I started Champions off with a tank...a Behemoth, to be specific, and I like it. In fact, I had no idea how much I liked it until I made an alt that was The Blade archetype...
I usually play DPS classes in other MMO's so making a tank in the first place was a departure, but I had no idea what I was in store for. I am up to level 27 with this Single Blade and it STILL SUCKS. Yes, it can dish out some damage, but has to do so in melee, and I have completely lost track of the sheer number of times I am defeated, every time, every mission. There has been an inordinate amount of facetime on the ground.
I prioritized the main attribute (Dex), and maxed out such powers as Way of the Warrior and Form of the Swordsman for general usefulness. My lunging attack can stun, my bleed attacks are well represented, and in a group, I always try and let a tank take aggro before engaging. I have learned to Block when needed, and I always try to flank.
None of it seems to matter. Talk about a glass cannon, this is awful. Is this just a general weakness of the archetype? Or is there some obvious tactic I am missing?
The blade comes with the correct follow up of moves unlike other spam spam spam ATs. It is more difficult to play but its dps is perhaps the highest among melee (though my disciple can probably take it down because of heal) BUT it has low health and no heals. Make sure to pick a +5 con superstat. Get some max HP/con boosting gear. But do not lose out on dex ! Dex is great with dodges even if it has been nerfed badly. Why? Because the blade would much rather have better survivability with dodge than more HP. But more HP is mandatory to avoid getting one shot. Jack fool especially can one shot u easily even with block up. And Ao'Quphoth can heal through your bleeds. And dragon lord hi pan doesn't even have to target you for it (you will barely take any damage if played smart though).
Make sure you take swallow tail cut. At lvl 40 the rupture boosts ur damage a lot, similar to ego blade annhilation and ego leech.
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
Blade is not made for running in and mu- ok it is..
The thing is that you have to play SMART with an AT like Blade. Also, never max a form unless its Aspect of the Machine. You'll always gain stacks in battle. The main thing about Blade is blocking and Scything Blade. When you're surrounded, block until you have enough energy to fully charge an SB. NEVER pull aggro by running in. Always use shurikens to pull so you don't mess up and get unwanted adds. Blade also doesn't really come unto its own until you get a fairly good amount of dodge and avoid which is about the 30s..
Really, most of the free ATs don't really shine until Cap when you can gear them properly instead of relying on random drops/Mission rewards
AWWWW CHAMPIONS UNIVERSE! DON'T YOU DARE. BE SOUR. CLAP FOR YOUR NIGHTMARE AND FEEEEEEEEEEEL THE POWAAAAAAH!
Nice try at trolling. Better luck next time. And many thanks to everyone else for the constructive replies, I put some of it into action and am having better luck. I also just picked up Chained Kunai and intend to make liberal use of it, thanks for the incentive!
Generally speaking to gain DPS you have to stack layers, technically a tank AT will usually have some kind of self heal as well making the blade much weaker for soloing unless you have some healing device or something. The Blade can hit pretty darn high, it doesn't suck for everything but generally speaking if you want an easy time in everything to the point you can basically stand around not caring about anything hitting you then try glacier and spam one button to win.
Basically don't expect it to be easy to solo stuff without any kind of heal while not resisting any damage.
I started Champions off with a tank...a Behemoth, to be specific, and I like it. In fact, I had no idea how much I liked it until I made an alt that was The Blade archetype...
Kind of suprised nobody mentioned it yet, but: play style. If you enjoy Behemoth, chances are you like slow and methodical, which the Blade is SIMPLY not suited to.
Talk about a glass cannon, this is awful. Is this just a general weakness of the archetype? Or is there some obvious tactic I am missing?
The archetype was one of the early ones intentionally designed to be worse than they need to be. There was no good reason not to include BCR in the build other than intentionally gimping it. BCR would not allow the Blade to solo cosmics or anything ridiculus, but make mid-level mission play a lot more bearable.
I started Champions off with a tank...a Behemoth, to be specific, and I like it. In fact, I had no idea how much I liked it until I made an alt that was The Blade archetype...
I usually play DPS classes in other MMO's so making a tank in the first place was a departure, but I had no idea what I was in store for. I am up to level 27 with this Single Blade and it STILL SUCKS. Yes, it can dish out some damage, but has to do so in melee, and I have completely lost track of the sheer number of times I am defeated, every time, every mission. There has been an inordinate amount of facetime on the ground.
I prioritized the main attribute (Dex), and maxed out such powers as Way of the Warrior and Form of the Swordsman for general usefulness. My lunging attack can stun, my bleed attacks are well represented, and in a group, I always try and let a tank take aggro before engaging. I have learned to Block when needed, and I always try to flank.
