Combat Mechanics

Elden Ring Reforged adjusts many of the combat related mechanics in the game. This page attempts to list all key changes made.

For changes to Weapons, Armour, Spells, Status Effects, Skills, and Enemies, please visit their respective pages.

## Movement and Animations

### Movement Speed

Added a small increase to movement speed at light equip load, and a small decrease to movement speed at heavy/Overloaded equip load.

* This does not affect jump distance.
* Movement speed values from Source (ERRv0.11.1B):

 elseif weight == WEIGHT\_NORMAL then
 elseif weight == WEIGHT\_HEAVY then
 elseif weight == WEIGHT\_OVERWEIGHT then

### Dodging and Equip Load

Reworked the equip load stat, so that equip load is no longer increased by leveling endurance. Equip load now starts at 100 (equivalent to 50 endurance pre-update) and can only be raised by % based effects like talismans and buffs. The weight and effectiveness of armor has been increased to accommodate this default value, and the heavy load state has been buffed in effectiveness. The exact changes are:

* Default 100 equip load.
* Increased armor weight by 1.75x.
* Talisman weight removed.
* Increased armor damage negation by 1.2x.
* Heavy load now uses a faster, further-reaching roll animation. Screenshake removed.
* Overloaded now uses the old heavy roll, and doesn't remove sprinting or jumping.
* The stamina cost of evasive actions (rolling, ducking, jumping) now increases with heavier equip load states.
* Stamina regen is reduced less at heavy equip loads. Values are Vanilla/New, and represent the amount of time in seconds it takes to regenerate an entire stamina bar.
	+ light - 6.5 / 6
	+ medium - 6.5 / 6.5
	+ heavy - 8 / 7
	+ overloaded - 9.5 / 7.5

These changes increase the number of viable equip load states and gives each of them their own identity based on the level of armor worn instead of having it be something you just out level with Endurance.

* *Equipment that increases max equip load (values are multipliers):*
	+ *Fortune of the Warmaster (x2 when wielding a favored weapon type);*
	+ *Winged Crystal Tear (x1.5);*
	+ *Stardust Elixir (x1.3);*
	+ *Arsenal talismans (x1.15/x1.125/x1.1);*
	+ *Baldachin's Blessing (x1.1, but -10% maximum HP);*
	+ *Fortune of the Paladin (x1.1);*
	+ *Erdtree's Favor talismans (x1.05/x1.04/x1.03);*
	+ *Binding Runes of Leonine Weight (x1.005 per rune, up to x1.05).*

Rebalanced all tiers of rolls (i-frames values are at 30 FPS):

* **Light Roll:** 13 i-frames. Act out of the roll 2 frames faster than Medium Roll. Travel further. The light load dodge now uses the dodge animation from Bloodborne. The animation's tracking was updated so that the dodge animation feels smoother than it would with a pure animation replacement.
* **Medium Roll:** 12 i-frames. Act out of the roll 2 frames faster than Heavy Roll.
* **Heavy Roll:** 11 i-frames. Slow.
* **Overloaded:** [Need Data]

Replaced the backstep animation with a duck animation.

* Ducking has a small amount of I-frames and regenerates stamina during the animation.
* Attacks that hit high can be dodged by ducking, even without I-frames.
* The animation can be cancelled into an attack very quickly, but can not be chained into itself or dodges that fast.
* **Light Duck:** 8 I-frames. 10% faster than Medium Duck.
* **Medium Duck:** 7 I-frames. 10% faster than Heavy Duck.
* **Heavy Duck:** 6 I-frames. Slow.
* **Overloaded Duck:** [Need data]

### Animation Changes

Removed the instant input buffer for rolls on most player stagger animations.

* *The input buffer now begins 3-30 frames after the stagger starts depending on the length of the animation.*

Adjusted the sprinting pivot animation to be cancellable on the first possible frame.

Adjusted weapon swapping and stance swapping animations to be cancellable on the first possible frames.

* *This means you can instantly perform any action after swapping weapons or when swapping between one and two-handed stances.*

Decreased the startup of jump animations.

* *This has a minimal effect on gameplay, but it makes jumps feel much smoother.*

### Plunging Attacks

Plunging attacks from prior games have been re-implemented. While there's no additional special attacks (Like the Asylum Demon or Taurus Demon in Dark Souls 1), there is now a universal plunging attack.

