Soulsborne video games have earned their name, not from the challenging learning curve but the wide variety of some of the best builds and playstyle players get to experience. Elden Ring, the latest adventure of Hidetaka Miyazaki, is no exception and, in many ways, is a much better-improved game than the previous series of video games released with this formula. Having some of the best weapons, spells, and incantations, making builds is the only way to explore and dominate enemies and bosses in the game. That is why we have curated the best Elden Ring Faith build guide for the players who love to hurl lightning bolts, cast red-colored ancient dragon lightning incantations or backstab lightning-infused swords into knights. 

You can continue reading the guide or watch our video for a detailed end game Faith build content. 

We have listed all the equipment that will allow you to make the best lightning build in the game. So, if you have some of the armor sets, weapons, sacred seals, talismans, and incantations, then you’re halfway in making the top-tier faith build that can melt enemies from a distance or up close and personal. While you’re at it, why not read our Elden Ring Weapons Tier List.

Even if you don’t have some or all of the gear items we have listed below for the lightning build, we still have listed a quick and short version of how to get all of them. Also, consider reading our Elden Ring Item Tier List and learn about the most and the least used items in the game. 

We would want our readers to make the amazing lightning build after reading our guide. So, without further ado, let’s get started.

Understanding how a build works in Elden Ring is critical in making an effective or weak build in the game. Faith build is one of those build types that can be extremely powerful or outright weak against enemies. That being said, there are plenty of lightning and holy nature-based incantations that you can use while having a Faith build in Elden Ring.

One, you can create a Faith build centered around doing ranged or medium to long-distance engagement from the enemies in the game. Two, you can make a hybrid build involving average investment into Strength and Faith character attributes in Elden Ring. This playstyle will allow you to balance the offensive and defensive aspects since your mode of engagement with enemies and bosses will be up close are personal. While mentioning bosses, consider reading our Elden Ring Bosses Tier List.

Whatever playstyle you select, investing runes into leveling up the character attributes is the most important aspect while making a faith or lightning build in Elden Ring.

Moreover, leveling up can be a hectic process since you’d require thousands of runes to reach at least SL100 or SL120 – which usually indicates an above-average build playstyle. That being said, read our Elden Ring Rune Farming methods if you want to fasten up the rune racking process in the game.

While making a build, your character attributes should be given the most attention since all of your weapons, talismans, armor sets, and more will reciprocate the scaling for which you leveled up your tarnished one. That being said, we have respeced our character attributes a couple of times and have finally created a pure lightning or faith build in Elden Ring that scales well with this playstyle. Here are the detailed aspects of leveling up each character attribute to create the perfect faith build you need.

You will want to prioritize leveling up Faith the most in Elden Ring since all of your incantations, which includes holy, lightning, flame, and more, will scale how high or low your character’s faith level is. That being said, we’d recommend you get at least level 60 Faith to have the maximum scaling. At this level, all of your incantations will deal the best damage to enemies and bosses.

With all the incantations casting as the core focus of faith build, you should put Mind character attributes as the second most priority while creating this build in Elden Ring. Otherwise, you’d frequently run out of mana and will use Cerulean flask repeatedly. We think you should at least take the Mind to level 40 since most of the time, it is the ranged, buff, and defensive incantations that will be your go-to mode of combat engagements.

The faith or lightning build in Elden Ring is nothing if you do not invest runes into vigor and have less than one thousand Health Points. Even if you wear or equip the heaviest armor in the game without having a decent amount of health bar, you’re likely to get one or two shot by bosses. That being said, you must have level 40-45 Vigor to be unstoppable or hard to kill by most mid to late-game bosses in Elden Ring.

Dexterity is another amazing stat that will reduce your spell casting times significantly. Moreover, taking Dexterity level to 20-25 will allow you to wield tons of some of the best dexterity weapons in Elden Ring, giving you enough room to try and test weapons for your faith or lightning build. Also, read our Elden Ring Dex Build if you want to try that playstyle.

