Hoo boy, so... that most recent patch! I feel a bit exhausted exploring poise, though I don't really mind the videos being a little outdated for the time being, since understanding the underlying systems is more important than any specific numbers involved. Nonetheless I'll think about making yet another poise video much later on, perhaps a sort of "where poise wound up" sort of discussion when the game is more settled in its lifespan. But what are the biggest and most important changes you've noticed? Anything that impacts your PvE or PvP experience in an interesting way? Let me know!
Something I’ve noticed is that sometimes at very high poise values it feels like I’m actually getting less hyper armor than I would at lower poise, am I crazy and if not what’s going on there?
Great video! Any chance you'd examine the best ways to consistently break enemy stance now that Flame of the Redmanes has been nerfed? I believe 1.08 had other overarching poise damage nerfs as well so I'd be interested in your thoughts
Amazing Video. Thanks for all the Effort of researching and explaining all of this. Since English is not my first language I'd like to thank you especially for speaking very clearly. Following normal conversations poses no problem for me, since unclearly spoken words can still be understood from context. However for complicated explanatory videos like this it's important to understand every single word and I have absolutely no problems following you. I still have a question though. You mentioned how some enemies have 'poise-invincibility' during certain attacks in your first Video and how you can't reduce their poise when attacking during that invincibility. Does the attack still reset the timer though?
So I spent most of yesterday figuring out the exact amount of armor poise I needed to get 201 poise for indefinite trading with the Godslayer's Greatsword using the calculator from the description and figured out I needed exactly 65 armor poise, and then I looked at a bunch of different armor calculators trying to find the least endurance I needed to get that much poise. Fun times. Then I went on the PvP discord and found the updated version of the hyper armor calculator, and it turns out that with the latest data, using that weapon my indefinite trading hyper armor is always between 200 and 250 with bullgoats talisman no matter if I'm naked or wearing full bull goats armor or anything in between. Queen's Black Flame will always resist two heavy enemy attacks or four light enemy attacks no matter what you're wearing, or one and three attacks without the talisman. You should probably edit the descriptions to link to the v0.13.6 calculator so you don't have other nerds like me wasting time due to outdated info.
That’s not actually science. Science would require a real world experiment the results of which repeat every iteration. Most of what people popularly call “science”, isn’t.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstoneYou really need to learn what Science is. I find it impressive you say it with such crazy confidence. Science is a methodology... Not "experimentation"
After my LvL1 no summon run I was convinced that Malenia could not only ignore poise damage but can actively refill poise damage while ignoring it. Thanks for confirmation.
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish the difference is that sekiro didn't had this shit around, at most, with sword Saint you had to stay always on aggro or his bar would refill instantly
You are my favourite channel on TH-cam right now. I am very much a numbers guy and finding out the most bizarre ways Fromsoft makes their games "work" is something that brings me a lot of joy.
Oh then you must have loved learning about the Vagrants from DS1. I never even knew they existed until I found this channel and he dug into their workings.
I have a theory on why the abductors require that last hit to poise break. The damage conversation is causing the poise check to miss timing. To more clearly clarify, The poise break check seems to happen immediately after poise damage from an attack is inflicted. Attack->Damage->poise break check. vs. the replacement effect. Attack->damage->damage negation->poise break check->reassign poise damage. At least that is the theory.
@@gmradio2436 Whenever I see a "something going into the negatives when it already hit 0", it reeks of floating point errors or a comparison lacking an _or equal to_
I'm gonna be away from Elden Ring testing for the next couple days so I haven't been getting to the questions in the comments here just yet, but I will later this week! So fire away, I do plan on getting to them. :)
Has Mogh got a Poise break gimmick like Malenia in the sense you can't Posture Break him during certain animations? Second Phase specifically feels like it has inconsistent breaks when I was fighting him today.
I've noticed that Maliketh can teleport a la the overworld dragons, though Maliketh saves this for when he's stuck in or on a pillar. However, I recently saw the Caelid Godskin Apostle fall asleep in the middle of its boss room, fade away like an overworld dragon while being invincible, then fade in at its initial spawn point, wide awake. What could have caused this, and what bosses can do these emergency teleports? Can normal enemies, important NPCs, etc. do this as well?
Extra question: Do spirit ash summons do the same poise damage and have the same poise as their normal counterparts? And if not which spirit has the most poise?
@@Sir_Twiggy In Mohg's second phase he gains poise damage reduction. Something in the range of 15-20%, I forgot the exact number. During Nihil he also takes reduced poise damage (or none, again, I forgot) and heals poise health with every Nihil. It's very hard to break his posture right after the phase transition as a result. His flight -> bloodflame throw -> sweep attack does prevent you from posture breaking him in a sense... because he has s in it, for some reason.
Eyy, thanks for the shoutout about the Impact system! I spent some time figuring it out for a mod I made, so I'm happy to summarize how I understand it: Every attack in the game has a defined "dmgLevel" which determines the kind of attack it is--this corresponds to the "dmgLv_S", "dmgLv_M", etc that you show at 23:25. When an attack lands, the victim checks the Impact level of the attack and compares it to their own Impact table (again, the table you show at 23:25) to determine how they react to it. For example: if an attack is "dmgLv_Push" and an enemy is set to be knocked down when hit by a "dmgLv_Push" attack, then it will always be knocked down when hit by that attack--meanwhile another enemy might be set to ignore it completely. The Crystalians are special because they start out with all Impact levels set to "ignore", but when their stance is broken their internal Impact table is changed so all Impact levels trigger a stagger. The same thing happens in reverse when a player uses something like Leaden Hardtear, which temporarily changes the player's Impact table to ignore the lighter Impact types (the Poise stat is unaffected by the spEffect). Edit: I should clarify, a character's Impact table not only determines IF they get staggered by a particular attack, but also HOW they get staggered. It can be set to things like short stagger, long stagger, stumble backward, and knockdown. It's especially noticeable with dogs, which get thrown back by most heavy attacks while other enemies will stagger but stay on their feet.
After a little more digging, I found where knockback settings are defined for NPCs. As far as I can tell, there's a default set of behavior that defines a stagger animation for each impact level (Small, Medium, Push, Strike, and so on), and then certain enemies have a spEffect assigned to them that overrides either some or all of that default behavior. Since the animations are directly tied to the category of stagger, for the most part this leads to logical results for short staggers, long staggers, and so on. However, I found that the reason dogs are easy to knockdown (instead of staggering while staying upright) is because their default animation for long staggers is the knockdown animation. They aren't specifically coded to distinguish between, say, a 2h claymore attack vs the Wrath of God spell--they just play the same animation for anything heavier than a short stagger. Also a note about the override spEffects: You'll find those override spEffects defined within NpcParam for the relevant enemies. However a lot of the spEffects aren't labeled so you just have to check manually if a certain spEffect changes an enemy's impact table.
Does the impact table include rarer animations such as falling down? Under specific circumstances enemies like zamor knights can be knocked down on the floor onto their back. This fall on back/face animation seems to occur when both elevation change and attack is applied to an enemy.
@@unuseableb Yes and no. It does include that, but if I understand you correctly, you're actually describing a special case that involves being airborne. I haven't tested this much so take this with a grain of salt, but basically if you stagger someone while they're in the air it will automatically trigger a knockdown regardless of the attack's original impact level. This is especially entertaining when you smack a misbegotten out of their jumping attack. The other exception I know of is headshots, which basically upgrades a lighter stagger to a heavier one. I don't know the details of how this works though.
@@javi7636 Interesting. I'm a bit late, but I think this would explain a funny interaction I've found. The Sanguine Noble that spawns as you enter the Mohgwyn Palace Mausoleum (guarding the path to the merchant) has the usual animation of emerging from a pool of blood. Thing is, if you stand against his back (trying for the easy backstab), he'll comically faceplant into the dirt. I think this may be caused by the spawn animation making the game think he's midair, which leads to a weird interaction where the player goomba-stomps him... which in turn triggers the auto-knockdown you mentioned. Oh, and a semi-related thing I thought of: in a randomizer video I watched, the God-Devouring Serpent was replaced by Fire Giant phase 2. Sometimes (I personally think it was caused by how the player moved, but this wasn't tested), when the boss spawned, he'd instantly splat as though he fell from a great height (keep in mind he didn't spawn until the player got to where the snake would normally aggro). Hilarious, and makes me wonder how the Fire Giant really calculates falls (and what they did in the patches to fix the fall cheese).
Virgin Abductor: Gets its stance broken by a single cast of Night Maiden's Mist, something that doesn't even drain the poise of other enemies. Chad Abductor: Takes the most 2H Charged R2s from Great Clubs, more than any other enemy, to have its stance broken. Yet they're one and the same! 😆
I noticed the "flinch level" system particularly when using a whip. Whips have fairly low poise damage, and it takes a lot to break a lot of heavier enemies' (like a banished knight, or the regional frog knights) stances, but at the same time, most whip attacks will cause said heavier enemies to flinch as if hit by an R2 of a larger weapon.
Damn, I should try out a whip build then. I've been frustrated with the DmgLvl system, felt like it was pushing me to spam jump heavies with most builds.
Yup. Whips are actually incredibly effect at stunlocking Malenia as a result. Two players alternating whip attacks can fully stunlock her in both phases, provided you land the first hit out of hyper armor. With three players, you regen enough stamina in between each hit to do so permanently without stamina regen buffs.
