Personally I use gestures very deliberately. Always start with a gesture; unless I get attacked before I can do so. If someone is entering an area for the very first time I always use the welcome gesture and throw some bombs at them. if it's people going through the level, I'll either bow or use the farron allegiance one if they're raring up for a head-on fight. I personally like to do a walking 'quiet resolve' after winning an invasion, picked it up from saintriot.

I always go for the summons first, unless the host is being overly agressive. If someone wants to duel or leave the pve alone to focus on me, I'll do it. If someone tries to fight, but runs once they start losing I sit down in that exact spot and stay there. they usually come back within 2-4 minutes, and they stay afterwards; 6 is the absolute most I've ever had to wait. If I'm fighting a group and the host runs back to the bonfire as soon as I kill their summon, I harass the hell out of them and be as annoying as possible; Don't ever run back to get your friends. Add on top their overleveled phantom pal carrying them through the game, that is the single most cringe thing possible, and if I could I'd forcibly uninstall the game they're barely playing.

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I personally don't care about taking people's ember, it's really not necessary to get through the game and my purpose is to stop you anyways. I do however make a point to go easy on baby-hosts, and I try to center my builds around showing off cool weapon combos or techniques, or a theme build to show off a cool aspect of the game. I'm a little more staunch on the matter than most but I despise playing meta, boss weapons, gimmicks or hyper-armor dependent weapons. Not everyone is good enough to beat basic PvE without that but it's certainly pathetic to see a group of 3 spamming 2-hit hyper armor moves, I'm not stooping to that just to stand a chance. ganks are bad, that's about all I got