Spellblade has pretty much always been Shatter Strike or bust. They made some great changes to Flame Reave where now Flame Reave is the new king, good stuff there. Shatter Strike still almost as good, good there still.
However a lot of the changes were geared towards a “proc” style where you used melee abilities to proc spells. After exhausting every angle I could experiment with the conclusion is — it all sucks in comparison to Flame Reave and Shatter Strike. The only one that comes close is spark charge but that’s nothing new and Runemaster and Sorcerer do that like 3x better.
Stuff like the Glacier node in Shatter Strike kinda baffles me. First of all it only procs off of the Ice Spikes (why?). And Ice Spikes halve on Shatter Strike recasts (why?). This causes Ice Spikes to not hit your main target on the recasts, pretty silly. Also only 20% chance to proc Glacier is abysmally low proc chance for an expensive mana skill like Shatter Strike.
On top of that it’s only 1/3 of a Glacier cast lol. so 20% chance to do 1/3 of a Glacier. Don’t go too crazy guys!!
I guess my main complaint is the lack of build diversity still, was really hoping to do some cool “spell weaving” from melee attacks but they all fall short, like massively short compared to Flame Reave’s melee damage. Flame Reave easily 5x the damage of any proc build.
To finish I’d also like to say I really hate almost all of the limitations of “Can only proc 1 time every 2 seconds”. Most of the limitations like these feel so bad and awkward. Like the limits on Fireball or Lightning Blast on Flame Reave. Why are they there? Flame Reave already costs mana, I can’t go that crazy with it because of the Flame Reave mana cost, that’s kinda the whole balancing point of the game are the mana limitations baked into everything. We don’t need these arbitrary “every 2 seconds” limits at all, it just makes us not bother with it and find a different build that has no limits.
I am running a Spellblade now. Using two Kuzon’s Fury, one Keplahan’s Pyrolith, the primordial ring to get the set bonus,es Immolator’s Oblation and only Firebrand. Fun as heck. Attack anything and Fire Aura stacks, burn on you stacks and Dancing Dragon from Kuzons stacks.
Although I havent tried it in corrupted yet.
I am also thinking about trying a bee build with Apogee of Frozen Light but I need more idols with bees for that to work (cause the bee-set isn’t very good).
I’ve had flame reave spellblade before S4 and was fun (and now is even stronger). I had pure firebrand before S4 and was also fun (and is now also stronger). Now i play fire aura stacking firebrand spellblade and is also fun, even very fun for me. So i disagree with the original statement.
I’d even say that spellblade is my favourite “melee” class in LE.
Interesting timing. I’ve just been working on a VO spellblade using those new rings. Comfortably doing 300 corruption and haven’t really pushed it as I’m still doing a lot of tweaking and trying things. It’s pretty simple to play alternating between a cooldown cold manastrike and building firebrand stacks with an unspecced teleport to dart around.
One thing that I did notice. The stats on the rings I personally think are some of the best set pieces we’ve had yet. A lot of pieces the affixes aren’t all that great and you end up just crafting the ‘unique affix’ onto other stuff. These being so much better it allows you to have the T8 unique affix (100% uptime) without much sacrifice. So I’ve always go a rotating VO going and probably about 60% of the time there’s two up (fire/cold.)
I reallt want to that off-hand to work, but so far all I got is maybe 4 stacks of the buff and that isn’t good enough. One Frozen Ire, for me, and an Apogee.
Interesting. I removed all spells from him and are now only running melee damage. But that’s boring, and the rings are cool so I gotta try that again.
I play spellblade since day one of the launch, and a flame reave at that, even when it was hard to go far. I always loved it, and with the s4 i truly felt a buff for my character, absolutely shredding everything. But if fear i went a little dogmatic with my build : I do not want to get rid of my sunwreath for it is good damage, and the added effect of circle flame reave is an absolute must for me (also I am the proud owner of an LP4 sunwreath, wanted to brag a little). So I would like an advice from you guys : do you play with it, or absolutely not ? Is it possible to not use the circle flame reave ? Do you use it but from the skill tree ? How does that go for your damage ? In short : is it viable ? Thanks for your future answers, and maybe for expanding my horizon !
