Mornes Greathammer - PVP Build and Guide

Comprehensive Guide for Mornes Greathammer PvP - Weapon Matchups, Gear, Tactics and More!

Introduction

Hey Everyone. Im Raptorjesus and this is my first guide.

Ive had very good success with this weapon and build so I wanted to share it with you all.

Do note that I will ONLY be talking about PvP in this guide. This build is also good for PvE however, so if you just want to go out and bash some heads witn a big hammer and WOGs then by all means, keep reading.

I will also not be talking or explaining the basics of PvP along with specific moves or tech (unless its related to the build specifically). This guide is assuming you are at least a little familiar with PvP in Souls games and Dark Souls 3

If you like this guide please leave a rating and a comment and let me know what you would like to see next or how I can improve this guide.

The Build

Starting Class: Knight (Since Mugenmonkey updated to ds3, yes, Knight is the best class for this)

Soul Level : 125 (The Dueling Meta lvl at the time of writing this guide)

Vigor: 39
Attunement: 10
Endurance: 37
Vitality: 20
Strength: 50
Dexterity: 12
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 30
Luck: 7

This Gives you 1300 base health which is good for pvp, as well as enough endurance to swing 4 times in a row.

There is not really any superfulous stats here, everything is here to meet an almost exact requirment minus Endurance and Vigor. Morne's itself requires 50 Str and 30 Fth to use.

If you use Heavy armor you may want to take some point out of Vigor and Endurance and put it into Vitality.

We keep attunement low for reasons that shall be explained, plus we will not be using Miracles with this build apart from two specific utilities.

The Gear

First off, you will need a Mornes Greathammer +5, Obviously.

You will need to keep your armor somewhat light since Mornes is so heavy, for this guide I am personally using full Xanthous, which is a medium weight armor.

From here we can get a little creative.

My personal setup:
Mornes +5
Longsword (or any fast weapon under 3.0 weight)
Simple Small Leather Buckler (you can also use a Simple Cestus)
Clerics Sacred Chime
Green Blossom
Throwing Knives

Clerics sacred chime will be used to buff yourself before duels. The reason we use this chime is that it gives us the best scaling/spellbuffs at 30 Faith.

Green blossoms will be used to give yourself more stam regen, as we do not use grass crest shield and it stacks on other stamina regen sources.

Throwing knives and our offhand weapon will be used to chase and rush down opponents who are left at low health from your hammer. Mornes is poor at chasing low targets because of its speed, so we will be using these tools to compensate.

The Simple Small Leather Buckler is the standout here, but it is extremley important for the build. The Simple infusion slowly regens your FP, very very slowly. Normally for casters this is useless, but we have a use for this since we will be Using Morne's Weapon Art frequently. Weapon arts can be used with full effectiveness at 1 FP, unlike spells. Using this infusion, we will be able to use the weapon art once every 4-5 seconds if need be. This is also why we keep Attn so low for the build, since we do not need much FP. We use the buckler specifically for when you need to parry, but you should always have it on you back for the FP regen.

Now that the setup is complete, let us look at the playstyle for this build.

Rings

For this build we have 2 nessesary rings : FAP +1 and Havels +1. FAP is just great in this game, and we take havels to keep our vit low, and therefor able to put those points into more meaningful stats.

Obviously you can get the +2 versions if you are willing to go to ng++, but they are by no means nessesary.

for the other two ring slots we have a fair ammount of flexibility, but first im going to talk about what you dont want to take.

DON'T TAKE THESE

Miracle Boosting Rings and Clutch Rings including Priestess ring
Mornes has no scaling for fth or miracle damage, even on Morne's Rage. No clutch or boost rings effect that damage. Instead, the WOG damage is based off of your weapon damage, so avoid taking these rings.

1 Slot Attunement Rings
One ring slot for one attuement slot is not really a good deal when the Darkmoon Ring exists

Prisoners Chain and Bloodring
These arent that nessesary, and the damage tradeoff is poor for PvP. Since we want to take trades we will want to avoid rings that allow the damage to turn in the opponents favor

Wolfs Ring
Poise has no effect in game, never use this ring until it is fixed.

