Seraphim Ego-Blader

kallethen

Once upon a time, I saw this Ego-Blade guide. It was a great guide and had a few good examples of Ego-Blade heros for different tactics. One was a DPS build, one was a tank, etc. One I thought was interesting was a balanced DPS style. It bucked some trends. It used Seraphim as a passive, in Support role (then known as Sentinal). He's since updated the builds he had after On Alert, which didn't include the Seraphim passive anymore. Which was a shame for me, because I hadn't finished leveling my toon I based off that so I only had half the build.

I decided to take some of what I learned from reading other builds and kept going on my own with the toon. I posted this before, in a thread talking about builds that work in ways that would be unexpected/unintended. She's evolved a bit, and I think I'm pretty satisfied with her recent tweaks enough to share with others on her own thread. So... here is my Support DPS Ego-Blader:


Powers: (roughly in a suggested build order)

1. Ego Blade - Energy builder, duh.

1. Ego Blade Frenzy (Rank 2, Rank 3) - Your minion grinding power.

6. Ego Blade Dash (Nailed to the Ground) - Get in close. NTTG is to cancel out flyers, there's a few NPCs so I don't count this as wasted points.

8. Seraphim (Rank 2, Rank 3) - This power buffs your damage (Ego is paranormal), buffs your healing, and gives you a constant Heal over Time. The fact that the HoT is team-wide is icing on the cake.

11. Ego Reverberation - Your energy unlock power. An alternate choice could be MSA, as there are a couple of powers that have short cooldowns in this build. But ER has a special synergy as I'll explain.

14. Mental Discipline (Rank 2, Rank 3, Id Blades) - Your form power. Id Blades is cosmetic, of course. I like the dual Ego Blades. Form of the Tempest is a possible alternate. If you do that, don't rank, spend the points elsewhere.

17. Ego Weaponry (Siphoning Strikes) - It's an attacking power, but it's purpose is for self-healing due to the advantage. On a crit heavy build like this, this works great. BCR with RR advantage is another option, but this power has more synergy.

20. Ego Surge (Nimble Mind) - Active Offense button.

23. Ego Blade Breach (Rank 2, Rank 3) - Main attack power, especially on bosses.

26. Parry (The Elusive Monk) Block replacer, and the advantage sacrifices a small amount of damage for dodge/avoid bonus whenever you attack with melee. Optional block replacers: Energy Shield w/LK (defense instead of dodge), Force Shield w/FS (moar energy plz?), Telekinetic Shield w/TR (small lasting defense buff), Retaliation (make me hit you harder!)

29. Masterful Dodge - Active Defense button.

32. Ego Blade Annihilation (Rank 2, Mental Acuity) - Spiking power. Extra bonus: synergy with Ego Reverb. Deliciously so.

35. Conviction - Another self-heal. It's worth it.

38. Freebie - I'll leave this up to you. I suggest another Active Offense like Lock N' Load, Ascension, or Imbue. I have Lock N' Load. Maybe a bubble would be good here too?

Super Stats:

6. Dexterity- For Crit chance and Specializations

10. Intelligence - For cost and cooldown reduction

15. Ego - For more damage. It's a matter of choice for me. Constitution would be a good alternative for more HP instead (taking a queue from the Galaxi build by Man.of.Light). I've also wondered if Presense would be viable for buffing your self heals.

Specializations:

Dexterity: Combat Training (3/3)
Dexterity: Gear Utilization (2/3)
Dexterity: Evasion (2/2)
Dexterity: Quick Reflexes (3/3)
Warden: Fortified Gear (3/3)
Warden: Ruthless (2/2)
Warden: Upper Hand (2/3)
Warden: The Best Defense (3/3)
Vindicator: Aggressive Stance (2/2)
Vindicator: Merciless (3/3)
Vindicator: The Rush of Battle (3/3)
Vindicator: Modified Gear (2/2)
Mastery: Dexterity Mastery (1/1)

Basic thought process for these choices are to increase your offensive ability as well as defensive ability. You may want to chose Deadly Aim (3/3) instead of Quick Reflexes. Me, I figure my crits are hitting hard enough that I'm comfortable with having more dodge.


Gearing and Talents:

Focus on the super stats of course. I picked up some CON in my Talents for a little more HP. If you chose CON instead of EGO, maybe do the opposite. Offensive gear, go try to increase Crit Strike and Severity (though I currently have gear that has a Healing bonus). Defensive gear, go for Dodge and Avoid. Utility gear: INT handles your cost and cooldown so... I actually have the Helmet of Topography...

How to fight:

This toon is meant to fight in Support role. No, that's not a typo. Why Support if I'm a DPS? Because this isn't meant to be the hardest hitting DPS, but one that can last in a fight. Support increases my self heals, lowers threat, and offers great energy management. Seraphim makes up for the loss in damage output. Hybrid role should be doable if you want more DPS, but you'll have to watch your energy more.

