Poise

FoldUnfold Table of Contents General Information Poise Regeneration Poise Safe Points Poise Drain Values Axes Curved Greatswords Curved Swords Daggers Fist Greataxes Great Hammers Greatswords Halberds Hammers Katanas Spears Straight Swords Thrusting Swords Ultra Greatswords Whips Spells Ammo Shields Items / Special Enemy Poise Values Regular Enemies Bosses Notes PvP related

General Information

Poise is a value that determines a character's resistance to being stunned. All characters, including enemies, have Poise. Being hit will briefly drain the player's poise value, and if drained to 0, the character will become stunned. Having more than 0 poise after taking a hit is required to avoid getting stunned, outside of a few specific instances.

Poise Regeneration

Each time a hit is taken, poise will reduce and remain briefly frozen at the latest value (it does not regenerate steadily like stamina). This means that if a player with 53 poise gets hit by an attack that drains 20 poise, the player will then have exactly 33 poise for the next few seconds. A hidden timer is triggered with each hit that is taken, and if it completes before another hit is taken, poise will instantly refill back to 100%.

For player characters, the timer takes a little over 3-5 seconds to reset¹. For most enemies, the timer is set to exactly 5 seconds.

Poise Safe Points

Poise Drain Values

Different weapons drain varying amounts of Poise, and it is completely independent of damage. The following tables show the amount of Poise drained for each weapon and attack type.

Note: When certain columns like "Rolling" or "L1/L2" are omitted below, they are identical to those weapons' R1 attacks. When "Kick" is omitted, it drains 0 poise from standard enemies but inflicts a guaranteed stagger on player characters.

Axes

• Kicks are regular kicks, on NPCs/Players they lead to a guaranteed stun, these just also deal poise damage. This can break and reset poise, no special animation is played for that however.

Chained Attacks:

• The Butcher Knife has a chained two-handed R2 attack, where the second R2 drains 70 poise instead of 52.5.

Curved Greatswords

Curved Swords

Chained Attacks:

• The Falchion and Scimitar have a chained R2 attack where the second R2 does 20 (1-handed) or 30 (2-handed) poise damage.
• The Jagged Ghost Blade has a chained R2 attack where the second R2 drains 5 per hit (both 1-handed or 2-handed).

Daggers

Fist

Greataxes

• The Dragon King Greataxe's two-handed R2 drains 100 poise with its AoE attack, and another 50 if the axe directly hits the enemy, for a combined total of 150 poise damage.
• The second stage of the Stone Greataxe's two-handed R2 chain attack drains the same amount of poise as the first attack, 75.

Great Hammers

Chained Attacks:

• The Large Club has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 drains 75 poise.

Note: The 2-handed rolling attacks actually trigger a guaranteed stun as well as draining Poise.

Greatswords

• The Moonlight Greatsword's 1H R2 projectile attack drains 35 poise. The blade itself does not deal any poise damage if it hits the enemy directly.
• The Moonlight Greatsword's 2H R2 projectile attack drains 52.5 poise. The blade itself will drain an additional 35 poise if it hits the enemy directly.
• The Obsidian Greatsword's 2H R2 AoE attack drains 70 poise. The blade itself will drain an additional 35 poise if it hits the enemy directly.

Halberds

Hammers

Chained Attacks:

• The Club, Pickaxe, and Warpick have a chained one-handed jumping attack, where the second R2 drains 24 poise instead of 30.
• The Blacksmith Giant Hammer, Blacksmith Hammer, Hammer of Vamos, Mace, Morning Star, and Reinforced Club have a chained one-handed jumping attack, where the second R2 drains 42 poise instead of 52.5.

Katanas

• Kicks are regular kicks, on NPCs/Players they lead to a guaranteed stun, these just also deal poise damage. This can break and reset poise, no special animation is played for that however.

Spears

• The Dragonslayer Spear's 1H R2 projectile attack does not drain poise. The spear must connect to its target to drain 20 poise.
• The Dragonslayer Spear's 2H R2 has a chained attack, where the second R2 drains 50 poise.

