This is the balance, the karmic justice if you will, to the IGN PvP build making guide Edit: but yeah after watching the video I've been kicking myself because I'm really optimizing the fun out of the game in terms of actually playing through to making a build. I need to stop that
I was so desperate to get my build at level 80 and another one around 20 (I was trying to optimise my fun the wrong way). I realized thanks to you, to go througt the game and go invading while gathering was more fun and I get to know my tools. Thank you Saint
For me, an issue with the honeymoon phase is that I go so in on it that it burns out quick for me. One of the reasons I like your stuff is that it helps make the turnover from burnout really quick, because your perspective is usually exciting, but not like, stupid-unsustainable-happy, and it brings me back to the game really fast.
I'm really looking forward to more of Saint's in depth videos on his lore builds. Seeing how to utilize about 4 different weapons with a thematic through line and great invasions totally appeals to me.
Those invasions looked fun as hell. I never realized how the chaos spells all compliment each other. One is an aoe that gets people to back off, so once you condition them for that they hang outside of your range only to get sniped by the long range one. Fed up with your nonsense, they'll see you charging a spell and try to rush you only to realize it's the close up scream or the poise grab. This guessing game looks like a ton of fun. I normally only ever see people spamming the snipe spell but your experiments with what a frenzy build can do has really opened my eyes.
Gotta say Saint, I really admire how the builds you make are supposed to be actual themed characters instead of just some broken, fuck-off setup meant to melt other players in two hits. Keep doing what you're doing! I had to stop playing Elden Ring because my I've given my art hobby complete precedent over all my free time, so for the time being I will be vicariously living through you like a dad pushing his children to pursue athletics because he was never able to go pro due to a debilitating injury he acquired in college football.
This is the exact thing I need to do, and it's stupid how hard it is. I've been trying to get my art off the ground for years, and I've wasted countless hours playing games when I should have been creating. I need to just take all the technology and lock it in a closet or something.
I always make sure to do this, hell I spend more time optimising my sliders than my build. If I'm playing a black flame spellblade, I'm not gonna pick the absolute best faith weapon, I'm gonna pick a weapon that fits the theme and vibe of my character, is there optimisation? Yes, I use the grave Scythe over normal scythe in my briar build specifically because its got less stat investment and better base damage, but I'm still using a scythe instead of a banished knight halberd or the blasphemous blade
This vid is the Elden Ring equivalent of one of your DS3 vids that first got me into invading, and I thank you for both. You are now a bloody finger mentor for the noobs of ER in which I hope this vid finds them and the community owes you a debt of gratitude for your service in this regard. Nice work👍🏻
I did invasions as my build was still growing and one of the most important things it did was give me an appreciation for the strengths of some low-level, easily accessible weapons, ashes, spells, and craftable items. Coincidentally I also did a madness build because it seemed tailor-made for PVP, and realized as I found more of them that the incantations with how they cover a wide variety of situations with an identical or near-identical wind-up animation seem tailor made for playing mind games. Inescapable Frenzy is very hard to land...until you've conditioned your opponent to expect Mind Blast and bait them into getting right in your face to punish it only to get grabbed.
The math for the soreseals has actually been done, and so long as you don't have more than 35 vigor they mathematically make you more tanky just because of the extra vigor and flat defense. There's also the fact that you can redistribute your points based on the other extra stats they give you. If you're trying a quality build or have to hit a weapon requirement and weight limit, having a full 15 points worth of levels between strength/dex/endurance means you can just lower each by 5 and have an extra 15 points in vigor. Eat a prawn to boost your absorption back to something a little less bad and it's a hundred times better. I'd very much recommend trying radagon's soreseal if you're playing below level 90 or so. Even at higher levels you can justify it if you can manage to squeeze enough faith onto your build to use something like black flame protection. Absorption kind of starts to level off around 30 for pvp anyways.
