Build: Pyro vs. Mage.

[OnionBro]

I've played almost 400 hrs of ds3 on pc, 250 of DS1 on ps3, and 100 of bloodborne, never tried this, but im wondering which build would be better since i've tried like every build in souls already, and im wondering which one to go with, pyro or mage.

[OnionBro]

Anyone?

[JellyPuff]

PvE wise on your first playthrough, i'd say do whatever you feel like, man.

The one good thing about pyromancies are, as usual, they do not require any stat investments to use. (note: Fire damage does scale with both INT and FTH in this game). Fire resistance is typically high amongst most enemies here. Stuff like Poison Mist will prove the most helpful to you.

Sorceries will be generally more useful in PvE throughout the game. High INT Crystal Soul Spears wreck just about any boss in a couple of hits. Better buffs (Pyro only got Flame Weapon, which is pretty much the worst weapon buff in the game) as well as some utility, like Repair (you'll really appreciate that one). Also Blue Flame is such a fun weapon - a sword that can cast spells. Raw-infuse that bad boy and buff it with Great Magic Weapon and blast away. You can still equip some pyros alongside it as well, however, you may run into attunement problems, so keep that in mind.

[Morsk]

Mage is better in DS2. Dark and Mage are the only casters I'd recommend leveling as in this one. Dark is easier obviously, because heals, but Mage has longer range and isn't bad.

[OnionBro]

Any other tips for beginning this? how much points should i put in intelligence and vitality and such.

[Morsk]

Mage scaling is special and has a mini soft cap at 20, in addition to the one at 40. So rush 20 int, then decide whether you want to pick up some secondary stats, before going for 40 int.

edit: this scaling chart that shows it http://darksouls2.wikidot.com/magic-atk-bonus

[King Robert Baratheon]

Being a mage is easier but being a pyro is more fun imo. Pyromancy has poison mist and toxic mist which is great for killing enemies before they can even reach you (enemies trapped in cages, enemies you know are in the next room so you cast toxic mist through the wall, etc). Some sorcery spells are really fun though as well. Like Soul Flash is basically WoTG for sorcerers. It's great for trolling people in pvp (it will knock them on their a$$ if you time it right and it does decent damage) and clearing out groups of enemies that have low poise. It can even stagger some dlc enemies (which are notorious for having a lot of poise). Also sorcery starts you off with a lot more casts than pyromancy. For some reason pyromancy and miracles start off with very few casts in dark souls 2 but pyromancy is much stronger than miracles so it's nothing to seriously worry about. I think you'll have more fun as a pyromancer because of awesome spells like chaos firestorm, forbidden sun, outcry (a slightly stronger version of firestorm) and fire snake (the perfect spell to punish people who run away from you in pvp, it has insane tracking). Then you have the cast speed of sorcery which always seems to faster than casting pyromancy. If a sorcerer with 50 INT and 50 attunement had a shootout with a pyromancer who had 50 int, 50 faith and 50 attunement I would think that the sorcerer could fire off two crystal soul spears before the pyromancer could cast a second forbidden sun. The witchtree branch has insane cast speed but the Staff of Wisdom has S scaling in Intelligence iirc. If you get the clear bluestone ring +2 then you probably would want to use the staff of wisdom. There are only 3 items that boost your pyromancies in dark souls 2 iirc. First is the lost sinner's gauntlets purchased from Maughlin after you spend a certain amount of souls at his shop, second is the fire clutch ring which is in the Ivory King DLC after you beat Aava, and last is the King's Ring which gives you a small boost in pyromancy damage so it's not really worth it imo.

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by The baked bagel:

Any other tips for beginning this? how much points should i put in intelligence and vitality and such.

You want VIG at 50 no matter what. If you wanna go mage, high INT (40-50(***)) is a no brainer. I recommend a build calculator for ATTN and ADP. The reason for that are the iFrames of your dodgeroll. They are dependant on the Agility stat of your character, which can be increased by both ADP (mainly) and ATTN (slightly). So up ATTN until you have the amount of attunement slots you want and then raise ADP until your agility is atleast at 96 (DkS1 mid-roll, but still better due to less input lag). The next iFrame you get is at 99 agility. END at 20 is fine. VIT only if you really want to use heavy armor/weapons. STR/DEX until you meet the requirements of the weapon/s you wanna use.

(***)If you like minmaxing, there are "spices" in this game. A certain NPC takes these in order to reduce the stat requirement on a spell.

[King Robert Baratheon]

Originally posted by Jellypuff:

Originally posted by The baked bagel:

Any other tips for beginning this? how much points should i put in intelligence and vitality and such.

You want VIG at 50 no matter what. If you wanna go mage, high INT (40-50(***)) is a no brainer. I recommend a build calculator for ATTN and ADP. The reason for that are the iFrames of your dodgeroll. They are dependant on the Agility stat of your character, which can be increased by both ADP (mainly) and ATTN (slightly). So up ATTN until you have the amount of attunement slots you want and then raise ADP until your agility is atleast at 96 (DkS1 mid-roll, but still better due to less input lag). The next iFrame you get is at 99 agility.