In my head i understand this er poise system like this: 1. There's PVE Poise, or enemy poise, or stance HP, which's basically a bar that you can drain by hitting enemies to open them for a ripost hit. 2. There's PVP Poise, or player poise, or Toughness Durability, which is a number that allows us to withstand a certain amount of poise damage without flinching. 3. The Toughness, which determines whether an enemy or the player can be flinched or not, and PVE Toughness works basically the same way as player's Toughness, but it doesn't have Toughness Durability, because PVE Enemies simply don't have PVP poise bar, which would allow them to withstand a certain amount of attacks without flinching. It also has two types, the first one just allows the player or an enemy not to flinch, for example aoe endure or any big boss has that type and it's the most common, and the second type of Toughness is the one that allows both not to flinch and deflect some smaller attacks, which is given to the player when having drank ironjar aromatic, and some pve enemies have it like for example crystalians before being broken and stone digger trolls. 4. Hyper armor. Hyper armor is just an event/script that increases player's PVP Poise/Toughness Durability during certain animations. So there you have it all, PVE Poise, PVP Poise, Toughness and Hyper Armor.
You missed a trio of 'consumable' items that can also be used to damage poise, and one of them in particular I would contend is probably one of the best options in some situations. Namely, the Wraith Line of items; The Wraith Caller Bell, The Omen Bairn, and the Regal Omen Bairn. The Wraith Caller Bell does 3 Poise Damage on bullet impact, while both Omen Bairns do 15 Poise Damage on the initial explosive burst, and 1 Poise Damage on each bullet impact. Because the Wraith Caller Bell is quick to use, low on the FP Cost, has extremely long range and ridiculously good tracking, I think it is the best consumable to use for a lot of more evasive enemies, in particular enemies that auto-dodge on ranged attacks and spells. Because the bullet travels relatively slowly and has such good tracking it can basically hit anything even if it dodges because they'll dodge the initial cast, not the bullet. The only enemy I have seen ever avoid these bullets are those freakin' Dragonflies when they get into their stupid "Wheee I'm just gonna fly in circles" pattern. And man, all of these quirks and weird rules and things like the poise dead-zone really just convince me that From Software has built up a lot of 'Cruft' under the hood from all of their games just being iterated upon. I really hope that for the next game they make From Software takes the time after Elden Ring to do a full Refactoring of a lot of their systems, such as Poise. I really think they need to just gut this system and rebuild it from the ground up to create a unified Poise System that governs both PvE and PvP, Staggering and Stance Breaking. You could even put the Parry system into a comprehensive enough Poise system so there wouldn't need to be the weird "Riposte every 3 hits" system that a small handful of enemies taken from Sekiro have.
I've seen a lot of Souls game stat related videos but this is the only one that I truly felt like I gained Insight IRL, especially from 24:00 on. Wtf is going on in this game lmao. Well done
The roundabout poise system for Abductor Virgins sort of makes sense in the context of them being basically a mech suit for snakes. You can't poise break the suit itself, but if you bang on it enough the snakes inside might get a headache. Also the lightning doing more because they're made of metal.
I almost never rely on stance breaks in ER because itd always felt so inconsistent that just being patient and waiting for regular damage felt like the better play. Even knowing how it works from this and the last videos didn't really change how i handle it except that maybe i'm more likely than before to use R2s than R1s. What was interesting to me is learning what i guess is the DmgLvl mechanic. After farming banished knight armor on several characters, i'd noticed by greatsword/colossal characters being able to handle them effortlessly while my straight sword, katana, etc characters had to spend ages playing cat-and-mouse with them because they just didn't stagger no matter what. It would be awesome to see a deep dive into this specific mechanic.
I think this is why we can't see the bar. If it did show the bar, it would make players focus so much on this mechanic, and it would turn to something like Sekiro, it would feel like a totally different game. The way I see this, is that I just play the game normally, but try to be aggressive (when I can) so I can maybe brake the stance.
Not only that but imo the riposte damage is also way to low in Elden Ring. If I break an enemies stance and I spam some powerful Ash of War or Spell I will do more damage than a riposte and since I do not have to break a stance to do that might as well not bother
@@MemoriesLP So far, using a riposte has almost always been worse. I even did some comparisons. The only exceptions I found are the Giant Stone Golems and the Octopus Enemies where a critical attack does massive damage.
@@envoyofrot7046 some enemies get out of the stagger to fast depending on the weapon. So you can do like only 1 charge attack and thats it, making the riposte better. While other weapons allow you to do multiple attacks, making the riposte worse. Sometimes doing one R1 attack and riposte is better... etc If you watch multiple people playing this game, doing challenges or speedrun, they will vary between riposte and normal attacks depending on all these variables Ive been talking about.
So in this video I issued a somewhat casual challenge for breaking an Ancient Dragon's Stance in NG+7, due to how much of a hassle that is. Well 'Color Green' on youtube here accepted and delivered! th-cam.com/video/lRCRZYJLbsk/w-d-xo.html The successful attempt begins at the 3 minute mark. Good job!
(NG cycle) An additional way to get poise break (is it more effective than Spectral Lance?) - i.ibb.co/qD6QLSp/20220824174640-1.jpg Besides, have some additonal questions about poise damage: a) What about Lansseax? Is her poise resitance the same as Farum Azula Dragons? b) What about scaling of poise damage? As in case of Ancient Dragons I encounter the basic problem, that they die before poise break happens (as head itself takes massive damage).
Spectral Lance does high poise damage but, in my experience, low damage to health. The player was probably concerned about what you mentioned, killing the dragon before staggering it, since the challenge was getting the stagger. Gravity Bolt does quite a bit of damage to both. It also doesn't have a very long range, though it's accurate. Spectral Lance landed in this clip when the player was too far for Gravity Bolt. If you want to hang closer to the dragon and your goal is just to defeat it, Gravity Bolt from the Fallingstar Beast Jaw could be better.
@@joshk494 Well, you can get Fallingstar Beast Jaw at +0 with minimal requirements met. Then you deal the same poise damage as at higher level and less damage to boss health. tested it on Lansseax at NG+ and I poise break it with more than 60-70% total health left. Spectral Lance is harder to land. By the way, Poise Damage does not scale. At least one from Gravity Bolt.
@@r3dn3ck3r3 no, poise damage does not scale, so an unupgraded Fallingstar Beast Jaw would work well to test this, maybe more accurate but again with less range. I was just taking a guess as to why Spectral Lance was preferred, obviously I don't know. I am unsure how how much poise damage the two skills do by comparison, I am more familiar with how strong Gravity Bolt is.
Hey, got a question related to other topic - could you check the Erdtree Heal incantation and how it affects Crucible Knight? As there is a unique interaction with one from Farum Azula, that seems to not work with those met at Limgrave or Siofra. @Josh K Small update - all 3 Ancient Dragons riposted i.ibb.co/cJfcpfy/Riposted-Dragons.jpg
I don't know if it's worth a full video, but something related to free-aim/projectile travel seems very interesting to me. Possibly looking into why certain items have different behavior, such as the pot of bees being thrown half the distance as normal pots, or the rancor pot's free aim spirit tracking? The abundance of projectile items has just fascinated me since release, I'd love to see more in depth discussion of these overlooked tools.
Finally, a video touching on Damage Levels, I did a lot of searching around and could never find any explanation about it. Can't wait for a deeper look on it.
I could spend, at least, a total year of my life listening to you talk about these random subjects. Please keep up the work so long as you enjoy doing so.
I always wondered why Elden stars was so effective against the abductor virgins, I thought it was just effectively hitting it when it was open it something like that. Good to know 😁 amazing video
I'm so very glad that this video was made. Especially since #10 got addressed, as that's how I thought it worked from my own playtime and vanilla testing, but after the first video I was a bit confused. Love seeing update videos to keep info correct, so good job!
Genuinely one of the most underrated channels on the platform. I really enjoy the in depth breakdowns of all the weird, wacky, and nonsensical mechanics from the “soul’s series”, but these kinds of videos are cream of the crop. Going over mechanics that are actually relevant to the playing experience and keeping it all entertaining, truly great stuff!
Considering that it functions pretty much identically to Posture in Sekiro, I've just always referred to it as Posture when talking about stance breaks, and Poise when talking about staggers. Like I would need to deal 80 Posture damage to stance break Malenia (assuming she feels like playing by the rules in that particular instance) but I only need to deal a small amount of Poise damage to stagger her with an attack (assuming she feels like playing by the rules in that particular instance). And since there's no stance breaks in PvP, Poise is just Poise. Calling everything Poise and having to specify which Poise is annoying.
Well, I think at the end of the day you'll have to specify which is which no matter what. By your system, it sounds like you'd also refer to the minor flinches in PvE as Poise? But since that uses dmgLvL instead, when you talk about poise damage, items that buff poise damage, etc, you'd have to clarify that you're only talking about PvP. So "normal" Poise still has to be singled out as "PvP Poise", specifically. You can't refer to what causes minor staggers for Melania as the same thing, if you're going to explain how it all works it needs to be clarified as being something different. Calling it Posture has its own problems. It's not called posture anywhere in-game in Elden Ring, so anyone who hasn't played Sekiro might be thrown by that. While it's conceptually *very* similar, that did work a bit differently behind the scenes, so that's another reason you don't hear me calling it Posture. I'd just go with Stance / PvE Poise. That's just a very specific nitpick of mine though, most players will still know what you mean by Posture probably. The mechanics are convoluted enough that there's really no way to talk about these things at a deeper level without having to specify a few things. This reminds me of my very first Dissected video, which was about Sin in Dark Souls 1. The game never breaks things down specifically for you, but there are actually two seperate Sin mechanics; PvP Sin and PvE Sin. At a certain point you just have to figure out the least-messy way to talk about things, while also being accurate to how things really work.
