Elden Ring Best Madness Builds - Top 3 PvP & PvE Madness Builds After 1.06 Patch

Madness is one of the special status effects in Elden Ring, essentially only works on human enemies, but it's very effective in PvP situations. In this Elden Ring Best Build Guide, we go over the top 3 meta madness builds which are both effective in PvE and PvP gameplay after 1.06 patch!

Elden Ring Madness Build Setup Explained

When madness frogs, you will lose 20% of your max selfless damage as well as 24% of your max FP and endure a 5-second stun animation. Now while the HP and FP loss is good, what makes madness strong is the 5-second long stun animation. During this 5-second long stun animation, you are completely vulnerable to all forms of damage. 5 seconds in Elden Ring is enough time for any weapon art or any spell to be cast or enough time for you to close the distance between you and your enemy. And one more thing about the madness that makes it super strong is a legacy issue that goes all the way back to demon souls PvP. In demon souls, status effects applaud through our frames and that's carried on even into the Elden Ring. You won't take the health damage or the FP damage when you're madness products but you will take the 5-second long stun animation and there's not anything you can do about that, you just have to eat it and hope to god that you somehow survive, and nine times out of ten you won't survive because five seconds in Elden Ring is death. 

Top 3 Elden Ring Madness Builds (PvP & PvE) After 1.06 Patch

Now we all understand why madness is strong and what it does, let's take a look at some builds for madness:

1. Vyke's War Spear Madness Frenzy Build

Whether you're looking to send players into a maddening death in PVP or to drop bosses in two hits, this is the build for you. Elden Ring Weapons and spells at prog madness come few and far in between an Elden Ring, there's one weapon Vyke's War Spear, one seal and five spells.

Status:

Vigor: 50

Mind: 40

Endurance: 30

Strength: 16

Dexterity: 30

Intelligence: 10

Faith: 45

Arcane: 10

This build is a dex faith build, so your primary stats are going to be decks and faith, you'll need enough strength to use the Vyke's War Spear and the rest can go into vigor, mind or endurance or wherever else you'd like to put it.

Weapon & Seals:

Right Hand: Vyke's War Spear

Vyke's War Spear is one of the few weapons in Elden Ring that can apply madness, it has a very simple moveset that is shared between most other great thrusting weapons, its weapon art is unique as well as its ability to proc madness on basics. Its weapon art is frenzy flame thrust, you leap up into the air and you thrust the spear down to the ground in the explosion of frenzy flame and this will do upwards of 1100 damage plus a madness proc plus tick damage from the flames that remain, even ignoring the madness proc this is a very strong weapon by itself, just because of its moveset and weapon art.

Seal: Frenzied Flame Seal

Moving on we're going to be taking a look at the only casting tool in the game that's tailored specifically for frenzyflame incantations, that being the Frenzied Flame Seal. This seal has a passive that boosts Frenzyflame incantations as well as builds madness up when you hit someone with a seal but you're never going to do that let's be honest here. Another thing about this weapon is that it scales off of strength decks end and faith, unlike any other talisman in the game.

We recommend using the seal just for this build, but you can use any seal that you feel like but this is the strongest one for frenzyflame incantations because of its passive and quad scaly but now.

Armor: 

Full-Goat Armor Set

For this build you can go for any armor set that you like, a more tankier build by using the Bull-Goat Armor and run it with the Fingerprint Stone Shield although you'll need to throw some points into your endurance and strength for this. 

Talisman:

Flock's Canvas Talisman - Boosts the potency of your incantations by 8

Radagon Icon Talisman - To shorten the time it takes you to cast

Shard of Alexander - Boosts attack poower of skills will

Erdtree's Favor +2 - Boosts HP by 4%, stamina by 9.6% and an 8 boost to your equip load

Physic Flask:

Cerulean Hidden Tear - for 15 seconds of infinite FP

Faith-knot Crystal Tear - Boost your faith even further

Spells (Incantations):

There are 5 frenzy flame incantations in the game and we're gonna take a close look at each one of them:

Frenzied Burst - It is the simplest of all the frenzy flame incantations, it's just a snot rocket that you shoot from your eyes that you can charge up to give it more damage and pierce, it has a pretty long cast on but its projectile speed is one of the fastest in the entire game, it will probably outright kill someone with two frenzy bursts because that procs madness as well as does about 1400 damage. It's probably the strongest frenzy flame spell in the entire game because it's very easy to hit and hard to dodge.

