Wednesday, October 25, 2023

Going Full Pyro in Elden Ring

 Leveling up my Prophet character, I generally pushed her toward a kind of tank-y shield-based build. Ultimately this led to my using a build that split her stats quite a lot - a mix of faith, strength, dexterity, tons of endurance, some vigor, and no room really for things like Mind.

The build was working out pretty well, actually - with a greatshield and the Barricade Shield ash of war, I was able to often tank hits even from bosses. But this wasn't really what I'd wanted to do with the character. My first Elden Ring character was an Intelligence-based spellcaster, and while I later re-specced him to have some Strength so he could use the Darkmoon Greatsword, he's still at 80 Int and can cast all kinds of sorceries, and that ranged magic caster vibe is pretty fun.

Faith and Incantations, of course, are somewhat less damage-focused, but you have some options. And among those options are the Giant's Flame incantations, which are all about lighting everything on fire.

While I'm only a few levels beyond 100 on this character, I'm far enough into the game that I have most of the pieces required to make it work.

I'm at somewhere north of 60 Faith, high enough that the Erdtree Seal is giving me the best Incantation Scaling (I believe this is the seal that does the best with a pure faith build when you get into high numbers) but I also use the Giant's Seal in my off-hand to give the damage boost to these spells.

There are three primary spells I cast.

Flame, Fall Upon Them is the bread-and-butter, which tosses a whole bunch of fireballs out in a wide arc. This is very chaotic and unpredictable - if you're lucky, multiple balls will hit your target and they'll take an enormous amount of damage. If you're unlucky, they wind up in the gaps between them. But you can also hit a ton of enemies with this if you come across a big pack of them, and big targets often get hit by multiples.

Giantsflame Take Thee I've found useful when in one-on-one duels. This giant fireball explodes and knocks targets down, which can give you some precious time to run and get some distance.

Flame of the Fell God is very situational - you sometimes launch it at a target that's far away and if they're slow, they might be caught in the patch of flame they drop.

I haven't taken down the Fire Giant yet (and might focus more on lightning spells given that I doubt the Fire Giant takes a ton of fire damage) so I don't have access to Burn, O Flame! (I love the names of the Fire Giant spells).

Flame, Grant Me Strength and Golden Vow work as buffs for boss fights. And I like to put Blessing of the Erdtree on myself to keep my HP topped up.

I'm using light armor (really clothes) to let me Light Roll, so the idea here is that I should try to avoid being anywhere near the foes' attacks, and the little occasional nicks and cuts I get should be covered by Blessing of the Erdtree, so I can then allocate most of my flask charges to Cerulean Tears.

A lot of these spells can charge up, so Godfrey Icon is one of my talismans. I have the Faithful's Canvas Talisman (haven't gone to the Erdtree yet so I don't have the Flock's version) and then of course Fire Scorpion Charm. I think my fourth talisman is the Two Fingers Medallion just to pump up my faith a bit until I can level some more.

One of the fun and funny things about the build is that Flame, Fall Upon Them feels like it would be a more situational spell, but using it as your bread-and-butter means you're constantly blasting fire everywhere. (The Silver Tears in Nokstella never knew what hit 'em!)

Anyway, the build I'm using still has some Strength and Endurance to throw on some armor and a shield and greatsword if I need to, but for now being a pure caster is working out.

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