Discussion on the Bladed Skill Tree

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by Sol Stormlin, Nov 9, 2019.

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  1. Sol Stormlin

    Sol Stormlin Avatar

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    Hello everyone, today i wanted to see if we could start a conversation about the Bladed skill tree. My current bladed and related skills are as follows:

    Bladed Combat: 130
    Thrust: 120
    Riposte: 100
    Blade Speed: 110
    Double Slash: 108
    Rend: 113
    Vital Points: 117
    Blade Mastery: 113
    Whirling Blades: 101
    Coup de Grace: 101
    Blade Specialization: 92
    Armor Weak Points: 105
    Train Dex: 101
    Train Str: 106
    Offhand Attack: 102
    Offhand Defense: 97
    Offhand Power: 86
    (I've only started using Offhand skills recently)
    Body Slam: 100

    At this point right now I feel as though I do a fair amount of damage, but it is pretty far from the damage that Polearms or Bludgeon do to me in pvp. In fact I'm always wondering how high with all of these skills I really need to go. Sometimes I want to just dump everything into Vital Points, Bladed Combat, or Bladed Mastery based on what they say they do. However, I feel like ALL of these skills should be 120 or higher in order to feel viable and I'm working towards that as I can. (I am a busy bee)

    I'm looking for some advice from everyone out there in the Bladed world, to see if there are some things I might be missing out on in this build. I've noticed my damage output has increased since I switched to dual wielding, but I still get rocked by Polearms. Seems like Bladed is a late bloomer. Has anyone else felt the same about this type of build? And what have you done to improve it?

    My 2 current goals are to: Solo the Rise, especially the dragon down there, and have a viable set up for PvP against Polearms and Bludgeon users.

    So far what can be gathered about Polearms and Bludgeon in relation to Bladed is:

    -Polearms has a really high crit multiplier that ignores armor and cannot be blocked by shields, also has a longer range. It also has a stackable bleed affect and naturally reduces the healing ability, and has root capabilities. Pretty OP in fact it's insane compared to what I can do.
    -Blades can deal some damage but it's not the best, and it seems like some skills seem outdated like Weapon Mastery, the damage bonus is 2x less than the damage bonus Crusher gives to Bludgeon. And apparently Bladed is supposed to be a high damage weapon.

    Let me know your thoughts on all of this, I look forward to any advice you all may have. Thanks so much!
     
  2. Vladamir Begemot

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  3. Titania Xylia

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    What's your skill rotation?

    Your base attack should be to stack rend 6-5-5. Three stacks, all ticks for bosses. You can skimp and do 3-3-3 on lesser mobs. In a crowd, try to use your rend + swirling blades combo.

    Damage is all about stacking DoTs in this tree, so applying fire and poison damage goes a long way, as well. To me blades was more about rotation than skill level. Higher skills the better, but your rotation has to be pretty exact.

    Ultimately, I only liked blades when taking out bosses.
     
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  4. Sol Stormlin

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    When I attack, I start with blind, body slam, then I rend 6-4-2. Seems to work but I will try 6-5-5. I do need to incorporate fire so that's a good point, as well as the combos. Do they work? I tried them a long time ago and they seemed to do barely any damage. I guess maybe it's better now. I always use poisons. Festering mainly, but I've started using Deadly and Corpion. As far as skill level, I feel like I need everything I use to be in the 120s. Some say that's not necessary.
     
  5. Dhanas

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    Blade suffer in pvp of damage resistance, but has the advantage of realy fast speed attack. You need something to stun your opponent like body slam, you have to be sure that your opponent has always 3 rend on him + 3 stack of festering poisons.
    Your main dps should come from rend, thrust And offhand attack.
    I would use firefly instead of blind, it lasts more and it is more useful.
    About gear i would go full chainmail with cutlass+ meteoric sword both with rend and thrust dmg.
    Also use an open deck with not too Many unlocked where you will have just attacks and you spam it pretty fast.
     
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  6. Vladamir Begemot

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    This is a bummer. I wish the whole tree didn't revolve around rend, because I like using it for combos as well. So I either have to forget the combos or not be effective it sounds like.
     
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  7. Alley Oop

    Alley Oop Bug Hunter Bug Moderator

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  8. Arkah EMPstrike

    Arkah EMPstrike Avatar

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    Its a good rightup but polearms and bludgeons have recieved some pretty significant upgrades since then, and the part about thrust being one of the best skills isnt really a thing anymore

    Crushing blow does more damage with the bludgeon tree filled out at a lower level than thrust does. It also has a high chance to stun for 3 seconds with the same low cost and fast cooldown.

