Fist builds feasible?

Hey fellow dark soulians i was researching some builds when i thought (and i'm sure i'm not the first) "how viable is a punching weapon based character"?

now i know this would probably be a hard as hell way to play....but wouldn't it be fun to go around punching dudes in the face...and eventually shoryukening them as well (with the dragon bone fist)?

What do you guys think? What stats would be the focus of the build and what about armor and magic?

....or am i just nuts?

Plenty of str, vit and end I would think. Perhaps you could supplement certain stats with rings and armor types as well? I would imagine dexterity would be rather important as well.

Yeah that's what I was thinking....do you think it'd be wiser to up vit and rely on light armor for fast rolling and attacks or go in as an enormous tank with heavy armor and just punch the living crap out of things?

More Dex then Str as fist weapons i think have a higher Dex attribute. Honestly i love my heavy armor for everything but that is just because I like to not block most of the time until it is needed to survive. The thing with the fast roll but light armor is you have to time your dodges perfectly with the rolls or you will be in trouble. Pick whichever you want because once you level up some anyways, you can start wearing heavy armor anyways and still keep the fast roll.

haha i totally made a new character last night...and i'm going to build him as a force-using punch happy monk type. too bad i didn't realize that force spells were miracles (need to raise my faith stat).

what do you guys think?

focusing on vit/str/dex/faith as main stats? or should i change str/dex for end?

If you fully upgrade a pyromancer's flame the melee attack gets an S in int scaling and the punch also lights people on fire.

If you upgrade a Cestus to +10 one of the boss souls can turn it into a fist weapon that can do Dragon Punches. That might be worth looking into. Edit: Oh wait you said that in the first post. Ignore me.

@SuperfluousMoniker said:

If you upgrade a Cestus to +10 one of the boss souls can turn it into a fist weapon that can do Dragon Punches. That might be worth looking into.

yeah that was a weapon that i was planning on getting eventually.

@yoshimitz707 said:

If you fully upgrade a pyromancer's flame the melee attack gets an S in int scaling and the punch also lights people on fire.

hmmm that sounds tempting...but i like the idea of being able to use force spells to blow enemies away so i can focus on them one-on-one. also wrath of god sounds pretty sweet and factors into the close-range melee this build will hopefully be doing.

i want to make a fist weapon build with the dark hand and the dragonpunch fist , the dark hand can be used as a shield in offhand or in main hand its heavy attack can steal humanity for other players ,

the main problem tho is that these weapons both kind of suck ..getting around 200+ attack rating when fully upgraded , a +15+ cestus with magic weapon or even better , darkmoon blade , would be decent damage , as would a lightning cestus , but regular fist weapons dont have the wow factor of the dragon punch or ripping ppls humanity out of them or conjuring a spectral shield...

itd be fun to play , mabye at the lowest soul level possible for a viable build .. but high level pvp and pve of any kind will probably suck..

plus .. in all reality can you handle the microscopic attack range of a fist weapon ? eheh

@heartlessomen: The Dragon Bone fist is pretty shitty IMO. For one it weighs as much as a Greatsword and despite it's A-grade scaling, it deals shit damage compared to proper weapons. The heavy attack does a shoryuken but it takes forever to come out. It's like doing a charged special in SF4 (whatever you call that thing where the camera zooms into your guy), except that the game doesn't pause when you're charging.

Also, no reach.

@White said:

@heartlessomen: The Dragon Bone fist is pretty shitty IMO. For one it weighs as much as a Greatsword and despite it's A-grade scaling, it deals shit damage compared to proper weapons. The heavy attack does a shoryuken but it takes forever to come out. It's like doing a charged special in SF4 (whatever you call that thing where the camera zooms into your guy), except that the game doesn't pause when you're charging.

Also, no reach.

hahaha well that's half the fun of it then right? I mean the game is already hard...so why not add some more challenge...kinda like a painfully delicious icecream sundae...using fist weapons and punching dudes is like adding nails for sprinkles.

i'm still very interested in this build and even rolled another new char last night for it (this time a cleric). maybe i'm just nuts @_@

i think i've found the answer to my first question..."am i nuts?" that answer is...YES!

so i finally got my 3rd rolled char (a str/end heavy cleric) out to the blacksmith in undead parish last night...and i bought the cestus (caestus as it is in-game) and got slightly disappointed when i saw my dmg drop from 150-180 (drake sword) to 30-50.

hahahahaaa....

...a few thousand souls later and with a caestus +2 i was doing 50-77 dmg a hit....lol.

This is going to be a fun build

I haven't even played the game yet, but I will say that that's probably not going to go well...

Havn't tried the dragon fist, even though i have it, cause i don't have enough STR, but...

The Dark Hand is kinda shitty for blocking as it doesn't fully block physical, also, it acts as if you got hit, so you get knocked back a lot, instead of a little.

The damage it does is shitty too, and it's not upgradeable. The only real redeeming thing about it is the R2 attack, which steals humanity, looks cool as hell, and is, as far as i can tell, unblockable.

hahahaa....so should i assume that what i'm pursuing is a lost cause?

Does this claw weapon that can be seen in the "first time I died..." trailer count as a fist weapon? I want to make a NG+ build with this weapon because it looks awesome!

@CptBedlam said:

Does this claw weapon that can be seen in the "first time I died..." trailer count as a fist weapon? I want to make a NG+ build with this weapon because it looks awesome!

yes it is a fist weapon! been looking forward to picking it up, i think it does slashing and scales to dex...also i think you get it in blighttown after joining the forest hunters.

it does however come with relatively low dmg according to the wiki...starts at 65 (the caestus is a 60 but scales like crap)

Nuts - yes

but admirably so

@heartlessomen said:

i bought the cestus (caestus as it is in-game) and got slightly disappointed when i saw my dmg drop from 150-180 (drake sword) to 30-50.

hahahahaaa....

Well, any vanilla weapon is going to disappoint you at the beginning of the game if you're using the drake sword.

Also, curse you, I might have to roll another alt. I have a 'fisting thief' character I like to make in RPGs. But I imagine blocking with a fist weapon isn't going to be very effective, and punching with a shield is going to look dumb...

@Stahlbrand: lol fisting thief .. is he related to the ass bandit ?

@envane: Heh heh. No, he's just a bad, bad man. Selfish and spiteful neutral evil. If you're fists are your weapon, you can never be disarmed.

i could imagine an invader coming at me with nothing but his fists lool

@GloriousDinosaur said:

Nuts - yes

but admirably so

haha thanks.

@Stahlbrand said:

@heartlessomen said:

i bought the cestus (caestus as it is in-game) and got slightly disappointed when i saw my dmg drop from 150-180 (drake sword) to 30-50.

hahahahaaa....

Well, any vanilla weapon is going to disappoint you at the beginning of the game if you're using the drake sword.

Also, curse you, I might have to roll another alt. I have a 'fisting thief' character I like to make in RPGs. But I imagine blocking with a fist weapon isn't going to be very effective, and punching with a shield is going to look dumb...

true, true...drake sword is very nice early on. also, i totally encourage MOAR FISTING!....

Kirk's armor boosts unarmed a little and the roll deals a tiny bit of damage too. But yeah that build is damn near impossible. Try pure archer offline mode.

To be clear, just about any build is viable in PvE in dark souls. The caestus is pretty damn fast and doesn't use much stamina, so that's a benefit. The damage is somewhat off-putting to be sure, but just about every kind of build is possible.