Ash of War: Thunderbolt | Elden Ring Wiki

wish this skill gave a visual lightning buff to the weapon, feels like a waste

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saved the day v maliketh

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Pro tip: Wave to your opponent so they wave back then zap 'em.

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Zap!

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I started using this AoW just for my PvE build to deal with flying enemies and enemies from a distance. I have the most fun on this with the smithscript cirque. I tried out PvP for fun, and instead of spamming it, I just use it to cancel out sorceries and dragon incantations and force people to fight. If you're one shot and you choose to fight, I won't use it, because some people lock in with like 1 hp left. But if you run away and heal a million times, or spam miram's vansishing, or spam backhand blades, or rivers of blood, elden stars and anything to avoid actually fighting, then I'm simply not gonna fight you and let you get zapped while rolling pathetically. People who actually fight rarely see me use it, I might use it as response to flame serpent ONCE, which usually is enough for people.

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Always have a dagger on me with this for arena. People who spam this usually can't dodge it. Be annoying, expect the same. Oh, and its great for pve, almost like they balanced it around that!

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I have nothing against the AoW itself, in fact I love the fricken thing, but if you're gonna spam this in the arena at the start of the fight, I am going to dodge it and mock you for it. You're just wasting time, FP and flasks. Put up or shut up.

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This isn't marked on the interactive map

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This is boosted by the Death Knight set btw

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So: wich Weapon has currently the highest Dex-scaling?

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Just remember that damn near every zone has either rain or puddles of water that will give you a free +10% damage boost, even if you aren't pure Dex.

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why can't I use this on the dryleaf arts?

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Put this on the smithscript daggers (they weight next to nothing!) and enjoy being a powerful wizard lol

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I love how the comments talking about how cheap this AoW is are getting a load downvotes and 'get gud, skill issue' replies from special needs nerds. The ash is a crutch and should never have been put in the game, sorry most on here seemingly can't accept that.

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Aw sweet, it doesn't scale off weapon damage. Imma put this on raptor talons

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This + Guardian's Swordspear = Dragonslayer Swordspear?

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Can From nerf this brainless **** already? It makes PvP damn near unplayable.

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This ash of war is missing on the interactive map, please update & add it in.

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I really wish this could be used on shields so I could have an offhand ranged in addition to my main hand one (pure dex build)

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This ruins the spirit of game in both pve and pvp far more than any other ash or spell. perfect tracking, near instant, low cost, high range, high damage, delayed, projectile. What were they thinking.

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SĀNZÄBORUTOOO!!!! screamed miyazaki at his team while making this ash

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A lot of people forgetting the perk of having ranged stats is to not get out ranged by builds who got armor/melee stats instead of ranged stats. A lot of people forgetting star shower true combos with thunder bolt. A lot of mages thankfully too unintelligent to try 30 dex keen estoc, scholars armament, thunderbolt and 60 int at 100+ RL for star shower. I did this at RL 138 but with falling star beastjaw instead of thunderbolt…

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Octopus Ohmbliterator. Virgin abductor volt-ampere-ifier. Tarnished taser. Rainy day dynamo! It's worth keeping that thang on ya with the amount of water and rain in this game, swamps count as water too...

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Damage can be boosted by shard of Alexander, Lightning scorpion charm and lightning physick. Will only cost 8FP instead of 10 with carian filigtree talisman equipped.

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Thanks a lot Miyazaki, i finally have a tool against passive hosts in the open-world areas.

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Does the incantation version do more damage?

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Tried the arena and having a close sword-fight. We're both one hit away. Guy backs up and pikachu's me. Lol what?

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Do we really need 500 comments about how this Ash is annoying in PVP when we have zero talking about how much fun it is to throw this on a Dex build in PVE and starting throwing out high damage tracking ranged attacks on a melee build with zero casting investment?

I swear, this kind of discourse makes me wish From would stop pretending they can make competent PVP and just stop putting it in their games. Souls PVP has always been a mess of netlag and shaky balance and it always will. Seeking a satisfying PVP experience in a Souls game is doing nothing but inviting frustration.

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I cannot seem to dodge this very well.

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For some reason Lost Ashes of War will not allow me to duplicate this AoW. Its the only AoW that doesn't show up when I try to duplicate at Roundtable Hold. Anyone else have this issue?

