Lightning Damage | Elden Ring Wiki

“You might have Vyke and the dragon lady on your side, but it’s gonna take more than that to convince-“
*Water lowers defense*
“OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”

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Is there an actual reason why lightning is yellow? Bloodborne was the only game to have blue lightning. Now blue is for ice lightning which is useless and underutilized. Yellow is for holy. Make sorcery green or purple. Lightning is blue.

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The is literally no reason why lightning affinity « should » scale off faith except it did in DS, and this simply isn’t DS. Hope that helps.
Yes there are lightning incantations, but there are also fire, holy, physical and even magic incantations. That doesn’t make lightning a faith thing. Rather the distinguishing characteristic of faith is its access to all damage types. This doesn’t make these damage types inherently faith aligned.

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You use lightning damage because it's meta pvp, I use it for that thunder god Kashimo vibe. We are not the same

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Time to melt Elden Beast with some new Convergence weapons.

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So does Lightning damage scale off of Dex or Faith?

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I think the in-universe reason why lightning doesn't scale off faith it's because it did once with the previous elden lord, placidusax, since all weapon skills regarding ancient dragon lightning are more like incantations using the weapon itself as a sacred seal. Whoever god placidusax served is no more, so lightning is utilized with different methods.

The dragon cult incantations are an exception, but one born out of an alliance between godwyn and gransax, an ancient dragon. These remain powerful nowadays, but neither godwyn nor gransax are with us anymore, so their power is somewhat diminished.

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Kashimo type beat

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The gigachad damage type

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My only serious gripe with lightning damage is there isn't a single lightning weapon outside of the erdsteel dagger you can scale with faith. If you wanna be a lightning caster I guess the best thing you can do is infuse a weapon with keen and use the vyke lightning spell.

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for the love of god just make a weapon better than the erdtree dagger so I can infuse it with lightning and get faith scaliiiiing!!!!

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why is there no normal version of a lightning arrow? only bone

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Jump when it hits you,then press r1 for a lightning reversa.... oh wrong game

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We have four ancient lightning weapons in the game. FOUR. And two of them dont even get their own skills.

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Looks to me like lightning damage will stance break faster on certain enemies. Easily testable on abductor virgins, but I think it also works against large golems as well. Using a dagger, with lightning infusion a virgin falls in 3-4 light attacks.

Can’t really verify on other enemies, but it does seem like I stance break with daggers on my dex lightning build more reliably than on my faith fire dagger build on a variety of enemies, even rune bears, but it could just be a feeling thing because it’s not particularly quick. May be a thing for more enthusiastic testers to consider delving into.

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Biggest thing missing in ER right now is a seal primarily made for DEX/FAI casters. The advantages of running incants over sorceries is the array of damage types and build varieties -- we've got pure FAI, FAI/STR, FAI/ARC, FAI/INT, and even the Frenzied Flame Seal which is doing its own thing. Of course a DEX/FAI seal would be kind of insane, because you could pump DEX to 70 to get the fast casting speed, saving a talisman slot, while still getting the benefits of decent incant scaling on your seal. But it's not like the other incant builds don't have advantages. I think it could still be balanced.

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I dont understand the use of lightning weapons in ER. Why and when should I go for one? Recent build is fully dex and I thought I should use the dex scaling of lightning infusions. But according to the weaknesses, there arent much enemies weak to lightning. Slash + strike + a fire resin and I pretty much have all enemy weaknesses covered. In DS a lightning strike weapon was a good choice, but not here due to those stoney folks. I get the advantage of a lightning weapon while raining or in water, but that cant be it?

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For anyone who is confused about the whole scaling thing, there is positives off getting Dex while doing a faith build. Dex speeds up your casting time, and since a good amount of Dragon Cult incantations are slow it makes that useful. Doesn't mean the Lightng affinities shouldn't scale with Faith, because they totally should, but at least there is a benefit.

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fromsoft devs really just decided to make an entire new type of incantation only to have it's weapons that do that type of damage not require any faith, ALL I ASK FOR IS CONSISTANCY SO I CAN MAKE A COOL LOOKING CHARACTER WITH A DECENT BUILD! ****!

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"Lightning Damage is often effective against heavily armored enemies, dragons and other draconic or serpentine creatures"

But on the damage type page:

"Ineffective Against:
Heavily Armored Enemies, Draconic Creatures, Fire-Oriented Creatures"

??

