Just like the previous two games, my first character in Dark Souls III was a faith build. It's partially for the heals, but I've also always loved Lightning Spear! The idea of forming a spear of lightning out of the air and throwing it in my enemy's face is strangely gratifying.
Even though I was quite disappointed in the line of Miracles in this installment, I still stuck to my guns. Rather than respec, I built up my faith and decided I could just play my next character a bit differently.
Unfortunately, faith draws the short straw in terms of the number of scaling weapons we have access to. But there are still a few in the land of Lothric we can use to lay the smackdown on the undead and Lords of Cinder.
Faith Weapon #1: Saint Bident
I'm a fan of spear weapons, although they usually aren't my go-to. I did play a bit with this weapon though, partially because it's not just a spear, but a freaking bident. Why use a weapon with just one pointy end when you can have a weapon with TWO pointy ends?
This one is fun, and its weapon art is a charging attack akin to a lance. This is one of the few weapons that scales with faith, although the scaling isn't very good (maxes out at C with +10 Lightning.)
The Saint Bident can be found in the Cathedral of the Deep.
Faith Weapon #2: Sunlight Straight Sword
This bad boy doesn't scale with faith, BUT it is infused with lightning. It's kinda strange though, because looking at the stats doesn't show lightning damage.
That said, it has a nice moveset (it is a straight sword, after all.) The weapon art casts Oath of Sunlight, which is a buff similar to that of Sacred Oath.
The Sunlight Straight Sword is found fairly late in the game at Lothric Castle -- (as the above video shows.)
Faith Weapon #3: Golden Ritual Spear
Another strange one. Luckily, it scales pretty well with faith. At just +1, it goes from B to A scaling.
..but it's used to cast Sorceries! It's basically a faith-based staff. The weapon art is called Steady Chant, which boosts Sorceries for a short period of time.
If you're playing a build with both faith and sorceries, this may be a good option. I personally didn't really end up using it though.
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The spear is dropped by a mimic close to the Pontiff bonfire.
Faith Weapon #4: Anri's Straight Sword
Finally, another weapon that actually scales with faith. Not very well, though.
It comes with the both the Blessed infusion and Hollow infusion. So it slowly regenerates your health and keeps skeletons from respawning like a Blessed weapon, but the Hollow infusion helps it scale from the luck stat.
To get the weapon, you either have to complete Anri's questline, let he/she be killed (by failing the questline), or do the job yourself.
Faith Weapon #5: Wolnir's Holy Sword
This is a fun one. Admittedly not a weapon I used for very long, but it's not bad. I may have used it longer if it scaled with faith, but for some reason (just like many other faith weapons in this game) it only scales with STR and DEX.
The weapon art for this sword is Wrath of the Gods -- a Dark Souls favorite. Even though the Dark Souls III version seems to be the weakest of the series, it's still fun to use- especially if you're in the middle of a mob.
To get it, you first have to defeat Wolnir and transpose his soul.
Faith Weapon #6: Lothric's Holy Sword
Great news! This is one of those few weapons that scales with faith.
..just kidding.
It is a decent weapon though. The weapon art is fun- called Sacred Lothric Light, it shoots a stream of light that damages enemies.
The sword is obtained by defeating the Twin Princes and transposing their souls.
Faith Weapon #7: Cleric's Candlestick
This is a weird one. It has a faith requirement, but it doesn't scale with faith. But you may think that it would cast Miracles, right? Similar to Dark Souls II's Mace of the Insolent?
..nope. This is another weapon that casts Sorceries while also functioning as a sword.
I included it because it has a faith requirement and is used by the Deacons of the Deep, so it's faith-ish. And if you're playing a build with both Miracles and Sorceries, this may be a good option for you.
But to be honest I didn't use it much once I realized it's mainly meant for Sorcerors. You get this weapon by transposing the soul from the Deacons of the Deep.
