Blue Protocol: Star ResonanceStormblade Iaido Slash Spec GuideBest build and how to play the class.

Basic ATK

Judgment Cut

Skill

Iaido Slash

Ultimate

Oblivion Combo

Slot 1 - Mandatory

Overdrive

Slot 2 - Mandatory

Volt Surge

Slot 3 - Mandatory

Flash Strike

Slot 4 - Flex

Raijin Dash

/

True Sight

Thunder Sigil - Thunder Sigils (Sigils for short) are our main resource, which we need in order to use our most powerful abilities, “Spenders”. Spenders can be used as soon as you have at least 1 Sigil, but have their ATK scaler multiplied by 25% per Sigil consumed. Because of this, our abilities are at their strongest when used with maximum Sigils.

Note

Here is how the math of Sigils works on a 150% ATK scaler ability: 150% x (1 + (25% x Sigils Spent)). Sigils do not multiply the flat damage of abilities.

Blade Intent - Blade Intent, Stormblade’s energy bar, it's only useful for increasing the attack speed of our spenders through their inherent abilities and talents. You always want Blade Intent, but it’s also generated for free without doing anything in our rotation, so you can ignore it.

Fixed Skills

• 

  Judgment Cut
  - Stormblade’s basic attack is only useful for Iaido during downtime in order to trigger one of the class's core talent effects, Piercing Slash. You’ll be spamming it during downtime for this effect, but nothing more.
• 

  Iaido Slash
  (Evolved: Thunder Cut) - Our best Sigil spender that makes up a huge amount of our damage, it has a 1-second cooldown and can be instantly cast at 100 blade intent
• The skill can evolve into Thunder Cut, but we don’t use that talent currently.
• 

  Oblivion Combo
  - Our ultimate deals solid AoE damage and generates maximum Sigils after use. It also pulls all eligible enemies in front of you to your position, serving as a grouping tool. Use it to gather enemies or while
  

  Volt Surge
  is on cooldown and there are no stacks of piercing slash.

Mandatory Skills

• 

  Overdrive
  - Our baseline Sigil generator that generates a measly 1 Sigil on use but has 5 charges. Used to kick start our combo during Volt Surge for maximum Sigils, or after triggering Piercing Slash, which upgrades its generation from 1 to 3 during downtime. Usually not worth using outside of these cases. It can be animation cancelled and is highly recommended to significantly speed up rotations and reduce downtime.
• 

  Volt Surge
  - Responsible for our godlike burst damage and the majority of our DPS. Causes all Sigil generation to instead generate the maximum amount for 12 seconds. Also provides Flat ATK, %ATK, and Super Armor. With the right talents and enough crit rate, Volt Surge allows us to spam 6 sigil spenders back to back continuously.
• 

  Flash Strike
  (Evolved: Dracoflash) - Our other Sigil spender, which while weaker than Iaido Slash, is crucial to use during our Volt Surge combo to fill in gaps during Iaido Slash’s 1-second cooldown. Despite its 15-second cooldown, there are talents that in most cases completely bypass its cooldown via resets and quickcasting.
• The skill can evolve into Dracoflash, but we don’t use that talent currently.

Flex Skills (Choose 1)

• 

  Raijin Dash
  (Evolved: Phantom Slash) - An optional alternative spender to Scythe Wheel that deals considerable damage in multi-target situations. Has a huge 25-second cooldown, but this can also be completely bypassed with talents. This ability is not preferred for a majority of content due to its lengthy animation time, but can optionally be used for AOE in content such as Stimen Vaults and Adept Trials.
• The skill can evolve into Phantom Slash, but we don’t use that talent currently.
• 

  True Sight
  - Our sole defensive tool. Grants full immunity for roughly 2 seconds on use. If hit during this period, you will counter, with the option to recast for an extra attack that maxes out your Sigil count.
• Note: The most useful flex slot given proper mastery of the content its used in and recommended over all other flex slots in master dungeons
• 

  Scythe Wheel
  - Summons a spinning scythe for 35 seconds to continually strike enemies. The damage from this ability isn’t impactful but the extra hits it provides can help keep certain Imagines and effects active such as Muku Scout. If you’re using Muku Scout you can use Scythe Wheel to boost its consistency.
• Tip: Can be summoned before combat. Also the direct damage portion of this ability is negligible and can/should be cancelled by using a dash during its animation. Doing this saves time but will still summon the spinning blade to achieve our goals.

