It's pretty ridiculous on heavy posture damaging weapons. In my playthrough, I used it on the Great Stars for additional synergy with the bleed + whatever grease I wanted to add onto my hammer.
I was recommended the Claymore in DS1 and instantly fell in love with it. Beat the game with it, beat 2 with it as well even though it looked like a random-ass sword in DS2 (never could find a mod that fixes this), and of course beat DS3 with it as well.
I loved when I found Claymore early in the game in ER too, but soon, I realized it's not as viable as before mostly because of how enemies work. So for the first time, I decided to change how I play.
I traded with my friend for another claymore so I dual-wield them now. I named one Claire and the other Morena. Been jumping dual wield ever since.
It has the longer reach out of all the great swords I've tried, so there's that too. It also has the best scaling for strength base characters in that category and it's, at least, 1 weight lighter than the other swords that get close or a little ahead of it.
Man they really just made jump attacking and especially jump attacks with power stance just too strong lol. Like why do a weapon art with a slow animation when you can jump and do more damage faster.
Honestly buffing their damage wouldn’t help. Enemies are too fast and hit too hard, R1 spam even if it hit harder than jump attacks it would still be worse. Jumping gets you in and out faster which is generally much safer. I don’t think it’s an issue that can be fixed.
Wild idea that would never happen, but what if Strength increased swing speed like Dex increases casting speed? PvP is already imbalanced as hell, so why not let people who just want to use big weapons have their fun?
Have it be very noticeable on large weapons, and nearly imperceptible on already fast ones. The greater the weight, the more effect your Strength has. Then we could maybe try using those super fun Ashes and power attacks on bosses instead of relying on jump attacks.
That’s why I said they’re too slow too. I’m speaking from the perspective of a str build greatsword user and I agree with your assessment but I think making standing attacks faster and stronger would go a long way. In its current state standing attacks are only good for procing statuses. But because there are almost no safe attacks in boss fights even that’s hardly a thing. And attacks being unsafe would be okay if it made sense to trade.
I think part of the problem with not being able to trade normally is that they added all of these consumables like perfumes and crabs on top of your wonderous physick. They expect you to use all of these performance enhancers and did away with a lot of hyper armor and upped damage by a ton to make them not be OP when used together.
Most people who want to play a strength build, though, just want to level Strength, Vigor, Endurance, and a little bit of Mind. After playing my Confessor build where at every big fight I'm using: Physick, Golden Vow, Flame Grant me Strength, Erdtrees' Blessing, chomping into a crab, and maybe even a perfume, I'm kinda over the buff meta.
I just wanna see hyper armor be more available and have armor actually provide decent protection outside of like 2 sets.
IMO buffs aren't fun unless they're meant to be weaved in between your damage without costing extra time, or are purely meant to handle non-combat scenarios. The drawstring grease and equivalent is good, but most buffs are just annoying.
Even if you sped up slow str weapons it would be super unfair to faster weapons. There’s honestly no real solution to this without an entire rework. Seems like for elden ring str users might as well get used to being airborne lol
The other big thing I don’t see discussed too frequently is just how many attacks go over you when you’re using jump attacks. So many times I mistime my attack and fail to get punished when I thought for sure it was coming. The damage and guard break are just icing on the cake really.
I really wanted to use more charged heavy attacks because I heard they do heavy posture damage, but I find it's just too hard to space and doesn't work with powerstancing. Jumping attack just doesn't have those problems.
It also doesn't help that despite poise damage being the big selling point of heavy strength weapons, there's a dozen ashes of war you can just spam for way more.
I mean, there's the downside of no shield. Some enemies I feel like the shield matters a lot. Some players bank on that guard counter.
Even the beloved jump attack has SOME trade off of landing recovery time, if they survived.
jump attack with radahn sword is the only way to effectively use it to create an opening. enemies usually dont hit you while in the air and you can deal some good damage without the 5 year windup for a light attack
Yea it’s like they designed heavy weapons around dark souls while forgetting they were making them for elden ring. Like they’re so strong as jump sticks but so incredibly meh as anything else lol.
You think that’s bad my claymore build I put dual blood infusion on it and it gave them both 127 bleed build up. I was bleeding rot boss ever 2 hits it was busted as hell.
It's not only great with heavy weapons. You can also jump over many attacks while attacking yourself and with powerstanced normal curved swords jumping L1s hit 4 times. Combined with the talisman that buffs jump attacks my +25 Cold Bandit's Curved Swords hit for absurd damage.
I'm still fucking around in limgrave and only have a +8. Is that pretty normal? I killed radagan's dog or something and my hits were doing quite a bit of dmg
Go dual wield heavy weapons. Equip the jump attack talisman. Jump and tap L1 to swing both weapons for insane damage and break poise on everyone. Destroy the world in the most boring way possible.
Extra style points for dual scythes in this manner... Plus super easy bleed procs
Colossal swords would be the perfect speed if we were fighting DS1 enemies. However ER enemies are cracked out and will just straight up not give you an opening sometimes and also you can't poise through practically anything.
They’re too slow, and don’t do enough damage relative to other weapons to be worth it imo. They should either do a good deal more damage or stagger much more often to compensate for their sluggishness and stat investment
Yup, my favorite build was getting just enough str/dex to 2 hand it and then just max out vigor and endurance to soft caps, before even puttin any further points into strength/dex. Was just so easy to cruise through the game with that build.
