@@brickpuncher1429 as if faith is not meta, its not like rotten breath, gaints flame take thee, flame fall upon them, catch flame, lightning spear, ancient dragon lightning strike, burn o flame, peast threads, every single blackflame spell etc are weak off meta incantations
I think dexterity is more versatile because a lot of the greatswords, curved greatswords, great thrusting spears scale very well with dex if you give them lightning or keen infusment but having high dex also allows you to faster activate elemental damage. You mainly lose out on using colossal weapons and ultra greatswords (which do have high poise break) in exchange for better elemental damage. But if you take a claymore, slap keen infusment on it, and give it giants hunt or lions claw, you’re still going to be very capable of breaking poise quickly. But then again, big stick go bonk
I actually will have to agree on this one as dexterity has one other feature that makes it quite formidable. It has the widest range of viable damage types along side faith (mostly due to ice/spear scaling mostly with dexterity, and . You actually do have access to two ultra greatswords on a dex build. Zwiehander (which is better w/ lightning affinity due to motion values) and God Slayer Greatsword
@@starstrider3030 yes but if you level dex and go with a hybrid build and use magic you also get faster casting speed. One good thing I will say about a strength build is that you really only need to go to 54 strength, then you can put your points into everything else. Reason being if you level to 54 and two hand you will hit the 80 soft cap on strength scaling.
@@DreyfusLagoon The increased casting speed from dex is negligible. If you are making a dedicated caster build it's far better to level int/faith to 80 and put the reset of the points into vigor and mind. Ofc if you are making a lvl 200+ NG+ build you will have enough points but at that level nearly any build is viable. Strength gives by far the most bang for the buck while leveling because of 50% boost when 2h, the clawmark seal (can also be 2h for extra damage) and access to heavy shield. Fire ashes of war can be found right at the beginning of the game in caelid while dex ash of war can only be found in Leyndell half way through the game. Basically dex is only good if you really want to use dedicated dex weapons for their unique ashes of war otherwise you can just slap heavy on your weapon. I think it would be cool if they gave 50% dex boost if you hold your weapon 1h.
The main issue is that in ER poise break is the best offensive stat, there are some enemies which are impervious to it (kinda, because with enough hits you are poise breaking them anyways), but the survavility and raw damage that Strength can give you is crazy and you can even have the best of any other build working perfectly and harmoniously with strength, once you have your Strength and vit in 60 you can try dexterity, arcane, even int and everything will only add to your character: Strength + dex broken, Strength + int broken, Strength + arcane broken, Strength + faith and enough dex you can't be more broken, do you have a high level character? the try Strength + dex + something else you are literally GOD.
My first build was a dex with arcane build, but at some point I noticed that in reality Dex isn't that impressive, it give you more magical resistants and inmmunity than strength, but if you don't invest quite a lot in vigor every thing will kill you in two or three hits (which is terrible for a melee build), also you do hit harder with dual weapons, but the difference isn't that big when you take incantations and special weapons in consideration, and as you said I had to put some point on strength anyways to use the weapons which are suppose to be for a dex build like the naginaka and KoB, so I am thinking of making a build like yours and see how it works.
My bandit, my prisoner, and my confessor I put dex in to use the faith daggers...Every time I played them I was wondering "When do I get the dmg or the spellcasting reduction?". I make one str character and I don't even have to level up. It's absurd.
@@made.online2149 While I try to at least don't use summons I am more a shooters guy and I play this kind of game in a more casual way, so I like to be able to tank some damage and kill the bosses quickly without much sweat in fact if I could facetank with impunity the bosses I will be even happier this is why I am going with strength recently, however ER's DLC have made me sweat a lot regarless of my build. My first souls like was in fact Code Vein? I kinda liked it and waifu is laifu but my first "real" for "real" souls was ER, and it has made me tried other Darksouls (I am finishing DS3 with all its DLC) and so far in this kind of game strength and vitality to 80 for facetanking and fun for days, is the way to go. :P
I feel like there’s good evidence that dex was supposed to be PvP balanced. Lightning works especially well against player resistances, especially on slashing weapons, while flat damage resistance makes it not as effective in PvE. The fact that casting speed and things like fan daggers or spark aromatics are also influenced by dex make me lean toward that conclusion. The casting speed doesn’t matter in PvE, but every frame matters in PvP.
I'm in NG+ now. I started as a Samurai class and I love the Katanas in game. I used them exclusively (with the longbow for range) for 3/4 of the game. This means emphasis on Dex and Arcane (for bleed). Then I got the Blasphemous Blade. Honestly for a melee character I don't see how there is a better weapon in the game. So now I have to spec into Str to get the most out of this weapon. (I could respect but I still like the katanas and longbow - the Bl Blade isn't the answer to everything). Even the katanas typically will benefit from some Str.
Yea the main thing to keep in mind is that pretty much every weapon can be changed between heavy and keen and most weapons will perform very similar on either infusion. So really the main thing you have to take into consideration is the stat requirements on weapons and mostly just what somber weapons do you like. But each somber weapon requires you to build specifically for that weapon. Like you pointed out though Str does have some other perks like increasing physical def, letting you equip better shields, and getting that juicy 1.5 bonus when two handing. But Dex for the most part has the much stronger somber weapons. My first playthrough started as a dex but I honestly would just respec when I came across a cool somber weapon I liked. At first it was moonveil going hard into int and dex even though I never cast a single spell. And then later into arcane/dex for some of the arcane weapons I wanted to use. So yea basically builds are really simple in Elden Ring. Every build will level Vit, end, and mind, and then you just pick one or two damage stats that you want to use based off of ashes of war, spells, and sombers you want to use and there you go. At the end of the day their isn't actually a ton of build variety in the sense of how it affects playstyle. Most builds all end up pumping up most of the same stats and most bosses revolve around spamming roll and then spamming your ash of war or spell. Its simple but super fun with just how many cool weapons, spells, and ashes there are. But the builds in this game do not actually affect playstyle as much as they do in some other action rpgs.
i agree and i like how this game has a wide variety of actual viable builds instead of, like many games, while having a wide variety of options, only a handful being truly good or competitive, along a hard meta. Elden Ring has done this the best. You can really find something you like, and can become a specialist in your own right of many diff builds and be able to compete well whether it be pve OR pvp. Cant wait for the dlc! Can only imagine what new weapons we might get. Was about to respec but gonna wait til the dlc since its so close. I wonder if the PvP meta level of 150 will ever evolve to a higher level with addition of dlc and more content.
I actually disagree that dex have better somber weapon options than strength. Strength has some serious one shot potential like Marias executioner sword, ordovis greatsword will hit for 60+ stance damage on a full charge and you have access to pretty much all the greatspears, mohg sacred spear and siluria’s tree. Another major point to mention regarding lightning infusion is that since strength build requires lower stat investment (due to 2 handing), you can built into faith and just put electrify armament on your weapon to, you can get like 117 lightning damage with the finger seal at 20 faith. I’m not saying that dex is more sophisticated than strength or anything but I’m saying that strength is just an all around better design stat. Marginally strength is always going to be better since for every level spent you get extra physical defense and 1.5 strength assuming that you 2 hand.
Not to disagree with your points because for the most part you are right but there is some context: Maria's is an interesting case of great DPS, nice burst, not necessarily the best one shot option but a decent one, there are many other similar skills and abilities to it. I would actually argue the "Tree Spear" is much better than all of the other great spears for pvp and potentially for pve outside of the bosses w/ a 60% holy resist or greater, especially with the new DLC greases Ordovis at the time had lower stance damage than the dragon king cragblade, I will still argue that even with the stance break potential they are both still A tier weapons, not great or the best at breaking poise Str requirements are typically higher, most dex requirements are stupidly low in comparison, which does help str quite a bit more There is actually a really interesting interaction with the lightning infusion vs using electrify armament. 9 times out of 10, when using weapon strike AoW you will get more damage with the lightning infusion, due to how buff motion values work. Often times, when using lightning slash at least within the level 125-179 pvp/pve brackets, lightning will usually result in having higher damage than a weapon buff or grease, Same thing with critical strikes. Lightning always has the best critical strike potential, till it is surpassed by quality. For other notes most of this is due to the DLC, Dex out competes str in the following aspects Great katana/Flamberge using skills especially w/ blood flame Milady w/ Wing Stance Back Hand Blades Curved Swords Raksasha's Katana (this one is a crime) Lizard Great sword (longest great sword, with a higher AR than most other greatswords, unique moveset, great on keen, horrible on heavy :/) Blender Skills (Falx/Dancing weapons) Bolt Of gransax (best sniper) Claws of night/Bows (headshot/Status tools) Storm/Cold AoWs Antishield (Sword of night) Halberd (Guardian sword spear is just ridiculous) Blood Hound Fang (quality but clearly more of a dex weapon, stupidly high AR) Ranah's Oil vs Flame of the redmains (about the same, but one is a quick tool) Pots/Daggers/Arrows Claws (Raptor Talon's w/ Blood flame blade is just the best setup) Better Spear setups (naginata/swift spear) Lightning > Fire AoW (Lightning has 4 good ones, Fire has 1 :/) The main issue with dex builds here (post DLC release) is that some of the options stand out as overpowered especially in pvp and are usually now banned in competitive play, Str is still much better designed, straight forward and reasonable, with amazing skill and weapon options. I felt like the theme they went with dex was the right direction, but they made alot of it a little too good in certain context After the DLC and the bug fixes were implemented, it became clear that str/dex are now the strongest attributes in the game, with faith coming in just behind them, This is much more noticeable with the much more aggressive DLC bosses.
