Elden Ring Strength Faith Build – Coldstorm Cleric Guide

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build – Coldstorm Cleric: Equipment

The reason we’re using the Chainlink Flail here is it has very high damage, it has high strength scaling generally, and I wanted to use it in a Block Counter sort of shield with a Greatshield, and Greatshields have high Strength, so it’s sort of a natural pairing there and it just made sense to put it with the Chainlink Flail because it has the best strength scaling of all Flails you can choose from. 

This weapon is not super hard to get, it drops from the Mad Pumpkin Head enemies, there are a few of these around Limgrave and in the Weeping Peninsula area, so if you want to farm this it’s not very hard to do, it just takes time. And I’ve picked up the Stormcaller Ash of War, and slapped it on here, that way when you’re spinning around and around you’re hitting enemies for blood loss buildup each swing, and once you eventually set this to the cold infusion, you’ll also build up Frostbite on them very quickly, triggering Frostbite and blood loss, and that does a lot of damage with the repeated strikes that you’re doing.

You might remember that we showcased this Ash of War on a Reaper weapon in the Grim Reaper build, but we did a little bit differently there, we used Bloodflame Blade on it, but we’re not doing that here because we’re using the cold infusion, and there are some advantages to using that cold infusion. First of all, it causes enemies to flinch a little bit, interrupting them, and if you cause them to flinch a little bit and then you hit them with Hemorrhage, and that causes them to flinch a little bit, which interrupts them, allowing you to keep swinging around more easily.

Additionally, you can pair this build with the Incantation Fire’s Deadly Sin, so that when you’re whirling around you’re removing the Frostbite status effect and then re-triggering it over and over, giving you increased damage significantly, and since we already have a good amount of faith with this build, this is very easy to add into it. 
So besides the Chainlink Flail, we’re using a Greatshield here. I’m using the Cuckoo Greatshield. It doesn’t matter which Greatshield you use, you’ll eventually want to use one early on if you’re playing this at the very beginning of the game. Probably just use a Medium Shield and then upgrade to a Greatshield when you have higher strength. Whichever Greatshield you want to use is fine, there are plenty of good ones out there.

I just happen to like the look of this one matching the fashion that I went with. The seal I’m using is the Clawmark Seal, which scales with Strength and Faith since we have a decent amount of Strength in this build and some Faith, but I’m really only using Golden Vow and Flame, Grant Me Strength here, so it’s not super important which seal you use unless you’re planning on using other offensive spells or maybe some heal spells or something like that. You can add them into this build if you want, which is why I’ve called it a Cleric build because you’re definitely very much set up for that.

I’m not using them here, but you absolutely can. And for armor, I have the Marais Mask, the Noble’s Traveling Garb, and two pieces of the Scaled Armor set for the look I’m going for. I kind of wanted this Cleric-y look that was white cloth and armor, and I used the Bull-Goat’s Talisman to get over the 51 poise threshold. If you were min-maxing, you would have some heavier armor and you wouldn’t have to fill a Talisman slot with that, but I’m going for fashion here, so I did that.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build – Coldstorm Cleric: Talismans

Other Talismans I’m using for this build are Shard of Alexander to further increase Stormcaller damage. You could use Warrior Jar Shard if you’re just starting a playthrough to get that 10% damage early on and you don’t mind killing Alexander but you’d be able to use it the whole game, whereas if you’re doing a NG+ playthrough Shard of Alexander is easily better. 

The other good Talismans for this build are Millicent’s Prosthesis or Rotten Winged Sword Insignia. Both of these are good for this build. You could even use Winged Sword Insignia and Millicent’s Prosthesis if you don’t have both of them. These are just good for repeated strikes and Stormcaller hits over and over, so if you hit over and over with your whirlwind, you’re just going to build up your attack power dealing more and more damage. 

I also have the Curved Sword Talisman here for increased Block Counter damage. We are Block Countering on regular enemies to take advantage of the Flail’s increased poise damage and range when doing Block Counters. We’re also using a Greatshield because we have high strength. After all, Chainlink Flail scales well with strength. So this just works well increasing your damage when you do them. You could use the Dagger Talisman for increased critical strike damage when you follow up as well if you want. That is a bit further in the game to get. 

Another good talisman for this build, Ritual Sword Talisman is good if you are at full health and you find you’re not taking damage, which is easy to do when you’re doing Block Counters. You just let enemies attack your shield most of the time and then Block Counter them, stagger them, etc. You could use the Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger to refund your FP when you do Block Counters to be able to use Stormcaller more often, etc. But you’re primarily going to use Stormcaller on tough enemies.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build – Coldstorm Cleric: Gameplay

Primarily, the strategy here is to buff with Golden Vow when you’re fighting tough enemies or bosses to increase your damage. You can use Flame, Grant Me Strength as well, although it’s not going to be as effective in this build because you’re going with the cold infusion. You’re only going to buff part of your weapon damage with it.

