Lance

How it plays

• Set up against the targeted part and stay there: the lance loses everything by backing off.
• Guard rather than dodge, and go straight back to thrusting once the blow has passed.
• Use the perfect guard to turn a read attack into an opening, rather than merely to survive.

Focus Mode and wounds

Focus Mode changes the lance more than most weapons: thrusts follow your gaze, which lets you hit a high part without moving. The Focus Strike lands without leaving the guard for long.

Defending

The best guard in the game — lance and gunlance block better than anything else. This is the category where defence is not a retreat: guarding is a working stance, the attack resumes from it at once, and a perfect guard turns a read attack into an opening.

What it brings

• Holds under attacks that force other weapons out of range, and hits throughout.
• Piercing: it reaches hitzones that resist both slashing and blunt.

What loses hunts

• Guarding everything, always: each block costs stamina, and an emptied guard holds nothing.
• Playing the lance as a mobile weapon. It moves slowly, and its edge vanishes as soon as it runs.

What the data says ?

• The corpus places it among the six categories that guard, and so among those that can trigger a Power Clash. Fextralife disputes that last reading, giving it a reinforced guard instead: the question is open.

  counters.powerClash.weapons

• No lance in the game carries sleep: it is the one status it can never inflict.

  profiles.lance.missingStatuses

Defence

• Guardyes
• Power Clashyes
• Offset attackno