Elena

This page is about the playable hero. For the two Chapter 6 boss fights named Elena, see Elena (first duel) and Elena (second duel).

Elena is the leader of the Demiurges and the only hero you can pick in the arcade DLC, Dance of the Throne (the game's data calls the mode "arcade"; see Arcade mode). She is not part of the story party and is explicitly removed from the hero list inside the Deep into the Dark Mist maze. Her weapon, the Blade of Revenge, switches between a single-blade form (a blocking, parrying, counter-hitting style) and a dual-blade form (a fast, dodge-driven dancing style). Almost everything she does is a timing trick: perfect blocks, perfect dodges and attacks that trade hits with enemy swings, and nearly all of it feeds the Rage meter that powers her arts and her two ultimates.

Overview#

The in-game blurb describes Elena as the head of the Demiurges whose attempt to topple the Church failed; with her closest ally missing, she follows a strange voice back to Solas and takes up her silver blades for another round of revenge. The DLC text says the mode is built around the Soul of Obsession "carrying the will of all Demiurges" returning for revenge, with Elena arriving as a playable character.

What sets her apart from the five campaign heroes (Terrence, Viola, Benita, Norwood, Jerold):

• Two weapon forms. The form decides which attack chains, arts, block or auto-dodge you have. Switch by holding Light.
• Endurance is her Attack stat. Her Attack rate is 840 for Endurance and only 200 for Strength (about 81% of the weight).
• Rage is a timing resource. Perfect dodges, parries and "trading" attacks all pay Rage; Rage in turn gates the longer dual-blade chains and both ultimates.
• A Power gauge that only exists during the ultimate buff and acts as its timer.
• No Lunatic effect. The Sanity text field in her data is empty (see Lunatic state).
• A model scaled to 80% of Terrence's size (Scale 0.8) with a wider hit radius (0.625 vs 0.5).

Base stats#

Her HeroData row (10007) gives the attribute points below. They are the values the game falls back on; in the Arcade mode she is overwritten by a preset (next table).

The preset is ArcadeHero row 6. It is identical to Jerold's preset, carries no trophies, and is applied by FS_UserData.InitArcadeHero. See Attributes and Character stats for how the six attributes work.

For comparison, Terrence starts at 59 Attack, 849 Health, 303 Stamina and 63 Defence. Elena's HeroData base is far stronger, but the only mode she appears in applies the preset instead (inferred: the base values are never used in play), which trades Health, Defence and shields for Attack and Stamina.

What each attribute feeds#

Each stat is the sum, over the six attributes, of (rate x curve value for the attribute's points) / 1000, rounded down. Elena's rates (HeroPropertyData rows for 10007):

Endurance alone feeds Attack, Stamina and part of the crit stats, so it is her best attribute by far. Strength is almost irrelevant for damage. The effect of raising one attribute while the others stay at the HeroData base:

(Values come from the game's curve tables, HeroAttributeData, with the other five attributes at the HeroData base of 10 / 8 / 34 / 12 / 22 / 24. Raising Strength from 10 to 99 adds only 31 Attack, while Endurance from 10 to 99 adds 130; the Strength value of 104 at 10 points is just the base Attack because her base Strength is already 10.) Like the other heroes, the curves have an elbow: most of the benefit comes before about 40 to 50 points.

Weapons and style#

Elena carries a single weapon, the Blade of Revenge. In single-blade form she holds one sword and plays defensively: tap Special to block, time the tap to parry, and answer with Light for a counter. In dual-blade form she dances: Special becomes a "Dual Moon" art instead of a block, and pressing Dodge at the last instant triggers a slow-motion perfect dodge she calls Flash. Hold Light to change form (the starting prompt says tap and hold Light to switch weapon forms). If you hold Light with at least 33 Rage the switch becomes an attack that costs 35 Rage.

Her tempo is controlled by Rage:

The 33 and 66 thresholds are the per-step RequiredRage values of the chain rows (skills 9, 11, 20 to 23). The talent text for Rage of the Dance promises chains of "up to 5" hits, but the data allows a sixth step at 66 Rage (the text understates it).

Moveset#

Button names: Light, Heavy, Special (block or Dual Moon), Dodge, Interact. "Then" means pressed as the next step of a chain. All her attacks deal Physical damage. "Raw attack" is the figure used in the Damage formula: flat power + Attack stat x rate, shown at the base Attack of 104 and at the Arcade preset's 121 (before the target's Defence, crits and other multipliers). A row with several values lists the steps of the chain in order.