You’re not going to buff the whole thing, but it still increases your damage so it’s not bad to have for occasions where you need a little extra damage. But typically it’s going to be Golden Vow before you go into a tough fight. And if you are using the Flask of Wondrous Physick, you’re going to want to make sure you have the Thorny Cracked Tear eventually. That also gives you increased damage the more you successfully attack. So that kind of factors into Stormcaller as well. 

So then when you get into your boss fight, you’re going to try and look for an opening and then start using Stormcaller by basically just mashing L2. You can hit it three times in a row in succession, doing a ton of hits to the enemy and that’s going to trigger Hemorrhage, trigger Frostbite, and build up your attack power. The main thing here is having enough poise and waiting for the right opening so that you can just keep swinging. Hopefully, you’ll stagger or make that enemy flinch a couple of times when the Frostbite triggers and the Hemorrhage triggers that you can just keep using it and then the enemy just goes down and the boss just goes down real fast. 

As I mentioned, if you’re using Fire’s Deadly Sin, you’ll be able to reapply Frostbite. And since Frostbite takes 10% of the target’s health off when it triggers if you keep reapplying this as you’re just right on top of the enemy, their health bar is just going to melt. So you absolutely can do that once you get it. I didn’t showcase that here, but it’s definitely something you can do to make this build even more effective.

It’s a bit different than the Grim Reaper build where we’re focusing on Bloodloss buildup almost exclusively and Poison buildup. Where here we’re really focusing more on Frostbite, debuffing the enemy with that, and then triggering some Bloodloss as well.

Elden Ring Strength Faith Build – Coldstorm Cleric: Recommended Attributes Distribution

So at level 149, I got 50 Vigor, 30 Mind, 30 Endurance, 55 Strength, 12 Dexterity, 16 Intelligence, 25 Faith, and 11 Arcane. You don’t need Arcane or Intelligence at all for this build. It started as an Astrologer. That’s why that’s there. I was experimenting with other setups for this build which is why I have a couple of points in Arcane. But you don’t need any of these stats. So if you started as a different class you definitely have a better stat spread at this level. 

50 Vigor is there to just give you enough health to trade hits. You’re going to make sure you have plenty of Vigor with this build because you are just trying to whirlwind through hits basically when you’re fighting tough enemies and just keep the pressure on them so eventually they just melt. You need to have a high enough health pool as you’re leveling up to be able to pull that off. So keep increasing your Vigor as you make this build. 

Mind is there to be able to use your buffs and also to use Stormcaller whenever you want. The buffs actually use way more FP than Stormcaller does. So if you’re buffing with Golden Vow regularly, the FP pool is nice. But you don’t need that much Mind. This is probably the amount of Mind you’d have at the end of your first playthrough. Having 20-25 Mind early on is probably fine. 

Endurance-wise, we have a lot here to be able to use a heavier armor set or to spam Stormcaller and not run out of stamina. If you were min-maxing this build you would definitely use a more protective armor set probably. And you can take your Endurance up higher to use one if you want. 

Strength is at 55 for this build because Chainlink scales really well with Strength, even with the cold infusion. Still does better than Intelligence. If you wanted to add Intelligence to this build, eventually it’ll make maybe NG+ to get more damage. At some point, it would catch up to Strength, but I think Strength still does even better than Intelligence up a little bit higher than this. But it does start to drop off a bit around 55 Strength, which is why I didn’t go higher here. 

12 Dexterity is simply there to meet the requirements for the Chainlink Flail. And then 25 Faith is there to meet the requirements for Golden Vow. This also lets you use Flame, Grant Me Strength. And Fire’s Deadly Sin uses 19 Faith to meet the requirements for all these. You can also use other spells that require Faith to use if you want to add some healing spells, like Blessing’s Boon or something to this build. You can. 

You can take your Faith up higher if you want, particularly if you’re another class and you have a better stat spread than I have. And as far as Great Runes go, I think Godrick’s is really good for this build. You use a lot of stats. You have six stats that you need for this build. Intelligence doesn’t hurt because you’re doing cold scaling, so that’s extra damage. So really you’re only wasting it on Arcane a bit.

Radahn’s is also not bad, giving you more HP, Stamina, and FP. That’s not bad either if you get that one eventually. But I think Godrick’s is the way I would go here. So that wraps up the Cold Storm Cleric build. I hope you guys enjoyed it. I like the Stormcaller Ash of War. I wanted to showcase it here on one of the Flails, doing it slightly differently with more of a focus on Frostbite.

It’s just a really fun build. Flails actually decent in this game, even though a lot of people don’t use them. I wanted to showcase a way that you could use one effectively. Stay tuned. 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.