Blue Protocol: Star ResonanceWind Knight Vanguard Spec GuideBest build and how to play the class.

Wind Knight - Introduction

Wind Knight - Vanguard is one of the classes available in Blue Protocol: Star Resonance. They fulfill the DPS role while wielding a Lance as their weapon of choice. Find their best build and how to play them properly in our guide. Difficulty:

Wind Knight has also access to a second spec - Skyward - and if you're looking for a guide to that spec, check here.

Update Tracker

Last guide update

07.10.2025

Overview

Best Skills

Talents

Gear

Rotation & How to Play

Introduction

The Vanguard spec is all about triggering random chance abilities and using them as quickly as possible to maximize damage. Its signature ability is Valor Cyclone, a toggleable pulsing spear aura that constantly consumes Wind Knight’s energy resource - Courage. Gameplay is simple: get ready to punch flashing buttons faster than a control board operator while feeding Valor Cyclone Courage so it never runs out.

Vanguard is considered hard to play, as reacting to all your chance-based abilities fast is key to max damage; being slow will greatly hinder performance. One way around slow reaction times is using semi-auto, but this comes at the cost of less control.

Ratings

AoE Damage [4/5]

ST Damage [4/5]

Utility [4/5]

Difficulty [4/5]

Pros & Cons

Pros

High damage with quick reaction times.
Always takes Wind Knights' party-wide buff talent.
Very fast-paced gameplay.

Cons

Bad RNG means fewer abilities and less damage.
Must react constantly to randomly activated abilities
Resource management can be tough with low stats.

Best Skills Loadout

Basic ATK

Windborne Grace

Skill

Gale Thrust

Ultimate

Typhoon Cleave

Slot 1 - Mandatory

Galeform

Slot 2 - Mandatory

Spiral Thrust

Slot 3 - Mandatory

Breach Pursuit

Slot 4 - Mandatory

Valor Cyclone

Resources

Courage - Our primary resource, which fuels all our abilities - the most important of which is Valor cyclone that drains it at all times. The goal is to ensure our Courage never falls to zero.

Sharp Stacks - Instead of a resource to be spent in the Vanguard spec, Sharp Stacks are a buff to maintain. Build then maintain 4 stacks at all times.

Skills Explained

Fixed Skills

Windborne Grace
- Wind Knight’s un-enhanced basic attacks don’t do much, but can be used to fill downtime while no other abilities are available. But both evolutions should be used as soon as they are available.

Can become both the Swift Blade and Drake Cannon abilities temporarily with the talents “Vanguard Spec” and “Rapid Drake Cannon” unlocked.

Gale Thrust
- Our Special ability and a core part of our gameplay. Performs a series of 3 thrusts (5 with talent), hitting enemies in front of us at the cost of 50 Courage. Incredibly expensive to use baseline, but can be discounted or cast for free with our talents. Also responsible for triggering and maximizing many of our best talents.
Typhoon Cleave
- Our Ultimate hits all enemies around us, knocking them airborne while also restoring 100 Courage. A key cooldown to ensure we maintain high levels of Courage.

Gains a second use with an alternative effect after activating the Battle Cry talent. This talent is a must-have for Vanguard, which we’ll explain more about in the talent section.

Mandatory Skills

Galeform
- Offers a % Increased Strength and +Flat Strength buff while also improving our Courage generation from 3 per second to 10 for its duration. Has two charges, is our main damage cooldown, and interacts with many of our talents, making it one of the biggest pieces of our endgame power.
Spiral Thrust
- Our highest hit count ability that consumes 30 Courage to hit enemies 7 times and inflict Would on them, reducing healing they receive for 10 seconds. Does mediocre damage baseline, but when combined with our hit-based talents gains significant power.

Can become Vortex Strike temporarily with the talent “Vortex Strike” unlocked.

