UPDATE: Carian Sorcery Sword has been buffed! It ties for the best staff at 40 int with the demi human staff. However, at 60+ int it is not as good as most of the other staves in the game. It is a lot more viable of an option now.
Also be prepped for the Impenetrable Thorns nerf, bleed on spells is explicitly not supposed to scale with the arcane of the catalyst, it was a nerf done way back in 1.03. It's a bug which is juicing the spell's performance into unreasonable territory
@@Data-AnalystSerai use it without investing in arcane so itll be fine. its amazing still, it does really good dmg and still inflicts bloodloss pretty often with no arc investment
Even while buffed, pretty disappointing. Thought it would buff up Carian Slicer a lot more, making it more aesthetic as well as powerful choice moving forward in the DLC but nope. I was also hoping that this weapon would allow us to imbue with its own AoW, so that we can get more damage or survivability option but might be too OP for PvP folks.
@@Asriel_Cypherits the most comfortable staff to use paired with a thrusting shield imo. Its built for stance breaks and crits so i lean into that not raw damage from the spells. I carry the big phalanx spell as a main cast with a bunch of utility spells for exploration. Vs a boss i two hand it and go for phalanx when bosses disengage and impaling thrust when they leave openings when close. It breaks stances relatively easily and follows up with 110 crit. Really great weapon imo, you just can't use it for what its clearly not build for.
When a creator does stuff like this it inspires loyalty enough that even if I have all the info I need I let the video play on in the background without sound, to pump those viewership metrics
I was under the impression that Staff of the Great Beyond had terrible spell scaling. I'm pleasantly surprised to be proven wrong. I'm very excited to get my hands on it.
It’s really not that bad at all. I’m around 70 faith and int right now and I used it for about half the DLC (in Journey 2 btw). The damage isn’t the most optimal, but it’s still good enough, especially if you know what you’re doing. The only time I switched to individual staves and seals was during certain bosses, specifically the final boss
It's totally fine at the kind of level you'd be stopping for PvP. At high stats and compared to casting tools dedicated for a single spell type it's going to be weaker but that's a reasonable tradeoff for convenience. At 45/45, it's literally the strongest int/fth staff and by a decent margin as well.
It’s fantastic. The versatility of being able to have one spell for every elemental damage type (including physical with gravity sorceries!) always ready to go means if you play smart and deduce what things are weak to you always have a good damage option. Plus it just promotes a really fun variety playstyle. Put it with rellana’s swords, SoNaF, or any of the smithsciprt weapons that get SDIF scalings and you feel like you’re getting a huge variety of options in a playthrough.
@@yadeel8281 I keep seeing lots of people saying its thier second or third time through the dlc. Are you guys literally beating the game and going to ng +1,2,3 ect? Or are you cloud saving, and just restarting from and old save?
@@jakeryan2805 This isn’t my second time through the DLC. I played through the whole game once and played through it again on Journey 2 all before the DLC came out. I didn’t make a new character going into the DLC I just used the same save, so I’ve only beaten it once
@imbatmanlol Chrightt actually takes into account several factors that Youwy doesnt, like motion values, use cases, pvp viability, and weaknesses. He's also informed on the fact that split damage isn't actually shit anymore. For a guy that likes optimizing the fun outta a game, Youwy also gets a lot of shit wrong.
The sorcery sword is good only for using non-attack magic like Thops's Barrier or Scholar Shield so you don't have to switch between your weapon and staff.
Yeah, this sword definitely favors sorceries that don't rely on catalyst scaling - Scholar Shield, like you mentioned, would work well with this (especially because it's a thrusting sword, shield poke for days), Miriam's Vanishing. You could even go with Fia's Mist, since you only need to care about the minimum stats to cast the sorcery.
I get that, but at the very least give it a passive buff to melee sorceries to give it some more versatility. As it stands it only favors low INT builds
Oof, and here I was, excited to actually play a Sword & Board Mage-Knight using the Carian Sorcery Sword instead of a regular staff… Edit: I know it’s buffed, guys, I just haven’t beaten the true Moghlester Lord. And haven’t started a second character.
just wait for the inevitable buff. And I mean inevitable, the incant scaling on the sword still scales with intelligence instead of its best attribute (dex), so it's just a matter of making the spells scale with dex, or making it scale better with int, or a myriad of choices.
