Poise

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In-Game Description

The ability to withstand the impact of attacks.

Poise Basics

If a player fails to withstand an attack, they will become stunned and vulnerable to subsequent attacks. Poise is the defensive stat that determines the player's ability to withstand various attacks.

Withstanding Attacks

If you have enough poise to withstand an attack, one of two things can occur depending on what you're doing:

While Attacking

If you take a hit and have sufficient poise while attacking, it is as if nothing happened and your attack animation will carry through without interruption.

While Idle or Moving

If you take a hit and have sufficient poise while standing still, walking, or running, you are put into a "half stagger" where movement speed is temporarily reduced. A player who is "half staggered" may still perform any usual action.

Poise Depletion and Regeneration

Poise essentially functions with an invisible meter that drains as hits are taken. This meter can be refilled in two ways:

  • When a player fails to withstand an attack and becomes stunned, their poise is instantly refilled as soon as the stun animation is complete.
  • When a player withstands an attack and has some remaining poise, the drained poise refills at 0.56 poise per second.

Note that the regeneration rate for a non-instant refill is very slow, commonly requiring over 20 seconds in various scenarios. This means that if a player withstands a hit, and takes another soon after, they have not regained any significant amount of poise inbetween and are at risk for having poise completely drained during the subsequent attacks.

Hyper Poise

Hyper Poise is a hidden, innate feature that accompanies most great weapons and boosts the effectiveness of poise. Its general purpose is to make it harder to interrupt the attacks of larger weapons.

Hyper Poise is briefly triggered during the attacks of certain weapons, active during the latter-portion of an attack's wind up, through to a few frames after the attack has been completed. While it's active, incoming poise damage is reduced by 50%.

The following weapons and attacks trigger Hyper Poise:

Weapons Attacks
All Ultra Greatswords All attacks
All Greataxes All attacks
All Great Hammers All attacks excluding 1H Rolling and 2H R2 attacks
Most Halberds 1H R1, 1H R2, 1H Rolling, & 2H R1 attacks
Helix Halberd 1H R1, 1H Rolling, & 2H R1 attacks

Increasing Poise

Poise primarily comes from your armor, typically heavier armor has higher poise. You can also increase Poise through your stats. Endurance and Adaptability together increase innate Poise by a small amount. It is increased by 0.3 per level until the lowest of Endurance and Adaptability is 30, then 0.2 until level 50 and 0.1 per level thereafter.

How to achieve high Poise:

Method Increase
Iron Flesh 100
Ring of Giants 10/20/30
Minotaur Helm 30
Havel's Armor 51
Havel's Gauntlets 31
Havel's Leggings 31
Increase Adaptability See note above
Increase Endurance See note above

Poise Breakpoints

Different weapons are categorized by having different amounts of Poise Damage. A "Poise Breakpoint" refers to the minimum amount of poise needed to withstand a single hit from their various attack types:

List By Breakpoints

Breakpoint Withstands
36 1H R1 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
44 1H R2 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
46 1H R1 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
57 1H R2 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
61 1H R1 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
76 1H R1 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons;
1H R2 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
91 1H R1 from 30 Poise Dmg Weapons
94 1H R2 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons
95 2H R1 from 10 Poise Dmg Weapons
122 2H R1 from 15 Poise Dmg Weapons
163 2H R1 from 20 Poise Dmg Weapons
203 2H R1 from 25 Poise Dmg Weapons

A more detailed list of poise breakpoints can be found here

10 Poise Damage Weapons

Includes: Bandit's Knife, Black Scorpion Stinger, Chaos Rapier, Claws, Dagger, Espada Ropera, Handmaid's Ladle, Malformed Claws, Manikin Claws, Manikin Knife, Mytha's Bent Blade, Parrying Dagger, Rapier, Ricard's Rapier, Royal Dirk, Shadow Dagger, Spider Fang, Spider's Silk, Thief Dagger, Work Hook.

Attack Breakpoint
1H R1 36
2H R1 95
1H R2 44

15 Poise Damage Weapons

Includes: All Reapers (except Silverblack Sickle), All Whips (except Bloodied Whip), Broken Straight Sword, Broken Thief Sword, Caestus, Darkdrift, Mail Breaker, Manikin Sabre, Melu Scimitar, Monastery Scimitar, Shotel.

Attack Breakpoint
1H R1 46
2H R1 122
1H R2 57

20 Poise Damage Weapons

Includes: All Katanas (except Darkdrift), All Spears, Aldia Hammer, Black Dragon Sword, Bloodied Whip, Blue Flame, Broadsword, Estoc, Falchion, Heide Knight Sword, Longsword, Scimitar, Shortsword, Silverblack Sickle, Sun Sword, Varangian Sword, Yellow Quartz Longsword.

Attack Breakpoint
1H R1 61
2H R1 163
1H R2 76

25 Poise Damage Weapons

Includes: All Twinblades (except Red Iron Twinblade), Barbed Club, Black Dragon Warpick, Bound Hand Axe, Club, Drakekeeper's Sword, Foot Soldier Sword, Homunculus Mace, Infantry Axe, Mace of the Insolent, Red Rust Scimitar, Red Rust Sword, Reinforced Club, Warped Sword.

Attack Breakpoint
1H R1 76
2H R1 203
1H R2 94

30 Poise Damage Weapons

Includes: Bandit Axe, Battle Axe, Blacksmith's Hammer, Craftsman's Hammer, Crescent Axe, Dragonslayer's Crescent Axe, Gyrm Axe, Heide Greatlance, Heide Lance, Mace, Morning Star, Red Iron Twinblade.

Attack Breakpoint
1H R1 91
2H R1 None
1H R2 None

Notes

  • Increasing innate poise through leveling your stats does not provide sufficient poise protection on its own, but it can be stacked with armor to achieve the various breakpoints.
  • Hitting someone with the tip of certain weapons will result in reduced poise damage.
  • Source of the latest testing results can be found here.
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