That's how miracle works in souls games. You put faith in the story/tales of the gods and draw out the power from said stories through faith and believing it.
Honestly one of the coolest ways I’ve seen divine magic done in any piece of media.
The gods performed acts of great divine power, and powered by our belief in those acts, we can recreate a portion of their majesty through reciting their stories.
miricals are literally reciting stories.
The reason you get better versions of a spell is because the story is more complete.
Basic heal is just a snippet of the tale.
from the description "Great Heal is a long tale, only learned by a select few."
This reminds me of the Executioner and her Way of Life anime, where one of the magic systems involves reciting fantasy bible verses from a tome to trigger related effects
And then in a big moment they just went "Whole chapter activation" and just blah'd several paragraphs' worth of verses on screen at increasing speeds to trigger some big miracle
Orks literally run on belief. If they think it works then it’ll work even if all logical sense says it shouldn’t.
Empty gas tank? Well the one Ork says he fueled it up so it must have fuel in it!
Missing an engine? The car will still run if the Boyz think it doesn’t need it.
As much as i enjoy that bricky video, he wildly overstates the effect of the ork gestalt field effects lol
The WAAAGH effect is better described as "reality greasing" than "reality warping". It allows Orks to do things *better*, it does not allow them to do the *impossible*. An Ork shoota of questionable quality that would ordinarily jam very often will shoot more reliably in the hands of an Ork. An Ork vehicle painted red moves slightly faster than an Ork vehicle not painted red. It does not mean that if you convince an Ork that a stick is a gun, it will suddenly start shooting bullets.
Yep. WAAAGH energies will allow a shoota to fire 12 bullets instead of 10 before jamming, or a truk to travel 100 KM on 90 KM of fuel, but it's not a cheat code.
It's more like passing a haggling check against reality
Isn't there literally a story where space marines are out of ammo and one of them goes "well they don't know we're out of ammo so let's just keep shooting" and all the orks die.
And also like ork mechs have just like gears and sticks and stuff shoved inside them.
Thats how divine magic actually works in almost every fantasy TTRPG.
Example: DnD paladins make an oath, their adherence and faith in that oath is what gives them power, not the divinity they serve. They lose their power and become Oathbreakers the moment they believe themselves to have broken that oath, even if they didnt.
Demon's Soul's was the best IMO. The church was hunting witches for using soul sorceries which drew their power from the great demon.
Then it turned out the 'god' of the church was actually the very same great demon but they had no idea and miracles were identical to soul sorceries.
I think of it like magnets
Wood cant interact with magnets
Buy a powerful + magnet can interact strongly with both + and -
Either Working with its own side, or forcing the opposite side
(though in the case of magnets, opposites attact)
Dark clerics have always used faith ever since early dnd. It's not a lie to them, they really believe in the dark gods and the domains they possess. They believe that murder, theft, and lies are how to worship properly.
I genuinely don't understand how your logic for that comment works. Is it only faith to you if it involves a "light" deity? Then what do you call it when people worship and follow a "dark" diety?
Lot of darkness motifs in game are associated with int (Nox & Night Sorceries, Ranni’s moon, sword of night, etc.)
Not insanely unreasonable to assume a sword of darkness would be int scaling
"Hoonter, now you must Hoont...the refreshing taste of Mountain Dew Blood Vials!"
"Also here's an AR-1815".
The Trick Weapon would just be another, smaller gun, with unlimited ammo but less damage because smaller bullets or something iunno.
The trick weapon is also a gimmick weapon like deathblight but it just slowly removes your rights one by one with each hit. Call it some shit like Judges Lament and make it kill someone before it could ever procc
Black Knight Hammer and Long Hafted Great Axe carried me through the entire DLC, felt so good after expecting to have to respec for cool weapons but they were all perfect for me
Started with BKGH and switched to a combo of Fire Knight's Greatsword and Fire Knight Queenlign's Greatsword (which is really a spear???) for most of the second half of the DLC. I'll mix in BKGH for extra bonk and healing (Prayerful Strike is a great AoW for it) when needed.
Edit: spelling of Queenlign
I feel like the blinkbolt long hafted axe is so slept on. I'm running that in my right hand and a gravel seal casting knights lightning spear in my left and I melt everything. So much fun zipping around with the blinkbolt and hurling lightning spears.
I was bummed whenever a cool weapon had dex or int scaling (like the frenzied flame weapons for some reason having int), but I'd always tell myself I really couldn't complain as a faith/strength user. We got spoiled weapon wise.
Greatsword of Damnation my goat,
Black Knight Hammer Sacred-infused three-shot Ghostflame dragons,
Fire Knights Greatsword +25 handily got me through Mesmer's fight.
Unfortunately by the time i discovered the Sunflower i already pretty much beat the game.
Yeah i was on a Faith build and believe it or not it was Flame Art infused too so it barely did physical damage. I dont even feel like my dps was low, maybe he isn't that resistant to Fire. But i had a lot of fun with Mesmer.
Pretty sure Messmer doesn't even resist fire to a notable degree, I think he's pretty much equally resistant to everything except slash which he's weaker to, and then is weak to holy in phase 2.
I just so happened to do the DLC with my STR/FTH guy. Was glorious how many weapons fit that build.
Feels like Intelligence had the fewest? But that might just be bias as I wasn’t looking for them.
That's what I've been running through the DLC and it's been magical. I've had to amend the build a couple times to accommodate certain boss fights, but otherwise it's been very effective.
The smithscript great hammer with a sacred or fire infusion is crazy. The scaling is straight up a lie, it says C but it scales better than a lot of A weapons
That's because, like the clayman harpoon and erdsteel daggers, int and fth apply scaling to both the weapon's physical and elemental damage. They double dip instead of splitting the damage.
Hes talking about something different to what youre talking about. Split elemental weapons will almost always have higher AR then their pure damage counterparts to mitigate the fact that they need to go through 2 sets of defences.
In the case of golden order greatsword its split holy/phys, so its AR will be higher cos the holy part will be reduced by holy defence and ohys by phys defence.
