Is the arcane stat actually helping my damage?

[CapNKirkland]

So I'm having a hard time figuring out
If the arcane stat is actually helping my bleed damage any.

I'm running an Unga Bunga dual colossal greatswords build with the bleed effect on them. I'm lvl 200 on NG+ and I havent been having much trouble with enemies or bosses in a long while.

I'm thinking of respecting to atleast bump my strength to 80 and figured I'd pull from the arc and faith stats.

Heres my stats.

V - 60
M - 20
E - 60
S - 77
D - 18
I - 7
F - 16
A - 21

Look, I absolutely suck at math and numbers especially in a system that doesnt really tell you what they do beyond some obvious stuff and weapon requirements. And my brain especially goes limp at the concept of weapon scaling, bit anyway.. should I leave my arcane stats alone for this build?

[Vantris]

Originally posted by Sir Toppor Bottom:

So I'm having a hard time figuring out
If the arcane stat is actually helping my bleed damage any.

I'm running an Unga Bunga dual colossal greatswords build with the bleed effect on them. I'm lvl 200 on NG+ and I havent been having much trouble with enemies or bosses in a long while.

I'm thinking of respecting to atleast bump my strength to 80 and figured I'd pull from the arc and faith stats.

Heres my stats.

V - 60
M - 20
E - 60
S - 77
D - 18
I - 7
F - 16
A - 21

Look, I absolutely suck at math and numbers especially in a system that doesnt really tell you what they do beyond some obvious stuff and weapon requirements. And my brain especially goes limp at the concept of weapon scaling, bit anyway.. should I leave my arcane stats alone for this build?

In this case your minimal investment into arcane is most likely helping your status build up rate more so then your direct damage as you are using primarily strength based weapons. Personally I would drop bleed infusion and arcane and instead invest into faith and fire infuse your colossal greatswords instead. For reference fire infusions scale with strength.

[MULTIPASS]

Arcane would increase the amount of bleed buildup per hit, potentially triggering the bleed effect in fewer hits. It doesn't affect how much damage is done when bleed triggers. The increase to buildup caps at about 60 arcane.

[Sabaithal]

Arcane affects two main things
- Bleed buildup and certain bleed-based weapons
- Dragon communion seal, with dragon communion incantations

If you're not doing either of those as your primary there isn't really much point.

[Frank B]

I use two reduvia's with an 82 arcane stat and bleed everything but bosses with a few swings. My bleed is at 98 on the right hand and 95 on the left. Arcane also increases the reduvia's attack power.

[MULTIPASS]

Alternatively, you could take a weapon that already has bleed and use occult affinity - then arcane would increase bleed buildup and damage too, you just wouldn't get bleed as high as blood affinity. It works great on things like the flamberge, great stars, and scavenger curved swords.

[Nutsmasher]

You need a weapon to have bleed and arcane stat scaling for it to really help.

[Rivaldman]

So, if you want the stat to be useful, you may try to infuse your weapon with bleed. Weapon with bleed will have additional scaling with Arcane. That way, if you boost Arcane,

1) it helps increase the weapon damage
2) it helps (speeds up) increase blood loss build-up, which deals a large proportional health damage when inflicted.

[River Victor]

There are two parts of your dmg.

Arcane will increase your RAW damage only when your wpn has arcane scaling. If you alter your wpn to bleed via ash of war, then your wpn will have arcane stat. Instead of scaling off str or dex, it will take arcane into account and increase off or decrease off that stat too, depending how high/low the arcane is.

Arcane will increase the build up of bleed. The build up rate increase, but the damage of bleed remains constant and depends on the enemy HP itself.

[Hamshank cat]

get a weapon that has natural arcane build up in it (ripple crescent halberd, ripple blade) the grease buildups increase vastly on them and actually scales with arcane

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Arc isn't like ds3 luck, you don't get a boost to buildup unless your weapon scales with it. The boost isn't anything like dex's boost to cast speed or fall damage reduction, it's not a character property. You need arc scaling for it to work.

Strength and dex suck past the mid fifties. By about 50 the levels get lower as you go (or flatline for int/fai/arc melee) until they run into a ditch at 60. The next 20 levels are usually around as big as the 56th depending on your affinity, but 54 strength already equals 81 while twohanded, since you get a 50% bonus.

More importantly damage stats just tend to be ass compared to vig, though you've got 60 vig anyways. But really you're getting like a third more health for the last 20 levels of vig whereas adding 20 levels on a damage stat won't usually even give you a quarter.

Try some weapons with innate bleed on them and then use the occult affinity, or the mohgwyn spear.

[Dr.Abscondus]

Weapon has to scale with Arcane for it to affect bleed. Only two greatswords in the game scale with Arcane, Marais Executioner's Sword and Morgott's Cursed Sword. Only Morgott's has bleed, but it scales more strongly to Dexterity.

[cgillmore85]

Originally posted by Dr.Abscondus:

Weapon has to scale with Arcane for it to affect bleed. Only two greatswords in the game scale with Arcane, Marais Executioner's Sword and Morgott's Cursed Sword. Only Morgott's has bleed, but it scales more strongly to Dexterity.

The way I understand it is: bleed scales with arcane regardless of the weapon having arcane scaling. Like the Flamberge, for example, if you put points into arcane, the bleed number will rise, but damage will stay the same. But damage scales off Dex and STR only.

[SMOOTHIE_KING]

Originally posted by cgillmore85:

The way I understand it is: bleed scales with arcane regardless of the weapon having arcane scaling. Like the Flamberge, for example, if you put points into arcane, the bleed number will rise, but damage will stay the same. But damage scales off Dex and STR only.

No. Arcane doesn't increase the bleed buildup if you don't have arcane scaling. It's not like ds3 luck.

[KleinGulo]

Watch this.
https://youtu.be/iiRUWEe_q3Y

[Heimdall313]

Originally posted by Sabaithal:

Arcane affects two main things
- Bleed buildup and certain bleed-based weapons
- Dragon communion seal, with dragon communion incantations

If you're not doing either of those as your primary there isn't really much point.

Or Ripple Blade. lol