Briars of Sin | Elden Ring Wiki

You can cast this to poise through any incoming attack except a collosal attack, or a jumping heavy from any weapon, and usually get the second cast to connect too if timed right. Only use the third cast to finish off and kill. If it won’t kill them, don’t use it, the recovery difference after the third cast is long compared to after the first or second cast. At 24 fth and 80 arc with albinauric staff and guilty staff in offhand, and alberich bracers (5% bonus) a complete three cast when all hit does like 1800+ damage including the bleed proc.

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Me trying to convince myself into rolling into it instead of panic rolling away:

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It would be acceptable for this sorcery to cost you far more health than now, if that is paired with a buff to raw and poise damage.

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You haven't lived until you have killed three players at once with this thing.

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green....

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Looking for a high faith scaling weapon that isnt yellow/golden to pair it with this spell and staff of the guilty. Any ideas?

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Every weapon can break passive poise, but this spell cannot? Give me a break, From. Balance the damn game

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Looks like the latest patch, only the first cast staggers... Enemies are free to roll out? I hope this is a bug...

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This was bugged for me today I got 'flame cleanse me' so I don't care but I went to Liurnia after beating Margit but before Godfrey for no.3 upgrade stones. I came across the camp killed the fire-*****es and kited the monk around to get the incantation. I saw the item notification for BoS but it wasn't and still isn't in my inventory. I didn't die to the monk but once you see an item notification it wouldn't usually matter anyway.

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I wanna know why this deals magic damage. I think it would probably have more of a niche if it dealt physical damage, plus the visuals don't really align with other sources of magic damage.

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Would be nice if the recovery wasn't like holding up a sign saying "Please fully charged heavy on me please." I understand you don't want to stunlock people into it endlessly, but the windup is enough for that. If they stay in that's their fault. Reduce that recovery and I'd be a happy lad.

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Could somebody tell me how much poise/hyperarmor is needed to withstand this? Sometimes I hit someone with 2 parts of this and he isnt staggered at all, which is a terrible thing for me cause im stuck in animation no matter what while he's slashing me

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Looks like it does 80hp damage per cast.

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You get big poise while using this as long as you are actually producing thorns

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Penitent One !

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How can you design the spell so bad that the enemy recovers from getting hit 3 seconds earlier than you recover from hitting him?!

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Wish they buffed the casting speed of it

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manliest sorcery, same with the miners spells

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This shiz was called punishment magic for a reason fam. It ain’t suppose 2 werk so good. U gotta be into the kink of it all - namsayin?

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Was the range and size on the thorns nerfed/reduced? I feel like they were bigger before…

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it didn't drop for me?

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wow, 2 whole spells, which require faith to use but require an int weapon to cast. They do terrible damage, are more dangerous to the caster than the target, have the slowest cast times in recorded history combined with zero hyper armour so if a shuffling corpse farts within a mile radius the spell fails. No expense spent on these evidently

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BRING BACK SPELL CHAIN CASTING!

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Briars of Punishment (BoP) is a really good incantation (Highly recommend). But Briars of Sin (BoS) is lacking in damage, speed and utility in PvE and PvP compared to BoP. It has less AoE than many Ash of Wars and can't be cast while walking making you open for any attack whilst removing your own health to do damage to a target.

One of those ash of wars is Black Flame Tornado (BFT) which does everything better than this spell except for the slight poise and fp cost it BoS has. This is ironic because all Prophets can use Black Flame Tornado instead of this spell and can be put on the starter spear. Briars of Sin is also too slow for the majority of bosses which in NG+7 means they either A) Remove 75 % of your health while you tank their hit or B) Instantly kill you, because you tanked their hit.

As of right now I don't think this will be able to compete against BFT unless they give BoS some tanking potential + damage buff. It will never be able to deal more damage than BFT as it is designed right now since it scales with the amount of health bosses have.

Also, if you're fighting anyone with two greatswords or bigger weapons and they do a jump attack you're most likely going to be dead after using BoS once since it's so slow and removes your health which allows players to go from a two shot attack, to a one shot. Marvelous.

