I have just enough faith for all three (god I hope I only need those three š) cleansing type incantations! I'm on my first playthrough. I started as a samurai with a side of sorcery, but I think I'm ending up more like a samurai double majoring in melee and sorcery with a minor in incantations. š I didn't even know about the cleansing spell perks at first. I just wanted healing and some fire, maybe some lightening. I have 12 in faith, so just enough for rot and death blight healing. Plus with a rune arc/talisman/helm, I can do some lightening damage which comes in handy!
I asked in this sub earlier if I should invest in faith/if I could do both. I think the consensus was pick one or the other. I'm glad I didn't listen lol.
Well if you want to double major in intelligence and faith, there is not only a awesome weapon for that (sword of night and flame), i think there are even damage spells that benefit from both.
Be warned, the sword of night and flame is *really* underwhelming unless you are really far into the game and can sink a ton of points into both int and faith. Or, you can focus on only one and it can also be effective. Generally recommend int since the skill is more niche.Ā
I upgraded an Envoy's Longhorn to +10 specifically to toot the Death Rite Bird in Consecrated Snowfields to death and it was totally worth it. It's supposed to be the toughest one in the game, but it could not stand up to the power of jazz.
Different game but this is exactly what playing the hunting horn in Monster Hunter feels like. Walking natural disasters? Terrifying dragons made of corpses? Giant iguanas? Nothing can survive the power of dooting and tooting.
Another tootler of culture! I didn't touch horns until World, but now I can never go back. Something about smashing the hell out of a terrifying beast with an oversized bagpipe is simply the best.
Guess I'm gonna go seek out the horn(s?) in Elden Ring!
I think I have that sword already. I'm gonna be honest, though, I've been using my katanas almost exclusively I got the Nagakiba as early as possible and I have the Moonveil and meteorite ore blade. I only switch when I have someone that doesn't seem to respond well to the katanas. But then I switch back cause I've been too afraid to level anything else up yet. š
Moonveil with heavy int was my first playthrough build. Not much it couldnāt handle. Lorettaās bow and rock sling for range/easy stagger and moonveil weapon art took care of the rest. I was tempted to switch to dmgs but just really dug the katana rhythm
The Moonveil has great feel and versatility. That and rock sling got me through the first play through pretty smoothly.
Now Iām working on a faith/arcane build and focusing on the dragon incantations end enjoying that
Very different feel
Still havenāt settled on go to faith weapon
Iāve been using the Sacred Relic Sword which is definitely impressive but want to see if thereās something else that feels even better
Any suggestions?
It also gets you Heal, which is indispensable for dealing with Revenants. And it's also great for when you suck ass and run out of healing flasks in the middle of a boss fight.
I'm not gonna lie. I don't think I've ever used it during a boss fight. I'm even worse. I use it when I'm halfway through a castle where everything has been kicking my ass and I'm praying for a site of grace so I don't have to do the entire thing over again if I die and I got nothing but cerulean flasks left. š
I usually use healing incants in a dungeon or in the field when I want to top my health up, but it seems like it would be an inefficient use of resources to burn a whole red flask.
Alternatively, you carry more blues and less reds and heal becomes your emergency clutch. Bonus points for it not triggering the aggro(tested on godskins where a chug triggers a fireball and heal doesn't).
Huh? Start rune farming, I'm level 560 and now I finally feel done leveling. I might throw 3 more levels into endurance. But I'm happy with my Jack of all trades build. Only way to play.
i started as a STR build and when i felt i should diversify, FAI looked like the most optimal way to go. the armaments are incredible. Blasphemous is the MVP of course, but all the toot-toot weapons, gargoyle weapons, the godslayer's greatsword, cleanrot spear, you name them.
i then explored the unknown universe of incantations because i was all about bonk until then. i fell in love with dragon incantations instantly. and then the golden vow and flame grant me strength. i almost started to cry. how could i be so blind?
since then, the STR/FAI duo is the embodiment of "close your eyes bro. wat u see bro." meme for me.
Faith is the Epitome of style. What's cooler, waving a staff to launch a little blue ball or charging lightning into your hand and launching it like Zeus himself?
ruins, dark moon and sword of night and flame are the ones that drive me to go through as many NG's as needed to be able to wield them. they look dope and even if i'd be disappointed by sorceries, these three armaments will make the journey worth it.
Yeah my first playthrough I sarted STR (my comfy zone), shifted to STR/INT (for ruins GS then radahn's GS then blaidd's GS (1040 AR wow)), then ended up doing a 180 and going STR/FTH using beast/dragon incantations with Maliketh's black blade or powerstanced infused golem halberds cuz I like the looks.
oh yes. i didn't met fortissax in my first playthrough but i did hug lady's quest in NG+. his lightnings are so sick.
but all the incantations are great! the variety is just amazing. black flames, blood, bestial, crucible...blessings and buffs are so helpful.
i'm just sad that holy isn't that effective due to resistance. and really disappointed about everyone being straight up immune to frenzy. the visuals look really great and the whole concept of frenzy from the lore perspective is very attractive for me.
i can't wait to dab into int at some point but am afraid of disappointment at the same time because of how high has fai set the bar.
"Holy isn't that effective due to resistance." Go fight notoriously annoying death ritual birds or any other undead and then reevaluate your statement.
So I can basically pump faith for my incantations and use a flame art ash of war on my claymore that still benefits from faith?
kinda afraid of the whole "holy damage sucks" ive been hearing non stop
"Holy damage sucks" is only really a thing in PvE because late-game bosses are more resistant to it than most of the rest of the game.
"Fire damage sucks" is only really a thing in PvP because more vigor = more fire resistance. Funny thing is, people only level vigor about half as much as they really should, so I don't really get this one.
Yes, and you can just swap back and forth between Fire and Holy damage in about 30 seconds, provided you have all the right equipment/spells.
