Much like Dan, I really enjoyed Bloodborne, but wanted to give Dark Souls a shot. So I started up as a Pyro lady figuring I'd go fire spells or whatever they do as that sounds different than Bloodborne. However when I took down the Tarus demon I got the Demon's Greataxe.

I did a little poking around online and it sounds like if/when I get Strength up to 56 this thing just crushes. However, it's this worth potentially giving up on magic?

Its been a while since I played dark souls but I believe that the pyromancy flame doesn't scale with any 1 stat, it just has to be upgraded at a vendor you meet later on. So if you really want to go strength and pyro you totally could. You'll just need to put points into atunement for more spells eventually. Having said that, 56 for a weapon is crazy and imo there are much better strength weapons out there that you'll find.

As Marco724 said, I can confirm that Pyromancy has nothing to do with your stats aside from attunement (more attunement = more slots to carry multiple spells around with you). If you want to use sorceries or miracles, however, you'll need to pump intellect/faith respectively in addition to attunement, which is where it gets stat prohibitive to pump strength as well. Pyromancy is pretty much magic for non-magic specced characters.

The Pyromancy flame doesn't require intelligence but it does give you stronger bonus damage as you level it up. The only real requirement would be making sure you have slots to hold various spells.

Thanks for all your help.

I'd also add that it's going to take quite a while to get up to lvl 56 strength. You probably won't have that until late game. I'd recommend the man-serpent greatsword in the meantime (drop from lizards at Sen's Fortress).

You will not be getting a strength of 56 on new game rather thats the kinda of number you mightttt have in new game plus or even new game ++, however if want to wield the demon greataxe , strength wepons when wielded two handed have a 1.5 × your current strength stat modifier so you need a strength of 31(DGA needs 46) but really you should just experiment with different weapons move sets until you find something you like as you will be much more effective doing that then looking online for min- maxing which is only usefull in PVP which regardless of what weapon you use you'll be outmatched in right now as a new player, most if not all dark souls weapons are viable in PVE and thats one of the things that makes the game great and were alot of the fun of the game is brought out from

You won't get near that strength stat til maybe half-way through NG+. I wind up settling on a Black Knight weapon if I'm lucky enough to see one drop but there's plenty of options in the base game to go for.