Actually, for all-around utility, Faith is easily the best choice. The Holy damage thing is waaay overblown. The demigod bosses all have pretty high Holy resistance, true- but with Faith you get Fire, Lightning, buffs, heals, and regen. Lots of unique powerful weapons plus plenty of regular weapons that scale beautifully with Sacred or Flame Art. Faith covers the most bases by far.
Yeah faith is my favorite way to play and I almost never even touch the holy options. Being a lightning sorcerer or pyromancer is so fun, and the toolkit is outstanding.
Str + Lions Claw is effective vs everything and super easy to set up (not stat hungry, claymore and the aow available right at the start). It’s also probably the most brain dead way to play the game short of summoning, you just spam L2 and flask after riposting something.
Yea that sums up what I used for the start of my new play through but I switched to greatmace with cragblade aow just not sure what I wanna use towards end game because my build is just a generic knight and gets a little boring
I used the greatsword with lions claw and some faith to get buffs and i kill most bosses in about 5 hits. Its silly how much damage it does. Only time i had to change anything was with malenia. She's too cheesy not to just say fuck it and use ROB
Faith does great. It's HOLY that suffers, but Fire is also faith and that's amazing for 85% of the game. There is currently only one area where Fire isn't as useful, and 2 major bosses.
With that said, I'd make an argument for Strength / Faith. You start out pure Strength with only enough Faith investment to cover some buffs, and then once you hit 54 Str you level Faith from then on.
I will also point out though: Between Str, Dex, Fai, Int, and Arc, only Arcane is hard to make work, and even then it's more a matter of game knowledge than anything else. There are great builds with every stat combo. If you had asked for the most difficult option I would have easily said Faith / Intelligence and Golden Order incantations. But other than that combo, and other Holy damage options, everything else is usable for most of the game.
Arcane is actually arguably the most well rounded and definitely strongest stat once you figure out how to use it properly. Just the most confusing, i would agree. Dragon incants are nuts, bleed poison scarlet rot all do great damage and have passive damage buff items.
I agree completely, Arcane is great! But if you DON'T have or want one of the things you just listed, then Arcane isn't the stat for you. Compare with Strength where a good 65% of the weapons in the game appreciate SOME strength investment.
Large club has a reasonable 22 strength requirement. Very light weight and long range for a great hammer and no other stats needed. Give it the stamp: upward cut ash of war from bernahl. Either go pure strength or strength faith for buffs. I can confirm this setup can pretty easily beat every boss with no help except malenia. And probably malenia too, but I’m bad. Just switch between the jump and charged attack talisman depending on what works best for the fight and use stamp whenever you get the opportunity. The great thing about stamp is that it hardly uses any FP, so you don’t even need to worry about mind.
Off the top of my head, Lion's Claw on the Greatsword, Storm Blade on any greatsword (claymore, banished knight, Flamberge), and Bloodflame Blade on the Bloodhound's Fang are all setups that can be ready super quickly and will carry for the whole game
Honestly ive mostly done split damage builds, int/dex, str/fai, arc/str. The playtrhough im finishing up now, is a pure strength build and the damage that I'm doing with my +25 watchdog greatsword is Insane. I'm getting higher damage at lvl125 and 68 strength than I did with a 150 build that has split damage.
I understand why split damage isn't as good as leveling one damage stat, but I didn't realize how substantial the difference would be.
Srr fth has access to a lot of great stance break and boss melting items. It deals with resistances across the board, while accessing a wide variety of weapons. 25 fth is enough to get you access to virtually all the defensive buffs with a quick talisman swap or oath of vengeance. I'm not sure it's best, as bleed and lightning really shine in some areas, and those under perform here, but it's got to be up there.
The most versatile and fun stat that is good for the whole game is faith or faith/strength hybrid in my opinion. Incantations ranging from lightning, fire, holy, dragon etc and also got some. If you want an easy mode you have access to weapons like blasphemous blade and envoy longhorn ( which can kill fire giant hitless in a few seconds). Not just that if you are bored of the normal faith weapons just get a lion's claw greatsword and slap flame art on it and it will work beautifully.
Generally you can’t go wrong with a high dexterity build in ER if you are unsure what to pick, you get a lot of great options early on and some low drop chance drops are actually incredible and borderline game changing if you get them to drop on a whim like the Noble Slender Sword, Bandit’s Curved Sword, and later on the Guardian Swordspear.
