is faith really bad?

[Stellar Fox]

i'm level 40 with that faith scythe you get from one of the first chests and black flame spells+normal flame spells. i've got low hp because of the amount of points i had to put into dex and faith for the weapon and spell, which means i get oneshot by the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses.
i'd be fine with that except for the fact that i do no damage. the scythe is fast at least, but it still takes me a full combo to kill the trashiest enemy. those faith spells do 0 damage to all bosses (unless they're extremely weak to fire) and take so long to cast i cannot use them in boss fights without trading hits.

am i supposed to throw more than 10 hours away and make a new character just because i didn't want to spoil myself and chose the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ magic or is this just a skill issue

[Despiser]

You can respec relatively early after defeating Rennela. Alternatively, blasphemous blade is one of the best weapons in the game but you want faith to be 50 for its special ability do do a lot of damage.

[Silent Warrior]

Don't worry, that wasn't a bad choice.
Maybe you're just too early in your game to find the good stuff, but faith can become very strong and you can use it to your advantage in many ways: healing, cure status effects, buff your weapon's damage, ranged attacks.
It will become much stronger when you upgrade your talisman, also make sure to use the right talisman for your stats.
In early game or with low faith the fire pots are stronger than Flame Sling, that's true. But Catch Flame is a good and fast melee spell and Black Flame is excellent. Also equip Lightning Spear, that's a bit faster and bosses can't dodge it so easy.
When you're going for Faith / Dex your goal should also be to get the Goodslayer Greatsword.

[Sc0rpiTr0n]

At low levels only physical builds are really viable.

At high levels (80-150 and beyond) Faith is very powerful.

By the way Sacred Blade Ash of War is powerful even on low levels.

[Citizen of Zozo]

If you're good enough (and just don't get hit) low health isn't really an issue, but for a new player it's absolutely best to invest heavily into Vigor. You're gonna get hit. A lot. It's just a fact.

To answer the threads question: Faith is really good. It provides healing spells, allowing you to safely allocate some blue flasks and fewer red flasks without hurting your ability to heal yourself.
Faith also gets many powerful and useful offensive spells, but you must upgrade a Faith Seal to really get the most out of them and that can be a tall order early on when all your upgrade mats are being put towards your weapon.

An important thing to remember about that scythe you're using is that it inflicts Bleed. A status effect. Whenever you hit an enemy you are building up an invisible bar on them that, when filled, 'causes them to take a big burst of damage. As long as they are vulnerable to Bleed, that is. If the enemies are made of stone or wood or for whatever other reason they do not *have* blood, then they will not Bleed.

[Sephylon]

winged scythe isn't really worth it imo, especially for the early game. Imo you should be focusing on vig till around 30~40 before pumping other stats.

[Stellar Fox]

Originally posted by Silent Warrior:

Don't worry, that wasn't a bad choice.
Maybe you're just too early in your game to find the good stuff, but faith can become very strong and you can use it to your advantage in many ways: healing, cure status effects, buff your weapon's damage, ranged attacks.
It will become much stronger when you upgrade your talisman, also make sure to use the right talisman for your stats.
In early game or with low faith the fire pots are stronger than Flame Sling, that's true. But Catch Flame is a good and fast melee spell and Black Flame is excellent. Also equip Lightning Spear, that's a bit faster and bosses can't dodge it so easy.
When you're going for Faith / Dex your goal should also be to get the Goodslayer Greatsword.

the thing is, for healing and dealing with status effects you've got other items. i assume spell buffs are stronger than item buffs and built in scaling for some weapons. but most of the time i'm just using offensive spells.
i feel like i could do the same job with a strength or dex character: pots do more damage than faith spells and you have a bigger variety of pots compared to spells (at least at the point where i'm at), so you can adapt to each enemy and boss to do even more damage.
i feel like i should respec into int and just use melee as a backup

[Lynfinity]

Holy-based weapons and Incantations are indeed not as good as you would've liked them to be. Everyone and their mother has some Holy resistance, especially noticeable in boss fights.

Incantations in general, however, are very much capable of rivaling Sorceries if you know what you're doing.

For starters, the upgrade level and scaling on your seals matter a lot. Simply relying on Faith won't get you far.

