[Top 5] Elden Ring Best Paladin Builds That Are Powerful (Up to level 200 in NG+)

Updated:

22 Jul 2024

The Tarnished Paladins

The Lands Between are a vast territory of powerful enemies and fallen gods on the way to the Elden Throne. But even in the squabbling fighting in a godforsaken land there are still a few Tarnished faithful. The Paladins are a strong way to play Elden Ring that rely on great incantations and blessings from the Erdtree to lay enemies low.

Building your Paladin to fit you:

Every Build has some kind of stat set that it likes to focus on and for the Paladins that's traditionally a Strength and Faith combination. They rely heavily on incantations to build up their combat or to heal, so faith is a big deal in every paladin build. Strength makes for a powerful weapon, and endurance builds up the durability of the warrior in a fight.

Paladins are pretty much your standard sword and board class so with those stats in mind, it's pretty easy to lean into the sword and board because so many of the best shields scale with strength and dexterity. Not only that, but when you get into it, some of the best weapons in the game fall into the sword and board category so this is a fun way to really get into Elden Ring the good old fashioned way, like a Hero or a Paladin of the realm.

Almost every Paladin build will have Golden Vow in their spell slot, but after that it really varies depending on what you're going for. There are plenty of options to really charge into battle and have a lot of fun playing the part of a holy knight. Paladins are a fun build and a central classic theme to any Fantasy RPG playstyle.

Ranking the Top 5 Paladins

5: Perfect Paladin

Upholding the Sacred Order

The Perfect Paladin is originally a build inspired by the Noble Swordsman and the Perfect Paladin builds by Fextralife. Paladins are a powerful type of fighter that relies on their holy faith and this build is no different. It makes full use of the incantations that can be found all over the map and the prayer books.

The Build for this one is as traditional as the player can get with a high focus on Faith and Strength with some put into Dexterity and Intelligence, There will be a more even point spread than other builds, but that’s just because this build meets the base stat requirements for a larger group of needs than the other builds which get more inventive with a specialized play style.

Why this build is good:

This is a swiss army build and it gets the job done. Since it's a jack of all trades, it doesn't really bring it home on any one skill, but it can make use of anything in a pinch. This may mean spending more time around a Site of Grace while you’re tweaking your spell lists, but this build will make sure that you’ve got a solution tucked away.
This build is also good because of the fact that it is self correcting. Some builds tend to just hope for the best in the skills that they pump up but in this case the player can put a little bit more focus into making sure that they’re able to handle each boss without changing too much of their playstyle.
This is a build that can be started as early as Limgrave in the original playthrough. The Lordsworn’s Straight Sword and Noble's Slender Sword can be found early on and they can be used and pumped up most of the game until the player gets into their better weapons. But since this is a build that focuses on enchantment and Holy damage, there are plenty of ways to start this build much earlier than the usual NG+ needs of other builds

Gear Loadout:

Primary Weapons:

Miquellan Knight's Sword

Physical 105, 68 Holy
Requirements 11 Strength, 11 Dexterity, 16 Faith

The Miquellan Knight's Sword was the original sword for the Fextralife Perfect Paladin build, and it does a really good job for a weapon here too.

Night Rider Glaive

Physical 129
Requires: 26 Strength, 10 Dexterity

This weapon has the ability spinning slash which means that it can be enchanted with Vykes Dragonbolt or electrify armament. Vykes Dragonbolt gives us an 35% increase to equip load, which is never a bad thing

Nobles Slender Sword

Physical 101
Requirements: 8 Strength, 11 Dexterity

This weapon is a jack of all trades sword and is one of the longest and most useful in the game. It can also be enchanted with just about anything which makes it good for any situation so long as the player has prepared right and set their skills and affinities right.

Secondary Hand:

Erdtree Seal

Requirements: 40 Faith

The Erdtree seal is a great seal and scales with incantation well. For this build we really like our faith so this seal helps us with a lot of our faster casting.

Eclipse Crest Greatshield

Requirements 32 Strength

This shield is a powerful greatshield that can guard the character while making bigger attacks or taking on other foes. It also gives a flat buff of 50 to Robustness, Focus, and Immunity.

Jellyfish Shield

Requirements: 20 Strength, 14 Dexterity

This is the best shield for this build since the player can enchant their armament with their seal, then switch to their shield and buff up the damage even more with contagious fury. This is also the lightest greatshield in the game and it offsets some of the heavier armor options.

