Elden Ring Giant’s Red Braid Build Guide – Flame Dancer

Elden Ring Whip Build Flame Dancer: Equipment

Let’s start with the weapon I’m using for this build. I am using the Giant’s Red Braid whip. This is obtained from defeating the Fire Giant in Mountaintops of the Giants and then exchanging his Remembrance for it. There are a few reasons that I chose this whip.

The first is that it has very good Strength scaling. Not all whips in Elden Ring have good Strength scaling. Admittedly, you can change the Ash of War on four of six of them to have some Strength scaling. However, what I really like about this whip is that it has a very good attack rating and it scales very well with Strength, Faith, and a little bit of Dexterity, giving it a very good overall attack rating throughout the finishing part of your first playthrough and on into NG+. Also, because it scales well with Strength, it allows you to use a Greatshield easily because you’ll meet the Strength requirements for that Greatshield just by boosting the damage of this weapon itself, which is not true very much of other whips. If you went with other whips and their Strength infusions, you would have lower damage than you probably would with Keen or some other infusion in order to be able to use that Greatshield, but that’s not the case with this weapon.

Secondly, there is a bit of synergy between Strength and Faith because of the Clawmark Seal that exists, which increases your Incantation scaling when you put points into Strength and Faith, and that allows you to use Strength and Faith weapons while still having decent damage with Incantations.  You’re not going to have as much of it if you went like Pure Faith or if you went Arcane with Dragon Communion Seal, but you’re still able to cast these spells, giving you ranged options when you’re going for like a melee type build, which is fantastic. And lastly, the Giant’s Red Braid has a fantastic Ash of War and Flame Dance. And what I really love about Flame Dance is that it hits in a really large AoE, allowing you to just AoE down tons of enemies. And because whips have like sort of a flinching mechanic built into them when you hit enemies, most enemies, not all of them, tend to flinch.

This allows you typically to hit them over and over and kind of stun-lock them. The weapons themselves have terrible stagger damage, meaning that you’re not going to knock them down and be able to get a critical strike. Whips can’t do critical strikes anyway, so that doesn’t really matter for whips. But when you hit them, they flinch. And when you use this Flame Dance, basically everything around you is repeatedly flinching, so they can’t get to you. We have a lot of poise for this build in order to be able to pull off this moveset without getting interrupted. But odds are, if you can get that first hit off anyway, you won’t be interrupted because you’ll just keep flinching everything around you, allowing you to wipe them out or just chain spam this if you can.

One of the downsides of whips in Elden Ring is that they don’t have a very good variety of Ashes of War. So if you’re using one of the whips that can be infused with an Ash of War, there aren’t too many good ones to pick from. There are some decent ones like Flame of the Redmanes and Thunderbolt. But besides those, there are really not a lot of other good options besides maybe Royal Knight’s Resolve and Determination. So by using a whip that has a very good Ash of War, we sort of remedy that issue.

Additionally, we’re using the Golden Greatshield here, and it doesn’t really matter particularly which Greatshield you use as long as it has a decent guard boost, so that you don’t consume a lot of stamina when blocking. I just happen to like this one, but you can use whichever you want for this build. Anytime you’re doing a block counter-based build, you want to try and use a Greatshield if possible.

It’s easier to do because enemies typically rebuff off your Greatshield. It interrupts their combos a lot of time and gives you a bigger opening to get that counter off after you block that medium shields just don’t give you. You can still make a block counter with medium shields, but it’s going to be harder to time those attacks. And if you are using a longer windup weapon, like a Colossal Weapon or something like that, it will be even harder to do without using a Greatshield. So you definitely want to have a Greatshield if you can when doing a block counter build. And this allows us to block counter very effectively.

One really good thing about whips as well, they have a very long block counter range. So you almost always connect on that block counter, no matter whether the enemy pushes you back a bit or not. The armor you want to use for this build isn’t super important, but having armor with high poise will allow you to get block counters off more effectively, to hit enemies with charged R2s or R2s and regular R1s without being interrupted. And most importantly, use Flame Dance without getting interrupted. Again, enemies tend to flinch when they get hit with this. So if you can get it off that like first hit, you tend to be okay. But sometimes because the Flame Dance has a long windup, you get hit right in the middle of that. But this will allow you to prevent being flinched if you have high-poise armor like we do in this case. That way, you’ll continue to do the whip attacks, hopefully from that point, continuing to make the enemy flinch over and over.

ER Flame Dancer Build: Talismans

As for the talismans you can use for this build, there are a lot you can use because there are just so many different ways you can play. But I’m using the Fire Scorpion Charm, the Ritual Sword Talisman, Shard of Alexander, and the Great-Jar’s Arsenal. The Fire Scorpion Charm is there to increase your fire damage. This is not only with your weapon but also with Flame Dance and also with the spells we’re using.

We’re using primarily flame spells with this build to take advantage of Fire Scorpion, but also to take advantage of things like Flame, Grant Me Strength which boosts fire damage and also the Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear which boosts fire damage as well. So you want to focus on fire damage if possible with this build. It’s very fire-oriented. Ritual Sword Talisman boosts your attacks when you’re at full health and your spells and your weapon skills at full health. So it’s very good. We use all three of these things with this build. So it’s a very good talisman for this build. And you just have to make sure that you top up your health.

