I can’t provide any screen shots, but I roughly have the following stats:
Level 63
1600 OA
1400 DA
8K life
3.8K DPS
800ish armor
most resistances 60-80% in elite except aether (8%) and chaos (below 30%)
Roughly 12% life-leech
Empowered Gorefeast main hand (vicous spike)
Empowered Willie’s Razor off hand (hallowed fang)
This includes my free points and + skills. The plan was to put my last point into wendigo’s mark then complete the blades of Nadaan and unknown soldier (expect the last node as I hear its useless and won’t have enough points anyway)
My issue is I obviously have no DPS and it takes me too long to kill anything, to the point that even though my survivability is high sometimes it takes too long to kill anything and I end up dying anyway.
I’m thinking of converting to a two hander and focusing more on the soldier tree… not sure what to do. My gear is crap, but I always stack resistances on gear as it seems to be the only way to survive in this game. The issue is I’m giving up on +skills and % damages in return and still using yellow items because of it.
This was my first char and I’ve moved on since it isn’t fun any more.
Can’t tell much from your stats, DPS is indeed low, betcha didn’t have a Mistborn Talisman/Shard of Beronath? Get one asap.
What weapons are you having?, also your OA/DA.
I’m not a Blademaster expert, but my suggestion is to ditch Wendigo, Scythe, Viper and get Hawk, Harpy and Blades instead.
I don’t have either one of those items, I’ll look into obtaining them. The reasoning I went into the wendigo tree is I was having issues staying alive before so I figure the mark would be a good source of life leech to stay alive. I than put on a hallowed fang which dropped my DPS, but has made survivability less of an issue up to this point.
Go to the Kymon/Order merchant and buy the Haunted steel blueprint. It’s much better than hallowed fang because it doesn’t convert your physical damage to vitality (iirc, but still miles better).
Now go to Smuggler’s Pass and farm that big ass troll at the end of the tunnel. I don’t know if he still drops the Mistborn Talisman blueprint at normal/veteran when you’re too overleveled, need someone to confirm this. Once you got the relic, don’t forget to change your default attack to Troll Rage and watch your DPS skyrocket
Blademaster is a little bit slower compared to other class when it’s your first character to farm for items, but still manageable.
Get Mistborn Talisman from the troll boss in Smuggler Pass asap. Better yet try to find a Shard of Beronath to replace your default attack.
For weapons, look for Dermapteran Slicer (in Royal Hive) with a nice prefix/suffix to significantly boost your DPS. Should allow you to spec more Offensive devotion setup. Look for Vampiric/Dreadlord/Alacrity/Voracity…
Some of the basic faction gears are quite good, take a good look at them if you haven’t got much in your stash yet.
OR if everything still fails, just F it, grab a badazz 2H-der and level up with Kraken+Behemoth+Falcon like every class can do, until level 75 when you hit Ultimate. Start farming Treasure Trove and pray the god of RNGsus to give you that sweet DM set and start kicking some ass with your now OP-ed Blademaster
Thank you for the input. If I change my basic attack to Troll rage does this mean my % chance to proc abilities no longer apply since they are based on auto attacks? If so should I just remove those points then?
I have a sorceress thats 61 and at this rate will farm items for me. I play my blademaster with friends and its just becoming frustrating to play with him so looking for alternatives so I can contribute better to the group and do solo play if I ever need to catch up in lvls.
Don’t, They WORK together, that’s why it’s so useful. Troll Rage is a standard default attack replacer or whatever people called, and it can proc WPS just fine (So does Savagery or Firestrike or Beronath’s Fury, but not Blade Arc nor Forcewave) .
BM without the right gear is fairly weak compared to other class combinations, what make him so good right now are those well designed items for him.
By doing it right a BM can outdamage every other class in this game for like 80-90% of the time, while still maintaining a very high level of survivability.
So yes, letting others farm the right gear for him is actually good thing to do.
thanks for the replies, I’ll try to farm the blue print for the Mistborn Talisman and look for more leech stats/components so I can spec into more offensive devotions.
That’s it, BM is the most gear-dependant class in the game. It isnt worth a shit without good gear, but with proper uniques, etc, he becames an avatar of domination.
I dont understand your build.
Blademaster is supposed to do PIERCING damage. He is also dependant upon critical strikes.
You MUST max Oleron’s Rage. It is an amazing buff.
