Skill Overview/Guide

cosmosia1989

Same as for the Tecs, here goes my post for the Edgerunners. It's assuming max upgraded skills, obviously.

This class is very versatile and has some nice shield mechanics but is a bit less straight forward compared to the Tec due to their insane versatility. I like this alot. Both the new classes require quite a bit of playerskill to really shine and can easily go down quickly if you don't know what you are doing.

Let's start with the shields. All shield skills can be used at any point, even when CCed, just like genie skills:

All available NF-Versions of the shields should be glyphed: Halo, Cataclysm, Rejection.

You have a pool of 150 total shield energy with a recovery rate of 5 per second. All shield (cept argent glyph on cataclysm, which has 120 sec CD) have a 90 second CD and there are 5 shields in total. If you were to use all of them, you could do that within those 90 seconds and then some, since you start with 150 and recover a total of 450 energy in those 90 seconds for a total of 600 shield energy available if you start with full energy. Now, if you fight for a longer time you might lose parts of the initial 150 but you will hardly find yourself in a situation in which you spam away all of them anyways. If your energy is 0 you obviously need 20 seconds before you can use another shield and then another 20 seconds for the next and so on. The point is, you have enough shield energy most of the time and a shield available at the very least every 20 seconds. Now that the energy isn't really a problem if you pay attention to what you wanna do, lets talk about glyphs:

Shield of Halo: Insanely powerful, purely physical DoT-Like damage (it stays physical, no matter which elemental stance you chose) similar to Edged Blur from seeker. It lasts for 10 seconds and dishes out your base damage every 2 seconds. Since it's physical it can be blocked by Expel but can also be increased in effectiveness by adding physical debuffs. Just like Edged Blur it is only based on the edgerunners att lvl and ignores defense level, like DoT-Type skills usually do. In terms of glyphs I highly recommend either the golden glyph since that does increase the damage by roughly 15-20% on average which can be really good if you need to make one Halo count or the Blue glyph, which reduces the CD on lv5 by 20 seconds. This allows you to use the shield every 70 instead of 90 seconds and as we have determined earlier, you can easily do that in terms of shield energy. Having this extremely powerful skill available as much as possible can also be a huge asset in 1v1 or mass pvp situations, especially when your damage is already more than high enough to put pressure on as it is. The other glyphs do not seem reasonable, so I cannot recommend these.

Shield of Cataclysm: Basicallly a 10 seconds faith-like status evasion. It is even better than faith, because it literally blocks everything, just as wings of desolation and their Ulti skill does. So no bewitch, no PT, nothing goes through. This is your main survival skill. The NF-Version also generates a shield based on 40% of your max HP, which is quite nice, seeing that Edgerunners are Heavy Armor and average out at 30k+ HP selfbuffed and way higher, depending on the gear. As long as the HP-Pool isn't depleted the "faith-like" protection stays up. Once the HP-shield is gone, the status effect protection also vanishes, which leads us to some of the potential glyph choices here: The golden glyph increases the HP pool to 60% (lv5 glyph) of your max HP. This can be very good if you are focused quite a bit and often and want to make use of the status evasion for as long as possible and ofc, stay alive as long as possible at that. Seeing that 20% is not THAT big of a difference, you can also chose my prefered glyph, which is yet again the blue glyph to reduce the CD by 20 seconds (lv5 glyph). Having this crucial skill available more often takes the cake for me for obvious reasons but there is certainly a usecase for a bigger HP-Pool.

Shield of Rejection: It's your ranged CC skill. You could make an argument about the CD-Reduction glyph here, too, for a faster availability of a 5 sec ranged stun which can be good in certain 1v1 situations. However, the most likely use here is the argent glyph which transforms this skill into a 4 sec paralyze skill. Paralyze is life, ijs.

The other 2 remaining shields are Shield of Imprecation and Monstrosity. Monstrosity has a very, very powerful status-reflect effect that literally reflects the next 4 skills within 8 seconds (sage) back to the caster of those skills. Remember tho, they need to have a target. if you get afflicted with target-less effects by mobs/bosses or the rare skills that do that, it will not be reflected. AOEs cast on your when you have that shield up will only be reflected back to the caster, not to his entire team. It also reflects bewitch, purge, PT, literally anything that targets. Insanely powerfull. Imprecation is straight forward. It increases your skill damage by 30-35% (Demon-Sage) over the duration. That's quite a damage boost and can be nice to put some extra pressure on.

Now I've said so much and we just barely covered the shields! Onto the attacks and elemental stances!

The elemental stances seem to be pretty straight forward. The Edgerunner can basically transform their damage into any element in the game and is able to adjust to every situation possible, damage-wise. A big note here would be that, as long as you use one of the elemental ones (not the physical one!) your attacks will not miss anymore. 100% accuracy on any attack. Seeing that you most certainly built an Edgerunner for full STR because of that, you will need them to not literally miss 24/7 but Base damage is still the biggest damage giver in the game, so I still advise to do that. You can argue going 100 Dex for some additional crit or even 200 if you love the physical stance and need some extra crit but it all depends on personal preference.