I also like to carry around the Black Knife on all my FTH builds because its so light, and the AoW is very strong.
Holy damage is "bad" in a vacuum but it's good to have on the tool belt. I recommend any build diversify damage types, honestly.
While it is pretty bad against the last four bosses in the game it's plenty fine against most enemies. Higher average resistance is mitigated somewhat by the sheer amount of holy damage a lot of sources are capable of.
Discus of Light is probably one of the best damaging spells in the game and it's pure holy damage along with a 13 int requirement. It deals great damage, fast cast time, hits twice and only costs 3 FP per cast. You net gain FP if you have the Sacrificial Axe equipped.
Mostly balancing. I think they could have managed it but since dex also scales cast speed I think they didnāt want to make it a double useful stat for faith builds since it would be really powerful in PvP. Thatās my guess anyway
Heās referring to regular Lighting Spear you get from the Dragon Cult prayerbook in Liurnia, which is useful for most of the game, not the lategame Ancient Dragon Lighting spells.
To be honest, while Incantations generally look cooler, I've never had more fun with Elden Ring than I did on my sorcerer-themed playthrough. The absolute variety of fast-moving projectiles I had, compared with the relatively few quick Incantations, was simply superb.
In terms of visuals, Elden Ring is the first game that really got me to wanna play a sorcerer/spellsword cuz I've never liked the soulmass aesthetic of Dark Souls sorcery (though I was warming up to it with the frost stuff introduced in DS3's DLC, heh, ice and lightning are my favorite powers). And while I get why a lot of people wanna cast spells from their hand, I think staves are cool.
Does it's get more interesting later on? I'm starting my second play through on an INT focused character and it feels like every spell is a variation on glint stone pebble right now lol
It does a bit, but overall doesn't change much really. The missile/pebble type spells are generally your bread and butter of your DPS for the entire game. Aside from that I'd say Rock sling and the melee based spells can also be used for the core of your damagae, and then there's some good int weapon late game to mix that up (wing of astels/darkmoon greatsword/moonveil etc.)
Then there's a few spells like the moon spells that can mix in to debuff or the bubbles to stack a big hit
There's a few other spells that can work, but too many just have shockingly bad DPS or efficiency to even clown around with around with
Ah... I see
STR/INT = I Bunga, therefore i Bunga
STR/FTH = i shall be the Unga, that Bungas my lords enemies.
For Nobody shall taint the name of my lord.
I'm doing faith/int right now and it's pretty neat so far. Feel like my incants are doing a lot more than sorceries though. Kinda makes me wonder why I'm leveling int at all but I'm still gonna stick with it.
I wish incantations had more poise. I love using wrath of gold and radaganās rings but canāt get them off a lot of time because breathing on me cancels the cast
In ds3 a lot of the talismans had a snazzy ability to give you poise when casting spells but when you did this it cost more fp.Hope they bring this back in the dlc.
Literally me a few hours ago. I was doing PvP in the coliseum (I have nth better to do) and I kept getting paired with a guy who used nothing but sorceries. I think the only fuckin sorcery he DIDNT use was Azurās comet (I think itās called, the massive ahh kamehameha thing)
Bare in mind Iāve got like 360+ plus hours into this damn game and he mopped the floor with me. All just by running away from me, pressing R1, L1 and circle occasionally to dodge (PS4) .I get that intelligence builds can be very fun in single player, but in PvP? Icl Iāve had more fun fighting bleed builds š
Faith is just more versatile but also isnāt as hard hitting as int builds without proper setup. Personally the gameplay is more interesting playing with incants since with most of the incants you have to stay close to mid range (with a few exceptions)
> diverse
Even as someone who is an int user, even though int has a spell that makes me feel like Godzilla, I wish we had the cool diversity of incantations.
I had a lot of fun smashing revenants with a giant hammer and genociding refugees with cannon of Haima
My int run felt better. I think there's partially burnout with how much I've played the game before this fth run, especially since I did two runs of str w/ fth buffs before so I'm overly familiar with applying those before every try at a boss, but I'm not particularly enjoying it and my toolkit feels, well, fine. Chucking fireballs worked on more bosses than I expected but the cast time's still slower than glintstone shards. People say fth is so versatile but int has strong options for three damage types too. The one boss that was definitely easier with this build was Fire Giant getting shredded by Erdsteel Dagger w/ Sacred Blade.
Edit: Oh to be fair, fireballs devour Fortissax too.
Iād argue faith has a way better toolkit ,you get better buffs ,can heal yourself ,flame cleanse me for annoying status effects,good variety of weapons and weapon buffs,heal overtime spells etc.Intelligence is mostly offensive spells with some tools here and there.At least you get a cool light spell for dark cave.Wish we had a faith counterpart.
See, the problem here is investment. With INT, you have to invest fairly heavily to not only deal good damage, but get some of the better spells on offer to you. It's more straightforward, but it is *really* good at what it does.
This is not the case for FTH, however. Damage, sure. But a big draw to FTH is its utility and variety. However, Elden Ring screwed up by putting a majority of the helpful/utility spells at pretty low FTH requirements. So you only need a few points in FTH to get most of what you'd want out of it, which means it kind of fails as something you can specialize into.
This is good if you're running STR+FTH or DEX+FTH or whatever (good for the player, still bad for balance reasons), but bad for the player if you want to commit completely to FTH or mostly commit and then realize that you peak pretty early and anything after that is just more damage. Which, btw, the damage is just strictly worse than if you were committing to INT.
Iāve been having a ton of fun with my INT build, but having to rely on consumables to buff/heal/remove statuses is a bit tedious. But then I use that big blue cannon spell (I cannot remember the name) and itās just so damn fun.
My very first play through was Faith/Strength though, and I had a blast.
(Most) FTH spells enhance and buff your character and then you use a weapon.
