Dark Souls 3 SL 40-50 Invasions Part 2: Weapons

These are the most effective/fun weapons I've found success with at SL 40-50. I'm not saying they are the most effective and my build is not optimized by any means. These are just weapons that I've found a strategy for and have had really solid success with (at least above 60% win rate, I'd estimate.)

Lothric knight greatsword:

This weapon is a beast. It can be buffed, so combined with a lightning bundle it has over 450 AR at +4. That is HUGE and can 3 shot a lot of phantoms. My build van only 2 hand it, but that is just fine because it adds a little damage and has the unparryable sweep attack that can decimate group health bars. Combined with the Leo Ring, the charged two handed R2 can do something like 700 damage on a counter hit, I believe. This was the first weapon I tried on this build and I've used ultra greatswords a lot, so I moved on to new things fairly quickly.

Gargoyle Flame Spear:
People say this is the best spear in the game and I believe it. It does really high damage, has great reach, can hit multiple enemies, and people don't use spears much so most people don't seem to know the Parry timing. It can't be buffed so what you see is what you get and that is A-OK. This can wear a group of gankers out of their estus pretty quickly. Another fun thing to do is bottleneck the gankers, and play a game of siege where you just try to get pokes in while they try to get past your crazy reach.

Dragonslayer Axe:
This is not the dragonslayer greataxe boss weapon, this is the one you get from killing Creighton the wanderer in Central Irithyl after you help Sirris. Infusing this weapon with raw gave it the best damage for me, but this probably depends on your build. It does a massive amount of damage and can be buffed. The lightning bundle will do 500+ damage if you can get both hits of a two hit combo. The only downside is that Katanas seem to be a terrible match-up for it. I'm pretty sure it just gets outspaced and will just straight beat it if you both swing at the same time. No trades, just interrupts. If you run into a solo Katana user switch to a straight sword, a longer weapon, a weapon with hyper armor, or out-space and punish to win.

Dark Souls 3 SL 40-50 Invasions Part 1: Stats and Tools

I've been experimenting for the last few weeks with very low level invasions. My current build is 45 and is not very  optimized, but I've had solid success and I've experimented with quite a few different tools to destroy gankers. I'm going to go over what my main toolset is, and why I think it is a great tool. I've been loving low level invasions and so much creativity is cultivated there because it requires you to min-Max as much as possible. 

My current build is level 45, with all +4 weapons. I chose this level because it seems to be a good level to invade at Cathedral of the Deep, the Catacombs, and probably Crucifixion Woods and the Smouldering Lake. It also guarantees that the highest weapon I will have to deal with is +6 because the invasion range is +-2 upgrade levels and it also very unlikely anyone will be running around with +8 weapons in the areas I'm invading. I am planning on going up to 53, I'm just a little nervous that I won't get constant invasions like I'm getting right now. I have seen other people get solid invasions at 53 though.  Now, here are my tools and tips:

Build:

This is my current build:

Vig:27

Attn:12
End:18
Str:18
Dex:20
Int:12
Fth:8?
Luck:9?
I'm going off of memory with the last two. Intelligience was to use a specific weapon, which I will get into later but it's mostly unnecessary for what I do. This is not optimized, I'm just experimenting with a lot of different things. I will probably respec when I choose a specific weapon or set-up but it is working just fine.  

Hornet Ring:
This isn't actually the MOST important tool you are going to have at this level and that is because it is unlikely to one-shot your opponent. It will definitely do more damage when you get a riposte, but it probably won't one shot unless you are super optimized. I, at least, haven't found a way to one-shot at my current level of 45. The mail breaker and the dagger might be the best bet. Still, it is a great way to guarantee you finish off your opponent if you get the parry and riposte with a little bit of damage on them. 

Other Rings:

I have been rocking the Prisoner's Chain, the Ring of Favor, the Leo Ring, the Hornet Ring, and the Priestess Ring. Depending on your build, some of the best rings are going to be the "give you extra level rings" because they can help you get the most damge or at least minimum stat requirements for weapons. At +4, most weapons won't have the best scaling so I don't think STR and DEX are the most important things to worry about. One way or the other, they are great ways to have wiggle room with your build and stay within a good invasion range.

