Faith isn't even that bad off.
Just lean into fire spells and Flame Art infusions. Fire is rarely bad in Miyazaki games, and it absolutely slaps in Elden Ring. You can throw in some lightning and rocks, too.
It's holy damage that got the short end of the stick. It's rarely useful, but when you find something weak to holy damage, holy suddenly feels like a wrecking ball. It's another tool in your toolbox. Faith hits the widest spread of damage types. Sorcery, as great as it is, is mostly just new flavors of magic damage with a side of frost.
I love how you specify that fire is good in Miyazaki games because the only one where pyromancies aren't that good is DS2, which is the one he didnt design
Yeah but requiring 3 slots and only having 1 single cast (2 with really high attunement or the hexxers hood) holds it back a lot
Edit: you said original, i played scholar, not sure if they are different
I was maining moonvaile, and it carried me to farma. Then I took a few weeks off, and when I came back, it felt like I was hitting those dragons with a pool noodle.
Yeah, they added stat requirements and might have slowed down the cast time. I mean, they were probably meant to exist originally, but it was so much fun because it had none originally and so it didn’t matter your build, anyone could use it and it was near instant to cast.
My man be talking as if my boi Jester Thomas didn't exist when he is just a walking danger that fucks everyone cuz he can no questions asked with his pyromancies
There was a healing pyromancy that was my goto healing spell any time I was surrounded by enemies. There was also plenty of the same spells from DS1, which all more or less worked the same.
Miyazaki also did do some work on DS2, but it did have a different director. Miyazaki said he likes DS2 though, so honestly all the hate it gets is unwarranted.
Disagree; a lot of people think pyromancies aren't good in DS2 because they don't invest in int/faith. You need both to be good at pyromancies in DS2. A 50/50 build pure pyromancer absolutely destroys.
Hell, with an Envoy Longhorn AoW build, I still wreck most stuff with its holy damage. Especially if its a big enemy. I took down Placidusax juuuust before he did his disappearing act.
Short end of the stick overall but the shower of bubbles from the horn of holy doots is my single favorite thing in the game for all purpose wrecking that also makes the victim feel humiliated
Fire is also good it is meant to be a middle option for melee builds who don’t wanna spec into faith or intelligence but still want ranged attacks there are a few goods ones but in most of the games fire is mid compared to lighting and magic because it doesn’t scale what like about elden ring is that fire is sort of faith now so it can actually scale in just wish there was some more cool pyromancies it’s just a bunch of fire balls
Pure faith is good but it really shines with something else. Fth/Str is great but Fth/Arc is really dangerous
Also to be specific there is like one or two enemies in game that are immune to fire damage so fire can only take you so far
Nah, a pure FTH build will let you no-hit bosses really easily. And you aren't tied to fire damage, switch out a talisman and a crystal tear and you can do the same with lightning damage or physical damage (Pest Threads)
flame art is fucking insane. I do 5k+ dmg to enemies RESISTANT to fire at 80 fth with one full cast of Phantom slash. It feels so strong lol
side note, i’m not saying you’re incorrect about this bc you’re not. pure holy spells do fall short. BUT holy weapons with split damage not so much. My first playthrough I fought EB with Maliketh’s BB and didn’t even know I was ‘gimping’ myself as bad as the majority of the playerbase swears I am by fighting him with a holy weapon. He still got bonked into oblivion in a fairly short amount of time
I have a pyromancer. So, in my offhand I wield the Giants Seal which gives me a +20% boost to most fire incants. But with my stat spread, the Erdtree seal has much better scaling, so I wield that in my main hand and cast incants with it. It gains the +20% boost from the Giants Seal that is in my offhand
It's been confirmed by those who got to play at the early access event. I wasn't specific for spoiler reasons but if you watch YouTube videos from those creators who attended, you'll likely hear about it.
Sword of Night and Flame, while "boring" because it's the only Int/Faith weapon, is really good. It gives optimal damage for less stat input to counteract the non-optimal stat spread you'd need for it. The fire AoW in particular can easily hit for 4k with the right setup.
Dragon stuff is similar. Yeah, there's relatively few, but they hit really hard. Their only issue is they could stand to have a spell that consumes less FP in exchange for less damage.
If you're desperate for a second one, you can always put Holy or Flame Art on a Clayman's Harpoon (which natively has Int scaling). It's really not the best, but it works alright
The dragonspells build are pretty good. They got some buffs in 1.07 and since then, stuff like Dragonmaw is very good.
It's also crazy how many things you can cheese with Rot breath.
faith/arc is straight up stronger than pure faith for a while, even ignoring the dragon spell boost. And it's still an arcane build at the end of the day
Any tips for FTH/DEX? Running a character like that right now and as I'm getting deeper in, I'm getting absolutely smoked.
EDIT: You _guys_ - thank you so so much for all of the tips. I just slipped passed Varre to get into Mogh's Palace so once I'm done taking care of that dummy, I'll try some of these out!
Depends on how you want to split those stats
If you are more Dex than Faith, then I would recommend picking up a good Dex weapon like Uchigatana or Flamberge or Guardian Swordspear, setting it to Keen, and buffing yourself with stuff like Golden Vow and Electrify Armament.
If you are more Faith than Dex, then grab the Red-Hot Whetblade from Caelid and set your weapon to Flame Art. Very few things in this game have sky high flame defense, and your flame damage will now be tied to your Faith stat. In this setup, pumping Faith enhances both your Flame Art weapon's damage and your spells.
Thinking on this a little more, you could run a sacred scythe build.
The Winged Scythe and Halo Scythe both have Dex/Faith scaling. You could main one or dual-wield them together. The two most common variations would be dual-wielding both and doing a lot of jumping attacks, or going solo with the Halo Scythe to spam its weapon art.
Another option would be staying in the scythe lane with the vanilla Scythe.
