Elden Ring PvP Lexicon

The discussions around Elden Ring PvP have a lot of terms which originate from previous Soulsborne titles, from fighting games in general, from data mining Elden Ring, etc. Understandably, things can get confusing every now and then. This lexicon aims to explain these terms in-depth.

Aggressive/Passive, Reactive/Read-Heavy
Red/Blue/Green/Yellow Quadrant

Players are often categorised based on two metrics:

• A reactive player waits for their opponent to make a move, then attempts to gain an advantage based on that. A read-heavy player will instead predict their opponent’s move and set up their next attack based on that.
• A passive player will stay at distance in neutral and wait for their opponent to come to them. An aggressive player will close distance instead.

Furthermore, a lot of players have been using the above graph as a template, to the point where people are sometimes referred to as being e.g. a “yellow quadrant player” or “blue quadrant player”, which sums up their playstyle based on their position on this graph.

Aimpunch

When a player is hit while attacking, even if they poise the attack, a flinch animation plays. The game mixes this flinch animation with the current attack animation, which can throw the player’s weapon off course and can even make the attack miss completely.

See also:

• Why Do Elden Ring Hitboxes Randomly Miss (YouTube)

Backswing

A backswing is a secondary attack, like the second R1 (R1 2) in a chain of (light) attacks. In a lot of movesets, the first R1 will swing the weapon towards the enemy, and the second R1 will swing it back, somewhat in the opposite direction.

Backswings on many weapons are able to put opponents into frame disadvantage, because the hitstun from attacks typically lasts longer than the recovery from an attack into the backswing. However, this is not always the case. When we say that an attack “has backswing”, it refers to this property of putting an opponent into frame disadvantage.

Block Cancel

Blocking in Elden Ring has a variety of applications which fall under the umbrella term block cancelling:

• Running without ever pivoting (i.e. cancelling the pivot)
• Repeating running jumps (i.e. cancelling the walking state)
• Performing a running jump towards the opponent and instantly running back without pivoting
• Cancelling the recovery of an attack (see recovery cancel)
• Cancelling the crouching state, e.g. to perform a neutral R1

See also:

• Elden Ring Tech: Block Canceling

Chip Damage

Chip damage refers to small amounts of damage coming from consumables, projectiles, and sometimes melee weapons, typically below 10% of player HP.

Counter-Hit, Counter-Damage

Attacks in Elden Ring have counter-frames towards the middle/end of their animation. These frames usually occur during the active frames of an attack and shortly after. During these frames, the damage negation of pierce damage of a player is lowered and getting hit is called a counter-hit.

Spear Talisman will further increase pierce damage by 15% on a counter-hit, i.e. counter-damage. In total, you can expect 50% extra pierce damage on counter-hits. When you deal counter-damage, you can also see a white spark appear near the blood splatter on your opponent.

Note that counter-hits are exclusive to pierce damage; if your thrusting weapon has an affinity component like lightning, the lightning damage will not be increased on a counter-hit. This is why Elden Ring PvP players usually prefer pure physical thrusting weapons over weapons with affinities.

Whether counter-damage can be dealt is up to each individual attack. For example, the Great Epee heavy thrusting sword has a pierce damage R1 thrust, but a slashing R2 which does not deal pierce damage. There are also attacks which look like a thrusting move, but don’t deal pierce damage: most notably, the Serpent Hunter crouch poke. Furthermore, there are attacks which do deal pierce damage, but don’t look like thrusting moves: most notably, the Serpent Hunter JR2.

Critical Attack - Backstab, Riposte [1.08]

After parrying or breaking the guard of an enemy, your R1 attack will turn into a powerful riposte attack. This attack keeps you and your opponent in i-frames during the animation and inflicts massive damage. When performing R1 close to the back of your opponent, you start a backstab.

