Notes from author
Chaos Blade is go-to for fast high damage pokes that benefit a lot from the % boost of the roars, great scythe 2hr2 comes out very hard and can be used at a good reach after a careful roar.
Pyros are really just there for the fact that stamina is scarce without FaP, the 45 dex investment seems more significant to me than the ~55 hp I think I got from 5 vit. I only use black flame and surge because black flame is great to fall back on when you over-extend with stamina-usage (Stamina regens while casting too) and fire surge is hard to punish.
A cool trick is to roar and surge when you're too low on stamina for a melee attack and a roll, you can let go if they toggle. You can use more pyros but this build has roars, not bellowing/cod
Lifehunt can be a good alternative for use after chaos blade build up if your opponent won't use bleed weapons, you can use the blood shield to be safe, but I usually just run GS.
The scythe has nice r1's for after a roar, it seems you can dead-angle a roar and simply lock on and use the tracking to hit with the narrow hitbox.
Flamberge, the tail-axe and 2h Gravelord Sword can be nice for their poise-break, the flamberge can also keep the bleed pressure up while doing so.
The furysword combined with the roar can do good damage through a lot of shields or dead-angle, the roar mitigates the significance of the split-damage penalty since higher ar is affected less by defense, really easy to hit with after a roar.
Spears are super op on this, I choose not to use them personally. The 2h r2 on sks is great with a roar.
I haven't used thrusting swords too much since their ar is low, but the movesets should work very well and roar + turtle poke could be effective, as well as the roar-bs.
I'm yet to get one, but I'm thinking a chaos/lightning-hander could be amazing due to the incredibly high armor penetrating ar with a roar, flipping zwei pokes are amazing if you're not too obvious and the dead-angles and shield penetration are crazy.
