Thank you for watching our video! Remember to like the video and subscribe if you want to see more content like this, let us know in the comments what topics would you like us to cover in the future.
As always a huge thanks to my dear friend and co-author @PenPenPlon who voices this video and wrote the vast majority of the script for this video. Without you none of this would have been possible.
If you want to inform yourself further about Dark Souls 2 you should check out these useful links:
Full chart of iframes for rolls, backsteps and landing rolls: https://images-ext-1.discordapp.net/external/Tkk9yuOp3axLGnIqYglq83rSMaWko0psvp7PVycC_Xw/https/i.imgur.com/FUAFSX3h.jpg?format=webp&width=570&height=662
General DS2 Advice and Information: https://tinyurl.com/DS2Generalinfo
Dark Souls II Damage and Defense overview: https://tinyurl.com/Damage-overview
DS2 Best in Slot PvE Weapons: https://tinyurl.com/BestPveWeapons
Iframes visual helper and calculator, useful for calculating your AGL investment: https://tinyurl.com/AGL-CALCULATOR
Link to our previous video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZrIRmGvuDPU&ab_channel=Metalhead
Link to the Best Weapons video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PRL9_-6s8&t=0s&ab_channel=Metalhead
TIMESTAMPS:
0:00 – 1:01 – Intro
1:02 – 2:26 – Agility Explained
2:27 – 3:49 – Agility Breakdown and Breakpoints
3:50 – 4:59 – Agility Breakpoints Explained
5:00 – 6:03 – Calculating Agility
6:04 – 8:23 – Agility displayed is not always accurate
8:24 – 9:03 – Agility when playing as a caster
9:04 – 10:19 – Other functions of Agility
10:20 – 11:28 – Item Use Speed
11:50 – 14:12 – Pursuer Grab Attack and How Grabs Work
14:13 – 15:37 – Fat Rolling/Roll Distance
15:38 – 16:43 – Panic Rolling
If you have any questions you can message me or ping me in the Dark Souls Discord server at Metalhead user ID: 884891166179467325.
You can support me here: https://ko-fi.com/officialmetalhead
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39 Comments
Author of DebugManger (the "hitbox viewer" you were using in the video) here. Very comprehensive explanation of the mechanic. Also, I was not aware of Agility values being incorrectly displayed, that's completely new to me 👀
Guess there are still things the game's hiding from me, even at this point
Oh wow. I knew i knew nothing about Agility as a whole, but like, this was very clear and very VERY easy to understand. As soon as i get an opportunity, I'm giving DS2 another playthrough, but with proper knowledge of Agility. Gonna aim for 95 ASAP, since I've got so much time in DS1 and am far more used to its mechanics than any other Souls title. Thank you so much for your video, im super happy it popped up on my recommendations, and i will absolutely be sharing it wherever i have an opportunity.
Very well made video, but regarding the breakpoints you missed an important chart. Casters always aim towards specific ATN breakpoints that give a new spell slot (10, 13, 16, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60, 75, 80, 94), so for each of these desired breakpoints, there are defined AGL levels to reach the iframes breakpoints.
Lot of maths and analyzing and thinking which would be easier to summarize as "git gud"
Jking, the video is great, i only knew about the iframe breakpoints
Nice vid. Just one quibble. The total roll length in DS1 is different to DS2, so you can't really compare them. 0% weight rolling with the ninja flip ring makes 79% of your roll invulnerable, which is far more than DS2 gives even at 116 agility (which is about 64%). So even though it has fewer iframes, you're less likely to get clipped towards the end of rolls. At other weights the roll length in DS1 is much longer than DS2, so a similar number of frames is far less forgiving.
Quibble aside, good stuff!
This was pretty great and thorough. I think that the variable roll distance is a huge culprit for people feeling bad about DS2's hitboxes. IMO this was a bad design decision that I'm glad From dropped (alongside AGI determining i-frames). It makes it harder for people to learn how to roll since as you swap gear around, your roll's effectiveness changes even though it didn't change category. So DS2 ended up being famed for having particularly poor hitboxes when it's really just as janky as any other Souls Game
I think AGI as a stat had a lot of potential and would like to see it revisited with things such as scaling consumable damage as well as use speed, things of that nature, sort of a "craftiness" measure type thing
ok but wjy do you have such a cool voice.
like im not trying to glaze here but i love DS2 and know everything i about agility, i just stayed here because your voice was noce to listen to 🙂
Still doesn't change the fact that modding the game to have a max agility from level 1 makes the game INFINITELY more playable. Without said mod, it's easily the worst souls game.
Okay, but my OCD REFUSES to let me be one point away from 100 agl
I just want to know the stat numbers I need to make rolling normal 😭
Good video, but still a bad mechanic.
Took me a long time after beating the game to know that agility did "anything"
I legit thought it was a dump stat meant to trap players, so I intentionally avoided it outside any gains I would get from attunement. Felt silly and proud after learning about the I frames being tied to it lol.