MV = Motion Value

Daggers are the most powerful riposte tools, along with high AR weapons like colossal swords:

Raw damage refers to the damage before defence/damage negation calculations

See also:

• ER - Motion Values and Attack Data

Damage Count

Damage count is a hidden mechanic in Elden Ring, previously seen in Dark Souls 3. Whenever you are hit, your damage count is increased. When you roll away, attack, or otherwise exit hitstun, the count is reset to zero. The greater the count, the sooner you can roll out of hitstun.

This mechanic prevents you from getting stunlocked when being attacked by multiple enemies. After the fourth hit, you are able to instantly roll out of any hitstun animation. However, the time until weapon art (e.g. Quickstep) is never shortened.

See also:

• [DS3] The Hidden Mechanic Behind Combos and Infinites | DamageCount (YouTube)

Damage Level [1.08]

Damage Level is a property of attacks which dictates how much a player is staggered when getting hit.

Frames at 30 FPS, 1 frame = 33ms

Note 1: There are multiple animations for the same damage level, so the recovery data is not universally applicable; the actual frames to roll may depend on the angle at which you are hit, the kind of attack, etc.

Note 2: Depending on your damage count (see above) you may be able to roll out of hitstun earlier.

The effect of each damage level is changed against a parried or sleeping opponent. For example, damage level 3 attacks will knock down opponents like damage level 7, and damage level 1 will stagger longer, allowing for true combos.

Dead Angling

In some previous Soulsborne games, it is possible to manually aim attacks in such a way that they bypass the shield of an opponent who is blocking in front of you, because they hit the opponent from the side or behind, where the shield is inactive.

The term is frequently (mis)used to refer to a variety of techniques related to manually aimed attacks. Free-Aiming is another way to refer to those other techniques.

Defence and Damage Negation, Competitive Defence [1.08]

For any type of the damage, the player has defences and negation values which reduce (or sometimes increase) the damage taken. Defences come from player stats, while damage negation comes from armour and buffs.

The calculations work as follows (code is written in Python 3):

atk = raw attack damage, def = defence, abs = absorption/damage negation, x**2 = x²

Effectively, this produces increasing returns, so the more damage your attack already does, the more your profit from additional damage. This effect is most visible below and round attacks which do roughly as much damage as the defence of the player. If the attack does more than 8 times the damage as a defence stat, the resulting damage becomes proportional to the raw damage and the curve becomes a line. As you can see in the calculations, damage negation simply becomes a multiplier for the resulting damage and has a much simpler relationship.

We consider a defence of 140 and a negation of 30 to be competitive defence, because it is a good average for RL 125 combat with good armour. That being said, lightning defence is usually lower than 140, because it only scales with rune level (127 defence at RL 125). Fire defence is usually greater, because it scales with vigor, and competitive players usually have plenty of vigor.

Empty Jump

When you jump towards your opponent without performing any attack, this is called an empty jump. Empty jumps are useful to bait out panic rolls once you have landed. They also close distance between yourself and the opponent, possibly up to their face, since your opponent will likely not want to trade with a jump attack.

Fast Weapon Art vs. Slow Weapon Art [1.08]

Certain weapon arts aka. skills are classified as “fast”. This includes (list may be incomplete):

• No Skill
• Lion’s Claw
• Double Slash
• Prelate’s Charge
• Unsheathe
• Square Off
• Lightning Ram
• Flame of the Redmanes
• Determination
• Royal Knight’s Resolve
• Quickstep
• Bloodhound’s Step
• Raptor of the Mists
• White Shadow’s Lure
• Unblockable Blade
• Sword Dance (since 1.07)
• Vow of the Indomitable (since 1.07)
• Eochaid’s Dancing Blade (since 1.07)
• Stamp (Upward Cut) / Stamp (Sweep) (since 1.07)
• Impaling Thrust (since 1.07)
• Piercing Fang (since 1.07)
• Charge Forth (since 1.07)
• Blood Tax, Repeating Thrust (since 1.07)
• Giant Hunt (since 1.07)
• Loretta’s Slash (since 1.07)
• Poison Moth Flight (since 1.07)
• Bloody Slash (since 1.07)
• Lifesteal Fist (since 1.07)
• Storm Blade (since 1.07)
• Flaming Strike (since 1.07)
• Lightning Slash (since 1.07)
• Blood Blade (since 1.07)
• Phantom Slash (since 1.07)
• War Cry (since 1.07)
• Ordovis’s Vortex (since 1.07)
• Wild Strikes (since 1.07)
• Spinning Strikes (since 1.07)

