Think it would be insightful seeing them in action. Maybe make a video for each of your top weapons in each category and so on and then what is optimal at each soul level for pvp/pve
I think the reasoning for them making the Zweihander a more dex than str weapon is likely of them realizing they did not make other colosal weapon that could fit that niche much like in DS2 and 3 and such the lightest colosal sword turns into the one for finesse.
Frankly the Zweihander is a greatsword and belongs there. But the movesets for both collosal and greatswords are very bad and so unrealistic it takes me out of the experience. godslayer sword actually has somewhat sensible moveset so I would rather they put that on the Zweihander as well and moved it to greatswords. I would love to test that moveset in a dex build on a normal weapon you can buff and the Zweihander seams a natural choice.
You could argue that the Astora greatsword filled that role in ds3 due to the low str requirement and S scaling when infused with sharp, crystal, lightning and blessed.
@@fabiopeels2733 while in DS2 you had a wyvern greatsword if I remember that was dex focused , and because weapons like these existed the Zweihander was left as the lightest str/quality option of big swords . The Zweihander even got the Heavy attack from the astora greatsword.
For a pure strength build, the regular Greatsword was easily the best and highest damaging one for me. I have super low faith, intelligence, arcane, etc. so the hardest hitting one was always the classic Greatsword.
I completely agree. Personally right now I'm using Ghiza's Wheel, which isn't an ultra greatsword, but it's still a Colossal Weapon. It's the exact same as the Whirligig Saw, my favorite weapon in all of Soulsbourne. If you're like me and you prefer pure melee builds, try it out! The Greatsword is my favorite Colossal Sword though, I will give you that. Secretly I prefer the Zweihander even those it's weaker because of the amazing moveset, but don't tell anyone 🤫
@@TheLycanStrain haha I love this reply. So I tried to get everyone weapon in Elden Ring and I did use Ghizas Wheel for a while there too for the same reason you did! I loved it in Bloodborne and I loved the Zwei also since it was amazing in Dark Souls 1 but was disappointed in this game with it, sadly.
Another good Ash of War to use with colossal swords, specifically the Zweihander is Giant Hunt, it is absolutely yucky in pvp if you can connect with it and it combos well from a poking heavy or a roll/crouch poke.
I remember hitting a host and summon with a thrust attack, following up with Giant Hunt, and tossing them both in the air to kill the pair. It was like flipping burger patties.
Just a note, the godslayers great swords ash of war is actually a 3 hit combo, not sure if you mentioned it. The first hit is when you bring it around, small hit box but does stun long enough for the hyper armor to kick in for the first diagonal swing.
Godslayer greatsword is quite possibly one of the best weapons in the entire game. I've built a faith/dex blackflame build around it, and the damage is actually unbelievable, especially considering that fire damage is the most buffable damage type in the game. I've hit well over 10k damage in a single ash of war combo, and the blackflame and other fire-themed incantations are really excellent (even more so after recent buffs). You can also TRUE COMBO the aspect of the crucible: horns knockup into a full godslayer's combo for a guaranteed combo that'll do ballpark 12k damage
Always found it funny how heavy the Zweihänder is portrayed in games and movies: real ones only weighed like 4 1/2-5lbs-up to 8 for ones that were purely ceremonial.
All swords suffer from the same thing. ⚔️ are just 🔪 with longer reach which is what people don’t understand. They have held machetes, kitchen knifes etc and understand they are light and good at stabbing and cutting but suddenly when same thing looks like a sword they think it’s a crowbar 🤣
A long sword yes but a dedicated Zweihander would be 6-7lbs 14lb ceremonial blades existed. A 4 lb sword would be a heavyset long sword or bastard sword. As most one handed swords varied from 1-3lb depending on size and style
I never cared much for ultras/colossals, I'm more of a polearm kinda guy, but you have absolutely dropped the ball here by placing the Zweihander at the bottom of your ranking list. The Zweihander's scaling and AR aren't that particularly relevant, it's always going to have the lowest AR of its weapon class by design, because it is the lightest of them all, and usually weapon classes follow that trend, the heaviest in a class will almost always reach the highest AR, and the lightest will reach the lowest, there are some other factors at play but usually weight is the most important thing in determining a weapon's base damage and therefore maximum AR. The thing that makes the Zwei shine is precisely that it is the lightest weapon in a category of very heavy weapons, and it manages to be the lightest while being longer than the majority of its counterparts, and has a better moveset to boot with a monster of an R2 that does Pierce damage (enabling counter damage). It also retains the exact same poise damage as every other Colossal Sword! The Zwei is almost entirely upsides, the only thing it truly sacrifices is AR which is a fair tradeoff for its huge range, good moveset, high poise damage, lower attribute requirements and lower weight.
The thrust of the Zweihander isn't really a dealbreaker though since the rest of the colossal swords get the thrust by crouch attacking which is also faster. Other points are fine but the thrust is kinda a minor if not insignificant point.
i think thats the whole reason why its last. if you want a lighter sword go for the greatswords rather then the Colossals. the whole point of the Colossal weapons is to have heavy slow attacks that stagger easily. the Zweihander simply doesnt do enough stagger or enough damage, even when considering its speed. its the middle child between greatsword and Colossal sword and is the worst of both worlds.
@@dustypaladin9216 Like I said, Zwei has literally the exact same poise damage as the other colossal swords, there is no difference, it has the same poise damage as the Greatsword, which is the heaviest Colossal Sword.
@@dustypaladin9216 that would totally defeat the purpose of an utilizable colossal. it DOES the same poise dmg than every other colossal, it's light, therfore can easily be offhanded/powerstanced, without heavy stat investment or the player can invest in heavier armor or dmg talismans rather than equip load talismans. it's accessible for quality builds and the r2 thrust is substantially stronger than crouch poke. it's a great colossal and should not be a greatsword, bc then it'd just be something like the already existing claymore
I’m thinking spears or halberds, so far I’ve run scythes, dual blades, heavy thrusting swords and now power stances great swords. All in one run. So many fun weapons!
I feel like your testing here is a little skewed, because Zweihander is a dex weapon, but you’re testing it with a STR build. I feel like it would have performed better if you had tested it with 50 STR / 50 DEX, instead of 50 STR / 40 DEX. You handicapped the Zweihander by running it with less main stat than the rest. Also, I think your methodology overvalues split damage too much, by treating all total damage the same. Split damage is almost always worse (point for point) because you have to get through damage mitigation (armor) twice.
I was thinking the same when it came to the ruin and great sword. While ruin gas less base, and split damage into magic. The scaling in Strength for ruin is higher than GS, so at higher Strength investment than those presented, Ruin has higher damage.
Yes, you are right. Still, the extra time he would need to commit to optimize his stats for every single weapon would be a lot to ask for. He already puts a lot of time into this. Also, split damage is complicated. It isn’t always worse. It is more of a case by case thing. Even in PVP, different builds have different resistances. I think it is best to use these videos to see movesets, weapon length, and scaling scores and then integrate it into your own stat allocations as you see fit. I mean, yes, this is skewed but there is still a lot of information you can get from these videos.
These are good points. It would be a bad video if he fully explored every weapon to these depths. I like the amount of information presented as a baseline and then information like you mention would be nice to include at the beginning or end to help people synthesize the information in their context.
