Elden Ring Incantations form the backbone of support spells across the game as part of the Faith class of abilities. Rather than focusing entirely on holy spells as you might expect, they also include everything from electric javelins to dinosaur tails and dragon breath. There are a total of 101 Incantations in the game, and we're here to rank them all based on information from all of the game's patches since release. We've left some of those notes in for posterity's sake, but keep scrolling to find our tier list.

UPDATE 1.03: FromSoftware recently surprise launched Patch 1.03 for Elden Ring. You can read the official patch notes here, but it’s worth noting that, while Sorceries were largely buffed, multiple Incantations were actually “shadow nerfed” in the update. This means some changes — including higher FP costs for certain spells — aren’t actually listed in the official patch notes. The community is still picking apart what changed. We’ve done our best to factor every alteration we know about into our rankings in the meantime. You can also check out our post-patch Sorcery tier list, Spirit Ashes tier list, and Ashes of War tier list, respectively.

UPDATE 1.03.2: As far as we know, this update hasn’t affected any Incantations. It seems to have been a very minor update focused on fixing glitches. We’re keeping an eye out for reports of shadow nerfs or buffs just the same after their presence in the previous patch.

UPDATE 1.04: Elden Ring just hit us with another massive balance patch in the form of Update 1.04. You can read the full patch notes here. We’ve updated the list to reflect some of the changes, but are continuing to test and change things on a new save. It’s also worth noting that almost every documented change was a buff. Incantations and weapon skills in particular saw almost across-the-board improvements to things like recovery speed and, as players in the community have asked for, boosts to super armor while casting. Even spells that many players already thought were great, like Honed Bolt, saw even more improvements.

UPDATE 1.07: Broadly speaking, DEX and INT builds were some of the most popular in the early days of Elden Ring. To entice a greater variety of builds, the 1.07 batch buffed pretty much all Incantations across the board, making them more viable than ever before.

What is Being Ranked?

Elden Ring splits its various skills into a wide range of categories. Though the broadest of these are basically: Ashes of War, Sorceries, and Incantations. The vast majority of these abilities drain FP, or “focus points,” from the player’s blue energy bar in the upper-left of the screen. Most Incantations require the Faith stat to use, and their potency will scale with the character's Faith. Though Incantations, even more so than Sorceries, are a bit uneven in this regard. Certain Incantations require very high Intelligence in addition to Faith. Others — specifically the Dragon Incantations found at the Cathedral of Dragon Communion — need various levels of Arcane.

The most concrete requirement in Elden Ring Incantations is that the player must cast them using a seal rather than the staffs and wands typically used for Sorceries, but even that gets wonky. Various seals scale with different combinations of stats: such as Strength for the Clawmark Seal and Arcane for the Dragon Communion Seal. This makes Incantations both more versatile and more of a headache to track and pin down into one collection of spells. So your seal of choice will determine the trajectory of your build.

What Do the Rankings Mean?

As mentioned above, Elden Ring Incantations mostly saw shadow nerfs with Patch 1.03 rather than noteworthy buffs. This is somewhat odd since Incantations were already a bit all over the place. Some key damage skills, like Honed Bolt, are still exceptional. Whereas the bread and butter heals, while boring, are both fantastic and now the primary way of healing (and being healed by) the Mimic Tear spirit — which no longer heals itself with basic flasks.

Some of the quirkier skills are inarguably more useful than others, though. And Incantations in particular have no shortage of… just plain weird abilities. You’re still sure to find a player who swears by one unpopular Incantation or another. Often if you “just use Bloodflame Blade first,” or “summon Mimic Tear afterwards,” or “hit the enemy during a big opening.”

Yes. Most skills work well with setup, prep, practice, and/or patience. That’s a good thing. That’s variety. Our philosophy is that players should be proud of their ability to have fun and make X, Y, Z work well with a particular build. Yet accounting for every single, possible scenario in the game is not the intent behind this or any other tier list. As such, we’ve categorized all Incantations between S and D ranks. Pretty much anything can work. You just might need to put in more effort as a result.

