Blademaster weapons

[Wonk]

My Blademaster is getting on lvl 20 soon, but i dont know what weapon type im gonna use.
Im using blade atm, but i heard it is bad in rvr, so i wanted to change to Pierce weaps or Blunt. but which one is the best if you are a celt BM ?

 

[old.Kian]

Both work well - blunt is the popular choice, but those of us who use pierce (myself, Tantalon, Kella and a few others) do very well too, especially against chain wearers (and so many opponents out there wear chain...) Blunt's top end style gives you a 9 sec stun (2nd in a parry chain), pierce gives you a 5 sec stun straight off an evade.

The real difference is in how you spend your spec points - bluntmasters pretty much HAVE to go to 50 for the last style, with pierce you can go 44/44/44 for a balanced spec.

 

[Novamir]

pierce !!

keep it maxed at your level. then bring up parry 2nd, and CD third. final spec something like 50 pierce 39 cd 39 parry

 

[sjaakievos]

i would personally never go for blades , pierce has a 5 sec stun after evade and good bonuses on chain , tho unbuffed BM's don't evade much , but parry loads , also in RvR now , and since we have that nice lvl 50 9 sec stun style , parry,stunning blow (slowed effect) devestating blow (9 sec stun ) is blunt probably the best choice if you want to go solo much , can't advice this but ok .. let's say .. pierce has the best looking weapons/styles imo and dmg is o..k ,slowest piercer is spd. 3.6 iirc , slowest blunt is spd 4.2 capped damage at 50+15 blunt of 411 with your best style , very good damage tho with druid haste/qui buff .. i personally loved slow weapons because you almost never miss styles in comparisment with ver fast weapons , and it can make about 150 damage difference .. so it ofc it's your choice what to take ,
1 last thing ,with blunts you kill stealthers quite easily .. always considered this quite important for me , not sure about pierce here .. armor tables can be found at www.camelotseer.com

 

[StormriderX]

Personally I would recommend pierce - healers/clerics wear chain and being support classes are one of your primary targets to take down in a fight so bonus on them doesnt hurt

In regards to spec I would recommend 50/50/27/7

pierce/cd/parry/shield(for engage)

Without shield you kinda archer fodder
Parry in its current state (group code) isnt so hot and at the end of the day you can easily bring it up with master of parry.

 

[Arakiel]

i would say dont max CD imo , keep it at 44 for the style then put the rest of the points in Parry :great: a lot of BMs have gone pierce and i know a cpl of shieldmasters

50 pierce
42 shield
36 parry ( i think)
16 CD

im not sure that is the accurate spec but apparntly its good to open a fight up witha slam then switch to CD for some dicing , or use the CD to break a Pbt on a mage and slam the biatch

However im one fo tyhe few who stayed true :hehe:

50 blades
44 celtic dual
rest in parry

id say go pierce everyone else has

 

[kr0n]

42 Shield = Must!!1

44/50 Pierce - (Tanks go for healing classes(cleric, healer, shaman, friar, all but one in chain) and casters FYI)

34CD - So no point raising it high, DR2-3 to up the chance of doublehit more than wasting 10-15 more to CD

30/20 Parry - Mastery of Parry if you want to up Parry chance, even tho its quite useless.

 

[old.Anpu]

Gunning for 44 Pierce, 42 Shield, 39 CD, 24 Parry at 50 with my bm.
Fun so far (at 27) and pretty versatile

As for the blunt stun, I'm not really a fan of reactive stun styles, since that requires the target to fight you and how often does that happen considering your prime targets are usually healers and mages.
As a warden I've learned pretty quick not to fight ppl with reactive stuns, I just have the group handle them while they chip away at me and I go poke a mage or healer in the meantime

/Anpu

 

[eccho]

Im also playing a shield master at the moment, which If I ever level to 50 will be 44 blade/44 parry/44 shield.

Its a fun character so far as the high defensive specs and BM evade ability make for a character thats pretty hard to hit.