Hey man, really appreciate your work. I feel you are way off in appreciating the Zweihander though. Some pointers: 1. The Zweihander was never a heavily str favoured weapon. In DS2, it starts with a lower strength scaling than dex and in DS3, it starts with the same scaling with the ability to infuse to A scaling in both strength and dex. It has always been the Anti-GUGS in terms of type of usage, a dex/quality friendly ugs. 2. Your numbers for Zweihander are definitely a bit off here due to your stat build being strength focused. 3. The best ash of war for UGS is actually bloodhound step. 4. The Zweihander is easily the lightest UGS which means that you can invest the extra weight load into several useful things like more armour for poise, more stat investment at the expense of endurance, a damage talisman instead of a weight talisman etc. 5. The R2 thrust attacks with Zweihander combined with its range makes it a boss in both pvp and pve. It also lets you take advantage of specific enemy weaknesses like dragons for example. The potential range at any point for a charged thrust R2 on a zweihander is absolutely nuts and very deceptive. 6. Because it so light and long, it can be used much easier as off hand in powerstance UGS than every UGS apart from Starscourge. You can also mainhand it powerstanced for bloodhound step. 7. Because of it's low requirements and accessibility, it's a great weapon to use one handed even on a quality build very very early in the game and then can be paired with something like barricade shield and guard counters. It is much easier to fit into your build for the first third of the game than the other swords and that is a significant chunk of the game. 8. It just looks cool af, even with all the other goofy designs, it's easily one of the most badass looking swords in the game IMO. Is it going to be as good as the best weapons in the game with the broken AOWs? No. It is god tier like in DS1? No. But it still has massive utility benefits IMO, just that these utility benefits are on the opposite end of the GUGS.
For fun powerstance colossal builds, weight matters. The Troll swords are comparatively light, at 17 and 18, combining for 35, whereas dual-wield Greatsword is 23 + 23 = 46, and that extra 11 weight can be beyond the limits of a sensible investment into endurance Poise damage also matters. Radhan's Greatsword seems to do truly double damage and is just the highest DPS, whereas powerstance moves seem to have a damage penalty. But Radhan's seems to not do 2x colossal poise damage, whereas powerstancing does (poise is affected by weapon class and type of attack, and not by damage)
Zweihander needs the Godslayer swings man. Being a much lower damaging and much lighter weapon. Having the faster swings would make sense. Not to mention they are both Dex colossals.
@@calebjones8966 weapon reviews doesn't mention motion values, add to that the butchering of Zweihander. Stats are skewed cause it's favoured towards a quality scaling. In order for them to reach optimal damage for STR scaling, they should check soft/middle/hardcaps. Even if the weapon has a D scaling in Dex even 40 dex count towards the AR. There's no good or bad Greatswords in terms of pve. You can easily reach high dps by essentially using buffs like, Golden Vow, bloodflame, attack Boosting talismans, flame grant me strength etc.
@@automato436 Sure I understand where you're coming from. That seems like it would be an extremely in depth analysis. Which would be great for the 1% of souls players interested. But, for the souls virgins out there like myself. This straight forward video explaining the pros and cons weapons and whichs ones might offer themselves better for certain builds is FANTASTIC. I don't think the nitpicking attitude is warrented
Greatsword in my opinion but I’m biased. I like Lions Claw. I use it as a trade off attack and I usually win the trade most times with a dead opponent. Go ahead and use your L2. Plus I can crouch poke, charge R2( though is nerfed, no knock down) and you can just r2, L1, R2, L1, until you stam. runs out which staggers mob enemies every hit and the usually die after the 3rd swing. I’m hitting close to 1400 with a charged R2.
This is the best video I've seen, both showing the locations and explaining the stats and requirements in such a short amount of time is amazing in my opinion, thats a subscribe for you for sure
Hey man noticed you’ve been saying when locations are spoilery, thank you for reacting to my comment :) I subbed on your first weapon ranking, they’re awesome
Great work with these weapon reviews, they pair great with looking at build videos and seeing if movesets/scalings are actually worth it/ would be enjoyable to use
I'm using godslayer in my dex + faith build and it's shredding. I can use greatsword, but I have to 2 hand it, so I use Zwei for a second. I think if Zwei had C scaling in both str and dex is would be better. Range and moveset matter unless the difference in damage is significant enough to warrant not using it. Kinda like how Astoria's was a meta weapon even tho it didn't have the best damage.
The Zweihander has never been the face of strength. It was a min-max weapon in DS1/DS2/DS3. And in this game it's also a low requirement/weight Colossal sword you can use with any damage type and have relatively high damage with a good move set. It's outclasses by the guts greatsword in PVE as a strength build tough, i will mention tough that it is probably your best option for a Powerstance with the guts greatsword considering the weight of other swords, not counting NG+. Concerning PVP it's the best colossal sword due to the moveset ( the R2 is great ).
Been using the ruins greatsword. I pretty much spammed L2 through the second half of the game. If you make contact with the weapon itself while using the weapon art the damage is even higher. I'm kind of sick of it so thinking about swapping the STR/FTH build.
I just don't like the way it looks :( Which is a shame because it feels amazing to use. If it at least resembled a sword rather than a club it would be one of my all time favourites.
For me- Greatsword is the best weapon in the game. I wish I'd known so that I could try out other weapons before ruining myself with it! I didn't know what I was doing to myself and now it's too late!
I loved the UGS from previous games but in elden ring? Stagger is all they are honestly good for imo. That's coming from a guy that mainly used them in previous titles. They attack far too slowly to be useful against at least 90% of the enemies you fight compared to how quickly they recover vs you, never mind how fast and frantic many enemies move in general. I used the guts sword for most of my first playthrough and it was a chore trying to hit most things. Literally swapping to anything else cuts the difficulty of enemy encounters in half. I feel like they need to either increase the dmg they do in general to make the inevitable trades more worthwhile or make it so it doesn't take a week for you're character to recover after swinging. Appreciate these videos BTW 😄
I played gugs in both PvE and PvP all game. literally all you have is your running r1+ roll and crouch r1. They completely ruined every other attack by increasing the recovery frames after your standing r1 and r2. though crouch r1 is super strong and pvp and can chain stagger PvE enemies until death.
I've been running around with the Royal greatsword I'm not going to lie I may or may not have beaten Margot first try with it. it's just does so much damage
Your killing it on content man. Love the videos man. Been wanting to set up a bleed/rot/poison some effect with double whips that scale with faith. No one has a build out yet. Could you set one up? Whips are fun as hell
You can try a primary Arcane with just enough Faith to use Flame Grant Me Strength and Bloodflame Blade. Combine it with Fire Scorpion Charm, Lord of Blood Exultation and Green Turtle Talisman for extra damage and utility. For your weapon you can use either Thorned Whip or Hoslow Petal Whip scaled to Occult so you can benefit from your high Arcane stat; you can use both of these in conjunction, but there are ways to get two in a single, solo playthrough of both
Between the Infusables, Greatsword wins out. Period. It is simply better. But the Somber Weapons? I'd make an argument about Radahn's. The Royal Greatsword puts work in and it's WA has some REALLY strong hyperarmor for trading. The thing is designed around 1-2shotting in PvP at all levels. This thing hits hard. I've not used the Godslayer personally but I know how powerful Black Flame is. It scales with Faith, so it is directly competing against Maliketh's. Holy vs. Fire. Because both have HP burn effects. Theses weapons only get stronger in viability the more HP the target has. I'd personally have these two tied for the same place because they fill the same role, and use even the same stats.
I miss the Fume so damned much. Even after they nerfed it, they then kept it as strike damage (nearly always the best). I really wish they had a strike damage colossal sword in this game. The moveset is better than hammers, and the extra reach is nice.
Ruins greatsword is the best for a pure Unga Bunga strength build. So if your not planning on doing a hybrid build and just wanna be crazy in strength use that.
yeah in 120-150lvl bracket if str is your main (60+) it is the best, I don't know how he got so low number in the video, it is more than 1K, 1.2K+ with buffs. Regular "greatsword" competes too and has the customizable ashe but ruins has a very good ashe too complements it very well for ranged attacks
Sadly they so darn slow but i personally been felt in love with the Godslayer, not just the look but the damage and how fast it is. If i could marry a sword it would be the Godslayer.
