Spectral lance on dragon head to poise break him, and then swap to sword with piercing fang to close distance and go for critical . Super devastating If used with rapier
I came here to say this. Spectral Lance on a Halberd does incredible poise damage and can be used at extreme ranges. Does decent damage too, and is perfect for an Arcane build if you put it on a Vulgar Militia Saw because Occult does well on that weapon. I had so much fun using it against Dragons with my Arcane build, especially memorable was the one on the bridge in Dragonbarrow.
I can't tell you just how surprised I was by how devastating spectral lance is. I recently did a pure arcane run, and with with the arrow's reach talisman I trivialized a shocking number of areas and bosses with it on an occult vulgar militia saw. As the OC said, large enemies capable of quickly making space that can be vexing to melee, like dragons, Astel, Fire Giant, etc. become pin cushions and stagger repeatedly. Even if you're too far to make it for a crit you just keep throwing, and a staggered boss is a boss that isn't attacking you, so it's a win. It also happens to have a knack for striking enemies in the face for bonus damage, more than most other projectile attacks I've used.
I like square off, but prefer stamp upward cut because of the 50% damage negation and ability to trade even with low poise. Those lands during spams add up to more damage over time
Please don't forget to mention the bird's specific warcry that boosts poise damage as a spirit summon on the White Shadow build. I absolutely adore how much stagger that shit had.
Square off is king because it not only deals a lot of poise damage it's also easy to hit with it between boss' attacks while playing agressively, so the boss will not start recovering.
I made a sword & board build back in the day. Had to add a swap-on crit dagger to it because of how often square off would poise break enemies. One of my favorite weapon arts.
Dark Moon Greatsword's heavy charged attacks still feel unmatched. Honestly its so good that I only stayed at the requirements to wield it for a long time and just pumped Vigor and Endurance.
I've spent a lot of time testing each weapon art poise dmg in order to test the fastest at breaking stances. But in the end i chose Piercing fang on GS, despite being a little slower than impaling thrust, it covers more distance and deals a lot more damage, so in general i think it's more flexible to play, while still dealing a lot of poise damage
I did a playthrough with the Short Spear.....and I found the Impaling Thrust to be AMAZING! The charged double poke ---> triple poke procs bleed FAST as well!
I wish square off would be available for greatswords too, not even to use for a crit build but just because I love it so much, plus the guard you go into looks very good imo and kind of a realistic guard in greatsword fencing. Even if they had to lower the poise damage for greatswords I would still take it just because I love the ash of war so much, anyway great video
I used a LOT of Glintblade Phalanx in my first playthrough. Like you said, it's not a huge amount of Poise/s, but it's very flexible, especially when you can land the follow-up lunge.
I randomly slapped 'Impaling Thrust' on GS and realized it really staggers knights well. Thanks to your video, I added the Phalanx WA on a dagger swap. Rune Bears have never been easier!
You covered the ashes well, but I'd like to see data on charged R2s. Do the bonuses to charged attacks (talismans, roars, etc) affect poise damage? Would the poise DPS stack up again AoW spam? There are also jump attack combos to look at.
Square off being one of the best ways to poise damage spam sound really great considering straight swords possess two weapons with a slighty higher crit damage (lordsworn sword and noble slender sword)
I appreciate you taking so much effort to make this video and many of your other ones too. I've been wondering what to use ever since redmanes got the axe and this provided me with some great options moving forward. Cheers! 🍻
I pretty much just abuse collosal guard counters with crimson dagger and ritual shield. Ritual shield and guard counters stack damage negation and dagger reactivates your ritual shield, their guard counter deals massive poise damage, 40+ to boot and They can also be combo'd with other stance damage sources. A jump attack into a guard counter is almost always a break, and the collosal procs C-dagger twice so you get massive healing off it. It may not be the highest crit damage on its own, But for me its kinda irrelevant because its borderline impossible for most enemies to even come close to killing you and you're still dealing ridiculous damage.
Some other, less-spammable considerations a crit build might make are Cragblade or Barbaric Roar. They are more single-target based, but either can supplement your heavy attacks - especially the latter since it lets those charged heavies hit multiple times more quickly with heavier armaments in addition to hyper-armor... though that does fall in line with the likes of Lion's Claw with being primarily strength-based and having the knife just be an extra.
look how they massacred our boy. . . real talk; the nerfs were a bit too much, as now I kinda don't see the point of using this over flame slash, aside from its range. Anybody still running this in PvE? I've never encountered it in PvP.
I literally only run red manes because it's the only decent flame art for zwi. I do not know why you can't put flaming strike on it. the aoe clear is decent into some enemy groups but it really did get gutted.
It's nice to use in PvE sometimes for smaller enemies or to get the last hit on some large enemies/bosses. It still hits hard but not something you spam just for the poise break. And you'd be surprised how often some players don't respect the massive range it covers in PvP as they lose a chunk of their HP.
@@lordderppington4694 never knew you couldn't slap that on a zwei. . . weird, considering they let the halberds have it, and they are detestably better weapons because of it. lol
@@pockystyx4087 Right? There are weapons with stronger combos, bigger range, more damage and they can use is. But colossal swords? That's where we draw the line. I was very sad because in addition to zwie being my favorite weapon, I'm doing a theme'd build and was going to use that art.
@@lordderppington4694 honestly; the way they choose what does and doesn't get ashes of war is dumb as hell. Things like whips, flails, and fists got jipped lol
There was a mention of just using a big weapon and charging an r2, but I kinda wish it was placed on the tier list to show exactly what gets overtaken by just... getting good.
Id say only viable charged r2 on dedicated stagger build is the hammer class weapon two handed. Does somewhere in the north of 30 poise damage and comes out incredibly fast compared to colossal weapons/swords or greathammers and the recovery is noticably better as well. 2 charged r2s +any follow up will stagger Margitt from his 80 poise. Other one Id recommend is jumping powerstance flail/hammer, it even beats out colossal swords jumping r2 for poise damage, while having much faster recovery and being much less prone to aimpunch miss. Hell, even on a non dedicated build the stance break capability of the hammer/flail class is not to be overlooked. Made my colossal sword builds feel like wasted effort.
