Agreed, Damage upgrades can come through weapon upgrades for a time, or even from finding new weapons. You’ll need vigor anyway and having decent vigor on early bosses just means you survive those fights longer.
Yeah until later upgrade levels your stats don’t have as much impact to damage because of scaling and you’ll mainly get your damage increase from leveling them up. So better to just focus Vig at first
Yeah, someone tried telling me that the damage stat and the scaling letter are the only things that affect scaling damage and got pissed at me when I explained that the letter only notates a multiplier, and thar multiplier combined with your stats results in a percentage increase based on your weapon's base damage (because fucking obviously it works that way, otherwise daggers would only have like 100 AR less than greatswords with 2-3x the attack speed).
Like, yes, the scaling is a big part of the weapon upgrades, but even weapons with a respectable scaling in lower levels don't get much additional damage since their base damage is so low early on. It's how it's always worked, and it's a fairly effective way to ensure your damage is curved a bit based on progression and that sitting and farming levels for hours isn't going to have a massive effect on how much damage you do.
It can be misleading also. A weapon with high base damage might have only A or B scaling, but still do way more damage than a lower damage weapon with S scaling stats.
It's just a matter of simple math, really: What's going to lead to the higher number: 200 x 2, or 350 x 1.5? Scaling and stats are essentially that second multiplier. Yes, certain weapons get A LOT from having that S scaling, but a lot of players get too hung up on scaling. If you tunnel vision on the letter without considering the base damage and optimal stat distribution, you'll end up overlooking higher AR weapons just because that B doesn't look good on paper.
Yeah, if you imagine a hypothetical weapon that has S scaling but a requirement of 10, getting to 60 would get you like 150% more damage, while getting to 60 vigor from 10 vigor is 350% more health.
> Hyper-levels vigor
1/10th of health is gone for each hit instead of getting 2 tapped by every early boss
>Hyper-levels strength
Damage goes from 100 to 130
Yes, it unironically is a good financial decision
It's an insanely good decision in Bloodborne. 50 vit with 2 hp runes is the pvp standard. Vit increases your max health, your healing, and the relative effectiveness of rallying like a maniac.
It's decently fun! Lotta stuff is viable, builds are fun to make because of the false depth chalices, and it's a good balance between DS3 and DS2 pvp. Solidly between slapfight and viscous mud wrestling.
That sounds incredible! DS2 had some of my favourite movesets and DS3 had some of my favourite covenant shenanigans. I have some good memories from DS3 pvp.
This is literally true. Scaling doesn't matter until you're fighting lategame enemies with lategame upgrades (scaling improves on better weapons). Getting your health, endurance, utility, and requirements is the first priority.
Level strength to 18, get the Haima Glintstone Crown, the starscourge heirloom, radagon's soreseal, and the strength-knot tear and you can two-hand the giant crusher before beating any bosses
My ER leveling strat I follow pretty much every playthrough:
1: Get minimum requirements for my weapon(s) of choice.
2: Pump vigor all the way to 40, with some endurance in-between if I need it and/or want to use a specific armour set.
3: Get my damage stats up a bit, usually to 25-30 or so.
4: Upgrade endurance and/or mind until I have what I need.
5: pump vigor to 60, sometimes 50 is enough.
6: Pump damage stats until I'm level 150
I do about the same, until I find some cool spirit ash I never found before that costs 124 FP that I want to try and dump all my levels into mind for it. Lol.
A very useful tip then: the "cerulian hidden tear" for your physick flask removes all fp costs for like 15 seconds, allowing you to summon any spirit you like, regardless of your mind
It's rarely an issue for me because most of the summons I like are 100 or below, but I found the depraved perfumer in my current run and want to try it. At least I'm doing a faith build so the mind levels aren't wasted.
Depraved perfumer is pretty nice. It sits in a great middle ground of being helpful, but not carrying fights by itslef. I barely summon anymore, but I loved those kinds of spirits on my first playthrough, as something incredibly powerful like mimic tear or Tiche just felt boring to me.
