Damage Type in Elden Ring is an important mechanic pertaining to Combat. Damage is divided into two major groups: Physical and Elemental. Damage Type is affected by many factors, including your equipment, skills and temporary buffs. Players and enemies can also inflict abnormal status effects which can deal or modify damage.
The basic damage calculation is (attack rating - defense) * negation. This calculation applies for each type of an attack's damage. When multiple types of damage are dealt, total damage is the sum of damage from all types. Because defense is subtracted from each damage component, total damage from weapons with two or three damage types is often reduced more than total damage from one type. Many other factors affect damage calculation. Some of these include:
- Move Used (Light, Heavy, Critical, etc)
- Target's Weakpoints
Other useful links:
- See Status Effects for all status buildups and other effects applied to your character.
- See Buffs & Debuffs for useful information regarding the stacking or overwriting of effects on your character.
- See Equipment with Special Effects for special stat-increasing or effect-granting weapons and armor.
- See Affinities for a comparison of each affinity's effects and their respective whetblades.
- See Special Weaknesses for weapons that deal extra damage to certain enemies.
Physical Damage types in Elden Ring
Elemental Damage types in Elden Ring
Other Damage "Types" in Elden Ring
Additional Notes about Damage Types in Elden Ring
- All attacks are comprised of one or more of the original eight damage types (Standard, Strike, Slash, Pierce, Magic, Fire, Lightning, Holy).
- Buffs and debuffs to damage negation and attack rating stack multiplicatively.
- The Heavy Affinity adds Strength scaling to a weapon, which benefits from two-handing a weapon (50% more damage).
- The Keen Affinity adds Dexterity scaling to a weapon, which benefits from wielding a weapon one-handed.
- The Quality Affinity adds Strength and Dexterity scaling to a weapon, but to a lesser degree than Heavy or Keen alone (two-handing is less effective than Heavy but more so than Keen as well).
- The Magic Affinity adds Magic attack to a weapon, which scales on Intelligence.
- The Cold Affinity adds Magic attack and Frost build-up to a weapon, which scales slightly on Intelligence.
- The Fire Affinity adds Fire attack to a weapon, which scales on Strength.
- The Flame Art Affinity adds Fire Attack to a weapon, which scales on Faith.
- The Lightning Affinity adds Lightning Attack to a weapon, which scales on Dexterity.
- The Sacred Affinity adds Holy Attack to a weapon, which scales on Faith.
- The Poison Affinity adds Poison status buildup to a weapon, which scales slightly on Arcane.
- The Blood Affinity adds Bleed status buildup on a weapon, which scales slightly on Arcane.
- The Occult Affinity does not change damage types, but scales the weapon on Arcane, and improves innate Bleed/Poison.
- Many consumable items, spells, and weapon skills buff a weapon and add damage types to them.
- The toxic spray attack of Giant Ants is a Standard-type attack that subtracts 60% physical damage absorption from the player's shield.
- All attacks deal some amount of Poise, but this does not subtract from the HP pool of the target and is therefore not counted as a Damage Type.
Anonymousman split damage is a lot better when u dont got people in ur ear telling u how bad it is
- Anonymous
man split damage is a lot better when u dont got people in ur ear telling u how bad it is
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After seeing the atrocities the crabs committed in DS3, the balancing gods forever relegated crab-kind to the deepest pits of punishment: being weak to holy damage. if you're weak against holy, you're weaker than the weakest damage type in the game. you better start praying to a different god cuz god knows he's not coming to save you
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can you get all five on one weapon? would be a fun challenge run. I can only think of using Lightning Sacred Blade Clayman Harpoon and then in off hand use pyros?? but thats not all 5 on one weapon. any ideas??
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How are you even supposed to know what damages are effective without using a guide?
- Anonymous
"The basic damage calculation is (attack rating - defense) * negation"
Shouldn't it be:
(attack rating - defense) * (1 - negation)
And how do you find what the defense number is?
- Anonymous
"hey maybe we should give our weapons with cutting edges slash damage?"
- Anonymous
Physical (strike) = Physical (thrust) > Physical (Standard) = Physical (Slash) > Magic > Lightning > Fire >>>>> Holy
Hi, is the information here about damage types and the enemies/bosses that are most affected by these types of damage is official (found somewhere in the game), or it's just based on trial and error by players?
- Anonymous
A lightning art infusion would be killer in a DLC so I can keep all my faith build's damage in the same school.
- Anonymous
Man, its amazing how many things faith builds have now, only for holy damage to be practically useless in pve and pvp
- Anonymous
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Stop asking for dark damage, no enemy is weak to it here. Weapons with death blight/ destined death are the closest thing to dark you'll ever get.
