Best straight sword?

[PROPHET]

Ashen warrior sword vs Heide knight sword!
stats:
STR- 20
DEX- 40
Faith- 16
Please suggest....Should I infuse lightning gem in any of these...I'm a dex user basically..

[Coylie3]

Neither.

Raw infused Black Dragon Sword +5 actually has the highest physical damage output of all straight swords at 20 STR.

Problem is the Black Dragon Sword is a pretty rare drop from the black dragon knights at the Dragon Shrine, and only the ones wielding the sword can drop it.

If you want to pick between specifically the two you said, then probably the Ashen Warrior Sword. Heide Knight Sword may say it has high AR, but it is split between the physical damage and lightning damage. Split damage will always be worse than pure physical or pure elemental damage.

[Loren]

Heidi Knight Sword has meh moveset. Ashen Warrior Sword has Balder Side Sword of DS1 moveset. Moveset trumps anything imo. Ashen Warrior Sword scales better at Dex unupgraded despite it is C / C. Upgraded, it is B.

[JellyPuff]

Fume Sword, uninfused.

[kasaBlanka]

Sun sword has B scalling in either Str/Dex

[Dexter]

There are no best weapons in Dark Souls... when people will learn this
Want to know AR, go and seach it on google, You can check AR with any infusion or without and your current stats just search.
Want to know moveset before farming, go and search.

http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/straightswords

[Loren]

Originally posted by dexter411:

There are no best weapons in Dark Souls... when people will learn this
Want to know AR, go and seach it on google, You can check AR with any infusion or without and your current stats just search.
Want to know moveset before farming, go and search.

http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/straightswords

That is basically it. If you are asking for PVE anything you like works.

Ashen Warrior Sword (Low Durability), Fume Sword, Sunlight Sword (You have Faith so check it.) and Longsword are the best straight swords to check first.

Please be reminded that there is higher or lower types of same letter scaling in this game. For example Ashen Warrior Sword has C / C unupgraded. But it is lower C for strenght, higher C for Dex. It is misleading. Look for things like that.

Longsword is good PVP. So you can get it first until you can reach your chosen one.

Please add if I missed any.

[TrueArchery]

There is no Sunlight Sword in this game (even though it's basically just re-named to Sun Sword). It also only scales with Faith in Dark Souls 3. It's a quality weapon in the other 2 games.

The Ashen Warrior Sword scales better with Strength than Dex. Infact at +10 it scales with 50% of your Strength BNS and with 35% of your Dex BNS. Scaling letters are pretty ♥♥♥♥ in this game, they're trash when it comes to infusions and they're uneven for Strength and Dex anyway. An A Dex scaling is pretty equal to a B Strength scaling.

For PvP there are 3 categories, best to worst:
1) Longsword & Fume Sword
2) Anything with the rolling poke and standard light attack (Shortsword, Foot Soldier Sword, Ashen Warrior Sword, Sun Sword)
3) the rest, and those are noticably worse

In PvE whatever got the highest AR (and counter damage). You're going to almost exclusively use light attacks and range isn't that important. Like already mentioned, at your stats your best bet is a Raw (or elemental) Black Dragon Sword, if that's too annoying to farm the next best should be the Varangian Sword.

Originally posted by Coylie3:

If you want to pick between specifically the two you said, then probably the Ashen Warrior Sword. Heide Knight Sword may say it has high AR, but it is split between the physical damage and lightning damage. Split damage will always be worse than pure physical or pure elemental damage.

The HKS will usually still outdamage the AWS. It has ~50 less physical AR and well over 100 lightning on top, it's unlikely that many people run around with 50+% lightning defense and most things in PvE don't have that either. The drawback is that you cannot use resins on it but on the AWS you can which gives the latter an edge. Both can be spell buffed though and then the HKS will probably noticably outdamage the AWS with Sunlight Blade.

[Loren]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

There is no Sunlight Sword in this game (even though it's basically just re-named to Sun Sword). It also only scales with Faith in Dark Souls 3. It's a quality weapon in the other 2 games.

The Ashen Warrior Sword scales better with Strength than Dex. Infact at +10 it scales with 50% of your Strength BNS and with 35% of your Dex BNS. Scaling letters are pretty ♥♥♥♥ in this game, they're trash when it comes to infusions and they're uneven for Strength and Dex anyway. An A Dex scaling is pretty equal to a B Strength scaling.

For PvP there are 3 categories, best to worst:
1) Longsword & Fume Sword
2) Anything with the rolling poke and standard light attack (Shortsword, Foot Soldier Sword, Ashen Warrior Sword, Sun Sword)
3) the rest, and those are noticably worse

In PvE whatever got the highest AR (and counter damage). You're going to almost exclusively use light attacks and range isn't that important. Like already mentioned, at your stats your best bet is a Raw (or elemental) Black Dragon Sword, if that's too annoying to farm the next best should be the Varangian Sword.

Originally posted by Coylie3:

If you want to pick between specifically the two you said, then probably the Ashen Warrior Sword. Heide Knight Sword may say it has high AR, but it is split between the physical damage and lightning damage. Split damage will always be worse than pure physical or pure elemental damage.