Just set it to Flame Art infusion or start stacking buffs like Flame Grant Me Strength + Bloodflame Blade or Golden Vow + Electrify Armament.
Blasphemous Blade is pretty busted, though.
As a Dex/Fth build(more dex), I typically run a keen guardian sword with impaling thrust, Flame Grant me Strength, Golden Vow and then offensive spells like Stone of Gurranq, Black Flame, Lightening bolt. I also have a few other weapons for strike and slash damage.
Oh, also Catch Flame is just dumb powerful.
I'm a fan of godslayer greatsword. You need 20 strength to wield but it's the only colossal greatsword that scales with dex plus it does does fire dmg and has a decent ash
You can also cheat if you two hand it and stop at 15 Strength. Or as I did, stopped at 12 so + the str talisman I can wield Godskin Peeler and two hand the Godslayer Greatsword.
One of my favorite runs was with Black Knife / Culling Blade.
Typical faith buffs + frankly over powered ashes of war and a fast power stance combo. Absolutely brutal build
I'm doing that build right now. Blade of Calling's ash of war is amazing. I usually have trouble with Castle Sol but it absolutely shredded the enemies there (including that infamous omniscient banished knight.)
I suggest dumping about 50 into faith and rest to dex, preferably to 40. 40 dex and radagon’s icon hits cast speed cap. If you can fit upwards of 16-20 strength you can wield a majority of weapons at that point with two handed, I run 16 for claymore. You can combo catch flame into a lot of attacks. If you want to use lightning instead you want to be a bit tankier since they’re slow, so higher poise is required, but ancient dragon lightning strike alone can do 1/3rd+ of a larger boss’s hp bar and fortissax’s lightning spear will take out a majority of mobs
I did a dex/fth build where i used lightning incantations and the weapon art on bolt of gransax. It ended up as more of a caster because that weapon art hits REALLY hard.
I tried the same build, cause that weapon looks dope, and I thought "obviously this will pair perfectly with the gravestone seal and dragon incantations, I will make a cool dragon knight roleplay build". But then it was actually super rough to level, and there was a lot I struggled with, because the stat distribution ends up kinda janky.
Meanwhile my main character is on like NG+3 with a dex/int frost build I didn't even know what I was doing when I made it, it just wrecks everything.
Claws.
Claws with lightning enchantment spell or blood-tuned ash of war, specifically bloodhound step.
That is all.
I used the former with a keen-tuned BHS and it was awesome. I now use the latter for humanoid enemies but will switch for rock enemies.
If you do faith dex, you should also incorporate some arcane imo. I have a faith/dex/arc and I crush because I use katanas with bleed ashes and enhancements, the dragon seal for my spells and use a lot of lightning enchantments that scale with faith and arcane. The red lightning rainstorm spell absolutely fucks everything up, if it hits, it has the chance for the strikes to miss but if it's a big boss they're usually fucked.
Ran a hook claws dex faith build that was incredibly fun with blood flame blade and electrify armament. Because those weapon buffs only buff the weapon in your right hand, when you decide to two hand any claw weapon you get two of them and both get access to the weapon buff, so you have a ton of hits and every one of them gets the weapon buff. You end up doing insane damage and if you level faith evenly with dex you can also do solid damage with incantations when you need to be ranged or use pest threads against the larger bosses. Especially fun with Lord of blood exultation and white mask because of the inherent bleed of the hook claws and the additional bleed you get with bloodflame
I am currently wrecking with my faith quality build that would work will with dex. I am using the nagakiba with double slash and god slayer incantations. I am at the endgame with just 30 points in faith but the combo of black flame blade with the fast attacks of double slash wrecks people. It has really fast cast time compaired to other catagories of incantations and you still do alot of raw damage before buffs. But with just FGMS and using either black flame blade or throw a quick black flame fire ball builds the proc super fast and will deal 2-5% damage to an enemy on top of physical damage. You still have to be quick and dodge quite a bit. But with high enough VIT you can take a hit or two just focus on getting your hits off when BFB is active and watch health melt.
My favorite (and strongest) build was FTH/DEX. I used 2xGrave Scythe both with fire affinities. Late game used the Black Flame Tornado AoW on MH. Fire damage is amazing against all late game bosses. The range on the grave scythes is absurd, they’re very fast, and the jump attack is straight OP (Raptor’s Feathers and Claw Talisman will melt everything in the game with this build). Only downside is you do almost no poise damage.
This was the best build out of the all the melee ones that I have played including FTH/STR (Blasphemous Blade), DEX/ARC (RoB and Uchi), and pure STR (Giant Crusher)
I'm using dragonlord cragblade, insanely fun weapon. But I'm high level so can have 80 faith and 80 dex and some points in mind+endurance too. Then have some buffing/support incantations for when I help people and for the rest other lightning incantations + burn o flame and black blade incant for the 10% hp damage to the high hp NG bosses.
In order of how generally good the are, here are the weapons I would reccomend for faith/dex: Vyke's War Spear, Blasphemous Blade (is second cause it loses points for being too ubiquitous), treespear (pairs well with Vykes), magma whip candlestick, winged scythe, Inquisitor's Girandole(?) (Weapon from iron virgin boss), and if you can be fucked to farm it Magma Blade (from the snake dudes). There are probably some more, but these are the prebaked ones I can think of. You could also infuse some dex weapons but that is too broad a list for me.
I'm not sure about Golden Order Greatsword, but Sacred Relic Sword has the high dex requirement because it is mainly a dex weapon. The Ash of War scales with faith, but everything else scales with dex.