The Flame of Frenzy - It is a spell that shoots flames across a wide area, it can also be charged to increase its range while it may not be the most powerful spell. It's extremely useful for creating a good AOE effect of madness and dealing damage to multiple targets, it can also be charged to almost double its range as well as increase its damage slightly.

Unendurable Frenzy - It is a two-part spell, the first part being extremely similar to the flame of frenzy except you can't charge it, you can just keep holding down the button to keep casting it as long as you have stamina and FP, the second part of the spell is you are locked in place for about three seconds and you shoot flames randomly around you, this also leaves you extremely vulnerable. The damage on this incantation is very good but that 3-second stun animation that you have to do during it, makes it really high-risk high reward.

Howl of Shabriri - This incantation doesn't really do much damage, but it procs madness almost instantly. This spell also debuffs you in two ways, the first being it lowers your protections of all types and the second being that it attracts enemies to you, similar to the Shabriri's Woe talisman. The spell isn't very good in invading, but in a gank it is extremely strong because it instantly procs madness

Inescapable Frenzy - It is a grab attack that is very similar to the dark hand grab from DS3, the damage for this spell scales off of what is in your right hand, so if you have fists in your right hand it will do no damage , but if you have a weapon it will do mince damage like you've seen the footage above.

There's something important to keep in mind and that is any use of frenzy flame will stack your own meter whether that be with the Vyke's War Spear weapon art or just casting a spell, it has the same effect on you as it does your enemy, so make sure you do not fill your own meter.

2.  Frenzied Acolyte Madness Build

Increasing your focus stat, which is attached to your mind attribute and also found on armor pieces, is one way to prevent status buildup so that you can use madness abilities and spells more effectively. If you plan to use madness abilities and spells frequently, you should make sure you have high focus so that you can cast more of these spells and abilities before you go insane. While this build is primarily intended for PvE, you might use it well in PvP despite the fact that it uses two spells that, when cast, cause madness to spread among you and your enemies. This means that we are employing those spells for their damage rather than their crazy effect. We optimize this build to get the most damage out of these spells not necessarily the most madness.

Status:

Vigor: 35

Mind: 29

Endurance: 10

Strength: 18

Dexterity: 15

Intelligence: 9

Faith: 27

Arcane: 45

Remember that both faith and arcane receive boosts from equipment pieces—faith by 1 point and arcane by 8 points—so the actual numbers will be a tiny bit lower. With this build, you have very little armor, so you want to make sure that you can at least survive long enough to take a pot. 35 Virgor is there to make sure that you don't die in one hit.

As a spellcaster, you need FP, and 29 mind gives you more of it to play with spells. As you get closer to 150 with this build, you'll probably increase this even higher because these spells cost a lot of FP and you want to be able to cast them at will. It also increases focus, which helps you resist madness. 18 strength and 15 dexterity are merely there to meet the requirements for the Occult Glaive; these stats will vary depending on the weapon you're using, therefore 10 endurance is there because we need the points elsewhere and don't actually need to equip load for this build. In addition to being required for specific spells, the Godslyaer's Seal also requires 27 faith, thus even if your offhand's Godslyaer's Seal isn't improved, you'll need at least 27 faith to use it to augment black flame.

Weapons & Seals:

Right Hand: Dragon Communion Seal, Occult Glaive

The dragon communion seal, which has great scaling when you pump arcane and also scales off faith, albeit to a lesser level, is the main one you'll be using for casting. As a result, those are not wasted and they also apply to your incantation scaling, providing you extremely high damage over and above the scaling, even if the increase to dragon spells is not advantageous to your build.

The weapon you choose here is not specifically important to this build actaully. We use the Occult Glaive with a colt scaling in order to gain damage from all that arcane that we have and put bloodhound's step on it in order to give you spacing. You need to get out of harm's way when enemies are aggressive to a safe spot where you can then swap back to your dragon communion seal and start flinging spells again, and then swap back to your Occult Glaive and start dancing away. 

