what's a good low level weapon buff to invest in? would like an additional 50-100 AR flat if possible

[Starman]

Hi guys. So I am pretty new to the whole weapon buff and magic in general. I am trying to stay at a relatively low SL, so I only want a weapon buff that won't require too much investment into INT or FTH. I am currently using an Executioner Greatsword, and my stats are 50 STR and 13 dex. I will be hitting a maximum of 450 ish AR once the weapon is maxed, but I want to get a little more juice out of it.

Whats the best route to go? Great Magic Weapon? Sacred Oath? carthus Arc? Thanks for any assistance.

[FellowFurnace]

If you hate stat investment just plonk a Resin on your weapon :P
Otherwise, use the sunlight straight sword for sacred oath buff and for a weapon buff use Carthus Arc

[ WraithGear]

just stick raw on whatever. and then use a resin, as they give comparable upps to weapons as spell buffs do. The astoras straight sword is ungodly powerfull, and has the best moveset, and stamina usage of all weapon types. and its reach like all straight swords is nearly as long as a great sword.

[FellowFurnace]

Originally posted by  WraithGear:

just stick raw on whatever. and then use a resin, as they give comparable upps to weapons as spell buffs do. The astoras straight sword is ungodly powerfull, and has the best moveset, and stamina usage of all weapon types. and its reach like all straight swords is nearly as long as a great sword.

He has 50 Str so he should at least put a heavy gem on his weapon so he can get some scaling rather than the raw damage

EDIT: You can't infuse the Executioner's Greatsword but at +10 it has a B scaling in strength giving you around 260 AR * sacred oath buff (1.1) = 286

That's without scaling and resin though

[Starman]

Originally posted by Gwyndolin:

If you hate stat investment just plonk a Resin on your weapon :P
Otherwise, use the sunlight straight sword for sacred oath buff and for a weapon buff use Carthus Arc

Carthus arc doesn't require much investment right? Do you know if anyone figured out the exact amount of AR each buff yields? Also unfortunately the executioner greatsword can not be infused. it can however be buffed. I shudder to think how beastly this weapon would be if it could be infused lol!

Originally posted by  WraithGear:

just stick raw on whatever. and then use a resin, as they give comparable upps to weapons as spell buffs do. The astoras straight sword is ungodly powerfull, and has the best moveset, and stamina usage of all weapon types. and its reach like all straight swords is nearly as long as a great sword.

Another of my character mains the astora greatsword. it's a great weapon. :D

I never really considered resins.

[FellowFurnace]

Originally posted by Starman:

Originally posted by Gwyndolin:

If you hate stat investment just plonk a Resin on your weapon :P
Otherwise, use the sunlight straight sword for sacred oath buff and for a weapon buff use Carthus Arc

Carthus arc doesn't require much investment right? Do you know if anyone figured out the exact amount of AR each buff yields? Also unfortunately the executioner greatsword can not be infused. it can however be buffed. I shudder to think how beastly this weapon would be if it could be infused lol!

Originally posted by  WraithGear:

just stick raw on whatever. and then use a resin, as they give comparable upps to weapons as spell buffs do. The astoras straight sword is ungodly powerfull, and has the best moveset, and stamina usage of all weapon types. and its reach like all straight swords is nearly as long as a great sword.

Another of my character mains the astora greatsword. it's a great weapon. :D

I never really considered resins.

Carthus requires 10 INT and 10 FTH and the Sunlight Straight sword requires 16 FTH so if you wan't a cheap sacred oath then getting the Sunlight Straight sword just for buffing is a good idea :P

[Starman]

Originally posted by Gwyndolin:

Originally posted by Starman:

Carthus arc doesn't require much investment right? Do you know if anyone figured out the exact amount of AR each buff yields? Also unfortunately the executioner greatsword can not be infused. it can however be buffed. I shudder to think how beastly this weapon would be if it could be infused lol!






Another of my character mains the astora greatsword. it's a great weapon. :D

I never really considered resins.

Carthus requires 10 INT and 10 FTH and the Sunlight Straight sword requires 16 FTH so if you wan't a cheap sacred oath then getting the Sunlight Straight sword just for buffing is a good idea :P

That is a great idea actually. is lightning still great to use of the elementsdue to lower defense, or is dark?

[Shan]

Lightning is a solid element.

On my buff build (granted, it's *way* higher than you're going to be, at 196), I primarily use Lightning Weapon because I specialize in Faith. It wrecks more bosses than you'd expect, with the only ones I've seen that have a heavy resistance to it being Nameless King and Dragonslayer Armor. Everything else, massive damage.

Also, if you're willing to grind out Moonbro/Bluebro, you can also get Darkmoon Blade, which adds the same amount of damage to your weapon as Lightning Weapon, but it's Magic-elemental, giving you a fair bit of versatility if you go Faith.

That said, they both require a fair investment into Faith itself, with both being usable starting from 30, so it's up to you.

Carthus Flame Arc is also a solid choice, but it's overall weaker in terms of added damage, with the tradeoff being it requireing lower stats to use (also Pyromancy Flames not having a real high Spell Buff).

If you're willing to spec into Int though, you can get (Great) Magic Weapon really early on, and both of those add a fair bit of damage even at their base requirement with an unupgraded staff.

One thing to note about Sacred Oath though, it's *not* a weapon buff and as such, it does not do the same thing as weapon buffs. Instead, you gain a flat 10% damage to whatever weapons you're carrying at the time (which is, at high level play, weaker than whatever bonus a weapon buff will give you). That said though, it does stack with every other buff, aside from the SSS weapon art.

