occult is good?

[colui]

i am an arcane fanboy, not bleed, arcane fanboy and idk if it worth occult

[Grey Mauser]

Occult is good yes.

[ESOS]

Yes, rather than split your stat to STR and DEX you can just focus at investing all your points to ARC

[Faust Wither]

Yes and no.

[Pozzy Vibes GGHF :)]

occult makes your weapon scale very well with arcane; the best thing to do is to make a blade that has natural bleed effect into occult infusion.

[StarlightAsh♡]

Originally posted by dragon15:

at low levels, yes. but when you have 80 str 80 dex 80 arcane bleed is superior

You know that the bleed scaling only scales off arcane right? str and dex would impact the base damage of the weapon but not the bleed buildup

[Bonkers]

Occult is generally a little worse than str or dex when it comes to physical damage, but it shines on weapons with innate status effects like claws or spiked weapons.

Some of the best examples is venomous fang, which reaches a baffling 149 poison build-up at 80 arcane, poisoning most enemies instantly.

The great omenkiller cleaver is also an extraordinary occult weapon. It reaches 745 ar (which is only 30 less than the best heavy infused greataxe at 80 str) and 115 bleed. It's also a great option for dual wielding.

Another great tool for occult builds is the spectral spear ash of war. While it's main damage comes from weapon upgrade level, it also scales with arcane. It's a strong ranged attack that deal really good stance damage and easily hits targets that would normally be hard to reach (such as dragon heads). The stance damage does depend on the weapon type it's put on, but even on regular spears it's a force to be reckoned with - I once did a dragon communion playthrough on an almost naked character, only armed with a seal and a short spear with the ash of war and it's one of the smoothest playthroughs I've ever had. Now that the DLC is out, spectarl spear should work perfectly on a bloodfiend's fork to get both damage and bleed from your arcane scaling.

As far as uninfused weapons go, the deadly poison perfume bottle and poisoned hand from the DLC are really nice, especially the Hand, since it gives you a damage buff if anything is poisoned nearby, even if it's in your offhand (meaning it still works if you have it in your left hand, but use your right hand weapon two-handed).

There's also plenty of dex/arc and str/arc weapons, but unless you're interested in them I'll keep off on writing a paragraph about them here.


As for a build suggestion that should be fun:
- Pick hero and rush the venomous fang, pick up lifesteal fist in caelid to be able to make it occult early.
- Throughout the game, search out the mushroom crown, kindred of rot's exultation and the poisoned hand for a damage bonus whenever you poison an enemy.
- Pick up a spiked club or a stone club for enemies that are weak to strike or are hard to reach with claws, such as gargoyles.
- Also seek out items that give you a boost for consecutive hits, such as winged sword insignia, it's rotted version, millicent's prothesis and thorny cracked tear
- ultimately aim for 60 vigor, 80 arcane and at least 30 endurance

I used this build a bit before the DLC, trying to beat as many bosses as I could before leaving each area and was able to completely clean out dragonbarrow (which houses things like the game's strongest bell-bearing hunter) before even going to altus.

[Key]

The point of occult is to turn your ARC scaling into physical damage for bosses immune to status effects. So yes, but it's situational, as using it for a purely physical build is inefficient.

[Loudness]

It depends on the weapon. Non-bleed weapons benefit from a bleed infusion, bleed weapons don't get much of a bleed gain compared to occult, so the dmg you get from occult is worth it.