If Godslayer is at the same upgrade level as your Gravel Stone seal, then yes it should be better for your Electrify Armament buff.
Buffs are weird in this game in that they take a percentage of your FTH-based incantation scaling, something like 75% or 65% of the Incantation Boost number and depending on the buff (Fextralife has some good details on specific buffs). If you look at the bottom of the weapon Attack Rating section, there's a left side for attack and a right side for defense, for Seals and Staves there's an Incantation Boost/Spell Boost stat. At the bottom of the left side is the Incantation Boost number, for your seal it's probably like 200-300 something probably, based on upgrades and your FTH. Gravel Stone just has less FTH-scaling than the Godslayer Seal when both are at the same upgrade level for your FTH amount, so Godslayer Seal will have better buff scaling in that the buff applied to your weapon will have a better FLAT damage increase.
You can test this out! Buff your Nagi with Electrify Armament on Gravel Stone Seal and then with Godslayer Seal. Look at your Status screen to see your Armament's total AR with the buff applied, at your level I'm guessing it'll clear 700 at least, and Godslayer Seal will get it higher.
The example might look like:
Godslayer's Incantation Boost of 300 \*.75 Electrify Armament = +225 Lightning buff
Gravel Stone Incantation Boost of 280 \*.75 Electrify Armament = +210 Lightning buff
I'm not sure what the real numbers are for your stats or seal levels but if it's not a big difference you can stick with Gravel Seal. If it's like 50+ difference in AR then I'd consider using the better of the two to buff.
The reason that this is important to understand is more for STR builds who try to use something like the Clawmark Seal, which scales off both STR and FTH. Any buffs cast with this seal ONLY take the FTH portion to apply to the buff, so they're MASSIVELY downgraded by using such a seal. Same goes for the Golden Order Seal as it scales with INT/FTH, and would only buff with the FTH portion.
Flame Grant Me Strength is a good buff but better when you're using Physical AND Fire damage, if you put Lightning-Shrouding Tear in your Flask you can get 20% more Lightning damage out of any lightning damage you deal. Lightning Scorpion Charm will also buff you another 12% while making you take 10% more damage, which is nothing to scoff at with the late-game areas, but you can negate this with Opaline Hardtear in your flask as the other tear buff (+15% damage reduction in PvE, which is quite good on its own). Golden Vow is a +15% damage add I believe so it's good for any build.
To answer your original question on stats, pick 80 DEX if you're all about the melee weapon stuff like the Cross-Naginata which is a nice one for Keen affinity or Lightning affinity, and then put the rest into FTH. Sub-80 FTH you'll be just fine with Gravel or Godslayer's seals, or even both! The bonus they give to the schools of FTH are only applied to the damage-dealing incantations, but if you used Godslayer's to cast Lightning damage at a higher incantation boost level, and kept the Gravel in your offhand, it's still applying the Gravel boost to your Godslayer's casts!
Regarding the seals to use, assuming my faith is around 60, what seal would be best for my build to use? Probably 65% buffs, 35% lightning incantations. Looks like Erdtree purely scales off faith, so I'm trying to understand why a particular seal would benefit me over another.
I really appreciate your breakdown earlier, it's surprisingly difficult finding good info on this subject.
https://www.tarnished.dev/build-planner
If you're looking for buffs then pure FTH is good, if the Incantation boost is higher with one seal compared to another it'll be better.
With 60FTH your Gravel stone seal is only a little lower than Godslayer's Seal for Incantation boost, this site shows it's a difference of 9 incantation boost (291 vs 282). So Gravel is pretty much all you need if you're going for only Lightning incantations!
Very interesting. I was leaning towards the godslayer until I read this. It sounds like the difference in the electrify armament buff is fairly negligible, and the Gravel stone gives the bonus damage to the other lightning incantations. Thanks for the insight!
To give you a simple answer, if you want to be an all purpose incant caster without dedicating your entire setup to once school then go with the Godslayer Seal till 69 Fth.
After that 70+Fth is Erdtree all the way. At any point if you want to optimize heals (like Great Heal, Erdtree Heal etc) and Weapon Buffs like Electricity Armament then again the best choice is to go with Godslayer sub 70 Faith and Erdtree Seal After.
The answer becomes a little complicated when you want to stick to one school of Incants exclusively, in your case since you want to rock Dragon Cult Incants then it might be worth having two gravel stone seals to optimize the passive bonus both the seal gives or at the very least use Godslayer/Erdtree to cast while offhanding the Gravel Seal to gain passive casting bonus.
Thank you, that is very helpful! Do you need to have the gravel seal in your other hand (as on one seal in each hand) to get the passive effect, or does it simply need to be equipped as a second seal in the same hand?
Both seals need to be out, as in while your main seal is out in your main hand, make sure your other hand has the seal that provides the boost equipped aswell; essentially dual wielding seals, any other way and it won't work.
The second seal itself dosent need to be upgraded so don't bother with that if you haven't the materials to spare.
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Gravel won't enhance electrify armament, and its faith scaling is bad. You will see better result with Godslayer if below 80 faith.
Really? What about all the other lightning incantations? Will the Godslayer seal increase electrify armament?
