Best build/stats to invest souls into?

[Bung]

I usually use the normal longsword and shield but do use the farron sword once in a while for fun, so far ive been investing my souls into vigor, dex, and endurance. Ive gotten a couple neat miracles but dont have enough faith to use them. Should i invest alot of souls into faith points to use these miracles? Or are they not worth my time and wont do much in boss battles/pvp?

[Jeremy]

post your stats

[Bung]

Vigor - 20
Attunement - 10
Endurance - 20
Vitality - 16
Strength - 21
Dexterity - 21
Intelligence - 9
Faith - 9
Luck - 7

[Jeremy]

Level up vigor, endurance, strength, and dex
Looks like you are doing a quality build. this means you are leveling up both strength, and dexterity. This will let you use 80% of this games weapons. Along the way figure out what types of weapons you enjoy using.

[Alltop]

I usually go for 40 vig and 30+ end before I min / max my Dex / Str, depending on weapon.

[Bung]

Originally posted by Jeromeperson:

Level up vigor, endurance, strength, and dex
Looks like you are doing a quality build. this means you are leveling up both strength, and dexterity. This will let you use 80% of this games weapons. Along the way figure out what types of weapons you enjoy using.

Thats what im going for mainly, but ive got all these cool miracles like lightning blade and spear, but they require such high faith, and they worth the souls?

[Jeremy]

Originally posted by Jamalian the Somalian:

Originally posted by Jeromeperson:

Level up vigor, endurance, strength, and dex
Looks like you are doing a quality build. this means you are leveling up both strength, and dexterity. This will let you use 80% of this games weapons. Along the way figure out what types of weapons you enjoy using.

Thats what im going for mainly, but ive got all these cool miracles like lightning blade and spear, but they require such high faith, and they worth the souls?

If this character will be primarily for PvE i would recomend you start putting points into faith once you got 40 vigor, 30endurance, 40strth, 40dex. then i would recomend you start putting points into faith or int.

but thats my two cents, please dont feel forced to do what others say.

[Ragnaman]

There is a ring that adds 5 stat points to VIG, END, STA;
You could minmax if you go:
25 VIG (40 final VIG is ok too, but scaling is a bit smaller after 30 VIG)
35 END (160 stamina at 40 END and scaling becomes better at high END stats and stops at 40END).
Stamina depending on how heavy you want your gear.

Stamina == Life if you plan to go in melee, as good shield then becomes what keeps you alive.

Miracles are trash if you use them for support. I hear they are good if you build a dedicated miracle nuker. In short you need to invest about 40 points in attunement/faith for miracles to become a good healing source that is more effective than estus (but heals are slow, often does not work for bosses).

DS2 was much more fun in terms of miracles (dat lightning spear before nerf...)

[Bung]

Originally posted by Ragnaman:

There is a ring that adds 5 stat points to VIG, END, STA;
You could minmax if you go:
25 VIG (40 final VIG is ok too, but scaling is a bit smaller after 30 VIG)
35 END (160 stamina at 40 END and scaling becomes better at high END stats and stops at 40END).
Stamina depending on how heavy you want your gear.

Stamina == Life if you plan to go in melee, as good shield then becomes what keeps you alive.

Miracles are trash if you use them for support. I hear they are good if you build a dedicated miracle nuker. In short you need to invest about 40 points in attunement/faith for miracles to become a good healing source that is more effective than estus (but heals are slow, often does not work for bosses).

DS2 was much more fun in terms of miracles (dat lightning spear before nerf...)

Originally posted by Jeromeperson:

Originally posted by Jamalian the Somalian:

Thats what im going for mainly, but ive got all these cool miracles like lightning blade and spear, but they require such high faith, and they worth the souls?

If this character will be primarily for PvE i would recomend you start putting points into faith once you got 40 vigor, 30endurance, 40strth, 40dex. then i would recomend you start putting points into faith or int.

but thats my two cents, please dont feel forced to do what others say.

Alright, ill make sure to grind those stats out beforehand, thanks alot for the adivce, glad to see this community helps new players better than others lol.

