Mugenmonkey currently has over 53,000 saved builds for Dark Souls 3. All of that data makes for some interesting glimpses into the Dark Souls 3 “meta”. As such, I’ve built a page that displays the total number of builds that each weapon, armor piece, ring, or spells is in. Additionally, you can view the most popular soul levels and starting classes.

Take a look here!

Before I jump into looking at some of the interesting trends that we can glean from this, it’s important to remember that while 53,000 is a lot, it’s a small proportion of the total number of people who bought the game. It’s going to over-represent the “hardcore” (whatever that means) PVPers who make many builds. Additionally, it’s the total count of all builds from any time, so weapons that have since been nerfed or buffed may be over or under represented. What you see here isn’t necessarily indicative of what people are actually using in game – but I think it’s a pretty good estimate, and interesting nonetheless.

The values are updated every 10 minutes, so the numbers you read in this post won’t necessarily reflect its current state.

Observations

Weapons

  • The most popular weapon by far is the Caestus, which is represented in 12,724 builds (as of this writing). I’m not sure if we see it as much anymore, but it was an extremely popular off hand parrying weapon. I’d be curious what percentage of those actually use the Ceastus for anything other than parrying.
  • The Broken Straight Sword is in 35 builds. This is more than 8 other weapons, including the Spotted Whip, Large Club, and Mendicant’s staff. Are these all troll builds, or what?
  • The least popular Ultra Greatsword is the Black Knight Greatsword, with only 298 builds. This makes me sad.
  • Hammers seem to be awfully unpopular. The Drang Hammers are the most popular, with 201 builds.
  • Straight Sword is the most popular weapon category (surprising nobody).

Armor

  • The Undead Legion Gauntlets and Armor are very popular. It seems people prefer to use different leggings and helmets, because both the Undead Legion Gauntlets and Helm are in significantly less builds. (The Undead Legion Armor is in 2,789 builds while the Helm is in only 728).
  • The Crown of Dusk is the most popular “helmet”, which is interesting given the defense penalty.
  • People seem to prefer either light helmets or ones that expose some or all of the face. The Thief Mask, Ragged Mask, Pyromancer Crown, Crown of Dusk and Hood of Prayer are all in the top 10.
  • The Scholar’s Robe is disliked, finding itself in only 18 builds.

Rings

  • The weirdest thing I’ve noticed about rings is that the Wolf Ring is in 681 builds. I honestly can’t explain this, given the role of poise in DS3.
  • The Ring of Favor (between all 3 upgrade levels) is in 60.2% of all builds. This is not a surprise really, but it does highlight the problem with having such a good ring. (It tends to cut down on build variety when every build is better with a particular ring.)
  • People don’t appear to like the Stoneplate rings very much.
  • Flynn’s Ring is in 871 builds. Again, I have no real explanation for this, given the very minor benefits the ring gives you.

Spells

  • Tears of Denial takes first place. (“Marcus, don’t forget to put on Second Chance!”)

I honestly never really use spells in any of these games, so I don’t have a lot of interesting commentary. Go ahead and comment if you have any interesting observations about it.

Soul Level

  • SL120 is clearly still the “meta” for Dark Souls 3 (with 21,076 builds). While some may argue that it’s an unnecessary holdover, it’s clearly engrained in people’s minds and here to stay.
  • There are more builds at SL150 then I would have expected (811).
  • I’m a little sad about the number of SL70 builds. I find that to be an enjoyable PVP’ing level.

Starting Class

  • Knight takes the lead with 18,782 builds. Herald trails behind at 1504.
  • I’m surprised that there aren’t more Deprived builds (currently 3,910). Deprived is a better starting class then most people give it credit for. Make sure you’re using the class optimizer. You’ll be surprised how often Deprived will get you your desired stats at the lowest possible SL.

Conclusion

Naturally, the only logical conclusion to this is the ability to now craft the ultimate meta build using all of the most popular equipment! Incredible!

…or we could go with the most hipster build, utilizing all of the least popular equipment.

- naiyt