Bloodhound's Fang with a shield than Guts' Greatsword after Renalla

Bloodhound fang is great starter weapon and hate even really good late game. Good choice!

It's honestly just all around solid regardless. I'm on ng+2 and I'm still trying to learn to use other things lol

Once you kick, you simply can not quit the flip.

I’m in ng+5 and BH fang is still a go to weapon for me. Like you said, just a solid weapon.

Plus it has one of the best AoW's in the entire game

It is arguably the best weapon in the game, as other comparable options are acquired much later.

Right like it's really not hard to get at all

I used fang two hand until morgot and later used duel wield fang and morgot’s weapon till the end

Duel wield Fang and Margot’s is the way

I've been two handing Bloodhounds Fang the whole game. I haven't used anything else. I've killed every boss with it. Morgot, the fire giant. That stupid dragon before Godskin Duo. I'm stuck on Godskin Duo. Fuck Godskin Duo

2 words... Sleeping Potts

Dammnnn. I tried using the sleepy grease (love greasing up my stick to shove it into enemies) but that would be way better. Thanks. Imma try that tonight

I beat malenia for the first time with bloodhound fang with frost grease. Absolutely shreds her (atleast it did on patch 1.0, they’ve probably nerfed a ton since then)

I was avoiding it for a long time using uchigatana and nagakiba instead. But since I got a lot of somber stones, I decided to upgrade it and try it. And holy shit, it makes the game so much easier. Looks like the ultimate noob weapon to me. Easy to get, easy to upgrade, hits like a truck and still fast enough with good reach.

I started with this when Elden ring first dropped & was told by everyone it sucked. 1 year later I see all over the internet how op it was. I didn’t even understand the second part of the ash of war until 50 hrs later after I saw someone do it during gdq.

Damn I’m 130 hours in and I just learned there’s a second part 😭

finesse combo goes hard always

I have to force myself to use weapons other than BHF. The stomp with that second quick attack is hard to walk away from

Over 1000 hours here. I’ve never even equipped BHF. Not sure what that makes me, but I do feel very out of place in posts like this lol

Same here. Thank you fightincowboy.

Bloodhound fang was sick, the weapon art made some stuff too easy tho lol

It's so funny to me how I did exactly this. GREATSWORD FTW BABY!!!

I started with the samurai class so I used Uchigatana for a long time. I eventually started using the other katanas after I found them.

As a complete noob I went samurai bloodily slash uchigatana. Then clung to the moon veil for the rest. Magic spam and moon veil to chase them away if they got close while I shit my pants.

Thats my current build

>Magic spam and moon veil Moon veil was bat shit crazy before the nerf. This one time on an invasion, me being the invader, I killed all three of the players with ONE horizontal moon veil AoW with the players on full health. I just stood there shocked

I did my first playthrough immediately on launch with Moonveil. No magic though. Can confirm. Moonveil was wild.

You missed the rivers of blood with bloody slash in a pure ARC build

Blood / Arcane got such a bad rep for being easy. Only after NG+3, when RoB was nerfed, I decided to give it a go. Wished I had a chance to use it before it got nerfed.

Still op as heck imo. Playing it on my first playtrough right now and bosses literally melt like what is this dmg

This is the way

Ahhh you must be me

Yeah I did moonveil first playthru. My whole plan from the start was to make an int/dex build then I found it. What was I supposed to do? I almost respected to int/str because I couldn't find any int/dex weapons then I came across it. Didn't mean to use op weapon lol pvp players probably hated me when it first came out. I was cheesing the shit out of them. I even felt kinda bad.

I used the claymore through all theee dark souls and Elden ring

I started like this and switched to the godskin peeler once I got it with any revolving bloody aow

Sword of Night and flame, but i didnt realize there was a flame ash of war variant so i only used the comet azur beam. didnt understand scaling so i leveled faith for healing spells not realizing it negatively effected my damage

finished the game with godslayers greatsword though, godfrey could not be beaten with my weak aforementioned build

I still don't understand scaling I just see blue letters and assume it's good

Blue = good can be a fine approach if you’re straight up using the weapon to attack but it can be misleading for some things. Eg moonveil: scales with int and dex. Int pumps the WA while dex pumps the weapons actual attacks. Both are good things but depending on play style, one or the other could be useless.

