Stellar Forged Blade Rotation

Blade’s new kit is very straight forward

-Blade’s damage is largely coming from the SP3. If you start off with 2 SP3’s in a row he’s gonna deal 18,000 degen damage over 60 seconds PER Degen.

-Two SP3’s = 10 Degen’s so that’s 180,000 degen damage over 60-120 seconds. Definitely should run max Mystic Dyspersion

-Danger Sense in most fights will only be useful for the 50% atrophy.

-SP1’s main job is to apply the atrophy, and extend the degeneration with torments.

-SP2 can only power steal before the opponent reaches the Max power (SP3) the damage is aight but you should use the SP3 2x and then blow down the opponent with SP2’s. Only SP2 spam if the opponent gains a lot of power but Blade won’t be able to stop someone like Vision Aarkus since he can’t nullify power gain buffs.

-Blade’s synergies are terrible. And of course he does not have a unique synergy with Dracula, or any of the characters you would expect him to.

Comments

Capricious

his bio also let’s us know important narrative info as Isophyne plans to use him as a weapon against the Eidols.

I do feel that once again there was a missed opportunity to bring up Blood Hunt as an event. Thor could have gotten a cool synergy, Miles, Doom, Strange, Moon Knight. But the short stick has been drawn. Still a cool kit overall but Blade’s definitely going to be in the C tier ranges or worse.

Capricious

I’m actually going to double back. Because we just had a whole controversy over Magik completely losing her power steal (which I’m neutral about to be clear… it’s a different champion. Whatever)

But now we have a new Blade who’s supposed to be “Enhanced” by a mystic that Kabam wants us to believe is some kind of Elder/God of the continuity. And you’re essentially telling us that the ONLY valid change is that now Blade deals degen instead of Bleed damage… once again Kabam misses the boat on the creative aspects of a champion kit, and does something that is alienating to the fan base.

So Blade’s Danger Sense now activates against everyone but the effect is completely negligible. Atrophy without any other form of buff control or reduced buff potency makes no sense. Removing AAR completely from his kit was scummy. And keeping the regen at exactly 70% is not indicative of someone who has been “Enhanced” even if the block regen is a nice boost. As a counterpoint Blade won’t be able to stop passive unblockable attacks or indefinite unblockable attacks. He’s also going to struggle against power gain champions with stronger buffs and passive buffs. Or like usual AW where he won’t have any immunities and will have to deal with compounding buffs (power gain nodes stacked on power gaining champions)

This is the same old script of the last 8 months with Kabam. Going too soft on a champion and ignoring what the game actually looks like today and even more egregiously underdelivering to the fans on what is really a fan service champion. PUT THE EXTRA SAUCE ON THE CHAMPION KITS! Stop with the “Just good enough” champion releases and actually put some effort in.

Sambob

They nerfed the damage increase from the danger sense as well which is a bummer. I really hope he is spamming enough specials to make his degen damage enough. I am honestly mind blown they left the regen alone (actually made it better with the blocked hit regen) so that is very nice. I am still waiting until I play him to form a final opinion because star lord let me down massively

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944239#Comment_2944239

Ironically damage is the only part that I’m not at all concerned about. Two SP3’s and spamming Sp2’s and you can take down pretty much anything. Now Battlegrounds specifically might be a bigger question mark but let’s be real. No one’s taking him into BG’s, he’s not good enough so it doesn’t even matter.

ahmynuts

Yay we got a blade nerf in 2026

Sambob

Also, I know they revealed where all the pieces are coming from on the stream, but was there ever a condensed list with dates in a single slide or an infographic?

Herbal_Taxman

i stopped reading at “after you throw two sp3s to start the fight…”

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944254#Comment_2944254

WHAAAT??? A PERSON IN 2026 WHO STOPPED READING??? Well color me shocked 😮

MaxtheSilent

I think I’d still rather use SF Blade over Deathless Guillotine. No he won’t be my go to for buff control or Serpent/Dark Phoenix counter. But he looks like he’d be fun to play, viable outside of PVP content and he looks awesome. Plus I’m betting he’ll be even better with a full SF synergy team which will make for some fun challenges similar to Deathless Necropolis. I respect the opinion of anyone who is disappointed with his kit but I’m personally looking forward to getting him.

Capricious

It’s likely that when Doom comes out they’re all going to get a cool synergy. But at this moment Blade gains 15% reduced regen duration while atrophy is up (with other SF champs) and 20% potency to danger sense with stealth suit spidy, or sam wilson cap. Very boring.