Breach Pursuit
- A two-part ability that generates Courage on use/hit instead of consuming it. The first use grants 15 Courage, the second knocks enemies airborne and awards 10 Courage per enemy hit up to 50. Has a cooldown of 12 seconds, which starts ticking after the first use.
Valor Cyclone
- Our core spender that is responsible for a lot of our damage.
Valor Cyclone
is less of an attack and more of a toggle ability. Toggling it on causes it to consume 16 Courage per second to deal damage around you constantly (damage frequency scales with Haste). Can be turned off by using again, will be forced off when Courage is no longer sufficient. Try to maintain
Valor Cyclone
100% of the time.

Skill Level Priority

Skill Priority
Valor Cyclone
>
Spiral Thrust
(Vortex Strike) >
Gale Thrust
=
Windborne Grace
(Swift Blade & Drake Cannon) =
Galeform
>
Breach Pursuit
=
Typhoon Cleave
Ensure all abilities you’re using are levelled to 30 - only advancement requires consideration.

Advance

Valor Cyclone

first; it’s our highest damaging ability. Next Advance

Spiral Thrust

as it improves Vortex Strike, then raise

Galeform

Gale Thrust

, and

Windborne Grace

to further increase damage. After that, you may advance,

Breach Pursuit

, and

Typhoon Cleave

as you see fit.

Best Talents

Important!
Embedded is our recommended core max-level Vanguard talent tree containing all the specs' top talents alongside 2 flex points you can spend on player choice talents you like most.

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 Skyward spec and Base Wind Knight talents.

Vanguard Tree

Vanguard Spec and Swift Blade - Grants two ways to access our enhanced Basic Attack, Swift Blade, which deals increased damage, generates 10 Courage, and triggers other abilities.

Vanguard Spec causes
Gale Thrust
to have a 20-40% fixed chance to trigger it
Swift Blade grants
Valor Cyclone
a 7% fixed chance on hit to activate it.

Break Pursuit Advancement - After using each Ultimate (including bonus ultimates), allows
Breach Pursuit
to be used two additional times in the next 15 seconds with no cooldown for a total of 6 activations.
Swift Breeze - Increases the rate at which our natural Courage regeneration (3 per second) recovers by 2% per 1% haste we have. Helps more comfortably maintain
Valor Cyclone
, but does not boost regeneration of ability or talent-based regen, making it less powerful than it may appear
Wind Tear, Spiral Tear and Wind Rift Diffusion - Wind Tear causes
Gale Thrust
to apply Rend on hit, which does moderate damage itself but enables other talents. While Rend is active, Spiral Tear and Wind Rift Diffusion have the following effects:

Spiral Tear causes
Spiral Thrust
and Vortex Strike to deal 30% more damage.
Wind Rift Diffusion causes all hits from Ultimates and Expertise skills against targets with Rend to deal additional damage equal to 75% of our ATK. On a 7 hit ability like
Spiral Thrust
, this is an additional 525% ATK Multiplier of DMG. This also triggers off abilities like
Valor Cyclone
, can Crit, but cannot lucky hit. Wind Rift Diffusion triggers end up being a large part of our total damage.

Battle Cry - Adds a second activation to our ultimate, which can be used first to grant a teamwide +10% Haste buff, 1 Sharp Stack every 2 seconds, and 10 Courage per second, all for 10 seconds. Not only will your teammates love you, but we’ll also gain even more Courage generation and an extra Ultimate to synergize with Break Pursuit Advancement.

You must activate your normal Ultimate within 15 seconds of using the talent-based Ultimate, or it will be wasted and revert to being on cooldown.

