• This forum is strictly intended to be used by members of the VS Battles wiki. Please only register if you have an autoconfirmed account there, as otherwise your registration will be rejected. If you have already registered once, do not do so again, and contact Antvasima if you encounter any problems.

    For instructions regarding the exact procedure to sign up to this forum, please click here.
  • We need Patreon donations for this forum to have all of its running costs financially secured.

    Community members who help us out will receive badges that give them several different benefits, including the removal of all advertisements in this forum, but donations from non-members are also extremely appreciated.

    Please click here for further information, or here to directly visit our Patreon donations page.
  • Please click here for information about a large petition to help children in need.

Dark Souls Speed Downgrade

7,356
2,063
I never thought I would ever make a thread like this, but after looking over lightning feats on a bunch of our profiles I noticed a ton of versus scale to lightning when they shouldn’t. I’ll start with Dark Souls because it is a game I know very well and it has the most obvious problem.

Pretty much every character is Massively Hypersonic+ for scaling to lightning spear and other similar miracles. However there is regular natural lightning in Dark Souls showcased in Dark Souls 2 and 3. In the Glass Mirror Knight’s boss fight and Gael’s boss fight both bosses use regular lightning from thunderstorms. This lightning comes from the sky to ground and in both cases is blue (or a bluish white). Meanwhile the Lightning spears and miracles all come from unrealistic sources, are yellow, and sometimes move in unnatural ways like Nameless Kings goes up from his spear down onto you like it did 2 90 degree turns.

Even if the miracle lightning didn’t have those problems it doesn’t matter anyways because the true lightning from the clouds literally travels thousands of feet in a single frame while the Ashen One or Bearer of the Curse don’t even move an inch. I’ve tried multiple times to compare the Ashen One to Gael’s lightning, but he doesn’t move at all during the entire strike of the lightning. The sky to ground lightning is also instant in comparison to the lightning miracles

The next best feats the Dark Souls characters have are Hypersonic+ but the calculations that have them that speed are years old and off site, so they preferably should be recalculated. The Ashen One being able to reflect arrows with the dlc Katana and Splitleaf Greatsword should be calculated. Also I think the lightning spears speed should calculated from the intro in Dark Souls 1.

Glass Knight fight for reference: Lightning is at 0:53 seconds - clearer example at 2:00 minute mark.

Gael’s boss fight for reference: Lightning all over the place in the last phase of the fight.
 
Last edited:
Ehhh I can see your point but I can see some detracting factors. Firstly, that those instances of lightning descend from Gwyn's lightning. Doubly so in the case of Nameless King, Gwyn's son. Generally speaking, on this site that is considered enough (one lightning = another showing of lightning if it comes from equal sources). Gael's is even manually summoned by Gael- by no means should Gwyn's lightning attacks be inferior in speed, one feels. I don't know enough to comment on DS2.

With that said, I do agree that it can be sorta whack when considering on-screen speed of certain lightning sources compared to others.

Count me as neutral, leaning towards rejecting the thread but not totally unconvinced of your argument.
 
The Nameless King’s Lightning shoots up from his spear before coming back down. It isn’t the most realistic, so his Lightning coming from Gwyn doesn’t mean much.

While Gael does summon the lightning both him and the Ashen One don’t even move an inch in comparison to it. Gael summoning it does give him Massively Hypersonic+ attack speeds, but there isn’t an inherent reason for him to scale.

There is no reason Gwyn’s lightning should scale to Gael’s. His lightning works completely differently.
 
The Nameless King’s Lightning shoots up from his spear before coming back down. It isn’t the most realistic, so his Lightning coming from Gwyn doesn’t mean much.

While Gael does summon the lightning both him and the Ashen One don’t even move an inch in comparison to it. Gael summoning it does give him Massively Hypersonic+ attack speeds, but there isn’t an inherent reason for him to scale.

There is no reason Gwyn’s lightning should scale to Gael’s. His lightning works completely differently.
I would argue it means quite a bit, but aight.

There is, given that Gwyn is the origin of lightning-related spells. I understand what you're getting at, it isn't inherently wrong, but I'm no more convinced of your side of the argument than the opposite.
 
Gwyn created Lightning spells like mircales. That doesn’t mean every thing of lightning has to scale to him, especially when his lightning spells can’t even move an inch in comparison to Gael’s lightning.

Gael’s just comes straight from storms, it doesn’t behave like any of the mircales throughout any of the other games (the Glass Knight doesn’t summon the lightning in his fight, he just uses regular lightning from a storm and has his sword act as a Lightning Rod). The mircales are universally are yellow, can be grabbed by people, and some times move in unnatural ways. Meanwhile Gael’s is blue and behaves like normal real lightning.
 
"Gael’s just comes straight from storms"

Gael's comes from him summoning. It's cloud to ground, sure, but it's not really different. It's implied this is via a miracle given that the only other Gael-related spell is a miracle (White Corona). The miracles are not universally yellow. Dunno where the hell that came from.
 
The lightning mircales are yellow as far as I remember (that’s what I meant, the lightning mircales, not all mircales in general, force is obviously white). I don’t remember a single one ever not being yellow (or at least yellowish red when it comes to sunlight spears).

Though I think maybe this thread probably needs more opinions so I’ll go get some staff members that either have talked about dark souls before or are usually good with these types of feats to see what they think.
 
Last edited:
Entirely agree with Keeweed here. I don't think what we currently use for MHS Dark Souls counts for realistic lightning and the juxtaposition of that speed vs. actual cloud-to-ground lightning kind of just puts the nail in the coffin with this argument.
 
