Lightning Strike | Elden Ring Wiki

Can be chained into honed bolt in PvP as a mixup, so that's cool. If they dodge bad they get hit.

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This incantation has nearly no downward vertical limit, you can be on top of a castle or mountain and blast things far below you so long as it lies within its zig-zag strike pattern. Other spells I know that act similarly, flame of the fell god lingering aoe effect, and the briars of punishment sorcery; also have no downward limit.

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Doesn’t seem to hit airborne enemies. Which is weird considering it’s a lightning strike

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I thought I got every single spell but somehow I missed this one single spell, and I just noticed in ng-plus.

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¡HERMANA!

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How to get this very easily:

1. Get close enough to start the lightning, but not all the way down (so you're still beyond the reach of the bats).
2. Go afk.
3. Come back half an hour later to see the 'item obtained' screen.

The lightning will damage the scarab as well as you / the bats, but the scarab won't run if hit - it'll just roll back to its original location after a few seconds. Since the lightning only does damage to things that have hitboxes touching the ground (as in the earth, not the gravestones you use to get down to the scarab), as long as you're sitting on a gravestone when the lightning starts, you can just let that do all the work for you.

Cheesy? Yes, but so is simultaneously rigging an incantation scarab area with ~12 bats and a lightning storm. You're just responding in kind to From's tired old 'everything's a trap' shtick by doing this IMO.

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I've killed the scarab and the spell simply don't appear in my inventory ;-;

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This spell looks so cool. If only it would hit more reliably.

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can be chain cast with honed bolt. get them to roll with honed bolt then free aim this bad boy to where they're gonna end up

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It's not bad. A lot of people say it's outclassed by frozen lightning spear or Lansseax's Glaive but tbh I've had more success with this than either spell. For some reason people are really good at dodging Lansseax's Glaive so you can't really hit anyone unless they're distracted and even then they have the casting audio cue. Frozen has more range and spread so it's more likely you'll hit someone but this can be chain cast and each cast after the first makes the lightning hit sooner than the first cast. It also combos with honed bolt. A lot of people tend to doge towards the caster so they can prevent a honed bolt spam so using this first will bait their roll and a chained honed bolt will roll catch them which sometimes sets them up to get hit by this spell since the strikes are delayed. I've done 1k damage reliably from either just chain casting this free aimed or with the honed bolt combo.

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This with honed bolt is amazing against mages.. if you're running a full faith build then it's worth looking into. Granted, there's also barrier of gold, but any time I use that, the mages just run away stalling the timer the entire time without attacking. Lightning strike fairs much better for me.

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why does this have a higher requirement than the ancient dragon version lmao

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Bro it cant be cast inside of most places like the room in Stormveil where you get stuck with the Banished Knight it just doesnt appear

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This is a pain in the arse to get but very much worth it. Any new players reading the comments should take those saying this isn't up to much with a load of salt, try it for themselves and make up their own minds. After the first cast repeated L1s come out much faster and for a pack the target lock can be moved from one to the next and each target will get their brains fried inside their helms.

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This spell's only application is to assail an opponent with visual noise as you chain cast into honed bolt. The aoe sucks and is inconsistent, damage is eh. Frozen lightning spear outperforms this spell in every way

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This spell exists to be cast a single time after conditioning your opponent with honed bolt spam, then immediately returning to honed bolt spam after.

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I think 1.06 has nerfed this spell.

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Needs to be a bit faster to cast. Even after the cast it takes a while for the bolts to come down

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this spell is buggy **** sometimes it doesnt trigger at all. probably caused by line of sight

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Note that the long delay only happens for the first strike, casting it repeatedly (one after another) causes it to hit faster. Didnt notice this before but it even mentions it in the obscure spell description so its actually a feature. Makes up for the otherwise lower dmg and comparison of the frost lightning version. Can be done with honed bolt also.

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in PvP, it performs better with no target lock, since you can manually aim where the row of bolts will go and the opponent will get randomly hit if they try to get close.
not that reliable past mid range, but it's alright for chip damage.

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Actually quite decent when you are trying to finish off AWARE opponent who is just a tiny bit away from being dead. Why? Because nobody can predict where those lightnings gonna land. Plus, not all lightnings land at same time, they seem to land in sequence, which further makes it harder to dodge these.

And the icing on top? You can chain cast Honed Bolt with this. Cast this, and while your opponent is struggling to dodge a hail of lightning strikes from sky, chain cast Honed Bolt to snipe him, lmao.

Excellent combo.

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I feel like frozen lightning spear performs way better than this. At least in pve. This one here is kinda weird and the image is a bit confusing. It, for me, looks more like this spell shoots through the ground like beast claw. Animation is kinda slow too. But at least you can combo it after other spells. Dunno how to feel about it. I probably would use this more frequently, if it was a bit faster.

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Bolt pattern seems random, but it's not. From the player's positions, first two bolts go straight and then form a crescent shape like a shotel, with the inside of the curve on the right.

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Needs a speed buff for pve

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Great in PvP. Good range and damage and chainable. Bolts are kinda random so you might hit or might not, but then again from your opponent's perspective they might dodge or they might not. The risk of this randomness is mitigated because you can use it at a safe range. I like to punish rolls towards me with catch flame, then when they roll away I beast sling --> chain into lightning strike. Then I can chain into other spells like triple-rings to keep the pressure up at midrange.

Especially good in Liurnia because water.