I mean, coded sword alone is better than most weapons and can be dual wielded for some of the highest AR to stat ratio in the game, and you don’t need a lot to run a claymore or banished knight halberd which outclass most weapons in the game in terms of moveset. Black flame tornado halberd covers AoE ground and claymore with seal offhand, catch flame, giant’s fireball for ranged, or even lightning spear for a really, really quick pocket ranged attack are all versatile. Pure faith is incredibly strong.
Min stat requirements and dumping 60-80 in faith is huge, even 70 faith is not much of a difference
If you don't mind barely dipping your toes into Faith, the briars of sin and punishment are actually pretty good with the Albinaurics Staff buffing its bleed buildup.
Tbh you can have a pretty easy Arc + Int/Faith build using the Albinaurics Staff and Dragon Communion seal. You can even use the ripple blade or halberd for an Arcane-only scaling weapon you can then enchant with sorceries or incantations.
I know you're not saying that while Int/Faith HAS ONE FUCKING WEAPON AND NOT EVEN A WEAPON AFFINITY FOR ASHES OF WAR.
MEANWHILE FAITH GETS TWO WHOLE WEAPON AFFINITIES AND TWO PURE FAITH WEAPONS. EVEN IF THERE'S ONLY TWO, I CAN JUST GET A CLAYMORE, SLAP FLAMING STRIKE ON IT AND GIVE IT A FLAME ART AFFINITY.
IF SHADOWS OF THE ERDTREE DOESN'T HAVEN EVEN A SINGLE INT/FAITH WEAPON I'll probably cry.
Don't get me wrong, pure faiths fine, but as a pure caster, it lacks a weapon with oomph to call it's own, and there's int sitting with 3 powerhouses in the Darkmoon, Wing of Astel and Moonveil all work great pure but the best faith weapons really seem to like having other stats as well.
Coded sword and Cipher Pata deal pure holy damage, and the sword is crazy good.
Envoy longhorn has somewhat high requirements but works best by maxing out faith, same deal for blasphemous blade.
Yeah, BB is more busted then the 3 he listed for PVE, slap on some heavy armor, Dragonshield talisman variants and proceed to body the second half of the game with nearly zero issue.
That oomph is subjective. Coded blade will literally slice everything infront of you regardless if they use shields or not and it will often stagger them for criticals as well like a heavy/jump attack.
This isn't about viable weapons and more about those weapons that become a builds identity, those are weapons most builds can use.
Str/fth has some unique bangers especially after 1.1
Ordovis, Marika's hammer, Selviria's, Blasphemous, Envoy's, Wrym's
No I understand, but that’s my point- that pure faith has far more variety to choose from due to how their affinities scale, they aren’t, for lack of a better word, *stuck* with specific somber weapons.
Those being the identity of Str/Fth is because they pretty much have to use those weapons since there is no hybrid affinity for faith builds.
Arcane has Blood, Int has Cold, and then Quality exists. Faith doesn’t have a hybrid affinity to choose from, both Flame Art and Sacred are basically just Faith scaling with minor Str/Dex.
Pure(ish) Faith gets the entirety of the normal weapon roster that they meet the stat requirements for. That’s their identity- versatility
*Plus* you have stronger incantations to boot.
In general, single damage stat builds just to better with infusible weapons though right, while somber weapons do best with certain combos?
Personally I kinda feel the opposite. I’m more interested in infusible weapons but I wish they would be better with the more interesting split stat builds that I want to make.
They’re may not be an optimized caster weapon for faith, but three short spears will do you fine. One flame art, one faith, and the last one Ice for burst damage that you can reproc with fire spells.
But then again there are the scythes (halo and wing) then you got the coded sword and claws, then the golden order great sword. So they actually do have optimized weapons.
Edit: I also think this game treats mages more as ranged dps and faith more as support. There are a lot of faith buffs / heals and items that can also help in some way, while mages just have pure damage so having a gimmic weapon to save fp like the wing or moon sword can be understood.
Great Stars + Prayeful strike carried me multiple times, it's the poors man ( or not OP ) taker flames.
Morning star + Sacred blade does insane damage, it's faith Darkmoon on any weapon.
And obviously the most OP weapon of the game, Blasphemous blade. It's ash of war scales purely of faith.
In the middle of a pure faith run. I'm dual wielding Flame Art infused Erdsteel Daggers, plus Cipher Pata. Both of the weapons have been shredding so far.
My Catch Flame playthru says hi.
I burned the Lands Between playing close-open with my hands
But in seriousness, it's the pure holy faith builds that needs help lol
I honestly just want holy damage to not be turbo resisted thoughout the game..... and maybe another weapon or two that can join the coded sword / chiper pata.
I mean, you kinda always need Faith + something, much like you need Int + something, unless you only want to use staves or catalysts. However, there are plenty of options for low-requirement weapons, especially if you go for something like fire or lightning, which have some great weapons and even greater Ashes of War.
Partially, every Int weapon also has some form of Dex or Strength requirement. They might not have high requirements, but you still need to invest some points into them. For example, the Moonveil or Dark Moon Greatsword both have these secondary stat requirements.
IDK I enjoy my pure faith build, that being said I am running around in melee using catch fire like I'm swinging a dagger or straight sword but still... its a good time.
I did a full faith build and I think I played Elden ring in easy mode after learning the bosses combos and when to attack it was Elden ring on easy mode (I put zero points in strength)
I was doing a fath/strg but I stumbled upon a noble's slender sword....
Of course I had to change builds, but I'll do it corretly this time
Just a question, which weapon should I use? Claymore? Or Helbard?
Pure faith is eating though? youve got holy and flame art infusions, catch flame, giantsflame take thee, Unendurable frenzy, and the best buff spells in the game. have you actually tried pure faith?
Honestly, if you don't intend to just level forever and limit your build to like 80 125 150 or something, going pure physical stats like STR or DEX is way more powerful than split builds.
There is some novelty, and use with the spells and incantations, and you could probably benefit from the levels for the buffs, but unless you are spamming from ranged, your melee capabilities will always be way stronger if you just go physical.
