A lot of mercenary setups rely on lightning buffs and spells, both of which are governed by faith. Not only is this going to make your dex scaling weapons more powerful, but it’s going to let you use a wider variety of weapons.Īs well as Dex, you might want to spec into faith depending on what you’re building. However, there are some fundamental things to be aware of.Īs you’re progressing through your playthrough, make sure you’re aiming to reach the dexterity soft cap of 40. Unlike some of the techier classes in the game, there isn’t much that you have to do to make the mercenary viable. This combination is going to allow you to completely shred through enemy’s health bars, even as you progress into the late-game.Īs you might expect, though, this playstyle sucks when you come up against enemies that have lightning resistance, so you need to be able to adapt and not just rely on that extra damage and range. Having said that, one of the best mercenary builds is a dexterity and faith build, so that’s what your combat playstyle should revolve around.įocus on using long ranged lightning attacks, as well as attacking up close with a lightning buffed weapon. Like any class, what kind of playstyle you should be employed with a mercenary depends on how you build it, and what stats you’re focusing on.

The Lothric Knight Sword is one of the best swords in the game and scales fantastically with your strength and dexterity, as well as if you decide to infuse to allow it to scale with faith (more on that later). This sword requires 18 dexterity to use, which is perfect for mercenaries and has a beginner-friendly move set. In particular, you should be using these to farm for the Lothric Knight Sword. Make sure that you pick the gold coins as your starting gift to combat this. Mercenaries start with particularly low luck which makes farming for effective weapons a pain. However, there are some early game nuggets of knowledge that you need to be aware of to use the class effectively. Like we said, the mercenary is one of the starting classes in the game, so there are no requirements that you need to fulfil in order to get your hands on it. The Best Overall Options for Mercenary Builds.

Dark souls 3 lightning blade