Poise break

[Baldurs_Gate_2]

What are actually the best weapons to poise break bosses? I guess they scale with strength.

[Grider]

buckler shield is light and can freeze them long enough to get good hits in. does that count as poise break? (Im not sure of the terminology)

[Sparhawk 60]

Heavy attacks, especially charged heavy attacks, are great for staggering enemies.
The jumping heavy attack is especially useful at building up to a staggered state.
Shield parries often instantly stagger an enemy, although they take timing and practice.

[Relentlz]

Brick hammer / Great Stars with craigblade with charged and jump attacks.

[Tarnished Elden King]

colossal weapons and colossal swords are amazing especially with the right ash of war (lion's claw or giant hunt) or a simple straight sword with square off heavy attack, it breaks most enemies in 2 to 3 uses.

[EvolutionKills]

Entirely depends on the boss and your playstyle.

It is my understanding that stance/poise numbers, insofar as how much stance damage a weapon does and how much is needed to cause a boss to stagger/stancce-break, are all pretty static. They're determined by the weapon class and the attack type, and aren't effected by player stats. You can do more/less depending on if the enemy is aware of you (+20%), if you two-hand the weapon (+10%), hit certain weak points, or if you have help (co-op or NPC summons cause bosses to take 40% less stance damage, but summon ashes don't incur this penalty).

You can find a table on the FextraLife Elden Ring wiki. Yeah, I know their embedded Twitch player is absolute cancer, but the information itself tends to be accurate and on point.

Typically you'll get the most with larger and heavier weapons, jumping attacks, and Guard Counters. But, the differences are perhaps smaller than you might think.

For example, colossal weapons (excluding hammers) deal 29 stance damage with a jumping power attack, and 36 with a Guard Counter. Want to know what else does the exact same stance damage for the same attacks? One handed maces and flails. So if you're fighting a quicker boss with smaller windows of attack in which to punish them, you might be better off with a faster one handed weapon. But other bosses might be better tackled with charged heavy attacks (where a colossal sword would deal 40 compared to mace/flails at 36).

Margit the Fell Omen needs 80 stance damage to be staggered/stance-broken and opened up to a critical hit. You could do that with 2 heavy charged attacks with a colossal sword (40+40), or 3 successive Guard Counters with damn near any weapon that can connect the counter (also keep in mind that enemies can and do recover their stance damage pretty quickly if you can't keep the pressure up on them with successive hits).

Fists/daggers/claws have the weakest Guard Counter stance damage at 18 (requiring 5 hits to stagger Margit), with thrusting swords the next weakest at 24. Everything else is 30 or more (vast majority of weapon classes are 30, like axes, straight swords, and katanas), with both colossal/great hammers at the top with 39.

So, it depends on the boss and how you plan to counter them. I lug around a Iron Greatsword, Mace, and Pike with my Distinguished Greatshield. I like to Guard Counter, and I have three different option on hand depending on what combination of speed/reach/damage is going to be the most advantageous in getting the most effective hits in the shortest time across a wide range of combat possibilities.

[königplatzen]

Comparing 2 handed charged R2 poise values:
Best are "Great Hammers" (42,7) and regular "Hammers" (39.6)
Colossal Swords only deal the same poise damage as regular Hammers (39.6). Great swords and Great spears even less. (36.3)
Some Colossal Weapons are better than Great Hammers like Giant Crusher (45.75), Trolls Hammer (45), Prelate's Inferno Crozier (45.75), Great Club (45.75), Watchdog's Staff(45), Staff of the Avatar (45), Rotten Staff (45), Envoy's Greathorn (45), Fallingstar Beast Jaw (45)
But, they are also significantly slower than Great Hammers.

Cragblade increases poise damage.(10%) The stonebarb tear increases poise damage very much (30% iirc), but for only 30 sec.
Square off on straight swords is also a poise machine, which deals 40 on the heavy R2 and 30 on the upper cut R1. Unsheathe on Uchi is only 30
Good option is also charged R2 with two handed fists like iron balls or star fist, which deals 33, but very fast. The range is a bit problematic, though

@EvolutionKills: you might have outdated values, as they changed them again for 1.08

f.e. I use a great hammer like the Curved Great Club, put Cragblade on it, I can poise the draconic tree sentinel with 1 Charged R2 (42.7*1.1) and one jump R2 (30.8*1.1) = 80.35

[EvolutionKills]

Publicado originalmente por königplatzen:

@EvolutionKills: you might have outdated values, as they changed them again for 1.08

Do you have a recommendation on where I could find those, if the wiki is out of date?