I am actually powerstancing godslayers in my ng+. It is the goofiest shit and the most fun I have had so far with powerstancing weapons. The AOW deals absurd dmg (I think it scales with faith so I guess having 60 points in faith is a +)
I gotta say after .04 patch I'm using mostly collosal's and quite happy with most of them (strength/int options chunk and nice variety in both swords and hammers) - with that said my wish list for changes would be: Godslayer's needs some fixing, on normal and smaller enemies L2:1 usually goes over their heads and then you're staggered and hardly ever finish L2:2 - I'd love a combination of either faster cast, more hyper-armor or a change in the angle of the slash to more horizontal, also could it pierce just a little? The other culprit is the Troll's Greatsword, I get why the golden one has Troll's Roar, fair play, but the INT variation should have a magic ash of war, Glintstone Pebble would be too notch but I've settle for phalanx since that's what the casting Troll's use... Just feels like From never got around to thematically finishing many things as these types of inconsistencies are made obvious when watching all of Youwy's videos (thanks man). Furthermore I'd also like to point out that at higher stats the S heavy scaling on the Watchdogs Greatsword is a misnomer - the poorer base weapon damage just doesn't bring up to par with the regular Heavy Greatsword so grinding for it really isn't worth it other than for collection purposes (and as you pointed out, it's a stubby little bastard)...
Really wish Ruins greatsword wasn't ao short and stubby. For PvE I think it has the best weapon art of any colossal weapon. A blasphemous blade with more damage and stagger, but no HP regen.
yeah but with the crouch/roll poke and jump attacks i've never felt the size to be a limitation as anything out of range of the regular swings you're probably going to use the weapon art anyway, and that thing hits HARD.
Zweihander in real life is really fast and not that heavy to begin with so it being a huge boy like the Greatsword makes little sense. They're only like 9 lbs. Just really long. Though funny it had to be the Zweihander. Giant Dad Wept.
You are doing God's work my friend.. Appreciate your content. Would be interested to see you carry on this series into builds, spells, etc.. Interested in your tier lists as well... From PVE and PVP perspective. Could be quicker and easier content once you lay thr ground work!
27:48 there are multiple ashes of war that give you magic scaling. Gravitas is a great example. But there are also the glintstone ashes of war Rogier will sell to you that scale to magic. In addition, if you do some exploring you'll find whetstones that allow you to place specific scalings on weapons (like magic or frost both scaling with int). IDK if you said this with other ashes of war (skipped around a bit) but it is important to mention since it opens up more options.
@@youwy You can aslo apply magic scaling through the above mentioned Glintstone Whetblade with nonmagical ashes of wars that can be applied to colossal weapons.
@@youwy Waves of Darkness is really good for staggering human-sized enemies like Cleanrot Knights and Malenia, so it's not a bad choice for any of these weapons
hm..... Grafted sword for the buff basically does the same as the great rune but for FP not 5000 runes worth of a limited item. only for 30s...... Kind of love to test this on an arcane build for bleed. Buff then swapping to 2 daggers with blood..... And teh FP cost is not a problem since dual bleed daggers don't cost FP usually. Only way I can think of to boost the damage of blood infused weapons and since you get +5 arcane you get more bleed..... Can be good. But the weight might be a problem if you do like me and pair daggers with the heaviest possible armor I have. Then again you get +5 endurance so the sword offsets its own weight a bit..... Damn I am going to test this today. I have been ignoring the Godric weapons and the first mausoleum for a while because both Godric weapons seem bad for my build, but that art is worth exploring. Especially if it stacks with things like Golden Vow. That 40 strength to equip though... Flask +10, talisman +5, 2 handing +5 Does, headpiece with +2 str, anything other than that buff str for a time so you can cast the art and not invest a ton of points in str? Also that godslayer sword actually has somewhat sensible moveset unlike all colossal and greatswords so dex build with a big ass weapon seams legit option. Zweyhander should really be a greatsword though.
I know I'm talking to a video that's two weeks old, but I can definitely say that FS had to walk a tight line with Quality scaling in ER. With higher softcaps, Quality could easily have become broken in this game. My character is level 400+ so I obviously have a ton of stat point to throw away, but Quality is oftentimes the best infusion at very high levels, Bleed is often right next to it in damage as well (if you have even more stat points to toss into Arcane), but like you said, you can buff quality and you can't always buff blood. All that being said, blood almost always does better than quality... because it bleeds, but also because you can proc the blood exultation for 20% damage. I feel that a 10% quality damage buff would make it equal, but I honestly doubt that'll happen. I also feel that weapon buffs are pretty lackluster in ER. The biggest AR buff is magic with a max of +322 AR which is quite a lot, but then the next best is Electrify at a max of +270 AR, then it drops hard. Black flame is a max of 238 AR for a mere 8 seconds, then Bloodflame is a pitiful +165 AR. The worst thing about weapon buffs though is that the status ones have no scaling and add a flat amount of status which means you're always better off just infusing rather than buffing. And to add insult to injury, any weapon that has more than 600 AR will likely just prefer RKR over any actual buff and guess what, you can do Bleed RKR and forget about buffs altogether and completely outclass the benefits of Quality being allowed to be buffed. Conclusion: buff either Quality dmg or buff weapon buffs. Maybe make buff scaling not based solely on the faith/int part of the scaling but actually scale with, you know, incantation scaling as a whole, the thing that is supposed to scale with incantations.
I'm able to add over 6,000 damage for 15 seconds using takers flame with the blasphemous. In my off hand I use a weapon that can use Golden Vow, then I swap to my seal, and case it again-it stacks for sure- and then I cast flame, grant me strength. Ritual sword talisman +10 percent. Swap to my 3rd offhand and use sepuku with the lord of bloods exaltation and the mask combining at around 35ish percent, Shard of Alexander. And Fire Scorpion Talisman. Follow that with a crystal flame tear, mixed with a magic and you're putting out a ton of damage.
@@mountaineerpaultalksfootba4782 First off, your comment contributed nothing to the discussion about weapon buffs. You likely misunderstood what I was talking about. I was talking about the likes of Electrify Armament and Scholar's Armament. Head to the wiki, character information, stats, buffs & debuffs. I think you'll see what I'm talking about. Second off, I know for a fact that the golden vow weapon art and the golden vow spell do not stack. Try using the spell first, then the art and watch your AR go down. You have your choice of 1 body buff, 1 aura buff, and 1 weapon buff. You obvs have your talismans and other equipment too obvs. What I'm saying is that weapon buffs are often far weaker than what you'd get from statuses or Royal Knights Resolve, which also counts as a weapon buff. RKR can also be placed on a weapon while giving it statuses which can also be used with the Exultation talismans to boost damage farther. RKR is a better choice for buff over anything else in the game if you at least have it on for 1 every 3 hits. The next best buff is Scholar's Armament which gives +322.5 Magic AR which isn't bad until you look at all the bosses that have at least 20% magic negation, making it closer to 258 AR. Faster weapons, especially paired weapons like claws fists or even twinblades will benefit from this damage buff much more from this buff bc the buff is a much higher percentage of their total damage. It is also because you cannot have two buffed weapons unless it's one if the weapon types mentioned, or you use RKR. Like i said about fast weapons, if we look at the Twinned Knight Swords, the highest damaging buffable weapon of the types I mentioned, it has an AR of 687 when Quality at 80/80. A +322.5 boost is a lot at 47%. But the issue is that these fast weapons get much more from bleed procs than normal damage in PVE, even with the diminishing returns of bleed (taking longer to proc) because 15% of a massive health bar is just better than a 45% damage buff most of the time. Plus, remember that we also have that Exultation talismans so the difference in the weapon buff is actually only 22.5% higher than bleed. This is also looking only at Scholar's Armament, which gives the biggest boost possible. Electrify is next at +275.25, then Black Flame (lasts literally only 6 seconds) at +238.55, then Blood Flame at a pitiful +165.15 and 30 bleed. Remember that these buffs are absolute max, best talisman/staff fully upgraded at 99 stat of whatever it needs. Although typing this all out made me think to test if Bloodflame Blade gets extra bleed if the talisman has arcane scaling. I know that it doesn't matter if the weapon has arcane scaling since I've already tested that and found that it doesn't.
