Is upgrading staves/seals worth it?

[Mecharion]

Im not into magic that much - is it worth to put smithing stones into your staves/seals?

How does it affect your spells?

Regards

[Mr.Hmm]

Yes its worth it in the sense that upgrading them means you get a better sorcery/incantation scaling from the staves/seals thus your sorcery/incantations dealing higher damage.

[Sonnenbank]

Upgrading staffs/seals gives more scaling.

However its a bit different from normal weapons

while with normal weapons the Upgrade Level is far more important than stats
with magic its the other way round.
upgrading still does add damage to spells but investing in stats gives more damage

[VonRaven 666]

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

Upgrading staffs/seals gives more scaling.

However its a bit different from normal weapons

while with normal weapons the Upgrade Level is far more important than stats
with magic its the other way round.
upgrading still does add damage to spells but investing in stats gives more damage

[Northstrider]

Yes, it is. Because the scaling increases so the sorcery and incantation scaling rises as well since these two factors depend on the stat scaling.

[Lina]

literally no lose doing upgrades with stones 1 through 9 since you have an unlimited amount of them. if you dont want to blow the ancient stones on them because they arent the primary focus of your build then dont but you can buy as many somber and normal smithing stones as you want

[Aqua Akai]

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

Upgrading staffs/seals gives more scaling.

However its a bit different from normal weapons

while with normal weapons the Upgrade Level is far more important than stats
with magic its the other way round.
upgrading still does add damage to spells but investing in stats gives more damage

id like to add that while all this is true some of the staves and seals give a bonus to specific types of magic ex: the claw seal ups the beast magic and its a decent chunk

[Sonnenbank]

Originally posted by Aqua:

Originally posted by Sonnenbank:

Upgrading staffs/seals gives more scaling.

However its a bit different from normal weapons

while with normal weapons the Upgrade Level is far more important than stats
with magic its the other way round.
upgrading still does add damage to spells but investing in stats gives more damage

id like to add that while all this is true some of the staves and seals give a bonus to specific types of magic ex: the claw seal ups the beast magic and its a decent chunk

yepp specific staffs and seals give massive bonus damage to some specific sorcerys and incantations

its always a good thing to use those since their bonus damage is ~ 30% which outweighs stats and scaling almost always

[Mecharion]

So if a seal for example has a E scaling for strength and a B scaling for Faith that means that str/faith increase the damage of a spell? right?

[smythny]

Originally posted by Mecharion:

So if a seal for example has a E scaling for strength and a B scaling for Faith that means that str/faith increase the damage of a spell? right?

Yes. As you upgrade it, the scaling will increase as well as the base Incantation scaling.

[Mr Robert House]

Originally posted by Mecharion:

So if a seal for example has a E scaling for strength and a B scaling for Faith that means that str/faith increase the damage of a spell? right?

The wiki says strength just affects melee damage of the seal, but idk if it can be trusted

edit the E strength scaling that is

[Daliena]

Originally posted by Mecharion:

So if a seal for example has a E scaling for strength and a B scaling for Faith that means that str/faith increase the damage of a spell? right?

Only with the Clawmark Seal and Frenzied Flame Seal. For most of them, Str only increases the damage of physically beating people over the head with the seal.

Clawmark's and Frenzied Flame's spellcasting scales with STR/FTH, Golden Order's scales with INT/FTH, and Dragon Communion Seal's spellcasting scales with FTH/ARC.

Edit: Correcting myself, Frenzied Flame Seal scales with STR/DEX/INT/FTH

[Sabaithal]

Well, an upgrade is still better than no upgrade. And with the proper bell bearings you can get infinite amounts of everything except the +25/+10 somber materials for weapons.

So there's not really a reason not to if you use them regularly.

[Aqua Akai]

there is also a 2 armor sets that up grade some spells that being the thorn magic which is mad tongues set and the crucible knight set that upgrades the aspect incants (tail swipe, the shoulder bash, and the fire breathing) wearing the full set is a 15% increse adding to the others i could be wrong on the exact number though edit: this part is just a opinion but i had so much fun with the aspect magic i greatly encourage people to try them out

[Xengre]

Almost all your dmg/scaling comes from upgrading the seal/staff. Very little comes from your actual stats. The issue is higher upgraded catalyst result in steeper scaling and it doens't matter what your stats are if the scaling is too low such as a C or worse D/E.

Take Lusat's Staff for example which is iirc the best scaling staff in the game. Caps at +10 upgrades.

Lusat's Staff +0 (52 int, min to wield) = 161 scaling
Lusat's Staff +10 (52 int, min to wield) = 284 scaling

Lusat's Staff +0 (80 int) = 204 scaling
Lusat's Staff +10 (80 int) = 413 scaling

At 52 int it got a +76% boost going to +10
At 80 int it got a +102% boost going to +10

However...
The jump to 80 Int at +0 only got a 26% boost.
The jump to 80 int at +10 only got a 45% boost.

As you can see the largest gains, by far, were made by simply upgrading it. A similar logic applies to melee weapon upgrades which is why Str/Dex/Int/Fth scaling for melee weapons is so irrelevant in contrast to the vital and powerful scaling of Vigor for HP, especially early when you have poor scaling.

The above example is actually very biased towards stat upgrades, too, because we start from a high 52 Int stat. For most catalyst and weapons you start from much lower so if we had compared to a sharp investment of 80 in a stat, or something similar (60, etc.) then you're looking at an even greater stat investment to garner that scaling jump in contrast to a meager weapon upgrade for a superior jump.