Bleed builds have always been considered powerful options for taking down bosses in Elden Ring in seconds. They tear through health bars and deal massive damage. You can find out what the current best bleed build looks like and what items and attributes you need here.
For a bleed build to be really good, it depends on various factors: Do you have enough buffs? What weapons are you using? Does the equipment harmonize with the build you have created? Many questions that can be overwhelming at first, but we sat down to figure out what the best bleed build needs to be truly powerful.
In our research, we came across a build so powerful that you can effortlessly pulverize bosses in the new DLC of Elden Ring. What you need for it will be detailed here. If you want to jump to the individual parts of our guide, you can use our directory for that.
These attributes are needed for the bleed build in Elden Ring
Why is this late-game build so strong? This build focuses predominantly on strength because we are using a weapon combination that perfectly harmonizes with the bleeding status effect. This involves the weapon class of dual blades.
Points are also allocated to Faith and Arcane to activate bleeding faster and buff our hero with summons. This creates a deadly combination, but that’s not all.
What is bleed damage, and why is it so good?
Weapons like Bloody Streams cause passive blood loss with each attack. If you hit an opponent often enough within a certain time frame, the opponent immediately suffers massive bleed damage. You can recognize successful bleed damage not only by the opponent suddenly losing a large portion of their health bar but also by a big blood splatter.
The number of hits you need and how long that time frame is depends on the resistances of the specific opponent. Most enemies in the game, even the largest and toughest bosses, can suffer bleed damage.
There are also late-game items that push the damage to the limit. The build uses the strongest weapons of the dual blades, as well as talismans and armor that further buff you with each instance of bleed damage.
This build thus relies on a storm of incredibly fast attacks and a continuous back and forth between the powerful bleed damage and the resulting DPS boosts.
How do I level up best for this build? As with our generally best build, we recommend the necessary attribute points to get the most out of your build. Here, we also pay attention to the “soft caps” so as not to level any value further than worth it.
Note that this is a level 150 build. You can also redistribute your attributes using the respec if you want to try the build.
- If you want to play the best class, you should choose the Vagabond. Due to its even distribution of attributes, it has the best prerequisites to build any build from it. We will now explain why our points were distributed this way.
- Strength: 50
- The soft cap is 40. Therefore, we agreed on 50 as we must endure more damage in the blood build due to risky attacks.
- Mind: 15
- Mind is only important for this build to use our incantations and war ashes.
- Endurance: 25
- The soft cap for equipment loads is 25. We do not want to go into battle naked, and with this amount, we can equip armor with a good balance and still wield weapons.
- Strength: 70
- With 70 points, you are above the second soft cap (55 points) and can deal a bit more damage. Important for wielding weapons that have a high strength scaling.
- Dexterity: 15 (20 points through the talisman “Millicent’s Prosthesis”)
- Dexterity stands at 15 points to be able to wield the Gargoyle twinblade.
- Intelligence: 9
- Not relevant for the build.
- Faith: 25
- With 25 points in Faith, you can use two important summons that buff you: Flame, Give Me Strength! and Golden Oath. Both are worth it for our build to deal even more damage.
- Arcane: 20
- Arcane stands at 20 points for us to reach the first soft cap and trigger bleeding faster.
If you also want to play PvP long term, you should try to keep your character not over level 150. The community has established the meta level at 125 – 150.
Since you will only find players in PvP who have a similar level to you, you can hardly find opponents if you are at a too high level. Since you have to redistribute all “purchased” levels when respeccing, you cannot reduce this investment either – the only way out here is to create an entirely new character.
This equipment makes the bleed build really powerful
What equipment does the build use? To make the build even stronger, you need to wear the following weapons, talismans, and armor:
- Weapon right 1: Gargoyle Twinblade +25
- Affinity: Bloody
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Weapon left 1: Gargoyle Twinblade +25
- Affinity: Bloody
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Weapon left 2: Finger Seal (for summons)
- Head armor: White Mask
- Chest armor: Black Vulture Feathers
- Talisman 1: Claw Talisman
- Talisman 2: Rotten Winged Sword Insignia
- Talisman 3: Blood’s Favor
- Talisman 4: Millicent’s Prosthesis
We will now go into detail about our weapon and equipment choices and explain to you why we decided on them.
