Give me the build you had the most fun playing through this game with. Not meta bullshit. Not PVP bullshit...

Fippy

Let me remember all my boss times. I used Shield and Morning Star for all except the dragons.
Margit and Godrick first try
Rennala 2nd try
Radahn 4 hours
Mohg 4 hours
Regal Ancestor Spirit 2nd try
Astel first try
Fortissax 5 hours FUCK THIS ONE I swapped to Radahn's bow for the dragons
Morgott 2 hours
Rykard 10 mins
Fire Giant 30 minutes
Malenia all weekend
Godskin Duo I cheesed lol
Placidusax first try radahn's bow
Gideon first try
Godfrey 7 hours (12 AM - 7 AM)
Radagon/Beast 3 hours
I didn't use any buffs or great runes until Radagon.

beast incantations. throwing rocks and roaring fun.

How can you assume anyone's played this more than twice? It's 120+ hours long, we have lives and other interests.

Replays aren't that long.

youve never played a souls game have you

Guard counter build

Morning star

based
Brick hammer and beast spells was one of the most fun runs i ever did

i made it half way through a ng+ and never touched it again

at least Nightreign has no exploration so i can just bonk things

I did another run the Morning Star a year or so after the RL1 and I destroyed with it. Very good weapon.

Your second playthrough should take about half the time your first does

I never tried an original build, enemies fight too lame and anime for me to care about style, just wanted to get most encounters over with

I went quality build with the anchor. Tried plenty of other weapon types and magic shit but bonking everything over the head with a giant anchor (and eventually, dual anchors) was the most satisfying.
Turns out I just got lucky in its attack type and counterstrike damage being some of the best in the game.

1. Defensemaxxing fatrolling retard with prayerful strike and no shield
2. Deflecting hardtear with a paired weapon
3. Shields only

I got the bloohound famg pretty early and it carried me most of the way through the game. Kept a bow on hand for cheese. Late game swapped to Godskin Peeler and a greatshield with heavy armor.

whatever my first run was never touched it after that

Red dragon lightning with milady. Insanely fun to larp as a pagan thundergod.

I'm still new to builds so I'm not sure I've found a really fun one just yet. Honestly I had more fun gimping myself in NG+ with un-upgraded weapons, limited crimson flasks and gated talisman pouches than whatever tf I was trying with my build.
So far I've done: flame throwing samurai, ARC thorn sorcerer, and INT glintblade Vergil wannabe. I might try a lightning samurai equipped with electrocharge and blinkbolt or a frost/ghostflame mage for my next NG run.

swing your sword to hurt enemies and parry attacks with your shield

Parry Bayle

eat shit

What now

I spam rolls and swing a giant sword around. Simple as.

What now

swing your sword to hurt enemies. It was the first option.

Naked with large club only levelling STR and VIG
Naked with occult hookclaws and blue dancer charm (damage of keen claws but with 90 bleed)
Envoy horn paladin
Carian knight cosplay
I know the OP says no peeveepee but I have fond memories of making reactionary faggots lose their minds simply by standing still and pressing R1 more than once with great hammers

Strength faith. I love buffing myself and then smacking with big stick. I know everyone uses the blasphemous blade but meh. I got more use out of the vampiric stab move that also does bleed toy just face tank and heal stab them to death

craft a lot

spam consumables

max str or dex (depends on your favorite weapon)

no spells

use all the ranged weapons you like

That's it

the paladin mage. i love this RP so much wish more games let you do it. only games that ever let me do this build of a long range caster(not a battlemage) in paladin armor are ER, fable TLC and the new lords of fallen.

Wretch, mind & int to 60 before anything else, then work towards a heavy knight with the moonlight greatsword.

Arcane/Faith caster dual-wielding Occult Great Stars.

Big fucking greatshield, and the lance. Your primary leveld stat should be endurance, to block everything forever.

