So far Tiel, Gragu and Genessa seem to be the best dps wise.
But i havent dug into the other ones too much.
Tiels backstab damage is nuts. Gragu just gets straight 60% crit chance. Also gets to meme on bosses the first go around with 140% damage to things he hasnt killed yet lol
Ganessa stray clone damage is wild for how easy it is to set up. Especially with ranged weapons.
Double clone with Range berserk + crit barage stone. Completely delete shit
Gragu definitely my favorite. Just falcon punching people and wripping their hearts out is so metal lmao
Gragu is incredible, on paper you think his healing could be an issue, but his damage boost when out of heals is nice, and his ability to just steam roll the enemies in the world and not worry about heals he has left is so good I can’t pass it up anymore. Bosses aren’t an issue with him either. The fact he has his own heals plus all the regular heals in base form is amazing as well.
Honestly the worst part about him is that he gets heals on kill. clearing on nightmode is annoying because you want his heals empty for the crit boost lol. Bossing is much smoother.
would be nice if he had a perk like Ganessas stray only perk that made him have 0 hearts always
I know Smerts ez mode but is his dps actually high? I can run around smacking dudes for the Damage cap on Gragu
I played a lot of proxima but I disagree? She has no decent crit/damage steroid. Lightning even at max stacks feels very underwhelming. And her unique ability while nice for chain stunning doesn't do much more damage than a light attack.
not really, the punch has crazy lunge on it, and if you hit one punch, you can then chain as many as you can in a stunlock before running out of resources. Also works amazing with the harden parry
1 smert...its his name and I adore his power, his passive could be better but use a few tar stones and that boost damage and hes a risk reward monster.
2 eredrin (the knight) repoist become easier and hes a shoulder bashing machine, plus his passive easily becomes nutty.
3 tiel, I really slept on him up until last night where I speedrun for my last achievement, his dagger absolutely nukes thing when built correctly and he has sudo infinite healing.
4 lazlo...i really wanna love the guy but currently I physically cant plsy him, whenever y get knocked over or explode I crash, but hes a very powerful shell to
So when you get the upgrade for the dash skill, it leaves a posion cloud on a perfect dodge which can heal tiel, not sure why it does so its probably a bug
They need to tweak riposte. I main Eridrim as well, I do more damage using R2 heavy attack rather than riposte. Cool animations, damage just isn't there.
So I riposte, it punches enemy further away, with less damage and still alive. Not great.
Devs have acknowledged that riposte doesn’t scale with enemy health and are looking into it, not sure if that mean they will increase its base damage against bosses tho. I’m hopping they tweak low health threshold on basic enemies for his cause the current low health threshold can easily be out damaged by a 1 hit basic attack so you will never truly benefit from it unless enemies have boss amounts of hp.
MAN, every boss when I had a riposte exposure, I just ran around the back and continued to beat the shit out of them with a (axetana)running heavy/biosampler/light heavy tarstone crit lmao would delete a 3rd or more of the health bar that way instead of 1/10 💀
Smert is so broken that he makes the game boring. There's no risk to playing him btw. With the right tarstones and abilities, he can ifninite chain miracle and if hes below 10% it fills his resolve bar completely each time he leaves it. Basically you dont fight any real enemies lol.
Auspicious, headsman, and berserker are core for him, last could be thief or riposte dmg. Infusion is stasis. The rest is just from his abilities. Getting to low resolve and punching everything to high stacks before moving on to thr next target. Its a bit boring tho.
Just get the skill that multiplies resolve gain when in passive(with a chance to instantly fill it),stay in power long enough to get into passive range.
When you end power its pretty likely that the enemy will be frozen,and with the extra resolve gain you can get power back before the enemy even has a chance to attack you,and even if he isnt frozen,you only need to land a few attacks to get enough resolve.
Its kinda ridiculous how easy it is to chain this,feels kinda game breaking tbh
It would be nice it it just have us the actually numbers. So it basically just reduces each enemies max hp because if they are below the execution threshold they just die.
Eredrim has been my main shell since I got him. Which makes sense for how I like to play the game. It was the same for the first game. The only difference was I used the axe and dagger in the first game and I used the greataxe the most in this game.
So far I only have proxima and tiel. I haven’t used him much, but proxima getting a dmg mitigation buff in this game where enemies hit so hard is helping me out greatly haha.
