This is a brief guide of a bunch of build ideas for Dark Souls 3. This information is all over the internet already, but it is definitely not consolidated and it took me a few months of playing to actually find some of this info.
This guide is for PVP BUILDS. PVE is entirely possible to win with anything. PVP means you have a level cap. If you just keep leveling up, that's totally fine and do your thing, but you don't need a guide to put Max points everywhere. The current meta is 120 but going anywhere from 100-130 will net you plenty of players to play with because the summon range is +-10 levels. Most people go 120 but as long as you are within 100-130 you will get plenty of players to fight. Don't listen to anyone who complains about you going above 120. They can't stop you from playing how you like and they have the exact same options you have. So, if you follow the meta, it helps to know where your stats will be giving you the most bang for your buck since you have a limited amount of them. Here's how it breaks down:
Starting Class and Defensive Stats:
Starting class, more or less, does not matter. You can respec 5 times per New Game cycle or if you upload your save and reload it then you can respec infinitely. However, you can only respec down to your classes Base stats so choosing a starting class that doesn't waste stats can be important for some. Knight, Deprived, Mercenary and Pyromancer have the least amount of wasted stats. The rest of the classes have too much luck, in my opinion. Luck is useful, but only really useful on a Bleed/Luck build and I will go into that later. Choose your poison, no matter which class you choose you will have a few wasted points but it's not THAT MANY points.
Vigor, endurance, vitality and attunement are your defensive stats. They will help your survivability and how much you can use certain attacks. In my opinion, you should go at least 27 vigor but above 50 is useless. If you are invading at 120, go AT LEAST 35 but if you are just dueling you can stay embered and your health will be great at 27-34. Endurance can be anywhere from 18-40. I've heard of some casters going to just 15 but that seems a little low to me. Strength builds are going to need to go higher, like 30-40, but low stamina consumption builds can go to 18. Vitality will all depend on what you want to wear and hold. I don't think you want to go higher than 25 but this all depends on fashion and how many weapons you want to hold at once. It raises physical defense higher than other stats but vigor will give you better survivability. Also, don't go above 70% equip load. Fat rolling will get you killed easily. Attunement is going to really depend on build. 120 casters should go 30, melee builds can leave it at 10-11 and bring some ashen Estus flasks if you need the extra weapon arts. No one seems to care if you chug that in the middle of a duel. It will really depend on your play style and how much you depend on weapon arts and how many points you have left over.
The builds:
Quality build:
The Quality build is equal parts dex/strength. The Jack-of-all-trades melee build. It can use nearly every weapon in the game. A great build for beginners and pros alike. For maximum damage output you will want to go 40 strength and 40 dex. Refined gems are the ideal infusion for your infusable weapons.
Strength build:
Big. Heavy. Weapons. This build has slower weapons but they hit HARD. A lot of strength weapons have hyper armor too, which means you'll take damage but your attacks won't be interrupted. They can be great in duels and they are fantastic against gankers. 50-60 strength will give you really great damage, but if you two-hand a strength weapon at 66 strength you actually get the the same damage as you would at 99 strength. Going 66 strength won't give you very much room for other things so I recommend going minimum dex requirement for whatever weapon you want to use. Heavy gems are what you want to use to infuse your weapons.
Dex Build:
Dexterity builds are for fast and tricky weapons. They are typically lighter so you don't have to pour as much into vitality. These weapons tend to do better in duels than they do in invasions, but they can definitely do some work against gankers 50-60 dex is ideal for optimal damage in pure dex builds. Sharp gems will net you the most damage from your infusions.
Sorcerer:
Now for the casters. Intelligence is the stat you want to focus on for sorcerers and you want to go 50-60 to get the most damage out of them...and they can dish out MASSIVE damage. Seriously, watch out for gank squads with sorcerers in them. These builds are great in duels but not so get against gankers. If you invest stats in the Moonlight Greatsword, you can have a really really powerful weapon too because it scales best off of intelligence. You won't have a lot of points to invest in weapons, but infusing one with Crystal Gems will get you best results. If you want to use the crystal magic weapon buff, you can go raw with your infusion too.
Pyromancer:
Pyromancers are the quality build of the casters. You want to go 40 faith and 40 intelligence on this build. Pyro spells are some of the best in the game. They can hit really hard. They are also the easiest to free aim and that can be really rewarding. They can do really well in all PVP situations because of their damage output and the ability to free aim. If you want a weapon, you should go Chaos infusion. Again, you can go raw with the weapon if you want to use Carthus flame arc.
Cleric/Miracle:
The cleric or miracle build is a curious build. It's one of the most satisfying builds I've made because the spells do very little damage until a really high level. You want to go 50-60 faith to do most damage, but you can make some of the best hybrid builds with an investment of 30-40. Honestly, I might make an entirely separate guide for the miracle build. It's still fairly unexplored right now. In my experience, some of the talismans have amazing hyper armor so a significant investment in vigor helps to tank hits. You can usually win the trade. Lightning gems will net you the best damage when infusing if you want to use a weapon. Lightning weapon, darkmoon blade, blessed weapon, and dark blade are all great weapon buffs to put on a raw weapon too.
Dark Magic:
If you want to go dark magic, it can be tricky. It's almost necessary to go 130 on this build, because ideally you want to go 45 faith 45 intelligence. Last I checked, this does pretty good damage but it's not incredible. I haven't made this build yet, but I'm interested. It can be the most versatile but it's also the trickiest because you need very specific catalysts, talismans, and the pyromancy flame in order to utilize all your tools. If you want to infuse weapons then you should go with the Dark Gem, or Dark blade and raw infusion. I might make the build just to report on my experiments, but I don't like to respec much so it'll take me a good 15-20 hours.
Luck/Hollow/Bleed Build:
This is another tricky build but can net you some really amazing damage. Luck is not useful for damage, until you infuse a weapon with hollow. Then, it can do a TON of damage. The current thought process is to go Quality 40/40 str and dex and 30-35 luck. If you have a weapon at +10 Hollow infused, you actually get a +5 to your Luck stat. So, if you have a +10 hollow weapon or shield in both hands, you get +10 to your Luck stat. This will next you the highest damage for many weapons. Plus, the luck stat will help cause bleed pretty damn fast with certain weapons. The only weapon that I know of that scales off of Luck naturally is Anri's Straight Sword, which is one of the best straight swords even after a recent nerf. I really like the Luck build, but I've only gone to 100 with the build so I need to do some testing at 60 luck. There is very little testing done on it yet that I've seen.
And there you have it! These are not rules, just a brief guide on the best math in the game. Hybrid builds can be completely viable too, where you have a spell or buff that supplements melee and quality builds and pyro builds definitely don't HAVE to be 40/40. Seriously, watch Praise the Sun's YouTube channel. He consistently has non-optimal stats and dominates. Have fun. Experiment. Dominate.
