Miracles or Magic?

It is proper to say that Jesus worked miracles, but it would be wrong to attribute His works to magic. Basically, magic and miracles differ in their source: magic has.
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Fuck range, give my scythe speed and I'm fine, the fuck is my cleric doing just sitting around contemplating his swing for so long for? Just hit the fuckers with it already, or give it hyper armor naturally so I could cast it with something other than the Sunlight Talisman and get some real damage done. Why are we nerfing pyro spells? You're entitled to your opinion but I find it to be bullshit when it comes to saying nerf anything pyro. I would rather we buff other spells instead of nerfing pyromancy, which seems to be the only good magic.

Somewhat longer cast time but a lot more hitting power, perhaps more FP loss too. Currently their damage is just pathetic. And it sucks; I loved to go battlemage in the previous 2 games, having quite quality stat but enough int and faith to reliably use both fire orb and lightning spear, allowing me to cheese stronger enemies, and practically always have my enemies weakness with me, all for the cost of having lower health due to the greater stat allocation into all 4 damage stats.

That risky system is a good one, but currently lightning spear is outdamaged by similiar FP cost spells even against enemies that are weak towards lightning. This is my main issue. People can't say "they made miracles how they were intended to be all along! They are absolutely meant to be powerful and mid-long range. The current lightning spear is just broken and confused. I can't be a true Sunbro without powerful offensive spells, and I shouldn't need to be SL for that to be the case. I don't want lightning spear to be overpowered, but at least make it useful and worth it to put in my attunement inventory.

I think the Sunglight Spear is currently at a sweet spot right now with its casting time and damage and is very viable in PvP. I use it more for trading hits at close range with how the Sunlight Talisman has an uninterruptible Unfaltering Prayer. It can occasionally be used for punishing whiffed weapon arts, parries, and catch rolls. If I have to ask for a buff, I think it could use a bit less FP. I think they could be buffed by giving them significantly shorter cast times and less FP consumption. They could then finally have some place in my attunement slots as more reliable punishing moves.

Remember that you should also balance these around PvP, and I think any longer cast times would make them too unreliable. Some things being balanced around just PvP has always left a sour taste in my mouth, it's certainly an aspect of the game but it is not the primary one. The only way to really tell is to check the spell buff stat on the catalyst itself and read flavor item text in case it has a special gimmick.

Miracles Or Magic? - Dark Souls Message Board for PlayStation 3 - GameFAQs

The spell buff will change based on the associated stat scaling. Ex INT for staves And keep in mind that catalysts of al kinds can be reinforced which will change scaling by differing amounts. Rbfrosty did alot of testing into spellbuff, good info if you want to look through it and use the info on spellbuff and what not.

The Difference Between Magic & Miracles

Sorceries are really an all or nothing stat now. Any attempt to go for a split build will be a fucking disaster. Right there with you. I have yet to give up and reached lvl 60 with 35int, 28attu, 20 dex, 10end,17 vig. The first 50 lvl sucked. In only now doing moderate damage but at a great risk. My all Ninja dex build was 50xs easier. Barely better than resin buffs. So no worth the investment. The problem with this post is that it looks at magic in a vacuum.


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This is an interesting post to help pick your stats and your rings, but it says nothing about the actual viability of magic in comparison to melee builds which have lower soft caps, no FP cost and deal better damage at an earlier level. Against good players there's not a single damage sorcery that will reliably hit, though your best bet is probably crystal homing soulmass. It's very similar to how magic in general was in DS2, except the cast times are longer now, weapons are faster, and rolls are better in all regards.

And I considered magic to be only effective if you weaved spells like fire snake and such together in DS2, there's very little in the way of mixups in DS3, so I'd say it's in the worst state it's ever been in for PvP. In DS2 I also felt they were decent but again, nothing special against an experienced melee player even if they were experienced themselves. Still I considered them viable and I had fun playing one.

