Best Fire Knight’s Greatsword build in Elden Ring

Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree adds tons of powerful weapons, and one of them is the Fire Knight’s Greatsword. Fire Knights are among the most troublesome enemies you encounter in the DLC, and some of them carry this new Colossal Sword.

Once you acquire this uncommon drop, here’s how you can build around it.

The best Fire Knight’s Greatsword build in Elden Ring

In Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree, the Fire Knight’s Greatsword primarily scales with Strength and has secondary scaling with Dexterity and Faith. It’s important to give it Fire affinity using Ash of War: Flaming Strike so it can deal an even mix of Physical and Fire damage.

If you’re coming from the base game with different stats, you should use a Larval Tear to respec your character before working on this build. If you don’t have the weapon yet, check out our guide on how to get the Fire Knight’s Greatsword in Elden Ring’s DLC.

Stat distribution

Since all your damage output comes from your Fire Knight’s Greatsword, investing points into Strength first is vital. Once the stat reaches 40, turn your attention to Vigor and Endurance by leveling up the former to 40 and the latter to 30. When you feel like you’re tanky enough, invest some points into Dexterity and Faith for scaling before going back to Strength.

This is what your endgame stats should look like:

• Vigor: 50
• Mind: 15
• Endurance: 35
• Strength: 50
• Dexterity: 20
• Intelligence: Base level
• Faith: 20
• Arcane: Base level

Rune Level 180 is probably the point at which you’ll achieve these stats. Any stats gained from additional levels beyond this point should be invested into more Strength for damage. If more survivability is what you need instead, level up Vigor to the soft cap of 60.

Crystal Tear concoction

The Bloodsucking Cracked Tear is a new Crystal Tear introduced in Shadow of the Erdtree. Similar to the old Power Within spell in Dark Souls, this buff increases your damage output by 20 percent at the cost of minor health drain per second for three minutes. When you need an endgame damage boost, there is no better Crystal Tear.

There are two options to mitigate the health drain from this Crystal Tear. You can either mix it with the Crimson-Sapping Cracked Tear to restore your HP through attacks or the Crimsonburst Crystal Tear to steadily recover health per second.

If you can balance out the health drain with flasks, the Strength-knot Crystal Tear is a good secondary tear for your Flask of Wondrous Physick. Having more Strength improves your endgame damage even further.

Gear breakdown

This build will have you use one primary weapon and one secondary weapon. The Fire Knight’s Greatsword deals both Physical and Fire damage; if you want to enhance its Physical damage, give it a Heavy affinity to scale more with Strength. Our build involves infusing the weapon with the Flaming Strike Ash of War, though, to increase its Fire damage output.

Flaming Strike is equally great for PvP and against bosses because of its high rate of stagger and poise damage on its successive attacks.

The secondary weapon for this build is the Sacrificial Axe. Since you’ll be using Flaming Strike repeatedly, you need to regenerate your FP. The Sacrificial Axe restores four FP every time you kill an enemy, and this buff applies even while the weapon isn’t in your active hand. This means you can wield the Fire Knight’s Greatsword in both hands.

For your armor, equipping the Fire Knight’s Set goes well with your main weapon. There is no specific armor set you need for this build, just ensure your equip load doesn’t exceed medium so you can maintain proper rolls.

Talisman breakdown

Four talismans work perfectly for this build:

• The Two-handed Sword Talisman is a new DLC talisman that increases the damage of your Fire Knight’s Greatsword by 15 percent as long as you’re wielding it with both hands.
• The Shard of Alexander greatly increases the damage of your weapon skill. Equipping this Talisman increases the damage of your Flaming Strike, amplified further with more Fire damage.
• The Fire Scorpion Talisman is another way to increase your Fire damage even further. Equipping this Talisman boosts your Fire damage output by 12 percent, which stacks with the increase to Flaming Strike through the Shard of Alexader.
• The Ancestral Spirit’s Horn ensures your FP is always topped off. Combined with the Sacrificial Axe, this talisman recovers seven FP every time you defeat an enemy.