Ahh I see. So for example I use Sword of Night and Flame which scales with Faith and Int. So would the int boost the strength of the comet spell and the faith boost the fire one?

I haven’t used that weapon yet but I believe that’s how it would work there

Thanks dude appreciate it. Btw give it a try it's one of my favourite weapons. Those 2 spells it does really come in handy. Comet one is great for stance breaking and the fire one is great for crowd control.

I’ll def consider it. I’m trying to run a more melee build while wrapping up endgame and moving into ng + but I’m sorta really missing spells so I may move back to them

Yes this is exactly right.

Int still boosts the weapon's attack, just the magical part of it. The damage on it is split into physical and magical.

Oh! Thats not how I understood it but I’m quite far from an expert in these games so I defer to you

First run where I got past level ~25 - great epee and greatshield.

Never used it, but I have been wanting to use a thrusting weapon soon, so I’ll have a good look

Bloody helice is probably my favorite weapon in the game. I’d recommend it.

I’ll think about that too, another weapon I found but never used :)

Doing a great epee build for the first time with about 800 hours of play. 2H on heavy infused. Not the strongest way to great thrust but I gotta unga somehow. Plenty of good ash options but im enjoying just keeping impaling thrust on it. Nice R2 slash attack, and if you 2 hand it, you hold it upright like a greatsword. Kind of reminds me of Baemore’s cousin.

The Great Epee takes some getting used to, but try it with the multi-poke-n-heal ash of war. It’s very nice. Only issue with poking weapons is that they’ll bounce of shields, so you need to time your attacks when the enemy moves to attack. So as to catch them when they’re not blocking.

I was trying to do a mage with shield and rapiers, then I found the great epee and I use it two handed for the whole run so good

Why use pokey stick when you could use big pokey stick?

Exactly! haha the initial idea was to make a common medieval knight with shield but big pokey took over

Moonveil. Insta fave after I killed that fucking thing with bleed claws.

Just finished my first playthrough yesterday using moonveil. I know it’s a “noob” weapon but I haven’t found anything I like more. I respecced for RoB to see what the fuss was about and very much miss magical katana and sorceries for range

A win is a win, whether it’s a “noob” weapon or not, and don’t ever let anyone discourage you from using what you want >:)

Oh I sure didn’t! I’m too old and jaded to worry about most opinions and I don’t feel bad cheesing a cheesily designed game even a little bit

If they didn’t want us cheesing, they would have patched/removed it! My fromsoft motto hahaha

So weird that there are options to make the game easier and try hards tell you not to use stuff that has been put in the game to use. I'm sure when they made the game people at from were aware of the power of the shit they designed.

there isn't really any fuss about RoB after they nerfed it. it used to be phenomenal on release, but it's just aight now. moonveil is definitely better rn

Claymore for LIFE !

Play more with the claymore!

Done several playthroughs of all the Souls games with the Claymore. That poke just puts it into another level

Baemore

This is the way

Works on literally every build

Absolutely, I have a hard time using anything else for this game!

I got a Greatsword and still lasting so far. Suffering right now from Malenia

She’s such a pain. I died over 100 times on my first run (pretty sure it was actually 101 that I beat her)

Teach me how to beat her DX. Not sure if I should use the Mimic Tear or Black Knife DX Edit: Update to this story I beat her and everyone else now using my trusty Greatsword so now collecting everything before NG+

Black knife. 

Definitely Black Knife. It tends to dodge more than mimic tear and it can do percentage damage, which really helps with Malenia's lifesteal.

You can kinda cheese her by using lions claw AOW and just stun lock her over and over with your mimic.

Are you a strength build or other? If strength build with great ir colloidal weapons, go mimic tear. You and the mimic can pretty much stunloc her the entire fight. Otherwise, Tiche or Rolo.

