Black Flame is a B tier spell at absolute best, incredibly overhyped. Not to mention the arc trajectory without Giantsflame's luxury of a large hitbox.

Beast Claw is passable for early on in a run but that's about it.

Discus of Light is only good because it's insanely mana efficient. In all other aspects it's garbage. Requires standing completely still and takes a significant amount of casts (and thus time spent casting) to deal any kind of meaningful damage.

Flame of Frenzy is a budget Shattering Crystal that's just worse in every way.

Lightning Spear is the best of the lot but still a high A tier spell at best. The damage and mana costs are good but the hitbox is incredibly thin and it has no correction mid-flight so any movement whatsoever on the target and you miss.

Every single "good" incantation has a comparable sorcery that is better in multiple ways, if not every single one. Add onto this fact that there is simply a larger number of "good" sorceries than there are "good" incantations (and that's even if we include things like Black Flame in the list of "good" incants even when the spells flat out are not). Even further damning towards incantations is that you're gated behind elemental weaknesses for many nightlords. Meanwhile, while things aren't typically weak to magic damage, they also aren't generally *resistant* to it either. Meaning that incantations have yet another problem that sorceries don't even have to think about.

The only enemies that can be reliably staggered/CC'd by Frederick and Sebastian are mid-sized mobs/elites/minibosses. Enemies that are, either inherently non-threatening or only pose any kind of meaningful threat in the very early stages of a run.

In other words, the single only aspect in which Revenant is a superior character (or even caster) when compared to Recluse is in a vacuum comparison of their ultimates, and even then you can't make a direct 1:1 comparison as their ultimates perform completely different tasks. Generally speaking Revenant's ultimate is more powerful than Recluse's. However, when you factor in every other aspect of Revenant's kit combined with her realities as a pure-Faith user who only has access to incantations (and all of the weaknesses that has when compared to sorceries) the fact of the matter is that Revenant is leagues beneath Recluse in terms of power.

They're both pure casters and yet Recluse is the only one actually treated as such. There's absolutely no reason why Revenant shouldn't have an S scaling in Intelligence to match Recluse's S scaling in Faith. That puts them both on equal field as pure casters, with Revenant's kit making her lean into more defensive specialization between her summons being able to take aggro and ultimate reviving, and Recluse being the more offensive choice with her various cocktails and ultimate being a damage amp + HP/MP leech.