Changes from patch 1.04 - Gavel of Haima from C to A tier - Adula's Moonblade from S to B tier - Briars of Punishment from C to B tier - Briars of Sin from F to C tier - Loretta's Mastery from C to B tier
Starlight is S tier for invasion gigachads. Only weaklings use stealth, and starlight is the exact opposite of stealth. They know you're coming for that booty and they should be scared, because no sane man puts a neon light over their head when they're on the hunt. :^)
I feel like most of it will stay the same because they don't tend to change how spells act, only their damage and speed. The Good spells are good due to their utility and speed moreso than damage so I don't think DLC will shake up the meta too much, maybe add a few more options.
18:50 "Night comet is just upgraded night shard" Not really true, the night shard is the night equivalent of swift glintstone shard - you can combo more powerful spells like the comet right after them, not to mention shooting it while running, rolling, jumping etc.
@@ScottJund If you have a Staff of Loss on offhand, it will receive a +30% damage boost, dealing much more damage than Swift Glintstone. Here's the banger: You can dual wield Staves of Loss to get the damage boost TWICE. Making Night Shard and Night Comet the best 2 sorceries in the game in PVE, and pretty dangerous if landed in PVP.
@@ScottJund Compared to the Carian Regal Scepter (best in the game with no setbacks or faith investment), Dual Wielding Staff of Loss deals ~10% less damage overall but ~50% more damage for Night Shard and Night Comet. That's a fair trade, especially in PvE, because you won't want to cast anything else, anyways. Both spells become super-efficient FP-wise. Night Shard is the fastest spell to cast in the game (tied with Swift Glintstone) and can be chain-casted into Night Comet, which is a spammable nuke. In PvE, enemies don't dodge or block either of them too. You are correct, though. By the definition of the term, it is a gimmick build, but a very powerful one. Its effectiveness in PvP isn't anywhere as PvE all things considered, of course.
Hey Scott, I loved your list overall and agreed with nearly all of your placements, HOWEVER, as a connoisseur of weird spells, I must tell you that in my experience, the thorn sorceries are actually surprisingly effective, especially Briars of Sin, which I got impressive results from. This is not in duels of course, but invasions. I have tried this on level 60, 80, and 135 builds. The worst was the 135, but the 60 and 80 performed quite well. At a meager 14 intelligence, you can use Swift Glintstone Shard, Carian Slicer, Magic Glintblade, and a couple oddballs. In my case I actually used Night Maiden's Mist because it can cut off chokepoints and people are generally afraid of it. At lower levels, the Staff of the Guilty's performance is solid for regular sorceries, very close to the best INT staves with equivalent stat investment and upgrades. At level 60, you can make a Faith Sorcery build with 35-40 VIG, 15-20 Mind (you don't need much at all as every spell here is extremely cheap in FP) just 14 INT, and dump the rest in FTH (usually you get about 35ish without buffs/talismans.) Then you buff up on faith/magic damage in your physick, Alberich's armor, and whatever sorcery/faith talismans you like. As for actually applying Briars of Sin, I found it to be AMAZING if you chain cast Swift Shard or Slicer into Sin. The transition is quite fast and will often catch opponents attempting to save their friends from your Slicer chasedown. If you repeat cast it, it will very often catch them a second or maybe even a third time, as Briars of Sin has a very long lingering hitbox that makes it nearly impossible to safely pass through. This does pretty high damage with this build and one or two shot the majority of people I hit it with. It also can be used as your classic "around the corner" ambush option to catch an overconfident gank squad by surprise. I've even had the experience of using Night Maiden's mist to fill the room at the Castle Sol church grace, then blocked the door and used Briars to kill the host as he tried to escape the mist. Briars of Punishment also works really well in this build as Magic Glintblades couple very well with it. Briars of Punishment has very impressive range and damage on this build, will travel across gaps somehow, and you can chain cast it into Sin to cover your ass when you need. Punishment makes a perfect substitute for something like Comet here, lower damage and cast time but very cheap to spam it and it can be very difficult to see coming in the chaos of PvE compared to a typical magic projectile. I implore you to give a build like this a try, I had incredible fun with it, and I love these thorn spells now.
Great vid, just wanted to add a weird interaction I found with Loretta's Greatbow. The fully charged projectile actually has an AOE hitbox, however it never hits more than 1 target anw. But it is useful to know that it will still do full dmg if you don't get a direct hit, but shoot the ground under them instead. tested easily on the beach zombies, so it's not a latency thing
i love the capability of glintstone shard, your videos showed me the spell combo into comet and other heavier spells that I feel like these combos make the difference between good mages and mindless stars of ruin spam
@@sirrealism7300 if i had the option to change how it would work. I would allow to combo spells/incantations but only if they are in the same category. so like glintstone spell into glintstone spell but not glintstone into thorn spell, or in the case of incantations, beastial into dragon communion.
Scholar's armament is exclusively useful for buffing Clayman's Harpoon for the double dipped inteligence scaling. But that weapon might just be an oversight by the devs so I don't know for how long that will be useful.
@@Hax4Snax Yeah but in DS2 it was on the Moonlight Greatsword and it was quite literally one shotting everyone in pvp with extremely little effort or input at pretty much any level. Other weapons like Black Cryptsword could still be buffed despite being innate dark in DS2 but wasn't nearly as egregious as the buffed Moonlight.
Appreciate the casting review. Completely unrelated question, do you feel beast roar is a decent counter to longer windup spells? Its worked for me as a nice suprise on, say , a stars of ruin windup. Especially if they have light poise and can be staggered out of cast
It's good, especially against spammers. You don't even need to cancel their SoR, as you can consistently dodge a good majority of the all but inevitable damage, which most often makes it a great trade in your favor.
@@ScottJund Hey, minor thing that probably doesn't change ranking much, but by casting rock blaster with LH while RH is empty ( 2 Handing & charging spell cancels effect) it will cost a grand total of 0FP
I intend to test if Vow of the Indomitable can act as a counter to Stars of Ruin, you would probably need to perform it twice in a row if not three times but it might be enough s. Another thing I wanted to test was if the Blasphemous Claw could parry the player version of the Black Blade incantation because I noticed that it has the same golden effect around it. If i get around to testing these before someone else then I will reply to this comment or post one on the next video. Roiling Magma may be more useful than you think, I think it was Amir that I saw using it to keep his opponent away from him while he cast a dragonbreath incant, though the statspread required for that seems a little odd, there are probably better area denial sorceries anyway.
Thanks a lot for this list, great points throughout. Totally agree that magma spells need something to stop being so underwhelming for the lack of range, FP cost, & cast speed. Every spell can't be great, but seeing an entire class of sorcery be trivialized is disappointing.
I was really looking forward to finally having access to fire elemental damage as a primarily int-based caster, but was so disappointed when I finally got my hands on them. Rykard's Rancor ended up being pretty nice though for all of those ulcerated tree spirits the game kept throwing at me, at least.
@@the-four-seven A silver lining is that if fire spells still reset Frostbite, there are plenty of ice spells that are great in this game. Even if the fire sorcery is eh, we can work with it in that regard.
Thank you Scott. I'm playing a int build rn and this list could not have come up at a better time. Glad you like the arc spell, it's super good in PVE. If only free aiming it didn't also change its vertical angle...
24:55 I largely agree, but if you're positioned right (close enough) when they start casting, and you roll forward, starting your i-frames _right_ as the first hit is coming in, and then roll forward two more times after that, you can avoid the damage entirely. It's actually somewhat similar to the pattern and tempo for dodging Malenia's Waterfowl Dance.
Add shaky connections and timing it is still impossibly hard, its gonna need either slower cast time or lower damage its way too oppressive with barely any effort on the casters part
@@TitaNiUm-NaZ not absolutely unplayable connection but just enough to have a small delay, ive consistently gotten fucked over by that spell and that one spell only over a mountain of invasions
@@pandinus1377 i guess slight damage reduction would be great … we dont want the only viable spell for mages to be nerfed to the ground and with it poor mages … since it is the only kinda viable caster build
I dont know what you're talking about, Starlight is the strongest spell in the game. Can YOU have a pretty blue glow? Thats right, didn't think so. Good tierlist btw
@@Krog517 it is a lot brighter than the hip lantern tho. It has like twice the visibility distance compared the the lantern. I found it pretty handy when exploring super dark places I hadn't been to before
I've not played with sorceries but seeing this list will and hearing you explain how they should be used will definitely help with coming up with counters against them...which most likely will be Carian Retaliation for most of them :^)
Got to say Founding Rain of Stars is quite underrated. I've been using a pure mage build similar to yours and use founding rain as my "you're gonna get wrecked when you get close" spell when carian slicer might not be the best (eg against some dual wielding rapiers or long poke weapons). The set up with Terra Magica I have not thought about but that could make it even better, for players who don't give a shit about the spell and just try and get me, it does like 600-700 damage and has A LOT of stuns. Really useful to ease pressure and then set up
@@ScottJund also loving your videos, keep the awesome content coming. I've always loved pure sorcery but you helped me make it possible, having my most enjoyable souls pvp experience atm
Love this, can't wait for incant list in the future! Opinions: • Strong disagree on Briars of Sin. The 24 faith req means it's for int/faith builds. It combos with any other chainable sorcery. Combo into the second animation in the chain to catch people you've baited into rolling in. Amazing hyperarmor and ok poise damage, and very fast recovery so you have plenty of time to begin your next combo of spells, serves as a nice transition from a sorcery combo to an incant combo. If you use low-req spells you could afford an int/faith/arc build (arc to scale dmg), and the albinauric staff will add to the bleed on this. Learn your combos so that you never accidentally use the third animation though, the recovery is atrocious. Arguably you could do just spam Catch Flame or Carian Slicer at people who roll into you, but this has a nice lingering hitbox and AoE for invasions, and people don't expect the fast recovery so they are likely to eat your followup. Still not A-tier but definitely not F. • I don't think night shard deserves to be C if swift shard is S, they are exactly the same except for 2 FP cost and visual and damage differences. • Rancorcall I'd argue is just as good as its big brother b/c it's just so cheap in requirements and FP, useable even if you are not a mage. It has longer range than Stars of Ruin, so cast a couple times at long range and now you can approach any low-poise mage for free (unless they have eternal darkness). Despite low damage they are forced to react because of stagger. • I'd say Thops is full F :( I tried to make it work but very slow and it doesn't combo with other sorceries afaik. Best use is PvE for removing one of the final boss's spells. But I will keep trying to make the meme work!