Inputs and unlocks#

Damage and costs#

Columns: "Armour" is the move's own Poise value while it plays; "Stagger" is damage to the enemy's stagger gauge (WeaknessSub). Backstab, Execution, Jump chop and the Riposte (105, the generic counter that answers a parried enemy attack; see Parry and counter#Counter Attack) cannot crit and ignore the target's Poise (CritIgnore, ToughnessIgnore 1), (which heroes share this: Critical hits#Moves that can never crit). Guard Break values are 40 to 80 for chains, form switches and counters, 50 for the Dual Moon follow-ups, 100 to 120 for Dual Moon and both ultimates, 150 for the Blade of Discipline after a Heavy chain, and 999 for Backstab, Execution and Jump chop (see the Sources).

Steps 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the dual-blade Light chain have no flat power at all (only 50 to 80% of Attack). The strongest single hits in the table are the Dual Moon "Echo" of the third swing (408 raw attack at 104 Attack), then the Backstab (327), the empowered dual-to-single form switch (326), Dual Moon's second Echo (326), and Shadow's Rage, Dual Moon's first Echo and Counter: Revenge (306 each).

Combo flow#

• Single-blade form: the Light chain, Heavy chain and Dodge strike all lead into each other and into the Blade of Discipline (any chain, then the other button). Holding Light at any point switches form. Block leads to Counter; a successful Parry leads to the stronger Counter, which then leads to Counter: Revenge.
• Dual-blade form: Light and Heavy chains lead into Lone Shadow (chain, then the other button). After the 5th hit, Lone Shadow becomes Shadow's Rage if unlocked. With the talent Enduring Blade II the chain count carries over through Lone Shadow, so you can continue the chain where you left it; Enduring Blade I does the same in single-blade form. Hold Special for up to three Dual Moon swings; the swings that follow a well-timed release are called "Echo".
• Rage tiers swap the chain: with Rage at 33%, the chain you start is the "Fervor" variant (SkillLLLLL2Up1/HHHHH2Up1); at 66% the "Frenzy" variant (...Up2). They share the same damage numbers; the talents make them faster (inferred from the talent text; the animation speed itself lives in the Unity animation data).

Talents that change moves#

The talent tree is covered in Elena talent tree. The nodes that matter for the moveset:

Ultimates and the Power gauge#

Elena has two "Sword Dance" ultimates and a hidden resource, Power, that times them.

1. Imperial Ambition (single-blade, hold Heavy). Needs at least 33 Rage and spends it in three slashes (33, 33, 34), so a full Rage bar of 100 lets all three land. (The talent text says it consumes "all Rage"; the data charges a fixed amount per slash, and each slash checks that you can afford it.) She is immune to damage during the slashes (per the talent text). Afterwards she switches to dual-blade form and gains the Dual-blade Ultimate status (10114): all actions cost no stamina.
2. King's Decree (dual-blade, hold Heavy). Same costs and same three-hit structure; she ends in single-blade form with the Single-blade Ultimate status (10120): her block can no longer be broken.

The buff lasts exactly as long as the Power gauge is above zero (see Hidden mechanics).

Statuses used by Elena#

See Buffs and Status effects for the general rules. The ticks give their number once, because period statuses pay out at most once per second and these last 0.1 s (inferred from StatusBase:CheckTimeForPeriodValue).

Arcade talents#

Elena's talent tree has seven extra nodes (17401 to 17407) that cost nothing and have no Immundus stone level: each is tied to an achievement of the "Defeat the Obsessed One of ..." family. They are the DLC's way of giving permanent bonuses.

How they work in the game: in a full Arcade run, defeating each stage's rival gives Elena the matching talent at once (ControllerStoryMode:AddTalent), and also advances the matching achievement. In the stage-select mode, every talent whose achievement is already finished is given at the start of the run (FS_UserData.InitArcadeHeroTalent). Together the Health nodes add +60% max Health and the Stamina nodes +50% max Stamina. The percentages are per mille of the base stat (PropertyAdd, Condition 5 = Health, 11 = Stamina). The three Fleeting-line nodes are meant to add up to a 50% cut in the Stamina cost of long attack strings, but they never take effect (Hidden mechanics).