@Captain_Morgan Havent really tried the greatsword class but I seriously doubt its viable for a Cr2 stance break build. So far Ive played it with curved greatswords, colossal swords and colossal weapons and all those to the hammers. The range is not really an issue imo. Landing Cr2s takes some positioning anyway, and the bigger issue is bosses hitting you instead of escaping your range.
@Captain_Morgan Yeah, its not that the greatswords arent a good class, or even bad at stance breaking. In fact theyre very balanced in terms of damage, just that for pure stance break the hammers are just insane against the bosses. The lordsworn greatsword actually scales pretty well for an early weapon if I recall correctly. I used it for a while on my second playthrough, definitely a nice option right at the start
A build i do for stance breaking / crit hits is 2 handed large club with poison mist ash of war. poison mist is quick, cheap, has good swipe range, combos well, procs poison very quickly, and can "wiff" foes that have been staggered / stance broken so you get a hit but can still critical hit. So with turtle shield on back for faster stamina recovery, can basically jump attack, then charge attack, then crit, then poison mist and repeat. Trick is to delay the crit till the last possible moment so your stamina recharges.
Spectral Lance, Giant Hunt, and of course Lion's Claw all can chain into each other alright if you can carry the weapons. High arcane gets the most from the lance, but if you leave your spear or The Lance on a non-elemental you can get fantastic grease effects if the enemy closes. Giant Hunt and Lions Claw benefit from longer weapons, especially Giant Hunt, but both of which you can use to kill Banished Knights and Wormfaces. Stack on a Misericorde with Glintblade Phalanx in your spare slot and you have active defense and an extra stagger hit for really stubborn enemies.
Great subject for a video and superb testing and calculation, as always! I see from the comments that you tested much more than made the video, your thoroughness is remarkable. My personal experience with Impaling Thrust made me rank it fairly high, but Ice Spear? I guess I never really paid much attention to criticals, but I'm certainly about to slap it on my lance with a soft-swap Misericorde and the appropriate talismans - time to enjoy a crit build! I know some other people have mentioned the guard-counter mechanic, and I remember your guard-countering with the hammer in PvP - an interesting build video idea, an optimized guard counter build with a focus on soft-swap criticals for PvE. You'd be the one to do it! Thanks for all the great information, always enjoyable.
Amazing video as always ! Just to note with impaling thrust on Greatswords, Claymores r2 chains really fast into impaling thrust and can be spammed consecutively into each other faster then 2 impaling thrusts in a row. Would be interested to see there poise damage/sec of it :))
Yes, I know. It is shown as well, but in terms of poise damage/sec it is not high. You are better of swapping => another weapon art like shown for higher poise dmg/sec.
I love fromsoft but I remember I hate them because they'll nerf something broken making completely unusable but ignore the other broken stuff like "eh we already did our job once"
@@WORTH-IT-MAN or how they were like "flame of the redmanes a bit too strong, kill it" and now no one's using it lol There's much more and I'm excited to get mad in the dlc about nerfs
Thank you again for an excellent video (as always). How about Eleonora's Poleblade WA? It seems to stagger pretty fast. Morgott's cursed sword as well, even though it was nerfed recently and i believe it can't hold up to something like impaling thrust anymore.
Eleonora is pretty weird because its "hits" are on both sides of the blade so it is pretty much impossible to connect everything. The stagger ends up being decent overall but the animation is actually quite long so you end up with roughly Moonveil's poise dmg/sec if you do the full chain (and also depends on how many hits you get in) Morgott's is also roughly in the same boat. It is faster but it doesn't actually poise break that quickly. (most likely because the explosion can stagger mobs regardless of poise breaking that makes it seem like it'll poise break but the stance damage isn't actually that high).
Oh hell yeah! This is just what we needed. Also, damn it Chrightt, I was just messing around with 2 builds you recently posted i'm not ready for another one, and it sounds awesome by the name!
I think there's another special gimmick to Impaling Thrust, as covered by a regular ER pvp youtuber _Onion Samurai:_ The R2 comes extremely fast after the end of Impaling Thrust, so you can chain the Ash of War with a super fast R2 to take advantage of the Hyperarmor, which can lead you to another attack window for your Ash of War. It's extremely hyperaggressive and requires a lot of endurance, but it does the job extremely well.
The other thing to consider is that impaling thrust has a 180 degree turn rate, which means that if you dodge a boss move such that you end up facing away from them, it is likely that you'll miss if you immediately go into your ash of war, since you can't turn enough to hit them. Likewise, you can use the knowledge to your advantage and position yourself to take advantage of the 180 degrees of turn that the ash of war can do.
Guard counters require you to wait for hits and then counter though. They do great poise damage but they're definitely another playstyle since its generally slower and you still need stat points to hold the shield + counter weapon as well.
I expected wing of astel to show up here because it’s essentially “flame of the redmanes at home,” I was hoping that storm blade would get a mention too because it does like 7 poise damage per hit, which on its own isn’t anything special but it also has good range, damage, fp cost, cast speed, and recovery time. Plus you can suck it on a greatsword and use it at melee range to get sword hits in too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the math shows that it’s not as good as I think, but all I know is that it made farming dual rotten crystal spears a lot easier for me.
I love the cipher pata. I know it’s like the word pve weapon in the game since it does pure holy dmg and is a fist weapon, but it looks so cool and it’s so fun to use
My poise breaker build was caestus and partisan with spectral lance. Partisan was mainhand, with the quickstep offhand spiked caestus as a main weapon. Making it easy to quickly switch to the mainhand weapon art and back to two-handing the caestus, as opposite to switching from two-handing caestus to wielding both weapons, to offhand weapon art. Can't boost the occult caestus, with how quickly it hits and how quickly it stacks the poise damage, might be not worth it to lose an attack window. Opportunity cost and all.