Though, to give credit where credit's due, it has an astonishing animation and sound. Also killing anything with it is satisifying as hell. I think from an aesthestic view this is my favourite magic type! keep the aberrant magic, it's a great starting idea with more fine tuning can be great! : )

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Can you chain cast it into
Briars of Punishment ?

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When min maxed, this thing can spank ganks incredibly well

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Why does this spell have a lingering animation, leaving behind a trail of briars, but they deal no damage to people who touch them? The briars should deal (at least minor) damage when people walk near them. As it's designed now, this spell is just a fast-moving projectile with a fancy animation. Which is a shame because the animation RULES.

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At the very least it feels like the AoE of each cast could be just a tad larger, considering that you will also take self damage, bleed build-up and be stuck in a very lengthy recovery if you go for the 3rd cast. Also is it just me, or does it seem strange that the first cast of this actually does less than Brairs of Punishment? Like where's the incentive the ever use this over Punishment when that has range, tracking and speed over Brairs of Sin? I get that it's the area Thorn sorcery but come on.

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Does the Dragon Seal have any boosting effect on Blood magic since they both scale off of arcane?

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Anon 20 Jan 2023 04: 08… me too, I like the designs : ) but FROM hates intelligence so much that they gave them sorceries with Faith requirements, ugh, stop making death and blood related to Faith, that’s horrible wrong [period] pssss just wait for, FROM is going to nerf and decrease aberrant sorceries pitiful AOE and dps, so they can make it ever more useless

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Love the designs, but FROM could’ve increased it’s extremely small AOE for a a faster and much, much bigger costing a lot more….hp/fp

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I made a lv 300 astrologer and did absurd damage but little bleed with both briars spells. I made a 150 build that uses nothing but the two briars spells, Albinuaric Staff and staff of the guilty. Alberich's set, faith 24, arcane 75, both briars spells are amazing. They can be made tricky to dodge if you don't always chain cast punishment, mix it up. Sin particularly bleeds the everliving hell out of folks, and if you cast at the right time, the first cast of sin has hyper armor only a jump heavy attack or collosal attack will cancel you out of. You will take damage from the attack granted, and from briars, but the health cost is reduced with Albinuaric Staff at higher arcane. Love my briars build.

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This spell is utterly broken but only because of how horrific the hitreg in MP is

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i wish people couldn't so easily roll through the lingering hitbox of all three casts with their Argentinian latency.

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So does the damage scale with sorcery scaling or just faith?

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kinda curious, using Albinauric Staff at 60 ARC, does the full 3-hit combo proc 95*3 bleed or gonna be lower than that? Thinking about using this as riposte tool for Flame of Redmane.

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Can confirm it still sucks. By the time your casting it your opponent has left to make a sandwich, got married, had three kids and got their GED. Then they proceed to stroll leisurely to kill you.

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Is it better after 1.07? Marginally a whole lot better than it used to be.

Is it viable after 1.07? Not really, the cast time is still slow compared to faith aoe spells WOG.

Is it cool looking? Hell yeah!

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Gigachad spell

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I figure they have an entire team that figures out balance changes for each subsequent patch. They seriously can't look at this thing (and briars of punishment) and just be like "okay, make it do some more damage" - at the very least? It would be nice if they could genuinely put some love into both blood sorcery spells: increase damage, let briars of sin and punishment chain into each other again, increase blood loss build-up to some extent, give briars of sin absolutely unbreakable poise and/or only take damage for the first cast and not the second two. There you go - now you have actual content added to the game instead of a dead stub in your spell inventory that you're never going to bother attuning.

Another cool feature, even if they changed nothing else, would be to add a healing effect from blood loss inflicted by either of these spells. Give us something, Michael Zaki!

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Chain casting Patch ruined my Briar guy, felt like briars of sin and punishment were suppose to work together that's the only thing the briar spells had going for them but then From goes and removes chain casing all together; I can understand patching chain cast honed bolt and dragon magic but did you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this one From?

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everybody's talking about how it sucks but like...nobody's mentioned that it's a spell that requires 24 ****ing faith.