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For everyone complaining about this: here is some advice. Lightning spear outdraws this and it’s not that OP, if you have latency, spam roll, you won’t get hit, casters you have faster spells like glint stone pebble and beastial sling. Faith builds are notoriously much stronger than other builds, use your incants like catch flame. While lightning builds can be quite OP this isn’t it chief, this is simply a easy to punish spammable poke on dex builds, the one build with little to no spell scaling.

For those who think “only spell/range abilities for int/arc builds” need to remember they are incredible melee options, to argue special privilege for one attribute and not the other is a poor balance decision

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This thing is obnoxious. With a good connection it's very easy to dodge but otherwise it's best utility is when you're losing a match and decide to giggle the McDonald's wifi router.

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The wiki is completely wrong. TB is a "Buller Art", the base weapon's damage or scaling does nothing to boost AOW dmg. All it matters is weapon type, infusion (keen is best) and stat investment (in this case only DEX is relevant). Don't believe me? Put this on a keen longsword and see for yourself. And which specific weapon doesn't matter as long as they're the correct type, eg: daggers perform worse than most straight swords, because they have a lower internal multiplier on keen affinity.

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How is it that people who use this tend to spam more than actual spell casters? I've been in arena matches where the literal wizard wasn't brainlessly spamming spells as much as the dude who had this on a dagger.

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"Unlike those maidenless spell spammers, I'm a real chad." -guy who spams this

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I've been wondering if using Keen affinity and Frozen Armament would let you inflict frostbite while using this Ash of War. I've been trying to make more ice + lightning combos because I want to roleplay a Nokron dragon-cultist. I figured I'd ask here just in case someone already tested it out. If nobody has/does, I'll get back with my own results on that later.

And this is a question regarding PvE and roleplay, so before any salty PvP players say anything like "why are you trying to make this more cancerous?", y'all can stuff it. If I could remove PvP from the game entirely, I would, because y'all seem to think anything that works is toxic/cancer, and then use some BS of your own to cheese out wins.

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PIKACHU USE THUNDERBOLT

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When I put this on my lordsworn great sword using sacred scaling, it does more damage than keen or quality. I have 30str 30 Dex and 60 fth. This suggests it scales with whatever the infusion is as well and not just Dex and base damage

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Someone hit me with this in PvP. Fomsoft nef pls

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the ‘i’m losing in PvP and am about to die, so let me spam this to get a cheap win’ ash of war…. seriously, this thing is pure cancer in PvP

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L2 gaming

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Thunderbolt + Black Flame:

If you use Black Flame Blade on a Keen infused weapon with Thunderbolt the Black Flame will transfer out to the lightning attack. Basically an upgraded Thunderbolt against high level bosses, but absolutely not fp efficient for PvP or low health bosses.

As far as I know this is the only elemental buffing aramanet spell/incantation that affects this ash of war. Though of course, using the weapon itself instead of ash of war to kill any boss will in most scenarios kill it faster and Black Flame Tornado ash of war is going to beat Thunderbolt + Black Flame by miles.

Also don't forget water gives lightning an area effect. Melania's boss arena has water and you can abuse this by forcing her to stand near water which makes it almost impossible for her to avoid your attacks. Though your black flame will deal less damage in water, but it's worth it in most cases since you wont miss in 90 % of cases if you time it right.

Good luck with this new information : )

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Went to the doctor after playing pvp and he diagnosed this as straight up CANCER.

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Just free. Chunks you for over 1/4 health for no effort at all, has range from across the colosseum. Literally the slightest bit of lag and you're not dodging it even if you saw it coming. Literally better than honed bolt that you had to read a massive book for.

In conclusion, oppressive.

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It looks like the game just won't let me duplicate this one

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Don't give me a link to a video that doesn't even show on the map where this is located, just link to the damn map.

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On what *sacred infused* weapon would this have the most damage? I would imagine a collosal (high base damage) or guardian sword spear for dex scaling and base damage. But I’m using logic to a game I don’t actually understand. Please help :)

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This thing is just broken af...

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it would be nice to have this also marked on the interactive map

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as far as spammy annoying ashes of war go, you can do much better

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Does anyone know if applying a lightning buff to the weapon adds any extra damage when using Thunderbolt?

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This or Beast Roar?

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Absolute plague of an ash of war. Give it the seppuku treatment.