agree on night shard for sure, and aren't invisibility sorceries unable to be parried too? does have some nice usage against spell parries if so. idk if that applies to eternal darkness or not haven't tested it :)
I've been trying to make an arcane caster build work for a while now. I'm not sure if i just suck at the caster play style or if it's my build that sucks though x.x. So far i've had an abysmal W/L record running both thorns Sorcs and a few of the blood Incants. Any advice?
I believe I have something in favor of Scholars Armament, hear me out Mr Jund. This spells adds 0.75% of your magic scaling as magic damage to your weapon, so a 400 incantation caster (everyone with 80 int buffed like your mage) can get something slightly above +300 magic damage in any weapon. There a few weapons with magic damage that can also de buffed, like the Clayman's Spear (12 STH, 10 DES, 12 INT), a weapon that with the basic stats and 80 int has a standard AR of 531 and magic infused AR of 672. Considering that you can go to somewhere around 835 total AR with the Standard Infusion + Scholars Armament, which then becomes 945 AR with the magic damage flask, I'd say it's pretty good compared to the magic infusion. It's not a ground breaking spell, but having a 5kg spear with almost 1000 AR and that your very own mage has the stats to equip right now is definitely something more than F tier... right? Might be wrong please don't ban me s2
I 100% agree with this and with lusat 430 scaling, tslismans and buffs with the right ash of war you can absolutely oneshot someone. Its way way way better than the magic or cold ash of war. The creator is wrong about this. A-S tier depending on what you use it on.
Clayman's Harpoon is literally the only weapon worth using with Scholar's Armament at a reasonable level. It's not "a few weapons", it's just this one. The spell doesn't become good because it has one cheesy interaction that ignores the rules that apply to every other weapon in the game.
@@KyussTheWalkingWorm this is just flat out not true. Its a spell so you can buff it with many multipliers. Talismans, armorsets, flask, staves int scaling. Its so much bettet than the passive scaling on a weapon that you get from magic or cold ash of war. With 70-80 int you get 10-20% more dmg per hit with scholar. Its quite nuts. Clayman is the best bcs it has inate int scaling but it work better at breakpoint int with any weapon.
4:04 I remember people saying back in the network test that that spell was going to be amazing for pvp because of lingering hitboxes. Even back then, I was telling them all they were wrong.
One thing about Bloodthorn sorceries though: they apparently combo with each other, letting you skip the cast animations and spam the shit out of them for massive damage, if timed correctly.
Night Maiden's Mist, in my honest opinion, is a lot better than you describe it as. For starters, the claim that it harms your allies is false. It only damages enemies and the person who used it. I know this for a fact, as I used it just the other night in Radahn's boss fight whilst playing with two of my friends, AND summoning all the NPC's. Absolutely none of them took any damage from it except myself and Radahn. This spell is capable of not only dealing with large groups of enemies simultaneously, but is also very useful against larger bosses, as they will very often stay inside of its range and continue to take damage. This is especially useful for bosses and enemies that are resistant to magic, as it does continuous tick damage to them that ignores their magic resistance, and can deal with them pretty easily because of that. And, it's also able to charged, which will effectively double the size of the cloud it creates, allowing to you cover a pretty large area, making it even more effective for all the aforementioned reasons.
Adula's Moonblade is ALSO a shockingly good anti-air. If someone tries a jump-in, after predicting you'll use other projectiles or weapon pokes, it's nigh-guaranteed to smack them. This is because the wave's hitbox is surprisingly high, and the targeting adjust on the spell will actually respond to the opponent's jump. This means it easily hits the opponent's non-invul upper-body. It's decent in a trade with most jump-ins too, because of its insane damage potential. Ambush shard, in some weird situations (usually involving the z-axis?) can appear directly inside the opponent's hurtbox. Combined with its fast startup, this is basically guaranteed damage. That said, the circumstances that allow for this seem to be quite unreliable. Cannon is S-tier in invasions imo, and also goes way up in usefulness if duels are happening in any area with substantial terrain (going down to a 1 vs 1 in an invasion; if we get any dueling arenas that aren't Final Destination). It's ability to damage through walls, punt people off ledges, and mess up roll-timings if it goes off "early" via hitting terrain shines in those situations. !Spell Carian Retaliation will still be worse than !Ash Carian Retaliation even if the damage were equalized, for the reasons you cite. Furthermore, when I used the spell in place of the ash, there were a bunch of times where I'd negate the opposing spell, but got no swords at all. Meaning the spell seems desync'd by lag in the opposite way to the ash. Frozen Mist is better than some of the other area denial spells, imo, since the cast is faster and it lasts so long. Assuming the opponent isn't already frostbit, that is, because in that case they don't fear it at all. A lot of the other area denial spells have the issue of either being unreliable in how they hit (magic downpour) or taking too long to come out (Crystal Release, Founding Rain), meaning that you almost need *another* area denial spell to buy the time to set them up. Hammer combo being even slower than the initial hit makes me extremely sad. I'm convinced they either did that a) to allow it to still hit if the first blow knocked an opponent down or b) because they 100% intended spell combos to be a thing, and didn't want a flash hammer followup from slicer. I think quantitative downgrade spells like Glintstone Cometshard shouldn't be ignored by mages with low mind. Being able to sustain an option across a fight, especially in protracted engagements like some invasions, shouldn't be dismissed. This is less true post-FP cost buffs, since Comet now only costs 7 more FP than Cometshard. This is NOT true for downgrades that lose a qualitative instead of quantitative factor - Gravity Well is not a more FP efficient, but DPS deficient, Collapsing Stars, because the real draw of Collapsing Stars is its delayed timing and being much more frame active. I disagree with Night Maiden's Mist's assignment to a fair degree - for invasions anyway. It's a poor-man's Cannon of Haima or Adula's Moonblade, when it comes to hitting people hiding behind doors or corners. A good way to check for such things too. The spell keeps ticking for a time even after fleeing the cloud, so even momentarily touching it deals like 200 damage. For low level invasions, I got a LOT of use out of it, especially since it's a fraction of the cost of Cannon. Also, if someone commits to a long animation, like a lot of the dragon communion incantations, since the mist doesn't stun *they cannot cancel the animation to leave it* and get dissolved. Awful in duels, to be sure. Shard Spiral gives me memories of the Great Soul Arrow vs Homing Soul Arrow mixup from DS2. Only potentially better, since good players can't just unlock, run diagonally towards you at boosted speed, and/or quick roll to negate the mixup. I think Terra Magicka is quite good in PvP, same as you. However, I think using it as an invader is a bit more limited in application. If you're in a position where the gank can pressure you, even superboosted Slicer or Moonblade damage probably won't save you. On the other hand, if you're down to just the host, you HAVE to go to them or they'll escape to resummon. Having Terra Magicka down on a vantage point where you can shell the host team with Comet, Cannon of Haima, or Stars of Ruin, however, is quite powerful.
The one niche use for Sorcerer's Armament is that you can use it to buff the Clayman's Harpoon, which innately has magic damage and Intelligence scaling in addition to being able to be buffed. It's the only weapon that is like this however, so it's kind of the exception to the rule of that spell being bad.
No no no, any weapons works with this. Doesnt have to be clayman, you just need to buff the initial cast as much as possible (talismans, terra etc. Not sure if Terra works here, havent tested). I have a plus 25 grave scythe in heavy affinity with the knights cavalry ash of war. Hits for 3k+ in pve absolutely oneshots someone in pvp if you land the 2 chain combo. Has bloodloss too so it destroys everything in pve. Also the ash of war is very good because even is you get stunnes the ghost hit goes trough.
@@Genosidukka I'm well aware it works just like any weapon buff, but you can't use it on a Magic or Cold infused weapon to maximize your Magic damage. Clayman's Harpoon is the exception since it has Magic damage built into the weapon and can be buffed, so it massively benefits from having a buff applied and you can pull off some nasty damage numbers with stuff like the Glintstone Pebble Ash of War.
@@Genosidukka I know it does, I wasn't talking about scythes though lol Unless you're PVPing at RL 200, I doubt you'd be getting much from using Sorcerer's Armament over going for an incantation buff build with a Heavy infused weapon.