Thanks for the detailed Q&A, as well as clarifying the dragons' bizarre poise mitigations! I've always appreciated your work and was elated to find an update, even back when you were just running a Tumblr page. Your explanation on enemies not taking poise damage from "throws" was neat, but do players take poise damage from ripostes, backstabs, and actual throws? Also, if a throw whiffs and does minor contact damage, does a player still take poise damage? Similarly, if a spirit summon is hit by a grab that can't grab them (ex: Hoarah Loux's grabs), will the whiff strike deal poise damage? Also, how is the whiff strike damage calculated (fraction of the proper grab, separate value, etc.)? Thanks again, Illusory Wall!
Ah so players don't take poise damage from backstabs and ripostes either. All attacks do the same amount of poise damage in PvP and PvE so that is consistent there (minding that we have to scale the numbers up x10 for PvP to match the poise value for players shown in the menu). You can find all of the exact values in the linked spreadsheet (click on the Poise Damage - PvP tab). Unfortunately I'm not sure of the best way to test whiffs, is there an enemy whose grab is relatively easy to miss but still causes damage somehow? Sadly I'm also currently unable to see the poise of spirit ash summons with the current cheat engine table, hopefully they'll be included in the enemy "to do" list in the debug table.
@@illusorywall A whiff test for players doesn't come to mind at the moment, but whiffs seem to mainly exist in regard to spirit summons that aren't based on a player model. IIRC, Hoarah Loux won't be able to grab Kristoph, a demi-human, etc. I'm not sure if a player can actually get hit by a whiffed grab, aside from Radagon's grab, and Radagon's grab seems to have a unique explosion effect that might be separate from the grab itself. However, the grab's range feels like it sometimes drags the player in, so if it's only intended to drag players in, then perhaps the explosion really is some kind of whiff damage.
I'm eagerly awaiting the inevitable full Sekiro style combat overhaul. I think all the systems are there, just need to be fiddled with. The hardest part will be setting up deflection, cause having parry on the weapon art rather than the block would be a shame.
I think there's a recent DS1 mod that integrates a perfect block mechanic which nullifies damage on a perfectly timed block, even while blocking with a weapon Odds are the same can be done for Elden Ring but modders would have to find a way to inflict poise damage with the perfect block while also giving it a dmgLevel of 0 to avoid staggering the attacker and interrupting the combo I'm confident someone will eventually find a way to achieve this without using the parry mechanic
Regarding stun damage levels discussed near the end, there's multiple levels of impact it has on an enemy depending on an attack, causing different amounts of flenching or falling to the ground if you use heavier weapons with heavier attacks.
Yes! In my DS1 poise video I briefly show how that mechanic better interacts with poise in that game, where not poising through something like Wrath of the Gods or a heavy attack (I think I use Capra Demon's 2H attack as an example) knocks you to the ground, while poising through it doesn't fully prevent flinching, but you get to stay on your feet at least. I don't think that sort of knockdown-type reduction happens nearly as often in Elden Ring but I'm honestly not too sure yet. :)
I wish these videos weren't so much effort just we could have more! Another great summary as usual and I always appreciate your high production value :)
Regarding Royal Revenant and bosses. No idea if they have done it, but normally in programming you would set a "flag". If parried once, set flag "parried once". If parried with flag "parried once", remove flag and play animation "poise broken state". For Revenant "if healing AoE of spells xyz hit, play animation "poise broken state". Of course this is obvious, just wanted to share this information for people who never programmed.
Damn, lighting daggers/ flail for the Abductors look super handy. I wish that I would have thought of that earlier. Lightning Bolt spam works too, but either of those work so well it's almost worth carrying them around just for that specific enemy type.
An amazing buff to poison would be poise damage on each tick. It would be an amazing tool for getting consistent stance breaks even if you struggle to stay aggressive on certain bosses. And let's be honest poison is underwhelming compared to Frost and Bleed.
I knew something was wrong with Malenia's poise. Sometimes I hit her 10 times with charged attacks or light L2 attacks and she decided to not poise break xD
Imagine me, going for steeght build against her, with my whole run being "I press R2 or lion's claw WA to stance break through power armor " and then going against an immune bs. Quickly grabbed my maliketh black blade and pushed her with a double DD proc with mimic tear, no time for bad design.
i actually noticed the abductors weird poise pretty early on. on my first playthrough i used heavy weapons for the first half of it, and the abductors felt impossible to stagger, as they practically were. but on my second playthrough i used ghizas wheel for most of it and was able to defeat them incredibly quickly with its skill. stand to the side -> L2 -> strafe to the front, got them every time, so i kinda theorized something pretty similar to what was actually happening. however i thought they took 1 poise dmg, were in the ballpark of 15 poise, and didnt know about their Lit. weakness.
#17 - kinda surprised you didn't mention this, but this is also true for mounted enemies (all that I'm aware of, at least - everything from standard enemies like kaiden riders to bosses like Loretta). You can stance break them and they'll slump down on their horse with a glowing spot indicating a critical opening, but there's no way to actually perform a critical attack on them. I frustrated myself for so long thinking I just wasn't doing it right before finally looking it up and realizing they just gave mounted enemies the stance break opening without giving them a critical attack to use it for
Sorry about my request but, i would like to see an area layout "dissected" of Bloodborne, specifically the dark woods before the shadows of Sharnam boss fight. I've always find very intriguing that area.
I love your videos because the more I learn about how these games work under the hood, the more my game design brain goes "FROM, why do it this way though".
Can you make a questions series to the best of your ability? Not just on poise, but other mechanics! I’d love to learn more about the hidden things we can’t see.
I like the idea because I had a lot of fun making this video, but I think I'll probably stick to maybe just doing occasional themed Q&As following specific videos, in the same way I did this one. Only because some topics take a ton of research to break down, so an open Q&A could potentially be a monumental task. Though I'll keep that in mind for much later on perhaps, when I'm a lot more familiar with more aspects of the game. 😀
For the Dragon in Farum Azula; my tactic to break their stance during my first playthrough was to use the flame gout miracle. The one that summons multiple spouts from the ground. I think two or three casts of that would break their stance. Their size makes it easy to land almost all of the hits.
9:23 I was a bit confused by this in your last video, since i find in much easier to break bosses posture after I did a crit and then a vharged heavy, when they where standing up. But it's good to know, that it only works, after the crit. 11:57 Why Malenia, why? Why does this boss have so many design flaws?
@@illusorywall Its a very fun weapon even if its a little tricky to get going with the wind-up it has, but when you do get it spinning the fast blood procs and stunlock is very satisfying!
Curious, this DamageLVL/Impact is reminiscent of the pain state from classic Doom, which was also essentially the chance of a weapon to inflict stagger
2 corrections: you CAN riposte the red wolfs, i've seen it done on distortion2s infinite ng+ mod that 70 poise damage kaiden sellsword attack is not unused, zullie showed it in a video where it showed it could destroy the carts too, but it is a rare attack
I'll have to watch that zullie vid! Did she specify the attack had 70 poise damage specifically? Because the animation is a copy/paste of another animation, so it's possible you were seeing the variant that is used. Unless the animation # was really the same. :)
@@illusorywall so yes i think it is a variant but what stuck out to me is that the variation has 100 object damage, which is what the video is centered around
Came to post about the Red Wolf riposte, here's a clip: clips.twitch.tv/SpinelessCovertOcelotDancingBanana-crE-LnWxqV3rzfWD looks like you have to be centered on the wolf's head rather than the orange spot. Enjoyed the video nonetheless, thanks!
@@4blasphemy Ah neat. In that case I believe that same attack should have 100 poise damage as well. But despite being the same number as that object damage, that would actually just be a total coincidence. There's different reasons as to why you'd wind up with those specific numbers for poise and object damage, they just happen to be the same for unrelated reasons. 🙃
I misheard Banished Knight as "Spanish Knight" and assumed that was a reference to the boss from Sekiro for some reason, which I thought was extra weird cos I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be Portuguese.
"No no! Healing on block is totally fair! She heals because her rune heals through courage!" So theoretically, she could just swing at a wall and heal? What dumb logic is that? 🤨
Beating her RL1 isn't for the fun of mastering the fight like most other bosses. It's to make the simps shut up when you criticize her and they can't say "git gud" anymore. Thankfully I got past that hurdle.
What about the massive dragon that everyone just cheeses with bleed? Is it just immune to poise damage? Does it even have poise? Is it an enemy at all? I know the devs most likely never intended it to be killed normally since it has a special mechanic, but what is it considered by the game? Maybe an entire short but sweet video on this dragon is in order. I dont know if any other special cases like this exist in the game, but it would be interesting to see. Either way, keep up the good work.
You actually answered a question I didn't even ask here, I had always been under the assumption that parries just reduced enemies' poise, since it led to the same opening as a stance break,I didn't actually think the systems were separate in elden ring
Hello. I know this came out a little while ago and you might not be answering more questions, but I have two about the war cry/braggarts roar heavy movesets. 1. Do they do more poise damage than the normal heavy attacks? 2. Does the ‘shoulder barge’ before the actual attack do any poise damage? It doesn’t look like it does anything to bosses, but it is able to interrupt humanoid NPCs and players despite doing no damage.