(***)If you like minmaxing, there are "spices" in this game. A certain NPC takes these in order to reduce the stat requirement on a spell.

I wouldn't advise using spices because they make offensive spells less powerful and weapon/character buffs not last as long. It's only useful if you really don't want to spec into large amounts of int and/or faith.

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by Forossan Knight:

I wouldn't advise using spices because they make offensive spells less powerful and weapon/character buffs not last as long. It's only useful if you really don't want to spec into large amounts of int and/or faith.

Well, duh, but that's not because of spices themselves. You just have lower INT than you'd normally have. One minute is all you need for Unleash Magic.

[King Robert Baratheon]

Oh and unfortunately dark souls 2 does not have the pyromancy Power Within. Feelsbadman. Every time I cast flash sweat i'm like "I wish that was Power Within" . They did give sorcerers a power within style buff though. It's called Unleash Magic and it temporarily lowers your max health for a bit but you get extra magic damage (as well as a cool looking blue aura).

Edit: apparently it boosts ALL magic damage by 20% for 60 seconds at the cost of 30% of your hp. I don't believe that though. I figured it just buffed sorceries. Anyways it requires 58 intelligence. Most pyromancers stop 30 int and 30 faith as that's the soft cap for pyromancy damage but I've always gone to at least 50 and 50 faith to get as much pyro damage as possible (within reason).

http://darksouls2.wiki.fextralife.com/Unleash+Magic

[Аkiminator]

Being sorcerer you'd better have 40-50 int and base fth, 43-50 atn. Basically you need only 3 spells:

Crystal Soul Spear - the greatest damage per one hit, amazing range and can hit multiple enemies

Great combustion - deals about 80 poise damage, usually you will win any trade if your enemies get close

Crystal homing soulmass - fill all of your empty slots with that, great tactical spell with insane damage which scales directly from your int, so catalyst doesn't matter at all.

Other spells are just bad or weaker analogs of these, you can use common soul arrows, homing soulmass, etc, but forget it then you get the best spells.

I advice to use witchtree branch, cause CSS damage won't be far worse than Staff of Wisdom, casting speed is more important

Melee weapons for you are foot soldier sword, thief dagger. Better raw infused to have pure physical damage tool. In total you'll have fire, magic and physical damage types, enough to beat the game and make decent PvP build


Pyromancy scales extremely bad (compare great fireball damage having base int/fth and 40/40, it won't be huge but dat stats wasting) so I advice you to NOT level up int/fth at all. Atn matters only, 50-75 is your goal. Other stats are better being invested into vig, end, some str/dex to get better weapons like longsword instead off classical for caster thief dagger and foot soldier.

The best spells are chaos storm or outcry on wakeups

Great (chaos) fireball is pyro analog of CSS, slower but damage is very good and aiming is better

Great combustion, reason the same as for sorcerer

Fire dance covers huge area and it can be surprisingly effective if you spam 2-3 casts in a row fast

The rest of pyroes are worse and far worse, I personally like using lingering flame and warmth also

Get penal cuffs to boost your fire damage, it works better than investment into int/fth

Also it's better to have some pure physical and dark/magic/lightning infused weapong, cause you can deal only fire damage with your spells

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by Forossan Knight:

*snip*

You're confusing me. Why would i mention spices if i'd talk about pyromancies. I was obviously talking about a pure mage here. And no, Unleash Magic does not work with pyros, unless you can give a source other than Fextralife saying this.

[Аkiminator]

Originally posted by Jellypuff:

You're confusing me. Why would i mention spices if i'd talk about pyromancies. I was obviously talking about a pure mage here. And no, Unleash Magic does not work with pyros.

Unleash Magic works with any offensive spell except homing soulmass, homing crystal soulmass and affinity

[JellyPuff]

Originally posted by Summer:

Originally posted by Jellypuff:

You're confusing me. Why would i mention spices if i'd talk about pyromancies. I was obviously talking about a pure mage here. And no, Unleash Magic does not work with pyros.

Unleash Magic works with any offensive spells except homing soulmass, homing crystal soulmass and affinity

Today i learned. Wikidot only says sorceries and hexes. Nobody's perfect, i guess.

[King Robert Baratheon]

Originally posted by Jellypuff:

Originally posted by Summer:

Unleash Magic works with any offensive spells except homing soulmass, homing crystal soulmass and affinity

Today i learned. Wikidot only says sorceries and hexes. Nobody's perfect, i guess.

I just f*cking posted that...

anyways watch this OP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fH3xDygk_aA

This is from 2014 though so maybe sorcery got patched after this. Even then though sorcery at a high level can be pretty op (with it's damage). Some experienced players will easily dodge your offensive spells so you have to get creative.