Blademaster's role in Rebirth

BM is usually the hardest role to play in a Rebirth.. it really depends on your squad too. At your level, your formation... you're mainly going to have to closely monitor and manage aggro and the health of your party.

Alpha Male is really the only important skill you'll need. Others such as tangling mire, absolute domain, earthquake and a few others can be helpful if you can incorporate them, but if you're unfamiliar with rebirth it's best not to try to do too much your first time in.

Typically, barb gathers mobs, pulls them to the edge of zhen and either Roars and brings them in, or brings them in and Roars... at which point a BM would stun then dragon. Some BMs hit Alpha Male while they dragon to amplify some of the reflect, but it's easy to grab too much initial aggro doing this.

So all the while picking the right times to stun and alpha male, of course you're going to be spamming your ultis, Heaven's Flame and later Glacial Spike (when you have high enough chi auras to do so)....and you'll be spamming your aoes. Killing the mobs is what must be done, but a good BM will watch the health of the mage/acher and roar or alpha male when you see them start to take aggro.

If you're party leader in a rainbow squad, you'll have to set auras. I always set in this order: Mana, defense, health, chi, attack. Defense only adds pdef, so after the initial aura, focus on health and chi, then attack. I prefer to get chi and health up to 5 before adding more attack. Some people will scream for more mana, and after you bump chi/health to 2 you can take mana to 2, but I usually mock those people... mp pots are cheap and the other auras are far more beneficial to the party early on.

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I generally don't tend to use Roar as the mobs are coming in unless it's a mixed wave of ranged + melee. Wave 1, doesn't matter... most mages/archers will most likely open zhen when you don't have higher chi auras.

As the barb pulls the mobs in, I'll roar if the mobs aren't grouped well. If they are well grouped, I'll rush to tangling mire and HF at that point I'll roar... I generally save my Alpha Male till the wave is half dead or if I see mage/archer/dd starting to take too much aggro or wait for the wave so the barb can leave without dragging mobs back into the valley.

Your timing and choice of Roar and HF as well as which you'll start with really depends on weapon balance for your DDs. A few of the mages I go with drop ultis as soon as the mobs are within range, so it's always best for me to rush and HF, aoe twice then roar.


Sorry, not feeling all that well at the moment, so I know I left out quite a bit... I'm sure others will provide their interesting insight on how they run rebirth.

One thing I have noticed is that every regular party kind of does rebirth differently, and you have to pay attention and work as a team, so as a BM, you kinda got to get a feel for how the barb and DD teams like to work.

I would only suggest that you try to find several really experienced players to go with your first time, it'll make learning a lot easier if you're on vent and being told what to expect and what's expected of you.

Cheers!

A lot is experience, learn which waves / mobs can and cant be stunned. I always open with a stun if I can, then ideally the barb clusters the melee and ranged mobs together and I get off a HF. Roll your face across your AOE keys, keep 1 eye on the wizzies HP at all time. If it starts to drop use alpha male. Do not be afraid to spam Alpha male. Do not hesitate to Alpha male! b:shocked

I hit Will of Bodhivstaha (spelling?) before 3-3 3-4 3-5, 9-3 9-4 and 9-4 arrive into the zhen. Stay in BB at all times and also keep an eye on mobs aggroing the cleric, especially latecoming mobs in the above mentioned 'stun waves', one of these coming in late and knocking down BB can cause a disaster.

Communicate well with your barb, talk to them and ask what their preferences are, always helps to spend 3 hours with a barb on the same wavelength as yourself. The bosses from wave 5 and onwards need to be taken out the AOE, so make sure you alpha male the mobs early and work on holding aggro. With you being lower level, aggro may be an issue for you. Talk to your wizzie and tell them to take a more survival based approach, with the attack blessing etc nowadays, you can take a survival approach and still dish out some respectable DD.

