Shikha2012-06-07 18:52:18
Blademaster is a wonderful knighthood spec for a knight who simply can't afford to, or doesn't want to, shell out the cash for the most expensive weapon runes. Sure, having the runes is going to help tremendously, but the aim is that using this guide one can attempt to fight decently as a blademaster without them.
How do I outpace wound curing?
Outpacing your opponent's wound curing is, obviously, one of the most important aspects of combat as a knight. Blademaster has an interesting mechanism for doing this, which is quite different than other knightood specs. As a blademaster, we are going to focus on ruining our opponent's wound curing through forcing sips rather than brute-force 'outwounding'. Because of the nature of this style, we are going to use max speed rapiers. Without artifacts, your rapiers should come out to 33/167/280. Add coal runes yourself or with a friendly forger to bump them to 43/177/290. As an aslaran this will put you in the area of 2.3-2.5 second balance on each arm, depending on latency.
Blademaster attacks all cause a small bit of bleeding when they hit an opponent. On its own, this bleeding is countered by the kingdom enchant. However, the blademaster specialization has many afflictions that can make this bleeding become a force to be reckoned with, particularly a lot at low wounding levels, meaning we don't need to worry about bursting heavy wounds all over our opponent before we become effective.
We are going to aim at causing a massive amount of bleeding by combining: the bleeding inherent in each attack, lacerations on both arms (negligable wounds), lacerations on both legs (negligable wounds), opened gut (light wounds), sliced forhead (negligable wounds), chaining gashed chests (medium wounds), rending impales (heavy wounds) and legpins (heavy wounds), and also hoping that the occasional slitlock (heavy wounds) will stick long enough to get in on one of the bleeding tics.
We are going to create maneuvers to remove wounds that do not effectively support our main goal of forcing mana sips while overwhelming herb balance.
Normal Attacks:
Head: Always hack down. Every blademaster head aff can be given on a swing. In the past people viewed this as an ineffective way to build head wounds due to RNG, however we aren't planning on going with the old 'outwounding' technique to begin with, on top of the fact that RNG has improved slightly with the recent special report. If you happen to hit chest instead of the head, don't worry! We need to hit swinging attacks on the chest in order to proc gashchest, which adds both a fair amount of bleeding and stun, so even if you miss the head you are still doing it right.
For the head, leave scalp out of your maneuver. Scalp just isn't going to stick because we don't have a realistic way to overwhelm purgative curing with this method. Instead, we'd much rather hit the lower wound sliceear, for the slight stun. Be sure to include gashchest in the maneuver!
Chest: Alternate between a swinging (swipe) attack and strikes.
For the strikes you can leave puncturelung in your maneuver. This wound does not support our goal in this technique at all, but since there is no lower wound to proc in its place, we might as well leave it in. Puncture chest will help add some bleeding and causes some blackout. This is good, as blackouts tend to panic opponents. Leave collapselungs out, it doesn't support our end goal. It sounds nice as a regen affliction, but in truth we'd rather have the punctured chest. Leave heartpierce in. You aren't going to damage kill an opponent, but it's just one more moment when they will have to sip instead of applying to their wounds.
For swings (swipe) maneuver in armartery, collapsenerve (swipes will occasionally hit the arms), opengut, disembowel (swipes will occasionally hit the gut), and of course, gashchest. You will notice we have left out septicwound, which is, yet again, another of those pesky afflictions that don't really support our end goal. Opengut at a lower wound level is both an herb cure, bleed causer, and can even prone an opponent on a tic if they can't cure it quickly enough.
Arms: Strikes only. Leave out only piercearm. While this is an herb cure, the arteries in the arm will do more for our goal of massive bleeding. We would leave out severnerve for this same reason, however, severnerve is a prerequisite for collapsenerve, which we will want to keep around for the endgame. Remember, if you can sever the nerve and also collapse it afterward, an opponent will be unable to stand until that is cured. It doesn't prone them on its own, but using morphite on a double lunge to the arm to achieve this can be very effective at proning an opponent in the end-game to go for the head.
Legs: Strikes only. Leave out only the pierceleg, for the same reason as the arms. Hold legpins as long as possible to further slow your opponent's herb curing, but be sure to rend just before they should be writhing off. This is difficult to time without practice, but mastering the timing here will make you noticeably more awesome.
Gut: Strikes only. The only thing we would really maneuver out of the gut would be septicwound, but that's a swing attack anyways. You can swing (hack up) very occasionally, if they are at critical, for the chance at disembowel, but odds of actually securing a disembowel kill are very low. Sure, I've done it before in the past, but the strike gives you something much much more valuable: the impale. Impale, unlike pinleg, actually prones an opponent, meaning their stance and parry don't work while your sword is in their gut. This is a fantastic time to hack down with your other hand. Just like legpins, be sure to rend before they writhe off. Holding it as long as possible does not hurt their herb curing the same way as pinleg, but it does help to hinder them in general.