Start off with lunging in at your foes since you are melee. If you have multiple foes (especially henchmen), rely on Ego Blade Frenzy to chop them down. Once you cleared the trash, switch to Ego Blade Breach on the bigger foes. EBB hits good, and also can easily give you Ego Leech stacks (more chance if you charge). Ego Leech triggers Ego Reverb, so you should be able to spam these easily especially if you take time to charge. EBB also debuffs your foe against Ego damage. Once you have a full stack of Ego Leech and your foe's got a full stack of the Ego debuff, it's time for a spike. Hit him with a full charged Ego Blade Annihilation (for more fun, I usually hit my Active Offense before I spike).

EBA will wipe out your Ego Leech stacks for a great spike in damage. It will also apply Ego Annihilation to the foe, which is a Damage over Time AND grants you Ego Leech stacks. Remember how above I said this power has great synergy with Ego Reverb? Here it is. Those Ego Leech stacks that return to you trigger Ego Reverb. So you basically have energy flowing back into you while you spam EBB again and again and EBA and... rinse and repeat.

When you need to heal, you've got Ego Weaponry. You should have a decent crit chance and severity, so this power should heal you pretty good after multiple strikes. Conviction also provides a large burst of healing. Masterful Dodge is also good to reduce the heavy hits as you try to heal.

To be honest, I've only recently gotten this toon to level 40. Her gear is mostly under-powered for her level. Only one Heroic (on utility no less), and most of the gear is sub-30 levels. Still, I find her able to go up against equal level foes without a problem.

monsterdaddy

I would suggest switching Ego Weaponry for BCR w/adv. The reason is that since you will be fighting in Support role and have a healing passive, you would get more healing AND dps from tapping BCR and using EBB/EBA than using Ego Weaponry. Plus BCR heals you when you aren't or can't attack, i.e. blocking, held, knocked.

Ego Weaponry Siphoning Strikes is really best for folks in DPS role, max critical severity/chance and little to none bonus healing. You got plenty of bonus healing but less than optimal DPS.

Also, for DEX PSS just use Deadly Aim and Expose Weakness for DPS. The others just don't give enough of a benefit once you have Heroic Gear.

Nimble Mind without CON SS is inferior to Lock N Load/Imbue.

BTW you shouldn't substitute CON for EGO since you need EGO for energy generation. Mental Discipline does not give energy so Ego Reverberation is your sole source. I would give up INT for CON though. In any case, I think you might have energy problems since I had the same issue with my 100% crit chance Ego Wep toon: Isis

kelbornx

I second the Ego Weaponry -> BCR/RR for this build. Siphoning Strikes only gains bonus from your crit severity, not your bonus healing. It also takes away the ability of EW dealing critical damage, which basically cuts its DPS potential in half when you're using it.

Definitely fix your DEX Specializations. Honestly, you shouldn't ever take the Dodge/Avoid specs in it. Even on a Tank (unless you're going for an uber survival solo build). You can get ~40% Dodge and 60% Avoidance from gear alone. Throw in The Elusive Monk on Parry*, and you're close to Lightning Reflexes territory. Deadly Aim is the largest source of crit severity that you can get, and Expose Weakness stacks to a -10% All Damage Resist debuff. Even on a Tank using Primary DEX you'd want both of those instead.

And Mental Discipline -> Form of the Tempest. The fact that Mental Discipline doesn't a) scale the damage bonus (stuck at 18% with R3, you can get 18% from one or two stacks of Focus) or b) grant you energy turns me off from it completely. I guess it used to be good once upon a time, but now you're just losing a lot of DPS potential. The only thing it's good for is Id Blades, but taking something just for cosmetics while there's something else you can take for highly increased functionality. The 10% crit chance from 5x Ego Leech pales in comparison to the damage potential of FotT.

My Ego Blader runs DEX, CON / INT and talents for EGO. And I have a secondary gear piece with some more EGO. That gets me enough for Ego Reverb. DEX pumps the energy return very high on FotT, so you can afford lower scaling on Ego Reverb. If I remember correctly I get 45 from FotT and 25 from Ego Reverb. CON beefs me up and scales Niimble Mind. INT for lower cooldowns and cost. I'm also running Ego Weaponry / EBA instead of EBB / EBA. I just never liked EBB. I pull enough aggro with the DPS I'm putting out as it is to care for any more, really lol.

*One neat trick I've started doing: set your Build 1 with Parry equipped. Set Build 2 without it equipped. If you're not taking damage, be in Build 2. Once you pull something to you, switch to Build 1. This minimizes the -15% damage penalty while still giving you the defense when you need it.

monsterdaddy

Hey Kelborn, bro the damage buff from Mental Disc is actually multiplicative and better than fott in most cases. No stacking needed plus you get the Crit bonus.

kelbornx

It is multiplicative? Still, ~90% average additive bonus from 8 stacks of Focus. Plus the energy return.