Aura setting, I dont have a 'set in stone' aura setup list, I try to take the parties gear into account etc. e/g a LA wizzie wont need a defensive aura approach as early on.
My 'Aura basics' are: start with mana 1, get it upto 2 by wave 2 to avoid archer QQ and if the archer has level 11 barrage, knock it upto 3 by wave 4 and never take it higher. I like to get chi to 2 early on, as i find it keeps me sufficiently chi'd up for HF and roar at any time i wish, then I leave it at 2 until I have att / def / health max'd up. I also always have defense set to 3 for wave 3, cos somebody told me to do it when I was starting out doing RB, so i've always done it as some weird habit.

I find marrow use to be very useful in RB. with a high def aura, a magic marrow'd bm will have ~10k mdef and ~25k pdef, which i find useful for waves such as 9-4 and 9-5, where you benefit massivly from the additional mdef and dont lose hugely on % dmg from pdef. Waves 2 and 7 are pretty much all physical mobs, so physical marrow is your friend. Especially at the end of 7 where youre expected to hold aggro while the barb looks after the boss.

Genie skills:
Alpha male. No AM, no RB. you need this a lot. A lot of people suggest skills like mire and bramble rage... I dont 100% agree with this unless you know youre good at holding aggro. I found mire often ate too much genie juice and meant i couldnt get alpha male off when i needed, but its probably worth checking out see what your preferences are.
I like using domain, I find it buys time if BB goes down or the barb gets stunned just before pulling the mobs into bb, you can stop the barb from dieing and give him time to let his charm tick and get the mobs in safely.
I also like true emptiness, I normally use it after popping domain as it does not have an energy req for the magic sponge, which buys time and saves charmticks for you.
Holypath is also nice. Move around fast. Pick beans faster. Also if you gotta do an 'emergency lure', you dont wanna try to be clever or mess about. Pop Will of bodhivsta, holy path to round as many mobs as you can and get back in BB asap. If you have more HP and as you get more confident in RB, id suggest using alpha male as you pull the mobs, to keep aggro off the cleric. Obviously if you do this, its unlikely you'll also be able to holypath, so depends how confident youre feeling =p.

Feel free to poke me in game if you wanna chat about anything Ive mentioned here or have further questions. I know RB is done slightly differently across servers, so theres gonna be slight disagreements from you other noob bms.

cu in cube baaalllzzzzorr! b:cuteb:chuckle

Also if you master the technique of Alpha Maling the melee mobs off your tank in mixed melee-ranged waves, your barb will love your guts and it'll make them so much easier.

Baalzor - Heavens Tear wrote: »

as for the auras...
i kinda always (as a wiz) said to get mana on 2 then health chi att def 1
and att max asap
i guess maxing auras really depends on the squad itself and their gear...
if squad is capable of surviving mass mobs i guess i should go att auras first.
since i played as a wiz i know what i'm capable of surviving knowing my gear.

as for the GS..do i have to have some uber refined weapon for it or i can just get FF weapons..
i am going for the effect anyway..
should be easy imho
if anything comes across your mind just spam ^^

the more info the merrier for other bm's

As someone who has a 100 Wizard and gone through many RB's on her, Wizards do not need Mana 2. Mana 1 is enough for them. Archers need way higher than 2, but reasonably I just make sure they have jiaozi and/or an mp charm. Unless it's 2x I wouldn't go higher than Mana 1 or 2, unless the archer means so much that you basically stick to level 1 or 2 of some other aura like chi, which still isn't worth it to me.

How fast to go attack aura depends on how well the wizard and barb are taking damage without ticking charm or, in the wizard case, needing to be babysat overall. For the most part I was conservative on attack auras for wizards who had decent magic attack (10K+) until later. I think with level 6 attack aura mine was 15-22K. As it is, the Jones Blessing is going to add a bit of overall damage which all helps a wizard steal aggro back faster after a roar or alpha. Unless you have a decent barb, and a wizard who can take a lot of damage (high pdef+HP) or has crappy magic attack (5000 - 8000), putting attack auras up right away could mean a 1K'd wizard if they can't time to drop DB. Most wizards can't or won't.

Someone should really take this info and turn it into a guide for bm's, like myself, that have run Gv.