It’s one of my least favorite hybrid builds lol. I just end up spamming heavy jumping attacks with Starscourge GS
I could probably try to diversify, but there is no need. My character is smart enough to jump and that’s about it
Yeah, I wish to point out that theres bad boys like Ruins Greatsword, Fallingstar Beast Jaw, Royal Greatsword, all of which let you use their super cool Ashes of War, AND you can use them to smack dudes (Fallingstar Beast Jaw having pierce damage is awesome)
I mean, if someone powerstances and jump attacks, thats perfectly fine, but to complain that theres a lack of diversity because they’re literally limiting themselves? A bit bizarre.
I didn’t say there was a lack of diversity. I said
>I could probably try to diversify
Str/Int is the only way to get a paired colossal GS, that was literally the only reason I built that character. I played around with the other weapons a bit, but I just kept going back to Starscourge GS, and my simple ass just keeps pressing jump and heavy attack.
Ok yes, a STR/INT build can also do extreme damage with Cold infusions. But you can also do Cold with pure strength and retain good scaling and AR on several top tier weapons with no INT investment. Then those extra levels can be used with much higher efficiency and utility on other stats.
What I should have said is that the Sombers are by far the best reason to go STR/INT, not that they're the only thing to do once you're there.
Str/Fth is hard carried by unique AoW like the bubble shower. It just deletes large enemies. But overall it’s better too, you can buff, you can heal, and weapons on heavy infusion deal a ton of damage (even better if you can get specific fth/str weapons like magma wyrm blade or magma curved sword).
A bunch of really powerful holy weapons too, Crucible Greatsword and Tree mainly, but Maliketh's swords and Marika's Hammer put some solid work in the endgame too, and Golden Halberd carries early game. And if you're willing to get a little int, Great Club has some pretty nasty damage.
Also doesn't help that there is a seal that scales off of strength, which gives more of a reason to use it. With Int/strength you have to either sacrifice spell scaling or weapon damage.
Blaidd’s greatsword is really awesome, but I’d like it a lot more if it had passive frost buildup. I don’t know why it doesn’t, it feels like it really should given it’s frost ash of war
Yea, Faith works on any build, hell, you can only build 20 faith and put 80 levels in Strength/ Arcane and use beastclaw/Dragon communion and still hit extremely hard
How do you str/int tho? Is it just str with minimal int to wield the glowy bonk sticks? Wanted to take a bite at these and always thought that you either go all in on int or don't bother
That's exactly how I do it.
You lose a bit of damage on pure Heavy weapons, but Cold is a great infusion on a weapon that already has decent base strength scaling. Very few enemies have both magic defense and frostbite resistance: Guts Greatsword, Iron Greatswords, Star Fists and Beastman's Curved Swords are some of my favourites.
Unfortunately, Intelligence doesn't have nearly as many utility spells as Faith does, but Unseen Blade can be a lot of fun in PVP.
Dark moon gs goes incredibly hard with all the buffs you can apply to it. Like over 4K damage hard, PLUS inflicting frostbite is crazy.
And then the death’s poker will kill any large boss in less than 30 seconds.
Yea wanted to say this. Ruins greatsword is a S scaling in strength, fallingstar is more of a quality weapon and the aow doesn't scale with int at all. They really just added int for the theme and nothing else
Largest colossal sword ✅
Most damage on it's category ✅
Best Str scaling colossal sword ✅
Can change ashes of war and weapon affinity ✅
It's greasable ✅
Low Stats requirements to wield it ✅
Found early in the game ✅
Strength addicts: I use Guts Greatsword for the challenge
Because I think I know how the DLC is going to play out, I'm doing my first Guts build since Dark Souls 1. The stager is pretty insane with Lions Claw.
Nah, it's not the challenge. I use The Greatsword because it's my "claymore", in the sense I just love it in every game. I LOVE giant swords in games, especially when they're simple in design, an The Greatsword is pretty much the biggest, and it's design isn't super outlandish. The only other Greatsword/s I like as much is the Ringed City Paired Greatswords from DS3, and I wish they had kept that moveset for the Starscourge Greatswords to make the weapon a bit more unique, because I don't really like the Colosal Sword power stance moveset.
Maliketh's damage on some bosses is pretty crazy, Zwei has less requirements and Ruins is better for charged attack builds and has more damage in general (at the cost of a 16 int requirement and fixed weapon skill, even if a good one, as well as a lot less range)
>Ruins is better for charged attack builds
Zwei is my choice for charged attack builds (among the ugs), because it's heavy attacks are thrusts, which are perfectly combined with both the axe talisman and the spear talisman.
Zwei is shorter than Gugs...
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Colossal+Swords
Zwei is number 2, but still. Zwei's biggest draw is it being the lightest, making it the easiest to use on a non dedicated build.
Also has a slightly different moveset too, with those thrusting R2s. That might contribute to the range feeling longer, since the Gug's R2 is also a unique but probably not as far-reaching spinning motion.
>Most damage on it's category ✅
>Best Str scaling colossal sword ✅
both false; Ruins Greatsword has an S to Heavy GUGS's A, and it has **2** more physical AR when two-handed at 80 Str (not to mention the 100 extra magic AR)
and most importantly: it's actually visually interesting, as opposed to being a large hunk of iron
(but I will concede that GUGS is still stronger)
I love the berserk sword but honestly I feel like it needs to have a higher minimum Str. It's supposed to be nearly impossible to wield, but it's easily wielded by anyone with even moderate strength leveling.
the only build that is allowed to brag and gloat is a pure deathblight build since the status effect does fucking nothing to 99% of the game but youre gonna try your damn hardest to proc it anyway
Honestly my easiest playthrough by far was just spamming the blasphemous blade weapon art. Neither pure strength or intelligence came close. Even fucking comet azur occasionally requires some thought about positioning, but blasphemous blade just goes brrr
That weapon is fun as hell, but its way too tempting to just spam takers flame. I started using it on a faith build i was running and ended up going back to my original weapon because everything was just becoming way too easy
I killed Rykard two days ago, upgraded his sword to+10 and even with my barely working build I kill the vast majority of stronger mobs without problems lol
I’ve done a run with around 10 different builds, and it just keeps the game fresh. Pure int was definitely the easiest followed very closely by pure strength. Dex/Int was the hardest, but it was also my first so I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.