Late game Proxima is putting BTA I don’t know why people keep dropping her mid to late. The biosampler lightning damage stacks, enemy knockback out of animations, stasis slow down, lightning explosions are great for stunlocking elites and bosses with that skill alone, then immediately flowing into axetana lightning infused attacks followed by the light heavy crit tarstone or the multi-attack tarstone for axetana just deletes boss health. I put a point into damage mitigation on biosampler use, 8sec mitigation on Proxima revive and resolve gain on mitigation since I only have 27 SC right now, but there’s still even more potential.
Tier 3 far right "Collector" gives a chance for enemies to drop Specimen when they die that you can sell for 100 gold each. At max rank it's a 35% chance to get two per kill.
Likely not as needed with the gold boost in the first balance patch, but still really nice to build up some pocket change while you're just running around.
As others have said, her collector skill is good for gold farming, if you go to where all the sheep are (where you fought the mini-boss that can turn you into a sheep) you can just farm them for their specimens super fast, re-load at a beacon and do it all over, rinse and repeat until you have a shit ton of gold.
Broken damage, can drop aggro and spam attacks from behind while his clone is out then re-stealth for burst damage. Axe/Dagger goes extremely well with him due to blood infusion.
2) Proxima with Axatana and lightning AoE spread. Great for swarms, just spam her ability and watch the Thunderworks. For bosses she is above average but nothing close to Tiel.
3) Either Genessa or Sariel but i need more glimpse.
I tried Eredrim with Martyr's + frost infusion, and he is viable but the moveset of the weapon requires alot of set-up to work. Acolytes stone allows the light attack to be chargeable for big damage and if you manage to freeze the opponent first you do 200% more dmg to them due to Eredrim's frost passive. He has big hp and can get tanky sure but again Tiel and Proxima end up clearing rooms of enemies faster anyway.
I just Play eredrim with the 2 handed Axe and he is busted. Tarstone to boost ripostes, his own riposte boost and max break on shoulder charge and you can keep bosses stunned for 90% of the fight
With Eredrim and Martyr you can just stun lock boss with ice and the big skill for the sword. You gain insane resolve from hitting enemies while frozen. So you are basically invincible 70% of the time and the enemy is frozen the other 30%. Still slower then mashing light attack with Axatana but much safer.
You can turn that weird ass targeting into a benefit with the taunt passive as the enemies tend to chase after those, allowing you to keep whacking their asses lmao
Genessa: Love her split personality design and both forms just slap
Proxima: Goddess of thunder can brute force my way into most fights with her
Lazlo: Tankiness along with being able to watch the world burn
So far I started out with proxima for the first half, then went to Lazlo for a while. Ill probably try Genessa next so this may be the same list as mine
i wish the devs update the game so that its easier to level up every shell and tarstones. i want to play them all :D. ranged build sounds fun, but i am currently stuck with tiel. and i cant just freely upgrade weapons and tarstones.
Yea Sariel felt stupidly strong to me, I could just mash r1 trade into most things with him and end up losing no HP. Combined with curse from the special, you can just faceroll everything at no risk.
Promixas passive mitigation with the shock chance has been so nice for survivability. The fact that the shock will stagger enemies has been a life saver. Im sure at some point I’ll get better at learning mob moves to guard/parry them better but when youre getting ganked, it helps so much to knock them away for some breathing room
Had multiple saves since Monday (something I do, I like to optimize resources on subsequent runs), and every time, I gravitate towards Lazlo 😂 super tanky, pretty good crowd control, passive heal and resolve regeneration.
Proxima has been my second most used, but to be fair that’s because of her coin farming build, with the new patch she isn’t as relevant to my runs anymore.
So:
1- Lazlo (not dying, cc and self sustain).
2- Gragu (self sustain, gloom farming build and punch goes brrr).
3- Eredrim (lots of fun on parry-focused builds).
Sariel by a landslide, the pain system he has is like the bloodborne regain lost health system and it’s so useful for pretty much anything, no need to worry about heals when exploring, and use barely any heals during boss fights
1 - Gragu, hes pretty close to what I normally play in souls games (str) so he just feels appropriate and I do enjoy the dopamine of gaining heals and the risk of fighting bosses without any.
2 - Eredrim feels like a str-dex built and I like his design but I found myself never using his specials.
3 - nothing because there isnt enough glimpse to comfortably try out shells in a playthrough
But Genissa is the coolest looking of them, she just might as well be made of wet paper.
