Whats better? great combustion or black flame.

[Draxur]

i was testing it and great combustion does more dmg but black flame does a greater stamina taker from shields, what is better, i want to know

[Draxur]

also what is the best time to use it when they got backstabs, as soon as i back stab them i use it or wait for abit.

[Empyreo]

black flame does more stamina damage, for example if someone is hiding behinda shield, 1 black flame will often do a shield break, the second will hit them full damage. After a backstab i often miss the flame, so i often try to get a second stab or a run attack on them cuz uk they will roll and just save it for another shot. unless, you did what i did when it first came out, 7 play throughs for 56 black flames. :P

[Draxur]

great combustion does more dmg tho, i tested it and it one shotted the bloat heads and black flame couldn't, i was using maxed pyromacy flame (+5 assended pyromacy flame)

[Draxur]

but i know stamina damage is good too

[Empyreo]

also different mobs have different resistances as well.

[Empyreo]

thing with dark flame is that it does partial physical damage, and black flame is meant to do a lot of poise damage. often times in pvp people will use their shields if they see you charging at them with fire, also this is fantastic vs havel shield turtles. Fire does decent damage through shields as well.

[Empyreo]

tested it on gargoyals. great combust did 713, black flame did 738

[Bullett00th]

having just recently unlocked it I carry both on me.
Combustion for PVE and Black Flame for PVP. Most builds I've faced (which isn't many admittedly) had ridiculous fire resistance anyway.

[Empyreo]

just tested every mob in undead parish, and black flame did more dmg on them all

[Draxur]

guess that undead burg went up in flames haha
get it???

[Draxur]

no one gets it? :( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJxCdh1Ps48

[Empyreo]

i get it. lol :P

[Bullett00th]

Originally posted by SL 15:

just tested every mob in undead parish, and black flame did more dmg on them all

that's weird. my Greater Combustion does more dmg.
Maybe it's tied to the Pyromancy flame level?

[Draxur]

reason is, black flame and great combustion does diffrent dmg, but still one and the same, black flame does phiscal as well as fire while great combustion does more flame dmg, it is better for fire dmg but not better in sheild stamina damging

[crystalgatedh]

The deal with the Black Flame is probably the same as the deal with fire or lightning weapons. Fire and lightning weapons do usually have higher AR than weapons upgraded to the standard path, but standard parth weapons still deal more damage since fire and lightning weapons have split damage, thus two defenses are applied.

Black Flame likely have a higher base damage Greater Combustion, but faces two defenses and therefore ends up dealing less damage for that reason. However, if you use it on enemies with low defenses, low physical defense in particular, Black Flame may end up dealing more damage since the split damage is less of a disadvantage against low defenses. Enemies in Undead Parish probably don't have very high defenses since they are early game enemies, so it makes sense they take more damage from Black Flame.