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Today we’ll be ranking a lot of the best incantations against each other in terms of usefulness. There are over 100 incantations in the game, so we will only be talking today about the ones that are absolutely top of the board, those that are simply a cut above the rest and those incantations will then be placed on a tier list and then compare it against each other. So you can know which ones are genuinely the cream of the crop of slinging faith magic. Every single incantation that we talk about in this guide is incredible in its own way, just being compared against the others. So even something in the bottom of this tier list will be worth using over pretty much any other incantation outside of niche situations where you want one very particular thing.
Elden Ring Best Powerful Incantation Ranking Tier List
Here, we will split and rank incantations from tier S to D, where tier S features the best incantations, and tier D the worst. With the help of our tier list, you will be able to make a more informed and educated choice the next time you play the game.
D Tier Incantations
Howl of Shabriri
This incantation does a small bit of damage and a large amount of madness build up in a small area around you including a little bit to yourself, but what a lot of people still don't know to this day is that it is also actually a damage buff while it is active and the reason that this is notable is it isn't like a boost of physical damage or magic damage or anything specific like that, just a 25% increase to everything across the board, every damage type that you can dream of though it also makes you take 30% more damage yourself while it's active. The low damage and increase in damage intake is why it's so low on this tier list, but the secret damage buff is what gets it on here in the first place.
Placidusax's Ruin
This is one of only two dragon incantations that even made it to this list dealing a good amount of damage and being decently difficult to dodge, as it fires off quite fast and has a lot of ticks of damage along the animation. In pve, you can more often than not hit the entire beam of damage into an enemy but the difficulty to dodge this one makes it even viable in pvp, though there are better incantations for both of those which is why this place is so low in relation to the others.
C Tier Incantations
Law of Regression
It resets everyone in your vicinity including yourself to their base state removing all timed buffs anything like golden vowel, flame brandy strength, aromatics of any kind even things like Seppuku or boiled crab. If you spawn into a duel and see someone buffing up, you can use this to just destroy their well-crafted plans. It also removes your own buff, so you have to be tactical about it either waiting to do your buffs until afterwards or just using it to completely reset the playing field and make everything neutral, go into the fight with just pure weapons armor and talismans. As a whole it's quite a fun way to change the way your opponent has to think about pvp and completely disrupt their plans and while it's useless niche, it is incredible when it removes something like 40 seconds of buffing.
Unendurable Frenzy
This frenzy incantation fires off a ridiculous number of angry beams of madness out of your face in a cone shape. And if an enemy was within its field of damage, they are very unlikely to be able to get out of it, most people don't even really know what to do when this thing starts going off and more than that it actually does quite respectable damage to everything especially enemies in pve. Even though the majority of pve enemies don't get the magnus buildup component, it still sort of melts through things surprisingly fast for a madness focused incantation.
Frenzied Burst
Every player has seen at some point as people love going into invasions with this just sitting a mile away trying to snipe you from absolute maximum targeting range. The damage this does is decent and the madness buildup it applies is significant, but there are even funnier ways to use it like killing melania who most people agree is one of if not just the hardest boss in the game, as two people sitting on opposite sides of the room just playing a weird game of ping pong with laser beams.
Fire’s Deadly Sin
Back in the day it was bugged to apply death blight when used with the eclipse shuttle, turning people into a demon that just emanated death buildup in what was the only real effective way to give people deathblight as now that status is all but dead, no pun intended, but these days it is just an interesting way to give you fire damage just for existing, turning into the human torch but less effective than the human torch just causing slight fire damage to things that are nearby you. It also is completely responsible for enabling weird builds like frost buildup application on repeat. As you can use the fire damage to clear the frost debuff and apply it again for a pseudo bleed effect taking off 10% of your opponent's health every time you activate the frostbite, then just removing it to start again.
B Tier
O Flame
It essentially just a charged version of catch flame, generally speaking, it is quite good especially in pve where you can actually charge it up the full amount to damage things properly which it does extremely well. Fire incantations can get quite insane in this game, but this is one of the better single target fire incantations around. With the only real limit to it being the time it takes to charge up fully compared to its particularly short range meaning you need the right opening to properly take advantage of it.
