Talk:Black Knight Greatsword (Dark Souls II)/@comment-147.194.135.69-20140726134059/@comment-10744163-20140811120835

I see your point. But as Dark Souls and Dark Souls II are games where being a one-trick pony isn't very optimal at all, it's good to mix it up. It could be considered ridiculous that Fire scales with Faith and Intelligence and your reasoning is sound. After all, why level Intelligence if I'm not running Sorceries? Why level Faith if I'm not using Miracles? And if I level both, why wouldn't I use Hexes? The answer to that is resistances and scaling.

In my experience, if it has good Fire resist, its Lightning resist probably sucks and vice versa. Ditto for Magic and Dark. Unlike Dark Souls, where a majority of the enemies could be murdered all too easily with an Ascended Pyromancy Flame, Dark Souls II's enemies have more diverse resistances. But the game still has no shortage of flammable foes. For example, those Lion Warriors in the Shaded Woods? They don't care about any sort of magic at all, except Fire. My Lightning Spear did like 150 on a clean hit, Great Combustion clipped him and did 450. The Duke's Dear Freja is also weak to Fire, as are a good amount of the unarmored enemies in the game, including the animals.

It may also be worth it to infuse a weapon with Fire and keep it as a back-up if you're pursuing another build. If you're doing a magic build, no matter what it is, you'll gain scaling for it. Unlike Dark Scaling, which only works if Intelligence and Faith are leveled up concurrently, Fire scales up even if you dump all your points into Intelligence or Faith, making it better as a back-up to your Magic or Lightning spells/weapons than Dark would be, as Dark requires a very specifc build to be effective.

Again, Fire and Pyromancy are not supposed to be the basis of an entire build like Magic, Lightning, or Dark, they simply doesn't have enough depth and utility to be used like that. It's there to supplement your combat style and fill in weaknesses. The fact that even though it has scaling, it still has no requirements outside of the Attunement Slots is proof enough. The scaling is there to ensure that a build that makes a fair amount of use of Pyromancy can be more effective. That, and the fact that now you need Fire Seeds to upgrade the Pyromancy Flame disincentivizes using Pyromancy as an "I win" button, especially considering that Gwyn himself was ironically and hilariously weak to Fire.