The Duelist Setup

[boomkick]

Reason I use Royalty is because you start at soul level 1. Here is the general information of what I use.

Soul Level: 108

Stats:

Vitality- 22
Intelligence- 19
Endurance- 19
Strength- 22
Dexterity- 18
Magic- 62
Faith- 18
Luck- 8


Head: Assassin's Mask / Monk's Head Wrappings
Body: Rogue's Clothes
Arms: Silver Bracelet
Legs: Leather Boots

Left Hand 1: Dark Silver Shield / Morion Blade
Left Hand 2: Talisman of Beasts
Right Hand 1: Moon Crescent Axe +5 / Moon Claymore +5 / Dragon Bone Smasher +5 / Phosphorescent Pole +5 /
Right Hand 2: All of the above and Kris Blade +5 / Talisman of Beasts (when in hyper mode).

Item Slots (in order): Full Moon Grass / New Moon Grass / Old Spice

Arrows: None

Rings: Clever Rat's Ring / Eternal Warrior's Ring / Ring of Magical Sharpness

Magic Slots: Soul Ray, Fireball
Miracle Slots: Second Chance

Example of the damage I can dish out:

Soul Ray
Boosted without Hypermode (Monk's Head, Ring, and Kris Blade +5) = 470 damage.
Boosted with Hypermode (Monk's Head, Ring, Clever Rat's Ring, Morion Blade) = 1200+ damage

Fireball
Boosted without Hypermode (Monk's Head, Ring, and Kris Blade +5) = 560 damage.
Boosted with Hypermode (Monk's Head, Ring, Clever Rat's Ring, Morion Blade) = 1400-1800 damage

My weapon attack power ranged from 333 to almost 500 (no regalias or -brandts)

[Shimizoki]

Hypermode royalty is VERY deadly, they already will die in 1 hit so there is no point in not going hypermode. I have seen God's Wrath do over 1700 damage and as boom made mention too, soul arrow doing at least 1000. If you go up against this build your only chance of survival is good dodging combined with anti-magic field.

[random]

lol, i just use royal because it starts with luck 7 and one of my favorite weapons... rapier

saying royal is better for magic is wrong. it will have just the same damage as any other class with same params

my final build is will18/mag16/faith(as much as possible)/end40/vit40/str22/dex16 based

my most common setup (i vary a lot just for my fun, but i only equip smaller weapons, claymore is exception as it requires a lot from user (and lol, i still suck at it) often using even Needle or dagger as my secondary)
L1: Dark Silver Shield
L2: Talisman of beasts (soul arrow, poison cloud+firespray or fireball in some levels, revival and self forbiden gods wrath only allowed when player spams firestorms)
R1: Blessed knights sword+5 (varying to dragon+5, moon kilij+5, falcions, scimitars, long swords, short swords
R2: any rapier (god i love rapiers, there's just something so elegant about them) or small weapon like dagger

I love packing low power weapons. everyone can win with extreme (yes, i packed sharp uchi+5 and dex 99, but truthfully... it was boring, yes, i've done massive magic damage with other setup, but again... even more boring)... not classy, more like brutish (barbarian would fit this pattern more)... low power simply requires elegance, efficiency, concentration (and a lot of losses while learning)... somehow this play style just goes with royalty

if anyone would follow my setup beware of this... my faith based setup as mine suffers on few fronts
- lava bow is best bow they can use, as desperate as this sounds, raising dex to 24 for white bow is too expensive as I PvP a lot
- you don't do massive amounts of damage so you have to use everything to string long attacks and switch from shielding to dual handing, weapon switching during combo, etc
- you have to know opponent as soon as you look at him, you have to have play style for each opponent and even then up few more tricks up your sleeve
- you will die a lot in PvP (at least while learning) unless you already have few playtroughs and PvPed a lot

why this low power setup? for one, every n00b can pack power and have his lucky shot... but no n00b can win underpowered... in ds this is no matter for frustration as you die a lot... you rape some and you get raped by some... simple as that... and one of the biggest charms of demons souls is knowing every opponent place, behaviour and their patterns. after 19th playtrough i simply made that aspect wider... i know where black phantom is and based on his setup i also know his patterns... i simply added few constant variable enemies to my games... this just requires knowing every glow, every shield, every weapon nothing else

well... classy just goes with royalty so good

[boomkick]

Spending a lot of time in this game really makes all of those little details and predictions second-hand thoughts, meaning that you dont evenhave to analyze and you already know what they are going to do (spells are hard to predict, especially when they are packing a Talisman of Beasts, but you can somewhat tell if they are wearing the Old Monk's Robe).

Big weapons take skill, they are hard to use because of their speed. The thing is though, some of the attacks from bigger weapons are really fast for their size (Dragon Bone Smasher and its two-handed running R1, Meat Cleaver and it's two-handed roll R1, Claymore and it's regular R1).

I always like to have strong weapons at my disposal, and with this build, my attack power is usually in the 400s or more for each weapon. I have weaker weapons, such as daggers and swords, just for fun of course. But most of the time I use the stronger weapons because the other side is playing serious (and its a morale kind of game, the more damage you do the more likely he will make a mistake and NOT attack you, meaning he will play defense).