WednesdayLength

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944238#Comment_2944238

I mean, the valid changes are stronger power gain, being able to use his sense against any champ and the atrophy as well as the degen instead of bleed. Also once again have to remind people that the stellar forged champs are like the deathless and will likely be designed around the full synergy team

WednesdayLength

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944254#Comment_2944254

His power gain objectively seems pretty solid though. Its not like you're building up 3 bars through combo, you can hit sp3 without even using an attack if you want

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944342#Comment_2944342

He can use his danger sense against any champion but it doesn’t matter anymore because it doesn’t effect AAR and not every champion gains buffs and even the ones that do are not always always affected by atrophy if their buffs are indefinite. He also loses debuff shrug off.

Someone already brought the synergies point up so the responsibility is off your plate! 😤Cool… and I hope that when Dr Doom actually comes out everyone gets to have the time of their lives! Me however… I will be enduring TWO boring incomplete versions of some of my favorite characters all because Kabam can’t bring themselves to cook the full meal, and sprinkle a little bit of sauce on top before serving out their entrees. So now I can use Skill Blade with no damage but all the utility and survivability in the world, Pink “Enhanced” Blade with damage but only half the survivability and half the utility, and Dracula who technically has all three but also technically has none of the above. Cool!

Ab_Samad

About creativity, I feel like both of stellar forged champ missed the mark.

ItsClobberinTime

To be fair I don't know what some of you expected lol we knew all the SF champs by themselves would be mid in short to mid content:

1. All Deathless champs were mid on release and only decent for long form content.

2. Some like Vision even straight up sucked ass without the synergies.

The real thing that should worry us is Kabam not creating another Deathless Thanos with SF Doom, now that would be very concerning because that would make the whole chase pointless.

ahmynuts

The kits of the stellar forge champions can be explained by looking at late addition of the first edition and border changes. They are half baked and lacking care. An afterthought

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944364#Comment_2944364

Every 5 minutes I’m getting this comment… “IDK what you expected It’s just Stellar Forged”

I expected Mystic Blade, enhanced by Isophyne in her ambitions to take down the Eidols. I expected the spotlight to not be 2 minutes long. I expected something fun… interesting. Not even strong or even better than old Blade. Just something fun. You see Star Lord being basic after he went from tech to skill makes sense. Skill champions aren’t interesting or creative, they’re practical and physically impressive.

A Vampire hybrid joining the mystic class is supposed to make us feel like he’s a vampire hybrid that’s joining the mystic class. I’m not even mad at the kit for the most part. What I’m mad about is that now when I unlock this champion I’m going to have to spend more time deliberating over whether or not I should take Skill Blade or mystic blade to a contest. All because Kabam couldn’t even do us the decency of copying and pasting Blade’s kit over to his SF counter part, and adding on degen and power steal. Couldn’t even let him regen to 80% health (SCREW IT! 75%) 🫩this isn't that hard. I didn't ask them to give him invisibility and Pheonix force powers or a completely new SP3 animation or the leather jacket. Just reduce the annoyance of picking which character to bring into a mode by giving him all of skill blade’s kit… and ACTUALLY enhancing it.

In summary since I ended up waffling! There is no reason why Blade should be worse at any of his vampiric abilities during the process of literally having his vampiric abilities “Enhanced”. And Kabam’s decision to once again remove vital utility and survivability from a kit just reflects the modern champion design (you can hide behind SF gimmicks all you want) but this is just the truth of modern champion designs. 2 steps forward, 1 step back. Never anything to write home about. Nothing that I can tell my friends “Hey look! ITS MYSTIC BLADE! HE’S DIFFERENT THAN THE OLD BLADE!” It’s basically the meme “All he did was take a few steps back” or the one with the tooth pick. I mean aight… cool I guess

Capricious

Wow this is real talent! Taking what I said in 16,000 words and making the point in only two sentences. Very impressive work!

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944365#Comment_2944365

ItsClobberinTime

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944367#Comment_2944367

You’re getting that same comment because your expectations were unrealistic, and you’re just throwing a tantrum for no reason.

Maybe if you chill out and read what I said you’ll understand why they didn’t make his regen and other things stronger, SYNERGIES. Deathless champs other than Thanos are the exact same in that sense they need synergies for certain abilities to be strong I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if one of the synergies with Doom or someone else makes Blade’s regen even stronger. This is how all Deathless champs other than the main chase one were designed yet I didn’t see you throwing a tantrum about Vision or DKG being mid. You’re just mad that the champ you care about is not that crazy even though YOU set those high expectations yourself. Even when you knew how this SF chase would work, exactly the same as the Deathless one: all champs other than the main one mid and synergy reliant.

