The REAL Way to Build Ashes of War

Ashes of War in Elden Ring have special properties where the skills may have different scalings within the same attack in PvE and PvP... but how does that work? Let's find out!

[@Markionorman]

I feel wrong getting called cinnamon pie

[@Dr.FeelGood1346]

It’s probably the pie part

[@glowindark64]

I felt so right ✅

[@Redhotquagmire]

Just pretend she said "roll". There ya go.

[@llab3903]

That’s on you boo boo

[@glowindark64]

@@llab3903 exactly. #dobetter

[@fadeddraconian9153]

First Short of the year!!

[@lunathemoon]

Fun fact! Putting Waves of darkness on things like the Butchering Knife or Great Stars makes the waves also regenerate your HP if they hit an enemy

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Insanely pog

[@persiviersgrandarcade]

@lunathemoon I used golden land on great stars. Each one of those little stars will heal you. And you can use it to snipe anything in sight.

[@light6666]

​@@persiviersgrandarcade faith users prob dont even need that much healing tbh like they are faith users having access to blessing boon

[@anthony.1991]

The bully soundtrack is just magic

[@ThysBordes]

A man of culture i see

[@7Regulus7]

Little cinamon pie 🤣 i love this lines 🥰😹

[@nielsco2671]

Listening to my teacher in class ❎️ Listening to this woman's cute voice ✅️

[@Tavemanic]

Yes But why are the healthbars for her yellow?

[@Fuzzelmonster]

​@@Tavemanici think it is a red filter because YT might see a specific type of red as blood and demonitize or smth stupid

[@justlucifer.]

Her name is Roderika 😊

[@GoroGororoGororo]

Sad to broke it for u but this is grown ass man 😂❤

[@AnyaKittyMeow]

@@GoroGororoGororo even worse, it's AI

[@stuolm77]

The end lines always make me smile

[@JoeMama17888]

Usually, the rule of thumb is that if the ash does elemental damage, it works best with that element on the weapon. Unless it's physical ashes of wars, it's all up in the air usually.

[@axl7370]

what about fire since it can scale from strength

[@JoeMama17888]

@@axl7370 well, let's use Flame of the Redmanes as an example, it mostly depends on AR. It will still get boosted by strength and weapon level. But overall the damage is similar to flame art, since that version has incredibly high fire damage, with lower physical scaling. So you'll probably get a higher AR out of Flame Art than just Fire. But both are not bad options

[@amateraustt9901]

Bully nostalgia

[@hussainalkhatem299]

"Little Cinnamon Pie" *proceeds to show us a dung pie* 😂

[@loubertthegreat671]

So just started elden havent played since dark souls simply because i suck at these games. My god your vidoes help soooo much with understanding this insanely frustrating but absolutely beautiful game.thank you!

[@jeanmclean6703]

👀 Ah. Didn't have to wait long before the first video of the year drops 👋😄 Best wishes for your 2025. May it be filled with joy, peace, precious moments and lots of Bomba ♡

[@ClonserHalphalive]

That wasn't a cinnamon pie...! That wasn't a cinnamon pie at all!

[@theaveragenormie7151]

