Ultimately, it'll feature the Bolt of Gransax and utilize Ancient Dragon Incantations for big lightning damage in the fray.
I like the AoW on this thing. Spear moveset isn't my favorite, but when you can shoot a fast, heavy red lightning bolt FAR downrange, who cares?
After defeating Placidusax, I can get the Dragon King's Cragblade, which has a similar AoW that is basically the gap-closer version of this in that YOU go into the lightning bolt.
They're DEX weapons, weirdly enough. Like... ZERO faith scaling. But I figure with FAI buffs and all, these weapons will still work great on a hybrid DEX/FAI build.
It's gonna take some time to get there. I got my early start to reach level 35.
Basically, the first thing I do is ride up to the first enemy camp you hit in the game, by the grace site where you get torrent. I rob them of the weapons in the carts - one is a flail that proves very useful in one particular case. In the basement there is the iron whetstone, as well. After that, I ride to the part of Limgrave where you can teleport to the Bestial Sanctum up in Dragonbarrow. You can ride south past all of the enemies to reach Fort Faroth, which has a Dectus Medallian half AND Radagon's Soreseal, the better physical stat boosting talisman, giving +5 to vigor, endurance, strength, and dexterity. Also an easy Golden Rune [10] to cash in for some early weapon upgrades. The enemies inside are too tough, but it is possible to run through the little bit of the place you need to hit to get those items.
Already pretty killer for a level 1 warrior class. But outside is Greyoll, the gigantic stationary dragon with 5 Lesser Dragons around.
However, from the grace site outside of Fort Faroth, the lesser dragons can't reach you... which is good because at level 1, you're probably never beating them. You can equip the flail, stand by his leg, and just keep letting the spinning AoW from the flail go. It'll keep proccing bleed, allowing you to kill him after just a couple of minutes. If you went and got a gold fowl's foot to eat before finishing off Greyoll, you'll have enough runes to go all the way to level 37. I took the opportunity to vigor up, add a little dex, mind, and endurance.
I think this is the ideal way to start a character in any normal melee class. Even if you skip the soreseal, the runes give you a good foundation so that you don't have to spend forever in the starting areas just leveling your vigor. Getting to Greyoll and defeating him only takes a few minutes with the only challenge being ignoring the big enemies along the way.
After all of that, I went to northwest Caelid from Limgrave. The first minor erdtree there has a grace site nearby and Tree Guardians to farm. I farmed them for two Guardian's Swordspears and their armor. All of it is pretty good. The swordspears are SLEEPER dexterity weapons with insaneo scaling. Like, they scale at level 55, better than a Godskin Stitcher at level 80! Not to mention, they have the halberd moveset! They may legitimately be one of the highest-damage DEX weapons in the entire game and that is NO joke! My favorite part about this being one of the best weapons in the game is... they're supposed to be made out of wood.
If you get the first two smithing stone Bell Bearings and upgrade two of those spears to +12, you're looking at an easy 300+ AR with powerstance combos and aerials, right at the start of the game. And that's if you want the big, but slow halberd set. I like it for the range, damage, and poise smashing. But for whatever reason, you also get a special R1 that is a faster, Loretta-style upward slash combo - highly useful! The first Bell Bearing is in Sellia Crystal Tunnel, north Liurnia lake, dropped by the single Crystallian at the bottom. The spears more than get the job done with all of the enemies in there.
The second requires you to get the other Dectus Medallion half in Fort Haight, Limgrave. I caught Rya and went to Volcano Manor to get the grace site first (if you ride the lift without catching her in Liurnia, the only way to the Manor is that whole long climb, or the Abductor Virgin below the Academy with the lava dungeon and dual-Virgin boss fight.) However, once you get to Altus, it's BARELY into the Sealed Tunnel found in little moat-swamps on the outskirts of Leyndell, in an easy-access chest behind the very first invisible wall.
Lemme tell you something man... I have an effective 25 dex with these two +12 spears and their jump attacks just SHREDDED Margit. I also put Sword Dance on the main one. The triple combo busts mobs with its big spread/knockback, and does nasty damage and poise damage to bosses. The jump attacks stun lock tough enemies with big damage, too. I wanna put Spectral Lance on the left spear. Reason being, it has better range than even the Golems with their greatbows. No need for bows and arrows, spectral lance is better in range than... everything. The bow is basically only for procs at that point.
I even got the Electrify Armament incant. With the faith-knot tear in my physick, I have enough faith for a cheap lightning buff on the main spear when I need a nice damage boost that will also scale a I level FAI. A couple points in my base FAI will let me use the Heal incantantion freely, giving me a good AoE for undead types. With just 7 levels spent in faith, the faith-knot physick lets me use Golden Vow, which gives +15% flat damage, and +10% flat negation, stackable with other types of damage and defensive buffs from equipment and consumables... an incantation not far from the Volcano Manor entrance, which I have the grace site for already activated.
I think I could probably use these for the whole game lol. I'm thinking somewhere around 45/45 spread for DEX and FAI. The good thing about these spears is that they really are outclassing pretty much ALL other DEX weapons with just 55 DEX, making them exactly what you want if you're working with 2 damage stats. Adding FAI buffs to that takes it beyond what it could do with the full 80 DEX scaling, AND opens up a bunch of other offensive and recovery options. I won't even be worrying about upping my DEX until like... level 70. The other tear in my Physick is the dexterity-knot tear, pumping me up to an effective 35 DEX. I one-shot nearly everything that's not a boss or super-tanky foe in the first 3 early areas... like, I went for the Tree Sentinel and it didn't even feel like a boss. He went down in like 4 quick jump attacks and a full Sword Dance combo, without touching me. And it really only took a couple of hours to get to that point.
