Shotel or Gold Tracer?

I actually ended up going with a combo of both. Because it weighs so little and has such a functional offhand moveset the Tracer works pretty well as a secondary close range deterrent for a sorcery build. The Shotel is definitely remaining my primary though. I'm doing a lot of damage with it buffed, and, like you said, I can do that damage right through a shield.

PlasticandRage wrote:I actually ended up going with a combo of both. Because it weighs so little and has such a functional offhand moveset the Tracer works pretty well as a secondary close range deterrent for a sorcery build. The Shotel is definitely remaining my primary though. I'm doing a lot of damage with it buffed, and, like you said, I can do that damage right through a shield.

You pretty much said it. I have been against both recently. I am high poise , high stability guy and the Tracer never does well against me. It usually takes 5-6 hits for them to get the bleed to pop on me with shield up. I wait for there stamina to run out from hacking away and then it is over , 2-3 shots from my GS and duel is over.

Shotel on the other hand is much more tricky. Because you are not relying on bleed build up you can just slowly wack away on a guy like me , just stay close so they cant heal. I have always found the shotel to be much more of a pain to deal with.

If you are going against a soft squishy mage , probably Tracer , but I would say it wouldnt matter much , mages are pretty easy to deal with. Just beat the sh!t out of them .

So the Tracer evidently doesn't work very well if you're trying to get Seath's tail off. I accidentally just killed him with it. Everything was going fine and then he started taking really severe bleed damage really quickly. Almost like it took awhile for his meter to fill but once it did it took off almost a third of his health. Every hit I landed was on his tail and it still didn't come off.

The tracer has epic bleed buildup, and hits harder 2h than its AR suggests. It also combos well with the r2.

I was 1 handing it for most of the fight just because my build is fragile enough that if he'd got me with a tail swipe without my shield up he probably would have killed me. Had I known that was going to happen I would have just used the Shotel. For some reason I just expected the Tracer to be a more effective weapon at tail cutting. I suppose if nothing else killing a boss with it by accident is a testament to a weapon's power

I almost never get bled out in PvP. It had happened about 3 or 4 times during the course of a PvP career, until I had a series of duels with a good GT user who bled me out 3-4 times in 15-20 minutes. Its bleed is not to be underestimated, nor should its power be. Though it has less AR than the PGS, it seems to do a lot of damage when 2h (more than the usual 2h multiplier for Curved Swords) and has a far more viable moveset.

SlakeMoth wrote:Thank you PlasticandRage. That explains it. Have only just started the DLC and got wopped by Artorias twice. Sounds cool.

Only twice, so far? Need help?