As for the specific effects of the stances: Don't pay them too much mind, honestly. Water and Earth have a chance to CC the target per hit, Metal gives you another 5 chi per hit (can be nice, chi is always good..but anyone has heart of steel, so dont forget to switch to a more preferable element if you wanna use this. Same is true for every stance, really.), fire drains 5 chi and wood adds another bloodpaint-like effect that restores your HP by 2% of the damage you deal (with non-Dot skills, so shield of halo is out for that). I still recommend to go with earth most of the time. Simply due to the fact that the only class with an earth immunity genie skill is the wizard. Any other class cannot evade this type of damage with the exception of complete immunity which can be awesome in these days of ppl spamming themselves with expel 24/7. The added chance to stun for 5 seconds with a 3% chance feels like another low-chance weapon proc but can indeed be very good if it works, so thats a little extra. Don't ignore the fire stance, however. Even in smaller scale PvP or 1v1...if you use a DEX-based genie you can make Spark (genie skill) work on the Edgerunner, too, in combo with the fire stance. It roughly doubles the damage on selfbuffed targets (on a 100 dex genie, so it reduces the fire res by 100%). If you play with a wizard, tec, SB..or anything that can reduce fire or magic resistance..you can end up hitting ppl insanely hard with that. Fire isn't a rare element anymore and debuffs are plenty. Just a regular magic def debuff like SB ulti or Cloud burst (50% on average) in combo with a tec Tide of flame debuff (60%) can lead into you Oneshotting a purged target with spark (genie skill) while being in the fire stance. If you add stronger/more debuffs, you could even obliterate fully buffed ppl with that, so going 100 Dex-genie built in tow with the fire stance is legit. Very legit even. The possibilities are endless...if you get a g17 weapon and get the rend proc on that...oh baby. Being able to debuff someone by 200% fire def and 170% physical def on your own is pure insanity (70% pdef debuff with green glyph (lv5) ghost slash) hence why I think rend will be stupid broken on edgerunners. Ofc, the proc chance is quite low, but there is no need to get any other non-def proc for the edgerunner anyways, since you can get purge from r8r as well and most spam-able skills are effectless and can purge ppl. Side Note: The Difference between g17 weapons purge proc and r8r purge proc is that r8r cannot proc the purge with skills that have effects and debuffs in them, like the pdef debuff, CC skills and so on. G17 proc works with them all, but rend is still more valuable on a debuff class like edgerunner imho.

Let's quickly go over the damage skills. Mortal Chant is a must have to be glyphed with the blue glyph. This increases the chi gain per use to 30 chi, which basically allows you to **** out chi as long as you have a target. Your main chi giver, don't bother with any other glyph. Ghost Slash is your main physical debuff and seeing that the green glyph increases the amount of what you can debuff, this is also a nobrainer, but hold on! In some situations like mass-pvp, you don't always need to debuff yourself, especially with a melee range, single target skill. Since glyph slots are limited, you should consider using that green glyph on heavenly arbitration instead, you only somewhat spamable ranged skill, because it turns it into a frontal AOE, which is obviously quite good in mass pvp. Depends on the situation, tho. It's useless in 1v1. Next up is hallowed Collapse, your spam-able CC skill. Here I recommend the green glyph as well for 1v1 or small scale situations. It increases the stun duration to 3 seconds. However, there is a catch and it is not displayed in the skill description. The stun only affects the target you use the skill on. NOW if you use the blue glyph and turn the stun into a 3 second silence effect instead -> this effect is AOE and effects anyone in the skill radius. So obviously stun for most 1v1 situations and blue for mass pvp for hallowed collapse. The NF version of hallowed Punishment has a chance to increase the damage your target gets on the first hit and has a chance to heal yourself by the damage you deal on the 2nd hit. Many ppl speculate with using glyphs on this one but honestly, I don't think it's worth it. The blue glyph that gurantees that the damage increase effect happens if you just land a crit pushes the amp itself down as well. IMHO just leave the skill as it is and be happy if it procs, either way doesnt make a huge difference. This leaves us with the Blade Hell and Focused Dive. Blade hell is your strongest DD skill. 450% of base damage and some weapon damage are spread onto 7 hits. That's it. Very powerful, gets rid of def charms and since its so fast, many hits are counted as one and thus you have great bypass potential. Use that on a rend proced person with spark and fire stance...rip! OP! Has a 1 spark cost which is reasonable for the damage. Focused Dive on the other hand...its a 20m range, frontal, chargable AOE with a high chi cost. That's it. No effect, just damage. Fully charged damage is ok but honestly the skill costs too much chi and is very slow to charge. The real use for that skill is if you wanna quickly land a frontal AOE on ppl or running targets when any other option if unavailable. Like all charge skills you can press the skill again to cancel the charge and instantly use it. That is the good part of that skill.

