Poise

Type Base Stat
Effect The degree to which you can resist collapsing under enemy attacks

Poise is a Base Stat in Elden Ring. Poise can be increased by wearing armor. It can also be raised by various other equipment, ashes of war, Wondrous Physick combinations, sorceries, incantations, and consumables. See also Stance for the related enemy-only stat that governs when an enemy becomes vulnerable to a critical hit.

 

Poise Information

Poise determines resistance to flinching or staggering from enemy attacks.

 There are 3 types of staggers in Elden Ring:

  1. Weak Stagger: On hit, cannot move or perform actions for brief period of time (a third to half a second)
  2. Heavy Stagger: On hit, cannot move or perform actions for extended period of time (about a second)
  3. Knock-down: On hit, knocked completely off feet, cannot move or perform actions until player finishes chosen getup animation (roll or neutral getup, several seconds each)

Against Creatures and Enemies depleting their Poise bar knocks them down to allow the player to deal Critical Damage. Often marked by a glowing orange spot on large enemies that have fallen down or by standing in front or behind a downed enemy, pressing the Light Attack button on your right-hand weapon allows a critical hit animation. Note that not all weapon classes can perform critical hits and some enemies are immune to critical hits.

 

Poise HP

  • In Elden Ring, poise works based off an invisible "poise HP bar," which is based off the visible poise stat. For simplicity's sake, the poise value displayed in that stats screen will represent your poise HP.
  • When your poise HP bar reaches 0 after being hit, you are staggered and your poise resets back to your max poise HP.
  • It's worth noting that if your poise HP bar is low and you get hit by a high poise damaging attack, your next health bar will not be tolled. For example, let's say your total poise HP is 51 and you get hit by a 50 poise damage attack. Your poise HP is now 1, and if you get hit by the same attack, the 49 spare poise damage WILL NOT wrap around to your next poise HP bar. Instead of leaving you with 2 poise HP the stagger effect refreshes your poise and you will be left with your total poise HP of 51 again.
  • In PvE, enemies see their poise HP regenerate after 6 seconds without taking a hit.

 

Poise Weapon Classifications

The stagger produced from the depletion of your characters poise HP is entirely dependent on weapon class, not weapon weight. There are only two common staggers produced from getting hit by humanoid opponents, and those two staggers are the "Weak Stagger" and "Heavy Stagger." The weak stagger is produced by standard weapon sizes, and the heavy stagger is produced by "great" weapons and bigger.

The 2 classifications of weapons for poise in this game, "great" and "standard" categorize the following weapon classes below. The Standard Weapons are all other Weapon categories. Greatbows and mounted Ballistas are also sometimes used by humanoid opponents, these always seem to perform a knockdown regardless of poise. Not even a Leaden Hardtear can stop this knockdown.

  

Poise Damage

 

 

Poise Thresholds

  • 41 poise to endure a dagger light hit
  • 53 poise to endure a dagger two handed light hit
  • 51 poise to endure most PvE enemy attacks without flinching
  • 51 poise to endure a standard light hit
  • 75 poise to endure a standard two handed light hit
  • 69 poise to endure a standard powerstanced hit
  • 45 poise to endure a rapier light hit
  • 58 poise to endure a rapier two handed light hit
  • 101 poise to endure storm stomp or flaming strike

To not be staggered by great weapons, both a buff and talisman is required as the largest armor in-game gives exactly 100 and is still staggered in one hit.

 

Poise increasing Items

 

Poise Notes & Tips

 

 

Stats in Elden Ring
Arcane  ♦  Dexterity  ♦  Discovery  ♦  Endurance  ♦  Equip Load  ♦  Faith  ♦  Fire Damage Negation  ♦  Fire Defense  ♦  Focus  ♦  Focus Resistance  ♦  FP  ♦  Holy Damage Negation  ♦  Holy Defense  ♦  HP  ♦  Immunity  ♦  Immunity Resistance  ♦  Intelligence  ♦  Level  ♦  Lightning Damage Negation  ♦  Lightning Defense  ♦  Magic Damage Negation  ♦  Magic Defense  ♦  Memory Slots  ♦  Mind  ♦  Physical Defense  ♦  Robustness  ♦  Robustness Resistance  ♦  Runes Held  ♦  Stamina  ♦  Strength  ♦  Vigor  ♦  Vitality  ♦  VS Pierce Damage Negation  ♦  VS Pierce Defense  ♦  VS Slash Damage Negation  ♦  VS Slash Defense  ♦  VS Strike Damage Negation  ♦  VS Strike Defense  ♦  Weight