@@gerg905 Nope. You're wrong and I took no time to read this ridiculously written soliloquy. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Looks around smugly, knowing you'll respond, calling me childish, or being critical in some way) **Bends over like Slug Jerry from Rick and Morty in the episode where Beth's idea of him is materialized, and asks you for a slice of cheese**
Whats the point of putting all stats at 40? Like literally no one plays like that, and it just makes showing damage numbers with different infusions completely irrelevant
Greatly appreciate the video man . are these accurate numbers for devoted builds though? for example, Malikeths black blade probably wont be used in a str build with 60-80 str unless they get that faith to 20. I believe you tested another weapon this way , curious as to why you spread out the stats this time.
Whenever i see these videos i instantly click like. Super in depth and a nice opinion/perspective on the weapons. Nice to see different views on the weapons. Keep them coming!
Ruins is so good after patch. Rolling R1 or Crouch R1 hits hard. Running R1 drag has a two step finish. Running R2 has a strong overhand attack. R2 combo is the overhand to upper cut short of FUG’s 3 combo. WA will make up any range deficiencies when fighting status elements. With a strong S scaling and min int means you can go 60 vig, 50 end, and rest in mind. I’ll straight bully people in pvp stacking health and wearing bull goat armor and tal. People freak the fuck out when you body them up and can poise thru so many attacks. They’ll keep rolling and as soon as they try to attack you can trade and guess who wins that haha. Great weapon all around even without the WA.
My first time turning on Elden Ring when it first dropped in Feb, I did some of the objectives in Limgrave and decided to do a suicide deathrun into Caelid to pick up as much loot as possible. I managed to find the Greatsword in that carriage and ever since the Greatsword has been my main weapon and carried me through the game from day one to the end. Myself being a Berserk fan greatly appreciated the many tributes to Miura and using the Greatsword (aka Dragonslayer) really had me feeling like Guts haha. Lion Claw weapon art/skill is great. Most humanoid enemies, (even some of the bigger ones) will be knocked down flat on their face if you land it. Even Malenia 😁
Same story, though this is my third playthrough, went pure magic first, then a melee leaning magic build with the Great Epee second. This time I did the Caelid-suicide-loot thing like you and also found the Greatsword. About halfway through the game now, at level 100ish and I LOVE this thing- they say magic is easy mode, but no- the greatsword is easy mode (for me anyway!). I absolutely love this thing- feels like I ruined every other weapon, every other weapon feels underpowered compared to this thing! I'm also still on 1.3 so I don't have new buffs and it still rocks!
What Armor set you have on in the intro? Looks like the dualist set the problem is I can’t find the damn snake gauntlets anywhere… alil help would be appreciated!
I think you're really under-rating the Ruins Greatsword. That weapon carries so hard because of its WA in PVE. IMO the best of the collossal swords, unless you specifically ignore WAs or PVE applications. Also worth noting Ruins has the highest guard of all weapons, which is also useful here and there.
Your "best for" analysis is kinda useless since you don't change the build to match the infusion. Mostly that affect your analysis of the zweihander, but also the int and fth weapons.
not sure why you're losing it over the Zweihander getting a bigger dex scaling, it's always been a quality weapon and always been perfectly functional on a dex build. Where the claymore was the epitome of versatility in greatswords the zweihander has been the epitome of versatility in ultras. And saying its name wrong triggered the fk out of me too 😂
I do not know why but your no always seem too less i hope you do future testing with maxed or 80 stats cause ruins is actually #2 more damaging sword and black blade actually beats out giant crusher hammer when you have enough points its like 1079
I like these videos but the stats you have isn’t very good at representing the each weapon to their full potential these damage numbers change greatly if you specifically level your character for that weapon having 50 in strength and 40 in every other damage stat isn’t a good way to showcase the weapons man... your not even hitting the soft cap
Which weapon category should I review next?
Halberds, plz. Im worried what they’ve done to my beloved lucerne.
twinblades after halberds if possible
Axes or Hammers! There's a lot of content for Halberd/Spear builds out there, but the non-straight sword faster small options seem underloved.
Whips! Only like 6 of em would be quick
Think it would be insightful seeing them in action. Maybe make a video for each of your top weapons in each category and so on and then what is optimal at each soul level for pvp/pve
I think the reasoning for them making the Zweihander a more dex than str weapon is likely of them realizing they did not make other colosal weapon that could fit that niche much like in DS2 and 3 and such the lightest colosal sword turns into the one for finesse.
Nah it's a conspiracy to force Giantdads to level dex, emasculating them.
Frankly the Zweihander is a greatsword and belongs there. But the movesets for both collosal and greatswords are very bad and so unrealistic it takes me out of the experience. godslayer sword actually has somewhat sensible moveset so I would rather they put that on the Zweihander as well and moved it to greatswords. I would love to test that moveset in a dex build on a normal weapon you can buff and the Zweihander seams a natural choice.
You could argue that the Astora greatsword filled that role in ds3 due to the low str requirement and S scaling when infused with sharp, crystal, lightning and blessed.
@@fabiopeels2733 while in DS2 you had a wyvern greatsword if I remember that was dex focused , and because weapons like these existed the Zweihander was left as the lightest str/quality option of big swords . The Zweihander even got the Heavy attack from the astora greatsword.
@@hisholiness4537 Pretty much this. Someone's got a hard-on for dex/faith on the From team.
For a pure strength build, the regular Greatsword was easily the best and highest damaging one for me. I have super low faith, intelligence, arcane, etc. so the hardest hitting one was always the classic Greatsword.
Plus Lions Claw and Giants Hunt are easily the best weapon arts. Id take them over any of the fancy shit like Starscourge
I completely agree. Personally right now I'm using Ghiza's Wheel, which isn't an ultra greatsword, but it's still a Colossal Weapon. It's the exact same as the Whirligig Saw, my favorite weapon in all of Soulsbourne. If you're like me and you prefer pure melee builds, try it out!
The Greatsword is my favorite Colossal Sword though, I will give you that. Secretly I prefer the Zweihander even those it's weaker because of the amazing moveset, but don't tell anyone 🤫
@@TheLycanStrain haha I love this reply. So I tried to get everyone weapon in Elden Ring and I did use Ghizas Wheel for a while there too for the same reason you did! I loved it in Bloodborne and I loved the Zwei also since it was amazing in Dark Souls 1 but was disappointed in this game with it, sadly.
@@fishnutz5196 agreed. I like the old classic of stamp upward cut too even if it’s super basic
I do think you should really go for the minimum int for the ruins greatsword
Another good Ash of War to use with colossal swords, specifically the Zweihander is Giant Hunt, it is absolutely yucky in pvp if you can connect with it and it combos well from a poking heavy or a roll/crouch poke.
I remember hitting a host and summon with a thrust attack, following up with Giant Hunt, and tossing them both in the air to kill the pair. It was like flipping burger patties.
Just a note, the godslayers great swords ash of war is actually a 3 hit combo, not sure if you mentioned it. The first hit is when you bring it around, small hit box but does stun long enough for the hyper armor to kick in for the first diagonal swing.
I was coming to comment that lol
Godslayer greatsword is quite possibly one of the best weapons in the entire game. I've built a faith/dex blackflame build around it, and the damage is actually unbelievable, especially considering that fire damage is the most buffable damage type in the game. I've hit well over 10k damage in a single ash of war combo, and the blackflame and other fire-themed incantations are really excellent (even more so after recent buffs). You can also TRUE COMBO the aspect of the crucible: horns knockup into a full godslayer's combo for a guaranteed combo that'll do ballpark 12k damage
TFW: We'll never two-hand another +10 Chaos Zweihander without putting points in dex like a filthy casul.
