Elden Ring: The Best Classes for Your Playstyle

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Before you can step into the Lands Between of Elden Ring, you first have to choose a class for your Tarnished. Although your character stats can be easily tweaked, and you’ll unlock a respec feature down the road, picking a proper class when you start playing Elden Ring could give you a slight advantage in terms of specific starting stats distribution and equipment for your preferred playstyle.

Attribute/Stats Explanation for Elden Ring Classes

Before we get to which, class goes best with what kind of playstyle, here are the basic explanations about Attributes and character stats in Elden Ring.

Attributes explanations:

Vigor: Increases HP, Fire Resistance, and Immunity.
Mind: Increases FP (Focus Point) and Focus.
Endurance: Increases Stamina, Robustness, and Equip Load.
Strength: Increases Physical Attack Damage, Physical Defense, and for equipping heavy equipment.
Dexterity: Decreases casting time, fall damage, harder to fall from Torrent, and for equipping light equipment.
Intelligence: For Sorcery spells, increases Sorcery Magic Damage for Sorceries and Magic Resistance.
Faith: For Incantation spells, increases Incantation Magic Attack.
Arcane: Increases Discovery, Vitality, Holy Defense, required for certain Incantations

Character stats explanations:

HP: Health Points, enough said. Healed by resting at a Site of Grace or consuming a Flask of Crimson Tears.
FP: Focus Points, used when using magic spells (Incantations and Sorceries). Filled by resting at a Site of Grace or consuming a Flask of Cerulean Tears.
Stamina: Consumed when running, dodging/rolling, attacking, blocking, and sprinting with Torrent.
Equip Load: The total weight of all equipment you’re using. The higher the Load, the slower you are.
Poise: The higher your Poise, the harder you’re to be knocked off.
Discovery: Increases the likelihood of discovering items when defeating foes.
Memory Slots: The number of slots available for Incantations and Sorceries.

Picking The Best Class for Your Playstyle in Elden Ring

In Elden Ring, classes are only a “starting point”; picking a proper class can give you an advantage for the early part of the game. Nevertheless, you can tweak the Attributes along the way, and there are soft caps for Attributes anyway, starting around level 40. With that out of the way, here are the best classes you should pick, depending on your playstyle.

Wretch – Hardcore/Clean Slate Build

Starting Level: 1
Starting Weapons: Club
Starting Armor: None
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 10
- Mind: 10
- Endurance: 10
- Strength: 10
- Dexterity: 10
- Intelligence: 10
- Faith: 10
- Arcane: 10

Do you claim to be a Souls veteran? Or do you always pick the most challenging difficulty when playing a new game? Then you might want to start with the Wretch class. Like the Deprived and Waste of Skin from FromSoftware’s previous works, Wretch starts you off with the bare minimum of level and equipment but completely balanced stats distribution. On one hand, this gives you total control over your character growth. On the other hand, your journey begins with a huge handicap compared to other classes.

Vagabond – Strength Build

Starting Level: 9
Starting Weapons: Longsword, Halberd, Heater Shield
Starting Armor: Vagabond Knight’s Armor Set
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 15
- Mind: 10
- Endurance: 11
- Strength: 14
- Dexterity: 13
- Intelligence: 9
- Faith: 9
- Arcane: 7

Vagabond is the one to pick if you like the classic, tried-and-true action RPG swordsman archetype. It starts with the biggest health bar and ability to use myriad weapons thanks to its high Vigor, Strength, and Dexterity. With that in mind, most people often spec into an STR build and look for heavy weapons like Greatswords (powerstance and jump attacks are somewhat overpowered) and heavy armor for high Poise. Focus on putting points into Endurance, Strength, Vigor, Dexterity, and/or Mind first, depending on what kind of equipment you want to use. You can try to increase Intelligence/Faith for a hybrid magic build, but it’s not really recommended; we’ll get to better classes for that later.

Samurai – Balanced Melee Build

Starting Level: 9
Starting Weapons: Uchigatana, Longbow, Fire Arrows, Arrows
Starting Armor: Land of Reeds Armor Set
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 12
- Mind: 11
- Endurance: 13
- Strength: 12
- Dexterity: 15
- Intelligence: 9
- Faith: 8
- Arcane: 8

Samurai is considered to be a very flexible melee-focused class. It comes with a Longbow and two types of arrows as well as Bleed-inflicting Uchigatana as its default weapons, letting you easily engage enemies in long and close-range combat and excel in mounted fights. Put points on Dexterity, Vigor, Endurance, and Mind. Intelligence and Faith if you’re going with a hybrid build. Stay away from the Samurai if you want to focus on a magic build; otherwise, it is one of your best options for a starting class.

Hero – Barbarian Build

Starting Level: 7
Starting Weapons: Battle Axe, Large Leather Shield
Starting Armor: Hero Armor Set
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 14
- Mind: 9
- Endurance: 12
- Strength: 16
- Dexterity: 9
- Intelligence: 7
- Faith: 8
- Arcane: 11

If Vagabond is the basic swordsman, then Hero is the Conan-like barbarian. As you can see, it comes with the highest Strength Attribute compared to other classes. Grab heavy weapons like Greatswords and a variety of Colossal Weapons, concentrate in Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, and Vigor, then go to town.

