Curious what everyone's experience was with pyromancy in their playthrough. Since there's no pyromancer, there's no-one starting with it, and you don't get it until several hours into the game at least. At that point I found the initial spells underwhelming. As a bandit I only managed to scrape together a single attunement slot, and the fireball / fire orb spells only seemed to have enough casts to take down one or two enemies. I used flash sweat in the fire areas to help with bosses and getting those treasures in the lava, but that was about it.

But then it came into its own. The later spells (fire swathe, chaos firestorm) absolutely rip through all but the strongest enemies, and can take down a huge chunk of life for most bosses. The fact that the glove upgrades for not many souls and its own upgrade material, and the fact that the fire seeds aren't all that hard to come by, mean you'll pretty much automatically be able to get a maxed out glove by mid to late game. At that point it was pretty much my go-to for anything big or any annoying groups of enemies. Those groups of three shield-bearing lancers guarding the tomb? Two fire swathes and down. And this was only with 3 INT, 8 FTH, and three attunement slots - the vast majority of my stat investment was into physical stats, and I had little scaling on the glove.

And in PVP especially, I've pretty much stopped using it unless I get invaded, as it seems downright unfair. Fire swathe can kill anyone in two shots, and it breaks through shields. Sure, you can dodge and try to get away, but few seem to know how to deal with it and it seems cheap to two-shot guys when I have a fairly big health/stamina bar and tons of DEX on my own.

So what do others think, either fighting with it or against? The lack of a pyro class means it can't be a crutch early on, but now it seems like a way for melee focused classes to dish out tons of spell damage late game. You need to put enough to get up to 10-16 attunement, or I suppose just use the attunement slot rings, and then spend to get some good spells, but that's about it for some massive AOE spells. You're limited in casts of the powerful spells, but two of the big spells is enough to push through some of the more difficult areas or save to take down a boss to half health.

I don't have any attunement so I haven't tried any spells but I'd rather play against a pryo than a hexer or sorcerer. I haven't seen many miracle users at all.

Pyro's not that great in PvP, cast speed is super slow and once you're accustomed to Flame Swathe it's generally easy to dodge with nothing else going on. A smart pyro might've set up some lingering flames too, though. It's great against some enemies and bosses though, Darklurker is super weak to fire and a well-timed Flame Swathe can take out almost half his health

The fact that you can get the southern ritual band +1 very easily in tseldora, for 2 free attunement slots, means you don't even need to put anything into attunement, and can put the extra points into faith/int for extra damages.

Firestorm and Fire Swathe wreck bosses super hard, with little to no stat investment and maybe 20,000 souls to upgrade the glove. The casting animation for Fire Storm will even put you below the swing range of a few bosses, so you're invincible while you do it.

A few pyro spells are ridiculously overpowered; seems reasonably balanced other than those. Suffice to say if you beat the game with the absurd pyro spells you probably shouldn't comment on the difficulty, much like Iron Flesh in the original.

I've had 5 Dark Souls 2 policemans go after me after I slaughtered Majula before starting NG+. 3 of them used pyromancy but the spells are so easy to avoid so I don't really see it as an issue in PVP. Flame Swathe is downright nasty when fighting bosses though. The most imbalanced PVP skill is the Great Resonant Soul hex because I've been 2 shotting all the policemans with it. I've been employing a scumbag tactic of casting Homing Crystal Soul Mass then rushing towards the opponent and then casting Great Resonant Soul as they try to avoid the Soul Mass projectiles. This works best if you force the conflict in chokepoints to limit their movement options.

I haven't messed with casting any of it, but I can confirm that it's a bitch the first few times you run up against players using it, yes.

for pve i find Toxic Mist really useful, takes down those greatshield heavies with no fuss, handy when there's two of them stood together and it's impossible to get behind them.

Considering I'm a pure melee build with 5 points in INT and FAITH, would it be at all worth it for me to raise my attunement to that single slot and slap on some pyromancies or is it completely wasted unless you invested at least some points in the magic build stats?

