Focused on Faith casting for a few hours

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

I finally gave the faith casting a try, and feel it was not only underwhelming, but mostly set me up for failure. The offensive incantations are okay, but have a long enough animation that it is unusable against the fast bosses (unless summoning ash side kick and/or co-op). The support incantations have such a short duration, that I will have to cast it three or more times in the average boss fight. This is not really something that can be done easily, making it really a choice of pick one, and only do it at the start.

However, I found that I really enjoy using the faith incantations as support for melee. They work very well together. Again, the support are too short in duration for anything more than one, but you can specialize for the specific fight well enough. I found that a couple of the offensive do very well, but I would not rely solely on them. They serve great in combination with melee, for when a boss does a localized aoe, and I throw a black fire ball at them.

This is my take so far. What are your thoughts on Faith incantations? Am I using it wrong and it is overpowered and easy mode? Do you find them to be made for melee support for a balanced character? Do you think that Faith focus is underwhelming with the focus on bleed skills so much?

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Also to note, I am not counting the dragon breaths. Any feedback is welcome.

[KingKangIV]

Lighting spear carries. Faith spells can make you easily take 60%+ less damage against almost any boss. I love the incantations, but while you can get some narly damage with the ancient lighting I really wish we had a things like melinas incantations midgame and radagons lategame along with fast ancient lighting abilities.

[Caz]

Incantations are very underwhelming. The damage and the length of the buffs. Compared to Sorceries, incantations feel like wet noodles.

[DonJuanDoja]

Sup dude. My understanding is you need a ridiculous amount of faith to get good dmg. I saw a build on reddit with 99 faith and he was killing multiple pvp opponents with wrath of gold.

In my experience faith is good as a light support skill, but mostly what you'll get is holy damage and faith weapons. You get a nice little heal you'll never use, but it can save you in a clutch, but I use flame cleanse and lords aid alot. The rest are kinda meh so far.

Just got the faith staff and I'm actually impressed with the blood spells with just 30 faith and +18 on the staff. It's not great but it's a long range bleed/dmg that doesn't take too long to cast and you can do it with no Int. The other briars spell can be cast 3 times for a increasing effect, try it. If you have 10 int you can scale glintstone pebble off faith too with that staff, again, not great, but a warrior with a few decent spells, can come in handy when you need it.

I could get more damage maybe, or have more health and drop the faith but I actually use it all the time and I'm usually using a STR/Fai weapon and holy and or fire damage is actually pretty good against lot of enemies.

[Skeleton Minion]

Just feels like Miracles are meant to supplement a playstyle rather than fully commit to it.

[mpcgannon]

Is this a fresh game or did you respec? I'd like to dabble a bit and try everything.

[KingKangIV]

Originally posted by Caz:

Incantations are very underwhelming. The damage and the length of the buffs. Compared to Sorceries, incantations feel like wet noodles.

1.5k lighting spears melt most things tbh tho and only require 50 faith to get that far.

[PUFFINS]

I used faith incants the whole games because with int everything was blue and that's lame and boring

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by DonJuanDoja:

Sup dude. My understanding is you need a ridiculous amount of faith to get good dmg. I saw a build on reddit with 99 faith and he was killing multiple pvp opponents with wrath of gold.

In my experience faith is good as a light support skill, but mostly what you'll get is holy damage and faith weapons. You get a nice little heal you'll never use, but it can save you in a clutch, but I use flame cleanse and lords aid alot. The rest are kinda meh so far.

Just got the faith staff and I'm actually impressed with the blood spells with just 30 faith and +18 on the staff. It's not great but it's a long range bleed/dmg that doesn't take too long to cast and you can do it with no Int. The other briars spell can be cast 3 times for a increasing effect, try it. If you have 10 int you can scale glintstone pebble off faith too with that staff, again, not great, but a warrior with a few decent spells, can come in handy when you need it.

I could get more damage maybe, or have more health and drop the faith but I actually use it all the time and I'm usually using a STR/Fai weapon and holy and or fire damage is actually pretty good against lot of enemies.

Oh! I am sitting on 50 faith, but I can definitely move some stats around. Lowering Endurance and Strength, both currently at 50, I can reallocate those points. Maybe even lower Vigor to 50 from 60. The talisman make the game far easier, and I do not get one shot anymore. It is all about getting the right gear.

