Force Blader Sword and Magic Skills - Need info please!

[Cathy]

Hey all, I could use a little info/advice on the sword and magic skills for a Force Blader, my FB is lvl 119 currently but still a little confused on the skills.

My current skills I have are:

Sword

Fade Step lv 9
Dash lv 9
Force Slash lv 20
Force Assault lv 20
Dance of Ruin lv 20
Force Kick lv 9
Infernal Stigma lv 20
Abyssal Crystal lv 20
Force Impact lv 9
Infernal Impact lv 9
Assassinate lv 12
Seal of Damnation lv 9

Magic

Earth Guard lv 20
Lightning Blade lv 20
Wind Movement lv 20
Aqua Vitality lv 20
Stone Cannon lv 20
Aqua Cannon lv 20
Lightning Cannon lv 20
Wind Cannon lv 20
Enervation lv 20
Defense Down lv 20
Guard Break lv 20
Blind lv 20
Hard Luck lv 20
Field of Enervation lv 20

Sword Skills:

Get Impact Stab and Rising shot, both lv.20. They're fast skills, like force assault and force slash, and great for dealing quick damage especially to low defense targets; they might seem weak at low level but they get more useful as your Attack gets higher, so they are good to get early on since FB's have plenty of sword skill points.

Force Impact can be lv.20 too since you shouldn't be using it often (it's more for comical effect than usefulness in any situation...)

Magic Skills:

Not all pve debuffs are worth using, simply because the effect is so minimal compared to how much damage you could do with an extra hit, as well as using up skill points.

Blind, Guard Break, Lower Defense, those can be put down to lv.1, you won't cast them in pve.
Generally you're just gonna Enervation > Hard luck > hit mob/boss > rinse and repeat.

Even if you're not interested in pvp, you're gonna want the pvp debuffs anyways. Everyone is gonna have to eventually n.war for Honor rank 10/11 to use +6/+7 accessories.

Darkness: This is a great debuff to have, even if you don't have a lot of points and keep it lv.1. Very useful for party dungeons.

Excretation and Field of Excretation: Same as darkness, but they really should be lv.20. With the duration and cooldown at lv.20, you can Excretation (20 seconds) > Field of Excretation (another 20 seconds after) > Excretation again (another 20 seconds) for a total of 60 seconds of practically nonstop unmovable.

So you should have Darkness and Excretation and Field of Excretation even if you only pve.

Mana Freeze: This is the only PURELY pvp debuff. If you really don't want it, you don't need it. It's very useful at low levels, but at high levels most people have enough MP to break it. At 180+, maybe 1/10th of players can be mf'd (a few WA's and BL's). *Note: MF takes away 1400 mp but Field of enervation can take away ~100ish, so you can actually remove 1500 mp from somebody. They'll need 1600+ mp to use all of their skills.

If you're having trouble with skill points: Deleting or putting lv.1 Guard Break, Blind, and Lower Defense will already get you a lot, but if you still need more you can lower wind cannon to lv.18. the attack and defense rate are less useful compared to attack, defense, and hp (so keep lightning, aqua, and stone at 20) but wind can be lowered without much consequence. The difference between lv.18 and 20 is almost nothing in stats. A lot of Fb keep it lv.9

In gear: Generally the most important stats to improve are crit rate > attack > crit dmg > amp

Vamp will keep you alive better than def/hp in pve so get high vamp earrings when you can. About 5%-6% hp steal is good at low levels; at higher levels (160~) 3-4% is enough. The harder you hit, the less % steal you need.

I hope this helps.