Kazite spellblade is weak and bland compared to better classes. Fix in topic.

[Vincefeld]

I know what you guys were going for. Idea of warrior wielding both magic and cold steel, but in outward its just so pathetic. What it can do? swear your weapon with fire or ice. Thats it! Oh wait, a consumable can do it. Cant even cast spells by swinging sword.

Theres game that did spellsword waaay better than every other - Dragon dogma dark arisen class is called Mystic knight.

So just watch videos on it to see what skills it has and get some inspiration of what makes spellsword so cool.

[Samseng Yik]

Seems like Kazite Spellblade main selling point is infuse fire/cold.
If you main fire or cold damage, the imbue help boost flat damage of that element for you for big single element bonus.

[Vincefeld]

So what? Any rag can buff a weapon. Class has nothing good going for it.
Shaman, Sage, Monk are way better than spellblade

[[CA]deusex2]

Spellblade is weak, by itself, but if you go all out on cooldown reduction, you can easily spam Elemental Discharge, every second. That makes it stupidly powerful.

[Vincefeld]

So other better classes wont benefit from cd reduction and be even stronger? hmm....

[Naryoril]

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

So what? Any rag can buff a weapon. Class has nothing good going for it.
Shaman, Sage, Monk are way better than spellblade

Rags are much weaker than the infuse spell and varnishes are weaker if the weapon has more than 33.3 base damage. Not to mention that they are consumables, thus they cost money for each use and take up space/weight in your backpack.
The infuse spell on the other hand is easy to keep up permanently. It increases your melee damage by about 45% and that percentage gets higher the more frost/fire bonus damage you have.
I don't think any other class can provide a comparable boost to your melee base damage (which is then multiplied by skills from other trees). Yes, you can use varnishes instead to come close, but you'll reserve that for strong enemies, it won't help in your everyday battle.

And Elemental Discharge is a nice bonus on top you can add to your attacks without the need of any special preparation.

Don't ever pick Gong Strike though, it's use case is so specific that you'll never waste one of your precious 8 hotbar slots on it.

[Katitoff]

So pick 2 other classes to increase its viability in the way you want.
I've been using it for my mage builds to have a projectile in the element opponent is weak to at all times through rags/varnishes.

Gong strike itself isn't bad either, decent aoe, decent range, decent damage.

[iGoblin]

I don't think it's weak. Pairs well with philosopher, specially well with chakrams. And yes, the imbue is stronger than comsumables. The only real issue i have is how elemental discharge murders your weapon durability. Totally unnecessary. Oh well, tsar weapon it is.

[Vincefeld]

How do you pair philosopher with spellblade? confused

Originally posted by Naryoril:

Yes, you can use varnishes instead to come close, but you'll reserve that for strong enemies, it won't help in your everyday battle.

And Elemental Discharge is a nice bonus on top you can add to your attacks without the need of any special preparation.

Shamanic resonance, Runic protection and Master of motion all easily beat minor dps loss from having to buff with varnishes. Dead don't deal any damage .In everyday battle rags more than enough for trash mobs
Elemental discharge isnt that strong of ranged attack to justify durability decrease and lowering defense by building into cd reduction.
Gong strike consumes boon so picking it instead of discharge makes no sense.

But putting all that nerd $hit aside... Lets talk about real problems: you cant even cast spells with sword! Wheres the rule of cool of a class? thats main selling point of being spellblade.
Casting magic energy waves for aoe/reach with each swing and possibly hitting target with a blade too to deal even more damage. Why spellblade cant buff its shield?That would actually give it purpose because rags cant do it. Oh yeah MERCENARY does this for who knows what reason and its not even good skill

[Naryoril]

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

How do you pair philosopher with spellblade? confused

Philosopher pairs well with the spellblade by either providing a buff to your fire damage or by giving you more ice spells for burst damage through the sigil of ice.
The breakthrough skill also covers pretty much all your mana needs for a melee/magic hybrid playstyle, even if you lean relatively heavily to the magic side. You don't even need to bother with tiredness, mana regeneration food or mana potions unless you have several back to back fights (which is pretty rare).