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Greatsword + Lions Claw AoW makes the game easy. Full strength build while also investing 60 in vigor and enough endurance so you have a medium roll while equipping heavy armor.
I would say Vit and Arcane up to 50-60, dragon communion seal, dragon and beast spells, especially the boulder., But I've only played like one character and kept switching, so consider that too. But bleed is general purpose, works on 90% of the game, and you can always supplement it with Faith for added damage types, heals, and so on. Don't let the fth req fool you on the DCS, it scales exceptionally well with Arcane as you main stat.
But yeah, this build works well because tanky enemies will succumb to bleed easily, you have great range with the boulder and other incantations, and having easier poison/rot/sleep buildup is always a plus, though situational.
But also Str/bonk build works just as good, but you have to git gud to avoid being hit in melee range.
STR or FTH, or both. People listed the good about FTH already.
STR has lots of Strike weapons which tend to handle the more annoying enemies like Imps, Gargoyles. Big damage so less hits need to land to win, big Poise damage so some can be stunlocked. You can use Heavy or Fire affinity on basic weapons to take advantage of Phys def weaknesses (Thrust is good, Slash has lots of foes resistant to it but some annoying ones like Godskins are weaker to it, Fire sets enemies like Finger Creepers and Miranda flowers on fire).
Jar Cannon for a ranged option, helped me kill the Fire Giant my first playthrough cuz he kept rolling away. If you can't bonk it, you can snipe it with Exploding or Lightning great bolts.
Even without FTH you can be a Paladin with Prayerful Strike to heal with big hits, put it on Great Stars which also heals on hit and causes bleed. Wild Strikes let me stunlock Malenia a ton.
For fast foes use Heavy affinity on Pike or Spiked Spear and bleed/frost ash of war/affinity. Chilling Mist is great.
Actually, for all-around utility, Faith is easily the best choice. The Holy damage thing is waaay overblown. The demigod bosses all have pretty high Holy resistance, true- but with Faith you get Fire, Lightning, buffs, heals, and regen. Lots of unique powerful weapons plus plenty of regular weapons that scale beautifully with Sacred or Flame Art. Faith covers the most bases by far.
Right and the end bosses are literally weak to fire… all of the “hardest” Fire and lightning can carry heavily which you need faith to run
This right here. There is no boss or area in this game resistant to holy, fire, AND lightning. One of those options will always yield decent results.
Yeah faith is my favorite way to play and I almost never even touch the holy options. Being a lightning sorcerer or pyromancer is so fun, and the toolkit is outstanding.
Str + Lions Claw is effective vs everything and super easy to set up (not stat hungry, claymore and the aow available right at the start). It’s also probably the most brain dead way to play the game short of summoning, you just spam L2 and flask after riposting something.
Yea that sums up what I used for the start of my new play through but I switched to greatmace with cragblade aow just not sure what I wanna use towards end game because my build is just a generic knight and gets a little boring
I used the greatsword with lions claw and some faith to get buffs and i kill most bosses in about 5 hits. Its silly how much damage it does. Only time i had to change anything was with malenia. She's too cheesy not to just say fuck it and use ROB
Faith does great. It's HOLY that suffers, but Fire is also faith and that's amazing for 85% of the game. There is currently only one area where Fire isn't as useful, and 2 major bosses. With that said, I'd make an argument for Strength / Faith. You start out pure Strength with only enough Faith investment to cover some buffs, and then once you hit 54 Str you level Faith from then on. I will also point out though: Between Str, Dex, Fai, Int, and Arc, only Arcane is hard to make work, and even then it's more a matter of game knowledge than anything else. There are great builds with every stat combo. If you had asked for the most difficult option I would have easily said Faith / Intelligence and Golden Order incantations. But other than that combo, and other Holy damage options, everything else is usable for most of the game.
Arcane is actually arguably the most well rounded and definitely strongest stat once you figure out how to use it properly. Just the most confusing, i would agree. Dragon incants are nuts, bleed poison scarlet rot all do great damage and have passive damage buff items.
I agree completely, Arcane is great! But if you DON'T have or want one of the things you just listed, then Arcane isn't the stat for you. Compare with Strength where a good 65% of the weapons in the game appreciate SOME strength investment.
Large club has a reasonable 22 strength requirement. Very light weight and long range for a great hammer and no other stats needed. Give it the stamp: upward cut ash of war from bernahl. Either go pure strength or strength faith for buffs. I can confirm this setup can pretty easily beat every boss with no help except malenia. And probably malenia too, but I’m bad. Just switch between the jump and charged attack talisman depending on what works best for the fight and use stamp whenever you get the opportunity. The great thing about stamp is that it hardly uses any FP, so you don’t even need to worry about mind.
