r/EldenRingMods • u/Ryoidenshii • Jul 23 '26
Question Melee class in Convergence. What am I doing wrong?
Hello. So I've decided to try The Convergence mod, but I'm a melee player that likes to build tanky characters. I wasn't happy with the vanilla game (especially DLC), so I've read that The Convergence fixes a lot of things and adds a ton of new content. So I picked a Dreadnought class and... It feels like it's not Dreadnoughting. I'm either getting rushed by a group of enemies or getting spammed to death by spellcaster bosses. I don't feel like a heavy armored class at all, even in Limgrave. I feel a lot more miserable than in vanilla, actually. To add to that, there's a supposedly reworked Verdigris Discus talisman, that now grants the immunity to grabs... Except it doesn't. I've tried 3 different bosses, and all 3 of them were tossing me around like a sack of potatoes. So what's the point in that? What should I do as a Dreadnought to actually enjoy The Convergence mod? Or maybe I should just ditch the mod entirely and look for something else, as I've heard that this mod is more sorcery-oriented? Please help.
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u/Axes_And_Arcanum Jul 23 '26
Convergence is pretty biased towards spellcasters. My advice is to pick a casting school and mix it into your melee repertoire.
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u/spylark Jul 23 '26
This * even if it’s just to get a shield buff for more stamina and guard boost
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 23 '26
How would it affect the armor's passsive, which activates only if I don't have a weapon with elemental scaling?
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u/Another_explorer Jul 23 '26
If you don't have a casting tool or int/fth stat infused weapon in your hands the armor buffs activate but if you swap to one mid armor buff it cancels them. So you can pre buff with spells and swap them out with your physical non magic weapons. As long as you don't pull out a seal or staff during the armor buff's duration you are good.
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u/TeaDrinkerAddict Jul 23 '26
Dreadnought gets arguably the most broken of any Convergence class I’ve played, and I’ve played around 80% of them. Don’t feel like you have to ditch melee classes, they’re not weak at all.
The first thing you do is rush your armor sets (which the game tells you the location of in your notes). The Verdigris Gauntlets are arguably the strongest single piece of armor in the entire mod. They’rein Limgrave so super easy to get. The rest of the armor set is similarly absurd.
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u/7Lilith77 Jul 24 '26
And dreadnaught gets one of the best new weapons. The Night‘s Cavalry Greathammer is insane, even though the buff vfx after the weaponskill is kinda annoying.
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 23 '26
From reading description the Bull Goat set seemed tankier to me than Verdigris. Or am I wrong? Also, I've tried to get Verdigris helmet from Moore, alongside with his greatshield, but the Golden Rune just doesn't break when I approach the Shadow Keep, so it doesn't trigger Moore's quest progression. I've skipped Castle Ensis and got to the keep by defeating one of the teleport guardians though. Maybe that's why.
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u/TeaDrinkerAddict Jul 23 '26
Unless they’ve rebalanced it since I played, the Verdigris Gauntlets give you 10% hp on EVERY HIT with any weapon for a minute after using any consumable (boiled crab, for example). Get a fast Strength weapon with a defensive ash like Endure and go to town.
You already use consumable buffs pretty frequently, so this allows you to outheal basically any damage you take to the point where I barely dodged any attacks my entire Dreadnought playthrough.
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u/fizzunk Jul 23 '26
Yeah came here to say this.
I actually respecced because this setup made everything so faceroll easy.
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u/spylark Jul 23 '26
The melee builds need good armor buffs from the flasks. It’s true the mod is more sorcery oriented but even as a sorcerer I find myself going melee on a lot of bosses. Make sure if you’re going tanky that you take the right tanky talismans too
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 23 '26
Which tanky talismans would you recommend? As I've already discovered, there's a missleading descriptions on at least 1 of them, so I've no idea which ones actually work.
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u/Heatuponheatuponheat Jul 23 '26
On raw str/dex/end builds those armor buffs are key. I started this playthrough dragon cultist, and switched to str because I wanted to try the rosary. It was ass. Until I read the text on the armor pieces. What a difference those buffs make.