Catalysts:

It's really not a bad idea to have at least 10 Intelligence and Faith. The Spook spell is really useful to get to the host quickly in certain areas, and having access to a chime weapon art can be very useful. You can activate the heal, and run away and essentially have a bunch more heals as long as your build doesn't require FP. At this level for a melee build, that's really going to be the extent of these tools unless you use hidden body or force. The other spells you have access to are not going do enough damage to matter unless you go complete glass cannon spell build. This is totally an option but I don't have enough experience with it to give you information about it. 

Consumables:

Consumables can be very useful. Bombs, arrows, knives, moss clumps, resins, and bundles are definitely going to be the most useful to you. Bombs and arrows aren't going to kill your enemy, but they can be used to wear down a gank squad when you are playing a battle of attrition. Great arrows can knock people off of cliffs for one shots. Resins and bundles can be used to raise your damage briefly. Bundles can almost completely replace a weapon buff, because it does more damage than a hybrid/buff build would do at this level. The red and purple moss clumps are probably going to be the two best clumps. Poison can really wear you down in a fight. Knives are great for finishing your enemy off or maybe inflicting poison.

Dark souls 3 Infusions: Elemental Infusions

The infusion system can be a little confusing in Dark Souls 3. I've watched quite a few videos of people's opinion about it, and I believe there is a lot of misinformation about it. I'm going to clear up some of the misinformation and give my own opinion on the elemental infusions in the game.

The elemental infusions are Crystal, Chaos, Lightning, Dark, Deep, and Fire. Crystal, Chaos, Lightning, and Dark scale. Deep and Fire split the damage 50/50 between physical and dark/fire. Essentially, the scaling weapons are going to be better if you have a caster build on account of your stats will be stacked to maximize spell damage. If you just want a weapon with elemental damage to help in PVE or go through shields better in PVP, infusing with Deep or Fire is a fine way to go.

Now we are getting to the confusing part: The scaling infusions! To be brief, when you infuse with an elemental infusion, your weapon will lose some base physical damage, add elemental damage, and then add scaling with intelligence, faith, or both. Now, your weapon will do split damage between an element and physical and will scale far less with your physical damage stats.

Now, the actual numbers come into play and how they work within the game. If you compare a +10 crystal longsword and 60 intelligence, for example, and a +10 refined longsword and 40/40 strength/dex, the crystal long sword will probably have the higher attack rating, indicating that it will do higher damage. It probably will in PVE versus certain enemies but it will not do as high of damage in PVP.

This difference in AR and actual damage is because of how defenses work in PVP.  Essentially, your character has flat defense ratings for every damage type. When you hit someone with a split damage weapon, the defense subtracts damage from both damage types separately. If your character has 120 defense for both physical and magic, then that crystal long sword's physical AR will go through the 120 physical defense and the magic AR will go through the magic defense on your character. This will result in lower damage taken than if the longsword did one damage type. There are a few split damage exceptions, but generally speaking it is better for your weapon to do all, or at least most of one damage type.

Now for the misinformation: a lot of people just write off the scaling infusions and say they are crap. In my opinion, the damage is fine. If you go 120 with a caster and pick a weapon that has a B-S rating when infused, it's probably going to be fine. You chose to be a caster, so the melee weapon should be supplementary anyway. If the damage reflected the AR the same way a pure physical, there would be absolutely no point in going Quality, Strength or Dex build. You would have the best melee damage and extremely strong range attacks. You don't want that game. No one wants that game. I think this was a good choice for the developers to go with. If you are going with a hybrid build, go with 40 strength or dex or a raw weapon with the buff. It's that simple to me.

I hope this clears up some questions people had about elemental infusions. I hope it also shows some people have some really silly expectations on how much damage elemental infusions SHOULD do. To me, the elemental infusions are fine. Stay creative with your builds, folks.