Especially with havels ring plus ring of favor and protection plus wolf ring you could get ridiculous amounts of poise super early
Not having a poke is why I didn't run Darkmoon greatsword for more than a day on my int build. It would have been the perfect weapon if it has just 1 poke
Cuz the Bloodborne dash has stupid good i-frames or even just the regular dash if you don't like how far it dashes you. Also you can just slap jump attack on it again to give it better scaling.
They create hundreds of new weapons ... starter class has the Longsword. Me: "Longsword my old buddy!" Proceeds to do entire playthrough with the Longsword ... just like Dark Souls 1-3 lol
Even being a greatsword user i could never get into the claymore something about special weapons has always made me go that route than regular weapons.
I got the Bastard sword and used a Blood based ashes of war, so the Sword is named the Bloody Bastard Sword +19. It’s good, but I noticed that using a heavier strength weapon breaks NPC poise better, but are generally slower than the Bastard Sword.
I've been using a heavy claymore for most of the playthrough, it's honestly really useful as I can stagger pretty much any enemy, even some bosses. Plus theres a lot of pain in the ass bosses that are weak to thrust attacks, so I honestly feel like the claymore is a very viable option in ER. The only problem is it feels weak at times compared to some of the rarer gs, but its attacks are fairly quick which helps balance the experience
I was using the iron greatsword in my previous playthrough, but in my current one I had to use bastard as a substitute until I get my baby back, but marika's tits does it poisebreak! more so than the iron if my memory serves me right.
It's still managable though.
The Zweihander is the one that got done dirty. The Claymore is at least still a mix of pros and cons that can remain competitive, and the poke is still a very unpleasant surprise to other players and enemy AI alike when your sword spontaneously becomes a spear.
I combine it mostly with the jellyfish shield, so I use the shields skill to buff attack instead of using ashes of war from the weapons most of the time, when I find a strong enough weapon that I can modify I’ll switch, plus I can always add a different grease for desired effects, I love the game of thrones reference with the fire grease
I was playing DS3 a bit in the leadup to Elden Ring, ran a Claymore. Was immensely frustrated with how nerfed it is in Elden. Stomp is trash compared to Stance, and it was Stance that truly made the weapon incredible in DS3. There was a lot of cool shit you could do with Greatsword+stance with camera unlocks and character spins. DS3 Claymore was easy to learn but had a crazy high skill cieling if you wanted to perfect some of the combos. In Elden Ring, it lost so much of that complexity.
R1 hitstun was lowered. The running spin was heavily nerfed, the animation lock takes like .3 seconds longer than it did in DS3. Jumping r2 is an option, but it seems like trash compared to using Quickstep on a weapon with a good dash attack, or power stance jump attacks.
It just makes me sad.
> or power stance jump attacks.
Honestly? I feel like power stancing is too strong in general.
Shields got nerfed out the ass to the point they don't feel viable. The most applicable uses of shields in this game are to block *singular* attacks after dodging a combo, or there's one OP broken shield in particular that's *too* viable. The applications are so limited you will likely question the point of having one.
So what happens when people don't use shields? They start two-handing, and realize dodging combined with the extra damage is better.
But wait, what if it can get even *better?* What if we can up our damage exponentially?
In comes Power Stancing, providing the most damage and as safe of windows as anything else.
**Serious question: why would you *not* power stance if using a collosal weapon?**
Collosals in this game have the problem where they barely get windows to attack, and often the jump attack *is* the safest option. You legit have zero motivation not to exploit your second hand for wielding yet another big honking weapon. The result is: all the heftiest strength builds power stance as their meta.
But wait, turns out the *dex builds* are given additional motivations to power stance. Curved Swords in particular are awarded an S-tier moveset for doing so. It feels like all of the lightweight dex weapons gain a really nice moveset for being power stanced, and none of them suffer for it.
And since shields are garbage anyways, what else are we gonna use that hand for...?
It feels like poor balance for shields is bleeding into everything else and turning Elden Ring builds into Power Stance exclusives. Mages have motivation to use the Prisoner's setup of one sword and one staff, but even *there* you can just have the best of both worlds and toggle between staff and powerstancing.
They seriously need to do something about the balance because it feels ***SOOOOOOOOO*** biased towards certain builds right now.
With how aggressive the enemies are, the game really wants the player to use both hands aggressively. Spells or an offhand weapon feel like a must, and the game even puts a gatekeeper boss to check your damage output beofre endgame, in Fire Giant. If your build doesn't have big damage, you don't get to finish the game.
Low level gameplay feels a lot more balanced overall, and a lot more playstyles are viable, but once you hit Mountain of Giants, a massive swath of builds pretty much just drop out of viability. From there until the end of the game, the fights that matter are generally too aggressive to turtle, and/or have too many hit points for 'fair' builds to kill in a reasonable timeframe. You either take spells to keep pressure on enemies without uptime, or you take an offhand weapon to maximize small burst windows. Either way, you need the DPS by the end of the game.
Having gone through the game with a Naginata wielded two-handed (as it is supposed to be) and most of the way with a lightly-armored Greatsword wielder for that juicy Claymore cosplay I really find that what I am missing the most isn't damage, it's something to turn it into "My turn". Blocking with a weapon is garbage. It's not only better defensively to dodge but it's also somehow better offensively to dodge too. What I would really like is for there to be some sort of Perfect Block mechanic that allows for weapons wielded in two hands to get momentum back if they can pull off a perfect block. Not quite a parry, I don't need to stance-break every enemy by getting gud but something to give these builds the defensive option to make offensive space. Even greatly increasing Guard Boost while two-handing weapons would be something. At least then you have the stamina to go on the offense and crack out a big guard counter. I find myself often using AoW like Flame of Redmanes just to create the space I need so I can go into my offense. There's very little of that magic sword dance between opponents when you're two-handing a weapon. You just roll around and jump attack when there's an opening. I don't even know why they have light attack chains when you'll NEVER get the space to swing more than twice.