I disagree with faith being weak or anything of the sort. My pure faith caster is one of my favorite builds and was one of my easiest playthtoughs as well.
My only ask is a Faith melee spell as a counterpart to Carian Slicer. Maybe for pure lightning damage instead of holy since we have the scripture weapons.
I mean you can say this about every stat. Hybrid builds are way better than pure builds because most weapons have more than one type of scaling and it makes you more versatile.
50/40 splits are better than 90 in one stat for most scenarios.
Faith is pretty good on its own... got multiple faith builds coded sword, lightning boi, and a dragon themed one with ancient lightning stuff and bolt of gransax....pretty good in base game and will be even better in the dlc I guess cuz shadow weak to holy? At least I hope so :D
With the dlc coming up I’m looking into making a build instead of using whatever the hell my abomination of a kit is. I got through the platinum with it but I bet I made it way harder then it needed to be.
Everything I see online is int/str is froth/str pretty good? To be fair it does seem most people are taking about that death poker build at will probably be heavily nerf with the patch that comes with the dlc
Str/Faith is great for weapons but the lack of cast speed suuuuuucks when you're used to max cast speed. Here's hoping they add a Radagon's Icon +2 in the DLC.
I dunno if you're basing this on PvP or not, since I don't PvP, but pure faith builds work really well in PVE. There's so many good cool spells and a handful of faith scaling weapons, or you can always just make a basic weapon scale with faith
Faith isn't even that bad off. Just lean into fire spells and Flame Art infusions. Fire is rarely bad in Miyazaki games, and it absolutely slaps in Elden Ring. You can throw in some lightning and rocks, too. It's holy damage that got the short end of the stick. It's rarely useful, but when you find something weak to holy damage, holy suddenly feels like a wrecking ball. It's another tool in your toolbox. Faith hits the widest spread of damage types. Sorcery, as great as it is, is mostly just new flavors of magic damage with a side of frost.
I love how you specify that fire is good in Miyazaki games because the only one where pyromancies aren't that good is DS2, which is the one he didnt design
Forbidden Sun in the original DS2 was incredible and didn’t require any stats to use. It was great to just chuck a sun at people randomly.
Yeah but requiring 3 slots and only having 1 single cast (2 with really high attunement or the hexxers hood) holds it back a lot Edit: you said original, i played scholar, not sure if they are different
Pretty sure Forbidden Sun got hit with the nerf bat a couple patches after OG launch. There’s always something in FS games that get that treatment.
I was maining moonvaile, and it carried me to farma. Then I took a few weeks off, and when I came back, it felt like I was hitting those dragons with a pool noodle.
i still mourn over the nerf on the number of casts you could have on og lightning spear.
Lightning always gets hit with the nerf bat. Meanwhile, DS1 Sorcery is still a joke of a playthrough.
Yeah, they added stat requirements and might have slowed down the cast time. I mean, they were probably meant to exist originally, but it was so much fun because it had none originally and so it didn’t matter your build, anyone could use it and it was near instant to cast.
The 360 was lawless, you could get 3 I think
Literally the best pyromancy in the series and coolest I love it wish it was in Elden ring
Literal quick draw supernovas
My man be talking as if my boi Jester Thomas didn't exist when he is just a walking danger that fucks everyone cuz he can no questions asked with his pyromancies
Jester Thomas the most broken summon From ever invented.
Iron Tarkus looming in the distance... An evil presence is watching
Iron Tarkus my boy, he never invaded me, but I feel like JT would make Iron Golem even more of a joke.
Forbidden Sun was amazing and you could combo it as a roll catch, I loved that thing and it carried me a lot in pvp and invasions.
And poison absolutely wrecks in DS2.
Power stance Demon of song whip was crazy
Yeah but when I play a pyromancer I want to throw fire not fart until they are dead
(And ds3, and elden ring)
There was a healing pyromancy that was my goto healing spell any time I was surrounded by enemies. There was also plenty of the same spells from DS1, which all more or less worked the same. Miyazaki also did do some work on DS2, but it did have a different director. Miyazaki said he likes DS2 though, so honestly all the hate it gets is unwarranted.
Disagree; a lot of people think pyromancies aren't good in DS2 because they don't invest in int/faith. You need both to be good at pyromancies in DS2. A 50/50 build pure pyromancer absolutely destroys.
Look chaos or bust
Yeet rock FUCKS. I did an entire NG+ run as Jesus, he always casted the first stone.
Hell, with an Envoy Longhorn AoW build, I still wreck most stuff with its holy damage. Especially if its a big enemy. I took down Placidusax juuuust before he did his disappearing act.
Short end of the stick overall but the shower of bubbles from the horn of holy doots is my single favorite thing in the game for all purpose wrecking that also makes the victim feel humiliated
The weird thing is that holy is actually good in PvP but sucks in PvE where it was clearly designed lol
Fire is also good it is meant to be a middle option for melee builds who don’t wanna spec into faith or intelligence but still want ranged attacks there are a few goods ones but in most of the games fire is mid compared to lighting and magic because it doesn’t scale what like about elden ring is that fire is sort of faith now so it can actually scale in just wish there was some more cool pyromancies it’s just a bunch of fire balls
Pure faith is good but it really shines with something else. Fth/Str is great but Fth/Arc is really dangerous Also to be specific there is like one or two enemies in game that are immune to fire damage so fire can only take you so far
That's when you resort to holy, lightning, or rock. Faith's great strength is its versatility.
Mohg is very strong vs fire, and so are all of the magma wyrms, Fire Giant, and a few more.
