Your Dark Souls 2 Builds

[Greg White]

The build I'm working on is just me running around as Havel the Rock.

The main thing is 55 Faith(Sunlight Spear and the Dragon Chime), 50 Strength and 10 Dex(because the Dragon's Tooth is awesome), 50 Vitality(because that stuff's heavy), and 24 Attunement for a healthy amount of spell slots.

Running the Third Dragon's Ring and the Soldier's Ring +2 lets you fast roll with everything and the other 2 ring slots are good for whatever the situation calls for. Vigor and Vitality I plan on pumping up until I hit SL 250, so they're likely to be up around 50 each by the time I'm done.

The only annoying thing is that it's a royal pain to find enough twinkling to max out both weapons and the armor.

 

[A-D.]

The build I'm working on is just me running around as Havel the Rock.

The main thing is 55 Faith(Sunlight Spear and the Dragon Chime), 50 Strength and 10 Dex(because the Dragon's Tooth is awesome), 50 Vitality(because that stuff's heavy), and 24 Attunement for a healthy amount of spell slots.

Running the Third Dragon's Ring and the Soldier's Ring +2 lets you fast roll with everything and the other 2 ring slots are good for whatever the situation calls for. Vigor and Vitality I plan on pumping up until I hit SL 250, so they're likely to be up around 50 each by the time I'm done.

The only annoying thing is that it's a royal pain to find enough twinkling to max out both weapons and the armor.

Farm Dragon Aerie, kill the drakes, then the lizards, grab everything, go back to bonfire, burn an ascetic and repeat until you got enough. The drakes can be cheesed with ranged weapons and spells if you use the binoculars, allowing you to kill them without even risking to take any damage at all. You can easily grind out 10-12 twinkling titanite and petrified dragon bones per run.

 

[42]

Nice, my builds at lvl 150, and it's a strength character but i'm getting wrecked by King Vendric, and i'm still on first playthrough.

I'll tell you a little trick i learned from the German spy. if you stick to vendricks right side and stay a little behind him he cant do a damn thing about it. also have 5 giant souls. that'll help a lot.

just managed to kill the lumbering bastard. and then from there it was a nice stroll in co-op for the final boss. but yeah now im reluctant to go into NG+

why is that? are you afraid that it'll be too hard or just that you board with it right now.

As for my build I have 3 right now that I'm working on. First one is my main that was strength based using greatswords (mainly the Mastadon and Claymore) but I recently respeced here into a quality build that uses the Black knight Halberd.
Second one is an almost pure magic user that uses the moonlight greatsword and Uchigatana.
And the final one is a basic Black Knight Halberd build that started out as duel-wielding Dex. Not entirely sure what I want to do with him yet

Mainly because i'm deepening my devotion to the Sun Bros.
AND I took the plunge into NG+, i was scared, but then i got completely wrecked first 5 minutes GG.

and I'm solo-ing all the bosses with my caster/lightening build.

 

[KoudelkaMorgan]

I got all the trophies with a sorcerer build, which sadly involved going through a 4th time since I forgot to get the miracle from Licia with the orb in the previous 3 cycles -_-

I used the witch hat/set with the dingy skirt and the staff of wisdom.

I had the throne watcher sword too but didn't really use it.

I had 99 int and att, like 30 vig and end, base everything else.

Now I'm going back to my original build which is pretty much great shield and mastodon halberd all day every day.

Though now I've finally decided to kill Targray and I LOVE his armor set. I'm kicking myself for ever letting him live the 20+ times previously.

His halberd isn't that great, but look awesome. I wish it were better, because the m halberd looks less awesome.

 

[Chris Tian]

snip

I liked a dex/str build best for both DS Games. Late game the stat scaling has diminishing returns and I thought: "Why should I keep putting points in dex, if I get more bang for my buck if I switch to str now."

Str and dex get raised equally and consume the major part of souls.

I put continuously some points into the stamina raising stat until it hits 20 and you get only 1 point stamina per point instead of two. The stat for equipload maximum gets raised the same way until 30.