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This isn’t the best sorcery, though I will say that if you sneak up on an enemy/group it can be a great way of dealing with them

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Current description is out of date, updated version is as follows:
An aberrant sorcery discovered by exiled criminals. Theirs are the sorceries most reviled by the academy.

Wounds the caster with thorns of sin, creating a spiral of bloodthorns. This sorcery can be cast repeatedly, up to three times.

The guilty, their eyes gouged by thorns, lived in eternal darkness. There, they discovered the blood star.

Would update it myself but I don't understand the formatting of the description box

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Considering how you need enemies to get up in your face to hit them with it while it has a slow casting speed, you'd need some considerable poise to cast it and you'd need to outdamage them by quite a bit to make it worth it. With 55 ARC on an albinauric staff I'm rarely able to outtrade someone (assuming they don't stagger me out of it.) Methinks it either needs some hyperarmor at the least, maybe lifesteal if you wanna be fancy with it.

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Moderate cast speed? More like 'painfully slow for a melee spell'

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Costs 80 hp to cast regardless of how much health you have. Is not affected by resistances or reductions, but I don't know about staff stat scaling. Azur's and Lusat's staves don't boost the cost, either.

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why this arcane sorcery scale with faith ?

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Seeing abberant spells makes me regret a little choosing prisoner class. I wanted to make bloodborne type of moonlight hunter sorcerer and blood sorcery would fit so well but damn, i would need to add 18 points into faith! Theres no way i can sacrifice so many points on 120 lvl

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Pretty decent utility and thematic cohesion for a death sorcery build. Not optimal, but definitely worth slotting.

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Tested with a build of 80 faith with full alberich and duel staff of guilty: this thing is actually stupid good in pvp, the chain casts and minor poise combined with peoples habits of rushing sorcerers leads to SO many insta kills. Landing the first hit of a chained cast almost always gets the second hit, dealing somewhere in the range of 1.7k combined... Just wish there was more thorn sorcery.

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Good news for faith bros who don't level up int: there's a staff in the game that doesn't require any intelligence (Staff of the Guilty)
Bad news: it seems pretty hard to get

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Let me just pop in to say that as Faith build I find this quite useful - The Staff of Guilty scales with Faith and Str, and gives me 266 scaling at 60fth and 16str. And while this and it's counterpart sorceries do not do much bleed up, their damage is still VERY respectable. Plus, nobody expects a lightning throwing Faith build to suddenly pull out a staff and cast bloody thorns all over the place. It's a good option for spell that can chase people down, has good tracking overall. The only downside is 4.5 weight units that you need to carry the staff around.

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I’m still confused why it scales with faith

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You can combo into this spell to catch people rushing you in pvp, but honestly there are better options as this does damage to you and doesn’t blood loss the enemy.

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Briars of Sin and Briars of Punishment were really meant to be used together, but there seems to be a bit of a bug I think?

It's nothing big, but Briars of Punishment plays a glitched(?) animation of glintstone pebble when doing it right after casting the 2nd follow-up of Briars of Sin, essentially cancelling the startup by a lot.
So the "Punishment > Sin > Punishment" string have been a powerful mixup for me so far.

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Instead of taking direct health, this could have worked a bit more like the fetid pot and gives the caster large bleed buildup

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Yes, you can pair this with Briars of Punishment, but what nobody is mentioning is that it also combos with a ton of other spells. Glintstone pebble or swiftshard or slicer for example will speed up the casting time significantly if you do them and then immediately do briars of sin. Don't use Punishment unless you want to play a part-time-sorceror pure faith build with Staff Of The Guilty, and don't use either of these spells at all if you're playing a normal int mage and not an int/fai prince of death staff hybrid.

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Seems to be bugged with quick casting incantation spells, such a bestial sling or catch flame. When I do a catch flame then combo it into briars it just does the first hit with briars, rather than the second. On the other hand, when I do it with a spell like carian slicer it seems to work just fine.

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The lingering hitbox on this spell is really good.

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This doesn-t just combo with Briars of Punishment. It combos with all the combo projectile sorceries too, like Comet and Glintstone Icecrag! You can fire things at enemies, then switch to this sorcery and send out the third AoE attack super fast which does pretty decent damage. Love this spell. Haven't used Punishment yet but I'm looking forward to getting a hold of it.