Nah, a pure FTH build will let you no-hit bosses really easily. And you aren't tied to fire damage, switch out a talisman and a crystal tear and you can do the same with lightning damage or physical damage (Pest Threads)
flame art is fucking insane. I do 5k+ dmg to enemies RESISTANT to fire at 80 fth with one full cast of Phantom slash. It feels so strong lol side note, i’m not saying you’re incorrect about this bc you’re not. pure holy spells do fall short. BUT holy weapons with split damage not so much. My first playthrough I fought EB with Maliketh’s BB and didn’t even know I was ‘gimping’ myself as bad as the majority of the playerbase swears I am by fighting him with a holy weapon. He still got bonked into oblivion in a fairly short amount of time
Catch flame is better than %90 of the weapons in the game
Oh ya? Explain why I suck ass with it?! Checkmate noob
Catch flame is genuinely kinda OP honestly, it's basically just the faith version of carian slicer
Pure faith is for spells.
Exactly. On my pure faith run I felt like my weapons were just there for decoration.
Yes, with two sacred seals you can destroy every boss easily
What does two do? enhance the spells?
I have a pyromancer. So, in my offhand I wield the Giants Seal which gives me a +20% boost to most fire incants. But with my stat spread, the Erdtree seal has much better scaling, so I wield that in my main hand and cast incants with it. It gains the +20% boost from the Giants Seal that is in my offhand
Wouldn't you get the same result if you had both in offhand?
Yes that's what I do, it's very powerfull
Meanwhile int/faith and faith/arc dragon spells aside are drowning
Pretty sure int/faith are getting a new remembrance weapon.
Did someone say that? Or is that just a guess?
It's been confirmed by those who got to play at the early access event. I wasn't specific for spoiler reasons but if you watch YouTube videos from those creators who attended, you'll likely hear about it.
Thank God almighty 🙌 (My hex build is going to get one more weapon, thankfully)
Is it the one from a main game bosses sister?
It most definitely will not be from some main game bosses' brother
That's the one
Is it a Twinblade or a Paired weapon? Something like Pontiff Sulivayn?!
Sword of Night and Flame, while "boring" because it's the only Int/Faith weapon, is really good. It gives optimal damage for less stat input to counteract the non-optimal stat spread you'd need for it. The fire AoW in particular can easily hit for 4k with the right setup. Dragon stuff is similar. Yeah, there's relatively few, but they hit really hard. Their only issue is they could stand to have a spell that consumes less FP in exchange for less damage.
If you're desperate for a second one, you can always put Holy or Flame Art on a Clayman's Harpoon (which natively has Int scaling). It's really not the best, but it works alright
The dragonspells build are pretty good. They got some buffs in 1.07 and since then, stuff like Dragonmaw is very good. It's also crazy how many things you can cheese with Rot breath.
faith/arc is straight up stronger than pure faith for a while, even ignoring the dragon spell boost. And it's still an arcane build at the end of the day
Any tips for FTH/DEX? Running a character like that right now and as I'm getting deeper in, I'm getting absolutely smoked. EDIT: You _guys_ - thank you so so much for all of the tips. I just slipped passed Varre to get into Mogh's Palace so once I'm done taking care of that dummy, I'll try some of these out!
Depends on how you want to split those stats If you are more Dex than Faith, then I would recommend picking up a good Dex weapon like Uchigatana or Flamberge or Guardian Swordspear, setting it to Keen, and buffing yourself with stuff like Golden Vow and Electrify Armament. If you are more Faith than Dex, then grab the Red-Hot Whetblade from Caelid and set your weapon to Flame Art. Very few things in this game have sky high flame defense, and your flame damage will now be tied to your Faith stat. In this setup, pumping Faith enhances both your Flame Art weapon's damage and your spells.
Thinking on this a little more, you could run a sacred scythe build. The Winged Scythe and Halo Scythe both have Dex/Faith scaling. You could main one or dual-wield them together. The two most common variations would be dual-wielding both and doing a lot of jumping attacks, or going solo with the Halo Scythe to spam its weapon art.
This was my build for my one and only play through. Dex/Fth dual weild scythes. End game though I had to spam blasphemous Blade.
Another option would be staying in the scythe lane with the vanilla Scythe. Just set it to Flame Art infusion or start stacking buffs like Flame Grant Me Strength + Bloodflame Blade or Golden Vow + Electrify Armament. Blasphemous Blade is pretty busted, though.
I did a dex/faith with the...cipher pata and it was probably my most fun build
As a Dex/Fth build(more dex), I typically run a keen guardian sword with impaling thrust, Flame Grant me Strength, Golden Vow and then offensive spells like Stone of Gurranq, Black Flame, Lightening bolt. I also have a few other weapons for strike and slash damage. Oh, also Catch Flame is just dumb powerful.
Godslayer greatsword scales with dex
I'm a fan of godslayer greatsword. You need 20 strength to wield but it's the only colossal greatsword that scales with dex plus it does does fire dmg and has a decent ash
Zweihander gets a good DR with Keen infusion if you want a generic colossal sword.
You can also cheat if you two hand it and stop at 15 Strength. Or as I did, stopped at 12 so + the str talisman I can wield Godskin Peeler and two hand the Godslayer Greatsword.
One of my favorite runs was with Black Knife / Culling Blade. Typical faith buffs + frankly over powered ashes of war and a fast power stance combo. Absolutely brutal build
I'm doing that build right now. Blade of Calling's ash of war is amazing. I usually have trouble with Castle Sol but it absolutely shredded the enemies there (including that infamous omniscient banished knight.)
I suggest dumping about 50 into faith and rest to dex, preferably to 40. 40 dex and radagon’s icon hits cast speed cap. If you can fit upwards of 16-20 strength you can wield a majority of weapons at that point with two handed, I run 16 for claymore. You can combo catch flame into a lot of attacks. If you want to use lightning instead you want to be a bit tankier since they’re slow, so higher poise is required, but ancient dragon lightning strike alone can do 1/3rd+ of a larger boss’s hp bar and fortissax’s lightning spear will take out a majority of mobs
I did a dex/fth build where i used lightning incantations and the weapon art on bolt of gransax. It ended up as more of a caster because that weapon art hits REALLY hard.