Overview of all weapons
What weapons do I need? In a bleed build, one would expect either daggers, curved swords, or katanas, but dual blades are unusual. This is understandable, but we use them for this build for a good reason: due to the jump attack.
When wielding two dual blades, you can land up to 6 hits with the light jump attack – if you have practiced the attack. This is optimal for a bleed build since your status effect, in this case “bleeding,” activates faster the more hits you land.
You can find the Gargoyle Twinblades from the Gargoyle boss in the Siofra Aqueduct To maximize our damage, we opted for the Gargoyle Twinblades. They have the highest damage when equipped with a bloody affinity and additionally adorned with the war ash: Rock Blade.
The war ash is essential here, as it increases your damage by 15% and harms your opponent’s posture by 10%. It is important that both of your weapons have the same war ashes and affinities.
Locations of the weapons and war ashes:
- Gargoyle Twinblade
- Location: In the Siofra Aqueduct. Defeat the two gargoyles and receive the weapon after the fight.
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Location: Found with a scarab in Caelid, west of the grace “Impassable Great Bridge”
Overview of all talismans
What talismans do I need? This bleed build has a special tactic for attacking. To benefit from it, we have selected the following talismans:
These talismans are needed for the bleed build - Claw Talisman
- Effect: Increases the damage of your jump attacks by 15%.
- Location: Found in Stormveil Castle on the rooftops. Use the grace “Wall Tower” and jump northwest to the far rooftop. Now try to find your way up until you find a ladder. You will find the talisman on a corpse at the highest point of the tower.
- Rotten Winged Sword Insignia
- Effect: Significantly increases the power of your attack sequences. Has three levels that increase your attacks’ damage by 6%, 8%, and 13% depending on intensity.
- Location: Received after helping Millicent in her fight against her sisters.
- Blood’s Favor
- Effect: Increases your damage by 20% for 20 seconds when someone nearby has suffered blood loss.
- Location: Found in the underground reserve of shame beneath Leyndell. Defeat the enemy “Esgar, Priest of Blood” for this.
- Millicent’s Prosthesis
- Effect: Increases your dexterity by 5 points. Increases the power of your attack sequences. Has three levels that increase your attacks’ damage by 4%, 6%, and 11% depending on intensity.
- Location: Defeat Millicent during her quest after receiving the Golden Prosthesis
Why these talismans? This bleed build is all about fast attacks and bleeding. Since we attack while jumping, the Claw Talisman is perfectly suited. With the Sword Insignia and the Prosthesis, we increase our damage through the attack sequences we create with our six hits from the jump attack.
Blood’s Favor is there to give us a significant damage buff when our opponent starts bleeding. These are already many buffs just from our talismans, but we can take it a step further with our armor.
Overview of all armor pieces
What armor do I need? To further increase our damage, there are two armor pieces that are perfectly suited:
White Mask 
Black Vulture Feathers - White Mask
- Effect: Increases your damage by 10% for 20 seconds when someone nearby has suffered blood loss.
- Location: Defeat one of the field surgeons who haunt you as intruders near the Mohgwyn Palace.
- Black Vulture Feathers
- Effect: Increases the damage of your jump attacks by 10%.
- Location: Found southeast of Mt. Gelmir in the cave of the sage behind a wall of illusions.
Why this armor? Both items fit perfectly into the synergies of the talismans and the style of jumping attacks and ensure that your damage continues to increase.
Important items to optimize the bleed build
What else can I use? To further increase damage, it is advisable to consume various buffs and items to become even stronger. We recommend the following:
- Summon: Golden Oath
- Summon: Flame, Give Me Strength!
- Flask of Wonderful Medicine
- Strength-knot Crystal Tear
- Bursting Thorn Tear
- Cooked Crab
- Blood Boiling Aroma
Now we will briefly explain how to play the build.
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How to properly play the bleed build
What must I do? Before each fight, you first buff yourself with your two summons. After buffing, drink a flask of heavenly tears and take your left twinblade in both hands.
Now buff this weapon with your talent of Rock Blade. Now take both weapons in each hand again and buff your right twinblade with Rock Blade. Finally, you can consume items like Blood Boiling Aroma, Cooked Crab, or the Flask of Wonderful Medicine.