Just don't tell anyone you leveled up your dex.
"filthy casual" 🤓
@@jaguarndr >hasn't seen the legend return
Absolutely tragic
@@funkymachine what
@@jaguarndr you mock the term "filthy casual" without prior research to what the reference is. Pathetic
Always found it funny how heavy the Zweihänder is portrayed in games and movies: real ones only weighed like 4 1/2-5lbs-up to 8 for ones that were purely ceremonial.
All swords suffer from the same thing. ⚔️ are just 🔪 with longer reach which is what people don’t understand. They have held machetes, kitchen knifes etc and understand they are light and good at stabbing and cutting but suddenly when same thing looks like a sword they think it’s a crowbar 🤣
@@herakles6185 Speaking of Crowbars.... why is the “Death's Poker” a greatsword lmao its a crowbar with white and black flames
A long sword yes but a dedicated Zweihander would be 6-7lbs 14lb ceremonial blades existed. A 4 lb sword would be a heavyset long sword or bastard sword. As most one handed swords varied from 1-3lb depending on size and style
@@sanguinetales yea some of these weapons are wild 😆 some of the colossus weapons actually seem as heavy as the animation makes them seem aa
I never cared much for ultras/colossals, I'm more of a polearm kinda guy, but you have absolutely dropped the ball here by placing the Zweihander at the bottom of your ranking list.
The Zweihander's scaling and AR aren't that particularly relevant, it's always going to have the lowest AR of its weapon class by design, because it is the lightest of them all, and usually weapon classes follow that trend, the heaviest in a class will almost always reach the highest AR, and the lightest will reach the lowest, there are some other factors at play but usually weight is the most important thing in determining a weapon's base damage and therefore maximum AR.
The thing that makes the Zwei shine is precisely that it is the lightest weapon in a category of very heavy weapons, and it manages to be the lightest while being longer than the majority of its counterparts, and has a better moveset to boot with a monster of an R2 that does Pierce damage (enabling counter damage). It also retains the exact same poise damage as every other Colossal Sword! The Zwei is almost entirely upsides, the only thing it truly sacrifices is AR which is a fair tradeoff for its huge range, good moveset, high poise damage, lower attribute requirements and lower weight.
The thrust of the Zweihander isn't really a dealbreaker though since the rest of the colossal swords get the thrust by crouch attacking which is also faster. Other points are fine but the thrust is kinda a minor if not insignificant point.
i think thats the whole reason why its last. if you want a lighter sword go for the greatswords rather then the Colossals. the whole point of the Colossal weapons is to have heavy slow attacks that stagger easily. the Zweihander simply doesnt do enough stagger or enough damage, even when considering its speed. its the middle child between greatsword and Colossal sword and is the worst of both worlds.
@@dustypaladin9216 Like I said, Zwei has literally the exact same poise damage as the other colossal swords, there is no difference, it has the same poise damage as the Greatsword, which is the heaviest Colossal Sword.
@@dustypaladin9216 It really should be in the greatsword category.
@@dustypaladin9216 that would totally defeat the purpose of an utilizable colossal. it DOES the same poise dmg than every other colossal, it's light, therfore can easily be offhanded/powerstanced, without heavy stat investment or the player can invest in heavier armor or dmg talismans rather than equip load talismans. it's accessible for quality builds and the r2 thrust is substantially stronger than crouch poke. it's a great colossal and should not be a greatsword, bc then it'd just be something like the already existing claymore
Looking forward to halberds, thanks for this series!
I’m thinking spears or halberds, so far I’ve run scythes, dual blades, heavy thrusting swords and now power stances great swords. All in one run. So many fun weapons!
I appreciate how much work you put into these, and it shows because they’re the most in-depth videos I’ve seen.
I feel like your testing here is a little skewed, because Zweihander is a dex weapon, but you’re testing it with a STR build. I feel like it would have performed better if you had tested it with 50 STR / 50 DEX, instead of 50 STR / 40 DEX. You handicapped the Zweihander by running it with less main stat than the rest.
Also, I think your methodology overvalues split damage too much, by treating all total damage the same. Split damage is almost always worse (point for point) because you have to get through damage mitigation (armor) twice.
I was thinking the same when it came to the ruin and great sword. While ruin gas less base, and split damage into magic. The scaling in Strength for ruin is higher than GS, so at higher Strength investment than those presented, Ruin has higher damage.
Testing has always been skewed since he uses the first rather than second softcap or the hardcap for most stats.
Yes, you are right. Still, the extra time he would need to commit to optimize his stats for every single weapon would be a lot to ask for. He already puts a lot of time into this.
Also, split damage is complicated. It isn’t always worse. It is more of a case by case thing. Even in PVP, different builds have different resistances.
I think it is best to use these videos to see movesets, weapon length, and scaling scores and then integrate it into your own stat allocations as you see fit.
I mean, yes, this is skewed but there is still a lot of information you can get from these videos.
These are good points. It would be a bad video if he fully explored every weapon to these depths. I like the amount of information presented as a baseline and then information like you mention would be nice to include at the beginning or end to help people synthesize the information in their context.
true
Hey man, really appreciate your work. I feel you are way off in appreciating the Zweihander though. Some pointers:
1. The Zweihander was never a heavily str favoured weapon. In DS2, it starts with a lower strength scaling than dex and in DS3, it starts with the same scaling with the ability to infuse to A scaling in both strength and dex. It has always been the Anti-GUGS in terms of type of usage, a dex/quality friendly ugs.
2. Your numbers for Zweihander are definitely a bit off here due to your stat build being strength focused.
3. The best ash of war for UGS is actually bloodhound step.
4. The Zweihander is easily the lightest UGS which means that you can invest the extra weight load into several useful things like more armour for poise, more stat investment at the expense of endurance, a damage talisman instead of a weight talisman etc.
5. The R2 thrust attacks with Zweihander combined with its range makes it a boss in both pvp and pve. It also lets you take advantage of specific enemy weaknesses like dragons for example. The potential range at any point for a charged thrust R2 on a zweihander is absolutely nuts and very deceptive.
6. Because it so light and long, it can be used much easier as off hand in powerstance UGS than every UGS apart from Starscourge. You can also mainhand it powerstanced for bloodhound step.
7. Because of it's low requirements and accessibility, it's a great weapon to use one handed even on a quality build very very early in the game and then can be paired with something like barricade shield and guard counters. It is much easier to fit into your build for the first third of the game than the other swords and that is a significant chunk of the game.
8. It just looks cool af, even with all the other goofy designs, it's easily one of the most badass looking swords in the game IMO.
Is it going to be as good as the best weapons in the game with the broken AOWs? No. It is god tier like in DS1? No. But it still has massive utility benefits IMO, just that these utility benefits are on the opposite end of the GUGS.
agreed.
Thank you for defending my favorite weapon in all the souls games
singlehandedly convinced me to get a +25 zwei, have a nice day
Aside from your opening statement being exactly false, as it started out (in DS1) unequivocally, as a str weapon, you made some fair points.
Its sad but the zweihander ish shite in er :(
For fun powerstance colossal builds, weight matters. The Troll swords are comparatively light, at 17 and 18, combining for 35, whereas dual-wield Greatsword is 23 + 23 = 46, and that extra 11 weight can be beyond the limits of a sensible investment into endurance
Poise damage also matters. Radhan's Greatsword seems to do truly double damage and is just the highest DPS, whereas powerstance moves seem to have a damage penalty. But Radhan's seems to not do 2x colossal poise damage, whereas powerstancing does (poise is affected by weapon class and type of attack, and not by damage)
Zweihander needs the Godslayer swings man. Being a much lower damaging and much lighter weapon. Having the faster swings would make sense. Not to mention they are both Dex colossals.