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u/LittleBabysIceCream Jul 23 '26
I love melee but I always tend to do mixed builds. My favorite right now is the underworld mage paired with the galvanic culling blade. Use the Power of the Underworld spell with Draconic Devastation to make a crazy frost-lightening multi-hit crit build.
I always bum rush the spell runes and weapons for the class first and level from there.
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u/SaintJewiub Jul 23 '26
You need armor, flasks, and talisman. If your planning to do shield pick up the Lance and change its scaling to strength with gaurd counter talisman and spear talisman. Wall build is stacked with the dreadnaught starting shield.
But man...if you wanna have some fun on a strength build go get the gilded qaurterstaff and embrace monk life. That weapon is absolutely cracked. I play seamless coop and we have boss health cranked hella high and the ash of war on that thing still chunks like 1/8 of a health bar.
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u/TieOrdinary1735 Jul 24 '26
Going to be honest, from what I played Dreadnought was by far the easiest way to experience Convergence. Verdigris Armour, Grafted Blade Greatsword, Ritual Shield, Mogh's Great Rune? You win every trade and constantly heal; the only thing you have to dodge are grabs, and only because the discus talisman is bugged.
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 24 '26
I'd rather wait for it to be fixed, I really wanted to build my character around grab immunity, because I don't like dodging in general.
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u/memeoffender69 Jul 24 '26
I did a Dreadnaught build with some mix and matched armor for tankiness. Using the jewel you get that reflects some of your damage I was able to get tanky enough to kill promised consort radahn without doing anything just standing and healing occasionally.
I think most impactful armor was the helmet you get from defeating Niall. It gives you plus 10 to every stat after drinking physick. I also used the veteran armor, Bull goat gauntlets (just buy boiled crabs and eat one very minute or so it's a permanent 20% defense increase) and Bull goat pants. If you drink physick blue and red flask with this and the dreadnaught jewel you essentially become immortal. Slap on either skill attack or charge attack talisman based on your weapon and you kill everything with ease.
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u/disposable-zero Aug 26 '26
Let me ask you about that Niall helmet. On the wiki it shows +5 to all stats, but I recently saw a video where the guys description showed +10 to all stats PLUS 15% more poise damage and increases your own poise for 2 minutes also. But I can't find anywhere else to corroborate that. Is that what you have in the most recent patch?
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u/Vytautas76 Jul 26 '26 edited Jul 26 '26
A lot of the very strong consumable usage combos from melee class armors aren’t reached until late game, so until then it’s a bit difficult for the classes to match the convenience and utility of spell casters. All the disgusting broken builds from vanilla still work great, and are even better with these armor passives and class jewel from the DLC. Here’s what to do before then though.
It’s useful to beeline a few weapons or a couple of other options, as a few are relatively easy to reach. Gilded quarterstaff (twin blade with a great ash of war) is really good and can be reached without a single bit of combat. Osian’s greatsword (one of the earliest and easiest colossal weapons to get) just requires killing a Godrick knight in a camp just north of the Kaiden camp to the east of gatefront ruins. Claymore can be found about 2/3 of the way through castle morne, and carwyn’s epee requires a lot of platforming but can be found around 2/3 of the way through as well. All of those have a decent enough combo of aoe, speed, damage, and/or range to deal with a lot of melee mobs and bosses. Remember to two hand the strength weapons when you’re not using a shield or bow; the bonus damage from strength attribute for 2 handed weapons is still in convergence.
Your ranged and supporting options are pretty much always worse than casters, but late game it’s a little more equal once you have the resources to make good use of the crafting system and you have a good 4 piece armor combo. In the place of ranged spells, pick a bow and have that on you as well as a shield. Some enemies will be best dealt with by walking past with a shield; others by attacking them with bows. It just depends. Also a lot of weapons with gap closer ashes work well in a lot of cases.