For equipment, I used the best bow I could get my hands on at any given time, the same goes for the (great)shield. You can find the drangleic sword in the forest of fallen giants and I used that for half the game until I found the Black Knight Halberd, which I then used for the rest of the game. After all that I choose the best armor I could without having to do the fatty role.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I just got the game yesterday and I beat the pursuer today (one try baby, woohoo!) so at the moment I don't really have the most refined build since I'm quite limited by the equipment that I've encountered up to this point.

Right now I'm using a Cleric

11 vigor
5 endurance
8 vitality
13 attunement
16 strength
10 dexterity
6 adaptability
4 intelligence
22 faith

I've got heal and lightning spear in my attunement slots, and I'm using the heide knight sword, basic chime, short bow, the drangleic shield and drangleic chest, no helmet (I'm not sure what my leggings and gloves are, but they aren't anything good or special). I'm also using the Chloranthy Ring, Ring of Blades, and the Stone Ring.

Not really sure what direction I want to take this build in yet. I'm using the heidi knight sword because I'm under the impression that lightning damage scales with faith. I'm not particularly fond of its move-set, but it's decent enough (though I would love a sword with a thrust attack), so if I'm wrong about the scaling please correct me since I'm not super attached to the sword yet. Lightning spears are doing tons of work for me, and I'm really glad I went to Heide's Tower of Flame first and got them, even though it was a huge pain in the ass without a shield since I'm not quite used to the timing of dodges yet.

Are there any stats I should really focus on? People keep telling me adaptability is good, and that it makes your dodge better, along with affecting a few other stats but I don't know when I'll actually see a noticeable effect from pumping points into it so I'm a little hesitant. Right now I'm probably going to be dumping points into endurance to get my stamina up.

 

[Chris Tian]

I just got the game yesterday and I beat the pursuer today (one try baby, woohoo!)

Impressive, from all DS2 bosses I had the most trouble with him. Might be because I did not have a 100% physical dmg reduction shield at that point.

I'm using the heidi knight sword because I'm under the impression that lightning damage scales with faith. I'm not particularly fond of its move-set, but it's decent enough (though I would love a sword with a thrust attack), so if I'm wrong about the scaling please correct me since I'm not super attached to the sword yet.

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I just got the game yesterday and I beat the pursuer today (one try baby, woohoo!)

Impressive, from all DS2 bosses I had the most trouble with him. Might be because I did not have a 100% physical dmg reduction shield at that point.

I'm using the heidi knight sword because I'm under the impression that lightning damage scales with faith. I'm not particularly fond of its move-set, but it's decent enough (though I would love a sword with a thrust attack), so if I'm wrong about the scaling please correct me since I'm not super attached to the sword yet.

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

I didn't have a 100% block shield either. At that point I had the undead soldier shield, which was a pretty lucky drop like 2 enemies before the pursuer fight. It had 80% block, which was still better than anything else I had at the time (and probably totally saved my life actually). I did almost die to the pursuer's impaling attack, but thankfully I took it at full health and survived with a sliver.

Thanks for the advice about the longsword, I'll look for it. The basic longsword was always one of my favorite weapons in dark souls 1 and demons souls. It'll probably be a hell of a lot easier to explore the forest of fallen giants now that I have the drangleic shield.

 

[Chris Tian]

I didn't have a 100% block shield either. At that point I had the undead soldier shield, which was a pretty lucky drop like 2 enemies before the pursuer fight. It had 80% block, which was still better than anything else I had at the time (and probably totally saved my life actually). I did almost die to the pursuer's impaling attack, but thankfully I took it at full health and survived with a sliver.

Thanks for the advice about the longsword, I'll look for it. The basic longsword was always one of my favorite weapons in dark souls 1 and demons souls. It'll probably be a hell of a lot easier to explore the forest of fallen giants now that I have the drangleic shield.

Well then, even more kudos to you.
I had additionaly not yet become used to the 0.5 seconds delay with witch the character raises his shield and attacks if you are playing with KB+M. That was obviously a big problem with a very fast opponent like the pursuer. I still have the bite marks in my desk

All of the drangleic items will help alot, its some of the best gear in the game.

Do you want to search for the firesword yourself or should I tell you where it is and how to get it best?

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I didn't have a 100% block shield either. At that point I had the undead soldier shield, which was a pretty lucky drop like 2 enemies before the pursuer fight. It had 80% block, which was still better than anything else I had at the time (and probably totally saved my life actually). I did almost die to the pursuer's impaling attack, but thankfully I took it at full health and survived with a sliver.