Endurance is another critical character attribute that will allow you to wear the heaviest armor in the game and make your character take less damage. We suggest you should level up Endurance at level 35 for optimal performance of the build. Otherwise, you’d need to rely on mixed low-to-medium weight armor set pieces that will not offer decent physical and elemental protection from incoming attacks. Then, having a high Vigor stat will also become an inefficient stat level.

Most great and colossal swords, hammers, spears, and other weapons types in Elden Ring will require you to have at least a 25-30 strength level. That is why we recommend you take Strength to level 35 so that you can have a sort of hybrid build should you need to make a transition from a pure faith to melee build while keeping using the incantations. This way, you will not feel the necessity to consume larval tear and respec your character attributes.

Whether or not you make a hybrid build by investing in Strength is up to you. However, we did waste a larval tear to respect and put decent levels into Strength attributes for even a greater faith build performance. Also, read our Elden Ring Strength Weapons guide and learn about the top-tier STR weapons in the game. 

You will have no compulsion to level up Arcane and Intelligence while rocking a Faith or Lightning build in Elden Ring. Therefore, keep these two character attributes as low as possible and invest runes into other stat levels for optimal build performance in the game. While you’re at it, consider reading our Elden Ring Arcane build and Intelligence build guides if you fancy these two playstyles in the game. 

Wearing just the right amount of equipping load of armor sets is the key to excellent combat where you roll at wish and not get struck by enemy hits due to fat roll. That being said, the main objective of the build or your playstyle will definitely be to die less and kill more, and wearing the heaviest armor sets will ensure that you survive most enemy and boss encounters. So, it all comes down to how much Endurance you’ve leveled up of your lowly tarnished character. You can also equip some of the best talismans that will significantly increase your equip load, such as equipping the Great-Jar’s Arsenal talisman.

That being said, here are our top picks for armor sets if you are wreaking havoc on enemies and bosses using the lightning, thunder, or faith build in Elden Ring. However, our recommended armor sets do not take into account the Endurance level we’ve suggested above.

Briar Set, Crucible Axe armor set, Crucible Tree armor set, Gelmir Knight armor set, Godrick Knight armor set, Iron set, Kaiden set, Night’s Cavalry armor set, Royal Knight set, Malformed Dragon set, and the Tree Sentinel set. All of these armor sets should allow you to be equipped without overloading your equip capacity. If you still can’t wear these armor pieces, then sadly, you’d need to use a larval tear and respect your character attributes; only this time, invest more into Endurance as well.

We have respeced the character attributes a couple of times, and our go-to armor sets so far are Malformed Dragon set, Tree Sentinel set, and Night’s Cavalry armor set. We’ve listed below how to acquire these armor sets and get the best physical and elemental defense stats from enemies and bosses’ attacks in Elden Ring.

Obtaining the Malformed Dragon set is probably the easy to acquire armor set in the late game. All you need to do is kill the draconic tree sentinel that appears before the fog wall of Maliketh, the Black Blade in Crumbling Farum Azula. There is another draconic tree sentinel field-boss that appears in Capital Outskirts. However, killing that one will not drop the armor set for you.

You can acquire Night’s Cavalry armor set before coming to Crumbling Farum Azula; that is to say, you didn’t venture enough into Mountaintops of the Giants, killed Fire Giant, and did the cardinal sin. It is because the Night’s Cavalry armor set will require you to maneuver a little bit before you go further into Mountaintops of the Giants by venturing into Consecrated Snowfield.

The starting point to obtain this armor set in Elden Ring for your faith build is to locate the Inner Consecrated Snowfield site of grace and roam the southwest side of it during the night. Once you do that, you’d spot two giants pulling the caravan, which will be guarded by two Night’s Cavalry enemies. You kill them both, and you will be rewarded the complete Knight’s Cavalry armor set in Elden Ring. Here are the overall damage negation and other status ailment resistance for this armor set in the game.  

