In Elden Ring, Samurai using katana weapons is undoubtedly the most accessible class with the ability to create the highest DPS builds. Therefore, whether it is used for starting the game or exploring the endgame, Samurai builds are one of the most sought-after. If you're thinking of trying a brand new class, we recommend you try these Top 5 Samurai Builds that are set up with the most powerful katana weapons in Elden Ring, they are menaces in both PvP and PvE in any stage of the game!
Top 5 Elden Ring Best Samurai (Katana) Builds 2023
Here we are setting up the 5 best builds that we think encapsulate the best way to play as a samurai in this game and we'll just show you all the items that make up each of these late-game builds. Obviously, you can adapt them for any stage in the game, you just have to work with the skills that you have available to you - these do scale relatively well at almost any level, you're just going to have to make sure you prioritize the same types of skills for each build so use the points as you have them.
Related Read: Elden Ring Best Samurai Builds & Weapon Combos in 2024
Top 1 - Keen Nagakiba Samurai Build
Nagakiba is hands down one of the top five weapons, it has the exceptional reach and the stat requirements aren't too bad particularly if you two hand it. It outperforms the Uchigatana in just about every way - the Uchigatana in it is kind of neck and neck in terms of damage, but this has way substantial Reach. This weapon skill does fantastic damage particularly early on in the game if you use this as a samurai, even when your weapons are not upgraded, and it stays good throughout the whole game. When you get the added reach of the Nagakiba to that sort of R2 and R1 attacks out of your L2, you can absolutely get the drop on enemies that are going for a lineup for an attack and you can interrupt them with that attack so that they can't complete that attack and you get that damage on them while they're attacking which just prevents them from hitting you. That means you're sort of playing this build as a reactionary build a lot of times.
Build Setup
Weapons:
Right Hand: Keen Nagakiba+25
We only use Keen Nagakiba for two-handing, it has the best range of all the katanas. Due to its extended length, this katana stands out as the longest among all katanas, offering significant advantages in PvP and PvE scenarios, such as roll catching or creating distance against tougher opponents. Additionally, it features a powerful weapon skill known as Piercing Fang that can be replaced, along with a distinctive heavy attack that capitalizes on its extended reach through a thrusting motion, rather than the typical overhead slash. Aside from these unique features, it retains the standard katana moveset.
Armor:
Head: Iron Kasa
Chest: Nox Swordstress Aarmor
Arms: White Reed Gauntlets
Legs: Ronin's Greaves
When it comes to armor for this build this is all about fashion for us, we are trying to get that Samurai look or that Ronin look, so we really went and mix to match pieces to try and give us that and also make it a little bit different than the other Samurai builds.
Talismans:
Bull-Goat's Talisman
Great-Jar's Arsenal
Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman
Shard of Alexander
Get light to equip load being able to roll as far as you can possibly roll which is really nice plays very well in Samurai build, and you still have that 51 Poise breakpoint so that you can tank through one hit. We're also using the Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman to further increase our protection because we're not wearing the heaviest armor and a lot of times you're trading, and we also have the Shard of Alexander to further increase our damage with our unsheath attacks.
Stats (Level 150):
Vigor: 50
Mind: 25
Endurance: 38
Strength: 18
Dexterity: 80
Intelligence: 16
Faith: 7
Arcane: 9
50 Vigor is probably the bare minimum you want at the start of New Game Plus which is where I am in this footage, so you'll probably want to get this up to 60 throughout your game Plus in order to give yourself - you know enough Health that you're not one-shot by later game bosses.
25 Mind just gives us enough FP to play around with unsheath, you could probably drop this down to 20 if you don't mind drinking a blue flask every now and then.
The Naga Cuba is a stamina hog, it absolutely uses a ton of stamina whether you're R1 spamming or whether you're L2 unsheathing with your unsheath attacks your Dodge rolling coming out of that L2/R2, it just uses a ton of stamina for this build and also this helps us get to the lightly equipped load so that you can dodge Max Dodge distance and you know still be under that weight threshold. So you would need a lot of endurance plus the Great Jar's Arsenal with armor set that we're wearing in order to get that light to equip load.