Straight Swords

• The Drake Sword's projectile 2H R2 attack drains 30 poise by itself. The sword impacting the enemy directly drains 20 in addition.

Thrusting Swords

Chained Attacks:

• Ricard's Rapier has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals 4 attacks that remove 2.5, 2.5, 2.5 and 1.25 poise.
• Ricard's Rapier has a chained 2H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals 4 attacks that removes 5, 5, 5 and 2.5 poise.
• Velka's Rapier has a chained 1H R2 attack, where the second R2 deals a single attack that removes 1.25 poise.
• Velka's Rapier has a chained 2H R2 attack, there the second R2 deals a single attack that removes 2.5 poise.

Ultra Greatswords

• The Dragon Greatsword's 2H R2 special attack drains 50 poise if only the projectile blast hits.
• Above instances where two values are found adding to each other, poise damage has the potential to trigger twice (rapidly in succession, from a single attack). Though it may be possible for only one of those to trigger, depending on the spacing or angle of the enemy.

Whips

Spells

Note that weapons buffed by spells do not have increased poise damage.

• The Soulmass orbs do not drain poise if they "bump" into an enemy instead of firing.

• Fire Surge does not drain poise.

• Miracle Resonance buffs do not increase poise damage.
• The AoE bursts trigger a guaranteed stun if unblocked by an opponent with sufficient poise, and instead trigger a knocking down animation when poise is drained.
• When the lightning miracles hit water, there are three different tiers of poise damage depending on how close the water effect is to the enemy:
  • Lightning Spear: 16 / 10 / 0
  • Great Lightning Spear: 25 / 15 / 5
  • Sunlight Spear: 35 / 20 / 10

Ammo

• All Bows and Crossbows deal the same amount of poise damage. The poise damage depends on the ammunition being used and also the body part being hit on human players/ NPCs.
  • A multiplier to certain body parts being hit by arrows or bolts affects the poise damage taken as well.
  • Legs and Arms of human players/ NPCs will take 10% extra poise damage (22 for regular arrows and bolts), regardless of which armor is being used.
  • Headshots with arrows or bolts are a guaranteed stagger regardless of poise.²
• The Avelyn deals the full poise damage for each bolt that impacts, for a total of 60 poise damage.

Shields

• Above instances where two values are found adding to each other, poise damage has the potential to trigger twice (rapidly in succession, from a single attack). Though it may be possible for only the first hit to trigger, depending on the spacing or angle of the enemy.
• The Crystal Ring Shield's projectile attack drains 60 poise, plus an additional 20 if the shield impacts the enemy.
• The Bonewheel Shield R2 attacks deal three possible hits, for a total of 60 poise damage.
• Some shields have unique animations that replace the kick attack, however these don't qualify as special kick attacks and simply behave as a standard kick.

Items / Special

• The Egg Head Kick drains 100 poise in addition to triggering a guaranteed stun regardless.
• Kicking with the Orange Charred Ring equipped does not drain poise (or affect the kick attacks that do drain poise).
• The Set of Thorns do not drain poise when equipped and rolling into an enemy, though having any piece equipped will stagger enemies with 0 poise.

Enemy Poise Values

Regular Enemies

Bosses

Various bosses do not have any poise. But rather than stagger with every hit, they are set to be completely unstaggerable.

• Priscilla has 60 poise when invisible, breaking her poise is what makes her visible. She has infinite poise (unbreakable) when visible.
• The Iron Golem has its own stagger mechanism instead of normal poise. See Iron Golem for an explanation.
• Artorias' Poise is reduced from 130 to 90 during his charge-up animation.

