The latest Elden Ring patch brings with it good news for weirdos who care way too much about how other people beat games, as well as big boosts for players who rely heavily on Spirit Ashes to help with the fantasy RPG’s punishing combat. This patch might also make major changes to the PvP meta, as it comes with significant buffs to certain underutilized weapon types.
The patch notes start with the PvP-exclusive changes, so we will too. The big ticket items are buffs to poise damage for many weapon types, including Light Greatswords, Backhand Blades, Hand-to-Hand, and Beast Claws. Dual-wield attacks for most one-handed weapons also see increased poise damage, which will make Tarnished who are dual-wielding light weapons considerably more dangerous. The incredibly tedious backstep from the Fine Crucible Feather Talisman has had its i-frames nerfed, and so has the Talisman of All Crucibles.
Raging Beast, Blind Spot, and Savage Lion’s Claw have all seen their i-frames reduced specifically in PvP, although Savage Lion’s Claw got a buff that apparently makes the second hit of the follow-up “easier to land,” whatever that specifically means (better tracking, perhaps). Finally, Miriam’s Vanishing also got its i-frames nerfed, while Knight’s Lightning Spear has been rebalanced to front-load the damage on the initial lightning spear.
In terms of more general balance adjustments, the biggest changes are the buffs to Spirit Ashes that we mentioned. Every single ash aside from the Mimic Tear has gained increased attack power and damage negation at higher upgrade levels, especially at +8 and higher. In addition, some of the NPC summons have also gotten buffs, which should help solo players.
There’s also a big pile of bug fixes, many of which are ultimately buffs. The list of bug fixes is filled with notes like “Fixed a bug where the damage of some normal attacks of the Dark Moon Greatsword were lower than intended” and “Fixed a bug where the ‘Rain of Fire’ incantation sometimes did not hit enemies.” A major change is that more spells and incantations can be cast while mid-air. Also, the Mimic Tear should be a bit smarter about using spells and incantations now.
However, the bugfix we’re most excited about is the PC-specific bug where the game would set “Anti-Aliasing Quality” to “High” every time you launched it. This bug has existed since the game launched on PC, and was infuriating for people like your author who can’t stand temporal anti-aliasing. Setting AA to “Low” reverts back to a simple FXAA effect that works well enough, but you would have to do this every time you started the game. Thankfully, that is no longer the case.
If you’re curious to see the specifics of the equipment, magic, and spirit ash changes, you can head over to the Bandai Namco site to check the full patch notes for yourself.