One extra note for the pure endgame PVEers I forgot to mention since I mostly cover the weapons roughly based on meta PVP levels. Occult Giant-Crusher retains quite a bit of str scaling so it turns into the weapon with the highest physical AR when you have tons of spare stat points.
The ghizas wheel is actually S teir, it's split Stat requirement give it good damage no matter what hand it's in and the heavy attacks di allot of bleed build up, more often than not you can one shot someone if you hit a fully charged heavy.
How do I get the Golem's Halebard to deal Pierce damage? Does it only do pierce with certain ashes of war?With prayerful strike it seems to deal only standard damage.
@@nathaneskin3572 I imagine you could do some busted combos and scaling if you got creative. Some weapons with multiple innate damage types do a stupid amount of damage on New Game even if they have crap scaling.
The Great Club was very likely meant to be a regular weapon, and the data for each of its infusions is still in the game. Unfortunately it seems it was either mistakenly made a unique weapon or it was changed last-minute.
@@StellarElite1 even though varre does pitiful damage and is also the worst weapon in its class id argue it's still better than the great club implicitly. Varre has a better moveset even if the mace moveset is one of the worst in the game it's still better than colossals which are carried by weapon arts and varre can also scale and proc sleep or status effects. The great club on the other hand is the shortest colossal does pitiful damage compared to the other options, it is also not infusible nor can it change it's worthless weapon art. Then again I have only considered pvp I'm sure the great club is better in PvE where moveset matters less.
@@jacobprout5097 Well... yeah, Colossals suck in PvP for a number of reasons. Aim punch, mediocre moveset, weight, even the poise damage is completely inferior to a mere Caestus. But at least they have *range,* and Golden Land kicks ass as a weapon art, what the heck are you on about? You can rub some bleed or frost on the club and have the darts from Golden Land do bleed or frost buildup, it's sick! They're definitely better in invasions, and honestly Varre's Bouquet is probably better in invasion content as well for the reasons you mentioned above. The bouquet, though... 112 base damage at +10 is perilous. You're hard countered by boluses and if your opponent's wearing heavy armour + eats a Boiled Crab, that damage is even more non existent. You're also dead wrong about the Great Club being the shortest colossal-- that's the Duelist Greataxes and Axe of Godfrey.
I don't think you mentioned it but the 1 handed heavy attack of Ghizas wheel is very important as it lands the spinning wheel on top of your target, unlike the 2handed. It hits several times and does massive bleed build up, easily 1 shotting with a setup like winged/prosthesis/axe with thorny/barbed crystal tear. Can be super fun. Pulley crossbow offhand with burned bolts brings the chefs kiss.
Golem's Halberd could have been my favorite weapon in the game if we could use Giant Hunt on it. Based on it's design it's the only non sword colossal weapon able of thrusting yet you can't apply Giant Hunt to it. It's pathetic.
Or if they at least allowed it to take Charge Forth, the same damn WA is comes with! It's so bad, you can't even use the one thing that sets it apart if you want to use a infusion.
Like with the Katar for Fists I suspect it's due to how it would probably apply to the entire weapon class, and Giant Hunt wouldn't be beliveable on the Giant Crusher ironically enough. Unless they could code it to only apply to select weapons in a weapon class.
Getting the Dragon Greatclaw after defeating the Draconic Tree Sentinel was such a disappointment, thought I was gonna have some sick red lightning ash of war, but no, no we can't have the cool things, same with the shield.
Trolls hammer is buffable, relatively low weight, with a relatively low str req, and does a ton of posture damage. That thing with the assassin dagger talismans is amazing for pve since blunt colossal weapons trigger those twice. Every parry, backstab, guard break, or posture break gives you around 40% of your hp back and 30 fp. You become unkillable to mobs. Trolls roar and its follow up does 80+ poise damage with hyper armor. Many medium size bosses have less than that. It can carry pve easily. Trolls roar outright kills weak mobs and staggers mid strength mobs. Get the critical and you make up all fp from its use. Never had much luck in pvp with colossal weapons but pve for most applications is amazing.
In addition to all of this, visually, the flames on the enemies are the red flames from their Fell God. I think it is the only weapon on the game w this effect
Weirdly enough, the one handed heavy attack on the Ghiza wheel is a multi-hit that will trigger winged sword/Millicent talismans. Which is funny, since its AOW doesn't trigger those talismans.
it’s worth noting that the great club’s charged R2 does the most poise damage of any attack in the game. so if you’re stance breaking, it’s not completely useless. but it’s close to useless lol
unfortunately not the case with patch 1.08. it's poise damage on its CR2 got reduced from 52.9 to 45.75, and now shares the same poise damage as the giant crusher and prelates (which technically got a buff to their CR2 poise damage in 1.08)
While it’s certainly not optimal, having the duelist axe on keen is surprisingly good. At least it’s an option if you want to have a colossal weapon for your keen build. Since the Bolt of Gransax strength requirement is 20, you can two hand the axe while not handicapping your keen build to mess with a different weapons.
Yeah, and given how powerful the power-stance Spear moveset is, you're encouraged to go to 20 Strength. Its definitely not optimal and is a niche use but it's there and isn't an unreasonable investment given that arguably one of the best Dexterity weapons in the game requires 20 Strength. The only thing that would be an issue is Endurance given how heavy they are.
In my opinion, Dragon greatclaw (considering it is a somber weapon which cannot be infused) should have an ancient dragon lightning version of the thunderbolt AoW. It would make it so much cooler, but also allow a ranged option. Shouldn't be too broken considering Fallingstar Beast Jaw has a similar AoW right? Opinions?
Or give it a red lightning version of endure (would be nice if a thunderbolt would strike the weapon when the ash of war is used) that envelops the weapon with red lightning. Thus buffing its normal attacks by making them produce a shockwave similar to that of the sentinels when buffed. and if AoW was followed up by a strong attack it will unleash an attack like that of the Malformed sentinels which would consume the buff. i'd be happy if they give it anything special to be honest
You should have mentioned how Occult Giant Crusher is stupid good if you are very high level, it becomes highest pure phys weapon in game, and capable of highest single hit damage in game (record being over 1 million). Unlike most occult weapons it keeps most of its STR scaling.
Troll's hammer is pretty good with a str build that uses black flame incantations. You can buff it with black flame blade and the innate fire damage helps overcome flat resistances. Plus the burn effect will be applied to the roar on the weapon art.
Troll's Hammer can be buffed via Grease/Incantations (notably Bloodflame Blade) despite being a unique weapon. Meaning that, with a dedicated build and with Buffing Incants such as FMGS or Golden Vow, it can reach pretty significant AR numbers. It's also the lightest Colossal Weapon in the game, allowing you to spare more points in other stats than Endurance. Been using it for 3 consecutive playthroughs and that thing is quite an underrated option imo, especially considering how easily Troll's Roar breaks enemy's poise. Until you can afford the stats requirements for Giant's Crusher, it's a very valid replacement.
Fun fact; Prelate’s Inferno Crozier un-infused with the default Prelate’s Charge can have Frozen Armament applied to it. Allowing you to inflict frostbite, before using the weapon art to reset it. Sadly; the weapon art cannot inflict it, so it’s best to use it just to reset it. Or if someone doesn’t know, you can just chase them down and put fear into them with it.
Watchdog's Staff is one of my favorite weapons (in PvE). SO versatile. Having a projectile synergizes so well with a high-stagger weapon since it lets you reapply stagger against fleeing enemies. And the range and damage justifies its use compared to consumables fulfilling that purpose. When you co-op, it lets you contribute pretty much every second of the fight you're not dodging.
Rotten greataxes were MADE for powerstancing... also, apparently they instantly rot anything with a fully charged warcry r2... I use a demented build where I have an urumi in my main hand and a greataxe in the left. Use endure on the urumi since it has a faster activation than colossals, and hit people with the greataxe as a form of retaliation. This works at level 125 and 150, earlier levels are harder to do.
Also, apparently, the rotten greataxe keeps its rot up until upgrade level +3, so if you want to try and make an abomination low level build, it may come in handy.