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

Shamanic resonance, Runic protection and Master of motion all easily beat minor dps loss from having to buff with varnishes. Dead don't deal any damage .In everyday battle rags more than enough for trash mobs

In the end you don't need any skills, you can beat everything without them. But yeah, dead don't deal any damage, that's why i prefer to deal a lot of damage myself, and Kazite spellblade does that very well. It's an offensive skill tree, not a defensive one.
Yes, using a varnish is just a minor DPS loss and yes you can use rags, but that's a major DPS loss in addition to all the drawbacks a consumable has.

As i said: the big advantage of spellblade is a large melee damage increase you can easily keep up permanently. If you don't want or feel that you don't need that, then spellblade falls short.
But that's true for any skill tree. Warrior Monk is really lackluster if you use a shield for example, because your stamina usage is much smaller when using a shield (since you don't have to use dodge rolls), master of motion is less relevant because the shield is your main line of defense and the attack skills are weaker due to the one handed weapon's lower damage and range. If you use a shield, you don't need warrior monk. That doesn't make warrior monk a bad skill tree.

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

But putting all that nerd $hit aside... Lets talk about real problems: you cant even cast spells with sword! Wheres the rule of cool of a class? thats main selling point of being spellblade.
Casting magic energy waves for aoe/reach with each swing and possibly hitting target with a blade too to deal even more damage. Why spellblade cant buff its shield?That would actually give it purpose because rags cant do it. Oh yeah MERCENARY does this for who knows what reason and its not even good skill

So your main problem with the Kazite Spellblade isn't how it actually performs, but that it doesn't do what you wish it would, what your imagination of a spellblade is (which is basically Link with a Master Sword and full health)?

It's a class that enhances your melee attacks with magic properties and adds a magic projectile skill released from your melee weapon. That's a perfect match for what i think of when i hear "spellblade". Yeah, it's only 2 skills, but pretty much any tree in Outward is only very few skills, but the 8 slots aren't enough as is.

[iGoblin]

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

How do you pair philosopher with spellblade? confused

Philosopher provides mana regen, fire damage bonus (for a fire imbue choice) or more spells for ice build, plus the chakram is really good for a melee focused build because they deal heavy impact damage. I'm currently playing exactly that - philosopher/spellblade/mercenary - in DE (i got mercenary to test shield infusion, and for quality of life running, because i really didn't need anything else)

I have on my bar Impale, Sweep Kick, Chakram Pierce, Arc, Dance, Brace, Discharge, Health potion. I was surprised by how good chakram dance is, since i always read people saying it was bad. The start of the animation is a dodge that actually has invunerability frames. The damage is solid, in a large area, and if you use it as a counter skill of sorts, you always hit 5 times. The only risk is the long animation that you get stuck in after casting, so you have to use knowing you will stagger the enemies. I kinda stopped using discharge for a while because weapon durability is a problem, but now i got a tsar sword and can go back to using it.

I agree with your points, spellblade could be much better, but lets be real, what in this game couldn't? But Outward has its charms.

*Shield skills in general are really bad. Only shield charge is usefull overall, gong strike and shield infusion are very situational. The easy solution would be to just lower shield charge base cooldown to 15, the good solution would be a rework. We can only hope the devs learn for a better outward 2.

[Vincefeld]

Warrior monk is lackluster? +40 to stamina +10 to all resistances. passives alone make it worth it. In a game all about stamina increase to it is so good.
Surviving endgame enemies becomes real issue. Especially when get hit by element your armor weak too. Unless you use traps or something lol or play with a friend.

I agree that monk skills are bad. Elemental discharge doesnt even look bad compared to them.

[Vincefeld]

Originally posted by iGoblin:

Originally posted by Vincefeld:

How do you pair philosopher with spellblade? confused

Philosopher provides mana regen, fire damage bonus (for a fire imbue choice) or more spells for ice build, plus the chakram is really good for a melee focused build because they deal heavy impact damage. I'm currently playing exactly that - philosopher/spellblade/mercenary - in DE (i got mercenary to test shield infusion, and for quality of life running, because i really didn't need anything else)

I have on my bar Impale, Sweep Kick, Chakram Pierce, Arc, Dance, Brace, Discharge, Health potion. I was surprised by how good chakram dance is, since i always read people saying it was bad. The start of the animation is a dodge that actually has invunerability frames. The damage is solid, in a large area, and if you use it as a counter skill of sorts, you always hit 5 times. The only risk is the long animation that you get stuck in after casting, so you have to use knowing you will stagger the enemies. I kinda stopped using discharge for a while because weapon durability is a problem, but now i got a tsar sword and can go back to using it.