I adore phalanx because its super aggressive and defensive at such a low cost. Ice clayman harpoon, abuse the followup or just swapping into spells makes for a nice crit mage build at low melee cost. Also you can pick up the turtle greatshield for fashion, stamina control and emergency block.
I love stance break builds. I play around with a lot of them, though, I’ve never really got into the numbers. It’s nice to see a lot of my casual observations confirmed with numbers. Spectral lance is weird. It doesn’t feel as slow as the numbers show. I guess because the range does provide some flexibility. However, I’ve always found it rather boring to play for a reason I can’t seem to put my finger on
Very insightful information, I never got to use the old flame of red mane, but I figured it couldn’t be that much worse…. I was mistaken. Either way I still wanted to make a play through of basically just parrying and criticals/ripostes. Was considering a lance for hella poise dmg but then said fuck it, lemme get the top of the list (wing of Astel). LEMME TELL YALL……. THAT SHIT IS BUSTED. Had to grind a bit to max it out and max my mimic too but after that I truly had a breeze with basically every boss (just beat radagon couple hours ago). I just dumped extra levels into intelligence for the scaling on it, the WA can carry you through the game I promise, but maybe pair it with reduvia dagger just to be safe.
Great video. In regards to poise beaking, there is a cracked tear that increases the poise damage you do by 30%. Some straight swords even have a bit of crit increase, so you could argue to not swap. Could help those poise breaking builds in pve. Another weapon art i liked was spinning slash. Poise broke malenia like three times 😮 Have you tried poise breaking with spells? (Greatblade phalanx comes to mind)
Greatblade Phalanx is not good for poise breaks at all imo. It does less poise damage than the glintblade phalanx weapon art while having the same delay and a lot more fp cost. It does do more damage tho, so that could be worth considering. If you want spells for poise breaks I'm pretty confident the fastest you could do is chain dragon claw back to back using 2 different seals, although you'll be likely trading a lot that way so you must have the health or negations to survive.
I always put impaling thrust on swords, not just for the shield break and poise damage but also because of the dynamic gameplay it gives, complementing swords' lack of range. Press L2 to go from one enemy to the next. Much like square off but cooler and with more range. I do the same with greatswords and piercing fang
Lordsword greatsword has better crit for a greatsword, and can be found at the start of the game, then get your horse and run straight to bernhal for impaling thrust. Impale away to break poise, then enhanced crit. Could be a decent speed run method to play the game. No bleed but being as you could set it to heavy you could just use blood grease on bosses that are bleedable. Very neat option there, for a fairly simple to execute strategy of land impales, then crit the boss repeat.
I never used flame of redmanes when it was a stance breaking god. I used glintblade phallanx because I got it early. I didn't even know anything about stance breaking back then. It just knocked enemies down in 1 to 2 volleys depending on how big they were.
Buttslam is horrible for poise break though. The 40 poise damage aside its slow to start up and the recovery is still painfully slow. Not at all practical to use - flame is still far more consistent.
I've had great success with 2 Lordsworn Straight swords. Left with Phalanx and right with Stand off. VERY easy stance breaks, very good damage with multi-hit boosters, and most importantly, FUN. Lmao
I'm making a "frost lightning" build (this is to say I haven't tested this) But I'm going to put Ice Spear on Clayman's Harpoon with Electrify Armament and 40 Dex and I am so sad for the DLC because i'm not going to see any of the bosses moveset :(
Glintblade Phalanx into Glintstone Kris might not be the best poisebreak but it works and it goes together amazingly. I came across this playing as a swordless swordsman. By the way, trolls roar has a lot of poise damage too. I thought it might have been a contender.
Would you do a video like this on charged heavy attacks? I would be interested to know how thier stance damage per second compares against each other and the skills shown here.
@@Chrightt I know this is a bit late, but I would just like to add that many enemies and bosses (E.G. Malenia, Hoarah Loux, Morgott) have maximum Stance values in multiples of 40, so I think whether or not a charged attack can hit the breakpoint of 40 Stance damage is important to mention. For example, two handed charged attacks from Hammers, Flails, and Collosal Swords come just short of doing 40 Stance damage, but will hit the breakpoint if buffed with Cragblade. On the other hand, two handed Great Hammers and certain Collosal Weapons one handed can do over 40 Stance damage in a single charged attack, leaving room to use Skills/Weapon Buffs other than Cragblade with little opportunity cost if one is going for Stance breaks. Of course, this may be different for the still significant number of enemies and bosses who's maximum Stance values is not in multiples of 40 (E.G. Godrick, Mohg, Elden Beast (not including Radagon)).
Spells are relatively slow in general, but this is a vid more dedicated to weapon arts. Although, from what I can recall, I don't think any spell actually comes close to the stronger WA spamming when it comes to poise dmg/sec.
@@Chrightt thanks. I find the base poise is also helpful, as a lot of enemies have exactly 80 or exactly 120, which can significantly affect performance
No, it does not. It looks like it but it isn't (I've actually used it after staggering the troll to show that I know it exists but I did not include it because the follow up is weaker than the Glintstone Kris' even with the highest poise damage weapon you can slot with it).
You can reach pretty high but the issue with charged heavy attack tends to be short range/no or low hyper armor, breaking your combo. This is a problem because doing 2 charged heavies in a row (R2 1 + R2 2) is much faster than doing 2 charged R2 1 so it is much more situationally dependent than the singular weapon art spam.
Ordovis was around 13~ and inconsistent due to 13~ being landing the blade portion in addition to the AoE while having to charge it. I tried to limit the video so it wasn't too long and Ordovis was just not very consistent across fights imo.
Comprehensive analysis as usual. Ordovis’s Vortex, particularly if charged, should be on the list, no? Takes too long to charge? Even uncharged, it has amazing stance break. I think I would rather regularly stance break an enemy and get an extra hit or two than get the occasional critical. What about a video that examines stance break?