This is the most fun way to play the game and is viable against absolutely everything, including pvp invaders, except for Malenia

God damn I love the anchor so much. Best ER weaponfu and perfect for a good pirate character

t. patches

patches has a dinky little spear. I mean THE LANCE. Nothing can escape you when you can charge and run it down, and it has superior cool factor.

This man has barnacles on his nuts.

Anything with a power stance jump attack that slams both weapons into the ground

STR/FTH with a focus on defense (vig and end for armor). Buffs can make up for the damage, incants have incredible utility and str/fth gets a lot of good and cool weapons.
The lower damage barely matters since your survivability is so good, and you end up doing well anyway since you don't have to panic roll away to heal every time you get hit.

UGS and STR in general is fun.

Oathseeker helm
Leda's Armor
Oathseeker Gauntlet
Oathseeker Greaves
Leda's Sword, 2 handed

Vagabond, level 20 all points to vig, never upgrading weapons, unironically, is the most fun I had with the game.

I was going for this build, but i failed to find swords and magic i considered very interesting. Then i got the Blasphemous Blade and ended up getting bored/dropped the game afterwards : It was the first truly fitting tool i found, but its special attack was so braindead overpowered yet cheap, that there was no point to using any other of my tools.
When i give elden ring a second chance, i hope to find some more interesting str+fth weapons and that shield that reflects projectiles. Or maybe i start off with something else than str+fth

This is such a random build why would you cap at 20

try the ordovis gs next time

Ronin armor, Greathelm helmet, Greatsword right hand, Clawmark seal left, 25 Faith for buffs and cleanses.
Swap ashes between Giant Hunt, Lion's Claw, and Braggart's Roar depending on you're feeling.

bloody helice is very fun

Because it give some HP and you can still invade limgrave to pwn downscaled max level phantoms who are on Ng+7.

Dragon Spells. Absolutely amazing damage and poisebreak if you can manage the ungodly casting times. With the Beast Claws from the DLC you can even pretend to have dragon claws yourself.

I want to like this so bad but I just can’t, each hit takes like 1/200th of a bosses health bar they’re just way too inflated, and it seems like the only useful shields are the super heavy greatshield, anything less there’s just no point.
In all the other dark souls games I’ve rocked the standard knight sword and shield but I feel like in elden ring its just impossible

the skill looks cool
though im not fond of that normal greatsword moveset where the guy just slams it into the floor

get used to using throwing daggers/bone darts during bosses to keep their stagger meter from draining

huh, I did not know that

You don't go for straight attacks, you need to learn to guard counter (which isn't hard at all to learn, mind you).

Dex build with RoB on the right hand and Nagakiba on the left, along with the white varre mask to increase bleed damage and a bunch of blood dmg talismans.

After all the patches you can definitely use a medium shield or a lighter greatshield and do well, just make sure you level endurance and get some stam regen buffs.
R1 spam isn't really good but you can use ashes or bleed to make up for the lower damage.

You tried it post dlc? Ansbach's whole outfit ups arcane slightly so pairing it with varre mask gives even more arcane.

The white mask doesn't increase bleed damage, it increase your AR by 10% after something bleeds .

Ansbach' set does not increase arcane, it only increase the power of bload oath weapon skills

I went pure strength (like I always do) and used that hammer or giant rock on a stick that needed like 60 strength. I'm a simple man that like to smash things.

Mage + Rapier, eventually switched to ice mage with ice scythe and the scythe moveset is really fun. Never used a shield.

ARC build with strong focus on bleed was my favorite. Early on you only get bleed procs when the enemy has a sliver of health left anyways but after RL40 or so you should have enough bloodloss on your weapon to shred most things. I started with Bloodhounds Fang and Bloodflame Blade then switched it up quite often with Occult infusions and Somber weapons. Kurkis for throwing daggers are really useful on that setup.

Great Mace with Prayerful Strikes, and as many HP increasing talismans and stuff as you can fit in.

Yeah early on you better just use Reduvia's ash point blank, it procs bleed every other hit and does great damage by itself too.

