't scale with stats you barely have to alter your build to use it. I'm not saying it's the only viable build, nor the only fun one. I'm saying that the builds aren't exactly a work of genius, which is I suppose unavoidable when on your first run there are basically zero clues as to what's to come. For example, how are you supposed to know that Four Kings will need high DPS? A better way to do all this would be to foreshadow every boss in some way. For example, NG being a very cut-down version of the game with simplified, shorter areas and weaker bosses, with NG+ being the real deal deal. This is basically how everyone who really loves the game plays it anyway: bumble around through your first play-through, then on the second and third goes you can start making more conscious choices, since you have some idea of what's to come.

[zwdr]

Elemental Weapons are okay, but not really very viable. If you want a weapon without scaling, chaos is your best bet, if you're => 10 humanity. The way to play is break points though. Most stats fall off at 40, then 45, then 50 points. Meaning that You should at most invest 50 points into one stat. So pump up VIT/END to 40/45 and then your primary attributes. For a generic melee characters a mix of STR/DEX works really well, since a lot of weapons scale with both stats.

Just in case someone was wondering about builds...

[vacri]

This is basically how everyone who really loves the game plays it anyway

No, it's not - NG+ is much easier than NG, because you start decked with all your previous equipment. People who really love the game do NG runs staying at level 1.

I've put in lots of hours, and NG+ is dull because you already have anything and can go anywhere. The challenge is gone.

[axblount]

I too quit in NG+, but mostly because I was tired of pulling my hair out. I've heard lots of people say that NG+ is easier... until four kings.

[roarroar]

Do you bother trying to understand what was meant before replying? How, after reading my post, was your take away "everyone plays NG+" (something anyone who plays the game knows is false)? The point is that people replay the game knowing what is to come, with everything already foreshadowed, and consequently being able to make much more informed choices. Whether you happen to be on NG+ or not is completely independent of this statement, and wasn't intended to be implied, which is why I said "second third playthroughs" in that sentence not "NG+". It's like you read just one phrase out of my post and responded to it out of context to prove some kind of point.

[vacri]

Yeah, silly me, interpreting a direct follow-on sentence as referencing the sentence before it. I like how you call me lazy for this breakdown in communication; it apparently never occurring to you that perhaps there was actually a connection there, intentional or not. Did you bother to even consider that you had written ambiguously?

I mean seriously, your criticisms of the game are just generic whines because you've encountered a hard one. Finding a boss hard? Go do something else in the game, because there's plenty else to do. There's only a couple of points where the gameplay bottlenecks, and even then you have to try hard to get it to the point where there's 'only one boss/area to do'.

[roarroar]

>Did you bother to even consider that you had written ambiguously?

All speech is ambiguous. You're expected as an adult to try to understand other people. You failed to understand me, and looking back at my post it ought to be obvious that you didn't read it carefully at all. The connection with the preceding sentence (a given in any paragraph you dunderhead) does not amount to "everyone does NG+ on their second play through". Nowhere is this written or implied. It's simply pure lazy reading on your part, eager as you are to take issue with what I said. And if you're going to come back with me with this sort of bullshit, maybe you should have some kind of real issue with what you now realise I actually said. But no, we get...

>I mean seriously, your criticisms of the game are just generic whines because you've encountered a hard one.

I've played through both games 3 times each. I didn't find them overly hard. Dark Souls is harder, and some bits were tough. I like that. And alternating bosses is exactly how I dealt with the harder bosses. None of this conflicts with my criticisms at all. Do you have some kind of argument to make? Or are you just upset that in your rush to piss on my post you grossly misinterpreted it? The point stands: the first play through is largely about bumbling around wasting your time. It is disorganized. It lacks clues. Do you have an answer to this, the thing I actually said? It seems it's very hard for you to change your P.O.V. to a superior one, one that can actually be defended with an argument, rather than garbage attacks like accusing me of "whining" because the game is "too hard". In fact, I don't think it's all that hard at all! Which is why in this very thread I spoke about how easy it is to beat the game with vitality builds, which is what I did on my first play through. The only "whining" here is that you didn't read my post, were butthurt by my retort, and without responding with an argument - one that contradicts something I actually said.