@@Zercanyan I’m gonna quickly touch on pvp and move on as I’d rather not mix pvp with pve. Dex is probably the strongest even before the dlc, you have access to the cleanrot and shamshir which are both top tier tournament weapons. Super strong AOW like piercing fang and sword dance. Now you even have the pata (im pretty sure it scale best with dex don’t quote me though) and back hand blade which is an utterly stupidly strong weapon. Strength have great options but are definitely not as strong as dex. When it comes to stance breaking strength is unmatched even with the dlc, you have the bloodfiend arm which is probably one of the strongest weapon even after the nerf. The only thing that can match it is pre-nerfed thundercloud form. After the nerf sadly (and its one of my favorite weapon) its actually kinda shit now. It takes like 3 fully charged thundercloud form to break goddrick stance (this is rough testing) compare that to the ordovis that have faster charged time and can break goddrick stance in 2 fully charged hits. It feel like thundercloud form does around 40 stance damage which really affects the stance-break break point for most enemies. Strength have access to Mohg Sacred spear, Ordovis GS and Marias exeuctioner sword, some of the strongest weapons even with the dlc taken into account. Overall I’d say that the dlc introduced some super strong dex weapon and really helped dexterity find a place in the game but I don’t think it’ll ever really out perform the disgusting 66 stance damage from Ordovis or hitting for 6-7k from eochaid dancing blade which cost 15 fp on a relatively fast AOW in just 3 - 4 seconds or procing bleed in 2 faster than usual charged heavies with the bloodfiend farm (charge heavies are around the same speed as straightsword charge heavies for some reason). When it comes to higher strength requirement i think you’re meant to 2 hand to reduce the requirement but yeah dex is definitely better on that ground. When it comes to non-somber weapons I also concede that putting electrified armament won’t match the lightning infusion. Dex have lots and lots of powerful weapons after the DLC but in my opinion it really have a hard time matching the borderline broken weapons strength have such as a starfist or any weapons mentioned above. I think its a good thing though because some of these strength weapons are kinda stupid ngl. I really liked your point that dex should feel more dexterous and not be a trading machine, you actually have to dodge enemies rather than just tanking and breaking stance. As to my opinion, I really don’t think build choices are that important, what matters is what you decide to use, you can always stick lions claw on a lightning zweihander and get super armor and 40 stance damage with slightly lower damage than strength, you can always put lightning in starfist rather than going into strength.
Another bonus of STR you don’t even have to meet the STR requirement to wield a strength weapon. So long as you two hand it, you can wield the f you are within 10 points of the STR requirement. Dex doesn’t allow for this at all. And actually there are now two fire based STR weapons. Magma curved swords are fire strength based. And the Fire Knight Sword from the DLC which is just a fire Zwei great sword.
100% even works w/ paired weapons even if they don't get the AR bonus. This is actually beneificial for all builds However str reaps the higheest reward. However it's not within 10 points but rather it gives you an effective +50% effective strength So if a weapon requires 30 str, you just need 20, if it requires 60 str, you just need 40 when two handing. It also means you only need 54 str to hit your 2 handing soft cap Magma curved swords are more quality weapons w/ a faith requirement :/ Fire Knight Sword from the DLC actually works good on Fire/Heavy/lightning/flame/sacred affinity, don't recommend it at all with keen but I do love how it does at least have unique scaling with fire. I was more hoping for a fire somber that was just str w/ split scaling but that is me being greedy xD (and dex somehow got 3 weapons that have split magic scaling, plus perfumes that scale for fire/magic/lightning that scale on dex, the perfumes aren't great but it is something)
Yeah dex recieved alot of buffs from the recent patches especially 1.13 where I would argue dex is now the strongest attribute in the game, pve and pvp. Especially after the bug fixes and balancing changes. The raksasha's katana, back hand blades, night weapons, blink bolt (which gives neutral attack weapons an engage, which are usually dex an engage), the longest great sword, which is the best at triggering status. Beautiful weapon strike AoW's that synergize well with the great katana, additionally the best tools and heavy pots. Bringing back the poise values for light weapons was just insane Finally a the divine beast frost stomp, along with hybrid int/fth/arc options that favor dex
@@aud9789 Lizard Greatsword. it's actually a decent bit longer than the sacred relic sword. A key factor that makes the weapon great however is both status effect builds on heavy attacks and the 1-handed AR which makes it amazing for weapon skill builds. Due to this reach its rolling attack is actually fairly reliable to land, unlike other shorter greatswords. Additionally the bullet projectile also consecutively hits increasing the build up of multihit talismans. It's a bit bugged however even now it's still incredible on the right build and if they end up patching it to fix certain talisman bugs, I it can almost cross the line of being the best great sword in general use for pve. As a warning it will always do better on a dex build, even when two handing :/
I noticed this during my first playthrough. I specifically wanted to use a single light spear (Cross-Naginata) with some auxiliary incanatations, but after crunching the numbers dex just made no sense to use if you primarily two-hand. Even if Keen eventually starts outperforming Heavy on your particular weapon of choice, it only does so with extremely heavy investment unless the weapon is RIDICULOUSLY dex-biased (such as Guardian Swordspear). For instance, a 54/20 Heavy nagi does 601 AR, while at the same investment 16/58 Keen nagi only does 570. That's on Cross-naginata, a weapon that's not just dex-biased but also requires a VERY hefty DEX investment to even wield. On something like a Longsword this genuinely just gets fucking stupid, with a 54/10 Heavy longsword still outdamaging a 10/80 Keen longsword. So in essence DEX just lags 7 to ~25 levels behind STR for two-handed damage output. This may not matter by meta PVP levels... but by the end of your NG playthrough you will only reach around SL100 even if you clear all bosses and minibosses while eating gold fowl feet (assuming you neither lose your bloodstain nor specifically farm). So with DEX you will be lagging behind a STR build in either vigor, damage output or versatility for most of your playthrough, especially when you consider clawmark seal, which, funnily enough, also benefits from two-handing if you want a higher magic damage output in a certain fight(although weapon buffs only scale with the faith portion). DEX only shines at lower levels if you build around unique weapons exclusively and spam weapon arts or if you powerstance at which point both are about equal on most weapons (and even then STR still has the option of powerstancing incredibly dumb heavy ultras for massive jump L1s).
One thing I heavily disagree with is hitting only ~lv100 during a run. You might only reach that if you speedrun areas and miss most of the game that isn't strictly necessary. Just during my first playthrough (meaning the greatest number of mistakes and waste) I had to specifically and intentionally waste most of my runes in everything I could find (emptying stores, maxing consumable stores etc.) just that I wouldn't level up too fast. If you don't care for meta levels or buildmaking, hitting 200 wouldn't be strange.
Dude I feel so identified with this... In DS3 I used to love playing Dex builds and I always did so two handing the weapons. In ER, well... Your summary i more than enough testament of what I have to say.
@@sibsart2039 ill admit the heavy great katana is great, I actually found that since it's more of a skill machine, keen/lightning does out perform due to being a skill stick. Seriously it is essentially an L2 machine which is where dex shines, as the 1 handing AR, and bullet AoW is where the skill scaling matters For some reason players like to look at the 2h AR without any other context :/
@@ZercanyanI want to make an argument as to why 2h matter more in my humble/far from a high level player perspective: Yesterday I finally beat the final boss of the DLC. It took me way more hours than I would have liked to take me. For most of the strong bosses (well, actually, for 92-95% of the entire DLC playthrough) I used Great Katanas, more specifically THE Great Katana. I have to say that the moveset, being so useful, maneuverable, varied, and strong, made me fall in love with it. But I have dabbled between Dex and Strength throughout the DLC, testing weoaons like Blacksteel Hammer, and I have to day that despite all my options, I ended up beating most of the bosses with the Great Katana. That included Messmer, Rellana, if I recall correctly, Bayle, and, obviously, the Final Boss. The latter was really tough. I tried sever AoW with the Great Katana and found out that I'd rather just focus on rolling attacks and follow-up R1s, as well as an occasional running R1 or jumping attack, to get the job done. Despite how much damage the Repeating Thrusts and Piercing Fang did, the damage difference wasn't big enough compared to the rolling R1 followed by regular R1s with the Retaliatory Crossed-Tree Talisman to make it worth the trade. I ended up simply putting Quickstep or, in the Final Boss' case, Raptor of the Mists. That made me capable of dodging some of the unfunny moves of the boss while also keeping me in place for my continued use of basic standard meelee fight style. For the record, I was using a 54 Strength build for this... Not optimal but still. Strength Invictus. I hope in the future I get to replay the DLC with a PS5 or a PC instead of a 30fps granny Ps4 lol
One thing I find ironic, because strength is often associated with unga bunga, is the fact that there are 2 colossal swords that also scale with int. The Dark Moon Greatsword? Yeah, it's got an int requirement of 38, but its 16 str requirement tells me that its physical damage scales better with strength.
I don't think you should ever use MLGS physical attack. Buffed Charge R2 is just nuts. Chances are if you use that weapon you will have a staff with pebble or night comet to use to deal with regular mobs. Helphen Steeple is probably better if you want to actually whack stuff with "physical attack" with an int scaling greatsword
@@trh3xa174 While that may typically be the style of play for DMGS (Dark Moon Greatsword), the sword itself still has a hitbox when you do the projectile from the buff. I'm likely wrong when I say this, but, I think it also temporarily boosts damage and (probably) scaling. Overall, my belief is that a sword should be used like a sword, not a magic staff (like the Lazuli Glintstone Sword).
@@brickpuncher1429 u benefit from the range and magic damage from the projectile than the sword itself when charging, and the sword scales much better with magic damage. "my belief is a sword should be used as a sword" ok XD? brah there are more attacks than that charged attack with the moonlight sword, also a sword should be designed in whatever creativity the game maker wants, like sword of night and flame for example, which is a pretty cool concept for a sword. "I'm likely wrong when I say this, but, I think it also temporarily boosts damage and (probably) scaling." im quite sure that you are wrong here, i dont think that applies to moonlight GS.
i personally think pure str or dex just get trumped by quality, even with the reduced dmg early on. I think str people tend to have a hard on for minimal things.
that's genuinely true. Beyond lower levels strength eventually loses out to quality. But often it is considered standard to limit level/progression to a certain degree to allow for more build limitations that eventually lead to more build variety.
