Fighting for the Bell Convenent is pretty fun, for each victory you're given a Titanite Chunk, and most of the times I dont even have to wait for an invasion, as soon as I'm out of one, I'm straight back into another one. Its definitely the easiest way to get PVP since all you need is the ring.

Thank god poise is only broken, glad to hear its a glitch and not something they actually thought would fit into PVP.

I love the Mace so far its criticals are so brutal and the moveset is pretty sweet, so many people are falling for the new pyromancy animations, I've had people roll into me when I cast Firestorm because they think I'm about to throw a Fireball at them.

@Knight
The lack of reusable invasion items is a big problem. There should at least be a non-cracked red eye orb.

Invaders shouldn't be allowed to use estus/life gems since they can use the environment to buy time for healing miracles/pyromancies while also having free reign of choosing when and how to attack (unless the host is near the end of the area). However, duelers should have full access to healing items (In fact, I thought they did already).

Poise seems to be broken at least in pvp. Someone mentioned that their 80+ poise build was instantly stunlocked by a dagger.

@bunnywink
A Soul vessel when used with the retired firekeepers lets you redistribute your points but you can't delevel. I've heard using one without the firekeepers resets you to your base stats. If so, you could collect a large amount of souls through co-op or pvp, use the vessel to return to base, and then use your amassed souls to get to the level you want.

I haven't had any troubles with hit detection. Occasionally I have a problem with input lag but not too often (I did start as the Explorer which has 12 ADP at start and then leveled it to 20 though).

Effigies are not a problem. Don't use them until you actually need them (like right outside a boss fight for summon help) and you shouldn't run out. I currently have like 20 sitting in my inventory.

For pvp purposes, it would probably be best to use a single effigy then always have a Ring of Life Protection equipped. It does the same thing as Rings of Sacrifice in DkS but you can repair them for 3k souls at the blacksmith after they break so you never lose your humanity (or souls for that matter). You lose a ring slot but I'd say never having to worry about losing your humanity is worth it.

The bigger problem from what I've heard with pvp is the difficulty of obtaining cracked red eye orbs. There are no merchants with an infinite amount and the only way of reliably and sustainably obtaining them is being in BoB and winning duels with other BoB members.

The limited respawns is ****ing annoying. It's not much of a problem for gathering souls since leveling and upgrading equipment is fairly cheap. I haven't done been doing any co-op and I've easily become over-leveled. However, it is a problem for rare drops. I wanted a bow dropped by a specific enemy but after 15 runs of killing the only four enemies of that type and they still wouldn't drop the bow.

@jerrmy
Yeah. It looks like soul memory will also become a problem for sustained pvp but I'm still not sure just how much it affects. Does it affect co-op and red soapstone/dragon summons? Or is it just true invasions (the eye orbs)? Is it a preference system that just makes it more likely to connect to people within your memory range? Or is it a hard lockout like the level restrictions?

I know about the shrine, but it's more inconvenient than the rings. You can get two rings of life protection (and one of soul protection) which means you can go 2-3 lives before needing to revisit the blacksmith whereas the shrine requires you to return every time you lose humanity.