Top 5 Best Starting Classes In Elden Ring - What Is The Best Class For Beginners

It’s good to know that the term class in the context of Elden Ring, mostly just refers to the starting stats and gear. Eventually, you can freely diverge and create your own builds as you level up, but starting strong is a huge benefit. There are 10 classes in total in the game covering any play style and having so many options could prove to be quite a daunting task, especially for newcomers. Understanding what Elden Ring class to choose and what the best options are will really help in the early stages of the game. So in this guide, we are going to through the top 5 best classes for Elden Ring beginners, hope to help you out with which class to start with. We go over the stats and weapons of each class as well as what kind of playstyle they are meant for. 

Top 5 Best Starting Classes & Builds In Elden Ring - Starter Classes Guide

The best classes for most cases will be the Vagabond, Hero, or maybe the Samurai. The Vagabond is great for starters if you favor Melee while the Prophet or Astrologer is a great choice for more experienced players who want more magic options. While the Wretch is for the masochists only who really want a challenge. Each class comes with a loadout of weapons and pre-leveled stats with an emphasis on certain statistics known as attributes which will effect different things about your character and as a result gameplay. Defeating enemies will give you runes which you can then use to level up your character to hone your build further. But due to an uncapped leveling system, you can spend points in different attributes at any stage to diversify your abilities whenever you want. Here are some tips and top 5 classes that you can pick at the beginning of Elden Ring.

1. Best Starting Class In Elden Ring - Confessor

Confessor is the most flexible due to the stats that it's given at the very beginning of this game. It's level 10 and it has virtually no bad stat, there's nothing bad about this class. He blends the balanced melee capabilities of the Vagabond with the faith-focused incantations of the prophet. Base strength and dexterity stats of 12 means there’s a lot of freedom in which weapons confessor players can specialize in, but we recommend pooling your runes into either one or the other to get either strength or dexterity focused weapons rather than trying to use both. Balance this with levels in faith vigor and endurance to keep your incantations up to speed and your confessor healthy, that should give you a relatively balanced character competent in both martial and magical attacks. 

2. Best Class for Beginners Elden Ring - Hero

This class is for the people that just want to hold a big old fat slab of a weapon like guts and just meat with this class you have a healthy amount of vigor, you're not necessarily bad at literally anything as high from casting spells. You start off with very nice vigor so you need that concern, you’ll be relatively slow with your big weapon. At least in terms of swinging, definitely shouldn't be fat rolling concerning the fact that strength also boosts up your equipment load total. So the fact that increasing your strength not only will make you stronger in terms of doing damage, but it will also allow you to put on more armor to protect yourself. You're going to be having these huge weapons and swinging them around, you're going to be using a lot of stamina, so you start off with 12 endurance. That's not going to take you but so far but it can definitely help you out very early in this game. So definitely think about boosting that while starting off as the hero class, but if you want to do some fat boy damage really early in this game, go with the hero class to hand that weapon and just slam, some people may be turned off because of the armor that you start off with but you have a high strength and that means that you can put on a lot of heavy armor that other classes just simply would not be able to put on at least without heavy rolling or fat rolling. One tip about this class is definitely make sure that you can get a hold of your timings, you are not going to be spamming r1 with this class especially early on you don't have enough stamina to just keep slamming down unless the enemy just has that low of health. But if you can get the hang of things you just absolutely obliterating enemies in this game very easily as long as you know what you're doing.

3. Elden Ring Best Starting Class for Beginners Prisoner

The Prisoner is a bit of a hybrid, he is going to be just breaking out of his shackles in this game. It doesn’t have the highest in any stat, but its strength lie in a blend of dexterity and intelligence, it’s almost a more defensive astrologer. It’s very unique in appearance starting with the prisoner’s clothing complete with an iron mask and wrist shield and wielding a glintstone staff and stock. Magic glint blade is very cool sorcery reminiscent of the floating chaos parameter from dark souls 3 in terms of function. In this case you conjure magical blades in the air to home in on the target because there’s a delay, you could very easily time it to combo together with other attacks. It does have a tendency to fly quite straight and just miss the target if they strafe. The s-dock is a thrusting weapon that can be used behind the shield while blocking. The starting rift shield is not great for this because it doesn’t block all incoming damage, not 100% physical damage negation, but still it’s very easy to dispatch weak enemies behind the safety of your shield in this way. Also you can perform a guard counter even while blocking with a weapon. You can also select multiple enemies as you cast spells and they seem to remember which enemy you initially focused before the blade seeks its target. 

4. Best Elden Ring Starter Class - Samurai 

The Samurai comes in with some eastern drip that has the highest starting endurance at 13 and really steps up with an extensive tool set right off the bat. You have the land of reeds armor set with Red Thorn Roundshield and then a Longbow and the Uchigatana. So you really have a lot of ways to approach combat. The Uchigatana also has bleed buildup even more so that the bandit’s great knife. The fact that we have a class that starts with Uchigatana is wild. It has an unsheathed skill that slices through enemies and destroys their stance and the longbow is extremely useful for long range sniping, the mighty shot skill packs a high punch. And once again it functions smoothly on horseback as well. Uchigatana have always just been one of the most accessible weapon types. Single light attack 600 damage, the bleed is no joke, really shouldn’t be underestimated. This is another great class in Elden Ring. 

5. Best Elden Ring Starting Class - Vagabond

The straight-up safest class to pick. This is probably the best beginner-friendly Elden Ring class that can be specialized for strength or dexterity to craft a strong and relatively simple melee build. You’ll start with a standard long sword, halberd and heater shield although we reckon it’s best to stick with the long sword and shield for fast attacks and good blocking. With the highest starting health of any class and a nice set of armor for decent protection, the Vagabond will be able to take far more hits from the start. Although wearing the full armor set initially means you’ll have a slow dodge roll unless you boost your endurance to carry more or take some off.