[Ragnaman]

Getting to SL 50 is easy, then it gets slower. I'd recommend getting 30 VIG as soon as possible (once you have stat requirement for your weapons).
Higher HP pool allows for more mistakes, less deaths == faster progress == faster gains.

Chainmail is superb early gear (very high slash protection for what it is).

[Sines]

26 Vigor is where the returns really drop off. I'd get to 26 Vigor and then not worry about it until later.

Anyway, Vitality for heavier gear is nice if you want to use it, but don't invest in it just for better armor, as it doesn't have the best returns. Do invest in it for bigger swords and shields, or if you just like the look of armor that happens to be too heavy for you to wear. Fashion Souls, baby!

Overall, as people have said, you want Vigor, Endurance and Strength/Dexterity. High Endurance is particularly important if you intend to make heavy use of a shield, though it's never a bad investment. Strength and Dexterity both help your weapons deal more damage, but depending on the weapon, one will be more important than the other. Additionally, your Strength contribution to damage increases when you two-hand, so if you're using a weapon that scales equally with Strength and Dexterity, invest in Strength first. Strength is also good for allowing you to use heavy shields, and the highest strength requirements for weapons are much greater than the highest dexterity requirements.

So, when in doubt between which of the two stats to raise, Strength is usually the better choice. But if you're using the Brigand Twin Daggers, then obviously it's kinda crap :D

One thing to bear in mind though. There is a way in the game to reset your stats back to your base stats. If you regret your decisions, or you decide you want to try a different kind of character, you'll have no trouble doing it. Additionally, the Knight base class is arguably the most flexible base class, as it has very little wasted stats for most builds, so you have that going for you.

You do really seem interested in Miracles, though. And since you said you have Lightning Weapon, then I think you're far enough in the game for a Faith build to start paying off. While I'd recommend against it for a first playthrough, if it's what you want to do, then go right ahead. Ideally, you'll want Lightning Weapon, as well as the Divine Tome of Lothric, and the Giants Coal (for making permanently infused lightning weapons).

Now, you need a lot of points in Faith for it to really pay off, so you may wish to consider just resetting your stats. I'd recommend going 18/18 Strength and Dexterity. 18 Strength opens up some good shields (Shield of Want and Black Knight Shield) and 18 Dexterity gives you a nice selection of weapons including the Lothric Knight Sword, which is basically an upgraded Long Sword. However, keeping your physical stats even lower to allow for more magic or defensive stats isn't a bad idea. Long Sword is pretty good all on it's own, and if you don't use shields too often, then you can just use a basic 100% physical block shield. After your Strength and Dexterity you can go up to around 40-60 Faith (how high depends on whether you want to be a 'dedicated' Cleric, or a more martially inclined Paladin). The Cleric can toss lightning in addition to their weapon, while the Paladin will mostly use their spells to buff themselves and make them better in fights.

Overall though, I find magic to be very underwhelming in Dark Souls 3. Enemies are often too fast and aggressive for you to really have time firing off some spells, especially since spells rarely do all that much damage anyways. While you can make it work, it's something of an uphil battles, compared to alternatives. Especially since Dark Souls 3 has some of the better sword play in the series.

[Bung]

Originally posted by Sines:

26 Vigor is where the returns really drop off. I'd get to 26 Vigor and then not worry about it until later.

Anyway, Vitality for heavier gear is nice if you want to use it, but don't invest in it just for better armor, as it doesn't have the best returns. Do invest in it for bigger swords and shields, or if you just like the look of armor that happens to be too heavy for you to wear. Fashion Souls, baby!

Overall, as people have said, you want Vigor, Endurance and Strength/Dexterity. High Endurance is particularly important if you intend to make heavy use of a shield, though it's never a bad investment. Strength and Dexterity both help your weapons deal more damage, but depending on the weapon, one will be more important than the other. Additionally, your Strength contribution to damage increases when you two-hand, so if you're using a weapon that scales equally with Strength and Dexterity, invest in Strength first. Strength is also good for allowing you to use heavy shields, and the highest strength requirements for weapons are much greater than the highest dexterity requirements.