It is enough to one-hand this weapon, you don't need to one-hand this weapon with this build, we are two-handing it pretty much everywhere, so you can drop this down to 12, the particularly early game we recommend this if you're just starting out a new playthrough don't go higher than 12 and just focus on your dexterity in order to get to that 22 mark more quickly and then you can two-hand the weapon.
This is about the point where damage really starts to fall off of this build, this makes this build not as good past New Game Plus, you're going to struggle with this in new game plus unless you switch to Quality at which point you need about 65 strength and 65 dexterity in order to get more damage than what we have now. And then obviously you can go up to 80 in both those and get some more damage that would put you ahead here.
Flask of Wondrous Physicks:
Greenburst Crystal Tear - Increases the speed at which you recover stamina, we go through a lot of stamina in this build getting it back more quickly means we can use it more quickly, so it's really good if you're being aggressive
Stonebarb Cracked Tear - Increases your Poise damage if you're going for that l2r2 attack strategy similar to Moonvile bosses going for the stagger, this will help you stagger them more easily so you can get those critical strikes or just attack them when they're laying on the ground
Thorny Cracked Tear - Or if you're going to the blood grease route and attacking rapidly with R1 attacks using the one that increases your damage with successive attacks is really good for this, so that'll give you more damage for that.
Top 2 - Bleed Nagakiba Samurai Build
This arcane bleed build is probably the most stereotypical one, so we have the arcane whitelands samurai or white reedlands or whatever you know wherever these people are from. It's pretty stereotypical as far as bleeds go but this build is very fun and got some unique aspects about it, particularly weapon choice and stuff. Obviously, when you have prep time for a boss fight, it's best to initiate all your stuff, first, so we get our Seppuku going on, then we're going to heal the life that took away take our physicks and then we're basically ready to go. The bleed samurai build does have significant strength against most enemies in the game.
Build Setup
Stats (Level 200):
Vigor: 60
Mind: 10
Endurance: 50
Strength: 41
Dexterity: 70
Intelligence: 10
Faith: 10
Arcane: 80
Our top priority for stats here is going to be arcane because we're going to want to get as much bleed build up as we can and that's going to help with the scaling for that. Then our next biggest one is going to be dexterity with 70 points. Then after that vigor, endurance, and strength are going to be your next most important ones because the weapons do also scale with strength so the higher that is the better they're going to do physical damage wise.
Weapons:
Right Hand Weapon: River's of Blood, or Blood Nagakiba+25 with Bloody Slash
Left Hand Weapon: Blood Nagakiba+25 with Seppuku
You could obviously go with River's of Blood, then you'd not only have the physical and the bleed which is what we're going for, but you also get fire damage. So then the build would look a little bit different because you might want to use some talismans or spells or something to give you a boost for fire damage and we find that river's of blood especially at a lower level is probably a better option, but once you're up to a high level for an end game build, we find the Nagakiba is also a good option and you put Bloody Slash on your primary one and Seppuku on your secondary one, it makes an incredibly powerful build, for one thing, your blood loss buildup is a lot higher. By putting these ashes of war on here and giving them the blood affinity, you give it arcane scaling of D which we think is the same as the River's of Blood, but it does give you an arcane scaling as well as your dex and strength and then your dexterity is going to be B which is going to make that's why dexterity is so important.
But instead of having the lower blood loss build up that the River's of Blood has you have 115 points of it with each of these if you do it this way at max, so these are both plus 25 which gives you a lot faster blood loss buildup, so it's almost twice as effective as the River's of Blood. Now obviously like we said River's of Blood also has fire and so you can specialize into that and you may not be able to get two Nagakibas up to plus 25 early games, so it really depends on your level and specialization.
