Some interesting Sacred Flame stuff

[Eternal Usul]

Hello again!

So, I've been messing around with Sacred flame...never got to play with it during the wonders of the OHKO exploit and I wanted to see how it worked and if it was useful.


And...uh...I've learned some interesting stuff.

I was playing around with the White Hair Talisman, the Pyromancer's Parting flame, and the standard pyromancy flame when I noticed something a bit odd.

The White Hair Talisman is doing noticably more damage than either of the pyro gloves.

Now, this is quite odd as both gloves have a higher spell buff.

So...what gives?


Well...we all remember the WHT + Sacred Flame glitch right?

The premise was that you put a powerful weapon with a multi-hit riposte/critical in your right hand, and the WHT in your left. You would then two hand the WHT and it would apply the riposte/crit damage to Sacred Flame, allowing absurd damage values to be achieved.

Now why would it do that if spells scale off of spell buff and most weapons don't have spell buff?


Because, Sacred Flame doesn't scale off of spell buff. It scales off the AR of the weapon casting it, it would have to...there's no other reason the program would consider AR as part of the spells calculation.


This is a testable hypothesis.


So I stripped naked with only my WHT and my sacred flame, and used it on an enemy to get my base damage.

Then I put on Flynn's Ring and did it again.


Lo and behold...Sacred Flame did more damage.




So long as an item/ability increases your AR it will also increase the damage of Sacred flame...but there's another twist.

Sacred flame is still a pyromancy, and still is affected by the Witch's Ring and the Great Swamp Ring.


And so we come to my point.



By stacking the Fire Clutch Ring, the Witch's Ring, the Great Swamp Ring, Sacred Oath and Deep Protection (didn't think those last two would stack, but they do!) you can dramatically increase the WHT AR and thus the damage of Sacred Flame.


Now, I'm not certain this is final, as my pyro glove is NOT fully upgraded. As it's only at +4 it could end up with a higher total AR than the WHT.

But that said, my Pyromancer's Parting Flame IS at +10 and still does less damage than the WHT with Sacred flame. Despite having 8 more AR and 35 more Spell Buff.


I am still not entirely sure of all the parameters that affect the damage of this spell thanks to that latter part. It cannot be a simple matter of which one has higher total AR, since the PPF would be dealing the most damage in that scenario. But it's also clear that Spell Buff is clearly NOT the parameter being considered.


Maybe I'll submit the idea to Limit Breakers, he's damned good at teasing these things out.



If you've gotten this far...Thank you for reading my little rant! If you have any ideas or data to contribute, I'd love to see them here.


Many Pics follow:

My Stats
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947469

My Stats + Deep Protection
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947484

My Stats + Deep Protection + Sacred Oath
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947497



White Hair Talisman
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947520

Pyromancy Flame +4
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947529

Pyromancer's Parting Flame +10
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=845947545



\[T]/

[Eternal Usul]

So I've given some thought to the last peculiarity of the WHT/sacred flame interaction and why it's still doing more damage than the PPF.


I think I've got an idea.

PPF only has fire damage on it, while the WHT has both fire and physical...


What if Sacred flame isn't doing pure fire damage, but actually is doing split physical/fire?

The physical damage of the spell might be scaling off of physical AR, while the fire damage component is scaling off of fire AR.


Since my test subject was a Smoldering Ghru this might explain why the spell does less damage with the PPF vs the WHT.


They have fairly high fire resist, and so the phys AR of the WHT carries it that little bit further, edging out the PPF in damage.


I still need to test this idea, but it might be a bit while I figure out a good test subject. An enemy with low fire resist and high phys resist would be ideal, as I could use the WHT and then switch to the PPF to see if the latter does more damage. Just not sure which enemy to use.


OFF TO THE LAND OF RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT!

[Eternal Usul]

And now to finish off my ranting.



After some thought, I decided to test my hypothesis on the Black Knight by the Farron Keep Perimeter bonfire.


As I recall, they have high physical resist and low fire resist.


And my numbers support the hypothesis!


With the WHT, witch's ring, and great swamp ring I hit for around 840 damage.

With the PPF, witch's ring, and great swamp ring I hit for around 1010 damage.



Conclusions:

The pyromancy Sacred Flame exhibits unique behavior among spells of all schools (that I know of).

It appears to ignore the spell buff stat in favor of scaling with both physical attack rating and fire attack rating of the implement used to cast it.

This is due the the spell dealing both physical damage and fire damage.

Any item or ability that increases physical attack rating will increase the physical damage of the spell, the same is true of fire attack rating and fire damage.


Utilizing a combination of rings, deep protection, and sacred oath will dramatically improve the damage of the spell.

Fully buffed, and using it with the Pyromancer's Parting Flame +10 against a Black Knight I dealt in excess of 1300 damage in one hit. Unbuffed I dealt slightly more than 1000 damage against the same target, an increase of approximately 30%.



Is this spell useful and viable?

Eh...it takes nearly half my mana to fully buff and prepare the attack, and the timing must be perfect or I take lots of counter damage.

Furthermore, the stat investment and number of spell slots necessary to pull off the damage puts severe restrictions on the number of other options available for damage. Against non-humanoid enemies it's very nearly worthless, though the initial hit will still deal decent damage.

Still fun to watch an enemy explode for over 1k damage though, and it was a lot of fun for me to work out the nuts and bolts of what was going on here...

Even if nobody reads this or comments.



\[T]/

[Kermit MADARA]

I read everything

[Eternal Usul]

Well thank you then, at least one other person kinda-sorta benefits from this knowledge!

Have a good holiday.

[Gravelord Qwint]

Very informative, would read again/10

[koumori]

:)

[TrueArchery]

TIL the WHT isn't complete trash but has a niche use.

Might lead to interesting trolling with caestus-perseverance buff or iron flesh for "poise casting".

[Eternal Usul]

Poise casting with perserverance is hard, but fun.

It works with maces too if you really want to confuse people, since most people don't think "sacred flame" when they see a mace.