Board Thread:Dark Souls II/@comment-5264386-20131018105419/@comment-18016240-20131024010528

Volknur wrote:

Agility and Other Mechanics (24th October, 2013)
Peeve Peeverson has recently released a video of his experience with the DaSII network test, in which he focuses on stacking Agility to see what it does, as well as just testing out the game in general. Here's a quick overview of what he found: Interesting, though the Brothers of Blood thing sounds a little tacky, I'm glad hand to hand is becoming more viable, I was quite disappointed when I tried out the claws and found they were worthless in the first game.
 * Boosts action speed. We already knew this, however, this is important, because it appears that the rate at which Estus heals may be boosted depending on one's Agility. Also, because higher Agility means raising a shield faster, someone with high Agility can raise their shield after being hit by a slow weapon (e.g. a Zweihander) once in order to prevent a stun-lock.
 * Agility may increase the player's jump distance. For example, when Peeve had 35 Agility, his jump distance was massive in comparison to DaSI's jump distance. However, this is very speculative, since he only tried it once when going for a plunge attack.
 * The Guard Break attack takes the place of a kick attack, and if it hits anyone who is blocking, it will instantly break their guard. It's also a backhand slap.
 * The DaSII equivalent of the Darkwraiths are called the "Brothers of Blood".
 * Blue Sentinels cannot attack enemies in the host's world; they are only there to hunt down an invader.
 * Stun-lock attacks appeared to do around 20% less damage with each hit.
 * The player's position appears to be a factor in the amount of damage you do, since clipping someone with the tip of your weapon did significantly less damage than at point-blank range.
 * You no longer get staggered when hit with a headshot during an action, such as an emote or using an item. Peeve speculated that wearing a helmet may help to prevent post-headshot stagger, but he didn't know for sure.
 * Hand-to-hand is now much more viable. Peeve had about 8 Strength, yet one punch did about 43 damage to an opponent. He also speculates that hand-to-hand damage now scales with Strength.