The following article was contributed by Stochastic with help from Cryptid Tracker and Narcolept.

Elden Ring Split Damage

Conventional Soul’s wisdom tells us that split damage in PvE is rarely ever worth it. In Elden Ring, I am happy to report, this is not the case. Before we delve deeper, let’s unpack that conventional Soul’s wisdom. Split Damage must go through defenses twice. Each element of our weapon must go through its own defense calculation before arriving at an total damage value. We can reason about this as if each element is treated as its own attack. Let’s look at a toy example. Supposed damage was calculated using a simple linear formula.

damage = .50 * (attack_rating) - 10

If we attack twice, we lose 10 damage each time. So a weapon with 100 attack rating hitting once deals more damage than a weapon with 50/50 attack rating hitting once despite having the same aggregate attack rating. In practice, the computations are more involved than this, but we experience the same effect. Generally speaking the smaller an attack rating is the more it is penalized, so it is even worse than flat damage loss in our toy example. Now let’s step back and look at how we arrive at attack ratings in the first place. Each attack has a motion value, a modifier on the attack’s base attack rating. Then we apply flat bonuses like resins, papers, bundles, dark blade, etc to arrive at our final value. We can reason about attack rating as looking like:

attack_rating = motion_value * base_attack_rating + flat_attack_bonus

Certain truths now come into play. Buffing a weapon with an element that it already has split damage is good, because we are making a number bigger instead of starting from a new defense equation. Unfortunately split damage infusions/upgrades//whatever you wish to call them prevented us from buffing the weapon (DS2 the notable exception). High motion value attacks also make split damage attack ratings bigger, thus less penalized by going through the defense equations twice. Unfortunately, DS1-3 and BB very rarely, if ever, rewarded the usage of high motion value attacks. DS3 is pejoratively referred to as R1 souls by some. BB’s innate split damage weapons even on dedicated builds barely increased the amount of attack rating associated with their non-physical component. Famously, the Burial Blade is more effective on a strength-quality build than a Skill-Arc build. In DS1, we slapped darkmoon blade on the fastest weapon available because the flat attack bonus does not interact with motion values at all. In practice, the buttons the prior games rewarded us for pressing penalized split damage.

Now, what is different in Elden Ring? Primarily we have reasons to use high motion value attacks. Bosses have poise that we can reliably break with judicious usage of high multiplier attacks. By doing possibly slightly less damage on a couple openings, we create for ourselves a large opening that more than makes up for that damage deficit. Within this playstyle, split damage thrives. In addition, Ashes of War have, generally speaking, large multipliers as a tradeoff for their fp cost. To illustrate the above let us look at the iconic Greatsword at base reqs of 32/12 str/dex and 10 in all other stats. A Regular +25 Greatsword has a physical attack rating of 557. A Magic +25 Greatsword has a physical attack rating of 334 and a magic attack rating of 358. An easily available Ash of War, Lion’s Claw, has a massive motion value of 2.4. For comparison, its charged R2 motion value is 1.6. So let’s see what happens in practice against an enemy that is equally weak to physical and magic(118 DEF and 0 NEG).

The R1 is slightly in favor of Magic, but would easily be eclipsed by some sort of grease or weapon buff. The Charged R2 is definitely showing the differences. The Ash of War really nails it though. Remember, this is with no real investment in the stat that magic damage scales with, Intelligence. We can further push this result by choosing buffs, flasks and talismans strategically, but I believe the point has been sufficiently illustrated. A few caveats. As we climb ng cycles, DEF increases, thus lowering the efficiency of split damage. However this scaling is not particularly aggressive. Ashes of War are also not guaranteed, as of this writing, to apply motion values to all attack ratings. As of current research, anything that hits the enemy with the weapon does though.

Credits:

This is not a solo effort in the slightest and the datamining and data organization of CryptidTracker, Narcolept, and many others provided the foundation for this work.

-Stochastic