How does one build a Mage-Melee hybrid?

[对不起我只会说英语]

NOTE: This is my first souls-like game / FromSoftware game in general. I also appreciate it if things are kept SPOILER FREE and just want to be educated on stuff like stats distribution.

And if anything, I've only gone pass Margit last night and is interested on exploring the magic aspect of the game since I've been doing just melee. I am asking here since I want to save time and is available only few hours a day.

Here's what I know:

Vigor - For HP
Mind - For FP or mana in most games
Endurance - For Stamina
Strength / Dex - For damage depending on the weapon
Intelligence - More damage for spells?
Faith - I guess for Incantations?
Arcane - Basically a "luck" attribute

Every stat also has a soft cap. (40vigor, 40mind, 25/40endu, 20/53str and dex and etc...)

I played Vagabond melee and stat distribution is pretty straightforward. I just went with VIGOR, ENDURANCE, STR and enough DEX to weild some weapons, more or less aiming for soft caps. I barely rely on stuff that consumes FP. Very easy yes?

Here's what I do NOT know:

What's the difference between incantations and spells?
For playing mage, what do I even focus on? Do I have to choose between incantation and spells (INT vs FAITH) to be efficient?

It gets even more confusing when I think about making a hybrid because: I need VIGOR, I need ENDURANCE, I need either STR OR DEX, and not only that, I also need to add INT and FAITH for magic. How do I even decide which attribute to allocate my points on?

Can someone actually please guide me on how does one build a hybrid? I'd appreciate it, thank you!

TLDR: I need a guide on how to build a Mage/Melee hybrid, because it looks fun. I'm just a little lost.

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

you get the sword ofnight and flame, and now youre technically a melee build. you use its special attacks, and now youre technically a mage/melee hybrid.

[Juno Brier]

Just choose one type of magic and stick with it. That'll make your life easier.

The difference between the two magic types is that Sorceries (Intelligence) focuses on attack spells while Incantations (Faith) focuses on healing and support spells (most attack incantations kinda suck tbh).

[Ellona]

TL;DR you can do both with very little stats, the first great rune you get gives you 5 to every stat if you use your rune arc.

So 12-17 in int and faith will be fine for the weapon spell buffs, if you wanna fling actual sorcery like glint stones and meteors you'll want to go higher to the spells requirements. You can have a focus and staff in left hand to buff right hand as required, it will be fp heavy so try not to pick a weapon that requires FP to be ideal.

The Evergaol Hound sword tends to be really good because its FP move doesn't require fp to use, you still get the attacks just not the invisibility effect from it. Depending on whether you wanna be a paladin, high hp, weapon buffs, thats low int and faith as said, you can dump the rest into vigor and str/dex as that curved sword has very low requirements and as an added bonus has bleed on it as well for a nice punch.

From there its just find what you like, right now I rock a bloodfire blade buff, but can do magic, lightning, poison etc etc etc. It's been very handy especially for the open world cause when it rains your lightning does more and fire does less etc.

[32x32 Riker jpeg]

sorceries you cast with staffs and tend to be offensive, or item buffs. They require intelligence to cast, and gain effectiveness with it.

Incantations you cast with "Seals" which are little talisman like trinkets. They tend to be status effect based, or for healing, and scale in effectiveness with faith.

Most smaller weapons have a low requirement to equip, and later in the game can have their attributes changed to scale with faith or intelligence so you deal magic or holy damage, and can DUMP points into your choice of magic school to make them extremely good.

You can dump a ton of points into vigor and endurance as well if you want to wear heavy armor and have a high health pool, it'll make the game a bit more easy, but your damage potential will suffer if you over generalize.

Also, do note that putting a level into ANY stat will make you ever so slightly more resistant to ALL damage.

[mpcgannon]

Dexterity helps with cast speed so I recommend going dex / int.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Chad "The King" ThunderCuck:

you get the sword ofnight and flame, and now youre technically a melee build. you use its special attacks, and now youre technically a mage/melee hybrid.

I'm not going to ask where you get this as that would be a spoiler on my part, but I'll remember the name or write it down.

Originally posted by Juno Brier:

Just choose one type of magic and stick with it. That'll make your life easier.

The difference between the two magic types is that Sorceries (Intelligence) focuses on attack spells while Incantations (Faith) focuses on healing and support spells (most attack incantations kinda suck tbh).

Ahhh, thank you for clarifying this! I was still confused about the whole Spell vs. Incantations thing since they looked similar to me.

[Frozen Dervish]

For casting:

Catalysts:
Incantations use "Seals" to cast spells.
Sorceries use "Staves" to cast spells.

The scale via the stat on said catalyst. To cast the spells you must also have the base stats needed on the spell itself though the scaling of the spell is based on the catalyst used.

Playing Int you want to focus on Vigor/Mind/Endurance/Intelligence
Playing Faith you want to focus on Vigor/Mind/Endurance/Faith

Though I mentioned the above this actually changes depending on the catalyst used which means say you use a Catalyst that scales via Arcane you may only want to hit the minimum faith/int values to cast the respective spells and instead gain more arcane stats.