You MUST max Night Chill. For the same reasons.
You MUST get Blades of Nadaan (and use swords) - it will convert useless physical damage into useful pierce damage.
Viper, Jackal, Wendigo, Harvestman’s Sickle - you hardly need those constellations… I’d rushed for Unknown Soldier, and maybe even Oleron, for offensive. For defensive, you need other constellations too, such as Behemoth, Dryad, Tree of Life.
The problem was I was having survival issues so I went for the wendigo devotion tree which unfortunately took a lot of devotion points. I’ll just reinvest back into piercing trees and behemoth (once I realized how good this was on my sorceress). I also plan on maxing Night Chill and Oleron’s rage I just haven’t gotten to that point yet. I could probably reallocate my skill points so I can boost those quicker and nerf my auto attack damage in the meantime.
Farm that misborn talisman up asap! Your auto attacks will do a lot more damage adn the 135% weapon damage modifiers will apply to all your % weapon damage based skills as well. I am happy to craft a mistborn talisman or shard of beronath (weapon component, the better auto attack replacer since it frees up a lot for a real relic) if you lose your mind farming for them, shard particularly can be a huge bitch. Zell’s suggestion to farm a half decent dermapteran slicer is good too, should be able to find some decent ones without much trouble and maybe even a great one.
Get your chaos res up asap, you are really going to need it soon. Go to town and craft an imbued silver for your weapon gives 10 bleed, 20 chaos, and 15% bonus damage to cthonics.
Ditch scythe, jackal, wendigo, and assassin (for now, worth getting back later). This will let you get blades of nadaan (90% pierce, 10% attack speed, and double your armor peircing values), harpy, and 1 point in the middle yellow 5% health node. This enables unknown soldier for flat and % pierce, attack speed, leech, health, and crit damage. Those changes a lone should be a pretty big dps boost. If you’re really struggling with survivability you could get hawk, 1 green in the middle, and get 3 points in behemoth. Or opt for dryad, max rank it’s 8%+350 health on a 4 second cooldown, you can throw bind it to shadow strike or blitz for a 100% proc rate giving you an command heal. I would say you should put at least 40 points into physique to make sure your defensive ability is significantly high on top the health it gives as well
I would dump fighting spirit for now, points in Night’s Chill will be a huge boost to dps. Veil of Shadow will help more than you’d think with survivability
Ooh also 3.8k dps seems pretty low for that point in the game what is your attack speed like? You can farm the faction vendors (exit to menu and go back and they’ll have new items). Finding some gloves with ~18% attack speed might be a big boost for ya and is probably worth unless you’re giving up big time resists for it
Don’t worry too much mate, just reallocate points from Fighing Spirit (leave it as 1 point wonder) and dump the rest to Oleron’s Rage.
For NB line you may take out points from WPS and Dual Blades to prioritize maxing Night Chill and Veil of Shadow (This buff is awesome both offensively and defensively).
Blade Spirit, right now may serve you well as a leveling skill, but its late game capability is just meh. You may want to experiment with it a little bit (with Blade of Wrath devotion procs attached to it).
Focus hard on gear to find OA/health/DA/attack speed/res/LS…
After you find the Derp. Slicer and something to replace your auto attack your DPS should be fine (for references it should be well over 10k for now).
thanks again for the tips. I was able to farm and craft the talisman within 10 minutes I put on the haunted steel component and reworked my constellations back into blades of nadaan with behemoth. I dropped blade spirit as I was using it for my windego mark. I’ve been putting extra points into Oleron’s Rage as more levels have been coming in. I’ll start looking into farming weapons but the results thus far have been great. I’ve tripled my DPS (over 10K when everything is active) and my survivability is even better now (to the point I can almost stand in the “fire”).
A question about dropping points from DB, since I am more focused on auto attacks with fast attack speed, would flat damage with multiplier bonuses actually be better for offence? I looked at my overall plan and I’m not sure which of my last abilities I should focus on. Should I max Anatomy of Murder for human and cunning bonuses, or max shadow strike, or max viel of shadow? Trying to figure out where the last of my points should go.