All ashes scale in one way or another. Bullet ashes scale with specific stats based on what kind of bullet ash it is, as long as the weapon allows it to. For example, Rings of Light scales with faith as long as the weapon has faith scaling. There's a small bonus for matching infusion to the bullet's type, for example putting lightning infusion on a weapon casting Lightning, but otherwise they scale off of the matching attribute (as long as the weapon allows it) with a fixed rate irrespective of the weapon's own scaling rate, which can be weird and counterintuitive. It doesn't matter how good the weapon's scaling is, so long as it scales with that stat. So Beast Roar gets screwed over by heavy infusion, but it'll do the same damage on a weapon with E dex scaling or S dex scaling because it has its own built-in scaling. A bullet art's preferred infusion is its default one, and each bullet art either scales from a single stat or two specific stats based on its preferred infusion (str for heavy and fire, dex for keen and lightning, int for magic, fth for sacred and flame art, arc for occult, str/dex for quality and int/dex for cold). Bullet arts are any art that fires a projectile, conjures magic or otherwise does literally anything other than hitting someone with your weapon. Any art that actually hits someone with the weapon uses the weapon's normal AR for the hit, so these funky rules only apply when you don't. The matching bonus exists because affinities like fire and lightning penalize the stat scaling that goes into the specific bullet art. At low investment they're better because of the bonus, but at very high investment (approaching 80), heavy and keen eventually surpass them Oh and the last thing: for some absolutely baffling reason, every weapon in the game is internally divided into one of two categories: either it's a strength weapon or a dex weapon. If the game secretly labels something a strength weapon, the heavy infusion is weaker on it, and thus the scaling bonus that goes into a strength-based bullet art is also weaker. Similarly for a dex weapon and the keen infusion. The game literally has Heavy and Heavy(weak) as two separate infusion entries and just picks the corresponding one without telling you. This means that any bullet art (that is, any weapon art that damages the target without hitting them with your weapon) will deal more damage with a weapon that doesn't normally scale well to your preferred stat. The Duelist greataxe has terrible base strength scaling, and this makes it ideal for casting something like Troll's Roar. Similarly, if you want an L2 stick to spam Lightning on your dex build, take a weapon that leans towards strength, like the broadsword, and infuse it with keen or lightning. And lastly: Quality, Bleed and Poison are all screwed. Their scaling is so bad that they are actually never better than other options even with the matching infusion bonus. Quality bullet arts (of which there's only really one, Stormblade) are always strongest on Keen, while Blood bullet arts are best on Occult. And finally; if the weapon is uninfusable and thus cannot have a matching infusion, they have an innate scaling modifier that's quite a bit higher than the generic one. This means Troll's Roar with the Troll's Golden Sword (or even the otherwise terrible Troll Knight Sword) will generally be a little stronger than any infusable weapon on a strength build, and similarly the Halo Scythe's Rings of Light will typically beat the ash of war version on a faith build.

[@theaveragenormie7151]

I stole this from a /vg/ post from 2 years ago.

[@peaceworld4682]

Im Fell in love with that voice

[@limbmoon5234]

What a way to start the year by getting called little cinnamon pie by Roderika

[@El_papii]

Batman has never eaten a cinnamon pie 🦇🗿

[@abrahamdeadpool3011]

Feliz año nuevo. Ya saben gente, a estudiar si no quieren que los vaporizen y hagan muffins con sus cenizas. Dan un excelente viaje.

[@johndang55]

This is because different infusions have different base damage and then have scaling on top of that. Only Fire or Lightning projectile infusions aren’t the strongest despite being the ‘correct’ infusion as heavy and keen respective with their greater scaling. Projectiles/ bullets scale with infusion and attribute, skills that use the direct contact of your weapon use a motion value multiplier of your minimum attack power for the weapon. For waves of darkness specifically magic infusion has the most base damage the most being about 106.3% of cold, cold is second, and lastly is metal infusions. Regardless of these infusions increasing your intelligence will boost the damage by roughly 1% per intelligence though I’m too sure how it works at past the first soft cap of 50.

[@feralenigma]

Sweet little bean, I love your vids. Thank you so much for them. I enjoy the ending send off the best. Happy New Year

[@user-sh6nv8et9f]

I really like you as a person and creator

[@ProtoPerson]

You should tell people about attacks that surprisingly do critical damage like lifesteal fist or inescapable frenzy, I only found out about it today after having played the game for hundreds of hours. The wiki doesn't even mention it on the critical damage page.

[@I_do_not_know_why]

Perfect short I’m literally eating apple pie 🤣

[@beginnereasy]

Hidden stats are so cool

[@bahmot9501]

I cannot express how much I ADORE having trivialised the concept of "builds" just by being level 713 ! I can do anything and everything I want at its highest effectivity ! I can wear the highest armour and 6 of the heaviest weapons and still not fat roll ! I don't need any sore seal or Godrick's great rune ! (Radahn's great rune all the way !) Literally the best feeling ever !

