In this guide, I showcase the Bloody Ballerina build for Elden Ring, an Arcane-focused setup designed for New Game Plus that excels at staggering enemies through rapid strikes and building up bleed to trigger hemorrhage. This Bloody Helice build is flexible enough to be used from the early to mid-game in your first playthrough, and it continues to be effective as you progress through New Game Plus, maintaining strong performance throughout.
The Bloody Ballerina build relies on quick and repeated strikes to stagger foes, creating opportunities to stack bleed and trigger hemorrhage for significant damage. This strategy works well against both standard enemies and tougher bosses, providing a versatile approach to combat. As you progress through the game, this build can be adapted to maintain its effectiveness, ensuring a smooth transition from early game to New Game Plus.
Elden Ring Bloody Helice Build Guide – Bloody Ballerina
An Arcane Build that focuses on the use of the Bloody Helice weapon and its weapon skill: Dynast’s Finesse
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Elden Ring Bloody Helice Build Guide – Equipment & Gameplay
The weapon for this Bloody Helice build is the Bloody Helice, a heavy thrusting sword with excellent bleed buildup and a unique weapon skill, Dynast’s Finesse. While its base damage is respectable, the real strength lies in the skill’s combination of mobility, invincibility frames, and high bleed buildup.
Dynast’s Finesse offers significant invincibility frames and spins you backward, dodging incoming attacks. The skill can be followed by one or two R2 attacks, resulting in a total of three strikes. This combination not only builds up bleed quickly, often triggering hemorrhage, but also inflicts substantial poise damage, often staggering enemies and leading to critical hit opportunities.
The invincibility frames during the backward spin provide excellent dodging capabilities, making the Bloody Helice an excellent choice for both PvE and potentially PvP. The skill’s flexibility allows for quick repositioning and creative counterattacks, especially when playing unlocked, where you can aim the spin in any direction. This versatility is particularly useful against aggressive enemies, allowing you to reposition and strike effectively.
The skill’s mechanics change based on whether you’re locked on or playing unlocked. When locked on, you spin backward away from the target, while playing unlocked lets you control the direction of the spin, allowing you to aim the backward movement where you need. This can be used to dodge to the side, forward, or even through the enemy to end up behind them. It takes some practice to master the timing and positioning, but once you do, it becomes a powerful tool for avoiding damage while delivering devastating counterattacks.
In terms of additional items, you can equip the Green Turtle Talisman in the off-hand for increased stamina recovery or the Sacrificial Axe for more FP restoration upon enemy kills. These benefits remain active even when two-handing the Bloody Helice, providing useful utility without compromising the build’s focus on aggressive melee combat. However, these are more for min-maxing; you can still achieve great results without them.
For armor, I’ve mixed and matched pieces from different sets for a balance of fashion and function. I use the Marais Mask, which provides a slight boost to Arcane, fitting for this build. While there are other helmets that offer more Arcane, like the Silver Tear Mask, they can reduce your overall damage, making them less ideal despite their Arcane boost. I prefer the Marais Mask for its style and moderate Arcane bonus.
For the chest piece, I’m using the Carian Knight Armor for its solid defense and appearance. The Bull-Goat Gauntlets are crucial for reaching the 51 poise breakpoint, which allows you to tank through one normal attack without being staggered. Although I don’t particularly like their look, the poise they provide is invaluable. For the legs, I’ve chosen the Scaled Greaves, contributing to the overall defensive setup while maintaining a cohesive aesthetic.
This Elden Ring Bloody Helice build provides enough flexibility with equip load to accommodate a variety of armor choices, even allowing you to heavy roll without much impact due to Dynast’s Finesse, which provides its own dodge mechanism. The key with this build is that you don’t necessarily need to stay in the medium roll range if you’re using Dynast’s Finesse effectively, giving you the option to wear heavier armor for more protection.
For min-maxing, consider wearing the heaviest armor set you can while maintaining your desired mobility. If you’re okay with heavy rolling, you can maximize your protection, making the build more durable in tougher encounters. If you prefer a balance between protection and mobility, aim for medium rolling with a sturdy set of armor.
Elden Ring Bloody Helice Build Guide – Talismans
The talismans I use for this Elden Ring Bloody Helice build are Shard of Alexander, Lord of Blood’s Exultation, Green Turtle Talisman, and Viridian Amber Medallion +2.
Shard of Alexander boosts the damage of Dynast’s Finesse, making it essential. Lord of Blood’s Exultation increases your attack power when you trigger bleeding, which happens often with this build, as the Bloody Helice has nearly 100 bleed buildup. This makes it easy to proc hemorrhage with just one or two hits, giving a solid damage boost.
The Green Turtle Talisman is crucial for increasing stamina recovery, while the Viridian Amber Medallion +2 provides extra stamina, both of which are important for this build because Dynast’s Finesse consumes a lot of stamina. The combination of using L2 for dodging and R2 for attacks can drain stamina quickly. The Green Turtle Talisman ensures you recover stamina fast enough to keep up with the pace of combat.