My current build that I'm almost done with is a Paladin using a shield and sacred straight sword with Sacred Blade. I can switch to a greatsword with a heavy attunement if I want, and use incantations like Golden Vow, Erdtree Heal, Vow of Resolve, or Blessing Boon.
It's really fun to guard counter, boost my weapon and attack from range sometimes.

My previous one was what I called a Dragon Knight. He used a large Axe and fire incantations. Sometimes I could switch to a halberd if I need some more speed.

I'm trying to decide what build I should play next (not OP)

The Dark Knight: Strength build with a colossal sword. Later on, he'll also use Godslayer incantations.

The Viper: Dex/Arcane build using bleed, and poison weapons. more focused on speed than power.

The Scholar: Int/Faith build using sorceries and incantations. Wielding a spear or thrusting sword when out of Mana.

go viper, it's crazy good nowadays and occult infusion give you very strong melee damage anyway

i too had some difficulty with morgott

*margit

My personal preference is for Strength/Endurance with a little bit of Faith just because I like heavy armor and big weapons. Mostly relying on Physical Damage buffed by Incantations and using Beast Spells, which are generally fantastic for how little faith investment they need. Plus grabbing a giant boulder out of the earth and tossing it looks cool. Swapping between the Claw spells was also surprisingly good in PvP but not great for PVE compared to the pocket sand and the rock.

This also translates very well to the DLC because you can grab the Sword and Armor of Solitude, which are just very powerful and reliable. Those base stats + A Scaling for Strength + 90% Physical Block was insane. Also a very good looking set even if it gives you a little bit of the Chicken Legs.

Viper sounds cool. Bonus points if you use duelist chest + venomous fangs.

Faith/Arc
Only use Blood magic, Reduvia, Bloody Helix, and Obsidian Lamina

Generic shortsword+shield heavy armor knight, using the misericordie for riposte, and occasionally throwing lightning and healing incantations

No way dude, he should just lean into serpentbone blade

shortsword

Why?

It sounds fitting for the mental image I have of my character

Well now I'm curious, please elaborate.
Shortsword and misericorde are almost the same size, it seems like a redundant pairing.

Misericordie is just for metaslaving. A dagger would be more fitting.

curved greatsword with storm blade on it
It was fun because of how powerful, adaptable yet simple it is

My favorite build was a blue dancer build with the warped ax. Blue dancer charm requires you to basically be naked for bonus dmg. Its not even that much of a boost but beating the whole game (and dlc) with just the warped ax and nothing else, no ashes or whatnot, really felt like I had mastered it.

elden ring

people play this old ass game?

Straightswords were disappointing in Elden Ring. Generally feel like they don't have the damage scaling to keep up and Aesthetically there isn't really anything standing out to my taste, outside of Golden Epitaph and the Sword of Knight and Flame, and Faith somber weapons get walled by late game and Sword of Knight needs too much investment.

A bit of a shame. I like the "Small Knight" aesthetic.

Strength/int Ice/black fireball two-hander build.
Just freeze, throw fireball, repeat until out of MP and then hit shit with big stick.

DLC gives a great looking set for a basic knight look

Oathkeeper set has worse stats than regular Knight set

Only other choice for a good, basic knight set is the Black Knights, who you have to grind for

Can we just stop with this "Armor drop" bullcrap and just put the full set in a given location. Why make us grind for gear in a single player game.

Comet Azure with the Determination bug.

I like the Radahn Greatbow.

ong duskblud these uncs fr still hop on elden nite :skull:

Yeah, but straightswords stance skill is one of the best in the game.

Straight swords get fucking square off and you could throw on storm blade if you need a projectile. They have a very fast charged heavy and a great guard counter, they are stance breaking machines
You must’ve been doing it wrong

Space wizard

Cold infused grave scythe with stormcaller. It's just cool as hell, pun intended actually

In base game I used blaidd's greatsword and a shield.
In dlc I used fire perfume bottle, lothric straightsword with fire weapon art, and the beast claws.
For both builds I also mainly prioritised bestial spells.