Faith Weapon #8: Anything with Blessed or Lightning Infusions
This is the route I took. I went through most of the game with a lightning broadsword. Then when I realized how amazing halberds are, I infused my Red Hilted Halberd with lightning. A lightning infusion on most regular weapons will give it B or A faith scaling, which makes a big difference.
So there you have it! Eight different Dark Souls III faith weapons to choose from. Good luck and enjoy, fellow Clerics!
Dark Soul 3’s Ashes of Ariandel, the first piece of downloadable content available for the game since it launched back in April, is now available. Included in that is a whole new arsenal of weaponry, two new boss encounters to complete, and a whole new area to explore. It also brought dedicated player-vs-player (PvP) into the world of Dark Souls for the first time in the franchise in the form of the Hollow Arena. Here’s how it works:
To unlock the Hollow Arena in Dark Souls 3’s Ashes of Ariandel DLC, you’re going to have to defeat the optional boss present in the expansion: The Champion’s Gravetender and Gravetender Greatwolf. The duo isn’t an easy encounter, but if you stick to playing defensively and swinging when an opportunity presents itself, you’ll walk away victorious.
Once defeated, the boss will drop two items: Valorheart and the Champion’s Bones. Bring both of these back home to the Firelink Shrine bonfire and activate it as you usually would to travel or attune spells. Here, you’ll see the option to burn the Champion’s Bones; do so, and the Undead Match option will appear in the menu. This is how you’ll access the dedicated PvP matches added with the DLC.
Currently there are three different types of matches available in the Hollow Arena: one-on-one duels, brawls, and versus.
Duels are 1v1 matches to the death against another player. In these matches you dont receive any Estus Flask uses to heal and you’ll be limited to five uses of your Ashen Estus Flask to restore focus for magic, special abilities, and so on. The last one left standing is the winner.
Brawls are a little more chaotic and provide charges for both your regular Estus Flask for healing and your Ashen Estus Flask for restoring your focus. Instead of the one-and-done rule of duels, brawls allow you to respawn continuously until the 300-second time limit is up. You can do these one-on-one or in massive groups where everyone is for themselves — and highest score wins.
![Hollow Build Dark Souls 3 Hollow Build Dark Souls 3](/uploads/1/2/3/7/123727731/644591880.jpg)
Versus features the same rules as a brawl with limited Estus use, but instead of a free-for-all, it places players in teams of two or three. You’ll then work with your teammates to kill enemy players until the time limit runs out. The team with the highest score is declared the winner.
As you might expect, the Hollow Arena is filled with excellent Dark Souls 3 PvP builds designed to chew you up and spit you back out crying. While this certainly isn’t as bothersome in a 1v1 duel, the brawl and versus modes both suffer from groups of players who gang up on a single person and smash them into the ground with powerful weapons. The arena does allow you to set password matching though, which means you could play with a group of people who adhere to a specific set of rules shared outside of the game for a better experience in both brawl and versus.
Occasionally you’ll meet up with a great group of players who tend to balance out their targets though, allowing three 1v1 engagements to share the same occupied space. Spells fling around you that you’ll have to dodge while you’re fighting another player in front of you, and friendly players work to block incoming damage with shields to keep friendly archers or mages safe. There’s a lot of team coordination present, and that’s without voice communication. It’s essentially a Dark Souls 3 version of World of Warcraft’s arena matches, and boy does it work well with the Dark Souls gameplay.
That said, the new Hollow Arena doesn’t necessarily feel complete. There’s only one map present (that we’re aware of or have unlocked) that you can battle on, and the feats you complete in the arena have no impact on your character. Take Covenant allegiance for example, which is shown on your character but doesn’t bring anything unique to the arena like rewards or certain team match ups. It doesn’t really detract from the added PvP experience, but instead feels like a missed opportunity that could have allowed From Software to expand on the current Covenant system like many had hoped they would.
The Coals and Gems sections of this guide is intended to be used for reference and contains minor spoilers (the locations of where the item can be found); the real content of this guide can be found under Best Scaling Weapon Infusions.