[@persiviersgrandarcade]

The blue letters let you know if the ash is increasing. The red letters let you know if the ash is decreasing. So if you are setting the affinity and you see a blue B being changed to a red A. Just know the red A is making the ash weaker than the blue B.

[@Samiska19]

Could you make video on armor bonuses?

[@moswu]

God! You are the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard on YT, no ,on the Internet!!

[@Curvial657]

My grandpa's dad was a war hero. Now I learning ashes of war from a elden ring waifu... 😭

[@GamerNemo]

bully ost goes hard

[@mrgametr808]

Waves of Darkness is not my favorite Ash of War but after this video I might give it another chance

[@WarGamerAndPainting]

Daily therapy. Thanks

[@humanratteler9760]

If it’s a projectile of sorts on an ash, it likely scales only with magic or faith respectively, is how it works

[@nateB-l7k]

Happy new year!!

[@MiguelRodriguez-gd5ut]

My favorite thing to do is put ashes of war like flame slash , fire skewer and fire spear on my quality weapons so they can still get the benefits of the fire damage without losing out on base physical damage.

[@AndroxineVortex]

My Ash of War is just like my ability to Git Gud. No Skill

[@parisp7502]

knowledge is power

[@javierburgos9975]

Feliz año nuevo desde PuertoRico, pequeña sopita de caracol.

[@vinhlam9249]

Cold zwei brought me nightmare 💀

[@besenbesen7081]

Its easy really. Ash of war affinity is static and weapon affinity is optional. When you pick an Ash of War (Lightning Bolt for instance) the L2 damage scales with the ash of war affinity , quality (str + dex) in this case and this cant be changed but you can set the weapon damage to Heavy, quality, etc. A quality build will get more L2 dmg for thunderbolt than a Str build but depending on the weapon the Str build might get higher physical dmg scaling for the weapon.

[@TheBigG4]

Do a video on og redmane flame and og hoarfrost stomp

[@LordGiga-fu3re]

Causal Elden ring characters got me feeling unwise

[@dcphillips1991]

It would be great if the game actually explained this...

[@Semilamist]

nah that's the charm of souls games, no one holding your hand, no one teaching you anything and you gotta figure it out yourself through trial and error

[@zbyszekkiebasa906]

@@Semilamist nah, hiding how infusions affect the damage on ashes of war is just annoying

[@Ghost_gc]

The hints the game itself gives you are on the inherent affinity of the ash in question. If the ash itself says "it gives magic affinity and the following skill", it means it's primary focus is usually magic, wich is the case in, for example, glintstone peeble. The tricky ones are the ashes in wich scaling is mostly dependant on weapon level and weapon type, and minorly on stats, like ghostflame call. Or the complete opposite, like horoah loux's earthshaker. Even then, they give you an idea of what stat one should focus on.

[@mane2993]

Where is my "pequeño pedacito de carne"😠

[@YScourgeOfTheStars]

My spirit is rather broken after the DLC. I need a pretty blonde spirit tuner to help me get my motivation back again.

[@AtashiiSallow]

buh, no hubo palabras argentinas, por cierto, feliz año nuevo

[@breloopharos1919]

Wave of Darkness is underrated af

[@ulysses5340]

Iirc Dex AoW's work better with keen infusion than let's say heavy or quality.

[@samuelfelipe2438]

Do a vídeo of the Ashes of war. The "best" infusions for ever ash

[@jackudall1824]

Where can we get the character pictures you use

[@andreasmoser9747]

My little titanite slabs :3

[@dely9999]

You have Ashes that scale with the Weapon AR, you have ashes with different hits and each hit has a different scaling, you have ashes that are just normal hits with extra steps using the different types of damages of the weapon... man that's confusing XD

[@hawawah8671]

Only ash of war I use is upward slash because I like to slash enemies into low earth orbit.