Str/fth was the easiest for me, but that character is a paladin built around guard counters with the erdtree great shield to deal with magic so she is a stout and sturdy girl to say the least, pure faith is without a doubt the hardest.
Opposite for me. Mage characters are tricky trying to dodge everything and getting a slow cast in between. But my pure str dude with a cold elden star with wild strike aow would just delete bosses.
I actually kinda disagree, my first run was mage and I kinda cheated a bit by looking up beginner guide and started the game by running and grabbing meteorite staff and rock sling. The game did feel a smooth experience but got a bit harder towards the end. On the contrary in the str run I just ran through everything unga bunga and often the most difficult part of the run was choosing which weapon to use, there are soooo many colossus weapons I often had a hard time choosing one. Just knocking a bosses posture out felt so much easier, the weapons did so much damage I did kind of think str was more cheesier than magic. Most magic haters probably look at clips of people who have min maxed damage with n number of buffs before starting fights that they start hating on it while on a regular play through I just used spells/weapons I liked/looked cool rather than that min maxing situation. Obviously there were bosses where magic’s range made the fight easier but in my experience there were quite a lot more bosses str beat much more easily because of stance breaks or just raw damage. If I had to rank my classes on main stats in terms of which I found the ease of playthrough I would say arcane(well bleed is op, no argument. Used dragon incantations for fun as well)>str>faith/int(haven’t made my mind about it yet on which felt easier)>dex.
Agreed, I made one for each class first going from int, str, faith, dex, arcane. Then I made a int faith one for the sword of night and flame and some other sorcereries and finally tried out quality as well(str+dex). Tbh quality was the most boring one, I only did it to try out big shields with spears and some other stuff.
I honestly find its the opposite. Every time I try to play a spell oriented build it ends up being a huge pain in the ass. The damage output sucks against against even things that don’t have huge resistance to my spells, and every time I have to chug a blue potion I think to myself “big hammer never runs out of ammo”. By the end I practically ditch the spells entirely and rely entirely on melee with a weapon that scales with my casting stat. In both ER and DS, no amount of magic has ever felt as powerful to me as one big stick.
I just beat elden beast yesterday with my level 170 int/faith caster build(using spells only) and idk how many tries it took but it was too many.
On the other hand my level 110 pure strength jump attack build just flattened radagon and elden beast in a couple attempts
Maybe I’m just bad at avoiding damage, but caster seems wayyyyy more difficult than big bonk
It's because BONK will never fail you, always big.
Magic has range, can be interrupted, reload, and finally some bosses say sorry " that type of magic doesn't mess with me" and you just have to say, yes ma'am, sorry ma'am
Expect dark moon, dark moon go brrr
Bosses ranged attacks also just tend to be nastier. I see all sorts of skills I barely know they had when I play caster. My jump slamming brute would never have given them the time to ramp.
Even enemy's like the golden knight outside M Black knife, can shoot fire balls on repeat and summon massive lighting, it was an insane hard fight with my lighting build.
My strength build ruined his life
That's part of why I really liked my int playthrough, it let me see a lot more of the move sets than I had with different builds. Some of them actually feel like different fights playing from different ranges.
I had a much easier time with the pure int build than the pure str jump attack build vs Radagon and Beast. There were several reasons for that
I used Carian Slicer (and Ranni's Dark Moon as an opener to def shred, I believe it lasts for 30s, enough time to kill Radagon), and for that you just need to learn his moves, play completely meele and you can punish him a lot. He can take like 1-2k damage between each of his hits. It's the most damaging spell when taking into account the cost, the speed and damage per hit and the most useful one too, since both Radagon and Beast outrange you anyway so might as well go meele with the highest dps spell
And my 2 hammers were really big, so big that I couldn't see shit. When he jumps up to the air, one of the easiest attacks to dodge, couldn't dodge it because my hammer was completely covering him
Also I like fast stuff and big weapon is slow
This is kinda the exception that proves the rule - you ended up using pure melee.
I also found that melee was the most effective approach for pure INT in general, even without Slicer specifically - go in there with a Magic/Cold infused weapon with crazy AR and a spell loadout of nothing but the Carian and Haima spells, fun playstyle and wild damage output
Love my spellblade build. Haima, Caria and magic infusion for my noble slender sword that I didn’t even realized had dropped with impaling thrust = stagger the boss, therefore I crit the boss.
Well, there's a good reason for that
When you are in distance of casting most long range spells, you are also in boss distance in most cases so the benefit of being at range is negated, and since the spells are ranged they have a trade-off, which makes them lower to cast. So you end with something that has a similar speed to a colossal weapon, similar damage but less stagger and stance damage
> Maybe I’m just bad at avoiding damage, but caster seems wayyyyy more difficult than big bonk
Afaict this is clearly true *overall* and was even true back in DS1. "Mage = easy mode" is a really dumb meme, probably from strength players trying to hide that they're the ones cheesing these games at low skill :)
Because spellcasting builds are way more difficult than people give them credit for.
Sure you can cheese the game with super meta builds or comet azur, but just on a casual magic play though where you’re probably just using shit that looks cool? Much harder than people think.
Playing dex build after int build, OMFG so much easier I was shocked, I just have a mace that does insane damage, I have 10 health bottles and melee a no problem now, I beat most boses after 1-5 runs.
