Top 9 Elden Ring Best Builds

 Elden Ring was released on 25th February 2022. A newly released game from FromSoftware, Inc, Elden Ring has a lot of content to offer in just one simple fantastic package. That is already obvious with a large selection of classes you can choose from the start. This guide will talk about Best Builds In Elden Ring, and it will give you a broad look at the concept of the classes and their unique abilities. Thus, you will have no trouble starting on an Elden Ring quest with the best starting build of your own. 

Please note that this guide is subjective, so our views on the best builds may differ from your first-hand experiences with the game. However, we have ensured that our personal experience with Elden Ring is extensive. So, players can pick whichever class they want and build whatever they want later on down the line. Of course, you’re going to level up, and you can also allocate whatever you want into your stats lines however you please and change up your entire build.

Best Elden Ring Builds 

Elden Ring has ten starting classes to choose from, all of which offer their unique abilities and stats. The good news for anyone looking forward to diving into the Elden Ring is that the game’s starting classes do not force you to fit any particular build. You are still free to create or build your character in any number of ways by distributing points into whatever stats you see fit. A starting class will provide you with some gear and stat boosts that may benefit you if you’re looking to focus on a specific playstyle. But, if you are the type of player that wants to min-max your stats for an optimal PvP build.

It is worth picking a class that will most definitely suit whatever you’re hoping to accomplish. For instance, going with a melee-focused starting class may leave a full-blown magic build with a few displaced points by the time you reach your self-imposed level cap. Those few points may not make a significant difference in terms of viability. But, in a game where showdowns can come down to the wire, every moment in your favor is worth the investment.

The Elden Ring Best Builds guide will also give you some pointers and tips, and on top of that, by providing a quick outlook on all of the ten classes, we will also list down the top 9 best builds you should take at the start of the game.

Pure Casters – Intelligence Build

Starting with Caster Astrologer will be best if the weapon requirements aren’t too high otherwise, Prisoner and Vagabond become competitive. For you guys, damage stat is the most important, especially since the world is much more significant; you’ll be able to space yourself and backpedal when fighting to not likely get hit much at all. For these, you will want ash of war that scales your weapon into Intelligence or Faith on your weapon.

We believe that raw scaling does not exist as it did in Dark Souls 3, so early on, pure caster’s melee will be relatively weak, and spells do cost stamina to cost as well as fp. So, you do want some endurance to cast and have enough stamina to dodge an attack. While Dexterity increases casting speed, there is usually a ring or talisman that can achieve the same thing, and you save many points. The essential stats For Best Elden Ring Intelligence build that you want to keep are as follows;

• Vigor-40
• Mind-35
• Endurance-27
• Dexterity-18
• Intelligence-60

Vagabond – Quality Build

The Quality build class In Elden Ring is Vagabond, which gives you the following stats with six flex stats in case there’s a sort of tears of denial or some other buff that you can dump into faith. The Quality build is the most well-rounded if you want to dabble into Strength or Dexterity weapons and well ignore the spell stuff. Although, the class itself is on the cusp of being the best for Hybrid builds, depending on the Strength or Dexterity you need. Make sure to our Best Elden Ring Weapons for more on this.

So, if you pick it, your options are immense compared to every other. Vagabond is among the best classes to have the flexibility to go into any archetype, be it Melee, Hybrid, or even Pure Casters. If you’re new and wondering why we stop at 40. It’s because that’s the softer hard cap where points into these stats afterward have severe diminishing returns and thus aren’t worth pumping up beyond that, and because of that, this game is super easy to make builds for. The critical stats that you want to keep for Best Elden Ring Quality build are as follows;

• Vigor-40
• Mind-15
• Endurance-40
• Strength-40
• Dexterity-40

The weapon of choice will be Strength-scaling weapons for extra damage. You will need to focus on leveling your three main stats; Strength, Endurance, and Vigor. Just because you will be wearing heavy armor to tank hits, you will need additional stamina and health. By keeping two-handed weapons, you will increase your Strength by 50%. To work with both damage and shielding, you can opt for single-handed weapons with a shield as a practical option.

Hybrid Build

The Elden Ring Hybrid builds are much harder to build and would be more annoying early on to level. But, these builds will much likely be among the strongest in the game given how Dexed out spells and incantations are, and you can take advantage of the posture system, unlike Pure Casters for this one. Though it’ll be a play by ear for you, and you might need more Mind, Endurance, or Strength or Dexterity, who knows, it depends on the weapons that you want to use. But, you get the gist of the stats; go to 40 or 41 for your highest stat.

Related: How To Two-Hand in Elden Ring

Prophet is ironically the best pallet in class since Strength and Faith is more effective than going with Strength and Intelligence. But, the reverse is true, going Dexterity and Intelligence is better than Dexterity and Faith. Where Astrologer is peak but Prisoner is best if you need a smidge of Strength but only by one point. So it would be best if you go with Astrologer if you want to make both a Pure Caster and Hybrid on one character. For Paladin, it is a two-two level difference between Prophet and Vagabond depending if you need Dexterity or not. The important stats are as follows;

• Vigor-40
• Mind-25
• Endurance-30
• Strength-40
• Faith-40

It will give you more power of a Strength build at your disposal. The buffs and damage options that tag along with this build will come in handy. Since it is a hybrid build, you will not be able to wear heavy armor because you will be focused on leveling your stats into Faith and Strength. Our Best Builds In Elden Ring includes a Strength, and Faith Hybrid build for a much better experience in the game.