Coals
Coals are required to unlock certain weapon infusions from Andre the Blacksmith.
Coal | Unlocks | Location |
---|---|---|
Farron Coal | Heavy, Sharp, Poison | Road of Sacrifices, behind the black knight in the first swamp. |
Sage's Coal | Crystal, Blessed, Deep | Farron Keep, left side from the bonfire, inside a circular building guarded by a dark wraith. |
Profaned Coal | Dark, Bleed, Hollow | Irithyll Dungeon, before the dragon shortcut near the room with six jailers (and Kayla). |
Giant's Coal | Lightning, Simple, Chaos | Anor Londo, giant blacksmith corpse, left side of large gate near bonfire |
Dark Souls 3 Hollow Faith Build
Gems
Gem | Resin/Buff? | Effect | Farm Location |
---|---|---|---|
Shriving Stone | - | Removes infusion | Road of Sacrifices and Farron Keep, dropped from harpies (feathered enemies) |
Refined Gem | Yes | Improves strength and dex scaling, lowers base damage | High Wall of Lothric, red-eyed knight outside of the Dancer bonfire. |
Heavy Gem | Yes | Improves strength scaling, lowers base damage | High Wall of Lothric, most common hollows. Farron Keep, slugs and tall swamp mosters in the poison swamp. |
Sharp Gem | Yes | Improves dexterity scaling, lowers base damage | Catacombs of Carthus, red-eyed skeletons |
Raw Gem | Yes | Increases base damage, removes scaling | High Wall of Lothric, most common hollows. |
Fire Gem | No | Adds fire damage, lowers base damage, removes scaling | Undead Settlement, scarecrows. Smouldering Lake, lava/red slugs. |
Deep Gem | No | Adds dark damage, lowers base damage, removes scaling | Irithyll of the Boreal Valley, deacons. Cathedral of the Deep, thralls. |
Poison Gem | No | Adds poison aux, lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Farron Keep, giant demon dogs. Farron Keep, slugs in the poison swamp. |
Blood Gem | No | Adds bleed aux, lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | LOC?, enchanted blade Irithyllian Slaves |
Crystal Gem | No | Adds magic damage (FAI/INT scaling), lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Road of Sacrifices, sorcerer hollows in Crucifixion Woods (near the Crystal Sage boss) |
Simple Gem | No | Adds INT scaling, adds passive FP regeneration, lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Irithyll Dungeon, jailers. |
Lightning Gem | No | Adds lightning damage (FAI/INT scaling), lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Archdragon Peak, larger enemies near the Nameless King boss. Archdragon Peak, most enemies. |
Blessed Gem | Yes | Adds FAI scaling, adds passive HP regeneration, lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | High Wall of Lothric, winged knight before the courtyard. Undead Settlement, evangelist (AKA pilgrim, or Dorhys) Lothric Castle, Lothric Priests and Lothric Knights. Farron Keep, Corvian Storyteller. Grand Archives, golden winged knights. |
Chaos Gem | No | Adds fire damage (FAI/INT scaling), lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Smouldering Lake, goat demons. |
Dark Gem | No | Adds dark damage (FAI/INT scaling), lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Highwall of Lothric, mutated undead. Lothric Castle, mutated undead. |
Hollow Gem | Yes | Increases luck scaling, adds luck when hollow (based on weapon level), lowers base damage, lowers STR/DEX scaling | Road of Sacrifices, staff wielding corvians (harpies) |
Note: Gems from all farmable locations are rare drops.
Bows, crossbows, tailisman, charms, staves, pyromancy flame, or anything that upgrades with Twinkling Titanite or Titanite Scale cannot be infused.
Best Scaling Weapon Infusions
Don't freak out if your favorite weapon isn't on any of the lists below, the weapons listed are not necessarily mean the best weapons in the game (they just scale extremely well with certain infusions). A weapon's moveset and range has a huge impact on a weapon's viability and this does not take that into account. Also, since boss weapons cannot be infused, you will not see any of those weapons either.