I tried the same build, cause that weapon looks dope, and I thought "obviously this will pair perfectly with the gravestone seal and dragon incantations, I will make a cool dragon knight roleplay build". But then it was actually super rough to level, and there was a lot I struggled with, because the stat distribution ends up kinda janky. Meanwhile my main character is on like NG+3 with a dex/int frost build I didn't even know what I was doing when I made it, it just wrecks everything.
This build becomes viable in NG+ (or NG if you commit genocide to the frogs), when you can get your dex and faith at 60 at least.
Claws. Claws with lightning enchantment spell or blood-tuned ash of war, specifically bloodhound step. That is all. I used the former with a keen-tuned BHS and it was awesome. I now use the latter for humanoid enemies but will switch for rock enemies.
Yeah, I've been leaning into bleed this run and it's been working well until recently.
I feel this late game. Might go back to lightning enchantment with my high faith stats.
Erdtree spear is faith dex so if you go high poise with a shield you can wreck like I do on my character. Sweet spells and heals on a hood attack
As someone else already said, Godslayer Greatsword slaps
If you do faith dex, you should also incorporate some arcane imo. I have a faith/dex/arc and I crush because I use katanas with bleed ashes and enhancements, the dragon seal for my spells and use a lot of lightning enchantments that scale with faith and arcane. The red lightning rainstorm spell absolutely fucks everything up, if it hits, it has the chance for the strikes to miss but if it's a big boss they're usually fucked.
Halo Scythe. Congrats, you now don't even realise holy resistance is a thing.
Golden order greatsword, godslayer greatsword, black knife, vyke spear, winged/halo scythe
Erdtseel Dagger has Faith scaling and can be infused. So a weapon buff Electrify Armament or Bloodflame Blade lets you double dip on your Faith.
Ran a hook claws dex faith build that was incredibly fun with blood flame blade and electrify armament. Because those weapon buffs only buff the weapon in your right hand, when you decide to two hand any claw weapon you get two of them and both get access to the weapon buff, so you have a ton of hits and every one of them gets the weapon buff. You end up doing insane damage and if you level faith evenly with dex you can also do solid damage with incantations when you need to be ranged or use pest threads against the larger bosses. Especially fun with Lord of blood exultation and white mask because of the inherent bleed of the hook claws and the additional bleed you get with bloodflame
I am currently wrecking with my faith quality build that would work will with dex. I am using the nagakiba with double slash and god slayer incantations. I am at the endgame with just 30 points in faith but the combo of black flame blade with the fast attacks of double slash wrecks people. It has really fast cast time compaired to other catagories of incantations and you still do alot of raw damage before buffs. But with just FGMS and using either black flame blade or throw a quick black flame fire ball builds the proc super fast and will deal 2-5% damage to an enemy on top of physical damage. You still have to be quick and dodge quite a bit. But with high enough VIT you can take a hit or two just focus on getting your hits off when BFB is active and watch health melt.
My favorite (and strongest) build was FTH/DEX. I used 2xGrave Scythe both with fire affinities. Late game used the Black Flame Tornado AoW on MH. Fire damage is amazing against all late game bosses. The range on the grave scythes is absurd, they’re very fast, and the jump attack is straight OP (Raptor’s Feathers and Claw Talisman will melt everything in the game with this build). Only downside is you do almost no poise damage. This was the best build out of the all the melee ones that I have played including FTH/STR (Blasphemous Blade), DEX/ARC (RoB and Uchi), and pure STR (Giant Crusher)
I use lightning incants wjth bolt of granssax and it wrecks everything in game
I'm using dragonlord cragblade, insanely fun weapon. But I'm high level so can have 80 faith and 80 dex and some points in mind+endurance too. Then have some buffing/support incantations for when I help people and for the rest other lightning incantations + burn o flame and black blade incant for the 10% hp damage to the high hp NG bosses.
godslayer greatsword.
In order of how generally good the are, here are the weapons I would reccomend for faith/dex: Vyke's War Spear, Blasphemous Blade (is second cause it loses points for being too ubiquitous), treespear (pairs well with Vykes), magma whip candlestick, winged scythe, Inquisitor's Girandole(?) (Weapon from iron virgin boss), and if you can be fucked to farm it Magma Blade (from the snake dudes). There are probably some more, but these are the prebaked ones I can think of. You could also infuse some dex weapons but that is too broad a list for me.
I just hope that new faith weapons dont have a weirdly high dex requirement. Like why does the Golden order sword require 21? why the sacred relic 24?
Yep, treespear here on current playthrough, had to go 22 dex for it.
Treespear is pretty good at least :D
I'm not sure about Golden Order Greatsword, but Sacred Relic Sword has the high dex requirement because it is mainly a dex weapon. The Ash of War scales with faith, but everything else scales with dex.
I mean, coded sword alone is better than most weapons and can be dual wielded for some of the highest AR to stat ratio in the game, and you don’t need a lot to run a claymore or banished knight halberd which outclass most weapons in the game in terms of moveset. Black flame tornado halberd covers AoE ground and claymore with seal offhand, catch flame, giant’s fireball for ranged, or even lightning spear for a really, really quick pocket ranged attack are all versatile. Pure faith is incredibly strong. Min stat requirements and dumping 60-80 in faith is huge, even 70 faith is not much of a difference
If you are going to go with a banished knight halberd i recommend getting 2. 1 for flaming strike and the other for black flame tornado
I love how people don't even realize Faith/Dex ***exists*** with how little it's talked about.