Aw, you should have mentioned that Troll's Hammer is buffable, and it's Troll's War weapon art will apply any statuses applied via the weapon buff. This doesn't really make it super viable, but it does mean that if you're using the Troll's Hammer, you can go Str/Fth and get functionally double faith scaling from both the weapon's fire damage and any fire buffs you apply like Blackflame Blade.
Or you can just treat the weapon as a pure str weapon and use a Fire Grease on it. It stacks nicely with the innate fire damage and pushes the weapons AR past other "unique" colossals with comparable stats. Of course you're still locked to the AoW but it's really not bad.
@@Chrightt You're not wrong, but the combined base, scaled, and buffed fire damage is okay. Its niche might be at lower levels. If you hit min stats on Troll's Hammer, then buff with fire resin for a low level build that might be potent and a little easier to do than low level Giant Crusher.
Honestly, all of the regular Smithing Stone weapons should have been infusable and buffable; I don't know what they were thinking with the Great Club or Troll's Hammer. At least they're not as screwed as the Torchpole. Edit: why the hell was the Greathorn a quality weapon when the lighter, faster horns were str/faith? I really hope that was a mistake and they switched the dex and faith scalings on it, but it's been a year with no changes, sadly.
while hardly optimal for PvP, the Godfrey axe can actually be difficult to dodge up close when it's buffed, if you're using heavies. That and the width of the attack can make it surprising to people who aren't ready for it
The Troll's Hammer can be buffed. It's actually quite able to get a lot of dmg, especially with it's low requirements and ease of acquisition. It's on the lighter side for the big hammer poise damage weapons.
Thinking about this more: the Troll's hammer is one of the lighter colossal weapons and does have a decent AR does that not give it some merit as a weapon? Troll's roar and the followup heavy attack also do an absolute metric ton of damage if you can get time to pull it off (which isn't common granted). It and the Great Club can be buffed with consumables and both of them have pretty low stat requirements and are obtained relatively early.
You can also buff it with incantations so it has some merit for pure casters with some strength investment. Although the fire buff in this game is much weaker than other variants which makes it weaker than Great Club buffed with Order's blade. I suppose it could still be useful for PvE where most enemies are weak to fire.
For pvp, I would add that golden slam is quite a bad weapon art, generally too slow to be worth using and easy enough to dodge and position for a backstab or other options of punishment. In this sense I would favor more the scarlet rot option, as phantom hits will still increase the build up, while the faith scaling on the regular staff won't contribute much to damage. On a more personal note, I prefer the inferno crozier to giant crusher specifically for the different heavy attack, because I find it much easier to land. Do keep in mind though that roar/cry abilities can change the heavy attacks and be very powerful when landing them. Also range in pvp tends to be a very relevant factor.
I think it's important to not that the Great Club is buffable despite being a "unique" weapon. And just like with regular Golden Land, the darts apply addtional affects such as Bloodflame and Blackflame. So if you do insist on using Great Club, using these will help alot. And then, with Ghiza's Wheel, I'm actually gonna say that you won't be using it for its Ashe of War. Unless it was changed in recent patches, its Ashe of War does not trigger things like the Sword Insignias and Milicent's Prosthesis. Its status build-up is also reduced. Rather, Ghiza's Wheel is better served for a Charged Heavy Attack build. The hits from the heavy attacks actually do proc multi-hit talismans and retains its status build-up. So running this weapon with Lord of Blood's Exultation/ Axe Talisman/ Milicent's Prosthesis/ Rotten Sword Insignia while donning the White Mask and off-handing the Jellyfish Shield is probably the best way to get the most out its damage potential. This is additionally useful since Milicent's Prosthesis boosts your Dexterity by 5, making that side of the investment slightly easier. And finally, my only note about the Duelist Axes is that it's a massive let down that they don't have a unique Ashe of War. The Duelist enemies get to throw these on a long chain. That would make these weapons so much cooler.
Fallingstar beast jaw might be my favorite unique colossal, specially roll catching with an uncharged R2, and in general, str/int might be my favorite unga bunga for the frost build up you can get. Awesome video my friend
Don't feel too bad. It has one of the highest poise hits in the game with its charged r2, and it can be enchanted unlike many of the weapons on the list, so that narrows the gap. It can use all types of grease, or enchantments. i.e. blood, magic, fire ect. Plus golden land projectiles take on the property of whatever grease or enchantment it has. So bleed, or rot build up from any range. And it scales purely from strength so you can make an easy build with points left over for other stats.
Great video! Two-handing a Giant-Crusher on blood affinity (vs occult affinity - no bleed passive) with Prayerful Strike (30% health regen and tons of hyperarmor) is awesome (dare I say: OP?). Except when you can’t see past the weapon in a narrow corridor. Lol
Wait how are you running Prayerful strike on blood affinity? Prayerful strike is a default sacred ash of war (like Golden Vow) so can only be run on standard, keen, heavy, quality, lightning or sacred afaik
Oops. You’re right! I have it on keen with high dexterity. I have so many weapons on the go, all bleed or occult, that I forgot this one was different. Still super strong with this AoW. At Journey 4 or 5 (how can I tell?). And I just switched it to Quality for a big AR pickup. It’s a Quality AoW.
My only complaint about colossal for pvp is goblin stepping/wavedashing. Most don't ever use r1 or r2. Just have their character have a seizure going in and out of crouch to spam high speed pokes. Makes me wish colossal regular attacks were better.
Thanks for making more videos on this. Glad to still see noodly videos on this game to help me on my journey to NG+7. Once you do videos on all the weapon classes I'd love to see a "best of the best" comparison of various S Tier choices
It is confusing how the Staff of Avatar has Golden Slam ash of war And the Great Club has Golden Land ash of war i feel like it should be the opposite. The Great Club looks brutish so it makes sense to have a body slam while The Staff of Avatar looks, well, like a Staff! It fits well with the Golden Land ash of war. I know the Avatars do the slam so much but that's the Avatar doing that. Not the staff. The staff is thrust into the ground, and produce holy projectiles. Just to convince that Golden Slam should be on the Great Club: What is the Great Club made of? A tree. What is the Avatar? A tree. And the Golden Slam happens when the Avatar (a tree) slams.
Little late but I wish they'd buff the speed of Colossal Weapons crouch attacks so it could be relatively viable and more comparable to ugs, which is quicker across the board Ugs cpoke is 17f, rollpoke is 15f. Colossal cr1 is 18f in both 1h and 2h. Should buff it to 16f in between imo and give a little lunge maybe since the 2h one is so short Also the r1s are 19f on colossals. 17f on ugs. Colossal should be a little quicker 18f Buff scaling on colossals like 1.09 said, for real this time not a meme. Boom somewhat viable colossals when they don't get aimpunched Wonder if chrightt would agree tbh, or if there'd be some issue with this he sees
The Duelist and Rotten Greataxe are mostly Dexterity oriented and have a little merit, in order to two-hand them you need 20 Strength. Conveniently the Bolt of Gransax, one of the stronger Dexterity weapons, requires 20 Strength to 1-hand, which given the power-stance Spear moveset is kind of important. So there's a very limited niche use there for those two as they have one of the lowest Strength requirements of the class. Odds are you'd wouldn't one-hand either of them anyways, so you don't need to go to 30 Strength for that. Also I appreciate that you don't shit all over the Dragon Greatclaw, it's the lightest Colossal Weapon (along with the Troll's Hammer), which is a powerful thing in it's own right, means you don't need as much Endurance or Equip Load to use it, or can use your equip load for better armor instead or to carry a faster sidearm (Straot Sword or Thrusting Sword). Also unlike the Troll's Hammer if has the better elemental damage as even in PvE, things like Rain and standing in water boost the damage of Lightning while reducing Fire (Liurnia in NG+), making it a decent way for a Strength build to have a source of Lightning damage, something that has merit in PvE.
Do you think a dex based power stance curve sword build would be viable? For PVE mostly, but maybe even for PVP. I am so bored of using status effects, which got me wondering what the damage output of two Keen bandits’s curved swords would do
Keen bandits are pretty good on PVE, and they give you access to a decent selection of moves If you center your build around "consecutive hits" effects you can get that AR quite high, and those are very easy to trigger with the powerstanced moveset and spinning slash I'm thinking milicent+insignia+claw+defensive if you want to focus on jump attacks, or a more defensive setup droping claw talisman if you wanna stick to L1 spam I think dual RKR could be pretty nasty on multihits as well, albeit kinda annoying to set up I guess there's a lot of options to explore there
You forgot to mention that Troll's Hammer is one of the few buffable weapons with already innate elemental damage. Maybe it's decent on a faith build with black flame blade or even blood flame blade. And this has the potemtial to be the weapon which takes the best advantage of flame grant me strength for this additive scaling. Maybe? Is this too much copium?