Enter the fight and try to always execute a light jump attack whenever you attack.
Once you achieve the first blood loss, your damage numbers will reach around 10,000 points – and beyond. It will then just be a matter of time before the boss or enemy is processed into a red puddle. However, pay attention to your stamina during attacks; otherwise, you may not be able to dodge when needed.
What do I do against bosses that are immune to bleeding? The only weakness of the build is the fact that you cannot generate bleeding against enemies that have no flesh. For this reason, you should swap your talisman “Blood’s Favor” and replace it with the “Ritual Shield Talisman”. This way, you will at least deal more damage, even without the bleed effect.
That was all the important information about the build. Do you also like to play with bleeding, or do you prefer other affinities like poison? Let us know in the comments how you found this build. You can find all our guides here: Elden Ring: All guides, beginner tips, and builds at a glance
- If you want to play the best class, you should choose the Vagabond. Due to its even distribution of attributes, it has the best prerequisites to build any build from it. We will now explain why our points were distributed this way.
- Strength: 50
- The soft cap is 40. Therefore, we agreed on 50 as we must endure more damage in the blood build due to risky attacks.
- Mind: 15
- Mind is only important for this build to use our incantations and war ashes.
- Endurance: 25
- The soft cap for equipment loads is 25. We do not want to go into battle naked, and with this amount, we can equip armor with a good balance and still wield weapons.
- Strength: 70
- With 70 points, you are above the second soft cap (55 points) and can deal a bit more damage. Important for wielding weapons that have a high strength scaling.
- Dexterity: 15 (20 points through the talisman “Millicent’s Prosthesis”)
- Dexterity stands at 15 points to be able to wield the Gargoyle twinblade.
- Intelligence: 9
- Not relevant for the build.
- Faith: 25
- With 25 points in Faith, you can use two important summons that buff you: Flame, Give Me Strength! and Golden Oath. Both are worth it for our build to deal even more damage.
- Arcane: 20
- Arcane stands at 20 points for us to reach the first soft cap and trigger bleeding faster.
If you also want to play PvP long term, you should try to keep your character not over level 150. The community has established the meta level at 125 – 150.
Since you will only find players in PvP who have a similar level to you, you can hardly find opponents if you are at a too high level. Since you have to redistribute all “purchased” levels when respeccing, you cannot reduce this investment either – the only way out here is to create an entirely new character.
This equipment makes the bleed build really powerful
What equipment does the build use? To make the build even stronger, you need to wear the following weapons, talismans, and armor:
- Weapon right 1: Gargoyle Twinblade +25
- Affinity: Bloody
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Weapon left 1: Gargoyle Twinblade +25
- Affinity: Bloody
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Weapon left 2: Finger Seal (for summons)
- Head armor: White Mask
- Chest armor: Black Vulture Feathers
- Talisman 1: Claw Talisman
- Talisman 2: Rotten Winged Sword Insignia
- Talisman 3: Blood’s Favor
- Talisman 4: Millicent’s Prosthesis
We will now go into detail about our weapon and equipment choices and explain to you why we decided on them.
Overview of all weapons
What weapons do I need? In a bleed build, one would expect either daggers, curved swords, or katanas, but dual blades are unusual. This is understandable, but we use them for this build for a good reason: due to the jump attack.
When wielding two dual blades, you can land up to 6 hits with the light jump attack – if you have practiced the attack. This is optimal for a bleed build since your status effect, in this case “bleeding,” activates faster the more hits you land.
You can find the Gargoyle Twinblades from the Gargoyle boss in the Siofra Aqueduct To maximize our damage, we opted for the Gargoyle Twinblades. They have the highest damage when equipped with a bloody affinity and additionally adorned with the war ash: Rock Blade.
The war ash is essential here, as it increases your damage by 15% and harms your opponent’s posture by 10%. It is important that both of your weapons have the same war ashes and affinities.
Locations of the weapons and war ashes:
- Gargoyle Twinblade
- Location: In the Siofra Aqueduct. Defeat the two gargoyles and receive the weapon after the fight.
