Lifesteal Fist | Elden Ring Wiki

PSA: Landing Lifesteal Fist on someone using Piercing Fang's windup animation will not work even when point blank.

Can someone confirm if Piercing Fang gives hyper armor and then if all forms of hyper armor prevent Lifesteal Fist from working?

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Saw an invader do over 2000 damage with this in one go. He had a magic buff on his claws and had just drank a physick, one part of which I imagine was the poise tear.

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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)

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I wish the page would give more detail on how LSF calculates damage. Is it equal to purely 30% of your HP? Is it subject to damage reduction? Does the damage scale? Do AoW talismans affect it?

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Anyone else find it weird that Lifesteal Fist can affect all these humanoid enemies, but Inescapable Frenzy only affects NPCs? Like I know that would probably need a lot more animation work, but it feels weird that they don't use the same logic.

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The imps from the catacombs can in fact be fisted I just tested it

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Somebody just one shot me with this AOW with a blue katar. Straight up 2k damage dealt and I was imobilized. Op AOW it seems

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I think a great way to redeem this AoW in PvE would be to make it work as a substitute for crits on any stance-broken enemy, regardless of size. Since what it does is already considered a crit, it would reward aggressive playstyles (that are pretty much already a given when using Fists/Claws) with a powered-up crit that heals half of your total HP with the Assassin's Crimson Dagger. That's even more than Prayerful Strike. Pls FromSoft.

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This is the kind of arcane I want more of. Red magic lifesteal and floaty sword stuff.

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Also known as Crucible Knights' Shackle

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This AOW is affected by AR. but does NOT scale with weapon stat scaling.
It means faith build and faith-based enchants are very effective on this AOW. Because this base dmg of this AOW is very very terrible, and the enchants are still affected by faith scaling of seals.

Additionally, it does not deal any status buildup of weapon or enchant. however it does enchant bonus effects.(blood loss of bloodflame, dot of blackflame)

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Lifesteal fist: "Only effective against foes of human build"

Also lifesteal fist: *proceeds to work on silver tear blobs*

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For some reason I decided to do a bunch of testing to try and "maximize" the damage of Lifesteal Fist and see what worked and what didn't. Tested on this build because I feel like it's generally the type of build you'd run Lifesteal Fist on anyway:

RL 166
56 dex
15 str
15 faith
50 arc
9 int

Applied it to a +25 Raptor Talons and tested pretty much everything.

Talismans that work:
- Dagger talisman
- Shard of Alexander (but not in combination with Dagger talisman? Which is weird, see below)

Talismans that don't work:
- Assassin's Crimson or Cerulean Dagger
- Spear Talisman
- Twinblade Talisman
- Did not test any others

Of all things, Standard Infusion seemed to do the most damage for some reason and this AOW doesn't seem to care much about your weapon's AR. I tested this on the Banished Knight that patrols at Cathedral of Dragon Communion (making sure there was no weather that might affect lighting/fire damage)

Total damage of Lifesteal Fist on infusions with no talismans equipped:
Standard: 1071 (weapon at 367 AR)
Heavy: 1019 (weapon at 251 AR)
Keen: 1012 (weapon at 396 AR)
Quality: 1059 (weapon at 337 AR)
Blood/Poison: 920 (weapon at 382 AR)
Occult: 1007 (weapon at 425 AR) - interesting that Occult is one of the lowest Lifesteal Fist damage tests, despite being my highest AR on the weapon

So knowing Standard Infusion was "best" I tried a bunch of greases on Standard Infusion and found some weirder results:

Fire/Holy Grease: 1161 damage (452 AR while on the weapon)
Magic Grease: 1090 damage (452 AR while on the weapon) --which is weird, because LF is magic damage, and this grease is the same AR as Holy/Fire, so maybe this makes it look at your Int stat?
Lightning Grease: 1231 damage (highest) (452 AR while on the weapon) --perhaps same as magic grease above and makes LF look at dex while the grease is active?
Dragonwound Grease(lol): 1085 damage (zero AR buff to the weapon) --another weird one, because it's higher damage than Standard without buffs by a slight amount, but adds zero AR

Lastly I tried stacking some stuff and noticed it actually results in lower Lifesteal Fist damage if Shard of Alexander is combined with Dagger talisman and greases:

Testing with zero buffs:
Base: 1071 damage
w/ Dagger Talisman: 1243 damage
w/ Shard of Alexander: 1231 damage
w/ Dagger Talisman + Shard of Alexander: 1118 damage (lower than either of them by themselves!)

Testing with Fire Grease:
Base: 1161 damage
w/ Dagger Talisman only: 1348 damage
w/ Shard of Alexander only: 1336 damage
w/ Dagger Talisman + Shard of Alexander: 1215 damage (lower than either, again)

Testing with Lightning Grease which gets even weirder:
Base: 1231 damage
w/ Dagger Talisman: 1116 damage (lower than base, when this same setup is higher damage than base with Fire Grease...?)
w/ Shard of Alexander: 1104 damage (again lower than base, for some reason)
w/ Dagger Talisman + Shard of Alexander: 1287 damage (only slightly higher than base)

Overall, I feel like I came out of this even more confused on how this AOW than I started, but maybe this helps someone or satisfies some curiosity? lol

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Someone inform Michael Zack that command grabs shouldn't have a clean hit mechanic. And also that they should be near-instantaneous. If someone is trying to turtle and lets you get into sniffing distance for a command grab, they've already failed. They shouldn't get a second, third and fourth chance to react. Still great vor PvE though.