Nah, I didn't forget this. I didn't bother mentioning it because the buff doesn't do much for it as you can just use a regular colossal and slot the exact same thing, buff it, and still do better.
This seems like a pretty easy weapon group to comprehend. I wish the colossal axes were more functional. They need a little something more to give us a reason to use them over their more unique and more powerful counterparts, maybe a slightly different and faster moveset, a niche AoW, a slight reduction to their weight or strength requirement, etc.
Dexterity builds can make very good use of colossal weapons, let me explain. RL 153 is what you want to be to enable you to invade 150 meta level and is the highest that can invade 138 (which is the highest that can fight 125), qualifying you 2 meta level brackets where 150 is primary, 125 is secondary, and tertiary is 138. Now if you are serious about winning invasions using nearby/ far and you are melee based the key stat points are 50 -60 vigour, 23 strength, 20 dexterity and 30 faith. Ideally you want 60 vigour to maximise survive with the use of Erdtree favour +2 and the use of frenzyflame and warming stone for heals. 23 strength is absolutely necessary to enable the use of Jar Cannon which is best invasion weapon where you combine is firepower for awesome very long range damage and knockback ability that will even crush over levelled phantoms as even having 99 in all stats is no match for the power of gravity. 20 dexterity is to enable the use of the Black Bow and the regular Great Bow (rain of arrows with Golem Greatarrows). They are great tools for inflicting range damage. 30 faith is to allow the use of every greater barrier where you can soft swap the +5 faith heirloom to use Erdtree Protection. These greater barriers will help counter the many spammy ash of wars of meta weapons. Two handing my dexterity build is a Vagabond where I have the above stats with 33 endurance and 60 dexterity with minimum mind, intelligence and arcane. Let me say this, colossal weapons are hard to use in pvp and if anything, they whiff a lot and if that happens it makes something like the Rotten Great Axe very good as if you combine it with rot grease. It will outperform the Rotten Staff on both Keen or Heavy affinities. If you are not using rot grease then don’t bother with the Rotten Great Axe as 65 scarlet rot is just not enough on a slow weapon and you would likely kill your target in PvP before you activate the rot or get much damage out of it. If that is the case you want to think about Lightning affinity or Cold affinity which is really good on the regular Duelist Great Axe for use with stuff like Lightning Slash, Chilling Mist and Waves of Darkness scales very well on Cold affinity and gets good damage scaling from Dexterity. A lightning Duelist Great Axe will outdo Dragon Greatclaw as it has higher AR and more % of it is lightning. With the stats I mentioned it had 140 physical defence and 133 lightning defence. 2 handing r1 against someone naked the Lightning Duelist Great Axe will do 735 PvP against the 704 of Lightning Dragon Greatclaw. This means the only Dragon Greatclaw really fills is some weird quality build and a colossal weapon with low weight. If you are fighting someone with my build who goes full Veteran’s set with 35.5% physical negation, 25.3% Lightning damage negation and 26.3% Magic damage negation they will receive in PvP from a 2 hand r1: 512 damage Lightning Duelist Great Axe, 490 Keen Duelist Great Axe, 451 Cold Duelist Great Axe, 458 Ghiza’s Wheel (70 Bleed build up), 426 Blood/Poison Duelest Great Axe (110, 142 build up). Higher motion values will make Lightning even better for damage, where 200 motion value like that from Chilling Mist will Make Cold do even more damage than even Keen. In PvP higher % physical damage negation, higher physical defence from strength, if they are frost bitten, if its raining or standing in water; all of this makes Lightning infusion much better than Keen. Comparing Cragblade (15% physical damage boost), War Cry (7.5% physical damage boost). Cragblade Lightning 558, War Cry Lightning 535, Lightning slash 585 Cragblade Keen 574, War Cry Keen 533 Cragblade Cold 513, War Cry Cold 482 Cragblade Bleed 503, War Cry Bleed, 465 So in summary if you want damage on Colossals on a dexterity build with 23 STR, 60 DEX, 30 FTH, Lightning Duelist Greataxe is the way to go, with Lightning Slash for buffed damage. Rot, you got rot grease with Rotten Greataxe, Frost you go Cold Duelist Greataxe. For bleed, use +5 heirloom to get to 28 STR and 1 hand Ghiza’s Wheel for its heavy or charged attacks, after that its Bleed Duelist Greataxe. Holy damage Sacred Duelist Greataxe, Staff of the Avatar, Envoy’s Great Horn are options. +5 STR heirloom can also be used to for in Axe of Godfrey (747 vs 773 on 60+5 STR). Look if I were honest weapon buffs are bad for Colossals as their bad moveset makes it hard to deal damage and finish people and you are going to need to use a Black Bow, thrusting sword or a ranged ash of war (Beast Roar, Thunderbolt) to finish them off. They do not have very good running or crouching/ rolling light attacks of Colossal Swords; you are better off with going Lightning Greatsword (colossal). If you really want to use colossal weapons on a Dexterity build then read what I said in the above paragraph. If you feel the need for longer range like the Golem’s Halberd chances are it’s not the range letting you down as colossals are already big range but rather it’s the crappy move set, and it’s likely you need Storm Storm which is still better to use on Duelist Great Axe.
What you did here was use enough stat points to beat dragon greatclaw (which I've already said has a narrow low stat distribution to be useful) to achieve a weapon that still deals less poise damage (relevant in PVE) and less damage. You should not be trying to beat the dragon greatclaw as I wouldn't pick that for PVP anyway unless your stat happens to fall in between some really weird low level for invasions. What you should do is give the str version of the axe the same treatment as the dex. The dex duelist is also inferior to their very own strength counterpart (when you also include the fact that you can 2h the heavy version and invest into faith). In summary, if you gave the exact same minute treatments I'm seeing from the dexterity version, the strength version will still be better due to the number of skillpoints you've actually ended up dumping. Now with 23 strength (13 points), 60 dex (50 points), 30 faith (20 points) you can already use a 54 str (44 points) giant crusher (also 2-handed like your scenario) and get your 30 faith if need be (while dumping the rest of the points into endurance and still have points to spare) and come out on top! with more length too! TL;DR The argument does not stand under scrutiny and the Duelist Greataxe does, in fact, still suck.
@@Chrightt yeah strength is better and more efficient, I’m just saying in detail that a dexterity build has some options which could be used for PvP. It’s not how can I best build my stats to make the most out of colossal weapons; but rather I have this sort of stat spread, what are the viable colossal weapon options for PvP? Dragon great claw I was just ruling it out as not a viable weapon.
@@johndang897 got it. Colossal weapons definitely seems to be designed with STR in mind. I just find it a shame that the two weapons they kind of wanted to make DEX work still falls short versus their own STR versions.
@@Chrightt yeah the build I use got me 8250 invasion wins with the past thousand of so invasions using nearby/ far I get 95% win rate in a non meta fashion build. I probably only won 10 times because of colossal weapons and had way better success on PvP. 153 allows for the best match making times for invasions and allows you to be strong enough to bring the necessary tools to counter whatever is thrown at you and overcome the numerous over-levelled phantoms there are. Invading at lower level means you are weaker and have to sacrifice your main damage stat or sacrifice faith, whatever the option will result in overlevelled phantoms having a greater advantage over you. The 3 range weapons I mentioned are a must to get high win rate in invasions; as they allow you to deal damage safely without costing too much FP. Melee is inherently risky when outnumbered at you can easily be swarmed and get blended in a stun lock. When you invade you have to invade with the expectation of having to beat 4 or more players to win the invasion. That’s a lot of damage you gotta do and you only have a limited pool of health to work with. Also you gotta be able to soft swap and hard swap multiple weapons to win. Where am I getting with this, well some unga Bunga strength chad is going to stack strength, 2 hand that giant crusher and go and invade and die a lot to semi competent players because simply their build it’s too one dimensional and has glaring weaknesses. A better way to play is to use my stat spread instead of a strength build to win and use multiple weapons either Duelist Great Axes as the main melee, a Cold Estoc as back up melee, a Black Bow. The best way is to not use colossal weapons in PvP as they have atrocious neutral move sets and need either some sort of Ash of War to carry them or the element of surprise.