Fearless Gale - The backbone of our ability spamming playstyle. After casting
Spiral Thrust
,
Breach Pursuit
(Part 1), or
Valor Cyclone
, our next
Gale Thrust
will be free. With this talent, using a free
Gale Thrust
after most of our abilities now becomes the norm, whereas actually using Courage for the ability becomes rare.
Rapid Drake Cannon and Wind Gate Drake Cannon - These talents grant access to Drake Cannon, our Enhanced Basic Attack, a high damage basic attack replacement. Rapid Drake Cannon grants us a fixed 10% chance to gain it when using Swift Blade, increasing by 10% each time we fail to evolve it. Wind Gate Drake Cannon grants it to us every 22 hits of
Valor Cyclone
. Use Drake Cannon whenever available.
Vortex Strike - Upgrades
Spiral Thrust
into Vortex Strike every 2 uses of Drake Cannon. Vortex Strike costs no Courage, benefits from most of our best talents, and hits tremendously hard. Use as soon as available.
Wind Rise and Dragon’s Fury Flame - A combination of talents dedicated to taking the damage of Drake Cannon and Vortex Strike to the next level

Dragon’s Fury Flame doubles the Crit Rate of both abilities and increases their Crit DMG by 8%
Wind Rise effectively increases the Crit Rate of both abilities by 49%
With both combined, each ability is now guaranteed to Crit and deal more damage.

Player Choice Talents

Fortitude: Grants us Super Armor, Damage Reduction, and Life Leech
Zephyr Waltz Agility: If you’re still lacking Courage in your rotation, pick this up for a further 2 regen per second.
Wind Chaser If you need neither sustain nor Courage, pick up Wind Chaser to maximize
Valor Cyclone
damage.

Recommended Vanguard Build

Talents

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

Talent Planner

Stat Priority

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.

Stat Priority

Crit Rate

Haste

Luck

Mastery

Versatility

Main Stats

Haste - Is one of our best stats and scales extremely well for the following reasons:

Wind Knight has a better than average Haste to ATK SPD% conversion of 1%:1.6% thanks to the base Wind Knight Talent “Swift”.
Valor Cyclone’s hit rate, one of our biggest damage sources, and which is responsible for activating other abilities directly, improves with Haste.
Vanguard has enough resource generation to support accelerating its spammy playstyle considerably with little downside.
Allows for more frequent access to enhanced abilities like Vortex Strike, which bring with them powerful temporary buffs we can now keep active more consistently.

Mastery - Vanguard’s Mastery grants 0.65% Wind DMG per 1% Mastery. While not game-changing, Wind DMG% is still rare enough of a stat that it’s still valuable enough to invest some of our stats into after reaching a high amount of Haste.
Versatility - This stat is always beneficial as it provides an extra multiplicative boost on top of all other DMG increases. Stats suffer diminishing returns, so a small amount of versatility is always recommended.
Crit Rate - Despite two of our strongest abilities having guaranteed Crits for free, Crit Rate is still a solid damage boost, as other major portions of our damage, like Valor Cyclone and our Rend, activated extra ATK% Multipliers can still benefit. Crit DMG is also a stat we actively chase, meaning boosting the Crit Rate of our non-guaranteed abilities is always welcome after maximizing haste.
Luck - Whilst not a useless stat to build on Vanguard, owing to the fact that so many of our abilities hit so frequently, we have no luck synergistic talents and would prefer the raw damage multipliers or speed other stats offer.

Bonus Stats

In gear slots you’re not using Set Gear in and which aren’t taken up by your class's signature Class weapon (if you have it), prioritize the following Purple Stats:

Helmet, Armour, Gloves, Boots

Agility%

Weapons & Accessories

ATK SPD% > Melee DMG% = DMG% vs. Bosses = ATK%

Set Gear

Vanguard’s 2P set bonus is definitely worth equipping as soon as you’re able to complete Raids and is better than Purple Bonuses. The 4P, on the other hand, isn’t quite as strong and is more comparable to purple damage bonuses. Here is what they do:

2-piece SET

Increases the DMG dealt by the Skills that consume Courage by 8%.

4-Piece SET

When dealing DMG, each stack of Sharpness you currently possess increases DMG by 1%.

Class weapon

Our Class Weapon is worth using over purple stats. Instead of a purple stat, it grants

8% Melee DMG
Increased stats.