It's not just about having a net positive, it's about opportunity cost. Other talismans can be very competitive even when scarseals are technically net positive.
From my own experience RL90 is way too high. I noticed it becoming a significant issue around RL60-70. I had 60 Vig (with the Soreseal) on a Str build, I respecc'd to compare and with 47 Vig and redistributing my stats to make up for not having it I had significantly more effective HP. I don't remember the exact values but I went from something like getting 3 shot by an enemy in Leyndell to 5-6 shot.
@@murdockg My experiences parallel this almost exactly. So now I start to wean a new character off of their soreseal dependency around RL 50 so that by 60-70, I’m ready to drop it without anyone getting the shakes or taking their remembrances to the pawn shop.
I'm glad youre talking about low level invasions, you seem to be one of the only ones from the older souls community that is advocating for lower level invasions in ER. It's strange to me, as I definitely have the most fun with low level invasions, and the matchmaking is much faster for lower levels too (at least on pc, lvl 40-80). Really like how you talk about using your build to play through the game and learn your equipment before you start pvp'ing, but also trying out invading in the early stages of your build to get an idea of what its like. Like you said, its so much fun to make a build and go through the game trying to figure out how to grab the gear I need in the quickest way, all the while learning the new build. This also leads to pseudo challenge runs, as I usually try to complete the game with my low level invasion characters as well.
I'm really liking RL30 +7/+3 for early game invasions. You have quite a lot more options for builds at that level compared to lower and it takes about two hours to get one ready: -Kill the knight at Fort Haight -Put bloody slash on any weapon that takes it -Cheese Greyoll with bleed, congrats you're level 30 -Grab the soreseal -Go to Liurnia, help the snake qt and use the lift for recusant's finger (Manor >>> blood & boypucci cult) -run through the Limgrave and Liurnia tunnels, kill the Crystallian -run around the map and pick up every golden seed and sacred tear that's out in the open And now you're ready
Pro tip for any faith build: Theres an ash of war called Endure thats does exactly what it says. Use it and you have like 3 seconds of BIG poise, so use it to cast big spells in invasions like Howl of Shabriri, Ancient dragon lightning, etc. Even the frenzy grab, go crazy with it
I just wanna say, Saint, you are one of the major reasons I still strive to invade and partake in Pvp. How you enjoy it, how you handle it, and how you do your builds as you just invade throughout rather than just gun for everything then start invading. It's refreshing, and I really am working myself to try and do the same methods in this game. I am on PC, though. So idk how much my mileage will vary with that but I am still gonna try. But, thank you for posting content and your words of rambling wisdom.
This video was necessary, i think. Too many people will not touch pvp until they “finish” their build. Im guilty of it myself sometimes. Also your build just inspired me for mine, im trying to play a golden knight but as i play i get more and more disenfranchised with the “golden order” and the two fingers etc, it would make sense for him to give up on his faith and fall the the flame of frenzy!
This is why I am glad that we still only get a limited amount of respecs per playthrough. A build with no origin story will never be as satisfying to use as one who's completed their journey. Heh.
What an age we live in. Some dude have to make a 40 minute video to remind people that if they just play the game they are going to have more fun than if they try to break the game doing what everyone says is best.
Great comment about how being given everything doesn't help you develop. It's the #1 issue I see with RoB and Moonveil spammers. They just use the ash of war, and they know nothing about spacing, timing, poise, etc. They never get better.
"I think Berserk is a quitter, I think he's a loser who quits. Leave a comment and tell me if Berserk is a quitter." as someone who has read all of the manga, I can confirm that's exactly the main trait our protagonist John Guts Berserk is known for, that host was perfectly in character tbh.
There is something beautiful watching saint talk about sore/scarseal penalties making leveling vigor worth a lot less while footage of him using howl of shabriri plays.