I put intelligence up to 30 when I was trying pure incantation faith build, as some even require up to 31 in the incantation list. I just put on a helmet that added two intelligence.

I feel strength/faith builds are the most powerful in PvE, if you can handle being in melee. A great deal of the late game items and gear are faith orientated. The hammer from the last boss is my go to weapon at the moment as well. Very fun to use a faster weapon. I tried the Moonveil and other bleed builds once, and found them boring. They are not bad, just not how I enjoy playing. But the hammer is perfect. And the FP effect on it is insanely powerful. It has saved me plenty of times, dealing with the flowers and other things, when they throw a bunch of adds on me, that can easily overwhelm me.

I will give the pure caster another try a little later, putting faith much higher. Maybe can afford to get it to 80, if I drop vigor to 40.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by mpcgannon:

Is this a fresh game or did you respec? I'd like to dabble a bit and try everything.

I am using rebirth. My character is level 200 now, was at 170 when starting the New Journey. I enjoy trying many different things as well, which is something that Elden Ring made especially easy to do. The rebirth option is a work of pure genius. So many games lock this out, making you have to replay the entire game to make even minor adjustments. The rebirth option has added a lot more enjoyment for me. Granted, the many play styles are vastly different and unique. There are even sub styles where it is different enough to feel completely different in play. Going from two handed focus in melee to one handed melee has been very fun.

[Is This Your Card? 69]

Originally posted by DonJuanDoja:

Sup dude. My understanding is you need a ridiculous amount of faith to get good dmg. I saw a build on reddit with 99 faith and he was killing multiple pvp opponents with wrath of gold.

No, Wrath of gold is just that strong.
The ♥♥♥♥♥♥ who puts 99 points into something that goes over 80 is wasting 19 points for little extra damage that could've been put into something else more useful.
Sure if you dont care about Meta SL, then by all means, go put 99 points into them.
But the point of having Meta SL is so that we can still find invasions and or duels.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by ROGUE AI:

Just feels like Miracles are meant to supplement a playstyle rather than fully commit to it.

I think this is the case, but it does not mean crazy cool options cannot be made, if done just right. When I used to test games for a few friends in the past, I would do builds that would min max benefits, not necessary stats. Doing so, you can find broken things much easier in a game, from difficulty problems to issues that causes character issues or even crashing by surpassing certain limits. I found it fun to do this, so I end up trying for funsy.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by PUFFINS:

I used faith incants the whole games because with int everything was blue and that's lame and boring

I have not tried the int casting side. I do find the wide variety of presentations for faith incantations to be very welcoming.

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by Not Zane:

Originally posted by DonJuanDoja:

Sup dude. My understanding is you need a ridiculous amount of faith to get good dmg. I saw a build on reddit with 99 faith and he was killing multiple pvp opponents with wrath of gold.

No, Wrath of gold is just that strong.
The ♥♥♥♥♥♥ who puts 99 points into something that goes over 80 is wasting 19 points for little extra damage that could've been put into something else more useful.
Sure if you dont care about Meta SL, then by all means, go put 99 points into them.
But the point of having Meta SL is so that we can still find invasions and or duels.

Ah, so that is why the lower level meta is constantly discussed. Without trying to level obsessively, I hit 170 in my first run through. I just thought people were trying to bash others for leveling when they have the runes, when they spoke of meta in that nature.

Diminishing returns on stat improvements is at every 20 after 60?

[Old Man Gamer (OMG)]

Originally posted by KingKangIV:

Lighting spear carries. Faith spells can make you easily take 60%+ less damage against almost any boss. I love the incantations, but while you can get some narly damage with the ancient lighting I really wish we had a things like melinas incantations midgame and radagons lategame along with fast ancient lighting abilities.

I do see a great benefit in the support incantations. They mesh perfectly for a melee build, to be extremely powerful, or for a weaker geared caster with a light equipment load, to not be a push over. I am finding that I do not need them so much in this current new journey. From what I have read though, by new journey 4, the difficulty will be higher than the first play through.

Would be cool to have an achievement for completely New Journey +7.