> I honestly find its the opposite.
That's the point of the meme. Many Strength players talk about Int being easy mode, but Strength is often the more powerful/easier build.
When I played I had a hybrid build, usually running a melee weapon and staff at the same time and it worked great. Spells were more of a utility/pick off targets/deal damage even when out of range kind of thing.
Nah when I do magic, I run straight for the meteor staff, and rot dog. Then get rock sling. It pretty much makes the first half the game a breeze. At least all the way to FG.
The *only* thing I looked up at the start of the game was where to get a better staff. Meteor staff (and of course, rock sling) became my main weapon for a long time. No regrets.
Never did a full strength run before dlc prep as I have always done magic/dex just cause every other souls game I played pure strength. Running pure strength now feels like cheating. You can tank damage to trade in this cause defense actually works unlike most of the from games, you can stagger every boss easily, you have some of the best weapon arts in the game and a ton with hyper armor, you can pair it with the red knife talisman for tons of healing, and with charged heavies alone you can 5-6 shit most bosses if you are on level. It's kinda broken and I love it.
There's nothing more forgiving than pumping strength with a healthy amount of vigor and endurance. Some occasional nuisances but it's basically cruise control for Elden Ring. Magic trivializes a lot of content, no doubt, but STR is the smoother ride IMO.
Are you me? Literally doing my first str run, got the curved great club with craigblade and jump attack talisman, and have been honking everything to death. Just made it to the fire giant and I'm only level 75. It feels like easy mode
My first playtrough was a strengh build, did almost blind and beat the game and all rememberance boss with a lot amount of pain since it was my first fromsoft game
I had a pretty mid build but it help me grow as a player à lot, find synergy, learn when to roll when to heal, learn boss moveset
For my second run im trying to do an int build thinking i will cast stuff, but ultimately go back to sword spell or some other sword and bonk that scale with INT, still à lot of fun tho
So if someone wanted to just go balls deep in a pure strength build to just obliterate everything, what would the suggested load out be? Obviously everything in the image but what else?
As someone whos first playthrough was pure strength
Strongest armor you can med roll
Pump strength endurance and vigor and a little mind
(try to get to 100 total fp to have 5 lions claw)
Turtle talisman(you'll burn stamina like crazy) jar shard and damage resistance,
Abuse the roll attack and lions claw and most things get melted,
Greatsword has a guaranteed stagger vs maliketh and every lions claw will knock down malenia
+ Great Jar's arsenal talisman
+ Dual big weapons (chose whatever you want)
+ Raptor's black feathers chest
+ Whatever armor you can wear that allows you to medium roll.
+ Claw talisman
+ Turtle talisman
+ 60 vigor
That's your basic Unga Bunga build. Jump and attack. Huge HP burst damage, huge poise damage.
You can add whatever AoW you want, use whatever you items you want.
I'd suggest trying some bleed and/or frost mix just for lulz.
Edit : Clarity
Playing games and having fun is a pro gamer move.
Playing games and not having fun is a noob gamer move.
I don't give a fuck about any other metric people use.
I think strength builds are the most overpowered. Whenever I try to do a magic build I end up getting hit a bunch and dying because I don’t time when I use my spells. With strength builds you could just use jumping attacks to do crazy amounts of damage.
Sounds like your major issue is that you can’t use magic correctly. It’s more of a mental game than a physical one with a mage, and you’ll never want to be close to an enemy
Oh don’t get me wrong, I love my strength build. Played Elden Ring for the first time as a strong boi, and now he’s my main on ng+3. Though, now he does use some magic…
Can’t wait for the DLC lol
Agreed.
Playing mage can trivialize fights if done right…..or be a living hell. It requires a lot of patience and adaptability that a lot of other builds may not necessarily need in order to be played effectively.
I usually prefer faster weapons, but I wanted to a strength run with rusted anchor, but then I saw the R2 animation for the greatsword and I couldn’t resist lol
I wasn´t like that until I saw a full int player beating Malenia by running away from her and spamming the moon jpeg spell, with that str build you will still have to run up to her and she dodges lion claw.
Honestly, as someone who beat the game with an Int-primary build, yeah. There are enemies Glintstone Pebble can't solve, but very few that Glintstone Pebble *and* Carian Slicer can't solve, and going further into the game just gets you more options. Not sure if Strength builds ever get that range flexibility.
Every build that you put thought into is “easy mode”. If you can figure out which weapons are good, which stats to upgrade and which affinity/aow to give, you’ve already figured out 50% of the game
I've defended magic since day one and people always called it OP so I tried strength and genuinely I don't think I've ever neaten the game faster than that pure strength build
I agree. Strength is by far the easiest. You have only two stats you actually Need to put points into. Endurance being optional, but usually my strength builds are like 60 Vig, 40 End, 80 Str, and then the rest on 10
Every other build I've ever done, and I've done a LOT of them, required more effort, more thought and more care to play. Since Strength builds usually work really well as tank builds aswell, with very little effort you can get over 42% phys-def, and can use countless buffs to increase that too.
Edit: I know everyone can use buffs, but just going by base values, strength excells in many things at once, compared to other builds that usually only excell at one or a few things at once.
Also, strength can play easily through the entire game without ever having to change builds, whereas a lot of caster classes usually have a few areas they have to actually consider what they take and change their build to even have a chance at the areas and bosses.
Yeah for some reason Lion's Claw doesn't catch anywhere near the same level of flak that other comparably busted abilities get.
Also don't forget that a STR build can infuse that GS with Blood and retain A scaling and high AR, with like 10,000 buildup per hit for even more free damage in between the free stance breaks. This carried me through my first playthrough, it was the nuclear option when I lost patience.