    Puncture does somewhere between 15%, 20% less damage which is fine because it ignores armor, but it also applies bleeds that damage undead and a healing debuff that both stack 3 times on the target.

    heres 3 screenshots, my blade stuff is the highest level but is number 2 in direct damage,

    The sword is 12-37 damage, 34.3% thrust damage masterwork
    [​IMG]

    The 2-handed axe is 10-33 damage, 31.4% crushing blow damage
    [​IMG]

    And the polearm is 13-40 damage with 32% puncture damage
    [​IMG]


    This is looking at all of these without specialization. Blades was built to be alot of damage, it has much higher crit chances than other weapons but since all weapons have the same attack speed and the innate gives you a single digit attack speed bonus that isnt really noticeable (less than 5% i think), its kind of a dead walrus.

    Here are some DPS meters after dealing 10,000 damage dual wielding meteoric versiosn of each weapon with double masterworks for doubleslash/thrust, crushingblow/armor break, and push/pull. The tridents are a different beast because they have a base 10% pusha nd pull damage increase before the masterwork so they already get a huge close to 50% damage bonus to each.

    Dual meteoric lognswords
    [​IMG]

    Dual Tridents
    [​IMG]

    Dual Maces
    [​IMG]

    Im gonan do one with 2 handed weapons because the halberd is mroe in-line because it doesnt have a natural skill bonus on it liek these tridents do and i dotn own 2 good spears. Plus itll elimiante offhand attack. Also will be able to see the damage difference between the skills in each weapon tree with help from Sotassist

    2H meteoric 30ish% thrust and doubleslash masterworks. 141 top DPS 120ish sustained
    [​IMG]
    Foudn it interesting that all skills, tho i was spamming them as they came up and keeping rend stacked on target best i could, were all very similar. Also keep in mind that a -15% healing debuff is the only thing that accompanied these skills.

    2H meteoric axe. Crushing blow and break armor masterworks. 151 top DPS, 120ish sustained
    [​IMG]

    The big thigns with bludgeon are Berserk and its strength bonus. They get the highest bonus damage from strength of any weapon and also have an innate skill that increases the wielder's strength by 25 at GM skill. they also have a weapon damage bonus from an inante that is 2x as strong as the weapon dmg bonus from the blade tree innate. Keep in mind that the above skills used also Stun for 3 seconds (crushing blow), reduce trgets damage resistance by -23 and target's weapon damage by -4 base weapon dmg (a person wieldign a weapon doing 11-37 damage woudl isntead be a 7-33 dmg weapon)

    2H polearm. Puncture and Skewer masterworks. 154 top DPS 120ish sustained.
    [​IMG]

    Here's one that Sol is on about. You can see that puncture and skewer are no slouch when it comes to damage. The DPS is roughly the same sustained as everything else is (including blades, which is supposed to be all about dmg, no fluff) BUT keep in mind, this weapon cannot be blocked by a shield, Puncture ignores armor, skewer roots, and there is a cumulative -30% healign debuff that is 100% applied with 3 punctures + 1 skewer.


    Blades has an additional skill with a unique effect, Coup de grace which deals massive damage to things that are almost dead. Very utilizaed and powerful skill.

    The other two trees also have additional utilities: And additional knockback/stun and the games best Knockdown for bludgeon, as well as a very strong AOE that also stuns with specialization, And with polearms, a skill that knocks down and a additional AoE bleed with specialization.



    So it isnt really the damage thats an issue as all 3 weapon have similar sustained DPS usign their most damaging skills, Its the fact that even in light of that, blades have next to no utility compared to all the other stuff the other weapons can do.

    The things i feel is most wrong with poelarms is that Its bread-and-butter attack is high dmg, ignores shields and armor, AND is a 3 stack rend that hits 2 targets at a time at longer range than any other melee weapon. Also the bleed works on undead, rend does not.
     
  9. Arkah EMPstrike

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    I would probably do something like, give doubleslash a chance to cause a bleed, have whirlwind attack do a AoE knockback, give rend an attack speed debuff with the bleed, make blade speed give 10% at GM and blade mastery cause bleeds to tick faster
     
  10. Lazlo

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    I would recommend getting your offhand attack/power much higher relative to your other skills. Unlike other active skills, it just keeps getting better without getting more expensive. It makes a really big difference in long/continuous fights.

    I don't know much about PvP, but as far as killing dragons goes, with any melee, that's a lot more about being able to stay alive than anything else. Rend is about as good as anything else for damage vs. most bosses, so you mostly just have to focus on healing and/or mitigation. Just having a lot of hps, Fitzowen lute, and decent healing skill is fine vs. most stuff. In places with cover you can just hide when dragons are flying around if you need to also.