None of it seems to matter. Talk about a glass cannon, this is awful. Is this just a general weakness of the archetype? Or is there some obvious tactic I am missing?
to the OP,
your main problem, and I've leveled a Blade to 23 so far and the constant deaths annoy the heck out of me too.
Threat, blades do a lot of damage which means they get a lot of threat, which means everyone attacks them.
so yes, you do die a lot unless someone is using crippling challenge or challenging strikes near you.
next- block when you have to .You will heal a bit while blocking.
don't go for all your super stats on talents, try to stack some Con . mine has Con/dex on it's defence gear so I can get more Hps.
load your device tray with heal items- I visited Karneeki and loaded mine FULL.
to give you fair warning,
the Fist at has exactly the same problem with 100 hands.
Night avenger has it with Ricochet shot, which really should be renamed "everyone attack me"
The Blade is my second favorite AT because Reaper's Caress is awesome. I don't remember having many deaths the two time I've leveled a Blade outside of alerts. I make sure to have plenty of heally patches though because waiting for out of combat healing sucks.
Blades do suck until Level 40. I totally agree. Getting their MAIN ATTACK at level 40 is almost inexcusable. The healing consumables help a lot, and once you're at an appropriate level and have the money, picking up a Necrulitic Elixir and a Nimbus can further your survivability.
I always thought The Blade sucked. Haven't played it in a long time so I can't say specifically.
Right now my new buddy is a blade and I'm taking 4K damage before he can hit anything with his standing around pointing with his energy builder and maybe 50ft leap versus my 100foot blast attack countered by the enemies' 100 foot attacks.
Compared to other Archetypes, Blade's survivability is really poor, making it not very enjoyable. After leveling up Specialist, Disciple and Unleashed, my Blade felt extremely fragile, and the DPS difference is perhaps not worth the difference.
My Disciple is an incredible crit-machine and I have solo'd Vikorin with her. My Unleashed, thanks to BCR, Force Sheathe, Surge and EotS can tank in alerts pretty easily, and my Specialist may not have crazy DPS but she survives Gravitar fights with no issue, and that's something not many archetypes can say. For endgame PvE (therakiel, gravi, cybermind, nemcon, malvanum) you'll find yourself drawing too much aggro for your own good, and possibly dying mid-fight. Although you may out-DPS the other AT's, your DPS is still 0 when you're dead. For this reason, the Blade in my opinion doesn't shine as bright as other archetypes in endgame, as you may end up giving your healer too much work.
For PvP, however, the Blade really begins to shine brighter - a good Blade can dispatch even freeforms if he knows what he's doing. This, however, doesn't mean that other archetypes are so below - Disciple, Unleashed, Devastator and Specialist all kick **** in PvP too (and i've killed good Blades with all of them).
In conclusion, I feel that the Blade goes a bit too extreme with the "glass cannon" style, dishing out insane damage and then dying before the fight is over. You can, of course, counter this by using CON talents/gear to bump up your health, but without a way to heal and/or bubble yourself you'll quickly die in F&I or Gravi or lairs anyways. But hey, maybe you can find a build better than what I used - I've seen blade fanatics out there insisting it's the best AT ever. So it's up to you - reroll as Unleashed (and gain an extra sword) or keep going down the Blade path.
Compared to other Archetypes, Blade's survivability is really poor, making it not very enjoyable. After leveling up Specialist, Disciple and Unleashed, my Blade felt extremely fragile, and the DPS difference is perhaps not worth the difference.
Just try fist... You find you're having to attempt stun lock rotations on basic mobs to survive sometimes.
My first character in CO was a Blade. I got every single death perk before level 40. I've since retrained him to an Invincible, which is probably the exact opposite of a Blade.
My first character in CO was a Blade. I got every single death perk before level 40. I've since retrained him to an Invincible, which is probably the exact opposite of a Blade.
Invincible is easy mode. I have one and love it. Tough as hell, can heal itself, reduces enemy damage resistance and, puts out enough damage that I can tank easily without having to use Crippling Challenge or Challenging Strikes. Unbreakable is on a 40 sec cooldown on my invincible as well and will only recharge faster as I increase my stats and half the attacks are toggles. All you have to do is push two keys every six seconds and you'll kill everything.
Invincible is easy mode. I have one and love it. Tough as hell, can heal itself, reduces enemy damage resistance and, puts out enough damage that I can tank easily without having to use Crippling Challenge or Challenging Strikes. Unbreakable is on a 40 sec cooldown on my invincible as well and will only recharge faster as I increase my stats and half the attacks are toggles. All you have to do is push two keys every six seconds and you'll kill everything.
Problem with the Invincible though is if the bad guy ur targeting hides behind a trash can the game goes OUT OF TRAGETING ARC! ...yeah.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
Problem with the Invincible though is if the bad guy ur targeting hides behind a trash can the game goes OUT OF TRAGETING ARC! ...yeah.