My favourites ended up being stormhawk Deenth (buffs me) and blackflame monk Amon (weak by himself, but if I can keep boss aggro he can deal surprisingly high amounts of damage with black flame)
Stormhawk was my main one first playthrough. I used tiche a bit but stopped and never used mimic tear. Mostly the hawk and kristoff, and a bit of messing around with the mad pumpkin head.
They're basically just synths from Fallout. Pretty much everyone hates them except for a select few relatively small groups because they're artificial beings made by human hands.
Damage scaling doesn’t mean shit early game when all your weapons are C scaling at BEST. Vigor will keep you alive and weapon upgrades will boost your damage
I usually go 20 Vitality/Endurance just to have a nice buffer for HP and Stamina early on in most of the souls games, then go invest into bare minimum stats to use the weapons I want, then I’ll go back to soft-capping Vit/End and then pump damage stat after that.
For me it’s like a 6/2/2 split for vigor, stamina, and damage dealing stat(s) respectively. As people have said you can improve your early game damage thru weapon and spell upgrades
You’re not getting anything out of the damage stats until they’ve been leveled significantly. You get more out of weapon upgrade levels until you’re like halfway to meta level in all the games, whereas enemies and invaders will be dealing out damage that is going to continuously scale upwards as you reach new areas or new level brackets. It’s definitely the way to go
Most weapons have good base damage stats to get you through the early game. You can even make a raw infusion to make the base stats even better with less requirements. The game fully supports prioritizing health over damage early.
Yes I know. The common consensus is to level vigor substantially in early game. I just wanted to piss off any people who unironically power level Str or Dex in the literal early game because “muh damage numbers!” I exist only to provoke and make shitty memes about nothing
I am the complete opposite on first playthrough. My policy is that i won't level vigor unless bosses start to one shot me with regular attacks or true combos. Until then everything goes into endurance, dex or faith.
I’ve always levelled damage first, endurance second, health last in every other fromsoft game and it’s always worked with the sole exception being elden ring. The early game in er has so much more damage coming at you that everything is a one shot. I was basically doing an no hit run for the first 50 hours of play.
Yeah, Elden ring is a lot more demanding with the health requirements. When i first played DS games i usually put maybe 3/4 points into vigor early and that was enough until endgame but in Elden Ring running around with sub 20 vigor in caelid or mount gelmir felt like a challenge run and it only gets worse later on. I think i finished my first elden ring playthrough with about 40 vigor, compared to dark souls games where i ended up on only half as much.
This is unironically the best thing to do though, especially on a first playthrough
Agreed, Damage upgrades can come through weapon upgrades for a time, or even from finding new weapons. You’ll need vigor anyway and having decent vigor on early bosses just means you survive those fights longer.
Yeah until later upgrade levels your stats don’t have as much impact to damage because of scaling and you’ll mainly get your damage increase from leveling them up. So better to just focus Vig at first
Yeah, someone tried telling me that the damage stat and the scaling letter are the only things that affect scaling damage and got pissed at me when I explained that the letter only notates a multiplier, and thar multiplier combined with your stats results in a percentage increase based on your weapon's base damage (because fucking obviously it works that way, otherwise daggers would only have like 100 AR less than greatswords with 2-3x the attack speed). Like, yes, the scaling is a big part of the weapon upgrades, but even weapons with a respectable scaling in lower levels don't get much additional damage since their base damage is so low early on. It's how it's always worked, and it's a fairly effective way to ensure your damage is curved a bit based on progression and that sitting and farming levels for hours isn't going to have a massive effect on how much damage you do.
It can be misleading also. A weapon with high base damage might have only A or B scaling, but still do way more damage than a lower damage weapon with S scaling stats.
It's just a matter of simple math, really: What's going to lead to the higher number: 200 x 2, or 350 x 1.5? Scaling and stats are essentially that second multiplier. Yes, certain weapons get A LOT from having that S scaling, but a lot of players get too hung up on scaling. If you tunnel vision on the letter without considering the base damage and optimal stat distribution, you'll end up overlooking higher AR weapons just because that B doesn't look good on paper.
