Blighter No-Shield Build / 55 Theory Crafting battlerage defense dps pve pvp shadowplay
Guide by StinkyFatShit Last update at Aug 11th 2014, 10:19


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CHAPTERS
  • 0. Introduction
  • 1. Explaination on Blighters
  • 2. Pros
  • 3. Cons
  • 4. Examples of Blighter PVP
  • 5. BlighterVsDarkrunner
  • 6. HowSomeThingsWork
  • 7. SomeThingsYouHaveToKnow

Introduction

Hi guys, Billymays/Citgo from ArcheAge's Alpha server here, for another guide on another Class that I feel is slept on heavily, the 2 Handed Blighter. This Guide is going to be similar to my Spellsinger guide content wise, so it may take a short while to fully complete it, but I feel that making this guide will help alot of people see the potential of this build, and show people how flexible this build is when it comes to playstyle. Much like the Spellsinger class, Blighters have a large range of abilities that can completely change and fit different people's playstyles, and I'm going to show you what I mean.


Explaination

So as I've said above, Blighters are very flexible playstyle wise, and have many viable builds as of the current level cap in Alpha, and when live rolls around it'll just get better (as will many classes though). This guide focuses mainly on my personal favorite Two Handed and Dual Wield build that I've used mostly on Citgo, one of my toons on Alpha. With this Build for Alpha I've focused mainly on high sustained damage and occasional microbursts, with heavy reliance on
parries to feed
spam, and Shadowplay melee abilities to sustain heavy sustained damage outside of burst with virtually no downtime on Special Ability usage that some other Classes have issues with. While this build has many usable spells, it also has a heavy use of Battlerage passive abilities, for high utility and damage boosts. While some talent placements like
can be viewed as fillers, they're really to keep up with Ranged Builds, or highly mobile builds, like Primeval, Trickster, Spellsinger, and Darkrunners, since the build is highly aggressive.


Pros



-High damage build
-Closes gaps easily
-Has a moderate amount of instant cast CC
-No casted abilities
-Free moving build / No need to stop moving
-Makes heavy use of Passives, and makes use of them that's comparable to active/on use abilities
-Primaries two stats rather than 3 or more
-Constant On-Use ability uptime


Cons

-This Build doesn't make full use of the Defense trees CC abilities due to the need of a shield
-Less passive protection when compared to the Blighter Builds that use shields, as you have sacrificed the bonuses of Shields for the extra damage.
-This build can break Snares, Slows, Launches, Lassitude, and Telekinesis, but not Stuns, Fears, Sleeps, and Disarms. Can leave you vulnerable or give you the upper hand against a different range of CCs.
-Makes heavy use of backstabs which can be semi-difficult for inexperienced players to land consistently.
-Can be kited occasionally even with it's high amount of gap closers.


Examples

Here are some videos I'm going to add to the Guide early for those of you who would rather see proof that this build can be effective in multiple situations, some of these videos show 2-Handed Builds, some show Shield Builds, and some even show builds that have players that swap from Dual/2Hand to Sword and Board mid fight. I'll be making Level 55 guides and explanations for variations of this Class. Here's the first video!


This player uses both Sword and Board, and a Two Hander in this video in different situations, to deal with different players in the most effective way he can. On multiple occasions in this video he is thrown and throws himself into multiple enemies and takes care of them relatively quickly.

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Here's another one from a North American player that is a Shield and Sword style Blighter, while it is a duel video, and there were a few close calls, it doesn't take away from what was accomplished here, and makes an example of the Classes high damage even when using a shield

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This is one more North American player who also uses a shield, (as many Blighters do). I used this video more specifically for the Arena Setting content. It gives a pretty reletive example of what Blighters are like in Arenas for the most part.

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Another North American player here: Rickenbaker. In this video he shows some Blighter PvP in 5v5s, and a couple duels, another Sword and Board Blighter, but he does well overall and even manages to pull himself out of some thick situations.


BlighterVsDarkrunner

Why should you consider playing a Blighter when Darkrunner is already a powerful AND popular build? Well I'll tell you why: Darkrunner is more of a Hit and run style build, while it does have some okay defensive abilities it's PvP style isn't for everyone, alot of players enjoy Darkrunner, and I've seen some players who enjoy Blighter, the difference between the two is how aggressive they are, and how long they can stay aggressive. Darkrunners do a lot of open and shut, run up Leech and open,
and open,
and attack, which is closely similar to the playstyle of say, a Rogue in World of Warcraft, or other relative things classes/souls/paths in other games. Nothing is wrong with this, and if this is the type of playstyle you enjoy, by all means go and check out Darkrunner gameplay, but me personally, I've always enjoyed a constant fight until someone's dead type of gameplay, which is why I play the classes that I play, and make the guides I make, for people that want to play similar style classes/builds. Blighters suit that style for me, they have the potential to open and kill, but they don't rely on it, and they're not in a constant state of trying to execute a one shot. In this Two Handed / Dual Wield style build for Blighters, we can constantly apply pressure through heavy amounts of damage and force bad decisions, early cds, and even shut someone down completely. Using this build I started noticing myself killing people 10 levels higher around level 30-40 with some extra effort, and around level 45 I even managed to kill some people with Arena Titles. This is a heavily slept on build, that many people don't really see, since many people play a survive and kill/sword and board Blighter.


HowSomeThingsWork

Some pretty basic things you can see in the guide so far, and in the video, is that
is huge. It's actually a pretty constantly used ability due to
's passive ability which resets the CD on all Battlerage CDs.
paired up with
means that you can make heavy use of
, gap closers like
and
, and
as a defensive out.

Outside of Deflect and Retaliate's procs, Blighter deals heavy damage with it's basic rotation that is easily executable, a pretty common opener for most Blighters that run a similar build would be something along the lines of
->
->(Running behind the target and executing a
)-> The next ability can pretty much vary on what you want to do, or the situation, if the target is still close at this point I'd probably use
, or if the target is far, I'd
into a trip from
->
->
Then if you want to you can execute a
, it won't have a full 20 Stakcs of Bloodthirst, but generally it's a really hard hitting ability from behind anyways, plus it gives an added Shackle CC, so if you did want to execute this, you could
->
, or just try to get behind them and save


SomeThingsYouHaveToKnow

A couple things that people overlook occasionally are things like combos, and the current mechanics on melee abilities.

-
should be used when
is up, as the combo damage increase is absolutely huge.
-If you
a target, make sure you get off the first slash in
before the Snare on the target falls off, because the first slash in
consumes Snare to Trip the target.
-
applies Shaken to the target.
-Try to use
after
for the additional combo damage.
-While it is hard to execute often,
's Cooldown is reset if you use
while still in

-
consumes Bloodthirst stacks to do extra damage aside from Backstab damage.
-All Melee abilities have a 0-4 Meter range for use, so you have some leeway in the actual distance you have to be from your target, AND, say you started an attack like
or
and your target moves more than 4 Meters from you, your attack will still finish doing it's damage, so don't worry about losing damage if you are ranged slightly or all of the sudden.