Finding the Tree Sentinel armor set is by far the toughest of all the armor sets we’ve listed above for the best faith build in Elden Ring. It took us a long time to triumph over the task at hand and acquired this armor set to give our lightning build the tanky appearance and stats. You can always go for other heaviest armor sets options that offer equal or above protection against physical and elemental attacks, but they also weigh too much. That being said, here is how you can obtain the Tree Sentinel armor set in Elden Ring.

The armor set is located inside Auriza Hero’s Grave, and you can obtain the armor after solving a puzzle that results in destroying the chariots that roam the hallways. You will need to watch a video guide for it since it will be difficult to comprehend the method to solve the said puzzle. Regardless, the Tree Sentinel is one of the best armor sets in Elden Ring, and if your Endurance of a combination of talismans allows it, equip this armor set for your faith build and get extra damage protection. Here are the detailed stats of the overall armor set.

Winged Scythe, Gargoyle’s Black Blades, Sacred Relic Sword, Treespear, and Sword of Night and Flame are our favorite picks if you want to have perfect lightning or faith build in Elden Ring.

Winged Scythe is an excellent faith scaling weapon that you can get in Elden Ring very early. Not only the weapon scales well as you level up faith character attribute, but Winged Scythe also comes with a blood loss buildup of 55 per hit. The best part about this scythe in the game is that it comes with a unique two-hit Ash of War by default that deals physical as well as holy damage. You can obtain the Winged Scythe from Tombsward Ruins. Once you’re there, you’d come across stairs that will lead you down towards a dark hall that is connected by a room containing a treasure chest.

Winged Scythe can’t be infused with other incantations for buffing purposes, and if you want to upgrade this unique weapon, you will need Somber Smithing Stones. To properly wield this weapon early game, you must put at least have a 24 faith level; otherwise, you won’t be able to get the best out of Winged Scythe.

Moving on to Gargoyle’s Black Blades, which is an excellent twinblade that scales well with faith and does physical as well as holy damage on enemies. This weapon also scales well with Strength character attributes, so the higher your Strength in the game is, the better damage out you can get out from Gargoyle’s Black Blades. Also, read our Elden Ring twinblade location guide and get this excellent dexterity weapon early game.

Obtaining this best twinblade faith weapon in Elden Ring can be done before reaching the Mountaintops of the Giants. You’d encounter Black Blade Kindred Just before the room containing Grand Lift of Rold. Gargoyle’s Black Blades will be given to you as a reward after killing this colossal enemy, which is fairly easy if you have a ranged weapon as opposed to a melee armament.

Like most named weapons in Elden Ring, you can’t buff Gargoyle’s Black Blades with incantations, and upgrading this weapon will require Somber Smithing Stones.

The next top-tier end game faith weapon that you should have while running a lightning or faith build in Elden Ring is Sacred Relic Sword. This weapon comes with a unique weapon skill called Wave of Gold that slashes foes as it covers an excellent distance. To properly wield Sacred Relic Sword in Elden Ring, you will need to have at least 24 Dexterity, 22 Faith, and 14 Strength.

Sacred Relic Sword is an end-game weapon and can be acquired after beating the Elden Beast and trading its Remembrance with Enia at the Roundtable Hold. Besides dealing the physical damage, this weapon also does a decent amount of Holy damage as well, and it scales with the Faith character attribute. Sacred Relic Sword cannot be buffed using various incantations and can be upgraded using Somber Smithing Stones only.

Treespear is an excellent offensive weapon that can be used with a shield equipped on other hand. Most spears in Elden Ring are used the most by having some of the best shields equipped on the other hand, and the same logic applies with Treespear as well. This weapon comes with Sacred Order Ashes of War, and you can also buff this weapon using various magic and incantations. Moreover, Treespear can be upgraded up to +25 using the Smithing Stones easily purchased from Enia after giving her various Bell Bearings.

Like Gargoyle’s Black Blades, you will need a high Dexterity to wield Treespear in Elden Ring for your faith build properly. You’d need 15 Strenght, 22 Dexterity, and 18 Faith to get the most of this spear in the game.