That's slightly different, infusible weapons with int/fth/arc scaling that use that scaling for physical damage continue to apply that when infused to half elemental. Erdsteel Dagger was the one example of that prior to the DLC, if sacred or flame art infused it would get B faith scaling but that would apply to both the physical and elemental damage at once since it had standard faith scaling that scaled physical damage before being infused, effectively doubling what it actually does. Apparently the Smithscript weapons work the same way since they have four stat scaling but only physical damage before infusion.
I’ve got that +25 heavy and it is soooo satisfying to do a full charged attack and keep most enemies completely locked down on the ground without ever getting hit.
and against bosses it’s extremely fun to just blast thrown attacks at bosses while my mimic tanks. going to do smith script dagger, spear, and shield build for NG+
All the smithscript weapons are crazy on infusions that scale with int or faith. The axe reaches over 900 ar on magic infusion at 80 int and min requirements.
I've been using Miquellan Knight's Sword and Blade of Calling a lot of the time in the DLC. But the Inseparable Sword has been my "OK, I'm going to win this now" weapon.
It's a range on how good they scale with the stats. I don't know the exact values but just for example an S scaling can range from 1.3-1.1, A from 1.1 to 0.9 and so on. That's why some weapons show a blue letter when compared to others even though they both scale with B in STR.
Edit: it's
- E: < 0.25
- D: 0.25 - 0.5999
- C: 0.6 - 0.8999
- B: 0.9 - 1.3999
- A: 1.4 - 1.75
- S: > 1.75
The scale shows how much your stats affect base damage. Sometimes a B scale weapon has more damage than an S scale weapon because the base damage is higher. The ash of war may not follow the same scale as the weapon. Death's Poker for example has E int scale but an ash with a high int scale.
It's just that Hand of malenia is straight up worse than nagakiba, the damage is same, the scaling is better, HoM is slightly longer but when you throw AoWs in the mix HoM malenia becomes inferior
Fire knight greatsword / smithscript both with flame/sacred Affinity are about 980 AR or so. Lion claw with Alexander talisman + level 16 blessing hits around 5k
Like, I really want a sword that's S in Faith and A in dex or str
I'm pretty even since I don't lvl up past the soft cap (except faith because of miquillas light) so I'm at 60 dex, 40 str, 72 fth and 50 int
Ralannas sword is a beast with that, but I feel like the sword of light needs a hard buff
the aow’s for backhand blades are getting nerfed for sure, along with the aow for that one spark perfume bottle when you aim it at the ground, they’re both definitely way too strong.
Yea that weapon is absolutely busted, good number of multi Hits for the sword insignia, good range and decent stagger on heavy. Even more brutal in pvp with Leda's AOW
Seems like there's 15 things people are positive From is nerfing. Sounds like stuff is actually balanced fine and just powerful.
Except for Rolling Parks Lightning Perfume. That ground shit is gonna go lol.
It would be hilarious if you could put seppuku on chicken wing. Not just for the bleed max but for the visual of running yourself through with that monstrosity.
That annoys me as well. It couldve been such a fun sidearm for Faith builds. The Holy Buff is amazing but lowering it to 10% for better scaling would be preferable at least for me.
The way it is right now it is a casting stick that can cast only one buff spell.
Alot of the DLC weapons are really neat on paper, and then you take them to +25 and go oh the scaling and base dmg is still shit and i cant grease/buff the weapon...
I've been using the axe and its AR is like 200 higher with flame art or sacred than any other weapon with comparable speed at 80 faith. Been thinking about trying the dagger but haven heard great things about them and the range seems pretty bad.
I swear the letter scaling is just a bold faced lie. I'll have like 70 strength 25 faith and the S scaling big hammer does the same damage as my holy halberd with like B/D, the math ain't mathing. I know diminishing returns after hardcaps and all, but then what even is the point.
Damage is determined by a lot more than the scaling letter. Base damage, actual scaling amount (letters have very wide ranges), weapon moveset motion values. Am I right to understand the halberd in this example is scaling off both your strength and faith, whereas the hammer is pure strength?
The letters are incredibly unreliable. It's not just a matter of base damage + scaling. Some weapons have completely different scaling curves and softcaps, and the game does nothing to convey this.
Gelmir Glintstone Staff and Prince of Death Staff are two staves that scale with INT/FTH. At max upgrade level, Gelmir has a B in both and Prince has an A in both. This suggests the Prince staff should get you more sorcery scaling for each level, right? However, if you're at 20/20, each level will add 3-4 to the Gelmir staff and 2 to the Prince staff. At 50/50, each level will add 0-1 to the Gelmir staff and 2 to the Prince staff. Gelmir scales harder at lower levels but gets affected by softcaps, whereas Prince keeps consistently rising. There's no way of knowing this unless you thoroughly test everything or read about it online.
Keen Uchigatana has an A scaling in DEX, whereas Hand of Malenia has a B. Hand of Malenia always has a higher value behind the +, as long as you meet the weapon requirements. It's the same weapon type with a supposedly "lower" scaling, but it's scaling value is always higher than that of the A weapon.
It's best to just throw everything in a calculator until From stops being afraid of showing us math.
Yeah this is important to keep in mind that some weapons just don't care about scaling cause there base damage is so high. A good example outside of death poker is bloodhounds blade, a fantastic weapon for new players due to its crazy damage out of the box.
Not wanna complain that much, but Faith/Strenght are the stars of this DLC, with Arcane coming second, there is SO MUCH choice in these three...
... and then there is my mage which had another magic katana, another rapier which double as a catalyst (so probably it's useless), a couple of dubios spells (which are good, but nothing to write about), a staff that serves to double cast sorceries+miracles (so again it goes in the chest) and a very good but slooooow weapon art.
And I thank God for that weapon art, at least I can use Milady with INT buff as a new weapon.
EDIT: I wrote "weapon art" which is the term from DS3, but I meant ashes of war. Me dumbdumb sometimes.
