Blood Mages

A small word of advice

Bloodmage in an incredibly fun and powerful subclass. However clicking a bloodmage is entirely different from clicking a regular fighter or lesser subclass. It is advised to first click another subclass, or learn the ropes as a fighter and then become a bloodmage. However just because your bloodmage has X amount of ranks doesn't mean they are capable of hunting area Y and Z.

How to become a Bloodmage

1. Become a third circle Fighter
2. Qualify for the Bloodlade
3. Become proficient with the Bloodblade
4. Gain insight into blood magic

Qualifying for the Bloodblade

In order to qualify for the bloodblade, you must practice fighting on low health. You should occasionally get the following message:

• You experiment with a new fighting style.

When you’ve qualified for the bloodblade (or Gossamer, or Fell blade) you will get the following message:

• You discover an important combat technique.

When you’ve qualified for the bloodblade you can acquire one from Nacerus (located in the savannah maha den) in exchange for a moonstone and a dagger.

Nacerus says, “I see you have mastered the skill needed to perform elementary bloodmagic.”

Nacerus says, “I can fashion you a weapon which will allow you to use bloodmagic in combat.”

Nacerus asks, “<name>, will you provide me a moonstone and a dagger?”

Becoming proficient with the Bloodblade

Once you have qualified for and purchased a bloodblade, you can begin training by using the /use /practice command. You will gain ranks in it whether you have it equipped or not. You can use the /use /reflect to see how proficient you are with the bloodblade. When you equip your bloodblade it will drain your health and you will gain Atkus/Darkus according to the amount of trained bloodmage ranks and the level of your health.

Gaining Insight into Bloodmagic

The most common way to gain insight is to use your Bloodblade, fight on low health and kill undine. Undine hut in NE field is a perfect location to gain insight.

When you have trained a significant amount of bloodblade ranks (around 60–80) you gain entry to the Nacerean Order (located in the Savannah Maha Den) and the ability absorb creatures for the bloodpool. The bloodpool is located in w town under the cemetery and in the Savannah cave. The bloodpool will hunger for a certain creature, if you absorb it and bring it to the bloodpool you will gain insight into the bloodpool.

• You learn from your brief foray into butchery. <Completing the drag-a-creature quest for Vaun Gutturt (needs confirmation)>

• You gain insight into the nature of your bloodblade. <Using you bloodblade>

• You learn about the nature of life and death from the passing of the <undine monster>. <Killing undine>

• You gain insight from fighting on the edge of death. <Fighting on low health>

• You learn from working with the blood of the <blood dropping monster such as a T’rool>. <Collecting blood>

• You gain insight into the nature of the bloodpool. <Feeding the bloodpool>

You will need at least 80 bloodblade ranks to become a Bloodmage.

Becoming a Bloodmage

Once you meet all the requirements Haima Myrtillus will officially indulge you into the order.

Bloodmage items

Bloodblade

The bloodblade is the cornerstone of the Blood Mage class. The blade allows access to most of the core abilities of the class and it can give the mage an immense amount of raw power. In general each rank trained in Bloodblade gives a lot of atkus, a huge amount of darkus, a moderate amount of balance, and a moderate amount of regia. Choosing to be weaker, fighting at, say, 1% health instead 25% health roughly doubles its effectiveness. These fluidly accessible stats can allow a bloodmage to tag and deal useful amounts of damage even in areas that are normally well beyond an exile of their rank count. Or they can cause a creature that attacked you, but just barely didn't kill you, to regret their life choices.

Non Bloodmage Bloodbladers will have more use out of a non-infused bloodblade since it will give a regia bonus on low health. However you will need an infused bloodblade if you wish to use absorb creatures for the bloodpool. When you become a Bloodmage your bloodblade will automatically become infused and drain notably less health.

Spoiler: While the bloodblade is equipped its ranks, in part, increase your balance. But it also removes defense equal to the defense bonus that balance would give. This means that right after you swing you can actually have less defence than you would using another weapon, or even negative defense. Source

Bloodstone Ring

The Bloodstone Ring can be bought for 3000c from Sargasti Avantis. Everyone, regardless of profession and training can use the bloodstone ring to block healing at desired health. After you've completed training with Unrastin (12 ranks) you gain the passive ability to see "sparkles" around the monster with the highest health nearby. The Bloodstone Ring is also used for feigning.

