Best Answers

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  Nestor

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  I notice you play on PC, is that also North America?
  
  If so, reach out to me in the game and I can help you and show you few things about MagBlades. Also, I can get you in a couple of helpful guilds that are great for beginners to the game.

  Enjoy the game, life is what you really want to be worried about.
  
  PakKat "Everything was going well, until I died"
  Gary Gravestink "I am glad you died, I needed the help"
  
  

  #2

  October 2017

  Answer ✓

  5
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  Lexxypwns

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  Don't build around shield stacking. The only shield you need is healing ward, the rest of your survivability comes from HoTs: Path, funnel, siphoning/leeching, degeneration, rr, rest ult, etc.
  
  The key to playing a high damage mageblade is to be pro-active about your defenses. Make sure you've got a shade up or an plan to disengage and kite before you start the fight. The other thing to remember is that you have to remain aggressive in the face of pressure and trust your damage and healing to relieve pressure and refill your health respectively while your healing ward holds. You have to remember that on a mageblade you're the predator, there's not many specs that can perform on your level 1v1. This means you have to turn an outnumbered situation into a series of quick 1v1s where you burst someone down with a spectral bow and maybe an ulti before setting up to kite and burst someone else again.
  
  For an easier learning curve, drop Alchemist for Wizard's riposte outright. Or run heavy alch, though I recommend starting with Riposte as its a cheap but very strong set
  
  Then you can run
  5 riposte - 4 body+resto <- Since its a 20 second debuff and it effects the crit that procs it, this is one of the most desirable back bar sets. It'll reduce your incoming damage and open up your burst windows while allowing you to stay in 5 light.
  5 Surge - Jewels, 1 body, destro <- Imo, surge is the best damage set you can wear as a mageblade since it offers enough burst on its own and has the very slept on damage proc, its a bit more advanced that running maiden, julianos, or spinners though because you have to recognize who it procs on and determine if they're going to be susceptible to getting burst then adjust your game plan accordingly.
  2 Skoria - Path, cripple, degen, flame reach, and surge all proc this and its big burst damage. If someone has surge on them and a skoria meteor incoming then they're highly susceptible to getting nuked with a will+ultimate combo, this works even on tankier targets as well.
  
  My offense is very dynamic on mageblade, but one thing that never changes is that I aim to achieve 2 will procs from each cast of merciless and after the 2nd proc I always refresh it before I go back bar. The biggest thing you can do is make sure you're weaving properly and keeping your DoTs up, just having cripple+path+reach ticking on someone is a decent amount of pressure add in proper funnel weaves and you'll be able to keep your opponents mostly on their back foot.
  
  For the tankier builds that are giving you trouble, remember that the only way to have good snare/root defense in heavy is with forward momentum. This opens heavy armor stam builds up to being kited easily and forces them to pick their poison, they can either deal with you limiting their mobility so that you can fight your fight OR they can stress their stam pool purging those roots and snares all day.
  
  For the most part I've got no problem going toe to toe against any build as a light armor mageblade, but there's some things you just CANNOT do. You CANNOT stand in front of either templar and eat their sweeps/jabs, you CANNOT face tank an offensive stam sorc's damage, you CANNOT tank all of a mDKs melee damage without putting yourself at risk to dying to a leap. In those situations I don't play run and hide, I just try to position myself in the most annoying way possible and refuse to allow them easy opportunities to get back into melee without having to sit in my Path. I also try to play the "squishy light armor build" card and bait them into thinking they can burst me while I've got my own combo up, this allows you to catch them when they're not expecting it and potentially secure kills before they have a chance to react. One of my favorite quintessential mageblade things is to turn what an opponent thinks is their burst window into my own.

  Edited by Lexxypwns on October 11, 2017 8:12PM

  #3

  October 2017

  Answer ✓

  6
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  Lexxypwns

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  WrathOfInnos wrote: »

  @Lexxypwns I don't PVP much, but I'm surprised to see Wizards Riposte recommended for mageblade. Don't Shadow Image and Mass Hysteria provide the same debuff, minor maim?

  
  They do. Shadow image debuffs only 1 target. Fear is a very short maim be if you fear a CC immune target they don't get snared or maimed. Riposte gives you near 100% uptime on maim on multiple enemies. It's a 20 second debuff that gets applied/refreshed anytime someone crits you on your resto bar. There's only a couple of other viable defensive back bar sets and there's really only 1 truly desirable one in light besides riposte: transmutation.
  