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd Well, that sounds nice, everything I’ve seen in this DLC is really amazing and opens up a lot of opportunities, but it’s underpowered compared to base game stuff, and I really, REALLY want them to at least be competitive with base game, I’m running “Cleanrot” build with Rot and Miracles, and the only thing I added since the DLC is the Crucible wings.
@@DanielFerreira-ez8qd you shouldn't expect buffs, they always leave a lot of underpowered stuff without any change in these games. It's cool that they finally separated pvp from pve though, and it seems that they are more willing to make changes since that happened, but yeah I wouldn't get my hopes up.
Personally, I prefer comfortable play over optimized play, so when I get around to doing my int/fth build again I'll certainly be using the Great Beyond. So long as a dual stat casting tool can reach 320 or above at 60/60 it is worth using in my opinion.
Right before the dlc I made a split build with blasphemous and moonlight it was so annoying having all my slots filled no diddy 😅I also used black knife
Yeah mine was better by a bit too and I'm high level too. I went to switch them just now because they're both +10 but realized one was very clearly better and kept my dragon seal on lol
So...the *Carian Sorcery Sword* is a Carian sword that doubles as a catalyst...but doesn't boost Glintblade Sorceries... Excuse me, but what the actual f-?
So much goofy balance in this game. I feel like things could be so much simpler so that optimizing damage didn't require constant experimenting with a stat as inscrutable as "incant scaling". Of course, damage doesn't matter that much if you can't even use half your spells on a boss because they're too slow for how little damage you get.
Why couldn't the carian sorcery sword increase the damage of ALL the carian sorceries? I literally would've respecced just to take advantage of this sword.
A video on your favorite weapons regardless of in game power could be cool. Or a general review of the DLC. Either way I started watching when you originally ranked the builds in elden ring and you've improved how I build my characters a shitload and I basically watch every video now. Thanks Youwy!
Man, when I first looted that sword and read the item description I screamed "blue flame is back!" internally and was sooo disappointed at the performance. Really hope the scaling gets fixed in a patch it doesn't need S scaling but as long as it gets spellbuff at least comparable to the weaker staffs it will still be fun.
Yeah I don't expect a sword to be the best staff in the game but at least I expected it to be better than the early game staff that can't even be upgraded.
Yeah, I also screamed "BLUE FLAME IS BACK", but I was dissapointed when I discovered that the new sword is unbuffable, I miss my powerstanced crystal magic weapon blue flame spellblade build... (And the fact that buffing it increased the spell damage because of how catalysts worked in ds2)
Hey, test briars of sin with the staff of the guilty for me please? I found it strange you didn’t include it. Wouldn’t that be the most optimized option or is the staff you mentioned better?
Love the staff of the great beyond, i swear miyazaki reading my mind somewhere cuz i wanted an ability to sekiro deflect/lies of p perfect guard and a staff that can cast spells and incantations
Kinda how I feel as a mage with zero spells and zero staffs found in about 30 hours. I’m used to 99% of rewards being weapons I can never use without respeccing but this is a lil shitty. Definitely doesn’t help that I’ve heard even the already small number of new spells and staves are shit anyways
am happy the int/faith staff is good, am using golden order seal with sword of night and flame, dlc gave me a lot of cool int/faith equipment, like relannas twin light greatswords and the scriptsmith weapons. also new faith sorceries. DLC SO FUCKING GOOD
I was praying they'd add something like Staff of the Great Beyond. Love spellcaster builds and hated having to switch catalysts with hybrid builds. I expected the versatility to come at the cost of a damage reduction but I'm fine with that. Also like the staff design.