That leaves us with the ultimate in terms of damage skills. The ultimate is quite impressive in it's animation and the effects also are not too shabby. It seems like an Edge-Blur like-effect as well but it is not. You are literally attacking (AOE) every 1.5 seconds and you cannot use other attacks while you are in the ulti state. It lasts for 20 seconds (lv2) and you are immune to all status debuffs in the game and your damage is reduced by 50%. Additionally, you can move while riding on your horse (yes, that's the ulti animation ) and your movement speed is increased by 100% as well. The damage will be based on your elemental stances and will be calculated like regular attacks. You can use your shield skills without interrupting the ulti and longer casting skills like Focused Dive and Blade hell but it will appear as if the skill is canceled. Do not be fooled. the skills will completely channel/cast through and don't panic. The only thing you lose is the animation with some skills but you eventually get used to it. Hence you can use ulti and combine it with Shield of Halo or Imprecation to deal some more damage, or Rejection for CC. POSSIBILITIES

Continuing in another post...too long

cosmosia1989

That about covers the attack skills. Now lets talk about the main support skill for your attacks! Shattering Scream. Insanely powerful. It ports your to your target with every attack you use withing 20 seconds for a possible total of 30 attacks (multihit skills like blade hell count for the amount of hits/ports you get while using it). The range here is 35. It says the max range would be 35 but that is not true. If you use a weapon with additional range, then it will port you further depending on the range add you have. Also, if you use a ranged skill like Focused Dive or Heavenly Arbitration..you WILL be ported by 35m + additional range on weapons you could have + the range of the skill you use, hence without any additional range add on the weapon, heavenly arbitration will port you for 35+23m (arbitrations range) for a total of 58m, which is by far the longest range in the game and allows you to either chase targets that are crazy far away or put yourself out of harms way as well, depending on the situation. Still, imagine being relentlessly attacked for 15 seconds with no way of kiting. Even if you go into the air, this skill allows the edgerunner to still keep attacking you, even if they are not on a flyer. OP af. It lasts 20 seconds with a cd of 60 seconds and costs 150 chi. So you have a downtime of 40 seconds. Be very aware of that skill if you fight against an edgerunner and dont plan on kiting too much because that most likely won't save vs an Edge. Also noteworthy: If you use Shattering Scream with a multihit skill you will continuously be ported to the target per hit. So if someone uses holy patch and moves at 15m/s and you use blade hell in shattering scream you will always be on your target and it will get hit by all of the attacks.

That leaves us with 2 survival skills: Wings of Desolation and Inner Serenity. Inner Serenity is straight forward. Immunity for stun/freeze and 50% movement speed increase. Simple enough. Wings of Desolation is a fine skill, very fine! It costs 100 chi and renders you completely immune to all status debuffs, just like the ulti does. And like the ulti it also decreases the damage you receive by 50% and increases your movement speed. Lasts 15 seconds. Just like the ulti you will be stuck in an animation for that time and cannot use other attacks, you can use shields again ofc if you like. A quirky thing about both ulti and wings of desolation is that, if you use that skill on your flyer, they will increase your flyers movement speed, too. So if you are in a pickly, jump on your flyer, get the speed flight going and use wings or the ulti and you are far, far gone, basically uncatchable and unkillable in the process. Neat!

That covers the skills and you can already see that this class is hella powerful. All that said, in mass pvp and vs melee classes the edgerunner will truly shine, make use of your debuffs to the max and throw in a heartbite rend proc and things can get pretty unfair pretty fast. But! They are not without their weaknesses. As powerful as shattering scream is..if you can allow it and if you play a ranged class..during the 45 sec downtime you can basically just walk away from an edgerunner and there is not much he could do about it. To circumvent this a little, I personally think it would be best to use an STR based genie here too, just like the Tec should do vs Arcanes and ranged classes. Occult ice and any additional CC to lock down the enemy will be much appreciated vs slippery targets, obviously. Also add Whirlwind on your genie for good meassure and you are golden. Oh, and lets not forget that an STR- Based tangling mire combined with a green glyphed ghost slash can easily reduce a targets physical defense by 120+% which can be lethal, given the high base damage edgerunners posses.

There is obviously much more to be said about the edgerunner and the tec and many, many more specifics, combos in specific situations and much more but to give you a general overview of what to expect, look out for and what to look into if you play them yourself. If someone wants to make a guide out of this and format it an a more appealing fashion, be my guest. Cheers.

PS. I personally still prefer Sage for the Edge atm due to those reasons: Shield of Monstrosity reflects one more effect and shield of imprecation increases the skill damage by 5% more. Other than that, there really isn't much difference. I agree that demon spark is superior to the sage spark, obviously since edgerunner are no tanks, they are DDs but just the trip spark does not outweight the other skills for me. If they are give those 2 shields NF versions and make them equal then I will switch to demon as well. Another nice thing you can do in sage is make a makro with all the sage elemental stances and let them just rotate. Since you get 10 chi per and it's fast, you can recover chi in no time if you are idle for a few seconds or afk. Very useful.

cosmosia1989

RESERVED

shackleless#4791

Anyone know what the shattered dream stance is on the white glyphs for edges? im still a big confused what that actually is