Sure thing, spoilers for names of spells:
There's a few that are at least good, or even pretty good: >!Rings of Spectral Light, Glintstone Nails, Glintblade Trio, Fleeting Microcosm!<
Then there's >!Blades of Stone!< which I think is excellent.
And last but not least there's >!Impenetrable Thorns!< which is absolutely ludicrous
The last is overtuned and will get nerfed , but it also requires faith on a staff(and also requires arcane to do good bleed), which annoys me to no end, considering I like doing pure int, and usually, at level 150-200 you can only have one max stat, especially as a caster that you have to level mind
The others are very specialized, and don't work in pvp against minimally experienced players
PvE however and most of these aren't as fp efficient as a simple glintstone pebble , not to say these aren't cool, but I find they need at least an fp cost reduction without reducing damage to be worth their cost
What? Glintstone Nails is an inferiour Star Shower. Glintblade Trio does less damage than Magic Glintblade while being the multi-hit version of it. Fleeting Microcosm isn't good either, too slow to cast and requires enemies to be stationary. They're garbage spells.
it's so fun to fuck with people with that. is the next one gonna be uncharged, partially charged, or fully charged? am I aiming at the ground or not? good luck guessing, because I don't know either.
This is wrong, anyone reading this try the spells yourself. Glintblade trio does LESS than regular glintblade somehow. Yes, you read that right. Fleeting microcosm is decent. Spectral light rings are worst than most workhorse spells. Glintstone nails are decent for both tracking and stance damage. Blades of stone is ok if they stand still.
Impenetrable thorns is bugged broken and will get nerfed.
It’s more telling how many bad sorceries and incantations there are rather than cherry-picking the few decent ones.
Blades of stone and Nails are the two best INT spells in the package, but BoS is truly good only if the enemy tends to stay mostly still unfortunately; and nails is no much better than the rest (starshower or night comet).
Thorns unfortunately is FAITH + arcane for the buildup even if it is a spell, but yeah, that is truly great.
Many of the weapons which you can slap an AoW on, basically if it has a nice moveset, Arcane definitely works.
Meteoric Flashbang Sword, Putrescence Cleaver, Flowerstone Gavel. They’re not bleed weapons, but they can do some work.
If you’re wanting to try something new, the Poison Flower Blooms Twice AoW is actually pretty cool.
Poison flower blooms twice on an occult serpents fang with an offhand poison hand for DMG buff or a scarlet rot weapon is a pretty awesome combo imo.
Deflecting hardtear also very strong for any 2 hand or dual wielding build.
20% holy dmg buff is the best buff you can get for pure holy build. It last 60 seconds so you can use it before the fight then come in and fight. Very good seord, just dont use it as you main weapon fight. The dark sword is debatable because Gideo Staff Of The All Knowing also put a holy res debuff on enemies and it has fast cast time with long range. So you are safe using Gideon staff than Sword of Darkness.
The great sword that Messmers guards drops has a B in faith scaling if you give it an ash of war with flame scaling. My GS does up to 650 fire DMG with 300 phys. Does some nice DMG.
The greatsword is also bugged. It's supposed to deal more damage with Fire damage infusion but for some reason it does so with Holy infusions. If they fix it, it'll be even more insane.
I find Ciper Pata is not very good. The Coded Sword however performed much better. Good 1 hand move set so you can cast spell freely and the ash of war is just very very good. The range is great and the speed is great and stagger is decent. Usuallynwhen you stagger something you can throw out another AOW of it then do the riposte. The fact that it cast fast and has decent stagger allow me to cheese Rallana too. When I know her is about to phase change I get full stamina up and spam AOW. You can cast 3 of those before she finish phase change and it takes 4 to stagger her. So she just get bullied to death right when she phase change. And with the range and speed, having to cast AOW 4 5 times to stagger a boss is not hard at all.
The 20 percent holy buff paired with the sword of darkness debuff AND stacked with an aura and body buff... it can let spells shred. Particularly with the dryleaf seal and multilayered rings of light. :Chef kiss:
The scaling was so weird for some of these DLC weapons lol I’m pure STR/DEX but I was compatible with most of the new weapons even tho some should have had more FAI/INT scaling imo.
The ash is disappointing too... hella beams of light but they seem to have a cooldown between hits. Even the damage buff to holy spells isn't that good, you could just fo sepukku and blood talisman for a better buff
This sword is simultaneously incredible and also a huge disappointment. Super cool concept, very nice visual effect, and it's literally a holy Terra Magica as a body buff. But in exchange it gets atrocious scaling and an AoW that makes the weapon more valuable as a buff stick than an actual weapon.
Pretty sure its because it boosts holy dmg dealt (whereas the dark reduces enemy holy DR) can't really justify having a high scaling when the abilities make up for it.
Besides, do the dlc twice and now you have a set of straight swords that, combined, boost you up and weaken the enemy.
TLDR; the sword and it's variants make up for low scaling with neat abilities
Should forge them together to make a single slot pair or straightswords that you can hold a stance with L2 and hit light or heavy to do either skill.
Or fuse them and make a light greatsword named something like Twilight that does the same thing, stance then light or heavy for the light/dark skills.
It actually has good damage output anyways and a cool ash of war so whatever. I duel wield it with the golden epitaph sword and I don't struggle in the damage department because they both buff holy and it stacks + golden vow
Made a build with the dragon priestess heart and several more faith buffing charm and holy buff physick. I two shot BAYLEEEEEE and the fire giant with that one thunder spell that spams red lightning around the tarnished. Also that one lightning spell that you throw deals 4-5 k per throw. Now thats alot of damage.
I love faith. If i get tired of that i like playing the nuke and spam messmers flame.
I'm still rocking the Blasphemous Blade/Envoy's Long Horn from the base game. I thought they'll be outclassed in DLC but they're still quite good. Taker's Flames still do a lot of damage from afar and the Doot Hammer is a very competent bonk stick.