With this build, your general strategy should focus on running R1 and R2 attacks for regular enemies. When facing tougher foes, use Dynast’s Finesse to dodge their attacks and counterattack with R2. The follow-up R2 after an L2 dodge often staggers enemies, so use it when safe to do so. However, if you’re facing enemies like Crucible Knights, where you might lose the trade, opt to dodge again with L2 or roll backward to avoid getting hit.
Fighting from horseback can be effective, especially against large targets like dragons. Holding down R2 while on horseback allows you to deal continuous damage as you ride past enemies, then release R2 for a powerful strike. This tactic is especially effective against large enemies, as it can stagger them while building bleed rapidly.
To start this build early in the game, beeline for the Bloody Helice in the Altus Plateau. Although it’s a bit deep into the game, you can get there quickly by knowing the route. For early-game talismans, use the Warrior Jar Shard instead of Shard of Alexander, and the early version of the Viridian Amber Medallion. You can also obtain the Green Turtle Talisman early on, providing a good stamina boost. This setup allows you to start the Bloody Ballerina build from the beginning and progress through the game with it.
Elden Ring Bloody Helice Build Guide – Recommended Attributes
The stats for this Elden Ring Bloody Helice build are 50 Vigor, 21 Mind, 45 Endurance, 16 Strength, 30 Dexterity, 16 Intelligence, 7 Faith, and 56 Arcane.
- Vigor (50): This provides a decent health pool for survivability. Since you’re using Dynast’s Finesse to dodge attacks, you’re not expecting to get hit often, but having a buffer of health is still critical. You’ll probably want to increase this to 60 during New Game Plus for additional safety, especially against bosses.
- Mind (21): This gives you enough FP to use Dynast’s Finesse and its follow-up attacks without constantly chugging blue flasks. It should be enough to get through most fights, but you might consider increasing it to 30 in New Game Plus to ensure you have sufficient FP without excessive flask usage.
- Endurance (45): Endurance boosts your stamina and equip load, which is crucial for this build. With Dynast’s Finesse, you use a lot of stamina, and this level gives you the stamina you need to execute your combos without running out. It also lets you wear heavier armor without hitting the heavy roll threshold. There’s a steep drop-off in benefits after 50 Endurance, so aim for 50 if you continue into later New Game Plus cycles.
- Strength (16): This is the minimum required to wield the Bloody Helice, which doesn’t scale well with Strength. Further increases in Strength are not necessary; it’s the last attribute to consider for damage output.
- Dexterity (30): This stat contributes to your weapon damage and scales well with Bloody Helice. You should continue to increase Dexterity in New Game Plus for additional damage, especially as Arcane’s scaling starts to diminish.
- Arcane (56): This enhances both damage and bleed buildup. The Bloody Helice benefits from high Arcane, as does your bleed proc rate. After reaching this level, further increases in Arcane will have reduced impact, so focus on Dexterity for damage increases.
- Intelligence and Faith: These aren’t needed for this build. I started as an astrologer, which explains these higher stats, but they don’t contribute to this build.
Overall, the priority is to boost Vigor, Endurance, and Dexterity, with Arcane as the key damage and bleed stat. Mind should be high enough to manage FP for Dynast’s Finesse and other abilities, while Strength is just enough to wield the weapon. The combination of these stats allows for effective use of Dynast’s Finesse, giving you the right balance between defense, stamina, and offensive power.
Elden Ring Bloody Helice Build Guide – Final Tips
For a couple of final tips regarding the Bloody Ballerina build, you can consider using the Dragon Communion Seal, but there are drawbacks. This seal requires Faith, and if you add points in Faith, you’ll lose some of your damage potential. Unless you want a broader stat spread, it’s better to focus on Dexterity and Arcane to keep your build optimized. If you do choose to use it, consider simpler incantations like Swarm of Flies to help with bleed buildup, but you’re likely to rely more on melee attacks with Dynast’s Finesse. I chose to leave spells out of this build to maintain the focus on melee combat, which I found more enjoyable.
If you’re using the Flask of Wondrous Physick, I recommend the Greenburst Crystal Tear for increased stamina recovery and the Greenspill Crystal Tear for additional stamina. This build consumes a lot of stamina due to the repeated use of Dynast’s Finesse and its follow-up attacks, so boosting stamina recovery is crucial. Having extra stamina also allows you to dodge and attack without running out of breath.
Regarding Great Runes, I suggest Radahn’s Great Rune because it boosts HP, FP, and stamina. This is perfect for this build, giving you extra health to avoid one-shots, more FP to reduce reliance on blue flasks, and additional stamina for rapid attacks and dodges. Overall, this Great Rune aligns well with the stamina-heavy playstyle of the Bloody Ballerina build.
So that wraps up our Bloody Ballerina build. As always, let us know if you have questions or other tips in the comments below. We have a ton more builds coming for Elden Ring and Shadow of the Erdtree so stay tuned for those. If you need help finding the spells, items, or equipment in this build, and securing some personal objectives, make sure to check the Elden Ring Map.