Very niche interaction, but night shard and night comet are pretty much the only spells that aren't affected by Eternal Darkness, so as an anti-mage spell its quite decent, and since its similar to the swift glintstone shard into comet combo, its quite good in certain scenarios.
Interesting thing with Shatter Earth is that if chain casted it does explosion of Rock Blaster with much faster cast time. Even if it's techincally a "worse version" of Rock Blaster it ends up being better for that alone. May be just a worse off version of piercer and slicer for roll catching, still satisfying to hit though.
night maiden's mist does not damage summoned phantoms, and yes you can "just walk out of it" but even having stepped in it for a moment causes a MASSIVE amount of damage that you can't avoid even if you roll. the AOE is much larger than it looks so free-aiming a mist as a finisher is incredibly lethal as, if you aim it properly, there's little to no chance they'll avoid getting affected by it
If you didn’t know you can chain cast both of the blood spells b2b. It’s niche but if you have both of them on your bar and you’re using the trail one Lyon can use the big aoe when they come close. Actually really fun build with blessed talisman and beast vitality.
I'm a bit late to the party but I feel like the night sorceries got a little undervalued here, because they have some hidden utility. People already mentioned the staff of loss bonus for an offhand choice (It can out damage comet for less FP when SoL is used in offhand), however, the real benefit of these spells is said lesser known utility. They have extra pierce damage to shields, are unaffected by eternal darkness, and do not trigger either carion retaliation or golden retaliation (erdtree greatshield). They can catch players off guard (and completely counter some) for those reasons. Night comet also combos the same way regular comet does, so night shard into night comet has the same fast cast and with SoL in offhand can easily hit for 1500+ damage. The trade off for another passive bonus staff is somewhat considerable for pure casters, however the other utility they provide makes it much more viable. I love this spell when I see erdtree greatshield because you can just full charge it and most people will just try and retaliate it and get slammed with a big chunk of damage(1000+ fully charged thru the shield w/ godfrey icon). Plus comet is a massive looking projectile that can clog up the screen and night comet is much less visually impactful, sometimes even being hard to track when in the dark (this part is mostly just personal preference though). Not quite as all propose as their glintstone counterparts, but still quite viable for the added utility
Just a heads up the briar thorn spells are better when used together due to the animation canceling between them. You can do the spell that tracks and then the aoe one around you and the aoe will have its animation cancelled. You can also do the aoe one twice and then use the thorn spell that tracks to cancel its animation. Makes them much more usable imo.
Ambush Shard is a lot stronger than you would think. If you add the arrows reach talisman it jumps out the range of attack and lock on substantially and its able to hit roughly 350-450 per hit. Depending on stat scaling, armor and catalyst.
For invasions I like night maidens mist to smoke people out of their hiding spots. Also the moons are fun to use at long ranges, especially against other mages cuz it’ll eat their spells like eternal darkness. Not the most practical things but very enjoyable IMO
Star shower should actually be higher, despite Stars of Ruin being better as it’s a direct upgrade, Star shower also can one shot when all 6 hit, costs less FP, has a faster cast time, and allows you to play less brain dead. Instead of spamming it for that easy win, you can justify chasing the last 2 blasts of your Star shower for a roll catch.
Rykard's Rancor has surprised me with how good it can be if you fire 2 or 3 at a time, makes a visually satisfying, and somewhat blinding for opponents, field of fire that does okay damage over a few seconds. No one is going to sit inside it of course but as the only half decent fire option for int mages it works well to set up frostbite damage. Most of my experience is PVE though because my internet craps out a lot, so take this with a grain of salt.
I agree with almost everything, but I think Freezing Mist is at least high B or A tier, the spacing it gives you is insane, it obscures your character if you stand just behind it/inside it so you can send spells through it and it can really fuck up people's reaction time, you can circle around it and use the cover to drink fp flasks and it lasts basically forever. It also forces the enemy to decide if he will let you control the space or if he's gonna rush across the mist to stop you, you can then trade with him using carian slicer inside your mist as he's getting frostbitten trying to rush you down, or use swift glintblade to stagger him inside it, etc...
yeah see i think Terra Magica fulfills that niche so much better. its either "come into my 800 damage carian slicer grinder" or "stay at a distance at die to projectiles"
@@ScottJund but what if another magic mf rolls up on you with the slicer strapped on his hip too. Wouldn’t sprinting into terra magica make the opponent’s slicer come out faster? It works on anyone right?
The amount it obscures your character from sight is by far the most useful and most slept on characteristic of the spell. People will put it to good use in time.
@@ScottJund One thing to consider, but needs testing is if Freezing Mist obscures the player enough so the enemy can't target through the fog. I doubt it does but it would be awesome if so.
Actually star shower has stagger(hit stop),pretty good poise damage,better cost performance and shorter duration that could not be easily retaliated.I think it deserves A tier indeed.
0:30 Super eager to see where you put night shard on this list. Edit: 18:31 Now I can't wait to see where you put swift glintstone shard. Other edit: 25:51 night shard is just as fast as glintstone shard, comes out at the same speed, and if you run the staff of loss in your 'off'-hand (whichever hand that is) it will out-damage glintstone shard by a significant amount. I regularly 3-4 shot people by spamming night shard at them. This does mean you need to either give up your Carian Glintstone Staff, or have your second off-hand slot with a staff, and have enough carry weight to not be fat-rolling while also having 56 poise, though. Personally, I think it's worth it. Everything you say here about swift glintstone shard, is also true of night shard, except if you have the staff of loss as your supporting staff, night shard will also hit harder than swift glintstone shard (anywhere from 400-450 damage has been my experience). You should really give night shard another look.
That's not enough of a benefit to justify not using the carian staff of other staffs that benefit the spells intended for close range. Scott's build is similar to mine as it's well equipped to handle itself at close range or long range(duel wise). It's better to focus on close range imo because more players are going to want to fight you up close than from far away. Night shard does hit hard, I've seen it. It just will not be a reliable win condition against a decent player, not by itself. Only bad players will let you repeatedly punish them with this, so it's not worth dedicating offhands or anything significant
the only things I don't agree on as far as placing is concerned are... Zamor's ice storm (very very good at punishing bloodhound step spammers that close the distance as the aoe around you catches them) scholars armament (INSANELY strong for amplifying certain weapons arts on hybrid casters with stuff like glintstone shard, waves of darkness, phantom slash turning any one of these into one shot machines, for this it deserves at least c tier and would recommend trying it out on a magic weapon art focused build) outside of that, solid video :P
The more flashy and expensive a spell the more likely it fucking blows total chunks in FromSoft games. Honestly, my favorite part of being a sorcerer is basically just Canon of Haima, Adula's Moonblade, and weapon arts (not even strictly sorcerer weapon arts).
18:16 I would move night shard and comet from c to b tier because it is not affected by eternal darkness so you can spam this at people who are setting up spells and if your far enough away eternal darkness will block their view preventing them from seeing you cast the spell
Ambush shard paired with the arrows reach talisman boosts it up to A tier for me. One of the only spells that work with it an that extra range is killer
Loretta's mastery is actually amazing because of its tracking, true, one arrow will always miss but u need to remember that you can face away from people, charge it, lock and let it fly It turns 180 and hits them if there is enough distance While it takes a lot of fp, if it hits, it does 800+ always Because of how it can curve, it can actually lead to roll catch because of how the projectiles can be delayed on each individual hit Its also really good when people hide behind objects U can get a 90 degree angle on them, lock and watch it curve and hit them behind the object Its also aoe so when they rush u to hit u mid cast u can release on the ground and watch it do 1k damage
For people who would like to have the benefit of Ancient Death Rancor without specing into faith, there's a weapon called "Family heads" that has the same effect. (and if you're spec'ed enough to hold the moonveil, then you can use it as well)
I've always loved invading in the souls series so when I saw your first spellblade video with that mortar spell I fell in love with it. I'm planning on doing an arcane caster so knowing some of the more out there spells helps loads
Love that the wizard meta is about battlefield control and mindgames over damage output. Obvs damage is important, and melee characters also have to consider this things, but that's just the nature of balance.
Yeah but it's not balanced because mages do absurd damage. So you have way to many advantages. The only slight balance being that your usually squishier
@@joesheridan9451 I feel like this argument would hold more weight if bleed wasn't as prevalent as it is currently in pvp and there weren't so many weapons with bleed innately on them. Mages definitely have damage, which generally gets balanced by being squishier, but there's not really a tradeoff for bleed spam outside of engagement.
Loretta’s Mastery actually is pretty cool because you can aim to your left if they’re in front of you lock onto them and it’ll do a really sharp arc and I’ve roll caught with it before
Sorceries are so crazy in ER, the combos, mixups, area control and sheer damage they have is insane. I also really enjoy the skill cap a sorcerer build can have as well. I'm shit at pvp but it's really fun learning and improving with different spells.
I cast Magic-infused Eclipse Greatshield(+25)!! All your magic is now D-tier! Now i cast barrier of gold, and I finish with shieldpoke and jumping poke, keeping a mild 30 degree strafe to always have the motion to avoid ambush shard! Gg. even stars of ruin is now useless. For real im glad they did actually put effort into making macic so much better in this game
Of the invasions I have done, most of the kills come from Ranni's moon. I don't know why, I just think that most people don't expect it. And I did get a snipe with Azur's Comet once too. That was funny. They're not useless, it's just that they are best when nobody expects them.