    It's been a while since I used blades, so I'm not really up to date on everything, but I think blades has a lot more interesting weapon choices than other melee do.
     
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  11. Boris Mondragon

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    Follow @Sara Dreygon ‘s advice on leveling bladed skills. I am at 158 bladed combat with 148 thrust/double slash and offhand attack at 146 on way to 148, last will be rend at 141 to 148.

    Ultimate goal 160/150 for the previously mentioned skills. I have not bothered with the dragon and rarely with the Obsidian troll as the juice is not worth the squeeze to me. I do my own pattern of non stop killing for xp and drops.

    I use two armor sets , one with decent resistance for the non mage mobs and for the mage room use Zerker at 120 with fleet flute at all times. The only real challenge is the elven fighter at entrance of dog run. Def stance, potion of haste and regular potion.
    Drop body slam, 3 tends and fireflies. Have imbued health and focus on utility bar just in case. Hope it helps. R/Boris
     
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  12. Sara Dreygon

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    Thanks for the tags @Vladamir Begemot and @Alley Oop.

    I'm still pretty sure blades would be tops in PVE with poles second and bludgeon third. Rend and coup are big reasons but thrust and d-slash has damage that is nothing to sneeze at with thrusts critting over 1000 (with tactics spec and berserker of course) and d-slash often our outdamaging thrust. In PVE, range isn't as much of an issue and that's the biggest drawback for blades IMO. I'm decent at polearms, too but they crit so much less often that my DPS is lower although against some high resistance mobs puncture is nice... I often wonder what poles would be like with polearm spec and as much XP as I have in blades.

    As Arkah mentioned, for PVP probably poles then blades then bludgeon. A couple of mossy handles and the big hits makes it better when most players are in defensive stance. The best thing about poles over blades is the range. With death shield fixed, blades is much more viable in PVP, though. I've had some good fights lately and have the ability to beat anyone with them.

    Without comparing apples to apples (blade spec, pole spec, bludgeon spec, XP in tree, etc.) like Arkah did above it is tough to get a perfect comparison... if I did a DPS meter on them blades would be getting quite a bonus from my blade spec. Mac has a very nice pole build right now that can pull agro from me but that doesn't happen often with 6 thrust, 6 d-slash, 4 offhand, and a locked rend and coup. Here is me with no buffs except berserker. What DPS meter are you using @Arkah EMPstrike?

    [​IMG]

    As far as your skills:

    Bladed Combat: 130 nice
    Thrust: 120 nice
    Riposte: 100 nice
    Blade Speed: 110 bit too much but fine
    Double Slash: 108 underutilized skill if you're blade spec... the triple slash is great. I'd have this at same level as thrust
    Rend: 113 121 for the extra 2 seconds
    Vital Points: 117 nice
    Blade Mastery: 113 keep this here... overrated and scales poorly
    Whirling Blades: 101 good here
    Coup de Grace: 101 keep this here... overkill most the time and better to keep the focus cost low - mine is still 100
    Blade Specialization: 92 probably good here until you get other things a bit higher
    Armor Weak Points: 105 keep this 16 levels below vital points
    Train Dex: 101 good
    Train Str: 106 good
    Offhand Attack: 102 good
    Offhand Defense: 97 good
    Offhand Power: 86 keep this 20 levels below offhand attack
    (I've only started using Offhand skills recently)
    Body Slam: 100 nice

    Don't forget berserker for mage types and anything you can kill fast. In PVP I'd go with defensive stance but you'll want as much speed as you can get (wolf speed, flute for buffs and a swiftness sash) because no speed = death).

    Also great is fortify defense and parry - especially when tactics spec'd. Glancing blow if great if you wear heavy armor, especially with the boots and leggings MW bonus.

    My basic PVP deck (without any sort of pre-fight buffing deck) is below:

    [​IMG]
     
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  13. Arkah EMPstrike

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    Sotassist

    I have used that one there before too and can redo with that one if you want.

    Your deck is almost similar to mine but im not a specialist in any weapon, but blades is my highest and the one ive used the longest. I think its gotten stale with all the buffs to other weapons as it does the same DPS as them but without being able to stun and ignore armor like the other 2 can. Polearms in particular as it's highest damage attack both ignores armor and debuffs healing
     
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  14. Sol Stormlin

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    @Sara Dreygon I appreciate you sharing that info. I agree that double slash needs to go up. I have a Sword of Speed with double slash and rend on it right now and it's great in PVE. Thanks again, I'll let all of that soak in. :)
     
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  15. Sol Stormlin

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    Thanks everyone!
     
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