Armor:
Head: White Mask
Chest: White Reed Armor
Arms: White Reed Gauntlets
Legs: White Reed Greaves
For our armor, it's white reed armor for the gauntlets, greaves, and the chest armor, and then for the helmet we're using the white mask because it gives us that sweet bleed advantage.
Talismans:
Shard of Alexander - It is going to greatly boost the attack power of skills, so any time we're using our skills on these it is going to be bloody slash.
Ritual Sword Talisman - It raises the attack bar when your HP is at maximum, so most of the game your HP is probably going to be up at the top. It's only like during boss fights or like when you're being just mobbed by a crowd of mob-type enemies that it's going to be lower, so you're going to have that initial boost to your attack power whenever your hp is at maximum.
Rotten Winged Sword Insignia - It greatly raises the attack bar with successive attacks again, we're going to be dual wielding, so we're going to be doing a lot of successive attacks, that's going to be a sweet boost to our attack power.
Lord of Blood's Exultation - The blood loss in the vicinity increases attack power and since this build is entirely surrounded by blood loss, it makes perfect sense that we'd be using that.
Flask of Wondrous Physicks:
Opaline Hardtear
Opaline Bubbletear
We don't have one that specifically needs to use with this build because it's really not about magic or potions or anything, but we do like to have this one as our go-to for builds. The Opaline Hardtear temporarily boosts all your damage negation and the Opaline Bubbletear significantly negates damage received, so both of those ones are going to be great for going into boss fights and stuff because they are just going to make you take less damage.
Top 3 - Intelligent Moonveil Samurai Build
This is the Ronin build that is an intelligence-based samurai build, one where we're going to incorporate a lot of magic into it and that's going to be the crux of it. For this one, we chose to go with Ronin's Set just because other than the whole role-playing thing about the whole samurai without master stuff and we think the outfit looks the most. When we're about to go into combat, we can just get our Glintblade Phalanx ready, and drink the Wondrous Physicks. With this gimmicky magic-type build, we can do incredible damage extremely quickly, so the Glintblade Phalanx and Transient Moonlight just do an immense amount of stagger to them, and then we're just able to shred them up with the dual wielding after that. So it's an incredibly effective build that you can both use for slaying the powerful bosses in PvE and dualing with the strong opponents in PvP.
Build Setup
Stats (200 Level):
Vigor: 51
Mind: 30
Endurance: 50
Strength: 40
Dexterity: 70
Intelligence: 70
Faith: 10
Arcane: 10
Weapons:
Primary Weapon: Moonveil+10 with Transient Moonlight
We use the Moonveil katana because of the transient moonlight's special attack, it does quite a bit of damage and also staggers the enemy rather well. Moonveil is an incredibly powerful Dex/Int weapon, it is an effective choice for delivering close-range Slash and Pierce Damage in combat. Additionally, the weapon possesses a unique ability that enables the wielder to draw it with incredible speed and unleash an instantaneous slash attack, unleashing a wave of luminous energy in the process.
Secondary Weapon: Cold Uchigatana+25 with Glintblade Phalanx Ash of War
For the secondary weapon, we go with another Moonveil weapon, because obviously if you have two of the same ones, it's easy to focus your skills specifically on it. If we go with the Uchigatana, we can add the Glintblade Phalanx ash of wear and give that the cold affinity which is going to give us an additional frost buildup. And we also have that blood loss buildup from the Uchigatana and if we put the Glintblade Phalanx on there, that's a great attack that can be used offhand, and it doesn't go away when you go back to two handing so you can just cast to that before you go into combat.
Left-Hand Weapon 2: Carian Regal Scepter+10 or Academy Glintstone Staff
Because we are going to do some casting with this one or it's great to at least have the option, we suggest use the Carian Regal Scepter if you've got this and you have a magic level high enough to use it or an high intelligence leve to use it. Otherwise the Academy Glintstone Staff is another great option, or pretty much anything and a lot of that's going to depend on what type of sorceries you want to pair with this.