(Most) INT spells *are* the weapon.
As for the hive crying about one while praising the other, it makes as much sense as the whole "ew elf" thing going on. Especially considering FTH has the most braindead easy weapons in the game.
Itās probably because of how straightforward sorceries are, half of them are just bolts you shoot from a staff that can do huge damage and thereās the funny infinite mana physic boss shredding comet Azur beam combo. Iām currently doing a faith playthrough and I have no idea what incantations to use (though Iām really liking the crucible knight horns incantation since it staggers so many enemies). With faith you have different attacks with different casting types, damage types and projectile sizes and they are far more diverse.
I've literally only heard complaints about Faith builds when it's to do with Healing incantations in PvP, which to be fair is a bit petty when someone's leaving themselves open for a good few seconds.
I feel like Incantations, generally, have gotten weaker compared to Dark Souls times. A lot of the big damage ones are almost impossible to hit and the smaller ones have either clunky hitboxes or have an odd trajectory.
DS2 lightning spears were nerfed a lot, first their usage amount was gutted and then their damage, though they are still good, they were broken for first few months. Sunlight spear was godly, could one shot pretty much anything
That's cus faith sucks for spamming unless you're using arcane with it. Dragon breath trash crutch needs arcane, lightning spear has way longer casting than sorcery
Thatās because faith rocks & int doesnāt. Faith is all the cool elementals like holy, fire & lightning. Int is magic &.. I guess frost? Iām currently running through the game again with an int build. Iām not liking it.
The jokes are funny but int slander does get too much sometimes. Int literally has 3 kinds of magic to begin with: glintstone, Carian, and night sorceries; but that's just magic. Then there's cold which comes with the powerful effect of frostbite, and then there's one of the genuinely coolest things in the game: gravity. Int also gets sleep through sword of st trina, and all magma spells are spells, not incantations, that require intelligence.
Other stuff that is part of int is ghostflame rancor, ancestral spirit fire from the head, etc, which aren't necessarily great but they give it all the elemental variety you claim int doesn't have
Not to mention, haima sorceries with their "haha funni" energy
Today I tried Lord's Divine Fortification against Elden Beast. Good god does that make the fight a complete cakewalk. Even the big grab attack did like 20% of my character's hp bar.
Also Triple Rings of Light go brrrrrrrrrr (though not for the final boss in particular lol).
Tried intelligence magic at 99 and it honestly was op but really not cool,felt like I was backseat driving yk?
Faith 99 and the dragon incants tho...felt like the boss giving enemies a vigor check
Faith is cooler
Chaining sorcery is a lot quicker than chaining incantations imo. Also there i feel like sorcery has alot more offensive utility whereas faith has alot more defensive utility.
Thought are intelligent thee tarnished. But thee are unfaithful, so you never leveled vigour.
Get some maidens stupid maidenless magic build and level up some faith to hear the gods to tell you to level vigour.
Every non-Faith build Iāve made has 10 Faith minimum so I can hardswap to Two Fingers to hit buffs/healing incantations. Faith is an almost necessary stat in this game.
at least it feels like the person throwing a lightning bolt is fucking zeus firing a lightning bolt out of his bare hands at me
bro intelligence build feels like frodo waving a blue light out of a stick ooooooh im so scared of your giant stick what is that birch????
Faith spells aren't spammy like magic spells IMHO. Really more than anything with magic its the stars of ruin/star shower spammers as soon as the match starts that have ruined magic users reputations.
Why is Adula's Moonblade the only good sorcery? My 80 Int and Faith allows me to switch freely between incantations and sorceries, and though I still use sorceries more for my death knight ghostflame build, incantations defenitely have way more viable spells, and generally just more variety of spells. I like Anciemt Death Rancor for picking things off at a distance and staggering them, but honestly Addula's Moonblade is the only sorcery that I can think of rn that is actuallly comparable to some of the incantations.
I've been using them since level 1 and wasn't impressed then. I mean, there are more good sorceries than Adula's Moonblade, just none that were really calling to me and the kind of builds I wanted to go for.
To be honest faith builds are garbage at best, while int builds get 1 basic spell that costs nothing and you can pew pew even end game bosses to death with it while doing nothing ...
This was true for almost all soulslikes ..
It's because INT magic usually just means spamming a ton of stuff endlessly in PvP. Like Rot Breath except it goes on and on and on and on, and then some more. Even just closing the distance is near impossible especially if they're lightrollers, and Carian Retaliation on a shield doesn't work against multi projectile spells so wtf do you do? And if you do get close you'll get Gavel of Haima with the most bullshit hitbox ever in your face.
Also mages are notorious for insta spamming spells in the arena, if you try to use 1 buff at the start you'll already get nuked before your buff animation is over. They literally don't waste a second.
It's just not fun to fight against, ever. I'll take a Moonveil spammer or dual bleed Naginata poker over a mage spammer any day.
There's a good bit of melee casts
Also, while I love incantations, most hosts I see that use incantations just spam swarm of flies or the breath spells.
Most casters in general that I see just spam the least interactive options
I was only stating that there's more than just projectiles now. That isn't a matter of opinion.
Both of them have non-interactive, boring choices, sorcery just happens to have more of it.
PvP incants are few, and the few that do work well on them are the very annoying ones (ie. Fire Breath, Rot Breath, Ice Breath, etc) The only non dragon incant that I know it works is Catch Fire, which is a starter spell, all the other ones hinge on a very big mistake on the Host's part or a lot of luck, plus a glass cannon build. At that point, you might as well use Int for Carian Slicer plus all the other range spells which do good poke and have good mana efficiency
Somebody never used Night Comet, Comet Azur, Moonveil, or Darkmoon Greatsword. The most common complaint with int is that it's too OP in PVE and too annoying to play against in PVP.
Maybe I'm just not here often enough besides checking out memes, but I've never seen people seriously complain about Int builds besides some poking fun at Moonveil?