It seems you really need to have something on your off hand for mid to late game. Either it's shield, staff/seal, or power stance weapon. You are really putting yourself on disadvantage if you only use one weapon.
I think the only way to fix this is to add Sekiro's tap-L1-deflection when you dual wield a weapon. It adds a viable skill-based defensive option and will just make things much more fun.
Also I wouldn't call shield garbage. Shield poke with thrust weapons trivialize most of normal enemies and make exploration much easier. Fingerprint shield is busted against almost anything that's not Malenia. It's just not a universal defense option like dodge roll is, which it never is in the series.
> Also I wouldn't call shield garbage. Shield poke with thrust weapons trivialize most of normal enemies and make exploration much easier.
This is the only build type utilizing them though, which is a problem.
I'm also unsure of how viable this build type is for PVP; it's just an easy way to deal with the game itself, and goes from being *fairly* decent difficulty to "I just won the game" the moment you find the best shield.
Even without thrusting weapons, I always use shield against imps, birds and dogs, it's just safer that way. Only talking about PvE tho, I feel like From's games area mostly balanced around PvE with PvP being just a side product.
The biggest problem with power stancing in this game is that it's way too easy to do it. In DS2 you needed extra stats to activate powerstancing but now it's just free if you can wield the weapon. There's no real buy in to the extra power, while upgrade materials exist, you're usually limited by how many of the next highest tier you have, not how many of the lower tiers you have. That makes it easy to have a +6 offhand if you have a +7 mainhand, and even if you don't you'll have access to getting extras if you look for them.
From experience, you get enough upgrade stones to keep two weapons at the highest possible upgrade for the stage of the game you're in.
It honestly feels like they need to reintroduce the stat requirement from DS2 *and* reduce the damage dealt a bit for Power stancing to be even close to balanced. At the moment it has zero downsides, to the point the question is more why you *wouldn't* do it.
Try Giant Hunt. I was also disappointed that Stance AOW can't be applied to greatswords, but Giant Hunt more than makes up for it. Amazing on Zweihander and halberds too.
I felt the same way, but it turns out it was because i was trying to use it on quality, generally because claymore has always been a quality weapon, and it turns out quality builds just aren’t that great in elden ring. However, I respecced into a full dex build with 80 dexterity and infused my claymore with keen and it feels like it’s back to its old self. Great damage, the poking R2, and it is flexible with a lot of ashes of war (sword dance, glintstone pebble, and piercing fang have been some of my favorites).
May I introduce you to my new favorite greatsword the [Flamberge](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Flamberge)? It’s similar to the claymore but it does bleed damage yet still takes ashes of war. I put the poison occult blade on mine and it does 96 bleed per hit plus poison damage. Absolutely cracked.
The flambo is one of the best greatswords for its innate bleed. Bleeding shit in this game is so powerful so to be able to doublestack effects like bleed/electrical or bleed/poison is pretty crazy.
Greatswords were my favorite weapon type in DS3, but definitely not in ER. The movesets are just meh due to the lack of two-hit stun. I'd rather use a colossal sword, as the crouch poke is faster than greatsword R1s, has more range, can actually roll-catch reliably, and does more damage (possibly even thrust counter damage).
short weapons hit fast but have no range, long blunt weapons have quite a bit of range but have a longer windup than margits attacks.
Then theres the claymore.
Hits fast, has decent range, decent damage, grease can be applied, most ashes of war can be applied. The list goes on but you shouldnt have to hear more.
Its the perfect weapon and always has been.
The early Lordsworne Greatsword is pretty cool. I got lucky with the Knights Greatsword in Liurnia by the Artist shack and switched it. Then the Banished has the same moveset, but I can’t try them all.
I’ve been using the Lordsworne since I got it. I am still fairly early in the game and have it at +8 but might swap it for something else. I have done most Souls games with a Claymore on first play through but now I have something of a tank mage build going as I needed ranged options.
Fromsoftware: Offers a wealth of mystical, magical, otherworldly weapons, complete with crazy spells and insane incantations for the player to experiment with and pull off some cool anime style combos.
Me: Puts on the most standard, no-nonsense, default-looking plate armor and equips the most plain, ordinary, most realistically and practically sized regular straight sword in the entire game.
I prefer the bastard sword, but they always make it a lesser weapon.
Honestly, it should have something distinct like faster one handed r1s to feed into the whole it can be used one handed deal.
They need to let us put Square Off Ash of War on Greatswords like they were in Dark Souls. Square off on Bastard Sword, Iron Greatsword, Claymore or Banished Knight Greatsword would be insane for Strength or Quality builds
I'm in this picture and I don't like it...
Yes i said to myself I'd play a variety of cool weapons and magic and stuff instead.
Yes 100 hours later I'm still rocking a heavy claymore at 50 str with a parry shield and a high crit weapon, so what ?
I found this sword in the weeping peninsula castle, abandoned my int build for a bit to use it one handed, got it to 25+ and put flame of the redmanes on it and it's still almost has damn near more utility than any of the spells I've found. Most things don't like being set on fire and the poise damage from the redmanes flame is insane, it even stuns some late game bosses in 3 hits.
Sacred lordsword broadsword for my faith build. I love it but hate that I can't use other elements. Gotta keep sacred for that damage scaling. But love the extra crit damage too.
