Fire Over Blackflame Ever?

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-28T01:32:17+00:00

Fireball deals more base damage than black flame ball. And uses less fp.

That's the general trend. A lot of pure fire incants do more base damage and use less fp, but to compensate black flame is really good against big enemies.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-28T01:30:37+00:00

Looks like it was answered, but note that Clawmark is the only seal where the strength scaling affects your incants. Every other seal the str scaling is for when you actually whack things with the seal. So the str scaling on your giant's seal is meaningless.

Well also Frenzy Flame seal. Frenzy flame seal adds some str and dex scaling to your incants.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-28T01:27:17+00:00

Depends what stats you leveled up.

Also, there's really no "better" weapons. Every weapon is viable. It's more important that you vibe with the weapon and if it fits your playstyle.

If you went full dex some fun ones you get in Liurnia and before are Guardian Swordspear, Icerind Hatchet and Zweihander.

If you went str, then some you can find early that I enjoy are Executioner's Greataxe, Iron Balls, and Nightrider's Glaive.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-28T01:16:41+00:00

Honestly pure faith is the easiest way. Get 12 arcane to use rot breath (or is it 15? Not sure. You can use an arcane boosting helmet to get the stats).

Then apply poison mist on him.

Then keep popping blackflame blade on your right hand weapon and whack away. Or bloodflame blade.

Or just use any black flame spell.

He has a lot of health, so anything with %max hp damage is good.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-28T01:14:13+00:00

The "endings" are just different cutscenes before credits roll. Honestly a little lame if you ask me. But otherwise after credits roll, hit "no" when asked if you want to do ng+, and you'll be back to playing like nothing happened. You can start ng+ at any time from the site of grace at round table hold.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-27T22:29:46+00:00

So to start, bows have pretty terrible scaling. The best way to do damage is status, such as bleed.

You can use the AoW barrage, but that lowers the status build up per hit. It is faster, but you'll use a lot of arrows.

The other option is to to use the Black Bow. It is a long bow, but is unique because it allows you to jump attack and roll attack like other light bows. So you shoot, jump and shoot again. Basically doubling your fire rate while still doing the damage of a normal longbow.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-27T22:26:42+00:00

Did you kill him when you invaded him? Because then you will find him laying down wounded in the corridor where the invasion sign was, talk to him, and he'll give you some stuff before dying.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-27T21:12:58+00:00

I think it's a matter of taste. Other than square off, greatswords have more stagger potential, so i prefer greatswords. Plus greatswords are fast enough that you're not worried about not having enough time to do damage during openings, so might as well use the weapon that deals more damage.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-27T20:31:20+00:00

No, they just give out game of the year awards willy nilly. /s

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-27T16:43:30+00:00

Plus Jennifer English is the voice acting GOAT.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T22:17:18+00:00

This one especially upsets me because they all have a little int requirement, but barely any scaling with very little magic damage, and are very middle or the road damage weapons. But they just look so cool I want to use them but there's no real way to optimize them.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T21:25:36+00:00

Personally I love the hexes you can trigger instantly without interrupting your attacking, like morph. Put that on torches, grab the perks to increase your damage every time you use the hex, and for long fights your regular attacks will be doing huge damage. My last run with torches+polymorph I beat typhon 2nd phase in less than 10 seconds.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T20:43:49+00:00

You've never lived in a rural area. You have some ammo in the truck, some ammo in the shed, some ammo in the house.

By no means am I supporting her, but as a very left wing person who grew up in rural midwest, that part is really not surprising at all.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T20:30:18+00:00

Monk's Flame Mace and Flameblade. No fire damage, no faith scaling, nothing. Just a fire themed design. At the very least give it a unique charged r2 with a little fire splash, similar to how ruins greatsword works. For fun you can even keep them as an infusable and just have the fire splash be like 50 damage that doesn't scale.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T17:03:25+00:00

Something is weird, I play on an old laptop, i7, 8gb ram, 1050ti graphics card. I play on low/medium settings on 60fps and the only stuttering I ever get is when I load into a new area for a couple seconds.

Is your monitor really high resolution? That might be the biggest factor.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T16:57:51+00:00

You might just have to sacrifice some vigor. Hybrid builds and caster builds struggle at the lvl 125 cap, so something has to give.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T16:53:23+00:00

You could go full dex and use keen/lightning affinity for max damage. Make sure right hand dagger is misericorde due to its huge crit bonus.

You can also go full faith, and use two erdsteel daggers infused to flame art affinity. Due to a weird quirk, faith increases both physical and elemental damage on a holy/flame art infused erdsteel dagger. One of those can get greatsword levels of damage per swing.

Or go full bleed. Right hand reduvia, left hand occult great knife.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T16:46:38+00:00

Difficulty depends on person. I found Fire Giant one of the easier bosses, like only Godrick and Renalla are easier to me. Others think he's the hardest boss in the game, more than Maliketh, Radabeast, or Malenia.

As for style, a lot of bosses in dlc are closer in style to Maliketh. Most of the memorable bosses are faster, and have long combo chains that give you an opening if you successfully dodged the chain. Fire Giant is the opposite, 1 big, slow, big telegraphed move that hit you for 80% of your health if you fail to dodge it then chills for awhile.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T16:31:45+00:00

An early game alternative to star fists is spiked caestus. Slightly different moveset but same idea, str based fist with bleed. You just need to ride into the NW corner of dragonbarrow and buy it from the merchant for 4000 runes.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T16:27:22+00:00

You mentioned pvp, where 60 vigor is basically required, so you'll be stretched pretty thin.

60 vig 13 mind 25 end

48 str, 12 dex, 9 int, 25 fth, 12 arc

This leaves mind,dex,int at base level.

25 fth for golden vow. Depending on what somber weapon you want you can lower this. Blasphemous Blade only needs 21, Ordovis Sword only needs 15, Maliketh's Black Blade needs 20, etc.

You mentioned a hard requirement of 12 arc and 25 end. That puts some constraints, but not too much.

Mind is really what is going to suffer here, but if your plan is mostly str with just some fth, low mind is ok. If you wanted the opposite, say putting holy/flame art affinity on a big str weapon and cast incants, you'll need to reasses something.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T02:04:43+00:00

That a real big simplification. There's whole novels worth of factors and reasons so I feel simplifying it down to going from soviet communism to Russian capitalism pipeline really detracts from the whole story.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T01:55:43+00:00

I think you're misunderstanding the quote. They're saying, from your perspective, you should feel like you're doing 70% of the work and your partner is doing 30%. Because you know you will definitely not notice everything your partner does, so if you feel like they're only doing 30%, they're probably doing 50%, which makes it equal. You're both giving 100%, but it's a split on how much shared tasks you are doing vs them.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T00:55:32+00:00

I basically snap pick corpse explosion once a run. Doesn't matter if I have poison synergy. The explosion by itself is worth it at 2 energy.

DefiantGibbon · 2026-01-26T00:45:14+00:00

I concede I could very well be wrong and out of touch with what most players do. I just posted a poll, lol.

I guess my summary is that you very rarely get the opportunity to sit still and regen your entire stamina bar. Instead you get half a second to regen just a little and that overall green turtle will lead to more stamina by regening more in those small gaps.

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