by vedasisme Tue Sep 11, 2012 3:22 pmI was always curious about damage types in Dark Souls, and though I did extensive searches on the subject, I never found sufficient explanation. My only choice was to pull out my Dark Souls Official Guide and figure out what the numbers were. Here is essentially what I have discovered. If you have anything to add that can make this into a useful article for other players, please let me know. I know, for example, that there is a claim that Thrust weapons ignore a percentage of armor, but the data to prove such a claim has not been documented to my knowledge.
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There are 4 types of damage in Dark Souls: Regular, Slash, Strike, and Thrust.
Some people confuse Regular and Slash damage. They are NOT the same, and do not share the same properties. A particular distinction to note is that certain enemies that are heavily armored or have tough exteriors will be resistant to Slash damage, but Regular damage will deal a normal amount of damage.
As the game will tell you, Slash damage does particularly high damage against enemies with exposed flesh. This includes chaos eaters, phalanx, rats, barbarians, and Stray Demon and its variants.
It also tells you that Strike damage is difficult to block, and Thrust damage is supposedly strong against armor. However, if we look at the data provided in the Dark Souls Official Guide, we can see that the only enemy particularly weak to Thrust damage is the demonic foliage in Darkroot Garden. Every other enemy is either just as weak to other damage, or strong against Thrust. A good example is the sentinels in Anor Londo. There are two types of sentinels, the ones that heal, and the ones that don’t. The sentinels that do not heal are actually NOT resistant to any particular damage type. The royal sentinels that guard the boss room are resistant to Slash damage, and have lower defenses to Regular, Strike, and Thrust. In other words, you are better off using a Regular or Strike weapon, as your dps will simply be higher with those weapons.
The enemies that are heavily armored that you would think are weak to Thrust attacks are actually weak to Strike attacks. This includes Crystal Golems, Maneater Shells, Burrowing Rockworms, and Great Stone Knights.
Strangely enough, the black Heavy Knights that appear in 3 locations of the game are actually not particularly weak to any damage type (though their elemental weakness is lightning).
Enemies that take damage from Piercing attacks generally take just as much damage from Regular and Slash damage. A good example are the Mushroom People, which are actually one of the rare enemies that are resistant to Strike damage.
Other boss enemies actually have no particular resistance to damage types, such as gargoyles, taurus demons, capra demons, Quelaag, Sif, Gwyn, Priscilla, etc.
So where does this leave Thrust weapons? Particularly shorter piercing weapons such as the Rapier and Estoc? We must consider the particular strengths of these weapons. Nearly all Thrust weapons can attack from behind a shield (though the PtDE patch increased the stamina consumed by both blocking and attacking from behind a shield). All thrust weapons deal increased counter-hit damage, and most thrust weapons have a longer range. This leaves the Pickaxe and War Pick, which are both mace-style Thrust weapons.
An ultimate conclusion we can make is that Strike weapons work on nearly every enemy, and generally deal enough damage that enemy resistances are less of an issue, while Slash weapons may work on fewer enemies, but attack quickly enough to make up for any shortcomings. Weapons that deal Regular damage will almost never fail you in any situation, while Thrust weapons will struggle to damage certain enemies, thus resulting in a mostly utility role. One can only guess that perhaps the existence of the Leo Ring is meant to give some additional use to these relatively weak weapons.
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There are 4 types of damage in Dark Souls: Regular, Slash, Strike, and Thrust.
Some people confuse Regular and Slash damage. They are NOT the same, and do not share the same properties. A particular distinction to note is that certain enemies that are heavily armored or have tough exteriors will be resistant to Slash damage, but Regular damage will deal a normal amount of damage.
As the game will tell you, Slash damage does particularly high damage against enemies with exposed flesh. This includes chaos eaters, phalanx, rats, barbarians, and Stray Demon and its variants.
It also tells you that Strike damage is difficult to block, and Thrust damage is supposedly strong against armor. However, if we look at the data provided in the Dark Souls Official Guide, we can see that the only enemy particularly weak to Thrust damage is the demonic foliage in Darkroot Garden. Every other enemy is either just as weak to other damage, or strong against Thrust. A good example is the sentinels in Anor Londo. There are two types of sentinels, the ones that heal, and the ones that don’t. The sentinels that do not heal are actually NOT resistant to any particular damage type. The royal sentinels that guard the boss room are resistant to Slash damage, and have lower defenses to Regular, Strike, and Thrust. In other words, you are better off using a Regular or Strike weapon, as your dps will simply be higher with those weapons.
The enemies that are heavily armored that you would think are weak to Thrust attacks are actually weak to Strike attacks. This includes Crystal Golems, Maneater Shells, Burrowing Rockworms, and Great Stone Knights.
Strangely enough, the black Heavy Knights that appear in 3 locations of the game are actually not particularly weak to any damage type (though their elemental weakness is lightning).
Enemies that take damage from Piercing attacks generally take just as much damage from Regular and Slash damage. A good example are the Mushroom People, which are actually one of the rare enemies that are resistant to Strike damage.
Other boss enemies actually have no particular resistance to damage types, such as gargoyles, taurus demons, capra demons, Quelaag, Sif, Gwyn, Priscilla, etc.
So where does this leave Thrust weapons? Particularly shorter piercing weapons such as the Rapier and Estoc? We must consider the particular strengths of these weapons. Nearly all Thrust weapons can attack from behind a shield (though the PtDE patch increased the stamina consumed by both blocking and attacking from behind a shield). All thrust weapons deal increased counter-hit damage, and most thrust weapons have a longer range. This leaves the Pickaxe and War Pick, which are both mace-style Thrust weapons.
An ultimate conclusion we can make is that Strike weapons work on nearly every enemy, and generally deal enough damage that enemy resistances are less of an issue, while Slash weapons may work on fewer enemies, but attack quickly enough to make up for any shortcomings. Weapons that deal Regular damage will almost never fail you in any situation, while Thrust weapons will struggle to damage certain enemies, thus resulting in a mostly utility role. One can only guess that perhaps the existence of the Leo Ring is meant to give some additional use to these relatively weak weapons.