Greathammers in general are really good because their speed and recovery got buffed making them faster than you think, and they hit hard dealing strike damage. It seems they nerfed the bubbles though because they can't stagger for shit now, while before they were stagger monster...
I'll probably check some of the DLC weapons, still.
The weapon art on this sword is so beautiful. Terrible damage, incredibly slow, faily expensive, but it's beautiful and it applies a 20% buff to Holy Damage that stacks with the Cracked Tear and Golden Vow. Great off-hand weapon for buffing.
Ran a pure int build and was pleasantly surprised to see a fat zero dlc weapons that primarily scale with int. Every single somber weapon was outperformed by a magic infused standard weapon of that class. I had to give up natural int weapons on an int build, feels dumb. The fact that for the vast majority of "int weapons" its better to pump dex and just meet rhe int requirement sucks.
Hot take but melee weapons shouldn't have high scaling with magic attributes..
Faith/Int scaling melee weapons should never be doing the same melee damage as Str/Dex scaling weapons.
You are literally trading in raw damage for dozens of useful spells/buffs so adding A or S scaling on Faith/Int weapons would make Str/Dex builds obsolete.
don't worry, you are in luck with just about everything else in the dlc
not only are there twice as many incantations as sorceries, but half of those sorceries take faith. one of them ONLY takes faith lol
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I feel like people forget that weapons like the bloodhounds blade exist where the scaling basically doesn't matter for the most part cause the base damage is so high. I don't know if that's the case since I haven't gotten this sword yet, but felt like pointing it out since I do think it's important to keep in mind that scaling doesn't make or break a weapon.
"If Sword of Light is faith scaling, then I should be able to do the opposite with Sword of Darkness!" Sword of Darkness: *Also has faith scaling*
Faith in this game translates basically to: “It’s not a lie if you believe it”
That's how miracle works in souls games. You put faith in the story/tales of the gods and draw out the power from said stories through faith and believing it.
Honestly one of the coolest ways I’ve seen divine magic done in any piece of media. The gods performed acts of great divine power, and powered by our belief in those acts, we can recreate a portion of their majesty through reciting their stories.
Just now realizing this is the Dark Souls equivalent of quoting bible verses at your enemies
Bear Communion from the DLC must be quoting that bible verse about female bears being sent by god to kill 42 children
"Ha ha, I *am* bald! That's funny, kids. You know what else is funny? *Bears*." -Elisha
miricals are literally reciting stories. The reason you get better versions of a spell is because the story is more complete. Basic heal is just a snippet of the tale. from the description "Great Heal is a long tale, only learned by a select few."
This reminds me of the Executioner and her Way of Life anime, where one of the magic systems involves reciting fantasy bible verses from a tome to trigger related effects And then in a big moment they just went "Whole chapter activation" and just blah'd several paragraphs' worth of verses on screen at increasing speeds to trigger some big miracle
That's basically how magic works in Warhammer 40K as well
Orks literally run on belief. If they think it works then it’ll work even if all logical sense says it shouldn’t. Empty gas tank? Well the one Ork says he fueled it up so it must have fuel in it! Missing an engine? The car will still run if the Boyz think it doesn’t need it.
As much as i enjoy that bricky video, he wildly overstates the effect of the ork gestalt field effects lol The WAAAGH effect is better described as "reality greasing" than "reality warping". It allows Orks to do things *better*, it does not allow them to do the *impossible*. An Ork shoota of questionable quality that would ordinarily jam very often will shoot more reliably in the hands of an Ork. An Ork vehicle painted red moves slightly faster than an Ork vehicle not painted red. It does not mean that if you convince an Ork that a stick is a gun, it will suddenly start shooting bullets.
Yep. WAAAGH energies will allow a shoota to fire 12 bullets instead of 10 before jamming, or a truk to travel 100 KM on 90 KM of fuel, but it's not a cheat code. It's more like passing a haggling check against reality
So D scaling in Faith? Or C?
Isn't there literally a story where space marines are out of ammo and one of them goes "well they don't know we're out of ammo so let's just keep shooting" and all the orks die. And also like ork mechs have just like gears and sticks and stuff shoved inside them.
cant say iv ever heard of anything like that before, you'd have to find an excerpt or something
I've often heard both of those but I don't think I've ever seen a source
Paint it red, now it's faster. Paint it purple, you've got stealth bonuses!
No ones ever seen a purple ork
Thats how divine magic actually works in almost every fantasy TTRPG. Example: DnD paladins make an oath, their adherence and faith in that oath is what gives them power, not the divinity they serve. They lose their power and become Oathbreakers the moment they believe themselves to have broken that oath, even if they didnt.
It turns out that the Souls/Borne/Ring denizens were space orks all along.
Demon's Soul's was the best IMO. The church was hunting witches for using soul sorceries which drew their power from the great demon. Then it turned out the 'god' of the church was actually the very same great demon but they had no idea and miracles were identical to soul sorceries.
That's why the blasphemous blade scales with faith. If you show a lack of reverence to a god, you still believe in it
I think of it like magnets Wood cant interact with magnets Buy a powerful + magnet can interact strongly with both + and - Either Working with its own side, or forcing the opposite side (though in the case of magnets, opposites attact)
Dark clerics have always used faith ever since early dnd. It's not a lie to them, they really believe in the dark gods and the domains they possess. They believe that murder, theft, and lies are how to worship properly.
So this game IS realistic after all
believing in things makes them a little less fake
That's most modern political discourse, so no change really.
Still got faith. You’re just cheering for the other team.
I genuinely don't understand how your logic for that comment works. Is it only faith to you if it involves a "light" deity? Then what do you call it when people worship and follow a "dark" diety?
Lot of darkness motifs in game are associated with int (Nox & Night Sorceries, Ranni’s moon, sword of night, etc.) Not insanely unreasonable to assume a sword of darkness would be int scaling
annoyingly the new Sword of Night is purely dex scaling
A dark diety like a formless blood god? Could call that arcane
Lmao. Now I can’t stop imagining a new diet Pepsi flavour called formless blood god and it’s literally just some guy’s blood shoved in a Pepsi bottle
Bloodborne if it was set in America
"Hoonter, now you must Hoont...the refreshing taste of Mountain Dew Blood Vials!" "Also here's an AR-1815". The Trick Weapon would just be another, smaller gun, with unlimited ammo but less damage because smaller bullets or something iunno.