Ordovis is actually pretty decent if I'm doing the analysis right using the frame and poise damage data. A charged version of the ash of war provided that you also land the blade part of it does 66 poise damage. It takes 66 frames to charge up the attack and you can start charging up another one on the 103rd frame of the charged version. You can also dodge after a charged ash of war on the 92nd frame (and light attack on the 93rd). Using the same calc. 103 + 103 + 92 = 298 frames for 3 charged attacks + dodge on the last one, translating to 9.93 seconds for the entire execution. At 66*3 poise damage per cast, that translates to 19.93 poise damage/sec, assuming that you are landing the weapon art of the ash of war each time (which imo is difficult to do against most mobile bosses, especially if you aren't looking to hit trade).
The math here for Ordovis' is wrong cause the many charged bullets for ordovis doesn't overlap (you can only ever hit one of them). It's just damage based on location. So, Ordovis fully charged deals 44 poise damage. You end up with 13.28 poise damage per sec. I didn't include it because I think fully charged Ordovis (while hitting the blade) is not very consistent at all.
I know this is specifically notes for critical hits, but after they massacred my boy (FotR), I went with staggering than full on poise break. Ancient Death Rancor + Sword of Night & Flame (night beam) has been my go to recently. Trying an Int/Fai build anyways, so decided to look up some int/fai builds from Fextralife, NizarGG, and some others, and they all seem to go with the same thing - I guess because it works? lol
I remember seeing that claymore r2 follow up out of impailing thrust is faster than the r1. Can you confirm? It wouldnt be part of any crit build, but with spear talisman and counter it might do some good damage.
Yes, it indeed is faster. And you're right. The R2 won't have enough poise damage so you still lose out by using the R2 instead of just doing another impaling.
@chrightt I guess if you have framedata, scaling and so on, its possible to put it all together and make a DPS chart of spells/weapons (with and without buffs). Do you think that this is something that you could do in the future?
This should be possible but it will be dependent on assumptions like given in this video (i.e. 3 spams with 2 being XX recovery) which is a lot more limited. Some slower WA might do massive DPS but have no Hyper Armor and is still reliant on being able to land without the hyper armor. It's easier when there is an assumption that makes sense (i.e. in this video we're just trying to spam weapon arts to get a crit).
![Marika's Ascension was NOT legitimate; AND IT EXPLAINS EVERYTHING [Elden Ring Lore]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Uo7Froo5xS8/mqdefault.jpg)
so this is why using wing of astel to cheese malenia felt like uncovering a horrific forbidden secret of the meta
My reaction when I first cleaned mohg up with it on my first playthrough. Man what a surprise that was.
@Dv Divine "hmm I'll respec to dex and try this new unique ash of war from this weapon I just got"
OH GOOD HEAVENS
Spectral Lance is a great option to poise break dragons since you can actually hit their head with it relatively easily.
Nice, actually some use for it!
Spectral lance on dragon head to poise break him, and then swap to sword with piercing fang to close distance and go for critical . Super devastating If used with rapier
Also, it's great against those lesser Astels. You can infinite stun lock them with Spectral Lance to their head.
I came here to say this. Spectral Lance on a Halberd does incredible poise damage and can be used at extreme ranges. Does decent damage too, and is perfect for an Arcane build if you put it on a Vulgar Militia Saw because Occult does well on that weapon. I had so much fun using it against Dragons with my Arcane build, especially memorable was the one on the bridge in Dragonbarrow.
I can't tell you just how surprised I was by how devastating spectral lance is. I recently did a pure arcane run, and with with the arrow's reach talisman I trivialized a shocking number of areas and bosses with it on an occult vulgar militia saw. As the OC said, large enemies capable of quickly making space that can be vexing to melee, like dragons, Astel, Fire Giant, etc. become pin cushions and stagger repeatedly. Even if you're too far to make it for a crit you just keep throwing, and a staggered boss is a boss that isn't attacking you, so it's a win. It also happens to have a knack for striking enemies in the face for bonus damage, more than most other projectile attacks I've used.
You can cancel Transient Moonlight's animation into crouch which will allow you to do another AoW faster than with rolling in between
Thats some forbidden knowledge you just shared
It's even faster if you cancel it with a block. And it also works with regular unsheathe obviously.
I really enjoyed square off when I got tired of redmanes even before it was nerfed. It feels like a much more honest way to play a crit build
i played square off for days with a black knife build and the warhawk talon sword
I like square off, but prefer stamp upward cut because of the 50% damage negation and ability to trade even with low poise. Those lands during spams add up to more damage over time
Lions claw goat
Combos are the real buissness. Glintstone phalanx + Glintstone dart, impaling thrust, or square off gets the job done pretty quick 👍🏾
Please don't forget to mention the bird's specific warcry that boosts poise damage as a spirit summon on the White Shadow build. I absolutely adore how much stagger that shit had.
which spirit ash is it? never heard of that it sounds interesting
I think it’s deathritual spear ash
@@ts6603 stormhawk deenh
@@sathlasdalaraynidridlendar6875 found it out in the wiki but still thanks m8
White shadow build?
Square off is king because it not only deals a lot of poise damage it's also easy to hit with it between boss' attacks while playing agressively, so the boss will not start recovering.
I made a sword & board build back in the day. Had to add a swap-on crit dagger to it because of how often square off would poise break enemies. One of my favorite weapon arts.
Dark Moon Greatsword's heavy charged attacks still feel unmatched. Honestly its so good that I only stayed at the requirements to wield it for a long time and just pumped Vigor and Endurance.
I've spent a lot of time testing each weapon art poise dmg in order to test the fastest at breaking stances. But in the end i chose Piercing fang on GS, despite being a little slower than impaling thrust, it covers more distance and deals a lot more damage, so in general i think it's more flexible to play, while still dealing a lot of poise damage
My thoughts as well. Particularly because I use Piercing Fang on a heavy greatsword.
