In this Elden Ring faith build guide, we are going to be showing you the templar build. This is the evolution of the paladin build, this is a level 50 version of this build. So if you've been wondering how to play a paladin as you advance the game, then you might want to check this build-out.

Elden Ring Faith Build Guide: How To Build A Templar At Level 50

How To Make Templar Build Work In Elden Ring

Starting with the equipment for this setup of the templar build:

• Brass Shield: This is absolutely just a fantastic shield for 16 strength, that pretty much outclasses any shield you can get up to this point barring great shields which have huge strength requirements. So you're going to stick with that shield at this point in time. 

• Noble’s Sacred Slender Sword: The sword for this build is the nobles slender sword, this drops from the nobles that kind of wander around the landscape and packs, you can find them in rail lucaria, you can find them in learning of the lakes, you can find them in limgrave, does take a while to farm this sword, it takes about an hour and a half. So if you don't want to farm this sword, you can just use a long sword or broadsword that the character begins with or any other weapon that you want that has minimal stat requirements, that doesn't have more than about 16 strength and about 10 to 12 decks just to keep those stats down. The reason to choose this sword for this build is that it has slightly longer reach than the long sword and it has slightly better critical rating, it has a 110 critical rating versus 100 and you do stagger enemies regularly with this build, which means when you go in for that critical strike you're going to do more damage. It deals a little bit less damage on average per attack in exchange for a little bit more critically, so it's probably a wash between the damage but you do have a little bit more reach than you do with the long sword and that can be really important as far as armor pieces for this build.

• Greathelm: We use the great helm because it looks very temporary just a pure fashion, it's very heavy has good defensive stats.

• Mausoleum Knight Armor: This just looks awesome, has very good defensive stats.

• Knight Gauntlets: Using the knight set for the gauntlets and legs. 

• Green Turtle: The green turtle talisman is absolutely vital for this build because you just chew through stamina, you're blocking and attacking and you need to recover stamina as quick as possible in order to be able to keep blocking and not get guard broken and to be able to go on the offensive. 

• Assassin’s Cerulean Dagger: The assassin's cerulean dagger might seem out of place because it gives you fp back on critical strikes. It's good for getting fp back that allows you to stack a lot of your flasks to the hp side of things and get away with few fp flasks because you can just regain it throughout the natural course of combat. And a lot of the weapon abilities you use and spells you use cost a lot of fp, so this will help manage your fp a little bit well. You can absolutely sub this one out if you want something else like the blessed do talisman is also a great pick here or tree's favor, if you like either of those you can sub this one out for that. 

• Curved Sword Talisman: This enhances your block counter damage, this is absolutely outstanding for this build because you do tons of block counters and you want them to hit as hard as possible.

Elden Ring Templar Gameplay – How To Play Templar Build 

A block counter is when you block an attack with your shield and then immediately hit r2 and you consume quite a bit of stamina to do an upward slash in this case with this weapon and it deals substantial damage and it's very fast and it deals incredible stagger damage. Usually, it will stagger average enemies, regular enemies, in one hit which allows you a critical strike which then is where the assassin's rear dagger comes into play. It usually takes two on some enemies and then three on bosses. 

In some ways, this is a very defensive build, it's very reactionary because basically the way you're going to play is you're going to approach enemies with your shield up wait for them to connect with your shield and then hit r2, it's not sort of dissimilar from a perry build except it's easier to do because you don't have to parry time the window for a parry, you can instead just wait for them to hit your shield and you have a half second afterward to hit r2. This is where the ash of war barricade shield comes in super handy because it costs very little fp and it reduces the stamina damage you take when blocking, so you're gonna lose very little stamina and blocking and enemies tend to rebuff off it, so they hit your shield they rebuff off. When you go to do your block counter, you're not in any danger of a follow-up attack for them a lot of the time. And because that costs fp as well that assassin cerulean dagger helps to regain some of that fp.