So, when in doubt between which of the two stats to raise, Strength is usually the better choice. But if you're using the Brigand Twin Daggers, then obviously it's kinda crap :D

One thing to bear in mind though. There is a way in the game to reset your stats back to your base stats. If you regret your decisions, or you decide you want to try a different kind of character, you'll have no trouble doing it. Additionally, the Knight base class is arguably the most flexible base class, as it has very little wasted stats for most builds, so you have that going for you.

You do really seem interested in Miracles, though. And since you said you have Lightning Weapon, then I think you're far enough in the game for a Faith build to start paying off. While I'd recommend against it for a first playthrough, if it's what you want to do, then go right ahead. Ideally, you'll want Lightning Weapon, as well as the Divine Tome of Lothric, and the Giants Coal (for making permanently infused lightning weapons).

Now, you need a lot of points in Faith for it to really pay off, so you may wish to consider just resetting your stats. I'd recommend going 18/18 Strength and Dexterity. 18 Strength opens up some good shields (Shield of Want and Black Knight Shield) and 18 Dexterity gives you a nice selection of weapons including the Lothric Knight Sword, which is basically an upgraded Long Sword. However, keeping your physical stats even lower to allow for more magic or defensive stats isn't a bad idea. Long Sword is pretty good all on it's own, and if you don't use shields too often, then you can just use a basic 100% physical block shield. After your Strength and Dexterity you can go up to around 40-60 Faith (how high depends on whether you want to be a 'dedicated' Cleric, or a more martially inclined Paladin). The Cleric can toss lightning in addition to their weapon, while the Paladin will mostly use their spells to buff themselves and make them better in fights.

Overall though, I find magic to be very underwhelming in Dark Souls 3. Enemies are often too fast and aggressive for you to really have time firing off some spells, especially since spells rarely do all that much damage anyways. While you can make it work, it's something of an uphil battles, compared to alternatives. Especially since Dark Souls 3 has some of the better sword play in the series.

Welp, that answers all my questions now, thank you for taking the time to clearly explain what is best in your opinion, and I’ll make sure to keep it in mind to get the best outcome for my character.

[Sines]

Oh, and to clarify, I find that buffing and support magic in Dark Souls 3 is a lot more justifiable than attack magic. It's a lot easier to find an opening to enchant your weapon once every 60 seconds, than it is to continuously fire off magic attacks. Especially since the first 60 seconds are 'free' from before you step through the fog gate. DS3 also has a lot of weapons that scale with Faith that can still be enchanted, and thus scale with faith even more (Sunlight Straight Sword + Lightning Weapon is quite nice).

Some people might disagree with me, and say attack magic is fine. But personally, this is the only game in the series where I don't prefer to play a Sorcerer. Indeed, I had a lot of trouble with the game at first, and thought that they had made it overly hard in order to keep challenging for long-time fans. Then I tried a physical character, and mostly breezed through the game. Turned out they just nerfed the hell out of my favorite class. At least when it comes to PvE, anyway. Sorcerers might be better in PvP, thanks to not needing to manage your FP so much, and players not being nearly as good gap-closers as many bosses are. But I haven't tried that.

Anyway, Miracles have always been the worst kind of magic for offense, so the weakening of attack magic (and a few other things) has indirectly buffed Miracles.

As a side-note, however, you may wish to look into building for Pyromancy instead. A Pyromancer build is going to hit 25 Faith at a bare minimum, and almost certainly higher (30 is the softcap). This opens up a lot of buffs to you, many of which don't actually scale on your faith, and therefore are useful even at relatively low Faith levels. Pyromancy offers some additional buffs and some better attack options (magic attacks are weaker, but they are still nice in the right occassions). So perhaps take a look at the Miracle list on the wiki, and see how many Miracles require more than 30 Faith. Bear in mind that Pyromancers are also going to build up to 30 Intelligence too, though since Sorcereries are almost entirely offensive, there's not nearly as many spells that are fine at low Intelligence. Still, it's worth considering.

[GewoonRobbie]

As long as vigor goes to 99 you're good to go