The Bloodborne Bloodtinge build Guide
The Vileblood Handbook - A Hunter's Guide to Bloodtinge
by Reddit user MyHeartsMistakes
A quick note: There will be mild spoilers in this guide including a couple NPC hunter fights, boss names, NPC names, and some enemy names. This will be a long post so brace yourselves.
Index
Introduction
What is Bloodtinge?
General Information
Weapons: The Chikage
Weapons: Simon's Bowblade
Weapons: The Bloodletter
Weapons: The Reiterpallasch and Rifle Spear
Weapons: Firearms
Hunter Tools
Gems & Farming
Starting a Playthrough & Progression
Final Words & Thanks
Introduction
Hello~ my name is MyHeartsMistakes, you've probably see me around this sub every now and again. I've been playing Bloodborne for a fairly long time. But definitely not as much as others, however I have made a habit of remembering information while I play. I mostly PvP while doing the occasional challenge run on my favorite bosses. I'm making this guide because I see a lot hunters asking for help on bloodtinge builds. Most of my Bloodborne experience has been using a Bloodtinge build, so I hope to impart some fellow hunters with some insight on how to be the best blood wielding hunter a hunter can be.
Small Disclaimer: This guide is meant to help people start a bloodtinge build. It will not go over every move each weapon has. I believe the best teacher is experience and it will help you a lot more then what anyone else can tell you. However of course i'll go over tips and weapon combos for every weapon. But if you want to learn about every move in the moveset I suggest checking a wiki.
What is Bloodtinge?
Firstly Bloodtinge is a stat the governs the amount of blood damage you deal to enemies. The weapons that do blood damage are all firearms, the Chikage, Simons Bowblade, and the Bloodletter.
Luckily for us, many enemies have little to no resistance against blood damage. This means that we will be effective on nearly (if not all) the enemies in the entirety of Bloodborne. Some enemies who are particularly weak to blood damage are, everyone's favorite, brain suckers. These guys will die extremely quickly while using the respective blood attacks on your weapon of choice.
However, every build is not without its cons. As i'm sure you've noticed, our weapon selection isn't exactly the biggest collection. By creating a Bloodtinge build you will be limiting yourself to about two weapons (or three depending on your build). Make sure you really do like a certain weapon before choosing to make a bloodtinge build.
General Information
To start you need to understand that bloodtinge weapons have a very odd scaling. In their untransformed state they exclusively with Skill (Chikage & Bowblade) or Strength (Bloodletter). However when transformed bloodtinge weapons will lose all other scaling a convert to pure bloodtinge. This is why bloodtinge requires a much bigger stat investment to actually see results.
This is also why 50 Bloodtinge is required to fully use a bloodtinge build. As well as why you should almost exclusively attack with your weapons transformed mode over their untransformed mode. Normally you will attack with your weapon in blood form 90% of the time. However because of this required heavy investment, your early game will be abysmal. But when you do get to the later stages of the game you’ll delete everything.
Note: Bloodtinge weapons, when transformed, will knock dogs onto the ground as if you shot them with your gun. Bloodtinge weapons also cannot be buffed by anything, so keep that in mind.
Weapons: The Chikage
The Chikage is the only bloodtinge weapon included in the main game and is my personal favorite weapon. When transformed, the Chikage will coat itself in blood and be wielded with two hands. However while transformed the Chikage will constantly drain your health at about 0.85% hp per second. This can be easily managed if you just pay attention and get used to the weapon.
The Chikage normally is a Katana that scales with the Skill stat. It has a B scaling in skill and a S scaling in bloodtinge. Like what I said before, its normal mode will only scale the skill stat while its blood mode will only use bloodtinge stat. The Chikage will want 50 bloodtinge to truly shine. Here is an example of a good Chikage build:
BL 120
VIT 45-50 (required for PvP)
END 25-30 (Normally 25, add more if you want)
STR 10
SKL 25 (higher If you don’t want arcane or stamina)
BLT 50
ARC 7-15 (Only go to 15 if you want use of the hunter tools)
That much VIT is pretty much required because on my bloodtinge build, my Chikage can do up to 1000+ damage in a single transformation attack. This means anyone without at least 40+ VIT will be one shotted. As well as helping you manage the health drain in tight situations. Not to mention having lots of VIT is always helpful. The Arcane stat can be helpful to bloodtinge builds, but personally I don’t think it's too great on on them. If you want use of the tools feel free to upgrade that though, just remember you can’t use buff’s on bloodtinge weapons, so the Empty Phantasm Shell will be useless.
Tips & Tricks
The Chikage’s bread and butter move would definitely be it’s amazing transformation attacks. The Chikage does 1.6x or 60% more damage on transformation attacks over normal ones. This should be the move that you spam in PvP. To do this do:
L1 to R1
R1 to L1
dodge to L1
My normal PvE combo is L1 > R1 > R1 > R1 > L1 or however many R1's it takes till the enemy is almost dead, then finish them with a transformation attack to negate as much health drain as possible. Alternatively you should L1 before your stamina runs out. The L1 > R1 combo has a small step forward as well. This can catch some people off guard.
It’s transformation attacks also have insane stagger, especially on hunters. You always want to open with a transformation attack during fights. It can easily stop almost every attack from a weapon. Since it can stop many attacks, you should abuse this and hang back and wait till the enemy attack to get a sweet counter hit while stunning them for a bit. I fought some NPC hunters to demonstrate this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xdWEXGhKgNU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQgacMvz61g
Final Comments
Pressing L1 after a combo should become instinctive. You want to have as little health drain as possible at all times. Finally I also recommend playing unlocked, the Chikage does so much better unlocked then locked. If you watch the videos above, you can see me playing mostly unlocked.