I did a playthrough with the Short Spear.....and I found the Impaling Thrust to be AMAZING! The charged double poke ---> triple poke procs bleed FAST as well!
Was this occult?
Hey there, just wanted to say I found your channel today and it's absolutely wonderful! Thank you for making these videos.
I wish square off would be available for greatswords too, not even to use for a crit build but just because I love it so much, plus the guard you go into looks very good imo and kind of a realistic guard in greatsword fencing. Even if they had to lower the poise damage for greatswords I would still take it just because I love the ash of war so much, anyway great video
Very educational as usual! My tried and true and always go to poise break is the Claymore with Lion's Claw. Thank you Chrightt
I hope you're planning on revisiting this after the dlc information is more complete. Finding savage lion's claw reminded me of this video.
Using Greatblade Phalanx and Nebula is doing plenty of stance breaking for me on my mage build!
R.I.P Flame of the Redmanes
Apart from aow maybe it's worth considering spells too. Rock sling in particular I believe does great poise damage and is pretty spamable.
Rock Sling's damage alone makes it a build in itself. The poise damage is just a bonus
I used a LOT of Glintblade Phalanx in my first playthrough. Like you said, it's not a huge amount of Poise/s, but it's very flexible, especially when you can land the follow-up lunge.
I randomly slapped 'Impaling Thrust' on GS and realized it really staggers knights well.
Thanks to your video, I added the Phalanx WA on a dagger swap.
Rune Bears have never been easier!
Been eagerly awaiting this video, thanks for all the hard work! Excited for the new White Shadow build.
You covered the ashes well, but I'd like to see data on charged R2s. Do the bonuses to charged attacks (talismans, roars, etc) affect poise damage? Would the poise DPS stack up again AoW spam? There are also jump attack combos to look at.
Square off being one of the best ways to poise damage spam sound really great considering straight swords possess two weapons with a slighty higher crit damage (lordsworn sword and noble slender sword)
The critical of all time!
yessir!
I appreciate you taking so much effort to make this video and many of your other ones too. I've been wondering what to use ever since redmanes got the axe and this provided me with some great options moving forward. Cheers! 🍻
I pretty much just abuse collosal guard counters with crimson dagger and ritual shield.
Ritual shield and guard counters stack damage negation and dagger reactivates your ritual shield, their guard counter deals massive poise damage, 40+ to boot and They can also be combo'd with other stance damage sources.
A jump attack into a guard counter is almost always a break, and the collosal procs C-dagger twice so you get massive healing off it.
It may not be the highest crit damage on its own, But for me its kinda irrelevant because its borderline impossible for most enemies to even come close to killing you and you're still dealing ridiculous damage.
I dont think ive ever been this excited to see a build "The White Shadow" sounds so cool
Fallingstar Beast Jaw did need a nerf, but it was massively over-nerfed...
same with flames, it would have been fine at 30 poise damage
@@yeetgrenade7492 No, it should not be a poise breaking tool considering it's other abilities.
This was a great video, I'd love to see a similar breakdown for sorceries and incantations.
GREAT stuff in here dude. Great video. I've just subscribed, and I can't wait to see the crit build. Thank you so much!
Some other, less-spammable considerations a crit build might make are Cragblade or Barbaric Roar. They are more single-target based, but either can supplement your heavy attacks - especially the latter since it lets those charged heavies hit multiple times more quickly with heavier armaments in addition to hyper-armor... though that does fall in line with the likes of Lion's Claw with being primarily strength-based and having the knife just be an extra.
Cragblade on spiked fists my beloved
look how they massacred our boy. . .
real talk; the nerfs were a bit too much, as now I kinda don't see the point of using this over flame slash, aside from its range. Anybody still running this in PvE? I've never encountered it in PvP.
I literally only run red manes because it's the only decent flame art for zwi. I do not know why you can't put flaming strike on it. the aoe clear is decent into some enemy groups but it really did get gutted.
It's nice to use in PvE sometimes for smaller enemies or to get the last hit on some large enemies/bosses. It still hits hard but not something you spam just for the poise break.
And you'd be surprised how often some players don't respect the massive range it covers in PvP as they lose a chunk of their HP.
@@lordderppington4694 never knew you couldn't slap that on a zwei. . . weird, considering they let the halberds have it, and they are detestably better weapons because of it. lol
@@pockystyx4087 Right? There are weapons with stronger combos, bigger range, more damage and they can use is. But colossal swords? That's where we draw the line. I was very sad because in addition to zwie being my favorite weapon, I'm doing a theme'd build and was going to use that art.
@@lordderppington4694 honestly; the way they choose what does and doesn't get ashes of war is dumb as hell.
Things like whips, flails, and fists got jipped lol
There was a mention of just using a big weapon and charging an r2, but I kinda wish it was placed on the tier list to show exactly what gets overtaken by just... getting good.
Id say only viable charged r2 on dedicated stagger build is the hammer class weapon two handed. Does somewhere in the north of 30 poise damage and comes out incredibly fast compared to colossal weapons/swords or greathammers and the recovery is noticably better as well.
2 charged r2s +any follow up will stagger Margitt from his 80 poise.
Other one Id recommend is jumping powerstance flail/hammer, it even beats out colossal swords jumping r2 for poise damage, while having much faster recovery and being much less prone to aimpunch miss.
Hell, even on a non dedicated build the stance break capability of the hammer/flail class is not to be overlooked. Made my colossal sword builds feel like wasted effort.
@Captain_Morgan Havent really tried the greatsword class but I seriously doubt its viable for a Cr2 stance break build. So far Ive played it with curved greatswords, colossal swords and colossal weapons and all those to the hammers.
The range is not really an issue imo. Landing Cr2s takes some positioning anyway, and the bigger issue is bosses hitting you instead of escaping your range.
