Elden Ring - Leg Armor

Leg armor holds the second-largest share of poise and rewards careful optimizing, since the right greaves carry more than a quarter of a set's poise and reach a stagger threshold the chest piece alone cannot.

Combat

Pros

• Legs supply roughly 27 to 28% of a set's total poise: Bull-Goat Greaves are 28 of the Bull-Goat Set's 100, Knight Greaves 14 of the Knight Set's 51. That is about three times what the gauntlet slot contributes.
• Poise runs from 2 to 28 across the slot against 1 to 10 for gauntlets, and plenty of leg pieces clear 15 poise, a figure no gauntlet reaches.
• Poise-per-weight is genuinely competitive rather than flat: Crucible Greaves return 2.08 poise per point of weight (20 at 9.6) against Bull-Goat Greaves' 1.71 (28 at 16.4), so the heaviest piece is not the most efficient one.
• The light end is unusually good. Ascetic's Ankle Guards carry 6 poise at 2.0 weight, double the 3 poise typical of 2.0-weight cloth, and Aristocrat Boots give 7 at 2.9, both while staying inside a Light load budget.

Cons

• Weight scales with poise almost linearly, so nothing comes free: getting from Knight Greaves (14 poise, 6.6 weight) to Bull-Goat Greaves (28 poise, 16.4 weight) costs 9.8 weight for 14 poise, which on most builds is the whole margin between Medium and Heavy load.
• Heavy load at 70.0% or more shortens roll distance, lengthens recovery and cuts stamina regeneration by about 20%, the exact things extra poise is supposed to protect against.
• The top of the slot is clustered and hard to separate. Banished Knight Greaves, Beast Champion Greaves, Radahn's Greaves, Crucible Greaves and Scaled Greaves all sit at 20 poise, so the pick usually comes down to weight, robustness or looks rather than poise.
• No single leg piece gets anywhere near 51 poise on its own, so the slot only pays off as part of a full loadout.

Builds

Pick the leg armor second, right after the chest piece, and treat it as the stat that spends whatever equip load remains.

• Decide the load band first: Light at 29.9% or less and Medium at 30.0 to 69.9% share the same invincibility frames, so Medium is almost always the right target and Heavy almost never is.
• Then take the highest-poise greaves that still fit under 69.9%.
• On a poise build that means Bull-Goat Greaves or Greaves of Solitude when Endurance and talismans can carry them, and Crucible Greaves, Scaled Greaves or Tree Sentinel Greaves when they cannot, because those three return more poise per point of weight than anything heavier.
• On a Light build the slot still deserves attention: Ascetic's Ankle Guards or Aristocrat Boots give real poise inside a cloth weight budget, where most robes give 3.

Best Leg Armor

Piece	Image	Poise	Weight	Physical	Immunity	Robust.	Focus	Vitality
Bull-Goat Greaves		28	16.4	11.9	44	51	29	34
Greaves of Solitude		27	14.8	10.8	37	39	61	31
Tree Sentinel Greaves		23	11.7	10.8	41	56	26	29
Crucible Greaves		20	9.6	10.1	31	44	22	22
Black Knight Greaves		17	8.5	8.4	26	41	15	15
Ascetic's Ankle Guards		6	2	3.4	26	14	17	39

Notes

• Poise is a hidden HP bar equal to the displayed poise. When it empties the character is staggered and the bar resets to full; spare poise does not carry over between hits, and the bar fully restores after 30 seconds without being hit.
• The breakpoints worth aiming for are 51 and 101 poise for the whole character. Because legs supply a quarter to a third of a set's poise, the leg piece usually decides which side of 51 a build lands on.
• Equip load classes are Light at 29.9% or less, Medium 30.0 to 69.9%, Heavy 70.0 to 99.9% and Overloaded at 100% or more, and the leg slot is the second-largest weight commitment after the chest piece.
• Elden Ring has no set bonuses, so leg armor can be mixed freely with any chest, helm or gauntlets.
• Leg armor cannot be altered. Altering, free with Boc the Seamster or 500 runes at a Site of Grace, only works on specific helms and body armor, so no greaves, trousers or boots have an (Altered) variant.

All Leg Armor

The table below lists all Leg Armor in Elden Ring.