In order to find the location of Treespear, you will need to reach Liurnia Highway South Site of Grace and after that take the road that leads towards the southeast. You’d come across a stopped Caravan at the very edge of a broken bridge that will be guarded by a troll. Loot the treasure behind this Caravan to acquire the Treespear for your lightning build in the game.

Finally, we recommend using the Sword of Night and Flame weapon, which is actually a hybrid weapon for INT/FTH players in the game. It is because you will need to have at least 24 Faith and 24 Intelligence on top of 12 Dexterity and 12 Strength. The Night skill attack is based on the intelligence scaling, whereas the fire-based Flame attack scales with your faith scaling.

Before Patch 1.03, Sword of Night and Flame was one of the overpowered weapons in the game as its Comet Azur-Esque magic spell and fire tornado-type incantation dealt a huge amount of damage on enemies and bosses. However, after the patch, the weapons have been nerfed by 30% and 22.2% on both unique ashes of war. On the subject of spells, why not read our Elden Ring Spells Tier List and learn about various powerful incantations and spell in the game. 

Regardless of the nerf, Sword of Night and Flame is still a very powerful weapon if you’ve got it upgraded from Blacksmith to +10. Players can obtain this named weapon from Caria Manor. After accessing the walkways above the castle, players can jump down to the platform on the left and will come across a ladder leading down to a room. The Sword of Night and Flame weapon will be there inside the treasure chest.

All five weapons that we’ve suggested above are the best faith weapons in Elden Ring and will give better results if you use them with the faith or lightning build we’ve recommended in our guide.

Finger Seal, God Slayer’s Seal, Gravel Stone Seal, and Golden Order Seal are the best-sacred seals you can use for lightning, or pure faith build in Elden Ring. Of course, equipping more than one sacred seal will be inefficient since you’d be required to level up multiple sacred seals, burden your equip load, and more. That being said, Finger Seal can be used for early to mid-game faith build, and once you reach Stormveil Castle and have at least one stonesword key, you can acquire the Godslayer’s seal.

However, if your build relies heavily on the dragon and holy incantations during the mid to late game, it’d be better if you use Grave Stone Seal or Golden Order Seal for the passive buffs these two offers.

Acquiring the Finger Sacred Seal is pretty easy in Elden Ring as this can be a starting equipment for Prophet and Confessor starting classes. Other than that, you can always buy this sacred seal from Twin Maiden Husks for 800 runes after unlocking the Roundtable Hold location in Elden Ring.

Moving on to Gravel Stone Sacred Seal, which boosts dragon cult incantations that are the bread and butter of our faith or lightning build in the game. You can acquire this talisman after killing a knight having a spear in had near Capital Rampart Site of Grace. Once you’re at Capital Rampart in Leyndell, go to the next room that has a single guard. After that, jump over the balcony, and you’d come across two heavy armor-wearing knights. The spear knight will be backed up by a bow-firing knight. If you kill the spear knight, he will drop God Slayer’s Sacred Seal.

Finally, the Golden Order Seal is another excellent seal that can be acquired by visiting the Minor Erdtree Church Site of Grace, located outside the Leyndell. This sacred seal boosts the Fundamentalists incantations, which include Law of Regression, Radagon’s Rings of Light, Discus of Light, Immutable Shield, Law of Causality, Litany of Proper Death, Order Healing, Order’s Blade, and Triple Rings of Light.

Most of these incantations are not the focus of your faith or lightning build. However, if you want to rely on these incantations the most, then using the Golden Order Seal would be a better choice.

Whatever sacred seal you decide to use as your go-to incantations caster, you must ensure that you’re getting the passive buffs each four of the above-mentioned sacred seals offer. Otherwise, the incantations you’d use in the field will have ineffective attack power and will severely reduce the overall efficiency of the build.

Faithful’s Canvas Talisman, Lightning Scorpion Charm, Erdtree’s Favor, and Godfrey Icon are our go-to talismans for the pure faith or lightning build in Elden Ring.

