While bows have always been viable weapons in Elden Ring, they've traditionally served as secondary tools – perfect for drawing enemy attention, weakening foes from afar before switching to melee, or farming that notorious rune-bearing bird off cliffs. However, Nightreign's Ironeye class fundamentally reinvents this dynamic, transforming archery into a primary playstyle that differs drastically from the expansion's other eight classes while emerging as Nightreign's closest equivalent to a dedicated support role. Witness Ironeye gameplay in our exclusive footage below.
The immediate standout feature when playing Ironeye is their fragility. While capable of wielding any weapon, maintaining bow distance becomes essential for survival since few hits can eliminate you, especially during early encounters. Fortunately, the starting bow proves remarkably effective – dealing respectable damage while featuring Mighty Shot as its signature skill, allowing devastating long-range attacks with bonus damage and poise disruption.
Nightreign significantly overhauls bow mechanics: Firing speeds increase dramatically, mobility improves during locked-on attacks, and mercifully, arrow inventory disappears. While this limits you to your weapon's native arrow type, it eliminates frustrating ammo management during critical encounters. Additional quality-of-life improvements include: rolling shot animations; acrobatic wall-run-and-shoot maneuvers; seamless third-person manual aiming; triple-arrow spread attacks; and perhaps most satisfyingly, arrow-based backstabs and visceral attacks. Essentially, Nightreign addresses every bow limitation from base Elden Ring, transforming archery into a genuinely viable core combat style.
The Ironeye's signature Marking ability exemplifies this transformation – a rapid dash-attack that phases through enemies while applying a damage-boosting debuff. With its brief cooldown, players can maintain near-permanent uptime on bosses while using the ability's traversal properties for tactical repositioning.
Their ultimate ability, Single Shot, functions as a turbocharged Mighty Shot. The lengthy charge grants complete invulnerability before unleashing a piercing projectile capable of decimating entire enemy formations.
Where Ironeye truly excels is their unparalleled ally resurrection capabilities.
Nightreign's revival system introduces a segmented meter above downed allies – each attack gradually depletes segments until revival occurs. Unlike other classes that risk melee proximity or expend precious mana/resources for ranged revives, Ironeye accomplishes this safely using standard attacks. This becomes invaluable during high-stakes encounters, though limitations emerge when multiple revives are needed – each subsequent knockout adds meter segments, eventually requiring ultimate ability expenditure for full revives.
While Ironeye may lack raw damage output compared to other classes, their squad utility proves unmatched. Between damage-boosting marks, loot-enhancing passives, crowd-clearing ultimates, and unique revival mechanics, they establish themselves as invaluable team assets among Nightreign's roster.
