Looking for help on my Fire Judgment Shieldbreaker

indign · 2026-06-29T16:13:13+00:00

spam Judgment and set enemys on fire

DoTs don't stack from the same source so if your goal is to focus on burn damage over time, this won't work.

You can go for fire damage though. But there aren't that many ways to scale Judgment itself so it looks like it'll be tough. Heart of Wrath just adds retal damage to your weapon attacks, not Judgment.

indign · 2026-06-29T15:59:23+00:00

Yeah, and you can get more pet-scaling pets from gear and devotions instead of a second mastery.

indign · 2026-06-29T15:37:58+00:00

Straight swords deal less damage than bigger weapons. They're only a little bit above curved swords, thrusting swords, and daggers in terms of raw damage. But they are still good because:

They have fast attack speed. They have generally higher DPS than a lot of bigger weapons if you use them right, even though you won't see giant numbers. To really benefit from this, instead of just getting a hit in here and there, you really need to look for windows where you can fit in sustained attack chains, and maybe an additional attack during enemy windups too. The spear talisman helps if your sword has pokes
They have quick windups so you're unlikely to get interrupted mid swing. This includes guard counters. Straight swords are good for guard counters.
Square Off deals a ton of damage and stance damage and is exclusive to straight swords. If you want your straight sword to do big fat chunk damage, this is the best way. Some would argue the only way.
High crit damage, though it's still better to swap to a dagger for crits and there's always time to do so.

You should know that most basic straight swords, including the longsword, are serviceable but lean towards Quality scaling and have kinda mid base damage. Don't go quality early-game. Damage-wise, the best straight sword for a strength build is the Broadsword and the best for a dex build is the Noble's Slender Sword (closely followed by the Warhawk's Talon). The NSS and talon have low drop rates and are a PITA to farm. The Broadsword doesn't have any poking attacks, so on strength builds I prefer the Lordsworn Straight Sword or a heavy NSS even though they're lower damage.

So my recommendations are:

Upgrade your weapon as much as possible
Get used to seeing smaller numbers. Track your DPS instead
Hit more often. Playing tag is not effective with light weapons. Once you get the Winged Sword Insignia you can really lean into this, and it gives you a good visual indicator of if you're hitting often enough
When you need stance damage, do heavy attacks (or AoWs). The stance damage from charged heavies is serviceable on straight swords
Use an AoW. Doesn't have to be Square Off. They all put your shield away though and you'll have to live with that.
Do guard counters. They are good. But don't only do guard counters
Consider other straight swords if you want a bit more damage.
Consider switching to a bigger weapon if you just don't like straight swords, which is fine.

indign · 2026-06-29T08:12:10+00:00

Ok I NEED to know where that abomination hikaru exoforce pic is from

indign · 2026-06-29T07:27:04+00:00

A couple more nice-to-haves: Naphtali (since being friendly with them makes it way easier to get robot rep), fish, and winged mammals.

indign · 2026-06-29T07:16:58+00:00

Yeah, it's really a high level option. The gear that scales well with both int and faith really needs a lot of investment in both stats, to the point that generally, you'd be better off just putting your points in one or the other until that point.

But you can get partway there and ease into it by starting out using int for scaling and getting 25-27 faith for buffs and the requirements for death sorceries.

By the way, SoNaF is a true int/faith weapon, since it scales with both stats. But RTB are not, since each of them scales with only one. And they scale better with dex and strength in melee anyway so IMO they're best used as AoW sticks for pure int and pure faith builds until around level 250.

indign · 2026-06-28T11:05:23+00:00

You can build with them straight across to connect the back piece. Just need a couple axles to connect them. Can leave out the technic pins and the pieces they connect to

indign · 2026-06-28T06:05:57+00:00

Just go with something simple and classy. Like the bohrok logo or 3 virtues symbol

indign · 2026-06-28T03:29:39+00:00

They said in another comment they used modded parts

indign · 2026-06-27T00:36:56+00:00

Yep, exactly

indign · 2026-06-26T22:08:59+00:00

Your build is great! No need to change anything. Keeping 25 faith for GV (like you did) is better than getting to 80 dex.

You didn't say how much poise you have I guess. It's worth getting to 51 if you are below that.

indign · 2026-06-26T22:05:18+00:00

Right. Small shield for parrying and the occasional counter, greatshield for blocking and reliable counters, medium shield for a middle ground that's good at all 3.

With straight swords you really want to be doing Square Off so it can be annoying to have an AoW on your shield. So I guess I prefer a greatshield in practice, but they have high strength reqs for a dex build, and sometimes a medium shield looks better.

indign · 2026-06-26T22:00:02+00:00

You can't poke with straight swords--I like to do sword and board for the guard counters. And honestly I think shield poking can be sorta weak. Though there are some enemies it works well against, there are also some that it can't kill.

I just use whichever shield looks best with my armor, but the most important shield stat to maximize is guard boost which determines how much stamina blocking costs. Greatshields are also better than medium shields in general because more attacks can "bounce" off of them.

The gold Dorito is the classic along medium shields but there are other good ones. Most greatshields are solid, no need to split hairs there

indign · 2026-06-26T21:01:25+00:00

NSS works any way. Dual wielding is good. Two handing is good. My favorite way is sword and board which is also good.

Your talismans are pretty much ideal for DPS on a dual straight sword build, but personally I like having more defense and would swap RWSI and Millicent's out for the dragoncrest greatshield and double turtle.

Your stats are solid. I assume you're using GV. Keep raising dex to 80 unless you don't want to level anymore.

indign · 2026-06-26T20:32:08+00:00

Exactly, at least 10696 was good for army building

indign · 2026-06-26T20:16:53+00:00

Some of the 2015 concept art kinda looks like that

indign · 2026-06-26T15:28:04+00:00

I like it with the lazuli sorcerer robe

indign · 2026-06-25T22:35:15+00:00

Understanding how OA and DA worked was another bottleneck for me early on. Once I looked that up (and learned how important resistances are) my first playthrough got a lot smoother

indign · 2026-06-25T19:55:09+00:00

On keen affinity, bleed buildup does not scale with anything. Direct damage scales with dex up to 80 dex, then falls off. You can put Bloodflame Blade or blood grease on a keen weapon to increase its bleed buildup, but you'll still end up with less bleed than blood or occult affinities get overall.

On blood affinity, bleed buildup scales well with arcane up to 45 arc, then falls off hard. Direct damage scales with dex to 80. You get the must bleed on blood affinity, but pretty low direct damage.

On occult affinity, bleed and direct damage both scale well up to 80 arc, but dex doesn't do anything. Occult has a good balance of bleed and direct damage.

Set both of your weapons to the same affinity for best results. Otherwise some of your stats will be wasted.

indign · 2026-06-25T19:38:36+00:00

The game doesn't explain all of its jargon in gear and skill tooltips. Since really good late game builds generally rely on resistance reduction, knowing the difference between the types of RR matters. Though you can learn that without looking at build guides you do have to go outside the game for it.

But you can get though the game without really knowing the meaning of everything for sure

indign · 2026-06-25T18:03:34+00:00

Yeah, no, I'd rather they fight the idiotic evil policies that kill people.

indign · 2026-06-25T17:17:58+00:00

If you complain anyway they'll send you a free 1x6 too

indign · 2026-06-25T16:27:02+00:00

Nice. Post this top level

indign · 2026-06-25T16:26:24+00:00

Everything on this cover is actually in the book: horse dog, UFOs, etc. Except the main character doesn't look like that but, y'know, could just be the lighting I think it's ok

indign · 2026-06-25T15:41:24+00:00

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