Talk:Black Knight Greatsword (Dark Souls II)/@comment-147.194.135.69-20140726134059/@comment-10744163-20140808090044

To be fair, casters don't value Vigor as much as melee classes because they're not supposed to be hit. At all. So casters should only get enough health to have a safe cushion should they actually get hit, 20-25 is okay. Stamina scaling fall off a damn cliff after your Endurance hits 20, so leveling that past 20 is debatable. Point is, casters should be fine as long as you stay outside of striking distance.

Regarding Pyromancy, as long as you upgrade your Pyromancy Flame, it does great damage. On my quality build with base Intelligence and Faith, I was wrecking with Flame Swathe, Warmth, and Chaos Storm. But to be fair, Pyromancy is not designed to be a basis of an entire build. It's possible to do so, but it may not be as optimal as one would think. It's meant to add another dimension to your combat style.

Hexes are good for a glass cannon build. High level Hexes do require a lot of stat investment, but not much more than high level Sorceries for comparable or superior results..

The Sorcery with a very high Intelligence requirement is Soul Vortex, with a requirement of 37 Intelligence and a max of 8 uses at 94 attunement. A Hex with similar requirements is Darkstorm, with 12 Intelligence and 21 Faith and a max of 6 uses at 94 Attunement.

The most powerful Sorcery is Soul Geyser, with 64 Intelligence and a max of 3 uses. I've seen that spell one-shot through Great Magic Barrier, though irregularly. By comparison, potentially the most powerful Hexes are Climax and Dark Greatsword, with requirements of 30 Intelligence and 47 Faith for Climax and 55 Intelligence and 29 Faith for Dark Greatsword. Those spells can about twice as many times and do more damage, as I've seen one-shots through Great Magic Barrier a lot more than with Soul Geyser. Now, Climax does eat all of your souls and takes up four attunement slots, but for 10 extra levels, that's an insane damage jump. Dark Greatsword can potentially do just as much damage if you hit with each portion of the spell.

Hexes are meant to be the ultimate risk-reward spells, especially with the Faith-oriented ones which, more often than not, cost souls to use at max potential.