Crystal Hail | Dark Souls 3 Wiki

This spell is a sorcerers only zoning option for PVP. Cast this out and you will guarantee do some chip damage and will give you some room for some set-up. Some people will attempt to dodge the arrows which gives you just that extra room to hit them with something more meaningful. In PVE its not too bad against enemies that can be stunlocked, but it's not worthless like some people make it out to be.

-Con

Submit

Great spell if you don't want to hit your enemies

Submit

how could they screw ds2's soul shower so bad? it was already an underwhelming spell, but at least it did it's job, since all of the projectiles were homing, and it served as a setup spell for stronger spells. But this is just pathetic, it rarely even lands a single projectile if the enemy isn't standing completely still, does even less damage than my will to live after casting it, and doesn't even work for setting up anything, as no one will ever give a damn about it.

Submit

Could be better if it was a cloud that soul arrows fell down from it

Submit

soul shower but bought on wish

Submit

The only reason to ever get this over the item discovery rapier is if you need the sorceries achievement. Very disappointing spell but I guess it could maybe catch someone off guard in PVP.

Submit

Great for when I don't want to hit my enemies.

Submit

best spell ever

Submit

List of spells in “Magic” box at bottom of article is missing this spell

Submit

best thing about this spell is the fast cast time and long duration. you can throw this out very easily for free damage against many bosses, even if the fp/damage ratio is not very good

Submit

I did some tests on a giant crab. Regardless of whether I lock on or free aim just above the crabs head, it hits 3-5 times, in total averaging just a bit more damage than a single basic soul arrow but at ~3x the FP cost. It feels bloody awful to use, and I wouldn't be surprised if it could only land six crystals at most on the largest bosses in the game.

Submit

it's a spell for big monsters but it doesn't do percentage damage... why use this over pestilent mist or even snap freeze? it's just incomprehensible... especially since it only does damage when you have higher stats than the base ones.

Submit

“Back in the old days son, before y’all invented those fancy A-10’s, we called down airstrikes like this.”

Submit

If you're lucky one of these crystal blobs might make a slight effort to hit.

Submit

I think this spell would have been far better off it they all came down at once on the target and did a load of damage like when the crystal sage actually uses it, however I must say it isn't at all useless and can actually be pretty fun to use.

Submit

Low key disappointed, but still appreciate the tactical capabilities online

Submit

Nice for pvp and against large hitbox bosses. Area denial in pvp but unreliable, sometime*****s 0, then multiple times. However i wouldn't recommend running into this, since it CAN stagger and hit multiple times. All other area denial spells like Snap Freeze and Pestilent Mist are way weaker, except against someone turtling in the entrance of a narrow room..which almost never happens.

Submit

Instead of this, the soul should've given us that *******ish star shaped spell that slowly tracks and deals a ton of damage lol

Submit

I find it kinda funny that the CRYSTAL hail is less effective then DKS2's SOUL hail. I thought crystal sorceries are supposed to be an improvement over the standard version

Submit

soul shower unrequiem

Submit

It would be better if this spell s proyectiles were chunks of crystals that do the same thing as boulder heave, but with magic damage

Submit

I would have loved if this spell were instead just the orb itself following its target. Imagine casting slow-moving crystal orbs at people!

Submit

Literally, just fix the tracking and this would be top tier. Still a good spell though. Very useful for crowd control.

Submit

how many damage it did if you manage to hit boss with all of it?

Submit

This spell is a staple for my build. Your opponent will almost always try to roll away from it, which gives you time to cast your other spells (Great for recasting Homing Crystal Soulmass or giving you a chance to hit with Crystal Soul Spear). Never leave home without it.

Submit

1) Get 40 Faith 2) Get 18 Int 3) Throw Divine Pillars of Light into the trash can 4) Use this thing 5) Stop playing poorly designed gam

Submit

The only time you'll want to use this is in the middle of a fight when you can pressure them, you can follow up with another spell. But unless your whole PvP plan revolves around this spell, just go with the rapier. The item discovery really helps farming for better weapons.

Submit

Ok so i cast this thing on those poison spreading bug thingie cluster at earthe peak to test its damage and guess what, it hit only once on one of the enemies. It is as if the damn thing is aiming not to hit :D. I mean there is an abundance of enemies below it. Oh and by the way i found otu something about the spell, the height it flies to is dependent on where your character is looking. If you cast this spell while looking at the ground the crystal thing stands around your head, if you look skywards it flies even higher. Could be useful when casting this thing indoors. However if the crsytal thing hits something it dissipates while dealing damage. The damage it deals in that case is equal to the damage of a single bolt from the hail.

