Could someone go over the basics of both roles of these classes, and as to which one is better?
I’m having a difficult time choosing between the two, and would like a more experienced player explain to me which one is more situational, or just all-out better.
Blademaster by far. Striker is a horrible class.
EDIT:
A few pros and cons:
Blademaster can bleed the enemy while in venom (Escape mode only, but there is a perk in Horde which can be upgraded to give you bleed) regardless of what weapon she is holding - all melee attacks in venom cause bleed with Venom Blade. The Striker can only bleed using a Breaker Mace.
From the perspective of their respective bleed attacks, the Blademaster’s melee attacks are faster than the Striker is. This is because the Striker can only cause bleed using the Breaker Mace and the swings are slower, whereas the Blademaster can bleed with normal melee attacks which are faster.
Blademaster has much better defence cards - Venom Resistance; Close Range and Mid-Range Deflection. Striker only gets stim from melee attacks, and even then they only gain stim when they land a melee hit while with full health, so if the Striker is even slightly wounded, they won’t get any stim.
Thrill Of The Hunt and the Blademaster’s passive skill enables them to heal when close to bleeding enemies or after they get a kill using a melee attack (either an outright kill or a bleed kill).
The Blademaster’s ultimate attack coupled with Shock Chain can decimate crowds of enemies, especially in venom. The lightning itself can cause bleed even if you haven’t direct cut that particular enemy. The Striker’s ultimate is only really good for single enemies, or a couple of enemies who are right next to each other (and even then, a Breaker Mace would be needed to hit more enemies).
Basically the trick for Blademaster is to stay in venom as much as possible in Escape; or if in Horde, upgrade their Damage Resistance perk; and their Bleed perk.
So basically, Blademaster is a direct upgrade to Striker?
I’d go as far as say that the two aren’t even comparable! Blademaster is so much more useful and pwoerful, it genuinely is no competition! I mean, the only thing they have in common is that they’re both melee characters.
Hey there,
In addition to @Bleeding_Pepper’s great rundown the Blademaster is character that requires a lot of personal Perk upgrading to be truly successful. As already stated all your Bleed is done from your Bottom selection personal perk, so wave 1 on Frenzy is always kinda hard as a Blade.
Cheers!
Well darn.
Thanks for clarifying though, but it sucks that I still have to level up striker anyway to get the new skins and such, though thankfully I don’t have to level up the cards with it.
I did a master horde with striker and out damaged the team and carried us to victory with the striker at level 13, apparently using ultimate with a breaker macs on a carrier is somehow safe and easy damage.
Striker’s Ultimate stuns / staggers bosses and mini-bosses. So going up to one with Breaker Mace, is safer since they won’t be able to hit back. This lets them 1 vs 1 duel with Carriers, Snatchers, Matriarch and Wardens.
If Blademaster uses Electro Blade Ultimate on bosses, they would fight back since they aren’t getting stunned or staggered. So using Electro Blade Ultimate on Warden, would cause the Warden to swing their Breaker Mace back, downing or killing Blademaster. An alternative would be to stun Warden would Flashbang then use Ultimate. Going up to Snatcher, Carrier or Matriarch with Electro Blade would probably not end well.
Outside of venom against melee enemies like Juvies and Rejects, Striker would probably survive better with Stim on each melee hit, plus the bonus GSD Legendary card explosions on melee kill, which has very short point blank range anyway so not that great.
Weird, I was just stunning wardens and a swarmak the other day with my blademaster Ult.
It’s not normally a sustained stun though. You can stagger them initially with the Electro-blade as you knock their helmet off, but aside from this you can’t stun them. At least not on master difficulty anyway. Either way as long as you’re using it in venom, you can slash them several times (5-6 times maybe?) while they are staggered and the bleed will be enough to finish them.
Which should be fixed at some point. The description since launch is “something something stuns and staggers enemies”. Shock Chain kinda has that effect and you can stun Carrier with it as long as you flash him before approaching him.
This is odd,
I agree with with you here. I just played Blademaster today and the ULT stunned 1 warden but then another spawned and it wouldn’t stun that one.
Clearly there are still many bugs to work out.
Wardens are also weird now. Had it happen to me and others a few times where running into or the Warden running (or rather walking) into us caused damage.
My lahni ult never stuns so who knows the case
No sir. Blade master melts wardens/snarcher/slump/matriach. Even a swarmak. Pretty much all ground bosses. Its awesome. Just melee from the side and behind.
Matriach can grab you tho so gotta be careful.
Blademaster is a badxss class.
This is a relatively old post. Not sure whether the full potential (and all bugfixes) were discovered and resolved back then. Blademaster waaay outclasses Striker in almost any point. You can go as far as to making over 10k dmg with a single Breaker Mace hit (not even the big charged hit), topping that off with 150% bleed in comparison to the lousy 50% of the Striker, it’s absolutely destructive. The damage resistance also makes an absurd difference on Master Horde once double damage kicks in. Striker dies way too quickly while Blademaster is just running across the map.
The only small advantage of Striker is the stunning effects of the Ultimate. In any other aspect, Blademaster is laughing at Striker. Even Brawlers “All The Glory” outclasses Strikers “GSD” card.
In Escape, Striker is only really much use when there’s a Mace around. Yet again, Blademaster can be used in pretty much any hive in comparison. While Striker gets Stim per melee hit, it ususlly gets shot off instantly and feels almost pointless in most hives.
Ähem, it’s 55%. Don’t undersell a great class such as the Striker…
The only hive I would ever advise anyone to use Striker on is Melee Brawl, and even then Protector would still be the arguably better choice if you had to use one of the promos.
Having said that, there’s better choices even for that hive that aren’t a melee class. Tactician can get players ammo if they choose to get the two Longshots from the snipers in act 1 which makes the Imagos effectively a joke to deal with. Also decent for any Drone Elites that may spawn in act 2.
What about the updated versions, now that they gave the promo classes a big overhaul this OP?