Weapon Choice for Dark Mage

[cppop]

Hello!
My friends and I are doing a final fantasy class run and I am a dark mage. I was thinking about using a low stat requirement weapon (because I'm not planning on lvling str or dex) that did great damage to infuse with dark and buff with dark weapon but my friend says that dark rapier isn't that good. I looked at the foot soldier sword and that seemed pretty good. Raw Rapier, Dark Foot Soldier, Raw Foot Soldier? Any suggestions?

[[FT].Galactus]

Dark mace or longsword work pretty fine too. Roaring halberd is an excellent choice dark build. U can 2 hand it if u dont wanna go 16 str.

[TrueArchery]

Both the foot soldiers sword and the rapier are very good.
Go elemental, it's better almost everywhere. Some enemies like the lion warriors have stupidly high elemental def and the dlc bosses get boosted def for summons, but for the vast majority an elemental one has better dmg output.
Lightning might be better than dark because just about everything is weak to lightning lol, it won't change the dmg added by the buff noticably.

[King Robert Baratheon]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Both the foot soldiers sword and the rapier are very good.
Go elemental, it's better almost everywhere. Some enemies like the lion warriors have stupidly high elemental def and the dlc bosses get boosted def for summons, but for the vast majority an elemental one has better dmg output.
Lightning might be better than dark because just about everything is weak to lightning lol, it won't change the dmg added by the buff noticably.

The lion warriors will be no problem for you if you have a uninfused weapon or have a Enchanted weapon. Enchanted weapons deal pure physical damage but scale with your intelligence. A fully upgraded Enchanted Rapier can do a lot of damage to the Lion Warriors with a backstab if you have high INT and low dex. Dex is a good melee stat for mages though.

[TrueArchery]

Dex does literally nothing for mages. There's no synergy at all unlike in Das1 and 3.

Enchanted is worse than raw as a hexer. You need quite a lot of int, like 40ish, to make it better. Forgot the exact breakpoint.

[King Robert Baratheon]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Dex does literally nothing for mages. There's no synergy at all unlike in Das1 and 3.

Enchanted is worse than raw as a hexer. You need quite a lot of int, like 40ish, to make it better. Forgot the exact breakpoint.

I know that there's no synergy between casters & dex in Dark Souls 2 but a strength-hexer or strength sorcerer seems less efficient to me. It sounds like OP already knows enough to make a decision on their own. I don't think they even needed to make this thread.

[Saint Lucifer]

On my Hexer I went fine thru the entire game using the Chaos Rapier. Of course the initial stats seem low, and it needs the rare Twinkling Titanite to upgrade, but the nice thing about this weapon is the low requirement (7STR/14DEX) and the high fire scaling, which grows huge as you level up your dark bonus, because your fire bonus will be second highest. Lets say you have 170 dark bonus, then you´ll have about 165 fire bonus aswell. Fire scaling of Chaos Rapier starts at B and goes up to almost A (there are several instances of each letter which are not shown to the player). The unique thing about the Chaos Rapier is that is has initial fire damage but you can further enhance it with any resin or magic buff. So you can get every element on top of your fire damage. Just notice: DONT infuse it, because it won´t gain any advantage from infusions. Leave it clean +5 and buff situational like you want it.

Another nice weapon for a Hexer is the Silverblack Spear, but it needs some more stats: 9STR/16DEX. It has initial dark damage, goes to +10 fast, does more damage than the Chaos Rapier, but is slower of course. I hope this helps you out.

[TrueArchery]

Originally posted by $aint Lûcifer:

On my Hexer I went fine thru the entire game using the Chaos Rapier. Of course the initial stats seem low, and it needs the rare Twinkling Titanite to upgrade, but the nice thing about this weapon is the low requirement (7STR/14DEX) and the high fire scaling, which grows huge as you level up your dark bonus, because your fire bonus will be second highest. Lets say you have 170 dark bonus, then you´ll have about 165 fire bonus aswell. Fire scaling of Chaos Rapier starts at B and goes up to almost A (there are several instances of each letter which are not shown to the player). The unique thing about the Chaos Rapier is that is has initial fire damage but you can further enhance it with any resin or magic buff. So you can get every element on top of your fire damage. Just notice: DONT infuse it, because it won´t gain any advantage from infusions. Leave it clean +5 and buff situational like you want it.

Another nice weapon for a Hexer is the Silverblack Spear, but it needs some more stats: 9STR/16DEX. It has initial dark damage, goes to +10 fast, does more damage than the Chaos Rapier, but is slower of course. I hope this helps you out.

Just an infused rapier beats the chaos rapier noticably. And needs less physical stats.
Even better: ice rapier.

Originally posted by R'hllor, Lord of Light:

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Dex does literally nothing for mages. There's no synergy at all unlike in Das1 and 3.

Enchanted is worse than raw as a hexer. You need quite a lot of int, like 40ish, to make it better. Forgot the exact breakpoint.

I know that there's no synergy between casters & dex in Dark Souls 2 but a strength-hexer or strength sorcerer seems less efficient to me. It sounds like OP already knows enough to make a decision on their own. I don't think they even needed to make this thread.

Doesn't make sense, why does it seem less efficient? I mean, none of them go well in particular, unless you spec for specific weapons like sacred chime hammer or defender gs or scythe of want or the heide weapons... They scale (uninfused) decently.
Efficient would be neither of the 2 hybrids but a pure int and/or fth build. With a low stat weapon like the foot soldier sword longsword rapier estoc ice rapier etc. bandit axe too. Since the scaling after infusions is bad for former physical weapon you lose next to no ar but gain a huge boost in base damage, up to 150%.

[Irkalla]

Dark infused Silverblack Spear is very potent and strong for a hexer type build.
Dark Longsword is pretty good on a hexer too. Longsword in general is an amazing weapon.

[warslad]

The foot soldier sword rocks and is very underrated. It's scaling and durability sux, but the requirements and stamina consumption are low, moveset is excellent and it's perfect sidearm for a buff build. My 149k sorcerer has an AR of 373 with 40 int and with great magic weapon, it hits plenty hard. The durabilty is an issue at +0 but after a few upgrades, the damage is enough so that it is rarely a problem after that and as a caster you can easily use the repair spell if needed.

[Inane]

Get Crypt Blacksword from Old Dead One(it's Rotten on ng+ or bonfire ascetic used on second bonfire at Black Gulch), upgrade it and infuse with Darknight Stone. Also get Dark Clutch Ring from Crown of Ivory king(it increase your dark damage) and buff weapon with Dark Weapon Hex. You will be one hell of a destroyer. :)