Lordsworn straightsword I meant*
Been too long I forget some of the names

How do you fit in 3 weapons against a boss
do you swap mid-fight or just use one.

Main weapon and 1-2 low weight techy sidearms is pretty common

Yeah but idk why you'd use them in a boss unless they're ranged. Like you use your attack with the main weapon, you can't do combos against bosses. Unless one is the riposte weapon or whatever or is just used for the ash.

I dunno man there's plenty of options

1 weapon to proc frost/rot/poison

1 weapon for stance break

1 weapon for big damage ash spam

a parry shield

a lightning misericorde for ripostes

a seal for buffs

I get that but I was wondering if you did something with your weapons mid-boss. I get using different stuff for basic enemies but on a replay I was trying to do weapon combos for moveset reasons and I never found a real use. Just statistical stuff like what you listed.

Just finished my 5th playthrough of this shit and helice was what reinvigorated my love of the game. Dynast's finesse is lovely

most fun I've had is with this STR/INT build. Waves of Darkness is GOATed weapon skill, carian slicer/piercer are amazing, and I love using the DLC gravity magic options.

I really wish the meteorite staff actually got scaling, or if there were a proper staff that scaled off STR+INT, but oh well, fine like this.

no one does weapon combos in PvE

I love it too

Pure STR, dual wielding Colossal Greatswords. Later on i grinded a shitton with the Elden Beast sword, got my STR and INT to 80 and just used the GUGS. Boy, i tell you hwhat, that Messmer fight was the most entertaining part of the damn game

Which does seem like a massive hindrance on the use of Ashes of War. Only getting one per weapon is lame when so many of them are pretty basic. Especially on many Somber Weapons. They should have just taken up Spell Slots and used the relevant weapons as their "Catalyst"

Lucerne + buckler
Harpoon + magic infusion + ice spear ash of war
Cranial Vessel Candlestand build which is str + faith pyromancer

if it's not fun, why bother

gay.

why celebrant skull?

GREAT GODFREY

I wish Rivers was still alright in PVP.
It's whatever in PVE but in PVP it's straight up unusable now against anyone with more than 80 IQ points, whining redditors got so many of the fun and cool weapons shafted for basically no reason.

Tarnished got absolutely bodied by Messmer's bed warmer.

I don't get how i used to struggle with this boss before, on my recent playthrough with a dex build i killed her so fast that she didn't even get to do her phase transitions.

How'd it get nerfed? Visually it looks the same.
I always thought Morgott's Curved Sword was the bigger PvP menace but that's because I fucked people up with it

It could be better but I wouldn't want ER to turn into a skillspam action game like many of the lesser soulslikes. Or more recently, Khazan.

They nerfed her by buffing early scadu.
I fought her opening night and she took 2 hours but mostly because I wasn't using fragments. I knew what they did, but Miyazaki made them sound like something else instead of just progression so a lot of us were not planning to use them at all and I beat the beast without any pretty easily. But she made 99% of us stop doing that. I remember her first phase was doing a billion damage to me and one hit in phase 2 would be 90% of my HP if I was lucky.

They reduced its damage, made it not combo anymore and made it so that only the physical blade actually really does anything, the extra range from the animation is a wet noodle now.

1) looks cool
2) lowest weight and strength requirements for anything that can use waves of darkness

It's not the most meta option, that'd probably be zwei, but I like it anyway.

switch to dagger for crits
switch to dryleaf for weapon art
switch to cane sword for storm blade

the list goes on for specific niche uses paired with ashes on 'free' weigh additions.

fair enough

I liked the skull a lot even though I stopped using it early on when the DLC came out cause of all the new shiny weapons

Oh and its bleed build-up is nerfed too.