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I hope you like my lightning flavored cheese :) Sweats thought they were clever spamming spell-like ashes from back up weapons, but now my cleric spams this in between every spell to roll catch and prevent my sweaty opponents from menuing or spamming their own ranged nonsense. Thunder bolt also has a melee portion, can confirm because when out of fp, it still damages people who roll into me. Cheese? Absolutely. But so is running away to menu with regen flask or for a bull goat with no int/fth to have better everything, even spells, than I do.

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the explanation is kinda needlessly complicated -- if you know where the well that leads down into the sewers is, it's near that. the scarab will be pretty obvious since it's meant to be bait with a few of the grabby guys waking up around you.

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If you had any doubts this is broken: 99 vigor, 35 dex and enough mind/ end to spam L2 in tree sentinel armor stacked on every life boost and blue feather branch sword. Didn’t even need great jar talisman to blast people away with this even on trades. How would I fix this? Remove it altogether. Spells should scale off int or faith. That being said, it would still be broken if it scales off only fth, since it’s still faster than spell version and does more damage. Needs to do 100 dmg max in pvp with proper stats. Should be nothing but a poke for a caster to save a spell slot. Everything I just said applies to every spell-like or ranged aow. I mean, why shouldn’t great bows one shot and long bows do beast roar level damage? Same logic.

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can we get a map location for this pls?

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So what I can't seem to find anywhere on any of the forums...

"Ash of War scales with Dex because lightning scales with Dex"
I can see this on Weapon Arts/Scaling, the lightning cracked pots and I haven't checked but I'm willing to bet lightning arrows?

However, when I cast any such form of lightning, this is based off of my Incantation Rating on my Seal, which comes mostly from Faith but also possibly from other stats.

My question is, if I use the lightning AoW with the Sacred affinity (You can obviously do and every Faith build has limited options so this is everywhere, probably the only way you even had a Faith scaling weapon for the first half the game) does it STILL scale off Dex? I really doubt that.

I think your AoW scales exactly like Spells and Incantations do from your Staffs and Seals.
First the scaling generates a value = "Incant Scaling" just like on a seal. You don't see this on the weapon though, this is a property(value) of the Weapon Art/AoW.

For example:
Academy Glintstone Staff +0 > Str-E | Int-B | Sorcery Scaling = 60 (I have 10 Int)
Magic infused Beastman's Cleaver +0 > Str-E | Int-D
The Academy Glintstone Staff has a value called Sorcery Scaling that I bet all weapons actually have to contribute to their AoW

I wonder if you could take the formula for the staff and apply it to the Cleaver for what damage numbers you are getting for a given AoW.
Certain things, like healing, ONLY scales off of the Faith portion of your Seal regardless of the other stat contribution.

I think using the Sacred affinity instead of Keen makes this scale off of Faith not Dex. Which makes me believe Lightning and Dex don't have any relationship outside of cracked pots and the scaling you chose to apply to your weapon when you put the AoW on.

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Was the Aow nerfed? Tested on the soldier of godrick with the spear and shield near gatefront grace. Both a fully upgraded keen guardian swordspear and a keen twin blade did 1080 dmg. the sword spear has higher base dmg and A scaling in dex while twin blade has B scaling in dex. It seems to only scale with weapon upgrade.

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Quick question, so I know Thunderbolt and other lightning ashes of war scale with dex. But does the Ash Of War scale with the dex scaling of your weapon? Forexample I would deal more damage if my weapon scaled A with Dex than C or is it already a predetermined amount?

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liurnia pvp summed up in a single ash

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I've put this skill on the bloodstained dagger for fashion purposes and noticed that it does more damage than on a parrying dagger, which I found kind of strange, as the dex scaling is lower. Further testing showed that the damage is not at all related to the base damage or dex scaling of the weapon. Here are the damage figures I got with my weapons at 60 dex:

Keen Vulgar Militia Shotel +25 255AR (A) - 906
Keen Parrying Dagger +25 158AR (S) - 906
Keen Club +25 230AR (A) - 944
Keen Bloodstained Dagger +25 180AR (B) - 944
Keen Urumi +25 225AR (S) - 944
Keen Watchdog's Greatsword +25 321AR (B) - 944

default Urumi +25 247AR (B) - 775
default Club +25 252AR (no dex scaling!) - 775

So it looks like there is some arbitrary value attached to each affinity, and that value just happens to be the highest for Keen. Simillarly, there doesn't seem to be any logic behind why some weapons perform better than others, they just do. Thanks From.