To set the Bloodstone Ring to 40% health, you would type/macro /useitem finger /set 40%

Bloodshroud

The Bloodshroud is a bloody red shroud with no special abilities. It costs 6,660c.

Bloodmage abilities

Bloodblade abilities

Debuffs

All of the bloodmage debuffs have their strength improved by training in either Disabla or Cryptus. Both trainers currently do the same thing and pool their ranks.

Disable

Activating this causes the next attack to consume spirit in order to cause a disabling wound that will lower the target's defense.

Not only can this help exiles hit evasive targets, but Rangers and Champions both may have atkus conservation on their swings (they only use as much atkus as it takes to hit) so they can swing more frequently against disabled critters.

Each rank in Disabla/Cryptus increases the reduction to defense and the spirit cost of the skill.

Cripple

Activating this causes the next attack to consume spirit in order to cause a crippling wound that will lower the target's ability to hit and its balance regeneration.

Each rank in Disabla/Cryptus increases the reduction to atkus, reduction to balance regeneration, and the spirit cost of the skill.

Hamstring

Activating this causes the next attack to consume spirit in order to cause a mobility-related wound that will lower the target's ability to move around and its balance regeneration.

Each rank in Disabla/Cryptus increases the reduction to movement speed, reduction to balance regeneration, and the spirit cost of the skill.

Damaging Abilities

Control Mode

Toggling this will cause all damage from the bloodblade to be dealt instead as damage-over-time (DoT), similar to hemo.

The benefits of this are a lower blood consumption and a more group friendly way of tagging. Keep in mind that the bleed will still end up doing, potentially, a lot of darkus worth of damage.

Each rank in Aneurus will further increase the damage done by this DoT.

Hemo

Activating this will cause the next successful bloodblade attack to deal an additional hemorrhagic wound. The creature unfortunate enough to be hit by the attack will suffer an extra large amount of damage over time (DoT).

Each rank in Aneurus increases the spirit cost of the ability and adds a large amount of damage to the DoT. The damage of the hemorrhagic wound is further increased by how low your current health is when you make the attack, much like the bloodblade itself.

Inferno

Activating this will cause the next successful bloodblade attack to deal extra damage and, if the attack kills the target, extra spirit will be consumed to cause the target to explode in a rain of blood which damages all nearby enemies. If an enemy exploding kills another enemy, that newly killed enemy will also explode damaging enemies around it. This chaining of explosions can get silly in certain situations.

If you have completed training with Unrastin, preparing the inferno will also indicate which creature you are sure to slay with the inferno blow.

Each rank in Dantus increases the spirit cost of the ability, adds a moderate amount of damage to the inferno-enhanced bloodblade attack, and a moderate amount of damage to any resulting explosion(s). The bonus damage Dantus adds to the attack is further increased by how low your current health is when you make the attack, much like the bloodblade itself. If a creature explodes, the amount of damage done to the surrounding creatures is equal to roughly half of the health the creature had left plus half of the bonus damage inferno added to the attack (i.e. killing a creature that had 10 histia left will do 5 histia worth of damage to the surrounding creatures plus an additional amount based on training with Dantus).

Bloodstone ring abilities

Healing Blocking

In order to maintain an ideal ratio of durability to murder ability, bloodblade wielders commonly use this ring to limit how high their health can get. The bloodblade gives an immense amount of stats while at as low a percent of health as feasible to fight with, this ring is key in making that possible. When setup it can prevent its user from receiving healing while at or above a user defined percent health allowing them to start and continue a fight while at a threateningly low amount of health.

Sidenote: Natural troilus and large bursts of healing may still take an exile past the set amount.