Notes

• Poise Damage for an attack is calculated as a base amount of poise (5 for Daggers and Thrusting swords, 20 for Katanas and Straight Swords(…), 35 for Greatswords (…) and 50 for Ultra Greatswords (…)), multiplied by some factor for the attack. This factor is 1 for a one-handed light-attack, 1.5 for a two-handed light attack, etc.
  • It appears that due to the way the game saves values, attacks with poise damage generated with a factor of 0.8, 1.2 or 1.6 are slightly less than they are supposed to be, allowing players to poise through them with a slightly lower poise value.
  • The value 1.6 in particular includes backstep/running attacks, making it possible to poise through 20*1.6=32 poise Damage dealing attacks with only 32 poise. The more precise poise Damage dealt is 31.9999980927.
  • Also, Black Knight Greataxe is the only weapon with different factors for its light attacks, happening to be 0.8 and 1.2, it can not stagger 40/60 poise with a single hit.

• The Wolf Ring also boosts poise by 40 points.

• Havel's Set provides the highest Poise of any armor set in the game at 121 Poise. This doesn't necessarily justify it's popularity, as the benefit of such excessive poise is debatable, and compared to many upgradable armor pieces it presents an option low on defense for a high weight setup.

PvP related

When building a character for PvP, it is a good idea to equip armor that will put you above one of the following Poise breakpoints:

• 32 lets you get poise through the many 30 poise two-handed R1s that dominate the PvP meta. Without this, you're giving Katanas, Spears and Curved Swords a massive advantage. Additionally it lets you walk through their running attacks.
  • 21 lets you poise through very light attacks, including one-handed ones of 30 poise Damage dealing weapons. With Wolf Ring, this can reach the much more important 61 poise breakpoint. One important tactic with this is removing the Wolf Ring at low HP, when poise doesn't help you anymore and the Dark Wood Grain Ring or Red Tearstone Ring are better choices.
  • 53 lets you survive at least one light attack from any weapon without getting your Poise broken except by 2-handed light attacks from an ultra greatsword, a great hammer, or a greataxe. This is a very minor poise breakpoint, as 61 poise and 32 poise are vastly more important. Primarily it is a counter pick against builds that don't use 30 poise Damage dealing weapons, as without which there is little need for 61 poise. This mostly refers to strength builds that have little to no variety in the swaps they can make, or specifically counter-picking Greatsword or Hammer users. 56 poises as a variation poises through running attacks.
• 61 lets you poise through two 30 poise hits, three 20 poise hits, a Katana kick into a Great Combustion, one 2H light attack from the Black Knight Greataxe or one Black Flame hit, as well as everything 53 poise can. This is the most important poise Breakpoint in the game, only followed by 31 poise. 62 poise is a variation which can take a two-handed running attack + a regular two-handed light attack from 30 poise Damage weapons.
  • 71 lets you poise through two, 35 poise light-attacks.
  • 76 lets you survive at least one light or jumping attack from any weapon without getting your Poise broken. None of these are generally seen as worth investing levels into, some builds use Full-Giants as it has the highest poise in the game, but the breakpoint has become irrelevant both with an increase in player proficiency, to not get hit by attacks with seconds of startup, and the widespread use of toggle escape. High poise levels such as these can be useful to not get interrupted while healing, in duels and most other situations, they are rather irrelevant for though.

• A popular list of important armor setups can be found (here).

• Running attacks drain more poise than normal R1 attacks. For example, you need 56 poise to resist a greatsword running attack as opposed to 53.

• A phantom hit — an attack that hits you during the invincibility frames from a roll when viewed by the player getting hit — will still damage your poise, much like poison and bleed will still build up when a phantom hit occurs. Can also be used to reset poise, just like it can be used to reset bleed.

• Toggle Escape — if you toggle your left/right hand weapon during a stun animation, you can replace the stun animation with a weapon toggling animation (which you can move during), effectively cancelling your stun. While clearly intentionally left as part of the animation, the reason is uncertain. Toggling is an important part of PvP, depending on the attack, it can get you in a safe position or even let you hit them back or backstab their attack.
  • Toggles are "Queued", that is they start after the current animation ends. This can be a positive, as it allows for perfect toggles after being stuck in an animation. However, if backstabbed with a toggle queued, the toggle will come out as early on in your wakeup animation as possible, which both breaks your immunity, and leaves you unable to roll or block, often allowing the opponent to land a free hit on you.