Armor:
Ronin's Set
Our armor is going to be just straight up the Ronin's Set for the int samurai looking.
Talismans:
Green Turtle Talisman - Because this build is a stamina sucker, so having this on there and making your stamina recover significantly faster is a huge benefit since you're going to use a lot of stamina with this build.
Carian Filigreed Crest - This is always a great choice because it lowers the FP consumed by skills and we're going to be using our skills quite a bit with this, especially since Moonveil with the Transient Moonlight is going to be a big thing that we're using a lot of so it's great to have that since this is just going to take down the FP so we don't have to refill it as much.
Shard of Alexander - It's going to greatly boost the attack power of your skills, so when we're using that or we're using the Glintblade Phalanx, it's going to give us that sweet boost that makes them significantly more powerful.
Magic Scorpion Charm - It's going to raise your magic attack and lower your damage negation for it.
Flask of Wondrous Physicks:
Magic-Shrounding Cracked Tear - It is going to temporarily boost our magic attacks
Stonebarb Cracked Tear - It is going to temporarily make stance breaking easier, so that's great because a big part of this one is staggering our enemies and then just spamming dual like the dual wielding attack on them as once they're staggered they can't defend it and you can inflict an immense amount of damage quickly.
Top 4 - Uchigatana Samurai Build
This quality samurai is going to be the closest to a real-life samurai as possible, so we focused on the type of skills weapons, and gameplay style that would be common to that. So if you're one of the players that want to just straight up be a samurai, this is the build for you. As far as using this building combat goes, it's not going to be gimmicky, it's going to be just straight-up physical damage is mostly what we're going for, jumping attacks are going to have that big boost because of our talisman setup. This is just a very good bread-and-butter build that works under almost any circumstance since it's not based on gimmicks or a big process of casting a bunch of spells.
Build Setup
Stats (Level 20):
Vigor: 65
Mind: 10
Endurance: 65
Strength: 80
Dexterity: 80
Intelligence: 10
Faith: 10
Arcane: 11
65 points in vigor to give us plenty of health. No points in mind since this is a wretch build. 65 endurance because on most of your samurai builds especially the ones where your dual wielding you're going to need lots of stamina and of course, it's always great and able to move around really well. With any quality build your two main areas are going to be strength and dexterity, so we have 80 in both of those. Then nothing for intelligence, faith, and arcane.
Weapons:
Right Hand: Quality Uchigatana+25 with Stormcaller Ash of War
A great option is the Uchigatana with quality affinity. With the Quality Uchigatana's impressive damage output, agile mobility, and versatile capabilities, this build stands out as one of the top-quality builds in Elden Ring. Stormcaller Ash of War has a great special attack that deals decent damage but sticks with the theme of no extra magic or fire or blood or anything like that.
Off Hand: Quality Wakizashi+25 with Bloodhound's Step Ash of War
For this one, we almost considered doing the bleed affinity because it's a dagger and so you go for that anyway, but we wanted to keep it strictly quality so we have that attribute scaling. Bloodhound's Step is great if you're going to be using it for a dagger or just to help yourself move around the battlefield a little bit easier so you don't get hit as much it's kind of dealer's choice for what ash of war you want to use on your Wakizashi.
Secondary Weapon: Albinauric Bow+25 with Mighty Shot
As a secondary weapon, we use a long bow for this build because obviously, samurai were famous wielders of a very unique type of longbow, unfortunately, we don't have one in the game that's much like it but the Albinauric Bow is great.
Armor:
Land of Reeds Armor Set
For the armor, we're going to be going straight up Land of Reeds because we don't like having all the extra feathery-looking cape thing around it but Land of Reeds is so very standard there.
Talismans:
Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman - For this type of quality build, Dragoncrest Greatshield Talisman is going to give us a big boost of physical damage negation.