General Scaling
Any Scaling Infusions
The following weapons are considered the best scaling weapons in Dark Souls 3. Most will scale A in STR or DEX when heavy or sharp infused, B/B when refined, S in INT or FAI when crystal or lightning, and A/A in INT/FAI when dark or chaos infused.
Note: Dark Sword, Lothric Knight Sword, and Painting Guardian's Curved Sword scale B/B when dark or chaos infused.
Astora Greatsword (16/18/0/0)
The staple weapon for Dark Souls 3 scaling weapons, the Astora Greatsword has reasonable strength and dexterity requirements and a decent moveset. Although you might want to consider a slightly worse scaling Dark Sword for a slightly faster moveset, this greatsword is still a really good option (especially for the 3 extra points in DEX, that can be made up by using the Carthus Milkring in most builds).
Winged Spear (12/15/0/0)
Hollow Build Dark Souls 3 2017
From a purely data standpoint, Winged Spear makes a solid case for being one of the weapons in Dark Souls 3. It scales extremely well regardless of infusion, has extremely low stat requirements, has a weapon art that cannot be interrupted (also known as hyper armor), and can be used with the Leo Ring.
Murakumo (20/18/0/0)
The Murakumo is a little bit of a disappointment in Dark Souls 3, it has a questionable moveset and requires a heavy investment into strength and dexterity. I'd pass on using it, but it's still listed in this section because of how well it scales.
Carthus Curved Greatsword (22/18/0/0)
One of the few solid scaling weapons with an auxillery effect, the Carthus Curved Greatsword has a few notable drawbacks: (1) high stat requirements if you're not using a quality build, (2) subpar weapon art, (3) slow and heavy, and (4) heavy.
Even though this weapon scales well, you should only really consider using it for high vitality, quality builds.
Dark Sword (16/15/0/0)
Along with the Estoc and Washing Pole, the Dark Sword is regarded as one of the best weapons in Dark Souls 3. The same argument can be made for this weapon that was made for the Winged Spear, it just has Stomp as it's weapon art (which is normally reserved for greatswords) instead of charge.
Lothric Knight Sword (11/18/0/0)
It's the Balder Side Sword (BSS) from Dark Souls and if you know anything about that game, you'll know about the BSS. A slightly less stat intensive weapon than the Astora Greatsword, you'll miss out on some of the sweeping attacks for thrust attacks (not always abad thing).
Painting Guardian's Curved Sword (7/19/0/0)
The Painting Guardian's Curved Sword (PGCS) is one if, if not, the best scaling weapon in the game. It attacks really fast, but has almost no range. Extremely similar to the Bandit's Knife, it's not really a viable weapon because you'll never hit anything with it.
Physical Scaling
Heavy, Sharp, Refined
The following weapons scale best for strength, dexterity, or quality builds.
Drang Hammers (18/16/0/0)
In addition to the fact that Drang Hammers are great for any strength and/or dex build, they also have one of the best movesets in the game. Dual-wielding (two-handing) this weapons has a nice stun/knockdown on its second attack.
Gothhard Twinswords (12/18/0/0)
Gothhard Twinswords are the speed counterpart to the Drang Hammers. A dex style weapon that works well for strength builds as well, the twinswords are extremely fast (especially when using the rolling attack).
Zweihander (19/11/0/0)
The Zweihander is another classic Dark Souls weapon and great for strength builds. It's a little slow, but its moveset is solid and the weapon art, Stomp, is very good.
Long Sword (10/10/0/0)
The long sword is simple but effective; it's one of the rare early game weapons that can make it through the entire game and still be extremely useful.
The broadsword is pretty much the same weapon, with longer range and just a little slower; a refined-infused one scales C/C instead of B/B (and sharp is C/C instead of C/B).