Thanks for the advice about the longsword, I'll look for it. The basic longsword was always one of my favorite weapons in dark souls 1 and demons souls. It'll probably be a hell of a lot easier to explore the forest of fallen giants now that I have the drangleic shield.

Well then, even more kudos to you.
I had additionaly not yet become used to the 0.5 seconds delay with witch the character raises his shield and attacks if you are playing with KB+M. That was obviously a big problem with a very fast opponent like the pursuer. I still have the bite marks in my desk

All of the drangleic items will help alot, its some of the best gear in the game.

Do you want to search for the firesword yourself or should I tell you where it is and how to get it best?

I'll look for it myself. I spoiled myself on a lot of dark souls 2 while waiting for it to come out on PC, so I've seen a quite a few of the areas, but I still really enjoy exploring them myself and finding the things that I don't know about (which is a lot in a game as big as Dark Souls 2). I kind of have an idea of where the sword might be because it'll be in one of the areas of forest of fallen giants that I haven't stepped foot into yet (I basically just made a bee-line for last giant because I needed the souls to level up enough to use lightning spear).

I like the drangleic items that I got so far. I don't intend to use the sword because I'm not going for a strength build (and I've heard people refer to it as the new drake sword), but all the other items are an upgrade to my own in every way, and having the 100% block shield is probably going to make my life significantly easier.

 

[Chris Tian]

I don't intend to use the sword because I'm not going for a strength build (and I've heard people refer to it as the new drake sword),

Because its to good and too easy to aquire early on? I dont really get the sentence sorry.

having the 100% block shield is probably going to make my life significantly easier.

Yup, having a 100% shield or not makes of course all the difference again.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

I don't intend to use the sword because I'm not going for a strength build (and I've heard people refer to it as the new drake sword),

Because its to good and too easy to aquire early on? I dont really get the sentence sorry.

The drake sword was basically considered a crutch for new players to make the beginning of the game easier after they'd gotten it. It's relatively easy to get by killing an optional boss, has high starting damage but is difficult to upgrade and therefore becomes kind of useless around the midgame.

It's not that it's too good and too easy to use, but most seasoned players avoid it because it stops being useful after a short while because upgrading it is a pain in the ass and not worth the trouble. So you tend to be better off using another weapon, getting good with its move-set and upgrading that instead of dicking around with the drake sword.

 

[MasterOfHisOwnDomain]

Doing a Strength build wearing the Smelter Demon set and wielding the Large Club, which is the most bizarrely overpowered weapon for such characters ... at max upgrade it has S scaling with strength. Tried the Greatsword of the Pursuer and it just didn't come close to matching it.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

AWWWWWW they changed the move-set on the longsword. In Dark Souls 1 it had a thrusting attack for the 1 handed R2 (heavy) attack, and now the thrusting attack is only for the 2 handed R2. That's really really unfortunate, and it means that the move-set isn't significantly different from the heide knight sword. In fact, the heide knight sword probably has a better move-set since the standard R1 attack is an upward slash that hits enemies that are laying on the ground, which helps you avoid ambushes.

Oh well, I picked up a winged spear so I'll probably use that after I get the leo ring, at least until I get a better weapon with a thrusting attack as part of the move-set.

 

[A-D.]

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

AWWWWWW they changed the move-set on the longsword. In Dark Souls 1 it had a thrusting attack for the 1 handed R2 (heavy) attack, and now the thrusting attack is only for the 2 handed R2. That's really really unfortunate, and it means that the move-set isn't significantly different from the heide knight sword. In fact, the heide knight sword probably has a better move-set since the standard R1 attack is an upward slash that hits enemies that are laying on the ground, which helps you avoid ambushes.

Oh well, I picked up a winged spear so I'll probably use that after I get the leo ring, at least until I get a better weapon with a thrusting attack as part of the move-set.

