Is blade master the worst class in the game on the higher difficulties worth playing? General melee problem

Gears 5
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#21

I would certainly say that Blademaster is NOT the worst class. That title could easily go to most of the promotional classes, unfortunately.

With that said, I’ll admit that Blademaster has been my personal least favorite CQC class (not counting promos again although I do really like Protector). I’ve been having a lot of trouble finding something that I like with this class. To me, a lot of the cards are too situational and require too many things to combo in order to work well.

I’m not a big fan of the Venom cards in most Escape maps. While pretty popular and yes, it is a strong build, I find it counter-intuitive to have to constantly wait when the whole idea is to keep pushing forward. Especially with an otherwise aggressive class. In Horde, these same cards are instead perks, which frees up card slots AND doesn’t involve waiting around for them to work.

However, the worst thing for me is how squishy the class feels. Gets downed way too easily, and the passive resistance is too small by itself to even be able to tank extra Juvie hits. Any extra resistance requires you to be in Venom, then start bleeding things, which requires at least 3 cards in Escape alone. Then, the deflection cards are 2 separate very limited ranges which is so dumb and redundant IMO when Nomad has Nomad Armor as a SINGLE card that protects from ballistics from 0-15 meters. Instead of 0-5 for 1 card and 5-10 for another if you use Blademaster. So wish these deflection cards would be condensed and/or buffed.

Then, the Thrill of the Hunt nerf has been absolutely AWFUL for survivability now compared to how it used to be. The delay in it triggering combined with the VERY limiting 2.5 meter requirement makes it hard to tell it is working half the time. In the past, Blademaster as Lahni could facetank the Warren Juvies with ease. Now, they will still just down you pretty fast regardless. The new passive helps a little but really only when stacked with other things, although healing on kill is excellent.

None of this means that the class is necessarily bad though. It is definitely a pretty devastating and good class in the right hands with the right build. Unfortunately the above are the reasons that it doesn’t work for me.

As a CQC class enthusiast, I know very welk how to dip, duck, and dodge while carefully prioritizing targets. Blademaster just doesn’t fit my playstyle as much as the others, I guess.

However, gotta say, been trying out max Nimble lately, and that might be my secret to starting to like it now, if only because cross-room sliding everywhere is so much fun lol.

4 Likes
#22

Blade master is overpowered just most people are a garbage can at gears

1 Like
#23

I noticed in your post you didn’t state what level your cards are at. What level are they?

As a Lahni (Blademaster) player that, when I do play her, 99% play her on Master for both Horde and Escape, she is NO WHERE NEAR the weakest. You have to know enemy/situational awareness, combining that with the right cards, and she can be a gold mine in either of those modes.

I’ve did a little over a minute video showing her on Master Horde wave 50 doing some work, without the mace. Did 4 million + damage Master Horde just running around without mace, and everything was melee kills, so it was harder getting to enemies. I could do longer videos if others were interested in seeing her potential.

The number one key for her, is maxing out her movement perk. Getting inside the 10m range with her at any range is key. And keeping her satisfied with damage resistance is key! Brawler is mandatory due to her passive now.

Now, don’t get me wrong, she can fail easily if your melee strikes aren’t accurate, or you get flanked by a number of enemies at once. I’ve been victim to this at times, especially if people aren’t tagging enemies. Run into the wrong enemy (Ice Scion :unamused:) and it’s over with.

I haven’t seen many good Blademasters at all in Master. Seems everyone is afraid to play her, or think they’re a liability to there team.

5 Likes
#24

What’s your card setup?

#25

Thrill of the Hunt
Brawler
Ambush
Short Range Deflection
Mid Range Deflection

Deflections cards + movement perk + Brawler gets me out of tough situations faster. The longer you stand up, plus the quicker you get to the enemy(ies) and kill the better off you’ll be.

2 Likes
#26

I struggle with ambush. It is really hard to get behind enemies because they almost always are coming straight at you, or if you are behind them they turn around. I don’t even use On the Flank, for the same reason. Either I am doing something wrong or yeah, it is too situational.