[Sabaithal]

Some weapons do specifically more stance damage (stance, not poise, different things) to enemies, as well as some ashes of war.

The two I know of are Siluria's Tree (does a ton of stance damage from all its attacks, even more than most greatspears) and the AoW Flame of the Redmanes (only in SP though, in coop it does next to nothing).

Larger weapons in general bring down both poise and stance, and it goes without saying that heavy attacks do more stance damage, and charged heavy attacks do even more, as well as some ashes of war. If an ash of war has "stomp" in it, it probably does extremely high stance damage if you land it. I believe any "slam" ash of war also does quite a lot.

[königplatzen]

Publicado originalmente por EvolutionKills:

Publicado originalmente por königplatzen:

@EvolutionKills: you might have outdated values, as they changed them again for 1.08

Do you have a recommendation on where I could find those, if the wiki is out of date?

This is my source, which seems be maintained pretty accurately:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j4bpTbsnp5Xsgw9TP2xv6d8R4qk0ErpE9r_5LGIDraU
Sheetname: Poise Damage - PvE

[EvolutionKills]

Publicado originalmente por königplatzen:

Publicado originalmente por EvolutionKills:

Do you have a recommendation on where I could find those, if the wiki is out of date?

This is my source, which seems be maintained pretty accurately:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1j4bpTbsnp5Xsgw9TP2xv6d8R4qk0ErpE9r_5LGIDraU
Sheetname: Poise Damage - PvE

Thank you kindly!

[königplatzen]

Publicado originalmente por Sabaithal:

Some weapons do specifically more stance damage (stance, not poise, different things) to enemies, as well as some ashes of war.

The two I know of are Siluria's Tree (does a ton of stance damage from all its attacks, even more than most greatspears) and the AoW Flame of the Redmanes (only in SP though, in coop it does next to nothing).

Larger weapons in general bring down both poise and stance, and it goes without saying that heavy attacks do more stance damage, and charged heavy attacks do even more, as well as some ashes of war. If an ash of war has "stomp" in it, it probably does extremely high stance damage if you land it. I believe any "slam" ash of war also does quite a lot.

Flame of Redmane got nerfed regarding poise damage. It used to deal 40, but now its less like 10, not sure. I have a hard time to interpret the linked sheet regarding the Ash of wars.

[Sabaithal]

Publicado originalmente por königplatzen:

Flame of Redmane got nerfed regarding poise damage. It used to deal 40, but now its less like 10, not sure. I have a hard time to interpret the linked sheet regarding the Ash of wars.

Are you certain that wasn't just MP values? Because like I said it does almost nothing during coop play, and I noticed that quite a long time ago.

[königplatzen]

Publicado originalmente por Sabaithal:

Publicado originalmente por königplatzen:

Flame of Redmane got nerfed regarding poise damage. It used to deal 40, but now its less like 10, not sure. I have a hard time to interpret the linked sheet regarding the Ash of wars.

Are you certain that wasn't just MP values? Because like I said it does almost nothing during coop play, and I noticed that quite a long time ago.

Im pretty certain, but did not test it myself
The changelog of 1.08 states:
"Reduced poise damage of the Flame of the Redmanes Weapon Art."
A no-hit streamer also said, that it's quite useless now. I'm absolutely not sure, about the 10 poise damage, though. The Attack data of this Ash of war only says 0, but I'm not sure, if that is true or miss something

[causality]

From my experience the buffed fist weapon charged R2 is so fast now that it poise breaks bosses faster than things like colossal jump r2 spam.

[EvolutionKills]

I wanted to see how Shield Crash stacked up, and it doesn't have a specific poise/stance damage listed, but rather a Poise Dmg MV ('motion value' I assume) of 75. If this is anything like Monster Hunter, then I'd guess that each tick is doing 75% poise/stance of whatever its base poise/stance damage is. For a Distinguished Greatshield, this looks to be 6, so each tick should do 4.5 dmg, for however many hits. But Shield Crash has 4 different entries, and the second pair has Poise Dmg MV numbers at 125, which would be 7.5 dmg per hit.

So, am I reading that and doing the math right? And if so, which of the pair of values actually applies?