Personally I just enjoy dex/arcane more than strength/arcane I’m able to use morgotts cursed sword, bloody helice, rivers of blood, reduvia, and my favorite occult flameberge. While also having bloodflame/frenzy/dragon incantions. To truly fit the theme. A couple of threshold testings to stop leveling faith. 16- all bloodflame incantations, all bestial incantations + flame grant me strength. And flame of frenzy amazing quick spell, roll catches, fast startup, fast recovery, good range if aimed high. And procs madness) 25 for all the above + Golden Vow and stronger dragon incantations And 30 for Greyoll Roar and Black flame protection. (If you’re aiming for dragon roar which is 28 might as well hit the faith cap of 30 for your dragon seal. And you can use black flame protection) Radagon icon with 40 dex gives max casting speed. It’s noticeable, especially if you play hybrid. You’ll notice how much those milliseconds matter. Difference between getting smacked or not.
I try to like Dex, I really try. But the thing is with Dex they always say the bleed bleed bleed. I hate being weak and relying on rng. And if you have a high chance of blood, you have to focus on a WHOLE nother stat with Dex too. Strength is straight forward and on Dex builds you rely on ashes of war so mind IS ANOTHER star to focus on.
What are you even talking about? First, bleed (or any status) is not RNG at all. You have build-up per hit (the number in the stat sheet of the weapon) up to a threshold (vitality of the opponent) and whenever your build-up exceeds that number the effect is procced once. The build-up may decay, it may also be alleviated through items etc. but generally you have a fixed number of hits until the effect procs. If the enemy has like 180 vitality (for actual bosses the number is more like 400-500) and you have 55 bleed build-up and you get 4 hits in succesion -> boom, blood loss procs. Which of course means that some movesets and some Ashes of War are just way better than others simply because they allow for more hits. (Which does narrow down the range of viable options, as OP said in his video.) Most dex weapons have innate bleed and no arcane scaling on standard. That means the bleed stat doesn't scale at all with arcane. In those cases that number (55 for example) is always the same, whether you have 7 arcane or 99. You only get an arcane scaling if you actually go for bleed affinity which by itself is sort-of terrible. Keen (for pure dex) or Quality (hybrid) are way better in terms of damage output. If you want additional bleed on a dex weapon with innate bleed you can use for example a blood grease and stay with Keen. So at the end of the day you can leave arcane as low as possible. You can do an arcane build but then you should rather pick and build your weaposns in such a way so that you have better arcane scaling overall and multiple status effects or stacking status effects between innate + from the infused. A typical example here would be the Antspur Rapier. The choice of weapons for such builds is even smaller than for pure (or primarily) dex builds. But at the end of the day... just don't call such a build a dex build. Because it isn't. Dex builds - as I just explained - don't require arcane. A possible alternative to Keen may be lightning infused. Depends on the situation, this comment is too long already. But for example on those crit weapons like Misericorde and the normal Rapier lightning infused is good as you don't even have time to buff the weapon if you pull them out the pocket after opening up the enemy for a crit. Lightning infused does a bit more damage in that one hit where it matters than unbuffed Keen. And irrespective of whether you play str or dex, you use AoWs on both, and should have enough mind so that a flask doesn't overfill the bar on any build. But not much more. So that's like a complete non-argument.
@@cyrusol i understand i like dex. I just like strength more i like ez staggering and stun on smaller enemies. I apologize for saying bleed relied on rng i was newer when i wrote that comment but i still think my opinion still stands. Since elden ring is my first souls game im new so staggering is easier
Chasethebro is genuinely one of the most informed players in terms of scaling and pvp effectiveness. While seeing a lighting sword spear on occasion hurts my soul he does have a great idea of what he is doing both in pve and pvp and he knows how to enjoy the game while casually optimizing his builds in ways that are fun and unique. He understood how things worked much earlier than plenty of other optimizers and he knew what he was doing from the very start. Str is still goated, but admittedly in the last few patches, since 1.07 onwards there was some benefits given to dex builds to make them quite interesting for pvp and pve. in terms of meta he genuinely capitalizes on what is viable without focusing on anything that is oppressive making him one of the best overall players to look at to know what works the best in terms of builds and redeemed the dragon king's crag blade for me (due to hearing constant negative reviews from content creators who clearly didn't put time in to learn the weapon).
@@Zercanyan Hey I appreciate the reply. this was well put. Honestly I was joking but I agree with your vid mostly. I have faith/arc pure strength, pure int and also dex/arc all capped at 150. Str is by far the most fun in my opinion. When you broke down the scaling of weapons I also noticed str is just the overall better option when leveling up. Idk what they could do to help dex in that regard but I too notied that with weapons. Overall great video btw dex took me the longest to complete because of how stale it felt. Great video you have my sub.
@@timothymoore2966 Absolutely. So dex has the benefit of certain unique weapons, bullet AoW, and lightning. This is actually what helps them quite a bit but when breaking down leveling, bugs in pvp, and overall net benefits typically str wins out unless you are utilizing bolt of gransax/BHF/Ice Spear. This doesn't really make up for the vast difference in prowess between the two but it is important to note the potential for new unique weapons, catalyst, tools ect... coming in the future may help balance the game a bit more or give more options (whenever they release the DLC of course XD)
Faith pairs well with both strength and dex because dex weapons are better at quickly doing elemental damage if you were to apply blood flame blade or poison to your weapon, and character buffs are universally good for both. Faith is nice tho because you can put 80 points into either strength or dex and put like 20-30 points in faith and still get access to all the good buffs. Int requires a lot more Investment because you cn basically only use int spells to deal damage
If you want to still use strength then your only option is faith/str and use clawmark seal. Otherwise you need to respec and take all your points out of strength and put them into int or faith depending on what kind of magic you want to use. Only leave the minimum amount of strength or dex you need to use the weapon you want to use. Then change the infusion to the stat that scales with the stat you invested in the most. Hope that makes sense.
I will make a point that most broken weapons that needed to be nerfed were Dex weapons. I can't think of a single Strength weapon that has been nerfed for being OP.
What is funny that you can be almost pure strength user with some (17) faith investment to gain access to bloodflame + black flame blade incantations "Oh no", you think, "I read on wiki that they scale off of faith portion of my stats only" But here's the catch: blood loss effect on bloodflame is the same no matter your incant scaling, black flame blade saps enemies health same as it does on high faith Yea, fire damage is lower, but it's clearly not the most important thing for these incantations
What build is the most fun, I’ve always done max strength in other games because I think i’m guts but honestly I don’t like the commitment when swinging… I always cheat since i’m a swinger I wanna be a glass cannon that rolls and counters everything like i’m playing sekiro
For reactionary game play The route I recommend here is likely straight swords, either power stanced or with shield with lightning infusion w/ the brass shield (if you want to get lighttning early on, you can head to altus after grabbing both medallions) If you want to avoid elemental damage, keen (dex) for higher reach, heavy(str) for higher AR All of these can be swapped with blood affinity For bullet ashes, if you want something more based on range combat that is super efficient with FP (effectively a Caster-like build) I recommend a dexterity build with ice spear/thunderbolt/storm blade/vacuum slice
Honestly certain fth/arc/int builds can do the same thing as well but what you are looking for is lighter weapons. I just recommend having a target for the build that fits your direction. Straight swords seem like the closest thing to sekiro I can think of game play wise (at least when it comes to pacing)
@@Zercanyan yes in my first playthrough i ran and keen guardian swordspear with ice spear and its pretty damb OP. Guardian Swordspear is easily one of the best weapons in the game and is a common weapon. Its moveset is awesome and unlike any other weapon for the type it is. Very fast, sweeping hits but range of a spear, i just love it.
@@nunyabizwacks6711 the ridiculous part is that guardian sword spear is just a wooden stick and ice spear is only hinted at being a int scaling AoW. xD GSS is clearly the best halberd IMO due to the AR and moveset, The reach isn't half bad either, the fact it has the highest AR in it's class outside of an overleveled quality nightrider glaive is insane, it's only 6 AR less than that at w/ 99 levels in each attribute .-. meaning that a 99/93 build vs a 99/17 keen GSS is debatable in which one is better which is ridiculous
I know this is an oldish video but I just used so many Larval Tears trying to beat Promised Consort Radahn with random stuff like Carian Sovereignty spam or quick cold/frost/scarlet rot buildup builds but since I’m level 200 once I said fuck it and just pumped strength to 99 and endurance to 40 I bonked that fucker to death with the Giant Crusher and Prelate’s Inferno Crosier without much effort lol
Carian Sovereignty is incredibly overrated (it is still amazing but not my cup of tea, I just won't consider it the best in pve or pvp). It can do great damage and has amazing hyper armor but the DPS is comparable to much more safer options. Milady w/ wing stance on a lightning build, guard counter str/dex builds, blood flame great katana skill spam builds, dancing builds, charge attack builds, ect.. can do more dps easily with less set up and much safer at lower levels. Other words: Big number does make my brain happy, is there other way to get big number? Yes... and faster/safer too, the difference is sometimes it isn't in one hit. and if it requires you to know the boss pattern to pull it off it is almost pointless outside of styling on a boss that you can beat with other means. xD
i have a lvl 70 STR invasion build and i am going in the dlc with a DEX build bc i wanted to use weapons like: DANCING BLADE OF RANAH, FALX, RAKSHASA'S GREAT KATANA, BACKHAND BLADE and SWORD OF NIGHT. and try some lighting damage all weapons you cant infuse and have a natural DEX scaling. also: Lighting really is optimal in dex ? or quality ? not saying DEX is better or STR is better. but some weapons only works in DEX. its like CHAOS build and QUALITY build in DS3 chaos have more versability and critical damage but few unique weapons quality is a lesser varsion of Chaos but with a little more range of wapons (unless you put some stats in Faith to use sunlight sword)
Depends, katanas have native dex scaling, so putting blood affinity on the katana would make dex stronger even when one handing but allocating to str and faith and going blood flame blade on heavy would make the heavy scale better while two handing but only for that moveset. This is where context becomes important. So it depends on how you want to run your arcane samurai build. You may also want to see what a blood beast man's curved sword or blood affinity long swords can do for your build as they are also of arcane scaling and be quite brutal.
@@flimsy364 ^Flimsy is right, this is the best advice anyone could offer. while my video is more about optimization the numbers are no more than 5-10% off in an extreme situation. Play what you enjoy.