One of my favorite combos is a wiffed adulas then comet I have caught so many ppl that think they can punish adulas only to eat a point blank comet lol
Ancient Death Rancor is 100% A tier for its stagger and chase time alone. The INT/FTH setup using Ancient Death Rancor can straight up combo people with bestial sling/flame catch stagger for the skulls to hit, then they do 2-3 stagger animations which is long enough for a follow up chain spell, 2 skulls are enough to stagger someone with maximum poise. Side Note: Scott, try an INT/FTH/ARC build for multicasting, the Albinauric Staff at 37INT/32FTH/50ARC has 320 Sorcery Scaling and the Dragon Communion Talisman is already the best FTH talisman for its investment, so at 32FTH you end up with 324 Incant Scaling and 320 Sorcery Scaling, it feels very strong and versatile because the sorcery spells actually get to do decent damage (this is on a lvl 125 character). Collapsing Stars, not noted here, will go through eternal darkness and has more range than stars of ruin and casts faster, I do disagree with it not doing a lot of damage, a CRS+10 and 80 INT will have the whole thing hit for about 700-900 DMG for 18 base FP. Night Shard and Night Comet are both inferior to their regular cousins, Night Shard is a swift glintstone shard, but costs 7FP (double staff of loss can be kinda fun though since at 80 INT it will hit for 450-500 in PvP), Night Comet isnt the "Night" version of Comet, it is the "Night" version of Cometshard and lacks Comet's amazing hitbox (while costing about as much FP). Otherwise, its basically on the money, great list.
For Blood Throne spells they can combo. This means that you can skip the long animation on Blood Whorl and go into the 2nd or 3rd hit right away. Mind you those attacks have good AoE and have great hyper armor / poise. The spells also deal decent damage and have bleed. They also combo into each other and can loop. Of course, you have to be mindful of the damage you deal to yourself. You also probably need a specialized build so it hits hard.
Er, Swift glintstone shard and Night Shard are basically the same spell, the latter useful due to being buffed by the staff of loss + pve enemies don't dodge. Correct me if I'm wrong, though
I think it's better to think of night shard as the upgraded form of swift shard, rather than in relation to night comet. It comes out just as fast, but pierces enemies so you can hit multiple opponents and in PvE enemies won't dodge it as it counts as invisible.
Star shower is underrated. It's great if you're a hybrid build with low FP. Lower FP cost than stars of ruin and has higher stun. In 1v1 situations, star shower + phalanx while running at them is perfect to start a roll catch chain
Imo Carian piercer should be s tier. I usually find it to be more useful than adulas moonblade as I use azurs staff which greatly increases its cast speed
Beast slng will be the best incantation on that list because of the 2 cast double barrel shotgun effect it has when jumping (99% sure it's a non intended exploit btw)
As a dps spell zamor ice storm sucks but it does have a solid utility. If someone is spamming BHS to get in your face you can time a charged blast, if they go in to attack the constant AOE will stagger them out of the . Then you can punish with moonveil or Regal scepter WA. It nukes.
I honestly belief you can make a solid build just with Carrian Slicer, Adulas Moonblade and Carrian Piercer. Rush with slicer and punish rolls and whiffs by swapping between the two. Also I think its worth mentioning with gravity spells, they can’t be spell parried by carrian retaliation shields. So Ive lately been using collapsing stars when people pull out a parry shield from a distance.
Anish shared is also good to hit people healing or trying to cast their own spells. It's really funny when someone tries to cast with partial convert and you smack them out of it
Briar of sin is tier A => Can be chain casting after Carian Slicer => Can trade most things in the game => Can be a true combo starter with comet => The whole combo ( Briar of sin + Comet ) can do 950 damage on a non optimised damage build
You are heavily underestimating the briars sorceries. They chain-cast faster than you would expect and are inescapable for multiple casts. They're my favorite, greedy teams will get one-shot as a group. If you try this spell then be sure to use the ranged one and cycle to the aoe when the opponent runs up on you. I used whirling tear and poise to make ganks survivable.
I do think they length-traveling Briar sorcery is decent which is why I put it at C. The problem is the build required to cast such spells is usually very inconvenient. They are sorceries that require faith to cast, which pretty much locks you into Staff of the Guilty, which is a terrible staff even at 80 faith (only 300 sorc scaling, compared to Lusat's 413, for example). Also this means you wont be casting many other sorceries since you are scaling faith. maybe at very high levels this becomes good but at 125-150 theyre not great.
@@ScottJund it's worth looking into the albanauric staff for the thorn spells instead. It'd be an entire arcane caster build for just the two spells but the bleed build up would scale with that staff. Offhand the staff of the guilty and wear alberich's set for free extra damage
@@ScottJund I've been having a fair amount of fun with Briars of Punishment and Briars of Sin in PvP, since you can chain cast Sin in the same animation as Punishment and have it come out extremely quickly and have it count as it's second chain. Been using the Staff of the Guilty in the off hand for the extra bonus with the Albinauric staff in main hand for the arcane scaling. It's definitely not top tier but when people don't expect it they advance on you as you cast Punishment over and over, and as soon as they step in to strike you chain cast Sin, they usually panick roll into the third channel of Sin and die. That said, absolutely horrible against anything but pure melee builds, and as soon as people know the gimmick they're not likely to fall for it again. Definitely super niche but kinda fun
Changes from patch 1.04
- Gavel of Haima from C to A tier
- Adula's Moonblade from S to B tier
- Briars of Punishment from C to B tier
- Briars of Sin from F to C tier
- Loretta's Mastery from C to B tier
💨 🚬 😮💨 Adula pack
Adula's is C tier. It's way too expensive for its cost now, even if it does OK damage.
Gavel of Haima got that good!? Damn how much did they buff its speed!?
Ancient Death Rancor is A tier
So the full moon sorceries didnt raise in rank?
Starlight is S tier for invasion gigachads. Only weaklings use stealth, and starlight is the exact opposite of stealth. They know you're coming for that booty and they should be scared, because no sane man puts a neon light over their head when they're on the hunt. :^)
Starlight into unseen form.
Lmao
@@brianbumble never let them know your next move
I wish starlight, instead of giving a light above your head they just changed it to a different spell that makes your whole body glow
You're the reason why when i invade i always kill other invaders first.
Who would of thought scott would be the main pvp sorcery guy. How things have changed!
Its really fun
When the main 3 spells of the class are quick weapon attacks that do ridiculous damage, how could he not?
@@andrewh.4866 You must be Rivers of blood main.
@@andrewh.4866 bruh
I'm trying this build and it's super fun to use it, More than my Original run, and Strength build
Oh hell yeah, can't wait for the incantation tier list. Love that sort of content. Especially from a knowledgable dude like you.
B tier is pocket sand and rest is under
Dragons spells : S tier
Everything else: meh tier
Maybe best to wait for that one until the next patch lol.
@@Mo_sty bestial sling is a tier as well
@@Mo_sty incantation buffs pretty good as well imo
I’m incredibly excited to see how much (or how little) the relevance of this list changes over time after future balance patches and DLC.
I feel like most of it will stay the same because they don't tend to change how spells act, only their damage and speed. The Good spells are good due to their utility and speed moreso than damage so I don't think DLC will shake up the meta too much, maybe add a few more options.
@@themurderofcoke pretty much I feel most of the changes will come from new spells or people learning new techs and spell combos
Starlight is gonna be S tier, mark my words
18:50 "Night comet is just upgraded night shard" Not really true, the night shard is the night equivalent of swift glintstone shard - you can combo more powerful spells like the comet right after them, not to mention shooting it while running, rolling, jumping etc.
This is accurate. I should have said it's a worst Swift Glintstone honestly
@@ScottJund If you have a Staff of Loss on offhand, it will receive a +30% damage boost, dealing much more damage than Swift Glintstone.
Here's the banger: You can dual wield Staves of Loss to get the damage boost TWICE. Making Night Shard and Night Comet the best 2 sorceries in the game in PVE, and pretty dangerous if landed in PVP.
@@Omar_Al_Seddik Except the Staff of Loss is terrible for casting everything else so you'll be a gimmick build
@@ScottJund Compared to the Carian Regal Scepter (best in the game with no setbacks or faith investment), Dual Wielding Staff of Loss deals ~10% less damage overall but ~50% more damage for Night Shard and Night Comet. That's a fair trade, especially in PvE, because you won't want to cast anything else, anyways. Both spells become super-efficient FP-wise. Night Shard is the fastest spell to cast in the game (tied with Swift Glintstone) and can be chain-casted into Night Comet, which is a spammable nuke. In PvE, enemies don't dodge or block either of them too.
You are correct, though. By the definition of the term, it is a gimmick build, but a very powerful one. Its effectiveness in PvP isn't anywhere as PvE all things considered, of course.
@@Omar_Al_Seddik He uses Lusat's staff btw. He prefers it more. Best is subjective
Hey Scott, I loved your list overall and agreed with nearly all of your placements, HOWEVER, as a connoisseur of weird spells, I must tell you that in my experience, the thorn sorceries are actually surprisingly effective, especially Briars of Sin, which I got impressive results from.