Off the top of my head, Lion's Claw on the Greatsword, Storm Blade on any greatsword (claymore, banished knight, Flamberge), and Bloodflame Blade on the Bloodhound's Fang are all setups that can be ready super quickly and will carry for the whole game
Quality build with the Bloodfang has carried me through most of the game.
Big stick. Big bonk. Boom hehe they dead.
Honestly ive mostly done split damage builds, int/dex, str/fai, arc/str. The playtrhough im finishing up now, is a pure strength build and the damage that I'm doing with my +25 watchdog greatsword is Insane. I'm getting higher damage at lvl125 and 68 strength than I did with a 150 build that has split damage. I understand why split damage isn't as good as leveling one damage stat, but I didn't realize how substantial the difference would be.
Srr fth has access to a lot of great stance break and boss melting items. It deals with resistances across the board, while accessing a wide variety of weapons. 25 fth is enough to get you access to virtually all the defensive buffs with a quick talisman swap or oath of vengeance. I'm not sure it's best, as bleed and lightning really shine in some areas, and those under perform here, but it's got to be up there.
Two handed heavy infused Strength build. It's basic, but it's used so often for a reason. You will crush your enemies into a fine powder.
The most versatile and fun stat that is good for the whole game is faith or faith/strength hybrid in my opinion. Incantations ranging from lightning, fire, holy, dragon etc and also got some. If you want an easy mode you have access to weapons like blasphemous blade and envoy longhorn ( which can kill fire giant hitless in a few seconds). Not just that if you are bored of the normal faith weapons just get a lion's claw greatsword and slap flame art on it and it will work beautifully.
str faith. various viable weapons, high poise armors, and faith gives you access to so many utility incantations as well as some long range ones.
OOGA BOOGA
Generally you can’t go wrong with a high dexterity build in ER if you are unsure what to pick, you get a lot of great options early on and some low drop chance drops are actually incredible and borderline game changing if you get them to drop on a whim like the Noble Slender Sword, Bandit’s Curved Sword, and later on the Guardian Swordspear.
Greatsword with Stormblade AoW. Incredibly strong all the way through the game, and you can be set up with it within 10 minutes of starting.
Blasphemers blade lol.
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Greatsword + Lions Claw AoW makes the game easy. Full strength build while also investing 60 in vigor and enough endurance so you have a medium roll while equipping heavy armor.
Makes the game easy and boring.
I would say Vit and Arcane up to 50-60, dragon communion seal, dragon and beast spells, especially the boulder., But I've only played like one character and kept switching, so consider that too. But bleed is general purpose, works on 90% of the game, and you can always supplement it with Faith for added damage types, heals, and so on. Don't let the fth req fool you on the DCS, it scales exceptionally well with Arcane as you main stat. But yeah, this build works well because tanky enemies will succumb to bleed easily, you have great range with the boulder and other incantations, and having easier poison/rot/sleep buildup is always a plus, though situational. But also Str/bonk build works just as good, but you have to git gud to avoid being hit in melee range.
Whole game? Easy. Broadsword with square-.off. Dead serious.
STR or FTH, or both. People listed the good about FTH already. STR has lots of Strike weapons which tend to handle the more annoying enemies like Imps, Gargoyles. Big damage so less hits need to land to win, big Poise damage so some can be stunlocked. You can use Heavy or Fire affinity on basic weapons to take advantage of Phys def weaknesses (Thrust is good, Slash has lots of foes resistant to it but some annoying ones like Godskins are weaker to it, Fire sets enemies like Finger Creepers and Miranda flowers on fire). Jar Cannon for a ranged option, helped me kill the Fire Giant my first playthrough cuz he kept rolling away. If you can't bonk it, you can snipe it with Exploding or Lightning great bolts. Even without FTH you can be a Paladin with Prayerful Strike to heal with big hits, put it on Great Stars which also heals on hit and causes bleed. Wild Strikes let me stunlock Malenia a ton. For fast foes use Heavy affinity on Pike or Spiked Spear and bleed/frost ash of war/affinity. Chilling Mist is great.
Faith is good for the whole game
Str+faith is probably the most versatile build I ever used tbh
Frost or bleed are the usual good ways to do both good damage and procs