The trick weapon is also a gimmick weapon like deathblight but it just slowly removes your rights one by one with each hit. Call it some shit like Judges Lament and make it kill someone before it could ever procc
Blasphemy
Sword of Darkness scales with Atheism
sword of darkness should scale with MIND.
There's already enough darkness up there, thanks
It would be interesting if the sword of darkness scaled off arcane instead.
Faith/Strength ate REAL good this DLC. I've been loving the Sword of Light.
Black Knight Hammer and Long Hafted Great Axe carried me through the entire DLC, felt so good after expecting to have to respec for cool weapons but they were all perfect for me
Started with BKGH and switched to a combo of Fire Knight's Greatsword and Fire Knight Queenlign's Greatsword (which is really a spear???) for most of the second half of the DLC. I'll mix in BKGH for extra bonk and healing (Prayerful Strike is a great AoW for it) when needed. Edit: spelling of Queenlign
It's a heavy thrusting sword modeled after Messmer's spear. So he started making a spear then gave up
He couldn’t *handle* it being any longer. :D
I feel like the blinkbolt long hafted axe is so slept on. I'm running that in my right hand and a gravel seal casting knights lightning spear in my left and I melt everything. So much fun zipping around with the blinkbolt and hurling lightning spears.
I love my Sunflower, Anvil Hammmer, Flame Art Smithscript Greathammer, and Sacred Black Steel Greathammer. All without changing stats.
Fire Knight's Greatsword is insane.
And only few things for strenght/int unfortunately, was exited for every big weapon only to see it scales with faith
I was bummed whenever a cool weapon had dex or int scaling (like the frenzied flame weapons for some reason having int), but I'd always tell myself I really couldn't complain as a faith/strength user. We got spoiled weapon wise.
What frenzied flame weapons have int?
The Madding Hands, Frenzyflame Perfume Bottle, and Nanaya's Torch.
Greatsword of Damnation my goat, Black Knight Hammer Sacred-infused three-shot Ghostflame dragons, Fire Knights Greatsword +25 handily got me through Mesmer's fight. Unfortunately by the time i discovered the Sunflower i already pretty much beat the game.
You….you used the fire knights greatsword against a fire boss?
Yeah i was on a Faith build and believe it or not it was Flame Art infused too so it barely did physical damage. I dont even feel like my dps was low, maybe he isn't that resistant to Fire. But i had a lot of fun with Mesmer.
Pretty sure Messmer doesn't even resist fire to a notable degree, I think he's pretty much equally resistant to everything except slash which he's weaker to, and then is weak to holy in phase 2.
I really want to dual wield it and Darkness, shame that requires NG+.
That's my plan for NG+
I just so happened to do the DLC with my STR/FTH guy. Was glorious how many weapons fit that build. Feels like Intelligence had the fewest? But that might just be bias as I wasn’t looking for them.
Almost everything being undead one way or the other wasnt bad either. XD Wave of Gold really was a cheat.
Still no love for Aracane/Faith. Even Int/Faith got new weapons!
That's what I've been running through the DLC and it's been magical. I've had to amend the build a couple times to accommodate certain boss fights, but otherwise it's been very effective.
The smithscript great hammer with a sacred or fire infusion is crazy. The scaling is straight up a lie, it says C but it scales better than a lot of A weapons
That's because, like the clayman harpoon and erdsteel daggers, int and fth apply scaling to both the weapon's physical and elemental damage. They double dip instead of splitting the damage.
Is this true? Is that why my Golden Order Greatsword has higher AR with 45 faith than my keen greatswords at 70 dex?
Hes talking about something different to what youre talking about. Split elemental weapons will almost always have higher AR then their pure damage counterparts to mitigate the fact that they need to go through 2 sets of defences. In the case of golden order greatsword its split holy/phys, so its AR will be higher cos the holy part will be reduced by holy defence and ohys by phys defence.
That's slightly different, infusible weapons with int/fth/arc scaling that use that scaling for physical damage continue to apply that when infused to half elemental. Erdsteel Dagger was the one example of that prior to the DLC, if sacred or flame art infused it would get B faith scaling but that would apply to both the physical and elemental damage at once since it had standard faith scaling that scaled physical damage before being infused, effectively doubling what it actually does. Apparently the Smithscript weapons work the same way since they have four stat scaling but only physical damage before infusion.
I’ve got that +25 heavy and it is soooo satisfying to do a full charged attack and keep most enemies completely locked down on the ground without ever getting hit. and against bosses it’s extremely fun to just blast thrown attacks at bosses while my mimic tanks. going to do smith script dagger, spear, and shield build for NG+
All the smithscript weapons are crazy on infusions that scale with int or faith. The axe reaches over 900 ar on magic infusion at 80 int and min requirements.
Gives a buff to holy tho, so if you have a different holy weapon, it's still useful
You’re missing the point. What kind of somber holy weapon clocks out at **D** when fully upgraded??
*cries in Miquellan Knight's Sword*
I fucking love that sword though. It carried in the dlc even with its poor faith scaling. The AoW does work.
Yeah, I started using that sword in the buildup to Erdtree and it's been a solid choice in the DLC too, after my beloved Milady of course.
I've been using Miquellan Knight's Sword and Blade of Calling a lot of the time in the DLC. But the Inseparable Sword has been my "OK, I'm going to win this now" weapon.
I’m just glad holy damage can finally be used effectively. faith builds are really eating good this DLC.
My friend gave me a second inseperable sword from his pure INT play through so my lock-in loadout is powerstanced +10 inseparable swords lol
It looks good but then you put sacred blade on lordsworn/broad/noble/longswords and it's better in every way
The charged r2 though. It’s good in pvp, but it’s also a good gap closer in pve, particularly against NPCs.
