Poise

Poise is a stat that determines one's resistance to being staggered by incoming attacks. All players and almost all other characters and creatures have poise. Striking an enemy will reduce their current poise by a set amount depending on the attack used. When poise is reduced to zero, it is considered "broken". The effects of breaking an enemy's poise differ based on if they are a Tarnished character or not.

Attacking an enemy who is guarding will not deplete poise, but will instead damage stamina, potentially breaking their stance.

Players and Tarnished
When a player or Tarnished character (i.e. a character that behaves like a player) has their poise broken, they will briefly stagger. The duration and severity of the stagger depends on the damage level of the attack. If an attack does not break their poise, they will resist the stagger of that attack altogether, preventing actions from being interrupted.

Poise Damage
Poise damage dealt by Tarnished varies based on weapon class and move used. Generally, two-handing a weapon will increase its poise damage by 10%, while using paired movesets will increase poise damage by 20% (lower for each hit individually, but higher in total).

Standard poise damage values for most melee non-skill attacks are listed below. One-handed, two-handed, and paired movesets are separated by rows. Note that fists and claws have the same moveset when two-handed and paired, and all torches and shields have no paired moveset. Weapons with unique attacks may deal different amounts of poise damage; refer to specific weapon pages for a more detailed breakdown.

Hyper Armor
Hyper armor is a mechanic that modifies the effectiveness of poise during some attacks. Its purpose is to prevent weapons with longer attack animations from being interrupted.

Each attack with hyper armor has an innate amount of poise that is used during certain frames of its animation. For most attacks, this value is combined with poise obtained from armor using this formula:

"$armorPoise + hyperArmor - \frac{armorPoise}{2}$"

Since poise from armor is subtracted, this means armor sets with very high poise, like the Bull-Goat's Set, can actually reduce a character's effective poise during hyper armor frames. For example, executing a two-handed light attack with a greatsword (which has a hyper armor bonus of 30) while wearing the Bull-Goat's Set (100 poise) will reduce effective poise to only 80 during hyper armor, while a one-handed light attack will retain the full 100 poise of the armor set.

Some attacks will instead set poise to a fixed value, and will ignore armor poise entirely. This type of hyper armor is most commonly found in skills, and is significantly higher than other instances of hyper armor.

Lastly, some attacks and actions will not grant any poise directly, but instead will prevent the character from being staggered entirely, such as Lion's Claw. During these, poise can still broken, but will have no effect.

Known hyper armor bonuses are given below.

Poise Recovery
Every time poise is damaged, it will stay frozen at the reduced value and does not regenerate over time.

After each hit, if poise is damaged but not broken, a 30 second timer starts. If poise is not damaged again within that time, it will instantly reset. Alternatively, when poise is broken, it will reset after the stagger animation is complete.

Using a skill with "fixed" hyper armor will both set poise to the skill's hyper armor bonus and reset the recovery timer.

Increasing Poise
Poise is primarily gained from heavy armor. The armor set with the highest poise is the Bull-Goat's Set, at 100 poise. The second highest is a tie between the Fire Prelate Set (unaltered) and Omen Set, which both have 86 poise.

The Bull-Goat's Talisman, Baldachin's Blessing, and Radiant Baldachin's Blessing all claim to increase poise, but they actually reduce incoming poise damage by a percentage. Using these items can give more effective poise during hyper armor frames than using heavier armor, as the reduction of armor poise during hyper armor does not apply to them.

Other Enemies
For non-Tarnished enemies, stagger is prevented depending on an attack's damage level, not its poise damage. Instead, breaking an enemy's poise will break their stance, leaving them vulnerable to a riposte.

Poise Recovery
Poise will remain frozen at its reduced value once damaged, but will regenerate over time after a short delay, unlike how poise works for Tarnished. The duration of this delay is dependent on the enemy in question, ranging from 2-15 seconds with an average of roughly 6 seconds. After this timer is up, the enemy will regenerate poise at a rate of 130.5 poise per second.