Don't forget about guard break either. In Dark Souls there was only backstab and parry - riposte as critical attacks. In Dark Souls II you can backstab, you can parry your opponent (which sits him down on his ass and you can riposte then) AND you can overpower his guard (with either the new attack that replaced kick or by just hitting him with a heavy weapon and having more stamina, both while Any info would be nice; citation would be appreciated. "Its hard to calculate the exact formula of a critical attack because the damage calculation formula is currently unknown. Ripostes do more damage than backstabs. (Need testing, King's Greatsword deals more damage with backstab (insta-kill) than riposte (~~80% of life). Bleed actually works properly in dark souls one. You can proc it in several hits and it does a nice chunk of damage when procced. Also if you're not set on daggers, the gold tracer is another fantastic bleed weapon. It can actually build up through shields very well too so it makes turtles easy to deal with. . Second, the bandit's knife has the highest critical rating which IS recorded in the game. Rapier has a critical of 110 whereas the bandits knife has one of 147. Base damage for rapier is 73 and for bandit knife its 56. At +15 the rapier will win but only because of the higher base damage. Thank you for replying. I'm still concerned about the parrying because I've been trying to do it on the first enemies who had swords and i couldn't parry with the first game shield even once even when parried right in front of being hit. So, total noob question, but how the hell do I beat the Winged Knight, the first one you encounter? I'm playing as the Herald with a Halberd, and I can't seem to land an attack without getting hit, if I dodge all his hits, I'll hit him, but it'll be to slow, and then he'll fucking destroy me. Keep in mind that what they see is usually your past of about 0.3-0.8seconds ago, so to avoid backstabs you must move so that they will never be able to reach your back within 0.3-0.8 seconds or you must hit them less than 0.3-0.8 seconds befor ethey land their backstab. The real Sulyvahn’s fast slash is the one to parry. Stay close, move left and turn right when the clone harmlessly goes through you while it slashes. Hit the parry button immediately after turning right, before even seeing real Sulyvahn move. Max. difficulty level 5/5 and example 03:34.

how to backstab in dark souls