Hero – Strength Build

Hero is the best Elden Ring strength build if you neglect every other stat, but Strength, Vigor, Endurance are the only three you need. It is much simpler to build than the other classes; however, since you will be weak at the start, you won’t have access to those big or ultra weapons yet, nor will you have super chunky armor. But that likely means you can pump Vigor higher early on than other classes. So, there’s that to counter that negative. The important stats that you want to keep are as follows;

• Vigor-40
• Mind-10
• Endurance-45
• Strength-66

Having 66 Strength will readily give you an additional 99 Strength when you use two-handed weapons. In short, this method will straight-up flatten your enemies with incredible damage output.

Related: Best Strength Weapons in Elden Ring

Samurai – Dexterity Build

Samurai is a good class for new players, and if you’re starting the game, then this Elden Ring Best Builds guide is also for you. He is an all-rounder character with good melee attacks, and Samurai has a pretty decent range and armor and excellent mobility. That is why he is a better option when leveling your Dexterity for this build. You can use Strength or Dexterity scaled weapons when going with Samurai.

We highly recommend that you go with Golden Seed when going for character creation, as it will give you an additional mana or healing potion, which will help you get an edge over most fights. Since at the beginning of the game, Samurai leaves you with little to no arrows. Therefore, you will need to craft some along the way. His weapons include the Bow and Uchikatana, and sometimes you might get confused under what situation you should use one of them. Some of the vital stats that you should focus on are as follows;

• Vigor-40
• Endurance-44
• Dexterity-65

You will need to level up your Vigor because you will be facing enemies at a melee range. During these fights, you will not get enough time to get out of the situation, and you will not be able to fend off the enemies with just your bow. For additional damage, you will need to level up your Dexterity in order to get those Strength-based attacks, and it is an excellent way to go as you will not die very quickly.

Dual Katana Bleed Build

Similar to the previous Dexterity build, the dual wield bleed Katana build in Elden Ring prioritizes Dexterity and arcane, with the main weapon being a katana. This build will make the most out of weapon artes and bleed damage, causing massive amounts of damage through the use of the blood loss infliction

Related: Best Elden Ring Bleed Weapons

For this build, we recommend the Uchigatana and the Rivers of Blood Katanas, with the Uchigatana in your right hand. While it is not necessary, if your arcane is very high, you can put bleed affinity on your Uchigatana. Otherwise, using a blood flame should do the trick just fine. We recommend a dexterity and arcane of 30 and above once you’re around level 90 and a high vigor and endurance for this Elden Ring build is confrontational.

For ashes of war, we recommend using bloody slash on your Uchigatana for its immense power. The general focus of this build would be to emphasize dealing tons of damage by inflicting blood loss on your enemy. We recommend staying close and getting perfect dodges then spamming L1 dual combos or L2 for your ashes of war. Whenever you want to deal a lot of damage, find an opening, dual wield your Uchigatana and use bloody slash,

This Elden Ring Build is geared for both PvE and PvP in Elden Ring. Its high speed coupled with its massive damage means every encounter, from lowly ads to bosses will fall before you in mere seconds. Overall, this is the best Elden Ring build for close-quarter combat.

Faith-Melee Hybrid

Elden Ring has more faith weapons than ever seen before in a Fromsoft game. This allows for an abundance of Faith builds in Elden Ring. One such build is a Faith-Melee Hybrid build. These builds have high casting speeds and high damage through incantations while also having a decent weapon and having most combat be close quarters.

We recommend the tree spear, with the Coded Sword being a close second. You should also go with Talismans that increase FP and casting speeds alongside incantation damage. It is also best for searching for and acquiring as many memory stones as you can. For incantations, our favorites are fire orb, lightning spear, healing incantations, poison curing incantations, flame, grant me strength, and the likes. We recommend a late-game faith level of around 50 with a high strength of dex level. Read Dex Build.

The way you will be using this build is to use your incantations to lure enemies away and clear ads from afar, then going in for the kill. You will be using your healing incantations to avoid wasting your flasks. You will be using buffing incantations before fights to ensure you deal tons of damage. All in all, this build is very viable and one of the best Elden Ring builds.

Melee Sorcerer Build

A popular version of the hybrid is the sorcerer melee build. This build emphasizes high Intelligence alongside high strength or dexterity or both. A build like this will deal tons of damage, both up close and from afar.

For such a build to work, players will require a lot of powerful sorceries mixed in with a decent weapon, preferably one that scales with intelligence. You should take a glintstone shard, azure comet, glintstone comet release, great blade phalanx, and the likes for sorceries. As far as your weapons are concerned, we recommend a weapon like the Darkmoon Blade or the Moonveil Katana, this way you can focus on having high intelligence rather than investing in some other stat like Strength or Dexterity.