This is not in duels of course, but invasions. I have tried this on level 60, 80, and 135 builds. The worst was the 135, but the 60 and 80 performed quite well. At a meager 14 intelligence, you can use Swift Glintstone Shard, Carian Slicer, Magic Glintblade, and a couple oddballs. In my case I actually used Night Maiden's Mist because it can cut off chokepoints and people are generally afraid of it. At lower levels, the Staff of the Guilty's performance is solid for regular sorceries, very close to the best INT staves with equivalent stat investment and upgrades. At level 60, you can make a Faith Sorcery build with 35-40 VIG, 15-20 Mind (you don't need much at all as every spell here is extremely cheap in FP) just 14 INT, and dump the rest in FTH (usually you get about 35ish without buffs/talismans.) Then you buff up on faith/magic damage in your physick, Alberich's armor, and whatever sorcery/faith talismans you like.
As for actually applying Briars of Sin, I found it to be AMAZING if you chain cast Swift Shard or Slicer into Sin. The transition is quite fast and will often catch opponents attempting to save their friends from your Slicer chasedown. If you repeat cast it, it will very often catch them a second or maybe even a third time, as Briars of Sin has a very long lingering hitbox that makes it nearly impossible to safely pass through. This does pretty high damage with this build and one or two shot the majority of people I hit it with. It also can be used as your classic "around the corner" ambush option to catch an overconfident gank squad by surprise. I've even had the experience of using Night Maiden's mist to fill the room at the Castle Sol church grace, then blocked the door and used Briars to kill the host as he tried to escape the mist.
Briars of Punishment also works really well in this build as Magic Glintblades couple very well with it. Briars of Punishment has very impressive range and damage on this build, will travel across gaps somehow, and you can chain cast it into Sin to cover your ass when you need. Punishment makes a perfect substitute for something like Comet here, lower damage and cast time but very cheap to spam it and it can be very difficult to see coming in the chaos of PvE compared to a typical magic projectile.
I implore you to give a build like this a try, I had incredible fun with it, and I love these thorn spells now.
Great vid, just wanted to add a weird interaction I found with Loretta's Greatbow. The fully charged projectile actually has an AOE hitbox, however it never hits more than 1 target anw. But it is useful to know that it will still do full dmg if you don't get a direct hit, but shoot the ground under them instead.
tested easily on the beach zombies, so it's not a latency thing
8:00 Don't forget that carian slicer can be parried, and spamming it like that is a good way to get yourself parried.
true, especially dangerous if they're spamming carian retaliation parry
True, but if you miss the parry you're probably dead from carian slicer damage lol
i love the capability of glintstone shard, your videos showed me the spell combo into comet and other heavier spells that I feel like these combos make the difference between good mages and mindless stars of ruin spam
Im pretty sure thats gonna get patched next update
Yeah, using bugs is what makes difference between good and bad mage lmao
@@sirrealism7300 if i had the option to change how it would work. I would allow to combo spells/incantations but only if they are in the same category. so like glintstone spell into glintstone spell but not glintstone into thorn spell, or in the case of incantations, beastial into dragon communion.
That’s not a bug the bug is only with catch flame/bestial sling running attack that skips the animation of the next spell
@@maciej-8809 im quite positive the natural animation chaining of swift glintstone into things like comet is completely intended
Scholar's armament is exclusively useful for buffing Clayman's Harpoon for the double dipped inteligence scaling. But that weapon might just be an oversight by the devs so I don't know for how long that will be useful.
Seems like an oversight for sure. This exact thing was in ds2 and was patched out once people found it.
@@Hax4Snax Yeah but in DS2 it was on the Moonlight Greatsword and it was quite literally one shotting everyone in pvp with extremely little effort or input at pretty much any level. Other weapons like Black Cryptsword could still be buffed despite being innate dark in DS2 but wasn't nearly as egregious as the buffed Moonlight.
Appreciate the casting review. Completely unrelated question, do you feel beast roar is a decent counter to longer windup spells? Its worked for me as a nice suprise on, say , a stars of ruin windup. Especially if they have light poise and can be staggered out of cast
yep beast roar is a great counter to things like stars of ruin
Beast roar best roar
It's good, especially against spammers. You don't even need to cancel their SoR, as you can consistently dodge a good majority of the all but inevitable damage, which most often makes it a great trade in your favor.
Lief Blower, Viking Champion
@@ScottJund Hey, minor thing that probably doesn't change ranking much, but by casting rock blaster with LH while RH is empty ( 2 Handing & charging spell cancels effect) it will cost a grand total of 0FP
I intend to test if Vow of the Indomitable can act as a counter to Stars of Ruin, you would probably need to perform it twice in a row if not three times but it might be enough s. Another thing I wanted to test was if the Blasphemous Claw could parry the player version of the Black Blade incantation because I noticed that it has the same golden effect around it. If i get around to testing these before someone else then I will reply to this comment or post one on the next video. Roiling Magma may be more useful than you think, I think it was Amir that I saw using it to keep his opponent away from him while he cast a dragonbreath incant, though the statspread required for that seems a little odd, there are probably better area denial sorceries anyway.
It's not enough, you'd take damage inbetween casts of Vow of the Indomitable and actually get more damage than spam rolling
Thanks a lot for this list, great points throughout. Totally agree that magma spells need something to stop being so underwhelming for the lack of range, FP cost, & cast speed. Every spell can't be great, but seeing an entire class of sorcery be trivialized is disappointing.
Same thing with lightning incant most just are too slow
@@expzulix4661 bs honed bolt and lightning spear are literally used as a basis
@@expzulix4661 Even without the fast casting bug or regular chain they arent as bad as the lower tier sorceries
I was really looking forward to finally having access to fire elemental damage as a primarily int-based caster, but was so disappointed when I finally got my hands on them. Rykard's Rancor ended up being pretty nice though for all of those ulcerated tree spirits the game kept throwing at me, at least.
@@the-four-seven A silver lining is that if fire spells still reset Frostbite, there are plenty of ice spells that are great in this game. Even if the fire sorcery is eh, we can work with it in that regard.
Thank you Scott. I'm playing a int build rn and this list could not have come up at a better time. Glad you like the arc spell, it's super good in PVE. If only free aiming it didn't also change its vertical angle...
24:55 I largely agree, but if you're positioned right (close enough) when they start casting, and you roll forward, starting your i-frames _right_ as the first hit is coming in, and then roll forward two more times after that, you can avoid the damage entirely. It's actually somewhat similar to the pattern and tempo for dodging Malenia's Waterfowl Dance.
yeah it did happen to me a couple of times where i didnt get any damage with well timed rolles … but it is hard to constantly do it perfectly
Add shaky connections and timing it is still impossibly hard, its gonna need either slower cast time or lower damage its way too oppressive with barely any effort on the casters part
@@pandinus1377 to be honest … with shitty connection … cannon of haima can hit you in split seconds
@@TitaNiUm-NaZ not absolutely unplayable connection but just enough to have a small delay, ive consistently gotten fucked over by that spell and that one spell only over a mountain of invasions
@@pandinus1377 i guess slight damage reduction would be great … we dont want the only viable spell for mages to be nerfed to the ground and with it poor mages … since it is the only kinda viable caster build
I dont know what you're talking about, Starlight is the strongest spell in the game. Can YOU have a pretty blue glow? Thats right, didn't think so.
Good tierlist btw
@@Krog517 it is a lot brighter than the hip lantern tho. It has like twice the visibility distance compared the the lantern. I found it pretty handy when exploring super dark places I hadn't been to before
Real men wander the lands between in eternal darkness, with the worst sense of direction imaginable
The sword sorceries are so good in this game that it actually feels way better to play as a spellblade than a melee this time.
I've not played with sorceries but seeing this list will and hearing you explain how they should be used will definitely help with coming up with counters against them...which most likely will be Carian Retaliation for most of them :^)
I REALLY hope they fix the ash of war version of carian retaliation
As long as you don’t use the self proc
Got to say Founding Rain of Stars is quite underrated. I've been using a pure mage build similar to yours and use founding rain as my "you're gonna get wrecked when you get close" spell when carian slicer might not be the best (eg against some dual wielding rapiers or long poke weapons). The set up with Terra Magica I have not thought about but that could make it even better, for players who don't give a shit about the spell and just try and get me, it does like 600-700 damage and has A LOT of stuns. Really useful to ease pressure and then set up
i think it takes too long to cast, and even go into effect, and it costs 2 slots. still not worth IMO
@@ScottJund also loving your videos, keep the awesome content coming. I've always loved pure sorcery but you helped me make it possible, having my most enjoyable souls pvp experience atm
This is excellent Scott, here’s hoping you keep these up, lots of good info.
“You’ll never death-blight someone ever”
I’ve seen montages showing otherwise. lol
Love this, can't wait for incant list in the future!
Opinions:
• Strong disagree on Briars of Sin. The 24 faith req means it's for int/faith builds. It combos with any other chainable sorcery. Combo into the second animation in the chain to catch people you've baited into rolling in. Amazing hyperarmor and ok poise damage, and very fast recovery so you have plenty of time to begin your next combo of spells, serves as a nice transition from a sorcery combo to an incant combo. If you use low-req spells you could afford an int/faith/arc build (arc to scale dmg), and the albinauric staff will add to the bleed on this. Learn your combos so that you never accidentally use the third animation though, the recovery is atrocious. Arguably you could do just spam Catch Flame or Carian Slicer at people who roll into you, but this has a nice lingering hitbox and AoE for invasions, and people don't expect the fast recovery so they are likely to eat your followup. Still not A-tier but definitely not F.