These weapon arts can be used earlier during another animation. For example, after a one-handed thrusting sword R1, you can use a fast weapon art on the first frame after the active frames of the attack ended, meaning that there is essentially zero recovery from R1 into Quickstep. Slow weapon arts require 4 frames of waiting before they can be used, i.e. they can be used on the fifth frame after the active frames have ended.

Note: All data is given in frames at 30 FPS, 1 frame = 33 ms

Fast weapon arts also appear to be handled differently by the input queue in Elden Ring. For example, during a katana JR2, it is possible to queue up a Spinning Slash, but not Double Slash.

See also:

• Elden Ring Frame Data Explorer

Foresight

Foresight in fighting games is the ability to understand whether a certain exchange is winning or losing. Foresight is acquired through experience.

It is important to understand whether you should attempt to roll through an opponent’s attack, block, or to attempt a trade on reaction (reaction trade). For example, if the opponent attacks you with a slow attack and you have a katana sheathed, it is best to unsheathe into them on reaction and either interrupt them or to trade, at least if you have an HP advantage.

Frame Trap

A frame trap is an attack or string of attacks that can't be fully avoided by rolling through it, i.e. dodging it using nothing but i-frames. This usually involves one part of the attack forcing a dodge, with subsequent parts roll-catching during recovery frames between rolls. Examples include:

• Spinning Slash
• Double Slash Follow-Up
• Light attack spam on numerous weapons, such as Shamshir, Dagger, Thrusting Sword, …

Such attacks can still be avoided by rolling out of their range, but not by rolling through them and staying in the same spot.

Note: In other fighting games, frame trap is often synonymous with frame disadvantage

Free-Aiming

Some attacks in Elden Ring -especially horizontal slashes- can behave differently when manually aiming them to the side, downwards, or upwards. Examples include:

• Aiming upwards to prevent an opponent from jumping over them
• Aiming downwards to extend their range slightly (e.g. Unsheathe R2, PS GSpears CL1, ...)
• Aiming sideways to make them hit on an earlier frame
• Aiming sideways to make them connect on a later frame, possibly allowing for true combos
• Aiming backwards to prevent your opponent from whiff-punishing you

Fundamentals

Fundamentals are game skills which are universal to every weapon. Fundamentals are necessary to master PvP.

Elden Ring Fundamentals:

• Foresight
• Spacing/zoning
• Reaction-rolling/dodging
• Game knowledge
• Stamina management
• Poise counting

Fundamentals Weapon

Some weapons, especially PS SS (Powerstanced/Paired Straight Swords) are often referred to as a fundamentals weapon. This means that there is no hidden gimmick to how to play the weapon, and you don’t rely on constantly using ashes of war. You simply use melee attacks and rely on the above mentioned fundamentals to use the weapon.

GUGS, WUGS

GUGS stands for “Greatsword Ultra Greatsword” and refers to the Colossal Sword named Greatsword in Elden Ring. This abbreviation originated in Dark Souls 3. This name is useful to disambiguate between the Greatsword weapon and the Greatsword weapon class.

Elden Ring players started using this pattern for other weapons, like WUGS for Watchdog’s Greatsword.

Hard-Swap vs. Soft-Swap

You can swap between weapons, either by switching between multiple weapons that you are carrying (soft-swapping), or by replacing your current weapon in your inventory (hard-swapping) by menuing. Soft-swapping is much easier, as it requires a single button press. Hard-swapping can sometimes be faster, as no animation is played while swapping and you can use the weapon instantly after leaving the menu.

Hard-swapping is perceived as unfair by some players, but the PvP community at large permits it, and it is not banned in any ladder or tournament ruleset.