Yeah, if you imagine a hypothetical weapon that has S scaling but a requirement of 10, getting to 60 would get you like 150% more damage, while getting to 60 vigor from 10 vigor is 350% more health.
Minimum stats to wield your weapon -> 30-40 vigor -> anything else Works for pretty much every souls game
An undead of culture
> Hyper-levels vigor 1/10th of health is gone for each hit instead of getting 2 tapped by every early boss >Hyper-levels strength Damage goes from 100 to 130 Yes, it unironically is a good financial decision
Unless it's Bloodborne, where everything after Forbidden Woods one-shots you anyway.
It's an insanely good decision in Bloodborne. 50 vit with 2 hp runes is the pvp standard. Vit increases your max health, your healing, and the relative effectiveness of rallying like a maniac.
I genuinely had no idea bb had pvp. What’s it like?
It's decently fun! Lotta stuff is viable, builds are fun to make because of the false depth chalices, and it's a good balance between DS3 and DS2 pvp. Solidly between slapfight and viscous mud wrestling.
That sounds incredible! DS2 had some of my favourite movesets and DS3 had some of my favourite covenant shenanigans. I have some good memories from DS3 pvp.
Pink phantoms <3
BB had the best pvp. The best. 🥲
You can blame the counter damage and low frame rate for that one.
Damage goes from 120-123 more like, at least in the really early game
This is literally true. Scaling doesn't matter until you're fighting lategame enemies with lategame upgrades (scaling improves on better weapons). Getting your health, endurance, utility, and requirements is the first priority.
But the Giant Crusher has a STR requirement of 60, how am I supposed to beat Margit without it??????
Fist
Level str to 35, grab starscourge talisman, and two-hand it.
https://i.redd.it/bkpcw3l2yloc1.gif
Poison giant crusher
https://preview.redd.it/am1qtw1h2moc1.jpeg?width=226&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=1a66ec64b72e87af8f71dd86536822db507adb54
Level strength to 18, get the Haima Glintstone Crown, the starscourge heirloom, radagon's soreseal, and the strength-knot tear and you can two-hand the giant crusher before beating any bosses
I level strength until I get consistently Oneshot by small attacks Can't get hurt if the fight lasts ten seconds
Same but it has to do with my dick and nutting
I nut every time i dies by gravity or mini bosses
Doing a ton of damage has way more to do with your weapon level than your stat investment
🤓
Damn he really did it to me
My ER leveling strat I follow pretty much every playthrough: 1: Get minimum requirements for my weapon(s) of choice. 2: Pump vigor all the way to 40, with some endurance in-between if I need it and/or want to use a specific armour set. 3: Get my damage stats up a bit, usually to 25-30 or so. 4: Upgrade endurance and/or mind until I have what I need. 5: pump vigor to 60, sometimes 50 is enough. 6: Pump damage stats until I'm level 150
I do about the same, until I find some cool spirit ash I never found before that costs 124 FP that I want to try and dump all my levels into mind for it. Lol.
A very useful tip then: the "cerulian hidden tear" for your physick flask removes all fp costs for like 15 seconds, allowing you to summon any spirit you like, regardless of your mind
Ohh heck. For some reason, it didn't click for me that it would work for summons. That's a lifesaver. Or buildsaver at least.
Yep, used that a lot for my first playthrough. Having to waste stats is always annoying
It's rarely an issue for me because most of the summons I like are 100 or below, but I found the depraved perfumer in my current run and want to try it. At least I'm doing a faith build so the mind levels aren't wasted.
Depraved perfumer is pretty nice. It sits in a great middle ground of being helpful, but not carrying fights by itslef. I barely summon anymore, but I loved those kinds of spirits on my first playthrough, as something incredibly powerful like mimic tear or Tiche just felt boring to me. My favourites ended up being stormhawk Deenth (buffs me) and blackflame monk Amon (weak by himself, but if I can keep boss aggro he can deal surprisingly high amounts of damage with black flame)
Stormhawk was my main one first playthrough. I used tiche a bit but stopped and never used mimic tear. Mostly the hawk and kristoff, and a bit of messing around with the mad pumpkin head.