More on Build Optimization

After some experimenting with a pure dex build and some other builds, I have a quick bit of information that was not really clear to me on the last guide. This post is really about how scaling functions within the game and how it works with your build.

Scaling is how much your stats add damage to your weapon. They are indicated by a letter underneath the requirement stats of your weapon on your weapon information screen. The letters are from E-S. S is the best, meaning that it will add points for every level you have in that particular stat. E means you might accidentally get some damage with every 10 levels. Those two stats are the easy ones. The others get weird.

With your build, you want to shoot for C-S letter scaling. Many weapons will only become B, A, or S with an infusion. C will do pretty good damage with a particular stat, therefore B should be better...and it is, but sometimes only slightly. For example, at 45 dex (I believe that's what I had) I was doing 370 Attack Rating with the lothric knight sword, which is pretty good damage. I infused it with the sharp gem giving it B scaling and it went all the way up to...374 AR.  Nearly useless. It's just not really a good use of a gem.

The point I am trying to state is that the letters barely mean anything. The letters just indicate which stat is going to be better if you want to use that weapon. My lothric knight sword might scale slightly better if  I go 60 dex than it would have otherwise (I haven't, I usually only go 100 with my builds) but I haven't gone all the way up that high.

However, 370-374 is totally respectable damage. Trust me, I've killed a lot of people with that build...like 100+ invasions dominated. So if you have a weapon you want to use, and you have the stats to use it, go for it. Depending on your build, it might be fantastic or trash no matter what the letters say. Optimization is great for damage, but it's not the MOST important thing in the world if you can use the weapon to its full potential.

Quick Build Optimization Guide

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.

Best Dex Scaling Weapons in Dark Souls 3

It's been a very long time since I've posted anything. Lately, I've been spending a lot more time playing dark souls 3 than I have fighting games. I still play fighting games but I just don't have as much time to dig in deep like I did a few years ago. However, I still love these games and I'm going to try to analyze and present some good information to players who are looking for help or are just looking for the same answers to questions that I have had.

First off: this list is geared towards pure Dex builds, which I have just started building. Fun fact I didn't realize about Dec builds is that the second softcap is at 60 Dex. Hybrid builds and quality builds can shoot for 40 dex but pure Dex should shoot for around 50-60 for optimal damage. Non-optimal stats are TOTALLY viable for duels (just watch Praise the Sun, he almost never bothers with optimal stat.s), but optimal stats are almost required for taking on gankers in invasions.

Second: This list is just for best scaling. This is not a weapon tier list. Every weapon can be viable in PVP duels and every weapon is viable in PVE. These are just weapons that will scale to dex better than other weapons. Keep an open mind for some other weapons not on this list because base damage is important too. Play with what you like, this is just a list. Also note, all weapons are +5 or +10.

The list:

S Weapons:

Chaos Blade
Dagger (sharp)
Scimitar (Sharp)
Painting Guardian Curved Sword (sharp)

A weapons:
Farron Greatsword
Bloodlust
Shotel (sharp)
Rapier (sharp)
Ricard's Rapier (sharp)
Murakumo (sharp)
Harpe (sharp)
Claw (sharp)
Manikin Claws (sharp)
Great Scythe (sharp)
Corvian Great Scythe (sharp)
Winged Spear (sharp)
Carthus Curved Sword (sharp)
Rotted Ghru Spear (sharp)
Rotted Ghru Dagger (sharp)
Sellsword Twin blades (sharp)
All clubs sharp (untested by me, this is fextralife info. The clubs seem really strange to get A scaling)

B scaling:
Storm Curved Sword
Exile Greatsword

Most other infusable weapons receive B scaling when sharp except Halberds, and Axes. Those receive C. Some of these weapons still might be pretty good for your build depending on base damage. The other few that do not receive B are terrible with scaling period or scale better with odd infusions.

Bad dex scaling:
Bandit's knife
Mail breaker
Corvian greatknife
Astora straight sword
Drakeblood Greatsword

If I remember correctly those are all C or D, which still might be viable for your build but will not be optimal. So there you have it, plan your dex build around some of the weapons and enjoy! Duel on and happy hunting!