At the moment I am having a hard time calling them viable I mean, if more players learn how to counter spells which is easy if you get to know how each spell works , I don't know how it can be viable. I like that you highlight that Sorcery and Miracles only really get into there prime later in the game. That seems to be there issue for most people. Spending a lot of investment and then you get your first offensive miracle and does such little damage My only complaint as a strength faith build is the Life Steal Scythe miracle.

Aren't the miracles of the Bible really magic?

It's literally a near perfect idea for a miracle since they want you to be close now, except it takes an ungodly long time to swing and has no hyper armor. The miracle actually makes my Zwei look fast as hell, yet literally anything harder than a stiff breeze stops it at any point in the animation. Don't have it yet myself.

But have you tried casting it with a talismans skill, Unfaltering Prayer, which will give you hyper armor. The LS miracles also get cut off when your hit even though you need to cast at melee for best results. That's what the talisman skill seems to be there for. Yeah, still get my face kicked in though because the casting time is so slow, it works better with the talisman yet it really suffers from being comically slow. Maybe it was supposed to be ass and the joke is on us, but damn I wish it just had a slight buff to be reliable.

Have you tried it with the Saint Tree Bell Vine to see if it becomes useful? I don't have the miracle yet and I've been using it in conjunction with WoG to actually hit players. The problem with the Saint Tree Bell Vine is that it doesn't have the talisman's skill to cast uninterrupted which makes it poor to use as an up close miracle caster. If poise worked then it would actually be better for offensive miracle casting since even the ranged miracles do more damage at close range. As it stands though offensive miracles need talismans to really get the damage you want.

Good post and very informative but let's be serious. Magic is at it's all time worse. Pvp wise at least. Everyone is using quality builds for a reason. What i'm saying is offensive spells are useless in PVP right now and noone can deny that. The only viable offensive magic would be pyro if any and even then a half-decent player aint going to get hit by any of that garbage thrown.

I haven't seen anyone use actual magic, I had one guy try and hit me with a crystal soul spear plus soul mass combo and he lost. You need to understand that From didn't balance this game around the idea of 1v1 duel PvP. Once you realize that and place spellcaster builds in a no rules winner-take-all scenario with multiple players on each side, they become much more potent. A FTH-based miracle build with group heals is going to be an immense asset in invasions because it gives whichever side you're on an incredible amount of sustain and does a ton to close the divide between phantoms and a host player.

Meanwhile getting a setup for a sorcery is much easier in a more chaotic environment where the attention isn't always on you, meaning that with some proper timing you can absolutely delete people with certain spell combos or get a really good Soul Stream snipe when nobody's paying attention to you. Lightning Spears are fast but not accurate. They have the hitbox of a needle. Rolling isn't required, you can actually Dodge lightning spear by doing the slow estus chug walk.

I have only ever gotten bonus damage with lightning from a counter, just like everything else, and never because of range. Good luck hitting anything. You'll never manual aim lighting spear while you can effectively manual aim many pyro spells. If you intend to use faith I highly suggest using any talisman with a working poise mechanic over anything else.

Faith has the absolute worst return on investment because most miracles don't scale at all with faith, and no competitive build for any reason should ever have more faith then the minimum for the spells you desire. You should not desire offensive miracles, because they are beyond useless. Any claim one might make for sunlight spear is negated by the 60 fp cost which makes its use unreasonable. Don't forget lightning resist scales with endurance, and lightning split damage is the worst split damage in the game! Miracles do not excel at any range besides "not in combat".

Because if you are in combat youre not casting anything. Let's not forget that both pyro and sorcery have various buffs including magic weapon. I would argue that sorcery even has better buffs plus great magic weapon, meaning the ONLY reason you should ever pick faith is for the heals in jolly co-op and even then mostly to make clearing levels easier. Idk about you, but clearing levels was never really a problem especially if you do co-op. Faith could essentially be removed from the game and nothing would be lost. Let's not forget the last slap in the face where lightning clutch doesn't affect other offensive miracles You raise some good points, but way too dramatic.

Why are int and pyro buffs better than faiths? Also faith has some great buffs, sacred oath, deep protection, heal over times, etc Sunlight sword gives sacred oath and only requires 16 faith. Sunlight sword also is only good on a quality build despite requiring 16 faith. Deep protection only requires 20 faith and all healing miracles are useless as you need to use FP to use them.