I watch your videos religiously and use you as like the most creditable source of info for this game for the past 2+years of playing and just realized I’m still not subbed consider this a formal apology
it would be cool if the carian sorcery sword had a hitbox when casting melee sorceries, so like with carian slicer you'd hit with both the spell and the sword at once, giving it an edge.
so just asking but what faith level is the frenzied frame seal best for, because i have been rocking it at +10 and it absolutally shreds enemies like budpriest or tree spirit when using flame of the fellgod incantation
0 faith, because it lacks requirements. You can use it on a pure int build to cast spells like causality and regression. Alternatively, you can be like me and min max your build so that frenzy seal is optimal, but that requires heavy stat spread and not more than 16 points into int because then the golden order seal becomes an option, and not more than 29 into Str because then clawmark overtakes frenzy in scaling. I halt dex at 34 because that plus radagon icon is the last cast speed breakpoint (64) before max (70). The rest of your points should go into fai, but if I remember correctly, it still won’t be the best option until you reach 52 or 53 fai to overtake dryleaf and godslayers.
Yah I think they dropped the ball with the seals and some of the spells in this dlc. Don’t get me wrong there are great things here but like I felt Frenzy and Mesmir spells were just lacking
My brother in Christ please get some rest, I’m worried for your sanity, this is like the 8th video in a row. Love you and your content but you’re still a person, make sure you rest
Yah the most I here is that this dlc gave fuck all for us wizards, yah but I do like the spellsword and the staff that can cast both incantations and sorcerys
It’s a shame none of the new casting tools replace the old top tier ones at meta level. Buffing certain spells and incantations is nice, but people wanna build the new equipment
I'm hoping that the Carian Thrusting Sword is bugged given how bad its spell scaling seems to be. That and if Fromsoft were to actually display its casting value on the weapon info (below the critical multiplier like on staves) it would be a lot nicer.
I love how they added a bunch of seals/staves that are best for early to mid game..... .....and put them in the f^&#ing late-game DLC areas. This is what I mean with From: their game-design philosophy is so f^#$ing backwards sometimes....
Im sad about impenetrable thorns. made a briars build, then found this spell. It just outclasses anything ever... Really lame since i bet people didnt go into arcane intel to spam one attack, believe it or not. Along with the perfume bottles, these seem like super strong arguments to PROVE nobody playtested this game. Its a good game, but wtf fromsoft, who tested these things??? Are they fired now??
Power stance the Carian Sword with the Frozen Needle main hand for some fun spamming frost bolt and night shards. The spell cast then replace the Ash of War button. *pew pew pew* :) I feel there is an easy way to make it more viable though, while not completly broken : just make the sorcery scale off of DEX in addition to INT (similar to Frenzied Seal).
I plan to use the Great Beyond because I like having a mix of incants and sorceries, but I’d rather have the convenience of not having to constantly manage the menu since there are other ways of boosting my spell damage beyond just base scaling. It is nice to know though that Dryleaf boosts all the Order incantations too, not just Multilayered. I use Discus a ton, so that’ll be convenient for the off hand passive as a replacement for the Golden Order seal.
For the seals that boost a spell group is it better to have two or just one in the office hand? Thinking of fire Knight and the one that boosts spiral spells
Yo Youwy i really liked how you talked about max level in this one. Would love if you could always do that in your videos if it fits. Really helps with my max level loadout. There are not many creators who talk about that in their videos (which is understandable)
For the seals, do their natural buffs get outshined by higher faith levels? Like if you are using godslayer incantations and have 85 faith would you still use erdtree?
Erdtree seal would be optimal at 80 fai but you can still get the godslayer bonus by holding it in the non-casting hand. Or you could stop leveling faith at 68 and put those extra points into mind.
I wonder if the Carian sword is bugged? It's obviously a dex/int hybrid weapon, so it seems like the spell power should scale off dex as well. If its bugged, then the abysmal damage would make sense. It's like the Clawmark Seal with its strength scaling taken away.