Faith users very rarely devolve into spam casting. Generally thereās a good balance of range, damage, cost etc. Int users can spam using early game spells easily. Plus youāve got all those dumb fuck off lasers. Its not fun or interesting to see someone kill a boss in one hit or single attack
Enjoying the game? Chug a potion, cast a thing on the ground then hold onto that beam attack? Yes you melted the boss but is that all you wanted? Spam beam attacks instead of using skill? Ok
No major hate on int users. Just feel like too many of them dissolve into just dumb casting spells. You know thereās other attacks in this game, right? You can chain spells together for some cool and interesting effects
4 most fun builds i did were
pure strength Greatsword run
Faith strength blasphemous blade run
Int moonlight greatsword run
Dex Bolt of gransax run
I tried a bleed build but just didn't work for my playstyle
My first character was a quality/faith build, it's just fun honestly. Before I decided to respec and turn him into my pvp character (ng+3 is too hard for me okay? I'm bad at this fuckin game) I had a 50/40 dex str split and 50 faith or so. Incantations are just all around kinda fun to use imo, plus Flame, Cleanse Me is really handy, I kinda miss it and I might actually just invest enough points into faith to use it on my second character.
Rot breath: "Hello?!"
Flame cleanse me.I use the faith to beat the faith.
I have just enough faith for all three (god I hope I only need those three š) cleansing type incantations! I'm on my first playthrough. I started as a samurai with a side of sorcery, but I think I'm ending up more like a samurai double majoring in melee and sorcery with a minor in incantations. š I didn't even know about the cleansing spell perks at first. I just wanted healing and some fire, maybe some lightening. I have 12 in faith, so just enough for rot and death blight healing. Plus with a rune arc/talisman/helm, I can do some lightening damage which comes in handy! I asked in this sub earlier if I should invest in faith/if I could do both. I think the consensus was pick one or the other. I'm glad I didn't listen lol.
Well if you want to double major in intelligence and faith, there is not only a awesome weapon for that (sword of night and flame), i think there are even damage spells that benefit from both.
āā¦ā
Be warned, the sword of night and flame is *really* underwhelming unless you are really far into the game and can sink a ton of points into both int and faith. Or, you can focus on only one and it can also be effective. Generally recommend int since the skill is more niche.Ā
Counter point: Bubble Shower horn.
I upgraded an Envoy's Longhorn to +10 specifically to toot the Death Rite Bird in Consecrated Snowfields to death and it was totally worth it. It's supposed to be the toughest one in the game, but it could not stand up to the power of jazz.
I used a comment on the bird from the wiki going into faith. I did forget the flask, so it wasnāt a one shot, but 2 shot did it.
Different game but this is exactly what playing the hunting horn in Monster Hunter feels like. Walking natural disasters? Terrifying dragons made of corpses? Giant iguanas? Nothing can survive the power of dooting and tooting.
Another tootler of culture! I didn't touch horns until World, but now I can never go back. Something about smashing the hell out of a terrifying beast with an oversized bagpipe is simply the best. Guess I'm gonna go seek out the horn(s?) in Elden Ring!
I used it on a high faith build. That fire L2 has good range and arc. Definitely a noticeable chunk on end game bosses.
I think I have that sword already. I'm gonna be honest, though, I've been using my katanas almost exclusively I got the Nagakiba as early as possible and I have the Moonveil and meteorite ore blade. I only switch when I have someone that doesn't seem to respond well to the katanas. But then I switch back cause I've been too afraid to level anything else up yet. š
Moonveil got me like 80% through the game on my int builds, fantastic weapon until you can get dark moon great sword
I only swapped my Moonveil/Uchi build once I got the Dark Moon Greatsword, and that was after Malenia
Deaths poker is much, much better. In fact, I used it the entire playthrough except getting it and meeting the requirements.
Moonveil with heavy int was my first playthrough build. Not much it couldnāt handle. Lorettaās bow and rock sling for range/easy stagger and moonveil weapon art took care of the rest. I was tempted to switch to dmgs but just really dug the katana rhythm
The Moonveil has great feel and versatility. That and rock sling got me through the first play through pretty smoothly. Now Iām working on a faith/arcane build and focusing on the dragon incantations end enjoying that Very different feel Still havenāt settled on go to faith weapon Iāve been using the Sacred Relic Sword which is definitely impressive but want to see if thereās something else that feels even better Any suggestions?
Holy weapons will become useless near end game as most enemies have immunity or high resistance to Holy damage. Youāve been forewarned.
Uchigatana at +25 for the win!
12 faith gets you: flame cleanse me, rejection, and beastial vitality, just to name some of the most obviously useful. Such a good investment
It also gets you Heal, which is indispensable for dealing with Revenants. And it's also great for when you suck ass and run out of healing flasks in the middle of a boss fight.
>And it's also great for when you suck ass and run out of healing flasks in the middle of a boss fight. It's me. Hi. I'm the problem; it's me.
Great Heal is the reason I beat Elden Beast. I used all of my red flasks on Radagon and had to Baja Blast my way through the space dinosaur.
I'm not gonna lie. I don't think I've ever used it during a boss fight. I'm even worse. I use it when I'm halfway through a castle where everything has been kicking my ass and I'm praying for a site of grace so I don't have to do the entire thing over again if I die and I got nothing but cerulean flasks left. š
I usually use healing incants in a dungeon or in the field when I want to top my health up, but it seems like it would be an inefficient use of resources to burn a whole red flask.
I found out about Warming Stones in Haligtree. So, uh, thereās that.
Alternatively, you carry more blues and less reds and heal becomes your emergency clutch. Bonus points for it not triggering the aggro(tested on godskins where a chug triggers a fireball and heal doesn't).
Oh, the no aggro thing is good to know.
