Elden Ring DLC Best Crystal Tear Tier List in Shadow of the Erdtree

Since you can only carry two Crystal Tears in your Wondrous Physick at a time, evaluating Crystal Tears against each other and other items with similar effects, such as talismans, is very important due to the opportunity cost involved. This tier list will focus on endgame PvE builds for level 150 or higher. Many Crystal Tears have different PvP modifiers and can be more situational, which will need another video, but PvPers will also glean insights from this guide. So, let's get started!

S Tier

Deflecting Hard Tear

The Deflecting Hard Tear is considered one of the most powerful Crystal Tears for endgame PvE in "Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree." It lasts for 5 minutes, ensuring that you have ample time to benefit from its effects even in prolonged battles. The tear significantly enhances your ability to guard, providing 100% physical negation, 75% elemental negation, and 75% status negation within 0.2 seconds of an attack hitting you. Additionally, it reduces incoming stamina damage by 65%. These buffs make guarding incredibly effective, even without a shield. The tear also grants a guard counter buff that increases damage, stamina damage, and poise damage, making it invaluable for both defensive and offensive strategies. This buff can stack up to four tiers, further amplifying its effects. Given the substantial benefits and the ease of maintaining the buffs against strong enemies or bosses, the Deflecting Hard Tear stands out as a top-tier choice.

Opaline Hard Tear

The Opaline Hard Tear offers a significant defensive boost by increasing all damage negations by 15% for 3 minutes. This tear is highly valued for its ability to enhance your effective health points (EHP). For instance, with a character at 55 Vigor and 20% average negation, the Opaline Hard Tear can increase your EHP from 8,750 to approximately 10,300. This preemptive defensive boost is more advantageous than reactive healing, making it a reliable choice for any build. The comprehensive damage negation it provides ensures that you can withstand more hits in challenging encounters, making it an essential tear for endgame survivability.

A Tier

Greenburst Crystal Tear

The Greenburst Crystal Tear is the best source of additional stamina in "Elden Ring," increasing stamina regeneration by 15 per second for 3 minutes. This boost significantly outperforms the Two-Headed Turtle Talisman, which only provides 10 stamina regeneration per second. The Greenburst Crystal Tear ensures that you have virtually no stamina issues during prolonged boss fights, allowing you to maintain a high level of offensive and defensive actions without running out of stamina. This makes it an excellent choice for any build that relies on stamina, landing it solidly in the A tier.

Cerulean Hidden Tear

Despite being nerfed from a 15-second to a 10-second duration, the Cerulean Hidden Tear remains highly effective by eliminating all FP consumption for its duration. This tear is particularly powerful in scenarios where you can unleash a barrage of spells or abilities without worrying about FP depletion. It is especially useful in co-op play, where allies can help stagger or distract bosses, allowing you to maximize the tear's benefits. The ability to trivialize certain fights by removing FP constraints makes the Cerulean Hidden Tear a valuable asset, securing its place in the A tier.

Cerulean Sapping Cracked Tear

The Cerulean Sapping Cracked Tear restores 5 FP per hit for 45 seconds, making it an excellent choice for low-mind investment builds. This tear does not work with magic, but for physical builds that land frequent hits, it can save multiple FP flasks. For instance, at an average of one hit per second, this tear can restore 225 FP over its duration, comparable to a maxed-out Flask of Cerulean Tears. This regeneration allows you to carry more HP pots and reduces the time spent drinking flasks, making it a practical and efficient choice for FP management in combat.

Bloodsucking Cracked Tear

The Bloodsucking Cracked Tear provides a substantial 20% damage boost at the cost of draining 0.2% of your max HP plus 20 HP per second. For characters in the 50-60 Vigor range, this translates to a drain of 23 HP per second, which can be quite costly over a prolonged fight. Despite the high HP drain, the tear's damage boost is significant, making it a powerful choice for short, intense battles. Combining it with healing abilities or items like the Blasphemous Blade can help mitigate the HP drain. The tear's high risk and high reward nature make it a strong but demanding option, earning it an A tier ranking.

B Tier

Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear

The Crimsonwhorl Bubbletear converts elemental hits into 5% of your max HP per hit for 15 seconds. While it does nothing for physical hits, it effectively negates elemental damage and heals you instead, making it invaluable in elemental-heavy encounters. This tear is highly situational but can be a game-changer against bosses that primarily deal elemental damage. Its short duration requires precise timing, but when used correctly, it can provide significant healing and damage mitigation, making it a solid B tier choice.

Winged Crystal Tear

The Winged Crystal Tear increases your equip load by 4.5 times for 3 minutes, effectively improving your roll distance and allowing you to switch from a medium roll to a light roll. This increased mobility can be crucial in dodging attacks and maneuvering around enemies, especially in boss fights where positioning and evasion are key. While its usefulness can be difficult to quantify, the Winged Crystal Tear provides a noticeable improvement in agility, making it a preferred choice over many C-tier options and earning it a spot in the B tier.

Crimsonburst Crystal Tear (for Allies)

The Crimsonburst Crystal Tear heals allies, NPCs, and spirit ashes by 7 HP per second for 3 minutes. This tear is particularly useful in co-op scenarios, where supporting your teammates can make a significant difference in tough battles. Healing allies continuously over the duration of a fight can provide substantial defensive aid, ensuring that your team remains resilient and can focus on offense. The tear's ability to support multiple allies simultaneously makes it a valuable asset in cooperative play, securing its place in the B tier.