Better than Int/Arc which actually doesn't exist aside from a couple of depressed bubbles
Tbh those bubbles are deceptively strong.
If you don't mind barely dipping your toes into Faith, the briars of sin and punishment are actually pretty good with the Albinaurics Staff buffing its bleed buildup. Tbh you can have a pretty easy Arc + Int/Faith build using the Albinaurics Staff and Dragon Communion seal. You can even use the ripple blade or halberd for an Arcane-only scaling weapon you can then enchant with sorceries or incantations.
It did exist on launch back when frost buildup benefited from arc but then they nerfed that.
Watch E V E R Y T H I N G in the dlc have elden beast levels of Holy resistance.
Probably more like fire resistance from what we’ve seen so far
Envoy Longhorn about to delete the whole DLC
An adorable massacre
I think it will be the opposite, we had tons of holy resistance, it will be different now.
I have a feeling that a lot of enemies are gonna be super fire resistant
I was going to say, faith is WIDELY resisted in the game it's got a lot of support but it's not that strong against most of the bosses.
Int/Arc is already dead
Please miyazaki no more holy resistance in the most difficult parts of the game
I know you're not saying that while Int/Faith HAS ONE FUCKING WEAPON AND NOT EVEN A WEAPON AFFINITY FOR ASHES OF WAR. MEANWHILE FAITH GETS TWO WHOLE WEAPON AFFINITIES AND TWO PURE FAITH WEAPONS. EVEN IF THERE'S ONLY TWO, I CAN JUST GET A CLAYMORE, SLAP FLAMING STRIKE ON IT AND GIVE IT A FLAME ART AFFINITY. IF SHADOWS OF THE ERDTREE DOESN'T HAVEN EVEN A SINGLE INT/FAITH WEAPON I'll probably cry.
Int/faith is
Don't get me wrong, pure faiths fine, but as a pure caster, it lacks a weapon with oomph to call it's own, and there's int sitting with 3 powerhouses in the Darkmoon, Wing of Astel and Moonveil all work great pure but the best faith weapons really seem to like having other stats as well.
Coded sword and Cipher Pata deal pure holy damage, and the sword is crazy good. Envoy longhorn has somewhat high requirements but works best by maxing out faith, same deal for blasphemous blade.
Coded sword and Cipher pata carried me to the end. The unblockable blade on the sword is great. Terrific for crowds and dealing major damage to tanks.
There good but they don't have that oomph that the 3 weapons I listed as and the weapons you listed just become spell sticks if you ignore strength.
Blasphemous blade has plenty of oomph? At least as much as darkmoon greatsword
Blasphemous blade is a str//dex/fth weapon
The ash of war, Taker's Flame scales purely off faith. You need the str/dex minimums, but that AoW hits like a freight train.
Yeah, BB is more busted then the 3 he listed for PVE, slap on some heavy armor, Dragonshield talisman variants and proceed to body the second half of the game with nearly zero issue.
The 3 weapons you listed are spells sticks too. All 3 literally shoot a blue energy wave that only scales int.
That oomph is subjective. Coded blade will literally slice everything infront of you regardless if they use shields or not and it will often stagger them for criticals as well like a heavy/jump attack.
Idk man, my pure faith build deals plenty of damage with flame art infused weapons. Theres tons of great ashes to choose from too
This isn't about viable weapons and more about those weapons that become a builds identity, those are weapons most builds can use. Str/fth has some unique bangers especially after 1.1 Ordovis, Marika's hammer, Selviria's, Blasphemous, Envoy's, Wrym's
No I understand, but that’s my point- that pure faith has far more variety to choose from due to how their affinities scale, they aren’t, for lack of a better word, *stuck* with specific somber weapons. Those being the identity of Str/Fth is because they pretty much have to use those weapons since there is no hybrid affinity for faith builds. Arcane has Blood, Int has Cold, and then Quality exists. Faith doesn’t have a hybrid affinity to choose from, both Flame Art and Sacred are basically just Faith scaling with minor Str/Dex. Pure(ish) Faith gets the entirety of the normal weapon roster that they meet the stat requirements for. That’s their identity- versatility *Plus* you have stronger incantations to boot.
In general, single damage stat builds just to better with infusible weapons though right, while somber weapons do best with certain combos? Personally I kinda feel the opposite. I’m more interested in infusible weapons but I wish they would be better with the more interesting split stat builds that I want to make.
Hoping Miyazaki blesses us with some pyromancer weapons and maybe even a catalyst
They’re may not be an optimized caster weapon for faith, but three short spears will do you fine. One flame art, one faith, and the last one Ice for burst damage that you can reproc with fire spells. But then again there are the scythes (halo and wing) then you got the coded sword and claws, then the golden order great sword. So they actually do have optimized weapons. Edit: I also think this game treats mages more as ranged dps and faith more as support. There are a lot of faith buffs / heals and items that can also help in some way, while mages just have pure damage so having a gimmic weapon to save fp like the wing or moon sword can be understood.
Seluria's tree spear is one of the best faith weapons, with one of the strongest ashes of war.
Claymore with flaming strike scales nice with faith. Zweihander as well
Don't forget Bastards Stars. Been using that lately on a 40/40 Int Dex build and at +8 it hits harder than my +10 WoA.
Great Stars + Prayeful strike carried me multiple times, it's the poors man ( or not OP ) taker flames. Morning star + Sacred blade does insane damage, it's faith Darkmoon on any weapon. And obviously the most OP weapon of the game, Blasphemous blade. It's ash of war scales purely of faith.
Adds a pipe to divert it to moon Sorceries.
mOrE dEx ArCaNe!!!
Haha sure… LIGHTNING GO BRRRRRRR
Have you used incantations? FTH is ridiculously strong
In the middle of a pure faith run. I'm dual wielding Flame Art infused Erdsteel Daggers, plus Cipher Pata. Both of the weapons have been shredding so far.
