About Stance-Breaking | Elden Ring Wiki

Amazing mechanic, especially for STR builds, but it needs a bit of buff for various weapon types (maces, axes, etc) and to be more effective against massive targets and heavily armored enemies. Not too much, but shouldn't take like 8 fully charged R2s with an Axe or Mace to stance break Haligtree Knights when I could do it in 4 with a straight sword jumping attack that has like no recovery.

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I think my previous comment created some confusion, just to be clear: stance breaking DOES NOT scale with weapons weight and character strength. At the moment, the only thing it depends on is the weapon category and the attack type.
As for weapon arts they seem to have their own stance breaking values that do not scale with anything. Some of them, such as the flame of the redmanes are completely broken and stagger a lot more than they intuitively should.
What I was saying in my previous comment is that I think stance breaking should indeed scale with the weapon weight and the stre of the character. Hopefully they will fix/adjust it in future balancing patches.

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If it is weapon weight and character strength, then is it just strength that governs the stance break ability of the Ash of War, Flame of the Redmanes?

Because it seems to be stance breaking regular mobs in 1-2 uses, and bosses anywhere from 2-4.

https://eldenring.wiki.fextralife.com/Ash+of+War:+Flame+of+the+Redmanes

My Confessor is utilizing a high-crit flame of the redmanes fighting style, where I break their stance and then critical strike them, and I want to try and increase the damage of flame of the redmanes at the least, but at best increase the amount of stance breaking power it has.

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Is the base stat for stance breaking the weight of the weapon, that is then calculated based on the type of attack etc? This would give the serpent slaying sword a niche outside the boss fight: best stance breaking poke that you can swap with a crit weapon.

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I have been testing a large number of weapons (based on a strength build) on trolls in Limgrave. For my testing I used all the weapons twohanded and without upgrades. I made sure to only start attacking while in combat (by checking that my rolling would consume stamina before swinging).
I tested:
A: Fully charged r2s
B: 1 fully charged r2 + r1s
C: r1s
D: jump r2s
I will start with one of the most surprising findings, which leads me to believe that the stance-breaking system is still quite broken and needs fixing:
All the weapons I tested, from Straight Swords and Axes to the Giant Crusher stance broke the Trolls with 3 jump r2s. One would expect big weapons to stance break much faster but, as far as I could test, the jump r2s deal the same stance damage with all or almost all weapons.
For the colossal weapons I tested The Greatsword and the Golem's Halberd which had the same exact performance:
A: 2 fully charged r2s
B: 1 fully charged r2 and 2 r1s
C: 5 r1s
D: 3 jump r2s
And the Prelates Crozier, Giant Crusher, Great Club, Troll's Hammer which all performed in the same way:
A: 3 fully charged r2s or 2 fully charged r2s and 1 r1
B: 1 fully charged r2 and 3 r1s
C: 4 r1s
D: 3 jump r2s
Axes, Straight Swords and Curved swords all performed in the same way too:
A: 2 fully charged r2s
B: 1 fully charged r2 and 5 r1s
C: I couldn't consistently stance break the troll
D: 3 jump r2s
Greataxes, Greatswords, Great Spears, Great Curved Swords all performed in the same way:
A: 2 fully charged r2s
B: 1 fully charged r2 and 3 r1s
C: 6 r1s
D: 3 jump r2s
Warhammers, specifically the Brick Hammer, Great Mace, Great Stars, all performed surprisingly well, on par with colossal weapons:
A: 2 fully charged r2s
B: 1 fully charged r2 and 2 r1s
C: 5 r1s
D: 3 jump r2s

My conclusions is that colossal hammers seem to deal the most r1 stance damage but, surprisingly, were the ONLY weapons tested unable to stance break with 2 fully charged r2s. Warhammers, specifically the great mace thanks to its range advantage over the brick hammer, seem to be your best bet to quickly stance break enemies.
I believe that the fact that jump attacks are one of the easiest and most common ways to achieve a stance break, and that colossal weapons do not seem to benefit from it, leaves strength bros at a significative disadvantage.
I believe it would logically make sense that stance damage scales with weapon's weight and possibly with the strength of the player, a bit like statuses (bleed and such) scale with other stats (arcane). This could help making pure strength builds more viable and fun to play.

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Thank god you can't store About Stance-Breaking. Having one is just enough for the meta not to break

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I tested which weapons type break stances more easily, 1 used them with one hand and only regular attacks.
My target was a scarlet rot zombie in Caelid, these weapon types need that many hits to break their stance:

4 Hits -> Colossal Sword, Colossal Weapon
5 Hits -> Greataxes, Greatswords, Great Spears, Great Curved Swords, Warhammers
6 Hits -> Halberds, Scythes
8 Hits -> Hammers, Flails, Medium Shield (as a weapon)
9 Hits -> Straight Swords, Spears, Heavy Thrusting Sword, Twinblade, Katana
11-12 Hits -> Claws
15 Hits -> Daggers

If you are wondering where the other weapon types are, I don't have them. But this should give you a vague idea.

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Best mechanic that was introduced in this game. I love it so much, it rewards aggressive play.

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quick question since im completely new to these kind of games. im running 2 greatswords and inbetween my jumping attacks and combo swings ive noticed i break their stance but i dont seem to perform a crit, what am i supposed to do? press the button to swing with only my right hand weapon?

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