Dark Souls & Other Souls-Likes

Mostly down to preference, but I can give you an idea of what each weapon class does. And the 'best' from that class.

-Any non-Artorias/Black Knight Greatsword: All attacks are useable in a PvP setting and are unlikely to be punished by duelers who aren't fishing. Claymore is considered the best.

-Curved Sword: Spam 2HR1 and win. Especially buffed. Falchion is considered the best.

-Spear: Turtle and Poke. As long as you keep your distance and don't get poise stabbed, you'll be fine. Silver Knight Spear is considered the best.

-Straight Sword: Basically a lighter Greatsword. Silver Knight Staight Sword excluded. Balder Side Sword is considered the best.

-Katana: R2 moves aren't particularly good but they have some utility. All other aspects are great. Debate over Chaos Blade or Iato being the best.

-Thrusting Sword: Can turtle, decent all around moveset. Rapier has massive backstab damage. Estoc has good melee damage. Estoc generally considered best for non back stab fishers.

-Ultra Greatsword: Ridiculously hard hitting and has some stunlock. Dead Angles well with practice. Zweihander considered best.

-Great Axe: See above. Black Knight Great Axe considered best.

-Great Club: Ridiculously powerful Rolling R1. Risky to use the rest of the moveset without good spacing. Practice needed. Large Club or Great Club considered best.

-Curved Greatword: Dead angles and infinite stunlock ALL the things! Murakumo considered best.

-Halberd: Powerful with good range, tends to leave you open (if you wiff) for punishment though if your spacing is off. Great Scythe considered the best.

-Dagger: Need to be good at backstabbing and parrying for the most part. Or be willing to wittle away at an enemy. Priscilla's has best melee damage. Dark Silver Tracer has highest back stab damage. Bandit's Knife considered overall best.

-Whip: Trolling only. Guardian Tail with Rotten Pine Resin applied is best.

-Fist: Mostly useless. Claws with Gauntlet of Thorns or Barehanded Dragon Form only.

-Club: R2 is mostly pointless. 2HR1 infinite stun locks. Great STR scaling, slow wind up and short range. Fairly light. Mace is considered the best.

-Axe: Slashing version of clubs, with worse STR scaling. R2 is actually useable. Hand Axe is considered the best.

-Crossbow: Crossbows are useable. Avelyn and Light Crossbow are most popular. Avelyn is considered the best.

-Bow: Actually viable. I believe mostly because you can cancel your attacks at any time. Poison Arrows are wonderful things. Composite Bow is considered the best.

-Great Bow: Trolling weapons. Either of them is completely fine for what they're used for.

Katana, Spear, Curved Sword, Halberd and Straight Sword are likely the best overall. Poise stacking is far more difficult now so their lower poise damage isn't as much of an issue and is easily offset by their speed.

Before 1.06 when Greatsword could infinite stunlock with higher poise damage they'd have been the overall best.

ENB just did a video about Dark Scythe technically being the best DEX build weapon, not that it matters much since a lot of what you use in Dark Souls is about personal preference

been using a regular longsword, which is the warrior starting weapon (because ENB said so) and it's working out really well. It uses very little stamina per swing, even 2hand R2. What makes it different than other straight swords is it's unique thrust attack when 1handing, similar to balder side sword. I fear it will eventually be out-classed by something else just based on it's C STR C DEX scaling at +15, but it's unique attack makes it a really nice sword so far.
Also, really nice analysis of each weapon type Raenil.

Think I'll put more effort into that list eventually. Go into more detail as to what you can expect to happen in a PvP environment while using the weapon class.

And try explain why the "best" is considered the best.

Maybe utility of special attacks. Particularly on weapons like MLGS and Dragon King Greataxe.

...Maybe make video's too? I'd need a victvolunteer willing to allow me to demonstrate on them though...

What are your thoughts on a Pike+15 Raenil? I've seen a few tests of it coming out ahead of SKS.

It's a nice spear. Definitely one of the better ones. It is stronger than the Silver Knight Spear. The charge attacks, while powerful, leaves you wide open (or can take you off a cliff on accident) so you'll want to use it sparingly. It also has a fairly high STR requirement considering it scales primarily in DEX. It's also heavier than the Silver Knight Spear.

Silver Knight Spear also has longer range. The spears are roughly the same length, but the the SKS is held further down on the shaft than the Pike is so more of it is being utilized.

In a SLv 100 environment, I'd likely ascend it to a Lightning or Chaos branch (like I did on my Murakumo build) and maintain minimum stat requirements. Pump END and VIT to make you more durable and turtle like a boss. SLv 125 is far more forgiving with stat allocation and can easily have 40-45* DEX. You can also buff it to increase performance.

*DEX increases spell casting speed. At 45 it caps and makes Black Flame/Great Combustion one of the fastest attacks in the game. Fast enough to combo with kicks. So you'd do Great Combustion damage + stagger bonus.

Depending on what you need and at what level I might be able to help out if you are around during the day next week... only SL 50ish I think though and my weapon collection would be lacking (and my parrying skills XD) so chances are I'm not your best bet.

Videos would have to be on PC version. Unless I invested in a capture card...

I'd mostly be demonstrating move sets and how they'd be used. Also means I'd have to branch out and try new weapons. So it'd be a while before I could make them for weapons I'm less familiar with if I were to decide to.