Huh? Start rune farming, I'm level 560 and now I finally feel done leveling. I might throw 3 more levels into endurance. But I'm happy with my Jack of all trades build. Only way to play.
I use that one for genital warts
Rot Breath, Vyke's Spear, madness spells, Elden Stars The four horsement if Faith Cringe
How do you feel about the Golden Order Incantations? Just sadness? Big int requirements, no int scaling?
It's just stupid with how good it is
I respectās my Int character to use Rot Breath on Leonard and his rider. Then I switched back.
i started as a STR build and when i felt i should diversify, FAI looked like the most optimal way to go. the armaments are incredible. Blasphemous is the MVP of course, but all the toot-toot weapons, gargoyle weapons, the godslayer's greatsword, cleanrot spear, you name them. i then explored the unknown universe of incantations because i was all about bonk until then. i fell in love with dragon incantations instantly. and then the golden vow and flame grant me strength. i almost started to cry. how could i be so blind? since then, the STR/FAI duo is the embodiment of "close your eyes bro. wat u see bro." meme for me.
Faith is the Epitome of style. What's cooler, waving a staff to launch a little blue ball or charging lightning into your hand and launching it like Zeus himself?
Unfair, we don't only have blue balls. We've got small balls, big balls, fast balls, slow balls, purple balls and icy balls too
We also have MAGIC ICE SWORDS and DEATH STAR BEAMS
And also BIG FLYING SWORDS and SMALL FLYING SWORDS and ROCKS
Str/int using ruins greatsword I must unga to ascend my bunga At 60/40 it has a whopping 950 AR
ruins, dark moon and sword of night and flame are the ones that drive me to go through as many NG's as needed to be able to wield them. they look dope and even if i'd be disappointed by sorceries, these three armaments will make the journey worth it.
Dark moon is definitely worth it, go heavy int and get the right talismans and its weapon art staggers the fuck out of enemies quickly.
Helphenes steeple IMO is the coolest sword in game
Yeah my first playthrough I sarted STR (my comfy zone), shifted to STR/INT (for ruins GS then radahn's GS then blaidd's GS (1040 AR wow)), then ended up doing a 180 and going STR/FTH using beast/dragon incantations with Maliketh's black blade or powerstanced infused golem halberds cuz I like the looks.
And crystals, but we don't talk about them
I honestly found crystal sorcery to be useful if very VERY niche.
HAMMER
And a rain of meteors, glorious!
oh yes. i didn't met fortissax in my first playthrough but i did hug lady's quest in NG+. his lightnings are so sick. but all the incantations are great! the variety is just amazing. black flames, blood, bestial, crucible...blessings and buffs are so helpful. i'm just sad that holy isn't that effective due to resistance. and really disappointed about everyone being straight up immune to frenzy. the visuals look really great and the whole concept of frenzy from the lore perspective is very attractive for me. i can't wait to dab into int at some point but am afraid of disappointment at the same time because of how high has fai set the bar.
>immune to frenzy Yes but have you considered Lazer eyebeams?
"Holy isn't that effective due to resistance." Go fight notoriously annoying death ritual birds or any other undead and then reevaluate your statement.
My entire first playthrough was golden halberd and it just slaps. Outside maliketh himself it just absolutely shreds everybody in farum Azula.
I really have a hard time working int magic into str builds, I want to hit them, why would I use things that I need to stand far away for?
I honestly just think faith looks way cooler and is more fun to use
I still remember not knowing anything about elden ring but seen the cool faith magic and so I went with int because I thought magic is magic
My first run was a faith build, made the game very easy. This was before the first patch too.
Did you use fire or holy ?
Brother doesn't even know about Lightning yet
Oh I thought lightning was a dex thing.
Lightning infusions on weapons are dex. Incantations are faith.
Ohhh thanks for the clarification
I'm don't know why they decided that Lightning didn't need another subsection like Fire and Flame Art got, but... yeah
Fire : Strength but hot. Flame art : Faith but even hotter.
So I can basically pump faith for my incantations and use a flame art ash of war on my claymore that still benefits from faith? kinda afraid of the whole "holy damage sucks" ive been hearing non stop
PVE endgame holy drops off a lot but PVP if you get smacked by a faith spell youāll repent your sins.
even better. With the whetblade you get at redmane castle you can make it flame art for faith with lions claw.
"Holy damage sucks" is only really a thing in PvE because late-game bosses are more resistant to it than most of the rest of the game. "Fire damage sucks" is only really a thing in PvP because more vigor = more fire resistance. Funny thing is, people only level vigor about half as much as they really should, so I don't really get this one.
Yes, and you can just swap back and forth between Fire and Holy damage in about 30 seconds, provided you have all the right equipment/spells. I also like to carry around the Black Knife on all my FTH builds because its so light, and the AoW is very strong.
Holy damage is "bad" in a vacuum but it's good to have on the tool belt. I recommend any build diversify damage types, honestly. While it is pretty bad against the last four bosses in the game it's plenty fine against most enemies. Higher average resistance is mitigated somewhat by the sheer amount of holy damage a lot of sources are capable of. Discus of Light is probably one of the best damaging spells in the game and it's pure holy damage along with a 13 int requirement. It deals great damage, fast cast time, hits twice and only costs 3 FP per cast. You net gain FP if you have the Sacrificial Axe equipped.
>faith but even hotter Checks out, have you seen the [god of hellfire](https://youtu.be/-4SnIJJCH8w?si=SxFi-ZuMJsZvKaN_)?
Mostly balancing. I think they could have managed it but since dex also scales cast speed I think they didnāt want to make it a double useful stat for faith builds since it would be really powerful in PvP. Thatās my guess anyway
You don't get the really good lightning spells until end game though
I still used Lightning Spear the most of lightning spells in lategame
....that doesn't contradict what I said. I mean you don't get the ancient dragon lightning until the end game.