Great Club (28/0/0/0)
Another classic Dark Souls weapon, the Great Club sees a few improvements in this installment of the game. The Great Club scales both for strength and dexterity builds (I'm not sure why it scales well when sharp-infused, but whatever, it does). The Warcry weapon art is a strong attack rating (AR) buff and improves the moveset during its duration.
Exile Greatsword (24/16/0/0)
Hollow Bleed Build Dark Souls 3
Similar to the Great Club, the Exile Greatsword has some odd weapon infusions; it's another strength-type weapon that scales better as a dex weapon (sharp-infusion).
Reinforced Club (12/0/0/0)
The reinforced club lacks sufficient range for a lot of strength and quality builds, but makes up for it with its bleed effect (it's one of the only weapons that scales well and has a bleed effect). It's extremely useful against bosses for this reason.
Note: The scales identical to the reinforced club, requires 10 STR, but has no bleed auxillery effect.
Elemental Scaling
Crystal, Lightning, Chaos, and Dark
Remember that Astora Greatsword, Winged Spear, Murakumo, Dark Sword, Lothric Knight Sword, and the Painting Guardian's Curved Sword from the General Scaling section scale S in crystal and lightining, and scale well here.
Great Corvian Scythe (16/18/0/0)
The Great Corvian Scythe scales S for crystal and lightning infusions and A/A for chaos and dark infusions. It also has a bleed auxillery effect and somewhat low stat requirements. However, it's moveset is kind of bad for PvP.
Special Effect Scaling
Simple and Blessed
Simple and blessed weapons (and shields) are normally used for their other effects, not really for their damage. That being said, most weapons that have good elemental scaling (see the previous section) also scale well for simple and blessed infusions; weapons that normally scale S as crystal, lightning, chaos, or dark scale A with simple or blessed infusions.
Great Corvian Scythe (16/18/0/0)
The Great Corvian Scythe is the only weapon in the game that scales S in INT or FAI depending on the simple or blesssed scaling. See the elemental scaling section for more information.
Auxillery Infusions
Blood and Poison
For the most part, any weapon that already has an auxillery effect benefits from blood or poison infusions. Infusing a weapon with blood or poison adds or increases the auxillery effect of that item, but at a slightly lower value than buffing the weapon using a buff/resin. That being said, it's still better to use Carthus Rouge or Human Pine Resin instead.
Bandit's Knife (6/12/0/0)
Game install directory sims 4 free. Due to the speed of the Bandit's Knife, it is arguably the highest damage weapon in the game; like the Painting Guardian's Curved Sword, it's range is way too short to be a great weapon. A poison or blood infused Bandit's Knife can come in handy during specific situations, like PvP against Greatshield or in boss fights.
Washing Pole (18/20/0/0) & Uchigatana (11/16/0/0)
The Washing Pole and the Uchigatana are lumped together since they are pretty much the same weapon, there's just a trade-off of weight and stats for range (and you're probably better off going with the Washing Pole). Both of these weapons also make great quality build weapons (40 STR/40 DEX) and work well when refined but scale slightly worse that the weapons mentioned in the above section.
Other Notable Weapons
Crystal Saint Bident (12/12/0/16, scales E/E/C/C)
While E/E/C/C isn't anything all that special, the unique thing about the Saint Bident is that it maintains its faith (FAI) scaling even when crystal infused.
References
Change Log
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Corey Docken
Corey has been playing video games all of his life. He learned how to use grid references playing The Legend of Zelda on NES and spent way too much running in front of a TV as a child. He loves the Final Fantasy, Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Dark Souls, and Civilization series and is stil trying to get over the loss of Fable.
Published on Monday, May 9th, 2016 at 4:24 PM.
Last updated on Monday, May 9th, 2016 at 2:22 PM.
Last updated on Monday, May 9th, 2016 at 2:22 PM.
