Poise is a base stat in Elden Ring. For players starting out, the following guide will explain what Poise does in Elden Ring and how the stat affects gameplay.
What Is Poise in Elden Ring?
For players unfamiliar with the previous FromSoftware games, Poise is one of the most important stats players can make use of in Elden Ring. It determines how much damage a character can take without being interrupted or staggered.
Let’s say you perform an attack and while the attack animation is rolling, your opponent attacks you first. The Poise stat of your character determines whether or not the enemy’s attack cancels out yours and staggers you; or if your attack animation continues and the attack lands on the enemy.
So if your character has low Poise, they will easily get knocked back during fights. This will be a massive problem as it’ll become extremely difficult for you to land attacks.
You’ll need to play perfectly to be able to execute attacks and combos. Whereas if your character has high Poise, you’ll have a much easier time landing attacks on the opponent without having to worry about getting staggered.
You might be thinking that this stat is designed to be used for tank builds. However, that’s not the case at all. Tank builds will certainly benefit heavily from having a high Poise stat, but that doesn’t mean this stat should only be leveled up if you’re going for a tank build.
No matter what character build you’re going for in Elden Ring, it won’t hurt to have a relatively high Poise stat. The game aims to kill and not get killed, and Poise will help you do exactly that.
What’s interesting about the Poise stat in Elden Ring is that Poise does not have that strong of an effect at low, and even relatively high levels. You’ll notice that your attacks are frequently getting interrupted even when your Poise is at 40-50.
So in Elden Ring, the Poise of your character needs to be quite high for it to be effective. You need to bring Poise up to at least 70 for it to be of proper use.
And if you bring your Poise up to 100+, a lot of mobs in the game, like dogs and rats, will become completely unable to interrupt you. This will make your life a lot easier.
To level up Poise, you need to invest points into Endurance. You can then further increase the stat by wearing the right gear for it; which is often heavy gear.
You can also gain a temporary Poise boost by hugging Fia, but this will cost you 5% of your HP. If you’re about to face a difficult boss, it might be a good idea to give Fia a quick embrace.