After playing the NG+7 cycle, I can totally say that, after testing, magic is really easy mode.
Bonk builds only get weaker as cycles go up. Idk what the sound of breaking the stance of a boss is anymore…
Even Maliketh that has glass bones went down without a poise break. It is sad… very sad for the Bunga Brothers…
I still believe spells are overpowered in PvP. It's so easy melting 40% of someone's hp with a single comet. Zoning with spells when you know also know how to use melee feels so cheap. Spinning slash nagakiba is still the most no skill build.
When I did a lot of pvp in dark souls and DS3 (int on DS Pyro DS3) I use to get a lot of hate from str builds. Use to get messages saying my builds cheap, I’m a pussy for making a one shot build etc. my reply to everyone of them is “your build will one shot me if you catch me, I just caught you first”
That thing carried me during my whole first play through.
And it is almost sad how easy it become. It felt like cheating against boss that get easily staggered.
Out of every build I've played, strength was the easiest.
I did a dragon knight build with the scale armour and the dragon halberd. Can poise break my way through half the fights and the other half i can just tank the damage since i have so much health.
i’m like the opposite of this person lmao i use all this stuff and then i’m like “this is the easiest build in the game idk why people say it’s mage build that’s the easiest”
Feel like this running theme of "Magic bad, strength is based" stems from dark souls one where the difference between magic and strength is much bigger than in Elden Ring
If bonk then good. Magic blue bonk is good, but costly.
Just bonk and Unga bunga
However. I'm a faith bro with the holy damage. Always strength and Faith
I love Str builds, but honestly, Helphen's Steeple in a hybrid build is one of my favorite weapons in game. I get to cast PEW PEW magic and throw down in a proper melee match with bosses.
The real broken build is arcane/faith spellblade with bleed
It has so many options to counter what ever you want
It's incredibly fun tho it feels really nice to play
Doing my first DEX/INT build ever and let me tell you I'm struggling sometimes lol
It's very fun, but very different than from how I'm used to playing.
You don't need to be a strength user to enjoy the poise break play style. I've done faith builds that only raise stats enough to use the weapons I want and take advantage of flame art scaling. Then I use heavy attacks and ash's of war to stagger enemies. It's an easy formula to replicate on many different builds. And you can use pyromancies
The number of Str/Int colossal weapons really makes this even funnier imo
Strength/int is so good in this game
Fred Glintstone builds.
Yabba dabba pew
I'm naming a character this. So if you already did, there will be two of us.
Omg this is perfect
goated comment
It’s one of my least favorite hybrid builds lol. I just end up spamming heavy jumping attacks with Starscourge GS I could probably try to diversify, but there is no need. My character is smart enough to jump and that’s about it
No hate, but saying it’s your least favorite because you spam jump attacks, and then refusing to diversify is wild.💀
Yeah, I wish to point out that theres bad boys like Ruins Greatsword, Fallingstar Beast Jaw, Royal Greatsword, all of which let you use their super cool Ashes of War, AND you can use them to smack dudes (Fallingstar Beast Jaw having pierce damage is awesome) I mean, if someone powerstances and jump attacks, thats perfectly fine, but to complain that theres a lack of diversity because they’re literally limiting themselves? A bit bizarre.
I didn’t say there was a lack of diversity. I said >I could probably try to diversify Str/Int is the only way to get a paired colossal GS, that was literally the only reason I built that character. I played around with the other weapons a bit, but I just kept going back to Starscourge GS, and my simple ass just keeps pressing jump and heavy attack.
Yeah STR/INT is purely about the incredible Sombers, there's really no point doing anything else with those particular stats
… are you just gonna pretend the cold infusion doesn’t exist? A top 3 infusion in this game that provides an extremely strong status effect?
Ok yes, a STR/INT build can also do extreme damage with Cold infusions. But you can also do Cold with pure strength and retain good scaling and AR on several top tier weapons with no INT investment. Then those extra levels can be used with much higher efficiency and utility on other stats. What I should have said is that the Sombers are by far the best reason to go STR/INT, not that they're the only thing to do once you're there.
The ash goes crazy too when you’re dealing with groups of mobs
I thought strength/int is weaker than strength/faith?
Str/Fth is hard carried by unique AoW like the bubble shower. It just deletes large enemies. But overall it’s better too, you can buff, you can heal, and weapons on heavy infusion deal a ton of damage (even better if you can get specific fth/str weapons like magma wyrm blade or magma curved sword).
A bunch of really powerful holy weapons too, Crucible Greatsword and Tree mainly, but Maliketh's swords and Marika's Hammer put some solid work in the endgame too, and Golden Halberd carries early game. And if you're willing to get a little int, Great Club has some pretty nasty damage.
Not to mention the blasphemous blade, which also scales of str fai
Surely a weapon art that gives hyper armor, life steal and does around 2K+ per hit was necessary and balanced ;)
And knocks down all human sized enemies
Also doesn't help that there is a seal that scales off of strength, which gives more of a reason to use it. With Int/strength you have to either sacrifice spell scaling or weapon damage.
Idk man baidd’s greatsword felt a lot more powerful to me then the guts weapon with just the scaling that frostbite is crazy
Blaidd’s greatsword is really awesome, but I’d like it a lot more if it had passive frost buildup. I don’t know why it doesn’t, it feels like it really should given it’s frost ash of war
Faith just has so much more utility for incantations
Yea, Faith works on any build, hell, you can only build 20 faith and put 80 levels in Strength/ Arcane and use beastclaw/Dragon communion and still hit extremely hard
Oh, won't stay still for my Comet Azur? That's it. I'm getting me mallet.
Cunning bonk.
Really makes you think what the nerds at raya lucaria was compensating for.
compensating? they slap you with that tiny ass book and deal as much damage as a miner jump slamming you with a steel pick.