@@Chrightt colossal weapons cannot stand on their two feet, they kind of need that strength scaling to help them out. If I were to be a strength build with a heavy rotten greataxe 2 hand with cold Cleanrot sword and black bow (54 str, 20 dex, 42 end) vs keen rotten greataxe, cold Estoc, black bow (23 str, 60 dex, 33 end) I would pick the later. It is because the bulk of PvP damage will be from the thrusting sword and bow, the rot damage, better damage out of beast roar and thunderbolt. The higher physical weapon damage from heavy vs keen will matter the least in a PvP scenario. I would even got as far as to say a heavy giant crusher on strength is worse than a lightning Duelist axe on dexterity for the same reasons minus the rot. If the host so much as eats boiled crab on top have heavy armour as well have dragon crest greatshield even for PvP equipped, use black flame protection, stand in water or rain, it just pushes the case for the dexterity build. I think I said all that can be said on this topic, but yeah now that I really think about it, dexterity is the better PvP build option if you want to use colossal weapons than even your unga Bunga strength build. If they didn’t have a crappy move set where they did not whiff so much or get screwed over by aimpunch I would not say strength was inferior. I do have one question, the colossal hammers do more stamina damage to shields than the colossal axes? That wasn’t mentioned in your video, just the poise damage was.
You can simply buff a regular hammer like Prelate's instead. You end up with more stats and you're able to swap ashes too. The buff part wasn't particularly mentioned because it doesn't save the weapon at all.
Hey Chrightt, I wanted to ask your opinion and advice if I may. What are setups that can break through the guard of an optimal hoplite player that is using a maxed out fingerprint stone shield along with the dragon crest great shield talisman, the great shield talisman, and has buffed their shield with both scholar’s shield as well as immutable shield and uses the barricade shield ash of war? I thought RKR, as well as flame grant me strength and golden vow as that is fair with the two buffs as well as the ash of war, and also the hammer talisman as well as mabye the shard of Alexander. I’m not sure if it would be fair to add an extra buff like a consumable to account for the fact that the stone shield can also be a weapon. But then again if he’s armed with a spear and shield then an extra weapon would probably be more appropriate like twin great hammers with the RKR on both. I’m wondering what can break through the optimal hoplite build.
the strength requirements on the greataxes aren't as big of an issue as you make it out to be, given that you only need 20 strength to two hand it, which is the same strength you need for other cool dex weapons, such as the bolt of gransax and the godslayer greatsword though obviously not fantastic, they are still options it's also worth noting that the rotten axe can still be buffed with rot grease, making it not actually too hard to proc rot with it
@@Chrightt I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm not saying it's optimal on a dex build, I'm just saying it's usable if you need a colossal's moveset for the poise/stagger on a dex build, and you don't need to go that far out of your way statwise to use it
Hi Chrightt, i was wondering if you have done a deep guide on claw weapons, want to make a lion themed character but lack this level of deepness on how to use that weapons effectively, thanks for guides like this and the great shield one, i like that style of fight so it helped me a lot.
@@Chrightt after watching it i think i would make it an arcane build, since I'm lacking one, mixing roar ashes of war on the claws and dragon incantations, will have to see in game how it performs and to tweak the stats around but i think i have a plan, thanks mate.
I have no idea why they ruined the great club. In DS3, it had a cool R2 attack, now it's just another useless hunk of material (like a lot of weapons in this game)
I was wondering what is the best weapon and setup for max counterhit damage with and without time restricted buffs) I endet up with the sepentslayers weaponart or the resoolve buffed charged Zweihänder (since this buff doesn’t hinder fluent combat)…what is your take?
you kinda undersold the godfrey axe, it's devastating in the hands of someone who knows how to use it. also the ghiza's wheel is stronger when one-handed due to the very good R2 that has hyper armor, decent speed and tracking, multiple hits that can trigger the multi-hit talismans & tear, and even builds up bleed on top of that.
No, the reason magic sucks here is because you need a very high strength requirement. Cold doesn't have this requirement as investing into strength itself already brings out its best AR for the weapon. You can play cold on a strength build.
I feel like the optimization aspect of elden ring was kinda unfinished with all the ransom weapons with non unique ashes being so bad, as well as the absolutely obtuse weapon art calculation.
One extra note for the pure endgame PVEers I forgot to mention since I mostly cover the weapons roughly based on meta PVP levels. Occult Giant-Crusher retains quite a bit of str scaling so it turns into the weapon with the highest physical AR when you have tons of spare stat points.
Prelate's Inferno Crozier and a few other pure str weapons are the same way, I wanna say.
I actually named my character unga bunga before i seen this video and was planning a strength faith build lmao. My other one is ooga booga the mage.
@@IdToaster warped axe my beloved
The ghizas wheel is actually S teir, it's split Stat requirement give it good damage no matter what hand it's in and the heavy attacks di allot of bleed build up, more often than not you can one shot someone if you hit a fully charged heavy.
How do I get the Golem's Halebard to deal Pierce damage? Does it only do pierce with certain ashes of war?With prayerful strike it seems to deal only standard damage.
It’s soul crushing how many weapons in this game are simply bad because you can’t change their affinities
Ghiza’s Wheel & Rotten Staff 😢
@@SlyBoogie Ghiza's one handed charged attack is pretty fun if you can land it.
Fromsoft has been doing this since demons souls so im used to it.
@@kevo300Dark Souls 2 let you change the affinity for almost anything. I don’t like ds2 but I don’t understand why they never did that again.
@@nathaneskin3572 I imagine you could do some busted combos and scaling if you got creative. Some weapons with multiple innate damage types do a stupid amount of damage on New Game even if they have crap scaling.
3:32 Update:
They added holy dmg and faith scalling to the Great Club in 1.09
Came back to this video just to find if anyone posted this update.
The Great Club was very likely meant to be a regular weapon, and the data for each of its infusions is still in the game. Unfortunately it seems it was either mistakenly made a unique weapon or it was changed last-minute.
Its a shame because even with infusions it still wouldn't be amazing but in it's current state it is a contender for the worst weapon in the game.
It still has the highest poise damage per hit r2 in the game!
@@jacobprout5097 Oh geez not even remotely. That goes to Varre's Bouquet.
@@StellarElite1 even though varre does pitiful damage and is also the worst weapon in its class id argue it's still better than the great club implicitly. Varre has a better moveset even if the mace moveset is one of the worst in the game it's still better than colossals which are carried by weapon arts and varre can also scale and proc sleep or status effects. The great club on the other hand is the shortest colossal does pitiful damage compared to the other options, it is also not infusible nor can it change it's worthless weapon art. Then again I have only considered pvp I'm sure the great club is better in PvE where moveset matters less.
@@jacobprout5097 Well... yeah, Colossals suck in PvP for a number of reasons. Aim punch, mediocre moveset, weight, even the poise damage is completely inferior to a mere Caestus. But at least they have *range,* and Golden Land kicks ass as a weapon art, what the heck are you on about? You can rub some bleed or frost on the club and have the darts from Golden Land do bleed or frost buildup, it's sick! They're definitely better in invasions, and honestly Varre's Bouquet is probably better in invasion content as well for the reasons you mentioned above.
The bouquet, though... 112 base damage at +10 is perilous. You're hard countered by boluses and if your opponent's wearing heavy armour + eats a Boiled Crab, that damage is even more non existent.
You're also dead wrong about the Great Club being the shortest colossal-- that's the Duelist Greataxes and Axe of Godfrey.
I don't think you mentioned it but the 1 handed heavy attack of Ghizas wheel is very important as it lands the spinning wheel on top of your target, unlike the 2handed. It hits several times and does massive bleed build up, easily 1 shotting with a setup like winged/prosthesis/axe with thorny/barbed crystal tear. Can be super fun. Pulley crossbow offhand with burned bolts brings the chefs kiss.
