Critical Attack

Critical Attacks are a variety of special attacks in ELDEN RING ⁽²⁰²²⁾ that cause roughly 2.5 to 4 times as much damage as a regular attack, while also locking both the player and the affected enemy into a long animation.

Certain weapons, including almost all Claws and Daggers, have an increased Critical multiplier, increasing the damage of the Critical Attack by the stat divided by 100 (e.g. for the Miséricorde its large Critical multiplier of 140 is divided by 100 to get 1.4, which means it deals 40% extra damage on Critical Attacks).

The Attack Power of a Critical Attack is dependent on weapon type, and Ripostes usually have about 25-30% more Attack Power than Backstabs. Against small foes such as Vulgar Militia both Backstabs and Ripostes have the same amount of Attack Power and this number is about 15-25% higher than a regular Riposte. Ripostes against large foes such as Omen, Golems, and Bosses have even higher Attack Power, and always (except for Throwing Blades) receive two hits during a Riposte.

The following list provides damage multipliers for Backstabs and Ripostes respectively for each weapon type, roughly in order from highest multiplier to lowest multiplier. Keep in mind that this is before any innate critical multiplier found on certain weapons is applied.

• Daggers: 294% and 420% Attack Power.
• Claws and Fists: 55% + 242% (297% in total) and 55% + 330% (385% in total) Attack Power.
• Axes, Flails, and Hammers: 55% + 292% (347% in total) and 55% + 303% (358% in total) Attack Power.
• Thrusting Swords: 253% and 380% Attack Power.
• Backhand Blades , Beast Claws , and Hand-to-Hand : 50% + 220% (270% in total) and 50% + 300% (350% in total) Attack Power.
• Curved Swords, Light Greatswords , Katanas, Straight Swords, and Twinblades: 230% and 345% Attack Power.
• Spears: 230% and 322% Attack Power.
• Halberds: 220% and 308% Attack Power.
• Throwing Blades : 220% and 300% Attack Power.
• Great Spears: 225% and 276% Attack Power.
• Greatswords: 220% and 275% Attack Power.
• Heavy Thrusting Swords and Reapers: 220% and 264% Attack Power.
• Curved Greatswords, Greataxes, Great Hammers, and Great Katanas : 55% + 176% (231% in total) and 55% + 220% (275% in total) Attack Power.
• Colossal Swords and Colossal Weapons: 52% + 168% (220% in total) and 53% + 210% (263% in total) Attack Power.
• Thrusting Shields : 200% and 280% Attack Power.

Ballistas, Bows, Crossbows, Greatbows, Greatshields, Light Bows, Medium Shields, Perfume Bottles, Sacred Seals, Small Shields, Staves, Torches, and Whips cannot be used to deliver Critical Attacks.

Backstabs

Backstabs are a type of Critical Attack made by hitting the light attack button when standing behind a roughly human-sized foe.

For human-sized bosses that don't use the same body as the Tarnished, such as Margit, the Fell Omen, backstabs are only possible when their Stance is broken, i.e. reduced to 0.

Ripostes

Riposted are a type of Critical Attack made by hitting the light attack button after either Parrying them (bosses can require several parries before being ripostable), dealing enough Stamina damage to a blocking enemy to break their Guard, or breaking an enemy's Stance.

List of Increased Critical Weapons

Format: Weapon name, weapon type (critical multiplier).

• Miséricorde, dagger (140)
• Dagger, dagger (130)
• Rapier, thrusting sword (130)
• Executioner's Greataxe, greataxe (115)

• Black Knife, dagger (110)
• Blade of Calling, dagger (110)
• Bloodhound Claws, claw (110)
• Bloodstained Dagger, dagger (110)
• Carian Sorcery Sword , thrusting sword (110)
• Claws of Night , claw (110)
• Death Ritual Spear, spear (110)
• Erdsteel Dagger, dagger (110)
• Fire Knight's Shortsword , dagger (110)
• Glintstone Kris, dagger (110)
• Great Knife, dagger (110)
• Highland Axe, axe (110)
• Hookclaws, claw (110)
• Lordsworn's Greatsword, greatsword (110)
• Lordsworn's Straight Sword, straight sword (110)
• Main-gauche , dagger (110)
• Morgott's Cursed Sword, curved greatsword (110)
• Noble's Slender Sword, straight sword (110)
• Ornamental Straight Sword, straight sword (110)
• Parrying Dagger, dagger (110)
• Pata , fist (110)
• Raptor Talons, claw (110)
• Reduvia, dagger (110)
• Rogier's Rapier, thrusting sword (110)
• Sacred Relic Sword, greatsword (110)
• Scorpion's Stinger, dagger (110)
• Velvet Sword of St Trina , straight sword (110)

Related Items

• Assassin's Cerulean Dagger restores 15 FP per hit in a Critical Attack (Daggers and Colossal Weapons can hit twice for certain Critical Attacks).
• Assassin's Crimson Dagger restores HP equal to 10% of wielder's max HP + 85 HP per hit in a Critical Attack (Daggers and Colossal Weapons can hit twice for certain Critical Attacks).
• Crucible Scale Talisman reduces damage taken from Critical Attacks by 30%.
  • Talisman of All Crucibles also grants this effect.
• Dagger Talisman increases damage dealt by Critical Attacks by 17%.

Trivia

• Patch 1.14 (Bug Fixes): Fixed a bug that caused critical hit damage dealt to Taylew the Golem Smith when using certain weapons the be lower than intended.
• Patch 1.13 (Bug Fixes): Fixed a bug that prevented the player from performing Critical hits on some enemies.
• Patch 1.12 (Bug Fixes): Fixed a bug in the Colosseum that allowed Critical hits against players in specific death animations.
  • This made it impossible to backstab players that are in the middle of the death animation from Death Blight, as it would otherwise allow for stunlocking them for the entire duration of the match.
• Patch 1.10 (PvP-exclusive balance adjustments): Critical hit angles have been extended.
• Patch 1.10: Increased critical hit damage. Decreased recovery time after a missed critical hit. Increased poise damage of attacks that occur after missing a critical hit.
  • This increased the Motion Values/damage multipliers for the various weapon types and shortened the time before other actions could be performed after missing a Critical Attack.