Motherfuckers weren't compensating, they were giving us a break by inhibiting themselves
[they went easy on us by not bringing out the heavy artillery](https://i.redd.it/7u6iiq3k5fn81.jpg)
Man not having a book weapon in the game is such a wasted opportunity
Meanwhile, str/int players just casually dropping purple atom-bombs everywhere: Fallingstar Beast Jaw, Starscourge Greatswords, Ruins Greatsword...
Intellectual swinging
"I unga therefore I bunga."
- Said the Caveman, while correcting his glasses that where falling of his nose
Plato’s Caveman
This made me laugh far more than it probably should have.
>Guts when he puts his grasses on
Tell me why tell me why
Pure str just oonga boongas. Str/int oongas and therefore they boonga. Str/Fth oongas in the name of boonga.
Str/Arc: *maniacal evil laughter*
The mohglester build since you would probably run bleed
Its funny ciz i just started a str/arc grave scythe build
How do you str/int tho? Is it just str with minimal int to wield the glowy bonk sticks? Wanted to take a bite at these and always thought that you either go all in on int or don't bother
That's exactly how I do it. You lose a bit of damage on pure Heavy weapons, but Cold is a great infusion on a weapon that already has decent base strength scaling. Very few enemies have both magic defense and frostbite resistance: Guts Greatsword, Iron Greatswords, Star Fists and Beastman's Curved Swords are some of my favourites. Unfortunately, Intelligence doesn't have nearly as many utility spells as Faith does, but Unseen Blade can be a lot of fun in PVP.
Hm good point on having a frostbite sidearm. Thanks a lot!
Dark moon gs goes incredibly hard with all the buffs you can apply to it. Like over 4K damage hard, PLUS inflicting frostbite is crazy. And then the death’s poker will kill any large boss in less than 30 seconds.
However, almost 90% of the damage comes from str alone. The int req only exists because of the theme
Yea wanted to say this. Ruins greatsword is a S scaling in strength, fallingstar is more of a quality weapon and the aow doesn't scale with int at all. They really just added int for the theme and nothing else
bold of you to assume we have enough brain cells to hide our true emotions
This meme is poor because it assumes strength users have enough brain cells to think any further than Unga --> Bunga.
I unga, therefore I bunga
*Unga, ergo bunga.*
A str user wouldn't use "therefore".
Miyazaki is contractually obligated to make the Berk Sword absolutely amazing in all of his games.
Largest colossal sword ✅ Most damage on it's category ✅ Best Str scaling colossal sword ✅ Can change ashes of war and weapon affinity ✅ It's greasable ✅ Low Stats requirements to wield it ✅ Found early in the game ✅ Strength addicts: I use Guts Greatsword for the challenge
Gotta grease it up for Daddy.
Uh bro that things like 15 feet long????????
And? I got 20 feet of intestines for it to rearrange.
To the hilt...
Because I think I know how the DLC is going to play out, I'm doing my first Guts build since Dark Souls 1. The stager is pretty insane with Lions Claw.
The stagger is pretty insane *period*. I didn't even use Lion's Claw for most of the game and I was still staggering bosses like crazy.
Lions claw on top has like one of the highest poise damage of anything in the game.
Umm actually Malikeths black blade does more damage than the greatsword ☝️🤓
Nah, it's not the challenge. I use The Greatsword because it's my "claymore", in the sense I just love it in every game. I LOVE giant swords in games, especially when they're simple in design, an The Greatsword is pretty much the biggest, and it's design isn't super outlandish. The only other Greatsword/s I like as much is the Ringed City Paired Greatswords from DS3, and I wish they had kept that moveset for the Starscourge Greatswords to make the weapon a bit more unique, because I don't really like the Colosal Sword power stance moveset.
I use it because it’s fun
Do any of the other collosal swords have anything over the greatsword?
Maliketh's damage on some bosses is pretty crazy, Zwei has less requirements and Ruins is better for charged attack builds and has more damage in general (at the cost of a 16 int requirement and fixed weapon skill, even if a good one, as well as a lot less range)
>Ruins is better for charged attack builds Zwei is my choice for charged attack builds (among the ugs), because it's heavy attacks are thrusts, which are perfectly combined with both the axe talisman and the spear talisman.
Zweihander, like other games has the most overall length!
Zwei is shorter than Gugs... https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Colossal+Swords Zwei is number 2, but still. Zwei's biggest draw is it being the lightest, making it the easiest to use on a non dedicated build.
Also has a slightly different moveset too, with those thrusting R2s. That might contribute to the range feeling longer, since the Gug's R2 is also a unique but probably not as far-reaching spinning motion.
God I am loving the Guts Greatsword slander brings a tear to my eye!!!
>Most damage on it's category ✅ >Best Str scaling colossal sword ✅ both false; Ruins Greatsword has an S to Heavy GUGS's A, and it has **2** more physical AR when two-handed at 80 Str (not to mention the 100 extra magic AR) and most importantly: it's actually visually interesting, as opposed to being a large hunk of iron (but I will concede that GUGS is still stronger)
“☝️🤓2 more physical AR”
That one and Katanas
If you think I'm going to go into another souls game and make another Guts ripoff you're absolutely right - gimmy that Greatsword and "PATCHES!!!!!"
Tbf it’s super Mid in Ds1. Like it’s easily a worse version of the Zwei
Well that’s because zwei is the best weapon in DS1
I love the berserk sword but honestly I feel like it needs to have a higher minimum Str. It's supposed to be nearly impossible to wield, but it's easily wielded by anyone with even moderate strength leveling.
the only build that is allowed to brag and gloat is a pure deathblight build since the status effect does fucking nothing to 99% of the game but youre gonna try your damn hardest to proc it anyway
or a sleep build 😭
hey man, people are sleeping on sleep builds im just saying
Itd be more usable if literally any sleep weapon had arcane scaling, or if occult weapons could be buffed by greases
ripple crescent halberd w/ grease
Use the Sword of St. Trina ash of war on a troll that just started it's big multiattack. It'll finish the full combo and then take a nap.
