Blade & Soul Comprehensive Blade Master Build, Tips and Strategy Guide

One of the Highest DPS Classes

Highest Burst DPS

Many Dodges

High Survivability

Very Low Support

Attack: Rather obvious, you can get attack from Weapons, Gems, and every accessory besides belts.

Critical Damage %: Increases the critical damage modifier of your attacks when you land a critical. Goal on Korean server should be between 200-210%. Can't really say for CN servers sadly.

Critical: Increases the chance of landing a crit. Goal on Korean server should be between 50-55%. Should be about the same for CN servers as well perhaps slightly lower.

Aside(Accuracy: Need about 115% For Blade Masters in Korea trying to do Palace and Yok Soon(15th floor Boss)

Pierce: Your attacks will pierce through a percentage of a mobs defense

Parry: Chance to parry an attack from a monster resulting in decreased damage, it has added usage for Blade Masters in that you can go directly to your poke after parrying an attack.

Defense/Health: Decreases the amount of damage you receieve from a mob and increases the amount of health you have respectively. Not particularly important.

Rather Straight forward, everyone should have this gem. On every crit it heals 200 hp and deals 200 damage, the 3 attack is optional and is an event gem.

Once again rather straight forward, for most situations a an attack diamond will always be used. Just choose the highest one you can afford or have on your weapon.

The first two are good for every situation. Use the random chance to deal 400 damage because that's the 100% chance of critting procs often enough, and when it does it always seems to be on some useless attack like charge or a normal hit.

Deal 100 damage on stunned targets, and increases attack by 5. The part that matters is the 5 attack, players on CN Servers might not have this yet. Aim to get one with 5 attack they appear on blue and green Topaz's as well I believe.

They are typically fillers for when you don't have one of the above gems... none of them are particularly good for Blade Master.

A Blade Masters bopae set should be focused around crit, just like every other class. Blade Masters should be using synthetic crit bopae on every one of their Bopae for maximum critical chance, if wanted or needed you can also substitute one of the crits for a pierce synthetic bopae.

Earrings: Critical Damage %, Crit, Attack

Ring: Critical Damage %, Crit, Attack

Necklace: Critical Damage %, Crit, Attack

Bracelet: Critical Damage %, Crit, Attack

Belt: Doesn't particularly matter, however if you play in the Korean server you need the undead dungeon belt to nullify the damage of some bosses in Palace of Grief.

It's okay if everyone of your accessories do not have those 3 stats, however you should definitely focus at the very least on having all of them have critical damage %.

This guide will be splitting this section into two parts. Required Skill trees that are typically more tailored towards bossing however some will be used regardless, and situational/Optional skill trees that you can use if you have the need or extra ability points. Skills that don't include initially, don't particularly matter and can be used at your discretion. However, this guide will TRY and put them in order of importance, but the first few will be pretty non-negotiable and only one is not completely obvious. Please note that this is just a general (yet strongly recommended) skill build that you should use if you have the required skill points, which means anyone playing in Korea should be able to have all the required skills as well as some of the optional.

This guide has a slightly adjusted build for CN Players that utilizes all 31 skill points in a slightly more effective manner. Just to make a note, the first 14 pictures are what you should have when Bossing, and the last 2 are for when you are switching to PVE AOE Grinding/Questing. 

Check the customized skill build on the link below.

The skills listed here are required for the best single target DPS, meaning that if you have enough skill points you should have all of these skills when you are bossing if you are in CN currently, and all of them if you are on the Korean servers plus some skill trees from the optional list.

This is the only good skill tree in block, if wanted you can go to the next block down and it will heal a small amount of HP on a perfect block.

Absolutely needed, allows for us to spam our poke after a successful block.

Main DPS skill, you need this, the skill tree that branches off this one gives a percentage of the damage done as HP back and can be used when learning fights.

THIS SKIL IS VERY IMPORTANT. 

After using Down Kick you are able to use your Poke, just like you would if you were to block. There's a combo for this that utilizes some animation cancels shown on the video at the very bottom of this post. Down Kick increases DPS GREATLY.

Second main DPS Skill, basically this skill tree makes you attack very fast, slightly faster than your Poke is. This is NEEDED for Bosses, otherwise you will have shit DPS. On the optional skills down below this skill is included on the AOE HP Regen Tree. This skill is required for single target DPS not mobbing or questing.

High single target damage skill, part of what makes us very high burst DPS. If you have the spare ability points you can go down to the next block and it will switch you to quick draw stance.

Both ways are decent, the first one moves you behind the mob you are fighting and is better for bossing, the second one is better if you are fighting mobs since it has aoe and goes in a straight line.

Grants invulnerability over the duration of the skills use. Needed for survivability.

Consumes no Chi, used for animation cancelling in a combo using the Down Kick.

Two possible trees for Gale

***Players from CN use this Tree, This makes the required skill tree 29 Ability points***

***Players from CN use this Tree, This makes the required skill tree 29 Ability points***

In Total the skill trees on that list use 30-31 Ability points, depending on which gale(Normal Attack) you prefer.

The skills listed here are optional, they are mostly for AOE Grinding or are skill trees to add on to or swap with the Required skill trees list depending on the situation, or if you have enough skill points (If you are on Korean Servers).

It is not instant like the bossing one, this one goes over a wide area and regens HP. Good for mobbing and questing, if you are mobbing and questing it is a good idea to have this skill it makes AOE grinding much easier than any other skill, HOWEVER DO NOT USE IT FOR BOSSING, even if you have 300ms ping+ it'll still be 2x slower than the Instant quick draw.

This is your one and only support skill for the most part, when you get more ability points you should have this. Very useful for blocking some bosses ranged attacks.

Launch a bunch of swords at a mob that will do sustained damage for awhile.

Good Aoe Attack, must always make sure it's instant cast though if you don't use this tree.

Can be used as a groggy from Draw Stance. Particularly useful for bosses that have no CC defenses like Mushin, Yok Soon, Swordy, etc.

Useful groggy, doesn't actually need points put into it but you can do it if you want.

If there's a skill tree not in here that you happen to use or are wondering about it most likely isn't any good, or if it is it has a VERY limited amount of uses.

All the required skills and swap out two skills that are tailored towards AOE and HP regen. If you want a quick AOE dps build when you are in the middle of a dungeon or something, then perhaps you could try using this.

Typically putting these two skills in your repertoire and exchanging them out with the Move-to-Back Dash Pierce skill tree and Instant Quick draw skill tree will be enough for any mobbing situation. It also makes it very easy to switch between single target DPS and Mobbing.

Most combos you do will branch off of a block or dodge.

The combo below will increase your DPS a ton since it is a way to use your rapid Poke without having to block or parry first. It also makes use of animation cancels, in essence it SHOULD completely recover all 10 chi and allow you to use 5 pokes. It is the holy grail of Blade master combos.