Power Attacks:
Manevuers are only needed on lunges for the arms and legs, to avoid the piercedlimb afflictions.
Now that we know what attacks we'll be using, lets look at venoms:
Senso, senso, senso. Senso causes the slickness affliction, which is cured with calamus, an herb. Because slickness is an extremely dangerous affliction to have, both because of locks and the fact that deepwounds cannot be cured with healing potion while one has it, this affliction will always be a top priority to your opponent over the other herb afflictions we are going to hammer them with. Proccing your senso on an opponent over and over means those other afflictions are going to stick, and stick hard. Use triggers with keeneye and visual cues to track whether your opponent is slick or not. If you see them eat calamus it is cured. If you see them applying, it has probably been cured by a passive healing ability (many guilds have these that tic occasionally).
If your opponent is slick, use mantakaya. Mantakaya causes paralysis. For lower level fighters this is a game ender, as the time it takes to come out of paralysis is longer the less discipline you have trained. At transcendent discipline, paralysis will take a full second to cure. During this time, your opponent's stance and parry don't work. Take this moment to hack down, or perhaps hit that other bodypart you have built up and they are now defending, using your other hand. Focus body, which cures paralysis, also takes 250 mana to use, furthering our goal of decimating our opponent's mana with the intention of making them sip.
Huzzah! I've managed to build wounds by forcing mana sips and now have my opponent hurting all over! How do I secure the victory?
Use legtendon, collapsenerve + morphite, or impale to prone your opponent, and hack away at that pretty neck! Alternatively, use mantakaya and hack down while they are still paralyzed. The latter can be very effective used as a combination of lunge head with mantakaya and then the hack down, to pile the head wounds on as much as possible at this critical moment.
So now we have a plan! We know how we are going to overwhelm their curing, how we are going to outpace their wound healing, how we are going to go for the finisher... that's it, rite? Nope.
Don't swing both your swords at once all the time. If you have your opponent on their heels you can wait a second in between swings, increasing your ability to stuff that venom in just after they cured the last one. This helps a ton for keeping them curing slickness instead of all those lacerations etc. Don't do this all the time, though, as occasionally you will need full balance for defensive purposes. This will take a lot of practice to pull off, but it is well worth it.
Knighthood combat is all about flexibility. You never know what can go wrong. There are lots of things that can force you to change tactics mid fight, or else you will lose, as an example:
Poisonist opponents can be immune to a particular venom of their choice. Many like to choose senso, as it is one of the nastiest venoms to be afflicted with. If this is the case, you will need to switch to an alternative venom, as it will not be helping you to break their herb curing. A good alternative is niricol. This won't lock them, and it won't slow their wound curing as much, but it will still slow their herb curing as most systems are likely to place blindness a lot higher on the priority list than a laceration (and rightfully so!) Niricol has the added benefit of hindering the opponent's offense more effectively than senso, so this is still a fair tradeoff.
This tactic will be less effective against opponents with massive amounts of mana and health both, as it will take a lot of both the bleed damage and the mana going from clotting to actually make them sip. There is no magic number about who it will and won't work against, you're just going to have to play around with it.
As a final note, tracking is a wonderful tertiary for this tactic. PoisonExpert will make your poisons proc much more often, really helping to confound your opponent's curing that much more. Also, a huntingcompanion can cause a fair amount of bleeding on their own, which as we have discussed, is exactly the thing we want to do. Dart traps with mantakaya will help you to bypass stance and parry while also making that mana drain hurt just a little more. Dulak is also an acceptable venom choice, giving you less chances at getting around parry, but possibly hindering their curing a little more.
That's it! This is not a 'perfect' guide. It won't work on everyone, nothing always works on everyone. Take it as food for thought. The guide assumes you have trans'd blademaster, and having combat up to keeneye helps a ton. Being a demigod certainly helps for the extra stat buffs, but please don't let people tell you you have to be a demi to fight, it simply isn't true. Aslaran is awesome for the speed buff. Enjoy!
How do I outpace wound curing?
Outpacing your opponent's wound curing is, obviously, one of the most important aspects of combat as a knight. Blademaster has an interesting mechanism for doing this, which is quite different than other knightood specs. As a blademaster, we are going to focus on ruining our opponent's wound curing through forcing sips rather than brute-force 'outwounding'. Because of the nature of this style, we are going to use max speed rapiers. Without artifacts, your rapiers should come out to 33/167/280. Add coal runes yourself or with a friendly forger to bump them to 43/177/290. As an aslaran this will put you in the area of 2.3-2.5 second balance on each arm, depending on latency.