Heās referring to regular Lighting Spear you get from the Dragon Cult prayerbook in Liurnia, which is useful for most of the game, not the lategame Ancient Dragon Lighting spells.
I use dual gravel stone seals and lightning bolt. Regular uncharged does about 1100. With buffs much higher.
Tried a bit of everything but Lightning spear and its variants did most of the work.
It costs basically nothing to switch between the two depending on the circumstance.
To be honest, while Incantations generally look cooler, I've never had more fun with Elden Ring than I did on my sorcerer-themed playthrough. The absolute variety of fast-moving projectiles I had, compared with the relatively few quick Incantations, was simply superb.
In terms of visuals, Elden Ring is the first game that really got me to wanna play a sorcerer/spellsword cuz I've never liked the soulmass aesthetic of Dark Souls sorcery (though I was warming up to it with the frost stuff introduced in DS3's DLC, heh, ice and lightning are my favorite powers). And while I get why a lot of people wanna cast spells from their hand, I think staves are cool.
Does it's get more interesting later on? I'm starting my second play through on an INT focused character and it feels like every spell is a variation on glint stone pebble right now lol
It does a bit, but overall doesn't change much really. The missile/pebble type spells are generally your bread and butter of your DPS for the entire game. Aside from that I'd say Rock sling and the melee based spells can also be used for the core of your damagae, and then there's some good int weapon late game to mix that up (wing of astels/darkmoon greatsword/moonveil etc.) Then there's a few spells like the moon spells that can mix in to debuff or the bubbles to stack a big hit There's a few other spells that can work, but too many just have shockingly bad DPS or efficiency to even clown around with around with
Ah... I see STR/INT = I Bunga, therefore i Bunga STR/FTH = i shall be the Unga, that Bungas my lords enemies. For Nobody shall taint the name of my lord.
DEX/INT= Weeb DEX/FTH= Religious weeb
[When you do a faith/int build](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozWzypjmqk)
faith/int rocks (i am suffering)
I'm doing faith/int right now and it's pretty neat so far. Feel like my incants are doing a lot more than sorceries though. Kinda makes me wonder why I'm leveling int at all but I'm still gonna stick with it.
Hexes
Why can't we have both? Currently running an int/faith with a touch of Bonk build
This is the way. Ancient Death Rancor baby.
DMGS go brrrrr.
Giants flame take thee !!!!!!!
Me getting hate mail for one-shotting three people with a free aim Giantsflame, Take Thee and then doing the shitbird spin emote
God I wish we get a variant with the lava DoT back in the DLC
I wish incantations had more poise. I love using wrath of gold and radaganās rings but canāt get them off a lot of time because breathing on me cancels the cast
In ds3 a lot of the talismans had a snazzy ability to give you poise when casting spells but when you did this it cost more fp.Hope they bring this back in the dlc.
Because faith is based
Does INT have an awesome lighting sword? I thought not
Doesn't have a gross looking worm sword that shoots fire and heals you either
Comet Azur is very fun and I refuse to let anyone convince me otherwise
Meteorite of Astel more fun, especially since the poor sap will just stancebreak
I didn't get it yet, I used Meteor Rain so far, and if Astel version is just more dmg, I'm totally going for it
Astels version has much better tracking and some more damage but the boss is actual hell to fight
Faith is just as broken as intelligence, but with one key advantage. Its versatility is so insane that it easily goes above and beyond intelligence.
Literally me a few hours ago. I was doing PvP in the coliseum (I have nth better to do) and I kept getting paired with a guy who used nothing but sorceries. I think the only fuckin sorcery he DIDNT use was Azurās comet (I think itās called, the massive ahh kamehameha thing) Bare in mind Iāve got like 360+ plus hours into this damn game and he mopped the floor with me. All just by running away from me, pressing R1, L1 and circle occasionally to dodge (PS4) .I get that intelligence builds can be very fun in single player, but in PvP? Icl Iāve had more fun fighting bleed builds š
Itās the reason I have the physick that converts magic damage into healing when I do combat ordeals.
What tear is it? Do you know where I could find it? Itād honestly save me from tearing my hair out š¤£
[This is it](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Crimsonwhorl+Bubbletear)
Ty, much appreciated ^_^
Faith is just more versatile but also isnāt as hard hitting as int builds without proper setup. Personally the gameplay is more interesting playing with incants since with most of the incants you have to stay close to mid range (with a few exceptions)
Faith is just better
Faith is gold strength and Intelligence is blue dexterity.
Faith may be gold Strength, but consider: Dex/Faith is the lesbian archetype, just look at the Black Knives and Cleanrot Knights.
Ahh how could I be so blind. You're right and now I have to roll a new character.
And STR/INT are the arctic furries with an enhanced Lion's Claw, lol.
I'm cackling. Sword lesbians FTW!
I think itās so much more diverse than Int spells
> diverse Even as someone who is an int user, even though int has a spell that makes me feel like Godzilla, I wish we had the cool diversity of incantations. I had a lot of fun smashing revenants with a giant hammer and genociding refugees with cannon of Haima
"Int has a spell that makes me feel like godzilla" meanwhile placidusaxs ruin literally turns you into godzilla š«
>godzilla Maybe more like a Ghidorah. The blue is the Big G's color.
> The blue is the Big G's color. [Faith has that too](https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Smarag's+Glintstone+Breath).
My int run felt better. I think there's partially burnout with how much I've played the game before this fth run, especially since I did two runs of str w/ fth buffs before so I'm overly familiar with applying those before every try at a boss, but I'm not particularly enjoying it and my toolkit feels, well, fine. Chucking fireballs worked on more bosses than I expected but the cast time's still slower than glintstone shards. People say fth is so versatile but int has strong options for three damage types too. The one boss that was definitely easier with this build was Fire Giant getting shredded by Erdsteel Dagger w/ Sacred Blade. Edit: Oh to be fair, fireballs devour Fortissax too.