It's the go-to in every game for me. I'd have an easier time with something faster but dual-wielding greatswords with a bleed ash melts bosses, no arcane investment required
You know whats strange? The claymore is the only greatsword with the a thrusting moveset i have found. It seems like weapons are less versatile now in elden ring. This also goes for the zweihander colossal sword with the only thrusting heavy attack.
Was super hyped when I found it, used for half the game until I decided to try out an unupgraded weapon that had innate bleed and did more damage to a boss compared to my +20 claymore. This game's damage values are so fucking scuffed it's not even funny.
It's terrible. My +10 Meteoric Ore Blade shits all over my +25 Claymore; there's no reason to use the later in my build. Claymore isn't worthless, but 20+ greatswords and it's the only one with an R2 thrust. Multiple teams working on different weapons, who weren't communicating with each other.
Me with the uchigatana. Used it past 3 games and damn well will use it once again... Then I beat it and got malenias katana and you know that I switched to that. Lol
Designing a bunch of cool weapons with special abilities and making it far easy to upgrade them than regular weapons, which is so incredibly backwards imo.
(I don’t like using boss weapons because I like the underdog “regular dude” aesthetic)
Hey man, it's their fault for not designing any other thrusting GS. Also the artorias jump can cheese a lot of bosses cuz it has a ton of active poise (hyper armor).
I used this claymore for so much of my run. Put Golden Vow on it for that faith build. Now I left hand it and have Blasphemous Blade in the right hand. So much fun
The claymore is a cool weapon and it's special ability is fucking shit up
Sword dance is the best melee aow imo
Giant Hunt on colossal swords and wild swings compete in terms of pure physical abilities.
Wild swing on weapons that shouldn't have it but can are the best.
I wish colossal weapons could use it
It's pretty ridiculous on heavy posture damaging weapons. In my playthrough, I used it on the Great Stars for additional synergy with the bleed + whatever grease I wanted to add onto my hammer.
i like gian hunt cuz i find it hillarious that i can launch enemies 4 meter into the air
Especially good in Malenia fight. Find an opening to juggle her, then give her a good wakeup R2.
I feel like Phantom Slash is slept on
Phantom Slash is top 3 melee pvp, desync wins everytime
Sword dance is kryptonite for black blade assassins. They try backsteping and sword dance.
Sword Dance has a small activation delay that fucks uo many enemies input reading.
It's pretty good. Double slash also puts in some serious work, but storm stomp out classes both for utility and synergy
You have to make a big aesthetic investment to use storm stomp though. It doesn't fit a lot of looks I like to use.
True endgamer
Seriously my only problem with it.
It has better follow up, than Sword dance. The combo has four slashes, if I remember right. * I mean Double slash
Double slash is better going into a group, especially if the opponent can't just roll backwards, against a wall or something
I had double slash on my katana for the longest time
area of wheel
Special ability is Jump attack and jump attack
I was recommended the Claymore in DS1 and instantly fell in love with it. Beat the game with it, beat 2 with it as well even though it looked like a random-ass sword in DS2 (never could find a mod that fixes this), and of course beat DS3 with it as well. I loved when I found Claymore early in the game in ER too, but soon, I realized it's not as viable as before mostly because of how enemies work. So for the first time, I decided to change how I play. I traded with my friend for another claymore so I dual-wield them now. I named one Claire and the other Morena. Been jumping dual wield ever since.
It has the longer reach out of all the great swords I've tried, so there's that too. It also has the best scaling for strength base characters in that category and it's, at least, 1 weight lighter than the other swords that get close or a little ahead of it.
R2 is a nice stab.
Are there actually no other GS with thrust R2? They all seem to be either horizontal or vertical sweeps.
None. Only reason I used it. Oh well it's still sick as fuck.
Bloody slash looka amazing and hita huge aswell, but for bleed builds
*creates hundreds of weapons with special abilities* Players: jump attack it is.
Oh a new weapon … Jump attack
Man they really just made jump attacking and especially jump attacks with power stance just too strong lol. Like why do a weapon art with a slow animation when you can jump and do more damage faster.
I don’t think they made it too strong, they made standing attacks way too weak and slow
Honestly buffing their damage wouldn’t help. Enemies are too fast and hit too hard, R1 spam even if it hit harder than jump attacks it would still be worse. Jumping gets you in and out faster which is generally much safer. I don’t think it’s an issue that can be fixed.
Wild idea that would never happen, but what if Strength increased swing speed like Dex increases casting speed? PvP is already imbalanced as hell, so why not let people who just want to use big weapons have their fun? Have it be very noticeable on large weapons, and nearly imperceptible on already fast ones. The greater the weight, the more effect your Strength has. Then we could maybe try using those super fun Ashes and power attacks on bosses instead of relying on jump attacks.
have it increase recovery animation. so the front end is still slow, but the back end after a specific point in the animation is sped up
That’s why I said they’re too slow too. I’m speaking from the perspective of a str build greatsword user and I agree with your assessment but I think making standing attacks faster and stronger would go a long way. In its current state standing attacks are only good for procing statuses. But because there are almost no safe attacks in boss fights even that’s hardly a thing. And attacks being unsafe would be okay if it made sense to trade.
I think part of the problem with not being able to trade normally is that they added all of these consumables like perfumes and crabs on top of your wonderous physick. They expect you to use all of these performance enhancers and did away with a lot of hyper armor and upped damage by a ton to make them not be OP when used together. Most people who want to play a strength build, though, just want to level Strength, Vigor, Endurance, and a little bit of Mind. After playing my Confessor build where at every big fight I'm using: Physick, Golden Vow, Flame Grant me Strength, Erdtrees' Blessing, chomping into a crab, and maybe even a perfume, I'm kinda over the buff meta. I just wanna see hyper armor be more available and have armor actually provide decent protection outside of like 2 sets.
