Frostbite weapons

[Скіф]

Im simply in love with frostbite in this game, going into ng+3 and irithyll straight sword has been my main weapon from the very first moment i found it.

Correct me if im wrong but there are only 3 frostbite weapons in this game.

I was wondering how would you compare vordts hammer and irityhll rapier to irityhll straight sword. Also do you consider irityhll straight sword to br a good weapon at all?

[Xengre]

So Vordt's is considered a great weapon in general for a few reasons. It spanks groups of gankers somewhat effectively because of long duration poise and physical damage reduction and heavy damage with wide swings and gankers tend to be on the lesser side of the skill spectrum (plus changing direction and other mix ups can catch at least one person off guard, and frostbite builds up even when dodged via rolling). Horrible weapon in 1vs1s or against good players in general though tbh. In PvE it has very powerful damage and procs frostbite very easily in usually 2 hits due to the hiigh frostbite value making it very effective against bosses susceptible to frostbite, and even more so if they are also weak to strike (Dragonslayer Armor is most notable it decimates that boss).

Irithyl Straight Sword is great all around for PvE against the right bosses and does alright damage against trash mobs (tho you can definitely get better results against trash with an optimized element/higher AR weapon this will still do just fine). I actually opt for this weapon in my later NG+s (currently NG+5) SL26 +2 weapon char on bosses because the damage from Dragonslayer Axe and Darkhand have been so heavily outscaled by boss resistances and health that I definitely want to rely on the heavy burst dmg from bleed and frostbite % HP whenever available to speed up long fights. I use it as a makeshift bleed build which I will describe in a moment.

The Rapier... well its good against Dragonslayer Armor but very inferior to Vordt's Greathammer on that boss and overall isn't that great as a weapon, imo. There are simply better rapiers.

Frostbite is a great option as a makeshift bleed when a boss is immune to bleed or very resistance to it but not frostbite. What you do is take the frostbite weapon in right hand and a fire infused weapon in left (you can swap from 2h to 1h to access the fire weapon if need be like with Vordt Greathammer during the cleanse attack). You proc frostbite via buildup then that does the % dmg and then you hit the boss once with a fire based attack (left fire infused weapon or weapon swap or whatever) to cleanse frostbite immediately. This removes the debuff but allows you to start proc buildup of frostbite immediately again effectively simulating bleed status on bosses you can't easily bleed. On some bosses it is especially effective if they are vulnerable to frostbite such as Dragonslayer Armor (easy proc for fast dmg), or Gael and SoC (makes Gael dumb, helps counter his massive Midir sized HP pool while SoC it makes him tire out and kneel for free damage frequently if you build it fast enough esp with Vordt but his frostbite resistance really goes up a lot each NG+ so it can become harder to achieve... at least with +2 weapons in my experience).