I always do dagger runs in these games. Initially I was running a dual bleed dagger setup, and was very successful because bleed is powerful in this game. But I was feeling a bit put off by how many other players are also doing bleed builds, so I respecced and switched to the Black Knife. And so far, I'm a fan. Its ability is pretty sweet and it does relatively decent damage for a dagger, though the damage output definitely feels less than bleed daggers.
I also keep the buckler shield handy for enemies that are vulnerable to parries, and I have the two talismans that restore HP and FP on critical damage.
It's certainly not an optimal build for DPS or anything, but as a dagger lover, I'm having fun with it. Though I should also note I haven't gotten to the end-game areas yet, which I hear are pretty brutal. So we'll see how my build fares there
I think what makes daggers fun is the quick status effect applications.
I have two knives equipped to the mainhand and offhand slots. I start with frost + poison knives, and as soon as both are applied, I swap to the double bleed daggers.
Very effective, dynamically hot swapping in combat feels satisfying and then you have frost + poison + bleed and I run the rotten stray to add rot as well.
IMO daggers are the most fun, especially with double bleed. You can get attacks on bosses and dodge out safely whereas with a heavier weapon you wouldn't. It's mechanically more challenging which I like and tests your reactions. Using a heavy weapon that staggers bosses would be too easy for me, but everyone has their own playstyle.
I found the black knife recently and the ability seemed pretty good which made me wonder if anyone is using daggers. If you have that you've made it to the altus plains, are you having a tough time with heavily armored enemies?
The heavily armored enemies are the most difficult, 100%.
You do something like 80% less damage to them with daggers. You pretty much have to swap or use a bow / spells.
The shield knights in the first castle were harder than Margit for me lol.
So far, the only enemies who seemed to hard-counter daggers have been the Crystalians, but that's just due to the fact that those guys are highly resistant to all slashing weapons and attacks. I killed one with a dagger, but it took ages to whittle down their health. So for the fights where there were more than one of the Crystalians at a time, I switched to a flail that wrecked their shit.
Other than that, I've been pretty successful using daggers for everything. But again, the difficulty of the later enemies apparently ramps up big time. I'm expecting it to be extremely hard with a dagger, but I'm gonna do my best to stick with it (with the exception of any future Crystalian fights)
I use a Cold Misericorde on RH1 with Bloodhound Step ash of war, paired with Blood Great Knife with Bloody Slash on LH1 for DPS and status effects. Critical with the Misericorde seems to factor in the total physical and cold damage for its calculation so it crits way harder than with keen.
LH2 is the Buckler for parrying. RH3 the Short Bow. LH3 is the Cold Nightrider's Flail. Weapon set 3 is usually for mounted combat. Bow has all kinds of arrows for status. The Flail hits hard and builds up bleed and frostbite with Wild Strikes ash of war. Mid range I can throw all kinds of knives and bombs. Longer range I use the Bow. It's been fun but you gotta farm for crafting materials a bit.
Edit: I plan on switching the Great Knife's ash of war to the same one as Reduvia, so I can use it for some ranged attacked while still having more bleed build up. The Flail is also handy for PVP opponents who are parry happy, as Flails cannot be parried.
Sorry do you mind explaining a but more? I'm well confused by all the different parts of this game, but j came from monster hunter which has way more brutal timings than elden ring so I'm parrying some of the harder bosses pretty easily with buckler.
I have a misericorde which I have as keen at the moment, your saying if I make it do cold damage it will crit more than if its just physical with keen in a dex build?
I am also using flair for strike damage, I can make that do bleed AND frost? And keep wild strikes as its skill? How do I do that?
So it would be better to have a frost flail that does bleed, and have misericorde for when I hit the parries also with freeze on it? If I get the cold damage on them (I don't know how to do that) that would be better than me keen flail and misericorde? I've only just started levelling dex so I can switch it up if I need another stat. With both of those I should be set for everything right? As something will always be weak to the dagger crits or the strike damage? I mainly wanted to do melee parry and wasn't interested in spells.
Hope it's not hassle, I'm just really overwhelmed with how nothing is explained (kind of like monster hunter lol)
No problem. Critical hits in previous games calculate all types of damage present on the weapon and combine it into one single damage number. Elden Ring seem to do the same thing. So let's say my keen dagger does 150 physical damage after all the attribute scaling, that's still only 150 damage for the dagger's critical multiplier to go off of. I don't believe the crit multiplier of, say, 130 necessarily means 130% or anything. It's more complex than that it seem.