Posted by3 years ago
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Hey everyone, before I start this guide I just want to say that I have sunk 250+ hours in to my luck characters and I have been using hollow weapons since release. I have had success with them in both PvP and PvE, and have compared them extensively to other infusions on the same weapon.
I see a lot of people on here who are both misinformed on how to best utilize a luck build and misinforming others on the matter. This guide is aimed at new players who may have never heard of luck scaling, as well as veterans who dont feel like experimenting in untreaded waters. I plan to convince you by the end of this post that Luck builds are completely viable, and even better than non-luck builds with the same weapon in a lot of cases. Note that when I say 'viable' I am referring to using a luck build for PvP at SL 120, as I believe that anything is viable for PvE. I will not be referencing Anri's Straight Sword, even though that sword scales with luck. This is because it is the most over-powered straight sword and no one should require a guide to use it. (heres the guide: hit r1 a lot) For the purpose of simplicity, I will assume that you are playing a deprived, but everything still applies to every starting class. If you already know how the hollow infusion works, you can skip the next section.
THE BASICS____________________________________________________________________________
Dark Souls 3 introduced a new upgrade path called Hollow. In order to infuse your weapon with Hollow, you need a Hollow Gem as well as the Profaned Coal. You can acquire a Hollow gem in Farron Keep and you can acquire the coal in Irithyll Dungeon. Another new mechanic introduced in DS3 is character hollowing. If you don't know how to make your charactar Hollow, look up Yuria/Yoels questline. It can be done very early in the game. I feel it is important to mention here that in order to maximize this builds effectiveness, you must be ok with your character looking like a weird zombie.
Infusing your weapon with Hollow does a few things. It reduces the base damage of your weapon slightly (almost always by a lesser amount than any other damage-reducing infusion), it DOES NOT change your weapons natural scaling, and it adds damage that scales with luck. As far as I can tell, the Luck scaling is almost always in the high B to low A range. Star wars knights of the force download. This scaling is not represented by a letter in the Attribute Bonus area, but the extra damage is shown next to your weapons natural damage.
Another less obvious effect of the Hollow infusion is that it gives you extra points in your Luck stat, provided your charactar is sufficiently hollowed. I believe you need to be somewhere around 20 hollowing for it to take effect, and you are granted 1 extra point of luck for every 2 levels of weapon reinforcement. This means that a +10 Hollow infused weapon will give you 5 extra points in your luck, and having a Hollow weapon in each hand gives you 10 total points of luck. I cannot stress how beneficial this is to making luck viable. This gives you 10 free levels of weapon damage scaling, reducing the levels you must invest in order for the weapon to reach maximum effectiveness.
MORE ADVANCED STUFF___________________________________________________________________
I want to expand on some of the less obvious benefits of using a Hollow weapon. When you have a hollow equipment in both hands, you are essentially giving yourself 10 free Soul Levels. This is important, because it means you only have to put 20 points into your luck stat to hit the softcap (and yes, the softcap is the same) rather than the 30 levels required to invest hit the soft cap for dex and stregth. This makes Hollow not only a very good choice to add extra damage to an already well scaling weapon, but also makes hollow a good choice for a weapon that has naturally crap scaling. Assuming you want to go with a luck and str or a luck and dex build, you only need to invest 50 levels into your stats to maximize damage. This leaves you with another 70 levels that you can invest in Vit/Vig/End or whatever you want if you are trying to stay at SL120. If you want to go with a 'pure' luck build, you only need to invest 20 Levels into your weapons damage, leaving a whopping 100 levels to invest in Vit/Vig/End and/or weapon level requirements. Infusing crap scaling weapons with Hollow not only makes them do significantly more damage, it also gives you WAY more levels in other stats that are useful for PvP, because you will not have to invest much in Str/Dex.