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I'm doing a Spiked Caestus run and I just got this and slapped it on and still had it equipped when I next met a Crucible Knight (in Siofra Aqueduct) and whoa boy this was the most effortless Crucible Knight kill of my life. This **** grabs through shield seemingly? So just dodge a few swings and then Lifesteal Fist for a super easy knockdown and some free hits while he's getting back up.

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While it does count as critical damage, it does not count as a critical hit, so the cerulean and crimson dagger talismans dont work

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Wait, since this counts as a critical hit, doesn't that mean the Cerulean Dagger talisman makes this free?

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“Only effective against foes of human build.”

*Shows gif of serpent*

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Does it count as a critical?

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It does work on night cavalry when they're not on their horse

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Hope they patch the weapon buff damage shenanigans at some point in favor of making it scale well with arcane/occult infusion. Makes no sense that it's 2-3x more effective with a dex/str int/fth build than a pure arcane build.

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Well I wrote up a full post with actual numbers but Fextralife decided to just give me an error, not post the comment and delete all my work so here's a ****ing short version of it. The scaling on this is pretty weird / confusing. 25 STR, 15 DEX, +23 Spiked Caestus Heavy infused has around 40 more AR than Keen infused, does around 100 more damage on 2H R1s, so everything is as expected. But for some Marika forsaken reason, the WoA does ~30 less damage when Heavy infused over Keen, even thought it has more AR. Testing was done on the same enemy, 2H in both cases, no talismans equipped, tested multiple times. Pretty non-sensical.

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wish this had a little more range like when elemer does it

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For large enemies this should still do the damage intended and heal you but no grip animation it would make this a lot more fun and viable

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dark hand got insane

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Someone should really make a list of the foes that this can work on. Might as well be me, so here goes:

Alabaster Lord
Albinauric (2nd generation only)
Ancestral Follower
Ancestral Follower Shaman
Avionette Soldier
Azula Beastman
Baleful Shadow
Banished Knight
Battlemage
Blackflame Monk
Black Knife Assassin
Blaidd
Celebrant
Cemetery Shade
Clayman
Cleanrot Knight
Commoner
Crucible Knight
Crystalian
Demi-Human (except small knife-wielder)
Demi-Human Chief
Depraved Perfumer
Duelist
Exile Soldier
Fallen Hawks Soldier
Fanged Imp
Fire Monk
Foot Soldier (Godrick, etc)
Frenzied Villager
Glintstone Miner
Glintstone Sorcerer
Guardian
Highwayman
Kaiden Sellsword
Kindred of Rot (Pests)
Knight (Godrick, etc.)
Large Oracle Envoy
Lazuli Sorcerer
Man-Serpent
Marionette Soldier
Miner
Misbegotten (except flying variant)
Misbegotten Warrior
Night Maiden
Noble Sorcerer
Nomad
Nox Monk
Nox Swordstress
Omenkiller
Onyx Lord
Oracle Envoy
Page
Perfumer
Putrid Corpse
Rotten Duelist
Sanguine Noble
Servant of Rot (mushroom men)
Silver Tear (including the blobs)
Skeleton
Soldier (Godrick, etc.)
Starcaller
Thorn Sorcerer
Twinsage Sorcerer
Vulgar Militiamen
Wandering Noble

Note: I didn't test it on any of the bosses (because I was already half-way through the game when I started compiling this list), but it will definitely work on boss variants of the enemies I tested.

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Can you use it on bosses like Malenia or Radagon?

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does the dmg of this scale with the weapon its on? or does it just do a flat dmg amount?

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This is an invaluable healing source for casters that invest the majority of their flasks into magic.
It also works on far more types of foes than one might think: It will work on almost any foe that has two arms, two legs, and is shorter than twice your height.
— Courh the Explorer

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Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but Lifesteal Fist is incredibly broken when paired with infusions. There seems to be some sort of strange interaction between flat buffs and the crit modifier where the damage is multiplied in some way? I’m not entirely sure how it works, but after getting one-shot by somebody running Scholar’s Armament with it I decided to do some research; unbuffed, my Caestus Lifesteal Fist did ~600 damage to the Banished Knights in Farum Azula. Adding Holy Weapon alone gave me grabs for 2000+, and that was without the scorpion charm, Alexander’s Shard, etc… used right, this thing is busted

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Is this, like Sacred Flame in DS3, considered a critical hit?

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Needs a buff for sure at least grant it some hyperarmour upon using it.

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Fun for pve, but way too slow for pvp (unless you're in the 300+ meme bracket lol)

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please fix the non-grabs, fromsoft

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Favorite WA, loved the dark hand in DS3.

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Blood flame procs bleed when using this food for thought

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Doesn’t seem to work on Rennala

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wish there was more occult like magic, using and manipulating vital energies and stuff like that.

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Oversight: The grab is blocked by poise even if the attack lands. Fromsoft, please fix as soon as possible. This ability should not be affected by the target's poise in pvp.

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I don't understand how this skill works. On regular soldier it barely deals damage and on the spirit goat people from siofa river it does super high damage, one shotting them. Is this a anti spirit attack?

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does this work on malenia

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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.

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MANE GIMME YO HEALTH MANG

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I think 450 lifesteal at FP14 is pretty good!
More cost-effective than recovering with INCANTATIONS

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dark hand

but good

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