The two spells we use for this build are blessings boon and aspect of the crucible's tail:

• Blessing spoon is absolutely fantastic, it puts a heal over time on you and friendly allies in a radius around you and you can actually hold r1 and just like wait for them to get around you and then let go so you can preemptively cast it if you know they're gonna like come to you. But it's really good even when you're playing solo because if you're using something like the blessed do talisman and then you put this on you it lasts like 90 seconds or two minutes got a pretty long duration. You're gonna have a lot of health regen naturally over the course of a fight and then you're gonna have the fp replenishment from assassin's creed dagger.

• The other spell that we use for this is aspect of crucible's tail, this is your aoe ability. This class has very little aoe, especially using a straight sword, it doesn't have like a wide arcing swing, so you need that aoe and this thing has pretty good poise too if you get about halfway through the casting time if you hold down r1. If you keep holding it down, it'll do two sweeps just like the crucible knight does and that second one has a much wider aoe. The thing about this spell too is as incredible staggered damage meaning that you can drop a troll, it gives you that aoe that you need.

About the ash of war golden vow that on the noble slender sword for this build, either use sacred blade or golden vowel. Your sacred blade is good to give you a ranged option and it buffs your damage for about 15 seconds and you do absolutely incredible damage during this time. So if you need burst dps like if you're fighting granola or something and she's about to drop, you throw out a blade and then your buff for 15 seconds. So when you're attacking or you do incredible damage really good if you can pull this off repeatedly and keep this buff up. It's kind of hard to do like in fights with aggressive bosses because it takes about a second for pull this off, so it's not always useful but the damage is absolutely incredible when you need it. 

Golden vowel is got a longer buff period and it increases your defense as well as your attack, it doesn't give you nearly as much attack, but it also buffs your group including spirit summons. So if you plan on summoning spirits or if you plan on co-opting, it's really good, you combine that with uh the heal over time ability or spell rather. Then you can really buff your party and play like that paladin playstyle if you want.

Elden Ring Templar Attributes

- Vigor: 20

- Mind: 14

- Endurance: 20

- Strength: 16

- Dexterity: 12

- Intelligence: 9

- Faith: 29

- Arcane: 9

Increase vigor to 20, endurance to 20 and then met the minimum requirements for the brass shield at 16 strength and then start cranking faith, this not only buffs the weapon damage you deal because you're using sacred blade or golden vowel, but it's also going to increase the potency of your incantations whether that's the healing potency or the damage potency. And as you accumulate more and more incantations throughout the game, they're going to have higher and higher faith requirements and you're going to want them to hit harder and harder.

Elden Ring Templar Build Tips 

• 1. First, don't fall into the trap of being only defensive, it can happen that you can fall in love with block counter, guilty as charged and that you'll be facing enemies and you'll just stop r1 attacking, you'll just keep waiting for them to attack so that you can hit r2 and sometimes you'll miss openings where you could literally just deal damage to an enemy or a boss because you didn't hit r1 because you're just sitting there waiting to hit r2. So don't forget to r1 when you can and make sure you're ready for your block counter, but don't forget that you can actually attack with r1.

• 2. Use barricade shield liberally. Anytime you're facing a tough enemy or an enemy that has a hard-hitting weapon that is going to take substantial stamina off if you block, make sure you use a barricade shield or even a bunch of little enemies because the amount of stamina they rip off, you can pile up real fast if you're blocking three or four attacks in a row. So when in doubt, use a barricade shield, it actually puts your shield out for a split second while you're casting it that actually will block attacks even though you're not holding the block button when you're pressing it.

• 3. Another thing to mention with this build is that the charged r2 or when you hold r2 completely until it actually fires or does a thrust attack in this case, does incredible stagger damage it, does about the same amount of staggered damage as a block counter? So some enemies that maybe take like two-block counters to stagger if you get in one good thrust and then a block counter you'll stagger them or the bears for instance like in the mistwood forest, they take three block counters, so if you can get in two block counters in a thrust, you'll actually stagger them. So in some cases, you can lead a fight with a thrust like sneak up get a thrust on them and then get two-block counters or a block counter and stagger the enemy.

• 4. Lastly, make sure you upgrade your finger seal, your finger seal is going to give you improved incantations as well, do not neglect this. If you are short on upgrading materials, make sure you prioritize your weapon. But upgrade your seal when you can because you do want your incantations to be as strong as possible and this is a good way to make sure that happens.