Which of her other talents she owns depends on the way you play: a full run starts with only the nine default-open nodes, while stage select maxes every talent outside the achievement row. The details are in Arcade mode#Elena's talents in the mode and Elena talent tree#Overview.

Hidden mechanics#

• Power is the ultimate's timer, and it decays by itself. Power starts at 0 every battle. When Imperial Ambition or King's Decree begins, it is reset to 0, then each of the three slashes adds its Rage cost to Power (33, 33, 34), so a full ultimate puts Power at 100. Power drains by 50 per mille of its maximum per second, which is 5 per second, so the buff lasts about 20 seconds. The decay does not run during the ultimate's own slashes. If you start the ultimate with less than 100 Rage you get fewer slashes (each slash needs its own Rage) and a proportionally shorter buff (inferred from Hero10007:OnSkillTrigger). The moment Power is 0, both buff statuses are removed.
• Imperial Will stretches the buff only a little. Each attack, Flash or Parry applies a 5-second status that lowers Power decay by 3 (from 50 to 47 per mille). Kept up continuously that is 4.7 per second, or about 21.3 seconds instead of 20 (inferred; the status value is -3 flat on property 42).
• Impregnable costs Power. The automatic block (single-blade) or dodge (dual-blade) is a skill that needs and spends 15 Power, so one full ultimate pays for at most six automatic saves, minus decay. The talent text also says each save shortens the buff.
• Rage never decays. Her data has a Rage-decay stat of 60, but the code never applies Rage decay to Elena: only Norwood and Jerold call the decay function. Power regeneration (6) is likewise unused (inferred from the absence of any call).
• The Fleeting line does nothing. The code is there: once Elena has chained 3 counted attacks, Hero10007_Value:GetSkillEnergy cuts the Stamina cost by the sum of the ComboAttackSubEnergy talents (type 103), and a hit counts only if its flat power is above 0, so steps 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the dual-blade Light chain do not count (Hero10007:AddSkillComboAttack; the count resets in OnSkillEnd). But the three talents (17403 to 17405, values 150, 150 and 200) carry the condition string "1", and the game asks for the talent total with the parameters (0, 0). For a non-skill talent type, MS_HeroTalentCondition:IsConditionPermit accepts a condition only if the first parameter is above 0 and listed, so the answer is always 0 and no discount is ever applied (ms_herotalentcondition.lua:41-67). Jerold's equivalent talent, Bouncy, has an empty condition and does work.
• Blocking works differently from Terrence. Her GuardDamageRatio is 0 (Terrence has 1). While the guard holds, a blocked attack deals no damage even if its Guard Break beats your Guard of 75. A block that fails outright (the attack is 3.5 times your Guard or more) staggers her but still costs no health, because it uses the same ratio. Damage only gets through when the guard breaks: you are out of Stamina or stagger gauge, or the attack's Guard Break is at least double your Guard (150 or more). GuardBreakDamageRatio is 1, so a broken guard passes damage x the Guard Break excess (capped at 1). An attack with 3.5 times the Guard value or more fails the block outright. Each block drains Stamina equal to damage x 0.25 x (1 + the excess), at most 45% of your maximum. A successful Parry (block grade above 1) pays the Stamina but can never break the guard. Norwood also has a GuardDamageRatio of 0. The general rules are in Guarding#How a blocked hit is resolved.