[@axb3r]

Thats a Dung pie, I am not poop 😂

[@Battleguild]

Shame that Seals, Staves, Bows, Crossbows, Greatbows, Ballista, and Perfume Bottles all got shafted in the Ash of War and/or Affinity options. I'd rather have Affinities, Ash of Wars, and full weapon functionality (Seals/Staves) over a flat and boring "You deal X % more DaMaGe with Y weapon/spell/skill". For example, we don't have a single Staff that buffs Ice Sorcery in some way. It would've been neat to grant a Staff the Ice Affinity and give it the Ice Spear Ash of War. Possibly even give all spells cast with that Staff minor Frostbite build-up. But that would be fun, so I can see why they didn't do it.

[@the_guy_from_the_voults]

i wish she called me a cinnamon pie in Spanish

[@СергейДерябин-о9у]

Gravity is an intelegent magic - as I remember.

[@MoleMole_7]

this explaining hurt my brain who use strength build .

[@natoriousthehopeful2786]

Happy New Year everyone, and God Bless🎊😇✝️

[@Friendlyneighborhoodemoguy]

Why do I have the feeling this is a dude, but I still find the pet names attractive?

[@raixira]

Yay, I'm a lil cinnamon pie today :3

[@ulysses5340]

So what happens here is that the bullet parts of the AoW's having their damage scaling tied to the weapon's own scaling with the same stat? Intelligence here for example.

[@Ghost_gc]

Partly. When infused in heavy, keen, quality or standard the waves themselves calculates damage on the int stat by a tiny amount, and weapon level by an even smaller amount. With golden land (a similar ash), the holy explosion and the darts scales heavily on weapon level and a tiny bit on faith regardless of infusions.

[@Bioguy5]

Yes, sort of. Ashes of War have a motion value, which is a value that multiplies the weapon's base damage. An MV of 240 is a X2.4 multiplier. So, if your weapon as a base attack rating (AR) of 700, and its ash's MV is 240, then the ash's total damage hits for 1680 (before enemy resistances). MV's can also multiple only a specific stat---like magic. In that case, the MV is only multiplying the weapon's magic AR. So, if a weapon has 250 physical and 300 magic AR, and its ash has a magic MV of 300, then the ash's damage will be 900---because the x3 multiplier only applies to the magic damage. This is just an example. In practice, AoW ARs can get very complicated to calculate.

[@Obsidian_One1]

This girl is so cute! She's my waifu. I'm so subscribed!🥰

[@RH-beefhemoth]

Can you explain the poison flower blooms twice ash of war procs for scarlet rot when infused with occult affinity

[@timelineenjoyer]

prefer the arcane waves of darkness on a blood rotten great axe.

[@AlexanderMartinez-kd7cz]

at this point I'm convinced fromsoft doesn't change their damage functionality because they themselves forgot how all that crap works.

[@emanuelstornello8009]

THAT WAS NOT CINNAMON, I REPEAT THAT WAS *NOT* CINNAMON!

[@HAKARITHE3RD]

Does lions claw get stronger with the heavy affinity

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Nope. It's actually better with Magic. We have a short about Lion's Claw, actually

[@johndang55]

Probably one of the weakest, split damage will always hurt more.

[@HAKARITHE3RD]

@@OnlyWaifuYT oh ok thanks so much for the help

[@Ludfrey]

Happy 2015!!

[@noraairobas7804]

Yall sleeping on strength int builds you get to use frost and flame at the same time

[@alvarox951]

Happy new year to our favorite elden waifus from the distant and corrupted land of ARGENTINA

[@E4uin0X]

Upgrades, for a weapon... with an Upgrade... am I getting that right?-

[@Firek_swordsman]

Me an edgy darklord: WaaAAaves of the DARKnEeEesSs!!

