advantage of sword BM?

Granrey - Sanctuary wrote: »

BTW, its really badass when my toon hits with the sword, then does a back hook kick (when I swith to fists) then return to another sword hit (when I switch to sword again lol).


BTW, just curios if anyone has a use for mage bane? I'm thinking to combine it with shadowless kick.

I mean, the magic attack cycle from mobs is very close to the cooldown of shadowless kick. Therefore, you cant use it to block the next mag attack.

Saying that, if mage bane its applied a bit before the next attack, this will increase the casting time of the mob, making more viable to use shadowless kick again to block that attack.

I have not tried, I always forget it and besides, not sure if using spark is worth it (I;m better with drake bash since it will stunt and do the same effect).

but what about if mage bane works on bosses (drake bash does not stunt bosses)? Again you could increase casting time to make shadowless kick to block the next attack.

i dun use that skill at all atm, even it might be nice for some pk cases.
saying that, i will go deamon (in like 10+lvls) and it gets a aoe ability, i kow its dmg is nice so when ill get that ill max the bane and use it.

The sage version of shadowless kick has a reduced cooldown to 10 seconds (according to ecatombs)...that is fast enough to totally cancel out some bosses.

I use all four weapons, sword is my primary weapon out of all of them. I like the attack speed and dd capability of the sword. More dd than axes, and more attack speed, giving you more chances to hit enemies with very high dodge, not to mention the higher dex also lets u do this (spear is similarly good but i still like the attack speed, and i enjoy the later blades).

Fists will hit the best accuracy wise, but i prefer doing alot more damage per hit, so generally i use fists either to gain chi quickly, shadowless, or when i max it use fist aoe to always attack 12% faster with everything else, as well as help close any gaps in my aoe looping. Sword ultimate is simply amazing, it will save yours and many squad member's lives if used correctly.

Axes i of course use for aoe, in combination with spear and generally the sword super, as well as fist aoe. If lined up correctly for meteor rush and fan of flames I never have to wait for another aoe attack to cooldown, its just an endless barrage.

Swords are also pretty cheap to grind with, slower exp wise, and less profitable, but cheap, they are very good at killing one mob at a time. Naturally, if i want to aoe train i use my axes primary and all other 3 weapons to supplement them.

I will admit mage bane is useless, i waste my sparks on drake bash over that or sutra. Especially with genies melee classes are harder to kill, therfore supplying drake bash with chi becomes problematic, aside from stunlocking i hate axes in pvp vs other melee classes, and if you use all your chi doing it u wont outlast (at least in duel, pk probably lasts forever considering charms and genies). Axes do have high spike damage with berserk, giving them ko ability; however, sword tree also has berserk on TT99 blade mirage scimitar, a different kind of berserk in fact. Read linked info about it to know.

http://www.pwdatabase.com/pwi/items/14809

The side effect of this can be easily averted with stun, if they cant attack you then it dosent hurt u, and you get multiple attacks in this state as far as i know, deadly if you have activated something like dragon bane already(with proper purification items/clerics of course). It also gives you time to say, myriad your enemy while berserked, or activate spark eruption...painful i must say, and really works out well to finish someone off.

A sweet combo i thought up would be while having dragon bane on ( 30 second duration and puify assumed with items) if you activate ability, do 3rd level spark eruption (+500% or more damage), then while invincible, on 3rd second, use cloud burst (amazing genie skill, gives u up to 2 sparks instantly, your enemy 100 chi also, works in pve also, turns your genie into a portable chi generator), then drake bash your enemy (so they cant take advantage of reduced defense)...then hammer away with normal attacks, reason for normal attacks is if duration of effect is 10 seconds u get 4-6 of them in, at 35+% crit, dealing double + 500% damage...OUCH, and if the drake bash crits your enemy will simply be reeling from it.

Sword also gives me two ranged attacks to work with (spirit chaser and myriad). Using spear, sword and drakes ray i can almost continuously range attack something. Plus a ranged super attack...once again myriad is just beastly. And smack at 79 gives you ranged sealing abilities on top of this. Spear is of course the king of reach, but you need all the ranged special attacks you can get being a melee class.

Atmos strike is useful to either escape, hit huge damage in pvp, or totally skrew over melee mobs in combination with slow/ranged attacks. Oceans edge and atmos work well together.

