Hey
everyone, before I start this guide I just want to say that I have sunk
250+ hours in to my luck characters and I have been using hollow
weapons since release. I have had success with them in both PvP and PvE,
and have compared them extensively to other infusions on the same
weapon.
I see a lot of people on here who are both misinformed on how to best
utilize a luck build and misinforming others on the matter. This guide
is aimed at new players who may have never heard of luck scaling, as
well as veterans who dont feel like experimenting in untreaded waters. I
plan to convince you by the end of this post that Luck builds are
completely viable, and even better than non-luck builds with the same
weapon in a lot of cases. Note that when I say "viable" I am referring
to using a luck build for PvP at SL 120, as I believe that anything is
viable for PvE. I will not be referencing Anri's Straight Sword, even
though that sword scales with luck. This is because it is the most
over-powered straight sword and no one should require a guide to use it.
(heres the guide: hit r1 a lot) For the purpose of simplicity, I will
assume that you are playing a deprived, but everything still applies to
every starting class. If you already know how the hollow infusion works,
you can skip the next section.
THE BASICS____________________________________________________________________________
Dark Souls 3 introduced a new upgrade path called Hollow. In order to
infuse your weapon with Hollow, you need a Hollow Gem as well as the
Profaned Coal. You can acquire a Hollow gem in Farron Keep and you can
acquire the coal in Irithyll Dungeon. Another new mechanic introduced in
DS3 is character hollowing. If you don't know how to make your
charactar Hollow, look up Yuria/Yoels questline. It can be done very
early in the game. I feel it is important to mention here that in order
to maximize this builds effectiveness, you must be ok with your
character looking like a weird zombie.
Infusing your weapon with Hollow does a few things. It reduces the
base damage of your weapon slightly (almost always by a lesser amount
than any other damage-reducing infusion), it DOES NOT change your
weapons natural scaling, and it adds damage that scales with luck. As
far as I can tell, the Luck scaling is almost always in the high B to
low A range. This scaling is not represented by a letter in the
Attribute Bonus area, but the extra damage is shown next to your weapons
natural damage.
Another less obvious effect of the Hollow infusion is that it gives
you extra points in your Luck stat, provided your charactar is
sufficiently hollowed. I believe you need to be somewhere around 20
hollowing for it to take effect, and you are granted 1 extra point of
luck for every 2 levels of weapon reinforcement. This means that a +10
Hollow infused weapon will give you 5 extra points in your luck, and
having a Hollow weapon in each hand gives you 10 total points of luck. I
cannot stress how beneficial this is to making luck viable. This gives
you 10 free levels of weapon damage scaling, reducing the levels you
must invest in order for the weapon to reach maximum effectiveness.
MORE ADVANCED STUFF___________________________________________________________________
I want to expand on some of the less obvious benefits of using a
Hollow weapon. When you have a hollow equipment in both hands, you are
essentially giving yourself 10 free Soul Levels. This is important,
because it means you only have to put 20 points into your luck stat to
hit the softcap (and yes, the softcap is the same) rather than the 30
levels required to invest hit the soft cap for dex and stregth. This
makes Hollow not only a very good choice to add extra damage to an
already well scaling weapon, but also makes hollow a good choice for a
weapon that has naturally crap scaling. Assuming you want to go with a
luck and str or a luck and dex build, you only need to invest 50 levels
into your stats to maximize damage. This leaves you with another 70
levels that you can invest in Vit/Vig/End or whatever you want if you
are trying to stay at SL120. If you want to go with a "pure" luck build,
you only need to invest 20 Levels into your weapons damage, leaving a
whopping 100 levels to invest in Vit/Vig/End and/or weapon level
requirements. Infusing crap scaling weapons with Hollow not only makes
them do significantly more damage, it also gives you WAY more levels in
other stats that are useful for PvP, because you will not have to invest
much in Str/Dex.
A common misconception is that in order to utilize a luck build
efficiently, you should find a weapon that has natural bleed damage.