• I don't think night shard deserves to be C if swift shard is S, they are exactly the same except for 2 FP cost and visual and damage differences.
• Rancorcall I'd argue is just as good as its big brother b/c it's just so cheap in requirements and FP, useable even if you are not a mage. It has longer range than Stars of Ruin, so cast a couple times at long range and now you can approach any low-poise mage for free (unless they have eternal darkness). Despite low damage they are forced to react because of stagger.
• I'd say Thops is full F :( I tried to make it work but very slow and it doesn't combo with other sorceries afaik. Best use is PvE for removing one of the final boss's spells. But I will keep trying to make the meme work!
THOPS'S BARRIER CAN REMOVE THE ORB??
agree on night shard for sure, and aren't invisibility sorceries unable to be parried too? does have some nice usage against spell parries if so. idk if that applies to eternal darkness or not haven't tested it :)
I've been trying to make an arcane caster build work for a while now. I'm not sure if i just suck at the caster play style or if it's my build that sucks though x.x. So far i've had an abysmal W/L record running both thorns Sorcs and a few of the blood Incants.
Any advice?
I believe I have something in favor of Scholars Armament, hear me out Mr Jund. This spells adds 0.75% of your magic scaling as magic damage to your weapon, so a 400 incantation caster (everyone with 80 int buffed like your mage) can get something slightly above +300 magic damage in any weapon. There a few weapons with magic damage that can also de buffed, like the Clayman's Spear (12 STH, 10 DES, 12 INT), a weapon that with the basic stats and 80 int has a standard AR of 531 and magic infused AR of 672. Considering that you can go to somewhere around 835 total AR with the Standard Infusion + Scholars Armament, which then becomes 945 AR with the magic damage flask, I'd say it's pretty good compared to the magic infusion. It's not a ground breaking spell, but having a 5kg spear with almost 1000 AR and that your very own mage has the stats to equip right now is definitely something more than F tier... right? Might be wrong please don't ban me s2
I 100% agree with this and with lusat 430 scaling, tslismans and buffs with the right ash of war you can absolutely oneshot someone. Its way way way better than the magic or cold ash of war. The creator is wrong about this. A-S tier depending on what you use it on.
I’ve tried it and it is 100% not worth it as it only does a tiny bit more damage than using magic ash of war for a temporary buff
@@oscarbarriuso3667 i wanna hear more of what you tested on. Its not a tiny bit ots like 20% depending on weapon.
Clayman's Harpoon is literally the only weapon worth using with Scholar's Armament at a reasonable level. It's not "a few weapons", it's just this one. The spell doesn't become good because it has one cheesy interaction that ignores the rules that apply to every other weapon in the game.
@@KyussTheWalkingWorm this is just flat out not true. Its a spell so you can buff it with many multipliers. Talismans, armorsets, flask, staves int scaling. Its so much bettet than the passive scaling on a weapon that you get from magic or cold ash of war. With 70-80 int you get 10-20% more dmg per hit with scholar. Its quite nuts. Clayman is the best bcs it has inate int scaling but it work better at breakpoint int with any weapon.
Sucks that some of the flashier spells tend to not do much. It's a shame, but oh well. Thanks for the list. Can't wait for the Incantations list.
That just makes it more satisfying when you pull the flashy bullshit off.
That’s why you should join the incantation gang. Nothing is flashier than dragon breath spells and they are very very good.
History of Souls games unfortunately. Flashy shit almost always tend to be absolute dogshit
@@shmekelfreckles8157 rotten breath is fucking lame
They are pve spells.
This may be kind of a meme, but what about the consumable items that cost FP and work like a spell...
4:04 I remember people saying back in the network test that that spell was going to be amazing for pvp because of lingering hitboxes. Even back then, I was telling them all they were wrong.
'Why did I choose that line of words...' - Always love the moments of inner commentary coming out!
One thing about Bloodthorn sorceries though: they apparently combo with each other, letting you skip the cast animations and spam the shit out of them for massive damage, if timed correctly.
its neat and all but a spell repertoire consisting of two spells is never gonna do great
@@ScottJund unless those spells are stars of ruin and stars of ruin
Night Maiden's Mist, in my honest opinion, is a lot better than you describe it as.
For starters, the claim that it harms your allies is false. It only damages enemies and the person who used it. I know this for a fact, as I used it just the other night in Radahn's boss fight whilst playing with two of my friends, AND summoning all the NPC's. Absolutely none of them took any damage from it except myself and Radahn.
This spell is capable of not only dealing with large groups of enemies simultaneously, but is also very useful against larger bosses, as they will very often stay inside of its range and continue to take damage. This is especially useful for bosses and enemies that are resistant to magic, as it does continuous tick damage to them that ignores their magic resistance, and can deal with them pretty easily because of that.
And, it's also able to charged, which will effectively double the size of the cloud it creates, allowing to you cover a pretty large area, making it even more effective for all the aforementioned reasons.
Aaaaand now you gotta do this all over again
Adula's Moonblade is ALSO a shockingly good anti-air. If someone tries a jump-in, after predicting you'll use other projectiles or weapon pokes, it's nigh-guaranteed to smack them. This is because the wave's hitbox is surprisingly high, and the targeting adjust on the spell will actually respond to the opponent's jump. This means it easily hits the opponent's non-invul upper-body. It's decent in a trade with most jump-ins too, because of its insane damage potential.
Ambush shard, in some weird situations (usually involving the z-axis?) can appear directly inside the opponent's hurtbox. Combined with its fast startup, this is basically guaranteed damage. That said, the circumstances that allow for this seem to be quite unreliable.
Cannon is S-tier in invasions imo, and also goes way up in usefulness if duels are happening in any area with substantial terrain (going down to a 1 vs 1 in an invasion; if we get any dueling arenas that aren't Final Destination). It's ability to damage through walls, punt people off ledges, and mess up roll-timings if it goes off "early" via hitting terrain shines in those situations.
!Spell Carian Retaliation will still be worse than !Ash Carian Retaliation even if the damage were equalized, for the reasons you cite. Furthermore, when I used the spell in place of the ash, there were a bunch of times where I'd negate the opposing spell, but got no swords at all. Meaning the spell seems desync'd by lag in the opposite way to the ash.
Frozen Mist is better than some of the other area denial spells, imo, since the cast is faster and it lasts so long. Assuming the opponent isn't already frostbit, that is, because in that case they don't fear it at all. A lot of the other area denial spells have the issue of either being unreliable in how they hit (magic downpour) or taking too long to come out (Crystal Release, Founding Rain), meaning that you almost need *another* area denial spell to buy the time to set them up.
Hammer combo being even slower than the initial hit makes me extremely sad. I'm convinced they either did that a) to allow it to still hit if the first blow knocked an opponent down or b) because they 100% intended spell combos to be a thing, and didn't want a flash hammer followup from slicer.
I think quantitative downgrade spells like Glintstone Cometshard shouldn't be ignored by mages with low mind. Being able to sustain an option across a fight, especially in protracted engagements like some invasions, shouldn't be dismissed. This is less true post-FP cost buffs, since Comet now only costs 7 more FP than Cometshard. This is NOT true for downgrades that lose a qualitative instead of quantitative factor - Gravity Well is not a more FP efficient, but DPS deficient, Collapsing Stars, because the real draw of Collapsing Stars is its delayed timing and being much more frame active.
I disagree with Night Maiden's Mist's assignment to a fair degree - for invasions anyway. It's a poor-man's Cannon of Haima or Adula's Moonblade, when it comes to hitting people hiding behind doors or corners. A good way to check for such things too. The spell keeps ticking for a time even after fleeing the cloud, so even momentarily touching it deals like 200 damage. For low level invasions, I got a LOT of use out of it, especially since it's a fraction of the cost of Cannon. Also, if someone commits to a long animation, like a lot of the dragon communion incantations, since the mist doesn't stun *they cannot cancel the animation to leave it* and get dissolved. Awful in duels, to be sure.
Shard Spiral gives me memories of the Great Soul Arrow vs Homing Soul Arrow mixup from DS2. Only potentially better, since good players can't just unlock, run diagonally towards you at boosted speed, and/or quick roll to negate the mixup.
I think Terra Magicka is quite good in PvP, same as you. However, I think using it as an invader is a bit more limited in application. If you're in a position where the gank can pressure you, even superboosted Slicer or Moonblade damage probably won't save you. On the other hand, if you're down to just the host, you HAVE to go to them or they'll escape to resummon. Having Terra Magicka down on a vantage point where you can shell the host team with Comet, Cannon of Haima, or Stars of Ruin, however, is quite powerful.
The one niche use for Sorcerer's Armament is that you can use it to buff the Clayman's Harpoon, which innately has magic damage and Intelligence scaling in addition to being able to be buffed. It's the only weapon that is like this however, so it's kind of the exception to the rule of that spell being bad.
No no no, any weapons works with this. Doesnt have to be clayman, you just need to buff the initial cast as much as possible (talismans, terra etc. Not sure if Terra works here, havent tested). I have a plus 25 grave scythe in heavy affinity with the knights cavalry ash of war. Hits for 3k+ in pve absolutely oneshots someone in pvp if you land the 2 chain combo. Has bloodloss too so it destroys everything in pve. Also the ash of war is very good because even is you get stunnes the ghost hit goes trough.