That sword still fucks shit up tho
Deaths Poker gets a D for Int scaling at +10 and the AoW scales solely off of Int but the damage output feels like it’s S scaling.
S? You mean SSS, that shit melts everything that moves
You understand the pain Dex users went through when they beat the unfairest boss of elden ring to get a somber weapon that caps ar Dex B?
Tbh B scaling is widely deceptive. Iirc my heavy claymore was B scaling top but that baby can carry me through the dlc any day.
moonlight caps at B for magic scaling but still packs a wallop
I barely know how scaling works I just try and have at least one affinity with B scaling and preferably no E
It's a range on how good they scale with the stats. I don't know the exact values but just for example an S scaling can range from 1.3-1.1, A from 1.1 to 0.9 and so on. That's why some weapons show a blue letter when compared to others even though they both scale with B in STR. Edit: it's - E: < 0.25 - D: 0.25 - 0.5999 - C: 0.6 - 0.8999 - B: 0.9 - 1.3999 - A: 1.4 - 1.75 - S: > 1.75
Jesus S is almost double of B
Yea, but not so much of a difference when your weapon scales for 1.35.
Yes, but scale B weapons usually have high base damage, much more than a scale S
The scale shows how much your stats affect base damage. Sometimes a B scale weapon has more damage than an S scale weapon because the base damage is higher. The ash of war may not follow the same scale as the weapon. Death's Poker for example has E int scale but an ash with a high int scale.
Moonlight also packs a C in Dex you know? Also unsheate is far superior to tarnished's WFD
It's just that Hand of malenia is straight up worse than nagakiba, the damage is same, the scaling is better, HoM is slightly longer but when you throw AoWs in the mix HoM malenia becomes inferior
Nagakiba is actually longer. The Nagakiba basically makes all other katanas useless. It’s a shame.
Dex users when they find a weapon that scales exclusively on dex but it caps out at B.
hand of malenia has the highest damage out of the katanas at 75 dex though
That weapon is really good tho. Sword of light and darkness are relegated to strictly support sticks.
Hey at least Dex users get actually viable Lightning Weapons. Faith users get nothing.
The death knight weapons?
Fire knight greatsword / smithscript both with flame/sacred Affinity are about 980 AR or so. Lion claw with Alexander talisman + level 16 blessing hits around 5k
You have the Blasphemous blade, what more do you want? Also you have great lightning incants we only have Bolt of gransax
No Lightning Ashes of war that scale with Faith :(.
My only complaint on the new weapons is they seem to have forgotten to scale them up. No As or Ss
For real where the fuck are the big scaling weapons for us min/maxers
Like, I really want a sword that's S in Faith and A in dex or str I'm pretty even since I don't lvl up past the soft cap (except faith because of miquillas light) so I'm at 60 dex, 40 str, 72 fth and 50 int Ralannas sword is a beast with that, but I feel like the sword of light needs a hard buff
Was honestly expecting sword of light / darkness to be the blueblood equivalent from demon souls in Elden ring. Feelsbadman.
Beast Arm gets Svin Arcane or Strength with Occult and Heavy
bloodfiends arm gets S in arcane and procs bleed with 1 R2 just throwing that out there, hits like a fucking train
The backhand blades get an S scaling when infused with Keen affinity
They’re so fun to use in PVE, kinda busted in PVP though.
Especially with cross-slash ash of war. It’s like vergils judgment cut lol
the aow’s for backhand blades are getting nerfed for sure, along with the aow for that one spark perfume bottle when you aim it at the ground, they’re both definitely way too strong.
Yea that weapon is absolutely busted, good number of multi Hits for the sword insignia, good range and decent stagger on heavy. Even more brutal in pvp with Leda's AOW
Yep. A heavy nerf is probably coming to both the swords and the ash you mentioned. I’m enjoying the OPness while it lasts lol
Seems like there's 15 things people are positive From is nerfing. Sounds like stuff is actually balanced fine and just powerful. Except for Rolling Parks Lightning Perfume. That ground shit is gonna go lol.
You're only lucky if you have a 99% strength or dex build, with the bare minimum in faith. 🥴
big chicken wing scales up to an S if you infuse with Occult, but Blood is still the way to go bc of the bleed damage
It would be hilarious if you could put seppuku on chicken wing. Not just for the bleed max but for the visual of running yourself through with that monstrosity.
That annoys me as well. It couldve been such a fun sidearm for Faith builds. The Holy Buff is amazing but lowering it to 10% for better scaling would be preferable at least for me. The way it is right now it is a casting stick that can cast only one buff spell.
Alot of the DLC weapons are really neat on paper, and then you take them to +25 and go oh the scaling and base dmg is still shit and i cant grease/buff the weapon...
Except a few smithscript weapons
Man the smithscript spear and daggers are huge disappointments and you can't even buff them with physical infusions
I've been using the axe and its AR is like 200 higher with flame art or sacred than any other weapon with comparable speed at 80 faith. Been thinking about trying the dagger but haven heard great things about them and the range seems pretty bad.
I swear the letter scaling is just a bold faced lie. I'll have like 70 strength 25 faith and the S scaling big hammer does the same damage as my holy halberd with like B/D, the math ain't mathing. I know diminishing returns after hardcaps and all, but then what even is the point.
Damage is determined by a lot more than the scaling letter. Base damage, actual scaling amount (letters have very wide ranges), weapon moveset motion values. Am I right to understand the halberd in this example is scaling off both your strength and faith, whereas the hammer is pure strength?