Non-poise question: How does the camera in the Placidusax fight work? It seems like his teleport logic always tries to put him correctly "in frame" for me, but my friends and some streamers I watch get very different teleport behavior than I do. How does this actually work? Will positioning myself "wrong" cause him to teleport too much / incorrectly? Is this idea used with any other large enemies like the Fire Giant, Mohg, etc?
About the Abductor Virgins, is it possible that the normal poise multiplier is used when hitting their inside/flesh, and the special flat poise damage is used when hitting the outside?
It could be, I haven't really investigated at that level of detail. But the rest of the enemies also don't take any poise damage while their stance is broken, so I wouldn't expect that to have to be something specific set for the inside of the Abductors.
Makes so much sense why my unupgraded spirit summoned birdcage archers where consistently breaking the stances of the virgin abductors, after they get hit they send out so many arrows so fast they do the 13-14 hits really fast.
Hello! I've been watching your videos for a while and I really appreciate the informative-in-nature content you upload as well as your overall contribution to understanding these game's data, but I have a question that I have not the ability nor the understanding of the game's code to explore myself so I feel it may be best to ask you if you were willing to take the time to find out should it interest you. I believe equipment that boosts your attack power after successive hits is bugged, or at least it currently doesn't work as intended. Equipment affected: Winged Sword Insignia, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Millicent's Prosthesis and Thorny Cracked Tear. You can also use 3 of the 4 equipment to combine the effect which also stacks, which... follows the same quirk, even more noticeably. After hitting enemies enough times to proc the effect and then continue to attack so the effect persists even after attacking (and to check the AR increase), it appears to stay at a peak number and then for about a tick before dropping, spikes higher and then as the effect begins to wear, drops in AR as "normal". Depending on how many times you have attacked, it can do this 2 or 3 times before it drops back to the unbuffed AR, but as it drops it'll still spike to a higher number before the lower one. I am not sure if this is a case of the status screen not reflecting the AR correctly, or if it's simply a case of the effects being applied but not actually stacking with themselves (this even happens if you use only one of these pieces of equipment) but I have noticed it and it certainly intrigues me enough to ask
It kinda feels like Hyper Armor gained, and passive poise regenerated, from 2-handing heavy weapons and using Colossals gets put into a bit of a negative light in this video. And the last video too. The way it works is strange, but getting a high amount of armor poise still allows you to tank though an enemy attack and also immediately recover enough poise to tank another attack as soon as you swing your weapon. That's extremely useful. For PvE, the most important Poise breakpoints are 51 and 101. If you have Hyper Armor normals, then you'd want the percentage of passive poise recovered from your attacks to reach one of those breakpoints. Which means you'd need higher Armor Poise from your gear, instead of having that stop at 51 or 101. That would allow you to restore enough poise to take another hit whenever you attack. The simplest way I've noticed to break that 51 threshold is to wear armor that gives about 60 poise, give or take, like the Banished Knight set or Beast Champion set. (Those being available as soon as you start a fresh new game.) And to also equip the Bull Goat Talisman to reduce incoming Poise damage. (You don't even need to fight anything in order to run over and pick that up.) That's what I do, and I can confidently poise though most of PvE with my heavy weapons without thinking too much more about it. For the 101 breakpoint, the only way to get that is to wear the full Bull Goat armor set and the Bull Goat Talisman. If you're running around like that with hyper armor normals to recover your passive poise, the vast majority of PvE is gonna have a very hard time making you flinch.
I played two and a half times being quite confused because I never expected the stance break mechanic to be just Poise for enemies. Helps me understand why I just got wrecked today by the spear wielding Redmane Knight on top of Fort Gael because, in my innocence, though I didn't expect to stance break him or anything, I was thinking "Yeah, Impaling Thrust on the epee deals so much poise damage, I can certainly interrupt that attack"
The Golem wrists being weak can be reliably hit if they do their fire breath attack as they lower their hands to do so even after they've finished breathing fire, they do stay just enough for a hit or 2 if you manage to evade or stay away
17:30 Yes the red wolf can be riposted/critical attacked!! im not sure if a recent update has changed it but i was able to get a riposte off by attempting it will standing near the head NOT the neck, like standing a little bit away and not hugging the wolf. hope this helps
I remember being able to tank some PvE attacks while having less than 51 poise, like bolts from the godrick soldiers. Do some (or all) projectiles have their own poise damage values?
I don't understand why they made it so complicated with all these multipliers, especially the redundant ones. I guess to keep the recovery time from shooting up on these high effective poise enemies? I dunno, seems like more work than is really necessary to me.
I have a question about the Gravitas Ash of War. When used on an airborne enemy it will knock them down to the ground. Is that a special effect or is that part of the poise system?
I always thought it was really strange that my Night Maiden's Mist broke Abductor stances, since I'd hear it despite not thinking it did that for any other enemy.
I would recommend looking into the special effect section and try to get the effect of the enemies that have the special rules designated to them onto another enemy to at least pin point where the effect is located.
Why not just have a stance bar like Sekiro? I'm really baffled by that, it seems like so much confusion with this game's stance breaking would have been fixed with that.
I highly recommend using Glinstone consumables. They are amazing for two reasons. 1: They are a safe, non-committal way to provoke an enemy out of their "edge lord walk" that lots of elden ring enemies do without you needing to chase them down or attack first. And 2: Because they are an easy poise reset as explained in this video!!
Here's a question of my own: How are status build ups affected by stats? I've seen unsatisfactory information about it, and was curious how it works. I've heard both that Arcane boosts status build up but only on weapons boosted by Arcane, and that Arcane boosts it regardless if a weapon has Arc scaling.
@@thulsa_doom DS3 pvp meta certainly rewards aggressive and fast weapons, which would have been theoretically countered by high poise tank builds of DS1/2 but sadly there is no poise in DS3.
Has anyone compiled comprehensive data on “damage levels” yet? Is this how it worked in other games (Bloodborne?)? Knowing when you will interrupt enemies is a very useful thing that I haven’t really seen anyone dissect.
Attacks having hyper armor, but doing nothing at 0, is probably because it was easier to set to zero than to remove it from the weapons, specially at instances that they might want to give it hyper armor again (but that never happened)
Maybe Malenia inconsistency is what makes the this boss; Otherwise she would be either a "too easy boss" or a "This is impossible boss". Yet, thats very strage
I don't think:she is very similar to sister friede from ds3, the difference is she was playing by the rule and still felt and being one of the hardest boss in the title. Malenia it's just broken, like godfrey, be he is another thing.
Hoo boy, so... that most recent patch! I feel a bit exhausted exploring poise, though I don't really mind the videos being a little outdated for the time being, since understanding the underlying systems is more important than any specific numbers involved. Nonetheless I'll think about making yet another poise video much later on, perhaps a sort of "where poise wound up" sort of discussion when the game is more settled in its lifespan. But what are the biggest and most important changes you've noticed? Anything that impacts your PvE or PvP experience in an interesting way? Let me know!
Something I’ve noticed is that sometimes at very high poise values it feels like I’m actually getting less hyper armor than I would at lower poise, am I crazy and if not what’s going on there?
Great video! Any chance you'd examine the best ways to consistently break enemy stance now that Flame of the Redmanes has been nerfed? I believe 1.08 had other overarching poise damage nerfs as well so I'd be interested in your thoughts
Amazing Video. Thanks for all the Effort of researching and explaining all of this.
Since English is not my first language I'd like to thank you especially for speaking very clearly. Following normal conversations poses no problem for me, since unclearly spoken words can still be understood from context. However for complicated explanatory videos like this it's important to understand every single word and I have absolutely no problems following you.
I still have a question though. You mentioned how some enemies have 'poise-invincibility' during certain attacks in your first Video and how you can't reduce their poise when attacking during that invincibility. Does the attack still reset the timer though?
So I spent most of yesterday figuring out the exact amount of armor poise I needed to get 201 poise for indefinite trading with the Godslayer's Greatsword using the calculator from the description and figured out I needed exactly 65 armor poise, and then I looked at a bunch of different armor calculators trying to find the least endurance I needed to get that much poise. Fun times.
Then I went on the PvP discord and found the updated version of the hyper armor calculator, and it turns out that with the latest data, using that weapon my indefinite trading hyper armor is always between 200 and 250 with bullgoats talisman no matter if I'm naked or wearing full bull goats armor or anything in between. Queen's Black Flame will always resist two heavy enemy attacks or four light enemy attacks no matter what you're wearing, or one and three attacks without the talisman.
You should probably edit the descriptions to link to the v0.13.6 calculator so you don't have other nerds like me wasting time due to outdated info.
@@KoiosDusklight Oh thanks for the heads up, I'll do that later tonight when I'm home.
4:12 idk why, but the sidestep dodging the attack into a completely late roll is hilarious to me
god gamer at work
Negative poise exists, we can prove it with science, we just can't explain what it is or why it's there. Kind of like Dark Energy...
That’s not actually science. Science would require a real world experiment the results of which repeat every iteration.
Most of what people popularly call “science”, isn’t.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone Astrophysics isn't science. Okay buddy
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone experimenting on a video game is a « real world experiment », you’re just using an computer.
@@ChevalierdeJohnstone "Remember kids, the only difference between screwing around and science is writing it down." - Adam Savage
@@ChevalierdeJohnstoneYou really need to learn what Science is. I find it impressive you say it with such crazy confidence.