GOOD FLEX RINGS

Chloranthy +1/2/3
More Stamina regen is always needed, these are a good staple if you do not wish to take hornets or if there is not useful for the specific matchup you are facing

Hornets
Greathammers do the most damage in the game with ripostes when you have this ring on. You can 1 shot anyone but full havels with 1600~ health. Backstabs do aroun 1k which is also massive. If you are not good at getting parries or backstabs do not take this, as it is essentially a wasted ring slot.

Lloyds Sword Ring
Boosts the damage of your WOG and basic weapon. Very good if you make sure you always get the first hit in.

Steel Protection +1/2/3
This ring gives you alot of physical resist in DS3 unlike 1 and 2. This is very good for us since casters are pretty bad for the time being and most builds being refined Physical. This defence gives us more damage resist for taking trades.

Life Ring +1/2/3
I have seen some math that indicates that this is worth is more if you were going to take Steel Protection. You can also get the +2 version in NG+ which is really easy. It gives you well over 100 bonus health which is pretty nice. I would reccomend this over Steel Protection every time if not for the fact that nobody knows the effectivness with the steel ring in relation to fast and or slow weapons (may be more effective vs one or the other).

Additionally, you can wear this ring and perform a ringswap in the equipment menu. Once you lose the bonus health the ring would give you (ex. swap the ring when you lose 150 hp) swap it out for another ring, since you are not losing anything by doing so. If you get comfortable with navigating in the menu mid duel, this becomes an extremley effective use for a ring slot.

Knights Ring
Gives you a little extra damage, nothing special. If you want you could strip 5 STR and use this ring instead, putting those extra levels somewhere else. I havent tried this myself but on paper it seems good if you dont mind giving up a ring flex slot.

SITUATIONAL

Knight Slayer & Horsehoof Ring
Swap these in if you are vs a turtle or a greatshield. Greathammers already do massive stamina damage to shields but these will help you push it abit further. I would take Knight slayer over Horsehoof, as kicks are no super great this time around.

Dragonscale Ring
Swap this in if you are getting BS fished alot. Decreases BS damage by 30%, pretty self explanitory.

Darkmoon Ring
Very good ring that gives you 2 attunement slots, even if its a pain to get it. With this you can also take Tears of Denial, or sacred oath if you prefer.



Personally I use Steel Protection +1 and Chloranthy +1. I used hornets in the past, but I am simply not good enough at getting parries for it to be really useful, even if backstabs are relativley commonplace.

The Playstyle

Great Hammers

Great hammers are big, slow weapons that are second in damage only to UGS (Ultra Greatswords). They have very wide swings and have a pretty decent moveset overall.

Most greathammers weapon art gives you alot of poise temporarily and brief damage resist, just like maces and hammers. It is important to note that this makes you Immune to backstabs.

In my opinion, Greathammers are the best weapons in the game at taking hit trades, because of their damage and hyper armor. Because of this, we will almost always be looking to take damage trades with our opponents instead of combos and the like. We will touch more on this in the weapon matchup section, but keep this in mind while reading.

Mornes Greathammer

Mornes deals the second best damage with normal attack in the Greathammer class (second to smoughs). But the true lethality here lies in its weapon art - Morne's Rage.

The weapon art causes the user to slam their weapon into the ground and emit a large, WOG-like, shockwave. Ironically, this is way better than the actual spell in both damage and speed.

Using this we will also get the preservance buff at the same time, making this move supreme at punishing spam and moves that lock the user into an animation. I cannot stress how HUGE the damage reduction is.

The damage from Rage comes in two parts, an initial melee range aoe from the hammer slamming into the ground and the AOE itself. If your opponent gets hit by the first proc, it is a garunteed hit confirm into the second hit. Hitting both damages around 800-1100, depending on their armor. Hitting just one does around 600-800 depending on armor.

Basic Attacks

If you manage to get an r1 in, and are not staggered yourself, ALWAYS HIT r1 AGAIN. with the exception of partial hits, rolling and running attacks, your r1's will always have enough hitstun for 1 followup. This gives you around 800 damage depending on opponent armor.