Ekzykes’s Decay
This thing does decently respectable damage, can be fired from the air making you a bit harder to hit while you're using it and most importantly, is one of the most reliable ways to apply scarlet rot to an opponent in the game. Especially considering you don't need to focus your entire build around it like having a scarlet rot weapon, it's just sort of there and you can use it to apply rot and then move on to the rest of your damage while your enemy slowly ticks down in health with no way to stop it.
Blood Flame Blade
The only way of applying blood flame as an effect to an actual weapon and it's quite decent. Generally speaking, the faster you can hit with your weapon, the better this puff will be as blood flame as a status applies a fair amount of blood buildup over two seconds and the more frequently that you hit, the more build up will be stored up until the bleed just happens a little bit after the hit connects. This is great in pve a bit harder to pull off in pvp, but realistically it just all depends on the weapon that you're using it with and there are definitely certain ways of using it that are surprisingly effective.
A Tier Incantations
Catch Flame
It does a load of damage each time you cast it but even more importantly than that you can cast it with ridiculous speed back to back letting you just spam this on anything that's close to you. It shreds things in pve especially things that are weak to fire damage and in pvp, if you can catch someone off guard with it, it can completely destroy their hopes of hitting you with a melee weapon. Either killing them outright or giving you the opportunity to switch to a longer ranged combat option as they flee.
Pest Threads
One of the most annoying incantations an enemy in the game will use and you can have it for yourself, allowing you to fire off a barrage of tracking projectiles and do a good load of damage when they connect. In pve this is pretty good especially against enemies that would otherwise dodge a slower incantation. But in pvp, this thing can be quite deadly especially when you launch it off and then close the gap to finish them while they panic about all the incoming projectiles.
Swarm of Flies
This incantation is a slow tracking ball that just homes in on your opponent dealing a decent bit of damage, but more importantly a very high amount of bleed build up and if you've been playing Elden Ring for longer than five minutes, you probably already know how strong bleed is. In a lot of ways, this is good for the same reason that pest threads is good, you can launch it off and then close the gap and attack with other things while your opponent is endlessly attempting to dodge this swarm of angry insects.
Honed Bolt
This incantation fires off a lightning bolt to your target's location extremely quickly and accurately and while it doesn't do a ridiculous amount of damage, it is very spammable. The most common use of this is in pvp where you can get someone low health by whatever means you have available to you and then when they are running away from you just panicking you just whip this out and start spamming it, it can be dodged if they know the timing but that means they have to dodge it perfectly over and over again, while also trying to kill you in the process.
Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Strike
In pvp, it is nearly useless as people will just dodge it every single time the wind up is long and the range is short. But in pve, this thing is nearly unmatched, it absolutely shreds bosses for thousands of damage when you build around it, becoming an absolute death machine to anything that isn't particularly resistant to lightning damage.
S Tier Incantations
Giantsflame Take Thee
This thing destroys bosses in pve like very few other incantations can do. But also it has a lot of use in pvp as while it has a decent charge up time to fully release the full power version, it has a great range and a big explosion radius to still catch people who aren't full sprinting the other direction.
Bestial Sling
This one fires out a cone of rockshards in front of you incredibly fast, making it quite hard to dodge but it also does a surprising amount of damage as well. As a result, you can use this similarly to use holden bolt to finish an already low enemy, but you can also just use this as a main damage source. The damage combined with the speed and the fact that it costs more stamina than anything else just makes it ridiculously spammable and that combination of things make this one of the best incantations in the entire game.
S+ Tier Incantations
Golden Vow
This is a buff that lasts for 80 seconds which is incredibly long for a buff and for that entire duration, you deal 15% more damage regardless of damage type just everything 15% more, and you also take 10 less incoming damage. It is insanely good and the only requirement is having 25 faith. If you run a faith build and you don't have this incantation on your bar, you're missing out, if you are running any build with the ability to get to 25 faith, you probably should solely for how good this specific incantation is. It is honestly worth more than hitting the soft caps of your main stat on a non-faith build, it's just that crazy strong.
Flame Grant me Strength
This one only applies to physical and fire damage, giving you a 20% buff to both of those damage types for 30 seconds after casting. But the thing that makes this truly ridiculous is that it stacks with golden vow, you can use them together and the vast majority of builds that people actually use in this game are either based on physical damage or fire damage.
