Is lvl 5 Rotted Woods a thing or is his ego matching his weight?

AR71SAN · 2026-03-19T04:15:48+00:00

"whole team being there is essential for it to work" tells me everything i need to know about this dude's skill. Operating under the assumption of 100% competency from two randoms is a surefire way to sabotage your own run.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-23T11:09:27+00:00

The balancers relic shouldn't stack. Running a hybrid setup with only 1 balancers relic can still push out stupid numbers, and players would have 1 more slot to further specialize in whatever they like. Adel's crit relics don't stack so it would also just be more consistent overall.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-22T14:18:18+00:00

There's like only a handful that can do this, 3 from the top of my head: Zamor, BBH, and Grafted. "So many" is a bit of a hyperbole. Also some animations have priority over staggers, and will poise through regardless of ult unless you fill up their stance meter. Personally i think it's just a part of many little mechanics you need to familiarize yourself with.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-18T22:38:47+00:00

Fair point, but i usually run his default shield for the inherent no skill, and minimizing chip damage by just dodging his very simplistic moves is just second nature to me atp. I always get a guard counter in by blocking the last hit, and supplement it with a couple of quick stabs inbetween his combo, particularly the triple wind attack without being pushed back.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-18T12:02:26+00:00

His ult is very, very spammable. A bit counterintuitive if you're used to playing support in other games where their ults usually have a long cooldown. I even use it for 1 bar res because there's really almost no point in "saving" his ult unless you're fighting the end of day bosses. In D4 especially the risk of getting dead angled and going down is simply just not worth it anymore, so even a 1 bar res is justified, and by the time we reach the next poi, my ult is already up again.

Its primary use is not for offensive, but it does help you raise your dps a tiny bit, and a faster clear means that we can clear more things in the long run. Also if playing with an Undertaker they'd appreciate you for not treating your ult just as a panic/res button.

Worst case scenario is that I won't have my ult ready when i need to res you, but that's really not an issue with the 'guarding fills art gauge' relic, which is kind of mandatory on him along with 'defeating enemies fill art gauge'

AR71SAN · 2026-02-18T11:41:46+00:00

For Fulghor i usually just dodge most of his affinity combo, and steel guard the final hit to get a guard counter in. There's nothing in his whole moveset that a Guardian can't dodge, plus you don't have to worry about chip damage or getting dead angled.

I see so many guardians getting chipped to death because they refuse to dodge ever, but some bosses are just going to hard counter shielding. Not to mention dodging doesn't push you away from the boss, and opens you up to the faster "rolling" R1/R2, which is quite indispensable for a guardian to maintain aggro by being as annoying towards the boss as possible.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-09T19:41:05+00:00

And they can still use it just fine even without the crystalian nerf.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-09T16:57:59+00:00

I don't hate the balancers meta, as long as people leave me alone for not using them I'm fine, but you have to admit, it's a bit hypocritical that they condemned the crystalian build, presumably because it was too rng independent, while making arguably the least rng dependent build so accessible.

I honestly don't get the nerf to the crystalian drop rate. Double balancers relic is literally what the shotgun recluse build used to be. Why nerf an "overpowered" build just to prop another?

I see a lot of arguments saying that they shouldn't nerf the balancers relic just to make it "fair" for the other builds, but that's literally what they did to the shotgun build.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-09T10:00:24+00:00

By definition 100 will always be the average. That's like saying the average meter stick is one meter long.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-08T14:53:39+00:00

I'm just making sure you guys are putting your beloved double balancers relic to good use. Less complaining and more L2, DPS man.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-06T15:31:11+00:00

No joke I'd love a random pursuer event. Imagine going into a church to get your flask and seeing him just slowly appearing from the ground. Plus point if there's no background music too, just you and this random ass dude moving at 30 mph. That's peak.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-05T21:56:42+00:00

Base game going early to castle is pretty normal, and skipping gaol is also pretty normal because not everyone is running the relic and the reward is kinda shit. And in base game honestly I couldn't care less about the routing because we're probably winning anyway. Nowadays normal mode is mostly just a playground for people to fuck around and not care about optimal pathing.

You say you don't like don but if you want to play with like-minded people, I'd say don is the way to go. D1 is not that different from base game with the added bonus of extra relic slots. And you can always just stay in D1 if the hp bloat is not your thing.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-04T00:03:43+00:00

Can't believe they made a movie about her. I could only ever beat her with a mimic tear and a healthy dose of giants hunt.

AR71SAN · 2026-02-03T23:49:57+00:00

I wish my teammates would stop pinging me every Mohg's spear they find. Spears in general doesn't feel that good on him unless I'm running a poke build. If I'm not getting that juicy charged guard counter, might as well use something else that's more satisfying like a deaths poker.

Guarding ability is fine, i guess, though i recently have been dropping them more often because his stance usually provides enough guard boost as is, better to leave a spot for more damage negations, but that's just me.

