Poise

Poise is a stat that determines one's resistance to being staggered by incoming attacks. All players and almost all other characters and enemies 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 whether they are a Tarnished character or not.

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

Tarnished
When a player or other Tarnished (i.e. an enemy or character that uses the same model as the 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 attack 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 certain animations. 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 given during certain frames of its animation, referred to internally as toughness. For most attacks, poise obtained from a character's armor (but not other items; see below) is halved when toughness is added, and the amount poise is currently damaged by is subtracted as a flat value. The minimum effective poise when hyper armor starts is 80% of the combined value of half of armor poise and toughness, potentially restoring poise if it has been heavily damaged.

Effective poise during most hyper armor can be derived with this formula:

"$max[(\frac{armor}{2} + toughness) - poiseDamage, 0.8 \cdot (\frac{armor}{2} + toughness)]$"

When hyper armor ends, the halved poise from armor is restored and the attack's toughness is removed, leaving only poise damage that was not restored when hyper armor started, or was taken during it:

"$currentPoise + \frac{armor}{2} - toughness = armor - poiseDamage$"

Note that this formula can leave zero poise remaining, but it will not be fully broken until being hit again.

Some attacks will ignore armor and poise damage entirely, and instead set poise to a fixed value once hyper armor begins. This is most commonly found in skills and spells, and is often significantly better 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, such as Lion's Claw. During these, poise can still broken, but will have no effect.

Since poise from armor is typically halved during hyper armor, armor sets with very high poise, like the Bull-Goat's Set, can actually reduce a character's effective poise during hyper armor if they are using a weapon with low toughness. For example, executing a two-handed light attack with a greatsword (which has a toughness value 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. However, these attacks will restore poise to a higher value after hyper armor ends compared to other weapons, making them potentially worthwhile as a partial poise "reset".

Attacks with Hyper Armor
Basic attacks always take armor and poise damage into account during their hyper armor, while spells do not and will set poise to a fixed value. Some skills will use armor/poise damage and some will not.

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 compared to using heavier armor, as the reduction of armor during hyper armor frames cannot 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.