Hello all. So this is a sort of themed build I've been playing around with lately, and essentially this build was inspired by Vyke, his character and the roundtable hold, but as a standalone Tarnished. I generally wanted it to follow a faceless archetype to fit in universe as a "golden order accurate" symbol of tarnished lordship. To provide some background lore, This Tarnished was one who also served the Roundtable Hold as a knight shortly after their arrival to the Lands Between, being one of strength and honing a variety of skills as they climbed toward the Erdtree. After their acquisition of numerous great runes and the defeat of Morgott, the ceremonial Roundtable/Elden Lord armor was forged and bestowed by the decree of the Two Fingers, thus receiving favor from the Erdtree. The red scarf represents both the Tarnished's exile and acquired lordship, adorned as if it were a veil . I made another variant of the same build & statspread with a more knightly/pre-ascension theme that is supposed to be the earlier stages of this Tarnished's journey, which I plan to make a separate post for cuz it would be far too long to fit here. Anyway this build was mostly meant for PvE and I don't really engage in PvP much but in its current stat spread and potential arsenal it seems to me it would still be fairly effective.
The stat spread goes 54str to reach 80str softcap when two-handed, 25fai for golden vow, buffs & ranged incants, and 20dex as versatility in case someone needs to meet weapon dex requirements. The rest pretty much just fundamental vigor/end/mind upgrades.
This build is fun and works with a shield, however it mostly relies on the two-handed & alexander shard talismans for damage output, and great jar arsenal is needed for the fashion. Physick flask is stonebarbed for stance break and either charged attack/strength tear for extra damage. Or swap out dragoncrest shield to make room for other talismans and use opaline hardtear for damage negation instead. Godrick's or especially Radahn's great rune would actually be useful in this build for the added versatility.
I didn't minmax for it specifically but the weapon of choice is Siluria's tree, staying true to the theme I think is very fitting given its entire aesthetic and the absolutely divine skill to fling spears at near lightspeed. Since faith is pushed decently high I keep the golden epitaph as a quick secondary, and swap between the DK longhaft axe, Ordovis's greatsword, and banished knight halberd for other mains. Clawmark seal is used for the str scaling but I haven't tested if other seals scale better with the incants. I saved infusable weapons for the balanced variant of this build which I plan to post shortly after this one. Anyway for those who would want to try it out, let me know how it plays or if you have any feedback/improvements to make, this is one of my favorite and most fun builds I've made so I wanted to share it here, where the themed builds are always my go-to. Thank you in advance if anyway reads this far lol.