The first Talisman, Faithful’s Canvas, significantly increases the overall potency or attack power of all incantations that a tarnished one casts: be it lightning, holy, bestial, flame, dark flame, or more. Players can obtain this talisman by venturing into Sellia Crystal Tunnel. Faithful’s Canvas Talisman can be found on a corpse that will be guarded by two insect-like creatures who are also called Prawn Miners.

The second talisman that you must have while rocking the lightning build in the game is Lightning Scorpion Charm. This talisman increases the lightning-based attacks by 12% for the entirety of the time you have it equipped on you. However, Lightning Scorpion Charm also penalizes you by reducing your overall damage resistance, and you’d be prone to get hit harder if you wore this talisman.

The best part about this talisman for a faith build is that if you happen to rely on hurling lightning bolts to deal direct or AoE damage, you will get at least a 12% increase in base damage right off the bat. If you want to obtain this talisman for your lightning build, then you must visit the Wyndham Catacombs. Lightning Scorpion Charm will be located behind an Imp statue’s fog wall, so you must also have at least one stonesword key to obtain this crucial talisman.

Another best part of using Lightning Scorpion Charm talisman is that you can even buff the base lightning attack damage by using Lightning-Shrouding Cracked Tear in your Flask of Wondrous Physick.

Moving on to the next important talisman for our ultimate faith build in Elden Ring is the Erdtree’s Favor. Since you’d be investing more rune into leveling Faith, Mind first, you can get increases Vigor, Stamina, and Endurance by equipping this talisman in Elden Ring.

You can come across three variants of Erdtree’s Favor in your New Game playthrough: Erdtree’s Favor, Erdtree’s Favor +1, and Erdtree’s Favor +2. All three are an excellent addition to lightning build. However, if you’re already in the late game, then getting the highest version of this talisman will give you better benefits with this build in the game. Erdtree’s Favor +2 can be found guarded by three fearsome Lesser Ulcerated Tree Spirits in Leyndell, Ashen Capital.

You need to start at Forbidden Lands Site of Grace, back it up to the elevator, and move into the Capitol. After that, take another elevator to go down. Take a right and walk down the stairs, and you’d encounter three Lesser Ulcerated Tree Spirits roaming around the Erdtree’s Favor +2 talisman.

The last talisman that benefits charged incantations, spells, and skills is Godfrey Icon. This talisman is relatively very easy to acquire as you’d need to enter and beat the boss of Golden Lineage Evergaol located to the right side after Grand Lift of Dectus operates and takes you up. Godfrey Icon is somewhere between early to mid-game, and acquiring these talismans is critical to how you progress your faith build in the game.

Having Godfrey Icon equipped will allow you to increase the base damage of all spells or skills by 15% if they’re charged. You can pretty much use this for Lightning Spear and other incredibly useful incantations that the pure lightning build offers.

Using the best crystal tears will amplify the overall damage you deal while running with the Faith build in Elden Ring. We recommend using the Lightning-shrouding Cracked Tear and Faith-knot Crystal Tear because the former increases the overall lightning damage by 20% for three minutes, and the latter increases the Faith Stat by +10 levels for the next three minutes. Using both will give you a significant bump on all lightning-based incantations that you cast on enemies and bosses. 

Faith or lightning-based incantations are the bread and butter of pure faith build in Elden Ring. We have discussed everything in detail, the incantations that are favorite, and we’ve tested them in the field as well. Your faith build will lack a punch if you’ve not equipped the incantations we’ve listed below.

Lightning Spear, Electrify Armament, Vyke’s Dragonbolt, Golden Vow, Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Spear, Ancient Dragons’ Lightning Strike, Fortissax’s Lightning Spear, Lansseax’s Glaive, Blessing of the Erdtree, Flame, Flame Grant Me Strength are our favorite incantations when it comes to running a lightning, or pure faith build. The Ancient Dragon or red-colored lightning incantations are excellent to deal AoE damage and apply self buffs.