Submit

It should cost less fp

Submit

Here is some advice for this spell. Use it when before someone is runs towards you in a straight line at a good distance. If you rolls away backwards after all that they will get hit by a few. If they decided to roll around you in a circle instead if you have a danger the stun lock plus hail work really good together they break through poise with the flurry of daggers and hail

Submit

Since this is "crystal" hail, the same "crystal" that amplifies the damage at a big FP cost, what the heck would the non-crystal version be like? Soul Hail that hurts like irl hail for the price of 6 FP and takes up half an attunement slot? It better spew more spit so at least my opponent will waste more stamina and dignity rolling.

Submit

It really could use a serious boost and more crystal firing. 120-150 to a max of 240 damage each shard would be perfect for this boss soul sorcery. I don't think my suggestion is OP due to the poor tracking of the spell and how slow it works.

Submit

It can work as a flare to send help signals. I think it is quite useful for Aldrich Faithful to find each other.

Submit

It's like Soul Shower from DS2 except this would be DS2 Soul Shower post-nerf, and even worse than that.

It's like 5 little dinky Crystal bolts that fall from the sky, have very little ~ zero tracking, and deal extremely poor damage. This spell also has the same issue as Soul Shower and Splintering Lightning Spear from DS2, if the orb you cast out to begin the barrage hits a ceiling or an enemy, it will deal a tiny amount of damage and then disappear, completely wasting the cast.

The advantages that this spell has is that it's quite fast to cast, and costs very little FP per cast. Other than that, using this spell is generally not advised; it's poor for area denial, poor for CC, poor for damage even if every bolt hits an enemy, and unlike Floating Chaos, is poor for forcing your opponent to take mistimed rolls since everyone knows that this spell does zero damage and has almost no chance of hitting you anyway so they won't even bother rolling.

Submit

A real balanced fix would be, to keep the fall of the hail the same way it currently is BUT to go back like in DS2. When it use to appear above its target.

Submit

This spell is an absolute garbage and the only reason to transpose it is for collection. Deacons of the Deep boss fight is theoretically the absolute best situation for using this spell, because the fight happens right after the crystal sage that you get the spell from, it has lots of weak and slow undead in a cluster and the spell still fails miserably. It basically fires several unguided and weak farron darts from above, that somehow manage to mostly miss even when above a huge freaking cluster of deacons. There is no better PvE situation for it in the game and in PvP this spell is just a waste of time to cast, even rolling through it would be a waste of stamina, because you'll get 60 damage or something.

Submit

This spell is good if used a a utility. Cast Crystal Hail then use a Great Heavy Soul Arrow or Crystal Soul Spear. The hail causes your opponent to roll through the hail and makes it so you can catch there roll with the soul arrow or soul spear.

Submit

I was doin' a bit fight club and summon people and there was this one guy, a sorcerer and he used this spell.The thing is he spammed around 3 of them over a his opponent and only one-two of the crystals hit him... the other times he used it the opponent simply walked, rolled through it.

Submit

If you shoot it near a boss you'll see the projectiles very slightly curve to hit it. Does not do it on regular ennemies. :-\ (Not tested on giants)

Submit

Ok I'm new to DS (DS3 is my first) and I just saw how this spell was done in DS2 and it was sooooo good ! The main problem here is that they've taken away the auto target (except on really big ennemies like bosses it seems to auto target a tiny bit) making it completely useless.

Submit

The one Crystal Sage use stays up in the air for a bit and rain down to you are and does quite a amount of damage if you get hit by all of it And they made a probably good spell into this thing that also makes no sense because you get this from the soul of a crystal sage who uses a completely different spell!

Submit

Good for people who are about to die but keep rolling around

Submit

Do yourself a favor and skip this one.

Submit

This spell would be great if only it lasted just a couple seconds longer, and maybe if it was possible to cast more than one at a time.

Submit

The spell looks awesome and i also like the noise it makes. But dmg is low

Submit

Rain the pain of bug bites.