I'm not asking for a dozen ashes of war to be available like spells, I just want like 2 or 3 instead of 1, an effect you can already get by having multiple weapons on a loadout, but that's gay and ruins muh immersion. Sometimes you have a weapon you love but it's Ash of War is something that's only good for AoE on mobs, or has no application for bosses or whatever and that's a little lame.

At the very least I'd give the game way more stance weapons that combo more cleanly in and out of your base attacks. That always feel great.

High Dex, good Vit and Mind, a little End

Scimitar with Quickstep one-handed

Empty offhand

Whatever flowy armor or cloak you want as long as it's light

It took me a million years to kill anything but I got to dance and twirl around every enemy while doing my cool swoopy slashes and it was very peak

Honestly I didn't like how ER made weapon skills so powerful and varied. I get it, it's fun. But it used to be the case that if you wanted to do cool shit like that, you had to make sacrifices and spec into a mage or cleric build. But now, you can just be a pure melee build completely ignoring those things, and you'll have access to a variety of "spells" that are either just as good or often BETTER than the actual spells that other builds have to completely dedicate themselves toward.

yeah its really awesome how things have progressed.

I just wish spellcasting had also been expanded. It annoys me how we're still stuck with the same cumbersome system of awkwardly flipping through a linear attunement list with a single button. At the very least we could've gotten ashes of war for seals/staffs that let us hotkey certain spells to L2/R2 to make it less awkward to combo spells together.

I build ENTIRELY to be a tree sentinel. I wore the entire armor set + used the golden halberd and sheild (the entire thing takes around 55 END to wear) and went STR/FTH to be able to cast miracles and use the halberd

Did you have a torch equipped too?

The issue with skills in Elden Ring is that on many builds, they're basically mandatory to spam against lategame/DLC bosses unless you're exceptionally patient and/or skilled.
Many of the weapons simply do not do good enough damage.
After needing to dodge an 8 attack combo from Radahn only to get just enough downtime to squeeze in one, maybe two hits, it just makes no sense to use regular straight sword R1s when you could do so much more with Square Off during the same opening.

I feel ya sister. Try the Carian spell sword for what you want sorcery wise. Faith didn't get one like that sadly.

Personally I'd want them to bring back passive poise in a more reasonable form so it's a leats possible to do more than a couple R1s, and improve on R1 and R2 combos so you actually have a varied moveset that isn't just alternating or repeating attacks. Repurpose some ashes as combo finishers maybe.
Like a the pike could have R1 R1 R2 do impaling thrust, but R1 R2 R2 do giant's hunt, but the winged spear's combos would be the storm assault jump attack without the storm part and the other would go into spining strikes.

I just regularly switched stuff out on the fly. Nothing crazy. That specific combination I mentioned using in the dlc was just really cool, so I tried to use them all as much as possible.

carian spell sword is pretty shit. Not good as a weapon unto itself, and it's so much worse for casting that it's not worth it for that either. I get that they don't want the spell-casting sword to be just as good as dedicated catalysts, but it's so much worse that it's not even worth mentioning.

Also sucks how we finally got a spellcasting tool in ER that can do magic+miracles but it also sucks unless you're like SL200+. I'd really like a return to the sort of cool variety we had in DaS2, but oh well.

It does the cast a spell on R2 like she wants though.

With the Deflect mechanics and how fast most bosses are in the DLC you barely use Ashes of War at all unless it's a ranged option and the boss is running from you. But yes non-somber weapons in the DLC generally can't keep up unless they have really good scaling or a status effect.

Optionally, they could also get rid of critical hits and just have the stagger be your chance to land your more powerful Ashes on a boss. Swapping to Misericord for the sake of meta is gay.

What level should I be to make the most out of these? Want bare-minimum 50 vigor.

Reach min requirements then pick int or faith and pump that if you want to spam the ash.
To actually use them as a weapon you'll want a quality build, I dunno the exact scaling but probably like 30 30 40 40

Personally I think bringing in Combos would be great, a reward for positioning with bosses. Make it so most of the time if you roll through an attack you won't be able to get the timing for a real stagger for a combo, but if your positioning and timing is good you can. Give the player more to do on "Their Turn".