- Anonymous
Question. I know scarlet rot is status affect in all but does it count as a element as well?
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How many games has it been now, and From STILL haven't worked out that split damage is screwed? They encourage you to use split damage with SO many weapons or upgrade paths across so many different games, and it has almost always resulted in a LOSS of damage because of defence calculations. It's like how it took them until Elden Ring to realise that equipment durability was a crap mechanic that everybody hated and brought nothing of value to the table and FINALLY scrap it.
- Anonymous
How many games has it been now, and From STILL haven't worked out that split damage is screwed? They encourage you to use split damage with SO many weapons or upgrade paths across so many different games, and it has almost always resulted in a LOSS of damage because of defence calculations. It's like how it took them until Elden Ring to realise that equipment durability was a crap mechanic that everybody hated and brought nothing of value to the table and FINALLY scrap it.
- Anonymous
"All attacks deal some amount of Poise, but this does not subtract from the HP pool of the target and is therefore not counted as a Damage Type."
And yet you've added stagger dmg to all weapons separately for each upgrade level.
Just need to find a full list for all weapon classes, as that's what needed.
- Anonymous
Is there any way to combine two damage types? I've thought extensively about how to do this, but there just doesn't seem to be a way to do it.
- Anonymous
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Standard Damage is pointless, any Weapon that deals Standard Damage should instead deal Slash Damage, because Straight Swords and Axes are Bladed Weapons it just makes more sense for them to deal Slash Damage like Curved Swords and Katanas
- Anonymous
R.I.P Dark Damage 2014-2019
AND IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-EEEEEIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII, WILL ALLWAAAYS LOOOOOVE, YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUU
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Came to the comment section expecting to see "why no ice damage?"
Was not disappointed lmao
- Anonymous
What about Frost damage? It does 20% more damage to dragons...
- Anonymous
Question:
So why does the Arcane stat grant us Holy resistance? As Int grants us magic resistance... and Faith grants us no resistance? It's weird that Faith only gets one unique scaling affinity, and provides zero resistance to the lone damage type that it itself governs.
So to start, players of DS1 will notice that Occult is a clear throw back reference to DS1, (perhaps even in its uselessness) and its inclusion in the game seems to have been a priority over what is admittedly a relatively trivial aspect of game balance. Which I mean, sure? I don't really care a whole lot about losing holy resist here, but its the series of decisions that led FromSoft to shuffle the holy resist that are really weird.
For reference, Occult is just completely worthless, its trash, and what motivated its inclusion in game, is the notion that a player with a high arcane stat might somehow be uncomfortable with the idea of using bleed, or I guess poison, and specifically they might want to run around and bonk things with a high item drop rate while having a slightly higher base damage than a bleed weapon, because I guess there a couple enemies which are immune to bleed, which I mean, sure, okay, this would allow you to do that.
So Occult only deals physical. One might think it would deal holy damage since its a reference (or I guess faith scaling magic damage with a modifier against gods?), but there would be a relatively glaring problem if that made Occult deal Holy damage that scaled with Arcane.
Because Faith already shares one of its scaling affinities with strength, which is the fire affinity (and sort of technically shares fire with Arcane on certain weapons as well), taking away its sole control over the last of its scaling damage affinites, and the one its supposed to govern, would be sort of ridiculous, when compared to lets say, Int, which doesn't have to put up with any of this.
This is why FromSoft made Occult deal only physical damage, because they would otherwise be taking away the main damage type governed by faith.
So as Occult no longer deals faith scaling magic damage, or holy damage, FromSoft had to make its inclusion fit thematically through its tie in to Dark Souls 1, as it is would otherwise be a reference in name only, so they needed to create some kind of loose association with acts against the gods and the divine. Otherwise, its inclusion wouldn't be "elegant."
So what did FromSoft do to make it "elegant"? Well, since Occult deals only physical damage now, and theres only like one actual god that you fight, and half the demi-gods are themselves heretics, it would also be redundant and pointless to have a bonus of some kind against that like one singular god. So they went with their perceived best alternative option, which was to swap the holy resist governing stat from Faith to Arcane.
This uhh... "design choice" paints a connection between the Occult weapon affinity and the theme of resisting the gods, err... sort of? And FromSoft didn't need to add overt levels of redundancy in game, which they could simply have avoided in the first place, had they not decided to implement a totally redundant Arcane scaling physical damage dealing weapon affinity, that nobody uses, when they could just use bleed.
And then FromSoft seems to have called it a day.
And thats why Arcane governs Holy resistance, and why Faith doesn't do a thing it should probably be doing.
The End.
