With Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC coming soon, I’m here to give you the 3 best Strength Builds. Not only are these builds devastating, they’re also early game compatible, ensuring you can start your journey to greatness right from the get-go.
Before you begin, don’t forget to prepare some Elden Ring Runes to dominate the unforgiving land of Elden Ring with unparalleled ferocity and power!
Raging Wolf
Number one is Raging Wolf. The best starter class for this build is Hero class.
In this build we are using the most famous weapon in Elden Ring, the well known Guts Sword. Despite its name, this is actually a Greatsword. Greatsword has slow, large sweeps that can hit multiple enemies and cause them to recoil.
It also has a powerful Guard Boost that’s better than many shields in the game. You should definitely take advantage of this and increase your Guard Boost further with items like Greatshield Talisman.
Most Strength weapons are easy to obtain from early in the game, but Greatsword is probably the easiest. It can be found behind a carriage west of Caelid.
Ash of War we’re using here is Braggart’s Roar. This is a weapon buff that increases your stamina recovery and physical damage and damage negation. It also changes your two-handed heavy attack and charged attack into stronger attacks.
Braggart’s Roar also gives us the opportunity to increase the damage of our charged attacks with powerful items like Roar Medallion and Highland Axe.
It is worth mentioning that although Braggart’s Roar will increase all your physical damage by 10%, Roar Medallion and Highland Axe can only enhance your two-handed heavy attacks and charged heavy attacks after using Braggart’s Roar.
For Weapon Affinity, you can use Heavy Affinity to further improve Greatsword scaling with strength.
However, I really recommend you give Blood or Cold Affinities a try. The first reason is that Braggart’s Roar allows you to easily trigger these status effects with one of Greatsword’s charged heavy attacks.
The second reason is that weapon buffs in Elden Ring only apply to weapons with Physical Affinities, such as Keen, Quality, or Heavy. However, Braggart’s Roar is the only weapon buff type that works on weapons with Blood or Cold Affinities.
To obtain Braggart’s Roar, you can defeat Blackguard or complete his quest chain and loot Iron Ball, which has Ash of War on it.
Also Read: Elden Ring: The Best One-Shot Build To Enter Shadow Of The Erdtree DLC! - Dragonborn Blood Mage
Iron Pumpkin
The second build is definitely a Stance Breaking mechanic, Iron Pumpkin.
In this one, we use Iron Ball weapon and Ash of War Cragblade. The best thing about Claw and Fist weapons is that when you use them with both hands, it puts a duplicate weapon in your off-hand, so there’s no need to use another weapon to provide a power-stance to two of them.
This is a powerful feature because when you apply a weapon buff like Bloodflame Blade, you end up with two weapons in each hand with the same buff. And they’re also lightweight, which gives you more room to wear heavier armor for better protection.
The charged heavy attack of this weapon is an absolute beast. It’s relatively fast, causing you to attack with both hands while dealing with the damage of each weapon. This is probably the strongest attack you should focus on when fighting a boss.
Since you attack quickly with this weapon, you can utilize items like Rotten Winged Sword Insignia and Thorny Cracked Tear to increase the attack power of each consecutive attack.
To further enhance the power of this weapon, we use Ash of War Cragblade with Heavy Affinity. This is a weapon buff that increases your physical damage by 15% and your stance damage by 10% for one minute.
This will enhance Iron Ball’s physical and poise damage easily breaking enemies’ stance and making them vulnerable to more damage. With this combo, you’ll absolutely destroy every boss in the game.
But the only drawback is that Iron Ball’s range is too short. If you’re not standing very close to your target, you can easily miss the attack. So keep this in mind.
Gods Crusher
Last but not least is Gods Crusher, a build that uses one of the most iconic strength weapons in Elden Ring, Giant-Crusher.
Giant-Crusher has a unique R2 that spins your character forward, then slams down the hammer to crush your enemies. This looks very similar to Ash of War Lion’s Claw. You can slam attack Giant-Crusher, dealing approximately 27% additional damage.
So, you should focus most of your heavy attacks, which will not only deal extra damage but also activate important items like Axe Talisman and Spiked Cracked Tear, which will increase your charged attacks by an additional 26%.
Many guides will recommend that you inject Heavy Affinity into Giant-Crusher. However, if you want to change it from a Giant-Crusher to a Gods Crusher, you have to use Occult Affinity, not Heavy Affinity.
Giant-Crusher with Occult Affinity delivers the highest non-split AR damage in the entire game.
While it has the potential to be the highest AR weapon in the game, it is also the heaviest weapon in the game. This means you’ll need to invest well in stamina and take advantage of items like Great-Jar’s Arsenal to lower your equipment load in order to use this weapon effectively.
Additionally, it requires 60 Strength to use, but obviously, at least early in the game, you don’t need that much Strength. In fact, two-handing any weapon will multiply your strength score by 1.5. This means you only need 40 Strength to start using Giant-Crusher.
Ash of War we’re using in this build is Royal Knight’s Resolve. Activating it will increase the damage of your next attack by 80%. The buff disappears after 10 seconds or after you hit it once.
We can do massive physical damage in one attack by using Royal Knight’s Resolve and then charging Giant-Crusher heavy attack.
You can also take advantage of it to enhance your jumping attack by applying Royal Knight’s Resolve buff to both of your weapons. While you’ll need to get Ash of War again to achieve this, the damage potential is even greater than charging the heavy attack on a single Giant-Crusher.
If you want to use Dual Hammer in your first pull-through, but can’t get the second Royal Knight’s Resolve, you can use Ash of War Determination instead. It behaves exactly like Royal Knight’s Resolve, but does slightly less damage.
These are the 3 best Strength Builds I would like to introduce. They will redefine your gaming experience. What is your favorite Strength Build in Elden Ring? I hope you try these builds on your next play through. Have a great day.