Best Modules

Here are the best modules for Wind Knight - Vanguard - listed in priority order:

Strength Boost
- Our best choice thanks to a large ATK buff and a rare DEF% Ignore effect for our whole kit.
Elite Strike
- Always a good module for DPS, but not active outside of Elites/Bosses.
Attack SPD
- ATK SPD% is useful for chaining more abilities within important buff cooldowns.
Crit Focus
- A nice buff thanks to guaranteed Crits on two abilities, but its secondary buff of Max HP is not useful for damage.

Best Battle Imagines

Important!
Some imagines will not be available to farm until all zones are unlocked - the most vital of these is
Muku Scout
.

Premium

Celestial Flier

Muku Chief

F2P

Muku Scout [A5]

Muku Chief [A0]

Top Gold Imagines

Muku Chief
- Despite having two abilities with guaranteed Crits, building Crit offers a substantial DPS increase, and Muku Chief’s double active helps tremendously with this stat. The permanent and temporary Crit DMG is also a large power increase.
Celestial Flier
- Haste is our Spec’s most powerful Stat. The combination of massive passive +Flat Haste in addition to a +%Haste bonus on use assists with our ability spam playstyle and constant damage ticking effects like Rend and Valor Cyclone.
Goblin King
- Goblin King’s huge +Flat Versatility and various summon-based buffs all offer solid bonuses to the Vanguard Spec. Unfortunately, some buffs, such as the Luck one, you may roll, hold this Imagine back unless multiple Advancements are unlocked.
Phantom Arachnocrab
- A more consistent alternative to Goblin King, but with lower max potential while still trailing behind Muku Chief and Celestial Flier in performance. Still great though, thanks to its +Flat Master,y a +% Mastery on use.

Top Purple Imagines

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.
Storm Goblin Warrior [A5]
- Storm Goblin Warrior is the generic Wind DMG% Imagine, granting 7.5% passive Wind DMG% and a further 16% on use. Due to a lack of this bonus in our kit, this Imagine performs similarly to Muku Scout, though it remains less universal.

Best Consumables

Culinary

Painfly - Grants Elite/Boss DMG% as well as a strong amount of ATK, making it the superior choice.
Meatfish Skewer - More ATK than Painfly, but without the Elite/Boss DMG%, it is less powerful.

Alchemy

Wind Serum - The best and only choice for our Alchemy consumable when aiming for maximum damage.

Best Gems

Sapphire - Strength (Haste) - As our best stat haste is the best and only recommended choice.

How To Play

Unlike other specs, Vanguard has no set rotation at all owing to its RNG-heavy kit. Instead, we execute abilities according to the following priority system:

Valor Cyclone
First Use (Do not recast)
Vortex Strike (Enhanced
Spiral Thrust
)
Drake Cannon (2nd Enhanced Basic Attack Form)
Swift Blade (1st Enhanced Basic Attack Form)
Gale Thrust
(Courage free only)
Spiral Thrust
Breach Pursuit
Basic Attacks

Tip
Be careful not to burn all your Courage using non-free
Gale Thrust
s; it’s usually safer to avoid them altogether unless Courage is overcapping.

Outside of this are our cooldowns,

Galeform

, and both uses of

Typhoon Cleave

Keep one charge of
Galeform
on cooldown at all times, save the second one to use if Courage runs low.
Use
Typhoon Cleave
’s first charge whenever available. Use the second charge when you're low on Courage or before it times out.

Auto Viability

We don’t recommend playing Vanguard on full auto, but semi-auto can be viable for using each enhanced skill more quickly and effectively. Reaction speed is key for optimal play, and the computer will instantly take into account new cooldowns being available. If using auto at a minimum, we recommend removing your Ultimate, Gale Form, and Battle Imagines from the auto combo settings.

Note
Auto-play does not dodge attacks or respect mechanics for you; you will have to manually play rotations in endgame content. It’s very likely that playing on auto will cause you to be hit far more often by attacks and boss mechanics; use it with caution.