I don’t like to assume people are playing things the ‘meta’ way so the only way to really help, if anything, would be to ask you a few questions? What corruption are you currently running comfortably? Are you satisfied with this or do you want to push your corruption higher? Are you dying a lot frequently (this will also be influenced by the corruption questions obviously.)
In short, what are you looking for?
just for starters, I’d probably recommend based on your build that Transcriber’s Graver really isn’t doing you a lot of good. I’d stick the Eye or Reen in your off-hand and add either a good Velocyn’s Jaw. It’ll crank your Crit chance up to probably 100% so your Firebrand spamming will proc Reen more often and set up even better Flame Reave explosions. Plus you’ll get 3 or 4 skill points for Firebrand and Reave and if you swap out Flame Rush for Surge, you can make those Reave hits smack even harder. And none of this should effect how you appear to be PLAYING the build I think.
But that said, wait until someone else comes in who really knows Spellblade. I’m actually more a Sentinel guy.
Yes, that is the one ! Well currently I’m on 550 corruption, clearing with ease if the boss is not too tricky (those blood spheres from shades of orobyss always stun me and give me a sweat). I think i could push 600 with not too much difference. I want indeed to play on higher corruption. I do not die too frequently, maybe once every session.
I would like to be able to kill bosses more easily, for this was always my concern (much less since the update), and my past experience led me to think I was too squishy, so I was looking for damage reduction.
For the weapon, I was projecting to change the transcriber for another eye of reen, for more damage, more crit multi, 100%chance to proc reen’s ire, and for the node of the flame reave skill tree that gives +20 damage for each equipped sword. But maybe it is not that strong ?
The flame rush is mainly here for damage red and shredding fire res. It has much less synergy with flame reave than surge, but it is more tanky. My gameplay is mainly spamming firebrand to get stacks and buffs, flame reave, and flame rush all over the place to dodge and tank, rinse and repeat.
The proc reaver seems reaĺly cool on paper, and the patchnote said the lava orb was here to give spellblade more options for single targeting, which was always my main problem with the class (that and survivability, but this seems to be good for now). But is it viable, and how to make it so ?
If your doing 550 I’d say that’s a successful build.
I definitely think you should try replacing that Transcriber’s Graver. Even a good Exalted Crystal Sword would probably give you more punch.
As to the survivability. I think tankiness for the mage class is built in to killing stuff fast as a ‘defense.’ The whole “if-it’s-dead-it-can’t-hit-you” thing. Mages have some pretty high end damage out put because of this. Sentinels (not counting outliers) out last their enemies. Mages (and Rogues for that matter) tend to need to kill them before they can act.
Give the Velocyn dagger and using Surge (and remember Surge has an ‘invulnerability’ node you can take to be tanky while using it - see a possible setup attached) a go just too see how it feels as the dagger is fairly easy to farm and at 550 corruption you’d replace Surge in one mono. If it doesn’t feel right, it’d be easy to swap back. You get ward generation with Firebrand and Surge this way.
If you do go with this setup of Surge, you might want to drop the Triple Strike node on Firebrand if you end up having mana issues. If you don’t and you can spam Firebrand like crazy that it won’t be a problem, but that option is there, in case you do.
DISCLAIMER: Take with grain of salt. WILL SOMEONE PLEASE GET A MAGE/SPELLBLADE EXPERT IN HERE!!!
I tried Surge, I didn’t manage to get my hands on a good velocyn jaw but I am working on it.
Surge defintely feels good. I put some points in fire aura generation for mana regen, and it works fine ! But I dieded of super death against 616 Confluence of Oblivion’s shades of orobyss. Maybe the jaw will help ! Thanks for the tips
Edit : I wanted to see for myself with a damage calculator, but i couldnt find one, so I did a good ol’ sheet. Here is the link. I think it is very clunky, and the builds used for base calculations are stupid, but it helps seeing a tendency. And the conclusion is overwhelming : velocyn jaw is a monster.
Dude, holy shit, the multiplicative nodes make the skill so much stronger I even wonder how I got to this point of the game without having it ! Fun game event : I killed argentus without him flying out midfight, he was just too stunned to do anything XD
