Hey fellas. I’ve been playing for a while now,mostly spellcasters, and am trying to plan out my second melee character. I’ve never played a blade master and am wondering what’s the best way to build one. It doesn’t have to be crucibal viable just something to have fun in vanilla killing nemesis. I’ve looked thru the build conpedium but not sure how outdated the info is with current changes. What kind of gear and devotions should I aim for? Thanks guys for any help
I’m far from a blademaster pro, it’s such a versatile combination. S+B cadence/blitz soldier, dual wield mostly nightblade, guns with pneumatic burst for heal, etc are all doable when you realize just how much you can do with soldier. The ‘Classic’ Blademaster is a dual wield piercing build, but it is much weaker now than it was in the very early days of the game. You can also do a sword and board piercing blademaster or a sword and board physical blademaster using a dermapteran slicer or a good mace (warborn especially) with a good shield. Chthon recently posted a good 100% piercing s+b blademaster build to the builds section, take a look.
I personally run with the physical s+b setup, which is basically identical to the same build with Witchblade, Commando, or Battlemage where you stack cadence and blitz, add on soldier skills here and there, and take a heal and some passives from nightblade.
Gear depends on if you’re going physical or piercing, as do devotions. Assassin’s blade will always be a must, manticore is great too for similar reasons (armor debuff plus resist reduction is lovely for a BM), Falcon, blades of nadaan (if swords), rowan’s scepter (if maces), assassin, unknown soldier, oleron, behemoth are all worth mentioning I think.
1-h+shield is the best way to go for Blademaster. For Dual-wield, Saboteur is better anyway (even for pierce damage).
go for 1h sword and shield blademaster, get blades of nadaan and oleron’s rage, with night’s chill it’s a really good build
Not really, best BM build now is DW cold based SS spammer, for vanilla use ofc, for cruci there ist any BM build worth recommending.
And no, saboteur is not better.
You can use different gear ofc, key thing is max SS and get alcamos rings for pierce to cold conversion.
Thanks guys for the suggestions. I was thinking of trying a dual wield BM or fire strike sab, but with that pic JoV posted maybe I’ll give cold BM a shot. Is blade spirit worth investing in or is it a one pointer used to proc devotions?
1 pointer to proc devotions
Only go BM if you have the gear it lacks sorely w/o it. Without gear Sabo is better for sure due to some very nice faction gear and a lot of the best gear being craftable