I plan on putting 30 points into cunning and the rest into physique (think its around 40 atm). Isn’t 50%+ uptime with FS and the massive amount of OA and % damage increase is huge? Is dropping enemy resits by 30% worth over 200% Overall damage and 235 OA? Don’t get me wrong I plan on upping nights chill but not till later. My attack speed was around 120. I actually just found empowered zealots gauntlets last night so AS with OA and some resists but it was getting late so I didn’t get around to equipping them or the other new items I found.
Thanks again everyone I feel I’m on the right track again and had a lot more fun playing my blademaster again.
The problem is, Wendigo wont increase your survivability. It is desighned for characters, that deal VITALITY damage (usually casters), and BM has nothing common with that damage type.
If you want ADCTH, then Nameless Soldier will provide a bit of it. Or, you could go for Reaper (though geting 8 chaos affinity just for it is kinda too much.). It’s much easiler just grab 2 rings with ADCTH on them, and leech back your life from enemies.
Also, do note, that capped resists are imperative for your survivability. They are №1 priority if you want to last longer.
Well the thing is, Night Chill’s and Veil of Shadow may seem a little bit underwhelming at first, but truly it will help you survive and dish out more damage than you may think. The slow and -OA mean that mobs will have much lower chance to crit you, and in Ultimate, the mobs have really high resistance, so every bit of -resist is needed to actually deal some damage. Night Chill -cold/pierce resist, so it synergize very well with all the WPS / Shadow Strike/ devotion procs…Believe me, in Ultimate, the most efficient way to increase your DPS is stacking -resist, which sadly is not reflected at all by the sheet DPS.
And the Fighting Spirit uptime is not 50%, the cooldown start after the buff wears off, so it is only up for 30% of the time. Not worth investing much I think, Soldier line is very hungry for points.
Dual Blade is amazing, it give you flat piercing damage to your weapon damage, so after around 1000% ish pierce multiplier it gives a huge benefit. Plus the fact that all the WPS and SS deal a lot of %WD too.
So you may need to experiment around a bit, if you feel you lack survivability, then investing in Veil of Shadow is a good thing.
End game is where OA really matters, cause a large portion of your damage now heavily depend on your ability to crit.
Edit: A fully fledged BM will have +5 to NB skills. So leave Veil at 5/10 and max out Night Chill. AoM will help a ton with the fight against Fabius. INVEST in SS and NJE, this couple with high OA will contribute 50% of our single target damagee. Too bad the lack of points will not allow us to max out both.
lots of good things to know, thanks!! I messed around with the +5 kills theory you have and I figure that frees up 10 more points as pneumatic burst and veil of shadow really have poor returns after their max levels.
Obviously I’m far from this point and I need to see how things go with gear… but those extra points what do you think is a good investment? Should I even bother with FS? Should I boost more into squad tactics/field command, or just max nidalla’s justifiable ends? This is under the assumption DB, SS, NC, OR are maxed.
http://grimcalc.com/build/pd8uLz
This is how I play my Blademaster. Ofc there may be slight variations here and there, and better optimization can be made, but this is what I feel comfortable with regarding survivability, at least with my current gear. It kills Fabius pretty fast too!
About skills, after factoring in the +skills you have,you need the following maxed: Veil+Military Conditioning+Oleron Rage+Scars of Battle+Field Command (optional choice of AoM if you want to fight Fabius). I dont really need Squad Tactics though, I prefer OA.
The followings are worth overcapping: Shadow Strike +Dual Blade+Night Chill
Zell’s grimcalc is a solid starting point, I opt to max fighting spirit and squad tactics taking the points out of shadow strike, leaving 1 point in anatomy, and not using ring of steel or it’s mods. The really only arguable thing is how many points you want into shadow strike, the rest of the calc is ‘standard’ if you will. Ring of steel I would probably use till you get more comfortable with the class and have better gear, it’s pretty good I just don’t find it necessary once you achieve God status I would max scars of battle as well.
The night’s chill debuff is gonna contribute a lot more to your damage than you’d think and it’s always on compared to FS and like zell said it’s going to be even more important on ultimate.
I put on the haunted steel component and reworked my constellations back into blades of nadaan with behemoth. I dropped blade spirit as I was using it for my windego mark. I’ve been putting extra points into Oleron’s Rage as more levels have been coming in. I’ll start looking into farming weapons but the results thus far have been great. I’ve tripled my DPS (over 10K when everything is active) and my survivability is even better now (to the point I can almost stand in the “fire”).
I would max scars of battle as well.