Off Hand: Frenzied Flame Seal, Gravel Stone Seal, Godslyaer's Seal

In order to achieve their increase for those types of spells that we're utilizing, we cycle these based on the spells that we're going to cast. The seals merely need to be in your off hand in order for you to receive the bonus; you don't even need to use them to cast the spells. One more thing to keep in mind: if you'd rather not switch between these three seals, you could actually use the Jellyfish Shield to buff yourself every 30 seconds and increase your spell damage by 20%. However, doing so adds a lot of equipment load and makes it more difficult to use bloodhound step, which is what we use on our weapon for this build. 

In order to effectively increase the damage of our two frenzy spells by 20%, which is incredible, we basically want to cast with dragon communion while holding the frenzied flame seal in our offhand. You will then cycle to the Gravel Stone Seal when you wish to hurl a lightning spear and to the Godslyaer's Seal when you want to cast a black flame.

Armor:

Helm: Silver Tear Mask

Chest: Commoner's Garb

Arms: Noble's Gloves

Legs: Noble's Trousers

Using the silver tier mask to get 8 arcane, we don't really do a lot of physical damage with this build, so with a glaive so reducing our attack power with that is not terrible getting that 8 arcane frees up a lot of other points for a lot of other attributes. Use commoner's garb not only because it gives us one faith but also it has very high focus. The other two pieces we use for this are noble's gloves and noble's trousers again for their high focus values that will help prevent you from you know filling your madness bar completely and applying madness to yourself. 

Talismans

Godfrey Icon - Increase the damage of our charged spells.

Faithful's Canvas Talisman - Your incantations' potency will be increased by a little proportion. You can change this out later for a better version of this, but we have this one here right now to deal the greatest damage.

Ritual Sword Talisman - When you are at full health, increases your overall damage by 10%. This will raise your spell damage by another 10% because you won't be getting hit very often with this build because you'll be moving all over the place with bloodhound's step to avoid danger.

Fire Scorpion Charm - The majority of the spells you use here, with the exception of lightning spear, deal fire damage to increase your fire damage. If you're going into a boss fight where you're going to be throwing lightning spear a lot or if you're fighting in a part of the game where enemies are weak to lightning or they resist fire and you're going to be using the lightning spear, you can actually switch out the fire scorpion charm for the lightning scorpion charm, so this one is interchangeable with the lightning scorpion charm you know periodically.

Spells

The Flame of Frenzy - If you use one charged cast of this spell and one standard cast, you can stagger the trolls in this game. It is sort of a mid-ranged conal AOE that causes enormous fire damage and has a very high stagger potential. This spell is excellent at stunning bosses as well as excellent at AOE situations and delivering huge damage to larger type opponents. Normally it's two charged R2S, but you don't even have to do that with it as you can do it at range.

Frenzied Burst  - This is a single target spell that delivers less damage than frantic flame, but it has a far longer range. You can boost the damage it deals by holding down R1, making it ideal for picking off foes far away. Since its casting cost is 24 FP, you won't use it very often, but if you really must kill anything without engaging it, such as at close range, this is the method to utilize. It also causes fire damage, just like the frantic flame does.

When combined with our mid-range single target spells, which are much more affordable, these two spells give us remarkable versatility because they not only let us stagger bosses but also kill adversaries at great distances in one shot, or perhaps two shots if they're difficult enemies.

3. Morgott's Cursed Sword Bleed Madness Build

This powerful one-hit level 150+ Madness focused build can be used for the endgame and 1.06 patch running, it is also an evolution of the frenzied acolyte build but is combined with a bit of bleeding. If you weren't aware, bleeding and madness both scale off of the arcane stat depending on what you have equipped, for example, if you use Morgott's Cursed Sword, bleeding gets better the more arcane you use; however, if you use the dragon communion seal to cast spells and then use a swarm of flies, then bleeding gets worse and madness gets worse because you are scaling off arcane.