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Doesn't this spell and Briars of Punishment cause bleed?

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If you think this spell is bad, you're wrong. Lemme explain. This and its counter part (Briars of punishment) are supposed to be used in tandem with each other to cover long, mid, and close range. This and Briars of punishment combo into each other. If you use this after using briars of punishment it comes out damn-near instantly which is amazing for defending yourself from someone who's trying to punish your casts of briars of punishment. The best staff to use for this spell and briars of punishment is the **albinauric staff** which boosts the blood loss build up to the point where enemies with the high resistances will bleed with two casts and anything else will bleed with only one (if you have 60-80 arcane).

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This spell is great for hitting through walls. Perfect for that one invader waiting for you to turn the corner or that one host also waiting for you to turn the corner.

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Interesting discussion regarding comboing these spells for increased damage and AoE. Does that really make big enough of a difference that this is probably one of the worst options for bleed and damage in the game? It may be "fast to cast" for a spell but I'm not a big fan of things that are countered by simply walking backwards or doing nothing. And if you're trying to zone in melee range, aren't there better options with lower investments that are more effective?

Really noticing lately that it seems like FROM completely skimmed over balancing and QAing pretty much all the hybrid equipment in the game. We have spells that have requirements in stats that they don't scale with, weapons and catalysts that lack the necessary scaling to have an any effect on the spells and skills they seem designed for, leading to a whole lot of spending time trying out builds that just arbitrarily suck because they were never given any attention.

I'd rather throw a pot or a kukri or grab a random bow specced for bleed. Those are actually reliable at no real cost and I don't have to hope the enemy is asleep to use it.

Here's an idea. Make the spell place a small bramble of thorns and detonate on proximity or damage. Maybe if the enemy has triggered one recently it gives a stacking debuff, and THAT'S what multiplies the damage and AoE. Boom. Unique spell with an unused mechanic. Boom. Can be countered through actual gameplay or build / spells. Boom. Has a niche use case that only it can fill and therefore is more valuable even though it does less damage and is more expensive than picking up any low requirement bleed weapon.

Unfortunately for now it's not a great option for because the requirements, necessary investment, and nonsensical scaling mean it's simultaneously possibly one of the worst weapons / skills / spells for bleed, arcane, faith, zoning.

Imagine looking at this in the context of your bleed build? Throw some faith into your build, upgrade a catalyst for something that does dramatically less then an autopiloted standard uchigatana. Imagine looking it in the context of a faith build? You have to get and upgrade a second catalyst, swap out to the catalyst and sorcery every time you want to use a low damage get-off-me tool that's completely outclassed by pretty much anything that tries to bleed, damage, poise, or get-off-me.


I cannot see this ever being the best choice for anything.

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a sorcery, that scales with faith, and is empowered by a staff that scales with arcane. sure!

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Swarm of flies just stomps this and its counterpart.

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Swarm of flies just stomps this and its counterpart.

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This spell has some decent hyper armor. My poise is complete garbage and I didn’t get interrupted by man sized enemies casting this spell

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It really feels like the Briars spells should've been Arcane-based, given that's the default scaling for other Bleed effects and also there are only... two Sorceries that ever require Arcane. Ah well, at least I can pair them with the Death spells for some old-school Dark spell nonsense.

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Update with the Arcane fix. The Albinauric staff INCREASES BLOOD LOSS BUILD UP when you use it to cast the spell. I suspect this is because it scales off arcane. Hold the Staff of Guilty in one hand and cast it with the Albinauric staff in the other hand. With Albrecht’s hat and gloves, the staff of guilty, and Albinauric staff, I was decimating everything in my path with zero problem and no sorcery damage talismans. Don’t forget the combo the spells. Since Albinauric scales sorcery off arcane AND Int, you can use this combination with just about any spells and they are still effective, while the thorn spells are excellent.

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24 faith requirement but its a sorcery?

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Follow up on the topic of Comboing Blood magic;

Generally each chained repeated cast of spells has its own animation, usually spells have 2 animations, the initial cast, the follow up cast, rinse and repeat.