Skill Priority

Iaido Slash

>

Flash Strike

>>>

Volt Surge

>

Judgment Cut

=

Oblivion Combo

>

True Sight

Ensure all abilities you’re using are levelled to 30 - only advancement requires consideration.

Focus on advancing

Iaido Slash

Flash Strike

Volt Surge

True Sight

Raijin Dash

Important!

Embedded are two endgame Iaido Slash trees, both with identical pathing - with the exception of 5 talent nodes. One takes Mastery and Armor Penetration, the other takes Crit DMG and a conditional Lightning DMG% increase. Which is better will depend on your gear, Imagines, and whether you’re able to time the Thunder DMG% increase correctly.

You can find a comparison of both choices along with their merits down below.

Gameplay Altering Talents

Most of our talents just help us do what we’re already planning on doing better, but some have a drastic impact on our itemization and rotation. Below is an outline of all the gameplay-altering effects you need to be aware of in the Iaido spec and Base Stormblade talents.

Base Stormblade Tree

• Iai Thunder Dance - Every 3 Sigils generated causes your next Special Attack to deal its damage twice. This talent is double damage for
  

  Iaido Slash
  and grants it 2 chances to Crit instead of 1, making our rotation far more consistent. Further incentivizes only using spenders with a high Sigil count.
• Keen Strike - Grants Basic Attacks a 10/20% chance per hit (scaling with enemies and number of hits) to trigger Piercing Slash, dealing damage and causing our next
  

  Overdrive
  to generate 3 Sigils instead of 1. A must have for Sigil generation while
  

  Volt Surge
  is on cooldown, consume Piercing Slash during downtime as soon as available.
• 

  Overdrive
  will glow purple when enhanced by Piercing Slash.

• Swift - Improves our Haste% → ATK SPD% scaling from 1:0.6 → 1:1.6, making Haste a far more valuable stat to build, despite the fact it isn’t one of our “thumbs up” stats.

Iaido Slash Tree

• Flash Frenzy Blade - Upon critically striking with
  

  Iaido Slash
  , gains a fixed chance to reset the cooldown of
  

  Flash Strike
  / Raijin Dash based on how many Sigils are consumed. Enables the ability to form chains of alternating
  

  Iaido Slash
  es and
  

  Flash Strike
  s, which make up the backbone of our burst combo.
• Zen Moment - Allows us to consume and immediately regain our Blade Intent on Crit, maintaining a constant 100 with enough Crit Rate, improving our attack speed.
• Thunder Sigil Rewind & Flash Sharp Strike - Both these nodes boost Sigil generation, either by refunding after consumption or via critical hits with
  

  Flash Strike
  . When combined with
  

  Volt Surge
  ’s ability to convert any Sigil gained into 6, this becomes incredibly potent.
• Dual Blade Intent - Massively accelerates
  

  Flash Strike
  and Raijin Dash animation while at 100 Blade Intent. Also improves the Crit Rate of both abilities and their evolutions by 10%. The speed gain from this talent makes it a must-have.
• Does not cause any of these abilities to consume Blade Intent.
• Duel Awareness - Doubles the chance for Thunder Sigil Rewind to trigger during
  

  Volt Surge
  but halves our Sigil Multiplier from 25% to 12.5%. Hurts our damage ceiling but is what allows us to spam exclusively 6 sigil spenders during our burst window, making our average rotation much more consistent in power.
• Vacuum Slash, Thundrage & Thunder Might - These talents make up the “evolution” playstyle that is currently not considered optimal due to evolved abilities not benefiting from Blade Intent speed bonuses. Without it, these abilities take far longer to cast and cause the playstyle to fall behind a pure
  

  Iaido Slash
  -focused build.
• Wind Assault II - This talent has an incorrect tooltip and in fact has an identical effect to Wind Assault I granting a Crit Rate increase and Luck decrease. Just like Wind Assault I it’s a must have to achieve our goals of high Crit Rate.