 




Register to EDIT the Wiki!
    • Anonymous

      poise is crap in elden ring i got 100 poise as im waring full goat armour and evrything is still stagering me and even dogs can just bite me and cancle my swing.
      wtf is the point waring it = none use you stats points on viger and war like scale armour. no point going for the big armour

      • Anonymous

        Sentinel armor of the golden tree and the mask that gives you 2 strength points plus the talisman you have 101 poise exactly to resist a light attack with a colossal sword

        • Anonymous

          DS3 had it mostly right. In DS3, poise is a way to get heavier, slower weapon attacks through with some thought and timing. In ER stacking poise is a way to completely ignore your opponent's attacks and just facetank trades. It's virtually a PVP-only stat; 89 poise, which requires one or both of some of the heaviest armors in the game and bullgoat talisman, is still not enough to tank a hit from a dog, let alone a common soldier with a greatsword. But it's a popular pvp benchmark. So now that lighter/faster weapons can benefit from poise in PvP without having to invest much of the build to do so, particularly thrusting swords, there's very little reason to use big heavy weapons that demand stat investment and are still too slow to confirm enough hits.

          • Anonymous

            There are gamers that complain, thinking “I can’t be bad, must be the games fault”, then there are gamers that just get good.

            So many complaints on poise, nasty noobs.

            • Anonymous

              I just wish the system worked more consistently for trades. Either works pretty well, or I get staggered no matter the poise. I know everyone hates on DS3 poise but they had the right idea by giving heavier, slower weapons "invisible" poise boosts. I don't need to have DS1 poise but it's really annoying losing so many trades to greatswords while using colosssals.

              • Anonymous

                @Dec 20: There is no Poise in PVE, only Stance. Certain weapons cause different staggers in PVE. It's usually the bigger weapons only who can stagger knights but whips who only deals slightly higher poise/stance damage than daggers will stagger knight type enemies.

                • Anonymous

                  I’m a fan of poise in this game, it’s no Dark Souls 1, but it’s nice, certainly feels better than DS3.

                  • Anonymous

                    Between 67 poise to 101 poise there's no point in having bull-goat armor. Why? Well because the bull-goat armor alone gives only 100 poise. This means without bull-goat's talisman the scaled armor-set is better in terms of poise (71) and weight ratio.

                    If you put on bull-goat talisman with scaled armor equipped on, it will not reach 101 poise, but instead 95 poise which is not enough to trigger the 101 threshold. But with Bull-goat armor set you can reach a whopping 133 poise, which once again is pointless due to the fact that the highest needed poise that matters is 111 poise right now.

                    This means that bull-goat armor set is useless at what it's designed to do, poise. You're better off using Lionel's set since it can reach 115 poise out of 111 and having the highest robustness in the game.

                    I don't want them to nerf the other armors. But give Bull-goat armor it's purpose back. Give 133 Poise a benefit of some sort and change either poise on the armor to 101 or lower the threshold to 100 poise please. :)

                    • Anonymous

                      The poise in this game sucks at least for PVE. I don’t mean on the player but on enemies. Besides the most basic enemies that die in 1-2hits hardly anything can be staggered with smaller weapons like axes, straight swords, and hammers unless you’re power stancing them or 2-handing them. Even then there’s quite a few that can occasionally poise through even 2 handing great weapons.

                      • Anonymous

                        As of this comment, a lot of the info here is outdated for 1.07, besides the 51 and 101 PvE player poise breakpoints.

                        89 poise is the new 61, and altered crucible knight set with bull-goat talisman is the new veteran's set, when it comes to hitting that breakpoint with the best poise:weight ratio.