Briars of Sin has three chains, each of which increases its' damage and range, this is to my knowledge also the only "cast repeatedly" spell that has can not be further repeated after its' third cast.
-Chaining this after the first or second cast of any "cast repeatedly spell makes you cast either it's second or third form at a greatly reduced cast speed. Also this spell has great hyper armor, which is active after the initial casting animation, chaining into this spell cuts down on the initial casting animation giving this spell way "better" (faster) hyper armor.

Briars of Punishment has only a single animation although it also can be "cast repeatedly". Chaining this spell after the second animation of any other "cast repeatedly" spell causes it to perform an alternative, almost instant casting animation.
-Combining this with the Briars of Sin chain function enables these two spells to be chained together infinitely, with all aforementioned benefits that come with their respective chain-mechanics.

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Follow up on the topic of Comboing Blood magic; Generally each chained repeated cast of spells has its own animation, usually spells have 2 animations, the initial cast, the follow up cast, rinse and repeat.

Briars of Sin has three chains, each of which increases its' damage and range, this is to my knowledge also the only "cast repeatedly" spell that has can not be further repeated after its' third cast.
-Chaining this after the first or second cast of any "cast repeatedly spell makes you cast either it's second or third form at a greatly reduced cast speed. Also this spell has great hyper armor, which is active after the initial casting animation, chaining into this spell cuts down on the initial casting animation giving this spell way "better" (faster) hyper armor.

Briars of Punishment has only a single animation although it also can be "cast repeatedly". Chaining this spell after the second animation of any other "cast repeatedly" spell causes it to perform an alternative, almost instant casting animation.
-Combining this with the Briars of Sin chain function enables these two spells to be chained together infinitely, with all aforementioned benefits that come with their respective chain-mechanics.

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Follow up on the topic of Comboing Blood magic; Generally each chained repeated cast of spells has its own animation, usually spells have 2 animations, the initial cast, the follow up cast, rinse and repeat.

Briars of Sin has three chains, each of which increases its' damage and range, this is to my knowledge also the only "cast repeatedly" spell that has can not be further repeated after its' third cast.
-Chaining this after the first or second cast of any "cast repeatedly spell makes you cast either it's second or third form at a greatly reduced cast speed. Also this spell has great hyper armor, which is active after the initial casting animation, chaining into this spell cuts down on the initial casting animation giving this spell way "better" (faster) hyper armor.

Briars of Punishment has only a single animation although it also can be "cast repeatedly". Chaining this spell after the second animation of any other "cast repeatedly" spell causes it to perform an alternative, almost instant casting animation.
-Combining this with the Briars of Sin chain function enables these two spells to be chained together infinitely, with all aforementioned benefits that come with their respective chain-mechanics.

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Alternate the two blood spells and cast it using a high sorcery scaling staff like Lusat’s with the Staff of Guilty in the other hand. Just enough faith to equip it and the rest INT with a +10 Lusat I was hitting for about 800-1200 with a little bit of bleed build up. Does good damage really fast. Personally I’d rather use other cheaper spells so I’m not using HP and they hit about as hard just not quite as fast. Seems like it could be good for a bleed heavy int build by getting some initial damage and bleed up front before meleeing with katanas or claws.

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I want to be a blood sorcerer so I started as Prophet and now I'm searching for sorceries like this. Does anyone knows if the bleed builds up with the arcane stat?

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A continuation on the spell combos: I'm fairly confident it's part bug and part feature. I've done some extensive testing on this and any spell within the same class (sorcery, incantation) that has 'can be cast repeatedly' or has some form of additional continuation can be combo'd into and out of from others of the same type. For example, Honed Bolt and Lightning Strike can combo into each other which makes sense.

Another great use of briars is that you can actually combo into and out of them with Carian Slicer. So you can run up to someone with slicer, force a roll and then immediately cast Briar of Sin to catch the roll. Or you can use Briars of Sin, then cancel out of the recovery animation with slicer. This also works with things like Gavel of Haima or Carian Greatsword.