I agree with your points, spellblade could be much better, but lets be real, what in this game couldn't? But Outward has its charms.

*Shield skills in general are really bad. Only shield charge is usefull overall, gong strike and shield infusion are very situational. The easy solution would be to just lower shield charge base cooldown to 15, the good solution would be a rework. We can only hope the devs learn for a better outward 2.

I need to test chakrams to judge their viability myself. Synergies between Philosopher and spellblade sound good on paper and logical.

[Samseng Yik]

Chakram murder stability even enemy don't have confusion.
Typical Chakram play style is 1 sweep reduce enemy stability below 50%, then melee combo as real DPS.
Frozen Chakram + Hex also combo very well with Sabre enchant which inflict elemental vulnerability + all 5 hex, then torment for tons of debuff.
Since sword hit kinda fast, you can just simply detonate all the hex for a burst damage, then again repeat the chakram + melee combo reapply knockdown.
Just careful if enemy block your chakram sweep.

However if you new to Chakram (just like me started last 2 days), you will need a bit time to get the hang of it

[King of Evil]

Spellblade is good if you combine it with Rune Sage w/ Runic Prefix, since Runic Blade gets a free Blessed Enchant you don't really need to waste a varnish or boon to cast Elemental Discharge.

It's also the only other class in the game besides Merc that gives you abilities for Shields, so if you plan on having a shield in your offhand it's one of the better options.

Spellblade's Awakening is also really good if you plan on spending more points for extra mana, as the +15 to HP/STA can basically be used to put an extra +3 into a leyline.

In short, it's not great but it's not bad either. My current main is Spellblade/Rune Sage/Hermit & it's a really good combo for Etheral & Lightning damage & being tanky, especially since I went with Holy Mission.

The downside is I can't use anything else in my offhand without it becoming too complicated & the lack of decent weapon skills means I must rely mostly on spells but I have 215 mana now & 125hp/sta so it works out.

There are times where I think Internal Lexicon & Gong might have been the better choices, tho. Then Philosopher for Fire Damage & Antique Plate Set, infuse fire on the Etheral Blade & become an etheral/fire death knight mage build.

[iGoblin]

Originally posted by King of Evil:

Spellblade is good if you combine it with Rune Sage w/ Runic Prefix, since Runic Blade gets a free Blessed Enchant you don't really need to waste a varnish or boon to cast Elemental Discharge.

It's also the only other class in the game besides Merc that gives you abilities for Shields, so if you plan on having a shield in your offhand it's one of the better options.

Spellblade's Awakening is also really good if you plan on spending more points for extra mana, as the +15 to HP/STA can basically be used to put an extra +3 into a leyline.

In short, it's not great but it's not bad either. My current main is Spellblade/Rune Sage/Hermit & it's a really good combo for Etheral & Lightning damage & being tanky, especially since I went with Holy Mission.

The downside is I can't use anything else in my offhand without it becoming too complicated & the lack of decent weapon skills means I must rely mostly on spells but I have 215 mana now & 125hp/sta so it works out.

There are times where I think Internal Lexicon & Gong might have been the better choices, tho. Then Philosopher for Fire Damage & Antique Plate Set, infuse fire on the Etheral Blade & become an etheral/fire death knight mage build.

Nice! You're right, spellblade with rune sage seems to have plenty of good synergy. And the runic blade doesn't have durability too, so the main problem for elemental discharge is gone. I guess your build suffered in the melee department since you went shaman, the lack of melee skills could be offset by choosing warrior monk or hunter.

Going internal lexicon and gong strike doesn't work as well because you trade the free imbue you get on the runic blade for it. So you end with the same old problem that gong strike always has: you have to eat rags for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.