Using Mental Discipline and Ego Reverb, you'd be better off going Primary EGO, dumping INT for CON and grabbing the Insight spec in EGO (for cost discount). Scale up that sole energy return, cuz you're gonna need it. EBB spam isn't cheap. Part of the reason I prefer EW / EBA to EBB / EBA.

kallethen

BCR w/RR does work well. I did have it in this build at one point. I have multiple builds with BCR. After seeing M.o.L's Galaxi guild, I decided to try EW w/SS and I find it works very well too. The reason I decided to keep EW instead of BCR is because I feel it heals me up faster.

As for energy issues... I don't have much energy problems. Support role + Ego Reverb do an excellent job. The only times I fall flat on energy is if I don't take care to keep feeding the Ego Reverb. You just need to keep those Ego Leech stacks building. EBB can be an energy hog to spam. The Ego Leech it can grant will negate the cost; I often at least partially charge it to guarantee an Ego Leech. I'd say one tick of Ego Reverb returns as much energy as I used to full-charge EBB. Toss in a full charge EBA to have it proccing Leech stacks, and I don't have to worry about charging EBB.

l1ghtstar

Hi there.

May I provide some feedback? First things first. This build is quite solid, in the sense that it's viable for pve content.

One thing that stands out is the passive, Serpahim. Seraphim is fine and all, but the thing is, Seraphim us better suited for a ranged TK toon or a support TK blader, like Empathic Healing and such. Your build is designed to be soloable. Siphoning Stirkes doesn't scale with Pre or any healing bonuses, and is dependent on out-going damage. So Seraphim really doesn't help Siphoning Strikes as much, just the dmg bonus. So I feel that switching from Seraphim to ID Mastery is a much better choice. Again, if you were to grabs some heal and become more team oriented, then yes, Seraphim might be the better choice.

From my experience, These such builds are agro magnets, and since there aren't many (or good) dedicated tanks that hold agro well, you'll find yourself taking hits and becoming the 'pseudo' tank. Imagine with no Con in your build in an alert with Gravitar?

As for Galaxi, I gave her Rec as a third stat to disregard any energy issues. If you look at her videos in that thread, you'll note that I suffer no energy issues spamming the crap out of EBB. I feel that Int isn't worth it in this such build perma Nimble Mind-Imbue (or whatever active offense combo) isn't necessary. TK Builds, when built right, have high enough crit chance and damage. Diminishing Returns also hurts like a truck, so Active offenses don't add much more damage (at least on my toons). Unless you're using devices, I'd say pass on Int as Rec/End provide better management now with cost discount gear.

This is a more general note, not this build specifically. Mental Disciple keeps getting over looked for FotT, and I see why. Mental Disciple not only provides a crit chance buff, but also doesn't need to scale on any stat, nor does it need to be stacked up for it's full potential (except the crit chance buff, which stacks via Ego Leech). FotT needs to be stacked, and cutscenes are evil. I tested out FotT vs Mental Disciple in another thread, and have found that you need to have FotT stacks at 13-14% per stack to have a higher damage bonus than Mental Disciple. To get to 13-14% per stack on FotT, you need a good chunk of investment from Dex, which'll be pushing you far into diminishing returns if you have Gambler's Lucky Gem stacked.
In other words, in conclusion, for simplicity's sake, Mental Disciple is much better choice than FotT in my experience.

There's bound to be different opinions, but these are my findings, which I base it on extensive testing in PTS, PH, AND in actual gameplay. (Darn Cryptic has me buying a bunch of retcon tokens =o )

selphea

l1ghtstar wrote: »

(Darn Cryptic has me buying a bunch of retcon tokens =o )

You can save money on tokens by buying 10-packs of keys and selling those for 100g each or AH for 105g each to cover the AH fee. Should cover the cost of a full G retcon with about 350g to spare unless you took a lot of 0-pointers

kallethen

I completely agree that using Seraphim is completely NOT the most effective means of creating an Ego-Blader. I do apologize for maybe giving that impression.

Disappointing that Siphoning Strikes arent' affected by healing bonuses, but I have still have to say I seem to heal myself up quickly with it. And to be honest, I think I'm tired of relying on BCR all the time.

Which is the point of this build really. It's not meant to be the greatest, it's being experimental. Seraphim is a Support passive, and I'm using it in a manner that's not what it was intended for.

I have pondered switching to Empathic Healing. As a self-heal, it would actually be in theme for the character (visually speaking), and it could be used to heal others. When I get the chance, I might test that out.