Its actually not a bug that light of miquella isn't boosted by dry leaf seal because of lore reasons. tl;dr the crown you get from killing miquella is how you boost light of miquella edit: oh if the crown is bugged then idk. The crown specifically says it only buffs light of miquella anyway so :shrug: the dry leaf seal buffs miquella's incantations which were developed under the golden order, when miquella sheds all of his mortal aspects he creates the light of miquella which operates under a different power for a different age. 🦐
With it's poor damage output on spells, Carian Sorcery Sword should at least reduce the cost. Just make it the opposite of the Lusat Staff. Right now the only spell I can think of that would pair best with it is just Magic Shield.
Since im a str/fth build im pretty sure the beastclaw seal is better than the godskin seal, esp. since im 60/60 with them - 301 incant scaling for me bb
So if your max level, which staff should you use? I use staff of loss in each hand for night sorceries. Are there stronger staffs and spells combinations at max level?
do the 20% special bonuses stack? like if i have a dragon communion seal in my offhand and one in my main hand, do the two 20% bonuses stack or do they cap out at 20%?
Between Dragon Communion Seal, Golden Order Seal and Dryleaf Seal (Assuming the passive effect is fixed) which one is going to be the best seal for end-game players whose stats are around 60~80 for Int/Fai/Arc? I heard that Golden Order Seal has the highest scaling, but the Dragon Communion Seal has Arc scaling + 15% Dragon Incantation boost. I don’t know much about Dryleaf Seal, but I do know that Miquella’s Light is an insanely cool Incantation.
I did the calculations and the dragon communion seal is actually the best at most levels. You didn't notice because you were leveling only faith. At low levels, if you level up arcane up to 43 instead of faith, dragon communion has much more incant scaling than any other seal. It keeps being the best if you level faith up to 43. From there you level up arcane until 99 and then faith until 99 but until then there is a margin of levels where erdtree is the best. Specifically when you have 76-99faith. Basically if you start with a wretch and only level up offensive stat: Level 1-66 dragon communion Level 67-99 erdtree Level 100-250!!! dragon communion Max level golden order So if you don't count passive buffs(which the dragon communion also has for 15%) there are only 2 good seals. Thank you for the attention Love you❤ +INFO: If you want to use dragon communion seal but the spell you use require faith, before going to 43 arcane, you can level up faith as much as you need with very little drawbacks in damage. If you use Godrick great rune, Marika scarseal or some special armor that buffs arcane, the margin where erdtree is best is smaller but not by much. Also in a normal playthrough you would choose the prophet and level vigor/mind/endurnace but it only moves the margins at higher levels.
Yeah, Lusat's is "always best" when you don't care the slightest about efficiency. The trade-off in FP cost for the extremely marginal increase in damage over the Carian Regal is laughable. At 70 INT Lusat's has 364 scaling while Carian Regal has 330. Lusat's also costs 50% more FP, and the description on it is terrible. It doesn't get a passive bonus. The bonus in the description is already baked into the scaling.
The Sorcery Sword is From going: "Fine! You want a weapon that casts spells?! Here take this! It's a bad weapon, with a bad moveset, non infusible, and a counterintuitive casting method. Happy now!?!"
Thanks for the video ! Could you make an in-depth ranking of sorcery staves please ? I have a hard time deciding between Lusat and Azur staves (the only two I want to use for cosplaying reasons) with matching crown and spells. I enjoy throwing maxed out Stars of Ruin with Lusat (especially for dodging ennemies), but Azur (with Comet) is many time the only choice allowing me to cast spells if the boss put a hard pressure on me (because of cast speed).
For strength/faith builds dry leaf is almost tied with clawmark at low faith high strength. 54/30 incant scaling is 221 80/30 incant scaling is 275 Dry leaf at 30 faith was 220 Just found that interesting
What does MAX level mean? Like a +10 seal? How is that better than 99 faith with the lesser seal at +9? Why are you compating +9 instead of +10??? How much faith are we talking? The MAX level BIS items are not explained properly, at all. At what faith are the MAX LEVEL items the best? Are they always the best? Are they the best even at zero faith??? How are there 2 different scales?? this makes no sense at all
Are you sure that the Dryleaf Seal is the best at 52 Faith? Using Chrightt's build calculator (the Optimal Catalyst Calculator) it shows that the Dryleaf Seal drops below the Godslayer's Seal starting at 51 Faith before falling incredibly far behind most of the other seals like the Demi-Human Queen's Staff for Sorceries, though this one at least keeps it lead until 50 Faith as opposed to that one which loses it's lead before 45 Int.
