occasionally using the carian knight shield with carian retaliation weapon art and one of +6 sleep sword or +8 sword of night and flame (the int and faith scaling has it at around 450 damage) when i need to melee or don't want to waste FP. sleep sword is super busted fwiw. pretty much an instant stun/guard break on a lot of enemies and completely trivializes a tough mid game demihuman dungeon boss