I'm going into this video with the mindset that I'm strongly of the opinion that dexterity is DEFINITELY superior, but I'm willing to hear the argument. I predict that i will be back to this comment in about 12 minutes to confirm that i was correct, but we shall see 🤔 Edit: ok ok ok, i'll give a strength build a try 🤷
Two-handed, literally every weapon performs better on str+heavy than on dex+keen, with two exceptions. Even clear innate dex weapons like the Nightriders flail or Naginata, will do more damage on heavy with 54 strength, 24 dex than it does with base strength and like 70 dex on keen. The exceptions are only Guardian Swordspear and Urumi. Strength increases physical resistance. Dex increases no resistances. On a RL 125 build, strength has around 155 physical resistances, dex builds have 130. Thats a big difference. I wish innate dex weapons performed better on keen+dex than they do on strength+heavy atleast, like it was in DS3 (Also while were talking about the physical affinities, the quality affinity is fucking shitee). Dex builds only redeming quality in my eyes is the lightning affinity like you mentioned, but if you actually toss two players at eachother, one dex lighning build and one heavy strength build, using the same weapon and armor, they do very similar damage, because the physical resistances of the strength build equalizes the lightning weakness.
On top of all of this the 24 dex isn't needed for most weapons. Often times this is insult to injury as Often dex requirements for weapons are quite lower. Even then the chain link flail is objectively better as even when one handing, it has a higher AR on heavy compared to the knight rider flail on keen (they have similar reach and the same moveset. ) typically the highest dex a strength build would breach is 22 for the nagakiba, or 18 for the great bows (which rare for strength builds to target), most of the time dex investment is not needed for most decent somber weapons excluding the claymore DS3 was honestly a much better set up for dex builds, as sharp was always competitive with heavy and emphasized weapons most would consider dex weapons. ER runs into the condition where keen falls behind heavy quite significantly and is mostly carried into some level of viability by PSSS/PSS (slender and naginata), the guardian sword spear, bullet AoWs and the urumi. And while that seems like a lot to list, the advantages that those builds lose out on are significant. DS3 also handed a good set of light str weapons and heavy dex weapons, overall I found the balance in ds3 more fair for the physical attribute buillds as even quality was a viable route to run.
At the start of the video, I totally disagreed with you on STR is better that DEX, but at the very end of the video, I actually understand what you meant and I believe too😂.
yeah, Flamberg is still a really nice strength weapon especially if you are two handing >.< But as a one handing weapon it still works incredibly well on a dex build
Need a video on strongest ash of war tbh ,not the skill but the rating for stats on weapons.I’m only 245 hours in and still can’t maximize damage.I’ve seen 900 dmg RoB with no buff and I’m confused.
Super interesting how I can do the exact same fucking goddamn thing as you, same weapons, stats, gear, and then get complete opposite results. Fucking amazing game design
This guy doesn’t seem to know that if you use heavy on your weapons your increasing how much stamina it takes to swing it. There’s a whole bunch of little things like that that make your argument weak.
Lighting, successive attacks, quicker attacks, counter damage, decks somber weapons, much lighter weapons. Dex and Str both have there pros and cons. One is not better than the other. Quality is the way.
I don’t think thats true. There are a view good points in there. I wont go to much into it because no one will read my comment but imo dex qnd str are pretty much equal. In most weapon classes you get very good options for both (of course they are not always equal like guts is better than zwei but bloodhounds fang outperforms other cgs). As for somber weapons you get wing of astes, morgots curved sword, hand of melenia etc that can keep up with ruins gs, beastjaw etc.
I understand where you are getting at. Dex clearly has the best CGS, Whips, Heavy thrusting sword and Halberd in the game, and debatably the strongest straight sword (though farming it takes hours xD). This was more of an on average point. Dex clearly isn't a 1 to 1 to strength. Keen is simply amazing for bullet AoWs but for the majority of weapon classes will lose out to heavy in damage. The point is heavy typically out performs keen. strength builds typically allow for more weapon options while giving typically a higher AR and still grant the ability to cast many damaging spells quite effectively. While also raising your defenses. Dex builds typically shines more with natural weapon scaling on bleed/frost builds (this doesn't really mean much tbh since str gets this beffinite as well) as well as lightning damage being absolutely goated and receiving the benefit of better scaling on bullet AoW seriously ice spear/hoarfrost stomp scaling on dex technically makes dex one of the best and efficient magic damage builds in the game . (if your faith is high enough, buffs and heals come out incredibly quickly with max dex as well) On top of that str builds typically require less investment due to not necessarily requiring another stat, or requiring very little of another stat making it very level efficient. A few things btw beastjaw is quality while wing of astel is int but that is true. I would actually argue typically dex has better somber weapons... And the nerf to beastjaw actually made thunderbolt the vastly superior option :/
I wouldn’t call it easy mode since any build can be made op especially in later games I would say it’s more like simple mode but I do think its the most fun especially when paired with faith
This dude forgot stat scaling exists. It doesn’t matter what the minimum stat requirements are, it matters how well the weapon scales with a respective stat
Both matter as it makes one investment more critical, imagine this, a weapon where keen has a higher scaling between two weapons but due to the need to invest into 4-10 more points in strength, along with a higher base damage, heavy becomes the better investment even for one handing the weapon that the innate dex scaling isn't as important. It's critical to note that Typically either has either a higher base damage or scaling excluding weapons such as the zweihander or the KGS. Regardless this all puts on a toll. Plus taking away from the all of that is the fact those points could have been put into endurance/vigor that the str build would have used. most weapons that are seen as unique such as the "shamshir" while technically having a higher keen scaling typically fall behind to a point heavy is a better infusion anyways, due to the two handing 1.5x property, it may make str seem even massively better. I will note that lightning typically competes with heavy in damage in the right circumstances (only sometimes) The focus on stat scaling may allow for nuances such as base damage, overall AR, motion values and AoW scalings to be ignored along for passive effects but ignoring all 3 of these things can lead to the differential power between dex and str to be ignored.
@@Zercanyan Lightning infused is only better in a few situations. (Crit weapons, or if the enemy has very high armor values against slash or pierce but very low lightning resist) Most of the time Keen + some buff has higher overall damage with high dex.
@@cyrusol incorrect. most weapon strike AoWs will scale better on lightning rather than keen or heavy even w/ grease. (note greases and weapon buffs have different motion values for AoW's) The only exception to this is when they have low motion values like repeating thrusts or if you can get the piercing bonus There is also the addition of lightning slash, which has high motion values, and makes lightning equal to and normally above keen even when greased (note that keen would still have to go through the flat elemental defense) Those are two critical categories missed. Some weapons that also favor elemental infusions or have a bane on keen may actually have better lightning scaling over keen
alot of speedrun and no hit builds already proved you wrong, strength is more effective yes, but dex isnt obsolete, hell i would call it a built in easy mode especially when paired with bleed, which most dex builds do. strength is better but takes more mastery of the game.
@@flamingmanure dex without status fx is trash. you're just doing chip damage against bosses with 300 move combos, so you have no advantage with the faster moveset. even bhf builds rely on bleed. strength builds just sip the posture physick tear and hold r2, stagger bosses out of combos and script fights. look at serpent hunter or heavy iron balls routes, it's literally free.
You sound so nerdy, so I believe you lol but I just tried a strength build and using heavy weapons and hated it. I went back to 60 dex and dual welding katanas
while I am an absolute simp for dex/fth builds, especially the black flame and blood flame builds paired with some of the quick cast, there is almost this fantastical almost objectively powerful power and presence around str builds that give it an edge in most situations. In pvp there is this power behind dex/fth (be either built together or seperate) that makes it almost unfair as it almost controls the battle due to lightning, heals, maddness and ignoring I-frames but generally speaking str is still king for many reasons especially when looking at raw AR, and similar builds work with str especially in the 125-150 bracket that make it quite competitive. .
@Zercanyan lol my dex build for wave off gold is AR 1100 at lvl 135. Dex still tops Str buddy. You are a little late these builds have been tested way longer than you put out your videos lmao
Have faith, comrades.
^ faith makes anything better
Can’t parry catch flame
Eww no int is superior
@@przemeklisicki8741Because gravity magic? Sure. Because you want to be boring and fit the meta? Go home.
@@brickpuncher1429 as if faith is not meta, its not like rotten breath, gaints flame take thee, flame fall upon them, catch flame, lightning spear, ancient dragon lightning strike, burn o flame, peast threads, every single blackflame spell etc are weak off meta incantations
I think dexterity is more versatile because a lot of the greatswords, curved greatswords, great thrusting spears scale very well with dex if you give them lightning or keen infusment but having high dex also allows you to faster activate elemental damage. You mainly lose out on using colossal weapons and ultra greatswords (which do have high poise break) in exchange for better elemental damage. But if you take a claymore, slap keen infusment on it, and give it giants hunt or lions claw, you’re still going to be very capable of breaking poise quickly.
But then again, big stick go bonk
I actually will have to agree on this one as dexterity has one other feature that makes it quite formidable. It has the widest range of viable damage types along side faith (mostly due to ice/spear scaling mostly with dexterity, and . You actually do have access to two ultra greatswords on a dex build. Zwiehander (which is better w/ lightning affinity due to motion values) and God Slayer Greatsword
umm you can just put a heavy affinity on them
@@starstrider3030 yes but if you level dex and go with a hybrid build and use magic you also get faster casting speed. One good thing I will say about a strength build is that you really only need to go to 54 strength, then you can put your points into everything else. Reason being if you level to 54 and two hand you will hit the 80 soft cap on strength scaling.
@@DreyfusLagoon The increased casting speed from dex is negligible. If you are making a dedicated caster build it's far better to level int/faith to 80 and put the reset of the points into vigor and mind. Ofc if you are making a lvl 200+ NG+ build you will have enough points but at that level nearly any build is viable. Strength gives by far the most bang for the buck while leveling because of 50% boost when 2h, the clawmark seal (can also be 2h for extra damage) and access to heavy shield. Fire ashes of war can be found right at the beginning of the game in caelid while dex ash of war can only be found in Leyndell half way through the game. Basically dex is only good if you really want to use dedicated dex weapons for their unique ashes of war otherwise you can just slap heavy on your weapon.
I think it would be cool if they gave 50% dex boost if you hold your weapon 1h.