If you get an r1 in and both you and your opponent are staggered, roll out or into them. Mornes is slow and you will most likley not be able to get an attack in after hitstun. By rolling in our out we will avoid the damage trade go in our opponents favour.

Miracles

We only run one Miracle for the standard build: Deep Protection (DP).

DP is the best in slot miracle for 1 attunement slot for melee faith builds. It gives you increased attack power and damage absorption by 5%, status resistances by 11%, and stamina regeneration speed by 3 stamina per second. (from the wiki).

This is basically everything we need, there is no reason not to use this. The big boost we want here is the damage resistance, which will help push damage trades in our favor even more.

Other Miracles:

Sacred Oath
Sacred Oath is VERY good to take. It gives you straight up 10% bonus damage and reduction. The downside here is it takes 2 attn slots. If you are willing to take a attn ring you should be running this.

Tears of Denial
I was going to write about how TOD is a super cool spell and it might be worth picking up if you made some adjustments blah blah blah. But the more I thought about this spell, the worse it got.

1) TOD basically does nothing against fast weapons since its easy to get that last one little hit in. Theoretically, it is good against UGS
2) 2 slot
3) you have to do a ringswap for it to be castable (it needs 100 FP)
4) TOD is hard countered by swapping in a piece of thorns armor and spamming roll, which I suggest you do if you come across someone using TOD
5) you cannot stack it on top of Sacred Oath or Deep Protection

Dont use TOD

Weapon Matchups

Daggers

Daggers are very fast, but they generally do terrible damage in DS3. With quickstep and their natural speed, these will be a pain in the ass for you. Luckily their low damage gives plenty of oppertunity to get a few hits in. Daggers are also a huge bait for Morne's Rage, since they need to spam to get damage off.

Overall this is a decent matchup if you space correctly, since you outrange them heavily.

Straight Swords

Straightswords are overused at the moment, especially the darksword. General tips apply here, parry, punish spam with Morne's Rage etc. It is dangerous to underestimate this weapon class so dont lose your cool and keep your space.

For the dark sword specifically, if you see them use the stomp, ALWAYS go in for 2 r1's. You will come out on the damage trade by alot, because of your hyper armor. At the very least you can use 1 r1 and then roll in to avoid the hit.

Greatswords

Poor greatswords. You outrange, damage and trade them. You have better hyperarmor, use it. Be careful for rolling r1 pokes.

UGS

UGS are the hardest greathammer counter in my opinion. They are the only weapons in the game that outtrade and armor you. DO NOT TRADE WITH UGS. Because they take our greatest strength away, I consider these a counter to us. With good precognition you can use Morne's Rage to outtrade them but if you mess up, well, its going to hurt bad.

Some UGS also have very good weapon arts that can throw you off and do huge damage, so be careful of that.

The exception here is the FUGs (Farron UGS). You can punish them in between spins, and you will outtrade them hard. You can also parry the dagger as it slams into the ground.

Finally, be careful for rolling r1s, especially if you are fighting vs a Fume.

Curved Swords

Curved swords have short range and okish damage. I hear good things about the falchion but I have yet to experience it myself. There is not much to say here, standard rules apply.

Katanas

Katanas are very user dependant. These are usually hard to deal with their damage, range and speed. Luckily there is a few saving graces here. Their parryable, somewhat predictable in useage and have some big opportunities for Morne's Rage punishment which i will go over now.

For dual katanas, if they ever use Oni Slayer (the jumping move) just hit your weapon art, it will hurt them alot.

For the others, when they enter a stance or when you know that they are coming in for a dash stab, use your weapon art.

This is an overall hard matchup that you will have to get use to because of their popularity. You will have to get a feel for the matchup yourself, as I am still doing the same.

Curved Greatswords

Curved GS's are alright. They are suprisingly fast and feature hyperarmor on top of decent damage. However, you generally outrange them and have superior hyperarmor, making this a pretty standard matchup.

Piercing Swords

Estocs pls no. These are difficult to deal with, as I am sure you are aware. My advice is to prioritize parries. Their speed will usually allow them to trade with you before your hyperarmor activates, meaning you dont get to do damage back.

