You're just finishing up your first week into Heroes vs Hordes. Looking through the early activity log you crash into Blademaster as the reward.
You ended up promoting a hero just in time to grab him, but is the Blademaster any good?
Turns out you just unlocked the best free-to-play hero in the game, but with a slight hiccup.
He's not great in the early game until you get legendary gear and access to his level 80 ultimate, so while it's bittersweet in the moment. But know you've unlocked a young white belt who just needs some time to turn into the ultimate ninja.
Think of this guide as your Blademaster Ninjutsu - you learn all the gear, strategies, and build to take full advantage of this A+ Tier hero.
In the early game, a hero like Knight will out-damage and out-sustain the Blademaster because the Knight's kit doesn't rely on more advanced stats. The Blademaster requires global buffs to cooldown reduction, critical strike chance, and access to his ultimate before he can truly shine.
His ultimate gives him invulnerability during its duration. You are invincible to horde attacks but still will take fire or magic damage.
To access the ultimate, you need to acquire 10 Blademaster Hero shards and save up enough hero orbs to reach level 80. Both of these can be hard to achieve early on.
Furthermore, the invulnerability from his ultimate procs off of critical hits to enemies instead of killing horde.
The issue is that early in the game, it's hard to proc his ultimate before the horde gets to you. The Blademaster needs a decent number of projectiles, increased crit chance, and more cooldown in order to hit enough of the horde between ultimate procs. Without enough of those stats to reliably proc your ultimate, he's weaker than someone like Knight, who has built-in defensive abilities.
While you'll want to get the Blademaster to level 80, you probably won't start using him as your main until you have legendary gear..
At that point, the Blademaster can carry you through all of Normal Mode, Hard Mode, and all 20 stages of the Arena. He's also top tier in any other event in which invulnerability is not disabled, like Faction Wars and Adventure.
He's a very strong hero—you just need to grind a bit with Knight first.
I will have a full guide on this one strategy as it takes a bit of explaining but know that you can clear Arena with Blademaster before almost any other hero in the game. It still takes time and won't happen until mid-game (Full legendary gear).
However, it's very rewarding when you can finally crack the cheese.
When it comes to gear, you're running a typical max DPS build with a heavy focus on crit. That means rogue equipment is usually the way to go, except for boots, where you want ranger boots for the increased cooldown.
That build looks like this:
| Helm: Rogue | Gloves: Rogue |
| Chest: Rogue | Necklace: Rogue |
| Boots: Ranger | Ring: Rogue |
You'll basically maintain the Max DPS build throughout the main part of the game, except for in Arena.
In the Arena, you can use the "Blademaster Cheese," which is a famous way to clear the Arena before other heroes. It needs a dedicated strategy guide, but I'll go over the gear here.
| Helm: Noble | Gloves: Rogue |
| Chest: Wizard | Necklace: Rogue/Ascended Wizard |
| Boots: Ranger | Ring: Rogue |
You're looking for a Noble Helm, Wizard Robe, and, ideally the Ascended Wizard Necklace. What you're trying to do is increase the number of starting upgrades. The way the Blademaster Cheese works is that during your initial weapon roll-down in the arena, you force evolved Boomerangs using the resource return to reshuffle your reshuffle strategy. The slows from evolved Boomerang will give you enough time to proc your ultimate and stay invulnerable during elite charges or swarms.
However, as mentioned earlier, you need enough cooldown and crit so that you can actually proc that ultimate even with the extra slows from Boomerangs. Without enough projectiles, cooldown, and crit, you won't be able to ultimate before the horde get to you.
I'll have more details on how to kite from corner to corner in the Blademaster Cheese guide.
Leveling up the Blademaster's main weapon is both an offensive and defensive upgrade since it procs his ultimate faster. So, the Blademaster's main weapon is top priority.
Follow that with items like Bomb, Fire Orb, and Chain Lightning plus one which can be Ice Orbs or Boomerang.
I also ran double disruption a lot to push content. You combine ice wand and boomerang, like this:
Then you evolve Boomerang with a Movement tome.