The main issue is that in ER poise break is the best offensive stat, there are some enemies which are impervious to it (kinda, because with enough hits you are poise breaking them anyways), but the survavility and raw damage that Strength can give you is crazy and you can even have the best of any other build working perfectly and harmoniously with strength, once you have your Strength and vit in 60 you can try dexterity, arcane, even int and everything will only add to your character:
Strength + dex broken, Strength + int broken, Strength + arcane broken, Strength + faith and enough dex you can't be more broken, do you have a high level character? the try Strength + dex + something else you are literally GOD.
My first build was a dex with arcane build, but at some point I noticed that in reality Dex isn't that impressive, it give you more magical resistants and inmmunity than strength, but if you don't invest quite a lot in vigor every thing will kill you in two or three hits (which is terrible for a melee build), also you do hit harder with dual weapons, but the difference isn't that big when you take incantations and special weapons in consideration, and as you said I had to put some point on strength anyways to use the weapons which are suppose to be for a dex build like the naginaka and KoB, so I am thinking of making a build like yours and see how it works.
My bandit, my prisoner, and my confessor I put dex in to use the faith daggers...Every time I played them I was wondering "When do I get the dmg or the spellcasting reduction?". I make one str character and I don't even have to level up. It's absurd.
Things killing you in two or three hits means that you're getting hit. Try not getting hit instead!
@@made.online2149 While I try to at least don't use summons I am more a shooters guy and I play this kind of game in a more casual way, so I like to be able to tank some damage and kill the bosses quickly without much sweat in fact if I could facetank with impunity the bosses I will be even happier this is why I am going with strength recently, however ER's DLC have made me sweat a lot regarless of my build.
My first souls like was in fact Code Vein? I kinda liked it and waifu is laifu but my first "real" for "real" souls was ER, and it has made me tried other Darksouls (I am finishing DS3 with all its DLC) and so far in this kind of game strength and vitality to 80 for facetanking and fun for days, is the way to go. :P
@@retardedvelociraptor Yeah strength and vitality to 80 for facetanking and fun for days, is the way to go. :P
where my strength bros??? 💪😎
I feel like there’s good evidence that dex was supposed to be PvP balanced. Lightning works especially well against player resistances, especially on slashing weapons, while flat damage resistance makes it not as effective in PvE. The fact that casting speed and things like fan daggers or spark aromatics are also influenced by dex make me lean toward that conclusion. The casting speed doesn’t matter in PvE, but every frame matters in PvP.
I'm in NG+ now. I started as a Samurai class and I love the Katanas in game. I used them exclusively (with the longbow for range) for 3/4 of the game. This means emphasis on Dex and Arcane (for bleed). Then I got the Blasphemous Blade. Honestly for a melee character I don't see how there is a better weapon in the game. So now I have to spec into Str to get the most out of this weapon. (I could respect but I still like the katanas and longbow - the Bl Blade isn't the answer to everything). Even the katanas typically will benefit from some Str.
Yea the main thing to keep in mind is that pretty much every weapon can be changed between heavy and keen and most weapons will perform very similar on either infusion. So really the main thing you have to take into consideration is the stat requirements on weapons and mostly just what somber weapons do you like. But each somber weapon requires you to build specifically for that weapon. Like you pointed out though Str does have some other perks like increasing physical def, letting you equip better shields, and getting that juicy 1.5 bonus when two handing. But Dex for the most part has the much stronger somber weapons.
My first playthrough started as a dex but I honestly would just respec when I came across a cool somber weapon I liked. At first it was moonveil going hard into int and dex even though I never cast a single spell. And then later into arcane/dex for some of the arcane weapons I wanted to use. So yea basically builds are really simple in Elden Ring. Every build will level Vit, end, and mind, and then you just pick one or two damage stats that you want to use based off of ashes of war, spells, and sombers you want to use and there you go. At the end of the day their isn't actually a ton of build variety in the sense of how it affects playstyle. Most builds all end up pumping up most of the same stats and most bosses revolve around spamming roll and then spamming your ash of war or spell. Its simple but super fun with just how many cool weapons, spells, and ashes there are. But the builds in this game do not actually affect playstyle as much as they do in some other action rpgs.
i agree and i like how this game has a wide variety of actual viable builds instead of, like many games, while having a wide variety of options, only a handful being truly good or competitive, along a hard meta. Elden Ring has done this the best. You can really find something you like, and can become a specialist in your own right of many diff builds and be able to compete well whether it be pve OR pvp. Cant wait for the dlc! Can only imagine what new weapons we might get. Was about to respec but gonna wait til the dlc since its so close. I wonder if the PvP meta level of 150 will ever evolve to a higher level with addition of dlc and more content.
always depends on which weapon art is broken (rivers of blood, longhorn, moghs spear)
I actually disagree that dex have better somber weapon options than strength. Strength has some serious one shot potential like Marias executioner sword, ordovis greatsword will hit for 60+ stance damage on a full charge and you have access to pretty much all the greatspears, mohg sacred spear and siluria’s tree.
Another major point to mention regarding lightning infusion is that since strength build requires lower stat investment (due to 2 handing), you can built into faith and just put electrify armament on your weapon to, you can get like 117 lightning damage with the finger seal at 20 faith.
I’m not saying that dex is more sophisticated than strength or anything but I’m saying that strength is just an all around better design stat.
Marginally strength is always going to be better since for every level spent you get extra physical defense and 1.5 strength assuming that you 2 hand.
Not to disagree with your points because for the most part you are right but there is some context:
Maria's is an interesting case of great DPS, nice burst, not necessarily the best one shot option but a decent one, there are many other similar skills and abilities to it.
I would actually argue the "Tree Spear" is much better than all of the other great spears for pvp and potentially for pve outside of the bosses w/ a 60% holy resist or greater, especially with the new DLC greases
Ordovis at the time had lower stance damage than the dragon king cragblade, I will still argue that even with the stance break potential they are both still A tier weapons, not great or the best at breaking poise
Str requirements are typically higher, most dex requirements are stupidly low in comparison, which does help str quite a bit more
There is actually a really interesting interaction with the lightning infusion vs using electrify armament. 9 times out of 10, when using weapon strike AoW you will get more damage with the lightning infusion, due to how buff motion values work. Often times, when using lightning slash at least within the level 125-179 pvp/pve brackets, lightning will usually result in having higher damage than a weapon buff or grease, Same thing with critical strikes. Lightning always has the best critical strike potential, till it is surpassed by quality.
For other notes most of this is due to the DLC, Dex out competes str in the following aspects
Great katana/Flamberge using skills especially w/ blood flame
Milady w/ Wing Stance
Back Hand Blades
Curved Swords
Raksasha's Katana (this one is a crime)
Lizard Great sword (longest great sword, with a higher AR than most other greatswords, unique moveset, great on keen, horrible on heavy :/)
Blender Skills (Falx/Dancing weapons)
Bolt Of gransax (best sniper)
Claws of night/Bows (headshot/Status tools)
Storm/Cold AoWs
Antishield (Sword of night)
Halberd (Guardian sword spear is just ridiculous)
Blood Hound Fang (quality but clearly more of a dex weapon, stupidly high AR)
Ranah's Oil vs Flame of the redmains (about the same, but one is a quick tool)
Pots/Daggers/Arrows
Claws (Raptor Talon's w/ Blood flame blade is just the best setup)
Better Spear setups (naginata/swift spear)
Lightning > Fire AoW (Lightning has 4 good ones, Fire has 1 :/)
The main issue with dex builds here (post DLC release) is that some of the options stand out as overpowered especially in pvp and are usually now banned in competitive play,
Str is still much better designed, straight forward and reasonable, with amazing skill and weapon options. I felt like the theme they went with dex was the right direction, but they made alot of it a little too good in certain context
After the DLC and the bug fixes were implemented, it became clear that str/dex are now the strongest attributes in the game, with faith coming in just behind them, This is much more noticeable with the much more aggressive DLC bosses.
@@Zercanyan I’m gonna quickly touch on pvp and move on as I’d rather not mix pvp with pve. Dex is probably the strongest even before the dlc, you have access to the cleanrot and shamshir which are both top tier tournament weapons. Super strong AOW like piercing fang and sword dance. Now you even have the pata (im pretty sure it scale best with dex don’t quote me though) and back hand blade which is an utterly stupidly strong weapon. Strength have great options but are definitely not as strong as dex.
When it comes to stance breaking strength is unmatched even with the dlc, you have the bloodfiend arm which is probably one of the strongest weapon even after the nerf. The only thing that can match it is pre-nerfed thundercloud form. After the nerf sadly (and its one of my favorite weapon) its actually kinda shit now. It takes like 3 fully charged thundercloud form to break goddrick stance (this is rough testing) compare that to the ordovis that have faster charged time and can break goddrick stance in 2 fully charged hits. It feel like thundercloud form does around 40 stance damage which really affects the stance-break break point for most enemies.
Strength have access to Mohg Sacred spear, Ordovis GS and Marias exeuctioner sword, some of the strongest weapons even with the dlc taken into account. Overall I’d say that the dlc introduced some super strong dex weapon and really helped dexterity find a place in the game but I don’t think it’ll ever really out perform the disgusting 66 stance damage from Ordovis or hitting for 6-7k from eochaid dancing blade which cost 15 fp on a relatively fast AOW in just 3 - 4 seconds or procing bleed in 2 faster than usual charged heavies with the bloodfiend farm (charge heavies are around the same speed as straightsword charge heavies for some reason).
When it comes to higher strength requirement i think you’re meant to 2 hand to reduce the requirement but yeah dex is definitely better on that ground.
When it comes to non-somber weapons I also concede that putting electrified armament won’t match the lightning infusion.
Dex have lots and lots of powerful weapons after the DLC but in my opinion it really have a hard time matching the borderline broken weapons strength have such as a starfist or any weapons mentioned above. I think its a good thing though because some of these strength weapons are kinda stupid ngl. I really liked your point that dex should feel more dexterous and not be a trading machine, you actually have to dodge enemies rather than just tanking and breaking stance.
As to my opinion, I really don’t think build choices are that important, what matters is what you decide to use, you can always stick lions claw on a lightning zweihander and get super armor and 40 stance damage with slightly lower damage than strength, you can always put lightning in starfist rather than going into strength.
