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While playingElden Ring, if your starting class was Prisoner, Bandit, or Warrior, then you are in luck. The Dex/Int combo is back in Nightreign with Duchess. This virtuous thief is one character that you will interact with quite often at the Roundtable Hold, even when you aren’t playing as her.
She is a very important character to the game’s story, and you meet the Duchess in the game’s tutorial, where you save her from dying, and later as Priestess at the Roundtable Hold. But enough about your encounters with her. Let us talk about what she is capable of when you take her to battle.
Elden Ring: 10 Best Dexterity Scaling Weapons
Dexterity weapons are an ever-popular (and occasionally maligned) category in any Soulsborne game — Elden Ring is no exception to the rule.
The good news is she can be a very strong character in the right hands. But at the same time, if you don’t know what you are doing with her, she can feel extremely weak.
So, here is how you should play Duchess in Elden Ring Nightreign. This guide has all the strategies to help you get her set with the right weapons, relics, and more to start taking down bosses in no time.
Duchess Abilities Explained
Description
Magnificent Poise
This ability reduces the stamina reduction when Duchess performs evasive moves or attacks. Magnificent Poise also lets you evade twice, back to back.
Character Skill
Duchess’s character skill restages the damage dealt to nearby foes in the last few seconds. You see their phantoms taking hits, which transfer nearly 50% damage to the target.
Ultimate Art
Duchess goes invisible in the middle of the fight, and the enemies lose track of her. This allows her to easily backstab them or to heal if needed.
Starting with her passive, understanding Duchess’s Magnificent Poise is very crucial when you want to learn how to play her.Unlike other characters that do a roll while dodging, Duchess lunges instead. This lets her cover more ground.
The best part is that if you immediately do another dodge, she lunges a second time and travels even further. This creates a large gap between you and your enemy, allowing you to regain your Stamina so that you can get back into fights more prepared.
For her character skill, we have Restage. This ability may arguably be even more useful than her ultimate.Unlike most characters whose Ultimate usually deals a lot of damage, this job is handled by her Restage instead.
Since Restage is her character skill, you may use it repeatedly after a short cooldown. However, just because the skill is available doesn’t mean you have to use it. To make the most of this ability, having an awareness of your surroundings is a must.
If you’re able to coordinate with your team, then this ability can be very easy to use. Otherwise,you will have to pay attention to your team when they are attacking an enemy and use this skill when the most damage is dealt for the best results.
Finally, for her Ultimate Art Duchess has Finale. Upon quick inspection, this ability might feel underwhelming as it only turns you invisible. Butit can truly shine when used at the right time to escape the enemy’s sight and surprise them with a backstab.
While the above use case is quite situational, you will often find yourself in it during the early game when you are trying to level up.
During boss fights or when you are fighting the Nightlords, the best use for this ultimate is to make yourself and your allies disappear. This allows you to take a quick break from the fight, which you can use to heal yourself and come up with the next plan of attack.
Best Weapons
Duchess has a B rating for Dexterity, A for Intelligence, B for Faith, and C for Arcane. This opens up possibilities for several different builds.To get the most damage out of her, going theDex/Introute is the way.
The best weapons for Duchess are Daggers, Curved Swords, Fists, or any Staff that has sword-based Carian sorceries. Starting with staves,you typically want to equip the ones that have Carian Slicer, Carian Piercer, Carian Greatsword, or Adula’s Moonblade.
Elden Ring: 20 Best Intelligence Scaling Weapons
Elden Ring offers players a wide selection of Intelligence-scaling weapons for sorcerers. Check out this list of the best ones available.
As for daggers, fists, or curved swords, try looking for ones that can apply status effects, like Poison or Scarlet Rot, or something that can build up Bleed or Frost.
Some weapons from the above classes that you can look out for are Venomous Fang for Poison, Star Fist for Bleed, Antspur Rapier for Scarlet Rot, and Frozen Needle for Frost.
Best Relics
Duchess is a surprisingly good character when it comes to inflicting ailments on your enemies. As such, whenperforming relic rites, you shouldchoose relics that either amplify her elemental damage or let her starting armament have some sort of status effect.
If you are having a hard time selecting the perfect relics or don’t have many options unlocked yet, you can always go for the ones that increase your Dexterity, Intelligence, Stamina, and Mind.
There are some relics that increase your attack power or other stats when you have more than 3 weapons of a specific class in your inventory. The best part is you don’thaveto use them. Just having them on you is enough for the buff to trigger.
However, the catch is, in the rush of leveling up, you may not find all the weapons needed for the effect to trigger, so communicate with your team if possible to be able to get its benefits.
This game doesn’t have equip load, so you can hoard multiple equipment without having to worry about fat-rolling.
If you still aren’t sure, then you can alwaysequip Nightlord relics that change the affinities of your starting weapon. Additionally, her quest-related items likeOld Pocketwatch, which is needed to unlock her, and Golden Dew, which you get from her first Personal Objective, are also some relics that give Duchess some useful buffs.
Duchess Expedition Strategies
While Duchess may have high Dexterity, she isn’t a character that you may just pick up and play. Not knowing how her abilities work can leave you handicapped and even put your team at a disadvantage.
She is a character who works best when she plays with the team. Here are some must-know tips around her skills and weapons to let you get the most out of her:
Best Team Comp
These are the best characters to team up with Duchess:
While Guardian may have the most HP of all the Nightfarers in the game, the reason Raider works better with Duchess is his raw strength. Raider has an S rating for strength and makes for a character that has a very straightforward game plan.
This plan is to get his hands on some Colossal Weapon or a Great Hammer, then start crushing any enemy that comes in his way. Typically, with Raider, you should use Giant-Crusher, Troll’s Hammer, Brick Hammer, Rotten Battle Hammer, or Serpent Hunter.
Now,to make the most out of the Raider and Duchess duo, you need to properly use Restage. As long as Raider can get a few hits in, all Duchess has to do is use Restage to deal back half of the damage already dealt to the target.
Raider’s Ultimate Totem Stela further boosts the attack power of all nearby allies. This is important for Duchess as her play style involves getting in the enemy’s face, landing a few strikes, retreating, and using Restage. Pairing both of these abilities can help your team do a lot of damage to the boss.
If you are having trouble with survivability, then you may switch Raider with Guardian. If health isn’t an issue at all, thenWyldercan also be an option to pair Duchess with.
It is easy to overlookRevenantdue to her low HP. But she is the best character when it comes to using incantations, and there are some really powerful ones in the game.
While Raider and Duchess are fighting on the frontlines, Revenant can play the role of support from the backlines. Be it using spells like Erdtree Heal to heal when your team gets low on HP, attacking the target with incantations like Black Flame, or simply using her summons to cause distractions to buy your allies some time to heal and reset, Revenant can do it all.
Her Ultimate Art, Immortal March, is excellent when you want to rescue teammates fromnear-death. Or even if they haven’t died, but you see them about to get hit while they are about to land their attack, you can use this ultimate to keep them alive.
Of course, as Revenant can be a tricky character to use, there are times when you may want some ranged characters that have a more reliable toolkit. If that is the case, then based on your enemy, you could swap her with eitherIroneyeor Recluse.
