User:Masel/Builds/Bladesworn

Sword + Pistol Power  Bladesworn

Build Rating (Subjective)

Criterion	Rating
Burst Damage	5/5
Sustained Damage	4/5
Utility Options	3/5
Survivability	5/5
Difficulty	2/5

Power  Bladesworn is a very unique build for instanced content that excels at providing burst and cleave damage. It provides itself and allies with good amounts of  Might and  Fury and can further share  Alacrity without adjusting gear at all, making it a convenient choice for Boon supply. Through  Unshakable Mountain and  Defense, it can become incredibly tanky by just changing one trait and a few utility skills.

Link to the Build on the Editor

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Dragon Trigger Skills
Sword + Pistol Skills
Gunsaber Skills
Utility

Key Mechanics

  Dragon Trigger

• Activating this roots you in place, and   Dragon Trigger is cancelled by any movement or skill cast with a cast time. You can still use instant cast skills like   Flow Stabilizer or   "For Great Justice!".
• Once activated, it charges up bullets. The more bullets you charge, the more damage the Dragon Slash of your choice does:

#	Skill			Description
1	Dragon Slash—Force	0.5½	1	Burst. Slash foes in front of you, ending Dragon Trigger. This attack consumes all charges to deal more damage.
2	Dragon Slash—Boost		1	Burst. Dash forward while slashing all foes in a line, ending Dragon Trigger. This attack consumes all charges to deal more damage.
3	Dragon Slash—Reach	0.5½	1	Burst. Slash to create a blade of air that strikes foes in a line in front of you, ending Dragon Trigger. This attack consumes all charges to deal more damage.

• You want to charge up all bullets if possible, because the damge of the slashes increases disproportionally.
• Given that you're very vulnerable while rooted, the two remaining skills give you some movement and defense:

#	Skill			Description
4	Triggerguard		1	Gain aegis. Using this skill will not end Dragon Trigger.
5	Flicker Step		0.5½	Blink to a location. Using this skill will not end Dragon Trigger.

• You can use   Triggerguard to block an attack and   Flicker Step to treleport a short distance. These are very helpful!
•   Dragonscale Defense grants you  Stability when you enter   Dragon Trigger, allwoing you to bypass incoming Control effects for short duration.
• Whenever you activate a Dragon Slash, you'll land on Gunsaber afterwards. Gunsaber includes another skill bar. You can only alternate between one weapon set, Gunsaber and   Dragon Trigger, so you cannot weapon swap in combat on  Bladesworn. Keep that in mind when choosing your weapon set.
• All Gunsaber skills aside from   Break Step have both ranged and melee components to them, so you can use them to stay at range whenever you need to.

Flow

• Instead of Adrenaline,  Bladesworn relies on Flow to use Burst skills. Simply attacking does not generate Flow. You to have skills or traits that usually generate Adrenaline, as that Adrenaline is converted into flow.
• You can gain flat amounts of Flow or stack up   Positive Flow to receive Flow over time.   Flow Stabilizer grants   Positive Flow over time and another flat amount of flow if you have  Fury when activating it.
• Expending Flow as charges for Dragon Slash still triggers traits related to spending Adrenaline. Spending 1-4 charges counts as spending 1 bar of Adrenaline, 4-9 counts as spending 2 bars, and a full 10 charges counts as 3 bars of Adrenaline.

Rotation Concept

• The general rotation concept is simple, but requires fast enough execution to get close to the benchmark.
• Whatever else you do, always enter   Dragon Trigger on cooldown. It does ~60% of your damage and makes your damage graph look like a heart monitor.
• Always use   Tactical Reload and   Flow Stabilizer on cooldown.

Opener

• Precast the following skills:

1.   Break Step x2
2.   Artillery Slash x1
3.   Cyclone Trigger x2
4.   "To the Limit!" x1
5.   Flow Stabilizer x2
6.   Tactical Reload x1

• This is done to pre-stack  Fierce as Fire and Flow for the first   Dragon Trigger.

Dragon Trigger

• After the precast, enter   Dragon Trigger and use   Dragon Slash—Force as soon as the charges are filled. With   Tactical Reload, that takes just over 1 second.
• After   Dragon Trigger, you will always land in Gunsaber.
• Then, there are two different scenarios depending on whether Weapon swap is available:

Scenario 1: Weapon swap is available

In case weapon swap is available, you want to use the following skills:

1.   Blooming Fire
2. Weapon swap
3.   Dragon's Roar,
4.   Gunstinger to recharge 3 stacks of   Dragon's Roar,
5.   Dragon's Roar again,
6.   Final Thrust and
7.   Sever Artery,   Gash &   Hamstring until   Dragon Trigger comes up.