You regenerate FP with estus flasks, making the whole thing useless unless you want to heal someone else. In short you only need to level faith up to 20 at max and you can use every faith weapon in the game expect 1 and all of the useful miracles. They absolutely gutted faith in this game. My play-style hasn't changed, I can still use all the buffs I want, just now I hit harder and can use more weapons.

Replenishment is good to mitigate overhealing. It's slow, but it's FP efficient. It's good for top-offs when you get grazed by monsters and a full heal or estus is overkill. I'm not really playing as a full on caster, more as a paladin, but a blessed shield, Lloyd Shield Ring and Lloyd Sword Ring make a powerful combo with Heal and Replenishment; there's very little reason to not always be at full health with all that, which means that Lloyd's rings really shine.

It says a lot about the Lightning miracles that Dragonslayer Swordspear has the best one in the game and only requires 18 Faith for anyone to use. All you need to do is brave one of the most annoying areas and beat the most frustrating boss in the game to get it. Have to say I'm really bummed about what they did to Warmth.

It's locked behind a covenant and requires 25 faith to even use. It was so great in DS2 because it offered a viable alternative to healing spells without investing points into faith, and it still had drawbacks to balance it out like healing everything indiscriminately. Plus it was perfect for fight clubs, but of course, no one is using it now The heal is a lot weaker too, so not only does it have a high requirement while being locked behind a covenant, but it's also just practically worthless.

I wouldn't say there's more variety in builds if you're a mage, because there isn't. Yes you can tweak your vit, end and vig stats but so can any of the three main melee builds str, dex, or both so there's no more variety from that perspective than there already was. I personally think this is a good thing. Only a few offensive spells are viable, and this has been a problem since Dark Souls 1.

There's tons of interesting spells like Bursting Fireball or Crystal Hail but even in pve their damage is absolutely atrocious. My biggest problem is the second one as it makes mages look like one-trick ponies. People gravitate to the same spells because they do more damage when I'd love a variety because it makes it harder to predict my movements. Uncertainty is really important in pvp, it's why melee and their variety of movesets and weapons are great because they provide not only the ability to be unpredictable but the damage between weapons can still be competitive.


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    • I think this is a great write-up and generally agree that everything is as viable as it was before but I personally wanted it to be better than before. I want more variety in spells and what they do rather than relying on one main offensive and backing it up with supports. This has been a problem in all Souls games.

    I see perma-death against undead being brought up as an advantage of blessed weapons quite a few times in the OP, however, which undead in the game rises again? I've yet to fight that enemy apparently. So it's nt a big deal. So when you're fighting through a larger group, you might just think some of them only got up late. In contrast to the other games, I never felt as if I would be gaining much from a blessed weapon here. Not sure on these ones officially and zombies. When you first walk thrioufh the gravyard take the time to kill all the ones just in the entrance and watch as they crawl right back up through the graves.

    They'll essentially respawn infinitely if you don't use a blessed weapon I think all 3 schools are viable but personally I feel sorcery and miracles do need some tweaking. This should be in the game manual. Very nice job and i agree with you from my experiences as well. While as a sorc you don't have enough FP to clear a whole area, but i almost always had enough to get to the next bonfire. It's Dark Souls, a big part of the series is figuring things out for yourself.

    I personally like it and I think it promotes the growth of a community by forcing people to experiment and discuss mechanics of the game. It also allows for mechanics to go unknown for a period of time until someone finally figures it out and changes the whole meta of the game. Didn't want to go into it cause I have no first hand experience with those nor have seen any comprehensive testing or numbers but I can extrapolate for you based on what I've read on other player experiences and seen.

    The dark flavor spells are more for lore purposes since I know they effecty NPC quests depending on where you buy them and how you get them ect.. And effect the ending too if I'm not mistaken.

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    Feel like Dark is meant to keep the opponent moving at different speeds so you can catch them with your faster spells. Wait, are you saying Raw infused weapons can still be buffed with stuff like Magic Weapon? I didnt know that, nice! Yes, fun fact, any weapon that has an infusion that only increases its physical damage can still be buffed.