Remember that lock on is a tool. There are times when it’s the right tool for the job and other times when it will actually hinder you. Learning to play unlocked will give you a lot better control with your attacks and the ability to track multiple opponents.
Finally, while using the Chikage, you’re going to want to play in normal mode 80% of the time, but use blood mode to attack 95% of the time. You don't really want to use the normal mode unless you have something like 50 SKL which probably won't happen if you're trying to make a build for PvP. If you don't care about PvP though then it doesn't matter.
Weapons: Simons Bowblade
Simons Bowblade is probably the quickest bloodtinge weapon you can obtain in the story. It is also a DLC weapon, so keep that in mind.
The bowblade while untransformed acts as a normal sword. It has an S scaling in skill/bloodtinge and while transformed it will shoot arrows using your quicksilver bullets. It costs one quicksilver bullet per arrow, so I highly recommend taking communion runes which will allow to you take more blood vials. Pressing up on the d-pad will provide you with 5 blood bullets at the cost of health (Note: tapping for blood bullets will take slightly less than a blood vial heals, you can use this to heal for small amounts). You cannot go over 5 blood bullets.
The bowblade, unlike its other two bloodtinge friends, will be used mostly in its untransformed state. You don’t want to use arrows for every enemy because it would be a waste of bullets. A normal build for a bowblade main would be:
BL 120
VIT 45-50
END 25-30
STR 10 (base)
SKL 35-50
BLT 40-50
ARC 7-15 (again hunter tools)
The bowblade will probably do best in a 50/50 SKL/BLT build. However doing this will force you to sacrifice other stats. I believe the bowblade will shine best while used in the off-hand to compliment your other bloodtinge weapon of choice. Being able to pull out significant ranged damage during fights can be a huge advantage.
In my opinion the bowblade’s best move would also be its transformation attacks going both ways. While untransformed, the transformation attack will do a quick backstep while shooting an arrow. This a great for catching people off guard as well as letting you move away. From the bow form the transformation attack will be a long thrusting attack with quite a bit of phantom range.
However in PvE be careful of using the bowblade to backstab. While untransformed the bowblade’s charged R2 move is a double spin attack. Since the spin hits twice, you’ll end up knocking the enemy out of the visceral state. However you can backstab someone with a fully charged arrow when transformed. Might be useful in some situations since you can do it from range (incoming co op wombo combos).
Final comments
You can actually use the monocular to free aim the bow. Good to keep in mind if you’re invading and want to snipe a host or enemy. In bow form the L2 will do a quick slash with a arrow, it does crap damage, but can save you if someone is very close and on low health. Or it can be used like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUyI0NPwko4
The bowblade can very easily trivialize and cheese many of the bosses in the game, since most were designed without the idea to actually counter someone with range. If it’s not dealing a lot of damage, it can also be used to throw around aggro for some bosses. For example, Ludwig the Accursed will always target the last person who hit him. By using the bowblade from a range when your host/friend gets low, you can switch Ludwig’s aggro to yourself so they can heal up.
Weapons: The Bloodletter
The Bloodletter will probably take the longest out of all the bloodtinge weapons to get. It requires you to get almost all the way through the DLC before it can be obtained. However do not let this dissuade you from trying the weapon, as it can be a great weapon!
The Bloodletter has a A scaling in strength and a S scaling in bloodtinge, like all the other previous weapons, scales with strength untransformed and bloodtinge transformed. The Bloodletter is normally a mace with the majority of its attacks dealing physical damage and the charged R2 dealing blunt damage. This weapon can deal out a ton of damage and in PvE can stunlock enemies hard, however it suffers heavily from lack of range.
To transform the Bloodletter you stab yourself in the chest sudoku style. It will deal around 20% of your health instantly, but will take no more health until you un-transform and retransform it again. (Note: You can kill yourself with the bloodletter for a special death animation of you stabbing yourself.)
A normal build for the Bloodletter will look something like this:
BL 120
VIT 45-50
END 25-30
STR 25-30
SKL 10-20 (You might want this to be able to use the Chikage or Bowblade in your off hand. Mind you they won’t be great, but if you only use them transformed they should perform fine)
BLT 50
ARC 7-15
When two handed and transformed, the Bloodletter will really shine. Transforming it will give you a ton of extended range and increase that already high damage. Interestingly enough the attack speed on the Bloodletter doesn’t seem to go down at all even though the weapon gets much bigger. This means you can pull off some great combos. For example the Bloodletter’s R1 combo will do two horizontal sweep followed by an overhead smash with great tracking.
Now for the weapons star move: the transformed L2. This move will make you smash your weapon into the ground causing an AoE explosion that deals massive damage to enemies stuck in the entire thing. However this move will also begin to frenzy you. When your frenzy meter fills you lose a big portion of your health. Interestingly the Bloodletters frenzy meter will only do 50% of your health, rather than the normal 70% (remember it frenzies your maximum health, not your current health, so if you’re under 50% hp you’ll die from the frenzy).
(Side Note: The transformed charged R2 also has a mini explosion from the tip, gives you a little bit of extra damage + range. Just keep it in mind)
Final Comments
Consider bring the Deep Sea rune (frenzy resist) when you use the Bloodletter. It will allow you to frequently use the L2 without much worry of being frenzied. You can find the tier two version (+200 frenzy resist) in the forbidden woods, behind the two big viper sphaggeti tangles in a corner (video location: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AacbDMrTGl8).
Also consider holding onto lots of sedatives just in case you need to pop one in a pinch, so you can L2 again. You can unlock sedatives from the bath messengers in the hunter's dream by obtaining the Cosmic Eye Watcher Badge, found in the Upper Cathedral Ward. (Side Note: Apparently you cannot be frenzied by the Bloodletter if you have over 180 frenzy resist. I cannot confirm this though, so be warned.)
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