- War Ash: Rock Blade
- Location: Found with a scarab in Caelid, west of the grace “Impassable Great Bridge”
Overview of all talismans
What talismans do I need? This bleed build has a special tactic for attacking. To benefit from it, we have selected the following talismans:
These talismans are needed for the bleed build - Claw Talisman
- Effect: Increases the damage of your jump attacks by 15%.
- Location: Found in Stormveil Castle on the rooftops. Use the grace “Wall Tower” and jump northwest to the far rooftop. Now try to find your way up until you find a ladder. You will find the talisman on a corpse at the highest point of the tower.
- Rotten Winged Sword Insignia
- Effect: Significantly increases the power of your attack sequences. Has three levels that increase your attacks’ damage by 6%, 8%, and 13% depending on intensity.
- Location: Received after helping Millicent in her fight against her sisters.
- Blood’s Favor
- Effect: Increases your damage by 20% for 20 seconds when someone nearby has suffered blood loss.
- Location: Found in the underground reserve of shame beneath Leyndell. Defeat the enemy “Esgar, Priest of Blood” for this.
- Millicent’s Prosthesis
- Effect: Increases your dexterity by 5 points. Increases the power of your attack sequences. Has three levels that increase your attacks’ damage by 4%, 6%, and 11% depending on intensity.
- Location: Defeat Millicent during her quest after receiving the Golden Prosthesis
Why these talismans? This bleed build is all about fast attacks and bleeding. Since we attack while jumping, the Claw Talisman is perfectly suited. With the Sword Insignia and the Prosthesis, we increase our damage through the attack sequences we create with our six hits from the jump attack.
Blood’s Favor is there to give us a significant damage buff when our opponent starts bleeding. These are already many buffs just from our talismans, but we can take it a step further with our armor.
Overview of all armor pieces
What armor do I need? To further increase our damage, there are two armor pieces that are perfectly suited:
White Mask Black Vulture Feathers - White Mask
- Effect: Increases your damage by 10% for 20 seconds when someone nearby has suffered blood loss.
- Location: Defeat one of the field surgeons who haunt you as intruders near the Mohgwyn Palace.
- Black Vulture Feathers
- Effect: Increases the damage of your jump attacks by 10%.
- Location: Found southeast of Mt. Gelmir in the cave of the sage behind a wall of illusions.
Why this armor? Both items fit perfectly into the synergies of the talismans and the style of jumping attacks and ensure that your damage continues to increase.
Important items to optimize the bleed build
What else can I use? To further increase damage, it is advisable to consume various buffs and items to become even stronger. We recommend the following:
- Summon: Golden Oath
- Summon: Flame, Give Me Strength!
- Flask of Wonderful Medicine
- Strength-knot Crystal Tear
- Bursting Thorn Tear
- Cooked Crab
- Blood Boiling Aroma
Now we will briefly explain how to play the build.
More on the topicThe super boss of Elden Ring is to go, as not enough money has been made
The corporation wants to destroy one of your favorite developers, fans are afraid of Elden Ring Gacha
Creators of Elden Ring briefly showcase their new project and even the biggest fans cannot believe it
How to properly play the bleed build
What must I do? Before each fight, you first buff yourself with your two summons. After buffing, drink a flask of heavenly tears and take your left twinblade in both hands.
Now buff this weapon with your talent of Rock Blade. Now take both weapons in each hand again and buff your right twinblade with Rock Blade. Finally, you can consume items like Blood Boiling Aroma, Cooked Crab, or the Flask of Wonderful Medicine.
Enter the fight and try to always execute a light jump attack whenever you attack.
Once you achieve the first blood loss, your damage numbers will reach around 10,000 points – and beyond. It will then just be a matter of time before the boss or enemy is processed into a red puddle. However, pay attention to your stamina during attacks; otherwise, you may not be able to dodge when needed.
What do I do against bosses that are immune to bleeding? The only weakness of the build is the fact that you cannot generate bleeding against enemies that have no flesh. For this reason, you should swap your talisman “Blood’s Favor” and replace it with the “Ritual Shield Talisman”. This way, you will at least deal more damage, even without the bleed effect.
That was all the important information about the build. Do you also like to play with bleeding, or do you prefer other affinities like poison? Let us know in the comments how you found this build. You can find all our guides here: Elden Ring: All guides, beginner tips, and builds at a glance
- Strength: 50
- Strength: 50
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