Assault Rifle and Blade Survival
A Blue Mountain Special
By Aela
The Blue Mountain Specials are 400 point survival builds that are built around dps and healing. The builds are targeted at 400 points, which is approximately the number of points you will have at QL 6. This particular build is designed to do substantial AOE damage utilizing sequenced finishers. It works wonderfully against pack fights, but suffers in single target encounters.
These builds are not intended to be “end-game” builds, they are solo friendly survival builds that should help you live longer when moving out of Savage Coast into the Blue Mountains. While these builds are not guaranteed to survive all fights in Blue Mountain (some fights in BM have special effects that hinder success with some builds), it is a good direction for progression.
Note: If you can not find the ability in your wheel, click on the menu to the right of your wheel screen, and do a search on the skill name.
Weapons: Assault Rifle and Blades
Active Abilities:
- Suppressing Fire (AR – Bombardment)
- Forking Paths (Sword – The Cutting Artist)
- Fire at Will (AR)
- High Explosive Grenade (AR – Bombardment)
- Crimson Theater (Sword – The Cutting Artist)
- Steel Palace – (Sword – The Cutting Artist) *you may chose to replace this ability with a dash or other ability.
- Anima Vessel (AR – Ground Control)
Passive Abilities:
- Shoot Em Up
- Leeching Frenzy
- Fatal Flourish
- Perseverance
- Salt in the Wound
- Bloodsport
- Killer Instinct
This build plays nearly identical to the previous “My first 60″ AR/Blade build, however I have replaced a number of abilities to better utilize the effects and procs from the build.
First, instead of starting the fight with Blade Torrent, you will start the fight with Suppressive Fire (allowing some range), and then you will trigger Forking Paths x4. During these 5 attacks, you will have (1) Leeching Frenzy Proc, (2) Shoot Em Up cause the target to be Afflicted, which makes the Forking Paths trigger its heal, (3) Perseverance to trigger, (4) the affliction status will also cause Salt in the Wound, Fatal Flourish to stack, plus (5) every swing will case Killer Instinct and Blood Sport (Triggering Salt in the Wound and Fatal Flourish again).
Then as with the “My first 60 build” you will trigger off the finishers. However, unlike before, you now have 2 AR AOE finishers you can use. Fire at Will and High Explosive Grenade. These two abilities will trigger extra damage on affliction and since one is a frenzy, it will recycle the frenzy effects.
Once all AR resources have been used, I have replaced the blade finisher with Crimson Theater and Steel Palace (if you need the ward effect). Though as stated earlier, you may chose to replace one of these.
You will then start back with your Suppressive Fire and restart the rotation.
Finally I have replaced Anima Shot with Anima Vessal, for extra healing if needed. However you may choose to use something else in its place, or try one of the other healing abilities if needed for extra survivability.
Please leave me any feedback and suggestions. This build is a work in progress and you might find some replacements more productive for your play style. If anyone ends up using this and feels like sharing, I’d love to see it. I haven’t spent much time in Sword, so I won’t be getting to it anytime soon 
Good luck!
On your my first to 60 builds how do you know where to put your points? I mean if you start a new toon, how many do you put say in AR first before you start putting points into blade, that part is not clear to me.
[Translate]
Grogin,
Thanks for the question. We didn't really cover the progress paths for the MF60's and we probably should. To provide a “rule of thumb” answer:
1. put points into an cheap abilities, particularly those that passively interact with your primary actives
2. put points into the tree that will ultimately pull in the most abilities
3. wait on points for deep trees that involve longer cool down abilities (e.g. get your bread and butter rotation going as soon as possible).
[Translate]
I would point out that if you got one deeper in bombardment you get Shoot Em Up which cause the Afflicted state since almost all your attacks are frenzies. You could also switch in Twist the Knife in order to increase the damage much more than the Salt in the Wounds.
