faith or esotericism for bloodflame blade ?

[achipalachau]

Good morning.

I finished the game 2 years ago but since the DLC came out I'm starting a new game.

I have just picked up "the bloodhound's fang", which I really like, and if I understood correctly one or the best incantation for this weapon (well a bleeding weapon) it would be the incantation "bloodflame blade".

My question is should I increase faith or esotericism to do more damage?

Thank you very much in advance.

[zmanbuilder]

Faith increases the flame damage part, while arcane effects the bleed build up.

[achipalachau]

So I add points only in esotericism ?

[Eric]

Originally posted by achipalachau:

So I add points only in esotericism ?

"highest damage" depends on enemy type. Meaning you will have to choose which you wanna do. Bleed = Arcane, Fire = Faith.

[PandaSav]

There is a talisman that boosts fire, so focus on bleed with Arc points. Fire is mainly flat, Bleed can stack quite alot and if procs hits hard.

[Lilly Satou]

Everyone here is either wrong or not answering in full detail.

'Bloodhound's fang' has no arcane scaling so increasing arcane will have no effect on it. You can't put arcane scaling on it using occult, poison or bleed infusion because it's a somber weapon. You can pair it with the 'Bloodflame blade', but the bleed build up of it is fixed at 40 and levelling arcane will have no effect on it.

Every seal has 'Incant scaling' stat. 'Bloodflame blade' takes the faith part of that scaling and multiplies it by 0.4. What equals is the fire damage you'll be dealing. Most other weapon buffs have higher multipliers like 0.75 of 'Electrify armament' for example. With this we can conclude that increasing your faith also won't give you that much of a damage boost.

To conclude, unless you're going for other spells that use faith, there's no reason to level faith and arcane past the requirements of 'Bloodflame blade'. Focus on dex to increase the direct physical damage of 'Bloodhound's fang'

[Lilly Satou]

♥♥♥♥ everyone else in this thread ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

[Imperator Ricardo]

Bloodflame Blades' Bleed build-up is fixed at 20 build-up per second, for 2 seconds. It will not scale with Arcane, but you can stack the effect if you hit the opponent repeatedly.

You can increase the fire damage with faith and faith-scaling seals, although it is rather inefficient. Arcane Investment will not impact the fire damage scaling, even with a Dragon Communion Seal.
I would recommend treating Bloodflame Blade as a supplement to your Strength/Dexterity build, rather than building around it. Best for weapons with innate bleed build-up, such as the Nagakiba, Great Stars or Flamberge, to name a few examples.
Otherwise, you would be better off just directly creating an Arcane bleed build.