Ash of War: Lifesteal Fist | Elden Ring Wiki

Tested damage on Pages because they have 0 absorptions across the board. Using a standard affinity Katar+0. Stats barely matter but were 54str, 16dex, 7int, 16fth and 11arc:

Baseline without any talismans is 14+14+14+44, which is 86 total.

With the Dagger Talisman it's 16+16+16+52, total 100. With Shard of Alexander it's 16+16+16+52, total 100. With both it's 18+18+18+60, totaling 114.

Fire, Lightning and Holy Grease all add the same amount of damage: 37+37+37+90 (total 201) without any talismans. With Dagger Talisman it's 43+43+43+106 (235). With Shard of Alexander it's 42+42+42+104 (230). With both it's 49+49+49+122 (269)

Magic Grease adds more damage: 72+72+72+162 (378). Then 84+84+84+188 (440) with Dagger. 83+83+83+186 (435) with Shard. 97+97+97+216 (507)

Drawstring Fire, Lightning and Holy Grease: 58+58+58+134 (308), then 68+68+68+156 (360), followed by 67+67+67+154 (355) and then 79+79+79+180 (417)

Drawstring Magic Grease results in: 96+96+96+208 (496), then 111+111+111+242 (575), then 110+110+110+240 (550) and finally with both talismans 128+128+128+280 (664)

This all seems fine but I've had this skill deal way less damage than expected on several occasions. Something in the damage formula is definitely prone to ****ing up.

As for affinities, it seems that physical base damage (scaling bonus does not matter) is the most important thing. Standard actually performs the best by a good margin for my stats.

Scaling is weird for this skill: damage mostly scales off your arc, regardless of the affinity you actually put on your weapon. It also scales with dex and a tiny little bit off of strength (unless your weapon is heavy or keen for some reason. only arc is taken into account in this case and keen consistently deals a tiny bit more damage than heavy)

Submit

Sanguine noble crit.

Submit

Weird that it doesn't work on the knights of zamor.

Submit

If only I could put this on Misericord.

Submit

As long as this doesn't work on slightly inclined surfaces, its trash.

Submit

Someone put scholar's armament on this and took me from 1900 health to 0 in one grab attack 60 VIGOR BTW!?! insane with the right buffs.

Submit

Would be fun if you could use this on a stance broken enemy of any size.

Submit

Wryryryryryryryryryyyyy!!

Submit

Why i cant put keen on it? Only Standard and Occult?

Submit

Does it work on malenia?

Submit

for people who want to know this seems to heal about 30% of your total life regardless of damage dealt

Submit

To those who want this to do more damage in pvp, try lightning armament, scholars armament, or any other buff that adds some amount of flat damage. I'm not sure if its a bug or not, but these buffs make it do SIGNIFICANTLY more damage.

Submit

decent crucible knight cheese, although it takes a long time

Submit

Wait, since this counts as a critical hit, and only costs 14 FP, doesn't that mean the Cerulean Dagger talisman makes it free?

Submit

Deals pure Magic damage and scales with ARC, independent of all weapons but the Clinging Fist (which is only a little better). However, if you really want to deal damage with this... buff your weapon instead of using Occult.

For whatever reason, damage-based Weapon Buffs seem to deal more than their own base damage, which can easily double the damage the Skill deals, even at high ARC. Magic Grease in particular will be useful.

Submit

good for saving flasks while just wandering throughout the world

Submit

Ive just been Using it for a cool looking finisher against crucible knights and other bosses/enemies that can be grabbed

Submit

Works on a surprising amount of enemies, Demi-Human Chief being an example.
Super good in my opinion, if you land it you can heal quite a lot of HP for a cheap FP cost, it doesn't even use FP if it misses!
Underrated, can be your absolute best friend if you're doing a claw build.

Submit

Stack Dex, wear two claws, clone this ash. Now go to town like you are Wolverine.

Submit

Definitely holding out for better/more fist exclusive weapon arts in the dlcs

Submit

they can make a grab work just fine on humanoid enemies that arent tarnished with this attack, but for some reason inescapable frenzy can go **** off i guess

Submit

Does this work against crucible knights? Or malenia? Could make the knights a cakewalk with this if it works

Submit

The "MORBIN TIME!!" skill.