When you say 11 i-frames, is it when the game runs at 30 fps or at 60 fps ?
What's the issue in rolling without enough stamina, Metalhead?
This was a really well put together video! Good job 🙂
I never had issues with iframes in ds2 but I’m also risky and dodge when things should physically hit and didn’t know about the hit boxes lol
damn it now I have to play DS2 again. thanks
I 've been playing these games since DS1 in 2012 fanatically, and i have to say that i ALWAYS found the hitboxes in DS2 the most consistent. It is by far the game that i have the highest amount of certainty of when i will or won't get hit, in both PvE and PvP.
I also never had a problen with the ADP/agility star. It is an RPG and i am not against a stat that allows you to improve your speed and dodging efficiency. The only thing i don't like is the fact that is not communicated properly. Iframes are the bread and butter of these games and it should be more clear on how many get and what you have to do to get more, if they are tied to a leveling stat.
yep blame the players for shit mechanics because fromsoft doesnt make any mistakes no sir not one time, im sorry but if u have to go into the source code to explain something that looks weird, its the developers fault not the players
Secret obfuscated stat tiers is sucih a terrible way to have stats in a game. I don't know why Japanese developers big and small love doing it so much.
Monster hunter just lists tiers, including iFrames from the evasion skill.
Its so much less of a headache
I'm coming from Elden ring and that sounds like a hell of a lot of stat points to invest for a roll. I can't imagine any magic caster being able to afford 90 points in that
DS2 has always been my favorite. Thank you for debunking so much crud, and helping people see what’s good.
Just one of the many, nearly countless issues with the game. Nothing makes any goddamn sense in this piece of shit of a game.
Thank you for debunking this, never had a problem with the rolling in ds2 from launch and yeah I did level adp a bit on my first playthrough
More backstep iframes is actually great if you pvp.
But yeah for just normal game play its only maybe useful if you want to really show off.
can't wait for more ds2 apologists to come out of the woodwork after they see this video
🖤I have a love-hate to DS2.
I hate this stat, but I'm glad i can understand and learn some things even better from this game.
Very interesting video, this changes the way i could experiment with the different classes🖤
I'm a simple man. I hear Secunda in the background, I hit subscribe
I still think the animation is a serious issue in that clip, but now it makes a lot more sense! Thanks for this. The game is pretty severely maligned which I always thought was unfair.
Great video. I used to also think AGL also sped up every animation related to throwing item and also interacting with objects (like opening doors, pulling levers, etc) but it seems to not be the case.
2:35
I miss this 2000's humor.
I never knew about Adaptability giving i-frames until last week. Only ever knew about item speed, but I’ve always made getting 30-35 ADP my early-game goal for all of my characters.
So why the rare 105 agility?
Nice video but I wish you would just speak normally:/
I had no idea this was a stat at all, so this was very informative.
dks2 is still my favorite of the trilogy. i always thought people's complaints about key features meant that they lacked critical information about how such features work. i can see now that even i in my hundreds of hours didn't know the full inner workings of agl.
i always took myself to 105 or 110 agl by the end of my build, as it really helped in pvp to have the extra frames. i also liked the clean multiple of 5.
but in pve, i always found my self circle strafing around attacks because i learned the blind spots for enemy hitboxes. you showing the active hitbox for pursuer makes this abundantly clear.
while i still agree that having a stat that you have to level in order to get a comparable i-frame data to the other fromsoft games was a poor decision, i do think they could've leaned into this sort of thing at the top end. like, what if they didn't make a stat whose main function is i-frames, but instead tacked it on for heavy investment. what if they had a souls game with the standard 11 frames, but with every 10 points of luck giving an extra i-frame (up to some hard cap). it would fit the theme of luck, as dodging an attack is considered lucky, as well as dodging attacks being a core to thief-type builds, who tend to want a decent luck stat for their status buildups.
Extra i-frames on backsteps are not useless for PvP.
In that pursuer example, i do see with the hitbox visualizer how the player did get hit, but I can't blame people for thinking its an unfair hotbox due to how they decided to play the animations. Ideally the moment the non-invincible player gets hit by the sword, their current animation would be interrupted by the grab animation to make it clear that's the moment they got hit.
I have to disagree with your saying that backstep i-frames don't matter, though this entirely depends on if your playing mainly PvE or PvP. In PvE it doesn't matter much because there isn't any latency (unless your in co-op) so every animation and attack should remain consistent so finding places where you can back step consistently isn't too bad. Whereas in PvP latency can really throw those timings off so any extra i-frames you can get can really make the difference. I personally would often make builds with 108 AGL just to meet a higher backstep i-frame breakpoint for that reason. Its also important to know that in DS2 backstep parrying someone who was R1 spamming was a fairly regular occurrence so being able to somewhat reliably backstep through an attack mattered quite a bit.