    I haven't tested it but a 40 dex 60 int built seems pretty good. Infuse weapon with dex gem then buff with CMW. In Dark Souls 1, spells inherently had a multiplier which would modify your casting item's MagicAdjust stat, which acted as the base value for calculations. Or, if you casted Crystal Souls Spear approx 3. Lets use the example of Heal and Sunlight Blade, as neither of these have enemy defense to consider in the calculations:.

    The values of both spells would be as follows:. Now, to show how effective stacking items would be, lets use the following hypothetical situation. Lets assume that the miracle boosting rings as well as the lightning clutch ring actually affected the amount of healing done by Heal. Lets also assume that the increase amount listed on fextralife is actually accurate which is a longshot, I know.

    Thanks for the breakdown, only at around SL 50 right now so haven't had a chance to invest and test the waters and your breakdown gave me a good idea of what direction I want to go. No, I should thank you for taking the time to read that so it doesnt feel like I wasted my time.

    It's nice to know I was able to help. Though I hadnt really thought of it as a breakdown till you mentioned it. Hopefully, more people see this so no ones fishing in the dark or overly disappointed in one of the magic systems when it doesnt work as initially expected from DS1 or DS2. One thing I'd like to mention is that pyro is mediocre until a trip to Smouldering Lake so you better get there fast.

    The difference in damage is ridiculous. I then made the trip to Smouldering Lake and fought the Dancer again at the same SL and upgrade level. My pyromancies were now doing double or even triple the damage and the fight was a cakewalk. Nameless King was the only one that was troublesome until I discovered a good strategy against him. I mentally divide my pyromancer play through into "before" and "after" Smouldering Lake. Shout out to Hidden Body for the amazing utility!

    I agree with you absolutely. I think a lot of people also do not understand that just because you are a wizard, that doesn't mean you do not also bring a sword or dagger with you- even Gandalf carried a sword and used it a bit more than his Staff. But when Gandalf unleashed his magic, that was when some serious shit was about to go down. Something I didn't see in the write up, that I find interesting about Miracles: You have access to almost every damage type with regards to weapon buffs.

    You're missing a fire buff, but you have Faith in your build right? I just thought that was some pretty cool utility, to be able to buff for any damage type as necessary. High faith seems pretty damn useless. On the subject of mages, are there any sweet robes in this game along the lines of Straids set from DS2? I swear that's all I wore cause armor is for pussies. Can't wait to do what I did in DS2 and do a character for every type.

    So far it seems like going pure magic is much more difficult than DS2. Any damaging miracle is not worth using. Period, end of discussion. Dumping stats almost exclusively into faith my raw ASS has consistently done more damage than almost any miracle. WoG has a 4 second cast time and deals as much damage as 2 swings from the ASS. To be perfectly frank, Faith has three good spells: Everything else is situational at best and there are few examples of even that , and garbage at worst. I'd like to reiterate that WoG is an absolute disgrace.

    As for sorceries, spell variety is terrible. Speaking of which, hexes are in no way worth the stat investment, dealing simply comparable damage to their purer equivalents. Pyromancies are a lot like the best of both worlds between Miracles and Sorceries, and even then you only have 6 good spells.

    Dark Orb is actually good only decent dark spell in the game , and Carthus Flame Arc is fantastic, being the longest weapon buff, and usually dealing comparable or better damage than Dark Blade though never getting close to Sunlight Blade. So, yeah, the complaint isn't that any spell school is bad, it's that there are just a handful of decent spells in any spell school, and they're almost exclusively the boring ones.

    Dark magic is almost never worth using, and there isn't a single new spell that's worth a damn. Honnestly the only damage tool you have as a sorcerer is Heavy Big Soul Arrow On thing that seems to be missing from this write-up: PvP is not being balanced around 1v1. I think this is one key component people are completely missing, despite it being extremely obvious. This game is simply not balanced around fightclubs and duels, which is perfectly logical considering fightclubs and duels will employ their own rules anyway, and these will contradict many of the intended game mechanics e.