Zweihander being unable to get A scaling with either Keen or Heavy is a joke.
Nice to see you here
Honestly the best elden ring reviews on RUclips. I've watched a lot, and love how in depth you go! Keep it up man!
Its not that good if you know even remotely what he's talking about
@@StarmenRock Explain? maybe? other than just post some hate
@@calebjones8966 weapon reviews doesn't mention motion values, add to that the butchering of Zweihander. Stats are skewed cause it's favoured towards a quality scaling. In order for them to reach optimal damage for STR scaling, they should check soft/middle/hardcaps. Even if the weapon has a D scaling in Dex even 40 dex count towards the AR. There's no good or bad Greatswords in terms of pve. You can easily reach high dps by essentially using buffs like, Golden Vow, bloodflame, attack Boosting talismans, flame grant me strength etc.
@@automato436 Sure I understand where you're coming from. That seems like it would be an extremely in depth analysis. Which would be great for the 1% of souls players interested.
But, for the souls virgins out there like myself. This straight forward video explaining the pros and cons weapons and whichs ones might offer themselves better for certain builds is FANTASTIC. I don't think the nitpicking attitude is warrented
Finally can't wait for youwy to tell me how underwhelming my favourite weapon class is 😅
Greatsword in my opinion but I’m biased. I like Lions Claw. I use it as a trade off attack and I usually win the trade most times with a dead opponent. Go ahead and use your L2. Plus I can crouch poke, charge R2( though is nerfed, no knock down) and you can just r2, L1, R2, L1, until you stam. runs out which staggers mob enemies every hit and the usually die after the 3rd swing. I’m hitting close to 1400 with a charged R2.
This is the best video I've seen, both showing the locations and explaining the stats and requirements in such a short amount of time is amazing in my opinion, thats a subscribe for you for sure
Hey man noticed you’ve been saying when locations are spoilery, thank you for reacting to my comment :)
I subbed on your first weapon ranking, they’re awesome
Great work with these weapon reviews, they pair great with looking at build videos and seeing if movesets/scalings are actually worth it/ would be enjoyable to use
ruins gets a different charged heavy, it shoots out a gravity wavy which keeps people stunned in pvp allowing for a followup heavy
I'm using godslayer in my dex + faith build and it's shredding. I can use greatsword, but I have to 2 hand it, so I use Zwei for a second. I think if Zwei had C scaling in both str and dex is would be better. Range and moveset matter unless the difference in damage is significant enough to warrant not using it. Kinda like how Astoria's was a meta weapon even tho it didn't have the best damage.
These videos are always amazing! You really put in the work
I subbed and liked after the 1st. You make good content! And i bet it will get even better once you finish with the weapons lists!
The Zweihander has never been the face of strength.
It was a min-max weapon in DS1/DS2/DS3.
And in this game it's also a low requirement/weight Colossal sword you can use with any damage type and have relatively high damage with a good move set.
It's outclasses by the guts greatsword in PVE as a strength build tough, i will mention tough that it is probably your best option for a Powerstance with the guts greatsword considering the weight of other swords, not counting NG+.
Concerning PVP it's the best colossal sword due to the moveset ( the R2 is great ).
Been using the ruins greatsword. I pretty much spammed L2 through the second half of the game. If you make contact with the weapon itself while using the weapon art the damage is even higher. I'm kind of sick of it so thinking about swapping the STR/FTH build.
I just don't like the way it looks :( Which is a shame because it feels amazing to use. If it at least resembled a sword rather than a club it would be one of my all time favourites.
@@sirsilco Honestly it got boring for me and kinda sucked in PVP. I agree it could look better.
For me- Greatsword is the best weapon in the game. I wish I'd known so that I could try out other weapons before ruining myself with it! I didn't know what I was doing to myself and now it's too late!
I loved the UGS from previous games but in elden ring? Stagger is all they are honestly good for imo. That's coming from a guy that mainly used them in previous titles. They attack far too slowly to be useful against at least 90% of the enemies you fight compared to how quickly they recover vs you, never mind how fast and frantic many enemies move in general. I used the guts sword for most of my first playthrough and it was a chore trying to hit most things. Literally swapping to anything else cuts the difficulty of enemy encounters in half. I feel like they need to either increase the dmg they do in general to make the inevitable trades more worthwhile or make it so it doesn't take a week for you're character to recover after swinging.
Appreciate these videos BTW 😄
I played gugs in both PvE and PvP all game. literally all you have is your running r1+ roll and crouch r1. They completely ruined every other attack by increasing the recovery frames after your standing r1 and r2.
though crouch r1 is super strong and pvp and can chain stagger PvE enemies until death.
I was waiting for this vid and am very impressed and pleased
Finally someone who understand how broken the starscourged greatsword is!
Halberds hit around the same amount of damage as greatswords and colossal greatswords and are also much faster the balance in this game is whack
You're right, its sad
They don't stagger nearly as much though
@@cenach8145 you don’t really need stagger when your hitting three times as fast as a colossal and nearly as hard
I've been running around with the Royal greatsword I'm not going to lie I may or may not have beaten Margot first try with it. it's just does so much damage
Your killing it on content man. Love the videos man. Been wanting to set up a bleed/rot/poison some effect with double whips that scale with faith. No one has a build out yet. Could you set one up? Whips are fun as hell
You can try a primary Arcane with just enough Faith to use Flame Grant Me Strength and Bloodflame Blade. Combine it with Fire Scorpion Charm, Lord of Blood Exultation and Green Turtle Talisman for extra damage and utility. For your weapon you can use either Thorned Whip or Hoslow Petal Whip scaled to Occult so you can benefit from your high Arcane stat; you can use both of these in conjunction, but there are ways to get two in a single, solo playthrough of both
Thank you for taking the time to make these!
Very good and in depth analysis, your effort is very much appreciated, helped out a lot!
that will helps me so much! good explanation. thank you
Between the Infusables, Greatsword wins out. Period. It is simply better.
But the Somber Weapons? I'd make an argument about Radahn's. The Royal Greatsword puts work in and it's WA has some REALLY strong hyperarmor for trading. The thing is designed around 1-2shotting in PvP at all levels. This thing hits hard.
I've not used the Godslayer personally but I know how powerful Black Flame is. It scales with Faith, so it is directly competing against Maliketh's. Holy vs. Fire. Because both have HP burn effects.
Theses weapons only get stronger in viability the more HP the target has.
I'd personally have these two tied for the same place because they fill the same role, and use even the same stats.
I have been waiting for this one
The ones with the R2 fwd poke are the only ones i use. Fume ultra greatsword from DS3 wouldve been awesome in Elden Ring.
I miss the Fume so damned much.
Even after they nerfed it, they then kept it as strike damage (nearly always the best). I really wish they had a strike damage colossal sword in this game. The moveset is better than hammers, and the extra reach is nice.
@@TheLycanStrain yeah. The zweihander(think thats how its spelled) has the FUME moveset and is about the same length. With Giant Hunt AOW also.
Great content. Thanks for your hard work!
Ruins greatsword is the best for a pure Unga Bunga strength build. So if your not planning on doing a hybrid build and just wanna be crazy in strength use that.
yeah in 120-150lvl bracket if str is your main (60+) it is the best, I don't know how he got so low number in the video, it is more than 1K, 1.2K+ with buffs. Regular "greatsword" competes too and has the customizable ashe but ruins has a very good ashe too complements it very well for ranged attacks
Sadly they so darn slow but i personally been felt in love with the Godslayer, not just the look but the damage and how fast it is. If i could marry a sword it would be the Godslayer.
I am actually powerstancing godslayers in my ng+. It is the goofiest shit and the most fun I have had so far with powerstancing weapons.
