In this Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide, I’m going to be showing you my Perfect Paladin build. This is sort of an update to the Paladin build that we did at level 50. People have been waiting for a direct upgrade from this. The Lightning Lancer build wasn’t quite a perfect upgrade from this.

So in this guide, I’m going to be showing you how to make that, as well as giving you some tips on how to play this build all throughout the game so that you can make a Paladin and continue to upgrade it through the course of the game and into New Game+.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide – Perfect Paladin

A Strength/Faith Build that focuses on the use of Block Counters and buffs to slash enemies to pieces.

• Class: Any
• Flask Spread: Mostly HP some FP
• Weapon: Miquellan Knight’s Sword & Clawmark Seal
• Shield: Haligtree Crest Greatshield
• Armor: Haligtree Knight Set and Greathelm
• Talismans: Bull-Goat’s Talisman, Shard of Alexander, Curved Sword Talisman & Sacred Scorpion Charm
• Primary Stats: Strength & Faith
• Secondary Stats: Vigor & Endurance
• Skills: Sacred Blade
• Spells: Golden Vow, Flame, Grant Me Strength, Blessing of the Erdtree

We have over 110 builds for Elden Ring. This build is recommended for NG+

Beginner Builds	Level 50 Builds	Level 100 Builds	Level 150 Builds	Level 150-200 Builds	All Game Builds
Paladin	Templar	Lightning Lancer Thundering Swordspear	Crusader Lightning Dragoon Golden Champion Black Knife Assassin Moonlight Crusader Flame Dancer	Black Blade Golden Sword Sage Godslayer Sword Saint Drake Knight Frost Paladin	Perfect Paladin Coldstorm Cleric Warrior of Waves  Tower Knight

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide – Perfect Paladin: Equipment & Spells

I’m going to be showing you the NG+, version first, and the first thing we’re going to talk about is the weapon that I’m using here. I’m using the Miquellan Knight’s Sword, and there are a couple of reasons for that. One, I like the R2 attack on this weapon. It pulls you forward in a slide that can gap close on enemies. A lot of times after you do a critical attack on them after you do a Block Counter and then critical attack, they’ll jump backward, and I find that this R2 is good at gap closing that jump backwards so that they can’t get away from you, and you can slap them right when they get off the ground.

Secondly, the ability Sacred Blade was buffed in patch 1.07. It adds more damage now. It’s faster. Most importantly, the blade portion of the attack does its own damage as well, meaning if you do this point blank on an enemy, you get the damage from the wave, and you get the damage from the sword, which allows it to do incredible damage when you’re point blank

I am also using the Haligtree Crest Greatshield here. I love the look of this shield. It allows you to do block counters more easily because it’s a Greatshield. It has very good guard boost when fully upgraded at 79, meaning you don’t take a lot of stamina damage when you block, allowing you to keep that stamina for attacking and counterattacking. It’s a really good shield, and it really just looks awesome for a paladin-type build because it kind of gives you that crusader, that holy warrior-type look.

Besides these two items, we have the Clawmark Seal, which allows you to cast incantations with 280 incantations, scaling the way we’re set up. This isn’t terrible. It’s not fantastic for NG+  so I don’t think you’re going to be a primary spellcaster or anything like that, but it will allow you to cast spells. You don’t need to upgrade it if you don’t use any offensive spells, but I do find that some of them, like Wrath of Gold, are nice periodically to deal with groups of enemies where, or maybe Radagon’s Ring of Light, where you don’t have a lot of AoE with this build, and it’s great for large packs of enemies.

We obviously also use staple spells like Golden Vow, which increases our attack and defense. We use Flame, Grant Me Strength to increase our physical damage, and we have Blessing of the Erdtree to give us heal-over-time. So these are all really staple buffs in a Paladin-type build, and we definitely make use of them here.

I’m using the Haligtree Knight set here for the chest, gloves, and legs, as well as the Greathelm for the style that I’m using. You could also use the Haligtree Knight Helm if you like that better. That does give you some Faith, so there is some advantage to using that. I tried to get it to drop, but I couldn’t get it to drop, so I just went with the Greathelm. I like the look of it anyway but that’s the armor I’m using.

Again, it’s not the most optimal here. You could get more protection using the Great-Jar’s Arsenal instead of the Bull-Goat’s Talisman if you want more poise and more protection.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide – Perfect Paladin: Talismans

Now, when it comes to the talismans I’m using for this build, there are a couple that I always use no matter what, and then there are a couple that I juggle around depending on the scenario. The first one is the Bull-Goat’s Talisman. 

This puts you over the poise breakpoint, allowing you to tank through a hit and continue to swing with Sacred Blade, cast a spell, or even use one of your charged R2 attacks with the Miquellan Knight’s Sword. So this is really good. It’s not optimal for this build. 

