Devotion ideas for my Blademaster?

[VictusBcb]

Relatively new player here, haven’t had a lot of time to play yet though because of real life stuff (Long work hours, my wedding, two young children, etc). Just wanted a little bit of advice on my newest character.

Since I’m new I mostly just jumped into the game blind, decided on Soldier for my first class because it seemed rock solid. Figured whatever I chose for my second class, I’d roll with it and make something interesting happen.

Chose Nightblade, and was going to go sword and board at first so I could use Menhir’s Will since it’s so great. Started going with Phantasmal Blades, but that quickly started eating the living hell out of my energy. So I opted to spec out and go for dual-wielding instead.

So far, the damage is great and my survivability isn’t too bad either. It feels really great to use my default attack with Markovian’s Advantage and Fighting Spirit from Soldier, and up to Amarasta’s Quick Cut on the Dual-Wielding side of things.

I’m just having trouble deciding what devotion skills I might want to tie into my attacks though. So far, I’ve been going for a bit of a fire/aether type of character (I’ve already got Aetherfire). Part of me wants to grab more offensive devotion powers, but there’s also stuff like Dryad’s Blessing that look pretty good.

Should I maybe go for something like Flame Torrent, Wendigo’s Mark, Dryad’s Blessing? Or would Wendigo’s Mark not be too great since it scales differently than what I’m going for with the build in general?

If I’m understanding the system for assigning devotion skills to my attacks, it looks like I can do something like:

Markovian’s Advantage
=== Aetherfire

Belgothian’s Shears
=== Flame Torrent

Amarasta’s Quick Cut
=== Wendigo’s Mark

Whirling Death
=== Dryad’s Blessing

Zolhan’s Technique
=== Fissure

I apologize for the giant wall of text, thank you for reading this far. Still learning the ins and outs of the system GD uses
If you know of any particularly good Devotions I should consider for the build, or I’m misunderstanding the system or how useful the skills I’m considering are, please help me learn

[BB_Shockwave]

If you want a pure physical Dual Wield, max out the passive skills and on Soldier side, Cadence and all its sub-skills. Frankly though, I don’t know why you would choose Fire and Aether, when Soldier or Nightblade has no skills that give you such base damage or bonus… ergo, you’d need to rely 100% on weapons and components. And just using weapons and devotions won’t make up for lack of devoted skills with such damage. If you want to use Fire, choose Demolitionist as second mastery, and Arcanist or Necromancer for Aether.
Instead, I’d recommend:
-Soldier gives you a lot of Internal Trauma and Bleed skills. Blade Arc or Blitz are both good as right-button skills.
-Nightblade gives you Piericing (many of the passive dual-wield skills), Bleed, Cold, and Poison skills, a LOT of them. For Cold, max out Shadow Strike and Amarasta’s Blade Burst. For Bleed, you have Ring of Steel and Anatomy of Murder. For Poison, max the Niddala’s Justifiable Ends part of Shadow Strike, and the passives Merciless Repertoire and Nidalla’s Hidden Hand.

I’d go towards Piercing, Physical, and Bleed or Poison (or both) on Devotions too. Early on: Assassin’s Blade, Falcon, Rat, Hammer, Akeron’s Scorpion. Then move on to Blades of Nadaan, Assassin, Manticore, Huntress. If you focus on Bleeding, Mogdrogen the Wolf is good, if Poison, Affliction isn’t a bad choice. I have not yet figured out how to easily get to Unknown Soldier without wasting Devotion points yet, but it seems like a good skill for Pierce builds.

[Bitchachos]

Do this:
Items:
-Belgothian Set + Reedemer of Malmouth
-Myth Blade Breaker Sash / Myth Mark of Kalastor Medal (or Myth DireWolf Crest)
-Bladetwister Signet and Myth Belghotian Sigil Rings / Myth Executioner’s Judgment Amulet
-Myth Windshear Greaves / Myth Chausses of Barbaros Pants / Myth Grasp of Unchained Might Gloves
-Doom Relic (use Doomforce granted skill from relic - its decent, although could have at least 100% main hnd dmg, not 60%…)

Components:
-Seal of Anihilation on Amulet
-Bloodied Crystal on both Rings and Medal
-Seal of Might and Seal of Blades on weapons
-Leathery Hide on Helm
-Sanctified Bone on Chest Armor
-Living Armor on Shoulders
-Spellscorched Plating on Gloves
-Ancient Armor Plate on Pants
-Ugdenbog Leather on Belt and Boots

Augments:
-Mankind’s Vigil on Chest Armor, Boots, Pants, Shoulders, Gloves and Helm
-Outcast’s Warding Powder on Belt
-Suvivor’s Ingenuity on both Rings
-Sylvarria’s Essence on Amulet

Devotion Celestial Skills on Mastery Skills:
-Blind Fury (Oleron) on Belgothian Strikes Primary Attack (from full belgothian set bonus)
-Living Shadow (Unknown Soldier) on Belgothian Shears
-Baldes of Wrath (Assassin) on Execution
-Assassin’s Mark (Assasin Blade) on Markovian Advantage
-Twin Fangs (Bat) on Zolhan Technique

Be sure to do “Hidden Path”, “A Merciful End” and “Kasparov’s Experiment” quests on all diff levels to get some extra skill and attrib points.