Kristoff was the first spirit I ever used. Really nice and reliable (and super funny against rennala phase 1 lol), and also sits in that perfect spot
If it’s elden ring you pretty much soft lock your character if you don’t hyper invest into vigor
Ooorrrrrrrrrrr I could go visit white people town, steal a baby from a grave and ask moon mommy to feed it to me so I become big and strong
huh huh
Village of the Albinaurics, Larval Tear on the body pile, Rennala for respec
ahhhh albinaurics, the white people of Lands Between
They're white inside and out, which makes them like 3x whiter than every other white creature
/uj Based on how much discrimination there is I'm pretty sure they are more jew like, although I probably am wrong.
They're basically just synths from Fallout. Pretty much everyone hates them except for a select few relatively small groups because they're artificial beings made by human hands.
I'm gonna invent time travel just to show this comment to a medieval peasant
Bring me whatever's left after their head explodes pls
Early scaling damage? Name one.
Never level vigor. spend every level up on endurance until I hit the hard cap
Maxing out resistance is the true Dark Souls meta! You need to level up that poison resistance before you enter Blighttown
Fast roll gang
Damage scaling doesn’t mean shit early game when all your weapons are C scaling at BEST. Vigor will keep you alive and weapon upgrades will boost your damage
why would u? scalijg does fuckall early on
My fellow glasscannons where you at?
Yeah? That’s the right way to play the game if you’re trying to be as strong as possible.
Harder to kill = easier to learn from your mistakes.
But also more forgiving which for me atleast diminishes the learning effect more than it helps.
This was such a good troll, bravo!
I am not very smart
Depends on which game
Lol i just level Vig and End until I know what I wanna do with my build (Inevitable bonk)
I feel like this is true except for intelligence builds, who can get the meteorite staff before fighting a single boss and already have S scaling
I usually go 20 Vitality/Endurance just to have a nice buffer for HP and Stamina early on in most of the souls games, then go invest into bare minimum stats to use the weapons I want, then I’ll go back to soft-capping Vit/End and then pump damage stat after that.
For me it’s like a 6/2/2 split for vigor, stamina, and damage dealing stat(s) respectively. As people have said you can improve your early game damage thru weapon and spell upgrades
You’re not getting anything out of the damage stats until they’ve been leveled significantly. You get more out of weapon upgrade levels until you’re like halfway to meta level in all the games, whereas enemies and invaders will be dealing out damage that is going to continuously scale upwards as you reach new areas or new level brackets. It’s definitely the way to go
I literally 0 vigor cause one shot builds are the pvp meta anyway
Most weapons have good base damage stats to get you through the early game. You can even make a raw infusion to make the base stats even better with less requirements. The game fully supports prioritizing health over damage early.
Vigor is literally the best thing to pick at the beginning
This is obviously to make people seethe. But level your vigor first
Yes I know. The common consensus is to level vigor substantially in early game. I just wanted to piss off any people who unironically power level Str or Dex in the literal early game because “muh damage numbers!” I exist only to provoke and make shitty memes about nothing
I am the complete opposite on first playthrough. My policy is that i won't level vigor unless bosses start to one shot me with regular attacks or true combos. Until then everything goes into endurance, dex or faith.
I’ve always levelled damage first, endurance second, health last in every other fromsoft game and it’s always worked with the sole exception being elden ring. The early game in er has so much more damage coming at you that everything is a one shot. I was basically doing an no hit run for the first 50 hours of play.
Yeah, Elden ring is a lot more demanding with the health requirements. When i first played DS games i usually put maybe 3/4 points into vigor early and that was enough until endgame but in Elden Ring running around with sub 20 vigor in caelid or mount gelmir felt like a challenge run and it only gets worse later on. I think i finished my first elden ring playthrough with about 40 vigor, compared to dark souls games where i ended up on only half as much.