Any tips against pontiff sulyvahn?

[jester]

just opened the shortcut, first try on him was really bad, I asked my friend what to use against him and he suggested a fire dark blade, i infused it, got it to +2 and it's extremely weak against him. so, does anyone have some good tips against this guy and also a weapon a souls virgin can use efficiently? (i've done all the other bosses with irithyll straight sword+2)

[Coin]

+2 at pontiff is like killing an elephant with a toothpick. People say that parry works well on him. Personally, dodging and retaliating worked for me all the time. His moves are pretty easy to read and dodge. When he takes a stance and holds blade close to his chest - go full offense, getting rid of the double should be the priority. Partly because it's dangerous, partly because pontiff will summon it again, opening himself for an attack.

[Clementine]

I don't parry at all, just learn his attack pattern and dodge his spells. Sounds easy, but this worked perfect for me. He's hard at the beginning but imo the second phase is easier because you can see his attacks from his Phantom. Don't get too greedy, use estus and just hit him from behind. Good Luck!

I always like to use fast weapons, I think that might be helpful against this fast enemy.

[Trehek]

Even if you won't use parrying during the fight, it's particularly easy to parry his initial charge attack. He always does it, so learning the timing is easy. Parry as soon as he begins the leap.

[Gabe]

parry the first lounge he does and i would use the Carthus blood ring to help roll some of his attacks. if you want to block some of them, the dragon crest shield is a good option becuse it has pretty good fire/magic resist. and you might want to upgrade your weapon to +6. and then you have to git gud :)

[40+13x-3=17x-363]

Grab any greatshield and block.

[Johnny Swamphand]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGOPl3i6q1Y

parrying the first attack could lead to his doom... with the right build

[Yal]

In his second phase, AoE attacks can be really powerful (since they can dispatch the clone while still damaging him). Like his knights, he has very low bleed resistance. If you've got access to magic, try to use spells along those lines (Dorhys' Gnawing is a really good dark miracle hidden in the first part of Irithyll - those creepy noises near the plaza bonfire is from Dorhys, you just need to find a way to fight her). What's your overall build/playstyle and STR/DEX/INT/FTH stats at the moment? Could help narrowing down suggestions to stuff you can actually use.

And as you might've realized, the Irithyll weapons are pretty much useless in Irithyll because everything is immune to Frostbite there :P

Try to dodge him with dodgerolls, since he attacks too fast to use a shield reliably (he'll just eat through your stamina bar in no time) and he's got a bunch of dashing attacks that makes running-away-and-taking-potshots pretty much useless. The tricky part is that he charges up his attacks for longer than normal enemies, so if you dodge when you think it's time to dodge, you roll too early and then he hits you once the roll wears off. Make sure you don't roll until he actually starts swinging his sword.

[Yal]

Could also be worth mentioning that Resins and Bundles add a pretty sizeable damage boost, if you can buy infinite resins of any type you should consider trying them out occasionally (and especially for bosses). You can buff any normal weapon (=not "Unique" or made from a boss soul) that is not infused with an element (Refined, Raw, Sharp and Heavy are fine).

I think a Resin lasts 30-60 seconds, and a Bundle lasts 7 seconds but is applied much more quickly and almost adds twice as much power as a Resin. Carthus Rouge could be useful against Sullyvan since he's weak to bleed, but fire and lightning resins shouldn't be too shabby either.

[Dark-Master.Barbzilla]

You will pretty much want to either build for fire or parry to get this match over with as quickly as possible (or I suppose you could also build into STR/HP/STAM and wield one of the better greatswords/curved greatswords, but this will be much less effecient and smooth though does work better on phase 2). Try to aim for thrusting weapons as that is his physical weakness, and happens to pair most excelently with critical parry builds (or even rapier/spear builds).

The biggest thing you could do to make him easier for yourself is to research his fight on youtube and watch the videos to learn his spell/boss ability patterns (he has a few distinctive ones that let you predict the spear charge, which is the easiest to parry and counter). I would also recommend against magic and dark damage heavy builds and spells. They do work on him, but he reduce the damage by a fair bit. If you are built into one of those elemental setups already, than I'd recommend Astora straight sword infused with Raw and leveled to at least +3, but I'd recommend +5/6.

Find a friend online to help you practice your parry window. Most players that have issues parrying don't realize that there are parry frames built into each weapon/shield/etc that can parry and some start earlier or later than others and some last longer or shorter than others. You could quite literally appear to be perfectly timing the parry going by model intercepts, but the parry frames on the weapon are either very early or late.

Fire and Lightning are his elemental weaknesses, however I don't feel like lightning does very good damage, or perhaps it is just that there really isn't a very good way to apply that damage to him in bulk if you are playing without phantom (lightning damage enchants and gems do okay, but split damage is just not great against bosses, so you will want be aiming at spells with quick casts and high damage, which lightning has non of by the point you get here. In fact your best Faith attack spell (direct damage wise) seems to be lightning (though I suppose you could have gone for dancer early and gotten something better).

That said on my Pyromancer I opened the fight with my Ansari's Sword raw infused buffed with carthus flame arc mainhand, cestus offhand (I know I was such a meta player at the time), once I got him to phase 2, I swapped to a Zweihander raw enchanted with Carthus Flame Arc on it and cleared him pretty easily when it all came together in my head and finally clicked (He was my first DS3 boss to give me enough trouble to consider coming back to him later, which was both really good because it got me to stop just looking at builds and what other players are doing and start building into weapons that complement how I personally play). I even gave up at one point and started summoning other players to come in with me. In the end that actually made my atttempts take a bit longer since he would often split focus us. So for the final fight to actually go so damn smoothly for me was a miracle in and of itself. But everything depends on your playstyle and build.

[Piglet]

Parry and punish all I can say not good with parries but somehow larger weapons are easier to learn the parry patterns

[TrueArchery]

Originally posted by Dark-Master Barbzilla:

If you are built into one of those elemental setups already, than I'd recommend Astora straight sword infused with Raw and leveled to at least +3, but I'd recommend +5/6.

Stop recommending Astora's already, it's garbage since the nerf. A Raw Longsword has more AR, a Broadsword is even better. Astora's has literally not a single purpose in this game anymore.

[Dark-Master.Barbzilla]

Originally posted by TrueArchery:

Originally posted by Dark-Master Barbzilla:

If you are built into one of those elemental setups already, than I'd recommend Astora straight sword infused with Raw and leveled to at least +3, but I'd recommend +5/6.

Stop recommending Astora's already, it's garbage since the nerf. A Raw Longsword has more AR, a Broadsword is even better. Astora's has literally not a single purpose in this game anymore.

Well, I'm sorry I haven't played a character that went with raw weapons in quite some time so I didn't realize it, but I'm looking at the nerf right now and it isn't really all that bad for low levels. Sure it plateaus a lot faster than it used to, but for early game it barely changed. So why call it garbage? Sure it does slightly less damage than the broadsword, but it also uses slightly less stamina per swing. On top of that it has an alternate basic attack set, so calling it garbage just makes you sound like you are sour about the nerf.

On top of that if you read the whole post I recommended thrusting weapons for Pontiff, and Astora's isn't thrusting on r1. I only listed the Astora's Straight Sword as an alternate for someone looking to monopolize on pontiff's fire weakness.