Here’s what those categories mean at a glance:

S – Great in nearly all situations.
A – Good to great in most situations.
B – Good in a wide variety of situations. Great with a particular weapon or build.
C – Not generally recommended, but either situationally useful or broadly effective with setup.
D – Not generally recommended: either because the benefits are too niche to matter regularly, or because other skills do the same thing but better.

We elected not to include an F tier because nearly all Incantations (as well as Sorceries and most Ashes of War) seem at least functional. Even if a particular function isn’t very appealing to us. Getting any more granular with higher and lower tiers (or pluses and minuses) felt pedantic to the point of opaqueness, rather than informative. If you’ve read our other tier lists, all of this should be pretty familiar to you.

How Are the Rankings Selected?

Elden Ring Incantations are much more difficult to compare one-to-one than Sorceries. The latter magic type is mostly focused on direct damage (and/or inflicting ailments that lead to more damage). Incantations are all over the place. How exactly do you compare a groupwide heal-over-time against a mutant shoulder tackle that launches heavy knights into the air?

Every tier list is different. Mathematical details have some impact, but different players weigh different elements — such as animation time, super armor, damage, range, status effects, etc. — differently.

We focused mainly on PVE applications for this list. The logic is that the game is first and foremost an action-RPG. While there is a very dedicated competitive player base, PVP is an almost entirely optional and opt-in element of a much larger Elden Ring community, while progressing through dungeons and bosses is not.