@humanity: just use the rings that give you attunement slots, no need to waste level ups on it if you only want it for occasional use.

It's rarely useful when I was invaded. But pyromancy is really powerful against some bosses. I easily killed Royal Rat Authority, Royal Rat Vanguard, and some other bosses with Flame Swathe and Lingering Flames. It's great when you're mostly melee character and want to have some crowd control method.

I get that From obviously realized Pyromancy was super unbalanced in Dark Souls, but I do feel like they went a little hard in the opposite direction, tinkering the way damage scales with it, and making it so you don't even get Pyromancy until hours and hours into the game. I suppose if you knew right away the most available Pyromancy glove was in No Man's Wharf, you could make a beeline for that area, but even so it seems ridiculous that an entire class of magic is basically held ransom to a boss that's actually optional.

Then again, I suppose the entire point of Pyromancy was to be a supplement to a melee build, and not an entire class unto itself.

It's quite powerful, especially in PvE. I imagine this is why they try and keep it out of your hands for the starting areas.

So, I'm confused. Is Pyromancy the same as in Dark Souls 1, where its damage only scales based on your pyromancy weapon (ie, the pyromancy flame from DS1)? I thought it scaled based on Int now?

@deathtrap: Both. The glove gives a fire damage modifier, which scales with your Fire Bonus, and int/faith raise said bonus. I believe I've got that right, but I'm not 100%.

I see. So, if it does scale off int/faith...why does that make Pyromancy any better than Sorcery for warrior types?

@gerrid: as Dave Lang would say "that's smart" I had the ring but I thought it only gave you an extra slot if you already had one. Huh! Well thanks!

@deathtrap: It scales based on both the glove and INT/FTH (giving fire bonus). But from what I can tell, it's still incredibly powerful without many points in INT/FTH once you upgrade the glove and get some good spells.

@humanity: There are rings that give you slots also. I think it's worth it to either invest in attunement or use a ring slot when needed. For a total cost of 30-50k souls - one mid-game boss - you can get a fully powered pyro glove and some crazy good spells.

@marokai:I mainly find it strange because they took out the early game crutch side of pyro, which I think makes sense, but gave it some incredibly powerful mid-late game spells that deal massive damage even without stats. If they actually wanted it to scale and force you to invest stats to make it useful, they failed. Since you can upgrade the glove easily, the scaling doesn't seem to matter. You can have entirely DEX or STR character wearing heavy armor and still have some amazing flame spells in your back pocket. Pyro in DS1 was incredibly handy early, but I used it less to deal damage as the game went on.

At least the spells are limited cast, but 2-4 casts can still take out groups of most big enemies or knock a boss's health down by a quarter or half. I still do most of my fighting melee and dodging since it's more satisfying, but it's nice having the extra options for crowd control given the number of enemies the game likes to throw at you at times.

Because a +10 glove without any int/faith is still really powerful, and you don't need to raise any stats to use it, unlike some spells for faith/int which can go up to like 64 requirements (Soul Geyser) or something ridiculous like that. All you need is some attunement, and not even that if you have the ring that gives you 1/2/3 attunement slots.

For reference, on my 30/30 int/faith guy with my +10 glove I did over 3,5k damage to a single mob with 1 chaos firestorm. Now even if I did half that much damage at, say, 8 int/faith, it would still be a lot, but I'm fairly certain the scaling isn't that aggressive, so you'd probably do something like 2,5k.

Oh and I forgot to mention, on my pure strength guy I could do about 800-900 damage with one cast of Flame Swathe against most enemies. Pyro is beast against the right mob types.

Also, Lost Sinner's cuffs (bought from Maughlin after beating her) increase pyro damage, fyi.

At a certain point in the game (I believe Iron Keep, but not 100%) you can buy infinite of the herbs that restore spell uses, too. Really useful in some boss fights.