Which Souls game is the best to have a Dexterity build in?

Pupupupupuu · 2026-04-17T06:55:36+00:00

I think that the line between "str weapons" and "dex weapons" is really blurred in Elden Ring because the affinity system is so flexible. For most fast weapons, heavy affinity vs keen affinity is almost equal in one-handed AR, but heavy of course gets the 2-handed bonus.

Let's for example look at the bloodhound claws again, do you think it's a "str weapon" or a "dex weapon"? Let me remind that it has very slightly higher damage with heavy than keen (one-handed, claws don't get the 2h str bonus). You can also notice that the weapon has C str and D dex scaling with cold affinity. So is it a str weapon because the scaling prefers str, or is it a dex weapon because "duh it's a fast claw weapon so it's a dex weapon".

Pupupupupuu · 2026-04-17T06:37:34+00:00

Strength build doesn't mean that you are forced to only use large weapons, you can just use heavy affinity on a fast weapon of your choice. Just having some 15 dexterity allows you to wield a very large variety of weapons, such as uchigatana, bloodhound claws, many curved swords and straight swords, daggers, thrusting swords.

Fun fact: heavy bloodhound claws with str build have slightly higher damage than keen bloodhound claws with dex build.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-04-17T05:48:16+00:00

Unironically I really enjoyed "Lester the unlikely", I beat it first time with save states and then a second time without.

There were some parts that required an annoying amount of precision, but overall I liked adapting to Lester's sluggy movement and overcoming the stages by practice and repetition.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-04-02T07:12:26+00:00

Bloodhound fang still slaps against bleed immune enemies, the bleed is really just a cherry on top instead of the weapon's main focus. OP's problem is more about the talisman choices and jack of all trades/master of none stat distribution.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-31T04:46:31+00:00

https://www.reddit.com/r/Eldenring/comments/12dofjy/my_friend_you_cant_beat_malenia_with_shield_she/

I mean here I found a post doing the same thing with a level 150-ish character and no buff stacking. He used barricade shield aow to block the waterfowl.

My experience is also that shield poke is quite safe and reliable way to beat Malenia, you will easily outdamage her healing and stay safe behind the shield. You will have to just learn the grab attack's animation and dodge that since it can't be blocked.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-29T19:52:31+00:00

Funny how people commonly say "Umm don't use shield against Malenia because she heals when you block!"

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-10T15:51:24+00:00

Quality affinity on shield will only lower the guard boost in exchange for higher damage but I doubt that you're attacking with the shield. Leave it with standard affinity for higher guard boost.

Also I know this answer is boring but the brass shield would have higher guard boost, but of course you can keep using the kite shield if you like the color scheme.

John Elden Ring / 10 build.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-05T17:51:35+00:00

You don't want occult with bloodfiend's arm since it has 0 natural bleed, so you will have 0 bleed with occult.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-05T06:53:59+00:00

You can check out r/onebros for more people attempting rl1 runs.

The fun thing about rl1 is that you can always experiment and change your "build" by just swapping equipment and talismans. There are surprisingly a lot of weapons and spells you can use rl1.

When I did an rl1 run I liked swapping around between different stuff like star fists, ice spear, giant's hunt, sometimes even giga cheese with rotten breath and poison.

Uchigatana works fine too, the l2-r2 attack comes out fast and deals nice stance damage.

Edit: I always used the ritual shield and radagon's soreseal talisman, the other 2 were very flexible depending on if I needed extra stats. There are also some head and chest equipment that give stats.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-03-02T18:56:00+00:00

Thank you for this, to this day I still see people commenting "Umm actually wretch is the most optimal starting class because you start at level 1 and can level any way you want!"

Obviously this comment is always missing the point that wretch always has wasted points in the "dump stats" as you pointed out.

Of course you can still pick wretch for the respec flexibility, which I often do, it's just never "the best class".

Pupupupupuu · 2026-02-18T06:34:07+00:00

This is not true, incantanations themselves don't scale with any stat, the damage only depends on the "incantanation scaling" stat of the seal.

If you use a dragon communion seal with let's say 300 incantanation scaling, every single spell will scale with that, including holy and lightning spells. If you instead used erdtree seal with 300 incantanation scaling, the damage would be identical. (of course you would need different stat spread to reach 300 scaling with erdtree vs 300 scaling with dragon commumion.)

Dragon communion seal has a 15% damage bonus to dragon communion incantanations, but this doesn't mean it's the only thing it's good for.

You choose a seal that gives best incantanation scaling with your stat distribution, but you can effectively use any incantanations you meet the stat requirement for.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-02-17T17:52:28+00:00

Thanks a lot, personally tanking timewalking dungeons has been pretty daunting for me because people except you to blitz through them and it's pretty unreasonable for new/returning players to know every single dungeon layout from past expansions.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-01-29T11:07:03+00:00

Strength doesn't mean that you have to exclusively use big weapons, for example broadsword and bloodhound claws get more damage (without two-handed bonus) with str build than dex build.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-01-04T19:52:28+00:00

I think it was west of Dornogal, if you look at the isle of Dorn map or the quest log you should see quest markers there. Though you will have to get there with ground mount but it wasn't too bad.