1 Like
#27

The main problem with it is the amount of effort and skill needed to make blademaster good is much higher than others for example if you have an average player trying to play inconceivable they will nearly always be more effective and have more “fun” playing as demolitions, tactician and pilot to name a few and the enemies with their accuracy and damage instant execution make it very punishing to make even a slight mistake, and I think if you are that good as a melee class your should be rewarded more whilst the class allowing more casual player a chance at doing even remotely well. And as i mentioned in the post melee can be buggy and inconsistent so you could play perfectly and still be killed easily without it being your fault. But I understand what you are saying, especially with people being afraid to play the class due to feeling like a liability and tbh people in public games tend to just kick anyone they deem to be doing anything they dislike or playing a class they think are bad.

#28

It’s like all those promo pokemon cards aside from that Mewtwo one back in the day. Pretty to look at but useless in the actual game

#29

You can strike from the side and it’ll count towards Ambush. But, it’s really annoying sometimes. I just tested it again, and it was registering sometime, but not others, so it could’ve been because I wasn’t exactly on the side. I mainly use it for targets that are occupied on teammates; once you strike their side or back you can leave because they’ll bleed out and it’ll count towards Ambush. I forgot to church about the DBNO factor.

#30

Well,

I have said this before and I’ll say again,
ambush works with bleed from no matter what direction. You can kill them from the front and if they bleed out from death then the ambush card works.

Surprised people still don’t know this, even though it’s been stated before.

And before you test it. Trust me, I’m right. Half my game time is just testing.

Cheers!

1 Like
#31

I just tested it yesterday and Ambush wasn’t working doing frontal attacks at all. Maybe they covertly fixed that?

#32

I’ll check it today. But they must have. They seem to do that quite a lot without any patch notes to speak of.

Cheers man!

1 Like
#33

I see this post is 3 days old but i still wanna give my input. Ive played blademaster/lahni since this game came out and im very experienced with the class. Since op4 Blademaster has been easily in the top 5 classes for horde (not counting engineers in that top 5). As blademaster you can kill literally every enemy in the game with ease besides a kestrel,yes i mean everything. All my cards are level 6 and this is the absolute best setup you can use for master horde without a doubt :
Brawler
Shock Chain
Energy Surge
Thrill of the Hunt
Blade Dancer.
I have a few videos on my youtube channel showing bladedancer gameplay on master. https://youtu.be/nXCEgL7_Cm0
This class is easily one of the best in the game, its just m o s t people cant adjust to having to play aggressive on the highest difficulty in horde. Its the same situation as infiltrator. You NEED to play aggressive or you arent gonna get anything done. Hiding in your base as blademaster is the exact opposite of what you need to do. Get out there and be on the offense. This isnt Gears 4 horde, you have to actually play the game now.

4 Likes
#34

So that means you can kill sentinels and guardians to??? :thinking:

1 Like
#35

It is possible when they hover low ground. I took a Sentinel out with a Breaker in the side corridor building of Blood Drive.

#36

Even the Brawler class can kill these enemies(if they are hovering low height) with a tackle. Even Bastions can be killed the same way (Try on corruption escape map for best results).

#37

Ah blood drive.

I was more thinking of maps like Pahanu, Dam and Allfathers arenas are going to be hard to take out the flyers for blademaster

#38

It might be possible with the Shock Chain bleed if another enemy is under and near the flyers, but I haven’t tested this. I think it used to work for the ending of Split with two Sentinels.

#39

It did as in Op 4 with Lahni, when the class was still tied to the character, I managed to wipe the entire final room minus one or two DR-1s before getting killed by a stray Sentinel rocket fired before it died (because Salvos are ridiculous in Escape when enemies use them, no idea why) and those were easy to clean up after the medbay decided to actually work. Maybe cause we had Ironman off.

So it should work in Op 5 for them too.

#40

Flat out 60% dmg res outside of Venom and 90% inside of Venom pre op4. Lahni took a nosedive in OP4, but they fixed it with OP5. She plays different now but at least she’s top tier again.

Can confirm, Shock Chain can reach flyers but shock chain in general is very wonky. Sometimes the entire room lights up and other times you have 2 enemies right next to each other and nothing happens.