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You can use a +25 straight sword or broad sword with lightning slash and holy afinity. The afinity scales with your faith and the lightning damage you get from the buff doesn't scale with anything, so you can still be a pure faith build. That's just one example.

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They should do water spells with dexterity scaling

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How exactly is lightning damage scaling ? Do the incantations scale to FTH with weapons and skills scaling to DEX ?

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God, I wish there was a was to make a full on lightning build that makes use of lightning weapons AND spells. I don't want to choose between either a dex build or a faith build. I. Want. Both. Without levelling over rl 150. I mean. I get it why they made lightning aow dex based but.. my dragon cult build feels a bit out of place with a holy or even standard physical ( for electrify armament) infused longsword. ugh

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Why do I feel like lightning dmg has more poise dmg. Can anyone confirm? is it just the looks that makes my character seem to flinch more when hit?

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waiting for from to add a "lightning art" infusion

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makes sense for it mechanically to scale off dex similar to how fire scales off str, but idk why they didn't give us a faith version like flame art. they could do red dragon lightning or something for it.

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boilprawn bonfire duelist affinity of choice

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Chad Lightning damage vs Virgin Holy damage

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no lightning sorceries is a big fat oof.

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lightning try not to be the best elemental damage in all fromsoft's games challenge (impossible)

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You can do magic by knowing about constellations and believing hard enough in god in this universe it's really not a stretch to think that there'd be forms of magic that can be used through pure mechanical skill or through physical strength, more of an explanation would be interesting from a lore perspective, but ultimately it doesn't matter (and this isn't dark souls).


Lightning infusions didn't scale with Faith in DS1, Bloodborne and Sekiro have lightning damage without faith stats, so I guess we need an explanation for why you don't need to be religious to use lightning in those games too?

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So why is lightning damage associated with dex now?

"UHHH DEX=FAST and LIGHTNING=FAST STOP ASKING QUESTIONS"

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UHHHH how about a lighting weapon with at least SOME FTH scaling?

I hope they add some cool FTH weapons in the DLCs if there will be some.

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Dex scaling? Please. Not putting a single rune into dex. STRENGTH.

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I'm fine with Lightning affinity scaling with dexterity in this game now, but Fromsoftware did a horrible job in explaining it in the lore.

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Very useful since it's almost always raining in WP, Dragonbarrow, and Southern Liurnia is a giant water level

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best damage stat in pve so fsr from my testing and idk why , generally everything except maybe elctric dragons are either have 0 resistance to electric , rarely negative resistance and most times lower resistance than say fire or magic , at worst creatures are eutral to this damage type. Pair this with a strike physical base damage type weapon and voila , theres nothing left in game you cant kill.

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I know that weather (rain) is stated to increase lightning damage and reduce fire damage, but it is not just limited to this. First of the rain is limited to recent contact, if in rain or roughly 15 seconds after leaving the rain or rain stopping, you and enemies gain +20% fire resistance and - 20% lightning resistance, shelter also prevents this effect, so if you enter a building it takes roughly 15 seconds before your back to normal. This should also apply to enemies even if it is raining outside if the enemy is standing in a shack it should not take less/more damage from fire/lightning.

This effect can also be applied by water, when standing in water you take 10% more lightning and 10% less fire damage, the moment you step out of the water onto dry land the effect is nullified immediately. Though interestingly enough if you roll in any water you get an unlisted "drenched" effect, similar to poison/rot pools, This effect lasts roughly 15 seconds as well applying +10% fire resist and -10% lightning resist, that also stacks with the effect from standing in water in total applying +19% fire resist and -21% lightning resist (due to how stats stack in Elden ring).

I do not know if the rain effect also stacks as well since I haven't tested it yet, but in theory it should grant +35.2% fire resist and -45.2% lightning resist if rain, standing in water and "drenched" effects stack. This was tested with no armor and no talismans with a base 0% resist in both fire and lightning while unaffected by any water be it standing or raining. (Or under a waterfall which I haven't tested yet, but theoretically would be considered standing in water and "drenched" if it isn't its own effect).

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Maybe what I'm about to say has something to due with how defense is calculated, but I noticed the most consistent crit damage on my Miser. (Which is really effective vs Human type enemies.)