• Demiurge's Curse is a stagger bomb, and only single-blade moves apply it. The curse is applied by the 5th hit of the single-blade Light chain, the 5th and 6th hits of the single-blade Heavy chain, and the Counter after a Parry (skill 25). It is not applied by dual-blade chains. The talent's own text says only that "the last hit" of a chain does it. Each level of the talent upgrades the status those hits apply: level 1 stacks to 3 (10115, 10 s), level 2 to 5 (10116, 11 s), level 3 to 5 (10117, 12 s). Each stack removes 20% of the target's stagger recovery, so five stacks stop recovery completely. When the level-3 version reaches its fifth stack, Elena also applies status 10121: the target's stagger gauge maximum is cut by 100% for 15 s, which should leave it empty and the target Weakened (inferred; see Weakness and execution#The Weakened state). When 10121 ends and the target is not in a hit reaction, its gauge is refilled to the maximum (Status102:Clear). The bomb is skipped for enemies that have no stagger gauge, and landing a Backstab or Execution removes 10121 and the maxed Curse. The talent starts unlocked at level 1 (3 stacks); levels 2 and 3 use the talent's three stone tiers (inferred from StoneLevel 1, 2, 4).
• The dual-blade Light chain starts weak. Steps 1, 2, 3 and 5 of the chain carry no flat power, just 50 to 80% of your Attack (52 to 83 raw attack at 104). Only steps 4 and 6 hit properly (164). The Heavy chain does not have this problem (112 to 164).
• Shadow's Rage costs 34, not 30. The talent text says 30 Rage, but both Shadow's Rage rows have RageSub 34. Hitting with it gives 100 Rage (RageAdd 100), so a hit refills the whole meter.
• Perfect dodge details. Dual-blade Dodge combo steps 3 and 5 are the Flash (the slow-motion rules are in Dodging#Perfect dodges (Jerold and Elena)): Elena gets a Rage tick, and with Flash Return a Stamina tick. If an enemy attack catches a dual-blade dodge on step 1, 2 or 4, the dodge jumps ahead to step 3, 5 or 5 (inferred: this is how a well-timed dodge becomes a Flash). A successful trade with an enemy swing ("beat back") gives the same slow-down, Rage tick and (with Flash Return) Stamina tick when it happens during the first step of Lone Shadow, Shadow's Rage, the dual-blade Heavy chain (including its Fervor variant but, apparently through a coding slip that lists the Fervor variant twice, not the Frenzy variant), or the Light-hold switch from single to dual form. Counter is not on that list (Hero10007:OnBeatBack). Three beat-back trades with Lone Shadow earn the achievement "Deadly Elegance".
• Blade of Discipline beat-back is a curse source. If the Blade of Discipline (either version), or the Light-hold switch from dual to single form, catches an enemy attack, there is no slow-down but the enemy receives the Demiurge's Curse status directly.
• Ranged parry achievement. "Return to Sender" counts ranged attacks deflected by An Eye for an Eye: ten within ten seconds.
• Demiurge's Might. The talent has a base value of 250 and a step of +100. Above 33% Rage the base 250 (+25% stagger damage) is used; above 66% Rage the value is computed at level 2, 350 (+35%) (SkillWeaknessSubBaseOnRageAdd with level 1 or 2; the level is passed in by the caller, so the talent does not need a second stone tier for the higher bonus). It applies only to skills 1, 3, 4, 5, 24 and 25 and only to the player-controlled hero.
• Dark Mist Morph. Holding Dodge for 0.25 s costs 15 Rage and 48 Stamina to start; releasing costs another 48 Stamina.
• Potions. Health Potion capacity is 2 (Terrence has 3); the talents Health Potions: Stock and others raise it.
• Death by falling. Quest 10078001 completes if Elena dies from a fall at one specific spot in Arcade stage 1007 (a coordinate box checked in Hero10007_Value:DamageDrop).