The HKS will usually still outdamage the AWS. It has ~50 less physical AR and well over 100 lightning on top, it's unlikely that many people run around with 50+% lightning defense and most things in PvE don't have that either. The drawback is that you cannot use resins on it but on the AWS you can which gives the latter an edge. Both can be spell buffed though and then the HKS will probably noticably outdamage the AWS with Sunlight Blade.

Dear True Archery,

Thanks for bringing attention to Fume Sword. It is great indeed. I wonder how it is for pure dex. I will check it out. Also sorry about Sunlight Sword, Sun Sword thing. I just arrived from DSR. :)

2 of 3 DS2 wiki pages state that Ashen Warrior Sword is better with Dex. You must be mistaken. Or there is a big mistake on their side which we should correct. Please check and advise.

Thanks,

[TrueArchery]

No, I'm right. I don't know whether you just look at the letters, but like I already said they're pretty unreliable. If you don't believe me, just test it ingame... a Strength build will have more AR than a Dex build. Or use a character planner like soulsplanner.
edit: the wikidot also links to a spreadsheet with the exact scaling: http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/physical-atk-dexterity

[Loren]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

No, I'm right. I don't know whether you just look at the letters, but like I already said they're pretty unreliable. If you don't believe me, just test it ingame... a Strength build will have more AR than a Dex build. Or use a character planner like soulsplanner.
edit: the wikidot also links to a spreadsheet with the exact scaling: http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/physical-atk-dexterity

Hi again,

I know letters are unreliable. Also thanks for Soulsplanner tip. That tool was not known to me previously. It has the option to choose +2 rings which Mugenmonkey does not have.

However Soulsplanner do not have option for regular weapon upgrades. So we can observe only C/C in Soulsplanner. Strenght gives a 10 point raise compared to dex when I enter 20 to each then raise one of them to 40. But what about upgrade? That makes the dex scaling B. I would like to test ingame but I cannot have that much souls in one go.

I don't see how your wikidot link is related but I'm no good at math at all. Instead please look at these:

Especially this one: http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/ashen-warrior-sword

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Ashen+Warrior+Sword

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYB7f_Hn_Ec

There is a link at http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/physical-atk-dexterity called uninfused calibration. It does not include Ashen Warrior sword. It is also for an old version of the game.

Also are you thinking in terms of infusions? I'm talking about regular upgrade max only.

Could you please check the data I provided and tell me again? Ashen Warrior Sword is my weapon of choise. I would really appreciate it if you could clarify this with me.

Thanks,

[TrueArchery]

Soulsplanner compares the max weapon level.

At the bottom there are tabs for more recent versions of the game...

[Loren]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Soulsplanner compares the max weapon level.

At the bottom there are tabs for more recent versions of the game...

Okey then. Soulsplanner miscalculates my poise (tested ingame now) but otherwise it looks solid enough.

Difference is only 10 AR. Since I want to use Loyce Greatsword in same build I will take my chances.

Thanks for discussing this with me and also for giving the tips about Soulsplanner and Fume Sword.

[TrueArchery]

Also, I read over the wikidot article again and there's this stuff written:

The letter ranks are the same, but the sword scales with Dexterity better than the Longsword does. At 24 STR and 30 DEX, it gives +70 AR compared to the +65 of the latter. Reinforcement also improves scaling for both stats, whereas the common sword only gets better at Strength scaling.

Did you maybe miss the BETTER THAN THE LONGSWORD part? While that is true, I also think that this testing is fundamentally flawed because it assumes that the Strength-C of the Longsword and the Strength-C of the Ashen Warrior have the exact same actual value. Which is true, but its known that other weapons with Strength-C have different actual scaling (like the Black Knight Sword or Greatsword of the Forlorn or).

[TrueArchery]

Originally posted by Loren:

Okey then. Soulsplanner miscalculates my poise (tested ingame now)

Elaborate, are you looking at the right stat screen? One only shows your "natural" stats from levels, the other also takes equipment into account.

[Loren]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Originally posted by Loren:

Okey then. Soulsplanner miscalculates my poise (tested ingame now)

Elaborate, are you looking at the right stat screen? One only shows your "natural" stats from levels, the other also takes equipment into account.

Soulsplanner shows 43 total poise with Alva Set+Heidi Knight Iron Mask (Not helm) while it "is" 44 ingame. That is total poise from Defense section of ingame character screen.

I think I did miss the better than longsword thing, yes. But thats a moot point since it is about unupgraded version of the sword.

I'm interested in Ashen+10 regular only anyway. If Soulsplanner is accurate, 30 Str / 40 Dex looses me 10 Ar compared to 40 Str / 30 Dex. I would like to have Loyce GS too. So I will forgo 10 AR.

https://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Weapon+AR+and+Scaling+Calculator

This too show that weapon has higher AR with 40 Str / 30 Dex. It specifies that the weapon upgrade is max. It shows a difference of 5 instead of 10 though.