The Problem with Faith

[Bees?]

I’ve always loved being a pure Faith build in other Dark Souls games. Especially DS3, despite how people said it was awful, since ToD + Lightning Stake + Perseverence was just too fun to stop doing. The spells felt powerful in PvE, they were all a decent speed, and there were a litany of good weapons for a hybrid Faith build to use.

Not in Elden Ring.

In Elden Ring, incantations are comically weak, especially compared to their Sorcery counterparts. The Dragon Cult incantations are all RIDICULOUSLY slow, essentially being variations of the same AoE spell, while the Lightning Spear you get in Liurnia outperforms them beat for beat.

Even if you min-max your build to do as much damage as you can with something like Giantsflame Take Thee, you’ll still be getting mogged by a dude who has like 30 int and Stars of Ruin.

It’s no better in PvP.

Half of the bosses in the game resist Faith. They resist Fire and Lightning very frequently, and a certain boss HEALS FROM HOLY.

And now, the weapons.

Faith weapons will do a mix of Fire + Phys or Holy + Phys. The only viable one is Fire, since again, half the game straight-up resists Holy.

Most Faith weapons are Faith + Strength, but those are mostly all pretty bad weapons, except for

1. the Crucible Knight weapons

2. Magma Wyrm Scalesword

Every other faith weapon is Faith + Dex (and one faith + int) and they’re ALL SO GOOD.

One thing I wanted so badly was an upgrade to Lightning Spear, and while none exist in Incantation form, it does exist as an Ash of War…

On a pure Dex weapon.

Why, Miyazaki? Why must you curse us so?

[Amereth]

Publicado originalmente por NeonRed:

Publicado originalmente por Amereth:

he is actually right, healing doesn't scale with dragon communion seal, it is probably a bug.

Something is for sure bugged with certain things scaling off hybrid stats for sor/incant scaling. A weapon buff is supposed to scale off the X scaling value on the your stat sheet but when you use something like claw seal it's only counting the faith value put towards that incant value.

Example: using Electrify Armament is a 75% of incant scaling damage buff and I have a clawmark (unleveled just cause) with 141 incant. After buff I'm only getting an +83 damage buff when I should be getting +105 (not sure if game rounds the extra 0.75) which means the game isn't seeing I have a 141 value and instead sees it as 111.

For sure has to be a bug because remember they screwed up Arcane scaling properly for certain things and had to be fixed.

pretty sure it is bugged.

i played with an hybrid faith/arcane for a little bit before returning to my pure faith

i was playing with 40 faith and 50 arcane and the healing was vastly inferior to my 80 faith build, it is crazy how good the healing is with pure faith compared to when i was using the dragon seal communion.

hybrid faith/arcane seem to be the way to go for pure dmg right now.

pretty sure dragon communion seal with my hybrid was doing more dmg than my erdtree seal with pure faith.

[Merik Lobo]

Publicado originalmente por NeonRed:

Only thing I find weird about Faith as a stat is that is has no secondary effect like every other stat; It should at least increase holy defense instead of arcane, which for some reason has 3 effects loaded into it (item discovery, holy defense and vitality)

it should increase lightning resist. currently no stat increases lightning resist.

[Naewyng]

Czech out this video:
https://youtu.be/sr9j5zrsUng

[Bees?]

I really don't see when this build is weak (except PvP ? i don't do PvP so i cannot know),[/quote]

Bingo. It’s nothing in PvP- I excluded Blasphemous Blade from the strong weapons because I consider it an outlier with an incoming nerf in a month or two. Even if it’s great in PvE, it isn’t as good in PvP since it’s ash of war is very easily dodged. (Unless you’re ganking with it. If so, shame on you. Dishonor on your family.)

[Nerevar]

tc is the classic case of not even trying. and anyone who brings up the elden beast holy immunity as an argument againist faith is a troll or a casulgamer. like dude. thats the FINAL BOSS. by that time faith has so much elemental disposal available it doesnt ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ matter at all.
why? bring pest threads. a pure faith based incant spell. you need NOTHING ELSE to beat elden beast with pure faith.

casuls think they MUST USE HOLY when playing faith. WRONG. you dont. you just think you should. but plenty of better options.

i finished the game as a level 40 and i only used FAITH offensive spells. i steamrolled most of the game thanks to lighting spear alone already.

the only thing i can agree on here is that the highend incants are lacking for the most part. ancient dragon lighting SPEAR and fortissax spear suck.

they need hyperarmor on cast or be flat out redesigned. frozen lighting spear is decent but there is better incants for big targets.

lannseax glaive. ABSOLUTLY COOL. and ABSOLUTLY USELESS at the same time. needs buff in literally every category to be useful ever.

ancient dragin lighting STRIKE is crazy strong but aquired so late its useless for most of the game on first run. the spell itself is fine tough.

pest threads. increase the range. rest is fine. mobs have infinite range with this ♥♥♥♥. why is the player range so stupid low? great on super large bosses tough.

plenty of good faith weapons. no need to argue on that front.

overall what faith could need the most is UNFALTERING PRAYER from ds3. seriously. why seals dont get that as a weaponart is beyond me.

but its not nearly as underpowered as tc claims it is.

sorcercy is currently overbuffed because the moron dev in charge of balance is a big sorcercy fan. hopefully he removed in due time. the bias is pretty obivious towards int builds in this game.