Level 100 skill requires sword/blade to use as well.

For my play style i like swords stat distribution as well, at level 92 i will be able to wield TT90 blade, TT90 spear, TT80 axes, and TT80 fists, thus allowing me to use all of their abilities combined to kick some ****. (expensive on spirit and cash but i love it). Spears would work similarly, save axes and fists would switch when you could wield them (higher str vs lower dex, for me 80 axes i can use at 87, and fists at 92).

Overall using all trees will make you better than using a single tree, they all have some sort of use, i just use sword for my main weapon, the others mostly for special attacks. b:victory

lol first post on forums yay...hope some of this helps.

Granrey - Sanctuary wrote: »

I agree with your post but I want to highlight this part, as this is one of the reason of using sword.

I do think that for a single melee mob: bleed, slowdown, knockback and range skills (add bow if you want). you can kill a mob really cheap, even high level ones.

So, you hit and dont get hit.

For magic mobs I stay on fists.

most of the mobs (at ur lvl) will range u with magic once u knock em back, and ur mag def sux so thats not the stradegy i use for mobs, i just stay close.
if a mobs hits hard magic ill use the stuns, ans skills to kill faster ( at mana coast) if its noraml range magic- close melee, i just take the initial mag dmg, not the end of the world, and i use only the normal swords hit to charge the sutras sparks, if a nob is increased in life or defence i use the spark to hit harder. simple, cheap and effective

Hehehe...are my two cents really necessary? Anyway, my personal experience as a PvP Blade BM build (works pretty well), I became a hybrid in the 70s after the traumatizing experience of grinding through the swamp...That is to say, I didn't change my build, but used axes my strength would allow. Now, this is where I started to see a difference. An equal sword and an equal axe (let's say TT 70 sword and axe no plus no socket), the way you look at it, you would think the axe would be better even for 1v1 due to the higher damage. A sword requires much more dex than axes and axes require *much* more str than swords. What comes with dex is an increase in evasion, accuracy, crit rate, and ranged dmg. What comes with str is obviously more dmg and a very slight increase to def. Even with acc shards to raise your accuracy 200 for an axe BM a sword BM could raise his dmg likewise. However, what makes the sword better for 1v1 is that the only skills axes get are AOEs, which are slow to cast and have a relatively long cooldown. A sword BM in 1v1 would go somewhat like Aeolian Blade>Roar>Atmos>Draw Blood>Ocean>Aeolian or something like that in THAT amount of time. An axe BM in the same amount of time could afford Roar>Cleave>Fissure>maybe something quick. Do you see where I'm getting at for 1v1? Axe BMs can do Aeolian>Roar>Drake>Draw Blood>Ocean>Aeolian but OBVIOUSLY Atmos does WAYYY more dmg than Drake's Ray in that substitution. And if you're going to talk about dmg spike, please refer to what I said before about sword BMs putting attack gems and axe BMs putting acc gems (if an axe BM put attack gems then he would miss pretty bad...). Of course, there's always Misty Ring...but not everyone's that rich...There's my point for 1v1. From my experiences, I almost always beat axes my level or just a few above, and a close win/lose with dex BMs, haven't really seen many poles much less fought with them. I lose against archers (damn kiters!), sometimes against wizards (are they nuke or not?), sometimes against venos (LA sometimes win, heavy almost never), almost always win against clerics (though there are those rare pure magic builds...), and win against barbs, but in all respect dueling and PvPing has to do with the skill of the combatants, build, gear, etc. etc. you get the picture.

For AOE, AXES AXES AXES <3<3<3<3<3<3.

Made my leveling life SOOOOOOO much easier SOOOOOOOOO much easier and fun. Although I have to admit for doing the most dmg in one hit axes win out.