Feigning

The ability to feign can be very useful in tight situations. When you feign you will appear fallen to the enemies around you so they won’t attack you, even if they run into your body. There will be a short delay between pressing the command though and actually feigning. During this delay you will lie down and most of your balance will be gone, leaving you vulnerable to being attacked. Also if you attempt to maintain the feign too long you will start to lose control over your life-force causing your spirit to quickly drain from your body. If this happens and you run out of spirit, you will be dead, for realsies. To get up from a feign you must either say your magic word (default is "Nacreus") or unequip your Bloodstone Ring.

Training in Posuhm will at first decrease the time it takes to feign, then, after 50~ ranks, it will only increase how long you can feign.

But beware, although feigning causes creatures to not attack you, stray rocks and lighting can still hurt you. If you sustain enough damage from these sources in order to have killed you if you didn’t feign, you will be dead, for realsies.

Bloodmage trainers

Ability trainers

Aneurus

Training Aneurus will increase the damage done by the hemorrhagic wound.

Cryptus and Disabla

Training with either Cryptus or Disable will increase the effect of the debuffs. The reason there are two separate trainers is that there used to be only 2 debuffs; cripple and disable. Those were trained individually. When hamstring was added they were added up.

Dantus

Training Dantus will increase the strength of the inferno blow as well as increase the range of the effect.

Posuhm

Training Posuhm will increase the duration of the feign as well as reduce the delay before the feign.

Unrastin

Capped trainer to unlock the full potential of the bloodstone ring.

Core trainers

Anemia

Anemia trains a mix of Histia and Regia, while training negative Troilus.

Stedfustus

Stedfustus trains a mix of Histia, Regia and Troilus.

Crato

Increases the amount of blood you can store (spirit pool). Identical to Spleisha and Splash.

Bloodpool

1. The bloodpool hungers, we must work to fill it.
2. The bloodpool quivers in agitation.
3. The bloodpool feels restless.
4. The bloodpool feels slightly restless, but could use some more life force.

Tips

Survivability tips

1. Put a hamstring on a creature to decrease its speed and thus it's threat level.
2. Don't stay too close to snell borders, if something you didn't expect crosses the snell you're toast.
3. Time your swings so you're not close to the creature when it's about to swing next, it might turn your way.
4. If possible, always move back after you've swung.
5. Tell the healers where your ring is set at the beginning of the hunt, so they know when to heal you.

Combat tips

1. A hamstring/hemo combo can be very useful to take down fast creatures.
2. If a creature is already low health and there are still people who need to tag/lasty switch to control mode (dot).
3. Junk can be very dangerous to you since you will most likely only have one swing and the bloodblade will lower your defence.
4. Put a hemo on a high Histia creature (i.e. Delta Toad) or high Troilus creature (i.e. Haremau Kitten) at the beginning of the fight to get the most out of your hemo.
5. Know your enemies. Keep an eye out which creature has high Histia/Troilus, runs fast, ferals, etc. so you know which skill to use on which.
6. Disabling enemies will increase the group's overall DPS as the lower Atkus requirements will result in Rangers/Champions using less balance per swing (when using goss/tell)

Other tips

1. If there are multiple Bloodmages in your party, communicate about your blood level and how much you need to pick up.
2. Know your hunting partners. It's great to know which other fighter needs a disable on a creature to hit or tag better, improving the overall group performance. It's also essential to know on who to drop stuff.

Training tips

1. Train LOTS of Histia.
2. Train enough Bloodblade so you don't need to be super low to be able to hit the stuff you want.
3. Invest in a shieldstone and some Heen. Shieldstoning is much more efficient for Bloodmages than for the other sub classes so don't worry about the blood loss too much.
4. Invest in Posuhm early on to get rid of the feign delay.
5. Training Regia will make you swing faster, thus increasing your overall DPS.
6. Training BB is never a bad thing because it can be untrained perm 10 ranks without any losses.
7. Invest in some Troilus, this will keep you from very low health as the BB health train will be equal to your health regeneration at a higher level.

Blood Mage Macros

Blood Mage Macros

Know bugs

1. DO NOT disconnect when you are feigned. When you log back on you will be fallen but healing will still be blocked, you will not be able to get up without GM interaction or depart.