Ideally, you would probably put something like the Great-Jar’s Arsenal here and use heavier armor to get more protection and more poise, but I like the style of this armor and sort of the Paladin Crusader type feel, which is why I opted for this. But if you wanted to be perfectly min-max, you would put something like Great-Jar’s Arsenal there instead and wear heavier armor. The other one is Shard of Alexander. This is something that’s going to buff the Sacred Blade. Sacred Blade has just really good since patch 1.07, and you’re going to use it all the time now that it’s so quick and that you can use it point-blank.

It’s really good after you backstab an enemy or you riposte an enemy after you critically strike them after a block counter. When they’re trying to get up off the ground, if you use this point blank, you deal a ton of damage. It works well. So those two I use all the time. The other ones I sort of juggle around are the Sacred Scorpion Charm. This will boost any holy damage spells you have, like Wrath of Gold or anything like Radagon’s Rings of Light, and anything else you want to add that does holy damage. It’s going to boost some of the damage of your weapon, and it’ll boost the damage of Sacred Blade.

Sacred Blade is 100% holy damage, so it’s really good for boosting the damage. Then it will increase the damage you take, so it’s not always optimal. But if you find you’re using spells more that deal holy damage or Sacred Blade a lot, then this is a good one to have. Another one that we use here is Ritual Sword Talisman. Again, this boosts all of your damage spells, weapon attacks, and weapon abilities. So it’s really good if you find you’re not taking damage or maybe you’re going into a fight and you want to try and burst something down really quickly and you don’t plan to get hit, this is a good one to have.

But during tougher boss fights, you’re probably going to take some damage, so I don’t recommend it there. Another staple of this build is the Curved Sword Talisman. This increases your block counter damage by 20%. You can one-shot enemies with block counters with this build early on in NG+ because of the amount of damage you do if you have this on there. So I definitely recommend having this most of the time equipped. 

You probably swap it out on fights like dragons and things like that where you’re just not going to do block counters. And then additionally, the Axe Talisman is good for getting those charged R2s. Again, this slides you forward and allows you to gap close. So you can use charged R2s with this sword probably a lot easier than you can use with some others because you can start charging outside of the range of the enemy’s weapon and then slide into it at the last second and hit them before they can finish their windup.

Now, if you’re talking about playing this build early on in the game, I would recommend doing some of the things you probably saw in the Paladin video. You can use Noble’s Slender Sword here in order to get a very high critical attack longsword that also has very good reach.

The Miquellan Knight’s Sword has a very good reach as well. It’s good for block counters because sometimes when enemies hit you, they sort of push you away. And when you go to do a block counter, you might miss if you have a shorter one. So the Noble’s Slender Sword is good here, as is the Lordsworn’s Straight Sword. It’s a bit shorter, but it also has a better critical rating than the Miquellan Knight’s Sword, and it has the same critical rating as the Noble’s Slender Sword.

So either of those two choices is good early on for a Paladin build. Now, because of the changes to Barricade Shield, I don’t recommend using this on your shield. Also, the way we’re set up here, we’re using Sacred Blade with our L2. So if you have Barricade Shield on there, you’d have to two-hand to use Sacred Blade, which I don’t like doing. And again, you can put Sacred Blade on either the Lordsworn’s Straight Sword or the Noble’s Slender Sword. So that works well for this build.

Again, Sacred Blade is very easy to find in Elden Ring early on. It’s near the Third Church of Marika and Limgrave. So you’re going to be able to get this quickly. So what I recommend doing for your shield early on to get a good Greatshield is get the Gilded Greatshield. And you can farm that from the ruins at the very beginning of the game.

There is the one knight there that has the Gilded Greatshield and Spear. You can farm him to get this. It’ll probably take you a while to do. But that is a great Greatshield that you can get quickly in the game. So between that and the Lordsworn’s Straight Sword, which is rather easy to get, or the Noble’s Slender Sword, which can take a while, you can farm all these items and get Sacred Blade right at the very beginning of the game and start playing this build.

Now when it comes to talismans, you can get a lot of these very early on. For instance, the Curved Sword Talisman is found in Stormveil, and the Axe Talisman is found in the Mistwood Ruins. The Sacred Scorpion Talisman can be found right in front of the Smoldering Church, which is on the road on the way to Caelid. This is not hard to do. You just kill the NPC invader there and you get this one.

So those are three of the ones that we use you can get rather early on. And obviously, you’re not going to even have three talisman slots that early in the game, so you’re going to be able to make this build and put it together fast. So talking about the Strengths of this build a bit, you have super tankiness. You have a Greatshield that allows for very easy block counters and you deal incredible block counter damage.