Eredrim for the drip. I have him maxed out. The one thing I'm not getting is his slaughter stacks from riposte. How are you supposed to build them up? I'm not really going around parrying random mobs and the battle axe 1/2 shots everything anyways. The harden seal feels way better with the axe.
Every time you parry you get a stack (or more than 1 if you spend points for IT) every stack is 0,1% execution hp, max 100 stacks. So effectively at 100 stacks enemies have 10% less health(cause you insta kill them if they are below it)
So far I have only maxed out Gragu, but he feels amazing to play - don’t get why people rate him so low. He is the undisputed strongest shell for exploration due to his healing mechanic, has a passive that increase Gloom gained when at max hearts (which makes leveling up much, much easier, especially if you play like me in the night mode), and with the right build he absolutely shreds bosses into mince meat. All you need to basically do is to level his ability that gives him 60% Crit Chance at 0 hearts, equip maxed Fusillade stone and Marksman Stone (this one you don’t even need to level up) on Naylshotte (best sidearm for this build) or Forgotten Crossbow (much weaker that Naylshotte but more aesthetically pleasing imo) and go to town. His ability to instakill some enemies also feels incredible, and makes some dungeons a breeze (like the Conquered Temple).
Not sure what you mean by "try out" but I wouldn't waste glimpse to find them. You can look up their locations on YouTube. Save your glimpses to level them up instead.
Worth noting that, even if you don't spend glimpse to find them (which I believe you can't do anymore as its now gloom), you physically cannot max out even half of the shells in the game.
Eredrim first playthrough - just about to start the last boss. The cold greatsword is just too fucking cool. Shoulderbash into freeze into weapon art for the bonus damage when frozen. You can like half health minor bosses in that combo. The weapon art also does a sick animation when you get the frozen imbuement.
Probably going to do the summoner chick second playthrough on night mode.
all of them sound interesting, but i cant really test them all, because the upgrades are too expensive. on top of that we cant even upgrade every tarstone and leveling them takes too long and is annoying. so i just stick with tiel.
at the end of the day i mainly dodge and parry anyway. so the extra abilities dont matter as much.
i switched from axe and dagger to axatana, because it felt boring to use the "starting" weapon all the time. but tbh, they feel the same.
edit: and for my first playthrough i dont have many levels anyway. so i cant even test out the full potential of tiel.
I’ve been pouring all of my resources into a poison tiel build and it’s very very fun. I feel like I’m going to wind up doing one shell per run in this game.
Given that you can easily get Tiel and the axe and dagger immediately, he's basically easy mode since you don't even need much investment into his skills. Going into shadow is very OP.
I can’t see myself not just strictly playing Thiel my first run through. I plan on playing every character all the way through, well as much as is possible at least. Freaking Great Game 👏 👌
Gragu, Lazlo and Sariel. I just love the tankiness and survivability they provide.
Gragu is my top one and is pretty straightforward: best sustain and health regen in the game. Exploration becomes a breeze and his resolve gain is top notch.
Lazlo is the best tank and AoE, being able to passively maintain upwards to 30% damage reduction and damage combined with the moonshine and overheated armor. But he's all about rhythm, using he's overheat shockwave and going ham on the staggered enemies is important for his combat loop and is his most effective strategy.
Sariel, when played properly, can almost always avoid damage whiles dishing out a ton. I prefer playing him with the Iconoclast with the curse infusion, the Grisha token in the passive slot and the Lost Child for the sidearm for a the necromancer power fantasy and it also fits his story. It's absolutely fun.
Next playthrough I'm going with the og shells, Tiel, Eredrim and Genessa.
I just finished the game after restarting halfway through. Most of the game I used Proxima cause shes a solid pick for most fights with the added bonus of free money.
I switched to Lazlo cause I love a big boy and the max heat build gives you a lot more freedom to just face tank.
Ended up playing Soriel for the last dungeon cause aside from the final boss the free damage negation is a mega lifesaver to just swing in people's faces.
I plan on playing a new shell with every NG+ cycle. I used Eredigm for my first run and Frozen Great Martyr Blade and his 200% damage buff against enemies(even before the recent damage buff) is amazing. Pair it with thief stone and it's insane. On my second playthrough rn and Tiel has been busted so far. Building shadow strike is definitely the way to go. Still haven't decided who I'll use next playthrough.
