What does the stat "faith" really do?

[xRKK]

And Is it worth investing in as a magic class?

[LittleEtherKitty]

Faith seems to be a good anti-mage stat and makes for a decent dagger build main stat.

[Norm Macdonald's Ghost]

Originally posted by Vitica:

What does the stat "faith" really do?

It satisfies stat requirements, and generally raises holy, lightning, and fire damage.

Originally posted by Vitica:

And Is it worth investing in as a magic class?

If you're casting incants? Sure.

[This PC]

There's some pretty good faith spells, like Black Flame, which does HP %'age damage with its dot component and can be boosted with a seal that is easily acquired early, about at the same time as the prayerbook to unlock black flame. They're both in Stormveil.

[Augustine]

faith scales armaments that have a faith scaling similar to many other stats but with themes on fire, holy, lightning and like beast magic. You could probably do a decent sized write up on all the peculiarities but for example you get a seal with a B faith scaling then increasing faith increases it's spell attack power, I forget the proper stat name. That stat is multiplied by a given spells multiplier in the damage formula. But not all seals even have high faith scaling. The one special and complicated thing is weapon enchants only scale with the faith portion of your seals spell attack power, but I'll leave that for your own research.

On weapons it typically increases fire or holy damage, but there is at least one exception that increases physical. There isn't a simple breakdown like other games, but if you make a faith build you should expect to lean into fire and holy damage but there are options for all the damage types and faith is probably the most versatile and varied single stat build all things considered.

[This PC]

Oh yeah stat scaling is an important concept in this game. ;o

"Most weapons possess scaling values, which cause the weapon's damage to increase in accordance with an associated stat. Weapons can scale with Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, Faith or Arcane. Scaling affinity with each stat is signified by a letter icon on the weapon's information."

Scaling goes from D to S, S being the best, and some weapons do scale with faith, as will any weapon you put a sacred Ash of War on, so beyond getting the stats to put X weapon on or use Y spell, at some point you'll find yourself dumping stats to actually scale your damage. ^^''

Stats also have soft caps where you get diminished scaling returns if you invest beyond a certain point. For example, spell scaling for faith starts dropping off beyond 60, and vastly does beyond 80.