Fun forest hunter build

Initially I was playing around with some strength weapons but I couldn't really get them to work the way I wanted, so eventually I came out with a build looking like this:

https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=341889370505165946

It's a lot of fun to use and surprisingly good at dealing with multiple opponents. The 28 poise is helpful since I still need to improve on my dodging skills although it's already a lot of fun to dance around opponents and punish them with the zwei!

I've been running the Mace in the forest.  It's extremely difficult to beat gankers with just a str weapon like that; you need something with sweeping attacks, or in my case I'm going to eventually go from SL 100 to SL 120 and just WoG people who try to surround/fish as gankers.

Zwei unlocked is amazing vs gankers.  Is there a way to get past 30 poise and keep the ninja flip?  You might have to drop the shield I guess.  It's worth it not to get stunned by almost every 2h r1 out there though since it really raises the situations during which you can attack.

I do have a forest build for the zwei too, though it's a midrolling full havel's .

I would suggest getting at least 31 poise, if you are going to have less than might as well have 0 imo. You can drop str to 27 and you'll have the same power when it is being two handed. This opens up for more endurance and better gear, more poise. Also if you are going for looks that's one thing but the mask of the child seems like a waste especially if you have green blossums.

Yeah very good point, I just realised the poise problem! I've now swapped the child mask for the father mask which allows me to wear havel's gauntlets for 35 poise. I'm basically two handing all the time and relying on dodging rather than blocking.

I've revised it now somewhat:

https://mugenmonkey.com/darksouls/?c=463841850469786619

The zwei is just so beautiful when you are ninja flipping and stacking stamina regen (grass and grass crest shield), it really allows you to control the pace of the fight with your mobility and dead angling ability. Thankfully most gankers can't parry well so that's not been as issue so far.

I'm interested in your mace build, it sounds very challenging. Could you possibly post up the details for it?

Pilgrim34 wrote:Yeah very good point, I just realised the poise problem! I've now swapped the child mask for the father mask which allows me to wear havel's gauntlets for 35 poise. I'm basically two handing all the time and relying on dodging rather than blocking.

The zwei is just so beautiful when you are ninja flipping and stacking stamina regen (grass and grass crest shield), it really allows you to control the pace of the fight with your mobility and dead angling ability. Thankfully most gankers can't parry well so that's not been as issue so far.

I'm interested in your mace build, it sounds very challenging. Could you possibly post up the details for it?

 The thread is here:

https://soulswiki.forumotion.com/t23115-forest-str-sl-100-build

But what I'm looking to do is make this eventually:

http://mmdks.com/33d0

Going from 100 --> 120, most points went into faith, with 2 in attunement (4 slots) and 2 in dex (will allow menu swap for more weapons if I want them later, a lot of weapons require at least 10 dex).  A key part of this build is that I have havel's shield and will use it 2h for its buff then swap it off; this makes poking vs a tank build more dangerous since a lot of weapons will literally bounce off, causing recoil and leaving openings.  2 hits from 2h r1 mace will stunlock (allowing 1-2 more hits in mace's case) anything but full havel's or giants + wolf ring, and people know it and it makes them predictable.

1v1 this build is *nasty*, even at SL 100.  WoG x2 will go a long way towards scattering gankers and opening up lethal tickstabs...and sunlight blade mace stunlock is just mean .  It's not nearly as hard to work with as you're imagining I suspect.  I've killed a lot of gankers with the SL 100 version already, though I dropped spell stoneplate for hornet's.

Nice, it actually looks pretty effective. I guess I've just not got enough experience with strength weapons and hammers, since I'm so used to swords I tend to struggle with anything that doesn't have a sweeping/slashing attack, although I'm well aware of the hammers' ability to tear through shields and poise!

I imagine that you can end most encounters pretty quickly and efficiently with the gear you're running there. I'm having to learn a little patience since my tactic so far for the zwei build is to lead my opponents all over the place and wear them down by landing big hits whilst dancing away for most of the time. What has surprised me is that many of the gankers I've come up against have been very easy to stunlock. I would stack poise if I was a ganker since mobility is less of an issue if you have a 1 or 2 person advantage, still I won't complain!

Stacking poise with zwei is effective as an invader too.  I had no problems racking up tons of kills with FAP + havel's ring allowing me to midroll in full havel's + grass crest, and I was using an elemental Zwei.  Unlocked dead angles require a lot of spacing judgment to handle (and gankers often get caught), and the resulting stunlock can kill a lot of people outright (even more amusing to stun bs them if they were fishing and close enough).  Unlocked kicks can leave fishing open for BS also if their shield doesn't pick it up (and if it does it drains stamina and has a push effect making you getting BS'd very unlikely unless you miss).

Something like VoW of Silence (no more dead angle WoG, point-blank dark bead, etc) + high poise + unlocked DA with zwei would be extremely obnoxious to your typical gank squads.  My only issue with Zwei is that it's a quality weapon so scaling it in pure physical is very costly and makes putting enough stats into VIT, END, and Faith almost impossible...not that a lightning or chaos zwei +5 is bad or anything of course .

I've long considered risking power within on a zwei for this purpose since most gankers are really aggressive and that stunlock would kill almost any build.  You'd need a way to heal though, either humanity farming or great heal.  PW + Sunlight blade + lingering ring = lol, but at that point we'd be starting to use oorobo's "quest for hatemail" territory type builds .  It IS pretty funny to watch him just lock onto a ganker with a DMB + PW falchion and 2hr1 spam them to death...it's amazingly fast if they don't parry and if they try and miss once they're dead lol.

I dunno...I guess I'm one of the few that is willing to sac pokes/speed for stunlock threat and then base my spacing around my opponent's necessary reactions to that.  It's a different style.  I like that you can get full scaling on str weapons at 27 str if you 2 hand them.  That's a big advantage until very high SL, because it lets you dump points into a powerful buff, or more VIT/END.

In a nutshell:

Pure str:

http://mmdks.com/33et

Pure dex:

http://mmdks.com/33ev

Quality:

http://mmdks.com/33ew

The difference in investment is a big part of the draw, but so is playstyle preference I guess.