- Anonymous
Lightning best for pvp, no stat governs resistance and armors are usually weaker to lightning. If youre in liurnia, the rain makes opponents weaker to lightning too. I would say fire/flame is the worst because high level duelists pack 60 vigor and 54 str. Vigor controls fire resistance and str controls physical resistance. These two resistances stack with high health pool and their armor to make fire/physical split damage terrible on many weapons. Arcane governs resistance to holy but players who use arcane rarely have high vigor or armor, making their holy resistance useless. No one stacks resistance to holy either and so it’s best for fth in pvp. Int/fth builds should also use sacred instead of magic for the same reasons and if they use sorceries, opponents may be stacking high magic defense in response... but nobody ever stacks holy defense.
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I feel like fire damage is the worst... It seems like every boss i need to fight is resistant to fite, and i'm running a blackflame confessor right now. I'm on the verge of just abandoning this build...
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This wiki page has been extremely useful. I kind of want to do a magic and holy damage build after viewing this page.
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Why is lightning listed as effective against draconic enemies?
Draconic tree sentinel and faram azula dragons are most resistant to lightning???
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For PVP is it safe to say split damage is not beneficial as just going heavy/keen given that many different armors and buffs exist that can negate different types of damages?
Standard damage doesn't make any sense whatsoever, considering that most weapons with Standard damage are infact bladed/edged, and should do Slash damage.
- Anonymous
I wish they would have just made an easy mode instead of massively favoring certain build types. Faith builds get hosed by boss resistance and Strength gets terrible ranged options. INT/DEX steamrolls.
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Holy damage: ineffective on about everything that isnt undead
- Anonymous
Are there more enemies that do physical damage than enemies that do magic damage? Is physical damage resistance more important than magic resistance?
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I've made 14 characters so far and for 12 of them I couldn't resist but to build holy, just because the weapons are the coolest for me. I still have no idea what's the strong point of it, like what, you get to deal more damage against boat skeleton? There are quite a few boat skeletons I must say, but are the undead some of the only enemies weak to it? I really want to know. Thought dragons would have a weakness to it at least but I haven't noticed much change.
- Anonymous
"Cold" damage doesnt exist, Frostbite is a status that triggers after you hit an enemy enough times to build up an invisible meter that causes it to take effect, same with bleed or poison or scarlet rot.
The frostbite effect does magic damage.
- Anonymous
Is there not code damage? Or does cold just apply the Frostbite efffect?
- Anonymous
Wish they kept a form of dark damage in the game, it would make way more sense. Godskins use dark flames to kill gods, but it does fire damage. Black knives killed godwyn... with holy damage? It just feels like the game is missing something in that aspect. Plus it's purple and who doesn't like purple man.
- Anonymous
This is incomplete, status effects themselves are a damage type. You can test this by using the flask that heals you on non-physical damage and then taking damage from a status effect inducing attack; it will heal you. Damage is not simply physical or elemental.
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So Strike is good againt almost anything that isn't a plant of some sort, Standard is the jack-of-all-trades damage type, Slash is good against anything not armoured. Pierce seems to not be terribly good on its own, but it's what long-reaching weapons have; so I guess it's okay.
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Might not be much of a surprise to anyone, but Holy damage tends to be ineffective vs gods and the royal family, or at least most of them. Among the 8 shard bearers, none of them are weak to holy, with Godrick, Morgott, Radahn, and Malenia all having Holy of their highest damage absorptions. Godfrey isn't a shardbearer but he's about as difficult, and he's also got strong Holy absorption. Granted, the remaining shardbearers tend to have Holy resist equivalent to all their other resistances, but still.
Reflecting on this, I can't help but feel like they did this damage type dirty. If there's a boss you're having issues with, it's almost guaranteed that boss resists Holy damage. If we zoom out our scope to include all remembrances, even the literal *LICHDRAGON* isn't weak to Holy but in fact resists it, and the Fire Giant resists more Holy Damage than Magic or Lightning. The only major boss with an arguable weakness to Holy is the Regal Ancestor Spirit. Puts a real bummer on Faith builds, especially with so few Flame Art ashes of war, and the Sanctified Whetblade being locked behind no less than two Great Runes without some major sequence breaking. I suppose it makes sense thematically, you wouldn't use the power of the gods to slay the gods, but I think they might've taken it too far.
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For a character with around 50 faith, what are the ups and downs of fire vs holy? Also, if said character had as much strength as they have faith, would fire affinity or flame art affinity be more ideal?
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Is there a GENERAL correlation between an area and weaknesses for the enemies there (granted there will be exceptions)? For instance, I assume (1) Snow area = weak to fire. (2) Volcano region = weak to frost. (3) ??? limgrave maybe? = weak to lightning. (4) ??? = weak to magic. (5) ??? caelid maybe? = weak to holy
And i wanna know todo if are enemies that doesent affect poison
Heey, i want to know if the afinitys of the ashes of war like poision or other called "oculto" in spanish, affect more to specific enemies and bosses
Thanks!