  Trans will give you better sustain but generally adds less defense. They're both very strong choices for mageblade AND they pair extremely well with each other(I prefer riposte front bar on a riposte/trans setup btw). If you're only going to run one then riposte is the superior defensive set as long as you don't need the sustain from trans

  Edited by Lexxypwns on October 11, 2017 8:37PM

  #4

  October 2017

  Answer ✓

  5
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  Lexxypwns

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  teiselaise wrote: »

  Hollery wrote: »

  Lexxypwns wrote: »

  Hollery wrote: »

  S-Shields? No... Stop... Just Ugggghhh. If you're on PC NA message me @Hollery and I'll run you through 'basic training'

  
  Dude, there's people on Xbox NA that message me all the time calling me a shield stacking trash-blade when the only shield I slot is healing ward. I'm pretty sure the general public is completely unaware of how mageblade works

  
  Exactly... I outheal damage, not out shield it.

  Lexxypwns wrote: »

  Hollery wrote: »

  S-Shields? No... Stop... Just Ugggghhh. If you're on PC NA message me @Hollery and I'll run you through 'basic training'

  
  Dude, there's people on Xbox NA that message me all the time calling me a shield stacking trash-blade when the only shield I slot is healing ward. I'm pretty sure the general public is completely unaware of how mageblade works

  
  Well, seems like shields are unpopular

  
  Shields are only an effective damage mitigation technique in controlled environments. A 10k shield is a 10k shield no matter how many people you're fighting. It always takes 1 GCD to cast and never last more than 6 seconds. Against 1 player this can be very strong, against multiple opponents the amount of damage each person needs to do to overcome your shield decreases. With mageblade, you'll have ~5k HPS without resto ult up or outrageous crit amounts on a brawly HoT build, in 6 seconds(the maximum duration your shield) this provides 30k health. Its not so cut and dry though because shields rarely survive 6 full seconds and will require a GCD to re-cast whereas the heals always provide their heals over the full duration. Since most mageblade heals are providing either a necessary buff or some sort of damage and since mageblade has bonuses to healing as is, its a no brainer to take healing over shielding
  
  If I'm at 20k HP and get jumped by 3 players doing 5k DPS I'll drop to 5k from the initial burst, spend 2 seconds casting my 15k stack(dampen+healing) and gain ~2k health from the healing ward cast while having ~5k shields left. In the same scenario, if I've got my heals running, I can cast 1 healing ward to shield 8k and in the second I'm casting that receive 7k HP back.
  
  By the time you can cast 2 shields you could easily have healed more damage than harness is going to protect you from and you'll get the benefit of your armor mitigation for your health pool where shields won't. The only thing running shields has going for it is that they can't receive crit damage.
  
  These examples are very reductive and over-simplified but it explains rather clearly why shield stacking isn't desirable on mageblades.

  Edited by Lexxypwns on October 11, 2017 8:56PM

  #5

  October 2017

  Answer ✓

  5
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  Nestor

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  teiselaise wrote: »

  
  Soooo, I didn't really understand your point, did you mean that the magblade playstyle don't work with clever alchemist or did you mean that my playstyle don't fit ^^?

  
  Night Blades are all about Criticals and Sneak Attacks* and Crowd Control and Attacking from Advantage and Mobility. While you can do all this with other classes, NB's are really all about this approach. They also have great burst openers where they do a bunch of damage from the get go, but then have weaker attacks to back it up. The reason a Magic based one is better is Siphon and Sap Essence are so much more powerful on a magic NB, and these are also your heals.
  
  Clever Alchemist fits with a NB due to the opener and the massive damage you can do, but you have to set it up right to take advantage. The video shows you how to do that.
  
  But what you can't do as a NB is the YOLO approach where you just wade in and spam some skills and things die, like you can on a Templar or Dragon Knight or a Sorcerer. You have to use appropriate tactics to your build and your build has to support your class.
  
  Does not mean you can't be successful, you just have a steeper learning curve.
  
  
  
  
  
  *Can't really do a Sneak Attack on a Magic Character, but you can attack from behind, and initially from sneak for a nice damage multiplier, your just not going to get Sneak Criticals on top of the multiplier.
  
  

  Edited by Nestor on October 11, 2017 8:58PM

  Enjoy the game, life is what you really want to be worried about.
  
  PakKat "Everything was going well, until I died"
  Gary Gravestink "I am glad you died, I needed the help"
  
  

  #6

  October 2017

  Answer ✓

  5