Black Serpent | Dark Souls 3 Wiki

This is a more fun than practical spell. It's homing isn't always reliable. It veers off course even if the enemy is straight ahead. Better at closer ranges. Pros are that you can use it against that are hard to hit because they're close to a ledge, hugging a wall, or are on a different level of the map. Cool animations and roll catching. Dark damage. This and havel's Boulder can go through walls. It's just fun. But if I haven't said it yet, it's a fun spell. Don't use if you're too serious or expect it to save you. This is fromsoft, expect the unexpected

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One of the four pvp pyromancies you'll see (the others being CBV, black flame, and fire surge). Very annoying. Hosts will just cast and recast this until they're out of blue juice while their phantoms run you down with ultra weapons. If you're having a hard time dodging it, don't roll. Just run to the side. It doesn't turn well, but it roll catches like a mf.

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So.. Does this do dark dammages or fire dammages ?

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Fear not the dark, my friend, and let the feast begin.

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Great spell in general, but it makes things too easy when I see people use this spell. Its major weakness are crossbows, & I'm surprised the meta hasn't gotten wise to it. The cast animation causes your character bend the knee, lining yourself up for a clean chance at a headshot. The most damage I've done was around 354 on one hit, and recently I was able to do a 334 headshot. Even when you account for the crit of a headshot, it's almost absurd that even light crossbows with 279 AR can punish users of this spell so much from a distance. It is possible to dodge out of the crossbow shot, but you'd need to have high/max out cast time and mash that roll button. Not impossible, but I've punished more people who used this spell than I can remember.

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It is such a shame that immolation tinder doesn’t cast pyro, this spell would pair so well

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Good for if you want to kill the Old Demon King early as a pyromancer to get the chaos bed vestiges. Otherwise, pretty much all of the other dark pyromancies are better.

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A spell that looks absolutely badass - a snake made of fire that slithers across terrain and even climbs walls to reach its target, dealing massive stamina damage if blocked, and has some interesting timing applications when taking its travel time into consideration.

However, it's weak. Beyond that it is easily dodged, it simply doesn't hit that hard. In PvE, the lack of damage and irrelevancy of opponent's stamina makes it useless, and in PvP it can be avoided or even traded against - it's a far cry from Dark Souls 2's Fire Snake which, while not the hardest to avoid, was much larger and could chew through a health bar.

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AMATERASU

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While i think the spell kinda sucks in general, I tested it on the enemies in the cemetery of ash (bc I figured they'd have the least resistance) and i calculated that the spell does approximately 1.357 * spell buff.

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This, fire surge and chaos bed vestiges are why I bring Vow of Silence to duels. Funny to see that as soon as some people lose this their second best strategy is to run away. No backup weapons, no backup strategies. Crutch spell.

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"***** your damn shield. From any distance." -Anyone using this spell

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Is anyone else confused as to how Friede managed to obtain this?

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I run this spell on my level 10 invader and have gotten so much hate for it

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I met a blue that only used this spell and shot with a crossbow truly great pvp experience

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The comments here really don't live up to my experience. A white phantom sent 8 of these in a row at me while I was fighting as a Spear of the Church. Dodged them all, while simultaneously having to keep the host off my back. And I'm not bragging either -- my record in PvP isn't anything exceptional. It's just that, reading the comments posted below, you'd think this pyromancy was way more punishing than it actually is. The tracking is better than most spells, but as long as you keep your eye on it, it's piss easy to dodge.

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"The flames can be slightly controlled with the control stick." ... do you mean I can control the flame direction while locked on, or free aiming?

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Great for builds that just use pyromancy as a side set of attacks, with 21 fth and 20 int, i got 300 AR, plus thats ease of casting, not to mention you get to summon a friggin snake made of fire

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This spell is lowkey the best for pyro/swordsman builds. Landing a hit while someone is blocking you opens them up for a riposte. Land the spell - riposte - chain with profaned flame - boom, they're back on the ground - run up and start r1ing them to death. Flawless against any type of knight.