In fact, Faith is the best magic discipline to go with for buff builds, because (Weapon Buff) + Deep Protection + Sacred Oath give you a massive damage output. Do note that to get good damage out of weapon buffs, you need a good catalyst like Yorshka's Chime +9 (for high level Faith) or the Canvas Talisman +9.*

As an example, with my buff build, using Anri's at 40/40 Str/Dex, 60 Fth, 40 Lck, its base AR is 492. Once I add Lightning Blade, Deep Protection and Sacred Oath, the AR rises to 830+. Insanely good for PvE, you can stomp bosses incredibly easy with this.

*Chimes at +10 don't give more spell buff, so it's useless to upgrade them that high.

[Starman]

Originally posted by Shan:

Lightning is a solid element.

On my buff build (granted, it's *way* higher than you're going to be, at 196), I primarily use Lightning Weapon because I specialize in Faith. It wrecks more bosses than you'd expect, with the only ones I've seen that have a heavy resistance to it being Nameless King and Dragonslayer Armor. Everything else, massive damage.

Also, if you're willing to grind out Moonbro/Bluebro, you can also get Darkmoon Blade, which adds the same amount of damage to your weapon as Lightning Weapon, but it's Magic-elemental, giving you a fair bit of versatility if you go Faith.

That said, they both require a fair investment into Faith itself, with both being usable starting from 30, so it's up to you.

Carthus Flame Arc is also a solid choice, but it's overall weaker in terms of added damage, with the tradeoff being it requireing lower stats to use (also Pyromancy Flames not having a real high Spell Buff).

If you're willing to spec into Int though, you can get (Great) Magic Weapon really early on, and both of those add a fair bit of damage even at their base requirement with an unupgraded staff.

One thing to note about Sacred Oath though, it's *not* a weapon buff and as such, it does not do the same thing as weapon buffs. Instead, you gain a flat 10% damage to whatever weapons you're carrying at the time (which is, at high level play, weaker than whatever bonus a weapon buff will give you). That said though, it does stack with every other buff, aside from the SSS weapon art.

In fact, Faith is the best magic discipline to go with for buff builds, because (Weapon Buff) + Deep Protection + Sacred Oath give you a massive damage output. Do note that to get good damage out of weapon buffs, you need a good catalyst like Yorshka's Chime +9 (for high level Faith) or the Canvas Talisman +9.*

As an example, with my buff build, using Anri's at 40/40 Str/Dex, 60 Fth, 40 Lck, its base AR is 492. Once I add Lightning Blade, Deep Protection and Sacred Oath, the AR rises to 830+. Insanely good for PvE, you can stomp bosses incredibly easy with this.

*Chimes at +10 don't give more spell buff, so it's useless to upgrade them that high.

Wow, amazing advice, thanks man! With my point spread, I will be right at level 69. I am considering using blessed weapon buff. I figured, a 7% increase to a high damage heavy hitting weapon will give it quite a bit of good damage don't you think? I would only have to throw a priestess ring on to cast it.

But having 15 faith also opens up deep protection for me too. Decisions decisions. I am shocked deep protection stacks with sacred oath.

[Burusagi]

Carthus Flame Arc is the best bang for your buck.

If you start as a Knight, you only need to invest a mere two Soul Levels (to bring Faith and Intelligence up to 10 each) in order to use it.

In addition, Fire seems to be the best element in terms of PvE: outside of Smouldering Lake there is nothing resistant to it, while there are plenty of things weak to it and even have special interactions with it (the stunlocking of Pus of Man when hit with Fire comes to mind).

[Shan]

The reason I didn't mention Blessed Weapon is because it generally isn't worth using. It adds very little and the regen you get from it does not do enough to justify using it.

You'd be better off with either Carthus Flame Arc or (Great) Magic Weapon.

Considering you're keeping yourself at a low level, having enough FP will be problematic. Even at 30 Attunement, you wouldn't have enough FP to do more than 2 full rounds of buffing (with my setup I can't even do more than 1 round), so you might want to add the Lingering Dragoncrest Ring (+X) to your build to help buffs last longer.

You'll probably need the Deep Ring/Saint's Ring/Darkmoon Ring, just to have some extra utility.

[Burusagi]

Great Magic Weapon is bad. Like, really bad. Same with Great Magic Shield - they're not a significant enough of an upgrade over their baseline variants to warrant the noticable drop in duration.

Stick with regular Magic Weapon until you get Crystal Magic Weapon which is a worthy upgrade.

Oh and don't be too quick to poo-poo Blessed Weapon: the 7% (I think it is 7%) base AR it provides is equal to quite a lot of STR/DEX levels. Plus as it adds raw AR, it adds physical damage rather than split damage which is another advantage in itself.

[Shan]

Originally posted by Alcohol Fueled Brewtality:

Great Magic Weapon is bad. Like, really bad. Same with Great Magic Shield - they're not a significant enough of an upgrade over their baseline variants to warrant the noticable drop in duration.

Stick with regular Magic Weapon until you get Crystal Magic Weapon which is a worthy upgrade.

Oh and don't be too quick to poo-poo Blessed Weapon: the 7% (I think it is 7%) base AR it provides is equal to quite a lot of STR/DEX levels. Plus as it adds raw AR, it adds physical damage rather than split damage which is another advantage in itself.

I can see that Blessed Weapon has its niche utility, it just never really felt worth using to me since other weapon buffs tend to outdo what Blessed Weapon does.

[Burusagi]

Agreed. But it is not utter ♥♥♥♥♥. :)

[Shan]

Originally posted by Alcohol Fueled Brewtality:

Agreed. But it is not utter ♥♥♥♥♥. :)

I never said it was

[Burusagi]

Originally posted by Shan:

Originally posted by Alcohol Fueled Brewtality:

Agreed. But it is not utter ♥♥♥♥♥. :)

I never said it was :cwat:

The general consensus of the player base thou...