Another bonus of STR you don’t even have to meet the STR requirement to wield a strength weapon. So long as you two hand it, you can wield the f you are within 10 points of the STR requirement. Dex doesn’t allow for this at all.
And actually there are now two fire based STR weapons. Magma curved swords are fire strength based. And the Fire Knight Sword from the DLC which is just a fire Zwei great sword.
100% even works w/ paired weapons even if they don't get the AR bonus. This is actually beneificial for all builds However str reaps the higheest reward. However it's not within 10 points but rather it gives you an effective +50% effective strength
So if a weapon requires 30 str, you just need 20, if it requires 60 str, you just need 40 when two handing. It also means you only need 54 str to hit your 2 handing soft cap
Magma curved swords are more quality weapons w/ a faith requirement :/
Fire Knight Sword from the DLC actually works good on Fire/Heavy/lightning/flame/sacred affinity, don't recommend it at all with keen but I do love how it does at least have unique scaling with fire.
I was more hoping for a fire somber that was just str w/ split scaling but that is me being greedy xD
(and dex somehow got 3 weapons that have split magic scaling, plus perfumes that scale for fire/magic/lightning that scale on dex, the perfumes aren't great but it is something)
A lot of dex weapons or ashes have been buffed in the last couple patches, mostly in terms of poise/stance damage values.
Yeah dex recieved alot of buffs from the recent patches especially 1.13 where I would argue dex is now the strongest attribute in the game, pve and pvp. Especially after the bug fixes and balancing changes. The raksasha's katana, back hand blades, night weapons, blink bolt (which gives neutral attack weapons an engage, which are usually dex an engage), the longest great sword, which is the best at triggering status. Beautiful weapon strike AoW's that synergize well with the great katana, additionally the best tools and heavy pots.
Bringing back the poise values for light weapons was just insane
Finally a the divine beast frost stomp, along with hybrid int/fth/arc options that favor dex
@@Zercanyan what weapon are you referring to when you say longest greatsword
@@aud9789 Lizard Greatsword. it's actually a decent bit longer than the sacred relic sword. A key factor that makes the weapon great however is both status effect builds on heavy attacks and the 1-handed AR which makes it amazing for weapon skill builds. Due to this reach its rolling attack is actually fairly reliable to land, unlike other shorter greatswords. Additionally the bullet projectile also consecutively hits increasing the build up of multihit talismans.
It's a bit bugged however even now it's still incredible on the right build and if they end up patching it to fix certain talisman bugs, I it can almost cross the line of being the best great sword in general use for pve.
As a warning it will always do better on a dex build, even when two handing :/
I noticed this during my first playthrough. I specifically wanted to use a single light spear (Cross-Naginata) with some auxiliary incanatations, but after crunching the numbers dex just made no sense to use if you primarily two-hand. Even if Keen eventually starts outperforming Heavy on your particular weapon of choice, it only does so with extremely heavy investment unless the weapon is RIDICULOUSLY dex-biased (such as Guardian Swordspear). For instance, a 54/20 Heavy nagi does 601 AR, while at the same investment 16/58 Keen nagi only does 570. That's on Cross-naginata, a weapon that's not just dex-biased but also requires a VERY hefty DEX investment to even wield. On something like a Longsword this genuinely just gets fucking stupid, with a 54/10 Heavy longsword still outdamaging a 10/80 Keen longsword. So in essence DEX just lags 7 to ~25 levels behind STR for two-handed damage output.
This may not matter by meta PVP levels... but by the end of your NG playthrough you will only reach around SL100 even if you clear all bosses and minibosses while eating gold fowl feet (assuming you neither lose your bloodstain nor specifically farm). So with DEX you will be lagging behind a STR build in either vigor, damage output or versatility for most of your playthrough, especially when you consider clawmark seal, which, funnily enough, also benefits from two-handing if you want a higher magic damage output in a certain fight(although weapon buffs only scale with the faith portion). DEX only shines at lower levels if you build around unique weapons exclusively and spam weapon arts or if you powerstance at which point both are about equal on most weapons (and even then STR still has the option of powerstancing incredibly dumb heavy ultras for massive jump L1s).
I was level 100+ in Mountaintops of the Giants.
One thing I heavily disagree with is hitting only ~lv100 during a run. You might only reach that if you speedrun areas and miss most of the game that isn't strictly necessary. Just during my first playthrough (meaning the greatest number of mistakes and waste) I had to specifically and intentionally waste most of my runes in everything I could find (emptying stores, maxing consumable stores etc.) just that I wouldn't level up too fast. If you don't care for meta levels or buildmaking, hitting 200 wouldn't be strange.
Dude I feel so identified with this... In DS3 I used to love playing Dex builds and I always did so two handing the weapons. In ER, well... Your summary i more than enough testament of what I have to say.
what about powerstancing cross-naginata or other weapon classes? would you still recommend levelling up Strength after meeting reqs?
11:10 Damn, that was sick, I had no idea you could do that to Malenia lol
yeah one of my favorite tricks, alot of her animations can be canceled by freezing her
I picked Dex because I liked the Katanas. But then there ended up being a ton of weapons I thought were awesome but were strength weapons.
Honestly str just has so many viable options compared to dexterity, the the DLC definitely evens the playing field in my opinion
@@Zercanyan especially with the great Katanas
@@sibsart2039 ill admit the heavy great katana is great, I actually found that since it's more of a skill machine, keen/lightning does out perform due to being a skill stick. Seriously it is essentially an L2 machine which is where dex shines, as the 1 handing AR, and bullet AoW is where the skill scaling matters
For some reason players like to look at the 2h AR without any other context :/
@@ZercanyanI want to make an argument as to why 2h matter more in my humble/far from a high level player perspective:
Yesterday I finally beat the final boss of the DLC. It took me way more hours than I would have liked to take me.
For most of the strong bosses (well, actually, for 92-95% of the entire DLC playthrough) I used Great Katanas, more specifically THE Great Katana. I have to say that the moveset, being so useful, maneuverable, varied, and strong, made me fall in love with it. But I have dabbled between Dex and Strength throughout the DLC, testing weoaons like Blacksteel Hammer, and I have to day that despite all my options, I ended up beating most of the bosses with the Great Katana. That included Messmer, Rellana, if I recall correctly, Bayle, and, obviously, the Final Boss.
The latter was really tough. I tried sever AoW with the Great Katana and found out that I'd rather just focus on rolling attacks and follow-up R1s, as well as an occasional running R1 or jumping attack, to get the job done. Despite how much damage the Repeating Thrusts and Piercing Fang did, the damage difference wasn't big enough compared to the rolling R1 followed by regular R1s with the Retaliatory Crossed-Tree Talisman to make it worth the trade. I ended up simply putting Quickstep or, in the Final Boss' case, Raptor of the Mists. That made me capable of dodging some of the unfunny moves of the boss while also keeping me in place for my continued use of basic standard meelee fight style. For the record, I was using a 54 Strength build for this... Not optimal but still. Strength Invictus.
I hope in the future I get to replay the DLC with a PS5 or a PC instead of a 30fps granny Ps4 lol
One thing I find ironic, because strength is often associated with unga bunga, is the fact that there are 2 colossal swords that also scale with int. The Dark Moon Greatsword? Yeah, it's got an int requirement of 38, but its 16 str requirement tells me that its physical damage scales better with strength.
I don't think you should ever use MLGS physical attack. Buffed Charge R2 is just nuts. Chances are if you use that weapon you will have a staff with pebble or night comet to use to deal with regular mobs. Helphen Steeple is probably better if you want to actually whack stuff with "physical attack" with an int scaling greatsword
@@trh3xa174 While that may typically be the style of play for DMGS (Dark Moon Greatsword), the sword itself still has a hitbox when you do the projectile from the buff. I'm likely wrong when I say this, but, I think it also temporarily boosts damage and (probably) scaling.
Overall, my belief is that a sword should be used like a sword, not a magic staff (like the Lazuli Glintstone Sword).
@@brickpuncher1429 u benefit from the range and magic damage from the projectile than the sword itself when charging, and the sword scales much better with magic damage.
"my belief is a sword should be used as a sword" ok XD? brah there are more attacks than that charged attack with the moonlight sword, also a sword should be designed in whatever creativity the game maker wants, like sword of night and flame for example, which is a pretty cool concept for a sword.
"I'm likely wrong when I say this, but, I think it also temporarily boosts damage and (probably) scaling." im quite sure that you are wrong here, i dont think that applies to moonlight GS.
I use everything. I don't use a particular build. I have chosen particular spells, incantations, weapons which are useful in particular situation.
i personally think pure str or dex just get trumped by quality, even with the reduced dmg early on. I think str people tend to have a hard on for minimal things.
that's genuinely true. Beyond lower levels strength eventually loses out to quality. But often it is considered standard to limit level/progression to a certain degree to allow for more build limitations that eventually lead to more build variety.
Personally I just enjoy dex/arcane more than strength/arcane
I’m able to use morgotts cursed sword, bloody helice, rivers of blood, reduvia, and my favorite occult flameberge.
While also having bloodflame/frenzy/dragon incantions. To truly fit the theme.
A couple of threshold testings to stop leveling faith.
16- all bloodflame incantations, all bestial incantations + flame grant me strength. And flame of frenzy amazing quick spell, roll catches, fast startup, fast recovery, good range if aimed high. And procs madness)
25 for all the above + Golden Vow and stronger dragon incantations
And 30 for Greyoll Roar and Black flame protection.
(If you’re aiming for dragon roar which is 28 might as well hit the faith cap of 30 for your dragon seal. And you can use black flame protection)
Radagon icon with 40 dex gives max casting speed. It’s noticeable, especially if you play hybrid. You’ll notice how much those milliseconds matter. Difference between getting smacked or not.
now that the DLC has the Golden Vow consumable which is better than the AoW, would you still recommend levelling Faith to 25 for a dex/arc build?