Science is a methodology... Not "experimentation"
After my LvL1 no summon run I was convinced that Malenia could not only ignore poise damage but can actively refill poise damage while ignoring it. Thanks for confirmation.
She is so obviously a Sekiro boss thrown into game not designed around Sekiro combat.
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish Fromsoft just can't seem to remember which game they're working on when they're making two at the same time
@@tastychunks As evident with Dark Souls III and Bloodborne, I'm inclined to agree.
As someone who has been clinging to salt for Malenia like a lifeline, this comment thread feels like sweet validation.
@@ImGonnaFudgeThatFish the difference is that sekiro didn't had this shit around, at most, with sword Saint you had to stay always on aggro or his bar would refill instantly
You are my favourite channel on TH-cam right now. I am very much a numbers guy and finding out the most bizarre ways Fromsoft makes their games "work" is something that brings me a lot of joy.
Oh then you must have loved learning about the Vagrants from DS1. I never even knew they existed until I found this channel and he dug into their workings.
- FROMsoft promgrammer (watching this video): "Ahhh, I get it now!"
Thank you so much, glad you're enjoying it!
@Boco Corwin sorry about your friend. I lost my best friend too. I wish he was around long enough to have played the souls games :/
I have a theory on why the abductors require that last hit to poise break.
The damage conversation is causing the poise check to miss timing.
To more clearly clarify, The poise break check seems to happen immediately after poise damage from an attack is inflicted.
Attack->Damage->poise break check.
vs. the replacement effect.
Attack->damage->damage negation->poise break check->reassign poise damage.
At least that is the theory.
Holy shit that might actually be true.
Reeks of a potential floating point error to me, but I don't know what kind of numbers are handling the poise system.
@@smergthedargon8974 That could be happening.
@@wraithwrecker_ We will see. I think this caught Illusionary Wall's interest. Might find out in three weeks.
@@gmradio2436 Whenever I see a "something going into the negatives when it already hit 0", it reeks of floating point errors or a comparison lacking an _or equal to_
I'm gonna be away from Elden Ring testing for the next couple days so I haven't been getting to the questions in the comments here just yet, but I will later this week! So fire away, I do plan on getting to them. :)
Has Mogh got a Poise break gimmick like Malenia in the sense you can't Posture Break him during certain animations? Second Phase specifically feels like it has inconsistent breaks when I was fighting him today.
I've noticed that Maliketh can teleport a la the overworld dragons, though Maliketh saves this for when he's stuck in or on a pillar. However, I recently saw the Caelid Godskin Apostle fall asleep in the middle of its boss room, fade away like an overworld dragon while being invincible, then fade in at its initial spawn point, wide awake. What could have caused this, and what bosses can do these emergency teleports? Can normal enemies, important NPCs, etc. do this as well?
Extra question: Do spirit ash summons do the same poise damage and have the same poise as their normal counterparts? And if not which spirit has the most poise?
@@Sir_Twiggy In Mohg's second phase he gains poise damage reduction. Something in the range of 15-20%, I forgot the exact number.
During Nihil he also takes reduced poise damage (or none, again, I forgot) and heals poise health with every Nihil. It's very hard to break his posture right after the phase transition as a result.
His flight -> bloodflame throw -> sweep attack does prevent you from posture breaking him in a sense... because he has s in it, for some reason.
Eyy, thanks for the shoutout about the Impact system! I spent some time figuring it out for a mod I made, so I'm happy to summarize how I understand it:
Every attack in the game has a defined "dmgLevel" which determines the kind of attack it is--this corresponds to the "dmgLv_S", "dmgLv_M", etc that you show at 23:25. When an attack lands, the victim checks the Impact level of the attack and compares it to their own Impact table (again, the table you show at 23:25) to determine how they react to it.
For example: if an attack is "dmgLv_Push" and an enemy is set to be knocked down when hit by a "dmgLv_Push" attack, then it will always be knocked down when hit by that attack--meanwhile another enemy might be set to ignore it completely. The Crystalians are special because they start out with all Impact levels set to "ignore", but when their stance is broken their internal Impact table is changed so all Impact levels trigger a stagger. The same thing happens in reverse when a player uses something like Leaden Hardtear, which temporarily changes the player's Impact table to ignore the lighter Impact types (the Poise stat is unaffected by the spEffect).
Edit: I should clarify, a character's Impact table not only determines IF they get staggered by a particular attack, but also HOW they get staggered. It can be set to things like short stagger, long stagger, stumble backward, and knockdown. It's especially noticeable with dogs, which get thrown back by most heavy attacks while other enemies will stagger but stay on their feet.
This is a good summary, and I am definitely looking forward to what else becomes known by the time the deep dive video is made!
After a little more digging, I found where knockback settings are defined for NPCs. As far as I can tell, there's a default set of behavior that defines a stagger animation for each impact level (Small, Medium, Push, Strike, and so on), and then certain enemies have a spEffect assigned to them that overrides either some or all of that default behavior. Since the animations are directly tied to the category of stagger, for the most part this leads to logical results for short staggers, long staggers, and so on.
However, I found that the reason dogs are easy to knockdown (instead of staggering while staying upright) is because their default animation for long staggers is the knockdown animation. They aren't specifically coded to distinguish between, say, a 2h claymore attack vs the Wrath of God spell--they just play the same animation for anything heavier than a short stagger.
Also a note about the override spEffects: You'll find those override spEffects defined within NpcParam for the relevant enemies. However a lot of the spEffects aren't labeled so you just have to check manually if a certain spEffect changes an enemy's impact table.
Does the impact table include rarer animations such as falling down? Under specific circumstances enemies like zamor knights can be knocked down on the floor onto their back.
This fall on back/face animation seems to occur when both elevation change and attack is applied to an enemy.
@@unuseableb Yes and no. It does include that, but if I understand you correctly, you're actually describing a special case that involves being airborne. I haven't tested this much so take this with a grain of salt, but basically if you stagger someone while they're in the air it will automatically trigger a knockdown regardless of the attack's original impact level. This is especially entertaining when you smack a misbegotten out of their jumping attack.
The other exception I know of is headshots, which basically upgrades a lighter stagger to a heavier one. I don't know the details of how this works though.
@@javi7636 Interesting. I'm a bit late, but I think this would explain a funny interaction I've found. The Sanguine Noble that spawns as you enter the Mohgwyn Palace Mausoleum (guarding the path to the merchant) has the usual animation of emerging from a pool of blood. Thing is, if you stand against his back (trying for the easy backstab), he'll comically faceplant into the dirt.
I think this may be caused by the spawn animation making the game think he's midair, which leads to a weird interaction where the player goomba-stomps him... which in turn triggers the auto-knockdown you mentioned.
Oh, and a semi-related thing I thought of: in a randomizer video I watched, the God-Devouring Serpent was replaced by Fire Giant phase 2. Sometimes (I personally think it was caused by how the player moved, but this wasn't tested), when the boss spawned, he'd instantly splat as though he fell from a great height (keep in mind he didn't spawn until the player got to where the snake would normally aggro). Hilarious, and makes me wonder how the Fire Giant really calculates falls (and what they did in the patches to fix the fall cheese).
So the most poise damage that an enemy can take is the abdicator virgins with 14 hits of the great clubs 2 handed guard counter for a total of 646.8!
Virgin Abductor: Gets its stance broken by a single cast of Night Maiden's Mist, something that doesn't even drain the poise of other enemies.
Chad Abductor: Takes the most 2H Charged R2s from Great Clubs, more than any other enemy, to have its stance broken.
Yet they're one and the same! 😆
@@illusorywall It really feels like "what's heavier, 1kg of feathers or 1kg of steel"
I noticed the "flinch level" system particularly when using a whip. Whips have fairly low poise damage, and it takes a lot to break a lot of heavier enemies' (like a banished knight, or the regional frog knights) stances, but at the same time, most whip attacks will cause said heavier enemies to flinch as if hit by an R2 of a larger weapon.
Damn, I should try out a whip build then. I've been frustrated with the DmgLvl system, felt like it was pushing me to spam jump heavies with most builds.
Yup. Whips are actually incredibly effect at stunlocking Malenia as a result. Two players alternating whip attacks can fully stunlock her in both phases, provided you land the first hit out of hyper armor. With three players, you regen enough stamina in between each hit to do so permanently without stamina regen buffs.
i wonder if that also affects the volcano pots because that ticking damage makes enenmies flinch
In my head i understand this er poise system like this:
1. There's PVE Poise, or enemy poise, or stance HP, which's basically a bar that you can drain by hitting enemies to open them for a ripost hit.
2. There's PVP Poise, or player poise, or Toughness Durability, which is a number that allows us to withstand a certain amount of poise damage without flinching.
3. The Toughness, which determines whether an enemy or the player can be flinched or not, and PVE Toughness works basically the same way as player's Toughness, but it doesn't have Toughness Durability, because PVE Enemies simply don't have PVP poise bar, which would allow them to withstand a certain amount of attacks without flinching. It also has two types, the first one just allows the player or an enemy not to flinch, for example aoe endure or any big boss has that type and it's the most common, and the second type of Toughness is the one that allows both not to flinch and deflect some smaller attacks, which is given to the player when having drank ironjar aromatic, and some pve enemies have it like for example crystalians before being broken and stone digger trolls.
4. Hyper armor. Hyper armor is just an event/script that increases player's PVP Poise/Toughness Durability during certain animations.