There's plenty of fast and powerful non-somber skills that work well in the DLC.
Square Off, Unsheathe and Wing Stance, for example, all come out very fast and do very good damage/stagger.

non-somber weapons in the DLC generally can't keep up

now that's an admission of skill issue if I ever saw one

I beat Radahn 2 with the lizard sword first time.
It was hard cause Radahn 2, but I won. I fucking won. My Lizard sword and I.

What I meant was that there should be something akin to an AoW that's usable on spellcasting tools that lets you hotkey a specific spell to L2/R2.

For instance, let's say I'm doing sorcery-only. Carian slicer is my bread-and-butter that I'm going to be using frequently, comboing into other stuff, etc. Rather than constantly needing to flip back to it, what if I could just hotkey it so that whenever I press L2, I use that attack, even while I still have another spell like moonblade or piercer set on the HUD. Something as simple as that would go a long way toward making a spell-heavy playstyle less cumbersome to use.

That and I'd like to see more spells with active variants. It's cool how you can use slicer, pocket sand, and combustion while sprinting/rolling/jumping. It'd be cool to see more spells like those

If you hold up on the dpad it instantly brings you back to the first spell you have attuned, that might help your issue

This thing fucks in pvp because most people have only seen the L2 once

Swapping to Misericord for the sake of meta is gay.

I don't know what kind of build you need for that to be good but it never did more than a charged R2 from my main weapon.
It only ever came close on my dual wield dex build.

At the DLC launch I was getting really fed up with gayboi radahn's 2nd phase, trying to beat him with my pure STR build. Ended up beating his ass by using the ironflesh perfume for infinite poise, spamming point blank charged R2s while tanking all his attacks, and chugging estus the entire time to barely outpace his damage. felt satisfying when I finally brought that fuck down.

First playthrough was most fun and I played faith. Only faith. I did not level anything other than faith until I hit the soft cap. I used a talisman to get my strength high enough to wield the Gargoyle's Blackblade and spammed the ability and incantations like lightning spear. I still remember that I killed Margitt with catch flame exclusively kek
Every boss after Rennala pretty much one tapped me and the extra challenge made me go full autism on the game, so I got pretty immersed.

These weapons generally aren't as good as these weapons

BUT I BEAT THE GAME WITH [Weapon]!

What are you, a bunch of women? Yes you can still beat the game with non-sombers. I beat the game with Muh Lady. The weapon is still generally outclassed performance wise by Sombers without a bit of help from Status and buffs. Same way it is in the base game.

I don't do it, I just think it looks gay when other people do it and I don't like the way they chose to be in their lives.

Milady is barely outclassed by anything at all in PVE, Wing Stance is outrageously powerful against all bosses.
It's not at all a matter of using a second class weapon, there are very few sombers that even compete with it.

I've played through the game as both a sorcery-only and miracle-only build, I'm well aware of that. It certainly helps, but if we were able to hotkey, that'd be even better AND it'd also allow you to keep an additional attack in the first slot for easy access and comboing potential.

Think of it this way, every melee weapon gets quick easy access to a variety of attacks. 1H1R, 1HR2, 2HR1, 2HR2, rolling attacks, jumping attacks, running attacks, blocks, AND ashes of war. And easily being able to switch to a different weapon to have an entire new kit of attacks. Meanwhile spellcasters are awkwardly fumbling around with the up button on the d-pad with an awkward spell system that fundamentally hasn't really changed since demons souls.

I don't know why you think being somber inherently makes it better. Most BiS are smithing weapons with a proper infusion. Somber also often suffer from split damage.

I'm saying that the Lizard Sword is actually better than most sombers. It's actually an S-tier greatsword, and your post assumes the weapon ash is the main part of the weapon. My R2 did double damage cause of the projectile, and also did strike damage which is the best type. It's better than the blasphemous blade, actually.