Armor Loadout:

Helms:

Consorts Headpiece
Okina Mask
Haligtree Knight Helm
Maliketh's Helm

Armor:

Maliketh's Armor
Haligtree Armor

Gauntlets:

Maliketh's Gauntlets
Haligtree Gauntlets

Legs:

Maliketh's Greaves
Haligtree Greaves

Extra Essentials:

Talismans:

Shard of Alexander – increases the power of skills 15%
Bull-Goat's Talisman- Boosts poise 33%
Great-Jar's Arsenal- Greatly increases maximum equip load
Sacred's Scorpion Charm- Greatly increases holy damage
Lightning Scorpion Charm- Greatly increases lightning damage
Curved Sword Talisman- Increases your block counter damage by 20%
Green Turtle Talisman- Increases Stamina recovery rate

Spells and Incantations:

Golden Vow- Increases Physical Damage by 15% and Damage negation by 10% (25 Faith)
Flame, Grant Me Strength- Boosts physical and fire damage by 20% (15 Faith)
Vykes Dragonbolt- electrifies the body and right armament with red lightning while increasing the equip load.
Electrify Armament- electrifies the right hand armament with lightning damage.
Great Heal- restores a substantial amount of health (15 Faith)
Wrath of Gold- inflicts an AOE of gold damage that staggers and throws back smaller enemies (32 Faith)
Radagon's Rings of Light- produces several rings of light that deal a large area of damage around the caster (31 Intelligence,31 Faith)
Poison Armament- Poisons the right hand armament (10 Faith)
Bloodflame Blade- Enchants the right hand weapon with bloodflame (12 Faith, 10 Arcane)
Blessing of the Erdtree- Regenerates a portion of health over time and can be combined with Royal Remains Armor (38 Faith)

Stats:

50 Vigor
25-33 Mind
30-35 Endurance
40-60 Strength
25-30 Dexterity
30-35 Intelligence
45-65 Faith
9-18 Arcane

Build Credits:

Perfect Paladin by Fextralife

http://fextralife.com/elden-ring-strength-faith-build-guide-perfect-paladin/

Crusader by Fextralife

http://fextralife.com/elden-ring-advanced-paladin-guide-crusader/

Templar by Fextralife

http://fextralife.com/midgame-faith-build/

Noble Swordsman by Fextralife

http://fextralife.com/elden-ring-straight-sword-build-noble-swordsman-guide/

4. Lightning Dragoon

Smite the Enemy

This build is made to smite enemies with the power of holy lightning and leaving nothing to stand in your way. Lightning is one of the most devastating elemental powers in the incantations and it can one shot most trash mobs with the right spell when it is used. That doesn’t make lightning the ultimate, but it is one of the most powerful and the least guarded against with the most variety of spell choices in the incantation list.

The Important stats for this build are going to be a spread range of Faith, Dexterity, and Strength. Dexterity is a big deal for using weapons like the Bolt of Gransax which is going to be the main weapon for this playstyle. And really? This build is about the Bolt of Gransax and any other lightning damage that can be hurled at the enemy.

The build does need a high faith count, sitting at least at a 45 although I would crank it up to 65 just for the scaling and the incantation speed. The build focuses around Bolt of Grandsax, but there are also a lot of alternate weapons that need strength, and a lot of the best shields for this build scale with strength as well. It's good to fill out the ratio between those three and go for the damage.

Why this build is good:

Lightning Damage is probably one of the more powerful elements in Elden Ring and they make some pretty tough builds around it. It's not well guarded against Fire or Holy, and it can be buffed up quite a bit depending on how the player spreads out their stats.
This build makes good use of range and close fighting, between the Lightning Strikes and the Lightning Spears it takes care of the mid range pretty well. And at close range, your main spear is still a good weapon. If you don't want that, Vyke's Dragonbolt and Electrify Armament both can buff up any weapon of your choice that can be enchanted.
One of the good things about having any kind of build that uses enchantments on the weapon is that you can choose how you play a lot more carefully. Anything that can be enchanted in the right hand is going to get some real power added to it, and that makes it very adaptable.
Lightning Spells in this game can be fairly useful in clearing out trash mobs quickly. This is always useful in farming runes or trying to complete some task in the NG+

Gear Loadout:

Picking your Primary Weapon:

Bolt of Gransax

Requirements 20 Strength, 40 Dexterity

Bolt of Gransax is probably considered the best lightning weapon in the game and it has its own built in range damage. It's a little slow in the melee aspect, but that's what makes weapons like Dragon Halberd so nice to use when we need them.

Gravel Stone Seal

Requirements: 4 Strength, 18 Faith

Gravel Stone Seal boosts Dragon Cult Incantations so it buffs a lot of the spells in the arsenal. It does have weight to it but it still gives a lot of benefits to this build to make it worth carrying.

Dragon Halberd

Requirements: 22 Strength, 10 Dexterity

Dragon Halberd makes the list because Halberds can be pretty powerful and this one does both Lightning and Ice damage. It also fits into the stat specs for the build so it makes it a useful alternative if you want to keep your spell slots reserved for range and focus on using the abilities of your weapons up close.