Some of the highest block counter damage I’ve seen on a build, particularly if you’re using a straight sword. You can buff your damage constantly with Sacred Blade and it gives you a ranged option if something hops backward or is just outside of melee range. You also have a gap closer with your charged R2 that allows you to get back in range or surprise enemies that are going to be aggressive and charge up to you. 

You can start charging this up earlier so that they run into it when they’re coming into you. Just have a lot of flexibility. You can use spells and buffs. You can buff cooperative players or you can buff your spirit summons and you can make yourself tankier with Golden Vow. So there are a lot of things you can do with this build and it’s just a ton of fun to play in my opinion. I think Paladin builds are some of my favorite builds in this game. 

Someone asked me, “What’s your go-to build?” I think I’ve always gravitated more towards paladin builds. I don’t think they’re the most powerful builds in the game in terms of outright damage, you just burst things down quickly but the amount of survivability they have and the amount of fun that you have with block counters and options that you have always appealed to me because you’re very safe with this sort of build. You can explore and not know what’s around the corner and you can face it with just about something to handle every scenario.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide – Perfect Paladin: Recommended Attribute Distribution

So talking about our attributes for this build, we have 50 Vigor, 27 Mind, 32 Endurance, 40 Strength, 25 Dexterity, 16 Intelligence, 45 Faith, and 9 Arcane.

We don’t need Intelligence for this build. I started as an Astrologer, so disregard that. We don’t need any Arcane for this build either. Those are just from the starting class. 

50 Vigor is enough to survive just about anything at the beginning of NG+. You have decent armor, you have a Greatshield, you’re buffing with Golden Vow so you’re not going to die right away at the beginning of NG+ with this amount of Vigor. But you will want to take this up to 60 eventually because you’re not using the Dragoncrest Greatshield on this build. So you should be getting that up to 60 at some point. 

Mind is at 27 here. You probably want more Mind than this. So you’re going to want to take this up to about 35 or 40 eventually throughout NG+ because you have a lot of FP usage with this. Sacred Blade is not cheap. Buffs like Golden Vow and Flame, Grant Me Strength are not cheap. Blessing of the Erdtree is not cheap, and you use these things regularly. So they’re going to drain your FP. So getting more FP is good. 

32 Endurance is about the breakpoint, give or take a couple of points of equip weight for this setup. If you change your armor around or you change your talismans around, etc. You might need another point or so. Generally speaking, this is enough for this setup. 

I have 40 Strength and 25 Dexterity here. These further increase the damage of your Miquellan Knight’s Sword. Miquellan Knight’s Sword scales best off Strength and Dexterity. And honestly, it’s kind of a tie about how much it scales off either one Strength. Probably slightly better than Dexterity. But as you get higher with Strength, Dexterity is going to start outperforming Strength. So you want to get Strength up to about 45 and Dexterity up to about 45 to increase the damage of your regular attacks further.

We have Faith at 45 here. Because even though the weapon itself doesn’t scale well with Faith, the Sacred Blade weapon skill is 100% holy damage, meaning it only benefits from your Faith attribute. So if you don’t have a good amount of Faith, your Sacred Blade is going to hit like a wet noodle. And you need it to hit rather well, even if your regular attacks suffer a little bit, which they don’t suffer much, but they will suffer a little bit from prioritizing Faith. So you need that Faith there. Also, having high Strength and Faith allows you to use the Clawmark Seal effectively, which is another reason to have a good Faith.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build Guide – Perfect Paladin: Final Tips

A couple of final tips before I wrap up this build guide. If you’re using the Flask of Wondrous Physick, you’re going to want to use the Holy-Shrouding Cracked Tear. This is going to make your Sacred Blade hit even harder. It does 100% holy damage. And any holy damage spells you cast, like Wrath of Gold or maybe Radagon’s Rings of Light or anything like that, anything that does holy damage, it’s going to benefit. 

And it does benefit your regular attacks, even though only about 35% of your regular attack damage is holy damage. But when you buff with Sacred Blade, you deal even more holy damage. That becomes about 50%. So this becomes even more beneficial when you’re buffed with Sacred Blade. And lastly, For the Great Rune to use here, Godrick’s is a really good choice. You need Vigor with this build. You need Mind. You need Endurance. You need Strength. You need Dexterity. You need Faith. That’s six of the eight attributes. 

Getting five in each of those is just going to make your build that much better. That wraps up the perfect paladin video. I hope I’ve showed how to make a really good Paladin build in New Game+. I know holy damage is not the most optimal type, but it still slaps pretty hard here. And a lot of the bosses I fought in this gameplay are holy resistant, and it still melted them pretty good. So really enjoy paladins in this game. As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree so stay tuned for those. If you need help finding the spells, items, or equipment in this build, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map.