One of my favorite things in ds3 and 2 that I'd do all the time was early game invasions. I'd grab whatever early invasion covenant I could and just go wild. For ds3, I'd grab the watchdogs covenant and get tons of invasions while I go out to kill the deacons or through the poison swamp. And good lord ds2 had some of my favorite covenants. It was amazing fun. Early game covenant invasions made me so motivated for my builds. I kinda hate the lack of covenants like that in elden ring. It just feels so dry. All these amazing legacy dungeons and areas and no covenants to guard them. No trickster covenants or anything at all. Not even the sun bros. It kinda killed my motivation for early game and made making every build feel like a chore in a way. I appreciate this video, getting some motivation for it again now. Hopefully we see some covenants in the dlc 🙏
My favorite thing to do when people try to spawn camp me when invading is Howl of Shabriri at them and watch them ALL wail in pain at the same time hahaha, its so fucking fun. It wont always lead to me killing any of them, just depending but its a good tool to teach them the flaw in spawn camping but also get a laugh
I love doing this with the inescapable frenzy grab. even after the nerf it's still comedy gold. before the nerf I had one invasion where I spawned 2 feet from the host & his summon who both immediately rushed me, and the host even after seeing his buddy get grabbed and toasted still decided that instead of rolling away he should instead spam that ruins greatsword L2 gravity wave thing. I would never have thought I'd get away with 2 successful grabs in a row. :)
Just wanted to say I appreciate this channel a ton , I got into invading in the late days of ds1 and start of ds3 , your vids are what I strive to be as a invader , I remember this one build you did that was the zhwihander with grass crest , cestus, and strait sword one of my favourites just saying keep it up man
About the frenzied burst instamadness you brought up ~32:00 It's done with communion seal, for the arcane scaling, and it is patched nowadays. Sadly the frenzyflame seal is one of the worst, though it does fill the niche of dex based damage scaling for spells. I love that seal regardless of it all
Tip: if you really want to do lots of low level invasions, you can easily get the recusant finger by joining the volcano manor. Just do the necklace quest for the lady in Liurnia lake and then meet her at the top of the lift. You just need to quickly grab the two halves of the lift medallion to activate it. If you’ve beaten the game, and know where the warps to Calid are, this shouldn’t take you very long to do.
@@ZebraOnYourNose Joining won't, but I believe there may be assassination missions they give you that could be potentially problematic. But if you don't kill anyone whose name you don't recognize you should be good, I guess.
The way I like to build my bills is to look for a theme. Right now I am building a death themed build, so I am using incantation spells and equipment that relate to death. For example right now I am using the gravediggers synth and Black flame incantations
Saint I've gotta thank you yet again. Even when I lose my sense of Invasions you somehow inspire me to get back into it in the long term. Also thanks for explaining that milestone with Vigor for this game. I kept at 40 even as a level 120. And I know I have stuff that are not so useful for my build but I've got a better idea for my fix now. Also yes you are correct. Guts is a quitter. Can't tell you how many Guts I've seen run away from a fight.
Yura will also despawn if you go too far east in the Weeping Peninsula, if you've not killed the assassin in Raya Lucaria he'll drop his weapon and his quest will end. This might only be after you defeat the first bloody finger, but I tried doing his quest after finding him in the Murkwater ravine and heading to Castle Morne but he didn't appear afterwards and I found his Nagakiba in his second idle spot near the Murkwater catacombs.
I really appreciated your video and viewpoint. I’ve been playing ER since launch, and still haven’t finished the game. I tried to squeeze every point of dmg out of a character and in the process lost the fun. Took a break and tried a new approach, similar to yours, began as a Wretch and building as I go and learning my character better - game is way more fun now!
One hit madness requires the dragon communion arcane build I believe. I know before the patch, the spell would inflict more buildup due to that seal having arcane scaling. Buildup is only scaled on a weapon as long as the weapon has arcane scaling. Not sure how is works since the patch as I have not played.
Another aspect is that this game is heavily spell reliant. If you're not going to use some form of sorc/incans, you're at an immediate disadvantage and are playing hard mode, strictly melee ash build.
