What am I doing wrong?

[CoffeeFueled]

Hello brothers,

 

I will start by saying that i've never had so many regrets after choosing a class and sticking with it as I do now...

To show all the glory of the Blade & Soul PvP "unique" combat, our dear overlords decided to make an event that require us humble Blade Masters to partake in PvP... worse... DAILY Battlefield PvP where others can see your class in all its Might as opposed to 1 vs 1 where you could just hide that said defeat under a rug and continue the struggle.

As I am writing this, in my mind there is a faint glimmer of hope that one brave Blade Master just has that skill, cunning and knowledge to actually make a working build for PvP and daily smashes through every enemy player, striking with an tempered steel resolve...

Senpai, whoever you are, wherever you are.. show yourself and teach me the humble art of mastering this sh*t class... please save me and my fellow brothers from this painful state, show me the true Hongmoon way because Master Hong died like a jerk without telling me how to play this retarded class. There is no hope i tell you.... no HOPE left.

 

Also this update brought some changes, some were good, some were bad... like the Threat on every half-decent skill, and my build, if it ever did work, it doesn't anymore... and in Battle field I literally do no damage, and everything I do is useless and its recieved with a cold bleak response in my combat info... RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED RESISTED  ... this is my reality.

 

If anybody has a working PvP build for a HM8 - HM9 Blade Master, please share its mechanics even if its just a rough explanation, and no, i do not have HM block yet, only breeze and lightning draw HM skills...

 

Also I'm still looking for friendly small clan / peeps to do daily stuff with on Europe group 2 servers.

 

WolvenSpirit,

BM HM8 - Greenhollow

[Avalyn]

Whirlwind valley is all gear no skill

1 bronze level summoner with crit defense set and legendary weapon can pretty much 1v3+ with no problem. 

 

First off you have to know that every time your opponent captures a brazier in 6v6 their whole team gets a resist buff for something like 15 seconds and then CC resist period after that. So it's not the same as normal PvP, also because gear isn't normalized so you see a ton of random blocks and evades if you aren't geared enough. 

 

Tbh you have way too many skill points at HM 8-9 if you don't have any HM skills besides lightning draw.

The ones you want for PvP are Lightning Draw, HM Block (Winged Protector), and Soaring Falcon.

 

Your build changes for fighting each class but I will give you the generic PvP build that works on everyone in 6v6 that's not optimized for a certain class. 

Can't post the latest patch version from Bnstree so I'll write it out. 

 

Breeze, Tier 3 Stage 2  - Regenerates 2 points of chi. BM has the worst chi problems of all the classes in PvP. Fairly self explanatory.

Flicker, Tier 4 Stage 2 - One of your only 2 stuns without HM Z as well as one of the only 2 CC's usable in draw stance (excluding lightning retribution and Raid extension). Stun is most powerful CC because it only gives your opponent 1 escape option (tab).

Cyclone, Tier 3 Stage 2 - Removes snares and slows etc., very long iframe, regens full chi and gives a chi regen buff. Especially useful while you don't have HM block, because you can parry stun and then cyclone and resist the tab daze from opponent if they happen to use it.

Honed Slash, Tier 1 Stage 1 - Regens 1 chi on crit, as I mentioned we have a lot of chi problems so this can help you save some trouble if you get lucky. Since this is where all your damage comes from while comboing and it consumes a ton of chi, this is a pretty well spent point.

Take Flight Tier 2 Stage 1 - Shortened CD. Really useful when you need to buy time or extend your combo. In whirlwind valley you can kill people who don't have crit defense with 1 aerial into lightning draw so this is good there too.

Lunar Slash, Tier 3 Stage 2 - 3 second daze, available in draw stance. Really good for comboing or forcing roll/tab out of an aerial.

Second Wind, Tier 3 Stage 3  - Dazes your opponent, penetrates defense. Putting 1 point allows you escape stuns, putting another into the daze is your most valuable skill in pvp. If you didn't have the daze, your opponent can just keep hitting you with CC and your tab escape would only mean that their combo is broken for a bit. They would be free to basically catch you right after you escape, making your tab completely useless. The CC back lets you create an opening where either your force their tab as well if they haven't used it, or if they already used it, it allows you to begin your combo after you force the F roll with the daze and tech chase it. It's important to dodge the daze with iframes, especially if you already used your tab.

Block, Tier 2 Stage 2 - Parry block, free stuns if your opponent isn't careful, this is what you use until you get HM block.

Rush Tier 2 Stage 1 - Our primary stun. As I mentioned before stun is the most valuable CC. Gap closes so you can also use this for chasing the F roll from opponent.