C Tier

Spiked Cracked Tear

The Spiked Cracked Tear increases the damage of your charged heavy attacks by 15% for 3 minutes. While this damage boost seems appealing, its narrow application limits its overall effectiveness. Charged heavy attacks often lead to stagger, resulting in critical hits that do not benefit from the tear's bonus. As a result, the actual damage increase is closer to 10%, which is not as impactful as other damage-boosting tears. The Spiked Cracked Tear's limited scope and lower performance compared to elemental damage buffs place it in the C tier.

Crimson Crystal Tear

The Crimson Crystal Tear restores half of your max HP when used. This makes it a valuable mid-fight healing option, especially in critical moments where instant healing is needed. With 60 Vigor, this tear can restore up to 850 HP, which is more than a maxed-out Flask of Crimson Tears. However, its utility is limited compared to other healing options and defensive tears. While it provides a significant healing boost, it is more situational and less versatile, placing it in the C tier.

Oil-soaked Cracked Tear

The Oil-soaked Cracked Tear applies oil to enemies within a 1-meter range, increasing the damage of your next fire attack by 20%. The oil effect lasts for 1 minute and is removed upon the first instance of fire damage. This tear requires close proximity to apply and frequent reapplication if you use fire attacks in quick succession. The additional steps and weaker effect compared to the Fire Shrouded Cracked Tear make it less efficient. However, it can be an interesting support option in co-op play, earning it a place in the C tier.

D Tier

Green Spill Crystal Tear

The Green Spill Crystal Tear increases your maximum stamina by 15% for 3 minutes. While this boost can be helpful, its impact is relatively minor compared to other stamina-enhancing options. The Vidian Amber Medallion +3, for instance, provides only a 1% increase in max stamina. Given that you have four talisman slots, the Green Spill Crystal Tear's benefit is limited, and there are better choices for maximizing stamina. Its modest impact places it in the D tier.

Vidian Hidden Tear

The Vidian Hidden Tear reduces stamina consumption for 15 seconds, but it does not work for blocking. This short duration and limited applicability make it less useful in prolonged battles. Infinite stamina for 15 seconds can be advantageous, but its practical impact is often overshadowed by other tears that provide more consistent benefits. The tear's short-lived effect and situational usefulness place it in the D tier.

Crimson Spill Crystal Tear

The Crimson Spill Crystal Tear buffs your max HP by 10% for 3 minutes but does not regenerate the additional HP gained. This makes it less effective compared to other defensive options like the Opaline Hard Tear, which increases effective health through damage negation. The Crimson Spill Crystal Tear is only useful if you already run the Opaline and want to scale something to your max HP. Its limited application and less effective boost place it in the D tier.

Crimson Bubble Tear

The Crimson Bubble Tear restores 30% of your max HP when you dip below 20% max HP. This effect is removed after it activates once. While useful in PvP for preemptive healing, in PvE, bosses often deal enough damage to outright kill you, negating its effect. The tear can save you from critical moments, but its one-time use and situational nature make it less reliable in PvE. As such, it is rated in the D tier.

F Tier

Twice-cracked Tear

The Twice-cracked Tear prevents Rune loss upon death, serving as a utility option rather than a combat enhancer. While it can be useful for players concerned about losing Runes, its practical impact in combat scenarios is negligible. Most players would prefer to avoid dying altogether, making this tear less desirable for endgame builds. Its limited utility places it firmly in the F tier.

Ruptured Crystal Tears (both)

The Ruptured Crystal Tears deal damage upon use, designed more for PvP invasions than PvE. The damage output is not significant enough to be useful in PvE scenarios, where consistent and reliable effects are more valued. These tears are better suited for surprising opponents in PvP, but their lack of utility in PvE relegates them to the F tier.

Speckled Hard Tear

The Speckled Hard Tear boosts all resistances by 90, but this effect is weaker than most talismans that provide specific resistance boosts. In PvE, you typically deal with one status effect at a time, making specific resistance talismans more effective. The Speckled Hard Tear's broad but weak resistance boost does not provide enough value, placing it in the F tier.

Leaden Hard Tear

The Leaden Hard Tear prevents stagger from minor hits for 10 seconds, a duration that is more useful in PvP than PvE. In PvE, this tear's short duration and limited sources of stagger it prevents make it less valuable. It might provide a final push in a tough battle, but its overall utility is minimal in PvE scenarios, placing it in the F tier.

Crimson Sapping Cracked Tear

The Crimson Sapping Cracked Tear heals 0.8% of your max HP per hit for 45 seconds, which translates to minimal healing over its duration. Even with frequent hits, the tear's slow and conditional HP regeneration is not substantial enough to be effective in most battles. Its underwhelming performance places it in the F tier.

Windy Crystal Tear

The Windy Crystal Tear increases roll i-frames by three frames but reduces damage negation by 15%. This high cost outweighs the benefit, as the tear only helps if you dodge too early. The negative effect of reduced damage negation makes it harder to recover from mistakes, and it can discourage proper timing and learning boss patterns. This tear's drawbacks make it undesirable, placing it in the F tier.

Opaline Bubble Tear

The Opaline Bubble Tear reduces the next instance of damage by 90% within 3 minutes. Its narrow application and the fact that multi-hit attacks can negate its effect make it less reliable. While it can save you from a single strong hit, its limited use in prolonged fights reduces its overall value. The uplift aromatic provides a similar effect with an added damage buff, making the Opaline Bubble Tear less appealing and placing it in the F tier.