Do I understand PvE poise correctly?

[Greywander]

I heard somewhere that, aside from things like NPC invaders that act like AI controlled players and thus use the PvP poise damage rules, all enemy attacks deal either 0, 50, or 100 poise damage. I'm not sure if a 0 poise damage hit will stagger you if you had 0 poise, and I also assume there are some attacks with functionally infinite poise damage.

If this is true, this is a disappointing oversimplification, especially since a lot of enemies are humanoids that use the same weapons we do. I get that they don't always have the same attack patterns, but still. This especially stings because there are some decent looking medium armor sets that get up into the 40s for poise, and they may as well have 0 poise. Likewise, anything over 51 is a waste. Armor is essentially split into two categories: "has poise" and "doesn't have poise".

Anyway, this would mean that PvE poise breakpoints are 51 and 101, with further breakpoints every 50 points (151, 201, etc.) to tank more hits without staggering. Technically, the actual breakpoints are anything >50 and >100, so if you could somehow get 50.01 poise, that would be enough to tank a hit. Armor only gives poise in integer values, though, so this only comes up when applying fractional bonuses. The highest poise you can get with armor alone is 100, so so it's not possible to get >100 without some kind of bonus.

The first of two common bonuses is the Bullgoat Talisman, which gives a +33% boost to poise. I'm not sure if this is exactly +33%, or if it's +1/3 your current value, which would actually be 33.333...%. Also, I've heard it doesn't actually increase poise, but rather reduces incoming poise damage by 25%. This is functionally the same as a +1/3 bonus, so we won't sweat the differences.

Anyway, here's our new breakpoints with the talisman:

76 + talisman = >100
38 + talisman = >50

These are much more reasonable numbers, and honestly what it probably should have been all along.

The other common bonus we can get is the Baldachin's Blessing, which gives about +50%. I'm not sure on the exact numbers, as one source states it as +52%. I'm also not sure if this is additive or multiplicative with the talisman, but if the blessing is actually increasing poise while the talisman reduces poise damage taken, then it should be multiplicative. If the numbers are what I think they are, then using both together should functionally double your poise. If the bonus is actually +52%, then it should be possible to break >200 with the Bullgoat armor, but if stacking the blessing and talisman exactly doubles it then you'd hit 200 exactly. To be safe, I'll treat it as exactly +50%.

Different combos of the blessing and talisman give the following breakpoints:

76 + talisman + blessing = >150
67 + blessing = >100
51 + talisman + blessing = >100
34 + blessing = >50
26 + talisman + blessing = >50

It should be noted that 26 and 51 poise needs both the talisman and blessing together to reach the next breakpoint; there's little reason to use just one or the other. 76 is still ideal, as the talisman alone gets us to >100 and stacking the blessing on top will push us to >150. 67 is handy if you don't have a spare talisman slot for the Bullgoat talisman, as it gets you to >50 unbuffed but allows you to push it to >100 by using the blessing (e.g. during a boss fight). If you have less than 50 poise, you're probably not worried about poise, but you have some options if a boss is proving too tough.

So assuming what I heard was correct, I think I've got it pretty well figured out. The one thing I'm not sure about is how poise interacts with hyper armor, but it's probably not worth worrying about too much.

[chriszewski]

Originally posted by Greywander:

The first of two common bonuses is the Bullgoat Talisman, which gives a +33% boost to poise. I'm not sure if this is exactly +33%, or if it's +1/3 your current value, which would actually be 33.333...%. Also, I've heard it doesn't actually increase poise, but rather reduces incoming poise damage by 25%. This is functionally the same as a +1/3 bonus, so we won't sweat the differences.

Bullgoat's Talisman does not increase poise and effectively does nothing to directly modify your poise value. The talisman reduces the poise damage against you by 25%.

[Greywander]

Yes, I noted that in the section you quoted. As I point out, though, a -25% reduction in poise damage taken is functionally equivalent to +33% poise bonus.

Anyway, the TLDR version of the of the OP is that one should ideally aim for 51 poise without the talisman, or 76 poise with the talisman (which is equivalent to having 101 poise).