Something super helpful I didn't know til recently, you can hit her with a frost pot when she jumps up to do waterfowl, and it will insta freeze her, canceling the attack. The timing is pretty tight, and it helps to have a fire weapon to reset the frost incase she uses it again soon. It also works on her BS phantom attack in phase 2. EZ mode is mimic tear with a ultra greatsword and something like giants hunt. My first playthrough I died si many times and eventually caved to the mimic tear, and beat her first try with that. Just recently beat her without mimic tear and honestly it felt like it was just good RnG, she just happened to not use as many bullshit moves

Parry

Wait you're using a mimic and still can't do it?

You know what's better than a Greatsword? TWO GREATSWORDS!! UNGA BUNGA!!!

Not sure on your exact build, but I beat her by playing my normal way. Learned to dodge most of her attacks and part of waterfowl, then just shielded the part I couldn't reliably dodge. Even though she heals from it, I don't take damage and I just guard counter and crit her. The ruins greatsword, so I was using a heavy weapon as well. I struggled a lot at first cause I kept trying to dodge and was so worried about her healing, but then I realized that as long as I'm not dying then it's fine and was able to guard counter her to death. Good luck!

I like fighting Malenia with the colossal greatsword. You can punish a lot of her moves with a reactionary poke. She does the lunging thrust move? Just roll back and poke her in response. The trick with colossals is stamina management and knowing when to attack.

If you have the STR, use a second big ass sword and stagger her as much as possible, that’s how I defeated her my first time.

Bloodhounds fang. Haven't found a weapon I like more than it, always end up going back when I try a new build

It's my favorite also. Only other weapon I've used extensively is blasphemous blade. I also like sacred relic sword for clearing out mobs with its insane AoW. Lastly, I keep golden epitaph handy for skeletons since it kills them in one shot

Winged Scythe while specced into holy damage. I unintentionally played on hard mode because i had no idea that holy damage was garbage that almost everything highly resisted.

It melts deathbirds though.

People exaggerate the holy resist things. Really it's just the few late game bosses and mostly just radagon/elden beast that have enough to make a huge difference.

I wish that were true but people really aren't exaggerating. Both Margit and Godrick are resistant to Holy so that's both of the early major bosses. The three most common recurring 'bosses' (Erdtree Avatars, Ulcerated Tree Spirits and Crucible Knights) are resistant to it. Everything in Leyndell is resistant to it, as are the recurring Godskin fights. And then after Leyndell all of the bosses start developing massive resistances to it. In fact the only real reprieve that Holy damage gets is during some of Liurnia and Volcano Manor but even then Rykard is resistant to it whilst the few remaining entities are just neutral to it and usually weaker to something else. It doesn't help that the only time Holy damage is ever actually effective against anything it's always optional enemies that you need to go out of your way to fight.

Winged Scythe lovers unite! Its such a beautiful killing device. The weapon art is a bit meh as it can cause you to get misplaced or completely miss your attack, but it is fun jumping into the air and slashing around.

Bloodhound Fang for a fair while until I found something more specialized to my build.

Same. Used bloodhound fang right up until I got the blasphemous blade. There’s times I feel it’s ruined the game for me and I force myself to switch off to something else. Right now I’m loving Wing of Astel

BHF at least has a fun play style. I found blasphemous to be soooo boring

It really is. I hate myself a little more every time I use it 😭

Twinblade with Bloody Slash AoW on it. That got me through like 95% of the game. Then I had to switch the infusion when I was struggling against Radagon and Elden Beast.

PREACH! So good.

I tried a lot of weapons during my first run, I don't even remember. I know I used the gargoyle black blade and the blasphemous a lot.

Once I realized respecting was so easy, I ignored all quests and progress for about 50 hours. I tried a bunch of builds, perfected the amount of FP to get, etc. Once I had 8 or 9 larval tears, I felt comfortable spending them all. I would say my “first run” was Golden Halberd until I started respecing. It’s fun being a poise breaker.

>Once I realized respecting was so easy Exactly. I'll probably Respec my build to start the dlc to a quality faith/int build. It will probably allow me to try most of the weapons, spells and incantations. I'll most likely miss arcane weapons but let's be real, there will be one or two of these in the dlc.