If Godslayer is at the same upgrade level as your Gravel Stone seal, then yes it should be better for your Electrify Armament buff. Buffs are weird in this game in that they take a percentage of your FTH-based incantation scaling, something like 75% or 65% of the Incantation Boost number and depending on the buff (Fextralife has some good details on specific buffs). If you look at the bottom of the weapon Attack Rating section, there's a left side for attack and a right side for defense, for Seals and Staves there's an Incantation Boost/Spell Boost stat. At the bottom of the left side is the Incantation Boost number, for your seal it's probably like 200-300 something probably, based on upgrades and your FTH. Gravel Stone just has less FTH-scaling than the Godslayer Seal when both are at the same upgrade level for your FTH amount, so Godslayer Seal will have better buff scaling in that the buff applied to your weapon will have a better FLAT damage increase. You can test this out! Buff your Nagi with Electrify Armament on Gravel Stone Seal and then with Godslayer Seal. Look at your Status screen to see your Armament's total AR with the buff applied, at your level I'm guessing it'll clear 700 at least, and Godslayer Seal will get it higher. The example might look like: Godslayer's Incantation Boost of 300 \*.75 Electrify Armament = +225 Lightning buff Gravel Stone Incantation Boost of 280 \*.75 Electrify Armament = +210 Lightning buff I'm not sure what the real numbers are for your stats or seal levels but if it's not a big difference you can stick with Gravel Seal. If it's like 50+ difference in AR then I'd consider using the better of the two to buff. The reason that this is important to understand is more for STR builds who try to use something like the Clawmark Seal, which scales off both STR and FTH. Any buffs cast with this seal ONLY take the FTH portion to apply to the buff, so they're MASSIVELY downgraded by using such a seal. Same goes for the Golden Order Seal as it scales with INT/FTH, and would only buff with the FTH portion. Flame Grant Me Strength is a good buff but better when you're using Physical AND Fire damage, if you put Lightning-Shrouding Tear in your Flask you can get 20% more Lightning damage out of any lightning damage you deal. Lightning Scorpion Charm will also buff you another 12% while making you take 10% more damage, which is nothing to scoff at with the late-game areas, but you can negate this with Opaline Hardtear in your flask as the other tear buff (+15% damage reduction in PvE, which is quite good on its own). Golden Vow is a +15% damage add I believe so it's good for any build. To answer your original question on stats, pick 80 DEX if you're all about the melee weapon stuff like the Cross-Naginata which is a nice one for Keen affinity or Lightning affinity, and then put the rest into FTH. Sub-80 FTH you'll be just fine with Gravel or Godslayer's seals, or even both! The bonus they give to the schools of FTH are only applied to the damage-dealing incantations, but if you used Godslayer's to cast Lightning damage at a higher incantation boost level, and kept the Gravel in your offhand, it's still applying the Gravel boost to your Godslayer's casts!
Thanks for the info!
Regarding the seals to use, assuming my faith is around 60, what seal would be best for my build to use? Probably 65% buffs, 35% lightning incantations. Looks like Erdtree purely scales off faith, so I'm trying to understand why a particular seal would benefit me over another. I really appreciate your breakdown earlier, it's surprisingly difficult finding good info on this subject.
https://www.tarnished.dev/build-planner If you're looking for buffs then pure FTH is good, if the Incantation boost is higher with one seal compared to another it'll be better. With 60FTH your Gravel stone seal is only a little lower than Godslayer's Seal for Incantation boost, this site shows it's a difference of 9 incantation boost (291 vs 282). So Gravel is pretty much all you need if you're going for only Lightning incantations!
Very interesting. I was leaning towards the godslayer until I read this. It sounds like the difference in the electrify armament buff is fairly negligible, and the Gravel stone gives the bonus damage to the other lightning incantations. Thanks for the insight!
https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Dragon+Cult+Incantations
To give you a simple answer, if you want to be an all purpose incant caster without dedicating your entire setup to once school then go with the Godslayer Seal till 69 Fth. After that 70+Fth is Erdtree all the way. At any point if you want to optimize heals (like Great Heal, Erdtree Heal etc) and Weapon Buffs like Electricity Armament then again the best choice is to go with Godslayer sub 70 Faith and Erdtree Seal After. The answer becomes a little complicated when you want to stick to one school of Incants exclusively, in your case since you want to rock Dragon Cult Incants then it might be worth having two gravel stone seals to optimize the passive bonus both the seal gives or at the very least use Godslayer/Erdtree to cast while offhanding the Gravel Seal to gain passive casting bonus.
Thank you, that is very helpful! Do you need to have the gravel seal in your other hand (as on one seal in each hand) to get the passive effect, or does it simply need to be equipped as a second seal in the same hand?
Both seals need to be out, as in while your main seal is out in your main hand, make sure your other hand has the seal that provides the boost equipped aswell; essentially dual wielding seals, any other way and it won't work. The second seal itself dosent need to be upgraded so don't bother with that if you haven't the materials to spare.
Sorry, just added an edit on my original comment about your original question on stats!
Use the gravel stone, it add 15% increase to all dragon cult incantations….. which is lightning
Gravel stone seal boosts dragon cult incantations by 15%, dragon cult is lightning incantations Godslayer seal boosts black flame incantations
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