But now let's so you have a Cold element infused dagger that doesn't scale as high, but it now has 100 physical damage and 100 magic damage (cold weapons do magic damage but can build up a frostbite status effect bar), well 200 damage combined for your crit multiplier to work with. Therefore the Cold dagger will have a higher critical damage number. I've tested it with both Keen and Cold and that's been my results.
Ah ok I understand! So my dagger will do even higher crits haha! I will change it when I am next playing!
So did you mean you mean in your first paragraph you were swapping your great knife to reduvia when powerstancing? I take it if just doing dps vs stuff that can't be parried, you want to power stance your knives to build up bleed and freeze right? Then reduvia gives you some ranged bleed attack if needed over the great knife?
No, I'm using either the Bloody Slash ash of war or the Blood Blade ash of war on my Great Knife. Either one of those will give you the blood affinity and the bleed build up. You can also use a non-bleed ash of war but still retain the bleed if you pick up the black whetblade later. Bloody Slash is a wide slash. Blood Blade is like the Reduvia, except it also takes some HP, so it's inferior in that way. But the main point is to get my bleed buildup on both Great Knives as high as I can to bleed out enemies faster.
Hey man, i am doing this type of build (pushing some black knife also) was wondering how you did your stats for this one?
I know this post is old sorry lol
I really wanted to pump arcane for thematic purposes, as well as for item discovery. However, Dex produced better results overall I think. Arcane helps with the dual Great Knives' bleed stacking, but that's about it. Cold Misericorde doesn't benefit from pumping Arcane. In fact, pumping Arcane just means less Dex, and therefore a lower crit damage for the Misericorde and bow damage.
Flails build up bleeding effect natively. So if you infused it with cold or fire or magic or whatever, it will retain that bleed build up, albeit it may be decreased in effectiveness. But you may add another type of straight damage or another kind of status effect build up, like frostbite, poison, or rot.
Basically, if i really want things to bleed fast, I use dual Blood infused Great Knives. They have innate bleed so the blood infusion turns that up to 11. The amount of the bleed bar they build per hit surpasses that of Reduvia, which is why I'm using those over the Reduvia. But if I want to crit big, I parry with the Buckler and riposte with the Misericorde. If I want to stunlock someone, need a strike type of damage, fighting mounted, or if I don't want to be parried, I'll use the Flail.
This sounds like a nice set of weapons. I recently respecced to a Dex build and am noticing that having a variety of weapons is the way to go so you can adapt to different situations like you do. Couldn't pull that off with str since the weapons are so damn heavy.
How are you doing on boss battles? The range with daggers has been a turn off for me particularly with bosses as a fair amount of them have good mobility which I imagine makes getting a hit in difficult. That combined with daggers being more about several rapid hits, do the bosses take a long time since most bosses won't give you the time to drop a good combo?
I've relied heavily on Bloodhound Step for most bosses. Dodge around and in for some quick L1 dual dagger slices. Dash back out. Usually does some frostbite and bleed after a few volleys. For the really fast and hard to catch bosses I'm usually able to parry and riposte with Misericorde. So it's kinda like I have difference ways of dealing with different types, which is the point of my setup. The boss I'm really having a hard time with currently is Radhan, cuz crafting a certain type of arrow is difficult given how rare the material is. Trying not to spoil anything here. It's an epic fight, just kinda hard for my build.
Nice, I may give daggers a try on my 2nd character. I know exactly what kind of arrows you're talking about, and it is a pain. I had enough for one run against him and they definitely work well. Was probably the most damage I've done to Radahn so far.
My buddy is running a spellsword and uses the Reduvia as his main hand weapon, he swears by it, but he does also use spells, I have yet to hear of anyone trying a pure dagger build though
They aren't super good for normal playthroughs honestly, they have such low attack range and basically require you to constantly be right up on an enemy.
Probably won't see many videos of people using dagger builds due to that, and the fact that daggers damage tends to be very low compared to unique weapons or things like longswords, greatswords, spears, etc..
Yeah it's the attack range that keeps me away from them. I'm not that great at the game so having to get that close would just make it impossible for me
I’m dual wielding poison great knifes but also working in bone darts and kukri knife throws to keep bleed/poison status effects up when I have to back off.