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Help please, I accidentally killed Miliscent and I can't finish the line quest. I need this talisman ROTTEN WINGED SWORD INSIGNIA someone has it on trade, please contact us
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Dude, what the **** is Phys (Thr)?? I have seen it listed as a weakness on so many of this sites individual pages but have yet to see an explanation for it. Like there’s a TON of unfinished information on here, especially concerning enemies’ weaknesses, but the amount of times “Physical Damage (Thr)” is listed w/o a single explanation of wth “THR” stands for is ridiculous… If it aint strike..or pierce..or slash.. w t f is Thr hooooooo my goodness lmao
I'm a little confused about weapons that have two PHYSICAL damage types. Like the Uchigatana and Twinblade for examples. Each say "Slash/Pierce", is it based on certain movements with each weapon? Because you could say the Uchigatana has a stabbing motion on the strong attack, but the Twinblade doesn't have any stabbing motions anywhere. Or is every movement both types at the same time, orrr is the outputted damage somehow split half and half regardless of movement? halp
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So can some explain this to me? When your weapon has (for example) 100 physical damage AND 50 magic damage, is the magic damage in addition to physical damage? So if you hit someone with this weapon without the magic damage, they will lose 100 HP. And if you hit them with the magic damage they lose 150 HP?
- Anonymous
So can some explain this to me? When your weapon has (for example) 100 physical damage AND 50 magic damage, is the magic damage in addition to physical damage? So if you hit someone with this weapon without the magic damage, they will lose 100 HP. And if you hit them with the magic damage they lose 150 HP?
- Anonymous
for lightning and holy, it should be put as it's own element. like, imagine fighting the Elden Beast with the sacred order great-sword
- Anonymous
for lightning and holy, it should be put as it's own element. like, imagine fighting the Elden Beast with the sacred order great-sword
- Anonymous
for lightning and holy, it should be put as it's own element. like, imagine fighting the Elden Beast with the sacred order great-sword
- Anonymous
Any idea what the difference is between Fire and Flame Art? Both add fire damage, but Flame Art scales better than Sacred on my Faith build...
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I want to have several different weapons that are effective in different situations. Can someone tell me if this makes sense? A strike damage weapon with magic or lightning (for armored enemies) A slash weapon with fire (for fleshy enemies) and a pierce weapon (fire or lightning) for the enemies in between. Does that make sense? I’m assuming it’s a little more complicated than that, but is this the right direction?
So, what exactly is Flame Art affinity? There's Fire and Flame Art. Both add fire damage. Anybody have any ideas? Has higher damage scaling than Holy on my mostly FTH build.
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at last they decided to dissociate magic damage from faith and they added holy
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Other than Rock Sling, what other spells deal physical damage?
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I have a question: if a have a weapon that deals physical damage, thunder AND fire, how the damage is divided?
- Anonymous
Blackguard npc's Cooked Crab/Prawns applies decent resistance to physical when consumed
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If a weapon has 2 damage types, is every attack an even split between the two? Or do different swings cause different damage types?
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So infusing weapons through ashes of war gives you a choice in scaling. Of course you have dex/str/quality, magic and ice scale off of int, holy scales off of fth, fire scales off of... strength??? Lightning scales off of dex? Ok, not everything can scale with fth. Except getting a red hot whetblade gives you a choice for fire to scale off of fth or strength? So using a sanctified whetblade would do the same for lightning? Nope, lightning still scales off of dex. What the hell is going on here?
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I tried all the elements against the Crystal Miners in Sellia Crystal Tunnel.
Fire is the most effective. Magic least effective. Holy/Lightning/Physical all fall in the middle.
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Maddening Magic, Poison Magic, Dark Magic and Blood Magic could probably use their own category here even if they are ailments it would be nice to know what at a glance is weak to those.
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What physical/elemental to use against ghosts? Just the same as their living counterparts?
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I noticed that lightning damage does increased damage to mechanical enemies such as the marionette soldiers and the iron maidens.
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Is standard damage jack of all trades ace of none type of damage?
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So how does split damage work? I.e physical plus fire for example?
Do you do 2 seperate damage outputs or just 1 according to enemy weakness?
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To the fools saying bleed is missing, understand that bleed, poison, rot, frostbite are AILMENTS.
Example: if a enemy uses an attack that inflicts Physical and Bleed, you have a shield that blocks 100% Physical, you will NOT take damage, you WILL still receive bleed BUILD UP as it is not damage.
To build RESISTANCES to bleed build up, increases your "Robustness"
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This was useful cuz I genuinely have no clue why someone would use anything other than physical damage.
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