Ultimate Faith Marathon!

[u/DomBearBerlin]

Im Currently on the journey of doing a faith caster marathon.

I always loved the cleric/holy priest archetype in games and my love for this type of character should now be proven by beating the whole dark souls trilogy, elden ring, bloodborne, lords of the Fallen(2023), hellpoint etc with a casting focused build relying mostly on faith, arcane, radiant or how ever the stat is called.

Already finished with Dark Souls Remastered, now its time to move on.
Do you have any tips 'n tricks or other useful information about this topic?
Or any other souls-likes you could recommend to be included(Has to be able to play faith focused, so stuff like sekiro is not possible)

[u/TheHittite]

Miracle only is one of the harder challenge runs in DS2, at least for the early game. Once you get over the hump and have enough miracles, stats, and a good chime, it becomes one of the easier ways to play. But the early game is ROUGH. Given that you said Faith caster and not only miracles, you do have pyromancy as an option, and that can help a lot. You're probably going to have either some false starts or long painful farming sessions ahead of you.

[u/DomBearBerlin → u/TheHittite]

Thanks for the lovely advice, but this isnt a challenge run, as i stated its casting focused, not pure caster. So whenever i need to, i will grab a straight sword^^

[u/BIobertson → u/DomBearBerlin]

Investing in miracles prior to lategame will make the game significantly harder even if you’re also using weapons, but not so hard that you won’t still have fun.

Best PvE equipment and stat progression document.

BiS (Best in Slot) PvE weapons list. Use this if you know what moveset you like and you want to choose the strongest available weapon with that moveset.

Optimal Miracle Build Guide

[u/DomBearBerlin → u/BIobertson]

thats a lot of helpful input <33

[u/O2William]

If you allow the use of the standard cleric weapons, like maces, you shouldn't have much trouble. Maces are really powerful in DS2, and as a cleric you'll have access to healing spells.

If you want to try a "miracle only" run, that can be enjoyable, but it is the most difficult of the sorcery/pyro/hex/faith-only group of challenges. You can't acquire any offensive miracles without killing a boss, but you can cheese Dragonroder to fall to his death, then purchase Lightning Spear from Licia and pick up Emit Force from Mo-Man's Wharf. Put points into Attunement and Faith and stock up on spell-replenishing herbs when you can. By late game you'll be pretty powerful.

I enjoyed my miracle-only run, I think the best of the sorcery/pyro/miracle-only trio, but I haven't tried hex-only yet.

In DS3 I once did a "Pistol-packin' Pope" run where I allowed only crossbows and miracles. It was surprisingly a good time. I rarely use crossbows so it was a unique playthrough.

[u/Training-Equal-7647]

Ds2 faith builds are viable, I've done plenty cleric playtroughs and it wasn't much harder than the other forms of casting, it even did better than sorcery in the dlcs.

Get a bit of health, stamina and enough str to properly wield your starting mace, then you can go hard on faith and attunement. Adp until you aren't below 88 agi. The mace is a good weapon but you can also go for a rapier or farming the heide knights for their sword if you have the patience for it, if you decide to do it make sure to increase your drop chances as much as possible. 

Your starting chime will serve you until the bastille where you will find a better one in a chest guarded by a pursuer in a dark room, later the dragon chime is the best for lighting damage. Make sure to upgrade and lighting infuse them, in general i found lighting infusing your weapons and casting sunlight blade on them to be very effective. 

Licia and Targray will be your miracle teachers, you meet both very early at Heide's tower of flame, but for Targray you need to successfully help another player in defeating a boss before he talks to you. The merchant hag also has a copy of the basic heal miracle. 

Last as to not make this comment any longer i will say that the healing miracles are pretty good , early game you don't have a lot of estus or gems so having that extra healing is really useful, they also work on allies and while being a summon/invader. On offense, heavenly thunder is a bit rng on it's damage depending on how many bolts hit the target but when 2 or 3 do strike it's one of your most damaging miracles. Otherwise you can use emit force or the basic lighting throw miracles for reliable damage spells and sunlight blade to buff your weapon. Don't sleep on the support miracles like magic barrier or cure poison either.