That's what the little pew pew palm laser is for (I forgot what it's called). If they run behind something, which almost never happens, you just rotate your character until it's facing them and obliterate whatever they're hiding behind along with them with your handy dandy hand laser.
That's what the little pew pew palm laser is for (I forgot what it's called). If they run behind something, which almost never happens, you just rotate your character until it's facing them and obliterate whatever they're hiding behind along with them with your handy dandy hand laser.
But that mean I need to like move my thumbs and use up energy I could be using to make grond jokes :L
To the OP I will say one thing that will help ur blade. Get a set of secondry dillo gear, just the secondrys it add 25% all dam resistance trust me its seriously helps the blade be more awesome.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
I always found my savage a lot better than my invincible... My disciple... Only managed to get to lvl 10 then exams started... But it was a great start compared to the invincible. And from what I have heard... It only gets better
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
After leveling the Blade I can def say its not for a newcomer to use. The most arduous thing wasn't having to wait till lvl 40 for Embrace so much as having only 10ft cones for AoE- made solo grinding annoying and longer than it had to be.
Alerts can be a bit rough, but the main thing is to try not to AoE (Blade is poor at it anyways) and rely on the knockup from Tides and the stun adv from Thunderbolt lunge to lockdown enemies while you single-target burn them down. In Alerts I'd usually wait for someone to pull and then pick on the toughest target, or protect the healer by knocking/stunning w/e mobs were after them. If noone in the group was being daring then I'd just go in, maybe hit Scything blade once, then block- just block till someone else takes aggro.
Getting R2 + Elusive Monk on Parry, gearing for growth amulets + extra Con + Nem or Armadillo 2ndaries, taking Masterful Dodge over Intensity, and always carrying healing packs all greatly helped to improve survival.
I have fun w/ the Blade, but I can't say I'd ever suggest it as anyone's first AT.
Problem with the Invincible though is if the bad guy ur targeting hides behind a trash can the game goes OUT OF TRAGETING ARC! ...yeah.
So blow up the trash can. Geez, non-robots shouldn't be allowed to use power armor attacks... you organics can't even handl- I mean hey, heeeeeey, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey... how about that Mechanon guy right? He's the bad guy here
Comments
And playing by myself since Aug 2009
Godtier: Lifetime Subscriber
Make sure you take swallow tail cut. At lvl 40 the rupture boosts ur damage a lot, similar to ego blade annhilation and ego leech.
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
~me
The thing is that you have to play SMART with an AT like Blade. Also, never max a form unless its Aspect of the Machine. You'll always gain stacks in battle. The main thing about Blade is blocking and Scything Blade. When you're surrounded, block until you have enough energy to fully charge an SB. NEVER pull aggro by running in. Always use shurikens to pull so you don't mess up and get unwanted adds. Blade also doesn't really come unto its own until you get a fairly good amount of dodge and avoid which is about the 30s..
Really, most of the free ATs don't really shine until Cap when you can gear them properly instead of relying on random drops/Mission rewards
It's you mate.
Click here to check out my costumes/milleniumguardian (MG) in-game/We need more tights, stances and moods
Nice try at trolling. Better luck next time. And many thanks to everyone else for the constructive replies, I put some of it into action and am having better luck. I also just picked up Chained Kunai and intend to make liberal use of it, thanks for the incentive!
Basically don't expect it to be easy to solo stuff without any kind of heal while not resisting any damage.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
Kind of suprised nobody mentioned it yet, but: play style. If you enjoy Behemoth, chances are you like slow and methodical, which the Blade is SIMPLY not suited to.
The archetype was one of the early ones intentionally designed to be worse than they need to be. There was no good reason not to include BCR in the build other than intentionally gimping it. BCR would not allow the Blade to solo cosmics or anything ridiculus, but make mid-level mission play a lot more bearable.
This might help.
http://champions-online.proboards.com/thread/362/all-silver-guides-thread
your main problem, and I've leveled a Blade to 23 so far and the constant deaths annoy the heck out of me too.
Threat, blades do a lot of damage which means they get a lot of threat, which means everyone attacks them.
so yes, you do die a lot unless someone is using crippling challenge or challenging strikes near you.
next- block when you have to .You will heal a bit while blocking.
don't go for all your super stats on talents, try to stack some Con . mine has Con/dex on it's defence gear so I can get more Hps.
load your device tray with heal items- I visited Karneeki and loaded mine FULL.
to give you fair warning,
the Fist at has exactly the same problem with 100 hands.
Night avenger has it with Ricochet shot, which really should be renamed "everyone attack me"
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Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
You asked.