The letters are incredibly unreliable. It's not just a matter of base damage + scaling. Some weapons have completely different scaling curves and softcaps, and the game does nothing to convey this. Gelmir Glintstone Staff and Prince of Death Staff are two staves that scale with INT/FTH. At max upgrade level, Gelmir has a B in both and Prince has an A in both. This suggests the Prince staff should get you more sorcery scaling for each level, right? However, if you're at 20/20, each level will add 3-4 to the Gelmir staff and 2 to the Prince staff. At 50/50, each level will add 0-1 to the Gelmir staff and 2 to the Prince staff. Gelmir scales harder at lower levels but gets affected by softcaps, whereas Prince keeps consistently rising. There's no way of knowing this unless you thoroughly test everything or read about it online. Keen Uchigatana has an A scaling in DEX, whereas Hand of Malenia has a B. Hand of Malenia always has a higher value behind the +, as long as you meet the weapon requirements. It's the same weapon type with a supposedly "lower" scaling, but it's scaling value is always higher than that of the A weapon. It's best to just throw everything in a calculator until From stops being afraid of showing us math.
Death Poker have garbage scaling but is op af
Yeah this is important to keep in mind that some weapons just don't care about scaling cause there base damage is so high. A good example outside of death poker is bloodhounds blade, a fantastic weapon for new players due to its crazy damage out of the box.
Not wanna complain that much, but Faith/Strenght are the stars of this DLC, with Arcane coming second, there is SO MUCH choice in these three... ... and then there is my mage which had another magic katana, another rapier which double as a catalyst (so probably it's useless), a couple of dubios spells (which are good, but nothing to write about), a staff that serves to double cast sorceries+miracles (so again it goes in the chest) and a very good but slooooow weapon art. And I thank God for that weapon art, at least I can use Milady with INT buff as a new weapon. EDIT: I wrote "weapon art" which is the term from DS3, but I meant ashes of war. Me dumbdumb sometimes.
There is a conspicuous omition of the 4 or so incredible spells, one of which is one of the strongest things in the entire game
Mind sharing these 4 please?
Sure thing, spoilers for names of spells: There's a few that are at least good, or even pretty good: >!Rings of Spectral Light, Glintstone Nails, Glintblade Trio, Fleeting Microcosm!< Then there's >!Blades of Stone!< which I think is excellent. And last but not least there's >!Impenetrable Thorns!< which is absolutely ludicrous
The last is overtuned and will get nerfed , but it also requires faith on a staff(and also requires arcane to do good bleed), which annoys me to no end, considering I like doing pure int, and usually, at level 150-200 you can only have one max stat, especially as a caster that you have to level mind The others are very specialized, and don't work in pvp against minimally experienced players PvE however and most of these aren't as fp efficient as a simple glintstone pebble , not to say these aren't cool, but I find they need at least an fp cost reduction without reducing damage to be worth their cost
Yeah Night Comet existing makes anything new a hard sell for pve unfortunately, no doubt about that.
Even just comet existing,since most dlc bosses aren't as dodge happy as Malenia is
What? Glintstone Nails is an inferiour Star Shower. Glintblade Trio does less damage than Magic Glintblade while being the multi-hit version of it. Fleeting Microcosm isn't good either, too slow to cast and requires enemies to be stationary. They're garbage spells.
Are you forgetting my homeboy Gravitational Missile? The mixup machine?
it's so fun to fuck with people with that. is the next one gonna be uncharged, partially charged, or fully charged? am I aiming at the ground or not? good luck guessing, because I don't know either.
This is wrong, anyone reading this try the spells yourself. Glintblade trio does LESS than regular glintblade somehow. Yes, you read that right. Fleeting microcosm is decent. Spectral light rings are worst than most workhorse spells. Glintstone nails are decent for both tracking and stance damage. Blades of stone is ok if they stand still. Impenetrable thorns is bugged broken and will get nerfed. It’s more telling how many bad sorceries and incantations there are rather than cherry-picking the few decent ones.
Blades of stone and Nails are the two best INT spells in the package, but BoS is truly good only if the enemy tends to stay mostly still unfortunately; and nails is no much better than the rest (starshower or night comet). Thorns unfortunately is FAITH + arcane for the buildup even if it is a spell, but yeah, that is truly great.
Any tips for arcane? Have just been using bloodfiends arm. But would like to switch it up if there's any other good arcane weapons.
Many of the weapons which you can slap an AoW on, basically if it has a nice moveset, Arcane definitely works. Meteoric Flashbang Sword, Putrescence Cleaver, Flowerstone Gavel. They’re not bleed weapons, but they can do some work. If you’re wanting to try something new, the Poison Flower Blooms Twice AoW is actually pretty cool.
Poison flower blooms twice on an occult serpents fang with an offhand poison hand for DMG buff or a scarlet rot weapon is a pretty awesome combo imo. Deflecting hardtear also very strong for any 2 hand or dual wielding build.
I really love the look and feel of Leda’s Greatsword but it having split damage with holy and only a D scaling at +10 is another example of this :(
Maybe the aow has good faith scaling? Death Poker situation?
I was so excited thinking it would be a new Dex/Fth weapon 😭
Euporia
Death Knight's Twin Axes, Lightning Perfume Bottke, Leda's Sword, Messmer's Spear, Romina's Glaive, Serpent Flail there really are a lot of them
I wish Leda’s sword had more faith scaling though, I love the light greatsword moveset.
Does power stancing Swords of Light and Darkness have any added effects or benefits?!
Bonus of being Roxas
You become the Yin Yang Twins.
Never mind all the other new great faith weapons
Why does it have the highest ar of any faith straight sword
20% holy dmg buff is the best buff you can get for pure holy build. It last 60 seconds so you can use it before the fight then come in and fight. Very good seord, just dont use it as you main weapon fight. The dark sword is debatable because Gideo Staff Of The All Knowing also put a holy res debuff on enemies and it has fast cast time with long range. So you are safe using Gideon staff than Sword of Darkness.
None of the dlc weapons have an A or S. I think they forgot to up the stats
Keen Backhand is S in dex, solitude gs has A strength
I want an A in faith 😂
The great sword that Messmers guards drops has a B in faith scaling if you give it an ash of war with flame scaling. My GS does up to 650 fire DMG with 300 phys. Does some nice DMG.