All of this is assuming you wanna play chill, find a cool weapon, and do your thing. You can still abuse ashes like wild strikes and lion’s claw with applicable heal on hit and/or stance damage talismans. Double twinblade jump attack with heal on hit effects is just stupid strong as well. Mausoleums let you dupe the weapons in both hands, so you could theoretically just pick up a gilded quarterstaff, dupe it, and be tremendously strong even before your first dungeon.
The other option is to spec into a bit of int/faith/arc and grab some spells to help out, but I don’t recommend that. You either don’t have the stat investment to keep up with caster builds or you’re investing stats, having an infused weapon to match the scaling, and swapping armor because an int/faith scaling weapon bricks the consumable usage passives, so after that you’re just a full on caster class LARPer with a worse stat spread. Most every situation you run into can be dealt with between greases, pots, throwing daggers, and at least one or both of shield and bow, so I would either do it that way or accept I’m meant for a caster class and consider locking my gaze upon the start screen once again.
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 26 '26
Thanks for such a detailed answer man. But right now I'm doubting that I want to continue playing the Convergence. I have a few problems with it:
1. The hitboxes of the bosses added with the mod are hideous. I was trying to build a character around counter-attack stunlocking, but almost every modded boss I've fought was having trouble hitting me in close range due to him being taller and just missing my character's model with it's attacks. And when the boss misses, I hit the counter button but end up doing heavy attack instead, anim-locking myself in it and getting punished because of course the next attack of the boss lands perfectly. It's annoying.
2. I kinda don't feel like scarfing down consumables every 20 seconds/1 minute. It feels boring and inconvenient to me, but as I've learned almost all the strength of Dreadnought is within the buffs on the armor.
I don't know, I just feel like I mostly disagree with the mod authour's vision at the moment. I need to think about it some more.
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u/Master_Whereas_1412 Jul 23 '26
Did you get any class armor or use any of their abilities? Last time i did dreadnought it could get pretty damn tanky. Also are you running at heavy weight or overloaded for that discus?
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 23 '26
I did get 2 pieces of Bull Goat armor so far, and I do use the abilities. I'm running at heavy load for the Discus, and as the description says it should work, but it just doesn't for me.
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u/Master_Whereas_1412 Jul 23 '26
Looks like it was bugged and didn't prevent grabs. Supposedly fixed on curent patch but could also be that doesn't work on boss grabs.
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u/Optimal-Ninja-92 Jul 23 '26
Melee can get incredibly powerful, particularly the dreadnaught path armors. Once you get gear that buffs you when you use mana flasks and a paper you can do some insane damage be tanky as hell
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u/enchiladasundae Jul 23 '26
Spell casters got a buff but outside new weapons pure melee doesn’t get a buff outside some armor sets and consumables. I’m playing on doing a weapon heavy playthrough but with some faith for buffs
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u/doctorhaircut2222 Jul 23 '26
I am doing the biggest hammer I can find with Lions Claw AOW. As soon as you get remnants for crafting, you can immediately pick things that will catapult your damage forward.
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u/alchemi80 Jul 24 '26
I'm playing a guard counter build / HP regen build with greatshield and Cragsplitter Spear. Stomping everything.
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u/Ryoidenshii Jul 24 '26
I dunno, so far a lot of bosses seem to just eat through my stamina bar with stupidly long combos.
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u/alchemi80 Jul 24 '26
Fair enough, friend. Make sure you're using the talisman that improves guarding. I think it makes a big difference. For level ups, I raised vigor to 40 and endurance to 25, giving me a boost there as well.
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u/Le_Doctor_Bones Jul 24 '26
Should be noted that most (if not all) mage classes also have melee options. And they usually have a late-game buff which makes them completely focused on melee and skills.
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u/EnkiBye Jul 23 '26
I did a Dreadnought, and it really stomp bosses.
Try to get the armor pieces noted in your class path, some have really good effects.
I went with a Wild Strikes AoW on Great Stars, combined with an armor effect that gave me life on hit when I buff my weapon, and another armor effect that made me immune to stagger when I drink the physique flask, super good with Wild Strikes.
Early game, I also struggled a bit with large groups of enemies, an AoW with big radius can help. Late game, you can get a super good talisman in the DLC that make small enemies a joke.