Path of Exile - Skill Demo: Blade Blast

Posted: 27 Feb 2020 04:58 PM PST

Path of Exile: Delirium introduces a skill called Blade Blast. Alongside this new skill, we're making some changes to some existing spells that it can interact with. Among these are Ethereal Knives, Bladefall, Blade Vortex and as a follow on effect, Animate Weapon.

Blade Blast
Casting Blade Blast deals damage in a medium sized area at your target. Enemies hit will be Unnerved, increasing their spell damage taken. If there are any blades from Ethereal Knives, Bladefall or your own Blade Vortex in the area of effect, Blade Blast will detonate those blades as well, creating a chain reaction. This way, you can set up and detonate a long sequence of explosions to finish off enemies in a large area, or deal high damage to targets in a cluster of blades.

Ethereal Knives
Ethereal Knives has received some visual improvements while also allowing one in every three knives to remain as a small blade in the ground. A blade in the ground will do nothing and fade away after a duration but these blades can be interacted with by other skills.

To make the most of Ethereal Knives with Blade Blast, using the Slower Projectiles Support lets you create a dense field of blades close to you, and adding the Unleash Support will result in easily setting up a huge damage burst for taking out bosses. Using the Ring of Blades unique jewel will let you spread out the blades in a ring around you, which results in a large circular area of Blade Blast explosions.

Blade Vortex
As Blade Vortex already has respectable single target damage, Blade Blast has a different purpose when interacting with it. Blade Blast can detonate blades as they spin around you and for each Blade Vortex blade detonated in sequence, the area of the Blade Blast is multiplied, gaining over three times the area on the tenth blade destroyed. This lets Blade Blast cover a large area around you in a burst of damage that can clear out a dangerous group of monsters (or your delusions) in one quick cast.

Blade Blast won't detonate Vaal Blade Vortex or other player's Blade Vortexes so you can't destroy your Vaal Skill or 'accidentally' end your party member's Blade Vortex.

Bladefall
Bladefall will leave one blade per volley, resulting in 6 blades per cast. The blades are placed relatively central in the volley, so with Concentrated Effect you can place them close enough to create a lot of overlapping Blade Blasts.

Combining the skill with the Unleash and Spell Cascade Supports, you can place a huge number of blades with one cast, actually going over the maximum of 50 blades. Use Awakened Spell Cascade instead to spread them over a wider area.

Having a setup where Blade Blast, Bladefall or both are triggered by a trigger support or cast by totems lets you create a devastating area of effect combo with ease.

Animate Weapon
Blades from Ethereal Knives, Blade Vortex and Bladefall can now be Animated by Animate Weapon, making the skill much easier to sustain.

Blades animated this way have base attack speed, crit and range similar to a Glass Shank, but Animate Weapon adds bonus physical damage to Ethereal Blades based on the level of the Animate weapon skill, on top of the added damage granted to all weapons by Animate Weapon. This also means that blades from a low level Bladefall can be used by a high level Animate Weapon as effectively as a high level Bladefall's blades.

We've rebalanced Animate Weapon to lower the maximum number of blades and lower the time taken to reach full power, which also improves server performance. To compensate for the minion count loss, we've significantly improved their speed and granted much more added damage. The skill now has a faster cast time, lower mana cost, and grants More Attack Speed. The skill grants increased minion movement speed as the gem levels and a higher minion limit as the gem levels.

Here is a preview of these mechanics in action.

We hope you've enjoyed this preview of the blade spell changes. Next week we'll talk about the new Kinetic Bolt Wand skill and the Spellslinger gem. Stay sane, Exiles!