                        • Anonymous

                          So does this mean that a poise of 68 is the same as 100?

                          31 poise to endure a dagger light hit
                          34 poise to endure a dagger two handed light hit
                          51 poise to endure a standard light hit (endures most PvE enemy attacks without flinching)
                          56 poise to endure a standard two handed light hit
                          61 poise to endure 2 dagger light hits, and 1 curved sword running light hit
                          67 poise to endure 2 dagger two handed light hits
                          101 poise to endure 2 standard weapon light hits
                          111 poise to endure 2 standard weapon light hits
                          101 poise to endure a great weapon two handed light hit (note that some attacks in the chain may deal greater poise damage, strong attacks cannot be endured even with 133 poise)
                          111 poise to endure a "great weapon" two handed light hit

                          • Anonymous

                            Anyone know specifically what weapons didn't get the poise/stamina damage buff yet? I need more info than "long range" lol

                            • Anonymous

                              Does lightning and fire infused weapons deal more poise dmg? Or is it just he animation that leads me to feel that way.

                              • Anonymous

                                I'd be interested to see how/if poise thresholds have changed with 1.07, since all armors besides bull goat got their poise increased, and weapons got more poise damage.

                                • Anonymous

                                  For PvP: At 51 I can endure a standard weapon hit, but how many players did you encounter that do not dual-wield this kind of weapon? Same for 61 poise, I can endure a curved sword running light hit, but most players dual-wield the curved sword. I don't count on meeting a lot of Dagger-wielding adversaries, so it seems that it's either 101 or don't bother. Or am I missing something?

                                  • Anonymous

                                    Poise should fathom or measure your stun duration too. The higher your poise, the harder enemy to combo you even with colossal weapon, while if your poise is too low, even with dagger enemy can combo you.

                                    • Anonymous

                                      I'm able to withstand a greatsword bigger than me but a rat headbutting me is just too much? What were they thinking?

                                      • Anonymous

                                        I think fist weapons do way more poise damage than what a lot of people are suggesting. Like 2 punches in pvp is enough to shield break them followed by another 2 or 3 instantly poise breaking.

                                        • Seems since 1.06 this page is redundant slightly.
                                          Either the devs shadow buffed all poise dmg or enemy poise dmg, or reduced poise effectiveness, or the counter dmg buff somehow affected that too.

                                          • Anonymous

                                            active poise really needs to be adjusted. its basically impossible to trade with a thrusting weapon, unless you have a faster thrusting weapon

                                            • Anonymous

                                              mimimum weight I’ve found for exactly 101 poise is full Veteran’s set except Crucible helm + Bull goat. Scaled helm also works for +0.2 weight.

                                              • Anonymous

                                                Poise was already nerfed in ds3 and now in ER. Also we really need a transmog system so we wont have to worry about stats and fashion, we even have a sewing kit, for crying out loud

                                                • Anonymous

                                                  It seems like "51 poise endures most PvE enemy attacks without flinching" doesn't apply anymore, after 1.06 I need 80+ poise to tank a freaking dog

                                                  • Anonymous

                                                    Why can't we have the yellow poise bar they made for Sekiro? The mechanics are pretty much the same: hit the enemy until they kneel. There's so much copy pasted content from older games, and yet poise HP is a hidden number in combat. WTF From!?

                                                    • Anonymous

                                                      Do we know how quickly "poise HP" regenerates and how long it takes to start doing so? Or if it only resets if you're poise broken

                                                      • Anonymous

                                                        it seems like poise damage across the board was shadow buffed, I've been getting comboed by benign things at high poise left and right ever since 1.06.

                                                        • Anonymous

                                                          Sad that you have rely on the heaviest armor, and waste a talisman slot just to have a viable tank build. What’s the point of having regular knight sets, if they can’t even withstand the hit of a katana?

                                                          • Anonymous

                                                            So if I understand this correctly, incoming poise damage gets rounded up but the bull-goat talisman's poise increase gets rounded down. What a stupid system.

