Elden Ring Poise

Caroline Mae

2 min read

·

06-01-2025

4

0

Share

Elden Ring, FromSoftware's sprawling masterpiece, throws countless challenges at players. One often misunderstood, yet crucial, mechanic is poise. Understanding and utilizing poise effectively can drastically change your combat experience, transforming you from a vulnerable target into a devastating force. This guide will break down everything you need to know about poise in Elden Ring.

What is Poise?

In simple terms, poise represents your character's resistance to staggering. When you're hit by an attack, your poise meter depletes. If it reaches zero before the attack concludes, you'll be staggered, leaving you open to further attacks. The higher your poise, the more hits you can withstand before being interrupted.

Factors Affecting Poise

Several factors contribute to your character's poise:

• Armor: Heavier armor generally provides higher poise. However, it's important to find a balance; excessively heavy armor can severely hamper your mobility.
• Weapons: Certain weapons inherently offer higher poise damage, allowing you to stagger opponents more easily. Greatswords and colossal weapons, for example, are known for their high poise damage.
• Talismans: Specific talismans can boost your poise, providing additional resilience against staggering.
• Stats: While not directly affecting poise, Vigor indirectly contributes by allowing you to withstand more damage before your health bar depletes. This gives you more time to recover from a stagger.
• Skills: Some weapon skills can have poise-related effects.

Utilizing Poise Effectively

Mastering poise is key to effective combat. Here are some key strategies:

• Understanding Enemy Attacks: Learn to recognize attacks that have high poise damage and those that don't. This will inform your decision-making during combat.
• Strategic Blocking/Parrying: Using your shield effectively to block attacks conserves your poise. Parrying, when timed correctly, can completely negate an enemy attack and leave them vulnerable.
• Weapon Arts & Spells: Weapon arts and spells can offer opportunities to break an enemy's poise.
• Trade Damage: High poise allows you to trade blows with enemies more effectively. This means you can land powerful attacks even while taking hits.

Poise vs. Roll

Many players believe that rolling is the only way to avoid attacks. However, high poise allows you to face many attacks head-on without being interrupted, even trading blows successfully. This can be more effective than constantly rolling away, especially against enemies with long attack animations.

Conclusion

Poise is a critical element in Elden Ring that can significantly affect your gameplay experience. By understanding how it works and strategically using it, you can take your gameplay to a whole new level. Don't underestimate its importance—mastering poise is a significant step toward conquering the Lands Between.