@Captain_Morgan Yeah, its not that the greatswords arent a good class, or even bad at stance breaking. In fact theyre very balanced in terms of damage, just that for pure stance break the hammers are just insane against the bosses.
The lordsworn greatsword actually scales pretty well for an early weapon if I recall correctly. I used it for a while on my second playthrough, definitely a nice option right at the start
Finally!!! Thanks, a poise list with incants and sorceries next would be nice
A build i do for stance breaking / crit hits is 2 handed large club with poison mist ash of war.
poison mist is quick, cheap, has good swipe range, combos well, procs poison very quickly, and can "wiff" foes that have been staggered / stance broken so you get a hit but can still critical hit.
So with turtle shield on back for faster stamina recovery, can basically jump attack, then charge attack, then crit, then poison mist and repeat.
Trick is to delay the crit till the last possible moment so your stamina recharges.
Spectral Lance, Giant Hunt, and of course Lion's Claw all can chain into each other alright if you can carry the weapons. High arcane gets the most from the lance, but if you leave your spear or The Lance on a non-elemental you can get fantastic grease effects if the enemy closes. Giant Hunt and Lions Claw benefit from longer weapons, especially Giant Hunt, but both of which you can use to kill Banished Knights and Wormfaces. Stack on a Misericorde with Glintblade Phalanx in your spare slot and you have active defense and an extra stagger hit for really stubborn enemies.
Great subject for a video and superb testing and calculation, as always! I see from the comments that you tested much more than made the video, your thoroughness is remarkable.
My personal experience with Impaling Thrust made me rank it fairly high, but Ice Spear? I guess I never really paid much attention to criticals, but I'm certainly about to slap it on my lance with a soft-swap Misericorde and the appropriate talismans - time to enjoy a crit build!
I know some other people have mentioned the guard-counter mechanic, and I remember your guard-countering with the hammer in PvP - an interesting build video idea, an optimized guard counter build with a focus on soft-swap criticals for PvE. You'd be the one to do it! Thanks for all the great information, always enjoyable.
Thanks! I definitely checked out a bunch more weapon arts that didn't really make the cut. I can definitely do a guard counter video for sure :)
Amazing video as always !
Just to note with impaling thrust on Greatswords, Claymores r2 chains really fast into impaling thrust and can be spammed consecutively into each other faster then 2 impaling thrusts in a row. Would be interested to see there poise damage/sec of it :))
Not high because regular R2 doesn't do high poise damage. Only charged R2s do high poise damage. You'll actually end up with less poise damage/sec.
Onion Knight did a vid on this a few months back. Tried it out on a Blood Claymore, easiest boss clears I've ever done.
Glintblade phalanx has a followup attack that causes the blades to fire
Yes, I know. It is shown as well, but in terms of poise damage/sec it is not high. You are better of swapping => another weapon art like shown for higher poise dmg/sec.
Thanks! Super interested in the build coming up
I love fromsoft but I remember I hate them because they'll nerf something broken making completely unusable but ignore the other broken stuff like "eh we already did our job once"
Ye it’s so dumb like I don’t want to use wings of astel for a crit build
@@WORTH-IT-MAN or how they were like "flame of the redmanes a bit too strong, kill it" and now no one's using it lol
There's much more and I'm excited to get mad in the dlc about nerfs
Thank you again for an excellent video (as always). How about Eleonora's Poleblade WA? It seems to stagger pretty fast. Morgott's cursed sword as well, even though it was nerfed recently and i believe it can't hold up to something like impaling thrust anymore.
Eleonora is pretty weird because its "hits" are on both sides of the blade so it is pretty much impossible to connect everything. The stagger ends up being decent overall but the animation is actually quite long so you end up with roughly Moonveil's poise dmg/sec if you do the full chain (and also depends on how many hits you get in)
Morgott's is also roughly in the same boat. It is faster but it doesn't actually poise break that quickly. (most likely because the explosion can stagger mobs regardless of poise breaking that makes it seem like it'll poise break but the stance damage isn't actually that high).
Oh hell yeah! This is just what we needed. Also, damn it Chrightt, I was just messing around with 2 builds you recently posted i'm not ready for another one, and it sounds awesome by the name!
I think there's another special gimmick to Impaling Thrust, as covered by a regular ER pvp youtuber _Onion Samurai:_
The R2 comes extremely fast after the end of Impaling Thrust, so you can chain the Ash of War with a super fast R2 to take advantage of the Hyperarmor, which can lead you to another attack window for your Ash of War. It's extremely hyperaggressive and requires a lot of endurance, but it does the job extremely well.
claymore poke meta let's gooo
The other thing to consider is that impaling thrust has a 180 degree turn rate, which means that if you dodge a boss move such that you end up facing away from them, it is likely that you'll miss if you immediately go into your ash of war, since you can't turn enough to hit them. Likewise, you can use the knowledge to your advantage and position yourself to take advantage of the 180 degrees of turn that the ash of war can do.
I know people always forget it exists, but guard counters are imo the best depending on which weapon you use.
The saving grace of flails
Guard counters require you to wait for hits and then counter though. They do great poise damage but they're definitely another playstyle since its generally slower and you still need stat points to hold the shield + counter weapon as well.
I expected wing of astel to show up here because it’s essentially “flame of the redmanes at home,” I was hoping that storm blade would get a mention too because it does like 7 poise damage per hit, which on its own isn’t anything special but it also has good range, damage, fp cost, cast speed, and recovery time. Plus you can suck it on a greatsword and use it at melee range to get sword hits in too. I wouldn’t be surprised if the math shows that it’s not as good as I think, but all I know is that it made farming dual rotten crystal spears a lot easier for me.
Yeah, nah. Doesn't even beat Moonveil.
I love the cipher pata. I know it’s like the word pve weapon in the game since it does pure holy dmg and is a fist weapon, but it looks so cool and it’s so fun to use
Thanks Chrightt! I love these videos
Valuable information in the video, and in the comments. Thank you!