Yeah it's more of a rethorical question I guess.

rivers of blood bleed build
got nerfed apparently so idk

Bull Goat/Verdigris Set

Greatsword

Great Turtle Shield

Erdtree Favor +2

Great Jar Arsenal

Green/Two Headed Turtle Talisman

Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman

It's still okay in PVE, just abysmal in PVP.

i just slapped lions claw on a hammer and put on that fat guys armor ezpz

(me)
Also that goddamn Kindred at the beast sanctum is literally the most unfair opponent in the entire game for where it's placed. I fought it around level 70 or so and since I could not wear good armor, had zero vigor and didn't use summons LITERALLY the smallest of love taps from him, any attack no matter what, oneshot me 100 to 0. I killed it using nothing but lighting spear (which dealt like 320 damage) while perfectly dodging every attack for 3 minutes or so. It took me 7 fucking hours to defeat that fucking thing, not even the Malenia fight took me that long.

How are there simultaneously three of you who don't understand what "Generally" means?

deleting whole gank squads by pressing R2 was hilarious

We know what "Generally" means. It's simply not the case.

Fire broadsword faith spamming square off with fire buffs.

probably the first souls game where I had fun with magic and the darkmoon / moonlight gs
the versatility of the lasers at both mid range and close range easily outperformed anything else I was doing FP wise as soon as I switched from the carian knight sword to the darkmoon sword with the exception of using ranni's moon once every couple of minutes on a boss to the point where I wasn't even using spells except for far range and frost build up, buffing, and a couple of weird ones (and magic shield but I don't think that counts), like shard spiral on fuckhueg bosses
I still think the magic can be better but it's a huge step up variety wise from from 1/2/3 while using the FP system from 3 which I prefer over cast limits

My nigga.

So you think non-somber weapons generally outperform somber counterparts even without applying buffs or status effects?

strength/faith is what i consider the most reliably good time in this game for many years. however, the DLCs addition of great katanas and light greatswords shook things up a bit. i think the base great katana you find in gravesite plain is my current favorite weapon

even without applying buffs or status effects?

"if you ignore a significant part of what these weapons are designed to do, my retarded argument is almost defensible!"

Yes. Feel free to look up scaling numbers if you care that much, you can see exact numbers with Smithbox.

I have 1.3k hours logged and arcane pyro is my favorite by far.

prophet start
occult infused uchi or dual occult scavengers swords
dragon communion seal

54 vig
42 mnd
8 end (you don’t need it for this build)
11 str
15 dex
7 int
35 fai
55 arc
erdtree’s favor+2, blood exaltation, flock’s, radagon icon

giants flame take thee, catch flame, o’ flame, bloodflame talons, ansbach’s blade, crucible horns, scarlet aeonia

I wish i liked the great katana more, i did an 80 Arcane Occult build with it and it absolutely wrecked things but for some reason it just never felt quite right.

my favorite build i had 60 int and 30/30 strength and dex. magic infused with carian grandeur. decent damage all around and if you could get the full AOW off it was a nuke

Oh and to be clear, it's not a matter of being somber or smithing in itself.
Smithing weapons simply get better scaling for most builds because of attunements, plus the flexibiblity of choosing the ash you want.
Being buffable is the cherry on top but honestly matters very little in the DLC, except for stuff liek sacred blade on ghistflame dragons I guess.

But really, look up scaling numbers, the letter values suck. Sombers are especially guilty of having low possible values for a given letter. See this table

E: < 0.25

D: 0.25 - 0.5999

C: 0.6 - 0.8999

B: 0.9 - 1.3999

A: 1.4 - 1.75

S: > 1.75

Sombers are often on the lower end of these ranges.

Also weapon skills don't all scale the same way. Some scale purely from weapon level, other purely from stats, and often a mix of the two for elemental ashes, where the weapon swing itself scales one way and the special effect or bullet scales differently. Take a guess how sombers tend to scale vs smithing.