I've been using Lusat's main hand and Staff of the guilty offhand to simply buff Impenetrable Thorns by 20%, Though i wish there was some sort of transmog in the game, Staff of the guilty looks like ass, whereas maternal staff looks badass for me. Think i might replace Lusat's at 80 arcane for Maternal staff, assuming the quicker bloodloss build-up for thorns and the buff to other finger sorceries with also the finger robe equipped outdamages the enhanced sorcery from Lusat's?
Yeah I keep hearing people talk about how broken the Impenitrable thorns are so yesterday I respec-ed my character cause i had like 30 larval years and I gave myself 70 faith and 70 arcane and I could barely scratch the big boys in the DLC. In the base game it one shots and chews them up but at 13 scadu and 7 summons level (forgot the name) i can’t do significant damage with that thing. Even holding the thorn staff in my off hand. People also keep saying how hard all the bosses are. Last night I saved three bosses to fight back to back because when I get in a boss defeating zone I am wound up tight and ready to go so i figured id fight Midra Lord of the Frenzied Flame, Comander Gaius at the back of the shadow keep and then Messmer back to back and I beat Messmer and the Gaius first try and then i went after Midra. Midra took me 4 tries to figure out his weakness to blood loss and impenetrable thorns wasn’t working so I redid my attributes back to a quality build and used the Bloodhound’s fang fully upgraded and that chewed him up. Actually, MANY of the bosses in the DLC can’t deal with the Bloodhound’s fang’s special move. Where you can do a swipe and jump back and then hit the heavy attack button to dash back and give him a good swipe that will usually result in a blood burst of health. Using the white mask and the talisman that raises attack when blood loss is near. Easy Peasy. Beat him easily with that sword when I was getting trounced using the SmithScript great hammer.
I get why they didn’t make the dlc weapons stronger than the base weapons. Nobody would use the OG weapons anymore.. Though, I wish they made ALL of them VIABLE at the very least
i will forever be aggravated that Fromsoft teased us with the carian sorcery sword and then DIDN'T give an equivalent for incantations. could've been a shield too to push the playstyle most faith builds fight in...oh but that would've given juuust too many references to Dark Souls 2's designs and we all know Fromsoft's lead devs hate DKS2 oh and of course the sword doesn't boost glintblade sorceries, what you wanted elden ring to be consistent?
Question about Impenetrable Thorn: there is another staff that specifically boosts thorn sorceries, and that's Staff of the Guilty. But that staff doesn't scale off of INT, it has a S faith scaling instead, and has 45 innate bleed buildup. How does this staff compare to the Maternal Staff when using impenetrable thorn? @youwy
Put a staff of the great beyond into the hands of a mimic tear with 68int/35 Faith and enjoy your artillery firing Rann's Dark Moon *and* Scarlet Aeonia. Killed Bayle accidentally first try with that setup.
Really wish we got an upgrade to Staff of the Guilty for Faith builds, especially with the Impenetrable Thorns. Scaling on that thing is sadly terrible, though it’s nice to have access to some bleed
The problem with the maternal staff is that 1- You have no problem bleeding stuff with the staff of the guilty specd only into faith. So the additional bleed is more or less irrelevant since you can bleed in one or 2 cast regardless with impenetrable thorns since it's multi hit and dual wielding SoG boost the thorn sorceries to about the same level of power as the max stat maternal staff so...what's the point of using it to get more bleed and waste additional points into faith to meet the requirement and split hairs 3 way with your stats. 2- Appart from the bubbles, there's no spell that benefit from an arcane requirement unlike the PoD staff does with faith. And if you spec in int and faith, you have access to incantations too. If you spec in Arcane for the maternal staff... It doesn't help you have access to more spell. It just means you can use arcane based weaponry and cast high level spells with arcane scaling. Which is fine but I don't understand the niche that staff is trying to fill when Fromsoft added no new arc/int spells and Lusat will still be better for pure Intel because of the boost so....I repeat, what's the point of shoving stats in arcane to cast intelligence sorceries? And if you're specd only into arcane, albinauric is still better so.... What is it trying to accomplish appart from a stat spread mess?