Status:

Vigor: 50

Mind: 30

Endurance: 28

Strength: 14

Dexterity: 35

Intelligence: 9

Faith: 31

Arcane: 45

With Vigor 50, you will gain lots of protection which is really good for this build, you're going to increase Vigor as you go through NG+ and NG++, obviously probably up to 60 or 65. Mind at 30 or prioritize more at 35-40, so you don't have to worry about your FP as much. Endurance 28 allows us to medium roll with this high protection and high Poise depending on what armor set you're using this will be higher or lower. Strength 14 and 35 dexterity is simply for the requirement for the weapon. Faith 31 is to meet the requirement in order to use unendurable frenzy, but if you're not using unendurable frenzy you can drop this down a bit, this will also increase your incantation. For 45 Arcane is the sweet spot for the dragon communion seal in terms of its incantation scaling but also it increases the damage of Morgott's Cursed Sword damage.

Weapons & Seals:

Right Hand: Morgott's Cursed Sword, Dragon Communion Seal

The damage of the curved great sword is not exceptional, but it absolutely has a very unique fantastic weapon skill. The cursed blood slice charges you forward at talking and then the attack cuts through the air leaves like a blood fire trail that then explodes and detonates dealing fire damage and also triggering the blood flame status effect on the enemy so that their bleed buildup doesn't get reduced. You can follow this up with another L2 to add another attack. The main advantage of Morgott's Cursed Sword is it has blood loss build-up on it natively, so regular attacks and this ability are going to trigger blood loss rapidly. 

We're also using the Dragon Communion Seal to get the Arcane in order to increase the damage of Morgott's Cursed Sword and the bleed buildup, this will also improve the efficacy of Swarm of Flies and the madness buildup that you get from the madness spells that we use as well. Although we're not really using the madness spells for the madness effect necessarily, it will help build up Madness on enemies that can gain Madness, and it will be more effective in PvP. 

Left Hand: Frenzied Flame Seal

Use Frenzied Flame Seal to cast spells like Golden Vow and Flame Grant Me Strength, also it boosts the damage of our frenzy spells by about 20%, so just having it on the offhand when you are casting to increase your damage with those spells. 

Armor:

Helm: Silver Tear Mask

Chest: Veteran's Armor

Arms: Veteran's Gauntlets

Legs: Veteran's Greaves

Equipping Silver Tear Mask on the head to get huge of 8 Arcane bonus. For the other three armor pieces, it's not super important which ones you use but getting a heavier armor set such as the Veteran's set with poise will make you get off the cursed blood slice weapon skill more effectively. Since tend to get hit when you're using it on that second L2 pull depending on what enemy you're facing if you don't stagger them immediately, so equip this armor set will make you be able to cast your Madness spells without getting interrupted.

Talismans:

Fire Scorpion Charm - It will boost the fire damage dealed by the cursed blood slice trailing fire explosion and the two Madness spells

Ritual Sword Talisman - It will affect your regular damage, your weapons skill damage, and your spell damage

Dragon Crest Great Shield Talisman - It will give you more protection, you already have good protection with this build anyway, but you do have the fire scorpion charm which does reduce your protection a little bit, so this kind of shorts that up and also gives you even more protection so it makes you kind of tanky for like a hybrid Caster type build 

Shard of Alexander - It will boost cursed blood slice damage by about 15% which is phenomenal, and you can swap the one around sometimes, such as using Flock's Canvas Talisman for raising the potency of Incantations by 8%.

Spells:

Golden Vow - This is your weapon skill and increases your damage by 15% which is perfect for this build. Also, it increases your defenses, so you're even tankier.

Flame Grant Me Strength - The damage you deal with Morgott's Cursed Sword is 100% physical except when you use First Blood slice in that trailing explosion deals fire damage which then it buffs the physical and fire damage to that very effectively

Unendurable Frenzy - This spell allows you to hold down the casting button and just continuously spew fire, as long as you have FP this spell is going to keep spewing fire in front of you and you can walk around when you do it, which allows you to keep the spacing on enemies

Swarm of Flies - This spell will help you get the bleed to build up on a target where you can just go on like a jump attack or something or you can use cursed blood slice trigger Hemorrhage really fast

Frenzied Burst - This spell likes your super long-range sniper ability and has very good single-target damage, you can charge it for even more damage and make it so that it penetrates enemies going through their Shields