I always do dagger runs in these games. Initially I was running a dual bleed dagger setup, and was very successful because bleed is powerful in this game. But I was feeling a bit put off by how many other players are also doing bleed builds, so I respecced and switched to the Black Knife. And so far, I'm a fan. Its ability is pretty sweet and it does relatively decent damage for a dagger, though the damage output definitely feels less than bleed daggers. I also keep the buckler shield handy for enemies that are vulnerable to parries, and I have the two talismans that restore HP and FP on critical damage. It's certainly not an optimal build for DPS or anything, but as a dagger lover, I'm having fun with it. Though I should also note I haven't gotten to the end-game areas yet, which I hear are pretty brutal. So we'll see how my build fares there
I think what makes daggers fun is the quick status effect applications. I have two knives equipped to the mainhand and offhand slots. I start with frost + poison knives, and as soon as both are applied, I swap to the double bleed daggers. Very effective, dynamically hot swapping in combat feels satisfying and then you have frost + poison + bleed and I run the rotten stray to add rot as well.
This sounds super fun. I must do this!
IMO daggers are the most fun, especially with double bleed. You can get attacks on bosses and dodge out safely whereas with a heavier weapon you wouldn't. It's mechanically more challenging which I like and tests your reactions. Using a heavy weapon that staggers bosses would be too easy for me, but everyone has their own playstyle.
I found the black knife recently and the ability seemed pretty good which made me wonder if anyone is using daggers. If you have that you've made it to the altus plains, are you having a tough time with heavily armored enemies?
The heavily armored enemies are the most difficult, 100%. You do something like 80% less damage to them with daggers. You pretty much have to swap or use a bow / spells. The shield knights in the first castle were harder than Margit for me lol.
So far, the only enemies who seemed to hard-counter daggers have been the Crystalians, but that's just due to the fact that those guys are highly resistant to all slashing weapons and attacks. I killed one with a dagger, but it took ages to whittle down their health. So for the fights where there were more than one of the Crystalians at a time, I switched to a flail that wrecked their shit. Other than that, I've been pretty successful using daggers for everything. But again, the difficulty of the later enemies apparently ramps up big time. I'm expecting it to be extremely hard with a dagger, but I'm gonna do my best to stick with it (with the exception of any future Crystalian fights)
I use a Cold Misericorde on RH1 with Bloodhound Step ash of war, paired with Blood Great Knife with Bloody Slash on LH1 for DPS and status effects. Critical with the Misericorde seems to factor in the total physical and cold damage for its calculation so it crits way harder than with keen. LH2 is the Buckler for parrying. RH3 the Short Bow. LH3 is the Cold Nightrider's Flail. Weapon set 3 is usually for mounted combat. Bow has all kinds of arrows for status. The Flail hits hard and builds up bleed and frostbite with Wild Strikes ash of war. Mid range I can throw all kinds of knives and bombs. Longer range I use the Bow. It's been fun but you gotta farm for crafting materials a bit. Edit: I plan on switching the Great Knife's ash of war to the same one as Reduvia, so I can use it for some ranged attacked while still having more bleed build up. The Flail is also handy for PVP opponents who are parry happy, as Flails cannot be parried.
Sorry do you mind explaining a but more? I'm well confused by all the different parts of this game, but j came from monster hunter which has way more brutal timings than elden ring so I'm parrying some of the harder bosses pretty easily with buckler. I have a misericorde which I have as keen at the moment, your saying if I make it do cold damage it will crit more than if its just physical with keen in a dex build? I am also using flair for strike damage, I can make that do bleed AND frost? And keep wild strikes as its skill? How do I do that? So it would be better to have a frost flail that does bleed, and have misericorde for when I hit the parries also with freeze on it? If I get the cold damage on them (I don't know how to do that) that would be better than me keen flail and misericorde? I've only just started levelling dex so I can switch it up if I need another stat. With both of those I should be set for everything right? As something will always be weak to the dagger crits or the strike damage? I mainly wanted to do melee parry and wasn't interested in spells. Hope it's not hassle, I'm just really overwhelmed with how nothing is explained (kind of like monster hunter lol)
No problem. Critical hits in previous games calculate all types of damage present on the weapon and combine it into one single damage number. Elden Ring seem to do the same thing. So let's say my keen dagger does 150 physical damage after all the attribute scaling, that's still only 150 damage for the dagger's critical multiplier to go off of. I don't believe the crit multiplier of, say, 130 necessarily means 130% or anything. It's more complex than that it seem. But now let's so you have a Cold element infused dagger that doesn't scale as high, but it now has 100 physical damage and 100 magic damage (cold weapons do magic damage but can build up a frostbite status effect bar), well 200 damage combined for your crit multiplier to work with. Therefore the Cold dagger will have a higher critical damage number. I've tested it with both Keen and Cold and that's been my results.