                                                            • Anonymous

                                                              A poise of 11 will allow you to endure 1 regular arrow or bolt in PvE without flinching, a poise of 10 will not. Similarly, a poise of 21 will allow you to endure 2 arrows or bolts without flinching. This only applies to normal body hits, not headshots.
                                                              Tested on Marrionette archers in Liurnia of the Lakes, and Godrick Soldiers near the Gatefront site of grace.

                                                              • Anonymous

                                                                Poise is not a bad mechanic, it's just not implemented nearly as well as it could be. At least it's better than it was in DS3, where it only functioned while doing certain attacks with some weapons on particular days when specific planets were in alignment, depending on your zodiac sign.

                                                                • Anonymous

                                                                  there are attacks that completely ignore your poise and they're literally everywhere. also your poise will disappear in a few hits no matter what, and with the multihit combos that every single endgame boss throws out it's basically useless to build up past maybe 60 poise. it's all you need not to get stunlocked into a corner by 2 rats

                                                                  • Anonymous

                                                                    Are we sure that you need one poise over the incoming poise damage? Doing some quick testing on gatefront soldiers and the breakpoint to be staggered on a light hit appears to be 49, 50 or 51 poise will absorb it the same
                                                                    That would imply poise “hp” needs to be reduced past 0 to flinch, or there’s an invisible 1
                                                                    Can anyone else confirm/deny?

                                                                    • Anonymous

                                                                      The bull goat talisman actually reduces incoming poise damage effectively resulting in 33% increased base poise. BUT, also resulting in increased hyper armor poise from certain attacks since incoming attacks deal less poise damage with the talisman.

                                                                      Also the talisman lets you pull off so much drip while maintaining 67 poise (of course at the cost of roughly 4-10lb carry weight more than something like veterans armor)

                                                                      • Anonymous

                                                                        Did any of you played NIOH2? This game had so nice, easy to read, easy to see and easy to use poise/stance system... Loved it, ER should definitely import it

                                                                        • Anonymous

                                                                          So against the giant hand enemies that has a attack that knock you down only causes a normal stagger with 79 poise(veteran set). Explain?

                                                                          • Anonymous

                                                                            I’m sure it’s useful for strats in pvp, but for pve, I’m so used to strategizing based on the assumption that I can’t poise through anything that i don’t even think about it when I have the armor and endurance levels for it late game

                                                                            • It should be noted that the Bull-Goat talisman does NOT increase poise by 33%, rather it decreases incoming poise damage by 25%. The difference is more than just semantic, as the bullgoat talisman will allow you to tank hits greater than what your stat suggests.

                                                                              This also means that the testing of regular thresholds is unreliable if the talisman is used, since it skews the data. Rather there needs to be two separate tables, thresholds with the talisman and without. Finally, the page should probably be updated to reflect that 100 poise is the maximum amount allowed by armor, and that the talisman itself is its own separate effect.

                                                                              • Anonymous

                                                                                I greatly dislike these "hidden" mechanics that are at the core of gameplay. Would it hurt the Devs to include relevant information on the weapons stat / info page in-game? Why does this have to be some arcane secret? It's too important.

                                                                                • Anonymous

                                                                                  I just want to know the sadistic weasel who made it so armor sets are almost always just short of reaching a breakpoint. What's the point of designing armor pieces that fit together if you have to mix them with pieces from other sets which don't to make use of an important game mechanic that is already obscured?

                                                                                  • Anonymous

                                                                                    They majorly overloaded poise to the heavier armor types.

                                                                                    Even medium armor is pretty much useless for anything else than fashion.

                                                                                    Either more poise or more DR for leather type armor would've been great.

                                                                                    • Anonymous

                                                                                      They majorly overloaded poise to the heavier armor types.

                                                                                      Even medium armor is pretty much useless for anything else than fashion.

                                                                                      Either more poise or more DR for leather type armor would've been great.

                                                                                      • Anonymous

                                                                                        Don’t Trust the Numbers. I’ve done many testing now since I wanted to poisetank through any attacks for pvp and it’s NOT 111 poise to stand a 2 handed Light hit from „big“ weapons it’s 113! Tried with greatswords and greatspears. Besides that it looks like it’s impossible to resist ultragreatswords/ colossal weapons even not a 1 handed light hit. Tried that with some great hammers and guts greatsword. They all stagger. So if you plan on building poise for your builds go for 61 or 113 anything below or between is a waste than better focus on other stats.