If you ask us which is the best incantation in Elden Ring, then our answer would be the Lightning Spear. You can charge it and release an enhanced or high damage spear or spam it while maintaining distance from the enemies. Call us biased, or we have an inclination towards Lightning Spear, but we don’t think there is just a better incantation alternative to it in Elden Ring. Lightning Spear at Faith level 60 or above is so powerful that if you engage in a boss fight that has slow movement or boss arena is spacious, we ensure you that you can beat this boss by just using the Lightning Spear in the game.

Moving on from Lightning Spear, which is the offensive incantation in our Faith build, we believe Golden Vow is another excellent incantation that you’d rely on most of the time in the game. This incantation increases the overall attack power and defense not just for you but allies as well. All you’ve to do is cast this incantation while standing near your allies, and the buffs will be applied to every tarnished player.

Moreover, the effects of Golden Vow last nearly for 90 seconds, and during this time, you get a 15% damage increase across all equipped weapons and 10% damage resistance or reduction from the incoming attacks. Golden Vow is a must-have incantation if you’re running a lightning or faith build in Elden Ring because it offers offensive and defensive enchantment capabilities. On top of that, if you cast Flame Grant Me Strength incantation, you get an additional buff on physical damage dealing attacks.

This brings us to the third and most used incantation, Flame Grant Me Strength, and you’d have to rely on while running a faith build in the game. Although this incantation is more inclined towards a pyromancy build, but since this spell is a part of incantation, you can use it with the lightning build as well.

Flame Grant Me Strength increases the overall physical and fire-affinity attack power after you’ve cast the spell. The effects of this incantation do not apply to other players while playing the Co-op. While Flame Grant Me Strength does not last as Golden Vow does, the best part is that you can use it on top of Golden Vow to increase your overall attacks for a short duration.

Electrify Armament and Order’s Blade are another excellent choice to infuse your right-hand sword, katana, or another weapon type with lightning or holy damage in this build. The former is an excellent incantation to buff right-hand weapons damage, but the latter also has the extra feature of stopping the undead from reviving themselves after killing them. If you’re not running the main weapon with sacred or lightning infusion, then picking one out of these two will allow you to buff your weapon for a short time.

Moreover, a better alternative to these two right-hand weapon buffing lightning incantations is the Vyke’s Dragonbolt. Not only does this spell buff your right hand sharp or blunt weapon, but it also has effects on the caster’s body or armor as well. The incantation significantly decreases lightning damage resistance and increases the overall equipment load by 15% for 70 seconds after casting the spell.

The duration of Vyke’s Dragonbolt is shorter than Electrify Armament and Order’s Blade, but you can’t deny the fact that you get to have temporarily increased equip load, lightning resistance, and weapon buff all at the same time.

Ancient Dragon’s Lightning Spear, Ancient Dragons’ Lightning Strike, Fortissax’s Lightning Spear, Lansseax’s Glaive are the best ancient dragon lightning-oriented spells that we go every now and then while running with the faith build in Elden Ring. Most of these spells are excellent at doing AoE damage, and you can take out duo bosses or a crowd of 4-5 enemies pretty easily using the incantations we’ve listed above.

Now let us discuss the defensive or healing incantations that you’d have to rely on while running the faith or lightning build in Elden Ring. Blessing of the Erdtree and Erdtree Heal are our go-to defensive or healing spells while playing as a faith build character in Elden Ring. The former allows you to regain the lost health over a 90 seconds duration and the latter incantation gives you a vast HP back immediately.

There are two playstyles that you can go with while having lightning or faith build in Elden Ring. If you’re solely relying on ranged encounters with enemies and like to say at a distance that hurling lightning bolts from a distance should be your go-to moveset.

Other than that, if you’ve invested level 20 or above in Dexterity or Strength build like character attributes, then you can equip some of the best Dex or STR weapons effectively. Also, you can use Lightning Armament on them to increase bonus damage depending on your faith scaling.

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