Personally I might use something like:
Crimson Theater
Bamboo Cutter
Grass Cutter
Suppressing Fire
Fire At Will
Art of War
Clearing the Path
Sharp Blade
Immortal Spirit
Shoot Em UP
Lick Your Wounds
Voracity
Twist the Knife
Art of War
[Translate]
Why the 2 AR AOE finishers? They both consume all of your AR resources and they are both AE?
[Translate]
@Jeff
Because Ar resources get built per mob while sword resources get built on you. So you can pop one AR AoE finisher, then tab target the next mob and pop the second one for some pretty nice burst AoE dmg.
Now my question… How do you prioritize your gear? I am still using your 60pt version of this build and I have been pretty happy with it so far, working towards enough points to try this one. However I have been focusing my gear strictly on DPS, trying to focus on pen / hit secondary when possible and I have to admit at times I feel the overall self healing is pretty lacking. Do you use any healing gear in any slots?
[Translate]
This comment has been removed by the author.
[Translate]
I put one 1 peice of heal gear and put the AR secondary skill to rank 4 and it seemed to help a lot.
[Translate]
Why Crimson Theater? Find no meaning in the attack
[Translate]
Because everyone always really likes it. You could replace it with another finisher. It just needs some type of sword finisher.
[Translate]
This comment has been removed by the author.
[Translate]
Just as an FYI on this. Fatal Flourish is kind of a waste of 4 AP as it only stacks to 5 (tooltip says 10, but it's 5), so you can save 4 AP by grabbing Dark Potency from the Blood tree instead.
[Translate]
I'm using this build in Blue Mountains and I'm sorry but it's outrageously shitty.
Single target DPS and survivability is absolute garbage with this build. And you face mostly single targets with a lot of HP in Blue Mountains
Someone convince me this build is good and I'm doing it wrong.
[Translate]
This build is an AOE dps survival build. The build won't work very well on single targets. When I was in BM, I faced a lot of AOE fights (I know they changed a lot of the packing of mobs in BM, however I still remember seeing packs of mobs when I ran through the other day) If you wish for single target fights, this is likely not the build for you. It specifically builds off the ability for the AOEs to build resources on individual mobs in a pack, and then use multiple AOE finishers, one on each mob.
[Translate]
Oh, and, be sure and read over the strats on the build from I liked at the start. This build is the direct continuation of that build. It should be clear after reading up both of them that it will not work on single target mobs. However, since I didn't write up the basic strat (and just provided a link), it could be unclear.
[Translate]
I think the nerf to mob density has pretty much rendered this build useless for BM. Sorry.
[Translate]
Pingback: TSW Build Page - TSW Guide, decks, tank, heal, dps and more - TSW Guides
Pingback: My First 60 - AOE and Survival Healing with Blade/AR TSW Guides - TSW Guides
I started my character with this build in mind last weekend and have recently entered Egypt. During AoE encounters, it is quite effective. With encounters of 3 mobs, I will usually go just over 600 DPS in BM but on single target encounters I’m averaging about 190 DPS. Since I dont have anything to compare it to, I’m not sure if that is good, bad, or average. Using Anima Shot vs Anima Vessel, I was able to kite the more difficult single target mobs fairly easily provided there was room for me to do so. The encounters were long but survivability was good. This typically wasnt necessary but came in handy a number of times when I inadvertently picked up an add while I was at/around 50% health.
[Translate]
Is there a way to make this build more ‘single target friendly’ ?
[Translate]
Certainly, sub out the multi-target builder and consumers for a single target one. Back when this build was created, Blue Mountains was well known for its pack fight problems. The zone has been turned downwards a good bit, single target abilities may be all you need.
[Translate]
VDM Code : VDM%-%6814909%-%7080589%-%6377980%-%6941043%-%7080591%-%7080594%-%6837273%-%6850557%-%6852644%-%7080599%-%7080620%-%6942578%-%6942580%-%5778317
[Translate]
Finally got this build today. Had been using the MyFirst60 AR/Blade Survival build. First impressions aren’t real positive, I feel like the MF60 build had better utility and I could keep myself healed better. Still thanks for this guide and build, I’ll keep using it and see how it goes.
[Translate]