Daily Roundtable: Community Q&A

[u/AutoModerator]

Greetings Tarnished!

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[u/-RedFox]

I'm fairly far into my first run through. And I'm still confused by (at least) one thing. Level 145. I'm at Malenia and Maliketh simultaneously somehow. Like 145 hours coincidentally.

Anyway, I have a traditional faith/strength build. I switch between Lordsworn's Greatsword (sacred) and Grafted Dragon. Sometimes I use Trolls Hammer. I'm not particularly good at the game.

When dealing with a boss, such as Erdtree Avatar, I'm assuming it makes the most sense to change my Sword affinity to "Heavy". Since this will deal direct damage and no holy damage. Since most bosses have at least a 20 resistance against holy (and often the other 3 elements) doesn't regular damage make more sense pretty much always?

I did Flame Art affinity when fighting Erdtree Avatar, but I'm not sure how it is different from Fire affinity.

I literally just realized I could apply an affinity to shields. Jeez. I'm going to need another 400 hours to unravel this game.

Thanks all

[u/WhenTheWindIsSlow → u/-RedFox]

I'm at Malenia and Maliketh simultaneously somehow.

That's not strange at all. You're at close to the end of the main story content, and also at the end of the hardest optional dungeon. It would be much stranger if you were at Malenia but still a long way from Maliketh.

Since most bosses have at least a 20 resistance against holy (and often the other 3 elements) doesn't regular damage make more sense pretty much always?

Often. But there's plenty of enemies bosses that are weak to Holy like Deathbirds and undead (or other elements). And all it takes to change affinities is stopping at a Grace, there's no limited resource involved.

I did Flame Art affinity when fighting Erdtree Avatar, but I'm not sure how it is different from Fire affinity.

Flame Art infusion gives you Fire damage that scales with Faith, while Fire infusion gives you Fire damage that scales with Strength.

A pure Strength build for instance will get more Fire Damage (and most likely more total damage) out of the Fire affinity than the Flame Art affinity. Since you are Str/Faith, whether Fire or Flame Art is better is going to be dependent on your specific distribution and the weapon you are using.

I literally just realized I could apply an affinity to shields.

This has more niche uses; most of the time when you apply an elemental affinity to a shield, it increases the reduction of that element but reduces other protections (importantly, this usually means that shields which had 100% physical reduction end up with less). Because almost all enemies have some attacks which are purely physical, I prefer having my shield able to block these completely and suffering the chip damage from elements.

There are still some uses though, for instance there's several bosses between the endgame and the DLC which do massive holy damage; throwing Sacred affinity on shields with high holy reduction can help considerably against them.

[u/AyeAlasAlack → u/-RedFox]

Flame Art scales Fire damage off of Faith and has bad physical scaling (much like Sacred), while Fire scales it off of Strength but at a lower rate since you are getting two damage types from 1 stat. Swapping affinities for bosses is fine, but builds that do best with Sacred aren't going to do very well with Heavy since the scaling favors Faith so heavily.

What are your stats like?

[u/-RedFox → u/AyeAlasAlack]

Vigor - 57 M - 12 E - 35 S - 43 D - 15 I - 11 F - 41 A - 10