EDIT: Huh. Missed a few weapon classes. Something to fix later. Like, after work later. Which I leave for in ten minutes... ;-;

Added missing weapon classes to list.

Great Scythe is pretty legit. Demolishing PvE with it. Only one PvP match so far and the guy got destroyed. <_<

Gonna stream for a bit soon. More work on the Great Scythe build.

I'd watch but I'm playing FFXI atm.

GL Raenil :)

Just started a new char going with sorcery pretty awesome so far.

Stream over. Lost 13 Humanity and 20k souls at some point. <_<

Started in Ariamis. Priscilla was annoying but her Dagger was obtained! S&O were ***. Ended stream after I beat them and fed Frampt. :|

I've yet to make a caster build. After a year of playing...

I'm in the same boat Raenil.

Well, I've made a sorcerer, but it's not nearly to the point of using it.

I probably never will. At best I'll make an INT Spellsword/MLGS build.

I don't like sorceries. :|

Well it was fun till I got to the hydra.. manually aiming to lob off heads sucked.

Use the rusted iron ring to run faster in water so you can cut them off.

It was mainly the delay in the sorcery and more than a few miss aimed shots that messed me up.

Hey guys, Virt here. I've recently done another collaboration video with someone. This time with Knutaf, on his Dark Souls Science series. He's a common twitch streamer, I'm sure some of you might have heard of him if you're ever hanging around the DkS Twitch community.

Two new videos, very informative and I suggest you guys take a look at them. They go into detail about Counter Damage, and something that we've dubbed "Instability Damage", as there were many misconceptions about what is and isn't counter damage. Many people didn't even know of the existance of this new type of damage bonus.

Here's the first video: (Counter and Instability Damage)



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Next video is an in-depth look at Bow Damage. (This can also be applied to Greatbows and Crossbows, mind you.) We've found that different body parts take different amounts of damage depending on where you're shot. For the most part, everyone already knew that shooting someone in the head with a bow does more damage, but nobody knew most of these other things, and I'm sure of that.

Body Damage: 100% (Base)
Hands/Legs (Limbs) Damage: 110%
Head Damage: 110%, 130%, or 150%

Beyond this, the amount of damage added by headshots is determined by what headgear you're wearing. This came as the biggest surprise to me and Knutaf. Apparently FromSoft made this game much more in-depth than we thought, and it's amazing to see how many things we still learn about after it's been out for so long.

Basically, depending on your helmet, you can take anywhere from 110%, 130%, or 150% damage. Helmets like Havel's/Giant's/Stone/Golem/Elite Knight, etc. will reduce damage to 110%, while cloth hoods take the full 150% damage, with many other helmets (usually open faced or lightly armored) somewhere in between at 130%, such as Ciaran's Porcelain Mask, or Balder/Knight Helmets, etc.

Here's the second video: (Headshots, Bodyshots, etc.)



Also, a spreadsheet/chart that accounts for (almost) every head equipment in the game and how much headshot damage each one takes:

Headshot Damage Chart

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Anyway, that's all. Hope some of you can maybe learn something out of that, or perhaps it will help even one of you in some way.

If you guys have any questions, feel free to leave a comment on the video (Knutaf will see it) or feel free to ask me here. Also, check out his stream sometime, he's a real cool and down to earth guy.

http://www.twitch.tv/knutaf

And lastly, if anybody ever needs any help or has any questions, they can also message me on my gamertag: VirtuosusFFXI

-Virt

I have just bought this game. any suggestions on a good starting class?

Pyromancer since they start off w/ a decent set of armor (offers poison resist and doesnt affect you're run speed by being too heavy) and starts you off w/ a pyromancy spell and has decent attunement meaning should you want a 2nd spell slot early on it requires only 1 level up point to invest in.

All classes are to some extent a shapeless mold of clay but Pyromancer offers a spell and easy to get 2nd spell slot while also being the only class that starts off at Level 1 to provide even further customization. Also Pyromancies offer no stat investment; their power scales w/ that of the pyromancy glove. During your travels you'll find NPCs who can upgrade your glove and in turn power up your pyromancies.

Just remember you can never undo a level up or otherwise redirtibute level ups into diff stats.

Starting classes dictate only what you start with and not what you end up having so there is no "super best" class only classes that allow X amount of customization early on and teh class that offers the most room is Pyromancer by virtue of the fact that it starts off at Level 1.

Edit: To Kal's point, I also started off as a Knight ^^; on my very first play-through when I was still learning about the game. It's equipment are what shines as benefits to starting as a knight versus
a Pyromancer's Pyromancies.

Knight is a very safe choice, but remember you can change your class to anything you want, even to what isn't listed.

All you're getting by picking a class is starting stats and equipment. You can be anything you want to be in this game if you're creative enough.

Cleric also offers benefits to beginners with free extra healing.

Pyromancer is probably the easiest class to start as though.

Cool, thanks guys. Anything i want huh.. Can i be a Long jumping chocolate cake on a pogo stick? :P I will try knight first, swords are stabby, i like stabby. :)

Best of luck. I normally like playing hybrid DEX builds myself but thinking of trying a heavy armor friendly build at some point. Anyways be sure to check either of the dark souls wikis to read up and which stat does what. That will definitely inform you on how to distribute your points to get to where you wanna be as far as character building.

Yeah, like the above posts have said you can build any class you want.

I'm planning on doing a H2H build when I pick it up again! Tough times ahead ><;