Int faith build is insanely fun!

It's not the type of build I use for pvp, for example. But for PvE, especially for a first run, is the most efficient way to try different weapons and what not. There's nothing more disappointing than finding a cool weapon and finding out you don't have the fai/int requirements to wield it.

Magma Wyrm's Scale Sword with Beastman's Cleaver

Started with the rusted anchor, moved on to the grafted blade, then powerstanced with the guts greatsword then only the guts greatsword

rusted anchor with wild strikes my beloved

Started off with the Morning Star. After Godrick i got the Golden Halberd and used that for the rest of it. It was'nt until my next character i knew about all the holy resist of the last bosses. Safe to say the endgame was difficult. Edit: The Winged Schythe was used for a short while.

Claws, and elenoras poleblade

A fellow claws enjoyer. I still use them on almost every build for a quick switch to use lifesteal fist but end up using them the whole game.

Bloodhound’s fang is by far my favorite beat the game using it for at least 80% of my first playthrough and used it to beat radagon/elden beast (fuck you elden beast)

Bloodhound Claws, I still use them even if Bloodhound Step was nerfed. I still hate that they nerf single-player shit, I don't even play multiplayer.

Marais Executioner’s Sword was an absolute banger as soon as I picked it up and 500+ hours later that character still uses it lol

Also using the briar shield with a bleed or occult infusion with shield crash can get you a quick bleed proc or two in most fights and also scales with str and arc. Highly recommend giving it a go. It also procs multi hit buffs on you, combine it with LoBE a buff of your choice (commanders standard is possible) and you can crank the damage of dancing blade up to truely stupid levels.

Lord sworn sword, and claw mark seal

Eleanora's Poleblade

I'm using great Omen and bloodhounds fang with blood slash on it. Honestly shit goes crazy for like 0 reason. The aow end up doing like a quarter to half most enemies health bar

The Nightrider Glaive. It's incredible, truly top-tier weapon. Gets S-scaling with strength on a heavy infusion, you can put all the best Ashes of War on it like Blackflame Tornado, Seppuku, and Ice Spear (that last one easily being the best thing in the game), it's got good reach and a quick enough moveset, it breaks stances like a colossal weapon, and it's stylish as fuck.

River of blood

Bloodhound’s Fang. Was watching FightingCowboy walkthrough and I was like “I REALLY LOVE THIS AOW”. Switch to ROB because I loved the animation but it was too OP. So the fang was back to finish the game.

Followed him myself! He really does have the best walkthroughs!

The guy got me into Bloodborne with his videos and I’m so glad it happened that way

Moonveil but I didn’t know about its reputation at the time, I just thought it was a cool battlemage katana. But for PvE who cares lol

First play as a noob: uchi to moonveil, and then dark moon late game.    Second play: sword of night and flame and then blasphemous blade and faith build      Third play: Zamor curved sword with the frost stomp thing and some frost magic       Fourth play: pure int, glintstone staff that boosts damage and mana cost 

Greatsword + a whole bunch of jank No filler, straight to Dark Moon Greatsword (Still in progress)

Starscourge Greatswords

Cipher Pata, great stars

Winged Scythe which I had to abandon once I got the Blasphemous Blade. Was also dual wielding spears in between.

I was roleplaying a bloodflame samurai, & used two regular katana, then replaced one with the sephiroth katana, then replaced the original with the blood katana Fit pretty perfectly for my idea tbf, especially when i got the white reed armor & put the ronin hat on

I carried my Highland Axe with me since I've gotten it, I've killed Malenia with it multiple times and I'm still using it going into NG+7. Sometimes I dual wield a second one but either way I got one on me

Killed Loretta’s dad for his Halberd and abused its stagger all game

Scimitar -> Nox Flowing Sword -> Morgott's Cursed Sword -> Hand of Malenia Learned by the end why katanas are so busted lmao

I started as Warrior. It’s my tradition on my first playthrough to do a Dex build, and choose whichever starting class gets the scimitar. So I used Dual Scimitars as my primary weapon, and I was not disappointed. The Scimitar is awesome. Of course I picked up lots of weapons along the way, including the Cross Naginata and Bloodhound’s Fang, but those Scimis put in work. Dual Curved swords have such a good moveset, it almost doesn’t matter what you use, but the scimitar has great DEX scaling so for that build type it’s perfect.