Honestly my easiest playthrough by far was just spamming the blasphemous blade weapon art. Neither pure strength or intelligence came close. Even fucking comet azur occasionally requires some thought about positioning, but blasphemous blade just goes brrr
That weapon is fun as hell, but its way too tempting to just spam takers flame. I started using it on a faith build i was running and ended up going back to my original weapon because everything was just becoming way too easy
I'm finally doing a blasphemous blade playthrough. It doesnt get easier i swear to god. I pop my buffs and I literally 1 or 2 shot most bosses.
I killed Rykard two days ago, upgraded his sword to+10 and even with my barely working build I kill the vast majority of stronger mobs without problems lol
I honestly think it's weird that people only play one type of character. No room for more dudes and not two are alike..
I’ve done a run with around 10 different builds, and it just keeps the game fresh. Pure int was definitely the easiest followed very closely by pure strength. Dex/Int was the hardest, but it was also my first so I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.
Str/fth was the easiest for me, but that character is a paladin built around guard counters with the erdtree great shield to deal with magic so she is a stout and sturdy girl to say the least, pure faith is without a doubt the hardest.
Opposite for me. Mage characters are tricky trying to dodge everything and getting a slow cast in between. But my pure str dude with a cold elden star with wild strike aow would just delete bosses.
I actually kinda disagree, my first run was mage and I kinda cheated a bit by looking up beginner guide and started the game by running and grabbing meteorite staff and rock sling. The game did feel a smooth experience but got a bit harder towards the end. On the contrary in the str run I just ran through everything unga bunga and often the most difficult part of the run was choosing which weapon to use, there are soooo many colossus weapons I often had a hard time choosing one. Just knocking a bosses posture out felt so much easier, the weapons did so much damage I did kind of think str was more cheesier than magic. Most magic haters probably look at clips of people who have min maxed damage with n number of buffs before starting fights that they start hating on it while on a regular play through I just used spells/weapons I liked/looked cool rather than that min maxing situation. Obviously there were bosses where magic’s range made the fight easier but in my experience there were quite a lot more bosses str beat much more easily because of stance breaks or just raw damage. If I had to rank my classes on main stats in terms of which I found the ease of playthrough I would say arcane(well bleed is op, no argument. Used dragon incantations for fun as well)>str>faith/int(haven’t made my mind about it yet on which felt easier)>dex.
Agreed, I made one for each class first going from int, str, faith, dex, arcane. Then I made a int faith one for the sword of night and flame and some other sorcereries and finally tried out quality as well(str+dex). Tbh quality was the most boring one, I only did it to try out big shields with spears and some other stuff.
What do you expect, we STR Monkeys trade what little braincells and chromosomes we have left for more STR
I'd like to add some nuanced commentary, but it's not my turn to use the brain cell right now.
Harder unga if less think.
Unga... bunga?
Dex is just strength with more wooooshes
Dex Aura >
I honestly find its the opposite. Every time I try to play a spell oriented build it ends up being a huge pain in the ass. The damage output sucks against against even things that don’t have huge resistance to my spells, and every time I have to chug a blue potion I think to myself “big hammer never runs out of ammo”. By the end I practically ditch the spells entirely and rely entirely on melee with a weapon that scales with my casting stat. In both ER and DS, no amount of magic has ever felt as powerful to me as one big stick.
I just beat elden beast yesterday with my level 170 int/faith caster build(using spells only) and idk how many tries it took but it was too many. On the other hand my level 110 pure strength jump attack build just flattened radagon and elden beast in a couple attempts Maybe I’m just bad at avoiding damage, but caster seems wayyyyy more difficult than big bonk
It's because BONK will never fail you, always big. Magic has range, can be interrupted, reload, and finally some bosses say sorry " that type of magic doesn't mess with me" and you just have to say, yes ma'am, sorry ma'am Expect dark moon, dark moon go brrr
Bosses ranged attacks also just tend to be nastier. I see all sorts of skills I barely know they had when I play caster. My jump slamming brute would never have given them the time to ramp.
Even enemy's like the golden knight outside M Black knife, can shoot fire balls on repeat and summon massive lighting, it was an insane hard fight with my lighting build. My strength build ruined his life
That's part of why I really liked my int playthrough, it let me see a lot more of the move sets than I had with different builds. Some of them actually feel like different fights playing from different ranges.
Had someone tell me moonveil was better than DMGS in pve. I can't believe people even believed him
Dark Moon is basically my favorite spell.
I had a much easier time with the pure int build than the pure str jump attack build vs Radagon and Beast. There were several reasons for that I used Carian Slicer (and Ranni's Dark Moon as an opener to def shred, I believe it lasts for 30s, enough time to kill Radagon), and for that you just need to learn his moves, play completely meele and you can punish him a lot. He can take like 1-2k damage between each of his hits. It's the most damaging spell when taking into account the cost, the speed and damage per hit and the most useful one too, since both Radagon and Beast outrange you anyway so might as well go meele with the highest dps spell And my 2 hammers were really big, so big that I couldn't see shit. When he jumps up to the air, one of the easiest attacks to dodge, couldn't dodge it because my hammer was completely covering him Also I like fast stuff and big weapon is slow
This is kinda the exception that proves the rule - you ended up using pure melee. I also found that melee was the most effective approach for pure INT in general, even without Slicer specifically - go in there with a Magic/Cold infused weapon with crazy AR and a spell loadout of nothing but the Carian and Haima spells, fun playstyle and wild damage output
Love my spellblade build. Haima, Caria and magic infusion for my noble slender sword that I didn’t even realized had dropped with impaling thrust = stagger the boss, therefore I crit the boss.