    The game gives opportunities for group fights, it encourages them through matchmaking. Sorceries, being a ranged option, if ever buffed to the point where they're great in 1v1 would become downright OP in, let's say, 3v3. Imagine getting one-shot by a soulspear while dodging a dude swinging his darksword in every invasion - that's not build diversity, that's just cancer. I can't vouch for Sorceries, as I haven't seen someone use them well nor that I've used them myself. I've just discovered offensive miracles being viable in PvP and I've had moderate success in duels and fight clubs.

    I even won 3x in a row with my Faith build and Sunlight Spears and I don't consider myself to be good at PvP at all. The key strength of Offensive Miracles comes from the hyper armor from Unfaltering Prayer, which allows me to trade and punish opponents.

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    He did do a few 1v1's fight club and I'd say it seemed almost too easy for him. Here is a word cloud of every comment in this thread, as of this time: While there are a lot of options for damage dealing sorceries I find often thanks to the way any 1 hit will stagger you many can't be utilized unless you're cheezing or used solely as an opener. Not only that, but most spells with high cast times are incredibly easy to dodge in PVP.

    Something needs to be done about the cast times or the staggering, because yes, sorceries CAN be used, and yes, I'm sure you CAN beat the game from start to finish as a sorcerer - but you're gonna be so outclassed by every other build there's little point in doing it. It's not about if it's at all viable, it's about if it's fun and effective and rewarding. Sorceries right now are so infuriating as you spend up to 3 seconds casting a spell, only to be staggered by a rat dealing 25 damage at the end of the cast.

    I just used a pale tongue to respec my sorcerer to 99 INT. I have health At the time of the early church, public miracles helped people recognize that God was at work Acts 2. At the same time, some people wrongly thought that the ability to heal and do miracles was a result of magical powers. The apostle Paul claimed that God helped him perform miracles to confirm the good news about Jesus and Paul's own role as an apostle 2 Cor In the ancient world, the belief in magic, sorcery, and witchcraft were common.

    The people of Israel claimed that the miracles performed by their prophets and leaders were different from these things because they were based on God's power. For example, Joseph used God's help to interpret the dreams of the king of Egypt after the king's own magicians and wise men could not Gen Later, when the Egyptian king's magicians turned their walking sticks into snakes, Moses and his brother Aaron used God's power to do the same thing, and their snake ate the snakes created by the Egyptians Exod 7.

    This showed the superiority of the God of Israel. For more about Elijah see the mini-article called Elijah. Witchcraft was forbidden by the Law of Moses Lev Disobeying the command against witchcraft could lead to harsh punishment Exod When King Saul, Israel's first king, was afraid of the approaching Philistine army, he did not pray to God for help. Instead, he broke the law forbidding witchcraft and asked a woman from Endor who talked to spirits to call on Samuel, who died some time before 1 Sam In another example, when the people of the northern kingdom Israel disobeyed God by worshiping the stars and using magic, or by worshiping idols like Asherah and Baal, God became so furious with them that he allowed them to be defeated by the Assyrians and carried away as prisoners 2 Kgs Later, King Manasseh of the southern kingdom Judah sinned against God by worshiping the stars and planets, by practicing magic and witchcraft, and by asking fortune tellers for advice.

    Apparently, the advice he received included offering his own child as a sacrifice 2 Kgs For Manasseh's terrible sins, the whole nation suffered God's judgment and punishment 2 Kgs His explanation to Balak contained this statement: Parts of the New Testament make clear that sorcery and fortune telling were caused by evil spirits. In one case, a slave girl lost her power to tell fortunes after Paul ordered an evil spirit to leave her. This angered her owners because she could no longer make money for them by telling fortunes Acts And in Revelation, a beast fooled people into believing in the beast who opposed God by doing magical miracles, such as making an idol speak as if it were alive Rev What does the Bible reveal about healers in the ancient world?

    Also, the prophet Jeremiah questions whether medicine or doctors can truly provide healing Jer 8.


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