Magic Downpour, Rykard's Rancor and Elden Stars make for one of the awesome visual combos you can cast. So much starts just happening and it looks really cool.

Would be nicer as an incantation where the player breathes it out of their mouths like rykard

It’s actually genuinely pragmatic for intelligence builds to invest in faith for this spell alone.

The Golden Order seal will then help you get some intelligence scaling back if you want to toy with incantations damaging incantations.

Flame Grant Me Strength and Fire Cleanse Me are top tier utility spells that make a case for 12 or 15 Faith in any build.

It’s a small price to get to play with some fire.

I mean, it's really nice to see some spell variations for an int caster aside than the usual blue and purple meteors.
Even if i like rhe idea of pyromancies bound to sorcerers, i wish that this spell was an incantation for faith casters since we're talking about Rykard.

if you want to cast this as an astrologer with unlevelled faith, 8 +1 from commoner garb and +10 from sorseal and heirloom = 19

this is a very underrated spell. it shreds large bosses in PVP, and can force players to run loops. works great when combined with Ancient death rancor and regal omen barin.

I cant comprehend what this spell is doing half the time, but I can say that its very effective against large or immobile enemies on a dedicated INT/FTH build with the Gelmir staff

Aside from other things mentioned below, my main gripe with this spell is that the tracking can either make or break this spell; either it'll loop correctly around an enemy and do a ton of hits OR it'll nosedive to the floor and end halfway prematurely. Never use this at an enemy near the wall because it'll end up touching something and end prematurely...

Ok this is one of my favorite spells and after extensive use of it, I think I'll share some guidelines about how this spell works:

- Launch a flaming skull projectile that leaves a trail behind. At the end of its range, a series of explosion will occur along the path it has traveled, dealing fire damage. The initial trail does not deal damage. The projectile appears to circulate half-way till the end. The entire range traveled is equivalent to that of great glintstone shard.

- Can home in locked on targets, however the projectile will always attempt to travel the full distance (including the circulation) whether it contacts with an enemy or not, or with any obstacles in general. The projectiles technically can travel through enemies and so do the following explosions.

- At 80 INT and Carian Regal Scepter +10, each explosion deals about 450~ damage, and about 60 dmg increased with Gelmir Staff off-hand

Strategy in PVE, this spell is great against enemies with large bodies like Dragons or Tree Spirits, especially the later because you will often fight them in tight area, where their size will soak up most of the explosions, melting them in a few casts. This spell is also great against mobs, technically follow the projectiles and have the enemies follow and get caught in a series of explosions.

In PVP, this spell can be used to zone out opponent offensively or defensively, cast a couple of this as you close the distance the opponent will have to respect it due to its delay activation, then engage them with a quicker weapon or spell to take the initiatives, getting caught in even a single explosion can leave them very vulnerable. Otherwise, don't trust this spell to deal damage in reliably.

I like to use Rykard's Rancor against the following large enemies that are weak against fire:
- Putrid Avatar
- Erdtree Avatar
- Putrid Tree Spirit
- Ulcerated Tree Spirit
- Giant Miranda Sprout

The circling makes it very nice to inflict multiple hits inside the enemy.