What this build is for
Elden Ring can be a pretty tough game. And sometimes, you want to just relax and explore, but there’s a pesky boss blocking your progress, or maybe an area with enemies you can’t run past. This build seeks to make it as easy as possible to beat that boss or clear that area.
How this build works
With some types of weapons — thrusting and heavy thrusting swords, spears, and greatspears — you can attack while blocking. This build uses the heaviest shield available, and a weapon that isn’t very reliant on damage scaling, to make it possible to hold block and spam light attacks and kill pretty much anything.
Setting up the build
The equipment listed above is the ideal, endgame iteration of this build. Naturally, you won’t immediately have access to much of what is listed. However, you can do a version of this build as soon as you can find a spear or thrusting sword, and a shield with 100% physical defense. Put enough points into Endurance that you can wear strong armor, wield a good shield, and still carry your weapon.
Mimic Tear
Keeping with the goal of this build being as easy as possible to use, 
Mimic Tear will be our Spirit Ash of choice. Before you summon the Mimic Tear, put healing items like 
Raw Meat Dumpling or Marika’s Blessing in your Quick Items bar — the Mimic will use those items and heal itself! Use healing spells to heal the Mimic Tear so that it can keep drawing aggro for you, making your life even easier. You can also choose to put more points into Faith in order to access higher level healing spells like 
Erdtree Heal or 
Blessing of the Erdtree, in which case you may need to remove points from Endurance or Arcane. If you do so, swap to the Erdtree Seal for the superior scaling/healing.
Weapons
The goal with the 
Antspur Rapier (or similar weapon) is to apply both a Damage over Time and a % Max HP status effect — in this case, Rot and Bleed. However, you can do similar with a Poison weapon and a Frost ash of war, and so on. Make sure you tailor your Talisman choices based on the status effects you are applying (the recommended ones focus on Rot). Non-damage Talisman choices are more flexible — you can go stamina regen, or more defensive stats, or whatever you fancy.
It can also be helpful to have throwables that inflicts the status effects your weapons inflict; if you’re fighting an enemy that often runs or flies away, the throwable can help prevent the status effect from decaying before you fully proc it.
A note on rolling
While the build as written above stays below 70% equip load, this is not always necessary. Since your gameplan will be to stand still and hold block, you can generally get away with having a fatroll — you won’t be rolling anyway! However, there are some boss attacks that will be hard to block, especially before you get enough non-physical resists and/or a shield that can block non-physical damage types that some enemies will do.
Using the build
- Summon Mimic Tear
- Cast whatever Fortification incantation works best vs the enemy you are facing
- Hold block
- Light attack 2+ times
- Let go of block when there is a break in enemy attack(s)
Usually, you’ll want to attack when the boss/enemy is in between attacks. But with this build, it’s the opposite — you’ll hold block and attack during enemy combos, then use the break between enemy attacks to regen your stamina by letting go of block. Depending on the enemy, your shield, and your total stamina, the amount of attacks you can get away with while blocking will vary significantly. When in doubt, err on the side of having extra stamina.
If for some reason you can’t full-block all the enemy combos, you’ll need to make sure you’re below 70% equip load, and roll the attacks you can’t block. As long as you’re properly leveled for the area you’re in, this should only happen rarely — and if you want to play on Easy Mode, you should overlevel anyway! If this is happening a lot, focus on leveling Endurance and make sure the Great Rune you have equipped gives you Stamina or Endurance (which gives you Stamina). (Don’t forget to use a Rune Arc to get the benefit of your Great Rune)
Hopefully this build makes the game nice and relaxing 🙂 Drop any feedback or results in the comments, GL HF!