Besides that, some Incants are pretty busted as is, you just have to experiment. But to lend you a little helping hand - seek "Catch Flame". It is Prophet's starter incant, and you can also buy it from Corwyn. Even with the basic-ass seal and no upgrades, this thing decimates anything foolish enough to stand in its way. Imagine what you can do with more overall power and buffs.

Black Flame incants deal more damage the more max HP your target has, so little-to-no use against trash mobs.

Lightning incants in general work well throughout the whole game, and one late-game incant in particular is a well-known boss killer.

All the more, certain seals provide an additional boost in damage for certain groups of incants, so watch out for those as well.

[Sephylon]

Originally posted by Stellar Fox:

the thing is, for healing and dealing with status effects you've got other items. i assume spell buffs are stronger than item buffs and built in scaling for some weapons. but most of the time i'm just using offensive spells.
i feel like i could do the same job with a strength or dex character: pots do more damage than faith spells and you have a bigger variety of pots compared to spells (at least at the point where i'm at), so you can adapt to each enemy and boss to do even more damage.
i feel like i should respec into int and just use melee as a backup

Depends how you build. Saying this as an int main: incantations have a wider variety than sorceries, having access to lightning, fire, holy and physical, with each having their own niches.

Holy spells are mostly accessed at a time when everything you're fighting resists holy. Its main drawback is that most of them require you to hybridize as int/fai, and that alot of bosses are very resistant to holy.

Lightning spells are accessible early game but you need to be able to kill a leyndell knight to get the book to have access to it. The rest of the lightning spells come in from the late game areas.

Fire spells are accessible early game and has access to catch flame which is both fp efficient and deals surprising damage due to its fast casting. It also has access to the most types of spells (frenzied flame, black flame, giant's/monk's flame, and bloodflame) accessible at various points in the game. Additionally most of the monster in game are weak to fire with a handful of exceptions.

Physical incants are obtained either from doing gurranq's quest for the beastial incants, or via dragon communion. Dragon spells also have access to fire and magic damage and are capable of inflicting rot and frost. Beast incants take a while to acquire as you need to do gurranq's quest, while dragon spells are restricted by requiring dragon hearts to acquire.

[Bakeneko]

You can also try sneaking into Redmane castle to get the red-hot whetblade + flaming strike. Put it on a longsword, change the scaling to faith and you are good to go.

[Big Daddy-Chan]

Scaling is trash early game until you start upgrading your weapon, I'd invest in the minimum to use your stuff for now and spread the rest into Vit, Mind, End however you prefer.

[Leland Gaunt]

This sorcerer play style but with half the range has already cost me some keybord buttons. The casting noise of Glinstone spells is even worse

[Jimothy]

Try to have more than one way to attack. You could have a faith weapon scale with a bleed using bloodflame blade, use it with a weapon that has innate bleed stack and boom, you're off to the races.

In any build if you have only one vector of attack you're easy to beat, unless you're spamming laser sword.

[Forest]

Faith is not bad. Holy damage how ever.............

[EF_Neo1st]

Originally posted by Stellar Fox:

i'm level 40 with that faith scythe you get from one of the first chests and black flame spells+normal flame spells. i've got low hp because of the amount of points i had to put into dex and faith for the weapon and spell, which means i get oneshot by the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ bosses.
i'd be fine with that except for the fact that i do no damage. the scythe is fast at least, but it still takes me a full combo to kill the trashiest enemy. those faith spells do 0 damage to all bosses (unless they're extremely weak to fire) and take so long to cast i cannot use them in boss fights without trading hits.

am i supposed to throw more than 10 hours away and make a new character just because i didn't want to spoil myself and chose the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ magic or is this just a skill issue

Weapons deal more damage based on the weapon lvl not on your stats.
Your stats help, yes, but just a bit and depending on the weapon scaling for the stat, while weapon lvl increase it more.

Want a good FAITH weapon?
Tree Sentinel Golden Halberd (yes, the very first "big" enemy in the game), spend just a bit at STR to be able to 2hand it and go bonking stuff with more damage (and remember to lvl up the weapon).

[EF_Neo1st]

I meam, it uses FAITH...
And hits hard.