Just looked through the list of folks Keeweed asked to look here, noticed it only contained a single Dark Souls supporter in the form of Wok.

So I guess I'll go summon the relevant folks here.
 
I have summoned Ovens, Grath, Apies, Therefir, and Poiesis.
 
I’ve seen those staff members (the ones I got) defend dark souls plenty of times in the past (other than Dargoo, but I know he talks about lightning feats quite a bit) and I felt just going to the verse supporters list was be a bit too biased. Though I can see how not going through that list could also be seen as bias in another way, I tried to chose people that have defended Dark Souls’ speed before (I know for a fact Weekly defended it on one of the last speed downgrade attempts).
 
Last edited:
I'd also like to note that I am planning on revising our lightning standards to help define what counts as "unrealistic lightning" and remove the clause that states realistic electricity + similar AP as lightning means similar speed. Food for thought but not relevant to the thread.
 
I've been asked to comment on this thread by Bambu.

Just out of curiosity, @Dargoo_Faust , when would this revision arrive? I'm aware that you mentioned it's not necessarily relevant to the thread, but if it affects how lightning feats are treated then this thread might go out-of-date regardless of what conclusion is reached.
 
I'll agree with Keeweed on this. Most lightning miracles (that I can remember off the top of my head) just look someone summoning plasma/electricity and then over hand throwing it. That's a bit of a far cry from cloud to ground lightning.
 
So should we start discussing what speed they’ll be downgraded to, if they do get downgraded, or should we wait for more opinions?
 
So should we start discussing what speed they’ll be downgraded to, if they do get downgraded, or should we wait for more opinions?
I think there's enough here, I dunno if we need a discussion given that we have the next best feat already set up. That is, unless someone has a potentially better feat to suggest that's (currently) uncontested.
 
Well, arrow dodging is the next best feat, right?
I think there is some hypersonic feats, but the calcs that put the feats that high are very old. I need to check something out but I believe the great bow arrows made Mach cones in Dark Souls 1 (though I maybe misremembering that badly).

I can’t remember if you can reflect the ghost archers on the dlc bridge (the ring city dlc). If you can reflect their arrows with the spilt leaf greastsword that could be a decent feat. Also we should get the lightning spears from the intro of Dark Souls 1 calculated since that could get subsonic to supersonic results.
 
Can someone explain to me how to post pictures. I want to confirm if the great bow arrows wind cone effect would count as a Mach cone or not. In the mean time I’ll find the old speed feats.

Funnily if this feat still is usable the arrows making a Mach cone would be very consistent:

edit: I remember dark souls used to be hypersonic+ for one feat, but supersonic is looking very consistent:


Edit 2: Found all the old speed feats, I have no clue why they used to be hypersonic (way before they became massively hypersonic) because every feat was subsonic+ to supersonic. Well at least supersonic is very consistent.
 
Last edited:
I think there is some hypersonic feats, but the calcs that put the feats that high are very old. I need to check something out but I believe the great bow arrows made Mach cones in Dark Souls 1 (though I maybe misremembering that badly).

I can't remember if you can reflect the ghost archers on the dlc bridge (the ring city dlc). If you can reflect their arrows with the spilt leaf greastsword that could be a decent feat. Also we should get the lightning spears from the intro of Dark Souls 1 calculated since that could get subsonic to supersonic results.
I actually just saw a youtube video someone made about all the weapons/items/spells that can reflect projectiles but I can't remember the channel name right now.
 
I remember the video. It says what can reflect projectiles. It doesn’t mention the ghost at all, but I’ll try to find video of the feat.
 
Random interjection. But since when was the Nameless King's lightning not sky to ground?

Is there any visual proof that the lightning comes from the spear itself? I know Electricity surrounds it when the move is used, but I don't recall the bolt originating from the blade, and I know for a fact that the player version of the move does not have the lightning originate from the blade.

Also weren't these points brought up in the last revision and rejected for reasons?
 


5:20 you can see the lightning come from his spear.

The Lightning from the player can be used when it isn’t cloudy out and indoors. Their lightning is also vastly slower than Gael’s and his shown to come from clouds.
 
Last edited:
I don’t know, but should this one be closed? I’m pretty sure we have enough support to have the downgrade go through, and we have a speed to place them at. They’ll be supersonic scaling to great bows and arrow traps.

Granted the calcs that place them at that level are old, but the great arrows make Mach cones in Dark Souls 1 and the calcs probably aren’t as outdated as I thought.
 
Last edited:
Remind me again, why can't Ashen scale to Gael's lightning?
 
Sorry, but is there a clearer video for Nameless King lightning bolt? I see a flash of electricity, but it's not clear if it's actually a stream of lightning going up and down
 
Oh wait, I checked some of the boss vs boss videos and it does appear to originate from the spear (albeit it's still not clear).

Though on a sidenote, should characters like Ornstein or the Nameless King get a sidenote detailing the fact they can almost blitz the player with their faatest attacks, or us that not needed.
 
Remind me again, why can't Ashen scale to Gael's lightning?
Because it moves thousands of feet in the time it takes the Ashen One to move a few cm at best.

Edit: (I originally said the Ashen One moves a few inches in comparison but after rechecking the feat the Ashen arguably doesn’t move any distance during the lightning strike, but I think it maybe appears that way because the Ashen One moves a very tiny distance in a single frame while the Lightning travels all the way from the clouds to the ground in one frame)
 
Last edited:
I think this thread has enough support to go through but I’m waiting for some more confirmation.
 
Back
Top