Holy Damage Bug

For unknown reasons, holy damage is not increased by otherwise damage increasing effects. For example, Coded Sword jump attacks are not affected by Claw Talisman in PvP, but they are buffed in PvE. Any talisman or buff which directly increases damage simply has no effect on holy damage in PvP.

See also:

• Elden Ring PvP - Holy Damage Bug (YouTube)

Hyper Armor

Hyper armour is a state which the player enters when using specific attacks. Heavy weapons like Greataxes typically give you hyper armour on every attack. Hyper armour essentially gives the player increased poise during the attack, and also permanently recovers some amount of poise health.

See also:

• ER Poise Calculator

IGN Glitch, IGN Build

On May 25 2022, IGN posted a video titled Elden Ring: PVP Build Guide. This video was widely circulated in the PvP community and mocked for multiple reasons:

• Showing no awareness that the PvP meta is at RL 125 or RL 150
• Being ill-informed about the viability of certain weapons, such as Bloodhound’s Fang
• Recommending poor build practice such as using soreseals over RL 200
• Promoting toxic strategies such as shield poking with Fingerprint Stone Shield
• Promoting the use of exploits

The exploit promoted by the PvP guide is the Bloodflame Blade + Fire’s Deadly Sin Glitch, where Fire’s Deadly Sin massively gains blood loss buildup because the main hand buff is falsely applied to it. As a result, this exploit was nicknamed “IGN glitch” or “IGN build”.

Invulnerability Frames aka. i-Frames [1.08]

When the player rolls or uses certain weapon skills, they become invulnerable for some amount of frames. During this period, the player cannot receive any damage from attacks, but they can still be afflicted with status buildup through phantom hits.

Note: All data is given in frames at 30 FPS, 1 frame = 33 ms

See also:

• ER - Parry + iFrame Data - for a much more detailed list

i-Frame Duplication, Roll-Spam Immortality

In Elden Ring, you can only deal damage with an attack if the opponent is outside of i-frames on your screen and on their screen. If the opponent is in i-frames on your screen, your attack doesn’t attempt to damage them. If the opponent was damaged on your screen but is already in i-frames on theirs, they will also not receive damage, but a phantom hit.

For every frame of latency, effectively, one frame of recovery is removed. If your opponent has approximately 8 frames = 270 ms of latency and is spamming light/medium rolls, then they will always be in i-Frames on your screen or on their own, making them immortal to any damage other than status effects. This allows them to do things that are normally impossible, like rolling into their opponent’s Flaming Strike and back out of it without taking damage.

See also:

• How Lag Makes You Invincible (YouTube, demonstration in DS3, netcode works the same in ER)

Irregular Poise Event (IPE) aka. Random Poise Event (RPE)

In some rare cases, players don’t get staggered by attacks that they clearly shouldn’t be able to poise. Even powerstanced great spear jumping attacks sometimes don’t stagger opponents, seemingly randomly. An IPE can be recognized by the fact that no flinching animation will be played whatsoever when the opponent is hit by an attack. Poising an attack normally will result in a slight flinching animation, possibly leading to aimpunch, contrary to an IPE.

The exact reason for why this happens is unknown, but IPEs most commonly occur when:

• A melee headshot is involved, i.e. the opponent gets hit in the head
• The opponent is turning just as they get hit
• The opponent is beginning to crouch just as they get hit

Kill Confirmation

Kill confirmation is the act of finishing an opponent off when they are at low health. When discussing tactics for kill confirmation, this typically involves ways of doing small amounts of damage, but as reliably as possible.

Knowledge Check

A knowledge check is an attack or playstyle which tests the opponent’s game knowledge. For example, using status effects checks if the opponent knows about talismans that increase their status resistances, and whether they know that they can remove these status effects with boluses.

Knowledge check is sometimes used in a condescending manner, referring to strategies which become useless if the opponent knows about them.

