Advice on exMP tank

So I built this guy soldier/blademaster for playing MP blah, blah, blah now he’s my singleplayer toon.

I have mostly defensive stuff from soldier and only PB from blademaster.

Using Blade Arc and Blitz for attacking as well as some item gifted stuff.

I’m not sure how to link grimcalc stuff and screenshots so I know I’m not giving you much to go on but…

I’m starting act 3 Ult. and I just ran into 2 heros I can’t kill…I can beat on 'em for 10 mins and no dice, just not enough deeps.

I’m lvl 79 iirc and have about 5 legs and OK gear otherwise. 10k HP, resists 35-80

i think Blitz does about 8k sheet and BA is about 2-3k.

Devotions are tanky/resist/life% stuff. Bat, Shieldmaiden,Torgo, Tortoise, Watcher, Obelisk etc.

Basically I Blitz in, WC and start wailing away with BA till Blitz is back up

I know its not a lot to go on but does anyone have any ideas where I can improve/change besides getting better gear?

I try not to just straight up FARM so every login I hit a trove, run the bug nests in Twin Falls and Arkovia then go on with my adventuring.

Any help appreciated.

It would be much helpful if you posted screenshots of your gear and build ^^

You’ve gone too defensive. You need to pick offensive devotions.

There are several good guides. Your skills should look something like the build called “The Last Blademaster”. The devotions advice in the guide is good, but you need more offense than is used in the final setup there. Look at the devotions in the “Markovian’s Destroyer” Battlemage build. Also you can look at the Blademaster in Dank Rafft’s guide (which has fallen to page 9 or 10 in the build forum).

With grimcalc, you make your build, then click the “Save” button in the upper right. Then just cut and paste the link it gives you into the forum post.

http://grimcalc.com/build/KFrGpD

Hopefully that works.

Looking at other builds mentioned tonight.

Kind of just trying to get by without a full rebuild of this guy or following someone else’s cookie cutter. A few tweaks here and there ya know.

You need more than a few tweaks, I think. The problem is you don’t have much damage. You need to at least triple your damage.

What are your OA and DA? Your DA is probably good but I’m guessing your OA is too low. You want your OA higher than your DA.

You should pick one attack and make it as effective as possible.

The damage from Blitz scales off your shield damage. So it’s not great as a primary offensive skill. It works best to just put 1/1 in it. You’ll wind up with 5/5 or 6/6 once skills from items are takin into account. That makes it useful.

Blade Arc works pretty well. You want to try to maximize physical and internal trauma damage. Try going 1/1/12 on the Cadence Line along with your maxed Blade Arc. Deadly Momentum adds a lot of damage to Blade Arc. (Look at the orange text in the tooltip.) Going Clean Sweep is an option that you may or may not like. (You use Cadence until Blade Arc comes off cooldown, making sure DM is up each time you use BA.)

Next question is what are you trying to do with your shield?

If you are going with a block build, why do you not have Overguard? It’s the “make me immortal” button for shield builds. And max Shield Training. You want to as much block recovery as possible. You can get 85% trivially. You get 20% from Shield Training, 20% from Serrated Shell, and 15% from Shieldmaiden. Overguard gives you the other 45% percent. It’s pretty easy to get your block chance above 70% (the vendor in Devil’s Crossing sells a potion that gives you 10% for a short time). If you have 70/100 block/recovery you just take no damage from anything. You can get more recovery by taking Overguard and Shield Training over the max with items, so you can even drop Shieldmaiden.

Next thing is War Cry. Break Morale is awesone. Physical resist reduction and skill disruption. The resist reduction will increase both your physical and internal trauma damage considerably. And you get the skill on Assassin’s Blade for the same reason.

The skills on Targo and Obelisk aren’t helping you.

You could try some combination of Oleron, Anvil, Dire Bear, and Bull. Rhowan’s Scepter gives health, defense, and damage - though you may not be able to afford to take it. Empty Throne and Wolverine are useful and also the most efficient path to get to Oleron.

You also may want to go for one of the big health regen devotions. Either Giant’s Blood or Healing Rain. (Unfortunately you can’t get both Tree of Life and Oleron. However, you can do Behemoth and Oleron.)

You also could invest more in Nightblade. Veil of Shadow is good (the OA reduction). Anatomy of Murder gives you OA and damage. Blade Barrier is a good 1 pt “get me out of trouble” skill.

Markovian’s/Zolhan’s aren’t that useful for a Blade Arc build since Blade Arc doesn’t proc them.

Short advice: Take points out of Blitz and max Overguard and Shield Training. Completely respec your devotions and go for offensive procs. (It’s not going to help immediately because you’ll have to level them up.) You may need to do this several times until you get what you like. You can farm Crystals at Ultimate Lower Crossing.

I hope some of that is helpful.

Blademaster is probably the strongest class in the game, provided you have the full Deathmarked set or at least everything except shoulders or torso.

What is your stat distribution? A 100% physique Blademaster is still incredibly fast compared to other classes, but it would help if you have at least 30 points in cunning. Either way, this, or something very close is the strongest Blademaster build for the current version.

Thanks all for the advice so far.

I’ve respecced my devotions to more offense as suggested and will try to implement the skill changes as advised as well. My resistances didn’t change as much as I thought they would.

As for the shield…well, I guess I thought it was useful the way it was. I’ll try to address that as well with the skill changes.

So far with just the devotion changes I doubled my sheet dps and kill noticeably faster now.

Ultimately, you would probably want to go one of 2 blademaster builds, either one with low hp, great damage and survive on lifesteals or one with relatively low damage but very tanky.