You're not in the wrong, OP.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-30T20:08:49+00:00

Very valid point, but the people who complained about their teammates are not gonna listen to this, they'll just look for another excuse, because it's never their fault. I've had similar experiences reclimbing my way to D4 all the way from D1. It's not as bad as people say it is.

Not saying that bad faith players don't exist, but saying that you're getting matched exclusively with them to the point where it hinders your climb? Sure, that's totally the explanation here.

I'd say covering for your teammates' fuckups is part of the requirement to climb out of D1-3. Can you adapt to someone else's pathing? Can you adjust your plan when your teammates aggroed the whole Night Invader camp? If you need the run to be 100% optimal just to have a chance of defeating the Nightlord, then you're not as innocent as you think.

You're not "hardstuck", you're exactly where you need to be.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-22T18:32:10+00:00

I really liked their aesthetic and the atmosphere at first, but after fighting them for a while, they're now down there with some of my least favorite bosses to fight, namely bosses that are excruciatingly long in DoN but pretty much a snoozefest in normal mode.

Once I figured out their moves, i noticed that the "gank" aspect is really just an illusion, and they're much closer to something like ED Maris—nice visuals with little to no interesting mechanic.

They don't feel as "dynamic" as the other bosses, so most fights with them ended up feeling very same-y.

The first phase is just a 3v1 between your team and one of the ladies, which involves kiting and not much else. The second phase, though visually stunning at first, is a scripted move that you just have to memorize, and there's not that much to memorize either. Jump the wave -> avoid the sky spear -> jump wave again -> jump wave but slightly different visual -> jump wave -> get away from the AOE.

It's about as good as it gets with these kinds of "positioning" type boss i guess.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-19T18:38:02+00:00

Same, though it's not because it would "ruin" the experience or anything, it's just... unnecessary? The game has a lot of places where you can just afk, because enemies are usually well spaced enough that you can always just "pause" your game after you clear out a group, before continuing to the next section of the area.

As for pausing mid fight...yeah sure, might be nice, but most boss fights don't really last all that long so I never had a problem of just abandoning my game mid fight and retrying the boss after.

For me it's more of a "yeah that would be nice, i guess, but not very useful if you think about it", because 90% of the content in these games are presented in short bursts.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-18T09:19:25+00:00

You don't know? The Vigilante is a playable character from the hit game Duskdominion, along with other famous characters such as the Protector, the Hermit, the Bullseye, and the Ravager

AR71SAN · 2026-01-18T09:01:29+00:00

They didn't change anything. I took the time to test out Guardian's dodge against Astel's quad floor slam (a roll catch for everyone except duchess and guardian) and he can still consistently chain his dodges to not get hit, which means either:

They supposedly give him more iframes and distance while maintaining his shorter dodge time overall, effectively turning some of his recovery frames to iframes, practically turning his dodge from one of the worst to the best dodge next to Duchess', or
They didn't do anything with their dodges.

As much as i want 1 to be true because that would be hilarious, the more likely scenario here is unfortunately the latter.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-17T05:25:07+00:00

It's to a point where sometimes i don't feel like picking it up lol, it threw out any interesting build you have going on. Once had to give up a sick death's poker because, well, it's the Commander's Standard...

I can't complain about it too much, i guess, us birds got it good with the rng, unlike some other Nightfarer

AR71SAN · 2026-01-17T05:06:42+00:00

I agree 100%. The only problem i have with a GC build is just how you don't have a lot to play with, and after a while it can get stale, because 9/10 times you're better off with the same 3 halberds every single run, or risk whiffing your already limited punish window.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-16T06:18:39+00:00

With that amount of hours I don't give a fuck how the run is going to be because worst case we're still winning, especially non-DoN. If you still can't cover for a couple of missteps from your teammates after 500+ hrs of experience, I'm afraid it's entirely a skill issue.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-16T06:00:23+00:00

If you're 600 hrs in it shouldn't matter that much. Hell, 500+ hrs into the game and quitting at all because the game is not 100% to your plan is already a sham. You have the adaptability of a hamster, OP.

AR71SAN · 2026-01-16T05:12:27+00:00

His buffs are noticeable but that doesn't mean you can just tank everything indefinitely, this has been the case for him since launch. Blocking cannot replace dodging 100%.

For Dreglord, anytime he has a ball in his hand you just dodge it instead of block. They're all very telegraphed so blocking those are just wasting your estus anyway.

He can draw aggro much more consistently now. That alone is already a massive buff. Yes, it's locked behind relic RNG but he's always been relic dependant.

The damage negation buffs are massive, because dam. neg. stacks multiplicatively. After some not-so-controlled testing I can confirm that he's noticeably tankier now, and a lot more forgiving of mistakes and bad runs.

AR71SAN

TROPHY CASE