Honest Question... Faith vs Intelligence

[Rincevent 83]

Hello,
I have played a few From Software's souls game and, I haven't finished Elden Ring yet.

This is an honest question, I haven't checked -on purpose- internet opinion about that.

Am I the only one to think that in latest games (something like after Dark Souls 2) intel build are less interesting than faith builds ?

- I did'nt said less powerfull
- It just seems to me that a lot of intel spells in Elden R are about throwing various damage from caster to target. It can be called ice, magic, crystal, it can be a pebble, a comet or a what'it, but it all about throwing damage from caster to target
- On contrary, it seems to me that faith spells have healing, have buffs have damage with various shapes area of damages. It just seems more intersting. isn't it ?

[Swordgun]

Faith because: 1) it's much more diverse so you don't get bored spamming the same attack half way through the game. 2) it plays nicely with melee builds. You can buff your melee weapons with faith buffs and also have it so you have 1 spell on one hand and 1 melee weapon on the other hand. 3) it looks cooler (personal preference).

[Myrmuz [IRL]]

I have a pyromancer and a mage. They both 80 in FTH or INT, as well as all the respective gear/talismans.

In terms of damage there isn't a huge difference. For FTH the Giantsflame can easily get to 2000-2500 dmg depending on the target. You can even get +50% to that if you chuck an oil pot first.
The issue is mainly that you will need to charge and then free aim fireballs to get the most out of it, which becomes increasingly difficult the farther away the target is or how fast it moves.
It's very difficult to hit maliketh with giantsflame unless you're point blank.

The mage on the other hand can just pew-pew Comets for similar damage very rapidly. Comet has some tracking in it too so you will usually hit unless the ai has auto-dodge like malenia. For that just use Ancient Death Rancor/Stars of Ruin, or one of the Night spells.
The mage also has Comet Azur, so that's tens of thousands of damage if you can get ai rng to cooperate.

The main difference I have found is that Giantsflame can knock down Malenia like the Blasphemous Blade L2. I think it can do this even uncharged, but not sure. It doesn't knock her out of waterfowl though, from what I've seen. (Maybe the mage frost spells might?)
Also, the Godskin Black Flame Ritual does well vs Elden Beast. And Radagon is very weak to fire so...

The differences, at least in pve, mainly boil down to the boss resistances and movement patterns. If they are fast then sorcery is usually better at hitting them, otherwise I find pyro spells more fun cos they require more thought/reflexes to get the most out of them.
I don't really have experience with the other FTH spells.

[lolschrauber]

Faith is more fun imho.

The spells have more variety, design-wise and damage type-wise. Sorcery is just some flavor blue projectile x100. I also much prefer having a glowing seal in my hand over a staff, just looks-wise.

Though I did find sorceries to be a bit more powerful.

[impuretrash2878]

speaking from a pvp perspective, I find faith a hell of a lot more obnoxious to deal with. Because so many of the attack-oriented incantations linger around for a while or create a big AOE. Most of the really annoying sorceries people used to spam constantly have been nerfed so they're not all that hard to dodge anymore.

[NisseDood]

Originally posted by Clail:

Dark Souls 2 is the only prior game that made INT builds interesting, viable, and fun. While DS3 and DS1 had select stupidly OP spells that could be spammed, they were for the most part not fun to get to a halfway viable point, and had far less variety to their spells.

Elden Ring does magic well enough. I do agree that most sorceries are just a variation of magic missle/glintstone pebble, but overall variety improved from previous games.

Faith might seem to have more variety, but the vast majority of them are buffs or heals. Offensively lighting spear and thunder bolt are the only quick to cast options, all others have lengthy cast times that aren't practical in a lot of situations.

One thing I miss from DS2 is spices.
Its amusing if you even could be bothered for anything other than dmg min max you could spice down Unleash magic from 58 to 10 int requirement to use in a faith build. :V

[Chad "The King" ThunderCuck]

Originally posted by LuckyCheshire777:

Originally posted by Chad "The King" ThunderCuck:

you do know there is a 3rd option in this game, right? and its also the best option : arcane. there are tools for either spells or incantations to make them scale with arcane, and the ones that already do are widely varied and hit like trucks. likewise, pumping that 1 stat and just meeting the minimum fth/int for the spells you want to use, lets you use a wide range of either type, whos damage is uneffected by your low fth/int.

Rather than the stats themselves, the discussion has been more about incantations vs. sorceries. So yes, Arcane exists and can be quite effective, but unless you're going to be switching back and forth between a staff and a seal constantly, you're probably still going to pick one or the other.

both staff and seal weigh virtually nothing, so yes. you can indeed be swapping between them constantly, or rocking both at the same time even for passive buffs. but regardless of how you people are mislabling incantations as "faith" and spells as "intelligence", the fact remains that unless youre shooting for the absolute maximum possible damage, the way to go is always arcane. especially with incantations, because the dragon seal has the highest output of all the seals because its passive effect is bugged and just applies something like 20% boost to every incantation, since like 2 or 3 patches ago.

[crayon eater]

faith is for mewers
int is for edgers

[Heimdall313]

Faith is utility and buffing, the lightning and beast incants are pretty solid. Black Flame is on all my Faith builds.
Int is mostly for damage, but usually degenerates into Pebble carrying you all the way to the nukes. I'm a fan of Magic Glintblade, absolutely fell in love with it on my first caster build (started Prisoner instead of Astrologer). Enemy AI still can't dodge or block it, and it's killer on horseback. You can charge it to increase damage, iirc it edges out Pebble on the FP to damage ratio that way, but main thing is even on invasions you use it to throw curveball timings and catch rolls.
My main gripe about pure Int builds is they can't heal, so I have to have red pots when I'm roaming around, or invest enough faith to hit 10 (minimum to use a seal and Urgent Heal) or 12 (unlocks a few more utility options) and thus take out of Endurance or something.

Running both, you have a few interesting options. Discus from the Golden Order incants is extremely, extremely good FP-to-damage on things like Stonediggers, even on a single tap, for fairly reasonable investment. Rancourcall and Rykard's Rancour were awesome on my "necromancer" character, you also have the Blood spells that need more love, imo.
15 Faith and 12 Arcane so I could heal and pop Rotten Breath on Radahn was pretty fun. I miss that file lol

[itssomuchfun]

Int builds are more focused on sorceries than Faith builds on incantations. I.e. you can play a sorcerer using mainly spells. You'll struggle to do the same with incantations especially at the beginning.

Then , there are a lot of cool sorceries out there , people are just stuck on glintstone ones as the most powerful.

And of course, Azur is great fun. A couple of times.