The AOW deals absurd dmg (I think it scales with faith so I guess having 60 points in faith is a +)
I gotta say after .04 patch I'm using mostly collosal's and quite happy with most of them (strength/int options chunk and nice variety in both swords and hammers) - with that said my wish list for changes would be: Godslayer's needs some fixing, on normal and smaller enemies L2:1 usually goes over their heads and then you're staggered and hardly ever finish L2:2 - I'd love a combination of either faster cast, more hyper-armor or a change in the angle of the slash to more horizontal, also could it pierce just a little? The other culprit is the Troll's Greatsword, I get why the golden one has Troll's Roar, fair play, but the INT variation should have a magic ash of war, Glintstone Pebble would be too notch but I've settle for phalanx since that's what the casting Troll's use... Just feels like From never got around to thematically finishing many things as these types of inconsistencies are made obvious when watching all of Youwy's videos (thanks man). Furthermore I'd also like to point out that at higher stats the S heavy scaling on the Watchdogs Greatsword is a misnomer - the poorer base weapon damage just doesn't bring up to par with the regular Heavy Greatsword so grinding for it really isn't worth it other than for collection purposes (and as you pointed out, it's a stubby little bastard)...
A fully charged ruins great sword heavy can juggle crucible knights iirc.
Watchdog's Greatsword should be higher than the Troll's weapons because you can infuse it.
This is the best review for Those Big Boys I've seen so far. Also, I dunno why, but I just flat out prefer Ultra Greatswords to Colossal Swords.
Quality Builds are not weak haha they have the Bloodhounds Fang which is one if not the most busted weapon in the game stat wise
Really wish Ruins greatsword wasn't ao short and stubby.
For PvE I think it has the best weapon art of any colossal weapon. A blasphemous blade with more damage and stagger, but no HP regen.
yeah but with the crouch/roll poke and jump attacks i've never felt the size to be a limitation as anything out of range of the regular swings you're probably going to use the weapon art anyway, and that thing hits HARD.
Zweihander in real life is really fast and not that heavy to begin with so it being a huge boy like the Greatsword makes little sense. They're only like 9 lbs. Just really long.
Though funny it had to be the Zweihander. Giant Dad Wept.
Fyi this is missing from your playlist. Just a heads up, ty for the super detailed reviews!
Uhhh malekiths black blade fits right into my beast build... thats just wonderfull
the zweihander is hardly ruined. i use it on my 20str/60dex vagabond with 2 spears, popping it out for a surprise lion's claw. it wrecks.
You are doing God's work my friend.. Appreciate your content. Would be interested to see you carry on this series into builds, spells, etc.. Interested in your tier lists as well... From PVE and PVP perspective. Could be quicker and easier content once you lay thr ground work!
Earned like and sub and I just started watching
I'm hitting 1200+ AR with royal 2 handed with scared vow, flame strength. And flame art.
I’m using a +24 sacred watchdog sword with royal knights resolve. One heavy attack is pushing over 3500 AR with a quality build.
good work with the series but the colossal swords ranking is entirely wrong this time and would totally mislead newcomers.
You really have fun playin the game with a character that looks like that
love your vids
Hey just subscribed. U think u might do Haliburton ranking? I'm lookingfor solid one to use. Thank you.
really cool video got a follow and like! have a great day my guy :)
Hey man! much appreciated.. I was hoping if you could also do some reviews on great spears.
These are the videos I want to see
Great video
Another video idea for you is going over War Cry and Barbaric Roar heavy attacks on all the weapon types
27:48 there are multiple ashes of war that give you magic scaling. Gravitas is a great example. But there are also the glintstone ashes of war Rogier will sell to you that scale to magic. In addition, if you do some exploring you'll find whetstones that allow you to place specific scalings on weapons (like magic or frost both scaling with int). IDK if you said this with other ashes of war (skipped around a bit) but it is important to mention since it opens up more options.
Colossal swords only get waves of darkness and gravitas as a magic ash of war I believe
@@youwy you can add magic affinities to normal ashes of war (resolve, roar etc)
@@youwy You can aslo apply magic scaling through the above mentioned Glintstone Whetblade with nonmagical ashes of wars that can be applied to colossal weapons.
@@youwy Waves of Darkness is really good for staggering human-sized enemies like Cleanrot Knights and Malenia, so it's not a bad choice for any of these weapons
Good video!
You should've left the game audio on for the sword's sound effects
They really should have given the Guts GS a vertical R1 like in DS3
hm..... Grafted sword for the buff basically does the same as the great rune but for FP not 5000 runes worth of a limited item. only for 30s......
Kind of love to test this on an arcane build for bleed. Buff then swapping to 2 daggers with blood..... And teh FP cost is not a problem since dual bleed daggers don't cost FP usually. Only way I can think of to boost the damage of blood infused weapons and since you get +5 arcane you get more bleed..... Can be good. But the weight might be a problem if you do like me and pair daggers with the heaviest possible armor I have. Then again you get +5 endurance so the sword offsets its own weight a bit..... Damn I am going to test this today. I have been ignoring the Godric weapons and the first mausoleum for a while because both Godric weapons seem bad for my build, but that art is worth exploring. Especially if it stacks with things like Golden Vow. That 40 strength to equip though... Flask +10, talisman +5, 2 handing +5 Does, headpiece with +2 str, anything other than that buff str for a time so you can cast the art and not invest a ton of points in str?
Also that godslayer sword actually has somewhat sensible moveset unlike all colossal and greatswords so dex build with a big ass weapon seams legit option. Zweyhander should really be a greatsword though.
Subbed, thanks for great content
The nerf to the Zweihander hurts my soul. I remember winning the first Dark Souls game with that weapon. I'd pancake every enemy
you missed the Watchdogs Greatsword, S in strength when infused with heavy. Great weapon
very cool if you do greataxes next! Very helpful videos!
I know I'm talking to a video that's two weeks old, but I can definitely say that FS had to walk a tight line with Quality scaling in ER. With higher softcaps, Quality could easily have become broken in this game.
My character is level 400+ so I obviously have a ton of stat point to throw away, but Quality is oftentimes the best infusion at very high levels, Bleed is often right next to it in damage as well (if you have even more stat points to toss into Arcane), but like you said, you can buff quality and you can't always buff blood.
All that being said, blood almost always does better than quality... because it bleeds, but also because you can proc the blood exultation for 20% damage. I feel that a 10% quality damage buff would make it equal, but I honestly doubt that'll happen.
I also feel that weapon buffs are pretty lackluster in ER. The biggest AR buff is magic with a max of +322 AR which is quite a lot, but then the next best is Electrify at a max of +270 AR, then it drops hard. Black flame is a max of 238 AR for a mere 8 seconds, then Bloodflame is a pitiful +165 AR. The worst thing about weapon buffs though is that the status ones have no scaling and add a flat amount of status which means you're always better off just infusing rather than buffing.
And to add insult to injury, any weapon that has more than 600 AR will likely just prefer RKR over any actual buff and guess what, you can do Bleed RKR and forget about buffs altogether and completely outclass the benefits of Quality being allowed to be buffed.
Conclusion: buff either Quality dmg or buff weapon buffs. Maybe make buff scaling not based solely on the faith/int part of the scaling but actually scale with, you know, incantation scaling as a whole, the thing that is supposed to scale with incantations.
I'm able to add over 6,000 damage for 15 seconds using takers flame with the blasphemous. In my off hand I use a weapon that can use Golden Vow, then I swap to my seal, and case it again-it stacks for sure- and then I cast flame, grant me strength. Ritual sword talisman +10 percent. Swap to my 3rd offhand and use sepuku with the lord of bloods exaltation and the mask combining at around 35ish percent, Shard of Alexander. And Fire Scorpion Talisman. Follow that with a crystal flame tear, mixed with a magic and you're putting out a ton of damage.
