Elden Ring Greatsword Build

Elden Ring Builds

Elden Ring allows players to try their hand at various weapons and playstyles. Every weapon has its own unique characteristics, strengths, and weaknesses. It depends entirely on you how you choose to play around them to make your way up the skill ladder and become the Elden Lord. 

Among those weapons is the Greatsword. Just as in real life, the weapon shows its greatest potential once held with both hands and excels at dealing massive damage, hitting guard-breaking blows, and stunning enemies.

Elden Ring Greatsword Build

The Greatsword build is one of the strongest builds that you can go for in the game. This is because the weapon allows you to be strong during all phases of the game. Even in the early game, you possess enough damage to take on some of the hardest bosses and defeat them if you find the right timing.

Now that you have decided to go for the Greatsword let’s take a look at what things will help you accelerate your growth and how to go about it. For a greatsword build, the best starting class is Vagabond. This is because of all the stats and perks it provides and their affinity with the Greatsword.

As for the stats, the class provides you with high Strength, Vigor, and Endurance stats with some decent dexterity points. As this weapon doesn’t scale with dexterity points, you don’t have to put point in it and use them to elevate your Strength, Vigor, and Endurance. 

These three stats are the most crucial for wielding a greatsword and will be required to be high if you wish to equip the powerful greatswords you can find in the mid to late game.

As mentioned earlier, you will initially have to two-hand the greatsword as it requires you to have 31 strength stats to one-hand it. For that, you will have to grind first, but for the time being, you can double-hand it to maneuver your way past the stat requirement.

Now that you are aware of where to start, let’s take a look at the best Elden Ring Greatsword build that you can go for.

Weapon

The game offers a wide range of greatswords to choose from, all having various stats. However, the powerful ones aren’t easy to acquire early on in the game and have high-level restrictions for wielding them. So, during the early game, our best pick for the weapon to go for is the fan-favorite “GreatSword.”

The weapon is called the Greatsword and is designed after the weapon of a manga character, Guts from Berserk. As the name suggests, the weapon is tall and wide blade in appearance and possesses some good stats for the early game, along with decent scaling.

Also Read: Best Katana Build

Location

To get your hands on the GreatSword, make your way to the Caelem Ruins Site of Grace in Caelid. As much as this is a dangerous area for new players to be wandering around in, the reward is too good to pass up. 

You can easily make your way past the horde of monsters with the right pathing and grasping the right opportunities. The weapon will be located in a Caravan chest just northwest of the ruins and is fairly prominent to find. 

Stats and Scaling

The weapon has 164 Physical attack damage along with 50 damage while guarding. Furthermore, it has a quite potent critical damage of 100 that can do big damage to stun-locked targets. Moreover, the weapon has a C scaling and strength along with E scaling in dexterity, which is quite good for an early-game weapon. 

The weapon is one of the most rewarding weapons, but it also requires some risk-taking. Greatsword has one of the slowest attack speeds in the game due to its heavy weight, making you extra cautious of the timings. Due to its long wind-up animation before attacking, it is very easily punishable.
Hence, you will have to mold your playstyle around it as you go if you want to reap the rewards of this weapon’s tremendous damage. Once it is fully upgraded, it does 401 physical damage to enemies, and that is only the base damage.

If you wish to increase its damage, you can use one of your Ashes of War to allow you to increase its strength, scaling to B. With that scaling, you will be able to increase your damage output by a ton and will be able to easily hammer past any enemy you encounter in your way.

 Additionally, once you upgrade it to level 20, the scaling will become an A, making this weapon a monster, allowing it to deal a whopping 500+ damage per hit. That is one of the highest damaging hits that you can get in the game and is too good to pass up. 

The weapon also possesses a potent skill called the Upward Cut. This Ash of War is multi-purpose and can serve as a crutch if you find yourself in a pickle. Firstly, you can use the stamp of the skill to brace yourself for a hard-hitting attack. 

This allows you to stand firm from powerful swings rather than being blown back. Furthermore, it provides you with an opportunity to follow up with Upward cut to cut through your enemies and win the battle.

Armor

In souls-like games, armor is considered a very trivial thing and is mostly overlooked by the players. Sometimes, it is worthwhile to do so because they drag you down a lot due to their weight, but sometimes, the extra protection and stats they provide can make all the difference between life and death.

As for the greatsword build, putting on armor makes your weight quite significant when paired with the Greatsword. The weight isn’t an issue for players who rely on blocking the enemy attacks with a shield, as it can function just the same.

However, other players like myself that rely on the roll mechanics, this makes quite the difference. With armor and the Greatsword, you reach the heavy load limit, making your walk speed and rolling speed that of a snail. 

With those movements, it becomes quite hard to dodge anything and can lead to fights ending before you can even get a hit in. To counter this problem, first, you will have to put in Endurance. This will allow you to increase the amount of weight you can carry and the stamina you possess.
Swinging a greatsword takes quite the stamina, and coupling that with the rolling, it most certainly becomes a requirement to have a large stamina bar. You can achieve both a larger stamina bar and a heavier weight limit by putting points in Endurance.
As for which armor to wear, it is up to your preference as the armor doesn’t play that crucial of a role. We advise that you choose a light to medium-weight armor sets so that you don’t instantly crumble from 2 or 3 strong hits and can put some distance between you and your enemies to heal up. If you feel indecisive in your picks, here are some recommendations for you.

Exile Hood

This is a fairly common hood that can be obtained from an item drop upon killing Exile soldiers. The helm fulfills the requirement of a low-weight armor piece and provides okay stats to make this build work. With only a weight of 4, it certainly has a lot to offer in terms of defense, with 4.4 against Physical, 4.6 against VS Slash, and 3.4 against Holy, among other stats.

Blaidd’s Armor & Gauntlets

As mentioned before, the GreatSword is a weapon that honors Guts greatsword. Thus, it is only right to pair it up with Guts attire to keep that look going and elevate your appearance.