Raid, Tier 2 Stage 2 - Extends CC and regens chi in draw stance. Can be used for comboing, baiting tab escapes from opponent, etc. Since we only have 2 stuns, being able to extend it to up to 4 seconds is extremely powerful.

AnkleBiter Tier 2 Stage 1 - 5 meter range knockdown for 3 seconds. The range boost on it (up from 3 meters) makes it a lot easier to catch people with it and you can use it to chase F rolls as well. 3 second knockdown means longer downtime for your opponent. You can't really use it in a combo because of ground counters and stuff but it can be used to keep your opponent in CC once you got an opening on them.

Lightning Draw, Tier 5 Stage 1 - Does 10k crits in arena, can do 30k+ depending on your AP and opponent crit defense etc. in battleground. Huge damage when opponent is CC'd. Commonly used with Rush stun > Lightning Draw to try to force tab escape.

Soaring Falcon, Tier 2 Stage 2 - Pulls your opponent. Creates an opening while destroyer/BD are spinning (you can pull and then use any CC you want). Useful for "gap closing" when you're snared, buying time, guaranteeing your CC lands (if the pull lands), etc. Good for initiating from glide (pull > Divine retribution). 

Boot, Tier 2 Stage 1 - Our main guard break skill. Ignores deflects too when knocking down which is useful against parry spin BD/destroyer too.

Shoulder Charge, Tier 3 Stage 3 - 3 second daze gap closer. If you chase the F roll with this, your opponent who usually has 2 escapes out of daze will only have the tab escape since they just rolled and you caught them. This makes it effectively a 3 second stun. If not though, gap closing is still very useful. You lose the heal but it's a pretty good trade.

Lightning Rod/Lightning Retribution, Tier 3 Stage 2 - Useful whether you are using Blade Call or Flock of Blades. Daze that goes through defense. If you blade call during an aerial and then use this to daze your opponent when they land on the ground, it will force them to either roll or tab. If you tech chase the roll and then lightning draw they pretty much have to tab or they will take 70%+ damage. If you use the knockback on flock of blades to chase the F roll, you can daze them afterwards to suppress any ground counters.

Flock of Blades, Tier 4 Stage 1 - knockback that pierces defenses, lets you escape grabs, etc. Lets you use without target also. Since it can't be evaded (as it pierces defense) you can use it to knock sins out of stealth when they get close to you, and you can knock warlocks out of their CC immunity circle, or away from their thrall. When you're really in trouble and your SS is on CD/you can't trigger cyclone and you need to break a snare, this will also do the job. If you are specifically fighting BM/KFM/SF though, you can use Blade Call instead since they don't have grabs or anything that needs you to knockback. 

SS, Tier 1 Stage 1 - Puts you intro draw stance. Anything that puts us into draw stance is extremely valuable because we gain another iframe (E) since E does not have CD in draw stance. You can also do things like SS and immediately 5 point strike, our SS iframe actually lasts for 2 seconds which is one of the best SS in the game, meaning if you SS immediately and 5 point strike you will still have the resist from the SS while doing 5 point strike. This is trick is pretty useful against FM's with HM impact who keep bouncing you around, you can just resist the pushback and continue on with the other 5 hits. Same with SF's who have no animation on their block, you can use this to resist their autostun off their block and continue into the aerial. Or if you're trying to force tab and your opponent thinks they're clever so they'll wait for you to come close and then tab to catch you with the daze, you can SS > 2 (raid extension) and you will resist too.

 

Now you should have some extra points, so these are some things you can put extra points into:

Pierce - Now that this is always on maximum cast speed, you can use it for some quick damage without having to go into draw stance. Since 3 chi is way too focus consuming, you can put 1 point into it (or 2 if you want more damage). This will also let you cancel Breeze and Pierce without consuming any focus if you want to do that.

 

Take Flight - the third point into this will allow you to use it at 16m range if Flock of Blades is active. If you haven't noticed, Heavenly Dance (your aerial RMB) actually gap closes to the target so you can do something like knockback with flock and then Lightning Retribution daze into Take Flight and Heavenly Dance. Mostly useful against sins and warlocks who don't have grabs but still require you to use flock for the knockback.

 

Rush, raid, Anklebiter - These 3 have charge disables if you put 1 more point into them. Very useful since it either forces your opponent to SS, or allows you to avoid being tech chased by them if they were planning to use a gap closing skill. Anklebiter also slows and is AoE, which is extremely useful vs summoners. The cat can't use the stun on you if it's charge disabled, and while it's slowed you can just run away from it easily and avoid its knockdown, daze hammer, etc.