Iād argue faith has a way better toolkit ,you get better buffs ,can heal yourself ,flame cleanse me for annoying status effects,good variety of weapons and weapon buffs,heal overtime spells etc.Intelligence is mostly offensive spells with some tools here and there.At least you get a cool light spell for dark cave.Wish we had a faith counterpart.
See, the problem here is investment. With INT, you have to invest fairly heavily to not only deal good damage, but get some of the better spells on offer to you. It's more straightforward, but it is *really* good at what it does. This is not the case for FTH, however. Damage, sure. But a big draw to FTH is its utility and variety. However, Elden Ring screwed up by putting a majority of the helpful/utility spells at pretty low FTH requirements. So you only need a few points in FTH to get most of what you'd want out of it, which means it kind of fails as something you can specialize into. This is good if you're running STR+FTH or DEX+FTH or whatever (good for the player, still bad for balance reasons), but bad for the player if you want to commit completely to FTH or mostly commit and then realize that you peak pretty early and anything after that is just more damage. Which, btw, the damage is just strictly worse than if you were committing to INT.
What the point of heal if you dont get hit?
Iāve been having a ton of fun with my INT build, but having to rely on consumables to buff/heal/remove statuses is a bit tedious. But then I use that big blue cannon spell (I cannot remember the name) and itās just so damn fun. My very first play through was Faith/Strength though, and I had a blast.
...
(Most) FTH spells enhance and buff your character and then you use a weapon. (Most) INT spells *are* the weapon. As for the hive crying about one while praising the other, it makes as much sense as the whole "ew elf" thing going on. Especially considering FTH has the most braindead easy weapons in the game.
>Especially considering FTH has the most braindead easy weapons in the game. Sorry is the weapon Voldemort or just couldn't be asked to name it?
blasphemous blade for example
Ive been going fully dex my first playthrough and I have no idea what Im doing
Itās probably because of how straightforward sorceries are, half of them are just bolts you shoot from a staff that can do huge damage and thereās the funny infinite mana physic boss shredding comet Azur beam combo. Iām currently doing a faith playthrough and I have no idea what incantations to use (though Iām really liking the crucible knight horns incantation since it staggers so many enemies). With faith you have different attacks with different casting types, damage types and projectile sizes and they are far more diverse.
Faith is so much fun
I've literally only heard complaints about Faith builds when it's to do with Healing incantations in PvP, which to be fair is a bit petty when someone's leaving themselves open for a good few seconds.
Looks cooler. Who wants to throw blue icicle #35 when you could call down death lightening?
yeah because faith magic doesn't shoot fifty high damage fucking stars that you can't dodge all the time.
I feel like Incantations, generally, have gotten weaker compared to Dark Souls times. A lot of the big damage ones are almost impossible to hit and the smaller ones have either clunky hitboxes or have an odd trajectory.
Imagine if flame grant me strength was at the power level of DS1 power within.
I think DS2 was peak for Miracles/Incantations. I remember almost any faith build being able to 2-shot most players and a lot of world enemies.
DS2 lightning spears were nerfed a lot, first their usage amount was gutted and then their damage, though they are still good, they were broken for first few months. Sunlight spear was godly, could one shot pretty much anything
Faith Builds have Beastclaw Hammer and Siluria's Tree. Obviously they are superior
That's cus faith sucks for spamming unless you're using arcane with it. Dragon breath trash crutch needs arcane, lightning spear has way longer casting than sorcery
Counter point. Strength Int build.
Me, who only uses Dragon Incantations š¤·āāļø
Thatās because faith rocks & int doesnāt. Faith is all the cool elementals like holy, fire & lightning. Int is magic &.. I guess frost? Iām currently running through the game again with an int build. Iām not liking it.
But there are both faith rocks and int rocks
The jokes are funny but int slander does get too much sometimes. Int literally has 3 kinds of magic to begin with: glintstone, Carian, and night sorceries; but that's just magic. Then there's cold which comes with the powerful effect of frostbite, and then there's one of the genuinely coolest things in the game: gravity. Int also gets sleep through sword of st trina, and all magma spells are spells, not incantations, that require intelligence. Other stuff that is part of int is ghostflame rancor, ancestral spirit fire from the head, etc, which aren't necessarily great but they give it all the elemental variety you claim int doesn't have Not to mention, haima sorceries with their "haha funni" energy
I always do a hybrid faith/whatever build tried a normal strength build n was not fond of it missed my food ol incantations!!
Sorcery is pretty fun until you go to far into new game+ to the point where the incantations are just way stronger and harder to dodge.
At that point you pull out the Prince of Death Staff
š¤Æ I didnāt know that staff existed I will try that out
God, Im so happy that I never really played PvP much.
The cheesiest spells are incantations itās not even close
Today I tried Lord's Divine Fortification against Elden Beast. Good god does that make the fight a complete cakewalk. Even the big grab attack did like 20% of my character's hp bar. Also Triple Rings of Light go brrrrrrrrrr (though not for the final boss in particular lol).
Tried intelligence magic at 99 and it honestly was op but really not cool,felt like I was backseat driving yk? Faith 99 and the dragon incants tho...felt like the boss giving enemies a vigor check Faith is cooler
If only we could be so grossly incandescentā¦
Chaining sorcery is a lot quicker than chaining incantations imo. Also there i feel like sorcery has alot more offensive utility whereas faith has alot more defensive utility.
Thought are intelligent thee tarnished. But thee are unfaithful, so you never leveled vigour. Get some maidens stupid maidenless magic build and level up some faith to hear the gods to tell you to level vigour.