Golem's Halberd could have been my favorite weapon in the game if we could use Giant Hunt on it. Based on it's design it's the only non sword colossal weapon able of thrusting yet you can't apply Giant Hunt to it. It's pathetic.
yeah being able to put thrusting ashes on it wouldve been so great.
That'd be sick, ngl
That'd be cool, I like that weapon a lot!
Or if they at least allowed it to take Charge Forth, the same damn WA is comes with! It's so bad, you can't even use the one thing that sets it apart if you want to use a infusion.
Like with the Katar for Fists I suspect it's due to how it would probably apply to the entire weapon class, and Giant Hunt wouldn't be beliveable on the Giant Crusher ironically enough. Unless they could code it to only apply to select weapons in a weapon class.
Note for great club- it's buffable despite being unique, and the ash of war applies on hit effects like bloodflame.
Does that include black flame?
Getting the Dragon Greatclaw after defeating the Draconic Tree Sentinel was such a disappointment, thought I was gonna have some sick red lightning ash of war, but no, no we can't have the cool things, same with the shield.
what were you thinking fromsoft never fails to not disappoint when it comes to weapons
"Giant Crusher, the heaviest weapon in game."
Fingerprint Stone Shield would like a word with you. And it *definitely* counts.
When you one shot stun lock people with the charge AoW, it definitely counts.
Trolls hammer is buffable, relatively low weight, with a relatively low str req, and does a ton of posture damage.
That thing with the assassin dagger talismans is amazing for pve since blunt colossal weapons trigger those twice. Every parry, backstab, guard break, or posture break gives you around 40% of your hp back and 30 fp. You become unkillable to mobs.
Trolls roar and its follow up does 80+ poise damage with hyper armor. Many medium size bosses have less than that. It can carry pve easily. Trolls roar outright kills weak mobs and staggers mid strength mobs. Get the critical and you make up all fp from its use.
Never had much luck in pvp with colossal weapons but pve for most applications is amazing.
In addition to all of this, visually, the flames on the enemies are the red flames from their Fell God. I think it is the only weapon on the game w this effect
Weirdly enough, the one handed heavy attack on the Ghiza wheel is a multi-hit that will trigger winged sword/Millicent talismans. Which is funny, since its AOW doesn't trigger those talismans.
People dont know how to build ghizas, you have to play around one handed charged r2 👌
it’s worth noting that the great club’s charged R2 does the most poise damage of any attack in the game. so if you’re stance breaking, it’s not completely useless. but it’s close to useless lol
unfortunately not the case with patch 1.08. it's poise damage on its CR2 got reduced from 52.9 to 45.75, and now shares the same poise damage as the giant crusher and prelates (which technically got a buff to their CR2 poise damage in 1.08)
According to the MV google sheet it has the ame as any other collosoal. Except Trolls Hammer, which is the highest in the game.
@@5chneemensch138 trolls hammer has the highest 1 handed CR2 poise damage but the giant crusher, great club and prelates do more on the 2 handed CR2
While it’s certainly not optimal, having the duelist axe on keen is surprisingly good. At least it’s an option if you want to have a colossal weapon for your keen build. Since the Bolt of Gransax strength requirement is 20, you can two hand the axe while not handicapping your keen build to mess with a different weapons.
Yeah, and given how powerful the power-stance Spear moveset is, you're encouraged to go to 20 Strength. Its definitely not optimal and is a niche use but it's there and isn't an unreasonable investment given that arguably one of the best Dexterity weapons in the game requires 20 Strength. The only thing that would be an issue is Endurance given how heavy they are.
In my opinion, Dragon greatclaw (considering it is a somber weapon which cannot be infused) should have an ancient dragon lightning version of the thunderbolt AoW. It would make it so much cooler, but also allow a ranged option. Shouldn't be too broken considering Fallingstar Beast Jaw has a similar AoW right? Opinions?
Or give it a red lightning version of endure (would be nice if a thunderbolt would strike the weapon when the ash of war is used) that envelops the weapon with red lightning.
Thus buffing its normal attacks by making them produce a shockwave similar to that of the sentinels when buffed. and if AoW was followed up by a strong attack it will unleash an attack like that of the Malformed sentinels which would consume the buff.
i'd be happy if they give it anything special to be honest
I think it is already perfect considering how abysmally boring it is.
JK right it needs so much more.
You should have mentioned how Occult Giant Crusher is stupid good if you are very high level, it becomes highest pure phys weapon in game, and capable of highest single hit damage in game (record being over 1 million). Unlike most occult weapons it keeps most of its STR scaling.
Thanks! I totally forgot about the max level PVE endgame mention. I mentioned it in the pinned comment.
One million for real? Brb respeccing...
@@Squiggums799 search Elden ring 1 million damage, vid goes over it in detail.
Troll's hammer is pretty good with a str build that uses black flame incantations. You can buff it with black flame blade and the innate fire damage helps overcome flat resistances. Plus the burn effect will be applied to the roar on the weapon art.
Just a tidbit, Golem's Halberd curiously has charge forth as its default aow. You lose ar not infusing it but It's kinda cool.
Troll's Hammer can be buffed via Grease/Incantations (notably Bloodflame Blade) despite being a unique weapon. Meaning that, with a dedicated build and with Buffing Incants such as FMGS or Golden Vow, it can reach pretty significant AR numbers.
It's also the lightest Colossal Weapon in the game, allowing you to spare more points in other stats than Endurance.
Been using it for 3 consecutive playthroughs and that thing is quite an underrated option imo, especially considering how easily Troll's Roar breaks enemy's poise. Until you can afford the stats requirements for Giant's Crusher, it's a very valid replacement.
At the point where this matters you can simply do a giant-crusher on heavy and buff it to receive a better effect.
Fun fact; Prelate’s Inferno Crozier un-infused with the default Prelate’s Charge can have Frozen Armament applied to it. Allowing you to inflict frostbite, before using the weapon art to reset it. Sadly; the weapon art cannot inflict it, so it’s best to use it just to reset it. Or if someone doesn’t know, you can just chase them down and put fear into them with it.
Watchdog's Staff is one of my favorite weapons (in PvE). SO versatile. Having a projectile synergizes so well with a high-stagger weapon since it lets you reapply stagger against fleeing enemies. And the range and damage justifies its use compared to consumables fulfilling that purpose. When you co-op, it lets you contribute pretty much every second of the fight you're not dodging.
Rotten greataxes were MADE for powerstancing... also, apparently they instantly rot anything with a fully charged warcry r2... I use a demented build where I have an urumi in my main hand and a greataxe in the left. Use endure on the urumi since it has a faster activation than colossals, and hit people with the greataxe as a form of retaliation. This works at level 125 and 150, earlier levels are harder to do.
Also, apparently, the rotten greataxe keeps its rot up until upgrade level +3, so if you want to try and make an abomination low level build, it may come in handy.
I literally searched this yesterday and was sad that you haven't made a video on this yet. Thank you so much for this!
Aw, you should have mentioned that Troll's Hammer is buffable, and it's Troll's War weapon art will apply any statuses applied via the weapon buff. This doesn't really make it super viable, but it does mean that if you're using the Troll's Hammer, you can go Str/Fth and get functionally double faith scaling from both the weapon's fire damage and any fire buffs you apply like Blackflame Blade.
Good to know!
Or you can just treat the weapon as a pure str weapon and use a Fire Grease on it. It stacks nicely with the innate fire damage and pushes the weapons AR past other "unique" colossals with comparable stats. Of course you're still locked to the AoW but it's really not bad.
You can buff a Heavy Giant Crusher while investing into faith and get a better effect as the base fire damage is garbo anyway.
@@Chrightt You're not wrong, but the combined base, scaled, and buffed fire damage is okay.
Its niche might be at lower levels. If you hit min stats on Troll's Hammer, then buff with fire resin for a low level build that might be potent and a little easier to do than low level Giant Crusher.
Yes, the niche is on lower levels. Troll’s Hammer is budget Giant Crusher. Even their names are lore-friendly, when compared with each other.
Honestly, all of the regular Smithing Stone weapons should have been infusable and buffable; I don't know what they were thinking with the Great Club or Troll's Hammer. At least they're not as screwed as the Torchpole.