Important Notes on Specific Incantations

The description of Urgent Heal is slightly misleading. Like other skills that say so, yes, it can be cast while moving. However, the animation slows you to a crawl. This makes using it in combat almost as risky as a “proper” heal — as you may take a hit mid-animation that negates the benefit of the damage. Regen skills typically provide a better HP-to-FP exchange (though their healing doesn’t scale) while also removing the opportunity cost of casting a heal mid-fight. Using a regen Incantation just before or right at the start of a fight allows you to continue dodging, blocking, attacking, etc. while topping off damage.
Much like the basic heals, Blessing’s Boon and Blessing of the Erdtree fill largely the same function with different tradeoffs. And since regen healing is fixed (i.e. it doesn’t scale with your stats or equipment) it’s very simple to calculate the costs versus the benefits. Blessing’s Boon heals a total of 720 HP for 30 FP — granting 24 HP per FP. Whereas Blessing of the Erdtree provides 1,080 HP for twice the cost (or 18 HP per FP). The latter skill is obviously less efficient over time, but you trade that FP for urgency. Neither PVP nor PVE encounters in Elden Ring operate on fixed time scales; you either die or the opponent does. Healing an extra 40 health over 10 seconds may make the difference between being able to survive and extra blow and not. As such, Blessing of the Erdtree shouldn’t be dismissed for being less efficient. Particularly when you consider its synergy with Mimic Tear.
The standard healing Incantations (Heal, Great Heal, Lord’s Heal, and Erdtree Heal) can likewise be considered sidegrades to one another — as they trade FP efficiency for more urgent burst healing. They are arguably more useful when using Mimic Tear, as well, since the AI seems to cast healing spells back-to-back it detects damage.
Bestial Vitality provides a slower heal than the above blessings, and doesn’t affect cooperative allies or spirit summons, but has a much higher efficiency for pure solo play. I say “pure” solo play because of Mimic Tear. Which, while no longer able to heal itself with flasks as of Patch 1.03, does still cast and is affected by healing Incantations.
Except specific in cases where you are guaranteed to only face Poison and not Scarlet Rot, and want to ration an extra seven FP per use, Flame, Cleanse Me is all but objectively better than Cure Poison.
Law of Regression is extremely versatile — curing Scarlet Rot and other status effects — but requires a monstrous amount of FP and high Intelligence (instead of Faith). This makes it a lot more niche in actual practice. Though the skill is necessary for a particular lore reveal and an NPC side quest late in the game.
The Aspects of the Crucible have moderate windup times but compensate with super armor, high stagger damage, and good damage overall. The super armor seems to trigger when a particular aspect (i.e. horn, tail, or breath sac) manifests on the character’s body. Enemies can be staggered or knocked flat. In the latter case, the target can then be caught with a well-timed charged hit as they stand back up. The Incantations also notably gain damage (up to about 16 percent) from wearing the Crucible Tree and Crucible Axe armor sets: which themselves feature excellent defense-to-weight ratios. They also saw a reduction in FP cot as part of the 1.07 patch.
Beast Claw endured quite a few nerfs. A halfway decent conical AoE, it drops the player into a crouch that can avoid horizontal swings while it charges, but it faces much stiffer competition from Incantations that stagger better and deal more damage.
Darkness (Patch 1.03): Note that this does not affect the player as its description implies. It affects the enemies around you. It creates a blinding fog that envelops foes (indicated by a black haze around their eyes) and causes them to lose aggro. This makes it a highly specialized spell, but one that can nearly trivialize dungeon and open-world combat, by letting you backstab and/or charge attack foes repeatedly. Combine with the Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger and/or Ancestral Spirit’s Horn talismans to offset its rather high FP cost (which was quietly increased with the Patch 1.03 shadow nerfs).
The various Fortification spells are very good for what they are, but obviously situational. The basic spells reduce incoming damage of a particular type by 35 percent for 90 seconds. Whereas the advanced variants reduce their particular damage by 60 percent for 70 seconds (none of these values scale). Despite them all being somewhat sidegrades to one another, we’ve currently put Barrier of Gold and Lord’s Divine Fortification one tier higher. The former is to reflect that magic damage is fairly common and that foes who rely on it often don’t have good alternative attacks. Negating their magic damage is generally just more all-around effective at shutting down magic users entirely. The latter skill’s placement, meanwhile, is a more specific nod to just how useful it is against the very final boss of Elden Ring.
The Golden Vow Incantation should not be confused with the Golden Vow weapon skill. The Incantation is more potent; it provides close to double the buffs and duration for roughly the same FP cost. It should also be said that its damage negation stacks with the various other buffs, including the Fortification spells. Not to mention you can use this on spirit summons. Mimic Tear will also cast the buff on both itself and you. Even after Patch 1.03.
For all named Dragon Incantations, you should also know that the midair attack functions differently depending on which hand you equip your sacred seal to. In your left hand, you can only cast each spell once, instead of being able to chain two breaths together. In your right hand, the chaining works normally.
Pest Threads appears to be a fairly unique spell. Its projectiles continue to tear into targets as they travel — functioning like Pierce Ammo from the Monster Hunter series. This means it does very, very high damage to large bosses and very little to smaller targets. As such it lands in the middle of the list despite its theoretically high potential.
Poison isn’t terribly strong in Elden Ring. Not when so many other ailments are stronger — such as Scarlet Rot, which Faith builds have greater access to than most. But Poison Mist is interesting. Intentionally or not, the Incantation can be cast from stealth without alerting enemies. This lets you kill or weaken otherwise annoying foes without fighting (though it will take a while).
Note that Unendurable Frenzy always ends with a final burst of projectiles in random directions — continuing to build up Frenzy even after you stop casting.
When Inescapable Frenzy says it only works on Tarnished, it means the skill is only for PVP and NPC invaders. It’s a risky but highly effective move if you can pull it off on human players.
Immutable Shield seems to provide 100 percent non-physical damage negation on shields for 30 seconds.
Even after being nerfed (i.e. after its bugged interactions were fixed) Fire’s Deadly Sin is useful for rapidly resetting Frostbite. Any amount of Fire damage on a foe afflicted with Frostbite will remove the ailment — allowing you to apply it again quickly for its initial burst of damage. The Incantation also still seems to combine with Bloodflame Blade, even after Patch 1.03, to inflict Bleed on enemies that stand too close.
Know that Black Flame (and most of the so-called god killing abilities) deal damage as a percentage of the target’s maximum health. This means this skill and others like it do more damage against bosses and other enemies with high HP pools. This makes the AoE “Black Flame” spells, like Noble Presence, slightly strange. Large, tanky enemies don’t often attack in big groups at point-blank range. This leaves Black Flame and weapons like the Black Knife dagger arguably more sensible uses of this damage type.
Black Flame Blade: This buff adds solid damage and can be cast quickly while moving. Just know that its duration is only six seconds after casting.
Scouring Black Flame: While a potentially very good AoE damage dealer, this skill has a very odd projectile shape that curves up at the front and to the sides. Juding the exact right distance to use it is slightly awkward when compared to similar spells.
Discus of Light and Triple Rings of Light, while able to hit enemies from behind like a boomerang, do negligible stagger damage. This makes them less desirable than similarly “spammy” ranged Incantations that can stagger enemies. Though they can be useful as opening attacks before switching to something more reliable, as the backswing hit is useful.
Elden Stars: While not very effective in PVE, this can be used to zone (i.e. to pressure and cause other players to panic) while you use other abilities or weapons.
Burn, O Flame! and Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Strike share the odd position of being useful against big bosses, groups, and almost nothing in between. The lightning strikes randomly but can hit the same target multiple times (making large enemies optimal targets).
Death Lightning (Patch 1.04): This skill functions much like the latter two skills. Yet Instant Death only works on other players — making Death Lightning far less useful in PVE. Its FP cost was reduced in the latest patch, however, and the Instant Death smoke it generates now lasts longer. This now makes it a much more effective zoning tool in PVP.
Most of the other “Ancient Dragon” Incantations saw a different sort of buff with Patch 1.04. This includes Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Spear, Frozen Lightning Spear, Fortissax’s Lightning Spear, and Lansseax’s Glaive. These were always solid damage-dealers that were risky to use thanks to their comparatively short range and the likelihood of being knocked out of your casting animation. Now the skills cast faster, recover faster, and have poise when you trigger them — plus lower FP and stamina costs. They’re basically better across the board.
Scarlet Aeonia (Patch 1.04): This ultra-flashy Incantation finally got the changes everyone wanted. It now casts faster, recovers faster, and boosts your poise as it fires. It’s still likely somewhat niche. You need to beat most of the game to acquire it in the first place and the move is quite visibly telegraphed in PVP. If you can land it, though, the damage and Scarlet Rot are a treat.
Rotten Breath and Ekzykes’s Decay (Patch 1.04): Like most of the breath powers found in the Cathedral of Dragon Communion, these are largely sidegrades to one another. The named version does more damage at greater range and can be cast in midair. However, it costs more FP and cannot be used on horseback. Both Incantations are absolutely fantastic, though. They deserve special mention for inflicting Scarlet Rot — a status effect very few bosses are immune to which deals more damage the higher their maximum health is. While several Dragon Incantations received direct buffs in this update, know that these skills in particular — as well as Dragonice and Borealis’s Mist — saw indirect nerfs. This is because the Dragon Communion Seal, which boosts the power of Dragon Incantations, saw a decrease to “the scaling of status effect build-up from spells and incantations” when using it. This seems to mean that Scarlet Rot and Frostbite won’t accumulate quite as quickly when using those Incantations with that seal compared to before.
Bloodboon (Patch 1.04): This table previously omitted Bloodboon, the Incantation acquired from the Remembrance of the Blood Lord. I’ve made sure to add it — especially now that it received the same offensive Incantation buff as so many others in Patch 1.04. It’s now faster, hits harder, and has reduced recovery time. And it’s certainly not bad now. It simply suffers from a lack of niche. It’s a solid area denial spell (specifically for PVP). Though in most circumstances it accomplishes largely the same thing as Bloodflame Talons by punishing foes who try to get too close with damage and Blood Loss. The talons are notably much faster and cost less FP (especially after they received their own buffs). Bloodbone obviously affects a larger area, allowing you to lock down swarms of smaller enemies, but many Incantations can simply kill large groups outright. Many of which also received buffs similar to this one.

General Notes & Jargon

Here are a few other concepts that go into our decision-making:

Animation Time: Most abilities have a “startup” or “windup” period before they do anything at all. Short startups are almost universally better, and we tend to weigh this pretty highly. Some skills compensate for long startup times with other benefits, like super armor, of course.
Super Armor: Speaking of which, super armor is a concept not just found in Elden Ring but fighting games and more. When an ability provides super armor, it means the user cannot be interrupted (or is much harder to interrupt) until the move completes. This is useful but tricky to rely on since it doesn’t usually stop incoming damage — just the stagger you would otherwise suffer from preemptive attacks. Though spells in particular
Cancelling: Many skills can be “cancelled” midway through. Usually by dodging or performing some other common action. This allows the player to begin moving again before they normally would if they simply let the animation complete. Some skills can be canceled much sooner than others. This is typically a desirable bonus trait. Skills with long animation times that can’t be canceled easily are less desirable.
Stagger and Posture Damage: Most offensive skills can stagger opponents. This causes the target to flinch and stop moving very briefly, often interrupting attacks that would otherwise hit the player. Lighter attacks are less likely to stagger while heavier armor reduces the chances of being staggered altogether. At the same time, several skills damage an invisible “posture” bar, to borrow a term from Sekiro, which leaves foes open to a Critical Hit when it depletes. Some skills do incredible posture damage and are especially desirable on builds that exploit Critical Hits.
Spam: The ability to use an ability over and over again very quickly, before the enemy has time to respond.
Status Effects: This refers to indirect damage types. Across Elden Ring, this includes Poison, Blood Loss, Frostbite, Scarlet Rot, Madness, Instant Death, and Sleep. Blood Loss, Frostbite, and Scarlet Rot tend to be the most effective and sought-after status types — due to their fast damage, usefulness in PVP as well as PVE, and easy application.
AoE (a.k.a. Area-of-Effect): A broadly used term that means any type of attack that hits in a wide area — be it a circle, a cone, etc.
Sidegrade: As opposed to an upgrade or a downgrade. If two items or skills are sidegrades of one another, it means they fill mostly the same role but each feature tradeoffs that makes them useful in different situations.

S	Black Blade	Burn, O Flame!	Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Strike	Golden Vow	Wrath of Gold
S	Catch Flame	Blessing’s Boon	Black Flame	Lightning Spear	Greyoll’s Roar
A	Giantsflame Take Thee	Honed Bolt	Agheel’s Flame	Magma Breath	Dragonfire
	Dragonmaw	Dragonclaw	Flame of Frenzy	Flame, Grant Me Strength	Borealis’s Mist
	Swarm of Flies	Discus of Light	Fortissax’s Lightning Spear	Flame, Fall Upon Them	Frenzied Burst
	Rotten Breath	Theodorix’s Magma	Bestial Vitality	Placidusax’s Ruin	Stone of Gurranq
B	Barrier of Gold	Lord's Divine Fortification	Great Heal	Lord’s Heal	Erdtree Heal
	Protection of the Erdtree	Dragonice	Ekzykes’s Decay	Bloodflame Blade	Flame Fortification
	Golden Lightning Fortification	Law of Regression	Pest Threads	Beast Claw	Scouring Black Flame
	Glintstone Breath	Smarag’s Glintstone Breath	Bloodboon	Black Flame Ritual	Unendurable Frenzy
	Lansseax’s Lightning Glaive	Radagon’s Rings of Light	Blessing of the Erdtree	Electrify Armament	Triple Rings of Light
	Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Spear	Lord’s Aid	Scarlet Aeonia
C	Bloodflame Talons	Order’s Blade	Frozen Lightning Spear	Gurranq’s Beast Claw	Noble Presence
	Flame Sling	Bestial Sling	Whirl, O Flame!	Fire’s Deadly Sin	Flame of the Fell God
	Divine Fortification	Dragonbolt Blessing	Howl of Shabriri	Darkness	Death Lightning
	Black Flame Blade	Aspects of the Crucible: Tail	Aspects of the Crucible: Horns	Heal	Flame, Cleanse Me
D	Urgent Heal	Assassin’s Approach	Poison Armament	Rejection	Order Healing
	Surge, O Flame!	Law of Causality	O, Flame!	Litany of Proper Death	Elden Stars
	Aspects of the Crucible: Breath	Black Flame’s Protection	Magic Fortification	Lightning Fortification	Cure Poison
	Immutable Shield	Poison Mist	Shadow Bait	Vyke’s Dragonbolt	Inescapable Frenzy

Tarnished Gordian Lens

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