Scenario 2: Weapon swap is not available

In that case, stay on Gunsaber and use the following skills:

1.   Blooming Fire on cooldown,
2.   Cyclone Trigger on cooldown,
3.   Artillery Slash with at least 2 charges (can be saved for Defiance bar damage),
4.   Break Step when you need  Fury or mobility and
5.   Swift Cut,   Steel Divide &   Explosive Thrust until   Dragon Trigger comes up.

Utility Skills

Default Skill	Notes
"To the Limit!"	Used for the free initial Flow, but also grants allies 50 Endurance and thus a free Dodge.
Flow Stabilizer	As the name implies, it is there to grant a stable inFlow (what a pun) as well as  Fury.
Signet of Fury	Just there for the additional  Precision. Should be kept to not create issues with critical chance-based effects.
Signet of Might	Just there for the additional  Power. Can be replaced by any other utility skill you might need.
Tactical Reload	Massive boost to the build's damage and convenience. Recharges 1 stack of ammo on all  Bladesworn skills and make   Dragon Trigger charge faster. Should be used on cooldown!

CC Skills for Defiance bar damage

•   Dragon Slash—Force is your main source if CC. Unfortunately, this costs you most of your damage if Defiance bars coincide with invulnerability.
•   Artillery Slash with at least 2 charges.
• For additional CC, you can use Hammer or Maces. Just remember that you cannot Weapon swap in combat, so you have to decide prior to entering combat on what to do.

Gear

Important Stats in Hero Panel (descending in Importance):

1. 75% Critical Chance:  Fury gives the remaining 25%. On  Bladesworn, it is very important to have 100% Critical chance because as soon as a hit   Dragon Trigger does not critically strike, you will notice it.
2. Maximize Power
3. Maximize Ferocity

• I chose gear that is convenient for swapping between  Bladesworn,  Berserker and  Spellbreaker here, because they all include different levels of Critical chance.

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Shoulders	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Chest	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Gloves	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Legs	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Boots	Berserker's	Superior Rune of the Scholar
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Berserker's
Ring 1	Assassin's
Ring 2	Berserker's
Accessory 1	Assassin's
Accessory 2	Berserker's
Backpack	Berserker's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Sword (Main Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Force
Pistol (Off Hand)	Berserker's	Superior Sigil of Accuracy
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro Lime Sous-Vide Steak
Damage	Non-Ascended Food	Bowl of Sweet and Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppercorn-Crusted Sous-Vide Steak
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters with Zesty Sauce
Damage	Utility	Potent Superior Sharpening Stone
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Thief
Survivability	Relic	Relic of Durability
Roaming	Relic	Relic of the Cavalier

• For a budget variant, simply replace all ascended armor pieces of Berserker's with rare/exotic Berserker's.

Traits

Strength
Tactics
Bladesworn

• The default specializations for damage are  Tactics,  Strength and of course  Bladesworn.

 Strength

• In strength, we’ll be using all the juicy damage buffs we can get!
• 5% increased Strike damage and Critical chance, converting Power to both Vitality and Ferocity and finally up to 21% increased damage upon spending bars of Adrenaline.
• Strength will also make your dodges apply  Might and damage enemies, make burst skills restore Endurance on hit and have  Might grant more power to you (40 per stack instead of 30).

 Tactics

•  Tactics includes many damage modifier that will boost your   Dragon Trigger.
•  Phalanx Strength leads to great passive sustain, as every stack of  Might you apply to yourself or allies will heal you.
• You can opt to make use of  Martial Cadence for additional  Stability uptime.

DPS Rotation Showcase

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.

Open World Build

Link to the OW build in the editor

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.

Increasing General Survivability

• In order to increase general survivability, we'll abuse the synergy between ammo skills,   Tactical Reload and  Unshakable Mountain. The latter gives you over 1300 Barrier every time you use the last charge of an ammo skill.
• Next, using  Defense grants great sustain at no cost in damage when you're alone, and a small amount of damage when doing group content:

Defense
Strength
Bladesworn

• I highly recommend using  Brave Stride in  Defense. It provides  Stability on movement skills, which allows you to easily maintain it for  Stalwart Strength. Both Pistol skills trigger this, as well as   Savage Leap on Sword,   Break Step on Gunsaber and   Flicker Step in   Dragon Trigger. Try to cast a movement skill right before going into   Dragon Trigger to make sure it hits with  Stability up.
• You don't really make use of  Cull the Weak when you're alone, so as soon as you have other people covering  Weakness for you, your damage goes up.
•  Adrenal Health heals you passively for decent amounts as long as you keep using your Burst skills.
•  Defy Pain makes you immune to strike damage for 4 seconds every 30 seconds upon using   Tactical Reload.
• To make use of  Unshakable Mountain, we're going to add a few ammo skills to the build:

1. Option A instead of   Signet of Might:   "Shake It Off!" for a Stun break that also cleanses conditions, so it does both. Also affects nearby allies for both effects. This is the safer option, as you have no other means of cleansing conditions or breaking a stun.
2. Option B instead of   Signet of Might:   "For Great Justice!" for area supply of  Might and  Fury. This isn't really worth it just for yourself, given that you're covering  Fury without it.
3. Use   Combat Stimulant for another strong ammo healing skill. In case you dont need the heal, you can use it twice to provide slef- Quickness and  Vigor.

• With   Tactical Reload and all the ammo skills you have, that amounts to massive Barrier that will make you almost unkillable as long as you keep using them.
• If you cannot go into melee range, camp Gunsaber and use   Dragon Slash—Reach instead of   Dragon Slash—Force.
• You can use any secondary weapon set you want with this setup, as you have another empty weapon bar and the weapon set is only used for a low amount of time:

1. Main hand Axe includes a bit of  Vulnerability,  Fury and another ammo skill.
2. Staff is a great support weapon that provides area healing and Boons.
3. Hammer and Maces provide high Defiance bar damage on demand.

To fully bunker down to solo very difficult content, you can make additional adjustments.

Defense Strength  Might Makes Right will further boost your healing and Endurance recovery, at the cost of the 21% damage modifier from  Berserker's Power. It's usually not needed, but can help if you're insecure or just starting with the build. You can use  Cleansing Ire on top: it removes a bunch of conditions on every hit of   Dragon Trigger and stacks up Flow passively when you get hit. You can also take  Stalwart Strength for higher damage with  Brave Stride. You can replace any piece of Berserker's gear with Knight's, giving you  Toughness in exchange for  Power and  Ferocity. This is a 1-to-1 tradeoff in damage, but can provide a more relaxed experience.

Boon Coverage

• On  Bladesworn, the most important Boon is  Fury, because you want to make sure all your hits of   Dragon Trigger are critical hits.
• We'll cover that easily with   "For Great Justice!",   Flow Stabilizer,   Break Step and (if you decied to use Axe)   Cyclone Axe.
•  Unyielding Dragon will make you cap out  Might for your   Dragon Trigger hits.   "For Great Justice!" provides a bit of consistent  Might on top.
• You can use  Daring Dragon to share  Alacrity with allies. It is a dps loss when you're alone, partially because you lose the  Might and Stun on   Dragon Trigger. An upside is that it makes   Dragon Trigger charge faster, reducing the time you are rooted noticeably. That reduces the chances to get interrupted and is thus easier to execute.
• you can use a Relic of Durability for better uptime on  Protection,  Resolution and  Regeneration at a fairlsy small amount of damage.  Resolution will reduce incoming damage further via  Hardened Armor.
• If you can, make use of   Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge. They give 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution on entering combat, with a 90 second cooldown. The free stats are very nice to have, especially for harder open world content.
• In case you dont need the heal from   Combat Stimulant you can use it twice to provide self- Quickness and  Vigor.
• In case you want easy access to boons in open world (especially  Quickness), you can abuse the synergy between Relic of the Cavalier and   Blast from the Skyscale to apply lots of  Aegis,  Resistance,  Might and  Quickness to yourself. It does not have an internal cooldown and applies the boons on every hit of   Blast. This also works with any other mount engage when hitting multiple targets.
• Since this also covers  Might, you can use  Daring Dragon to cover all important offensive boons on yourself.

Dealing with Conditions and Control effects

•   "Shake It Off!" cleanses conditions and breaks a stun on you and nearby allies.
•   Mending can be used for short-cooldown heal that cleanses conditions.
• You have a few possible sources for  Stability:

1.  Dragonscale Defense grants it for every time you enter   Dragon Trigger.
2.  Brave Stride is triggered on both Pistol skills as well as   Savage Leap on Sword,   Break Step on Gunsaber and   Flicker Step in   Dragon Trigger.
3.  Stalwart Strength grants it on   Dragon Slash—Force and   Artiellery Slash with at least 2 charges.