This Elden Ring build will serve as a great PvE and PvP build due to its hybrid nature. The strong spells alone can get you through the game, the addition of melee weapons will just be an overkill and serve to aid close-quarters encounters. All in all, the melee sorcerer build is one of the best builds in Elden Ring.

High Strength Tank Build

Similar to the strength build mentioned above, this build leaves all else for a very high strength level and high equip load. The goal of this build is to have the absolute maximum equip load and the biggest Greatsword and Great shield the game has to offer.

For this build, we recommend Endurance of around 45 and above with strength being just as high (yes, this is a very late game build). We recommend a weapon similar to the Grafted Blade or Golden Halberd alongside the Dragon Claw great shield. On top of all this, you want armor with the highest resistance and poise, something like the Bull Goat’s armor or Lionel’s armor.

The main goal of this build is to tank through every attack while dealing insane amounts of damage. We recommend talismans that boost defense and attack, similar incantations that buff you cam be used. This build may not be the most viable of all Elden Ring builds but it will get you through while having a good laugh. It will also do good in PvP where you will just eat up opponents’ attacks while dealing high damage of your own. All in all, tank builds are some of the most fun and best Elden Ring Builds.

Additional Stats Tips

This particular section is all about Elden Ring stats and what each stat will be doing for you within the game. Before you go on with leveling or creating your class builds, the Best Builds in Elden Ring will help you guys make sure that you won’t waste any specific statistic numbers for no apparent reason. Furthermore, it will help you a lot when going through the game, as having a decent build will make the game much more manageable. On the contrary, no matter what build you choose to select from this guide, please do not take the risk of scaling any of your character’s attributes above level 60. Because you’ll just be wasting those points for no reason, overall, investing any higher isn’t worth it as scaling slows right down and barely affects your overall stats.

Let’s break it down, the main three stats that you guys are going to be using are Vigor, Endurance, and Mind, and these are essentially like your universal stats, and they will be used no matter what build you’re doing. It is like this because these are your main bars; Strength, Dexterity, Faith, Intelligence, and Arcane will be your damage stats and have hidden bonuses inside of those. These are going to be mainly used to boost inside of the area of damage output that you want to utilize.

Vigor

Breaking it down from those categories alone, Vigor is your health bar which also has an added effect that gives you added fire resistance and poison immunity. So the higher you put this up, the more healthy you’re going to obtain, and the higher you will be resistant to poison and fire. As mentioned before, do not level these up above 60. Our Elden Ring Best Builds analysis includes the prominent use of Vigor in almost all of the builds.

Mana

Now, your mana affects the focus-related resistance, which is essential so that you can use weapon skills and spells. These will deplete quite quickly as you utilize your skills and your spells. There are going to be specific stats that you guys can use to make sure that you use less mana.

Endurance

Finally, we’ve got Endurance which increases your stamina. It affects physical defense power, and robustness Endurance will also affect your maximum equipment load in the final game, meaning that you can carry more weapons and heavier armor. But your stamina is going to be crucial as it is going to be your utility to how much you can run and the number of swipes you can take on a general basis before you start to get tired.

Strength

Strength is the one thing players generally push into the most, and it’s not always necessarily a bad thing. Now, leveling Strength will get you to carry cumbersome weapons like giant swords, axes, hammers, etc. This will also boost your attack power stats for standard weapons and increase your maximum equipment load. You will need to level up Strength to get up close and inflict damage with those heavy weapons.

Dexterity

Your Dex movement is going to increase your damage output on Dex Weapons, and it will also affect your magic. Although, it will decrease your casting time on spells that are massive and make you take more minor “full damage,” which will be significantly affected inside of this game. Overall, Dexterity is going to be quite a significant move no matter what build it is that you’re utilizing. However, it does not mainly work towards the Sorcerers and stuff like that because it will decrease your casting time on spells, and that is huge. It means that you can put more spells out at a faster rate but again, the total damage and not being knocked off your horse.

Intelligence

Intelligence will increase your damage output with sorcery spells. Now, for many spells, you have to have a specific amount of Intelligence to use them. So if you guys are going down that Sorcery route, Intelligence is going to be a pretty important step for your guys as it’s going to unlock specific spells. Leveling this setup will also increase your magic resistance from others. So if you wanted to be a primary sorcerer, then Intelligence is going to be a big one-up for you.

Faith

Faith will increase the damage output for incantations, and it will allow you to use specific incantations the higher you level it up. Unlike Intelligence, it does not raise any resistances whatsoever, so this one is going to be solely around incantations.

Arcane

Arcane is essentially the bit of a black sheep statistic. It is often considered a useless stat, mainly because it helps with discovery and increases your luck finding loot in activities and around the general map. Moreover, Arcane also helps affect your death resistance and certain sorceries and incantations. But this stat is going to be relatively low no matter what builds you are making.

We hope that the above Best Builds In  Elden Ring , along with a brief overview of the basic stats of the game, have greatly helped you with either using one of the above builds or creating them on your own. Obviously, you will get a better idea of what stats you should level before going mid-game. Due to our personal experience within the game, we jotted down a few best builds to help you work your way through the game without figuring out things your way. If you loved our guide, you should check out our other guides related to Elden Ring.