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I really like this thing in duels. Yeah it's easy to dodge, but for some reason a lot of people refuse to dodge it at all. You can't strafe it... Plus it's extremely good at punishing casters and slow AoW

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"what if dragon slayer sword spear weapon art was insanely spammable cheesy and lame"

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Why is this so much faster to cast than honed bolt????

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It’s broken on a pure dex/str build. But it’s disgusting on a sacred paladin. Ancient dragons lightning forces people to roll and then you infinitely roll catch them with this. Practically a one shot if both connect. That’s the most simple but correct application of this ash but It gets even better. Triple rings, elden stars, magic glint blade, carian phalanx and thunder bolt ash all out at the same time. Nobody can even see what’s happening. If anything staggers at all my victim will blow up. This ash and beast roar used to be the bane of my mage, but now I’m gonna use it the right way and make you all suffer cheesing me.

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It's kinda weird, but this gets more damage from keen infusion instead of lightning infusion. I'm at 80 dex and I tested with a keen/lightning jawbone axe +18.

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K so PvE, is this too OP? I really wanted to do an efficient lightning build and I’m torn.

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I was once a glintstone pleb but when i found this, i never looked back.

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Be wary of latency

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Ok so this actually scales with dex not faith. Does that mean I should be going quality if I want a lightning infused big weapon? Or would big weapons have such terrible dex scaling that lightning infusions are bad on them? Is this ash compatible with sacred then? That I should use sacred infusion on big weapons while channeling lightning incantations and the lightning thunder bolt ash? I need your guidance

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A lot of misinformation or old info below. ash scales off dex stat not weapon ar/type. For best results go with lightning infusion

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Bring back Blessed as a B/B STR/FTH "quality" infusion, and have Thunderbolt scale with those.

I don't know what was going through the developers' heads making 3/4 of the content DEX/INT, even some **** that doesn't make sense, like most infusions and ashes scaling with DEX.

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I’m sorry but this one of the most broken spells in pvp.
Not only because of damage, range, and speed but because of targeting and bad visual cues.

It’s literally invisible sometimes with lag, and it doesn’t miss without a good connection. So it’s basically invisible lag-bolt. Which makes winning very easy as long as you can cast it with a bad connection.

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Lmao, not only does this cast faster than the Honed Bolt incant, using this on a max upgraded Keen Dagger does roughly 20% more damage than Honed Bolt using a seal with 300+ incant scaling

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It hurts my soul they gave the fastest and most damaging spells in the game to pure strength and pure dex builds. This ash (spell? lol) can two shot players who chose to have armor instead of vigor in mid levels all without actually fighting.

It gets worse. Lightning ignores armor, the catch of fast spammy weapons is that they do less damage and have a hard time with armor, which will make a fight against slow weapons with armor/poise about even. Knights vs rogues. Except dex builds now ignore armor and channeled high damage to begin with. My great mace will lose trades against dex builds all while still getting cut down for being slower. This ash represents a lot of the core issues with balance in this game. Hopefully strength and endurance both get higher resistance points for lightning, to punish split damage since the armor can’t.

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The tracking on this spell is way too good. Like predicting where your roll will land good. A lot of people use this as their “bail out” spell in case they start losing or want free hits. Also with lag the bolt is indivisible, so make sure and watch the caster. I’ve been hit multiple times when I was not in range and it was invisible. It’s really useful when someone just roll dodges the whole fight, it’ll catch the roll and catch the others with a continued cast.

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Why be a mage when you can level dex and mind and shut down all ranged builds. All jokes aside I have removed this from my inventory and regret that this is even in the game let alone dex scaling. Same with beast roar and bestial sling, they have no business being in pvp and certainly not on us dex builds. Downvote the truth.

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yeah pretty sure the scaling on this is bugged, on Lightning infusion it doesn't matter what weapon you use, Great Knife will do the exact same damage as a Pest's Glaive or Dismounter, but on Keen infusion the larger weapons not only do more damage than Lightning infused, they also do more damage than the knife, even though it has S scaling on dex and the others are A and B scaling, tested on the grey Albinaurics at Palace Approach Ledge-Road, 10 times with each weapon +0 and at +25

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The Dexterity favouritism in Elden Ring is so blatant. Huge weapons which should be STR only have dex requirements and scaling. Dex improves poise on horseback. Dex improves casting speed. Lightning is now inexplicably Dex scaling. Dex weapons get better magic damage than Faith builds. And of course, let's not forget about the mess that Katanas are.