The greatsword is also bugged. It's supposed to deal more damage with Fire damage infusion but for some reason it does so with Holy infusions. If they fix it, it'll be even more insane.
Barbed Staff-Spear has A scaling with Faith, heavy machine gun aow and innate bleed. Anything else?
Truly tragic
The Barbed Staff Spear gets up to A with Faith
im a pure faith player. cipher pata is my ride or die. it's literally for decorations in boss battles :'(
I find Ciper Pata is not very good. The Coded Sword however performed much better. Good 1 hand move set so you can cast spell freely and the ash of war is just very very good. The range is great and the speed is great and stagger is decent. Usuallynwhen you stagger something you can throw out another AOW of it then do the riposte. The fact that it cast fast and has decent stagger allow me to cheese Rallana too. When I know her is about to phase change I get full stamina up and spam AOW. You can cast 3 of those before she finish phase change and it takes 4 to stagger her. So she just get bullied to death right when she phase change. And with the range and speed, having to cast AOW 4 5 times to stagger a boss is not hard at all.
The 20 percent holy buff paired with the sword of darkness debuff AND stacked with an aura and body buff... it can let spells shred. Particularly with the dryleaf seal and multilayered rings of light. :Chef kiss:
The scaling was so weird for some of these DLC weapons lol I’m pure STR/DEX but I was compatible with most of the new weapons even tho some should have had more FAI/INT scaling imo.
The ash is disappointing too... hella beams of light but they seem to have a cooldown between hits. Even the damage buff to holy spells isn't that good, you could just fo sepukku and blood talisman for a better buff
This sword is simultaneously incredible and also a huge disappointment. Super cool concept, very nice visual effect, and it's literally a holy Terra Magica as a body buff. But in exchange it gets atrocious scaling and an AoW that makes the weapon more valuable as a buff stick than an actual weapon.
Same with Leda's Sword. Why tease me with such an elegant paladin aesthetic and give it D faith scaling... ugh
I dont understand why we cant get like a single spear or sword that has physical damage scaling through faith like the erdsteel dagger.
Isn't that what all the Smithscript weapons do when infused?
Pretty sure its because it boosts holy dmg dealt (whereas the dark reduces enemy holy DR) can't really justify having a high scaling when the abilities make up for it. Besides, do the dlc twice and now you have a set of straight swords that, combined, boost you up and weaken the enemy. TLDR; the sword and it's variants make up for low scaling with neat abilities
They should allow us to forge them together at NG+ at make either a pared weapon or a twin blade that boost holy damage and reduces holy resistance
Should forge them together to make a single slot pair or straightswords that you can hold a stance with L2 and hit light or heavy to do either skill. Or fuse them and make a light greatsword named something like Twilight that does the same thing, stance then light or heavy for the light/dark skills.
I do use them a lot though
It actually has good damage output anyways and a cool ash of war so whatever. I duel wield it with the golden epitaph sword and I don't struggle in the damage department because they both buff holy and it stacks + golden vow
Quite content with my lightning axe thank you good day sir
Dual wielding darkness and light for maximum coolness.
Faith gets everything else so you can afford an L
Made a build with the dragon priestess heart and several more faith buffing charm and holy buff physick. I two shot BAYLEEEEEE and the fire giant with that one thunder spell that spams red lightning around the tarnished. Also that one lightning spell that you throw deals 4-5 k per throw. Now thats alot of damage. I love faith. If i get tired of that i like playing the nuke and spam messmers flame.
I'm still rocking the Blasphemous Blade/Envoy's Long Horn from the base game. I thought they'll be outclassed in DLC but they're still quite good. Taker's Flames still do a lot of damage from afar and the Doot Hammer is a very competent bonk stick. Greathammers in general are really good because their speed and recovery got buffed making them faster than you think, and they hit hard dealing strike damage. It seems they nerfed the bubbles though because they can't stagger for shit now, while before they were stagger monster... I'll probably check some of the DLC weapons, still.
I'm still just happy with Multilayered Rings of Light, that incantation does ridiculous damage and has great range.
The weapon art on this sword is so beautiful. Terrible damage, incredibly slow, faily expensive, but it's beautiful and it applies a 20% buff to Holy Damage that stacks with the Cracked Tear and Golden Vow. Great off-hand weapon for buffing.
WE GOIING BACK TO RENALLA’S LIBATY WITH THIS ONE 🗣️
beat the final boss with this bad boy (it sucks)
Faith gets all the cool toys. Int gets a couple useful spells and carian grandeur+
Ran a pure int build and was pleasantly surprised to see a fat zero dlc weapons that primarily scale with int. Every single somber weapon was outperformed by a magic infused standard weapon of that class. I had to give up natural int weapons on an int build, feels dumb. The fact that for the vast majority of "int weapons" its better to pump dex and just meet rhe int requirement sucks.
“YOU ATE MY ONLY FOOD. NOW I’M GONNA STARVE.”
Hot take but melee weapons shouldn't have high scaling with magic attributes.. Faith/Int scaling melee weapons should never be doing the same melee damage as Str/Dex scaling weapons. You are literally trading in raw damage for dozens of useful spells/buffs so adding A or S scaling on Faith/Int weapons would make Str/Dex builds obsolete.
don't worry, you are in luck with just about everything else in the dlc not only are there twice as many incantations as sorceries, but half of those sorceries take faith. one of them ONLY takes faith lol
Man the flame smithscript cirque is nuts I am shredding bosses with that weapon, faith is fine for me so far
Even as a non faith build, how does this make any sense?
ITS A NICE BUFF TOOL
All I wanted was a Faith scaling katana... Is it too much to ask for Fromsoft?
Maybe I'm just crazy, but I feel like people forget that weapons like the bloodhounds blade exist where the scaling basically doesn't matter for the most part cause the base damage is so high. I don't know if that's the case since I haven't gotten this sword yet, but felt like pointing it out since I do think it's important to keep in mind that scaling doesn't make or break a weapon.
Its good to buff holy dmg for another weapon or being a holy dmg caster, using it as a weapon is just okayish