[Boo]

As a little heads up I find it to generally be a bad idea to bind devotion abilities to weapon attack procs. The % chance for devotion abilities to trigger are bound to the cooldown of a skill. I believe that for WPS skills the proc chance is around 15%, personally I find this to be really low for a skill that you use on average on 1/5 of your attacks… If you have any skills with cooldowns you should try to bind as many devotions to those as you can.

I could be wrong about this but this is my personal experience with WPS skills and devotions.

[BB_Shockwave]

Do this:
Items:
-Belgothian Set + Reedemer of Malmouth
-Myth Blade Breaker Sash / Myth Mark of Kalastor Medal (or Myth DireWolf Crest)
-Bladetwister Signet and Myth Belghotian Sigil Rings / Myth Executioner’s Judgment Amulet
-Myth Windshear Greaves / Myth Chausses of Barbaros Pants / Myth Grasp of Unchained Might Gloves
-Doom Relic (use Doomforce granted skill from relic - its decent, although could have at least 100% main hnd dmg, not 60%…)

You do know that someone just starting the game is likely to NOT have any mythical or legendary sets? I have been playing the game for years now sporadically, and I barely have any Epic sets completed, let alone legendary ones. Unless you trade a lot that will take a lot of grinding to complete any of these.

[Bitchachos]

You do know that someone just starting the game is likely to NOT have any mythical or legendary sets? I have been playing the game for years now sporadically, and I barely have any Epic sets completed, let alone legendary ones. Unless you trade a lot that will take a lot of grinding to complete any of these.

Then start trading … and play same char…not 7…that is something to aim for so u know what to do from early stages, meaning the skills and devs.

[Tycho]

If you want a pure physical Dual Wield, max out the passive skills and on Soldier side, Cadence and all its sub-skills. Frankly though, I don’t know why you would choose Fire and Aether, when Soldier or Nightblade has no skills that give you such base damage or bonus… ergo, you’d need to rely 100% on weapons and components. And just using weapons and devotions won’t make up for lack of devoted skills with such damage. If you want to use Fire, choose Demolitionist as second mastery, and Arcanist or Necromancer for Aether.
Instead, I’d recommend:
-Soldier gives you a lot of Internal Trauma and Bleed skills. Blade Arc or Blitz are both good as right-button skills.
-Nightblade gives you Piericing (many of the passive dual-wield skills), Bleed, Cold, and Poison skills, a LOT of them. For Cold, max out Shadow Strike and Amarasta’s Blade Burst. For Bleed, you have Ring of Steel and Anatomy of Murder. For Poison, max the Niddala’s Justifiable Ends part of Shadow Strike, and the passives Merciless Repertoire and Nidalla’s Hidden Hand.

I’d go towards Piercing, Physical, and Bleed or Poison (or both) on Devotions too. Early on: Assassin’s Blade, Falcon, Rat, Hammer, Akeron’s Scorpion. Then move on to Blades of Nadaan, Assassin, Manticore, Huntress. If you focus on Bleeding, Mogdrogen the Wolf is good, if Poison, Affliction isn’t a bad choice. I have not yet figured out how to easily get to Unknown Soldier without wasting Devotion points yet, but it seems like a good skill for Pierce builds.

Unknown Soldier is good for pierce and it adds a little bleed too, but the devotion proc at the end is somewhat forgettable and it’s not unheard of for people to simply not bother with it. Assassin’s Blade is a must for the RR, yes, and Dryad is actually very nice (affinity yield is bad but the proc is good for staying alive, last I knew, and some of the nodes are quite decent). You probably won’t be straying far from Yellow (Order) and Purple (Ascendant) affinities if you’re physical and/or pierce, but you might find some of the Blue (Primordial) constellations to your liking (some will help you snag Yellow affinity too). Poison/Acid is going to pretty much be almost all Red (Chaos) and Green (Eldritch) affinities, and the Abomination’s left (or his right, rather) arm MIGHT be worth snagging if you go Poison/Acid.

Also, yes, binding devotions to WPS is generally not a great idea unless you really don’t care about that devotion proc ever going off. And also, yes, Pblades really chews through energy in a hurry if you take the transmuter.

[Bitchachos]

Dont wanna get into anything here - but isnt the life steal applied to player ?..or to what life of the shadow ? Am i wrong ?

[VictusBcb]

Frankly though, I don’t know why you would choose Fire and Aether, when Soldier or Nightblade has no skills that give you such base damage or bonus… ergo, you’d need to rely 100% on weapons and components.

Honestly, it was mostly because I kept getting gear that leaned towards fire and aether damage. So I chucked a few components onto my weapon to convert phys to fire, and decided to grab Aetherfire for the heck of it.

I have respec’d going phys/pierce now, though I do still have quite a ways to go since my character only just got done with Act 1 last night.

========
Good to know from several people here saying that devotions on weapon procs generally isn’t a good idea. It seemed to be going okay for me for the time being (probably because my attack speed isn’t completely awful), but it’s definitely something good to know for further down the line.

If I do want to go with a non-default attack, what’s usually the best way to deal with energy issues? And will Cadence still proc my dual-wield skills since it says you can use it as your default attack? I don’t have much experience with Cadence so far.