The Blade is my second favorite AT because Reaper's Caress is awesome. I don't remember having many deaths the two time I've leveled a Blade outside of alerts. I make sure to have plenty of heally patches though because waiting for out of combat healing sucks.
[at]riviania Member since Aug 2009
The road from 6-40 is hell for a Blade.
Right now my new buddy is a blade and I'm taking 4K damage before he can hit anything with his standing around pointing with his energy builder and maybe 50ft leap versus my 100foot blast attack countered by the enemies' 100 foot attacks.
My super cool CC build and how to use it.
My Disciple is an incredible crit-machine and I have solo'd Vikorin with her. My Unleashed, thanks to BCR, Force Sheathe, Surge and EotS can tank in alerts pretty easily, and my Specialist may not have crazy DPS but she survives Gravitar fights with no issue, and that's something not many archetypes can say. For endgame PvE (therakiel, gravi, cybermind, nemcon, malvanum) you'll find yourself drawing too much aggro for your own good, and possibly dying mid-fight. Although you may out-DPS the other AT's, your DPS is still 0 when you're dead. For this reason, the Blade in my opinion doesn't shine as bright as other archetypes in endgame, as you may end up giving your healer too much work.
For PvP, however, the Blade really begins to shine brighter - a good Blade can dispatch even freeforms if he knows what he's doing. This, however, doesn't mean that other archetypes are so below - Disciple, Unleashed, Devastator and Specialist all kick **** in PvP too (and i've killed good Blades with all of them).
In conclusion, I feel that the Blade goes a bit too extreme with the "glass cannon" style, dishing out insane damage and then dying before the fight is over. You can, of course, counter this by using CON talents/gear to bump up your health, but without a way to heal and/or bubble yourself you'll quickly die in F&I or Gravi or lairs anyways. But hey, maybe you can find a build better than what I used - I've seen blade fanatics out there insisting it's the best AT ever. So it's up to you - reroll as Unleashed (and gain an extra sword) or keep going down the Blade path.
Just try fist... You find you're having to attempt stun lock rotations on basic mobs to survive sometimes.
A Playlist of my CO PvP video's (starting from post nerf PTS team duels)
My Characters on PRIMUS DB
Invincible is easy mode. I have one and love it. Tough as hell, can heal itself, reduces enemy damage resistance and, puts out enough damage that I can tank easily without having to use Crippling Challenge or Challenging Strikes. Unbreakable is on a 40 sec cooldown on my invincible as well and will only recharge faster as I increase my stats and half the attacks are toggles. All you have to do is push two keys every six seconds and you'll kill everything.
Problem with the Invincible though is if the bad guy ur targeting hides behind a trash can the game goes OUT OF TRAGETING ARC! ...yeah.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
That's what the little pew pew palm laser is for (I forgot what it's called). If they run behind something, which almost never happens, you just rotate your character until it's facing them and obliterate whatever they're hiding behind along with them with your handy dandy hand laser.
But that mean I need to like move my thumbs and use up energy I could be using to make grond jokes :L
To the OP I will say one thing that will help ur blade. Get a set of secondry dillo gear, just the secondrys it add 25% all dam resistance trust me its seriously helps the blade be more awesome.
Nepht and Dr Deflecto on primus
They all thought I was out of the game....But I'm holding all the lockboxes now..
I'll......FOAM FINGER YOUR BACK!
"Good can be found in heights, even in the deepest pits of evil" but "The valleys of evil always exist in the mountains of good."
~me
Obviosuly, it should not be that way where toon starts work only after 35+ or so. But that's reality even with many so-called "premium" ATs.
I really wonder how well this latest AT discount will fare and how many of the purchased ATs will be the Savages.
Alerts can be a bit rough, but the main thing is to try not to AoE (Blade is poor at it anyways) and rely on the knockup from Tides and the stun adv from Thunderbolt lunge to lockdown enemies while you single-target burn them down. In Alerts I'd usually wait for someone to pull and then pick on the toughest target, or protect the healer by knocking/stunning w/e mobs were after them. If noone in the group was being daring then I'd just go in, maybe hit Scything blade once, then block- just block till someone else takes aggro.
Getting R2 + Elusive Monk on Parry, gearing for growth amulets + extra Con + Nem or Armadillo 2ndaries, taking Masterful Dodge over Intensity, and always carrying healing packs all greatly helped to improve survival.
I have fun w/ the Blade, but I can't say I'd ever suggest it as anyone's first AT.
- Be safe and have fun, champs - for science!
So blow up the trash can. Geez, non-robots shouldn't be allowed to use power armor attacks... you organics can't even handl- I mean hey, heeeeeey, heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey... how about that Mechanon guy right? He's the bad guy here
My super cool CC build and how to use it.