Edit: why the hell was the Greathorn a quality weapon when the lighter, faster horns were str/faith? I really hope that was a mistake and they switched the dex and faith scalings on it, but it's been a year with no changes, sadly.
YOU NEVER MISS !
while hardly optimal for PvP, the Godfrey axe can actually be difficult to dodge up close when it's buffed, if you're using heavies. That and the width of the attack can make it surprising to people who aren't ready for it
I catch a lot of people with it. Pretty sure it buffs with roar talisman and highland axe. Quality builds have to go beyond the meta level.
The Troll's Hammer can be buffed. It's actually quite able to get a lot of dmg, especially with it's low requirements and ease of acquisition. It's on the lighter side for the big hammer poise damage weapons.
I Unga. Therefore i Bunga.
Thinking about this more: the Troll's hammer is one of the lighter colossal weapons and does have a decent AR does that not give it some merit as a weapon? Troll's roar and the followup heavy attack also do an absolute metric ton of damage if you can get time to pull it off (which isn't common granted). It and the Great Club can be buffed with consumables and both of them have pretty low stat requirements and are obtained relatively early.
Mentioned in summary section.
You can also buff it with incantations so it has some merit for pure casters with some strength investment. Although the fire buff in this game is much weaker than other variants which makes it weaker than Great Club buffed with Order's blade. I suppose it could still be useful for PvE where most enemies are weak to fire.
For pvp, I would add that golden slam is quite a bad weapon art, generally too slow to be worth using and easy enough to dodge and position for a backstab or other options of punishment. In this sense I would favor more the scarlet rot option, as phantom hits will still increase the build up, while the faith scaling on the regular staff won't contribute much to damage.
On a more personal note, I prefer the inferno crozier to giant crusher specifically for the different heavy attack, because I find it much easier to land. Do keep in mind though that roar/cry abilities can change the heavy attacks and be very powerful when landing them. Also range in pvp tends to be a very relevant factor.
Its sad that they didnt gave the golems halberd a piercing attack
The crouch attack is piercing
Leave it to Fromsoft to post a patch a week later that buffs the hell out of the Great Club, immediately outdating the video lol
Not that much has changed for the weapon besides having good damage now.
I think it's important to not that the Great Club is buffable despite being a "unique" weapon. And just like with regular Golden Land, the darts apply addtional affects such as Bloodflame and Blackflame. So if you do insist on using Great Club, using these will help alot.
And then, with Ghiza's Wheel, I'm actually gonna say that you won't be using it for its Ashe of War. Unless it was changed in recent patches, its Ashe of War does not trigger things like the Sword Insignias and Milicent's Prosthesis. Its status build-up is also reduced. Rather, Ghiza's Wheel is better served for a Charged Heavy Attack build. The hits from the heavy attacks actually do proc multi-hit talismans and retains its status build-up. So running this weapon with Lord of Blood's Exultation/ Axe Talisman/ Milicent's Prosthesis/ Rotten Sword Insignia while donning the White Mask and off-handing the Jellyfish Shield is probably the best way to get the most out its damage potential. This is additionally useful since Milicent's Prosthesis boosts your Dexterity by 5, making that side of the investment slightly easier.
And finally, my only note about the Duelist Axes is that it's a massive let down that they don't have a unique Ashe of War. The Duelist enemies get to throw these on a long chain. That would make these weapons so much cooler.
I've been looking forward to this one!
Fallingstar beast jaw might be my favorite unique colossal, specially roll catching with an uncharged R2, and in general, str/int might be my favorite unga bunga for the frost build up you can get. Awesome video my friend
Don't believe intelligence contributes to the build up of frost.
The great club really hurt me I have a soft spot for that weapon since I beat ds1 for the first time with it
Don't feel too bad. It has one of the highest poise hits in the game with its charged r2, and it can be enchanted unlike many of the weapons on the list, so that narrows the gap. It can use all types of grease, or enchantments. i.e. blood, magic, fire ect. Plus golden land projectiles take on the property of whatever grease or enchantment it has. So bleed, or rot build up from any range. And it scales purely from strength so you can make an easy build with points left over for other stats.
Great video! Two-handing a Giant-Crusher on blood affinity (vs occult affinity - no bleed passive) with Prayerful Strike (30% health regen and tons of hyperarmor) is awesome (dare I say: OP?). Except when you can’t see past the weapon in a narrow corridor. Lol
Wait how are you running Prayerful strike on blood affinity? Prayerful strike is a default sacred ash of war (like Golden Vow) so can only be run on standard, keen, heavy, quality, lightning or sacred afaik
Oops. You’re right! I have it on keen with high dexterity. I have so many weapons on the go, all bleed or occult, that I forgot this one was different. Still super strong with this AoW. At Journey 4 or 5 (how can I tell?). And I just switched it to Quality for a big AR pickup. It’s a Quality AoW.
My only complaint about colossal for pvp is goblin stepping/wavedashing. Most don't ever use r1 or r2. Just have their character have a seizure going in and out of crouch to spam high speed pokes. Makes me wish colossal regular attacks were better.
After all the changes and additions to the colossals, we need an updated version of this.
One thing different about the hammers vs non hammer colossal weapons, is that the hammers have better poise damage on their guard counters.
Very very logical summary Thank you!
Glad it was helpful!
I mean I get the Greataxes aren't great but wouldn't you two hand them at 20 str and not 30?
perhaps the duelist axes are more geared toward 2/3 quality builds.
20 str, 30 dex,
30 str, 45 dex,
40 str, 60 dex.
Thanks for making more videos on this. Glad to still see noodly videos on this game to help me on my journey to NG+7. Once you do videos on all the weapon classes I'd love to see a "best of the best" comparison of various S Tier choices
Doesn't the Dragon Great Claw do more damage against Dragons and Ancient dragons? Or am I mistaken?
Waiting for the Greataxes guide
Awesome work, thanks Chrightt ;D
Thank you I have been waiting on this one
It is confusing how the Staff of Avatar has Golden Slam ash of war
And the Great Club has Golden Land ash of war
i feel like it should be the opposite.
The Great Club looks brutish so it makes sense to have a body slam while The Staff of Avatar looks, well, like a Staff! It fits well with the Golden Land ash of war.
I know the Avatars do the slam so much but that's the Avatar doing that. Not the staff. The staff is thrust into the ground, and produce holy projectiles.
Just to convince that Golden Slam should be on the Great Club: What is the Great Club made of? A tree. What is the Avatar? A tree. And the Golden Slam happens when the Avatar (a tree) slams.
Little late but I wish they'd buff the speed of Colossal Weapons crouch attacks so it could be relatively viable and more comparable to ugs, which is quicker across the board
Ugs cpoke is 17f, rollpoke is 15f. Colossal cr1 is 18f in both 1h and 2h. Should buff it to 16f in between imo and give a little lunge maybe since the 2h one is so short
Also the r1s are 19f on colossals. 17f on ugs. Colossal should be a little quicker 18f
Buff scaling on colossals like 1.09 said, for real this time not a meme. Boom somewhat viable colossals when they don't get aimpunched
Wonder if chrightt would agree tbh, or if there'd be some issue with this he sees
Watchdog staff - unga bunga with extra pew pew
Your channel is peak Elden Ring content, keep it up
Int Str build: I unga, therefore, I bunga.
The Duelist and Rotten Greataxe are mostly Dexterity oriented and have a little merit, in order to two-hand them you need 20 Strength. Conveniently the Bolt of Gransax, one of the stronger Dexterity weapons, requires 20 Strength to 1-hand, which given the power-stance Spear moveset is kind of important. So there's a very limited niche use there for those two as they have one of the lowest Strength requirements of the class. Odds are you'd wouldn't one-hand either of them anyways, so you don't need to go to 30 Strength for that.
Also I appreciate that you don't shit all over the Dragon Greatclaw, it's the lightest Colossal Weapon (along with the Troll's Hammer), which is a powerful thing in it's own right, means you don't need as much Endurance or Equip Load to use it, or can use your equip load for better armor instead or to carry a faster sidearm (Straot Sword or Thrusting Sword).