Blademaster attacks all cause a small bit of bleeding when they hit an opponent. On its own, this bleeding is countered by the kingdom enchant. However, the blademaster specialization has many afflictions that can make this bleeding become a force to be reckoned with, particularly a lot at low wounding levels, meaning we don't need to worry about bursting heavy wounds all over our opponent before we become effective.
We are going to aim at causing a massive amount of bleeding by combining: the bleeding inherent in each attack, lacerations on both arms (negligable wounds), lacerations on both legs (negligable wounds), opened gut (light wounds), sliced forhead (negligable wounds), chaining gashed chests (medium wounds), rending impales (heavy wounds) and legpins (heavy wounds), and also hoping that the occasional slitlock (heavy wounds) will stick long enough to get in on one of the bleeding tics.
We are going to create maneuvers to remove wounds that do not effectively support our main goal of forcing mana sips while overwhelming herb balance.
Normal Attacks:
Head: Always hack down. Every blademaster head aff can be given on a swing. In the past people viewed this as an ineffective way to build head wounds due to RNG, however we aren't planning on going with the old 'outwounding' technique to begin with, on top of the fact that RNG has improved slightly with the recent special report. If you happen to hit chest instead of the head, don't worry! We need to hit swinging attacks on the chest in order to proc gashchest, which adds both a fair amount of bleeding and stun, so even if you miss the head you are still doing it right.
For the head, leave scalp out of your maneuver. Scalp just isn't going to stick because we don't have a realistic way to overwhelm purgative curing with this method. Instead, we'd much rather hit the lower wound sliceear, for the slight stun. Be sure to include gashchest in the maneuver!
Chest: Alternate between a swinging (swipe) attack and strikes.
For the strikes you can leave puncturelung in your maneuver. This wound does not support our goal in this technique at all, but since there is no lower wound to proc in its place, we might as well leave it in. Puncture chest will help add some bleeding and causes some blackout. This is good, as blackouts tend to panic opponents. Leave collapselungs out, it doesn't support our end goal. It sounds nice as a regen affliction, but in truth we'd rather have the punctured chest. Leave heartpierce in. You aren't going to damage kill an opponent, but it's just one more moment when they will have to sip instead of applying to their wounds.
For swings (swipe) maneuver in armartery, collapsenerve (swipes will occasionally hit the arms), opengut, disembowel (swipes will occasionally hit the gut), and of course, gashchest. You will notice we have left out septicwound, which is, yet again, another of those pesky afflictions that don't really support our end goal. Opengut at a lower wound level is both an herb cure, bleed causer, and can even prone an opponent on a tic if they can't cure it quickly enough.
Arms: Strikes only. Leave out only piercearm. While this is an herb cure, the arteries in the arm will do more for our goal of massive bleeding. We would leave out severnerve for this same reason, however, severnerve is a prerequisite for collapsenerve, which we will want to keep around for the endgame. Remember, if you can sever the nerve and also collapse it afterward, an opponent will be unable to stand until that is cured. It doesn't prone them on its own, but using morphite on a double lunge to the arm to achieve this can be very effective at proning an opponent in the end-game to go for the head.
Legs: Strikes only. Leave out only the pierceleg, for the same reason as the arms. Hold legpins as long as possible to further slow your opponent's herb curing, but be sure to rend just before they should be writhing off. This is difficult to time without practice, but mastering the timing here will make you noticeably more awesome.
Gut: Strikes only. The only thing we would really maneuver out of the gut would be septicwound, but that's a swing attack anyways. You can swing (hack up) very occasionally, if they are at critical, for the chance at disembowel, but odds of actually securing a disembowel kill are very low. Sure, I've done it before in the past, but the strike gives you something much much more valuable: the impale. Impale, unlike pinleg, actually prones an opponent, meaning their stance and parry don't work while your sword is in their gut. This is a fantastic time to hack down with your other hand. Just like legpins, be sure to rend before they writhe off. Holding it as long as possible does not hurt their herb curing the same way as pinleg, but it does help to hinder them in general.
Power Attacks:
Manevuers are only needed on lunges for the arms and legs, to avoid the piercedlimb afflictions.
Now that we know what attacks we'll be using, lets look at venoms:
Senso, senso, senso. Senso causes the slickness affliction, which is cured with calamus, an herb. Because slickness is an extremely dangerous affliction to have, both because of locks and the fact that deepwounds cannot be cured with healing potion while one has it, this affliction will always be a top priority to your opponent over the other herb afflictions we are going to hammer them with. Proccing your senso on an opponent over and over means those other afflictions are going to stick, and stick hard. Use triggers with keeneye and visual cues to track whether your opponent is slick or not. If you see them eat calamus it is cured. If you see them applying, it has probably been cured by a passive healing ability (many guilds have these that tic occasionally).