 

Blade Storm Tier 2 Stage 2 - Boosts honed slash damage. Since this skill was somewhat nerfed this patch, we now have to put 2 points into it to achieve part of the old effect. You can slip this into your combo ie. 2 - 4 - RB - X - LB - RB - RB... for some damage boost to ensure the 100-0.

 

 

 

 

 

[CoffeeFueled]

59 minutes ago, Avalyn said:

Honed Slash, Tier 1 Stage 1 - Regens 1 chi on crit, as I mentioned we have a lot of chi problems so this can help you save some trouble if you get lucky. Since this is where all your damage comes from while comboing and it consumes a ton of chi, this is a pretty well spent point.

 

Hey, so you would advice not using Dragon Tongue with its complementary Flicker T4 S3 which reduces DT cd by 2 seconds on hit? They seem to have redesigned it quite a bit.. although it may be harder to chain them.

Thanks for the build and tips, very comprehensive, will try it now.

May rngjesus bestow upon you the best of luck, senpai.

[Avalyn]

Dragontongue/fire build is more of a PvE thing. Some BM's have been using it in PvP and it can work decently well but I don't think it's optimal against top players. In order to use it, the fire lunar slash T3 S1 is mandatory to make it 0 CD spammable. This means you lose your 3 second tab daze which is pretty huge, and on top of that you have to have very specific cooldowns ready in order to do any sort of combo. Granted Dragontongue does a ton of damage and can 100-0 people even if you don't land that many dragontongues, but this is still a huge handicap. Also it pretty much requires you to have HM Z if you want to make this remotely viable. 

 

Losing the flicker stun in PvP is definitely no good though. The BM's that play fire build in PvP only take the fire lunar slash and dragontongue. If you lose the flicker too you will only have raid extension as a "cc" during draw stance, so you can barely hit them a couple times with dragontongue before you have to switch back to basic stance.

[xxxAoi]

Lightning build also increases your ranged attack speed which is needed more on PvP. Also, people can easily dodge AoE skills like Blade Call so it's better to spec it to Flock of Blades for knockback against grapple and other snare status.

[Princess Zelda]

Dragontongue in Arena only does like 10% more dmg, so dont sacrifice for it. Other than that if you do want to use it there is a certain play style you need to get used to. 
If you spec non daze lunar slash, u probably won't be able to 100-0 someone with a blade call/flock combo anymore, which means you're playstyle has to change from baiting out a tab and then all in, to more chip dmg. Being able rush then tab rmb 2 rmb rmb lmb rmb rmb e shoulder charge tech chase deals some big ol dmgs, but it wont 100-0 someone.

[CoffeeFueled]

I will start by saying that Avalyn's build works in 1 vs 1 fairly well, limitations probably being set by my own shortcomings as a player.. still getting used to it though.

In whirlwind valley.... at my 571 AP I can barely squeze any dps and i'm often among the people listed that did sh*t dmg.

 

The Dragontongue I would have thought to be good, at least in my own case because I get my "combo"/rotation interrupted so often in pvp, or the stun doesn't last long enough for me to do more than 1 rmb in draw stance, when I actually manage to daze/stun i just stand there like a moron because i lack chi points to actually finish the opponent.

 

And this is a happy scenario, if I go against destroyer, if he catches me once with a stun and i have no escape from it, he ani cancels me to death, tbh that is just wrong, but in a live webcast... i think at tower of infinity release you clearly see the guy there ani cancels also... i will just bottle up my frustration towards that for now.

 

Assassin (started playing to understand what i do wrong against them in 1 vs 1) for example is very intuitive in its gameplay and you can make a good rotation easily, bm is no such case and i find that a shame.

 

[Avalyn]

6v6 is all about gear so I wouldn't worry too much about it since it's just these couple weeks for the daily quest event. If you don't have crit defense your opponent will just instant kill you in 1 aerial in there. Once you get good at 1v1 and are familiar with how to avoid getting CC'ed though most people in there have no clue what they're doing and rely on gear so you can survive vs them just by avoiding their CC.

 

I think yeah, for most beginners in PvP they have somewhat of an idea of how to catch their opponent, but then they don't know what to do once they catch them so they just end up doing aerials all the time and eventually killing people after doing enough aerials.

 

So I'll talk about comboing this time since that seems to be your problem now. Maybe specific class matchup details in another post if you still having trouble since you can beat most lower players just by being able to do this combo.

If you get them in a combo (Tab gone and tech chased F roll) the combo shouldn't get "interrupted" if you chain your CC's right. 

 

These 2 videos will show you how to do the combo with Blade Call and then with Flock.

 

 

 

 

Now I'll explain what is going on in some more detail.