You can either do that through an incantation that gives you health over time or you can prioritize health less and just top yourself off when you hit it every now and then. But one of the great things about using a build that uses block counters or a Greatshield, is you tend to take damage less often because you can block a lot of things. Shard of Alexander is there to boost your damage with Flame Dance because each hit doesn’t do that much damage. You just want to increase it as much as you can. And Great-Jar’s Arsenal lastly is there to make sure that we can get up to medium rolling with our equip weight. If you can play this build, if you want, with heavy rolling. But I find it is a little less effective, particularly if you’re coming from a build where you’re used to dodge rolling and you’re going to be wrong on those dodge rolls a lot more than you’re blocking until you get the hang of the build. I would recommend putting this here and not being able to medium roll. But you can take it out and play heavy if you want.

Other good talismans you could put in this build if you want, like maybe if you want to go heavy and you want to swap out Great-Jar’s Arsenal, like Winged Sword Insignia or Rotten Winged Sword Insignia or Millicent’s Prosthesis, that give you more damage as you hit repeatedly. This happens a lot when you’re using Flame Dance because it hits five times. So it’s going to stack that buff when you use that. It just really depends on how often you’re using Flame Dance. I find Flame Dance to be very situational with this build. So it’s not something I use all the time, which is why I don’t have it here. But you could put it in there if you want instead, or instead of like Fire Scorpion Charm if you want.

Another good option is the Curve Sword Talisman which increases your block counter damage. If you find yourself in a stretch where you’re doing a lot of block counters, make sure to put that on and maybe take off Fire Scorpion Charm if you’re not casting as many spells. Again, that’s one of the great things about this build. There are so many talismans that you can use. It’s very flexible depending on how you want to play this build, whether you’re leaning more into the spells, more into block counters, or more into Flame Dance. It’s really up to you.

Flame Dancer: Spells & Gameplay

When it comes to spells I’m using for this build, I have Golden Vow for the increase in damage and defense. I’ve got Flame, Grant Me Strength to increase the damage that we deal with. Flame Dance, our regular attacks, and also our fire spells, which is fantastic. Other spells I’m using are Black Flame. This is really good for any fire-based build, and it gives you a nice single-target ranged option.

One of the great things about this build is Flame Dance is your AoE. You have block counters and a single target. But then with Black Flame, you have like a single target ranged attack that’s going to hold you in good stead when you need to range something down or you just can’t get close to something, etc. I also have Black Flame Ritual here. It’s not something I use super often in this build, but it’s really good when you’re fighting against aggressive enemies or big enemies. Putting it under them will deal a ton of damage, and it puts that Black Flame status effect on them that saps some of their max HP, which is great.

You can also use Flame, Fall Upon Them for this build. It’s also very situational, sort of like a shotgun of fireballs, it works best against big targets where you can hit them with all of the fireballs from a very close distance. This is primarily a melee build, so you’re going to be able to get close distance with no problem, particularly with your Greatshield, since you can hold it up as you move in. But if you can’t hit the enemy with all these fireballs, you’re going to be better off using Black Flame, so just keep that in mind.

And lastly, I’m using Stone of Gurranq here. This is a good physical damage range option. Sometimes enemies resist fire damage. This gives you a nice physical range option to kind of work around that. And it’s also boosted by the Clawmark Seal, which is an extra benefit.

Flame Dancer: Recommended Attributes Distribution

Regarding the stats we’re using for this build, I have 46 Vigor, 25 Mind, 28 Endurance, 50 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 9 Intelligence, 50 Faith, and 9 Arcane.

46 Vigor is just there to give you enough health to sustain hits and keep on going. You have decent armor with this build, even with Fire Scorpion Charm. And if you don’t use Fire Scorpion Charm, you’re going to have even more. And also you’re boosting your defenses with Golden Vow quite regularly. So you don’t need as much HP probably as some other builds because you just won’t die in the same amount of hits. 25 Mind is there for the FP. We need lots of FP with this build. We have buffs, we have spells, we have an expensive weapon skill.

Honestly, if you’re taking this build forward, I would highly recommend increasing Mind so you can do these things more easily. But I don’t think I would ever put less than this, or you’re going to struggle and have to use Blue Flasks quite regularly. 28 Endurance is there because we’re using a Greatshield. We have a weapon and a seal equipped. And we have the Great-Jar’s Arsenal. This will give you enough weight load in order to medium roll and still have this heavy armor equipped with these things. So that’s why I have that there. 50 Strength and 50 Faith are there to hit the sweet spot for your whip.

This is kind of where it really shines right in here. You get decreasing performance from this point forward with this. However, you can still get damage out of it and you can increase dexterity in NG+ and onward, making it so this weapon is a very good NG+ weapon, or even NG+ for that matter. And what’s really great is it has fantastic strength scaling, which is a little bit better than its faith. And also allows you to use the Clawmark Seal rather effectively as well because it is boosted by both of these rather effectively. We don’t need any Intelligence or Arcane for this build and dexterity is just there to meet the requirements for the whip. But again, you can increase this in NG+ and beyond to further increase the damage of this weapon.

Something that should be pointed out that’s really great about this weapon is that its Ash of War is actually physical and fire damage, which means that points and strength, dexterity, and faith all increase Flame Dance’s damage. So even when you go into NG+ and you’re getting into dexterity and you’re getting like one point of damage per attribute point you put in there, you’re still going to be boosting Flame Dance’s damage as well, which is great. And one final tip, if you’re using the Flask of Wondrous Physick, obviously you’re going to want to use the Flame-Shrouding Cracked Tear. This is because it increases your fire damage. So that’s your fire spells, which you’re leaning into, Flame Dance, and your regular attacks. And you also want to use Greenburst Crystal Tear to increase your stamina recovery.

You use a lot of stamina with this build. Block Counters, whips themselves consume a lot of stamina and you’re going to be casting a lot of spells and dodge rolling as well. So that’s a good one to take with it. That wraps up our Flame Dancer guide. I hope you guys enjoyed it. 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.