Best Swordmastery Perks and Abilities

Swordmastery is a deceptively-named skill tree. Sure, it contains all the skills you’d expect out of a tree named “Swordmastery”, including sword damage and critical hit chance, stamina mitigation, sword-based active abilities and numerous flavors of parry bonuses. In addition, however, Swordmastery is also the home of most of the generalized perks Coen can unlock, including RPG mainstays, and since the boons gained by investing in the Swordmastery tree apply both during the day and at night, almost everybody is going to want to invest in this tree. This page will cover the best perks to buy in the Swordmastery tree while providing a sample build in The Blood of Dawnwalker!.

Page Breakdown¶

Best Swordmastery Perks¶

As mentioned earlier, the Swordmastery perk tree is somewhat deceptively named, as it’s not just dedicated to hacking your foes apart with three points of steel… granted most perks in the tree do help with that, to one degree or another, but not exclusively so. You’ll also find generic blocking, parrying, activation charge, health and stamina upgrades in this tree, which are useful whether you’re casting spells or rending foes with your vrakhiri claws. Turns out the sword is also a potent defensive tool, and during the day, it’s really your only option for blocking enemy attacks.

Simply put, not only are you going to want to invest in the Swordmastery tree for general stats, but a bit of sword prowess will keep you alive and, with the correct investments, allow you to fuel your abilities. In fact, Swordmastery is such a potent tree that it draws investment from the other two trees, and some of the best builds we’ve made invest heavily in Swordmastery even if we focus on using abilities from the Witchcraft and Vampirism trees!

There are many ways to turn Coen into an ability-spamming machine and increase his durability by investing in the Swordmastery tree to the point where there are arguably few outright “bad’ perks - maybe some unnecessary perk ranks, but aside from Pack Mule we daresay most of these perks are worth looking at. We know, we know, we’re pack rats, too, but there are shrines with infinite storage every 100~ meters in the game. You don’t need the extra Carry Weight. That said, some perks are more useful than others, and we’ll cover the standouts below:

Stinging Blade¶

Good, not great. Each rank gives +5% Weapon Damage, which is fine. If you plan to spam Swordmastery abilities, it may be a bit better, but it won’t improve your Witchcraft or Vampirism abilities. The first two ranks don’t consume any time and the 1 skill point investment is paltry, so getting at least two ranks in this will help you get through the early game, at the absolute worst.

Endless Effort¶

+25% maximum Stamina per rank. Stamina fuels your attacking, blocking and dodging, and running out of it in combat is… not ideal. Like Stinging Blade, the first two ranks have no time cost, and a +50% bonus to your Stamina is probably sufficient, but more ranks certainly won’t hurt.

Vigor¶

More health, less death. Good stuff. Like the previous two skills, the first two ranks cost no time to invest in, but the fourth rank gives double the boon as the first three, so maxing this out is extra appealing.

Fate’s Favor¶

The first three ranks get you +6% critical hit chance with your weapon - not your claws, not your spells. If you plan on making use of Swordmastery skills, this is an easy investment. If you plan on investing in Soul Stigma as well, you can have up to a 58% critical hit chance before any gear is factored in. If going for a crit-heavy build that uses swords (read: Artery Slash) as its primary damage dealer, this could be worth maxing… but even then, it’s only fully effective during the day, when paired with Soul Stigma. Situational investment, but the build it works for is massively powerful.

Sustained Focus¶

One of the better perks in the game. Activation Charges fuel your abilities. Having more of them isn’t amazing unless you also have a way to charge them quickly, but even then, the first two ranks are no-brainers, as you simply cannot use any 2-cost abilities without two Activation Charges, and starting every fight with one Activation Charge puts you ahead of the curve. Depending on how you build, you might see diminishing returns from later ranks, but any build that wants to spam skills and can generate Activation Charges quickly won’t mind the extra capacity at all.

Master Fencer¶

You want to equip more Swordmastery abilities, you need to invest in this skill. Depends on your playstyle, but if you plan to do most of your damage with your Swordmastery abilities you’re probably going to want Adrenaline Rush, Artery Strike and perhaps Walking Fortress. Buy as many ranks of this as abilities you plan to use.

Renewed Focus¶

Another great perk for pretty much any build, this perk increases your Activation Charge restoration. First two ranks give +15% passive generation, third rank increases +50% restoration from all attacks. It’s not the best engine of Activation Charge generation on this tree, but it’s still a solid investment.

Restless Blade¶

Lowers cooldowns for your Swordmaster abilities. At some point, cooldowns will probably become the major limiting factor of your offense, so the less time you’re waiting to spend Activation Charges, the better.

Best Swordmastery Abilities¶

Charge¶

Charge has a lot of things going for it - low Activation Charge cost, short cooldown (20s), decent damage, stun, and at higher ranks it automatically inflicts Bleed for even more damage over time. If you can be bothered to aim it at a distant enemy, it’ll also deal damage to all enemies in a line! It also synergizes well Artery Strike, which is its real selling point. All in all, a solid ability you can spam to proc Adrenaline Rush.

Artery Strike¶

One of the most damaging single-target abilities in the game, dealing up to a whopping 800% damage at rank 4. Since it’s weapon damage, it scales with many other perks and buffs and it always deals critical damage. If you max it out it’ll decapitate bleeding enemies (which synergizes with Charge and Shred), but really it’s just here for brute damage, which can reach five figures with the right build/level/gear.

Adrenaline Rush¶

Use an ability and you’ll get a damage boost, ranging from 20% to 50% depending on the rank of the ability. At higher ranks it’ll also give you 100% - 150% Activate Charge regeneration, which helps fuel more abilities. The duration is short, it works with all abilities (including Swordmastery, Witchcraft and Vampirism abilities), so as long as you have a cheap ability to use and enough Activation Charges to follow up with something bigger, it’ll help you swing for huge damage. Charge + Artery Strike is a good combo, but plenty of things work.

Walking Fortress¶

One of the best Activation Charge engines in the entire game, perhaps only contested by the Tactical Mastery ultimate. On perfect blocks you’ll recover a portion of an Activation Charge. Not bad, but not going crazy over. As this ability ranks up, however, this growth will increase and you’ll start reducing active ability cooldowns by -1s and then -2s for each directional block or perfect block. Generating Activation Charges is good. Generation Activation Charges and lowering your cooldowns is even better. Finally, at rank 4 this ability will reduce the Activation Charge cost of the next ability used after a perfect block, which is just icing on the cake, although perhaps redundant with Tactical Mastery.

Best Swordmastery Ultimates¶

There are three Swordsmastery ultimates, and for our money Tactical Mastery is the best of the bunch, as it reduces the cost of all abilities by -1 Activation Charge. In practice this means you can reliably spam Artery Strike and Soul Reaping more, which is benefit enough - even if it’s not strictly necessary and Walking Fortress steps on its toes a bit.

Having all your 2-cost abilities turn into 1-cost abilities forever is just a great boon, but if you feel like you’re getting by without it and want to live dangerously you can always opt for Last Stand, which will double the damage you deal as long as you’re below 30% health. This can be risky, and frankly, kind of difficult to maintain if you invest in some of the better Witchcraft abilities.