A common misconception is that in order to utilize a luck build efficiently, you should find a weapon that has natural bleed damage. This misconception stems from the fact that bleed damage is increased with a higher luck stat. This is true, but the increase is almost completely insignificant, and should not factor in to your weapon choice. I'm not saying that Luck/Bleed builds don't work, they certainly do. I'm simply saying that only using weapons that have natural bleed is significantly reducing your build options for a very small benefit that almost never make a difference in the end. I will talk more about Luck/Bleed later in the guide.
Now that the association between bleed and luck builds has been broken, you are open to an extremely wide range of options when it comes to Luck builds. But what weapon should you use?
WHAT WEAPONS WORK WITH LUCK AND WHY?________________________________________________
Short answer: A lot more than you would think.
Dex/Str weapons: Practically all weapons that have a natural C or better in Dex or Str scaling will benefit MORE from a hollow infusion than a Sharp or Heavy infusion. The drawback to the extra damage is that you have to invest 20 more levels into your scaling stats. I personally think that with a Sharp or Heavy build, you end up with more levels than you really need especially if you plan on being SL120, but this is up to you to decide. Hollow is generally more effective on a dex build, because there are not many weapons that naturally scale highly with strength. When directly comparing Sharp weapons to Hollow weapons, at 40dex/40luck you will do around 40-50 more damage per swing. When comparing Heavy weapons to Hollow weapons you will do around 30-40 more damage per swing. This is because in both cases, the Hollow infusion reduces the base damage by less and does not effect the scaling of the other stat.
Quality Builds: I generally would not recommend using a Hollow infusion on a naturally C/C scaling weapon. I have not tested the waters but I can only assume using a refined gem is more beneficial. This is because of the huge stat requirements. You will presumably do massive damage with a quality/luck build, but I do not think that 40 levels is enough to spread across your non-damage stats to realistically do well in PvP.
Pure Luck builds: Weapons that don't scale well naturally have potentially the most to gain from using a luck build. For example the Brigand Twindaggers are a weapon that almost everyone probably dismissed as soon as they realized it had D/D scaling at +10. However, if you infuse it with hollow and only invest in your luck stat for damage, you will be getting around 200 damage per hit with an investment of only 20 Soul Levels. this gives you 100 damn levels to invest in your other stats. If you have a bunch of Carthus Rouge, you can actually do viable damage with this weapon, stack bleed quickly, and use quickstep. Really a deadly combo. I am not sure about the actual numbers, but it seems that very low scaling weapons actually benefit MORE from being infused with hollow than other weapons. Any weapon with high base damage and low scaling is an extremely good candidate for Hollow infusion. It is a great way to bring trash-tier weapons into viability. You may not do as much damage, but you will have SO much more tankiness and endurance.
Bleed builds: Finding a very fast weapon and infusing it with Hollow is probably the most effective strategy for a bleed based build. Something like Painting Guardians Sword or Brigand Twindaggers will always do better with a a hollow infusion. Use Carthus Rogue to give bleed to non-bleed weapons and you can be a tanky, fast rolling, bleed monster that does more damage than anyone would expect.
Magic builds: The Man-Grub's staff is the only magic catalyst in the game that offers luck scaling. It is acquired from maximizing devotion to the Rosaria's fingers covenant. I have not personally used it, but from what I hear the luck scaling is better than the int scaling on every othr staff. Of course, you still need to meet int requirements for spells so this is probably not a great choice.
CONCLUSION____________________________________________________________________________
If you are using a Dex scaling weapon, a Str scaling weapon, or you want to make a crap scaling weapon viable, try investing 20 points into luck and infusing with Hollow. It almost always gives you a significant damage increase and I think it is always worth it. If you have any questions or critiques, mention them in the comments. And if I forgot about anything, or if I got anything wrong please tell me. I hope you guys found this guide helpful, as it took me a long time to write. I love the Luck stat and the Hollow infusion, and would hate to see it not included in future games. Cheers!
edit: the covenant that gets you Man-Grubs staff is Rosaria's fingers, not Mound-Makers. I have also been told that the requirement for hollow luck-boost to take effect is 15 hollowing.
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