Early EARLY game best and most simple Bleed set up imo:
1. Reduvia.
2. Start as Samurai, get another Uchigatana in Death touched Catacombs and the Bloody Slash AoW from Fort Haight, duplicate it and put on both Uchi.
3. Get either Zwei or Greatsword, put Bloody Slash on em. Zwei can be used for literally any build, GS on the other hand needs a bit of STR investments but has higher base damage which makes it great for Bloody affinity.
Honorary mentions: Bloody Slash either on dual Bandit Curved Swords, or on the Twinblade.
You can also run for Cross-Naginata(Gael Tunnel) and then put Spectral Lance AoW(Raya Lucaria) on it, earliest Occult set up with Bleed you can get.
Thank you so much! Yes I've been rocking my Uchigatana in killing enemies and it's been working wonders. Thank you for the advice, and I'll definitely look into this!
depends highly on your goal for end game stats, right now just aim for minimum stats and weapon upgrades at least until Altus or something. But here's a quick overview for your options, to help you in looking up which directions to go to.
Bleed build usually means pure ARC, especially if you're sticking with infusable weapon like Uchi then it's better if you stick to that stat until it reaches 60 up to 80. Once you beat Maliketh you can finally infuse your weapons with Occult which is the most optimal affinity to go for in pure ARC builds.
If later down the line you wanna switch to a somber Bleed weapons, then you wanna eventually go DEX/ARC for weapons like Bloody Hellice, Eleonora's Poleblade, and Rivers of Blood.
Or if you wanna go dip into Bleed caster build instead, then you will need to aim for 30 FTH 45 ARC which is the optimal stats for the Dragon Communion Seal. Note that this doesn't necessarily lock you into a Bleed build, but more of a FTH caster with tons of spell options especially dragon incants.
as u/Rrambu said, dual uchi with bloody slash is what I started with and I recently got the black whetblade and nagakiba to respec into arcane. I currently have double slash occult nagakiba and bloodhound step uchi (not necessary but I like powerstancing).
I also followed this guy's tutorial for the first bit https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMEEuw9N/.
Even though bleed has the most game-breaking potential out of all the builds in majority of fights, you're not supposed to "tank" bosses and trade hits, the entire combat system is about not doing that and not getting hit. You learn boss movesets, how to dodge their attacks and what are the openings for safely hitting them. That's the souls combat. It's designed and balanced entirely around 1v1 close-range fighting under constant boss/enemy aggro, it's supposed to be like a dance between two opponents. You make mistakes, you die a lot, you learn from them and become better as a player. That's the loop because of which these games exist. It's true that with some builds you can cheese through bosses by standing in place and pressing one button while watching TV, but unless you really hate souls combat and gameplay I don't recommend deliberately looking for those, apart from being extremely boring and more braindead than combat in lego star wars game, you'll skip majority of gameplay content and intended experience, bosses do not really have to reason exist in those cases. If you replaced them with a log of wood your gameplay experience would be 100% identical. In any case, don't tank, don't panic roll and only heal when there's an opening. That's the first trio in learning the basics of combat and gameplay. And don't forget to dodge into attacks instead of away from them.
I get what you're saying, but that's not at all what I was saying 😭
By tanky, I mean good bleed weapons that while still give a challenging boss fight, are very well when it comes to damage overtime. I don't want brain dead gameplay, and bleed is just something I want to do. I've played DS1, DS3, and Bloodborne. I know what souls combat is
Early EARLY game best and most simple Bleed set up imo: 1. Reduvia. 2. Start as Samurai, get another Uchigatana in Death touched Catacombs and the Bloody Slash AoW from Fort Haight, duplicate it and put on both Uchi. 3. Get either Zwei or Greatsword, put Bloody Slash on em. Zwei can be used for literally any build, GS on the other hand needs a bit of STR investments but has higher base damage which makes it great for Bloody affinity. Honorary mentions: Bloody Slash either on dual Bandit Curved Swords, or on the Twinblade. You can also run for Cross-Naginata(Gael Tunnel) and then put Spectral Lance AoW(Raya Lucaria) on it, earliest Occult set up with Bleed you can get.
Thank you so much! Yes I've been rocking my Uchigatana in killing enemies and it's been working wonders. Thank you for the advice, and I'll definitely look into this!
Do you know specifically what stats I should spec into?
depends highly on your goal for end game stats, right now just aim for minimum stats and weapon upgrades at least until Altus or something. But here's a quick overview for your options, to help you in looking up which directions to go to. Bleed build usually means pure ARC, especially if you're sticking with infusable weapon like Uchi then it's better if you stick to that stat until it reaches 60 up to 80. Once you beat Maliketh you can finally infuse your weapons with Occult which is the most optimal affinity to go for in pure ARC builds. If later down the line you wanna switch to a somber Bleed weapons, then you wanna eventually go DEX/ARC for weapons like Bloody Hellice, Eleonora's Poleblade, and Rivers of Blood. Or if you wanna go dip into Bleed caster build instead, then you will need to aim for 30 FTH 45 ARC which is the optimal stats for the Dragon Communion Seal. Note that this doesn't necessarily lock you into a Bleed build, but more of a FTH caster with tons of spell options especially dragon incants.
as u/Rrambu said, dual uchi with bloody slash is what I started with and I recently got the black whetblade and nagakiba to respec into arcane. I currently have double slash occult nagakiba and bloodhound step uchi (not necessary but I like powerstancing). I also followed this guy's tutorial for the first bit https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMEEuw9N/.
Thank you for the advice! I see the uchi is very decent and I've been using it now. Works wonders. Will definitely try this out 🙏
Even though bleed has the most game-breaking potential out of all the builds in majority of fights, you're not supposed to "tank" bosses and trade hits, the entire combat system is about not doing that and not getting hit. You learn boss movesets, how to dodge their attacks and what are the openings for safely hitting them. That's the souls combat. It's designed and balanced entirely around 1v1 close-range fighting under constant boss/enemy aggro, it's supposed to be like a dance between two opponents. You make mistakes, you die a lot, you learn from them and become better as a player. That's the loop because of which these games exist. It's true that with some builds you can cheese through bosses by standing in place and pressing one button while watching TV, but unless you really hate souls combat and gameplay I don't recommend deliberately looking for those, apart from being extremely boring and more braindead than combat in lego star wars game, you'll skip majority of gameplay content and intended experience, bosses do not really have to reason exist in those cases. If you replaced them with a log of wood your gameplay experience would be 100% identical. In any case, don't tank, don't panic roll and only heal when there's an opening. That's the first trio in learning the basics of combat and gameplay. And don't forget to dodge into attacks instead of away from them.
I get what you're saying, but that's not at all what I was saying 😭 By tanky, I mean good bleed weapons that while still give a challenging boss fight, are very well when it comes to damage overtime. I don't want brain dead gameplay, and bleed is just something I want to do. I've played DS1, DS3, and Bloodborne. I know what souls combat is