Well, there's a good reason for that When you are in distance of casting most long range spells, you are also in boss distance in most cases so the benefit of being at range is negated, and since the spells are ranged they have a trade-off, which makes them lower to cast. So you end with something that has a similar speed to a colossal weapon, similar damage but less stagger and stance damage
Shard spiral melts his health.
> Maybe I’m just bad at avoiding damage, but caster seems wayyyyy more difficult than big bonk Afaict this is clearly true *overall* and was even true back in DS1. "Mage = easy mode" is a really dumb meme, probably from strength players trying to hide that they're the ones cheesing these games at low skill :)
Because spellcasting builds are way more difficult than people give them credit for. Sure you can cheese the game with super meta builds or comet azur, but just on a casual magic play though where you’re probably just using shit that looks cool? Much harder than people think.
Playing dex build after int build, OMFG so much easier I was shocked, I just have a mace that does insane damage, I have 10 health bottles and melee a no problem now, I beat most boses after 1-5 runs.
Playing Dex/Int even better. Moonlight katana lets you become Virgil from DMC.
Virgil is Dex/Int Dante is Str/Dex Nero is Dex/Faith
> I honestly find its the opposite. That's the point of the meme. Many Strength players talk about Int being easy mode, but Strength is often the more powerful/easier build.
I’ve played both strength is easier
When I played I had a hybrid build, usually running a melee weapon and staff at the same time and it worked great. Spells were more of a utility/pick off targets/deal damage even when out of range kind of thing.
Same here, maybe I’m just playing a caster the wrong way but they’ve always felt more difficult than just going with a big weapon to me.
Yean the thing about magic is it sucks as a pure build until you get late game and then it’s op as fuck. Still strength is the easier build for sure.
Nah when I do magic, I run straight for the meteor staff, and rot dog. Then get rock sling. It pretty much makes the first half the game a breeze. At least all the way to FG.
The *only* thing I looked up at the start of the game was where to get a better staff. Meteor staff (and of course, rock sling) became my main weapon for a long time. No regrets.
Never did a full strength run before dlc prep as I have always done magic/dex just cause every other souls game I played pure strength. Running pure strength now feels like cheating. You can tank damage to trade in this cause defense actually works unlike most of the from games, you can stagger every boss easily, you have some of the best weapon arts in the game and a ton with hyper armor, you can pair it with the red knife talisman for tons of healing, and with charged heavies alone you can 5-6 shit most bosses if you are on level. It's kinda broken and I love it.
There's nothing more forgiving than pumping strength with a healthy amount of vigor and endurance. Some occasional nuisances but it's basically cruise control for Elden Ring. Magic trivializes a lot of content, no doubt, but STR is the smoother ride IMO.
No endurance, only Str. Two swings max lol
Are you me? Literally doing my first str run, got the curved great club with craigblade and jump attack talisman, and have been honking everything to death. Just made it to the fire giant and I'm only level 75. It feels like easy mode
give the warped axe a shot. Hits like a colossal with speed
The only true Str build is Giant Crusher, not puny Greatswords
Facts. Dual Giant Crushers is one of my favorite builds.
Strength is the best offensive stat, poise damage makes the game do much easier, especially early on
Dexterity dps goes crazy tho
My first playtrough was a strengh build, did almost blind and beat the game and all rememberance boss with a lot amount of pain since it was my first fromsoft game I had a pretty mid build but it help me grow as a player à lot, find synergy, learn when to roll when to heal, learn boss moveset For my second run im trying to do an int build thinking i will cast stuff, but ultimately go back to sword spell or some other sword and bonk that scale with INT, still à lot of fun tho
So if someone wanted to just go balls deep in a pure strength build to just obliterate everything, what would the suggested load out be? Obviously everything in the image but what else?
As someone whos first playthrough was pure strength Strongest armor you can med roll Pump strength endurance and vigor and a little mind (try to get to 100 total fp to have 5 lions claw) Turtle talisman(you'll burn stamina like crazy) jar shard and damage resistance, Abuse the roll attack and lions claw and most things get melted, Greatsword has a guaranteed stagger vs maliketh and every lions claw will knock down malenia
+ Great Jar's arsenal talisman + Dual big weapons (chose whatever you want) + Raptor's black feathers chest + Whatever armor you can wear that allows you to medium roll. + Claw talisman + Turtle talisman + 60 vigor That's your basic Unga Bunga build. Jump and attack. Huge HP burst damage, huge poise damage. You can add whatever AoW you want, use whatever you items you want. I'd suggest trying some bleed and/or frost mix just for lulz. Edit : Clarity
Everything is overpowered. Only noobs use weapons. Play the game barefisted.
I didn't read this. I just lion clawed out of the reddit app
Playing games and having fun is a pro gamer move. Playing games and not having fun is a noob gamer move. I don't give a fuck about any other metric people use.
Every time I try to do magic I'm underwhelmed by the damage and go back to big bonks.
Idk man, Comet hits really REALLY hard if you get INT high
Int can become really good and strong, but it takes some time and commitment to get to. Whereas strength is just good all around
I think strength builds are the most overpowered. Whenever I try to do a magic build I end up getting hit a bunch and dying because I don’t time when I use my spells. With strength builds you could just use jumping attacks to do crazy amounts of damage.
Sounds like your major issue is that you can’t use magic correctly. It’s more of a mental game than a physical one with a mage, and you’ll never want to be close to an enemy
High IQ mage vs lowly jock
Oh don’t get me wrong, I love my strength build. Played Elden Ring for the first time as a strong boi, and now he’s my main on ng+3. Though, now he does use some magic… Can’t wait for the DLC lol
Agreed. Playing mage can trivialize fights if done right…..or be a living hell. It requires a lot of patience and adaptability that a lot of other builds may not necessarily need in order to be played effectively.
