Best weapons to infuse with lightning on a strength/faith build?

[Magic Duck]

topic

[Tax evasion]

Any weapon you're comfortable with does the job. Slap a sunlight blade on top of it and you're gucci. Keep in mind that it will lower the strength scaling iirc.
Even the old whip +5 slapped with a lightning infusion and sunlight blade does 600+ per hit.

[Magic Duck]

İlk olarak Arkhtor tarafından gönderildi:

Any weapon you're comfortable with does the job. Slap a sunlight blade on top of it and you're gucci. Keep in mind that it will lower the strength scaling iirc.
Even the old whip +5 slapped with a lightning infusion and sunlight blade does 600+ per hit.

thnx for the reply.Im currently at a low level using dragonslayer cresent axe and looking for another secondary weapon like a straight sword which is good with lightning.Any recomendations? SM 80k

[Chinese Blin]

i would recommend any kind of mace you are confortable with using, as strike damage is king, and maces are all about str (with maybe a few exceptions i can't think off atm).

hand axe is a good backup plan if the above fails.

[Magic Duck]

Is craftman's hammer any good?

[TrueArchery]

If you infuse a weapon the scaling becomes so bad that you just shouldn't bother with it. Exceptions are innate elemental weapons but the respective elemental infusion still cripples the physical scaling.

High base damage/low scaling weapons are usually the best for infusions. At your stats a Longsword is pretty much the best Straight Sword. The kind of elemental infusion doesn't even matter much.
If you want a hammer, yea, you should pick the Craftsman's. The Homunculus Mace is another good one for infusions in particular, but it's locked pretty late into the game, so...
But again you don't get much out of your levels in Str/Fth. Like we're talking about around 20 AR from requirements to the softcap, so pretty much 1 AR per level. That's terrible.

[Tax evasion]

Yeah, what is said above is true.
If you want to infuse a weapon, there's no use going over the minimum requirements to wield it and is, in fact, a waste of points. You're better off investing in the buff related to the infusion.

[76561198849090398]

Try zweihander

[TrueArchery]

İlk olarak Arkhtor tarafından gönderildi:

Yeah, what is said above is true.
If you want to infuse a weapon, there's no use going over the minimum requirements to wield it and is, in fact, a waste of points. You're better off investing in the buff related to the infusion.

It really doesn't matter whether the buff's element fits the infusion or not. There is a synergy but it's literally a single digit damage increase, pretty worthless. Unless it's an innate elemental weapon where matching elements gain a way more significant buff.
Thus the best buffs are Dark Weapon (adds good damage, doesn't need much investment for just attuning/casting it and neither for the longest duration possible, has plenty of casts, can be picked up easily and early in the game plus it's usually the least resisted element in PvP) or Sunlightblade (most common PvE weakness).
And I guess Resonant Weapon when you're at a very high level/SM where its drawbacks really don't matter any more.

[Tax evasion]

My raw damage with a lightning old whip +5 with only the requirement stats are a little weaker compared to my powerstanced normal Old Whip +5. However, I have to disagree on the buff part. The damage goes up quite drastically when I apply Sunlight Blade with a Dragon Chime +5 and 50 faith.

EDIT : I read the post fully (my bad), so the comment above doesn't really stand.
Isn't Flame Weapon viable, as well as the great / crystal / magic weapon counterpart ?

[Vinnolo]

lightning infused weapons lose scaling with str/dex and gain more scaling with faith, so having high str/dex is not advised, the best lightning infused weapons are the ones with base lightning damage, like the heide weapons (you can farm a heide sword just when you start the game and use it for the entire game)

[TrueArchery]

İlk olarak Arkhtor tarafından gönderildi:

My raw damage with a lightning old whip +5 with only the requirement stats are a little weaker compared to my powerstanced normal Old Whip +5. However, I have to disagree on the buff part. The damage goes up quite drastically when I apply Sunlight Blade with a Dragon Chime +5 and 50 faith.

EDIT : I read the post fully (my bad), so the comment above doesn't really stand.
Isn't Flame Weapon viable, as well as the great / crystal / magic weapon counterpart ?

Buffs have different power tiers.
1) Resonant
2) Dark, Sunlight, Crystal Magic
3) Great Magic
4) Flame
5) Magic

Only tier 2 is really worth using. Flame Weapon if you have literally just 1 attunement slot for buffs and don't want to invest ANY Int/Fth. It's decent for builds like that and better than resins, but pretty meh otherwise. It doesn't add as much damage as the better ones and the fire element isn't that good overall, its duration also doesn't scale (but that's not a big factor).
You could go for Great Magic for its large number of casts and low stat requirements (plus low requirements to max its duration), but honestly just use Dark instead, it needs a bit more investment but is worth it.
Almost everything is viable, but some things are just better than others and buffs are no exception.