Submit

Is Lifesteal fist considered a critical? Would the dagger talisman have any effect on it?

Submit

Does this count as crit damage?

Submit

How do people make one shot on this?

Submit

Pretty sad that this piece of crap is the only ash unique to fists/claws in the game. You'd think after the Demon's Souls headbutts, Hands of God, DSI dragon bone fist's absurd uppercut, DSII dragon bone fist martial art moves and hadoukens, and DSIII's demon fist's spinning move, they'd have more ideas for what fists can do than this.

Submit

Does this afflict poison if infused with poison?

Submit

It’s morbing time

Submit

Absolutely no clue why this isn't usable on whips.

Submit

Put this on a 110 crit fist weapon and start morbing.

Submit

I did my best to make use of this ash of war, but i failed. Has pretty cool animation tho

Submit

Oh hey, they somehow made a worse functioning grab skill than the dark hand lifesteal from dark souls

Submit

This with Hookclaws for an early game Arcane build

Submit

Does this skill count as a critical hit and gain a benefit from Dagger Talisman and Assassin's Crimson Dagger?

Submit

I like the part where you morb all over your enemy

Submit

In case you don't want to fight the high poise humanoid enemies (ex. crucible knights) with parry, this ash is your choice.

Submit

I don't care how bad it is, I just enjoyed watching someone get doughnuted like in anime.

Submit

It's not bugged and poise has nothing to do with this skill. You must be very close, perfectly lined up and your enemy cannot be hit stunned, staggered, slept, basically any cc will dud your grab. The only thing you can interrupt is an attack animation.

Submit

This skill is not affected by an enemy's poise nor is it bugged. You were inaccurate or not close enough. Also if an enemy is recoiling from a blow they cannot be grabbed. So you can't dogpile enemies with your buddies and grab them while they're getting smacked around. The grab must be earned and landed clean with no outside interference. This even means you cannot combo a grab after pulling somebody towards with a gravity spell even though that is what Ensha tries to do with his lifesteal fist

Submit

the most satisfying move to hit in the entire game. Pop a scholars on any 110 crit fist weapon, get a dagger talisman and watch as anyone foolish enough to let you lunge before trading melts in your grasp

Submit

Just so people know, this is a command grab like Inescapable Frenzy. A good way to make new friends, but is pretty bad against people with 3 brain cells. 2 brain cells is a bit iffy, but doable.

Submit

The worst ash in the game.

Submit

Strangely enough the attack gets boosted by the dagger talisman

Submit

The scaling on this is bugged and doesn't seem to account for STR in any infusion.
I've tested this with my STR build, which has 60 STR 12 DEX, using a Spiked Castus +25. All tests are against a resting Leyndell Knight with no Dagger Talisman or Shard of Alexander.

STANDARD: 564 total DMG (364 AR)
HEAVY: 504 total DMG (432 AR)
KEEN: 561 total DMG (291 AR)
QUALITY 519 total DMG (365 AR)

There's obvioiusly something wrong with the STR scaling on this WA, since the KEEN infusion outperformed the Heavy version despite me having 60 STR and 12 DEX.
Hope they patch this soon, I really love this WA; even though it's very situational, the style points make it too cool not to use.

Submit

absolutely sucks in pvp lmao. Super slow, nearly impossible to land unless you have high poise, hits and heals for very underwhelming amounts. Landing this is so ridiculously hard that it would need to suck the soul outta someone to make it worth using, but honestly it should be easier to use too. Any attack this hard to land will never be good tbh. Literally the Dark Hand attack except they forgot to let you steal people's humanities lol

Submit

Using this I can make my venomous claws occult affinity allowing arcane scaling. Using the dragon spell thing I can make incantations arcane scale. Just enough fate invested to cast rotten breath and black flame. I can now stack deadly poison, scarlet rot, and black flame burn damage all scaled by arcane and still have great HP and melee damage. Later on add the mushroom crown +kindred of rot talisman+winged ingina and watch anything melt in seconds. Calling it the Plague Prophet build.