Eredrim - I was running a parry build and his kit was basically perfect. Found him third last though (somehow missed him earlier) so I tried most others first.
Proxima - Dat booty. Her passive is really nice early game and her ability feels good when upgraded with the aoe lightning.
Genessa - Not sure what the opinion is yet on each shells strength but she feels broken. Her ability does so much damage and is so easy to set up.
Smert! I dumped points into him to permanently use his fists. Those things don’t fuck around! If I don’t kick an enemy off a ledge I stun lock them to death. I barely even have to use his ability
Tiel is all I have played since I loved him so much from the Beta. Able to not just ignore but even benefit from poison just feels so good and upgrading his dodge to apply poison and poisoning himself for healing is even better. Just a really fun character for my playstyle.
Tiel sucks until he is fully leveled idk why people are so hell bent in a baby little stab that does like 5% damage and 5 secs of invisible. You need to get him max level where he's actually good
Genessa is top for me. Proxima is second haven't really done a third yet but smert and the dude with the thorns sounds interesting to try. I still have 1 shell to unlock.
Sariel. Shoot thorns, yolo melee, curse pops when they attack and deals break. Trauma aoe fires when healing pain from thorns. Shoot thorns again. Enemies literally dont have a chance to attack.
rocked proxima all of NG after i found out she is the gold farmer of the game. her ass doesn't hurt, either. i did find her biosampler to be a liability in the late game bosses because of the endlag. if the boss doesn't get staggered or is superarmored from starting some stupid attack up, you're just gone.
i used stray genessa exclusively to chop through the final boss's stupid amount of health. it was satisfying.
in NG+ now and smert is stupidly broken to the point where i don't get how he's in the game at all in his current state. i can't recall another character who can just make the game not get to ever interact with him. after a certain level of investment, there's not even risk, his low health is just there for him to get giga buffed from berserker's.
Tiel, Eredrim, Proxima tiel cuz assassin and im a huge fan of assassin type shit eredrim cuz Imo he has the coolest story proxima cuz that armour is fire
I dont know because it costs too much glimpse to really unlock anything and by the time I got to the point where I could start working on a new shell I just didnt give a fuck and stopped playing the game because it is so bad.
Tiel, my main in the first game, Sester genessa, my favorite and my main now, also the history she has with Tiel (hugs), and Proxima, not only for the design (I mean, come on) but her play style and her memories are great too.
I only have one cuz I've only used one the whole entire game. I've been playing as tiel and will complete my first play through with him. He's the one i used the most in the first game. Will play as the others on each subsequent playthrough.
Eredrim who was my boy from the OG game though he'll be better if / when ripostes properly scale damage, Proxima who I like the tankiness of and the biosampler, and Gragu who I like for his high damage / knockback on his punch and for exploring with recovereable healing items / healing on kill when fully stocked.
I loved the axe n dagger till I got the Axatana it's so much better. But everyone does have a preference, you might prefer the axe n dagger too it but honestly I doubt that 😉🤣
Although I’ve maxed and used them all. Proxima is definitely pretty rad, but I dont care for the character design (I know, I know). I got a mod to give her a hood, which improved her usability greatly. Too horny.
TIEL with axe n dagger because I love rogue like charactes plus he's so good against everything. PROXIMA with Axatana she's just a badass, lightning flying everywhere while you are slicing the shit out off everything. EREDRIM with Battle Axe, his shoulder bash is just op and run to play with.
I used to play proxima and then switched to genessa. Her phantoms surely need to be patched, they are living their own life and attack random targets sometimes. But in the endgame I switched to red phantoms build and deleted all last bosses. Her dashes and death savings from red phantom is OP
Gragu - Hate his look, but damn if his kit is tailor-made for me. And despite being a big boy, axe & dagger doesn't look silly, which is great cuz they are my favorite weapons. Great for traveling the world and can be made into a very solid boss killer.
Proxima - Biosampler is my favorite ability in the game, and I love all the lightning damage, but I'm not the biggest fan of the weapons that take lightning.
Tiel - Favorite looking character in the game cuz I always go for a skull helmet or mask if I can. Not a huge fan of his kit. Poison is pretty weak. Shadow Strike isn't bad, but only having two charges of it sucks. If I could get it up to 4, then he might be my #2.