Warrior – Dual-Wielding and DPS Build

Starting Level: 5
Starting Weapons: Scimitar (x2), Riveted Wooden Shield
Starting Armor: Swordsman Armor Set
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 12
- Mind: 10
- Endurance: 15
- Strength: 11
- Dexterity: 15
- Intelligence: 9
- Faith: 7
- Arcane: 10

High Dexterity and Endurance give you an easier time to sneak in damage since you have more stamina for dual-wielding light weapons. Since you want to keep up your DPS, getting weapons that can easily build up Bleed (or Ashes of War like Bloody Slash) as soon as you can is one of the best strategies when starting as a Warrior. You can also try relying on small shields to parry incoming attacks. Concentrate on raising Vigor, Dexterity, and Endurance, as well as Arcane if you go with Bleed.

Bandit – Archer and Backstab Build

Starting Level: 5
Starting Weapons: Great Knife, Buckler, Shortbow
Starting Armor: Bandit Set
Starting Magic: None
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 10
- Mind: 11
- Endurance: 10
- Strength: 9
- Dexterity: 13
- Intelligence: 9
- Faith: 8
- Arcane: 14

For those of you who enjoy playing as an archer or dealing that delicious critical backstab. Focus on raising Vigor, Dexterity, and Endurance. Juggle it with Intelligence/Faith/Arcane if you’re making a “magic archer” build or archer/melee hybrid with Bleed weapons.

Astrologer – Magic Swordsman Build

Starting Level: 6
Starting Weapons: Astrologer’s Staff, Short Sword, Scripture Wooden Shield
Starting Armor: Astrologer’s Set
Starting Magic: Glintstone Pebble, Glintstone Arc
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 9
- Mind: 15
- Endurance: 9
- Strength: 8
- Dexterity: 12
- Intelligence: 16
- Faith: 7
- Arcane: 9

Now, these last few Elden Ring starting classes are the best ones if you want to dabble in magic. You can either go full wizard with Astrologer or going half-melee thanks to its high starting Dexterity that lets you wield different weapons. Just be careful, this class is really squishy since it has the lowest Vigor Attribute. Raise your Intelligence, Mind, Endurance, and Vigor if you want to go full mage. Add Intelligence, Dexterity, Vigor, Mind, and Endurance if you’re going with a melee-magic hybrid build.

Confessor – Paladin Build

Starting Level: 10
Starting Weapons: Broadsword, Finger Seal, Blue Crest Heater Shield
Starting Armor: Confessor Armor Set
Starting Magic: Assassin’s Approach, Urgent Heal
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 10
- Mind: 13
- Endurance: 10
- Strength: 12
- Dexterity: 12
- Intelligence: 9
- Faith: 14
- Arcane: 9

In case you want something more flexible for a magic knight build, then Confessor is a good choice. Simply grab a sword and a shield and focus on Faith, Vigor, Endurance, and Strength if you’re making a hybrid Holy knight build. Or increase Faith, Mind, Vigor, and Dexterity if you want to focus more on Incantation spells.

Prophet – Holy Sorcerer Build

Starting Level: 7
Starting Weapons: Short Spear, Finger Seal, Rickety Shield
Starting Armor: Prophet Armor Set
Starting Magic: Heal, Catch Flame
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 10
- Mind: 14
- Endurance: 8
- Strength: 12
- Dexterity: 8
- Intelligence: 7
- Faith: 16
- Arcane: 11

If Astrologer relies on Sorceries, Prophet’s high Faith scales with Incantation-type of magic instead, allowing it to deal huge Holy and Fire damage. In case you want to focus on attacking with Fire-based Incantations, then you should put points into Mind, Vigor, Faith, and Arcane. Meanwhile, for Holy Incantations and using Seal weapons, go with Faith, Mind, Vigor, and Dexterity.

Prisoner – Mystic Knight Build

Starting Level: 9
Starting Weapons: Glintstone Staff, Estoc, Rift Shield
Starting Armor: Prisoner Attire
Starting Magic: Magic Glintblade
Starting Attributes:
- Vigor: 11
- Mind: 12
- Endurance: 11
- Strength: 11
- Dexterity: 14
- Intelligence: 14
- Faith: 6
- Arcane: 9

Like Astrologer, you might want to check out the Prisoner if both casting Sorceries and stabbing enemies is your go-to playstyle. Most players will spec on Intelligence, Vigor, Dexterity, Mind, and Endurance when picking it as the starting class to up their magic damage, stamina/mobility, and some resilience.

As mentioned before, while you should choose the best starting class for your playstyle, picking the “wrong one” isn’t the end of your run in Elden Ring. Later, you can always respec/restart your Tarnished stats after you defeat Rennala, Queen of the Full Moon, in Raya Lucaria Academy. You’ll unlock an option to reallocate all of your Attributes in exchange for a rare item called Larval Tear. I hope this guide helps, and you enjoy your journey through the Lands Between.