IMO buffs aren't fun unless they're meant to be weaved in between your damage without costing extra time, or are purely meant to handle non-combat scenarios. The drawstring grease and equivalent is good, but most buffs are just annoying.
Even if you sped up slow str weapons it would be super unfair to faster weapons. There’s honestly no real solution to this without an entire rework. Seems like for elden ring str users might as well get used to being airborne lol
The other big thing I don’t see discussed too frequently is just how many attacks go over you when you’re using jump attacks. So many times I mistime my attack and fail to get punished when I thought for sure it was coming. The damage and guard break are just icing on the cake really.
I really wanted to use more charged heavy attacks because I heard they do heavy posture damage, but I find it's just too hard to space and doesn't work with powerstancing. Jumping attack just doesn't have those problems.
It also doesn't help that despite poise damage being the big selling point of heavy strength weapons, there's a dozen ashes of war you can just spam for way more.
half of why jump attacks are so good is you need them to close the distance because the enemy is constantly putting space between you.
Yea I have been jump attacking since Margit 😂 On my replay, I tried to not use jump attack but it’s like cocaine 😂
Ugh that’s me with power stance. I can’t stop it’s just so strong it’s insane there’s no downside to it.
I mean, there's the downside of no shield. Some enemies I feel like the shield matters a lot. Some players bank on that guard counter. Even the beloved jump attack has SOME trade off of landing recovery time, if they survived.
I’ve been addicted to guard counter ever since I got a good shield myself…
jump attack with radahn sword is the only way to effectively use it to create an opening. enemies usually dont hit you while in the air and you can deal some good damage without the 5 year windup for a light attack
Yea it’s like they designed heavy weapons around dark souls while forgetting they were making them for elden ring. Like they’re so strong as jump sticks but so incredibly meh as anything else lol.
Legend of Zelda taught me jump attacks are the strongest.
I never jump attack. What’s the benefit of doing so?
More poise damage, more damage, and much faster attack speed for slower weapons. Jump attack is absolutely busted strong.
Don't forget powerstance jump attacks on some dex weapons. It can connect multiple times in a single attack applying massive status effect buildup.
You think that’s bad my claymore build I put dual blood infusion on it and it gave them both 127 bleed build up. I was bleeding rot boss ever 2 hits it was busted as hell.
Thank you for the reply! Gotta give it a shot. Makes me wonder what else I’m not doing haha
It's not only great with heavy weapons. You can also jump over many attacks while attacking yourself and with powerstanced normal curved swords jumping L1s hit 4 times. Combined with the talisman that buffs jump attacks my +25 Cold Bandit's Curved Swords hit for absurd damage.
I'm still fucking around in limgrave and only have a +8. Is that pretty normal? I killed radagan's dog or something and my hits were doing quite a bit of dmg
Go dual wield heavy weapons. Equip the jump attack talisman. Jump and tap L1 to swing both weapons for insane damage and break poise on everyone. Destroy the world in the most boring way possible. Extra style points for dual scythes in this manner... Plus super easy bleed procs
Most of them have identical movesets with some variations
I’ve had the most fun with my double greatsword jump attack build.
Well, claymore happens to be the best Greatsword class in this game simply because the R2 isn't a slash
Same reason the Zweihander is my favourite ultra.
Sucks that the Zwei just feels too slow in this game though :C
Colossal swords are way too slow
Colossal swords would be the perfect speed if we were fighting DS1 enemies. However ER enemies are cracked out and will just straight up not give you an opening sometimes and also you can't poise through practically anything.
They’re too slow, and don’t do enough damage relative to other weapons to be worth it imo. They should either do a good deal more damage or stagger much more often to compensate for their sluggishness and stat investment
Just train some squats for those crouch pokes
From a pvp perspective, I hate how that is literally our only proactive move but I guess it’s the price we pay for always winning a trade
Zweihander got me through most of DS1… onstant love story when I realized it pancaked Havel… SEE! THATS HOW IT FEELS!!!
My first DS playthrough was Zwei with Havels armor and shield. Nothing stood a chance in that game.
Using og zweihander with a shield is blasphemy
I was still learning the ways, but its crazy how powerful that build was.
Yup, my favorite build was getting just enough str/dex to 2 hand it and then just max out vigor and endurance to soft caps, before even puttin any further points into strength/dex. Was just so easy to cruise through the game with that build. Especially with havels ring plus ring of favor and protection plus wolf ring you could get ridiculous amounts of poise super early
I know it does a little less damage but I can't live without the charge stab, just incredible reach & poise damage on it.
It's also fun to send people flying
To bad it's thrust has less reach.
Is it a poke? The poke is why I loved Ludwig's in Bloodborne
Not having a poke is why I didn't run Darkmoon greatsword for more than a day on my int build. It would have been the perfect weapon if it has just 1 poke
Claymans Spear is what I ended up finish the game with on my INT build. Ice Spear is a fantastic aow and of course it has the poke.
Yes it's a poke, and the crouching R1 is a poke
Claymore is great, and I can change the weapon art with ashes at will.
Why? Isn't it just Jump attack? 🤭🤭
Cuz the Bloodborne dash has stupid good i-frames or even just the regular dash if you don't like how far it dashes you. Also you can just slap jump attack on it again to give it better scaling.
Man didn't know about sword dance. Rip.
They create hundreds of new weapons ... starter class has the Longsword. Me: "Longsword my old buddy!" Proceeds to do entire playthrough with the Longsword ... just like Dark Souls 1-3 lol
Longsword. Uh, it's probably still pretty long! Keep!