When you combo, Honed Slash RMB is your main damage. Since Honed Slash consumes 3 chi and max chi is only 10, you have to have some form of chi regen or you will run out really fast. Now if your opponent messes up quite badly and you didn't have to use flock or blade call for anything (this happens a lot at lower rating), you will get to use your Flock of Blades/Blade Call for chi regen (and huge damage on blade call). You'll notice in the skill description Flock generates 2 focus per second for 12 seconds, and your Whirling Scourge which you can use while Flock is up also generates another 10 chi over time. Having Flock and whirling scourge up while you combo allows you to just stay in draw stance without really worrying about chi as you can continuously use Honed Slash and your draw stance CC's. 

 

Well he shows you a preset rotation for your combo, but it doesn't exactly have to be like that. All you have to keep in mind is that 1 second of CC you can do 1 Honed Slash or 1 Breeze (I'll explain why you need to know about the Breeze later). Other things also take up time, for example Lightning Draw counts as effectively 1 second as well, and switching into draw stance with Q also takes a little bit of time but if your ping is fast enough you can still get 2 honed slashes in after using Q. Anyways, after you use your 2 honed slashes in for example a 2 second CC, you need to re-CC before you continue using Honed Slash. If you just keep this in mind, your opponent will stay in CC for your whole combo until their escapes come back,, they die, or you run out of chi or CC's. This is the reasoning behind his combo: Flicker (2 Seconds) > Honed Slash x2 > Raid (extend/re-CC 2 more seconds) > Honed Slash x2 > Lunar Slash (re-CC), > etc. The opponent is CC'ed the entire time this way, and you get all your honed slashes in. Once he runs out of CC he sends them into aerial to get the last bit of damage needed to finish them.

 

Now as for how to practice your combo, get a broken or 1 AP weapon, unequip your outfit + accessories etc. and go to mushin tower and buy a trainee's emblem from the general merchant there for 10 silver. Then go to the brazier in front of the training dummies and enter it and you can fight a junghado training dummy. It gives you a private instance where you can just practice it, so I personally like it better than the pigs at hogshead or whatever else people use. Obviously people get nervous in PvP so once you can do it on the dummy get used to it in actual PvP as well.

 

 

Read this next part only after you feel completely comfortable with doing everything above, or you'll just get confused.

 

Now a lot of the time you don't get to have your Flock/Blade Call when you catch your opponent, and this is the 2nd major bottleneck for most BM's after they learn how to do the basic blade call/flock combo. You'll notice at the end of the first video when he fights the KFM, he uses Blade Call when the KFM still hasn't used tab escape, in order to force it out. But what is he going to do after that when he catches the KFM? KFM lost his escape, but the BM can't do his full combo either since he used his blade call. Same kind of situation happens a lot vs BD's or destroyers, where they grab you and you use Flock to escape it and don't  have it for comboing later on.

 

So there's another type of comboing when you don't have that cooldown. I'll just refer to this as "flockless comboing" and basically it comes down to managing your chi because you don't have flock to regenerate it automatically for you. This is something you need to learn how to do, and how it works is you cycling back and forth between normal stance Breeze for chi regen and draw stance Honed Slash for damage while keeping your opponent CC'ed the whole time. This is also why the 3 points spec'ed into Breeze for 2 chi regen is one of our most important skills, because if it only gave you 1 chi you would barely be able to use any Honed Slashes. This is also where the 1 Breeze per second of CC comes in. What this pattern looks like is rather than the [CC] - [Honed Slash] - [CC] - [Honed Slash] etc. pattern that you have with flock comboing, you'll instead do  [CC]-[Honed slashes] - [CC] - [Breezes] - [CC] - [Honed Slashes] - [CC] - [Breezes] etc.

 

In order to pull this off, you need to be familiar with all your draw stance switches (Q, Lightning Draw, SS, no HM Z yet for you). SS in particular is inconvenient and time consuming (around 1 second) to use, so usually this goes together with raid to gap close. In general, for every Honed Slash that you do you need 1 Breeze to balance it out even though Honed Slash consumes 3 and Breeze regens 2. It all works out in the end because when you crit Honed Slash essentially only consumes 2 focus, and when you crit Breeze it regens 3 focus. Add onto that the fact that things like Rush stun or Raid and SS all recover chi, and things balance out.

 

I'll just give you 1 example and then this should all make some sort of sense.

 

Starting from tech chase with shoulder  charge:

C- Q - [Honed Slash x3] - LMB - 1 - [Breeze x2] - 2 - 4 - [Honed Slash x1] - Tab - 1 - [Breeze x2] - SS - 2 - [Honed Slash x1] - 1 - R - F - [Aerial]