Player Choice Talents

• Arcane and Thunder Reversal - Gain 10% Crit DMG and a conditional 10% Lightning DMG Bonus for 15 seconds. Crit DMG, while nice, is a stat we have a good amount of already thanks to talents, endgame gear, and Muku Chief (our ideal Gold Imagine). Thunder Reversal, however, is challenging to use as it requires you to perform 5 Blade Intent enhanced
  

  Iaido Slash
  es before activating, something that usually only occurs at the end of our burst window. While the buff is active, you can’t refresh the bonus or gain stacks for future activations, making uptime during
  

  Volt Surge
  unreliable at best.
• Advancement and Break Slash - Gain 6% Mastery and a 30% DEF Ignore buff to
  

  Iaido Slash
  . This Mastery is equal to 15% finisher damage after conversion on all our spenders, a bonus that is superior to Crit DMG unless you have tremendous amounts of Mastery, as it’s guaranteed and not all our abilities will Crit. Break Slash buffs our
  

  Iaido Slash
  damage a decent amount, but requires you to critically strike in order to gain the benefits. This talent requires no thought and is mindless to use

• Crit DMG Variant
• Mastery Variant

Iaido Slash Crit DMG Variant

Iaido Slash Mastery Variant

If you want to create your own Talent tree, check our tool:

Talent Planner

Important!

All gear & talent related info is based on extensive in-game testing, parsing, theory crafting and simulations. If you want to learn more about how damage works to understand our decisions, check out our Damage Formula Guide.

Note!

The percentage value shows the impact of the module compared to not having any module equipped (each module is calculated based on it being +6).

Here are the best modules for Stormblade - Iaido Slash - listed in priority order:

Lvl 3: +0.98%

Lvl 6: +8.35%

Special Attack

Since Iaido Slash, a Special Attack, makes up a massive share of our damage, meaning a Special Attack Elemental DMG% increase is one of the best gains we can hope for.

Lvl 3: +0.98%

Lvl 6: +8.11%

Elite Strike

A great module for damage, since we are often fighting at least one Elite or higher-level enemy. Not active outside of Elites/Bosses.

Lvl 3: +0.98%

Lvl 6: +7.57%

Agility Boost

Providing Agility and General Physical Damage once at the max level, making it the strongest buff overall.

Lvl 3: +0.84%

Lvl 6: +6.45%

Attack SPD

Falls behind our top three options, but still a reasonable choice if it’s all you can assemble, thanks to its ATK SPD% increase. We can also opt for having Atk% lines instead of Attack Speed, since this node can cover the amount needed.

Lvl 3: +0.37%

Lvl 6: +6.36%

Crit Focus

CRIT DMG is a powerful stat, but having one portion of this module's stats be defensive holds it back. Roughly as strong as the Attack Speed module.

Lvl 3: +0.63%

Lvl 6: +5.28%

Strength Boost

Even if it provides strength that is not useful, it does provide Def ignore once at the maximum level. Unfortunately, this is not enough to make it a very competitive option.

Lvl 3: +0.37%

Lvl 6: +1.60%

Luck Focus

It provides Luck DMG Multiplier, but since the majority of our abilities can’t Lucky Hit, it's not a good option.

Premium

Phantom Arachnocrab [A2+]

+

Muku Chief [A1+]

F2P

Muku Scout [A5]

/

Brigand Scout Leader [A5]

+

Muku Chief [A0]

Top Gold Imagines

1. 

