Elden Ring has taken the gaming world by storm with its vast, immersive open world and dynamic combat system. The game offers players countless ways to build and Elden Ring Runes customize their characters, allowing them to create builds that suit their playstyle. In this article, we’re going to explore some of the best PvE builds that I feel are crucial to mastering Elden Ring. These builds feature a mix of strength, dexterity, and faith-based builds that perform exceptionally well in both early and late game stages. Whether you're looking for high DPS, powerful buffs, or crowd control abilities, this guide will give you all the insights you need to enhance your Elden Ring experience.

1. Warped Axe Strength Build (Bleed Infusion)
The Warped Axe is a heavy-hitting weapon that has become a fan-favorite among strength-based builds due to its high two-handed DPS. It offers incredible scaling, particularly when infused with a heavy infusion, giving it an A scaling in strength. The true power of the Warped Axe, however, comes when infused with a bleed build. Bleed weapons in Elden Ring can deal incredible amounts of damage, especially when paired with Talismans that boost blood loss buildup. The Warped Axe retains its A scaling in strength and enhances the bleed buildup to rival that of greatswords.

Core Weapon Infusion and Talismans
Weapon Infusion: For this build, we recommend infusing the Warped Axe with Blood, which allows the weapon to stack bleed effects rapidly.
Talismans:
Lord of Blood’s Exultation: Increases damage when you inflict bleed on enemies, which is essential for a bleed-focused build.
White Mask: Further boosts your damage when you cause bleed on nearby enemies.
Two-Handed Talisman: Increases damage when wielding a weapon in two hands.
Multi-Hit Talisman: Maximizes your damage output by applying buffs to multiple strikes.
With these talismans equipped, you can maximize the Warped Axe’s damage potential, ensuring that each hit deals maximum damage. This setup, combined with the high scaling from strength, ensures a potent character build that excels in both boss fights and enemy crowds.

Weapon Skills: Spinning Slash or Light Attack Spam
The Warped Axe’s light attack combo is fast and efficient, allowing you to quickly build up bleed stacks on enemies. However, if you face larger foes like knights or omens, switching to Spinning Slash as a weapon skill is an excellent choice. While Spinning Slash doesn’t output as much damage as light attack spam, it has the added benefit of staggering enemies and dealing more stance damage, making it useful against tankier foes.

Buffs and Spells
For this build, having access to some basic Faith spells will significantly enhance your damage output. Reaching around 26 Faith grants you access to buffs such as Golden Vow and Flame, Grant Me Strength, both of which increase your damage and stamina regeneration. These buffs allow your character to perform consistently well in longer battles, especially against bosses with high health pools.

Clawmark Seal: Boosts the power of your incantations and is an essential part of any strength-based build that incorporates Faith spells.
This build is straightforward but devastating, and it works wonders against nearly every PvE encounter in Elden Ring.

2. Power Stance Straight Sword Build (Lightning Infusion)
Straight swords in Elden Ring have a unique advantage: they excel in Power Stance, allowing you to use two weapons simultaneously to deliver lightning-fast attacks. The Lord Sworn’s Straight Sword and Longsword make for an ideal pair, offering incredible DPS in Power Stance. Both weapons benefit from a Lightning Infusion, which increases your damage output, especially against enemies weak to lightning.

Core Weapon Infusion and Talismans
Weapon Infusion: Infuse both the Lord Sworn’s Straight Sword and Longsword with Lightning to increase your damage output.
Talismans:
Braggart’s Roar: This Ash of War boosts your damage by 10% and increases stamina regeneration, which is key for keeping up your attack speed.
Two-Handed Talisman: Boosts your damage when wielding weapons with both hands.
Multi-Hit Talisman: Increases the number of hits you can land, helping you stack damage over time.
Lightning Talisman: Provides an additional boost to lightning damage, synergizing perfectly with the Lightning Infusion on your weapons.
Weapon Skills: Square Off
The Square Off Ash of War is particularly strong in a Power Stance build. When executed, this skill can break enemy stances, dealing massive damage and leaving enemies open for follow-up attacks. The combination of Square Off and the Multi-Hit Talisman creates a devastating combo, allowing you to stagger enemies and deliver huge damage spikes.