I have a question about the dryleaf seal; has anyone tested if it outclasses the clawmark seal at 30 STR/50 FTH? Because from what I have gathered, they should have the exact same incant scaling of 259, which should be a tiny bit higher than the godslayer seal at these exact stats.
I don't like that casting speed scales with Dex. It makes Dex/Int or Dex/Faith builds just the obvious choice over Strength for any caster build. I think Mind would have been a better stat to link casting speed to. Your casting speed being connected to mind would be sort of speed of casting through understanding of spells. The more mind you have is the better you can understand spell casting and therefore lets you cast faster.
Am i doing something wrong? The Golden order seal is NOT the best seal or close to it. I have the dragon seal +10, the frenzied Flame seal +10 and the Golden order +10 and Golden order is third. The first is the dragon seal and the second is the frenzied Flame seal Note that my stat is all 55 in all damage stats (Int/faith/arc/Str/dex)
I think that chart needs to account a bit for builds that have specific stat spreads and buffs for their particulars relevant to performance. Carian Glimtstone staff is specifically the best staff for a magic sword casting build because it's so good already that it's buff pushes it ahead for that use, and it's not one you offhand just for the boost. Because a retaliation shield or the new carian shield are your go to offhand. Similarly the dragon communion seal is unparalleled on any build that makes heavy use of Arcane, like bleed builds and ESPECIALLY dragon communion builds. and the clawmark seal is specifically good for alongside the misbegotten shortbow allowing strength builds to have range and utility. I think while some seals and staves fail at their job it's important to consider that not every one of them is meant to be used by a primary spellcaster.
While I disagree on giving the sword an 'S' scaling, I do agree it should be buffed to like 'B' with option to infuse that can bring it to an 'A' if magic is used or keep a 'B' if the player wants to improve the physical damage via Keen, Quality, or Heavy
Staff of the great beyond has become my new favored staff for my int/faith build and I’m never going back! I have so much elemental coverage with it. Not to mention it helps my frostbite mage burn off the frostbite for over 14k damage
imo there should have been a "cast incantation" and "cast sorcery" AoW that lets you cast spells with the skill. Also ngl replicating AoW is useless and Lost AoW should have allowed us to copy unique weapon skills for a weaker or more generic version. Like balanced be damned I want Stormcaller cry on a greataxe.
Hey Youwy, I know this isn't related to the video but I wanted to tell you in case you are interested (or if you are reporting bugs to fromsoftware). I fought the final boss with parrying and I noticed 2 wierd things: If you parry the blood slash (not the thrust) you get the parry but the fire trail will still come out and explode behind you, while in most cases of other parryable bosses, a parry will completely negate the attack's after effects. The second issue is that it seems the boss's parry counter resets on phase transition, so if you got 2 parries and the boss goes to p2, your parries are gone which is a BS that even Malenia didn't have.
How much incant boost are the boosts to specific spell schools worth? I know I can look the % up on the wiki but I don't know how that translates to the incant/sorc boost stat.
It’s better at lower levels because it comes maxed out. You don’t have to upgrade it. The chart implies if you have the staves maxed out. I should’ve specified
Weird that deyleaf seal boosts fundamentalist incants. I think it’s a bug, description says Miquella and his followers abandoned everything for faith, so it wouldn’t make sense for it to boost them, lore-wise they’re from another belief
So if I’m level 323 and I’m using faith with mostly lightning inventions with the occasional black flame for big bois, should I be on the dragon seal or golden order seal?
If you have 2 fire knight seals the messmer flame incants do a little more dmg at 80 faith than using the Erdtree Seal in your main hand, much like how dual wielding Giant's flame seals are still optimal for maximizing those spells, despite having significantly lower scaling than the Erdtree.