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Using a +25 Greatsword, infused with KEEN, lightning scorpion charm and with 60 dexterity, 25 faith, 21 strength (2hand it), this spell is doing about 1300+ to end game mobs with minimum mana usage and a somewhat fast cast. In lower level maps it goes about 2k+ damage. It's totally insane. If you use the Flask of Woundrous physic with Lightning Shroud cracked Tear it gets even better.

From my testing, to use this properly, a weapon with a huge base damage and proper scaling in DEX is necessary (using a colossal weapon and putting KEEN on it should do the trick). For example my Greatsword is going for 373+351, from what i understand, the 351 will be what the spell will use for its damage scaling, that, and faith. When i upgrade my faith points, this thing will hit even harder.

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This is the new Meta AOW. This thing hits like a truck, faster than 90% of spells, and it’s tracking is insane and it staggers opponents! Plus you don’t have to be a dedicated caster to use it! Another AOW that makes most other builds pointless. Yay! It would be even more super cool If it was invisible more often and had a one shot red version. Don’t know why anyone wouldn’t have this somewhere in theyre pvp kit for when you start losing.

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I tested it with lance, claymore and zweihander. all have B keen scaling with 20str/80dex but surprisingly dealt the same thunderbolt damage even though they have different base damage.

Tested on the highest base damage/dex scaling ratio weapon, the guardian swordspear, and even tho it has higher base damage and an A dex scaling it surprisingly dealt the same thunderbolt damage as the other 3

Is there a damage cap or something?

Best weapon to use it imo is the claymore since it puts pressure on passive players, something the claymore struggles with

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When testing damage of this AoW, make notice if it's raining or not. I didn't and got bullshit results.

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Needs a damage nerf considering all the other ranged ashes of war deal like 200 less damage then this.

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tested on heavy misericord +20 537dmg and on my heavy greatsword +20 did 587dmg. the damage increases each time I level my weapon up and the base AR definitely has an effect on the Ash of War. Put it on your heaviest hitting weapon with the highest weapon level you can.

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Missing from interactive map

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52 str 13 dex +25 greatsword
Heavy AR 808
Keen AR 552
Thunderbolt damage on radahn soldiers
Heavy 601
Keen 661

The attack seems to be weapon base + dex scaling and nothing to do with actual AR

TLDR; Terrible option for ranged attack on heavy weapons

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lame

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I've been seeing this every third PvP match or so at level 125. It is quite something.

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Put this on a +25 Great Knife or Parrying Dagger with the Keen affinity, level Dex, and bam you're now a better Lightning mage than actual Faith casters.

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Even on a strength build, it's a low cost, fast projectile that does decent damage. I use this and Beast's Roar on my Greatsword and does wonders in PvP (Estus punish, Roll punish). Definitely would recommend since it's very easy to use

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this thing has the same damage as lighting bolt, faster cast time and is less telegraphed. What is the ****ing point of using incantations if weapon arts do the same thing but better.

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"This means this Skill will do the most damage on a Weapon that has high base damage and good Dexterity Scaling, which most Halberds have."

...Most Halberds scale better with Strength. What the heck is this on about?

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not the most common ash to be seen in pvp, so most people can't tell what the animation conveys. since you can also chain it, it's at least 2 hits against unaware opponents (900+ damage)

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so basically this thing allows non casters to do nearly as much damage as a pure caster does with honed bolt. can be pretty annoying to go against in a 1v2

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For my testing, the ash of war damage is the same regardless of the weapon base damage. For example, a colossal weapon deal the same damage with a dagger at level 1.

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Is this available after Leyndell turns ashen?

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Ngl, after seeing this all I’m thinking is “imma put this on my Morning Star and make Tonitrus 2: Electric Boogaloo”.

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Man on a dex build you're basically a better caster with this than other pure casters, minus the infinite FP stars of ruin spam cheese. Start up on this is faster than most spells and and does good damage with the right talismans. Also maybe this is just me running into people that don't know the timing to dodge this, but it seems like any amount of latency throws off the dodge timing for this.

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