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Lol, i love all the "it can be managed" comments. Sure, so can everything else. Doesn't change the fact that when i use this i land the majority of my casts. Let's not pretend this isn't what it is. Not OP, but a very good spell. I land more hits with this than any of my other pyromancies, even if i spam it. They can know it's coming and still get hit. The whole "roll at the right time" argument is so pointless when the reality is that this WILL hit the majority of people you come across. Just like with eveeything else, you'll run into the odd player that you won't be able to touch with this owing to them knowing how to handle this, but in general those players are experienced and will know how to handle most things you throw at them. Using the fact that there are skilled players as an argument against ANYTHING being good isn't an argument... It's not that the weapon/spell isn't good because there're skilled players who can handle it, it's that the skilled players are skilled so they can handle the good weapon/spell.

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Have anyone tried using lingering ring with this pyromancy?
I think it might go a longer range if you use it but i may be wrong.

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Just walk horizontally, no rolling needed on flat ground.

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If you manage to get hit by this useless spell you really need to work on your rolling skills. Its pathetically easy to avoid with the ultra roll at less than 30 percent equipment load.

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It's pretty good, i'm been trying it and baits into a onyx blade hit a lot of times.

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The strange homing property of this spell is caused by its random start directions. The flame trail is constituted of a sequence of short-range projectiles, the small explosions being their impact effect. The first projectile has a random horizontal direction within a range of 170 degrees. The range of succedent projectiles' random horizontal angle is 10 degrees. All these projectiles have very good homing abilities. Each can steer its direction to the locked on target by 360 degrees per second. If unlocked, the "locked on target" is assumed to be a point few meters away in front of the caster. So this spell homes very well when locked on, but acts like a drunkard while free aiming.

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For extra cheese dart cast with spell

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Tracking will be nerf'd called it.

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lmao use the Millwood axe WA and plow right through it. Scares the crap out of them.

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For the love of god they need to increase the cast time on this or some other type of nerf, everyone uses it and spams the ***** out of it, it's hard to get close, and even if you do I find that they can usually cast it again, right after. I started using it after I saw how disgusting it was, and boom, like magic I was winning duels left and right. No spell should be THAT effective.

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Roll to the right then roll back over it to the left Or just be meta and walk away until it dissapears

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You can steer it with your joystick. Try it out.

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Babies whining and soiling themselves because they can't even kill pyromancers using black serpent.

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Now i've seen multiple ganks that got 2 pyros just spamming it.I would suggest just increasing the damage and not an instant stagger of the enemy as it is quite OP if you got 2-3 people just spamming it and someone with a crystal soul spear.Of course you can say "git gud" but does it improve it being spammed in ganks?I wanna see you try going against 2 pyros spamming it while one is pressuring you with a sword as a meele build that aims for parries.If you can do it without any help, I'll accept it and will try to "get gud"

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Fought some guy earlier who was deflecting spells like a boss. I used this, he deflected it, rushed me and the thing made a u-turn and hit him in the back just as I was casting the second one. Comboed into black flame for a KO

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Tracks almost in a full circle now. Is a pain in the neck to try and dodge.

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I'm almost certain it's buffed with the dark clutch ring but anyone knows if it work with the fire clutch ring ?

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actually goes in a full circle

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Can't play pvp vs this spamming pyromancy. Nice build: estoc, Witch's Locks and this spell (my ass is on fire after *****ty spammers)

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This pyromancy seems waaay better since the early July update. Not great damage but can still zig-zags and stuns.

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plain and simple

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Works better after. 08 patch. With dark clutch ring i took up to 600 hp on random phantoms. Spamable.

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Anyone can give me a good amount of dmg with around 30/30 or 40/40 Int/Faith? and a Pyro hand +10

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Anyone else noticed that this thing seems to change direction based on where you look after it's been cast if you unlock? I can't tell if this is just me but I tried it out a firelink and almost every time I cast it looked in a different direction and it followed that path.

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This is a solid mid/long range pyro for pvp. Like other pyro you wont get that far with it locked on, but when unlocked it can be very effective at catching people who are strafing you, if you aim and predict correctly. This pyro has a noticeable recovery so you should not use it at close range or when the enemy like to roll right at you.

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Despite what the notes say, I've noticed this spell does NOT track in anyway whatsoever. It follows a predetermined path that suddenly veers to the right before adjusting back to its original course just before dissipating. This can cause the spell to miss seemingly vulnerable enemies.

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Does anyone know if the scaling for the dark magic (pyro, sorc and miracles) is like DS2? (Lowest from INT / FAI)??Because in the DARK GEM description says its scales from faith.

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