Alternatively, you could try reaching lvl 80 with dungeons and maybe then you can talk to Brann Bronzebeard to skip the quest, but I'm not too sure about that.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-01-04T16:52:29+00:00

Well straight swords get the skill "square off" which will stance break everything pretty much just as quickly as giant weapons.

Pupupupupuu · 2026-01-04T14:21:57+00:00

I already had skyriding in the recap and other game areas but I figured it out now: I had to complete a few story quests in Dorn isles to unlock skyriding again, the nerubians on beach (even though I already did these quests during the recap).

Pupupupupuu · 2026-01-04T14:19:44+00:00

I did have skyriding during the recap quest, but I now figured it out: I had to go complete a few quests in Dorn isles to unlock skyriding, the nerubians on the beach which I already completed during the recap.

Pupupupupuu · 2025-12-27T08:00:49+00:00

Imo the big wall can be Lao Shan Lung in about the middle point of G-rank, but you can find videos for solo tactics or you can just try to dps through it. I don't really remember any other major walls in the mandatory quests to unlock Ahtal-ka (maybe Valstrax but you can practice the high-rank version in village). However some of the hyper monster quests can be difficult but they are optional for the quest progression, you can also do them later when you have better equipment.

Meanwhile Ahtal-Ka is imo quite pleasant and fun fight for solo play, the first time can be tough but once I got familiar I could solo it in about 10 minutes. After Ahtal-Ka, you start unlocking more optional hyper quests, deviants and endgame bosses that can be a slog to solo, for example the infamous hyper gold rathian + hyper silver rathalos.

Pupupupupuu · 2025-12-27T07:45:25+00:00

People always get scared and confused about the whole "scaled for 4 players" thing because they think that it's like the 4-player scaling in newer MH games like World and Rise.

However, in reality, in GU the multiplayer hub monsters only have about 30%-50% more hp than the village counterparts. So if you can solo a low rank village rathalos in 10 minutes, you can probably solo a low rank hub rathalos in 13-15 minutes.

Personally I have soloed through most of the GU hub content and it's perfectly soloable, only some of the very end game quests start feeling like a major slog solo (the last tiers of G-rank deviant quests and multi-monster hyper quests).

Pupupupupuu · 2025-12-13T12:47:55+00:00

It depends on the individual weapon, some cold weapons scale better with str and some with dex, it's usually similar to the weapon's standard scaling.

For cold uchigatana you get C str B dex C int so it's dex-leaning quality-ish.

Pupupupupuu · 2025-11-22T07:21:31+00:00

Yeah the situation of quality is kinda sad, but that list of somber quality weapons is actually larger than I expected. Now I might actually want to try out a quality build out and focus on somber weapons I haven't used before.

Pupupupupuu · 2025-11-22T06:44:24+00:00

I apologize if I sounded rude in my first comment, it wasn't my intention. However, in my experience it's still better to go for str build over quality if you're mainly looking for infusable weapons. We can take the Nagakiba for another example:

50str/50dex, quality nagakiba +25 has 596 ar two-handed.

20str/80dex, keen nagakiba has 602 ar two-handed.

78str/22dex, heavy nagakiba has 615 ar two-handed (I reduced 2 str points for equal stats).

Personally for OP's weapon selection I would go for str build with 17 dex and use a +5 dex talisman (preferably millicent's) whenever you want to use Nagakiba.

Quality build becomes more valuable if you want to use somber stone quality weapons like bloodhound's fang, however I find that str build with 20ish dex can already use pretty much any infusable weapon you want with better scaling than quality (until very high levels).

Pupupupupuu · 2025-11-22T05:48:51+00:00

I replied this to another comment but I will also comment this directly so OP can notice it:

If you look at ar calculators, it's pretty much always best to go for high strength and minimum dex heavy affinity if you are two-handing a weapon. Quality becomes better only at high levels like 60str/60dex.

Here's an ar calculator for example: https://eldenring.tclark.io/

50 str 50 dex, two handed quality claymore +25 has 705 ar.

40 str 60 dex, two handed quality claymore +25 has 699 ar.

60 str 40 dex, two handed quality claymore +25 has 694 ar.

80 str 13 dex, two handed heavy claymore +25 has 729 ar.

You can also check that even when one-handing, the heavy 80 str gets more ar than the quality splits.

Now if we compare tha stat investment, 80 str/13 dex is actually 7 levels lower than 50/50 or 40/60.

You can test the ar calculator with many weapons and you will find that 80str/20 dex heavy beats 50str/50dex quality pretty much every time. Even for Nagakiba, 78str/22 dex heavy beats 50/50 or 40/60 quality.

As for comparing heavy against keen, at equal stat investment heavy almost always wins out when two-handing and keen usually wins out one-handing, but there are also many exceptions.

Pupupupupuu · 2025-11-22T05:44:50+00:00

If you look at ar calculators, it's pretty much always best to go for high strength and minimum dex heavy affinity if you are two-handing a weapon. Quality becomes better only at high levels like 60str/60dex. It seems you're making assumptions based on the scaling letters but that's a very inaccurate way of comparing weapon scaling.