So there you have it all, PVE Poise, PVP Poise, Toughness and Hyper Armor.
You missed a trio of 'consumable' items that can also be used to damage poise, and one of them in particular I would contend is probably one of the best options in some situations. Namely, the Wraith Line of items; The Wraith Caller Bell, The Omen Bairn, and the Regal Omen Bairn. The Wraith Caller Bell does 3 Poise Damage on bullet impact, while both Omen Bairns do 15 Poise Damage on the initial explosive burst, and 1 Poise Damage on each bullet impact.
Because the Wraith Caller Bell is quick to use, low on the FP Cost, has extremely long range and ridiculously good tracking, I think it is the best consumable to use for a lot of more evasive enemies, in particular enemies that auto-dodge on ranged attacks and spells. Because the bullet travels relatively slowly and has such good tracking it can basically hit anything even if it dodges because they'll dodge the initial cast, not the bullet. The only enemy I have seen ever avoid these bullets are those freakin' Dragonflies when they get into their stupid "Wheee I'm just gonna fly in circles" pattern.
And man, all of these quirks and weird rules and things like the poise dead-zone really just convince me that From Software has built up a lot of 'Cruft' under the hood from all of their games just being iterated upon. I really hope that for the next game they make From Software takes the time after Elden Ring to do a full Refactoring of a lot of their systems, such as Poise. I really think they need to just gut this system and rebuild it from the ground up to create a unified Poise System that governs both PvE and PvP, Staggering and Stance Breaking. You could even put the Parry system into a comprehensive enough Poise system so there wouldn't need to be the weird "Riposte every 3 hits" system that a small handful of enemies taken from Sekiro have.
I've seen a lot of Souls game stat related videos but this is the only one that I truly felt like I gained Insight IRL, especially from 24:00 on. Wtf is going on in this game lmao. Well done
I very much love and appreciate these videos that go in-depth on the mechanics of these games.
Thank you!
The roundabout poise system for Abductor Virgins sort of makes sense in the context of them being basically a mech suit for snakes. You can't poise break the suit itself, but if you bang on it enough the snakes inside might get a headache. Also the lightning doing more because they're made of metal.
I almost never rely on stance breaks in ER because itd always felt so inconsistent that just being patient and waiting for regular damage felt like the better play. Even knowing how it works from this and the last videos didn't really change how i handle it except that maybe i'm more likely than before to use R2s than R1s. What was interesting to me is learning what i guess is the DmgLvl mechanic. After farming banished knight armor on several characters, i'd noticed by greatsword/colossal characters being able to handle them effortlessly while my straight sword, katana, etc characters had to spend ages playing cat-and-mouse with them because they just didn't stagger no matter what. It would be awesome to see a deep dive into this specific mechanic.
I think this is why we can't see the bar. If it did show the bar, it would make players focus so much on this mechanic, and it would turn to something like Sekiro, it would feel like a totally different game.
The way I see this, is that I just play the game normally, but try to be aggressive (when I can) so I can maybe brake the stance.
Not only that but imo the riposte damage is also way to low in Elden Ring.
If I break an enemies stance and I spam some powerful Ash of War or Spell I will do more damage than a riposte and since I do not have to break a stance to do that might as well not bother
@@envoyofrot7046 it will depend on the enemy, situation and your own weapon. Sometimes its good to use riposte, sometimes its not.
@@MemoriesLP So far, using a riposte has almost always been worse. I even did some comparisons.
The only exceptions I found are the Giant Stone Golems and the Octopus Enemies where a critical attack does massive damage.
@@envoyofrot7046 some enemies get out of the stagger to fast depending on the weapon. So you can do like only 1 charge attack and thats it, making the riposte better. While other weapons allow you to do multiple attacks, making the riposte worse.
Sometimes doing one R1 attack and riposte is better... etc
If you watch multiple people playing this game, doing challenges or speedrun, they will vary between riposte and normal attacks depending on all these variables Ive been talking about.
That lightning weakness suddenly makes the abductors a lot less scary
Thank you for this info
Your video quality is insane
So in this video I issued a somewhat casual challenge for breaking an Ancient Dragon's Stance in NG+7, due to how much of a hassle that is. Well 'Color Green' on youtube here accepted and delivered! th-cam.com/video/lRCRZYJLbsk/w-d-xo.html
The successful attempt begins at the 3 minute mark. Good job!
(NG cycle) An additional way to get poise break (is it more effective than Spectral Lance?) - i.ibb.co/qD6QLSp/20220824174640-1.jpg
Besides, have some additonal questions about poise damage:
a) What about Lansseax? Is her poise resitance the same as Farum Azula Dragons?
b) What about scaling of poise damage? As in case of Ancient Dragons I encounter the basic problem, that they die before poise break happens (as head itself takes massive damage).
Spectral Lance does high poise damage but, in my experience, low damage to health. The player was probably concerned about what you mentioned, killing the dragon before staggering it, since the challenge was getting the stagger. Gravity Bolt does quite a bit of damage to both. It also doesn't have a very long range, though it's accurate. Spectral Lance landed in this clip when the player was too far for Gravity Bolt. If you want to hang closer to the dragon and your goal is just to defeat it, Gravity Bolt from the Fallingstar Beast Jaw could be better.
@@joshk494 Well, you can get Fallingstar Beast Jaw at +0 with minimal requirements met. Then you deal the same poise damage as at higher level and less damage to boss health. tested it on Lansseax at NG+ and I poise break it with more than 60-70% total health left. Spectral Lance is harder to land.
By the way, Poise Damage does not scale. At least one from Gravity Bolt.
@@r3dn3ck3r3 no, poise damage does not scale, so an unupgraded Fallingstar Beast Jaw would work well to test this, maybe more accurate but again with less range. I was just taking a guess as to why Spectral Lance was preferred, obviously I don't know. I am unsure how how much poise damage the two skills do by comparison, I am more familiar with how strong Gravity Bolt is.
Hey, got a question related to other topic - could you check the Erdtree Heal incantation and how it affects Crucible Knight? As there is a unique interaction with one from Farum Azula, that seems to not work with those met at Limgrave or Siofra.
@Josh K Small update - all 3 Ancient Dragons riposted
i.ibb.co/cJfcpfy/Riposted-Dragons.jpg
I don't know if it's worth a full video, but something related to free-aim/projectile travel seems very interesting to me. Possibly looking into why certain items have different behavior, such as the pot of bees being thrown half the distance as normal pots, or the rancor pot's free aim spirit tracking?
The abundance of projectile items has just fascinated me since release, I'd love to see more in depth discussion of these overlooked tools.
Finally, a video touching on Damage Levels, I did a lot of searching around and could never find any explanation about it. Can't wait for a deeper look on it.
I could spend, at least, a total year of my life listening to you talk about these random subjects. Please keep up the work so long as you enjoy doing so.
I always wondered why Elden stars was so effective against the abductor virgins, I thought it was just effectively hitting it when it was open it something like that. Good to know 😁 amazing video
First a 40+ minute video on poise and then an almost 35-minute addendum; gotta love your commitment!
I'm so very glad that this video was made. Especially since #10 got addressed, as that's how I thought it worked from my own playtime and vanilla testing, but after the first video I was a bit confused. Love seeing update videos to keep info correct, so good job!
Genuinely one of the most underrated channels on the platform. I really enjoy the in depth breakdowns of all the weird, wacky, and nonsensical mechanics from the “soul’s series”, but these kinds of videos are cream of the crop. Going over mechanics that are actually relevant to the playing experience and keeping it all entertaining, truly great stuff!
I wish I had math taught by this guy - he actually makes numbers make sense! The craziness with the Abductor Virgins was explained so well!
Considering that it functions pretty much identically to Posture in Sekiro, I've just always referred to it as Posture when talking about stance breaks, and Poise when talking about staggers. Like I would need to deal 80 Posture damage to stance break Malenia (assuming she feels like playing by the rules in that particular instance) but I only need to deal a small amount of Poise damage to stagger her with an attack (assuming she feels like playing by the rules in that particular instance). And since there's no stance breaks in PvP, Poise is just Poise. Calling everything Poise and having to specify which Poise is annoying.
Well, I think at the end of the day you'll have to specify which is which no matter what. By your system, it sounds like you'd also refer to the minor flinches in PvE as Poise? But since that uses dmgLvL instead, when you talk about poise damage, items that buff poise damage, etc, you'd have to clarify that you're only talking about PvP. So "normal" Poise still has to be singled out as "PvP Poise", specifically. You can't refer to what causes minor staggers for Melania as the same thing, if you're going to explain how it all works it needs to be clarified as being something different.
Calling it Posture has its own problems. It's not called posture anywhere in-game in Elden Ring, so anyone who hasn't played Sekiro might be thrown by that. While it's conceptually *very* similar, that did work a bit differently behind the scenes, so that's another reason you don't hear me calling it Posture. I'd just go with Stance / PvE Poise. That's just a very specific nitpick of mine though, most players will still know what you mean by Posture probably.
The mechanics are convoluted enough that there's really no way to talk about these things at a deeper level without having to specify a few things. This reminds me of my very first Dissected video, which was about Sin in Dark Souls 1. The game never breaks things down specifically for you, but there are actually two seperate Sin mechanics; PvP Sin and PvE Sin. At a certain point you just have to figure out the least-messy way to talk about things, while also being accurate to how things really work.
Technically, you can stance break someone on block in pvp, but that's a different mechanic that play around endurance.