Submit

To those of you confused on why it sometimes "bugs out" during pvp - it's not a bug, it's an oversight. This ability doesn't proc if the hit doesn't break their poise.

Submit

You can duck under some horizontal attacks while charging this.

Submit

this works on more than you'd think and it's a decent amount of health so it's a good way to heal so far. it works on stone imps for some reason lmao.

Submit

Still bugged.
WIthout Talisman: 429
With Alexanders Shard: 496dmg
With Dagger Talisman: 664
With Dagger AND Alexander: 576???

Tested with +25 Star Fist, heavy

Submit

It eont let me equip this at all??? To my fist or cipher Plata??

Submit

Was this not fixed with the 1.3 update?

Submit

Like other people have noticed in testing, damage of this ash is increased by base damage only, not scaling damage. This means standard scaling, "raw", is always better than choosing anything to increase scaling when it comes to using this ash regularly. It is uncertain whether this is a bug but for now stick it on a weapon that has good default scaling and focus on your vigor. Pairs well with Sacrificial Axe and the Ancestral Horn, Carian Filigreed Crest if you like, when you are in humanoid populated areas. Great sustain, 14 FP cost and 7 back on a kill.

Submit

Welp, there goes my ARC build plan. You think there's any way we can get FromSoft to change this so it's equipable on whips? I really want to run a pair of whips on a bleed build with this on the left handed one for a pseudo riposte on a vampire themed build...

Submit

There is two problems that i found with this art of war :
1. If you only equip Alexander Shard, the damage seems to go down, but if you equip it with Alexander Shard AND Dagger Talisman, the damage is correctly showed.
2. For some reason, this does not scale up with your weapon affinity, but scales down with it ? You'll deal more damage going without any affinity than you'll deal by going with 99 ARC and the Occult Affinity (wich is the base affinity of this art of war btw)

Submit

doesn't work on npc invaders

Submit

This skill doesn't work with the cerulean dagger talisman, although i'd need to do some more testing to see if it's not a critical attack, or it just isn't affected by that. Either way, good item to pair with this, because then you only need to backstab someone once to get back another use of it.

Submit

No hyperarmor, no point. Takes way too long to charge up and has piss range. In any situation you would have landed this practically every other weapon would have already killed the foe. Looks funny and causes a knockdown, even through shields - but the fact that it has no hyperarmor with that animation can't be compensated for.

Submit

This heals for 570hp. A miss does not use FP. Given one Flask of Cerulean Tears get 220FP, you can use this 15 times (with 40 mind), getting you 8550hp for one flask.
Excellent PvE as coop to use on humanoids that is not aggressive.

Submit

Fairly certain the damage also scales with the dagger talisman but I could be wrong

Submit

I thought this was just going to be Dark Hand and rolled my eyes at it for a while, but it's actually pretty decent once your AR starts going up. The most important thing... it works on humanoids. Originally, I took this as just humans, but it's anything humanoid including commoners, knights, zombies, claymen, demi-humans, the druid guys, etcetcetc. It does have a long wind-up, but you assume a low stance and horizontal swings will go over your head. The damage is okay as it hits 4 times with the final hit being 50% of the damage. The heal is really decent considering the FP cost. And, since it's a grab, it is unblockable and a good way to take down any knights that like to hide behind a shield. It is also an early source of Occult for ARC builds and pairs great with claws that have innate bleed or poison (i.e. every claw). All-in-all, not something I would have been drawn to initially since it isn't really flashy, but it's definitely got it's uses and has slowly grown on me.

Submit

I'd like to try this with Spiked Caestus

Submit

Start with a backstab and then if you time it right, you can chain this skill several times afterwards. Very useful for certain enemies.

Submit

Tried it in one of the catacombs it does not stop skeletons from respawning.

Submit

"Undead enemies are no longer able to revive" is a lie. Killed many skeletons with Spiked Caestus with this Ash, and they still reanimate unless you hit the corpse after it's down.

Submit

Dark hand sick

Submit

Dark hand sick

Submit

The range on this isn't all that great but the lifesteal is pretty high. Does not work on enemies with shield that are blocking

Submit