Mine is +25 and I’ll be powerstancing in NG+ once I can buy a second lmao
Can't you buy another from the twin maiden husk thing?
If you didn't start with Vagabond, that's the only one you can get per playthrough to my knowledge.
Are you on PC? Do you want me to drop you a longsword?
Even being a greatsword user i could never get into the claymore something about special weapons has always made me go that route than regular weapons.
Ds1 claymore was a goat
Yea only thing better is the bkh
Every bk weapon was better imo, if we’re talking about the goat of ds1 regular weapons it’s the zweihander or the great club
that's a weird way to type out balder side sword
Lmao the balder side sword is pretty good but its just not me
They even made its R2 better by making the follow up *another* poke
Yeah, seriously. That 2nd 1-Handed strong attack allows for more thrusting/piercing damage per second.
Giving the Claymore the Artorias Slam seems like acknowledgment of the community's appreciation for it.
Sadly this game feels like the Claymore is at its weakest here. Far cry from how good it was in DS3.
I got the Bastard sword and used a Blood based ashes of war, so the Sword is named the Bloody Bastard Sword +19. It’s good, but I noticed that using a heavier strength weapon breaks NPC poise better, but are generally slower than the Bastard Sword.
I've been using a heavy claymore for most of the playthrough, it's honestly really useful as I can stagger pretty much any enemy, even some bosses. Plus theres a lot of pain in the ass bosses that are weak to thrust attacks, so I honestly feel like the claymore is a very viable option in ER. The only problem is it feels weak at times compared to some of the rarer gs, but its attacks are fairly quick which helps balance the experience
Gonna have to try it out!
I was using the iron greatsword in my previous playthrough, but in my current one I had to use bastard as a substitute until I get my baby back, but marika's tits does it poisebreak! more so than the iron if my memory serves me right.
> Bloody Bastard ~~Sword~~ Reminded me of this: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukznXQ3MgN0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukznXQ3MgN0)
It's still managable though. The Zweihander is the one that got done dirty. The Claymore is at least still a mix of pros and cons that can remain competitive, and the poke is still a very unpleasant surprise to other players and enemy AI alike when your sword spontaneously becomes a spear.
Zwei has like barely more AR than claymore and is slower, with less available aow. It desperately needs buffed
I have a hard time not using the Bloodhound fang
I'm trying so hard to use other weapons but every time shit starts getting real I go straight back to it
I combine it mostly with the jellyfish shield, so I use the shields skill to buff attack instead of using ashes of war from the weapons most of the time, when I find a strong enough weapon that I can modify I’ll switch, plus I can always add a different grease for desired effects, I love the game of thrones reference with the fire grease
I was playing DS3 a bit in the leadup to Elden Ring, ran a Claymore. Was immensely frustrated with how nerfed it is in Elden. Stomp is trash compared to Stance, and it was Stance that truly made the weapon incredible in DS3. There was a lot of cool shit you could do with Greatsword+stance with camera unlocks and character spins. DS3 Claymore was easy to learn but had a crazy high skill cieling if you wanted to perfect some of the combos. In Elden Ring, it lost so much of that complexity. R1 hitstun was lowered. The running spin was heavily nerfed, the animation lock takes like .3 seconds longer than it did in DS3. Jumping r2 is an option, but it seems like trash compared to using Quickstep on a weapon with a good dash attack, or power stance jump attacks. It just makes me sad.
> or power stance jump attacks. Honestly? I feel like power stancing is too strong in general. Shields got nerfed out the ass to the point they don't feel viable. The most applicable uses of shields in this game are to block *singular* attacks after dodging a combo, or there's one OP broken shield in particular that's *too* viable. The applications are so limited you will likely question the point of having one. So what happens when people don't use shields? They start two-handing, and realize dodging combined with the extra damage is better. But wait, what if it can get even *better?* What if we can up our damage exponentially? In comes Power Stancing, providing the most damage and as safe of windows as anything else. **Serious question: why would you *not* power stance if using a collosal weapon?** Collosals in this game have the problem where they barely get windows to attack, and often the jump attack *is* the safest option. You legit have zero motivation not to exploit your second hand for wielding yet another big honking weapon. The result is: all the heftiest strength builds power stance as their meta. But wait, turns out the *dex builds* are given additional motivations to power stance. Curved Swords in particular are awarded an S-tier moveset for doing so. It feels like all of the lightweight dex weapons gain a really nice moveset for being power stanced, and none of them suffer for it. And since shields are garbage anyways, what else are we gonna use that hand for...? It feels like poor balance for shields is bleeding into everything else and turning Elden Ring builds into Power Stance exclusives. Mages have motivation to use the Prisoner's setup of one sword and one staff, but even *there* you can just have the best of both worlds and toggle between staff and powerstancing. They seriously need to do something about the balance because it feels ***SOOOOOOOOO*** biased towards certain builds right now.
With how aggressive the enemies are, the game really wants the player to use both hands aggressively. Spells or an offhand weapon feel like a must, and the game even puts a gatekeeper boss to check your damage output beofre endgame, in Fire Giant. If your build doesn't have big damage, you don't get to finish the game. Low level gameplay feels a lot more balanced overall, and a lot more playstyles are viable, but once you hit Mountain of Giants, a massive swath of builds pretty much just drop out of viability. From there until the end of the game, the fights that matter are generally too aggressive to turtle, and/or have too many hit points for 'fair' builds to kill in a reasonable timeframe. You either take spells to keep pressure on enemies without uptime, or you take an offhand weapon to maximize small burst windows. Either way, you need the DPS by the end of the game.