                                                                                        • Anonymous

                                                                                          Why did you get rid of the chart with poise damage for different weapon attacks? Even if like 25% of them weren't accurate, some information is better than literally zero come on.

                                                                                          • Anonymous

                                                                                            Is there a breakdown for Hyper Armor yet? I remember reading on a thread somewhere that when you enter an attack animation, your poise is halved but then you get a flat amount of poise health added back to your attack depending on the weapon and attack. Is this true? And if so, how does Bull-goat's talisman interact with the hyper armor if at all?

                                                                                            • Anonymous

                                                                                              Imo, the best way to solve problem with poise monsters is simply remove Bull Goat Talisman from the game. Viola, you get now staggerable bull goat players, while still having a working poise system.

                                                                                              • Anonymous

                                                                                                theoretically good, but in practice it just serves to kill fashion souls and PvErs who don’t have a pvp build. it would be better if passive poise didn’t work in pvp and hyperarmor got a buff; a clunky solution but definitely better than what we’ve got now

                                                                                                • Anonymous

                                                                                                  Okay so explain this to me: I have 111 poise but still when someone issues Zweihander with both hands and uses r1 still the first hit staggers me

                                                                                                  • Anonymous

                                                                                                    I haven't seen anyone mention how your poise is actually lower when you are attacking with light weapons- you heard me, this game has *negative hyperarmor*
                                                                                                    in fact the only weapon that i would say has true hyperarmor is the great mace, its practically impossible to interrupt.

                                                                                                    • Anonymous

                                                                                                      I do hate how the poise HP bar for mobs is completely different for various types of mobs in game. Basically makes you get hit/die to a monster if the dev's decided it's going to have a massive poise HP bar for some reason.

                                                                                                      • Anonymous

                                                                                                        Bring back DS3 poise and just remove the 2 hit combo's simple fix we don't need this fusion of DS3 and DS1 poise because it just doesn't work.

                                                                                                        • Anonymous

                                                                                                          I love this poise system. Instead of making in OP or relatively useless in other titles. Now, OP poise is still attainable but only with a the heaviest of armors and major stat/fashion/talisman requirements. Also your best outcome is to only block one of the heaviest none of the major heaviest, and possibly 2 of the lightest. The differing poise damage on so many weapons and their movements makes finding an ideally optimal poise level difficult. Basically, without extreme knowledge of what weapon and attack your going up against, you still gotta dodge or block and if you mess up and poise through then its a bonus. Best poise system yet

                                                                                                          • Anonymous

                                                                                                            White Mask (bleed buff), Veteran's body, Scaled hands, and Scaled feet take you to 61 poise. This is might be the most generic PvP fit possible, as the White Mask buff works even if you aren't the one triggering hemmorage and hemmorage is extremely common in PvP. PvP thresholds are higher than PvE, so this would also work for that.

                                                                                                            Use with Erdtree Talisman for the 8% equip weight bonus to make fitting even easier and enjoy the fantastic hp bonus.

                                                                                                            • Anonymous

                                                                                                              It would be nice if only enemies didn't have a Dark Souls 1-like poise system and were not even staggerable after multiple hits of an ultra greatsword. They just poise through pretty much everything and proceed murdering you. Tested yesterday with the beastmen in Farum Azula, especially the bigger ones.

                                                                                                              • Anonymous

                                                                                                                Why is this even in the game
                                                                                                                Its useless in PvE
                                                                                                                In PvP the entire point of poise is that light weapons cant stunlock murder you with their quick attacks
                                                                                                                but then they make halberd running attacks do 100 poise damage and make ugs crouch poking do over 133

                                                                                                                • Anonymous

                                                                                                                  So the take away for PvP is you either want 61 poise… or all of it.

                                                                                                                  I’m guessing this eventually gets adjusted. 5 weapon classes doing the same poise damage is silly.

                                                                                                                Load more
                                                                                                                ⇈ ⇈