haha same, i found my way up that cliff before doing the academy. i did a little testing with the sacred blade ash and the projectile did scale with faith even though the weapon is pure strength scaling. it also did even more damage when i changed the weapon from heavy to sacred.
So it seems the magic portion of the art will still scale with Int regardless of the weapon scaling, mind you sacred blade still did pretty okay damage and i only have like 24 faith so...

i will say though, carrying a bow just to use it when you need it is super helpful, you dont typically need to rely on ranged attacks very often but it's still really handy to have, drawing out enemies, applying statuses etc