[Bleezip]

Publicado originalmente por hemorrhage911:

LOL what? I have faith at 67 right now and I'm destroying everything with lightning spear. Toss up Elden Stars while spamming other faiths kills.

If you are comparing everything to a single OP sorcery or bleed, of course it will look "weak". Faith is actually balanced.

That's interesting. Isn't lightning spear scaled with dex now instead of faith?

[Nerevar]

Publicado originalmente por Bleezip:

Publicado originalmente por hemorrhage911:

LOL what? I have faith at 67 right now and I'm destroying everything with lightning spear. Toss up Elden Stars while spamming other faiths kills.

If you are comparing everything to a single OP sorcery or bleed, of course it will look "weak". Faith is actually balanced.

That's interesting. Isn't lightning spear scaled with dex now instead of faith?

sigh. who spread that missinformation? the only lighting stuff that scales with dex is ASHES OF WAR which there is precisely 3 off that arent unique skills. which might even be a bug given lighting was always a faith thing and dex already provides castspeed.

[chewonthis]

Publicado originalmente por Naewyng:

Czech out this video:
https://youtu.be/sr9j5zrsUng

I can tell you right now. 10 across the board and 40 faith is not one shotting the game. The build that does one shot bosses is lvl 150. That's just a "starter" to get you buy first 2 bosses and your not one shotting second boss unless you get lucky.

At 150 they are cutting alot of QOL to run 80 faith as well.

[Bleezip]

Publicado originalmente por Nerevar:

Publicado originalmente por Bleezip:

That's interesting. Isn't lightning spear scaled with dex now instead of faith?

sigh. who spread that missinformation? the only lighting stuff that scales with dex is ASHES OF WAR which there is precisely 3 off that arent unique skills. which might even be a bug given lighting was always a faith thing and dex already provides castspeed.

Ah okies. I was a bit confused is all, since I remember hearing lightning related miracles scaled with faith.

I knew lightning was always a faith thing which was why I was confused about that info going around.

[Naewyng]

Publicado originalmente por chewonthis:

Publicado originalmente por Naewyng:

Czech out this video:
https://youtu.be/sr9j5zrsUng

I can tell you right now. 10 across the board and 40 faith is not one shotting the game. The build that does one shot bosses is lvl 150. That's just a "starter" to get you buy first 2 bosses and your not one shotting second boss unless you get lucky.

Well yes, you will improve onto the build the more you play, the thing is, even if you don't one shot bosses, 2shotting them with barely any effort should still rank pretty high, no? :)

[Nerevar]

Publicado originalmente por chewonthis:

Publicado originalmente por Naewyng:

Czech out this video:
https://youtu.be/sr9j5zrsUng

I can tell you right now. 10 across the board and 40 faith is not one shotting the game. The build that does one shot bosses is lvl 150. That's just a "starter" to get you buy first 2 bosses and your not one shotting second boss unless you get lucky.

ignore that video guide. the idiot who made it literally tells you to use glitches to get spells early. like wrong warp. that isnt a guide at all.

[Amereth]

Publicado originalmente por Naewyng:

Publicado originalmente por chewonthis:

I can tell you right now. 10 across the board and 40 faith is not one shotting the game. The build that does one shot bosses is lvl 150. That's just a "starter" to get you buy first 2 bosses and your not one shotting second boss unless you get lucky.

Well yes, you will improve onto the build the more you play, the thing is, even if you don't one shot bosses, 2shotting them with barely any effort should still rank pretty high, no? :)

2 shotting what boss ? radahn ?

or a pumpkin head in limgrave ?

[chewonthis]

There nothing wrong with wrong warp....especially if you have already beaten the game multiple times......What are you going to do? take the belfry tower to the spider you just killed on your second play through at the beginning? there not even a grace there.

[Drukaris]

what a maidenless topic smh

[Nerevar]

Publicado originalmente por chewonthis:

There nothing wrong with wrong warp....especially if you have already beaten the game multiple times......

there is. its nothing else but cheating. may aswell edit yourself a character in if you do that. like seriously. dont try to excuse cheating. its pathetic. even speedrunners have categorys for these things for a reason.