It feels like the game should have started us off at Weeping Peninsula. It has low level dungeons, towers, even a baby's first Stormveil, and it even kinda looks like Tutorial Island in Runescape.
Im glad theyve included ways to change startup class and stats, but ive never had an issue getting stuck with it. Hell, I used to play through the ds3 with each and every one of my characters until i was discovered honest merchant, 3 years after the game released. Never looked back, but it is THE way to get a fresh taste of the game. You get to see how certain things arent what they seem to be, and you also get to appreciate the game's design more. Glad this is how you see things too.
i love syour videos cuz theyre like unscripted you just goes off the cuff but it isnt like all the other vids that are off the cuff, and it isnt like the scripted vids either youre just fun to listen to in general yknow you got that wild way of talkin that i love
All my favorite ds3 builds were made the same way. In the late days on PC I grabbed honestly merchant for convenience but I just didn't love the builds I made using it. Had to play through the game putting them together
@@Piiavc yep ye heard right. In addition to causing severe madness buildup, dealing low dmg and making enemies more likely to target you in pve it also gives you a +20% dmg increase from all sources and +30% dmg received from all sources for 20 secs according to the fextralife wiki
Very fun video, and now I'm logging in as my Richard D James build and gonna do some relatively low level invasions, something I wouldn't typically do. Hilarious Guts comment at the end lmao, couldn't be further from the truth, I laughed.
I think making a low level invasion build and needing to progress to the late game at an extremely low RL is the best way to learn how to use your build
Hey Saint, you said that you love fighting the bosses with your builds. Do you think that you could include some of those boss fights too in these videos? Or I wonder if that would make boss fights too easy for the watchers.
I got into your vids from ds3 a long while ago,been subbed since. Your my biggest inspiration for my drive to get good at pvp and invasions. I do the same sort of thing with experimenting with builds and as of right now I’m rocking an grim reaper looking assasin as my main invasion build at lvl 80 had also had my first victory in elden ring today. Sorry if I went on a tangent but thanks for making these vids,you made a pve noob from ds3 learn to love invasions even when on the receiving end,even if he still sucks lmao.
Oh yeah this is cool. It’s so satisfying to me when a character, their equipment, meaning, name, fashion and playstyle all start working out. Or when you find good go-to areas really fit for their build and loadouts. The amount of ‘happy coincidences’ in this game are great too, so many odd things that pan out. My Ursa from Bloodborne had such an insanely perfect progression and fit. I’ve gone into the habit of making every character also partly about things I’ve trouble processing like traumas or anything I need to work on on those ends. So I get the best challenge run experiences. Plus I get to fight Malenia for like 30h with a +8 pest glaive at 44 with cute rot sister fashion. Not sure why I just love that fight. My new strength character is starting to make sense. I’ve a sort of junkyard knight I found fashion for prior to making : Duelist helm, vulgar militia garb, cleanrot gauntlets and bull goat greaves. It’s all rusty iron and green - I SO wanted mainhand palisade shield and rusty anchor offhand to work. The running or crouch attacks on the greatshield look like the gnarliest junkyard gladiator stuff idk. /About the scarseal, afaik it gives you more base defense/health at low level Btw I’m hyped for the zephyr thing. I can fit carian piercer etc on a level 33 and it sounds fun. ~now that I know not to grab the 2nd item off of Rogiers corpse (first is his equipment, then rapier) And I’m altering Jerren’s helm for the silly bearded helm
This is exactly how I play all Souls games, I come up with a build, I prefer lower level, and play through the game with the things that are part of the build. Because that experience with them is what sets me up for how to use them in PVP
I was actually just up at the Beast Sanctuary when I got taken to the Roundtable Hold. I'm not sure what the trigger is but it can happen after Limgrave
I’ve watched this video twice. Both times I was/an at a point when the thought of playing is more fun then playing. This video isn’t a PvP guide. It’s a guide on how to enjoy the game longer.