The big rub though is that faith/int are expensive by themselves as several spells require 50-60+ in the attribute to even cast let alone use their respective catalysts.

Sword of Night and Flame is a very catch all melee weapon that only needs the bare minimum in the stats to use it as its base values are absurd.

Vigor is definitely needed if you don't want to be 1-shot.
Mind is needed if you wanna cast more than once or twice
Endurance is needed so you can dodge/cast/attack.
Faith/Int are needed to actually cast spells/use catalysts.
Arcane/Dex/Str are basically filler attributes as you pick them up as needed to use your weapons.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Misadventure:

TL;DR you can do both with very little stats, the first great rune you get gives you 5 to every stat if you use your rune arc.

So 12-17 in int and faith will be fine for the weapon spell buffs, if you wanna fling actual sorcery like glint stones and meteors you'll want to go higher to the spells requirements. You can have a focus and staff in left hand to buff right hand as required, it will be fp heavy so try not to pick a weapon that requires FP to be ideal.

^ this is what I had in mind to be honest. Less about the buffs and just wanna fling actual spells. In fact, in some videos, I saw people swinging a giant glowing sword like what Margit does.[/quote]

Originally posted by Misadventure:

The Evergaol Hound sword tends to be really good because its FP move doesn't require fp to use, you still get the attacks just not the invisibility effect from it. Depending on whether you wanna be a paladin, high hp, weapon buffs, thats low int and faith as said, you can dump the rest into vigor and str/dex as that curved sword has very low requirements and as an added bonus has bleed on it as well for a nice punch.

From there its just find what you like, right now I rock a bloodfire blade buff, but can do magic, lightning, poison etc etc etc. It's been very handy especially for the open world cause when it rains your lightning does more and fire does less etc.

So this is is a Melee focused build that buffs up your stats like a Paladin. Not the type of play which I was hoping for, but it's still interesting and fun to know.

[Funpire]

So much text in this thread...

Roll vagabond.

Pump Vigor 40 (priority)
Pump Mind to 25-40 (very useful)
Pump End 20+ (eh, good for armor but isn't a huge deal unless you are bad at sta management)
Pump weapons to minimum (no need for str/dex weapon scaling)
Pump Int to 60 (this is your spell/scale stat)

Weapons: Moonveil, DarkMoonGS, Loretta's war sickle, crystal dagger, grave scythe (magic/cold infused), meteoric katana... List goes on.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Frozen Dervish:

For casting:

Catalysts:
Incantations use "Seals" to cast spells.
Sorceries use "Staves" to cast spells.

The scale via the stat on said catalyst. To cast the spells you must also have the base stats needed on the spell itself though the scaling of the spell is based on the catalyst used.

Playing Int you want to focus on Vigor/Mind/Endurance/Intelligence
Playing Faith you want to focus on Vigor/Mind/Endurance/Faith

Though I mentioned the above this actually changes depending on the catalyst used which means say you use a Catalyst that scales via Arcane you may only want to hit the minimum faith/int values to cast the respective spells and instead gain more arcane stats.

The big rub though is that faith/int are expensive by themselves as several spells require 50-60+ in the attribute to even cast let alone use their respective catalysts.

Sword of Night and Flame is a very catch all melee weapon that only needs the bare minimum in the stats to use it as its base values are absurd.

Vigor is definitely needed if you don't want to be 1-shot.
Mind is needed if you wanna cast more than once or twice
Endurance is needed so you can dodge/cast/attack.
Faith/Int are needed to actually cast spells/use catalysts.
Arcane/Dex/Str are basically filler attributes as you pick them up as needed to use your weapons.

Alright, I am learning a lot from this. Thanks! This clears a lot of things for me such as the difference between incantations and spells. STR/DEX/ARC being fillers = noted.

[Juno Brier]

A note on Endurance: Stamina and equip load are certainly useful, but you can probably get away with like 15-20 Endurance if you're using lighter gear. Especially if you wear the talisman that increases stamina recovery. As long as you're not at "heavy load" you're good to go.

[Ellona]

If you wanna go pure spell blade then yeah, go int for sure, it is the flashier of the two schools by far, at a certain point you get to literally throw moons at people. Pair with a katana for hilarious effect.

[Ellona]

Originally posted by Funpire:

So much text in this thread...

Roll vagabond.

Pump Vigor 40 (priority)
Pump Mind to 25-40 (very useful)
Pump End 20+ (eh, good for armor but isn't a huge deal unless you are bad at sta management)
Pump weapons to minimum (no need for str/dex weapon scaling)
Pump Int to 60 (this is your spell/scale stat)

Listen to this person.

[对不起我只会说英语]

Originally posted by Funpire:

So much text in this thread...

So much text indeed XD I am actually reading each one of the replies, but it's hard to reply to each. Though tbh, everyone is being helpful. I am learning a lot and is getting the picture of how I'm going to build my Mage/Melee hybrid later this evening.

[对不起我只会说英语]

I might list every suggested weapons here, though I don't know where to find them (please don't tell me where, discovery is part of the fun), i'll at least know that they're useful once I do find them.