so the crystal soul spear is useless now?

[angelo]

im pretty sure someone already ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about this before but anyway
i just got back to the game after not playing for a while and just noticed how bad the damage of the crystal spear is compared to great soul dregs.
i mean really, (i tried this with the serpent sorcerer that is close to the nameless king bonfire) with 55 int and 15 faith the crystal spear does 668 damage while using magic clutch, both dragon rings, lloyd sword ring and crown of dusk with a buffed +9 court sorcerer's staff.
souls dregs on the other hand does 927 damage with a +9 murky longstaff, blindfold mask, dark clutch ring and everything else is the same. so yeah soul dregs does 259 more damage while consuming less fp and having 8 points less of int required.
and i know it moves way slower than the crystal spear but that doestn really matter when bosses and most mobs dont even try to dodge sorceries and nobody use sorceries for pvp unless they are a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ casul. so i cant find a reason of why great soul dregs does so much damage, maybe From is trying to make dark damage op like it was in dark souls 1 or 2 i dont really know.
(im not a native english speaker so feel free to correct me)

[[Jintoro]]

You can not say something is unbalanced solely by testing it against PVE enemies. some of them have resistances to a certain element so your numbers will be skewed. Try testing on the naked hollows of Lothric or even the Firekeeper since they have close to zero resistances. Also, CSS has piercing capabilities and it's faster projectile shines in PVP scenarios.

[Scraps]

I guess the one advantage of the soul spear is the piercing properties, which is... Eeeeeeeh. Especially in comparison to Soul Dreg's vastly superior homing. There's a lot more things in PvE resistant to dark than magic, so I guess it's a plus.

Even at 60INT with a Court Sorcerer's Staff, Great Soul Dregs only deals marginally less damage than the Crystal Soul Spear -without- dark enhancing items.

[angelo]

i tried with the waifu, 1363 soul dregs, 1468 crystal spear, seems a little more balanced but still doesnt make sense because is using 50% more fp for 100 extra damage which is really meaningless. also the "piercing projectiles" seems useless for me, using a crystal spear for common mobs seems like an overkill and ive never been in a situation where a have multiple enemies line up and i can kill then all with a single crystal spear

[Tyler McRae]

It's stupid good against bosses. But that is -it.- Against players, unless your opponent is distracted and doesn't see you cast it, you -won't- hit them. And, it's got too high an FP cost to use against normal enemies. That being said, it's worth using on bosses for the burst DPS, to ensure you kill them faster.

[Hunubul]

Originally posted by angelo:

i tried with the waifu, 1363 soul dregs, 1468 crystal spear, seems a little more balanced but still doesnt make sense because is using 50% more fp for 100 extra damage which is really meaningless. also the "piercing projectiles" seems useless for me, using a crystal spear for common mobs seems like an overkill and ive never been in a situation where a have multiple enemies line up and i can kill then all with a single crystal spear

You know... Bosses have multiple hitboxes sometimes, and because of the piercing you damage them more than once. Nameless king is good example. Hit dragon + nameless king at once, and you deal a lot of damage.

CSS is generally an antiboss spell, and bashing on it because it has one use is stupid. I mean most things have it's uses, they are situational. At least CSS does good enough in all situations.

[Pyramid Bread]

Great heavy soul arrow is still the winner

[Tyler McRae]

Originally posted by decadence:

Great heavy soul arrow is still the winner

For general PvE, yes. But for Bosses, Crystal Soul Spear still trumps it, in terms of sheer power. You don't need FP management in a boss, when you want to deal as much damage to it as fast as possible. But, in terms of sheer damage per FP ratio, yes, that spell -does-- win.

[Scraps]

Originally posted by Tyler McRae:

Originally posted by decadence:

Great heavy soul arrow is still the winner

For general PvE, yes. But for Bosses, Crystal Soul Spear still trumps it, in terms of sheer power. You don't need FP management in a boss, when you want to deal as much damage to it as fast as possible. But, in terms of sheer damage per FP ratio, yes, that spell -does-- win.

I agree heavily. Spells have their own usage, and Crystal Soul Spear is very good against bosses and just being a solid "delete button" against them, and Soul Dregs are good against those bosses who love magic, like Crystal Sages and Oceiros.

GHSA is still a very solid spell against your average mooks, and reliable against bosses with very high hp like the Demon Prince.

Even on the opposite side of the spectrum, despite Farron darts being lacklustre in power, they're the most reliable sorcery to use in PvP, especially when you have people who are good at dodging aforementioned spells.