Submit

This is the most worthless spell of the game

Submit

This can be aimed lower for the hail to be started lower, allowing for more to hit smaller targets. Though at 99 intelligence, it's still not considerable. Crystal hail got buffed from 1 seemingly useless hail to 5, with the 5th being sprout out notably weird. It looks pointless to use in PVP, as anyone could just walk through this thing, right? This thing doesn't even stagger like the crystal sages one. It doesn't track you through walls endlessly and chunk out your health, like the crystal sages one. It just flies in the air, BING BING BING BING BING, Hey look I did about 73 damage to that one guy at the cost of like 19 FP. It just gives people the illusion that they are "DODGING AN ATTACK", when in reality, all this thing does is take out about 150 health if you do manage to somehow get hit by this seemingly random spell. It pierces! That is so great! Why not just blast everything with crystal soul spear instead of trying to hit that guy midrange from you with this?Does this thing stagger or not... I can't really tell, the firekeeper just stands through it, but the deacons play some animation like they are being staggered...

Submit

You just have to use it differently. Don't use it to set up other spells only; you have to cast it, hit with something, then the crystals hit for you to follow up. It has a long enough delay and trickle duration to accomplish this. One way I've had success is to cast the spell, use a large AOE spell like Soul GS or a pyromancy, then follow up once the crystals hit the stunlocked opponent with either another spell (I like to be cheesy and use CSS or GHSA) or some hits from a weapon. Honestly, it's more damage when you hit.

Submit

I use this A LOT in PvP ... Nope not for the Damage but because for the Stupid things some People do when trying to avoid it XDCliffs are your friends here !!!

Submit

There is absolutely no reason to choose this spell over the rapier. Don't make the same mistake I did, and save yourself some pain. This spell is so bad, I'd honestly think the developers were trolling me, even after the buff. The chances of even hitting anything is low, and even if you do it hardly does any damage. It is a useless spell, I assure you. I'd love to hear someone try to defend it.

Submit

I did a bit of testing on some weak enemies, and I found that if I used it close range on an enemy that remained stationary, they'd generally get hit by multiple projectiles which could add up to some so-so damage. But if they started moving around a bit, then they would likely only be hit by one or maybe two projectiles at most.Also, I couldn't get it to work very well from any sort of long range or during situations where I was at a higher elevation than the enemy. Manual aiming also seems to be completely ineffective.Then there's the problem if there's a ceiling or a wall nearby in that all the projectiles can just collide with it.I'm thinking maybe something like the stray demon might be an appropriate target for this spell, but I haven't tried it on him. I still don't think it would out perform more conventional spells though, and would likely need to be cast pretty close up.Definitely a candidate for one of the worst spells in the game.

Submit

This spell was useless before the update in over and pvp, but after its a pretty good bullet storm to get them rolling right into a Css. But if you want a finisher use fire surge it's much better.

Submit

Just transposed this for NG+ and oh my god, how is this spell so weak? Is there something I'm missing or is this spell just literally worthless?

Submit

Tried giving it a chance. Used it on the big ass crabs in the swamp hoping it might be effective against very large armored targets....NOPE

Submit

I'm happy to go with the flow with dark souls but picking this over the rapier is a tragedy. This spell is complete garbage.

Submit

Agreed with... well.. everyone... Wish I got the Rapier, I could have used the +50 item discovery far more than this waste of a spell slot.

Submit

I really wanted to like this spell. When the Crystal Sage casts it, it works and looks great - high damage, good tracking and all that nice stuff. Sadly, the player version is much like Benhart's Fake MGS - a poor imitation. This spell has 0 tracking, does paltry damage even with 50 INT and is completely uncontrollable - locking on to an enemy or even shooting a stationary foe will still usually result in a single (out of around 10) projectiles hitting them. Attempting to use this in a crowded room is even more laughable as it just further shows you how much better Soul Greatsword would be in that situation. Overall, this spell sucks for single and multi-target situations. Its damage is poor, its cost is high and it has no redeeming qualities outside of its unique look. Go with the Rapier and don't waste your time like I did.

Submit

And this is not a game where that kind of spell is useful.

Submit

This spell is god awful. Do not get it. The shards don't track and each one only does paltry damage. Why is this thing even in the game?!

Submit

When the crystal sage casts this spell he already casted 3 other op spells at the same time and they all do a *****ton of damage if any of them hit.When you cast it it either hits the ceiling, misses completely, or does about 50 damage and still leaves you wide open cuz u aint no crystal sage feels bad man

Submit

Not going to lie I kinda regretted buying this, I may only have 18 int but it doesn't seek targets and each hail only did around 22 damage, and only around 2 hit even so it felt kinda like a waste to me. I switched back to soul arrow shortly after

Submit