Check out the PvP wiki on the atlus demon's souls wiki. I wrote (at least 95%-99% of it). It shows some information and common facts. Of course... I not going to put the really veteran tricks on there, newbies need to find out for themselves, usually the hard way.

[random]

"You, the Black Phantom, must look as intimidating as possible. Your only ally (if all your hordes of demons are corpses already) is your influence on the player. If you can wear armor, hold a fat shield on your back, and hold a big weapon in two hands and run at full speed at a guy, that person is going to get pretty scared. Being scared makes their actions more predictable or they just wont attack, so that makes your life easier."

well, that is stupid... only works on n00bs that started yesterday. doing that running will consume a lot of stamina.

lol, next paragraph is complete clash with first

"Invading is usually only for those people who are good at being fast and "ninja-like." You usually don't see Veteran Black Phantoms packing the Biorr set and moving/rolling like they're fat. "

lol on this

"Shields: It is your choice if you want to use a shield or not, but coming from me it is not advised. Most people will not stagger from attacking your shield and blocking requires your precious stamina, especially if they are packing a stamina draining weapon (Large Swords, Extra Large Swords). Extra Large Swords make blocking useless because when they hit the shield they make the blocker stagger a bit. Riposte is also a bit hard because of the inevitable lag between two or more players. Shields are, of course, useful against smaller, less stamina draining weapons. Still, it is not advisable to use a shield other than for it's special effects (Adjudicator's Shield's HP Regen)."

you probably just described the play style you're good at (lol, don't missunderstand me, not even nearly i'm not saying you suck, you probably don't, completely otherwise i'm sure). but... try using shield as it should be, then go on with advices about it. shield should be mostly down, with short blocking bursts on hits. shield is only bad when user blocks continuously. second shield advice is... know when not... as soon as you see packing blind, moonlight, DBS... go dual handed. spams should be performed 1 or 2 handed based on what you need (if switching between dual and single handed is not natural reaction, then you are just starting). next advice... know your shield and its exact characteristics... packing bad *** shield like purple flame just makes you stupid (you die in matter of seconds PFS has 100/30/90 cap, compare to DPFS+5 100/70/90) and you won't survive, if you want purple shield in PvP use Dark Purple Shield+5. while hitres means something against enemies, hitres of 50 is way more than enough for PvP. 65 is overkill. if you don't know weapons and shields by heart, shields are just as you described, but if one does... completely different story... and lol on regen... even when i'm in my regen setup, it is completely useless in PvP and i have regen ring, blessed+5 and adjudicator+5 on my back... around 25hp/sec and if you add slow recovery +6hp/sec... but comparing to damage you receive in this game... useless, you last one second longer, but only if you are lucky

magic section... one spell that any meele/magic can really use and it is left out... Ignite... perfect finish blow when you stay out of stamina after spam or when ranged magic user is directly confornted by melee... you are there and in range, does damage around fireball*3... meanwhile if opponent survived, stamina is back for one or two more hits following... or firespray... ideal stamina regeneration time spell... it usually forces opponent into dodging while your stamina is regenerating. if he tries to heal, he is cancelled as it is cast per second

otherwise tips are pretty good, except i would add one or two
- sprint when usefull, many times when opponent backs away he is out of stamina and sprint will get you in spam position giving opponent way less time to react (if he backed away to heal... he won't), especially useful against mages that try to spam firestorm, firestorm is canceled when player loses contact of his fingers with the ground, much more chance of surviving firestorm untouched than backing away as firestorm starts and continues around the opponent, middle has almost 0 bursts, even firestorm description says "uncontrollable" and firestorm only covers ground by randomly placed bursts, gods wrath is also canceled. if one spams light rays or fireballs, don't bother... just run around him locked on and keeping distance but don't change direction... sooner or later he will stay out of mp and that is the time to attack (like scirvir)

- DO NOT PANIC! if you are losing blood, poisoned and have plague.. panic will kill you sooner. almost always there is still time to turn table with well done attack

[boomkick]

I like your opinions. If you get a chance you can post it up on the wiki with your opinions, otherwise i will do it myself and give you credit for the application.

About that first comment, its just an example, not something you would want to do of course.

I have used a shield before, and it does do well if you have tons of stamina to work on. But id rather save my stamina because id rather roll then block.

[random]

nah, just post, no need for credits either... i'm no karma whore and i swap names more than porno stars swap their partners. since you understand what i was saying it is better to credit your self if anyone has questions sometimes.

endurance? yeah, it is suggested for shield users to be endurance whores. end40 is very welcome for shield, but in the same time you also get longer combo leading to being way more deadly in spam session. more than 40 is non sense, at 40 stamina gets to its maximum and you just level up various resistances. example in 10 points of endurance you get 2 hits more with bbs or knight sword. which deals a lot of damage. try leveling your weapon with other stat as much as here

lol, example is misleading if it contradicts next sentence, especially if this is n00b guide, which i guess it is since you say you left pro tips out just my opinion.

and yes, you probably like rolling more as it takes way less to learn and less concentration, most people do. efficiency depends on player anyway. i've seen people without shield raping me, but then again so did i when i returned them the favor. as we both already said, there is no "end be all" in ds.

[carolmincy]

I'm Carol....49 years old....and from Vestal, New York!
Looking forward to reading the forums and getting to know some new friends

Looking forward to meeting you all, Carol from Get Payday Loans Online!