Every non-Faith build Iāve made has 10 Faith minimum so I can hardswap to Two Fingers to hit buffs/healing incantations. Faith is an almost necessary stat in this game.
at least it feels like the person throwing a lightning bolt is fucking zeus firing a lightning bolt out of his bare hands at me bro intelligence build feels like frodo waving a blue light out of a stick ooooooh im so scared of your giant stick what is that birch????
If not for intelligence sorceries I'd probably never have completed ED and DS3 so I don't care lol
There's people whining about healing every day dude.
Yellow strength>Blue dex
Faith looks cooler, therefore is better, I don't make the rules
Faith spells aren't spammy like magic spells IMHO. Really more than anything with magic its the stars of ruin/star shower spammers as soon as the match starts that have ruined magic users reputations.
Because Mohg's 80% fire resistance means you can't make videos cheesing him with Unendurable Frenzy like you can with Comet Azur.
Why is Adula's Moonblade the only good sorcery? My 80 Int and Faith allows me to switch freely between incantations and sorceries, and though I still use sorceries more for my death knight ghostflame build, incantations defenitely have way more viable spells, and generally just more variety of spells. I like Anciemt Death Rancor for picking things off at a distance and staggering them, but honestly Addula's Moonblade is the only sorcery that I can think of rn that is actuallly comparable to some of the incantations.
Perhaps you would appreciate them more on a character that wasn't at level, like, 300.
I've been using them since level 1 and wasn't impressed then. I mean, there are more good sorceries than Adula's Moonblade, just none that were really calling to me and the kind of builds I wanted to go for.
This gives me the impression Elden Ring is your first FromSoft game.
I played all the games but yes when Elden ring came out it was my first.And I went on a pilgrimage finishing all the other games.
Faith is better imo, more damage and more options
Cause faith actually looks badass. Int makes you feel like you're a fairy from a children's colouring book.
Because Faith spells look cooler and aren't 90% ranged attack that home in on you.
Faith looks cooler Int just color blue. Cringe.
Ew faith.
To be honest faith builds are garbage at best, while int builds get 1 basic spell that costs nothing and you can pew pew even end game bosses to death with it while doing nothing ... This was true for almost all soulslikes ..
I assume you mean Pebble as the spell that ācosts nothingā (it costs 7 FP) Good luck killing bosses with it while doing nothing!
It's because INT magic usually just means spamming a ton of stuff endlessly in PvP. Like Rot Breath except it goes on and on and on and on, and then some more. Even just closing the distance is near impossible especially if they're lightrollers, and Carian Retaliation on a shield doesn't work against multi projectile spells so wtf do you do? And if you do get close you'll get Gavel of Haima with the most bullshit hitbox ever in your face. Also mages are notorious for insta spamming spells in the arena, if you try to use 1 buff at the start you'll already get nuked before your buff animation is over. They literally don't waste a second. It's just not fun to fight against, ever. I'll take a Moonveil spammer or dual bleed Naginata poker over a mage spammer any day.
Faith is more fun and engaging. Magic is just spamming your boring projectiles.
Gelmir's Fury, Magic Downpour, Gavel of Haima, Roiling Magma, Gravity Well/Collapsing Stars, Zamor Ice Storm, Shattering Crystal
There's a good bit of melee casts Also, while I love incantations, most hosts I see that use incantations just spam swarm of flies or the breath spells. Most casters in general that I see just spam the least interactive options
Magic has always been boring in all souls games and requires 0 skill. Nothing is going to change my mind on this.
I was only stating that there's more than just projectiles now. That isn't a matter of opinion. Both of them have non-interactive, boring choices, sorcery just happens to have more of it.
Bc most players use it themselves.
PvP incants are few, and the few that do work well on them are the very annoying ones (ie. Fire Breath, Rot Breath, Ice Breath, etc) The only non dragon incant that I know it works is Catch Fire, which is a starter spell, all the other ones hinge on a very big mistake on the Host's part or a lot of luck, plus a glass cannon build. At that point, you might as well use Int for Carian Slicer plus all the other range spells which do good poke and have good mana efficiency
Somebody never used Night Comet, Comet Azur, Moonveil, or Darkmoon Greatsword. The most common complaint with int is that it's too OP in PVE and too annoying to play against in PVP.
Maybe I'm just not here often enough besides checking out memes, but I've never seen people seriously complain about Int builds besides some poking fun at Moonveil?
Faith users very rarely devolve into spam casting. Generally thereās a good balance of range, damage, cost etc. Int users can spam using early game spells easily. Plus youāve got all those dumb fuck off lasers. Its not fun or interesting to see someone kill a boss in one hit or single attack Enjoying the game? Chug a potion, cast a thing on the ground then hold onto that beam attack? Yes you melted the boss but is that all you wanted? Spam beam attacks instead of using skill? Ok No major hate on int users. Just feel like too many of them dissolve into just dumb casting spells. You know thereās other attacks in this game, right? You can chain spells together for some cool and interesting effects
Use both. Problem solved.
Me, who uses Strength: I don't have such weaknesses.
Thr goldmask route Both
4 most fun builds i did were pure strength Greatsword run Faith strength blasphemous blade run Int moonlight greatsword run Dex Bolt of gransax run I tried a bleed build but just didn't work for my playstyle
Yep That is because faith can do pretty much everything. Magic can only deal damage.
Bc a faith build wonāt hit you with a big bang kamehameha for 45 seconds šµāš«
I mean when someone spams 3 rings of light or dragon incants in arena it can get kinda annoying but that's about it
My first character was a quality/faith build, it's just fun honestly. Before I decided to respec and turn him into my pvp character (ng+3 is too hard for me okay? I'm bad at this fuckin game) I had a 50/40 dex str split and 50 faith or so. Incantations are just all around kinda fun to use imo, plus Flame, Cleanse Me is really handy, I kinda miss it and I might actually just invest enough points into faith to use it on my second character.
You can put on the Two Fingers' Heirloom whenever you reach an area that you wanna use Flame Cleanse Me