Elden Ring received another big PvP patch in version 1.10, which might be the last big shakeup to the game before the release of the Shadow of the Erdtree DLC.
Though Soulsborne games have long had PvP options, they’ve traditionally been lightly supported in a way that keeps them from being particularly balanced. That’s not necessarily bad for the wacky, frantic experience of invasions but it has kept arena-based PvP from ever really taking off as a popular way to play the games. That’s been changing to some degree in Elden Ring.
FromSoftware has been juggling the development of Armored Core 6: Fires of Rubicon as well as creating the Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree DLC. Somehow, the studio has also been making an active effort to make Elden Ring’s PvP experience balanced and viable for a variety of builds. Patch 1.10 advances that with a number of changes to poise as well as some critical hit changes that will impact the single-player experience.
Elden Ring PvP set to become more like Dark Souls with patch 1.10
Elden Ring patch 1.10 will make the game’s PvP feel a bit more like Dark Souls thanks to changes made to increase the opportunity for critical hits and backstabs.
Elden Ring’s PvP has been brushed off as inferior to Dark Souls 3’s offering by many hardcore FromSoftware fans. Part of that is the relatively high difficulty associated with landing critical hits and the lack of power behind them compared to previous Soulsborne games. Both of these factors were changed with Elden Ring patch 1.10.
The hitbox for landing critical hits was extended and the damage they inflict was increased. On top of that, the unique attack animation used for landing a critical hit was buffed to have a quicker recovery time if it whiffs. If a critical hit attempt misses, the player who misses will deal increased poise damage on attacks after for an unspecified amount of time.
Some of these changes will also impact the actual single-player experience of Elden Ring. The increased critical hit damage and changes to whiffed critical attacks will be applied across the entire game. This will should make builds around large weapons and two-handing more powerful than they were previously.
Elden Ring aimpunch bug fixed with patch 1.10
While those changes were met with general approval from Elden Ring PvP fans, the dreaded “aimpunch” effect was also removed from the game.
Aimpunch was a phenomenon where a player would wind up to make an attack, take a hit in that doesn’t break their poise, but see the trajectory of their attack shift as a result. This was infuriating as it didn’t just result in an attack missing, but also saw the aimpunched player punished further by leaving them open to punishment after whiffing an attack.
Under the bug fixes section of the patch, the development team stated that it fixed “adjusted the player damage animation so that the attack direction is not unintentionally shifted.” This should mean the end of aimpunching.
The full 1.10 patch notes can be found on the official Elden Ring website.