Also unlike the Troll's Hammer if has the better elemental damage as even in PvE, things like Rain and standing in water boost the damage of Lightning while reducing Fire (Liurnia in NG+), making it a decent way for a Strength build to have a source of Lightning damage, something that has merit in PvE.
Rotten staff slam deals more poise damage than regular Staff slam.
howdy I like the intro animation
Thanks! Trying to add a few touches to make the video look more high quality!
Do you think a dex based power stance curve sword build would be viable? For PVE mostly, but maybe even for PVP. I am so bored of using status effects, which got me wondering what the damage output of two Keen bandits’s curved swords would do
Keen bandits are pretty good on PVE, and they give you access to a decent selection of moves
If you center your build around "consecutive hits" effects you can get that AR quite high, and those are very easy to trigger with the powerstanced moveset and spinning slash
I'm thinking milicent+insignia+claw+defensive if you want to focus on jump attacks, or a more defensive setup droping claw talisman if you wanna stick to L1 spam
I think dual RKR could be pretty nasty on multihits as well, albeit kinda annoying to set up
I guess there's a lot of options to explore there
You forgot to mention that Troll's Hammer is one of the few buffable weapons with already innate elemental damage.
Maybe it's decent on a faith build with black flame blade or even blood flame blade. And this has the potemtial to be the weapon which takes the best advantage of flame grant me strength for this additive scaling. Maybe? Is this too much copium?
Nah, I didn't forget this. I didn't bother mentioning it because the buff doesn't do much for it as you can just use a regular colossal and slot the exact same thing, buff it, and still do better.
@@Chrightt I see, sad
This seems like a pretty easy weapon group to comprehend. I wish the colossal axes were more functional. They need a little something more to give us a reason to use them over their more unique and more powerful counterparts, maybe a slightly different and faster moveset, a niche AoW, a slight reduction to their weight or strength requirement, etc.
Dexterity builds can make very good use of colossal weapons, let me explain.
RL 153 is what you want to be to enable you to invade 150 meta level and is the highest that can invade 138 (which is the highest that can fight 125), qualifying you 2 meta level brackets where 150 is primary, 125 is secondary, and tertiary is 138.
Now if you are serious about winning invasions using nearby/ far and you are melee based the key stat points are 50 -60 vigour, 23 strength, 20 dexterity and 30 faith.
Ideally you want 60 vigour to maximise survive with the use of Erdtree favour +2 and the use of frenzyflame and warming stone for heals.
23 strength is absolutely necessary to enable the use of Jar Cannon which is best invasion weapon where you combine is firepower for awesome very long range damage and knockback ability that will even crush over levelled phantoms as even having 99 in all stats is no match for the power of gravity.
20 dexterity is to enable the use of the Black Bow and the regular Great Bow (rain of arrows with Golem Greatarrows). They are great tools for inflicting range damage.
30 faith is to allow the use of every greater barrier where you can soft swap the +5 faith heirloom to use Erdtree Protection. These greater barriers will help counter the many spammy ash of wars of meta weapons.
Two handing my dexterity build is a Vagabond where I have the above stats with 33 endurance and 60 dexterity with minimum mind, intelligence and arcane. Let me say this, colossal weapons are hard to use in pvp and if anything, they whiff a lot and if that happens it makes something like the Rotten Great Axe very good as if you combine it with rot grease. It will outperform the Rotten Staff on both Keen or Heavy affinities. If you are not using rot grease then don’t bother with the Rotten Great Axe as 65 scarlet rot is just not enough on a slow weapon and you would likely kill your target in PvP before you activate the rot or get much damage out of it. If that is the case you want to think about Lightning affinity or Cold affinity which is really good on the regular Duelist Great Axe for use with stuff like Lightning Slash, Chilling Mist and Waves of Darkness scales very well on Cold affinity and gets good damage scaling from Dexterity.
A lightning Duelist Great Axe will outdo Dragon Greatclaw as it has higher AR and more % of it is lightning. With the stats I mentioned it had 140 physical defence and 133 lightning defence. 2 handing r1 against someone naked the Lightning Duelist Great Axe will do 735 PvP against the 704 of Lightning Dragon Greatclaw. This means the only Dragon Greatclaw really fills is some weird quality build and a colossal weapon with low weight.
If you are fighting someone with my build who goes full Veteran’s set with 35.5% physical negation, 25.3% Lightning damage negation and 26.3% Magic damage negation they will receive in PvP from a 2 hand r1:
512 damage Lightning Duelist Great Axe, 490 Keen Duelist Great Axe, 451 Cold Duelist Great Axe, 458 Ghiza’s Wheel (70 Bleed build up), 426 Blood/Poison Duelest Great Axe (110, 142 build up).
Higher motion values will make Lightning even better for damage, where 200 motion value like that from Chilling Mist will Make Cold do even more damage than even Keen. In PvP higher % physical damage negation, higher physical defence from strength, if they are frost bitten, if its raining or standing in water; all of this makes Lightning infusion much better than Keen.
Comparing Cragblade (15% physical damage boost), War Cry (7.5% physical damage boost).
Cragblade Lightning 558, War Cry Lightning 535, Lightning slash 585
Cragblade Keen 574, War Cry Keen 533
Cragblade Cold 513, War Cry Cold 482
Cragblade Bleed 503, War Cry Bleed, 465
So in summary if you want damage on Colossals on a dexterity build with 23 STR, 60 DEX, 30 FTH, Lightning Duelist Greataxe is the way to go, with Lightning Slash for buffed damage. Rot, you got rot grease with Rotten Greataxe, Frost you go Cold Duelist Greataxe. For bleed, use +5 heirloom to get to 28 STR and 1 hand Ghiza’s Wheel for its heavy or charged attacks, after that its Bleed Duelist Greataxe. Holy damage Sacred Duelist Greataxe, Staff of the Avatar, Envoy’s Great Horn are options.
+5 STR heirloom can also be used to for in Axe of Godfrey (747 vs 773 on 60+5 STR).
Look if I were honest weapon buffs are bad for Colossals as their bad moveset makes it hard to deal damage and finish people and you are going to need to use a Black Bow, thrusting sword or a ranged ash of war (Beast Roar, Thunderbolt) to finish them off.
They do not have very good running or crouching/ rolling light attacks of Colossal Swords; you are better off with going Lightning Greatsword (colossal). If you really want to use colossal weapons on a Dexterity build then read what I said in the above paragraph. If you feel the need for longer range like the Golem’s Halberd chances are it’s not the range letting you down as colossals are already big range but rather it’s the crappy move set, and it’s likely you need Storm Storm which is still better to use on Duelist Great Axe.
What you did here was use enough stat points to beat dragon greatclaw (which I've already said has a narrow low stat distribution to be useful) to achieve a weapon that still deals less poise damage (relevant in PVE) and less damage. You should not be trying to beat the dragon greatclaw as I wouldn't pick that for PVP anyway unless your stat happens to fall in between some really weird low level for invasions.
What you should do is give the str version of the axe the same treatment as the dex. The dex duelist is also inferior to their very own strength counterpart (when you also include the fact that you can 2h the heavy version and invest into faith). In summary, if you gave the exact same minute treatments I'm seeing from the dexterity version, the strength version will still be better due to the number of skillpoints you've actually ended up dumping. Now with 23 strength (13 points), 60 dex (50 points), 30 faith (20 points) you can already use a 54 str (44 points) giant crusher (also 2-handed like your scenario) and get your 30 faith if need be (while dumping the rest of the points into endurance and still have points to spare) and come out on top! with more length too!
TL;DR The argument does not stand under scrutiny and the Duelist Greataxe does, in fact, still suck.
@@Chrightt yeah strength is better and more efficient, I’m just saying in detail that a dexterity build has some options which could be used for PvP. It’s not how can I best build my stats to make the most out of colossal weapons; but rather I have this sort of stat spread, what are the viable colossal weapon options for PvP? Dragon great claw I was just ruling it out as not a viable weapon.
@@johndang897 got it. Colossal weapons definitely seems to be designed with STR in mind. I just find it a shame that the two weapons they kind of wanted to make DEX work still falls short versus their own STR versions.