[@anonimoqualquer9422]

Question: Is it worth putting lightning infusion with a lightining Ash of War in my Godskin twin blade? It works fine but I don't know if I'm losing dmg value because of it

[@rlkganesha]

OMG THE NAZARÉ TADESCO MEME MENTIONED ❗❗❗❗ LETS GOO BRASIL ❗❗❗❗ 🥳🥳🥳🥳🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷🇧🇷

[@lharsay]

~50% bonus = D rank scaling

[@seifer1281]

See this is how i have fun Occult SLC great katana=stonks on high arcane And before yall call me a dirty bleed user, I am actually just that one guy with 99 arcane farming weapons for fun, and using occult weapons makes great use of that!

[@nateB-l7k]

Doesn’t lion’s claw scale better with elemental affinities?

[@OnlyWaifuYT]

Yes, that's why I said you should experiment. We also have a short about Lion's Claw. Lion's Claw is particularly weird because it scales off total AR

[@rafaelpozo9962]

Feliz año nuevo waifu

[@Imamblind]

Always saying objects or weapons from dark souls

[@Biuldcraft]

Nice

[@poiuytrewqfg1477]

Bully music has no copyrights?

[@hackresolution5074]

Weird sort ahead

[@Mrporkstash...]

Thie channel seems to love using rodrika

[@cno733]

That's not exactly true. Some parts of attacks are physical, some are elemental, and some are both. Physical damage will always be determined largely by strength and dexterity first, while Elemental damages will always be determined largely by their scaling stat, ie intelligence, faith, arcane. The 'wave' of waves of Darkness deals no physical damage because the sword doesn't actually hit the person, whereas actually striking them with the sword deals physical. If you had the same stats in strength and dexterity as you did in intelligence, then the damage would be half because you're only getting the elemental and not the physical half. Sacred blade for example deals as much damage as an uncharged R2, except when only the blade projectile strikes the damage is 100% holy and is based off of faith, but when you strike with the weapon itself and the blade half of the damage is physical and half is holy, meaning that the amount of damage will change if you have higher or lower of Faith than strength and dexterity, after applying the scaling modifier of course. And of course, if you change which element of damage and thusly which stat is scaling off of, that will change the amount of damage ( unless you have identical amounts of every stat in which case nothing will ever change).

[@cno733]

Also consider that when you're changing which element of damage is being dealt, the unit receiving the damage will likely have different amounts of defense against different types of damage, which changes the amount that actually gets dealt.

[@Suspiciouspottedplant]

I'm doing 713 (still trying and I'm around 250 😭🙏)

[@titesyl1023]

It just despises me that ash of war spamming is the optional way to play the game 😔😔

[@cephadromeplays8750]

Does anybody know which npc is used for this video? I think I have dementia I’ve beaten the game a few times but I have zero clue who this is

[@jotarokujo3603]

Roderika. The young lady you meet outside Stormveil who upgrades your spirit ashes. She warns you about Dung Eater and her "questline" dialogue involving Hewg is arguably some of the most emotional of any npc.

[@cephadromeplays8750]

@ oh my god it’s so obvious now I don’t think I’ve ever seen her without her hood

[@RaidenKaiser]

Waves of darkness is overrated use the butt stomp instead for extra immersion

[@eds02]

Who’s narrating this? Roderika, is that you?

[@Magnus_Fraus]

i do hate ds22 for making 2k damage look weak

[@eraykur7476]

imagine some cute girl making hardest game look cute

[@s.w.a.a.g.]

Or if you are too lazy too figure this shit you can do a strength or dexterity (my build) build and to negate damage you just dodge at the right time and hit at the right time. For strength players: You Unga until you Bunga

[@crabcore_tv]

Where BOMBA or BOLA???

[@MyGuy158]

Idk, I’m level 713 so it doesn’t really matter lmao

[@rexcaliborb0i226]

Yes, but what are the implications of those with no life and are lvl 500+? (I have no life)

[@SSMLivingPictures]

Is this a real chick or A.I? Please tell me its her real voice

[@AngryFurki]

Ai voicechanger. Its a guy

[@SSMLivingPictures]

@AngryFurki Ew

[@aryantiwari1945]

Who uses quality anywyas

[@Pesho-jc7ol]

Con los milicos pegaba mas

[@primaledge9388]

Ok but who's only waifu are you?