@@mountaineerpaultalksfootba4782 First off, your comment contributed nothing to the discussion about weapon buffs. You likely misunderstood what I was talking about. I was talking about the likes of Electrify Armament and Scholar's Armament. Head to the wiki, character information, stats, buffs & debuffs. I think you'll see what I'm talking about.
Second off, I know for a fact that the golden vow weapon art and the golden vow spell do not stack. Try using the spell first, then the art and watch your AR go down. You have your choice of 1 body buff, 1 aura buff, and 1 weapon buff. You obvs have your talismans and other equipment too obvs.
What I'm saying is that weapon buffs are often far weaker than what you'd get from statuses or Royal Knights Resolve, which also counts as a weapon buff. RKR can also be placed on a weapon while giving it statuses which can also be used with the Exultation talismans to boost damage farther. RKR is a better choice for buff over anything else in the game if you at least have it on for 1 every 3 hits.
The next best buff is Scholar's Armament which gives +322.5 Magic AR which isn't bad until you look at all the bosses that have at least 20% magic negation, making it closer to 258 AR. Faster weapons, especially paired weapons like claws fists or even twinblades will benefit from this damage buff much more from this buff bc the buff is a much higher percentage of their total damage. It is also because you cannot have two buffed weapons unless it's one if the weapon types mentioned, or you use RKR.
Like i said about fast weapons, if we look at the Twinned Knight Swords, the highest damaging buffable weapon of the types I mentioned, it has an AR of 687 when Quality at 80/80. A +322.5 boost is a lot at 47%. But the issue is that these fast weapons get much more from bleed procs than normal damage in PVE, even with the diminishing returns of bleed (taking longer to proc) because 15% of a massive health bar is just better than a 45% damage buff most of the time. Plus, remember that we also have that Exultation talismans so the difference in the weapon buff is actually only 22.5% higher than bleed.
This is also looking only at Scholar's Armament, which gives the biggest boost possible. Electrify is next at +275.25, then Black Flame (lasts literally only 6 seconds) at +238.55, then Blood Flame at a pitiful +165.15 and 30 bleed. Remember that these buffs are absolute max, best talisman/staff fully upgraded at 99 stat of whatever it needs.
Although typing this all out made me think to test if Bloodflame Blade gets extra bleed if the talisman has arcane scaling. I know that it doesn't matter if the weapon has arcane scaling since I've already tested that and found that it doesn't.
@@gerg905 Nope. You're wrong and I took no time to read this ridiculously written soliloquy. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul. (Looks around smugly, knowing you'll respond, calling me childish, or being critical in some way) **Bends over like Slug Jerry from Rick and Morty in the episode where Beth's idea of him is materialized, and asks you for a slice of cheese**
@@mountaineerpaultalksfootba4782 enjoy living in your own blissful ignorance! 🙃
Whats the point of putting all stats at 40? Like literally no one plays like that, and it just makes showing damage numbers with different infusions completely irrelevant
I hate being like everyone else and using the greatsword
But it pretty much beats everything in damage and lenght
Greatly appreciate the video man . are these accurate numbers for devoted builds though? for example, Malikeths black blade probably wont be used in a str build with 60-80 str unless they get that faith to 20. I believe you tested another weapon this way , curious as to why you spread out the stats this time.
Been waiting for this, respecced for the royal greatsword once I acquired it on my 1st playthrough. Guess I made a good choice to leave baemore behind
great series
Wow a 40 minute video for a one word answer lovely.
Whenever i see these videos i instantly click like. Super in depth and a nice opinion/perspective on the weapons. Nice to see different views on the weapons. Keep them coming!
There’s not enough recent videos that test poise and poise damage, do you think you could make one in the future?
agree it would be super valuable to have a video that ranks the top 10 poise/stagger damage weapons / weapon classes
there is literally no reason using anything other than greatsword. Most damage, most range best guardstats
Spears have better range and are faster also just better dps.
@@jablinski_time Last time i checked spear was not a colossal sword.
@@Virosaa last time I checked I read that wrong. Sorry.
@@jablinski_time np man its all good. Enjoy your weekend.
There is a solid gravity magic ash of war that coats your weapon in rocks I think it's called gravitas
How do I make a colossal dual welding build? Love your videos! Keep up the good work. Can't wait for dlc weapons review
get 54 strenght and double Zwei
Ruins is so good after patch. Rolling R1 or Crouch R1 hits hard. Running R1 drag has a two step finish. Running R2 has a strong overhand attack. R2 combo is the overhand to upper cut short of FUG’s 3 combo. WA will make up any range deficiencies when fighting status elements. With a strong S scaling and min int means you can go 60 vig, 50 end, and rest in mind.
I’ll straight bully people in pvp stacking health and wearing bull goat armor and tal. People freak the fuck out when you body them up and can poise thru so many attacks. They’ll keep rolling and as soon as they try to attack you can trade and guess who wins that haha. Great weapon all around even without the WA.
Greatsword + Bloodhound Step is crazy good
My first time turning on Elden Ring when it first dropped in Feb, I did some of the objectives in Limgrave and decided to do a suicide deathrun into Caelid to pick up as much loot as possible.
I managed to find the Greatsword in that carriage and ever since the Greatsword has been my main weapon and carried me through the game from day one to the end.
Myself being a Berserk fan greatly appreciated the many tributes to Miura and using the Greatsword (aka Dragonslayer) really had me feeling like Guts haha.
Lion Claw weapon art/skill is great. Most humanoid enemies, (even some of the bigger ones) will be knocked down flat on their face if you land it. Even Malenia 😁
Same story, though this is my third playthrough, went pure magic first, then a melee leaning magic build with the Great Epee second. This time I did the Caelid-suicide-loot thing like you and also found the Greatsword. About halfway through the game now, at level 100ish and I LOVE this thing- they say magic is easy mode, but no- the greatsword is easy mode (for me anyway!). I absolutely love this thing- feels like I ruined every other weapon, every other weapon feels underpowered compared to this thing! I'm also still on 1.3 so I don't have new buffs and it still rocks!
@Ahmad Adnan agreed, she waman
What Armor set you have on in the intro? Looks like the dualist set the problem is I can’t find the damn snake gauntlets anywhere… alil help would be appreciated!
I think you're really under-rating the Ruins Greatsword. That weapon carries so hard because of its WA in PVE. IMO the best of the collossal swords, unless you specifically ignore WAs or PVE applications. Also worth noting Ruins has the highest guard of all weapons, which is also useful here and there.
Ruins carried me through a few boss fights with its WA.. oh, and the Bloodhounds Fang haha….
Your "best for" analysis is kinda useless since you don't change the build to match the infusion.
Mostly that affect your analysis of the zweihander, but also the int and fth weapons.
not sure why you're losing it over the Zweihander getting a bigger dex scaling, it's always been a quality weapon and always been perfectly functional on a dex build. Where the claymore was the epitome of versatility in greatswords the zweihander has been the epitome of versatility in ultras.
And saying its name wrong triggered the fk out of me too 😂
The problem with Malikeths black blade is that holy damage sucks against all the later bosses except one.
Don't let steelovsky's video get you down, he has no clue what point he's trying to make.
I do not know why but your no always seem too less i hope you do future testing with maxed or 80 stats cause ruins is actually #2 more damaging sword and black blade actually beats out giant crusher hammer when you have enough points its like 1079
Greatsword is just my favorite in general, just pure Strength bonk gameplay, sadly I can't get the heaviest armor in the game 😔
I like these videos but the stats you have isn’t very good at representing the each weapon to their full potential these damage numbers change greatly if you specifically level your character for that weapon having 50 in strength and 40 in every other damage stat isn’t a good way to showcase the weapons man... your not even hitting the soft cap
I want to use colossal swords, but the moveset is so old and slow. It makes it really hard to choose them.
I think this video is missing from your weapon comparison playlist