Should I do the DLC with a faith build?

[Quadsword]

I want to do the DLC for completion's sake (and because there's a guaranteed titanite slab there that I can use to knock out an achievement), but the bosses have notoriously high resistance to anything that's not physical damage. Manus is already hard enough - I don't want to make it even harder by taking ages to kill him.

[Andrey Ⅱ]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0jjqRc6QRc
All can be done with miracles.
Note that manus took him so long because he was playing extra safe because of red tearstone ring.

[Apathy]

Sure. The DLC is doable for casters. It'll probably take you longer to kill things because of resistances and you'll need to play safer in general but you can beat them with any build. To make it less stressful on yourself I'd get a weapon similar to your main weapon to Normal +15 so that you do have a physical damage source. Casters generally have one anyway so they can put buffs on them.

Protips: Get the Silver Pendant and Great Magic Barrier. Silver Pendant is hidden in Ooacille Township behind a wall that vanishes when exposed to a light source such as: the Sunlight Maggot, Cast Light, or the Skull Lantern. Great Magic Barrier is in Great Ash Lake inside the hollowed out tree between the first hollowed out tree and the Stone Dragon. There's a drop on a root walkway near the Basilisk. If you drop correctly you'll end up in a tree trunk with the Miracle and a path back out. These make Manus' magic less dangerous so you can focus on his physical damage attacks. This helps since he usually goes hyper aggressive in between casts. GMB counts as a personal buff so you can't use personal buffs while using it so keep that in mind.

Or you can just kill him from up top by sniping him with arrows. But where's the fun in that?

[Melth]

I do the DLC as a faith build all the time.

By the time you get to the DLC you should definitely have either Sunlight Blade or Darkmoon Blade and 50 faith and the darkmoon talisman.

Have a nice strong +15 weapon like a (gargoyle) Halberd or whatever is strong, moderately fast, and you like using.

With a weapon buff on that thing, you will dish out serious damage to the bosses.


Although the bosses have relatively high elemental resistance, you can have so much raw power on your miracles at this point in the game with things like 50 faith + darkmoon talisman + dusk crown + ring of the sun's firstborn that you deal massive damage anyway with WotG or Great Lightning Spear.

You can amp things up even further with Power Within if you want, or with Red Tearstone Ring if you're hardcore.

Regardless, your miracles can either wipe out the bosses or do such a large chunk of free damage to them that even a split damage weapon that the bosses resist pretty well will kill them in fewer hits than a quality build person would need with the boss starting from full HP.