If you want madness to be more effective you can use the dragon seal because it has innate arcane scaling and increases the amount of madness that you deal per hit. Found early af too
I recommend sl60 35 Vigor beastial incantations build where you get to like 15-20 Faith (I use talisman to get 20) and get weapons with fire ashes of war. Using bestial catalyst you scale of str/fth on spells. Really fun and good in melee combat. Bestial sling is strong vs many spammers
Eyyy I love howl of Shabriri! PvE I found it pretty effective to use on wakeup and carried that over to PvP. A strong attack while someone's in the madness animation knocks them down and it's fun trying to get madness strings
Cool stuff i do for inescapable frenzy is i put a ceastus with perseverence on the other slot weapon and when i get cornered or ganked i use it to tank and then use the incantation, it works wonderfully i got a lot of kills of over lvl phantoms with that before the patch
It seems obvious that they would change concepts as they make a new franchise, like with how they treat chaos in ER compared to DS, but still, it always feels weird to me that lightning is now a dragon thing.
I've just bought the game a week ago. Never had so much fun as using my lvl1 character with a whole bunch of endgame gear dropped to me by a friend to invade the poor newbies fighting tree sentinel for the first time.
Whew that one guy dropped 19k runes and his host only dropped about 150. I don't know what level that phantom had to be at in order to drop that much but man imagine being an end game build and getting your ass whooped by a guy running around at level 20 with a short sword. Now that is a humbling experience
Hey saint so the insta proc madness is still a thing they just made it so you couldn't CHAIN proc madness with frenzy burst. They lowered the stun duration of the madness proc, that's all I believe. The way to instantly proc madness was by using an Arcane build to increase the status build up it does with the dragon communion seal due to it's innate arcane scaling. The frenzied flame seal is worse for madness buildup. Great video as always saint. Meta level invasions are drying up for me on pc so I'm gonna have to work on some lower RL builds. Looks like a ton of fun.
This is absolutely the playstyle I play Elden Ring for. Don't get me wrong, all respect to Jeenine but I just can't play the way he does, not because I'm not skilled enough to hardswap, but because I'm a fucking NERD. I rp if I play Elden ring, my newest character is a Fell God Worshipper, I'm using exclusively Fire Giant Incantations (As well as a regen buff and Golden Vow cmon I'm not a masochist). No Black Flame, no wrath of gold, no bestial sling, hell, no catch flame or flame sling, those are tarnished incants based around prophecies about the erdtree, not derived from my Almighty Fell God. The point is, I can't just use everything my statline allows, I put a ton of effort into sliders and I feel that goes to waste if I don't play a character with rules and preferences.
But i’ve been enjoying RL60 builds, i can get far on the progression in the campaign, find plenty of pvp invasions, started to use margots rune in azula to progress the game further, and the pvp has been great…
The strength build i did was 45 9 20 30 9 7 8 11 at lvl 60 with radgons, starscourge, great jar arsenal, and alexanders… that will pu the build at 50 9 25 40 14 7 8 11 using boiled crab when necessary to negate the soreseal
Its funny, originally I was like "ah man, straight swords arent gonna be viable in pvp cuz everyone is stacking poise." Then I made a few lower level invaders that used straight swords, and as it turns out, no, straight swords are perfectly viable. A SS R1 can poise break basically anyone not wearing like, veterans or bullgoats. And at lower levels, players usually dont have the stats to wear heavy armor for the poise. On top of that, a lot of them are playing caster builds that wear medium to light armor because all of their stats are in mind and int/faith. Sometimes, all I need to do to win an invasion is mash R1 into a couple of co-opers and they just stand there and take it because they cant poise thru my R1s and dont think to roll away. I learned all of that because I invaded at lower levels as I was making my build and going thru the game. I was wrong to assume straight swords couldnt work because I hadnt learned how to make them work.