The Heide Sword also has a thrusting attack, its i think the 1handed heavy. But not sure since its been a while that i used it extensively (it gets replaced fairly quickly for any melee build). Winged spear is probably one of the best non-unique spears i've found, mainly cause its relatively easy to upgrade, can be infused with anything, cheap to buy if you need one more and has a rather large damage output. Ironically some of the unique spears are rather useless, the Dragonslayer spear for example is plain useless because its heavy 1handed is pointless, Dark Gargoyle Bident is superior there and if you need a lightning-based weapon that is unique, the defender greatsword is the better option.

 

[Chris Tian]

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

AWWWWWW they changed the move-set on the longsword. In Dark Souls 1 it had a thrusting attack for the 1 handed R2 (heavy) attack, and now the thrusting attack is only for the 2 handed R2. That's really really unfortunate, and it means that the move-set isn't significantly different from the heide knight sword. In fact, the heide knight sword probably has a better move-set since the standard R1 attack is an upward slash that hits enemies that are laying on the ground, which helps you avoid ambushes.

Oh well, I picked up a winged spear so I'll probably use that after I get the leo ring, at least until I get a better weapon with a thrusting attack as part of the move-set.

Oh that sucks, I just found the sword and never used it. I just assumend it has the same moveset than ind DS1.

Well, if you like the spear and lightning than you might want to look around in the Lost Bastille.

 

[Bombiz]

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

AWWWWWW they changed the move-set on the longsword. In Dark Souls 1 it had a thrusting attack for the 1 handed R2 (heavy) attack, and now the thrusting attack is only for the 2 handed R2. That's really really unfortunate, and it means that the move-set isn't significantly different from the heide knight sword. In fact, the heide knight sword probably has a better move-set since the standard R1 attack is an upward slash that hits enemies that are laying on the ground, which helps you avoid ambushes.

Oh well, I picked up a winged spear so I'll probably use that after I get the leo ring, at least until I get a better weapon with a thrusting attack as part of the move-set.

Oh that sucks, I just found the sword and never used it. I just assumend it has the same moveset than ind DS1.

Well, if you like the spear and lightning than you might want to look around in the Lost Bastille.

you can always use the Black Knight Halberd.

 

[Chris Tian]

you can always use the Black Knight Halberd.

My favorite weapon in the game, I loved that they changed helbarda so that you can use them like spears with your shield raised now.

I was just thinking that neither weapon might be suitet for Dirty Hipsters, since you need rather high dex for both.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

You are right about the scaling, fire does scale with faith too. There is a fire longsword available relatively easy in the forrest of fallen giants. The longsword has a thrust attack. You might want to check that out if you don't like the moveset of the heidesword.

AWWWWWW they changed the move-set on the longsword. In Dark Souls 1 it had a thrusting attack for the 1 handed R2 (heavy) attack, and now the thrusting attack is only for the 2 handed R2. That's really really unfortunate, and it means that the move-set isn't significantly different from the heide knight sword. In fact, the heide knight sword probably has a better move-set since the standard R1 attack is an upward slash that hits enemies that are laying on the ground, which helps you avoid ambushes.

Oh well, I picked up a winged spear so I'll probably use that after I get the leo ring, at least until I get a better weapon with a thrusting attack as part of the move-set.

The Heide Sword also has a thrusting attack, its i think the 1handed heavy. But not sure since its been a while that i used it extensively (it gets replaced fairly quickly for any melee build). Winged spear is probably one of the best non-unique spears i've found, mainly cause its relatively easy to upgrade, can be infused with anything, cheap to buy if you need one more and has a rather large damage output. Ironically some of the unique spears are rather useless, the Dragonslayer spear for example is plain useless because its heavy 1handed is pointless, Dark Gargoyle Bident is superior there and if you need a lightning-based weapon that is unique, the defender greatsword is the better option.

The only thrusting attack that the heide knight sword has is a rolling thrust as far as I'm aware. One handed heavy attack is just a wide horizontal swing.

 

[Chris Tian]

The only thrusting attack that the heide knight sword has is a rolling thrust as far as I'm aware. One handed heavy attack is just a wide horizontal swing.

I never liked the Heide Sword moveset either.

If you are using the Winged Spear now, that must mean you have at least 18dex, right? If you dont mindt putting 8 more points in dex you could really go for the Black Knight Halberd or the Heide Spear. Then you had a Cleric with a really good weapon and had the option to go for a cool dex/faith build later if you like.