You could argue that a hero specced defensively this way would perform a lot better given they have Scale ability and Moose but interestingly theres been discussions lately about the merits of using Reinforced for its high slash resist to the point that some Heros are considering abandoning Scale in favour of RF.

Something to think about, but anyway its good to see more BM's being rolled as they are a fun and much under-estimated class .

 

[StormriderX]

hmm 42 shield is a popular spec but imho if you aint dual wielding then go make a hero

As for 44 weapon spec - bm damage isnt that spectacular anyway so less than 50 isn't a good idea as far as I'm concerned.

In regards to parry - grouping bug means you aint gonna parry much in the course of a fight anyway so I'd rather pump cd to 50....

Currently specced
50blades
44cd
36parry
10shield

If we ever kill the dragon and I get a respec stone I would go
50blades
50pierce
27parry
7shield

Why stay blades? Well I made this char to be a blademaster so thats what I'll be till the end

Oh and get prevent flight asap - that way you actually do *something* when you hitting on a enemy tank chasing your support chars. Had it proc on me a few times and its so uber - can barely move let alone chase anything - getting it myself it I get around to rr6l7 0_o

 

[kr0n]

Difference between 44-50 is ~100 weaponskill I guess. 100 weaponskill... out of 1600... Gives you instead:
1. Better defense
2. 9s Anytime slam
3. Better guard to be teh defender tank of da droood

What you loose is:
1. You hit less for ~10 damage average
2. L50 style (generally sucks)

42 Shield is something you really really want, to be offensive or defensive. 9s is enough time to do muchos muchos damage no matter what, getting off those high damage positionals is a good thing.

 

[StormriderX]

Aye shield slam is very useful I've seen miril use it to good effect (no3 bm on excal last time I looked (before xml broke)) but I'd rather take blade to 50 at the expense of cd/parry if you going shield + blade, so you get the 2nd part of the back chain - brilliant blade which does sweet damage.

Like I said before though if I wanted to be a slambot I'd have made a hero instead (well I did make one but I digress ).

Edit: just want to point out that I agree a shield master is a lot more versatile + more utility in the group as a 'pure' dual wield bm.

 

[old.Reno]

About piercer speeds, drops top out at about 3.5 spd, crafted at 3.6 spd.
There is however a Galadoria dropped piercer that is 4.1 spd.

Danita

 

[Arakiel]

i stayed blades , had to be a "blademaster" , live up to the class an all , :mgwhore:

 

[old.Kian]

Hmmm... I'm a 44 Pierce/44 CD/44 Parry BM

Going to 50 in a weaponskill doesn't add much damage, as pointed out above. The level 50 pierce style is third in the Evade chain, I can live without it. Can do without shield as well - especially as you can't hotkey a switch from shield to dual wielding, making it a pain to slam and then go max damage output, unlike a LW hybrid.

Evade - I have Dodger 2 RA on top of my Evade III and evade plenty, buffed or unbuffed. Maybe not quite as often as my NS, but I have plenty of Parry on top of that. I seem to get more than my fair share of one-on-one RvR encounters, and I find Slam overrated in those - last time I ran into a pally he got a slam on me before I even knew he was there, and I still won without IP (and I think he DID IP during the fight).

As for weapon speed - I don't want anything faster than my 3.6 speed guarded rapier, I use my evade and parry reaction chains a lot and slow weapons would hinder that.

The above spec suits my play style perfectly - I'm a dangerous duellist, and my RPs tend to find me while I'm wandering around DF or the frontier If you can safely assume that you'll always be running in a full group (or zerg) with end regen and doing nothing but spam anytime styles, your mileage will vary.

Odd that nobody has spoken up for blunt weapons so far - when we first got the respecs, I was the only level 50 BM in Pryd/Hib to go piercemaster initially (I think Sharwyn was blunt/shield for a day or so, and Kella was a lowly level 43 at the time