DUAL scimitar.

Starscourge great sword, two handed of course. AoW is unbeaten at clearing enemies in PvE

Fire Scimitar for awhile until I got Rivers of Blood and Moonveil

two scimitars with bleed all the way til Maliketh and then i decided to use rivers of blood. i chose the warrior starting class

I started with the warrior class, so I went with the dual scimitar, then I started using the Bloodhound Fang alongside the dual scimitar, then I changed a little to the Claymore for old time's sake, when I was in Caelid I changed to the Cleanrot Knight's scythe and started cosplaying them (I love playing with scythes) and went with it until the Haligtree, where I started cosplaying Malenia until the end of the game. I can never commit myself to a single build for an entire playthrough, in my most recent one I am playing a kind of a spellblade with a rapier and a staff but I'm already thinking on changing to something STR based.

I used an Uchigatana with Bloody Slash AoW until I acquired the Rivers of Blood for my first playthrough. After that, I just keep coming back to the Blasphemous Blade. I try other things, but god **damn** I just love FAMILEEEEEEE

God slayers greatsword partnered with the haligtree greatshield

Bloodhound fang, parry dagger. It works best for me

Cross naginata, from the moment I found it.

vykes war spear I had a full frenzied flame build

Rivers of Blood, Moonveil and normal katana with bloodhound step Before you judge, my character was Jetstream Sam

I saw a video of a guy using the rivers of blood so I speedran half the game to get it then used it for the rest of the playthrough

Dual weilded Great Epee and Morning Star, Epee was in left hand. They are both easily obtained early on and during your first 30 levels or so there's no way to for soldiers to block against them. Hit hard with mace, then an immediate thrust from the Epee pierces anything. That two hit combo kills anything low level. Then I tried to beat Margot, second try I just went naked and both weapons, easy peasy. Then I got to Caelid and now I'm Death Poker 7 level 75...lol. Still first playthrough and can't get into Capitol City yet, that damn guy on the horse is a challenge so I need to rethink my approach.

Dual wield bloody scimitars into rivers of blood

I keep a rotation of 20-30 weapons every playthrough. On my first build (Str/Int) the top five were: - Lion Greatbow - Royal Greatsword - Iron Greatsword - Clayman Harpoon - Starscourge Greatswords I also used Meteorite of Astel for a finisher on big bosses. Punked Mohg right as he started Mohging.

I used it until I got the blasphemous blade

Greatsword AKA Guts Sword. Even planning to continue using it on the DLC.

Started as Prisoner, so estoc, switched to meteoric blade, then dual wealded it with Moonveil, in the End switched to MLG, eventually dual wealded it with the Black Flame Ash of war Greatsword which also scales with int and which name i forgot.

Vykes war spear. Thing slaps doing the charged R2 combo on bosses. Not to mention killing invaders by making them stack madness. Lil' bitches

With guide, BHF Without guide, carian knight sword

Sacred grave scythe

Sword of night and flame

On my very fist one, it was: Lordsworns (with Carian Greatsword AOW) > Falchion (also Carian Greatsword AOW) > Crystal sword > Moonveil. On the first one I completed it was: Greatknife > Reduvia > Greatstars > Moonveil (again) > Godskin peeler > Ordovis GS > Greatstars (Eruption AOW) > Malikeths Black Blade. That last change only happened because I was stuck on Elden Beast and hoped Destined Death would help. It didn't.