Motion Value (MV)

Motion values are multipliers for properties of attacks. They include:

• Physical/Affinity attack motion values
• Status motion values
• Poise damage motion values
• Stamina damage motion values

For example, the actual poise damage of a weapon is calculated by multiplying the poise damage motion value and the base poise damage of the weapon. Except for poise damage MVs, all MVs of a one-handed R1 are typically 100, so you can see them as a percentage of a light attack.

See also:

• ER - Motion Values and Attack Data

Neutral, Neutral Game

In fighting games, there are three states that players can find themselves in:

• Advantage - Player is pressuring their opponent
• Disadvantage - Player is being pressured by their opponent
• Neutral - Neither player has the advantage

While players are in neutral, they are typically closer to the middle of the stage and attempting to put the opponent into disadvantage, e.g. through zoning.

Neutral Jump

A neutral jump is a technique where the player jumps while standing still. If their opponent attacks them during this, the jump can avoid this attack and counter it with a jump attack. Neutral jumps work similarly to parrying because they are predictions of your opponent attacking you. However, they are often safer and require much less precision than a parry.

From testing during PvP, it appears like neutral jumps have very good tracking when used while walking, but have no tracking whatsoever when used during a recovery, e.g. after performing an attack.

Offstoc, Offkiba, etc.

Players refer to offhand weapons with these abbreviations:

• Offstoc - offhand thrusting sword, not necessarily Estoc
• Offkiba - offhand Nagakiba
• Offpike - offhand Pike

Passive Poise vs. Active Poise

When a player is hit while they are not attacking, and manages to not get staggered, i.e. “poises” the attack, this effect is called passive poise. Also refer to the lexicon entry for poise for more information.

While the player is attacking, they may also receive hyper-armour which lets them poise more attacks, and we refer to the calculations when they get hit as active poise.

Parry Frames [1.08]

Not every tool for parrying is made equal in Elden Ring. Some parries have significantly better frame data, meaning that the active parry frames appear earlier in the animation, and there are more of them, so there is a longer window during which an attack may be parried.

Note 1: All data is given in frames at 30 FPS, 1 frame = 33 ms

Note 2: Ashes of War like Golden Parry have the same frame data on small/medium shields

Windy Crystal Tear and Crucible Feather Talisman add +3 iframes and therefore -3 recovery to Light, Medium, and Heavy Roll. No other iframes are affected by these, and they do not stack.

See also:

• ER - Parry + iFrame Data - for a much more detailed list

Perfect Block

When a player starts blocking at the same frame as they are hit, they will block without entering block stun, but still lose stamina. It is commonly seen that a player takes full damage instead of blocking, but bypasses hit stun with this technique. This indicates that the perfect block is likely a bug.

Phantom Headshot

When a physical projectile like a fan dagger or arrow hits your opponent in the head, a headshot animation plays which staggers them for a long time. This is even possible on a phantom hit, so you only need to headshot them on your screen. The phantom hit will still deal no damage, but it will stagger them, interrupting the roll on your opponent’s screen.

Phantom Hit

A phantom hit occurs when you hit an opponent on your screen, but on their screen, they roll or otherwise enter invulnerability-frames before they get hit. Animations like a blood splatter and a sound effect will still be played, but the opponent receives no damage. Status effects are built up as if you hit them normally, possibly resulting in a phantom proc.

Phantom Miss aka. Phantom Anti-Hit

This is the exact opposite effect of a phantom hit. Visually, you get hit on your screen by a projectile or melee attack, but it deals no damage to you because the attack did not connect on your opponent’s screen. This effect is most noticeable when stopping to strafe projectiles, or when seemingly getting roll-caught by projectiles, but taking no damage. It occurs because on your opponent’s screen, you were still strafing or in roll i-frames.

Phantom Proc - Phantom Blood Loss, Phantom Sleep, etc.

If status buildup reaches 100% during a phantom hit, the status effect is still applied.

Players unfamiliar with phantom procs may assume that blood loss randomly doesn’t do any damage. However, what actually happened is that their opponent rolled just before they got hit, resulting in a phantom hit and subsequent phantom proc.