My poise breaker build was caestus and partisan with spectral lance.
Partisan was mainhand, with the quickstep offhand spiked caestus as a main weapon. Making it easy to quickly switch to the mainhand weapon art and back to two-handing the caestus, as opposite to switching from two-handing caestus to wielding both weapons, to offhand weapon art.
Can't boost the occult caestus, with how quickly it hits and how quickly it stacks the poise damage, might be not worth it to lose an attack window. Opportunity cost and all.
I adore phalanx because its super aggressive and defensive at such a low cost. Ice clayman harpoon, abuse the followup or just swapping into spells makes for a nice crit mage build at low melee cost. Also you can pick up the turtle greatshield for fashion, stamina control and emergency block.
I love stance break builds. I play around with a lot of them, though, I’ve never really got into the numbers. It’s nice to see a lot of my casual observations confirmed with numbers. Spectral lance is weird. It doesn’t feel as slow as the numbers show. I guess because the range does provide some flexibility. However, I’ve always found it rather boring to play for a reason I can’t seem to put my finger on
Very insightful information, I never got to use the old flame of red mane, but I figured it couldn’t be that much worse…. I was mistaken. Either way I still wanted to make a play through of basically just parrying and criticals/ripostes. Was considering a lance for hella poise dmg but then said fuck it, lemme get the top of the list (wing of Astel). LEMME TELL YALL……. THAT SHIT IS BUSTED. Had to grind a bit to max it out and max my mimic too but after that I truly had a breeze with basically every boss (just beat radagon couple hours ago). I just dumped extra levels into intelligence for the scaling on it, the WA can carry you through the game I promise, but maybe pair it with reduvia dagger just to be safe.
Great video. In regards to poise beaking, there is a cracked tear that increases the poise damage you do by 30%. Some straight swords even have a bit of crit increase, so you could argue to not swap. Could help those poise breaking builds in pve. Another weapon art i liked was spinning slash. Poise broke malenia like three times 😮
Have you tried poise breaking with spells? (Greatblade phalanx comes to mind)
Greatblade Phalanx is not good for poise breaks at all imo. It does less poise damage than the glintblade phalanx weapon art while having the same delay and a lot more fp cost. It does do more damage tho, so that could be worth considering.
If you want spells for poise breaks I'm pretty confident the fastest you could do is chain dragon claw back to back using 2 different seals, although you'll be likely trading a lot that way so you must have the health or negations to survive.
I always put impaling thrust on swords, not just for the shield break and poise damage but also because of the dynamic gameplay it gives, complementing swords' lack of range. Press L2 to go from one enemy to the next. Much like square off but cooler and with more range. I do the same with greatswords and piercing fang
Flame of Frenzy, when aimed at the ground in fromt of you, just melts poise
cragblade on an executioners axe with the poise damage tear is just pure bullying
Lordsword greatsword has better crit for a greatsword, and can be found at the start of the game, then get your horse and run straight to bernhal for impaling thrust. Impale away to break poise, then enhanced crit. Could be a decent speed run method to play the game. No bleed but being as you could set it to heavy you could just use blood grease on bosses that are bleedable. Very neat option there, for a fairly simple to execute strategy of land impales, then crit the boss repeat.
Charged R2s with a light hammer and cragblade will poise break almost every boss in 2 hits and deal really great damage.
Awesome video, thankyou
I never used flame of redmanes when it was a stance breaking god. I used glintblade phallanx because I got it early. I didn't even know anything about stance breaking back then. It just knocked enemies down in 1 to 2 volleys depending on how big they were.
Bro I can't believe buttslam of all things is better than post nerf redmane, they MURDERED it. Great vid
Buttslam is horrible for poise break though. The 40 poise damage aside its slow to start up and the recovery is still painfully slow. Not at all practical to use - flame is still far more consistent.
I've had great success with 2 Lordsworn Straight swords.
Left with Phalanx and right with Stand off.
VERY easy stance breaks, very good damage with multi-hit boosters, and most importantly, FUN. Lmao
I'm making a "frost lightning" build (this is to say I haven't tested this) But I'm going to put Ice Spear on Clayman's Harpoon with Electrify Armament and 40 Dex and I am so sad for the DLC because i'm not going to see any of the bosses moveset :(
Use dragon frost-lightning axe, it can be obtained quite early and deals good dmg
The Dragon Halberd is a Halberd? Or are you talking about the Stormhawk Axe? Cuz that doesn’t do frost Lightning just regular Lightning.
Glintblade Phalanx into Glintstone Kris might not be the best poisebreak but it works and it goes together amazingly. I came across this playing as a swordless swordsman.
By the way, trolls roar has a lot of poise damage too. I thought it might have been a contender.
It’s funny the ash of war that dethroned Fire of Redmane is a frostbite ash
Glintblade phalanx was my go to for no damaging malenia for a while
Would you do a video like this on charged heavy attacks? I would be interested to know how thier stance damage per second compares against each other and the skills shown here.
Sounds good!
@@Chrightt I know this is a bit late, but I would just like to add that many enemies and bosses (E.G. Malenia, Hoarah Loux, Morgott) have maximum Stance values in multiples of 40, so I think whether or not a charged attack can hit the breakpoint of 40 Stance damage is important to mention.
For example, two handed charged attacks from Hammers, Flails, and Collosal Swords come just short of doing 40 Stance damage, but will hit the breakpoint if buffed with Cragblade. On the other hand, two handed Great Hammers and certain Collosal Weapons one handed can do over 40 Stance damage in a single charged attack, leaving room to use Skills/Weapon Buffs other than Cragblade with little opportunity cost if one is going for Stance breaks.
Of course, this may be different for the still significant number of enemies and bosses who's maximum Stance values is not in multiples of 40 (E.G. Godrick, Mohg, Elden Beast (not including Radagon)).