@@Chrightt yeah the build I use got me 8250 invasion wins with the past thousand of so invasions using nearby/ far I get 95% win rate in a non meta fashion build. I probably only won 10 times because of colossal weapons and had way better success on PvP. 153 allows for the best match making times for invasions and allows you to be strong enough to bring the necessary tools to counter whatever is thrown at you and overcome the numerous over-levelled phantoms there are. Invading at lower level means you are weaker and have to sacrifice your main damage stat or sacrifice faith, whatever the option will result in overlevelled phantoms having a greater advantage over you.
The 3 range weapons I mentioned are a must to get high win rate in invasions; as they allow you to deal damage safely without costing too much FP. Melee is inherently risky when outnumbered at you can easily be swarmed and get blended in a stun lock. When you invade you have to invade with the expectation of having to beat 4 or more players to win the invasion. That’s a lot of damage you gotta do and you only have a limited pool of health to work with. Also you gotta be able to soft swap and hard swap multiple weapons to win.
Where am I getting with this, well some unga Bunga strength chad is going to stack strength, 2 hand that giant crusher and go and invade and die a lot to semi competent players because simply their build it’s too one dimensional and has glaring weaknesses. A better way to play is to use my stat spread instead of a strength build to win and use multiple weapons either Duelist Great Axes as the main melee, a Cold Estoc as back up melee, a Black Bow. The best way is to not use colossal weapons in PvP as they have atrocious neutral move sets and need either some sort of Ash of War to carry them or the element of surprise.
@@Chrightt colossal weapons cannot stand on their two feet, they kind of need that strength scaling to help them out. If I were to be a strength build with a heavy rotten greataxe 2 hand with cold Cleanrot sword and black bow (54 str, 20 dex, 42 end) vs keen rotten greataxe, cold Estoc, black bow (23 str, 60 dex, 33 end) I would pick the later. It is because the bulk of PvP damage will be from the thrusting sword and bow, the rot damage, better damage out of beast roar and thunderbolt. The higher physical weapon damage from heavy vs keen will matter the least in a PvP scenario.
I would even got as far as to say a heavy giant crusher on strength is worse than a lightning Duelist axe on dexterity for the same reasons minus the rot. If the host so much as eats boiled crab on top have heavy armour as well have dragon crest greatshield even for PvP equipped, use black flame protection, stand in water or rain, it just pushes the case for the dexterity build.
I think I said all that can be said on this topic, but yeah now that I really think about it, dexterity is the better PvP build option if you want to use colossal weapons than even your unga Bunga strength build. If they didn’t have a crappy move set where they did not whiff so much or get screwed over by aimpunch I would not say strength was inferior.
I do have one question, the colossal hammers do more stamina damage to shields than the colossal axes? That wasn’t mentioned in your video, just the poise damage was.
....trolls hammer, like bloodhound fang, can b buffed...not useless...
You can simply buff a regular hammer like Prelate's instead. You end up with more stats and you're able to swap ashes too. The buff part wasn't particularly mentioned because it doesn't save the weapon at all.
Hey Chrightt,
I wanted to ask your opinion and advice if I may. What are setups that can break through the guard of an optimal hoplite player that is using a maxed out fingerprint stone shield along with the dragon crest great shield talisman, the great shield talisman, and has buffed their shield with both scholar’s shield as well as immutable shield and uses the barricade shield ash of war?
I thought RKR, as well as flame grant me strength and golden vow as that is fair with the two buffs as well as the ash of war, and also the hammer talisman as well as mabye the shard of Alexander.
I’m not sure if it would be fair to add an extra buff like a consumable to account for the fact that the stone shield can also be a weapon. But then again if he’s armed with a spear and shield then an extra weapon would probably be more appropriate like twin great hammers with the RKR on both. I’m wondering what can break through the optimal hoplite build.
can we all agree that, unga is the big weapon, and bunga is the big damage
the strength requirements on the greataxes aren't as big of an issue as you make it out to be, given that you only need 20 strength to two hand it, which is the same strength you need for other cool dex weapons, such as the bolt of gransax and the godslayer greatsword
though obviously not fantastic, they are still options
it's also worth noting that the rotten axe can still be buffed with rot grease, making it not actually too hard to proc rot with it
Uh, it is. Because you can 2-hand the heavy version to, giving it more of a AR boost than the dex version. Therefore, it is crap.
@@Chrightt I think you're misunderstanding me, I'm not saying it's optimal on a dex build, I'm just saying it's usable if you need a colossal's moveset for the poise/stagger on a dex build, and you don't need to go that far out of your way statwise to use it
thank you for the video!!!
This is not "Unga Bunga"
Its "I Unga, therefore I Bunga"
Is Regal Roar buffed by troll talisman yet?
Question about Watchdog's Staff: Are you saying that the bullet art does not scale with Str or Dex, only buffs/weapon level?
Yes, it doesn't scale to str/dex. You can have 99 str/dex and it will still do the same damage as base str/dex.
Hi Chrightt, i was wondering if you have done a deep guide on claw weapons, want to make a lion themed character but lack this level of deepness on how to use that weapons effectively, thanks for guides like this and the great shield one, i like that style of fight so it helped me a lot.
If you're talking about one similar to this, yes! It is on my channel. Check the weapons breakdown playlist.
@@Chrightt after watching it i think i would make it an arcane build, since I'm lacking one, mixing roar ashes of war on the claws and dragon incantations, will have to see in game how it performs and to tweak the stats around but i think i have a plan, thanks mate.
Great club is really good. Same with trolls hammer.
Dragon greatclaw is the trash one
Aim punch ruining this weapon class for everyone
I have no idea why they ruined the great club. In DS3, it had a cool R2 attack, now it's just another useless hunk of material (like a lot of weapons in this game)
I was wondering what is the best weapon and setup for max counterhit damage with and without time restricted buffs) I endet up with the sepentslayers weaponart or the resoolve buffed charged Zweihänder (since this buff doesn’t hinder fluent combat)…what is your take?
The full name of Prelate is Late Before You Were Late
Dope video
If I unga therefore I bunga - me using Royal Greatsword
Maaaan where’s maliketh’s sword :(
you kinda undersold the godfrey axe, it's devastating in the hands of someone who knows how to use it.
also the ghiza's wheel is stronger when one-handed due to the very good R2 that has hyper armor, decent speed and tracking, multiple hits that can trigger the multi-hit talismans & tear, and even builds up bleed on top of that.
Can u made new ranking of daggers after all weapons in this class got buffed?
Looks the same. All the frame data of daggers changed to become faster. Nothing else changed.
Biggest heaviest weapons being quality scaling is stoopid dookie
UNGA BUNGAAA
Doesn’t the Godfrey axe have a true combo with a off hand weapon?
A lot of things combo with a fast off-hand like thrusting sword. The thing is... you gotta land that Godfrey attack.
Smoughs hammer chads rise up!!!!
big bonk
魔像戟如果能上突擊的戰灰就好了....為什麼它明明素體有突擊但不能放突擊上去啊
😂 他們懶惰
If you have yo level Dex, it not real Unga Bunga.
True unga bunga is using wooden clubs and ancestral follower garbs
0:51
This is the unga bunga of all time
Weird, how you avoided magic infusion but covered cold. Are all magic infusion’s just bad?
No, the reason magic sucks here is because you need a very high strength requirement. Cold doesn't have this requirement as investing into strength itself already brings out its best AR for the weapon. You can play cold on a strength build.
@@Chrightt I see, thanks for the clarification, despite my grammatical errors.
Ambatukam
Wait he didnt mention Greatsword at all?
??? This is colossal weapons video. You can check out the greatsword vid for greatswords.
@@Chrightt Greatsword is a Colossal sword dude. That makes it a colossal weapon in my book.
@@flute136 He has a video on colossal swords separately
How to put the unga, into the bunga
Monke happy
Great club hits like crap no reason to even use it … which it really sucks :/
Pissed you mentioned the pizza glitch
Finally!
I can't help but feel like watching a guide on how to unga bunga is counter intuitive. Great info nevertheless though!
Why does he say it like “pre latesinfer no crozier”?
I feel like the optimization aspect of elden ring was kinda unfinished with all the ransom weapons with non unique ashes being so bad, as well as the absolutely obtuse weapon art calculation.
Also
* cries in trolls hammer being bad *