Elden Ring - Rivers Of Blood Katana Build Guide - How To Build A Sanguine Samurai (level 150 Guide)
Elden ring sanguine samurai guide
In the cell ring article, I'm going to be showing you my sanguine samurai build. This is a level 150 build for the end game, and this is the first of our 150 endgame series. We're going to have a bunch of these articles. I don't know if they'll come out quite as quickly as the other ones because there's a lot more testing.
There are a lot harder bosses at this point of the game, and I need to make sure each build can beat these bosses and tweak them accordingly, so they might come out a little bit slower, but we're going to do lots and lots of end-game builds.
How to make this build work
So let's talk about rivers of blood. This is the weapon that we will use for this build.
It is obviously a very, very hyped weapon. There are lots of articles all over the internet about it, and it is very, very strong, extremely strong, and it deals both physical and fire damage. It scales off strength, dexterity, and arcane damage. I would say And something interesting is that even though arcane is only descaling here, you can actually see if you scroll points like during respect or something like that, you'll actually come out ahead putting points in arcane if you just go like all arcane versus all dexterity.
Even though dexterity has a scale, arcane seems to do better anyway. And what's really great about that is points into arcane increase the blood loss buildup, meaning that you're going to set the hemorrhage status effect even faster, which is one of the great things about bleed builds, so putting points into arcade night is not only better for your damage with this weapon but also better for your bleed buildup.
It's a win-win. The weapon skill itself actually does both fire and physical damage too, in my testing, so the weapon skill isn't just physical or just fire or something like that, so it doesn't mix both damage types, and its damage actually increases with the weapon level as well as the scaling from your arcane and dexterity.
So cranking these, which you're going to do anyway, benefits this build immensely. The corpse piler skill itself is a little unique, but not completely. If you use the double slash ability on something like the nagakiba or uchitana, you basically get the same moveset. However, you do actually more bleed build up and more damage with corpse.
Even though the weapon itself, when compared to the nagakiba and uchikatana at the same upgrade status, with you know, having the blood affinity set on both those weapons, is higher by default on those weapons, the weapon ability actually sets the status effect faster, so it actually increases the blood loss buildup than your regular attacks with rivers of blood could be.
You can see from my testing on the troll here that swinging twice with rivers of blood sets the hemorrhage status effect even though I only have like 73. It builds up compared to like naga kiba and ushitano, which is much higher, but it takes three hits from those to set it, so there is seriously some blood loss buildup being added to that effect, which is how you're able to set blood loss, you know, hemage on enemies a lot faster.
Also, what's really good about the corpsepiler's weapons skill is that it has a better range. It has a further range than either the nagakiva or the uchigatana. Even though the nagakiba is a close second, it's still not as far and it allows you to cue this weapon art up faster. You know, as enemies approach you, so that you can get into the meat of it.
The first couple swings are slower and the next three are much faster, so sometimes you want to preemptively swing that first one even though you know you're going to miss with the first swing because you want to get into that second combo, because it deals a lot more damage and is far more likely to trigger the hemorrhage status effect.
One of the things about this combo is that it doesn't stagger enemies hardly at all, so you're not going to go for staggers with this build and you're relying on that hemorrhage proc to sort of interrupt an enemy's attack while you then go into another combo with this ability. So getting into that second combo is what's going to guarantee that you're going to hemorrhage.
If you don't get it in two hits and the enemy doesn't stagger, if you're point blank, you're going to take damage, but if you miss the first one, hit the second one, and then get two more hits real quick before you swing and you interrupt him with that slight interruption from getting the hemorrhage to proc, then you're safe and then you'll hit one more time and you can do, you know, your finishing animation, for even more damage.
I'd like to use the sacrificial axe in my offhand for this build. The reason for that is that this webinar just consumes Fp like crazy. You're going to be using it all the time. The regular r1 attack with this weapon is something you shouldn't be using unless you absolutely have to. You should be going with the corpse piler as much as you can.
The saffron official axe being in our off hand, even though we don't use it or meet the requirements for it, gives us 4 FP with every kill we have. So this is going to help you get your FP back. That's going to allow you to use this ability much more frequently. Additionally, we have the carried in filigreed crest slotted here as well, to further reduce the cost of this.
You can just spam it and we have a lot of minds as well, so you don't have to worry about it. This should become your default attack if you're using rivers of blood. I also have a seal that I use for this build. As I mentioned, the weapon does both fire and physical damage, so that synergizes really well.
However, if you're going to take this build higher, like if you're going to go up higher levels, you're probably going to get more out of putting ten more points into faith, getting 25 faith, and using Golden Vow to boost your damage by a further 15. Then you will invest 10 more points into dexterity and arcane however you want, because the damage is really starting to drop off at this point per point investment in those stats. That doesn't mean you can't continue to crank those moving up, but you'll probably want to get to 25 faith first and then continue cranking decks in arcane.
Armor
What armor you use for this build isn't super important as long as you can medium roll, but there are a couple of headpieces that are really good for this build.
Number one is the Okina mask. This increases your dexterity by a factor of three, which is just great and also sort of fits the samurai theme. The other option is the white mask, which increases your attack rating by 10 for 20 seconds when something around you suffers from blood loss. This is going to be constant.
