I just got an Anima-Touched Blade of Warding and even though it is just barely epic I’m getting faster kills than with my Mythic 1 weapons AR and ELE, even with only a few abilities and passives unlocked – flowing strike/spirit blade/tempess/hurricane with eye of storm/measure twice cut once/masterpiece – besides which it heals me steadily proportional to the damage I do in a way that keeps health up unless I do something really stupid.
Yet in discussions of this weapon I see people lamenting the “wasted slot” that Spirit Blade takes up, while this is in fact one of the most awesome abilities I have seen and many tend to regard it as a low-dps weapon when my admittedly novice experience is the opposite.
I can see the problem with the absence of group heals/buffs but it seems these could be relegated to the secondary.
Some questions: Does the healing effect of the blade draw aggro in dungeons as I’m told other heals used by DPS’s do?
When the blade icon is full blue and the grip is empty does it still have the spirit blade buff?
What does it mean when the blade shows full blue but the broken blade image is still up?
What’s the best way to generate Chi? Spamming the basic ability, Flowing Strike seems to work, but not always fast enough.
Sword just has a combination of things:
It’s melee and not remarkable/underperforming damage wise and brings practically no group support. Also it has the slottax of spiritblade…meaning less room for other stuff.
KSR AR users stomp every number you may be able to manage on a sword while standing so far from bosses and such that they outrange a lot of stuff.
It’s even worse as offhand. Once signets kick in your offhand is mostly for support and dots as your basic of your mainhand will outperform your power attack from your offhand at some point. Making it useless as a damage source.
Blade is a very sturdy soloing weapon, the problems with it are entirely isolated to group content. It’s biggest issue is that it doesn’t have any group utility (with the standard setup) and not enough damage to make up for that drawback. It deals decent damage, yet so do other weapons while they can also effortlessly expose, debilitate, purge, burst AoE, etc. You can absolutely make it work if you like the playstyle, but just like you said, you will most likely need to rely on your secondary when you’re expected to provide utility and you will have one less slot for utility.
Self healing as DPS isn’t significant enough to draw aggro. Each point of healing generates half a point of aggro and overhealing doesn’t generate any.
Blade being full Blue means it has just been forged with max Chi. Grip being empty means you don’t have any Chi left after forging the blade.
Blade being full Blue while broken means it’s ready to be forged fully.
Chi generation can be boosted via Supreme Harmony and several passives.
Firstly what you’ve heard about blade is mainly from an endgame perspective. Can you do great dps with blade at endgame? Certainly. These numbers might not mean much to you atm but parsing 30k+ with blade on test dummies or regional is very possible and exceptionally good endgame dps. However, is it “The Best Option” No and not even close for a variety of reasons. Firstly its melee which adds several challenges to mechanics and in high mobility fights lowers your damage significantly. Secondly it adds no group utility (As a primary weapon). Note that it is the ONLY weapon that doesn’t have an Elite that exposes or debilitates. It also offers no group wide benefits, no team healing and cant be used for tanking, so in theory it should make up for that by putting out Top Damage, but it doesn’t and even with the optimal setup you are going to get out performed but most AR users who can fight at maximum range, offer impairs and purges with no notable loss in dps and utilize a mechanic that with the right AR is almost the easiest weapon gimmick in the game.
It is a great solo weapon but then pretty much every weapon is. And with the one you have in particular it has excellent solo survival (supreme harmony gives a speed boost and full cleanse). So for scenarios it works nicely.
To summarize if you love the feel of blade note that you can do very well with it. And I’d be more then happy to discuss build options. But in late game when mechanics get harder and dps/group support starts to matter more realize that you may be limited.
Keep in mind though that when people talk about assault rifle being top DPS, it is pretty much only true for fully geared people, since assault rifle is the weapon that scales the most with energy, and good energy regen requires a huge amount of crit chance (good luck grinding your glyphs) and a red Vali Metabolic. When you’re barely starting the game, assault rifle won’t give you anything above what other weapons might give you, that’s why you don’t notice the difference in DPS for yourself. Weapons like the all praised KSR is actually the worst assault rifle to have with low gear since your energy regen will be way too low for it (talking from both theoretical pov and from experience when i’ve been using the MIRV mainhand with lower gear and no KSR user could outparse that at that time without being fully geared and having ridiculous regen).
Blade is overall in the top 4 strictly from sustained DPS, so people saying blade is bad for DPS are just clueless. The main problem, as said by other people already, is the total lack of group utility. For instance, hammer can output pretty much the same sustained DPS that blade can, but it has way more group utility (exposed, interrupts / knock ups, purges), and is the best burst weapon in the game, which are both important factors.
There is one factor that is being overlooked in all this, both by the O.P. and in the replies. It is one of the most important and neglected stats in the game and the major difference the O.P. is seeing between the weapons.
I am referring here to a little something called ‘Fun’.
You are having more fun playing Blade than you did AR.
That’s it, and that’s awesome.
Run with it!
This is a game. Theory Crafting is great, don’t get me wrong, but having fun trumps it every time.
Another thing that gets overlooked in these conversations about DPS is that you can complete virtually all current end-game content doing about 20k sustained single-target DPS. All weapons should be more than capable of outputting this DPS with gear that is below the maximum power.
Blade has a highly complex and unforgiving rotation that at similar gear levels with other weapons will just reach “average” overall DPS. Other weapons use far less and more forgiving that can do “above average” numbers. Of course, if all other weapons can do “above average” or better then that means that Blade isn’t really “average”, now is it? I guess the better way to describe it is that highly skilled blade player can do about the same DPS as a standard player of any other weapon.
Blades are just overall a bad choice. They’re decent for leveling and soloing, but there are far better options.
I appreciate the sentiment, but when someone asks a technical question they get a technical answer. Sometimes people care about pulling their own weight in a group situation and there’s nothing wrong about asking techincal questions about a weapon they are interested in. OP says he likes Blade but wants to know the issues. I’ll tell him about the issues he’s wondering about rather than dismissing him with a “go have fun”.
Fun trumps everything but fun is subjective. That’s the actual factor that is always overlooked. Fun is subjective. Some people have fun having a deeper understanding of the game and the weapons they use. Some people have fun supporting their team. Some people have fun weighing the options they have. I’ll respect the inclination.