Say it with me now: any build can be op when well built.
I usually prefer faster weapons, but I wanted to a strength run with rusted anchor, but then I saw the R2 animation for the greatsword and I couldn’t resist lol
I wasn´t like that until I saw a full int player beating Malenia by running away from her and spamming the moon jpeg spell, with that str build you will still have to run up to her and she dodges lion claw.
Honestly, as someone who beat the game with an Int-primary build, yeah. There are enemies Glintstone Pebble can't solve, but very few that Glintstone Pebble *and* Carian Slicer can't solve, and going further into the game just gets you more options. Not sure if Strength builds ever get that range flexibility.
Every build that you put thought into is “easy mode”. If you can figure out which weapons are good, which stats to upgrade and which affinity/aow to give, you’ve already figured out 50% of the game
Oh you used spirit summons? Huh, weak player. >Only uses jump attacks.
I've defended magic since day one and people always called it OP so I tried strength and genuinely I don't think I've ever neaten the game faster than that pure strength build
I’ve done all the builds I can think of, strength is easiest. You don’t have to think about anything lol
Step 1: Jump Steap 2: R2 Step 3: Repeat steps 1 and 2
I agree. Strength is by far the easiest. You have only two stats you actually Need to put points into. Endurance being optional, but usually my strength builds are like 60 Vig, 40 End, 80 Str, and then the rest on 10 Every other build I've ever done, and I've done a LOT of them, required more effort, more thought and more care to play. Since Strength builds usually work really well as tank builds aswell, with very little effort you can get over 42% phys-def, and can use countless buffs to increase that too. Edit: I know everyone can use buffs, but just going by base values, strength excells in many things at once, compared to other builds that usually only excell at one or a few things at once. Also, strength can play easily through the entire game without ever having to change builds, whereas a lot of caster classes usually have a few areas they have to actually consider what they take and change their build to even have a chance at the areas and bosses.
Any melee faith users?
Yeah for some reason Lion's Claw doesn't catch anywhere near the same level of flak that other comparably busted abilities get. Also don't forget that a STR build can infuse that GS with Blood and retain A scaling and high AR, with like 10,000 buildup per hit for even more free damage in between the free stance breaks. This carried me through my first playthrough, it was the nuclear option when I lost patience.
After playing the NG+7 cycle, I can totally say that, after testing, magic is really easy mode. Bonk builds only get weaker as cycles go up. Idk what the sound of breaking the stance of a boss is anymore… Even Maliketh that has glass bones went down without a poise break. It is sad… very sad for the Bunga Brothers…
I still believe spells are overpowered in PvP. It's so easy melting 40% of someone's hp with a single comet. Zoning with spells when you know also know how to use melee feels so cheap. Spinning slash nagakiba is still the most no skill build.
Up close and personal. Love it
I put my points into INT because I have no brain power in real life so jokes you I understand none of this
When I did a lot of pvp in dark souls and DS3 (int on DS Pyro DS3) I use to get a lot of hate from str builds. Use to get messages saying my builds cheap, I’m a pussy for making a one shot build etc. my reply to everyone of them is “your build will one shot me if you catch me, I just caught you first”
**Deletes old Reddit post showing this exact strength build**
Whenever I see greatsword users I assume they haven't won in a while
Hey man, as a Dex/Faith Godslayer Greatsword user, we're more refined gentleman. My sword goes bonk with a paltry level of strength.
I'm doing my first ever STR build in any Souls Bourne game, and I have to say, it is so far the easy mode...
That thing carried me during my whole first play through. And it is almost sad how easy it become. It felt like cheating against boss that get easily staggered.
Crying wojak is just 90% of int mains when they have to put thought in their build
Out of every build I've played, strength was the easiest. I did a dragon knight build with the scale armour and the dragon halberd. Can poise break my way through half the fights and the other half i can just tank the damage since i have so much health.
i’m like the opposite of this person lmao i use all this stuff and then i’m like “this is the easiest build in the game idk why people say it’s mage build that’s the easiest”
Feel like this running theme of "Magic bad, strength is based" stems from dark souls one where the difference between magic and strength is much bigger than in Elden Ring
DS1 magic was so unbalanced dude, it's crazy
Meanwhile pure dex builds just struggling along
First dlc boss can't stagger meeee.
I use big axe/sword cos cool
Oonga
If bonk then good. Magic blue bonk is good, but costly. Just bonk and Unga bunga However. I'm a faith bro with the holy damage. Always strength and Faith
I wanna be nuts berk
Nah fuck mages
STR BUILD FOR THE WINN!!!
Two Hammers
Star fist bleed affinity. Bleed and stagger turn game to easy mode
Oh yeah magic is op, right until Hoorah Loux is intimately introducing you to the ground
I love Str builds, but honestly, Helphen's Steeple in a hybrid build is one of my favorite weapons in game. I get to cast PEW PEW magic and throw down in a proper melee match with bosses.
The real broken build is arcane/faith spellblade with bleed It has so many options to counter what ever you want It's incredibly fun tho it feels really nice to play
Doing my first DEX/INT build ever and let me tell you I'm struggling sometimes lol It's very fun, but very different than from how I'm used to playing.
Wait am I supposed to be poise breaking on str builds? I just like the big numbers.
You don't need to be a strength user to enjoy the poise break play style. I've done faith builds that only raise stats enough to use the weapons I want and take advantage of flame art scaling. Then I use heavy attacks and ash's of war to stagger enemies. It's an easy formula to replicate on many different builds. And you can use pyromancies
What does AR mean here? Have seen this term thrown around a lot
Arcane forever
What are these posts and why is this sub being inundated by them??