Still in the bloodhounds fang and zweihander dex gang. Ng+ and everything is easy enough :P
Dex with a zwei infused with lighting why not have both
If it’s curved it for the nerds, if it’s straight it’s for the strength
I try to like Dex, I really try. But the thing is with Dex they always say the bleed bleed bleed. I hate being weak and relying on rng. And if you have a high chance of blood, you have to focus on a WHOLE nother stat with Dex too. Strength is straight forward and on Dex builds you rely on ashes of war so mind IS ANOTHER star to focus on.
What are you even talking about?
First, bleed (or any status) is not RNG at all. You have build-up per hit (the number in the stat sheet of the weapon) up to a threshold (vitality of the opponent) and whenever your build-up exceeds that number the effect is procced once.
The build-up may decay, it may also be alleviated through items etc. but generally you have a fixed number of hits until the effect procs. If the enemy has like 180 vitality (for actual bosses the number is more like 400-500) and you have 55 bleed build-up and you get 4 hits in succesion -> boom, blood loss procs.
Which of course means that some movesets and some Ashes of War are just way better than others simply because they allow for more hits. (Which does narrow down the range of viable options, as OP said in his video.)
Most dex weapons have innate bleed and no arcane scaling on standard. That means the bleed stat doesn't scale at all with arcane. In those cases that number (55 for example) is always the same, whether you have 7 arcane or 99. You only get an arcane scaling if you actually go for bleed affinity which by itself is sort-of terrible. Keen (for pure dex) or Quality (hybrid) are way better in terms of damage output. If you want additional bleed on a dex weapon with innate bleed you can use for example a blood grease and stay with Keen.
So at the end of the day you can leave arcane as low as possible.
You can do an arcane build but then you should rather pick and build your weaposns in such a way so that you have better arcane scaling overall and multiple status effects or stacking status effects between innate + from the infused. A typical example here would be the Antspur Rapier. The choice of weapons for such builds is even smaller than for pure (or primarily) dex builds. But at the end of the day... just don't call such a build a dex build. Because it isn't. Dex builds - as I just explained - don't require arcane.
A possible alternative to Keen may be lightning infused. Depends on the situation, this comment is too long already. But for example on those crit weapons like Misericorde and the normal Rapier lightning infused is good as you don't even have time to buff the weapon if you pull them out the pocket after opening up the enemy for a crit. Lightning infused does a bit more damage in that one hit where it matters than unbuffed Keen.
And irrespective of whether you play str or dex, you use AoWs on both, and should have enough mind so that a flask doesn't overfill the bar on any build. But not much more. So that's like a complete non-argument.
@@cyrusol i understand i like dex. I just like strength more i like ez staggering and stun on smaller enemies. I apologize for saying bleed relied on rng i was newer when i wrote that comment but i still think my opinion still stands. Since elden ring is my first souls game im new so staggering is easier
@@cyrusol also i usually use maliketh's black blade or zweihander, since im a strength/faith user been a great experience so far 😃
ChaseTheBro hs entered the chat
Chasethebro is genuinely one of the most informed players in terms of scaling and pvp effectiveness. While seeing a lighting sword spear on occasion hurts my soul he does have a great idea of what he is doing both in pve and pvp and he knows how to enjoy the game while casually optimizing his builds in ways that are fun and unique. He understood how things worked much earlier than plenty of other optimizers and he knew what he was doing from the very start. Str is still goated, but admittedly in the last few patches, since 1.07 onwards there was some benefits given to dex builds to make them quite interesting for pvp and pve.
in terms of meta he genuinely capitalizes on what is viable without focusing on anything that is oppressive making him one of the best overall players to look at to know what works the best in terms of builds and redeemed the dragon king's crag blade for me (due to hearing constant negative reviews from content creators who clearly didn't put time in to learn the weapon).
@@Zercanyan Hey I appreciate the reply. this was well put. Honestly I was joking but I agree with your vid mostly. I have faith/arc pure strength, pure int and also dex/arc all capped at 150. Str is by far the most fun in my opinion. When you broke down the scaling of weapons I also noticed str is just the overall better option when leveling up. Idk what they could do to help dex in that regard but I too notied that with weapons. Overall great video btw dex took me the longest to complete because of how stale it felt. Great video you have my sub.
@@timothymoore2966 Absolutely. So dex has the benefit of certain unique weapons, bullet AoW, and lightning. This is actually what helps them quite a bit but when breaking down leveling, bugs in pvp, and overall net benefits typically str wins out unless you are utilizing bolt of gransax/BHF/Ice Spear.
This doesn't really make up for the vast difference in prowess between the two but it is important to note the potential for new unique weapons, catalyst, tools ect... coming in the future may help balance the game a bit more or give more options (whenever they release the DLC of course XD)
Faith pairs well with Strength since you can apply buffs with Incantations.
Faith pairs well with both strength and dex because dex weapons are better at quickly doing elemental damage if you were to apply blood flame blade or poison to your weapon, and character buffs are universally good for both. Faith is nice tho because you can put 80 points into either strength or dex and put like 20-30 points in faith and still get access to all the good buffs. Int requires a lot more Investment because you cn basically only use int spells to deal damage
I have a strength build but would like to use some magic.
What do I have to do to use some spells, besides from putting points in faith??
If you want to still use strength then your only option is faith/str and use clawmark seal. Otherwise you need to respec and take all your points out of strength and put them into int or faith depending on what kind of magic you want to use. Only leave the minimum amount of strength or dex you need to use the weapon you want to use. Then change the infusion to the stat that scales with the stat you invested in the most. Hope that makes sense.
Only in the first minute but i can already tell that this is a "quality" video
Can't tell if it's a criticism or not but I have never seen a pun so perfectly executed.
@@Zercanyan very much a compliment. The video was very informative.
Lions claw w/greatsword on top
based
I will make a point that most broken weapons that needed to be nerfed were Dex weapons. I can't think of a single Strength weapon that has been nerfed for being OP.
STRONGTHY
Strength is easier for sure.
The valiant gargoyles would have begged to differ
I heard that Strength also reduces the stamina cost when using Ashes of War, Sorceries, and Incantations. Is this true?
this is incorrect however it would be cool if it was xD
What is funny that you can be almost pure strength user with some (17) faith investment to gain access to bloodflame + black flame blade incantations
"Oh no", you think, "I read on wiki that they scale off of faith portion of my stats only"
But here's the catch: blood loss effect on bloodflame is the same no matter your incant scaling, black flame blade saps enemies health same as it does on high faith
Yea, fire damage is lower, but it's clearly not the most important thing for these incantations
What build is the most fun, I’ve always done max strength in other games because I think i’m guts but honestly I don’t like the commitment when swinging… I always cheat since i’m a swinger
I wanna be a glass cannon that rolls and counters everything like i’m playing sekiro
For reactionary game play
The route I recommend here is likely straight swords, either power stanced or with shield with lightning infusion w/ the brass shield (if you want to get lighttning early on, you can head to altus after grabbing both medallions)
If you want to avoid elemental damage, keen (dex) for higher reach, heavy(str) for higher AR
All of these can be swapped with blood affinity
For bullet ashes, if you want something more based on range combat that is super efficient with FP (effectively a Caster-like build) I recommend a dexterity build with ice spear/thunderbolt/storm blade/vacuum slice
Honestly certain fth/arc/int builds can do the same thing as well but what you are looking for is lighter weapons. I just recommend having a target for the build that fits your direction. Straight swords seem like the closest thing to sekiro I can think of game play wise (at least when it comes to pacing)
@@Zercanyan yes in my first playthrough i ran and keen guardian swordspear with ice spear and its pretty damb OP. Guardian Swordspear is easily one of the best weapons in the game and is a common weapon. Its moveset is awesome and unlike any other weapon for the type it is. Very fast, sweeping hits but range of a spear, i just love it.
@@nunyabizwacks6711 the ridiculous part is that guardian sword spear is just a wooden stick and ice spear is only hinted at being a int scaling AoW. xD
GSS is clearly the best halberd IMO due to the AR and moveset, The reach isn't half bad either, the fact it has the highest AR in it's class outside of an overleveled quality nightrider glaive is insane, it's only 6 AR less than that at w/ 99 levels in each attribute .-. meaning that a 99/93 build vs a 99/17 keen GSS is debatable in which one is better which is ridiculous
I know this is an oldish video but I just used so many Larval Tears trying to beat Promised Consort Radahn with random stuff like Carian Sovereignty spam or quick cold/frost/scarlet rot buildup builds but since I’m level 200 once I said fuck it and just pumped strength to 99 and endurance to 40 I bonked that fucker to death with the Giant Crusher and Prelate’s Inferno Crosier without much effort lol
the higher defense with such high strength definitely helps
Lion’s Claw on just the Giant’s Crusher probably would have been fine
Yeah the flat defense strength gets actually adds up pretty quickly
Carian Sovereignty is incredibly overrated (it is still amazing but not my cup of tea, I just won't consider it the best in pve or pvp). It can do great damage and has amazing hyper armor but the DPS is comparable to much more safer options. Milady w/ wing stance on a lightning build, guard counter str/dex builds, blood flame great katana skill spam builds, dancing builds, charge attack builds, ect.. can do more dps easily with less set up and much safer at lower levels.
Other words: Big number does make my brain happy, is there other way to get big number?
Yes... and faster/safer too, the difference is sometimes it isn't in one hit. and if it requires you to know the boss pattern to pull it off it is almost pointless outside of styling on a boss that you can beat with other means. xD
Quality gang 😎
i have a lvl 70 STR invasion build and i am going in the dlc with a DEX build bc i wanted to use weapons like: DANCING BLADE OF RANAH, FALX, RAKSHASA'S GREAT KATANA, BACKHAND BLADE and SWORD OF NIGHT. and try some lighting damage
all weapons you cant infuse and have a natural DEX scaling.
also: Lighting really is optimal in dex ? or quality ?
not saying DEX is better or STR is better.
but some weapons only works in DEX.
its like CHAOS build and QUALITY build in DS3
chaos have more versability and critical damage but few unique weapons
quality is a lesser varsion of Chaos but with a little more range of wapons (unless you put some stats in Faith to use sunlight sword)
Dexterity is secondary stat you can pair it best with INT IMO. Infact I feel arcane is much rewarding than dex in the game.
I have a basic arcane, and dex samurai build rn. Would allocating my and swapping my arcane and strength make my character stronger?
