Hand of Malenia is an Elden Ring Katana that provides lots of advantages, so there are many builds centered around this weapon to even run the entire time. Here we have an Elden Ring Best Hand of Malenia Build, which focuses on dexterity/faith and meta for endgame and PVP. 

Related Read: Elden Ring Malenia Build After 1.06

Elden Ring Dex/Faith Malenia Build - Best Hand of Malenia Build for Elden Ring Endgame

Malenia in Elden Ring is a boss that has some of the most difficult-to-dodge attacks in the game, this Elden Ring Malenia build by KhrazeGaming can maximize the heck out of her kit and amazing attack ratings. 

Elden Ring Hand of Malenia Build Stats

- Vigor: 40

- Mind: 20

- Endurance: 30

- Strength: 17

- Dexterity: 80

- Intelligence: 9

- Faith: 35

- Arcane: 8

Elden Ring Hand of Malenia Build Weapons  

Hand of Malenia is one of the best classes of weapons in the entire Elden Ring, it's running heavy attack is great at punishing enemies, especially in terms of PVP with a very long reach stab that definitely punishes people who are not careful enough, since it's one of the lengthiest katanas in the game, it's also great at catching enemies from pretty far away, even the ones that tend to move quite a bit and hint boss encounters definitely become a little bit easier with the regular attacks when you have this katana equipped. Most important, the weapon skill called Waterfowl Dance is so great at stacking a lot of damage buffs.

Elden Ring Hand of Malenia Build Talismans

When it comes to other Elden Ring items that you should have for this Malenia build, there are two most popular choices. You can’t acquire them throughout one single playthrough, you have to start a second one and choose the opposite of whatever you chose in the Millicent quest line in the previous playthrough to get both of them. 

- Rotten Winged Sword Insignia: can be earned after assisting Millicent and successfully defeating her sisters. In the case of the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, it takes no more than three hits for the first stage to pop and give you a 6% damage buff, the second stage takes roughly one to two more hits after the first one, giving you an 8% damage buff on top of the first one, and finally, there are another one or more hits after the second stage, giving you a total between 13 to 15% damage buff. A good thing to note is that the first stage of damage buff can activate faster with fewer and fewer hits after the first time you have bought a target. 

- Millicent’s Prosthesis: can be obtained by killing Millicent at the Windmill Heights Site of Grace after killing the Godskin Apostle there. The same goes with Millicent’s Prosthesis, the only difference is the fact that this one gives you a plus five stamina, the buffs seemed also lingered significantly longer compared to the Rotten Winged Sword Insignia, but they do appear to be lower in terms of the bonus damage per stack, respectively 4%, 6%, and then 11%. 

They all have about three stages of damage boost on the number of attacks that you're performing. The good news is that both of these talismans stack with one another, so you can get both of their bonuses at the same time, but the drawback is that that only adds up to about 25 to 30 percent, which can seem quite high but not high enough with the weapon that we have

How to Increase Attack Power for this Elden Ring Hand of Malenia Build?

After using the above talismans, actually, we are far away from the 1700 attak rating, how to increase that? There are some great crystal tears and incantations used. 

Thorny Cracked Tear, a crystal tear that you get from the Minor Erdtree mini boss in the Consecrated Snowfield next to Ordina, is the highest level version of whatever these talismans are trying to achieve in the sense that its duration is a whole three minutes once you activate the physic potion, and the damage increase for consecutive attacks is much bigger even than the next best one which would be the rotten winged sword. In this case for the third and final stage of consecutive attacks, it gives you a whole 20 damage boost from this point on, it's just a matter of having a couple more buffs. This is a Dex/Faith build that uses about 70 points in the dexterity, and also reaches about 35 into faith, giving us plenty of options to buff our characters up and also get some protection in the mix. 

Dexterity-knot Crystal Tear, this one also helps with the remaining 10 points to reach the cap of 80 for dexterity, and then we have Flame, Grant Me Strength, and the Golden Vow to buff our damage for the final bit, this is basically what you need to do, and in only one Waterfowl attack you will reach 1700 damage with the Hand of Malenia, which is significantly higher than anything it can do at its default rating.

Build Strategy and Tips 

You can just one shot almost any regular enemy with a Waterfowl Dance, even if there are groups of enemies the more the merrier because it just means you stack so much damage and pretty much everything dies even more. If they try to encircle you, you kind of deal damage almost all around your character with very small little gaps over there for them to squeeze in which means they just fall off at your feet against bosses, it does require a bit of attention and you do need to know a bit of the boss strategy, but it's totally worth it and definitely satisfying to pull off a Waterfowl Dance at the right moment, especially if you kinda already know the boss fights by heart. Its biggest advantage is definitely noticeable against enemies with large hitboxes that also tend to be a little bit more sluggish, including the Elden Beast.

For Hand of Malenia PVP, it's a slightly different story, but not too much, since this is a katana, it's also amazing at punishing people especially the ones that tend to be a little bit hastier, because you're running R2 is your best friend, in this case punishing people from very far away especially when they charge towards you or are playing a little bit more aggressively, its jump overhead attack is also amazing at doing damage and interrupting foes and you can totally take people by surprise still even with a weapon skill when they are within range, it's not going to be as hard to dodge as Malenia 's own version, but if you pull it off, it's definitely going to one shot people under the right circumstances, even if you don't fully buff yourself.

Game Giveaways