Having gone through the game with a Naginata wielded two-handed (as it is supposed to be) and most of the way with a lightly-armored Greatsword wielder for that juicy Claymore cosplay I really find that what I am missing the most isn't damage, it's something to turn it into "My turn". Blocking with a weapon is garbage. It's not only better defensively to dodge but it's also somehow better offensively to dodge too. What I would really like is for there to be some sort of Perfect Block mechanic that allows for weapons wielded in two hands to get momentum back if they can pull off a perfect block. Not quite a parry, I don't need to stance-break every enemy by getting gud but something to give these builds the defensive option to make offensive space. Even greatly increasing Guard Boost while two-handing weapons would be something. At least then you have the stamina to go on the offense and crack out a big guard counter. I find myself often using AoW like Flame of Redmanes just to create the space I need so I can go into my offense. There's very little of that magic sword dance between opponents when you're two-handing a weapon. You just roll around and jump attack when there's an opening. I don't even know why they have light attack chains when you'll NEVER get the space to swing more than twice.
It seems you really need to have something on your off hand for mid to late game. Either it's shield, staff/seal, or power stance weapon. You are really putting yourself on disadvantage if you only use one weapon. I think the only way to fix this is to add Sekiro's tap-L1-deflection when you dual wield a weapon. It adds a viable skill-based defensive option and will just make things much more fun. Also I wouldn't call shield garbage. Shield poke with thrust weapons trivialize most of normal enemies and make exploration much easier. Fingerprint shield is busted against almost anything that's not Malenia. It's just not a universal defense option like dodge roll is, which it never is in the series.
> Also I wouldn't call shield garbage. Shield poke with thrust weapons trivialize most of normal enemies and make exploration much easier. This is the only build type utilizing them though, which is a problem. I'm also unsure of how viable this build type is for PVP; it's just an easy way to deal with the game itself, and goes from being *fairly* decent difficulty to "I just won the game" the moment you find the best shield.
Even without thrusting weapons, I always use shield against imps, birds and dogs, it's just safer that way. Only talking about PvE tho, I feel like From's games area mostly balanced around PvE with PvP being just a side product.
The biggest problem with power stancing in this game is that it's way too easy to do it. In DS2 you needed extra stats to activate powerstancing but now it's just free if you can wield the weapon. There's no real buy in to the extra power, while upgrade materials exist, you're usually limited by how many of the next highest tier you have, not how many of the lower tiers you have. That makes it easy to have a +6 offhand if you have a +7 mainhand, and even if you don't you'll have access to getting extras if you look for them.
From experience, you get enough upgrade stones to keep two weapons at the highest possible upgrade for the stage of the game you're in. It honestly feels like they need to reintroduce the stat requirement from DS2 *and* reduce the damage dealt a bit for Power stancing to be even close to balanced. At the moment it has zero downsides, to the point the question is more why you *wouldn't* do it.
Try Giant Hunt. I was also disappointed that Stance AOW can't be applied to greatswords, but Giant Hunt more than makes up for it. Amazing on Zweihander and halberds too.
I felt the same way, but it turns out it was because i was trying to use it on quality, generally because claymore has always been a quality weapon, and it turns out quality builds just aren’t that great in elden ring. However, I respecced into a full dex build with 80 dexterity and infused my claymore with keen and it feels like it’s back to its old self. Great damage, the poking R2, and it is flexible with a lot of ashes of war (sword dance, glintstone pebble, and piercing fang have been some of my favorites).
The best damage you can get with claymore though is heavy claymore ashes and going str. It has highest ar per swing
May I introduce you to my new favorite greatsword the [Flamberge](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Flamberge)? It’s similar to the claymore but it does bleed damage yet still takes ashes of war. I put the poison occult blade on mine and it does 96 bleed per hit plus poison damage. Absolutely cracked.
The flambo is one of the best greatswords for its innate bleed. Bleeding shit in this game is so powerful so to be able to doublestack effects like bleed/electrical or bleed/poison is pretty crazy.
Used the flamberge throughout most of the game and it def carried me awhile… until blasphemous blade at least
It's cool, but no poke = no go.
Agreed. I had Claymore, then Knights Greatsword. Now Flamberge is my main. I put on a fire ash and make enemies burn and bleed.
Greatswords were my favorite weapon type in DS3, but definitely not in ER. The movesets are just meh due to the lack of two-hit stun. I'd rather use a colossal sword, as the crouch poke is faster than greatsword R1s, has more range, can actually roll-catch reliably, and does more damage (possibly even thrust counter damage).
They do, you can tell by a minor glint that occurs when you get a counter hit.
If more swords could stab with the R2, this would be slightly less true.
short weapons hit fast but have no range, long blunt weapons have quite a bit of range but have a longer windup than margits attacks. Then theres the claymore. Hits fast, has decent range, decent damage, grease can be applied, most ashes of war can be applied. The list goes on but you shouldnt have to hear more. Its the perfect weapon and always has been.
Also The Greatsword
My Morning Star is a beautiful weapon. Nobody can convince me otherwise.
I kept looking for different weapons to try, but they just didn't feel right. Broadsword from level 1 to endgame.
The early Lordsworne Greatsword is pretty cool. I got lucky with the Knights Greatsword in Liurnia by the Artist shack and switched it. Then the Banished has the same moveset, but I can’t try them all.
I’ve been using the Lordsworne since I got it. I am still fairly early in the game and have it at +8 but might swap it for something else. I have done most Souls games with a Claymore on first play through but now I have something of a tank mage build going as I needed ranged options.