This misconception stems from the fact that bleed damage is increased
with a higher luck stat. This is true, but the increase is almost
completely insignificant, and should not factor in to your weapon
choice. I'm not saying that Luck/Bleed builds don't work, they certainly
do. I'm simply saying that only using weapons that have natural bleed
is significantly reducing your build options for a very small benefit
that almost never make a difference in the end. I will talk more about
Luck/Bleed later in the guide.
Now that the association between bleed and luck builds has been
broken, you are open to an extremely wide range of options when it comes
to Luck builds. But what weapon should you use?
WHAT WEAPONS WORK WITH LUCK AND WHY?________________________________________________
Short answer: A lot more than you would think.
Dex/Str weapons: Practically all weapons that have a natural C or
better in Dex or Str scaling will benefit MORE from a hollow infusion
than a Sharp or Heavy infusion. The drawback to the extra damage is that
you have to invest 20 more levels into your scaling stats. I personally
think that with a Sharp or Heavy build, you end up with more levels
than you really need especially if you plan on being SL120, but this is
up to you to decide. Hollow is generally more effective on a dex build,
because there are not many weapons that naturally scale highly with
strength. When directly comparing Sharp weapons to Hollow weapons, at
40dex/40luck you will do around 40-50 more damage per swing. When
comparing Heavy weapons to Hollow weapons you will do around 30-40 more
damage per swing. This is because in both cases, the Hollow infusion
reduces the base damage by less and does not effect the scaling of the
other stat.
Quality Builds: I generally would not recommend using a Hollow
infusion on a naturally C/C scaling weapon. I have not tested the waters
but I can only assume using a refined gem is more beneficial. This is
because of the huge stat requirements. You will presumably do massive
damage with a quality/luck build, but I do not think that 40 levels is
enough to spread across your non-damage stats to realistically do well
in PvP.
Pure Luck builds: Weapons that don't scale well naturally have
potentially the most to gain from using a luck build. For example the
Brigand Twindaggers are a weapon that almost everyone probably dismissed
as soon as they realized it had D/D scaling at +10. However, if you
infuse it with hollow and only invest in your luck stat for damage, you
will be getting around 200 damage per hit with an investment of only 20
Soul Levels. this gives you 100 damn levels to invest in your other
stats. If you have a bunch of Carthus Rouge, you can actually do viable
damage with this weapon, stack bleed quickly, and use quickstep. Really a
deadly combo. I am not sure about the actual numbers, but it seems that
very low scaling weapons actually benefit MORE from being infused with
hollow than other weapons. Any weapon with high base damage and low
scaling is an extremely good candidate for Hollow infusion. It is a
great way to bring trash-tier weapons into viability. You may not do as
much damage, but you will have SO much more tankiness and endurance.
Bleed builds: Finding a very fast weapon and infusing it with Hollow
is probably the most effective strategy for a bleed based build.
Something like Painting Guardians Sword or Brigand Twindaggers will
always do better with a a hollow infusion. Use Carthus Rogue to give
bleed to non-bleed weapons and you can be a tanky, fast rolling, bleed
monster that does more damage than anyone would expect.
Magic builds: The Man-Grub's staff is the only magic catalyst in the
game that offers luck scaling. It is acquired from maximizing devotion
to the Rosaria's fingers covenant. I have not personally used it, but
from what I hear the luck scaling is better than the int scaling on
every othr staff. Of course, you still need to meet int requirements for
spells so this is probably not a great choice.
CONCLUSION____________________________________________________________________________
If you are using a Dex scaling weapon, a Str scaling weapon, or you
want to make a crap scaling weapon viable, try investing 20 points into
luck and infusing with Hollow. It almost always gives you a significant
damage increase and I think it is always worth it. If you have any
questions or critiques, mention them in the comments. And if I forgot
about anything, or if I got anything wrong please tell me. I hope you
guys found this guide helpful, as it took me a long time to write. I
love the Luck stat and the Hollow infusion, and would hate to see it not
included in future games. Cheers!
edit: the covenant that gets you Man-Grubs staff is Rosaria's
fingers, not Mound-Makers. I have also been told that the requirement
for hollow luck-boost to take effect is 15 hollowing.
SOURCE