   Muku Chief
   - Muku Chief provides passive +%CRIT DMG alongside a powerful active ability that grants even more +%CRIT DMG as well as +Flat Crit Rate. Furthermore, it has two charges, allowing superior uptime compared to other Imagines. Chief not only boosts our damage but also boosts the consistency of our combo as well.
2. 

   Phantom Arachnocrab
   - Phantom Arachnocrab grants passive +Flat Mastery and additional +%Mastery on use. Mastery boosts the damage of our finishers, which we’ll be spamming constantly during Volt Surge, making the crab a great choice.

Top Purple Imagines

1. 

   Muku Scout [A5]
   - Muku Scout 5 grants us a passive 15% ATK, provided we are consistently hitting attacks. Upon activation, it doubles the stacks, giving a tremendous 30% ATK buff, amplifying the entirety of our damage. A generic, accessible, and exceptionally strong option.
• While numerically our best option, the passive of Muku Scout is harder to keep active on Iaido Slash than other specs (although it’s still very doable). If you’re struggling or worried consider Brigand Scout Leader instead or using Scythe Wheel to boost hit count.
2. 

   Brigand Scout Leader [A5]
   - Brigand Scout Leader grants 10% Agility passively and a further 20% temporarily on use, which together form a tremendous damage increase. While powerful for Agility classes, it is specific to exactly that attribute, making it a less flexible investment than more generic options.
3. 

   Boarrier Tyrant [A5]
   - Boarrier Tyrant is a Special Attack-centric Imagine, making it a great choice for amplifying our Iaido Slash damage. On top of this, you can receive a few copies of this Imagine’s Will for free through the new player rewards. Not as strong as Imagines above, but still solid.
4. 

   Muku Vanguard [A5]
   - Muku Vanguard is the generic Thunder DMG% Imagine, granting 7.5% passive Thunder DMG% and a further 16% on use. While solid, it does not compete with higher multiplier options like Boarrier Tyrant, Muku Scout, or Brigand Scout Leader, and is also limited to use on Thunder classes.

1. Ruby - Agility (Crit) - The best choice to ensure smooth comboing.

For optimal value from your Emblem Core, aim to upgrade the Emblem nodes at an even pace. When prioritizing damage output and utility, follow this leveling sequence:

1. Adaptation
2. Affinity
3. Resistance
4. Raid > Strong Attack
5. Tenacity

For the Emblem Core the priority is:

Void Corruption Pulse > Void Corruption Arcane > > Void Corruption Power

Burst Rotation

Our goal with our burst rotation is to execute as many 6 Sigil finishers as possible. Open fights with this combo and execute it as frequently as you can throughout battle.

Start your burst rotation by using any available Imagines, then activate

Volt Surge

Overdrive

Volt Surge

Iaido Slash

Flash Strike

• 

  Overdrive
  if not at maximum Sigils.
• Use
  

  Iaido Slash
• Use
  

  Flash Strike
  when Iaido Slash is on cooldown.
• Wait for Iaido Slash cooldown when missing Crit.

When performing your alternating combo of

Flash Strike

Iaido Slash

Tip

If you accumulate 6 Sigils before using

Volt Surge

you can skip out on having to use the first Overdrive.

Downtime Rotation

While waiting for Volt Surge’s cooldown, fill the spare time with your Downtime Rotation. Our Downtime rotation deals substantially less damage but still generates a respectable amount of Sigils for us to spend on less powerful Iaido Slashes.

Follow up your Burst Combo by dumping any remaining Sigils you have into

Iaido Slash

Oblivion Combo

Iaido Slash

Volt Surge

• Use
  

  Judgment Cut
  until Piercing Slash activates.
• Overdrive to consume Piercing Slash Buff.
• Spend Sigils on
  

  Iaido Slash

Continue this priority order until

Volt Surge

Can Iaido Slash be played on auto?

Iaido Slash cannot be played on full-auto or semi-auto; it must be played fully manually.