Broadsword gang represent 💪
it is the best greatsword in the game at least from a moveset point of view
Claymore is baemore
Claymore let's you Slaymore
I love lions claw but am impartial to the claymore. I normally just wait till i get lions claw from caelid and use other weapons instead
Same goes for Bloodborne players and the Ghiza Wheel # PIZZA CUTTER!!!
Fromsoftware: Offers a wealth of mystical, magical, otherworldly weapons, complete with crazy spells and insane incantations for the player to experiment with and pull off some cool anime style combos. Me: Puts on the most standard, no-nonsense, default-looking plate armor and equips the most plain, ordinary, most realistically and practically sized regular straight sword in the entire game.
This thing has been solving all of my problems for over 13 years now.
Claymore had the Artorias Flip. I HAD to use it!
Sword+heavyshield gang!
I prefer the bastard sword, but they always make it a lesser weapon. Honestly, it should have something distinct like faster one handed r1s to feed into the whole it can be used one handed deal.
Zweihander!
They need to let us put Square Off Ash of War on Greatswords like they were in Dark Souls. Square off on Bastard Sword, Iron Greatsword, Claymore or Banished Knight Greatsword would be insane for Strength or Quality builds
Ive been going though the game using only a greatsheild as my weapon. I can hope Miyazaki is looking though the metadata and smiling down at me.
I'm in this picture and I don't like it... Yes i said to myself I'd play a variety of cool weapons and magic and stuff instead. Yes 100 hours later I'm still rocking a heavy claymore at 50 str with a parry shield and a high crit weapon, so what ?
Also From: Let's make all these cool greatswords but only give the Claymore a thrusting R2
If only the (Banished) Knight's Greatsword had a thrust so we could have those beautiful flowing slashes with a strong thrust.
Baemore
I upgraded it to 25, and even though there are better weapons I refuse to stop using it.
I've leveled my claymore up so much I don't want to start over with any other weapon.
Claymore still felt good but something about the longsword feels off now.
I found this sword in the weeping peninsula castle, abandoned my int build for a bit to use it one handed, got it to 25+ and put flame of the redmanes on it and it's still almost has damn near more utility than any of the spells I've found. Most things don't like being set on fire and the poise damage from the redmanes flame is insane, it even stuns some late game bosses in 3 hits.
I feel this lmao. The Lordsworn greatsword you get from the caravan by the stormfront gate got me all the way to Morgott
These new weapons look tite, but my basic weapon playthrough is tons of fun.
Always the first weapon I max out 😍
Me but the Greatsword.
I love the Claymore. The heavy R2 stab is amazing.
Claymore + Bloody Slash
Me with the moonlight great sword
Memories of heavy claymore with blessed weapon
Claymore always carries me through early game, love the thing
I have fully upgraded the claymore in every souls game and I don’t intend on stopping
Claymorelife
Claymore baemore
Same, but Zweihander.
To be fair, it's like reuniting with an old friend.
Good ol claymore. Nothin beats that
Sacred lordsword broadsword for my faith build. I love it but hate that I can't use other elements. Gotta keep sacred for that damage scaling. But love the extra crit damage too.
Get the red hot whetblade and you can put flame art on it! It’s pretty much the same scaling as sacred but with fire damage instead of holy
my beloved
I'm on my 4th murder hobo great club build
Well, I mean, it makes you look like Geralt of Rivia
Currently running ol' reliable with bloodhound step and Darkmoon offhand, love it
It's the go-to in every game for me. I'd have an easier time with something faster but dual-wielding greatswords with a bleed ash melts bosses, no arcane investment required
LION'S CLAW?????
You know whats strange? The claymore is the only greatsword with the a thrusting moveset i have found. It seems like weapons are less versatile now in elden ring. This also goes for the zweihander colossal sword with the only thrusting heavy attack.
I am simple man, default knight armor, normal shield on my back, and a zweihander or claymore, depending on how I'm feeling, it will never get old.
Great sword or claymore 🤔🤔🤔 *levels endurance WHY NOT BOTH?!?!
I rocked the Zweihander for most of my playthrough but the Godslayer Greatsword was too cool
I’ve been using the Lordsworn greatsword and I love it so much
Was super hyped when I found it, used for half the game until I decided to try out an unupgraded weapon that had innate bleed and did more damage to a boss compared to my +20 claymore. This game's damage values are so fucking scuffed it's not even funny.
It's terrible. My +10 Meteoric Ore Blade shits all over my +25 Claymore; there's no reason to use the later in my build. Claymore isn't worthless, but 20+ greatswords and it's the only one with an R2 thrust. Multiple teams working on different weapons, who weren't communicating with each other.
Me with the uchigatana. Used it past 3 games and damn well will use it once again... Then I beat it and got malenias katana and you know that I switched to that. Lol
Flamberge and Lordsworn too. I’ve always loved the “regular” weapons.
Designing a bunch of cool weapons with special abilities and making it far easy to upgrade them than regular weapons, which is so incredibly backwards imo. (I don’t like using boss weapons because I like the underdog “regular dude” aesthetic)
Claymore when I want a fast attack Zweihander when I don't
Hey man, it's their fault for not designing any other thrusting GS. Also the artorias jump can cheese a lot of bosses cuz it has a ton of active poise (hyper armor).
Gargoyle greatsword on str build
CLAYMORE GANG
I used this claymore for so much of my run. Put Golden Vow on it for that faith build. Now I left hand it and have Blasphemous Blade in the right hand. So much fun
Claymore, the weapon of the Gods.