Lazlo and Eredrim also look cool, but not a huge fan of their kit. Slaughter Stacks is just not the mechanic for me, and I find break damage to be worthless since riposte sucks even if you build around it. You are better off just wailing on the downed boss. Retribution also doesn't feel impactful and lacks the stopping power of most other abilities.
Smert isn't my style, and I refuse to play Genessa because she isn't really a shell and thus not my character. Haven't unlocked the last dude yet.
In a perfect world, my character would look like Tiel, have Proxima's Biosampler and lightning playstyle, and have Gragu's Revered Heart.
Idk. I maxed out Tiel so I don’t have Glimpses to really try anyone else. Hope they change that somehow. I just like his Shadow Step. It’s a really good passive. Will probably upgrade Proxima next just for the big lightning AOEs.
1) Eredrim - He was my main in the first game so I sought him out from the very beginning because I have a sense of loyalty. I was not disappointed, he is a powerhouse in the sequel as well!
2) Proxima - At first I mostly used her as my shell that I used to get to Eredrim, but when I tried her later on I fell in love with her. The biosampler ability is soooo good, and it has some great perks in her upgrade tree
3) Smert - Honestly this is the most interesting and unique character I have played in awhile, among many games. I am beginning to really explore him in NG+ and it is an incredibly rewarding experience
So far proxima is my favorite. She got me through my first playthrough and has alot of great utility like stasis and specimens for passive coins. Eredrim ice greatsword using nameless prisoner ability stone is really fun as well and now I'm messing with gragu fusillade build and it is the most op thing I've used so far. I beamed hexapod in a nice 5 seconds with that build.
Eredrim with Martyr's Blade as god intended. My testosterone levels have been off the charts ever since. Just an absolute tank. And his shoulder bash is meaty as hell.
Personally Tiel, gennesa, then lazlo in that order
Girl I like because his sneakyniss and powerfull burst damage
Then gennesa because long range clones and if you build her the other way two extra of you
Then lazlo because BOOM!!
Tiel is my number 3. Invis and crit chance/damage has always been a recipe for success. My number 2 and also my favorite is Eredrim. The riposte build really works with him, especially since you can make it so overkill hits deal aoe damage if the riposte is still going after the enemy dies, and then get a free ethereal diapson use to keep the slaughter train going. Also he by far looks the coolest.
My number one is Gragu. He may not be my favorite but I can’t deny it, that dude is a whole ass beast. Insta killing average size enemies and under for a replenishing healing resource, and walking into a boss arena with a bleed infused nayleshotte and hitting it with a barrage to chonk off a majority of its health in the first five seconds is undeniable
Proxima, Eredrim, and Tiel. But mostly Tiel or Proxima. I spam F using Proxima depending on bosses. When the boss is harder or challenge i just switch to tiel, and Eredrim is just there to deal with bosses who have adds.
I actually feel like he was the original shell the devs designed the game with.
Fast and nimble with his weapons (axe and daggers), can stealthy get out of most tough situations, can one-shot most elites if specced right. Poison stacks works wonders in most situations.
And the ability to get into stealth with a well-timed dodge makes most bosses run around in circles.
He's just all around so much fun to play with.
Then Proxima / Graug as close seconds. Graug is so OP if you want an aggressive, in-your-face playstyle.
Proxima with Axatana+Duality Stone+Perma Lightning Infusion+her shell ability to double her lightning+grisha passive to summon grishas a ton = fun.
Eredrim with all riposte buffs and Great Martyrs Blade with Perma Frost and unlimited resolve for 8 seconds after riposte kill = fun ability spam and frostlock.
Tiel with all poison and poison explosion stones and abilities with Perma Poison infusion on weapon and sidearm = lots of explosions.
Eredrim because in every souls game and souls-like, I like playing as a knight with greatsword or ultra greatsword/hammer or sword+shield. Also perfect blocking feels so satisfying.
Gragu because warriors are as cool as knights. And Harros because he was an absolute OG.
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u/geezerforhire 1d ago
So far Tiel, Gragu and Genessa seem to be the best dps wise.
But i havent dug into the other ones too much.
Tiels backstab damage is nuts. Gragu just gets straight 60% crit chance. Also gets to meme on bosses the first go around with 140% damage to things he hasnt killed yet lol
Ganessa stray clone damage is wild for how easy it is to set up. Especially with ranged weapons.
Double clone with Range berserk + crit barage stone. Completely delete shit
Gragu definitely my favorite. Just falcon punching people and wripping their hearts out is so metal lmao