Poise

Poise in Elden Ring is a stat which dictates how many attacks it will take until you are staggered. The player has an invisible poise health bar which depletes whenever they are hit. This includes phantom hits, so it is not necessary to take damage in order to take poise damage.

All attacks in Elden Ring deal some amount of poise damage, and the player is staggered if their poise health reaches zero, or if they are attacked in any way while having zero poise. Here is a list of ways that your poise health is changed:

• Getting hit by an attack decreases poise health, depending on the kind of attack
• Entering hyper armour increases poise health, but may not reset it completely
• Not getting hit for 30 seconds resets poise health to whatever your poise is

Even though the game doesn’t display it as such to the player, poise and poise health are fractional. For example, full bullgoat armour gives the player ~99.9 poise, not exactly 100, but the game rounds this up when displaying the poise in menus. Poise damage is also fractional.

See also:

• Elden Ring Dissected #6 - Poise Explained (YouTube)

Poise Breakpoint [1.07]

A poise breakpoint is a poise value which allows you to poise one more attack. As a counter-example, 52 poise is not a breakpoint because having 52 poise instead of 51 will not allow you to poise any more attacks.

WIP

Also note that Elden Ring poise is translated into a toughness stat which has a lower maximum than poise. Poise damage subtracts from toughness, introducing floating point imprecision. Furthermore, armour poise is fractional, e.g. Bullgoat Armor gives ~99.6 poise and is rounded up to 100 when displayed in your menu. As a result, 60 armour poise can sometimes be enough to protect against 60 poise damage, but this cannot be relied upon. The above list is always poise damage +1.

Poise Counting

Poise counting is a technique of keeping track of your and your opponent’s current poise health. When you get (phantom) hit, your poise health is depleted, and so is your opponent’s. When it reaches zero, the poise health is reset.

Poise counting is necessary to know whether you will interrupt your opponent’s next attack. If so, you can afford to play more aggressively and to pressure them. You should typically avoid performing attacks that will not break the poise of your opponent, since they can very easily poise trade with your attack otherwise.

Powerstance (PS)

A powerstance refers to using two weapons of the same type, one in the mainhand and one in the offhand. In this case, the L1 attack will not just swing the offhand weapon, but will use both weapons in a paired attack.

This term originates from Dark Souls 2, but is widely used in Elden Ring despite not being mentioned anywhere within the game. “Paired weapons” instead refers to weapons that give you a PS moveset when two-handed, such as Ornamental Straight Sword.

Priority

In an exchange of attacks, one player usually has priority over the other, especially if they are using different weapons. Priority is a form of advantage where if both opponents were to attack at the same time, the player with priority would win the exchange for some reason.

For example, if a player in Elden Ring gets hit by an attack, they usually don’t have priority, because a follow-up attack of their opponent would hit them before they recover from the stagger animation and can perform their own attack.

A player can have priority because their attack has more damage or poise damage, or because it is significantly faster. If you don’t have priority yourself, you typically have to gain distance from your opponent and reset to neutral, or you can parry or neutral jump if you predict that your opponent makes use of their priority.

Proc [1.08]

Proc comes from “programmed random occurrence”. It was commonly used in World of Warcraft to describe when a random event happens during an attack, like poison damage.

In Elden Ring, the term is used to describe when status buildup reaches 100% and e.g. the blood loss effect is applied. It is a misuse of the term because it is not a random event.

Note 1: the ⌊symbols⌋ mean rounding down

Note 2: There are further PvE variations of poison and rot

Note 3: Poison ticks can be i-framed, meaning that the total damage may be lower than e.g. 720

See also:

• ER - Miscallaneous Data - for further information on status effects

Read, Hard Read

 A read in fighting games is a prediction of your opponent’s actions with a pre-emptive punishment for them. For example, you can predict that your opponent will attack when they get closer to you, and you attack them to interrupt them before they can do so.

