Game:

Elden Ring (2022)

Duration: 35:57

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54

Background: It is time to stand on business. Rivers of Blood had fallen from grace, once being the undisputed choice for a Katana bleed build, now but a shadow of its former self. Or is it? Granted, a Bloodflame Nagakiba or Uchigatana will outperform it: https://youtu.be/sMOBf38K3zY (There's the plug, I have done it before and it is stronger), however, Rivers of Blood is still a fairly decent weapon where the nerfs to it in PvE at least, are a bit hyperbolic. To establish that point, I choose to run Rivers of Blood buffing only with successive hit buffs and my physick.

For this build: This is an Arcane/Dexterity build centered around using Rivers of Blood and its weapon skill, Corpse Piler to self-buff constantly through the use of successive hits and triggering the Lord of Blood's Exultation. So to unpack this weapon, Rivers of Blood's scaling is weird to unpack. It technically has better scaling with Dexterity at a B (scaling value: 90) than Arcane at a D (scaling value: 59), it benefits way more from levelling Arcane because a) leveling Arcane will increase its bleed build-up and b) Arcane scales both Rivers' physical and fire damage. At 70 Arcane, it will have 77 Bleed Build Up, which contextually isn't bad compared to an Occult Nagakiba with 80 Arcane, which would have 85 Bleed Build Up though the damage on Rivers is physical/fire split making it prefer a bit better against bosses weak to fire and a bit worse against bosses stronger to fire. Now, to talk about Corpse Piler as it exists in Patch 1.10: this weapon skill really needs to be landed pointblank in order to carry its weight making it so that the blood slashes and the blade to hit, which has something of an effect akin to landing a pointblank Reduvia Blood Blade. Secondly, while Corpse Piler is the main pull of this weapon because it will ramp-up successive hits and bleed build-up very quickly, I will say it is a more satisfying weapon when you weave Corpse Piler into your basic combos with light attacks, especially because Corpse Piler is not cheap (17 FP for a single use, 35 for the full combo, compare that to Double Slash, 6 for a single use, 12 for the full combo). So, if I'm going to be honest, Rivers of Blood isn't exactly what it once was, but it's nowhere near totally unusable and is definitely a serviceable enough weapon for a successive hit bleed build.

Relevant Stats:
Vigor: 40
Mind: 20
Endurance: 30
Strength: 16 (only 12 needed)
Dexterity: 38 (41 with Okina's Mask, 46 with Okina's Mask and Millicent's Prosthesis)
Arcane: 70

Talismans:
1. Shard of Alexander: Increases the power of weapon skills by 15%
2. Lord of Blood's Exultation: Increases attack power by 20% when blood loss occurs for 20 seconds
3. Rotten Winged Sword Insignia: Successive Hit Buff (6%, 8%, 13%)
4. Ritual Sword: Increases attack power by 10% when at full health
Flex: Millicent's Prosthesis: Successive Hit Buff (4%, 6%, 11%)

Physick:
1. Thorny Cracked Tear: Successive HIt Buff for 3 minutes (9%, 13%, 20%)
2. Flame Shrouding Cracked Tear: Increases Fire Damage by 20% for 3 minutes

Drip: Okina's Mask and the White Reed Set

How to improve this build: Alrighty, so with this section, we will pretend that Bloodflame Uchigatana or Nagakiba set to either the Heavy affinity (for Strength builds) or Keen affinity (for Dexterity builds) with Double Slash isn't stronger than this. That's because if I'm being honest, if you want a bleed-based katana build with Double Slash for ramping up successive hits and bleed, that would be the definitive stronger way to do it. However, that's not the point and again, I have a whole other video on that set-up specifically. If you wanted to use specifically Rivers of Blood, how to make it stronger would be to hit 80 Dexterity and 80 Arcane (their final softcaps for both respectively) and you would achieve an AR of 741 when two-handing (7.9% stronger than my current stat spread here). From there, getting Faith to 25 or 33 for access to Golden Vow and/Howl of Shabriri would buff its power further. Oh, and the White Mask stacks with Lord of Blood's Exultation if you are willing to sacrifice fashion for function. Per the usual, feel free to adjust stats for as much Vigor, Mind and Endurance as you like .

Chapters:
0:00 Margit (No Damage)
0:35 Godrick (No Damage)
1:35 Radahn (No Damage)
2:16 Draconic Tree Sentinel (No Damage)
3:30 Goldfrey (No Damage)
4:43 Morgott (No Damage)
6:01 Mohg
9:53 Niall
13:49 Loretta
15:24 Malenia (the last minute and twenty was very fun)
20:44 Fire Giant (No Damage)
24:31 Maliketh (No Damage)
27:48 Hoarah Loux (No Damage)
29:18 Radagon (No Damage)
30:13 Elden Beast

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