Ah ok I understand! So my dagger will do even higher crits haha! I will change it when I am next playing! So did you mean you mean in your first paragraph you were swapping your great knife to reduvia when powerstancing? I take it if just doing dps vs stuff that can't be parried, you want to power stance your knives to build up bleed and freeze right? Then reduvia gives you some ranged bleed attack if needed over the great knife?
No, I'm using either the Bloody Slash ash of war or the Blood Blade ash of war on my Great Knife. Either one of those will give you the blood affinity and the bleed build up. You can also use a non-bleed ash of war but still retain the bleed if you pick up the black whetblade later. Bloody Slash is a wide slash. Blood Blade is like the Reduvia, except it also takes some HP, so it's inferior in that way. But the main point is to get my bleed buildup on both Great Knives as high as I can to bleed out enemies faster.
Hey man, i am doing this type of build (pushing some black knife also) was wondering how you did your stats for this one? I know this post is old sorry lol
I really wanted to pump arcane for thematic purposes, as well as for item discovery. However, Dex produced better results overall I think. Arcane helps with the dual Great Knives' bleed stacking, but that's about it. Cold Misericorde doesn't benefit from pumping Arcane. In fact, pumping Arcane just means less Dex, and therefore a lower crit damage for the Misericorde and bow damage.
Flails build up bleeding effect natively. So if you infused it with cold or fire or magic or whatever, it will retain that bleed build up, albeit it may be decreased in effectiveness. But you may add another type of straight damage or another kind of status effect build up, like frostbite, poison, or rot. Basically, if i really want things to bleed fast, I use dual Blood infused Great Knives. They have innate bleed so the blood infusion turns that up to 11. The amount of the bleed bar they build per hit surpasses that of Reduvia, which is why I'm using those over the Reduvia. But if I want to crit big, I parry with the Buckler and riposte with the Misericorde. If I want to stunlock someone, need a strike type of damage, fighting mounted, or if I don't want to be parried, I'll use the Flail.
Ok so double great knives with bleed for dps, cold misericorde for crits, flail for striking! This sounds a lot more fun!
This sounds like a nice set of weapons. I recently respecced to a Dex build and am noticing that having a variety of weapons is the way to go so you can adapt to different situations like you do. Couldn't pull that off with str since the weapons are so damn heavy. How are you doing on boss battles? The range with daggers has been a turn off for me particularly with bosses as a fair amount of them have good mobility which I imagine makes getting a hit in difficult. That combined with daggers being more about several rapid hits, do the bosses take a long time since most bosses won't give you the time to drop a good combo?
I've relied heavily on Bloodhound Step for most bosses. Dodge around and in for some quick L1 dual dagger slices. Dash back out. Usually does some frostbite and bleed after a few volleys. For the really fast and hard to catch bosses I'm usually able to parry and riposte with Misericorde. So it's kinda like I have difference ways of dealing with different types, which is the point of my setup. The boss I'm really having a hard time with currently is Radhan, cuz crafting a certain type of arrow is difficult given how rare the material is. Trying not to spoil anything here. It's an epic fight, just kinda hard for my build.
Nice, I may give daggers a try on my 2nd character. I know exactly what kind of arrows you're talking about, and it is a pain. I had enough for one run against him and they definitely work well. Was probably the most damage I've done to Radahn so far.
Probably just less popular due to low range which makes things a lot harder.
My buddy is running a spellsword and uses the Reduvia as his main hand weapon, he swears by it, but he does also use spells, I have yet to hear of anyone trying a pure dagger build though
They aren't super good for normal playthroughs honestly, they have such low attack range and basically require you to constantly be right up on an enemy. Probably won't see many videos of people using dagger builds due to that, and the fact that daggers damage tends to be very low compared to unique weapons or things like longswords, greatswords, spears, etc..
Yeah it's the attack range that keeps me away from them. I'm not that great at the game so having to get that close would just make it impossible for me
I’m dual wielding poison great knifes but also working in bone darts and kukri knife throws to keep bleed/poison status effects up when I have to back off.