Depends, katanas have native dex scaling, so putting blood affinity on the katana would make dex stronger even when one handing but allocating to str and faith and going blood flame blade on heavy would make the heavy scale better while two handing but only for that moveset. This is where context becomes important. So it depends on how you want to run your arcane samurai build. You may also want to see what a blood beast man's curved sword or blood affinity long swords can do for your build as they are also of arcane scaling and be quite brutal.
Just play what you think would be more fun.
@@flimsy364 ^Flimsy is right, this is the best advice anyone could offer. while my video is more about optimization the numbers are no more than 5-10% off in an extreme situation. Play what you enjoy.
I'm going into this video with the mindset that I'm strongly of the opinion that dexterity is DEFINITELY superior, but I'm willing to hear the argument.
I predict that i will be back to this comment in about 12 minutes to confirm that i was correct, but we shall see 🤔
Edit: ok ok ok, i'll give a strength build a try 🤷
Two-handed, literally every weapon performs better on str+heavy than on dex+keen, with two exceptions. Even clear innate dex weapons like the Nightriders flail or Naginata, will do more damage on heavy with 54 strength, 24 dex than it does with base strength and like 70 dex on keen. The exceptions are only Guardian Swordspear and Urumi.
Strength increases physical resistance. Dex increases no resistances. On a RL 125 build, strength has around 155 physical resistances, dex builds have 130. Thats a big difference.
I wish innate dex weapons performed better on keen+dex than they do on strength+heavy atleast, like it was in DS3 (Also while were talking about the physical affinities, the quality affinity is fucking shitee).
Dex builds only redeming quality in my eyes is the lightning affinity like you mentioned, but if you actually toss two players at eachother, one dex lighning build and one heavy strength build, using the same weapon and armor, they do very similar damage, because the physical resistances of the strength build equalizes the lightning weakness.
On top of all of this the 24 dex isn't needed for most weapons. Often times this is insult to injury as Often dex requirements for weapons are quite lower. Even then the chain link flail is objectively better as even when one handing, it has a higher AR on heavy compared to the knight rider flail on keen (they have similar reach and the same moveset. )
typically the highest dex a strength build would breach is 22 for the nagakiba, or 18 for the great bows (which rare for strength builds to target), most of the time dex investment is not needed for most decent somber weapons excluding the claymore
DS3 was honestly a much better set up for dex builds, as sharp was always competitive with heavy and emphasized weapons most would consider dex weapons. ER runs into the condition where keen falls behind heavy quite significantly and is mostly carried into some level of viability by PSSS/PSS (slender and naginata), the guardian sword spear, bullet AoWs and the urumi. And while that seems like a lot to list, the advantages that those builds lose out on are significant.
DS3 also handed a good set of light str weapons and heavy dex weapons, overall I found the balance in ds3 more fair for the physical attribute buillds as even quality was a viable route to run.
At the start of the video, I totally disagreed with you on STR is better that DEX, but at the very end of the video, I actually understand what you meant and I believe too😂.
The best dexterity weapon is a strength weapon (keen Flamberg)
yeah, Flamberg is still a really nice strength weapon especially if you are two handing >.< But as a one handing weapon it still works incredibly well on a dex build
Need a video on strongest ash of war tbh ,not the skill but the rating for stats on weapons.I’m only 245 hours in and still can’t maximize damage.I’ve seen 900 dmg RoB with no buff and I’m confused.
Why fight about it when you can have both
awh I see, a one who can truly appreciate QUALITY!
Fact is strength builds are easier and more comfortable to make.
Especially for a new souls player.
Super interesting how I can do the exact same fucking goddamn thing as you, same weapons, stats, gear, and then get complete opposite results. Fucking amazing game design
Magic Build Beats anything
It doesn’t if someone has thops barrier or erdtree great shield you’re done 😂😂
Laughs in int lol
it's big brain time
Dex:🗿
Strength:🗿
Strength is just more comfortable to build.
This guy doesn’t seem to know that if you use heavy on your weapons your increasing how much stamina it takes to swing it. There’s a whole bunch of little things like that that make your argument weak.
Quality build.
quality builds need to come back
very insightful.
Lighting, successive attacks, quicker attacks, counter damage, decks somber weapons, much lighter weapons. Dex and Str both have there pros and cons. One is not better than the other. Quality is the way.
I don’t think thats true. There are a view good points in there. I wont go to much into it because no one will read my comment but imo dex qnd str are pretty much equal. In most weapon classes you get very good options for both (of course they are not always equal like guts is better than zwei but bloodhounds fang outperforms other cgs). As for somber weapons you get wing of astes, morgots curved sword, hand of melenia etc that can keep up with ruins gs, beastjaw etc.
I understand where you are getting at. Dex clearly has the best CGS, Whips, Heavy thrusting sword and Halberd in the game, and debatably the strongest straight sword (though farming it takes hours xD). This was more of an on average point. Dex clearly isn't a 1 to 1 to strength. Keen is simply amazing for bullet AoWs but for the majority of weapon classes will lose out to heavy in damage.
The point is heavy typically out performs keen. strength builds typically allow for more weapon options while giving typically a higher AR and still grant the ability to cast many damaging spells quite effectively. While also raising your defenses.
Dex builds typically shines more with natural weapon scaling on bleed/frost builds (this doesn't really mean much tbh since str gets this beffinite as well) as well as lightning damage being absolutely goated and receiving the benefit of better scaling on bullet AoW
seriously ice spear/hoarfrost stomp scaling on dex technically makes dex one of the best and efficient magic damage builds in the game
. (if your faith is high enough, buffs and heals come out incredibly quickly with max dex as well)
On top of that str builds typically require less investment due to not necessarily requiring another stat, or requiring very little of another stat making it very level efficient.
A few things btw beastjaw is quality while wing of astel is int but that is true. I would actually argue typically dex has better somber weapons... And the nerf to beastjaw actually made thunderbolt the vastly superior option :/
Katana’s are just overrated. Big stick is more effiecent
Dex + faith, braindead dmg setup on duels.
Someone at fromsoft loves strength I guess
Easy mode for melee builds
Magic build
Strength has always been favored by devs since DS1, it has always been easy mode
I wouldn’t call it easy mode since any build can be made op especially in later games I would say it’s more like simple mode but I do think its the most fun especially when paired with faith
Faith>int>str>arc>dex
Skill issue
but..... but......
hand of Malenia
for a pvp weapon, yeah after patch 1.10 it shreds >.< Honestly I am surprised how the game changed over the last year
This dude forgot stat scaling exists. It doesn’t matter what the minimum stat requirements are, it matters how well the weapon scales with a respective stat
Both matter as it makes one investment more critical, imagine this, a weapon where keen has a higher scaling between two weapons but due to the need to invest into 4-10 more points in strength, along with a higher base damage, heavy becomes the better investment even for one handing the weapon that the innate dex scaling isn't as important. It's critical to note that Typically either has either a higher base damage or scaling excluding weapons such as the zweihander or the KGS. Regardless this all puts on a toll. Plus taking away from the all of that is the fact those points could have been put into endurance/vigor that the str build would have used. most weapons that are seen as unique such as the "shamshir" while technically having a higher keen scaling typically fall behind to a point heavy is a better infusion anyways, due to the two handing 1.5x property, it may make str seem even massively better.
I will note that lightning typically competes with heavy in damage in the right circumstances (only sometimes)
The focus on stat scaling may allow for nuances such as base damage, overall AR, motion values and AoW scalings to be ignored along for passive effects but ignoring all 3 of these things can lead to the differential power between dex and str to be ignored.
@@Zercanyan Lightning infused is only better in a few situations. (Crit weapons, or if the enemy has very high armor values against slash or pierce but very low lightning resist)
Most of the time Keen + some buff has higher overall damage with high dex.
@@cyrusol incorrect. most weapon strike AoWs will scale better on lightning rather than keen or heavy even w/ grease.
(note greases and weapon buffs have different motion values for AoW's)
The only exception to this is when they have low motion values like repeating thrusts or if you can get the piercing bonus
There is also the addition of lightning slash, which has high motion values, and makes lightning equal to and normally above keen even when greased (note that keen would still have to go through the flat elemental defense)
Those are two critical categories missed.
Some weapons that also favor elemental infusions or have a bane on keen may actually have better lightning scaling over keen
Vigor is better
Vigor is always better.
elden ring combat boils down to posture break and status effect spam, so str and arc make dex obsolete.
alot of speedrun and no hit builds already proved you wrong, strength is more effective yes, but dex isnt obsolete, hell i would call it a built in easy mode especially when paired with bleed, which most dex builds do. strength is better but takes more mastery of the game.
@@flamingmanure dex without status fx is trash. you're just doing chip damage against bosses with 300 move combos, so you have no advantage with the faster moveset. even bhf builds rely on bleed. strength builds just sip the posture physick tear and hold r2, stagger bosses out of combos and script fights. look at serpent hunter or heavy iron balls routes, it's literally free.
I really wish you would slow down your pace of speaking to enunciate more properly. Great info, just hard to parse as it feels like you're rushing.
dex is gay
Couldn't have said it better myself
And strength users are in the closet?
this is why i have a strength build in a separate game file, and dex in a diff one
You sound so nerdy, so I believe you lol but I just tried a strength build and using heavy weapons and hated it. I went back to 60 dex and dual welding katanas
People still making builds for noobs when the game has been out for over a year plus😂. Fyi Str builds are trash compared to faith/dex builds.
while I am an absolute simp for dex/fth builds, especially the black flame and blood flame builds paired with some of the quick cast, there is almost this fantastical almost objectively powerful power and presence around str builds that give it an edge in most situations. In pvp there is this power behind dex/fth (be either built together or seperate) that makes it almost unfair as it almost controls the battle due to lightning, heals, maddness and ignoring I-frames but generally speaking str is still king for many reasons especially when looking at raw AR, and similar builds work with str especially in the 125-150 bracket that make it quite competitive. .
@Zercanyan str is not king in low lvl buddy. That's just an opinion.
@Zercanyan lol my dex build for wave off gold is AR 1100 at lvl 135. Dex still tops Str buddy. You are a little late these builds have been tested way longer than you put out your videos lmao