Claw Talisman - The claw talisman enhances jump attacks, as you will do a lot of jump attacks with a build like this so that's going to be a good talisman.
Bull Goat's Talisman - Bull Goat's Talisman is going to raise our poise, as this suit of armor doesn't have a ridiculously good poise so this talisman will help to some extent.
Rotten Winged Sword Insignia - We're going to be dual wielding going for rapid strikes on this, so this one greatly raises your attack bar with successive attacks.
Summon Ashes:
Mimic Tear Ashes - Obviously, if you're going to do a summon ash of war, then the Mimic Tear Ashes is a great one to go with because it's just going to make two quality samurai there other than that Black Knife Tiche Ashes or Dung Eater Puppet, or any of the real great summoning ashes will be good.
Flask of Wondrous Physicks:
2x Ruptured Crystal Tear - We have the ruptured crystal tear for both of them to get a big old powerful explosive.
Top 5 - River’s Blood Samurai Build
Finally, we have one of the most controversial weapons in all of Elden Ring, this item used to be extremely broken with the entire community at war complaining about it. Since then it got nerfed pretty hard so it's quiet now but we still rated a decent 6 out of 10. River's of Blood has less damage and less bleed buildup than it used to and it's pretty inaccessible until far later in the game at which point most late game bosses have high resistance or are straight-up immune to bleed. As a patch 1.06, the ash of war fare River's of Blood - Corpse Piler had both its damage and bleed buildup decreased when hitting an enemy with the ranged blood attack, but if you manage to hit the target with the physical part of the blade as well while using corpse piler the damage is still decreased but not by as much, either way, its bleed buildup was decreased across the board which means you'll most likely kill a Target before the bleed even activates. Fromsoft did give it a small damage buff in patch 1.07 but it's still not as good as it used to be. It does good damage and it's super fun to use still, but for applying bleed it's a bit suboptimal, we'd say it's a pretty honest weapon to use now since there are better ways to apply bleed, also a fun fact about the corpse piler it only deals physical damage. The weapon itself deals a mix of fire and physical but there is no fire damage on the blood slash.
Build Setup
Stats (125 Level):
Vigor: 50
Mind: 30
Endurance: 25
Strength: 20
Dexterity: 70
Intelligence: 9
Faith: 70
Arcane: 70
For your skill points, this is a full Arcane build which is the only stat you need for the damage. Throw the rest of your points straight into dex until around 70 or as well even into Faith with 70 Faith points to deal even more damage with your spells. The route you choose is all up to you but of course you can do all of that and then put the rest of your points into strength to be fully maxed out and deal even more damage than everything.
Weapons:
Right Hand: Occult Uchigatana + Great Knife (Early Game), River's of Blood (Late Game)
Left Hand: Dragon Communion Seal, Reduvia
The early game build consists of the occult to Uchigatana with bloody slash and the Reduvia power stands with your great knife, you can also obtain the dragon communion seal which boosts blood buildup on spells and scales with Arcane. This will be your setup until late game when you can get your rivers of blood extra Blood Spells and much later a second Reduvia. You can use the Dual Reduvia setup if you already have it but for new players, we found that the great knife is just as good when you first start out as a bandit, and it's excellent when dual wielding with the Reduvia since you can use blood flame on the great knife and it synergizes to rapidly build up bleed just as fast as two Reduvius.
Armor:
Head: White Mask
Chest: Hoslow's Armor
Arms: Hoslow's Gauntlets
Legs: Hoslow's Greaves
For armor just make sure you at least have the white mask since that stacks with the Talisman for the Lord of Bloods' Exaltation.
Talismans:
Rotten Winged Sword Insignia
Millicent's Prosthesis
Shard of Alexander
Lord of Blood's Exultation
Always use these for the most damage possible.
So now you have our top 5 best samurai katana builds in Elden Ring after the 1.09 patch, which we do think are both incredibly powerful in both PvE and PvP!
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