My best experiences have been catching them between rolls or precognitive Morne's Rages. its not inherently specific to this matchup, but you should try for these regardless. keep in mind with latency, they have about as much range as you do.

Axes

Axes are ok? their just slower Straight swords.

The butcher Knife does suprising damage however, so look out for that.

Greataxes

Greataxes are generally on par with greathammers, trading a little bit of range and damage for speed. Greataxes have one great vice however, they have a very narrow hitbox on 2 handed attacks. With good positioning you can hit your opponent without them hitting you, just because their hitbox dosent extend to the left and right as much as say, spears and halberds. Because of this they also have lots of oppertunities for backstab punishes.

For when Axes and Greataxes use their warcry, always try to punish with 1 r1. Their windbox from the move has less range than our basic attack, and does not reduce damage temporarily.

Overall a very good matchup for Greathammers.

Hammers

These will start being used more to counter thrusting, straight and Katanas. For now not many use them but I expect them to be picked up soon, and with good reason. Their presevance buff lasts longer than the animation, unlike Greathammers, which reduces damage done to them by alot and gives them no stagger.

Luckily the buff does not last terribly long. Usually your best bet is to punish inbetween buffs and outrange their attacks, as the range on the hammer class is poor.

Greathammers

I have yet to have a match against another Greathammer, Sorry :( .

Fist Weapons

Lol

Spears

Charge attacks are huge baits for Morne's Rage. As soon as you see a charge move come out, hit that ♥♥♥♥ for a huge punish. This works so well because your opponent will be locked into an animation, leaving them totally open.

Do not underestimate spears horizontal hitbox. Side stepping usually does not work. The best bet for beating out spears is getting in their face. Do not let them beat you in footsies.

The Swordspear in perticular is a hard matchup, the damage is very good and the weapon art bolt is very fast and will take some practise to dodge properly.

Halberds

Another class rising in popularity. Luckily they share the same weakness's as spears, for us anway. Red Hilted Halberd's spin and Gundyr's charge are both Huge punish opportunities With Morne's Rage.

If you are somewhat close to them and they go for a 1handed or 2 handed r1, some times you can roll behind them for a backstab. This seems fairly reliable to pull of even though I am not 100% on the range you need to be at.

Reapers

They have the same range as you, but lack the hyperarmor. Very vulnerable to standard r1 damage trades.

Whips

Whips have a better moveset in DS3, as well as being a little bit faster with better range. These do not seem to be too huge of an issue to fight against, but I am personally not very experienced in this matchup.

Outro

Thanks for reading this guide, I appreciate you taking time to read it.

There will probably be some spelling issues here and there so sorry for that.

Thanks for reading!

Coming Soon & Updates

More Detail in the playstyles section

More Specific with weapon matchups

Alternative Build Changes

Some PvP Videos?


3rd May 2016 - Updated Miracles section
30th april 2016 - Updated Ring section & Build section (Knight is 100% best class)
25th~ april, 2016 - Added Ring section

[Siddou]

Great Guide.
"Weapon arts can be used with full effectiveness at 1 FP" not anymore, it was patched.

[Frost☂]

@Ratorjesus oh thats where im confused my bad friend

[†Raptorjesus†]

@Sweetchuck Knight is better for 125. If you are stopping at 120, warrior and knight will have the same stats at 120

[Nidhogg]

This guide is incorrect; Morne's Rage does NOT make you immune to backstabs.

[Frost☂]

would warrior not be a better start?

[Nattsu]

Horse ring actually works on weapon attacks so its always better than knight slayer ring unless its fixed

[†Raptorjesus†]

@kurdtokopf you are right I am dumb, ill update that. I assume that you are correct about the steel ring but i havent tested it in an organized way yet.

[Kibbaru]

"fist weapon"
"lol"
i laughed quite hard

[SofaKingBad]

yea already trying to use mornes hammer, after he smashed me with that skill i had to murder and rob him lol. wasnt sure what it did then i imploded. cool weapon but heavy stat investment

[Umbasa]

dawg the meta is 120.