İlk olarak Kill4rz tarafından gönderildi:

lightning infused weapons lose scaling with str/dex and gain more scaling with faith, so having high str/dex is not advised, the best lightning infused weapons are the ones with base lightning damage, like the heide weapons (you can farm a heide sword just when you start the game and use it for the entire game)

See the issue is that physical weapons lose a bunch of their scaling and gain elemental scaling, like you already said, but that new elemental scaling is pretty bad, too.
The exception are innate elemental weapons. However, often times just infusing a physical weapon like the Longsword is still just better than picking up and infusing an innate elemental weapon like the Heide Knight Sword. The LS is just more damaging out of the box till you've put like 30+ points into Faith and even at the softcaps 40 or 50 it doesn't deal much more damage.
Compare a Lightning LS at the Warrior's base stats to a Lightning Heide Sword with those base stats and 50 Faith: 174/172 vs 151/253. 346 vs. 404. It's a difference of 58, but consider that you spent 45 levels for that increase which is pretty inefficient. If you level Faith for spells and spell damage (which actually scales well with your stats) it's another matter because then the usually 30ish more AR (comparing former physical infused and innate elemental infused) is just a pretty free bonus, but just don't level it solely for scaling gains. Not worth it, it's super poor mileage. Those levels are better invested elsewhere.

by the way, a Lightning Bandit Axe at base stats (232/232 with Warrior) will almost always have more AR than a Lightning Dragonslayer Axe. Like you literally need near maxed Str, Dex and Fth to surpass that AR. Innate elemental weapons are often not the best choices.
OP, don't let this stop you from using that axe or whatever else you want to use, they're all absolutely viable, I'm just clarifying a couple of things. Scaling just isn't very good in this game and should be the last priority for most weapons/builds.

[CALICOMP 1.1]

Lightning Greatsword if your going for a strength build as zweihander leans towards more equality/faith build but it isnt a bad choice as it has a good moveset but if you are at a much higher level for more stat investment you can go for weapons like the fume ultra greatsword or the king's ultra greatsword

Lightning bandit axe is a must and hits like a truck when infused with sunlight blade

Lightning curved dragon greatsword or murakumo are good ones

Lightning greataxe is a good one but if you have enough strength for the giant's axe go for it or the bandit great axe for a different moveset and lower stat reqs

For greatswords the lightning defender greatsword is probably your best choice and can has a special where it can be infused with lightning. Lightning mastoden greatsword is another good one and the black dragon sword is another good choice if you dont have much stat investment at all.

Lightning Homunculus mace outputs great damage and also is one of the only maces with a decent moveset.

All of these can be buffed with sunlight blade (besides the defender greatsword) making them hit like a truck so thats pretty highly recommended

[Magic Duck]

Thnx for all the replies, just need to make one thing clear do the buffs (dark,sunlight,etc) scale with faith/int or should i just have min req for the buffs?

[CALICOMP 1.1]

İlk olarak Magic Duck tarafından gönderildi:

Thnx for all the replies, just need to make one thing clear do the buffs (dark,sunlight,etc) scale with faith/int or should i just have min req for the buffs?

To sum it up damage is dependent on your attack rating and not faith/int but the duration for how long it lasts is dependent on faith/int
you can check this out if you want more info
https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkSouls2/comments/2xpwud/the_mystery_of_buffs_a_post_of_calculations_and/

[TrueArchery]

İlk olarak CALICOMP 1.1 tarafından gönderildi:

Lightning Greatsword if your going for a strength build as zweihander leans towards more equality/faith build

Dude, an uninfused Zweihander gains <1 AR on average per Dex level from the base requirement to the softcap, lol. That's trash and gets even worse when you infuse it. I checked out of curiousity, you gain a whopping 8 AR from 12 to 40 Dex.
And both have pretty much the same (bad) Faith-scaling when lightning-infused.
Lightning Zwei gains <1 AR per level from Str, Lightning GS scales twice as well but still gains <2 AR per level. Bad.

For reference, an uninfused GS gains ~4 AR per Str level from req to softcap. It's one of the best scalings in the game, actually. And still not THAT high, lol

So really... don't think that any infused weapon leans more towards Strength or Dex or Int/Fth... they all scale terribly. Base requirements, done, period. Again, the exception being innate elemental weapons and if you're after spell damage/buff duration/elemental defense because then it's just a free (& barely noticable) side effect.

I wouldn't really recommend the Greataxe or Giant Stone Axe btw. The Greataxe is just very short and the moveset doesn't really fix that, especially onehanded.
The Drakekeeper's Greataxe is extremely similar but longer which helps it more than you'd think. It needs a few more levels for its requirements but it's worth it.
The GSA however is just unproportionally heavy and while it does have higher AR, it lacks the counter damage bonus. So while it has like 40 AR more, 10% counter damage bonus in 600ish AR range is worth more than that. A lot of your hits are counterhits so that stat is fairly important. And because of all that the GSA isn't really a great choice, it's usually outperformed but needs noticably more investment to handle the slightly higher Str req + the way higher weight. It's also less easy to upgrade and only really "shines" at high upgrade levels due to the nature of all boss weapons so its early availability isn't worth much, but that's just a minor gripe (Petrified Dragon Bone weapons start with low base damage but have it multiplied by 2.5 when they're fully upgraded, regular Titanite weapons start with "regular" base damage which is doubled at +10 and Twinkling Titanite weapons start with higher base damage but only have 1.5x as much when fully upgraded).

Similar logic applies to the mentioned Greatswords. If you have high Faith just go for the Defender GS, like mentioned. But the others are rather poor examples. Mastodon is heavy as hell and consumes a ton of stamina with each swing. Comparing infused weapons, it only has 20ish more AR than a Claymore which is more than outdone by the Clay's counter damage stat, but it requires MORE stats all around (except tor that literal single point in Dex) while performing usually worse, arguably the Clay's moveset is more useful, too.
The Black Dragon GS isn't bad, but has the same counter dmg issue, is more annoying to get and actually doesn't even have very low stat requirements (25 Str + 16 Dex compared to the 20/13 of the Clay for example).
So low Faith -> Lightning Clay and high Faith (40+) -> Lightning Defender is my suggestion. Strength doesn't do much for both of them, see my thousands of remarks about bad scaling of infused weaons above.

The stuff about buffs was already mentioned, but for less numbers and testing and more conclusions simply take a look at this wiki (the "Spells" tab in particular in this case): http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/