Marika's Hammer is the primary equipment used for this build, although the weapon has holy damage (considered the worst damage type in general), it deals both Physical and Holy damage but most of it comes from Physical damage. It also has great scaling in terms of potential multiple playthroughs because the weapon scales with Strength, Dexterity, and Faith which are stats you would eventually improve to get more value out of the weapon. Another thing that makes the weapon special is its skill, Gold Breaker, triggering the character to leap up high and slam the ground causing a large AoE explosion that can hit multiple targets, a perfect skill for farming or if you are cornered by a group of enemies. And even if you don't use it as a way to one-shot a group, the skill is still viable to deal high damage and make a strong enemy such as a boss flinch or even send them flying up for a brief moment, allowing you to reassess your next move or use another Gold Breaker. Finally, Gold Breaker has infinite hyper armor when you are airborne, which means you cannot be interrupted if you are hit once you use the skill, using this skill is also a good way to attack a target from a distance while also closing in the gap.

The build also uses the Golden Order Seal but you can use any type of Sacred Seal that you prefer, the reason why we decided to use the Golden Order Seal is (1) it has 0.0 weight and (2) to buff the character with Flame Grant me Strength and Golden Vow. For defense, we are using the Golden Greatshield to easily block-counter enemy attacks. Since the character will have high strength, it's best to use this type of shield to utilize its great defense. Once a block counter connects, you can follow up with critical hits, and if you pair it with talismans such as the Assassin's Cerulean Dagger, your critical attacks can restore 15 FP, allowing you to use Gold Breaker more since the skill is FP-hungry. Now since the skill consumes high FP, having the Carian Filigreed Crest will lower the FP cost of the Gold Breaker skill by 25%. To boost the attack power of the skill, it's a must to either have Shard of Alexander or Warrior Jar Shard. Finally, for the last talisman, you can go for the Curved Sword Talisman or Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman, the Curved Sword Talisman is great for increasing the guard counter damage since you'll be using block counters often for this build, however, you can opt for the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman if you are fighting a boss to reduce the Physical Damage taken by 20%.

Moving on to Stats, this build is running at 50 Vigor, 25 Mind, 31 Endurance, 53 Strength, 23 Dexterity, 25 Faith, and you won't need Intelligence and Arcane. 50 Vigor is standard in our opinion when you're coming from NG+ but we recommend improving it at some point to 60 Vigor since you will be trading damage whenever you use the Gold Breaker skill, so you want to make sure you can withstand the attacks you take. Mind is at 25 but we recommend extending this to about 35 Mind since you will be consuming a lot of FP when using your skills, 31 Endurance is balanced and good enough for equipping the armor used for this build and for medium rolls, but it can change depending on what armor you eventually end up using. 53 Strength and 23 Dexterity are what we've found to be the perfect points to distribute to have better damage. Finally 25 Faith, it will come naturally to put points to Faith since Marika's Hammer requires 19 FAI and to increase the damage.