Generally, pyromancy builds require spending a lot of souls to get pyro skills and expensively upgrading gloves (and these are expensive), so character builds remain at a low level. You should make your build with this in mind. Generally, think of it as being 50 levels lower at the end of the game. Think of your second weapon accordingly. It's a good idea to use a short axe and focus on stamina, spell slot and health values ​​without giving too much str dex.

Originally posted by spy:

Generally, pyromancy builds require spending a lot of souls to get pyro skills and expensively upgrading gloves (and these are expensive), so character builds remain at a low level. You should make your build with this in mind. Generally, think of it as being 50 levels lower at the end of the game. Think of your second weapon accordingly. It's a good idea to use a short axe and focus on stamina, spell slot and health values ​​without giving too much str dex.

Gotcha, I know with DS1 u can't be a pure wizard cuz of cast slots n stuff; I may look up pyro builds and see what's good since I'm not worried about a blind playthrough this time.

Pyro is a lot of fun.

Weapons with low requirements and high base damage even at the cost of scaling are best for fire, lightning, and chaos weapons, so battle axe, reinforced club, clay-more, and halberd are all classic.

As stated above you'll probably be working on your glove and want to pick your lvls wisely early on; keeping your STR and DEX low at first can allow you to focus on getting 16-19 ATN for 4-5 slots and working on your VIT early.

You can easily achieve a balanced Pyromancer build with a decent melee.
Lightning, Fire, and Chaos modified weapons have no direct scaling on stats and are purely raw damage, aside from Chaos requiring 10 humanity for full damage.

With this, you can easily min-max your character to use a specific weapon + pyromancy.
For example, if you wanted to be able to fast roll with Elite Knight armor with a popular PvP weapon, the Gargoyle's Halberd, you can set your stats at:

Vitality: 45
Attunement: 23 (6 slots)
Endurance: 56
Strength: 16
Dexterity: 12

Havel's Ring would be required for Fast Rolling, but you'd have a free Ring slot for whatever you'd like. Probably the Bellowing Dragon's Ring for a +20% damage on Pyromancies.

The 16 Strength and 12 Dexterity is the bare minimum to use the Gargoyle's Halberd, which is usually how you'll determine those stats if you don't plan on relying on Strength or Dexterity Scaling.
Edit: The Endurance at 56 also includes wearing the Grass Crest shield on one's back.

The rest of the stats would be base level for Pyromancer, as they're irrelevant.
Either way, with these stats you would be at Soul Level 100. A popular level to Softlock at is 100-120 for Meta PvP.

This is however assuming you'd care about fast rolling with Medium armor at all, as there's lots of good Light armor to choose from.

18 faith if you don't care about the dropping some END on the build above would let you TWoP and then black flame someone. I do a lot of white sing coop and having filthy PvP cheese up my sleeve is a constant.

good to know! for what it's worth I dont actually care about pvp much at all, just wana have a solid PVE experience. But hey I'll def keep these things in mind!

if you're often the summon it's not uncommon to stand up in someones world to see them getting chased around their bonfire.

Let us know how it turns out.

My several attempts in PtDE and DS:R wind up all being thief, ranger, mage, cleric, using stealth and long range whenever possible. They all seem to need these basic skills. ;-)

NG++++ lvl 240 current character. Remember the game was designed to be played 3 times as Sif's souls is required for three weapons. Or, you can ask for someone to drop what you don't have or Sif's Boss Soul.

My preference is to only think of NG++ and higher. That way you don't get all wigged out when you "miss" any important whatever.

Good Luck

Originally posted by dcy665:

Let us know how it turns out.

My several attempts in PtDE and DS:R wind up all being thief, ranger, mage, cleric, using stealth and long range whenever possible. They all seem to need these basic skills. ;-)

NG++++ lvl 240 current character. Remember the game was designed to be played 3 times as Sif's souls is required for three weapons. Or, you can ask for someone to drop what you don't have or Sif's Boss Soul.

My preference is to only think of NG++ and higher. That way you don't get all wigged out when you "miss" any important whatever.

Good Luck

I'm back and I beat the game! Gotta say this run went a LOT better than my first one; definitely put it up a notch or to in my mind. Did things in the proper order and made life soooo much smoother, there's still some fights I generally dislike (some are hot takes, others not so much); but I may actually play this more semi regularly from now on. Appreciate the help you guys gave to get me kickstarted :D

before you level anything else get your vit to 30. adjust later as needed.

use this as an opportunity to try out all the weapons that low stats will let you use.

Originally posted by CB:

before you level anything else get your vit to 30. adjust later as needed.

use this as an opportunity to try out all the weapons that low stats will let you use.

Oh yeah as someone who played a lot of ER and DS3, I leveled vitality early on, I'm a fair bit past 30 now

A pyromancer hybrid build is genernally the best way to go for a first(enjoyable) run of the game in my opinion.

although the fact that it doesn't scale isn't as useful as you would think due to the fact that upgrading the pyromancy flame takes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more souls than you probably think it does, it does still make builds a lot more flexible and easy to work with.
personally, i'd reccomend a pyromancy/miracle build with things like force and wrath of gods for close range(as well as a melee weapon of your choice(the halberd is a fantastic choice)), fireball/orb spells for mid range, and lightning spells for long range.

Originally posted by rad_knight:

A pyromancer hybrid build is genernally the best way to go for a first(enjoyable) run of the game in my opinion.

although the fact that it doesn't scale isn't as useful as you would think due to the fact that upgrading the pyromancy flame takes waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay more souls than you probably think it does, it does still make builds a lot more flexible and easy to work with.
personally, i'd reccomend a pyromancy/miracle build with things like force and wrath of gods for close range(as well as a melee weapon of your choice(the halberd is a fantastic choice)), fireball/orb spells for mid range, and lightning spells for long range.

Oh I beat the game, twice now! I had a great time just dumping souls into the flame until it maxxed out; went dex and the uchigatana carried me through most of the game.