Unfortunately as I mentioned earlier this does not work between classes. I've tried having a seal in my offhand and a staff in my main hand and you can't do things like combo from Honed Bolt into Briars of Sin.

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Turns out there's actually a special mechanic for briar spells that makes them a lot better and is not AT ALL listed or described as part of the spell and it's not something most people would try.

You can actually chain cast between both Briars of Punishment and Briars of Sin. If you go from Briars of Punishment to Briars of Sin you instantly cast the AoE around you (with the hyperarmor I believe) and if you go from Sin to Punishment near the end of a Sin combo you'll quick cast it. On their own the briar spells aren't too exciting, but being able to combo between the two makes for a really interesting PvP option.

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Pros:
- You get hyper armor after about .5 seconds into the cast based on poise
- The briars hitbox lingers around you in between follow-up casts, so an enemy swinging or walking at you will be damaged and in many cases knocked back from you by the spell
- Applies bleed buildup to enemies
- Low fp cost

Cons:
- First cast leaves you vulnerable
- Recovery time post-cast is not the best
- Costs a % of your total hp to use

I personally enjoy using the spell after getting used to it. I'm still unsure of whether arcane does anything for the bleed-buildup, but the default amount seems reliable and the damage it does on its own makes it worth it.

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Edit to previous comment I made about Guilty Staff - Correct name is Staff of the Guilty.

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You do not need to kill the slugs - appears during any time of day. The mob in question also drops the Guilty Staff along with this spell.

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Can confirm:

Drops from a lone cultist outside the cultist camp on the west side. There’s also 4 fire slugs near her.

Closest would be the Eastern Tableland site of Grace. Head SW and you’ll reach the camp (just avoid any cultists). Go around it to the western side and find the lone cultist.

Not sure if time makes a difference. Did this at night.

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So this is bad right? Seems way too slow to really use.

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The mob that drops the spell only spawns at nightfall. It'll appear after you've killed the fire slugs, and it'll appear after reviving them once you walk away a certain distance.

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This spell is such a massive middle finger to blood arcane faith build. Especially since unlike all the other blood spells it's actually available fairy early.

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I can confirm from my testing, it does indeed cause bleed buildup on enemies. On Albus (I think that was the guy who attacks you in the Hold when you jump from the balcony) it took three full castings to cause bleed. Now, note that I already had Staff of the Guilty, which boosts thorn/briar sorceries (I ignored him on my second character for a while). Arcane 9, intelligence 20, Faith 46. Does it always apply bleed when all 3 casts hit? No idea.

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Seeing this and the Aeonia Flower spell requiring Faith seems to be a reference to how the Erdtree (and maybe plants in general) are sacred in this setting.

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Kill the mobs infront of fort laid to get a staff scaling with faith but being able to cast sorceries (staff of the guilty) however the dmg is a bit underwhelming

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so does this do bleed buildup on enemies too or just yourself?

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does arcane boost this spells damage or bleed

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just a note, this is used by mad tongue alberich, who invades you at the roundtable hold if you jump of the balcony.

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I can't even begin to describe how disappointed I am that this requires 24 Faith despite being a sorcery.

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can confirm; the lady, with a couple of slugs near her, just outside of the flame camp south of church of vows drops this spell

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Can confirm there are more spells of this type. Past Zamor ruins, near the big, thin bridge of stone blocks, there's a gathering of the cultists, and a corpse on a ledge has Briars of Punishment, currently not on this site.

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I found this north of the Artists shack in Liurnia from one of the flame guys west of the encampment

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Location: Liurnia of the Lakes, Flame Cult Camp south of Church of Vows. Just to the side of the camp is a lone female cultist who casts the spell. Kill her, and it's yours.

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has anybody found this yet?

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Anyone else have this showing in game as requiring 24 FAI and not 11 INT as this wiki is stating? I'm assuming you need the base intelligence to use the proper staff but the spell itself is showing 0 INT requirement. Assuming it is for Hybrid builds

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Give me vow of silence from dks2 and gimme a weapon like blue flame to cast hexes and reg magic to make a nice Dark Knight, or give me a black witch staff to cast mircales and magic and some fur armor to make my shaman.

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