MOAR POISE CONTENT
Seeing this broke my poise
Thanks for the detailed Q&A, as well as clarifying the dragons' bizarre poise mitigations! I've always appreciated your work and was elated to find an update, even back when you were just running a Tumblr page. Your explanation on enemies not taking poise damage from "throws" was neat, but do players take poise damage from ripostes, backstabs, and actual throws? Also, if a throw whiffs and does minor contact damage, does a player still take poise damage? Similarly, if a spirit summon is hit by a grab that can't grab them (ex: Hoarah Loux's grabs), will the whiff strike deal poise damage? Also, how is the whiff strike damage calculated (fraction of the proper grab, separate value, etc.)?
Thanks again, Illusory Wall!
Ah so players don't take poise damage from backstabs and ripostes either. All attacks do the same amount of poise damage in PvP and PvE so that is consistent there (minding that we have to scale the numbers up x10 for PvP to match the poise value for players shown in the menu). You can find all of the exact values in the linked spreadsheet (click on the Poise Damage - PvP tab). Unfortunately I'm not sure of the best way to test whiffs, is there an enemy whose grab is relatively easy to miss but still causes damage somehow? Sadly I'm also currently unable to see the poise of spirit ash summons with the current cheat engine table, hopefully they'll be included in the enemy "to do" list in the debug table.
@@illusorywall A whiff test for players doesn't come to mind at the moment, but whiffs seem to mainly exist in regard to spirit summons that aren't based on a player model. IIRC, Hoarah Loux won't be able to grab Kristoph, a demi-human, etc. I'm not sure if a player can actually get hit by a whiffed grab, aside from Radagon's grab, and Radagon's grab seems to have a unique explosion effect that might be separate from the grab itself. However, the grab's range feels like it sometimes drags the player in, so if it's only intended to drag players in, then perhaps the explosion really is some kind of whiff damage.
Deserves more views for sure. Love the attention to detail here.
I'm eagerly awaiting the inevitable full Sekiro style combat overhaul. I think all the systems are there, just need to be fiddled with. The hardest part will be setting up deflection, cause having parry on the weapon art rather than the block would be a shame.
I think there's a recent DS1 mod that integrates a perfect block mechanic which nullifies damage on a perfectly timed block, even while blocking with a weapon
Odds are the same can be done for Elden Ring but modders would have to find a way to inflict poise damage with the perfect block while also giving it a dmgLevel of 0 to avoid staggering the attacker and interrupting the combo
I'm confident someone will eventually find a way to achieve this without using the parry mechanic
Regarding stun damage levels discussed near the end, there's multiple levels of impact it has on an enemy depending on an attack, causing different amounts of flenching or falling to the ground if you use heavier weapons with heavier attacks.
Yes! In my DS1 poise video I briefly show how that mechanic better interacts with poise in that game, where not poising through something like Wrath of the Gods or a heavy attack (I think I use Capra Demon's 2H attack as an example) knocks you to the ground, while poising through it doesn't fully prevent flinching, but you get to stay on your feet at least. I don't think that sort of knockdown-type reduction happens nearly as often in Elden Ring but I'm honestly not too sure yet. :)
I really appreciate you replying to comments. S tier dedication to educating the community
Huh I didn't realize criticals don't do any poise damage, definitely something to remember.
I mean, would be kinda weird and brokwn if the punish for breaking a stance (riposte) allowed you to break the stance again.
Oh hai, fancy seeing you here
I wish these videos weren't so much effort just we could have more! Another great summary as usual and I always appreciate your high production value :)
Reeeaally wish they'd just added a posture meter along with the health bar
Regarding Royal Revenant and bosses. No idea if they have done it, but normally in programming you would set a "flag". If parried once, set flag "parried once". If parried with flag "parried once", remove flag and play animation "poise broken state". For Revenant "if healing AoE of spells xyz hit, play animation "poise broken state". Of course this is obvious, just wanted to share this information for people who never programmed.
Damn, lighting daggers/ flail for the Abductors look super handy. I wish that I would have thought of that earlier. Lightning Bolt spam works too, but either of those work so well it's almost worth carrying them around just for that specific enemy type.
Love your wideos. Haven't even played elden ring yet, just love the way you put out info
An amazing buff to poison would be poise damage on each tick. It would be an amazing tool for getting consistent stance breaks even if you struggle to stay aggressive on certain bosses. And let's be honest poison is underwhelming compared to Frost and Bleed.
The impact mechanics reminds me of the different levels of shield deflection but reversed.
I knew something was wrong with Malenia's poise.
Sometimes I hit her 10 times with charged attacks or light L2 attacks and she decided to not poise break xD
Imagine me, going for steeght build against her, with my whole run being "I press R2 or lion's claw WA to stance break through power armor " and then going against an immune bs.
Quickly grabbed my maliketh black blade and pushed her with a double DD proc with mimic tear, no time for bad design.
I’m honestly so glad to finally understand exactly how Cragblade works.
Aye man, thanks for covering this topic so thoroughly.
i actually noticed the abductors weird poise pretty early on. on my first playthrough i used heavy weapons for the first half of it, and the abductors felt impossible to stagger, as they practically were. but on my second playthrough i used ghizas wheel for most of it and was able to defeat them incredibly quickly with its skill. stand to the side -> L2 -> strafe to the front, got them every time, so i kinda theorized something pretty similar to what was actually happening. however i thought they took 1 poise dmg, were in the ballpark of 15 poise, and didnt know about their Lit. weakness.
#17 - kinda surprised you didn't mention this, but this is also true for mounted enemies (all that I'm aware of, at least - everything from standard enemies like kaiden riders to bosses like Loretta). You can stance break them and they'll slump down on their horse with a glowing spot indicating a critical opening, but there's no way to actually perform a critical attack on them. I frustrated myself for so long thinking I just wasn't doing it right before finally looking it up and realizing they just gave mounted enemies the stance break opening without giving them a critical attack to use it for
Always love to see you upload 💜.
Keep up the entertaining and informative content!
the "damage level" thing could also be called "flinch power"
"impact"'s pretty good tho
Sorry about my request but, i would like to see an area layout "dissected" of Bloodborne, specifically the dark woods before the shadows of Sharnam boss fight. I've always find very intriguing that area.
The absolute best way to break the poise of the iron virgins (without lighting, at least) is with the R2 of the Ghiza's Wheel ;)
I love your videos because the more I learn about how these games work under the hood, the more my game design brain goes "FROM, why do it this way though".
Can you make a questions series to the best of your ability? Not just on poise, but other mechanics!
I’d love to learn more about the hidden things we can’t see.
I like the idea because I had a lot of fun making this video, but I think I'll probably stick to maybe just doing occasional themed Q&As following specific videos, in the same way I did this one. Only because some topics take a ton of research to break down, so an open Q&A could potentially be a monumental task. Though I'll keep that in mind for much later on perhaps, when I'm a lot more familiar with more aspects of the game. 😀
For the Dragon in Farum Azula; my tactic to break their stance during my first playthrough was to use the flame gout miracle. The one that summons multiple spouts from the ground. I think two or three casts of that would break their stance. Their size makes it easy to land almost all of the hits.
There is just something very comforting about how across all of these [BLANK] Dissected videos, his character is constantly using a short short.
Actually, it’s not bad!!
9:23 I was a bit confused by this in your last video, since i find in much easier to break bosses posture after I did a crit and then a vharged heavy, when they where standing up. But it's good to know, that it only works, after the crit.
11:57 Why Malenia, why? Why does this boss have so many design flaws?
*Chained Prisoner stares intently*
The abductor virgin thing explains why I almost only ever got stance breaks on them with the pizza cutter
That makes sense! I haven't really used the pizza cutter much in Elden Ring yet, I gotta fix that. I loved it in Bloodborne.
@@illusorywall Its a very fun weapon even if its a little tricky to get going with the wind-up it has, but when you do get it spinning the fast blood procs and stunlock is very satisfying!
Curious, this DamageLVL/Impact is reminiscent of the pain state from classic Doom, which was also essentially the chance of a weapon to inflict stagger
2 corrections:
you CAN riposte the red wolfs, i've seen it done on distortion2s infinite ng+ mod
that 70 poise damage kaiden sellsword attack is not unused, zullie showed it in a video where it showed it could destroy the carts too, but it is a rare attack
I'll have to watch that zullie vid! Did she specify the attack had 70 poise damage specifically? Because the animation is a copy/paste of another animation, so it's possible you were seeing the variant that is used. Unless the animation # was really the same. :)
@@illusorywall so yes i think it is a variant but what stuck out to me is that the variation has 100 object damage, which is what the video is centered around
Came to post about the Red Wolf riposte, here's a clip: clips.twitch.tv/SpinelessCovertOcelotDancingBanana-crE-LnWxqV3rzfWD
looks like you have to be centered on the wolf's head rather than the orange spot.
Enjoyed the video nonetheless, thanks!
@@4blasphemy Ah neat. In that case I believe that same attack should have 100 poise damage as well. But despite being the same number as that object damage, that would actually just be a total coincidence. There's different reasons as to why you'd wind up with those specific numbers for poise and object damage, they just happen to be the same for unrelated reasons. 🙃
I misheard Banished Knight as "Spanish Knight" and assumed that was a reference to the boss from Sekiro for some reason, which I thought was extra weird cos I'm pretty sure he's supposed to be Portuguese.
They are very consistent about Malenia she is cheater lorewise and gameplay wise.