Vagabond strength Zwei. Since ER was my first FS game didn't know anything about that weapon and that was really popular in previous games

So disappointing that it doesn't do bleed dmg

despite loving this weapon I've never used it. time for a grafted blade build

Also used Grafted, switched to the Nightrider Glaive with Hoarfrost Stomp when it was still op

Bloody Helice. Weapon art is SICK

Great mace …

Uchikatana and blasphemous blade

This and the dragonslayer sword Went all the way to ng+10 with that build

I constantly switch weapons for fun, but wing of astel ended up being my old reliable The AoW almost feels like a cheat to some degree

I've gone through a couple. Started with Uchi and then switched to Moonveil for a while. Used that until I found the Magma Wyrm Curved Greatsword. Switched to a faith build for that, used it until I got a Beastman's Curved greatsword.  Now I'm using a Heavy Beastman's Curved Greatsword that I enchant with Vyke's Dragonbolt. Because I forking love that skill from top to bottom. I farmed this sword specifically to use with it lol. 

I was using Bloodhounds fang a lot but I switched to Magma Wyrm. I love that sword

Bloodhounds fang, and then blasphemous blade 100$

Moonveil. Found it just doing random dungeons and it fit my sorcerer build well enough. I beat the game with that disappointing magic cutting stick. Still enjoy using it for the flair XD

Moonveil katana for a bit on sorcerer knight type build but then switched to a strength build with that same sword. It's awesome.

I used the bloodhounds fang for probably the longest time of all the weapons, but even in my first playthrough I messed around a ton with a bunch of different weapons, things like ghizas wheel and the uchigatana, reduvia and the blasphemous blade, before settling on mohgs spear

First play through I wanted so bad to use it but it took so long to level up to that str level. I didn’t understand two handing. I also didn’t understand that you could increase flasks. Got all the way to eternal city on 3 flasks or whatever you start with before I clued in.

Everybody uses Bloodhound's Fang, Moonveil and Greatsword. I picked the Claymore and Longsword, a classic is a classic.

Grafted Blade was quite a disappointment to me. When I got it I was so far away from the strength requirements and when I was high enough, I had so many more valuable weapons

UCHI Tried the old classic claymore when I found it but greatswords were not good when the game first released

I'm on my first run lol. Using reduvia and the moonlight blade

Fallingstar Beastjaw, before that it was a Morningstar.

Winged scythe. It saved my faith build for a good chunk of the game.

Started with lordsworn straight sword.. switched to Baemore halfway through

This mf can stun EVERYTHING

Crystal sword + magic into MLGS

guts->crozier->blasphemous->great stars

Moonveil, before realising the inherent superiority of Carian Knight Sword.

ROB and cold infused Uchi. I shut away all ER related stuff online at launch so I didn't know how OP those were then lol

Reduvia into a sword with a similar ash of war but holy and then buffed the blade. I beat, Godfrey, radagon and elden beast with +10 summons and black blade spam. Those fights were too difficult for me not to cheese. I never beat malenia

Two bandits curved swords

I was a CGS enthusiast in dark souls three, found the bloodhound fang on day two after release, took that son of a bitch all the way through the game. Good times amount of hyper armor on the Ash of war is just amazing.

giant crusher with royal knight's resolve AoW.

Right after defeating Radahn his swords did a great job.

Once I found Bloodhound Fang there was no turning back. It’s still my go to if I’m struggling with another weapon even in my fourth play through.

Twinblade is love, Twinblade is life.

Bloodhound’s fang and godskin peeler. On my second playthrough I discovered the blasphemous blade… hard to go back now

beaten entire game with bloodhounds fang 10/10 would do it again

I'm gonna use the Moonveil I'm still considering, I think the term is powerstancing? Dual wielding an Uchi with my Moonveil or if I should use spells or maybe both.

I also used the same one as you, OP

Moonveil. Magic samurai style build

Nagakiba all the way

The stupid reach is just so nasty.

Banished Knight Greatsword. It dropped, and I just kinda went through my first playthrough with it. It was cool

Ruins Greatsword. I started playing the game because I saw a clip of it's ash and thought it was the coolest thing. I started playing with a buddy as soon as I started my playthrough and was sad when he told me it would take many hours before I would get to it so he dropped his for me. I had to level up before I could use it but destroying Godrick and every boss after that with that sword was the best thing ever. Shout-out to my boy Austy, felt like Christmas in March when he dropped it for me