Trivia#

• Her internal name in the data is the Chinese transliteration of "Irina" (伊琳娜); the English text calls her Elena. A hostile Elena (enemy id 20039) is the opponent of Arcade stage 1006, and beating her gives the Finale talent.
• The achievements tied to Elena: First Awakening (clear Dance of the Throne once), Endless Nightmare (clear it on Hard with Elena), Return to Sender, Deadly Elegance and the seven "Obsessed One" achievements above. See Achievements.
• Her only skin is the default look plus the DLC outfit named "Enigma" (Hero 11007 in the DLC list); see Skins.
• In the debug build, the Arcade hero list can be switched to include all heroes (a debug flag); in the shipped game it shows only Elena (ChooseHeroCtrl).

See also#

Elena talent tree, Arcade mode, Dance of the Throne, Characters, Rage, Dodging, Guarding, Parry and counter

Sources#

• HeroData row 10007 (kit table HeroData, es_herodata.lua; English strings via text/HeroData.jsonl): attributes, Scale, HpAddNum 2, GuardDamageRatio 0, GuardEnergyRatio 0.25, UIRageMin 33, UISanityDescription empty.
• ArcadeHero row 6 (es_arcadehero.lua): level 30 preset; FS_UserData.InitArcadeHero (structdata/fs_userdata.lua:91-103).
• HeroPropertyData and HeroAttributeData rows for 10007 (rates and curves); computation reproduced in build/wiki/scripts/characters_b/stats.py after FS_HeroData.GetPropertyAllByList (structdata/fs_herodata.lua:575-603); output in build/wiki/data/characters_b/stats.json and stats2.json.
• Moves: SkillData rows for HeroId 10007 (extracted to build/wiki/data/characters_b/moves_10007.json, regrouped in build/wiki/data/elena/moves_by_index.json); chains in SkillChainData; skill ids in gamedata/playerdefine/hero10007_define.lua:5-42, combo lengths in gamedata/playerconfig/hero10007_config.lua.
• Hero code: logic/player/hero10007.lua lines 8-25 (state), 27-38 (Start), 40-64 (OnBlock), 66-113 (OnSkillHit, Curse), 115-201 (OnBeatBack), 203-233 (OnAutoSkill), 305-358 (OnSkillStart), 374-436 (OnSkillTrigger: form switches, Power gain, ultimate statuses), 442-522 (OnSkillEnd), 524-562 (ChangeWeapon, auto skills), 564-593 (parry bullets), 595-607 (PowerDecrementSub), 674-684 (combo counter); logic/playervalue/hero10007_value.lua lines 11-31 (Power update), 33-47, 49-61 (stamina discount), 71-79 (fall quest).
• Power decay: logic/playervalue/animalbase_value.lua:1594-1600; Rage decay only in hero10004_value.lua and hero10005_value.lua; block damage and stamina: animalbase_value.lua:2508-2545 (also 1962-2000 for traps) and BlockGuardLevelLow/High/BlockEnergyRateMax in gamedata/playerdefine/animalbase_define.lua:239-241; Demiurge's Might: animalbase_value.lua:2351-2371; Rage gain per hit: animalbase_value.lua:2148, 2770-2782; periodic status ticks: logic/status/statusbase.lua:270-282, 284-345, status102.lua:26-34 (status 10121 refill), status103.lua.
• Fleeting line: HeroTalent rows 17403-17405 (Type 103, Condition "1"); hero10007_value.lua:49-58; controller/controllermain.lua:3261-3277 (GetTalentValue, parameters 0, 0); fs_herodata.lua:401-433; structdata/ms_herotalentcondition.lua:41-67; Jerold's Bouncy (HeroTalent 15210, empty condition).
• Talents per mode: fs_savestory.lua:1168-1172 (full run, no talents) and 1238-1243 (stage select, AddTalentToMaxWithOutSan, fs_herodata.lua:313-322), controllerstorymode.lua:1510-1512.
• StatusData rows 10114-10122 (types 204 / 116 / 321 / 320; Params), reports/status_effects.md lines 79-82, 141-142, 161, 192; property ids in structdata/ms_herodata.lua.
• Talents: HeroTalent rows 17101-17113, 17201-17212, 17301-17307, 17401-17407 (kit table HeroTalent; English via en_Name / en_TalentText); talent value rules structdata/fs_herodata.lua:401-433, ms_herotalent.lua:175-198; property bonus animalbase_value.lua:217-222.
• Arcade: StoryMonster rows with TalentAdd (stages 1001-1007); controller/controllerstorymode.lua:1511, 1722-1735, 1771, 3511; structdata/fs_userdata.lua:105-120; ui/controller/chooseheroctrl.lua:119-125, 275-281; structdata/fs_savestory.lua:2938, 2981; Maze exclusion fs_savestory.lua:2932-2941.
• Achievements: kit table Achievement rows 60003, 60004, 60005-60011, 60013, 60014; hero code references (hero10007.lua:101-112, 565-590).
• DLC text: text/GameText.jsonl keys UI_DLC_ITEM_DETAIL_INTRO_dlcarcade, UI_ARCADE_HERO_INTRO_10007, UI_DLC_ITEM_DETAIL_INTRO_hero11007.
• Marked "(inferred)" above: Power buff duration with less than full Rage, the Imperial Will maximum duration, the one-shot value of the tick statuses, and the speed-up of the Fervor and Frenzy variants.
• Re-verified against the kit and code (scripts in build/wiki/scripts/verify_elena/): stat and attribute-curve numbers, all SkillData rows for HeroId 10007, StatusData 10114-10122, HeroTalent rows, hero10007.lua curse and beat-back conditions (lines 72, 97-111, 130, 162, 355), animalbase_value.lua:2351-2371, GetHeroTalentValueByLevel (fs_herodata.lua:436-470).