"No no! Healing on block is totally fair! She heals because her rune heals through courage!"
So theoretically, she could just swing at a wall and heal? What dumb logic is that? 🤨
@@Rahnonymous heal when I shit that takes real courage
Damm you guys are salty.
@@Rahnonymous the kind that brings beasts all over the shop, you'll be one of them sooner or later
Beating her RL1 isn't for the fun of mastering the fight like most other bosses. It's to make the simps shut up when you criticize her and they can't say "git gud" anymore. Thankfully I got past that hurdle.
What about the massive dragon that everyone just cheeses with bleed? Is it just immune to poise damage? Does it even have poise? Is it an enemy at all?
I know the devs most likely never intended it to be killed normally since it has a special mechanic, but what is it considered by the game? Maybe an entire short but sweet video on this dragon is in order. I dont know if any other special cases like this exist in the game, but it would be interesting to see.
Either way, keep up the good work.
so you're telling me i can just throw daggers at the abductor virgins and that will eventually cause them to fall over?
amazing
Great video, all my questions got answered
It's insane how much there is to say about this topic.
You actually answered a question I didn't even ask here, I had always been under the assumption that parries just reduced enemies' poise, since it led to the same opening as a stance break,I didn't actually think the systems were separate in elden ring
Hello. I know this came out a little while ago and you might not be answering more questions, but I have two about the war cry/braggarts roar heavy movesets. 1. Do they do more poise damage than the normal heavy attacks? 2. Does the ‘shoulder barge’ before the actual attack do any poise damage? It doesn’t look like it does anything to bosses, but it is able to interrupt humanoid NPCs and players despite doing no damage.
The throwing knife strat for keeping poise damage from resetting was big in some of the speedrun competitions.
Non-poise question:
How does the camera in the Placidusax fight work? It seems like his teleport logic always tries to put him correctly "in frame" for me, but my friends and some streamers I watch get very different teleport behavior than I do. How does this actually work? Will positioning myself "wrong" cause him to teleport too much / incorrectly?
Is this idea used with any other large enemies like the Fire Giant, Mohg, etc?
About the Abductor Virgins, is it possible that the normal poise multiplier is used when hitting their inside/flesh, and the special flat poise damage is used when hitting the outside?
It could be, I haven't really investigated at that level of detail. But the rest of the enemies also don't take any poise damage while their stance is broken, so I wouldn't expect that to have to be something specific set for the inside of the Abductors.
Makes so much sense why my unupgraded spirit summoned birdcage archers where consistently breaking the stances of the virgin abductors, after they get hit they send out so many arrows so fast they do the 13-14 hits really fast.
Hello! I've been watching your videos for a while and I really appreciate the informative-in-nature content you upload as well as your overall contribution to understanding these game's data, but I have a question that I have not the ability nor the understanding of the game's code to explore myself so I feel it may be best to ask you if you were willing to take the time to find out should it interest you.
I believe equipment that boosts your attack power after successive hits is bugged, or at least it currently doesn't work as intended. Equipment affected: Winged Sword Insignia, Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, Millicent's Prosthesis and Thorny Cracked Tear. You can also use 3 of the 4 equipment to combine the effect which also stacks, which... follows the same quirk, even more noticeably.
After hitting enemies enough times to proc the effect and then continue to attack so the effect persists even after attacking (and to check the AR increase), it appears to stay at a peak number and then for about a tick before dropping, spikes higher and then as the effect begins to wear, drops in AR as "normal". Depending on how many times you have attacked, it can do this 2 or 3 times before it drops back to the unbuffed AR, but as it drops it'll still spike to a higher number before the lower one. I am not sure if this is a case of the status screen not reflecting the AR correctly, or if it's simply a case of the effects being applied but not actually stacking with themselves (this even happens if you use only one of these pieces of equipment) but I have noticed it and it certainly intrigues me enough to ask
It kinda feels like Hyper Armor gained, and passive poise regenerated, from 2-handing heavy weapons and using Colossals gets put into a bit of a negative light in this video. And the last video too. The way it works is strange, but getting a high amount of armor poise still allows you to tank though an enemy attack and also immediately recover enough poise to tank another attack as soon as you swing your weapon. That's extremely useful.
For PvE, the most important Poise breakpoints are 51 and 101. If you have Hyper Armor normals, then you'd want the percentage of passive poise recovered from your attacks to reach one of those breakpoints. Which means you'd need higher Armor Poise from your gear, instead of having that stop at 51 or 101. That would allow you to restore enough poise to take another hit whenever you attack.
The simplest way I've noticed to break that 51 threshold is to wear armor that gives about 60 poise, give or take, like the Banished Knight set or Beast Champion set. (Those being available as soon as you start a fresh new game.) And to also equip the Bull Goat Talisman to reduce incoming Poise damage. (You don't even need to fight anything in order to run over and pick that up.) That's what I do, and I can confidently poise though most of PvE with my heavy weapons without thinking too much more about it.
For the 101 breakpoint, the only way to get that is to wear the full Bull Goat armor set and the Bull Goat Talisman. If you're running around like that with hyper armor normals to recover your passive poise, the vast majority of PvE is gonna have a very hard time making you flinch.
Great work as always.
Gotta say, love calling it the Impact system!
I played two and a half times being quite confused because I never expected the stance break mechanic to be just Poise for enemies. Helps me understand why I just got wrecked today by the spear wielding Redmane Knight on top of Fort Gael because, in my innocence, though I didn't expect to stance break him or anything, I was thinking "Yeah, Impaling Thrust on the epee deals so much poise damage, I can certainly interrupt that attack"
The Golem wrists being weak can be reliably hit if they do their fire breath attack as they lower their hands to do so even after they've finished breathing fire, they do stay just enough for a hit or 2 if you manage to evade or stay away
So basically power stancing isn't a shortcut to INSANE POISE DAMAEG. Sad. :( Thanks for answering!
the old video was 45 minutes?!?I consumed all that information in one sitting
17:30 Yes the red wolf can be riposted/critical attacked!! im not sure if a recent update has changed it but i was able to get a riposte off by attempting it will standing near the head NOT the neck, like standing a little bit away and not hugging the wolf. hope this helps
I'm not good with math nor have I played Elden Ring. Yet I still watch these videos while stroking my beard and going "hmm yes, of course". 😂
I love how you say Question.
I remember being able to tank some PvE attacks while having less than 51 poise, like bolts from the godrick soldiers. Do some (or all) projectiles have their own poise damage values?
I don't understand why they made it so complicated with all these multipliers, especially the redundant ones. I guess to keep the recovery time from shooting up on these high effective poise enemies? I dunno, seems like more work than is really necessary to me.
Funny how you say your “resist correct” video is the poorest performing one so far yet that’s the video that made me subscribe lol
18:20 I thought I remembered seeing a crit animation for the red wolf... perhaps on an older patch?
Illusory, will you plan to do other more video about the hidden (or generally any) changes in the recent patches?
I have a question about the Gravitas Ash of War. When used on an airborne enemy it will knock them down to the ground. Is that a special effect or is that part of the poise system?
I always thought it was really strange that my Night Maiden's Mist broke Abductor stances, since I'd hear it despite not thinking it did that for any other enemy.
I would recommend looking into the special effect section and try to get the effect of the enemies that have the special rules designated to them onto another enemy to at least pin point where the effect is located.
Why not just have a stance bar like Sekiro? I'm really baffled by that, it seems like so much confusion with this game's stance breaking would have been fixed with that.
I highly recommend using Glinstone consumables. They are amazing for two reasons. 1: They are a safe, non-committal way to provoke an enemy out of their "edge lord walk" that lots of elden ring enemies do without you needing to chase them down or attack first. And 2: Because they are an easy poise reset as explained in this video!!
Here's a question of my own:
How are status build ups affected by stats?
I've seen unsatisfactory information about it, and was curious how it works. I've heard both that Arcane boosts status build up but only on weapons boosted by Arcane, and that Arcane boosts it regardless if a weapon has Arc scaling.
Ah yes, poise mechanics post DS2. Only slightly less complicated than a Quantum Mechanics course.
... and people still shit talk about DS2, where poise actually existed.
@@thulsa_doom It really feels like they tuned it for more fair pvp fights. But perhaps they nerfed the poise recovery a little bit too much.
It's fairer in DS2 indeed. Whenever I get myself into multiplayer in DS3 I feel like everything is a DEX build
@@thulsa_doom DS3 pvp meta certainly rewards aggressive and fast weapons, which would have been theoretically countered by high poise tank builds of DS1/2 but sadly there is no poise in DS3.
Has anyone compiled comprehensive data on “damage levels” yet? Is this how it worked in other games (Bloodborne?)? Knowing when you will interrupt enemies is a very useful thing that I haven’t really seen anyone dissect.
Attacks having hyper armor, but doing nothing at 0, is probably because it was easier to set to zero than to remove it from the weapons, specially at instances that they might want to give it hyper armor again (but that never happened)
That makes sense!
Yes please on a video about flinching/damage level!
Maybe Malenia inconsistency is what makes the this boss; Otherwise she would be either a "too easy boss" or a "This is impossible boss". Yet, thats very strage
I don't think:she is very similar to sister friede from ds3, the difference is she was playing by the rule and still felt and being one of the hardest boss in the title.
Malenia it's just broken, like godfrey, be he is another thing.
poise is convoluted in this place.
Shortbow with Barrage and lightning arrows works wonders on the Virgins!