@@Genosidukka I'm well aware it works just like any weapon buff, but you can't use it on a Magic or Cold infused weapon to maximize your Magic damage. Clayman's Harpoon is the exception since it has Magic damage built into the weapon and can be buffed, so it massively benefits from having a buff applied and you can pull off some nasty damage numbers with stuff like the Glintstone Pebble Ash of War.
@@StairFacts the scythe has bloodloss built in so its going to chunk
@@Genosidukka I know it does, I wasn't talking about scythes though lol
Unless you're PVPing at RL 200, I doubt you'd be getting much from using Sorcerer's Armament over going for an incantation buff build with a Heavy infused weapon.
@@StairFacts 170 with 80int i sure am. Just a flat 20% dmg buff that scales with ashes of war too. If i hit i oneshot sub 50 vigor
Very niche interaction, but night shard and night comet are pretty much the only spells that aren't affected by Eternal Darkness, so as an anti-mage spell its quite decent, and since its similar to the swift glintstone shard into comet combo, its quite good in certain scenarios.
Scott's videos are the only YT vids I dont watch in 1.5 speed because he already sounds like hes at 1.5 speed normally.
Interesting thing with Shatter Earth is that if chain casted it does explosion of Rock Blaster with much faster cast time. Even if it's techincally a "worse version" of Rock Blaster it ends up being better for that alone. May be just a worse off version of piercer and slicer for roll catching, still satisfying to hit though.
night maiden's mist does not damage summoned phantoms, and yes you can "just walk out of it" but even having stepped in it for a moment causes a MASSIVE amount of damage that you can't avoid even if you roll. the AOE is much larger than it looks so free-aiming a mist as a finisher is incredibly lethal as, if you aim it properly, there's little to no chance they'll avoid getting affected by it
that "why did I use that line of words" got me damn 😂
If you didn’t know you can chain cast both of the blood spells b2b. It’s niche but if you have both of them on your bar and you’re using the trail one Lyon can use the big aoe when they come close. Actually really fun build with blessed talisman and beast vitality.
Please god do more. We lost PvP skillz. We need rating formats for ER
I'm a bit late to the party but I feel like the night sorceries got a little undervalued here, because they have some hidden utility. People already mentioned the staff of loss bonus for an offhand choice (It can out damage comet for less FP when SoL is used in offhand), however, the real benefit of these spells is said lesser known utility. They have extra pierce damage to shields, are unaffected by eternal darkness, and do not trigger either carion retaliation or golden retaliation (erdtree greatshield). They can catch players off guard (and completely counter some) for those reasons. Night comet also combos the same way regular comet does, so night shard into night comet has the same fast cast and with SoL in offhand can easily hit for 1500+ damage. The trade off for another passive bonus staff is somewhat considerable for pure casters, however the other utility they provide makes it much more viable. I love this spell when I see erdtree greatshield because you can just full charge it and most people will just try and retaliate it and get slammed with a big chunk of damage(1000+ fully charged thru the shield w/ godfrey icon). Plus comet is a massive looking projectile that can clog up the screen and night comet is much less visually impactful, sometimes even being hard to track when in the dark (this part is mostly just personal preference though). Not quite as all propose as their glintstone counterparts, but still quite viable for the added utility
Interestingly you can free aim Crystal Barrage by moving the camera. Probably not too useful but that's pretty neat.
Just a heads up the briar thorn spells are better when used together due to the animation canceling between them. You can do the spell that tracks and then the aoe one around you and the aoe will have its animation cancelled. You can also do the aoe one twice and then use the thorn spell that tracks to cancel its animation. Makes them much more usable imo.
Ambush Shard is a lot stronger than you would think. If you add the arrows reach talisman it jumps out the range of attack and lock on substantially and its able to hit roughly 350-450 per hit. Depending on stat scaling, armor and catalyst.
Ngl Scott. Its nice to see you having genuine fun with games again. The break from DBD is doing you wonders
In my opinion there are 3 big dick spells so far, cannon of haima, ocular bubble, and collapsing stars. Not the best spells but are suprising useful
I wish the thorn sorcery was better. The outfit to buff it, is the coolest looking wizard one. It’s the only Gandalf style set
For invasions I like night maidens mist to smoke people out of their hiding spots. Also the moons are fun to use at long ranges, especially against other mages cuz it’ll eat their spells like eternal darkness. Not the most practical things but very enjoyable IMO
I'm building a RL130 Necromancer build, Fia's Mist and Eclipse Shotel too and, man, have I been shook by this video ay lmao
Star shower should actually be higher, despite Stars of Ruin being better as it’s a direct upgrade, Star shower also can one shot when all 6 hit, costs less FP, has a faster cast time, and allows you to play less brain dead. Instead of spamming it for that easy win, you can justify chasing the last 2 blasts of your Star shower for a roll catch.
Briars of Sin and Punishment are best cast with the Albinauric staff btw, since it scales bleed buildup with your arc stat
Rykard's Rancor has surprised me with how good it can be if you fire 2 or 3 at a time, makes a visually satisfying, and somewhat blinding for opponents, field of fire that does okay damage over a few seconds. No one is going to sit inside it of course but as the only half decent fire option for int mages it works well to set up frostbite damage.
Most of my experience is PVE though because my internet craps out a lot, so take this with a grain of salt.
Just under half an hour isn't a "very long video" Scott.
Thanks for the video Scott.
Glad to see my baby Glintblade is in A tier.
I agree with almost everything, but I think Freezing Mist is at least high B or A tier, the spacing it gives you is insane, it obscures your character if you stand just behind it/inside it so you can send spells through it and it can really fuck up people's reaction time, you can circle around it and use the cover to drink fp flasks and it lasts basically forever. It also forces the enemy to decide if he will let you control the space or if he's gonna rush across the mist to stop you, you can then trade with him using carian slicer inside your mist as he's getting frostbitten trying to rush you down, or use swift glintblade to stagger him inside it, etc...
yeah see i think Terra Magica fulfills that niche so much better. its either "come into my 800 damage carian slicer grinder" or "stay at a distance at die to projectiles"
@@ScottJund but what if another magic mf rolls up on you with the slicer strapped on his hip too. Wouldn’t sprinting into terra magica make the opponent’s slicer come out faster? It works on anyone right?
The amount it obscures your character from sight is by far the most useful and most slept on characteristic of the spell. People will put it to good use in time.
@@ScottJund One thing to consider, but needs testing is if Freezing Mist obscures the player enough so the enemy can't target through the fog. I doubt it does but it would be awesome if so.
Star of Ruin is in its own tier night club where only stars of ruin can hang out.
I love this character arc for you so much
Actually star shower has stagger(hit stop),pretty good poise damage,better cost performance and shorter duration that could not be easily retaliated.I think it deserves A tier indeed.
0:30 Super eager to see where you put night shard on this list.
Edit: 18:31 Now I can't wait to see where you put swift glintstone shard.
Other edit: 25:51 night shard is just as fast as glintstone shard, comes out at the same speed, and if you run the staff of loss in your 'off'-hand (whichever hand that is) it will out-damage glintstone shard by a significant amount. I regularly 3-4 shot people by spamming night shard at them. This does mean you need to either give up your Carian Glintstone Staff, or have your second off-hand slot with a staff, and have enough carry weight to not be fat-rolling while also having 56 poise, though. Personally, I think it's worth it. Everything you say here about swift glintstone shard, is also true of night shard, except if you have the staff of loss as your supporting staff, night shard will also hit harder than swift glintstone shard (anywhere from 400-450 damage has been my experience). You should really give night shard another look.
That's not enough of a benefit to justify not using the carian staff of other staffs that benefit the spells intended for close range.
Scott's build is similar to mine as it's well equipped to handle itself at close range or long range(duel wise). It's better to focus on close range imo because more players are going to want to fight you up close than from far away.
Night shard does hit hard, I've seen it. It just will not be a reliable win condition against a decent player, not by itself. Only bad players will let you repeatedly punish them with this, so it's not worth dedicating offhands or anything significant
@@subhuman9544 I already dealt with this in my comment. To repeat, you can just have the other staff in a second off-hand slot, and switch as-needed.
the only things I don't agree on as far as placing is concerned are...
Zamor's ice storm (very very good at punishing bloodhound step spammers that close the distance as the aoe around you catches them)
scholars armament (INSANELY strong for amplifying certain weapons arts on hybrid casters with stuff like glintstone shard, waves of darkness, phantom slash turning any one of these into one shot machines, for this it deserves at least c tier and would recommend trying it out on a magic weapon art focused build)
outside of that, solid video :P
The more flashy and expensive a spell the more likely it fucking blows total chunks in FromSoft games. Honestly, my favorite part of being a sorcerer is basically just Canon of Haima, Adula's Moonblade, and weapon arts (not even strictly sorcerer weapon arts).
18:16 I would move night shard and comet from c to b tier because it is not affected by eternal darkness so you can spam this at people who are setting up spells and if your far enough away eternal darkness will block their view preventing them from seeing you cast the spell
10:25 thought we wouldn't notice, but we did
Stars of ruin can also be dodged with quick step, and spamming it is a very easy way to eat a Carian Retaliation.