A hard read is a read where you predict your opponent with great confidence and make a substantial commitment to the punishment. For example, a successful parry is always a hard read, and so is a neutral jump. In this case, you are predicting that your opponent will attack within a small time window, and then punishing them for it. Parries and neutral jumps can be punished and thus require commitment.

Recovery Canel

Moves in Elden Ring have a certain amount of recovery frames until the player can walk and perform an arbitrary move again. However, the amount of recovery frames into actions other than walking is typically lower.

For example, the recovery after a UGS crouch poke to walking is fairly long, but the player can crouch to end this recovery sooner.

See also:

• Elden Ring Frame Data Explorer

R1, R2, JR1, RR1, etc. Input Notation

Elden Ring players typically refer to attacks/inputs by these acronyms.

Note that there is no difference between a rolling and a crouch attack in Elden Ring, they are always the exact same attack. This is why RR1 is unambiguous, as CR1 can be used to refer to a rolling attack.

Reverse Backstep (Ravioli) [1.08]

This is a technique where you queue up a backstep during the recovery of an attack, and then start walking backwards so that the backstep doesn’t go backwards as usual, but forwards. You can then perform a backstep attack. This sequence is faster than recovering from an attack into running and performing a running attack.

Frame data is at 30 FPS and recovery windows do not include the startup

Cancel windows depend on equipment load

*during startup, your character doesn’t move yet and turning is enabled, which allows you to turn around before the hop

The ravioli allows you to pressure opponents much more than with repeated running attacks, as both the reverse backstep and the backstep attack will close distance.

Reverse Quickstep

This technique is similar to the reverse quickstep, but can also be performed while walking. To perform it, you need to lock onto a target. Then, aim backwards, quickstep, and unlock all at the same time. This will result in your character performing a backwards quickstep, but towards your target. These inputs don’t have to be performed frame-perfectly at the same time, you have some leeway.

This technique is used for approaching the opponent with a backstep attack, or for backstabbing them. The reverse quickstep is a much less risky way of backstabbing opponents than using a reverse backstep, because it also has i-frames.

See also:

• The Reverse Quickstep | Elden Ring (YouTube)

Roll-Catching Combo

A roll-catching combo is a series of attacks that an opponent can roll out of, but that will roll-catch them if they panic roll, i.e. spam the roll button as soon as they are hit.

Examples:

• Great spear R1 into R2
• Great spear RR1 into R1
• Halberd RR1 into Impaling Thrust
• Halberd RR1 into Flaming Strike
• Unsheathe R1/R2 into Unsheathe R1

The key benefit of roll-catching combos is that they don’t require any precision or careful timing to catch rolls. They work if you simply queue up attacks.

Rune Level (RL)

This is the level of a character. The meta, i.e. the level where competitive matches take place is 125 in Elden Ring. Another popular level is 150. For invasions, players often make characters at RL 137, allowing them to invade both 125 and 150.

Rising Jump Attack vs. Falling Jump Attack vs. Landing Jump Attack

When you perform a jump attack very early into the jump, i.e. while your character is gaining height, this is called a rising jump attack. When you are doing it late into the jump, i.e. while your character is losing height, this is called a falling jump attack. If your character touches the ground while performing the jump attack, it is a landing jump attack.

Falling and landing jump attacks have much better tracking than rising jump attacks, to the point where you can perform the attack and turn into the direction where you have jumped from.

Shield Poke [1.08]

When you block with a shield and simultaneously perform a light attack, you attack while blocking. You can get guard-broken during this attack.

Frame Data at 30 FPS, 1 frame = 33ms

Note 1: Damage level 1 results in 10 frames hitstun until dodge, and 7 frames hitstun until attack; This means that the poked player always has a frame advantage

Soft Cap vs. Hard Cap [1.08]

A soft cap is a level after which the gains from additional stat investment significantly increase or decrease. In most cases, the gains will decrease, but some soft caps, like 15 Mind, increase returns. A hard cap is the maximum of 99 which can be invested into a stat. See below the gains in HP from Vigor and Mind, with soft caps highlighted: