Elden Ring Sorceries Tier List - Updated February 2024

There's no single build in Elden Ring that can deal more damage than a straightforward glass cannon mage with high Intelligence and all the best Sorceries in the game. Where it lacks in defense it makes up for in overwhelming magical power. Sorceries hit hard, fast, and typically from long range, but you need the FP to back it up. Unlike Incantations, which have a wide variety of uses such as healing, Sorceries are almost exclusively about dealing huge amounts of damage. Even if your build only dabbles in some Sorceries or it's more of a hybrid like INT/DEX, you need to know the best spells that are worth it.

NOTE: Reading past this point will lead to MINOR SPOILERS for Elden Ring. This is a game all about exploration and discovery. Some players might not even want a hint of a whiff of what new powers await them. If that’s you, skip this for now and come back later! Though we suspect you already know what you’re in for if you’ve read this far. With that out of the way, here’s the current Sorcery tier list in its simplest form.

This list has been updated to reflect ongoing balancing updates with the game, including the version 1.10 update. Be sure to check out our Incantations tier list, Spirit Ashes tier list, and Ashes of War tier list for similar updated roundups. Continue on for our official tier list ranking all of the sorceries in Elden Ring. Note that the spells within each tier are in no particular order.

S	Comet Azur	Carian Slicer	Ranni’s Dark Moon	Glintstone Pebble	Loretta’s Greatbow
	Magic Glintblade	Night Comet	Rock Sling	Terra Magica	Cannon of Haima
	Adula’s Moonblade	Rennala’s Full Moon
A	Crystal Torrent	Eternal Darkness	Gavel of Haima	Meteorite of Astel	Comet
	Shard Spiral	Glintstone Cometshard	Great Glintstone Shard	Stars of Ruin	Swift Glintstone Shard
	Carian Retaliation	Ambush Shard	Great Oracular Bubble	Zamor Ice Storm	Glintstone Icecrag
	Gravity Well	Magma Shot	Rykard’s Rancor
B	Crystal Barrage	Ancient Death Rancor	Glintblade Phalanx	Carian Phalanx	Collapsing Stars
	Founding Rain of Stars	Scholar’s Shield	Star Shower	Shatter Earth	Night Shard
	Loretta’s Mastery	Gelmir’s Fury	Carian Piercer
C	Unseen Form	Explosive Ghostflame	Shattering Crystal	Rock Blaster	Meteorite
	Thops’s Barrier	Scholar’s Armament	Greatblade Phalanx	Glintstone Arc	Carian Greatsword
	Night Maiden’s Mist	Roiling Magma
D	Unseen Blade	Starlight	Tibia’s Summons	Crystal Release	Lucidity
	Fia’s Mist	Freezing Mist	Crystal Burst	Rancorcall	Glintstone Stars
	Briars of Punishment	Briars of Sin	Frozen Armament	Magic Downpour	Oracle Bubbles

What is Being Ranked?

Elden Ring splits its various skills into a wide range of categories with some of the central types being 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. And the vast majority of Sorceries require and scale with the Intelligence stat. Though there are some notable exceptions that require other stats in addition to or instead of Intelligence. The most concrete requirement in Elden Ring Sorcery is that the player must cast them using a staff, or similar magical focus, rather than the seals used for Incantations.

What Do the Rankings Mean?

Elden Ring sorcerers got a nice little boost with Patch 1.03. Magic was already fairly strong throughout the game, but now it seems like a wider variety of Sorceries in particular should give the almighty Glintstone Pebble a bit of a run for its money. The starting ability is simply so good and cheap and fast that there weren’t a lot of reasons to use much else. Sorceries have the slightly strange distinction of being almost entirely damage-focused on in one way or another. Incantations have a much wider variety of use cases by comparison — and much larger gulfs between what’s useful and what isn’t as a result. Whereas Sorceries are just… good! They’re largely pretty good at what they do (which typically means direct, ranged damage).

A few of the quirkier skills are more or less useful than others, though. You’re still sure to find some player out there who swears one unpopular skill or another works for them. Often if you “just use Bloodflame Blade first,” or “summon Mimic Tear afterward,” or “hit the enemy during an opening.”

Well… Yes. Most skills work well with setup, prep, practice, and/or patience. That’s a good thing. That’s variety. 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 Sorceries between S and D ranks, to acknowledge that pretty much anything can work.

Here’s what those 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 Sorceries in the game seem at the very least functional. Even if the function doesn’t appear terribly 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. This should be familiar to you if you’ve read any of the aforementioned tier lists already.

How Are the Rankings Selected?

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. Much like a regular review. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something. If you understand that, and still believe there is any such thing as an “objective opinion,” then go with God(frey) my friend.

We consider primarily PVE applications for this list with overall utility factor as well. This is operating under the assumption that most players focus on single-player and/or cooperative play rather than invasions and duels. 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.

This is of course largely inferred from anecdotal evidence. The closest thing we have to public data on the percentage of players that invade is the “Shardbearer Mohg” achievement for defeating the boss of the same name. This has a completion rate of 13.8 percent on PlayStation and 16.4 percent on Steam at the time of this writing. Mohg is only accessible for most of the game by players who invade at least three times.

This is obviously a very flawed metric. Not every play who invades — even frequently — will immediately defeat or even attempt to fight the boss. Conversely, players may also reach Mohg through a portal in one of the final areas of Elden Ring. Others still may invade the requisite three times to reach the appropriate PVE area and then stop. Everyone is simply operating under assumptions without direct specifics from FromSoftware.

These simply help us weigh other factors, though. All Sorceries have been tested on a post-game save and compared to various online discussions. Extremely specialized and extremely generalized skills tend to fall somewhere in the middle — around the C and B tiers — for opposing reasons.

Broadly applicable skills, like Glintblade Phalanx for example, are nearly always useful. Though they may struggle to stand apart from the pack in any one regard. Hence their placement near the middle of this list.

The latter camp is where you find a lot of abilities that specifically excel in PVP. Competitive play is quite different from basic Elden Ring combat; it’s more about predicting and exploiting common player habits than reacting to a concrete suite of actions. This includes stunning players out of dodge rolls (a.k.a. “roll catching”) or baiting them into attacks before you quickly strike first. Since PVP is a more niche part of the game, requiring skills that don’t necessarily translate into the meat of Elden Ring, these Sorceries instead trend toward the middle due to a lack of general application. Carian Piercer is a solid example.

The higher tiers usually offer both: versatility across most common gameplay encounters in addition to something that makes them stand out. Though there are always exceptions.

Important Notes on Specific Sorceries

• Despite being a starting spell, Glintstone Pebble is no joke. It’s not flashy, but it can quite easily carry you through nearly the entire game as a caster. The damage, tracking, speed, range, and FP cost all simply add up to a workhorse damage spell that basically never stops being useful. To the point where the suite of Sorcery buffs in Patch 1.03 almost seems like an attempt to get people to stop using it all the time.
• On a similar note: Magic Glintblade should not be overlooked. Its delayed activation tends to confuse enemy AI (and even other players in PVP). It can also fire over low cover that would otherwise block direct projectiles. Appropriately enough, the projectile also seems to be unblockable (by shields that is).
• Rock Sling is an excellent damage-dealer with good tracking, but its main differentiator is how quickly it stuns enemies. This opens bosses and large foes up to Critical Hits — particularly if you aim for the head. Some monsters (notably dragons) allow you to lock on to the head directly. And Rock Sling benefits greatly from the extra headshot damage. This is naturally worth keeping in mind for all ranged attacks.
• Thops’s Barrier does seem to be a literal joke spell. Or at least one intended mostly for lore purposes tied to its namesake. While it technically does function as described, the spell is flatly outclassed by Carian Retaliation — and even the other Thops’s Barrier, which is a shield skill of the same title that costs zero FP.
• Ranni’s Dark Moon and Rennala’s Full Moon are two variations on more or less the same spell. The dark variant trades some direct damage to apply Frostbite (and can be buffed with the Snow Witch Hat). Note, though, that both spells require extremely high levels of Intelligence to use.
• Briars of Sin and Briars of Punishment are slightly awkward for players built around other Sorceries. Both skills require Faith, not Intelligence, and thus don’t really fit into the usual kit. That is unless you’re building a mix of high Intelligence and Faith, which is hardly out of the question for Sword of Night and Flame users.
• The basic damage spells more-or-less follow a progression like this: Glintstone Pebble → Great Glintstone Shard → Glintstone Cometshard → Comet → Comet Azur. Each “step up” deals more damage, but costs increasing amounts of FP in exchange. One reason Glintstone Pebble was so dominant before Patch 1.03 was because the FP escalation for its higher potency cousins far outstripped the increased damage (with the exception of Comet Azur). With this patch, however, the FP curve is much gentler.
• Night Comet and Night Shard essentially function like PVP-oriented versions of their respective namesakes. They purport to be “semi-invisible,” and this does at least seem to confuse AI foes who would otherwise try to dodge. They can be used on the move or immediately after another action, respectively. Night Comet also received an FP cost reduction from 32 to 24 with Patch 1.03.
• Despite the buffs to the more powerful Pebble-likes, Glintstone Icecrag is very notable for its addition of Frostbite. The status effect itself deals high damage when it procs and applies a defense debuff throughout its duration. Frostbite can then be reset with any instance of Fire damage (including from Rykard’s Rancor, Magma Shot, and Roiling Magma). This allows you to reapply Frostbite again very quickly for a fast chain of burst damage. Also, the combo makes you feel like a Black Mage right out of Final Fantasy XIV.
• Crystal Barrage and Collapsing Stars (Patch 1.04): While most spells have been buffed post-release to be more FP efficient in the first major balance update, these spells seriously benefited from big increases to damage. They have long windup times and leave the player somewhat vulnerable but do exceptional damage if you can hit all or most of the projectiles you fire. Crystal Barrage also got a further buff to its cast speed and recovery time in Patch 1.04.

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 cancelled 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 basically means any type of attack that hits in a wide area — be it a circle, a cone, etc.