Ambush shard paired with the arrows reach talisman boosts it up to A tier for me. One of the only spells that work with it an that extra range is killer
Loretta's mastery is actually amazing because of its tracking, true, one arrow will always miss but u need to remember that you can face away from people, charge it, lock and let it fly
It turns 180 and hits them if there is enough distance
While it takes a lot of fp, if it hits, it does 800+ always
Because of how it can curve, it can actually lead to roll catch because of how the projectiles can be delayed on each individual hit
Its also really good when people hide behind objects
U can get a 90 degree angle on them, lock and watch it curve and hit them behind the object
Its also aoe so when they rush u to hit u mid cast u can release on the ground and watch it do 1k damage
Fia's death mist can be used to conceal yourself and cast stuff they can't see
For people who would like to have the benefit of Ancient Death Rancor without specing into faith, there's a weapon called "Family heads" that has the same effect. (and if you're spec'ed enough to hold the moonveil, then you can use it as well)
I've always loved invading in the souls series so when I saw your first spellblade video with that mortar spell I fell in love with it. I'm planning on doing an arcane caster so knowing some of the more out there spells helps loads
Love that the wizard meta is about battlefield control and mindgames over damage output. Obvs damage is important, and melee characters also have to consider this things, but that's just the nature of balance.
Yeah but it's not balanced because mages do absurd damage. So you have way to many advantages. The only slight balance being that your usually squishier
@@joesheridan9451 honestly I'm calling it karma for Ds3
@@joesheridan9451 I feel like this argument would hold more weight if bleed wasn't as prevalent as it is currently in pvp and there weren't so many weapons with bleed innately on them. Mages definitely have damage, which generally gets balanced by being squishier, but there's not really a tradeoff for bleed spam outside of engagement.
11:08 cut to Ludens making death trees all over the Lands Between
Loretta’s Mastery actually is pretty cool because you can aim to your left if they’re in front of you lock onto them and it’ll do a really sharp arc and I’ve roll caught with it before
And duel or invasions, uncharged cannon of haima right after a few stars of ruin catches people ALOT of the time.
Unseen blade for spears is quite nice, they wont know what range you have for a category of weapons with a wide range variety
Sorceries are so crazy in ER, the combos, mixups, area control and sheer damage they have is insane. I also really enjoy the skill cap a sorcerer build can have as well. I'm shit at pvp but it's really fun learning and improving with different spells.
I cast Magic-infused Eclipse Greatshield(+25)!!
All your magic is now D-tier!
Now i cast barrier of gold, and
I finish with shieldpoke and jumping poke, keeping a mild 30 degree strafe to always have the motion to avoid ambush shard!
Gg. even stars of ruin is now useless.
For real im glad they did actually put effort into making macic so much better in this game
Of the invasions I have done, most of the kills come from Ranni's moon. I don't know why, I just think that most people don't expect it. And I did get a snipe with Azur's Comet once too. That was funny.
They're not useless, it's just that they are best when nobody expects them.
Glintstone Pebble spell, I agree. Glintstone Pebble ash of war, however? Murders everyone.
Wouldn’t it be nuts if you could powerstance the blade sorceries? Two staves and carian slicer
One of my favorite combos is a wiffed adulas then comet I have caught so many ppl that think they can punish adulas only to eat a point blank comet lol
Ancient Death Rancor is 100% A tier for its stagger and chase time alone. The INT/FTH setup using Ancient Death Rancor can straight up combo people with bestial sling/flame catch stagger for the skulls to hit, then they do 2-3 stagger animations which is long enough for a follow up chain spell, 2 skulls are enough to stagger someone with maximum poise. Side Note: Scott, try an INT/FTH/ARC build for multicasting, the Albinauric Staff at 37INT/32FTH/50ARC has 320 Sorcery Scaling and the Dragon Communion Talisman is already the best FTH talisman for its investment, so at 32FTH you end up with 324 Incant Scaling and 320 Sorcery Scaling, it feels very strong and versatile because the sorcery spells actually get to do decent damage (this is on a lvl 125 character).
Collapsing Stars, not noted here, will go through eternal darkness and has more range than stars of ruin and casts faster, I do disagree with it not doing a lot of damage, a CRS+10 and 80 INT will have the whole thing hit for about 700-900 DMG for 18 base FP. Night Shard and Night Comet are both inferior to their regular cousins, Night Shard is a swift glintstone shard, but costs 7FP (double staff of loss can be kinda fun though since at 80 INT it will hit for 450-500 in PvP), Night Comet isnt the "Night" version of Comet, it is the "Night" version of Cometshard and lacks Comet's amazing hitbox (while costing about as much FP). Otherwise, its basically on the money, great list.
The moons can just elliminate basicly ANY prjectile if it collapes in the moon. Spells also start circeling alround it if they get near.
For Blood Throne spells they can combo. This means that you can skip the long animation on Blood Whorl and go into the 2nd or 3rd hit right away. Mind you those attacks have good AoE and have great hyper armor / poise. The spells also deal decent damage and have bleed.
They also combo into each other and can loop. Of course, you have to be mindful of the damage you deal to yourself. You also probably need a specialized build so it hits hard.
Er, Swift glintstone shard and Night Shard are basically the same spell, the latter useful due to being buffed by the staff of loss + pve enemies don't dodge. Correct me if I'm wrong, though
Collapsing stars into piercer is godly.
I need a tier list for each weapon class, each ash of war, you name it. Full guide mode
I think it's better to think of night shard as the upgraded form of swift shard, rather than in relation to night comet. It comes out just as fast, but pierces enemies so you can hit multiple opponents and in PvE enemies won't dodge it as it counts as invisible.
Star shower is underrated. It's great if you're a hybrid build with low FP. Lower FP cost than stars of ruin and has higher stun. In 1v1 situations, star shower + phalanx while running at them is perfect to start a roll catch chain
Glintstone Arc is also easily S tier for PvE because it has infinite piercing, meaning you can completely kill enemy groups in one or two casts
Fuck yes.
This is the content we want Scott Daddy
Imo Carian piercer should be s tier. I usually find it to be more useful than adulas moonblade as I use azurs staff which greatly increases its cast speed
Scott dual wields Azur+Lusat so has max effective casting speed in his build.
Beast slng will be the best incantation on that list because of the 2 cast double barrel shotgun effect it has when jumping (99% sure it's a non intended exploit btw)
As a dps spell zamor ice storm sucks but it does have a solid utility. If someone is spamming BHS to get in your face you can time a charged blast, if they go in to attack the constant AOE will stagger them out of the . Then you can punish with moonveil or Regal scepter WA. It nukes.
Wow, and I was just about to eat. This is prime eating food content. Nice.
Briars of punishment can be chained into briars of sin nearly instantly, good for punishing aggression
I honestly belief you can make a solid build just with Carrian Slicer, Adulas Moonblade and Carrian Piercer. Rush with slicer and punish rolls and whiffs by swapping between the two.
Also I think its worth mentioning with gravity spells, they can’t be spell parried by carrian retaliation shields. So Ive lately been using collapsing stars when people pull out a parry shield from a distance.
Anish shared is also good to hit people healing or trying to cast their own spells. It's really funny when someone tries to cast with partial convert and you smack them out of it
0:24 omg Scott claims to know everything!
Briar of sin is tier A
=> Can be chain casting after Carian Slicer
=> Can trade most things in the game
=> Can be a true combo starter with comet
=> The whole combo ( Briar of sin + Comet ) can do 950 damage on a non optimised damage build
oof
@@RazorusR3X777 doesnt work anymore lmao
You are heavily underestimating the briars sorceries. They chain-cast faster than you would expect and are inescapable for multiple casts. They're my favorite, greedy teams will get one-shot as a group.
If you try this spell then be sure to use the ranged one and cycle to the aoe when the opponent runs up on you. I used whirling tear and poise to make ganks survivable.
I do think they length-traveling Briar sorcery is decent which is why I put it at C. The problem is the build required to cast such spells is usually very inconvenient. They are sorceries that require faith to cast, which pretty much locks you into Staff of the Guilty, which is a terrible staff even at 80 faith (only 300 sorc scaling, compared to Lusat's 413, for example). Also this means you wont be casting many other sorceries since you are scaling faith. maybe at very high levels this becomes good but at 125-150 theyre not great.
@@ScottJund it's worth looking into the albanauric staff for the thorn spells instead. It'd be an entire arcane caster build for just the two spells but the bleed build up would scale with that staff. Offhand the staff of the guilty and wear alberich's set for free extra damage
@@DamnTuckingFypo its an interesting idea but i really hate how limited you are if you go for one of those niche combination builds
@@ScottJund I've been having a fair amount of fun with Briars of Punishment and Briars of Sin in PvP, since you can chain cast Sin in the same animation as Punishment and have it come out extremely quickly and have it count as it's second chain. Been using the Staff of the Guilty in the off hand for the extra bonus with the Albinauric staff in main hand for the arcane scaling.
It's definitely not top tier but when people don't expect it they advance on you as you cast Punishment over and over, and as soon as they step in to strike you chain cast Sin, they usually panick roll into the third channel of Sin and die.
That said, absolutely horrible against anything but pure melee builds, and as soon as people know the gimmick they're not likely to fall for it again. Definitely super niche but kinda fun