This setup is especially useful when progressing through later-stage Hard Mode and wanting an easier run. You still have to pay attention to the timing of your ultimate. When it runs out, you need to run away from the horde and let your ultimate proc again. Use the freezes from Ice Wand and slows from Boomerang to survive in between ultimate charges.
For Tomes, you're looking to go cooldown first, followed by anything that increases your chance of proccing that ultimate (Area of Effect, Duplicator, Crit), and then damage. This is one situation where crit is favored over damage because it has a defensive value (more invulnerability uptime) in addition to its offensive value.
Cooldown
Area
Duplicator
Crticial
Damage
Movement
You can even substitute out damage tomes for movement tomes and Boomerangs in Normal and Hard Mode. Remember, you beat chapters by surviving until the end. With both ice wand and evolved boomerang, you survive by guaranteeing you proc the Blademaster's ultimate.
Don't be tempted by critical strike jewels, even though that's what technically procs your ultimate. You want cooldown first. You need to swing more often, which is more important than any single crit strike.
Ultimate Charge
Ultimate Duration
Vulnerability
Cooldown til 60%
Critical Strike
Area
Projectile (P)
Run cooldown jewels until it hits 60% in the detail window. You cap cooldown at 60% because you get 30% from cooldown tome. 90% is the max cooldown cap in Normal, Hard, Arena, Boss, and Guild modes.
Then start stacking critical strike chance. Critical strike acts as both an offensive and defensive multiplier for the Blademaster. Any increase in crit means higher uptime on your ultimate, which translates to longer invulnerability.
In the Forge, the Blademaster is not super forge-dependent (you can clear content without forging your weapon), but forging will definitely make him stronger and help him proc the ultimate more often.
Recommended Forge picks might look like this:
Again, you're looking for sources of critical strike chance because it's both an offensive and defensive stat for the Blademaster.
The only skill you really need to know about is the Blademaster's ultimate. It grants him invulnerability for the duration.
His entire existence is built around proccing the ultimate as often as possible in order to clear through events and chapters. That means that kiting is more important for the Blademaster than other heroes.
As you progress in Normal and Hard Modes, you can run double disruption weapons to keep horde away between ultimate procs. You literally watch your ultimate timer and when it gets down to 2-3 seconds, start moving to the other side of the battlefield behind the horde. Since you're invulnerable, you can run through them.
Thanks to the movement speed and the slow from Boomerang (and possibly Ice Wand), you can reach another safe spot on the map. Then proc your ultimate again with crit and cooldown before the horde reach.
Rinse and repeat that process until you clear all of Hard Mode.
Dealing with packs of elites in later stages or in Arena can be a little hard. For the Blademaster Cheese in Arena, kite from corner to corner, and start moving with about one or two seconds left on your ultimate so you can set up your next proc.
Arena just becomes a time check on charging your ultimate before the horde reaches you. As long as you can do that, you can clear any stage or chapter with the Blademaster.
Main Pet. The best main pet for the Blademaster is your highest-level pet. Typically, that means the Pyrokraken or Emberpaw. When you get an epic pet, switch to them.
Your highest-level pet should do the most damage.
Passive Pets. I typically run my next two highest-damage pets as my passive pets. That means either Emberpaw or Pyrokraken, plus an elemental striker with a damage bonus.
I have a full pet guide that goes into more detail.
Main Pet. I really like the Hydro Basilisk as a main pet. The ultimate slow is great, the geysers do a ton of AOE damage, and it's ranged. A great combo across the board.
I just now managed to get the Crystalsaurs to the same level, which should start doing more damage.
Generally, your highest-level pet should do the most damage.
Passive Pets.Right now, I am running Pyrokraken and Crystalsaurs as my passive pets. I like them for the ranged DPS that isn't limited by the Emberpaw radius. If you have a higher level Strom Gryphon than Basilisk, I would swap in the Basilisk for Pyrokraken.
A lot of this will come down to your own testing, honestly, as there's no 100% ideal setup.