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It seems that while yes this does do the most damage it also takes a **** ton of stats to do well, INCANTATIONS scale w/ faith (but dex helps with cast time) no str, But a Lightning ASH OF WAR scales with Dex only, but the WEAPON itself only scales with dex and str, (no faith) which means you need to put a lot of levels into Fth, Dex (like 65 each at least) and adequate str otherwise your holy weapons will typically outshine them AND have high vig (50 min), end (35-40) for big armor and wtv damage u take to charge most spells. But man the buffs are worth it with golden vow stacked too. Taste my Lightning ****ers

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Does Electrify Armament interact with the lightning stat at all? If my weapon has +lightning will it further buff the spell?

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Weapons section should include Dragon King's Cragblade

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rain lowers your resistance to lighting damage

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A bit of a bummer that fire infusions can make use of the sanctified whet stone but you are locked in for dex with if you want lightning.

For example. I can scale fth redmanes flame using pure flame affinity and it still do fire damage only. With lightning slash there seems to be no way that I know of to keep lightning on your blade to scale with faith. Or am I missing something here.

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Something seems to be extremely off about lighting. No stat right now scales lightning defence, not even endurance like it did in older games.

This is Huge, try to reallocate your stats on rebirth, i can guarantee you will get same lightning defence no matter how you set up your stats! So basically all lvl 100 builds for example will have same crappy lightning defence no matter their built. This literally makes lightning damage best offensive damage type besides pure physical in PVP period.

This could be a bug or a intentional choice to nerf endurance. Since endurance gives weight and stamina i guess they decided to remove its lightning defence bonus? Or maybe since you need dex for lightning infusions you are bound to have a squishy character so this is suppose to give you an upper hand?

This is on top of the fact lightning damage gets a huge buff in rain.

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Best for pvp, for some reason none of the stats raise the lightning defence. I bet your lowest resistance is lightning.

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According to the information in this very wiki, dragons are not weak to lightning, neither are wyrms. Some dragons are even particularly resistant to lightning.

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Only two weapons come with innate lightning damage meanwhile everything else requires using a skill or incantation. Kinda wack when all the others seem to have a plethora of weapons with innate magic, fire, or holy.

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Lightning does AoE dmg when hitting a water surface

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The "Best Lightning Defense Armor" is listed as a body piece which is unattainable in-game. Could be Bull-Goat's instead like the rest?

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I'm not 100% sure on this, but I believe that Lightning damage is buffed in the rain, I have seen a few instances of lighting attacks that usually dont kill the player, suddenly ones hotting while its raining. Needs further testing, but I know you get a buff when attacking something standing in water, so it's not too far fetched. Would be useful to put in a wikiarticle like this if it's proven right.

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would it even be worth it to mainly go lightning with blood being so op?

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Effective on dragons?? Lightning seems to hit like a wet noodle on the ones in Crumbling Farum Azula. Am I missing something?

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The best type of damage, especially in PvP, due to players likely having endurance on the lower side and most heavy armors having less lightning resistance. Not surprising at all, been a trend since ds2, maybe even ds1.

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Missing Dragon Halberd, Dragon King's Cragblade, Dragon Greatclaw and Veteran Prothesis.

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I'm under the impression that lightning increases posture damage. I can break stances of large enemies with a lightning enchantment applied to my weapon when normally they wouldnt ever get knocked into a vulnerable state. Can anyone confirm if this works for them as well?

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where is the earliest ash of war with lightning, please? are they all in the capital? (I just got to Altus) is there a whet stone that gives lightning as a scaling option, or do you just get it directly from Ash of War, please?

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Scales with Dex only

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The Dragonkin halberd's ash of war inflicts lightning (and frost) damage and enchants the weapon with both elements for a little while

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Does lighting scale with anything ?? I know for a fact it is not faith

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Does lightning have a stun modifier?

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Likely affected by your wetness. If you stand under the rain you'll get extremely low lightning damage resistance.

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For anyone wondering the ran lowers your lightning resist and strengthens your fire resist... Was ticking me off trying to figure it out

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Looking at my stats and i see -8 lightning resist... So i take off all my gear and now its -20 at base... what is causing this weakness to light for me??

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There is an Electrify Armament spell too that gives your weapon electricity damage.

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