If your opponent is slick, use mantakaya. Mantakaya causes paralysis. For lower level fighters this is a game ender, as the time it takes to come out of paralysis is longer the less discipline you have trained. At transcendent discipline, paralysis will take a full second to cure. During this time, your opponent's stance and parry don't work. Take this moment to hack down, or perhaps hit that other bodypart you have built up and they are now defending, using your other hand. Focus body, which cures paralysis, also takes 250 mana to use, furthering our goal of decimating our opponent's mana with the intention of making them sip.
Huzzah! I've managed to build wounds by forcing mana sips and now have my opponent hurting all over! How do I secure the victory?
Use legtendon, collapsenerve + morphite, or impale to prone your opponent, and hack away at that pretty neck! Alternatively, use mantakaya and hack down while they are still paralyzed. The latter can be very effective used as a combination of lunge head with mantakaya and then the hack down, to pile the head wounds on as much as possible at this critical moment.
So now we have a plan! We know how we are going to overwhelm their curing, how we are going to outpace their wound healing, how we are going to go for the finisher... that's it, rite? Nope.
Don't swing both your swords at once all the time. If you have your opponent on their heels you can wait a second in between swings, increasing your ability to stuff that venom in just after they cured the last one. This helps a ton for keeping them curing slickness instead of all those lacerations etc. Don't do this all the time, though, as occasionally you will need full balance for defensive purposes. This will take a lot of practice to pull off, but it is well worth it.
Knighthood combat is all about flexibility. You never know what can go wrong. There are lots of things that can force you to change tactics mid fight, or else you will lose, as an example:
Poisonist opponents can be immune to a particular venom of their choice. Many like to choose senso, as it is one of the nastiest venoms to be afflicted with. If this is the case, you will need to switch to an alternative venom, as it will not be helping you to break their herb curing. A good alternative is niricol. This won't lock them, and it won't slow their wound curing as much, but it will still slow their herb curing as most systems are likely to place blindness a lot higher on the priority list than a laceration (and rightfully so!) Niricol has the added benefit of hindering the opponent's offense more effectively than senso, so this is still a fair tradeoff.
This tactic will be less effective against opponents with massive amounts of mana and health both, as it will take a lot of both the bleed damage and the mana going from clotting to actually make them sip. There is no magic number about who it will and won't work against, you're just going to have to play around with it.
As a final note, tracking is a wonderful tertiary for this tactic. PoisonExpert will make your poisons proc much more often, really helping to confound your opponent's curing that much more. Also, a huntingcompanion can cause a fair amount of bleeding on their own, which as we have discussed, is exactly the thing we want to do. Dart traps with mantakaya will help you to bypass stance and parry while also making that mana drain hurt just a little more. Dulak is also an acceptable venom choice, giving you less chances at getting around parry, but possibly hindering their curing a little more.
That's it! This is not a 'perfect' guide. It won't work on everyone, nothing always works on everyone. Take it as food for thought. The guide assumes you have trans'd blademaster, and having combat up to keeneye helps a ton. Being a demigod certainly helps for the extra stat buffs, but please don't let people tell you you have to be a demi to fight, it simply isn't true. Aslaran is awesome for the speed buff. Enjoy!
Unknown2012-06-07 19:16:05
Just want to say thanks for this. My current character isn't even a blademaster (though you may have convinced me to change - this looks fun!), but it's awesome you spent the time to create a resource like this.
A positive attitude towards sharing strategy is great for the game as a whole.
A positive attitude towards sharing strategy is great for the game as a whole.
Shikha2012-06-07 19:38:52
Welcome! Have a few other tactics for different specs I've been thinking abour writing up too. I might post a couple of them later.
Unknown2012-06-08 14:24:05
Reading the description on Haymaker, when is that worth using?
Also would love to see stuff on other specs, particularly pureblade. :)
Also would love to see stuff on other specs, particularly pureblade. :)
Unknown2012-06-08 17:23:02
Deschain:
Reading the description on Haymaker, when is that worth using?
lolnever. It's the butt of jokes. Maybe conceivably there is a use, but I have never seen it used, nor heard of it being used.
Unknown2012-06-08 17:41:01
Awesome post! I love seeing topics like this which go into strategies and such, especially one as detailed as this one!
Any chance of a cavalier one? Heheh...
Any chance of a cavalier one? Heheh...
Svana2012-06-08 22:21:45
Deschain:
Reading the description on Haymaker, when is that worth using?
Through all of my tests, the only conceivable time haymaker was useful was as an Ebonguard in choke (Cleanselocks in choke were just nasty). Buuuut... choke doesn't exist anymore, so now the best I can do is raise my eyebrow in its general direction and giggle at anyone who wastes the power to use it.
Unknown2012-06-18 22:02:07
Fantastic post Shikha. Lots of good information and principles that can be used by all warriors.