Almost forgot my input about fist BMs. Well...they're harder to level than sword BMs but in PvP or duels against other classes (not BM) like archer, cleric, etc. they rock.

im also a sword bm usually when i lvl i do 2 in str and 2 in dex and 1 in vit and it works well. as for sword of choice i made a 3 star +2 kan and li dual swords with 2 sockets and a few garnets. and so far even thought atp is slower than single sword i havent found a sword or anything that comes close to it at my lvl although id say its a wip hehe not finished with it yet.

as for the oppinions of every single post so far im gonna try out a sword/axe/polearm hybrid. lol i already accidentl got all teh lvl 1 skills for the other trees lol

Maddrox - Harshlands wrote: »

I've actually grown to prefer Single blade over dual blade for pvp. I see why they give more options for the Single blades. I think I may secrifice 400ish damage to keep the HH90 instead of 99 darkslayers: ibliteration or w/e. Kinda hard though, pro's and cons :S (More pro's by far)

lol considering the bonuses i get its even harder max phys attack +49 dex +4 and vit +2

guacanagarix wrote: »

BTW, the NPC's using axes and poleblade are the guardsb:laugh

from what i read no single weapon is good at everything a mixture is the best course

Dex-based Axe BM like myself would have,

5850hp
2780 accuracy
+Calamity

That > All sword BM

Mythsoul - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Dex-based Axe BM like myself would have,

5850hp
2780 accuracy
+Calamity

That > All sword BM

How about actually posting some relevant and informative stuff instead of bragging about your mediocre stats?

The advantage of a sword BM would be having the strongest 2 spark skill (initial damage-wise), having an extra ranged skill, and having good single target damage. However from experience pvping against Sword BMs I feel that their advantages don't warrant going pure sword path. Axes have dragon and stunlock, Poles have range, fists have good dps, sword isn't unique enough for me at least to go only sword. Even though my main weapon is axe, please ignore people who think that axes are the only weapon bms can actually use and who think that having 5.9k hp at lvl 80 makes them super pro.

I've actually been a sword BM since I began playing PWI about 3 months ago. From lvl 1 up to where I am now (lvl 19 about to do my FB19 on Sanctuary) I have worked with swords to strong success. A few keys I have had to succeed is what friends who play the game teach me. I've found at least for me that a combo of Tiger Maw, Draw Blood, Drake's Ray (to start an opponent ranged and then let him into the proverbial Cuisenart) and Stream Strike along with normal strikes have done all I need them to do at this point. Also just picked up Aeolian Blade which oughta be real fun to work with. Yeah I need and have learned to play careful and smart cause I have learned getting double or tripled by enemies as a sword BM, not so fun but I learned that quickly and didn't have to die once to understand it. It's also completing the right quests to get the right equipment for a sword BM that makes the difference. The blades I'm using: a quest reward I got a couple of levels back and they are doing right by me so far. I know they'll need to be upgraded again soon but so be it.

Other things I learned is how to distribute your attribute pts as a sword BM. A couple of tips: keep a surplus. Don't spend every point you get right away on a level up. I don't. I only spend on strength and dex when my armor or weapons need it there as a requirement. Otherwise I save them. And when I have more than 20 attribute points, put all except a bank of 20 of them into vitality. This keeps life up to a reasonably high level and will keep you alive more often than not. Also never place a single attribute point into Magic as a BM. Nothing more need be said about the last tip. But I'm writing this to say I've had a good experience as a sword BM and will likely end up a sword BM in the end. That is all and until next time I am out!

I use swords and favor dual blades (more base dmg), however make your BM your own. I didn't want to be copy and paste axe user and poleblade just looks weird to me honestly. My vit right now w/out add ons is 71, (first char so did some nub stuff :P) dex is lower than it should be imo(110 no adds). however once i hit 60 i started adding in 6 points in str every 2 lvls. This has helped me out tremendously. my vit gives me alot more hp than bm's my lvl (at 4.3K) so i can take most users of any path on and kill them b4 then can kill me. yeah sword uli is pro however if not lvl'd u better off double sparking. I use drake's bash over mage bane because if u can stun lock a magic mob then no point in slowing thier channeling down. (yes u can stun lock w/ any path if u use drakes bash. maxed alonein+roar+drakes=all BM stuns until 89) basically make ur BM ur own and have a blast w/ it.

Maddrox - Harshlands wrote: »

I agreee, sword bm's take skill and knowing your character and skills to play well. Done right. they outright own more than any other BM type and can aoe well enough to speed up grinding a bit. We can be lethal in PvP.b:surrender People just don't understand us

all classes take skill and knowing their char and skills to play well.

swords have the LEAST amounts of aoe skills of all 4 weapons, and pole has the same skills as sword, just pole has further range, hits harder, and actually can aoe

and it looks like one of those ppl that doesn't understand them is u