Buffs and Spells
While the Power Stance Straight Sword build is already powerful, having some buffs can make it even more efficient:

Golden Vow and Flame, Grant Me Strength for damage boosts.
Lightning Tier for an additional lightning damage boost, especially useful in lightning-heavy builds.
Perfume Bottles: These are essential for Dexterity-based builds. Perfume bottles infuse fire damage and allow you to deal fire damage even with a pure Dexterity build.
This build is extremely versatile and capable of melting through a variety of enemy types, from swarming mobs to powerful bosses. It's especially useful when dealing with enemies that are weak to lightning.

3. Faith and Strength Hybrid Build (Magma Blade + Spells)
The Magma Blade, a fire-based weapon from the DLC, is an incredibly powerful weapon that benefits from both Faith and Strength. With the Shadow of Alexander Talisman and the Talisman of the Dread, your magma-based attacks can deal upwards of 15% more damage, making this build one of the most potent fire-infused setups.

Core Weapon Infusion and Talismans
Weapon Infusion: Infuse the Magma Blade with a Fire infusion to maximize its damage output.
Talismans:
Shadow of Alexander: Boosts your weapon skill damage, specifically when using magma-based abilities.
Flame, Grant Me Strength: Increases fire attack damage.
Multi-Hit Talisman: Enhances your overall damage output with consecutive hits.
Two-Handed Talisman: Increases damage when wielding the Magma Blade two-handed.
Spells and Buffs
Faith and Strength hybrid builds benefit from utilizing both offensive spells and buffs. For this setup, focus on enhancing your Faith level to around 30-40 to use a wide range of powerful incantations like Golden Vow, Flame, Grant Me Strength, and Pest Thread’s Speed. These buffs significantly boost your damage output and allow you to deal with even the toughest bosses more efficiently.

The Fire Serpent spell is another solid choice for dealing with smaller enemies, while Ancient Dragon Lightning Strike can be used to obliterate large groups of enemies or bosses.

This build excels in dealing consistent and high burst damage, making it a top choice for anyone looking to combine strong weapon usage with potent Faith spells.

4. Cold Infusion Dual Weapon Build (Backhand Blades)
The Backhand Blades are an excellent option for dexterity-based builds, especially when infused with a Cold infusion. With their fast and fluid moveset, these blades allow for quick strikes, perfect for building up status effects like frost. Their Guard Counters are also incredibly effective, especially when paired with talismans like the Deflecting Tier and Curved Tier, which boost your guard damage.

Core Weapon Infusion and Talismans
Weapon Infusion: Infuse the Backhand Blades with Cold, which grants them B scaling in both Dexterity and Intelligence, allowing you to deal both physical and frost damage.
Talismans:
Multi-Hit Talisman: Boosts the number of attacks, amplifying your frost buildup.
Deflecting Tier: Increases the damage of guard counters, which is key when using the Backhand Blades.
Thorny Tier: Boosts the damage of your weapon when at full health, adding even more damage to your attacks.
Spells and Buffs
With a little Faith investment, you can enhance this build with Faith buffs like Golden Vow, Flame, Grant Me Strength, and Blessing of the Earth Tree to further boost your damage output. For your spells, Knight Comet and Rockling can help with crowd control, while Shivering Spire can assist with melting large bosses.

This dexterity build is fast, fluid, and highly efficient at dealing damage through both physical and elemental attacks, making it one of the top PvE builds in Elden Ring.

Conclusion
These four builds provide a comprehensive overview of some of the best PvE setups in Elden Ring, showcasing the versatility of strength, dexterity, and faith combinations. Whether you prefer wielding massive axes or delicate straight swords, or mixing both melee and magic, there is a build that fits every playstyle. Make sure to experiment with the Elden Ring Items for sale different talismans, buffs, and weapon infusions to find the perfect synergy for your character. And most importantly, have fun while taking on the diverse and challenging enemies of the Lands Between!