I really don’t understand how people complain about the cleave, VIII’s lights have more cleave than the zelly 2h Power Sword even with no buffs. Sure the dmg falls off but even with no buffs it’s still more than enough with its stagger to handle mixed hordes on T5+.
Anyway, I’ve mostly run something like this:
Mostly just been changing the 2 red outlined talents around with any of the yellows, or the 2 combinations of oranges. Also still not set on whether I like Warp Flurry or Nexus.
Either way, it plays like a hybrid. It took a bit getting used to, to kinda force myself to use the sword more often than I normally would. But that’s necessary both for charging it and keeping Malefic Momentum stacked.
Typically you only use the staff while sliding around & closing distance to melee, or when you want to keep it safe. Otherwise full melee, while keeping track of True Aim so every time it caps → switch to staff → put the Surge double crit somewhere it counts & gets you that warp kill for MF → back to melee.
The sword special is incredible. Even just 1 charge level is often enough with your buffs to wipe almost everything, especially if there’s a lot stuff in there (bc Perilous Combustion). You kinda want to strike a balance where you don’t wait too long to use it but also don’t sit on it for no reason, while ofc making sure to only use it on big groups where it matters. It synergizes wonderfully with Vent, and between the two you can either do 2 massive horde wipes, or use both on the same group as an oggy nuke. The nuke bit is really important tho, a big part of this build is always making sure the sword is charged asap, so you can do the big plays when there’s a ton of enemies and things are starting to look bad.
Light spam for hordes, heavy spam or push-attack → heavy (unique stab with extreme finesse dmg) for single targets. Always aim for heads. With Shred that light spam is enough with Empathic Evasion to make you range-immune, you can also do that by spamming the staff primary ofc.
The combos are simple, but the playstyle is quite aggressive and hectic. The slow-ish sword and low dodge count does mean you need to really handle your melee. So there’s a lot of sliding, pushing & push-attacks, weapon swapping etc. to alternate between the dodges.