Moonviel is mechanically built to be used between dodge spams lmao
Are spells too slow to consider? I thought about ash of war phalanx + crucible tail combo, which has good reach, aoe, and is easy to execute
Spells are relatively slow in general, but this is a vid more dedicated to weapon arts. Although, from what I can recall, I don't think any spell actually comes close to the stronger WA spamming when it comes to poise dmg/sec.
What is the raw poise damage dealt by the ice spear bullet?
25
@@Chrightt thanks. I find the base poise is also helpful, as a lot of enemies have exactly 80 or exactly 120, which can significantly affect performance
What weapon do you recommend for charge R2 spam, since you said it was an excellent choice? Balls? Clubs?
The phalanx AOW has impaling thrust R2 follow up
No, it does not. It looks like it but it isn't (I've actually used it after staggering the troll to show that I know it exists but I did not include it because the follow up is weaker than the Glintstone Kris' even with the highest poise damage weapon you can slot with it).
I definitely expected wing of astel here.
how much poise damage for second can you get just using charged heavy attacks with balls and cragblade?
You can reach pretty high but the issue with charged heavy attack tends to be short range/no or low hyper armor, breaking your combo. This is a problem because doing 2 charged heavies in a row (R2 1 + R2 2) is much faster than doing 2 charged R2 1 so it is much more situationally dependent than the singular weapon art spam.
I was surprised to not see Ordovis's Greatsword here. That thing slaps.
Ordovis was around 13~ and inconsistent due to 13~ being landing the blade portion in addition to the AoE while having to charge it. I tried to limit the video so it wasn't too long and Ordovis was just not very consistent across fights imo.
@@Chrightt That's a fair assessment. Thank you for replying though.
It would be buuuuuusted on greatswords, but yeah, I wish so too.
You can crouch cancel moonveil to spam it way faster
I have no idea what's going on but this is cool
Love your videos❤🎉
Comprehensive analysis as usual. Ordovis’s Vortex, particularly if charged, should be on the list, no? Takes too long to charge? Even uncharged, it has amazing stance break. I think I would rather regularly stance break an enemy and get an extra hit or two than get the occasional critical. What about a video that examines stance break?
Ordovis is actually pretty decent if I'm doing the analysis right using the frame and poise damage data.
A charged version of the ash of war provided that you also land the blade part of it does 66 poise damage. It takes 66 frames to charge up the attack and you can start charging up another one on the 103rd frame of the charged version. You can also dodge after a charged ash of war on the 92nd frame (and light attack on the 93rd). Using the same calc. 103 + 103 + 92 = 298 frames for 3 charged attacks + dodge on the last one, translating to 9.93 seconds for the entire execution. At 66*3 poise damage per cast, that translates to 19.93 poise damage/sec, assuming that you are landing the weapon art of the ash of war each time (which imo is difficult to do against most mobile bosses, especially if you aren't looking to hit trade).
The math here for Ordovis' is wrong cause the many charged bullets for ordovis doesn't overlap (you can only ever hit one of them). It's just damage based on location. So, Ordovis fully charged deals 44 poise damage. You end up with 13.28 poise damage per sec. I didn't include it because I think fully charged Ordovis (while hitting the blade) is not very consistent at all.
@@Chrightt Makes sense. Thanks for the info :)
I'm really curious about the premise of the White Shadow build teased at the end of the video.
the trick with the glintblades is to walk between his legs and cast them straight into his body, makes it super spamable
It isn't about 1 unit in particular but bosses in general. Can't replicate it on everything.
@@Chrightt no but u can do it on a lot of things
Howbout this for mellee: Left Hand:Cragblade Collossal
Right Hand: Misèricorde with Endure
Good video as always
Amazing video, the community has been needing something like this for quite some time.
Any chance youll test high poise damage spells and incants too?
I might do a heavy attack and also a spell one separately, yeah.
Did you test Repeating Thrust? It may be a poor choice but am curious.
Your simply the best man
I know this is specifically notes for critical hits, but after they massacred my boy (FotR), I went with staggering than full on poise break. Ancient Death Rancor + Sword of Night & Flame (night beam) has been my go to recently. Trying an Int/Fai build anyways, so decided to look up some int/fai builds from Fextralife, NizarGG, and some others, and they all seem to go with the same thing - I guess because it works? lol
It's more like there is only limited amount of int/faith options :(
do you think lightning slash would be any good as it does 28 poise per slash? or do you think it’s too hard to hit/too slow?
Lol we went from Flame of the Redmanes to Flame of the Purplemanes
Dont use a weapon art use the grafted dragon weapon, it's super fast charged heavy attack dose 40 poise damage a hit
This crud's too complicated, I might just grab a buckler and do a parry run
Hey Chriightt, I know I'm a bit late, but do you know how well the bloodhound fang performs? It seems like it also deals decent poise damage.
I'm guessing butt slam with carian glintblades in 2nd.
I remember seeing that claymore r2 follow up out of impailing thrust is faster than the r1. Can you confirm? It wouldnt be part of any crit build, but with spear talisman and counter it might do some good damage.
Yes, it indeed is faster. And you're right. The R2 won't have enough poise damage so you still lose out by using the R2 instead of just doing another impaling.
@chrightt
I guess if you have framedata, scaling and so on, its possible to put it all together and make a DPS chart of spells/weapons (with and without buffs). Do you think that this is something that you could do in the future?
This should be possible but it will be dependent on assumptions like given in this video (i.e. 3 spams with 2 being XX recovery) which is a lot more limited. Some slower WA might do massive DPS but have no Hyper Armor and is still reliant on being able to land without the hyper armor. It's easier when there is an assumption that makes sense (i.e. in this video we're just trying to spam weapon arts to get a crit).
Cipher Pata might not be better than the others in damage, but it is better in weight. That's a zero impact on endurance.
FOTRM needed the nerf but you can’t deny how much fun it was
Is impaling thrust on the great epee the same as the great sword/lance in terms of damage and recovery?