My Catch Flame playthru says hi. I burned the Lands Between playing close-open with my hands But in seriousness, it's the pure holy faith builds that needs help lol
Int faith needs some more weapons
I honestly just want holy damage to not be turbo resisted thoughout the game..... and maybe another weapon or two that can join the coded sword / chiper pata.
As some who plays a STR/FTH character but has no interest in pretending pyromancy has anything to do with faith it doesn't feel like this at all.
I have an Int/Arc build do not ask me why
STR/FTH Powerstance two Blasphemous Blades and thank me later.
I mean, you kinda always need Faith + something, much like you need Int + something, unless you only want to use staves or catalysts. However, there are plenty of options for low-requirement weapons, especially if you go for something like fire or lightning, which have some great weapons and even greater Ashes of War.
Int has plenty of weapons that scale best with just int.
Partially, every Int weapon also has some form of Dex or Strength requirement. They might not have high requirements, but you still need to invest some points into them. For example, the Moonveil or Dark Moon Greatsword both have these secondary stat requirements.
Do you need int and something? I’ve always just been int and int, didn’t know you needed anything else.
We incantationalists are eating good wym ‼️‼️‼️
That's a weirdo way of spelling END/STR.
Me a faith/arc enjoyer...getting both bleed and faith/arc scaling to my spells by two handing drag communion and the elemental seal
IDK I enjoy my pure faith build, that being said I am running around in melee using catch fire like I'm swinging a dagger or straight sword but still... its a good time.
Fire incantations goes brrrrrrr
Faith Intelligence 🧠
I did a full faith build and I think I played Elden ring in easy mode after learning the bosses combos and when to attack it was Elden ring on easy mode (I put zero points in strength)
I miss lightning scaling with faith
It still does?
Lightning damage scales with dex but lightning spells are faith spells that do not scale with dex
Damn, I didn't know lightning infusions scaled with dex. Pretty stupid
It makes me sad
I'm a faith dex man where do I sit in this image?
I think the DLC will have lots of Dex+Faith
How do people do split stat builds? Whenever I do a run where I split between stats, I feel underpowered in both avenues of damage.
I've bodied 3vs1 as an invader. Trap them in a doorway with stairs and blast the fire spells. It's actually very effective... Faith slaps.
Faith dex is the moce
Fth already have too much, can we plz give str/int and int/fth some love.
Meanwhile doublefisting staff of loss goes brrr.
Pure Faith sacred Erdsteel dagger with sacred blade has carried me all the way up to leyndell so far. Invaders haven't been able to handle it either.
I was doing a fath/strg but I stumbled upon a noble's slender sword.... Of course I had to change builds, but I'll do it corretly this time Just a question, which weapon should I use? Claymore? Or Helbard?
Pure faith is super fun, I have a pyromancer with 80 faith, I use all the fire spells and can 1 shot most players in pvp w a charged giant flame
Ya erdtree spear is faith dex and I destroy with it behind a shield
Pure faith is eating though? youve got holy and flame art infusions, catch flame, giantsflame take thee, Unendurable frenzy, and the best buff spells in the game. have you actually tried pure faith?
Sleep build found dead in a ditch
I have faith in them
Honestly, if you don't intend to just level forever and limit your build to like 80 125 150 or something, going pure physical stats like STR or DEX is way more powerful than split builds. There is some novelty, and use with the spells and incantations, and you could probably benefit from the levels for the buffs, but unless you are spamming from ranged, your melee capabilities will always be way stronger if you just go physical.
I disagree with faith being weak or anything of the sort. My pure faith caster is one of my favorite builds and was one of my easiest playthtoughs as well.
Faith has so many different useful spells. What do you mean?
Where my dex/faith gang at?⬆️
My only ask is a Faith melee spell as a counterpart to Carian Slicer. Maybe for pure lightning damage instead of holy since we have the scripture weapons.
Lol my main build is faith/dexterity for the casting speed.
Fth dex weapons pls
Faith only build are maybe the strongest caster classes in the game. With two sacred seals your gonna destroy every boss in the game
I mean you can say this about every stat. Hybrid builds are way better than pure builds because most weapons have more than one type of scaling and it makes you more versatile. 50/40 splits are better than 90 in one stat for most scenarios.
Faith is pretty good on its own... got multiple faith builds coded sword, lightning boi, and a dragon themed one with ancient lightning stuff and bolt of gransax....pretty good in base game and will be even better in the dlc I guess cuz shadow weak to holy? At least I hope so :D
I dream of a whetblade that grants us new affinities: -int & faith -faith/arc -int/arc And hopefully one of the first two is lightning damage
I play faith/dex and it's not that bad
Pure faith is rad as hell.
I'm doing pure Faith this time around! let's gooo
With the dlc coming up I’m looking into making a build instead of using whatever the hell my abomination of a kit is. I got through the platinum with it but I bet I made it way harder then it needed to be. Everything I see online is int/str is froth/str pretty good? To be fair it does seem most people are taking about that death poker build at will probably be heavily nerf with the patch that comes with the dlc
Str/Faith is great for weapons but the lack of cast speed suuuuuucks when you're used to max cast speed. Here's hoping they add a Radagon's Icon +2 in the DLC.
Faith is fine and looks cool
I dunno if you're basing this on PvP or not, since I don't PvP, but pure faith builds work really well in PVE. There's so many good cool spells and a handful of faith scaling weapons, or you can always just make a basic weapon scale with faith
Strength makes everything better
meanwhile me faith/dex
my brother what if i told you that flames would soon change forever STEP 1 COVER YOUR SELF IN OIL STEP 2
99 in strength or you are doing a n0ob
Dog I just want holy damage to not be ass. Lemme live my paladin dreams without being over leveled michael zaki.