Elaboration about why this can be hard to dodge in PvP: your i-frames are what you see on _your_ screen, but your position is what your opponent sees on _their_ screen. With latency, this means you shouldn't dodge the bolt which is about to strike where you are now, you need to dodge the bolt which is about to strike where your position was 0.5 seconds ago. This is difficult to judge in the heat of battle.

This spell is balanced by its stamina and fp cost, but is still excellent in many situations. You can get it very early too. I didn't even mention PvE (great for big enemies and groups).

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Pretty good vs The Fire Giant on NG. Had 74 Faith using +10 Erdtree seal. I was by no means biting chunks outta that healthbar, but was certainly better and more consistent than chucking lightning spears one at a time, as those tended to miss too much for my taste.

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It's a decent spell to use after Honed Bolt in PvP once your opponent is timing their dodges correctly as it's combo-able, and you can unlock and aim it towards where they are rolling.

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This spell is devastating in pvp. It’s unpredictable and almost no tell and long range. With lag there’s no escaping it because the window for a dodge is very small.

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I struggled to find this scarab!! But I found that the easiest way to get to it is from the Ailing Village Outskirts site of grace, heading SW along the cliff edge until you find those tombstone-shaped ledges to platform down from. I highly recommend you just range attack it from the last platform because it's definitely going to disappear before you're done killing the 10 bats that swarm you while simultaneously dodging lightning blasts from the nearby flowers....

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really good for big bosses like Magma Wyrms and Dragons, plus dragons take bonus damage. You can hit them multiple times if you space it right and melt their HP bar. Also you can chain cast. On top of that it looks awesome. People say lightning spells are bad but who cares if you look cool as **** shooting lightning everywhere

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This spell is insane as a follow-up to catch flame or bestial sling as it significantly reduces the cast time (since it is a chain casting spell), honed bolt as a follow-up to this can also be quite good if you have high cast speed (like in a dex/faith build with Radagon's Icon) as you can use the honed bolt follow-up as a roll catch or the stagger component for the delay to go off.

PvE wise, its ok in enclosed places.

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Reduce the initial cast/recovery times, and make it actually hit what you put in the zone, and this spell will be great.

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damage nerfed and fp cost increased 17 > 21 with the shadow nerfs of 1.03 patch

this is ridiculous. it seems like almost all of the dragon cult incantations were nerfed it's like dark souls 2 all over again
literally nobody asked to nerf lightning. nobody. why from why

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Its on the shelf ABOVE the bottom of the crevasse as it's a two-tiered canyon, was looking all over at the bottom where the tunnel is.

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This and Honed Bolt have the same startup animation and can be chained into each other. With Honed Bolt being instant, and Lightning Strike being delayed, maybe good in PVP?

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For those of you who experience this failing to spawn more than 1 or 2 damaging bursts, check to make sure you have Frame Rate prioritized in your options. Just like hoarfrost stomp.

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can you get out of the area you find this spell in without warping or dying?

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This spells simply doesn't even work half the time.

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I was down there last night fighting off those stupid bats and when I finally killed them it was gone...

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I've found that targeting a distant enemy causes the lightning to hit more enemies as it 'arcs' between the mobs to get to its end target.

If you target the closes and attack with this spell, it feels less effective.

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Great spell against big targets or groups of slow small ones. Can be chained cast.

No meant to be used against smaller fast targets, you have lightning spear for that

8/10 spell.

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Thought this was garbage until I realized you can instantly recast it after you initially cast it and repeat the process for as long as you have FP.
I still think it’s garbage, but you can use it to burst down certain enemies, hit enemies that are in weird locations and make PvP’ers panic.

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This spell is great early game against mounted knights, get them to chase you then cast it backwards

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Boy, it feels like Spells are far better than Incantations could ever hope to be. I guess we have beastclaw...?

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I figured it might serve as a Prophet's Glintstone Arc, or an AoE conal damage spell that helps crowd control with stagger, but the strikes, despite lighting up the area in front of you as if that were the area about to be AoE'd, it fires 4-5 randomly placed bolts somewhere in there and not only will miss a not insignificant number of the targets in that zone, but can even miss the target you were locked onto in the first place! Also, it can even cancel early if the first strike hits something (usually if you cast it onto something directly in front of you). I could see it being very devastating if you could land all strikes on a big target, but as general use spell, it's not very good. It could be patched so that each bolt has more strike area but less damage so you don't have the case of one enemy being nuked by several bolts, especially since the FP cost would be quite fair, even cheap. I'm not asking for it to be OP after all, just a bit more utility.

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It's a really cool spell, but the delay is annoying. It makes it that it might not hit your desired target, and the initial cast time is already pretty long. Not bueno. Decent for groups of enemies though especially if they're in a line. Can also be chain cast so the subsequent ones come out way faster. Overall I'd give it a 6/10.

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This incantation costs 21 FP FYI

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Shoots a fairly random conical pattern of lightning strikes down in front of you, each hitting for a bit more than Lightning Stake. Not cost-effective against human-sized enemies. However, against colossal hitboxes, the lightning can strike more than once (I just defeated a dragon with this a few minutes ago) and you can chain-cast it quite a lot more quickly than the first cast goes off. This incant is purpose-built for dumping your FP bar rapidly into giant monster damage, and in that specific usage, it's very good. Wouldn't use it on anything else, though.

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this incantation is GARBAGE.

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dragons are known for lightning now? wtf

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dragons are known for lightning now? wtf

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