* Attacking while falling more than a certain distance will grant a huge increase to damage and poise damage dealt by the attack, indicated by a white flash and a buff icon.
* This applies to both light and heavy airborne attacks, and can hit multiple enemies if you happen to hit more than one.
* Note: The distance you need to fall before a plunging attack activates is longer than in previous games, to compensate for jumping.
	+ *This provides incentive to try and use the environment to your advantage more, and restores a cut mechanic from the rest of the series.*

## Blocking

Blocking an enemy attack within the first few frames of a weapon’s block animation will perform a deflect.

* Deflects last for 8 frames (30 FPS). This includes the 3 frames of perfect deflects.
* Deflecting an enemy attack reduces stamina damage taken, reduces physical damage by 100%, elemental damage by 10%, and status buildup by 25%.
* Different weapon types reduce stamina damage taken by a different amount.
* Medium and Great shields and Catalysts get minimal guard boost bonuses from deflecting.
* Deflects can be seen by a spark visual effect and louder sound.

Blocking an enemy attack with an even stricter timing will perform a perfect deflect.

* Perfect deflects last for 3 frames (30 FPS).
* Perfect deflects consume no stamina and negate all damage and status buildup.
* Perfect deflects additionally grants a buff for 1.3sec that increases all damage dealt by 13% and Poise Damage by 16.7%
* Perfect deflects are capable of deflecting multi-hit attacks without taking any damage.
* Perfect deflects are indicated by a white flash and a glowing weapon.

## Guard Break

Being guardbroken now deals a small amount of damage.

* 15-25% of your maximum health depending on the difficulty. This effect can not take you below 1% HP, so it cannot kill you.

Stamina regeneration is now slowed while guardbroken.

The guard break animation can now be instantly cancelled by rolling.

* *If you are hit by another attack before the guard break animation can be cancelled, you will not take the extra damage penalty.*

## Parrying

Increased the size of the parry hitbox and moved the hitbox forward slightly.

* *This change helps reduce the amount of parries that whiff because the hitbox didn’t hit the enemy despite the timing being correct.*

The frames/timing of some parry animations have been adjusted.

* Parry animations with 5 parry frames have been decreased to 4.
	+ This excludes the special Unsheathe parry added to the Katana, to give it a niche.
* Parry animations with 2 parry frames have been increased to 3.

## Counterattack

Counterattack, or counter damage, is a vanilla mechanic where players and enemies take extra damage when hit shortly after attacking.

* Instead of boosting only pierce damage by 30%, counterattacks now boost pierce damage by 20% and all other damage types by 10%.
* Enemies now take 10% more poise damage during the counterattack window.
* Counter damage window extended to cover part of the attack animation as well. This applies to both you and enemies.

## Poise

Enemy poise damage has been lowered across the board. More enemy attacks should have the ability to be poised through.

Poise recovery for the player now begins 12 seconds after last being hit instead of 30 seconds.

Player poise damage has been altered, the highest attack poise multipliers have been pushed down to tone down some of the outliers.

* *This is most notable on things like the Glintblade Phalanx Ash of War. In vanilla the four Phalanx projectiles do a total of 40 poise damage. This is 8x more poise damage than the spell variant, which deals 5 poise damage.*

## Stealth

Increased the stealth attack damage boost.

* 20% -> 25%.

Running/Rolling/Jumping is now considered an “important” sound source.

* *Most enemies will walk towards the source of an important sound. Non-important sounds will just make enemies look towards the source.*

Slightly adjusted the radius of some player sound sources.

## Damage Level

Damage level is a property of attacks that determines what knockback animation it triggers on enemies, like staggering them, knocking them back, or launching them upwards. Some enemies can only be staggered with a high enough damage level and will ignore attacks with low damage levels. The main changes to damage level include:

* Increased damage level of R1 combo finishers.
* Increased damage level of fully charged R2 attacks.
* Increased damage level of some charged spell variants that didn't already increase damage level.

*This change has a large impact on combat against mobs and enemies that can be staggered without being stance-broken. Some enemies like the Bell Bearing Hunters have had their damage level resistances adjusted, allowing them to be very briefly staggered from powerful attacks despite being bosses. The intent of all these changes to stagger is to provide more meaningful choices when it comes to how attacks stagger enemies.*