I can understand the frustration over Dracula being ass and I completely agree, but this one’s on you man.

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944378#Comment_2944378

I’m getting the same comment from people who have no or poor standards and lack vision. And I’m not interested in your “Expect nothing and never be hurt” mentality.

Again… you’re missing the point of what I am saying. Stellar Forged Blade “WITH SYNERGIES” is not the spotlight that just came out. Stellar forged blade “WITH SYNERGIES” is not the champion that we get to use in raids, BG’s, and in some cases 3 man content. I do not care about Blade’s regeneration. The point is that Kabam goes 2 steps forward and 1.5 steps backwards with champions that have been released since around Mr. Knight came out. Synergies are not going to give Blade the AAR reduction, Debuff shrug off that he lost. Synergies are not going to validate Kabam releasing Blade as is with his janky nullify which was completely unnecessary. The integrity of the game is being compromised by unprofessional and noncreative decisions like this. I don’t think that SF Blade is as well executed as he should have been. Finally I do not blame the mishaps on “Future synergies” I blame them on Kabam’s intentional choices to over tune the hell out of champions leading to lackluster 2016 bots.

Also once again… can’t comment on Groot or Guillotine when I don’t play them. Excuse the hell out of me! But I go in and advocate for champs that I don’t like or care about ALL OF THE TIME on reddit, or on threads because I don’t want standards to be lowered and I just don’t think it’s fun having trash champions in the game. Or I’ll just post buff ideas or new champ recommendations but it’s the same energy. The game is only as good as the champions that we put our time and energy into.

Do you want to know the funniest part. Here’s me posting in my alliance chat two months ago. And look at how “High my expectations” were. LIKE I JUST SAID… SKILL BLADE WITH DEGEN AND ATROPHY! But y’all gonna act like I’m angry that he’s not the second coming when I was just reading the same champ description that you all did. And then we get this bait and switch champion and I’m crazy for not liking it.

ItsClobberinTime

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944395#Comment_2944395

I’ve been very vocal about **** champs like Blue Marvle JJ and Dracula, that is not my mentality at all lmfao the issue here (which you have ignored for the third time again even after I mentioned it) is that that is how the Deathless champs work and that is how SF champs will work, they are meant to be MID without the full team. This isn’t lack of vision or anything like that it’s how the chase works, what part of that is not clicking?
As for the things they removed, a mystic with abilities like purify doesn’t make sense lmfao that specific utility is tied to the skill class you’re just yapping without even thinking twice at this point.

Flavyjay

ItsClobberinTime

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944407#Comment_2944407

To add to this, you seem to be confused in your previous response, this was never meant to be a buff to OG Blade this was meant to be a What If Blade was a mystic champ essentially, so yes naturally a bunch of things got removed and he received others that align better with mystic abilities. They axed the purify and gave him atrophy, they axed the bleeds and gave him degen, they axed the aar and gave him a solid nullify instead, they added more regen while blocking to deal with current cosmic threats etc.

If you want a Blade buff then this thread should be about OG Blade being outdated, the SF version is fine for what it’s supposed to be based on how they handled the Deathless chase, now we wait and see what the synergies actually do because the synergies played a big part when it came to Deathless champs and it will be the exact same deal with SF champs.

Ourobøros

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944367#Comment_2944367

You don't want something fun, you wanted something groundbreaking. Judging by your profile pic, I might even go as far as to guess that you have some personal feelings about this

Squidopus

I don’t really care about most of the conversation happening here about SF Blade being good or mid or bad, we’ll see how good he is when we can actually play with him. I do agree that SF Blade was never supposed to be a 100% upgrade over his regular counterpart, where he does everything regular Blade does but better. Anyone expecting that, or even a SF Blade that had every ability regular Blade does to varying degrees, was setting themself up for disappointment.

On that topic of regular vs. SF Blade, though, what does immediately disappoint me is that SF Blade has NOTHING with regular Blade. The 4 regular Deathless all had unique synergies with their regular champion counterparts that were neat bonuses (Deathless Thanos did not have a synergy with regular Thanos, but I’m willing to give them a pass on that one since he’s built to have very powerful synergies with the rest of the Deathless and regular Thanos was frankly beyond saving via synergy). SF Star-Lord didn’t have a special unique synergy with regular Star-Lord alone, but he did have a synergy with him regardless that offered him something, however small. SF Blade has zero synergy bonuses with regular Blade though, not even a generic +5% Attack boost or something, which feels like a waste. Throw those Blade loyalists a bone, it’s not gonna make him break the meta again, I promise.

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944407#Comment_2944407

Oh I gave my response to the deathless champions already. You just didn’t like it and that’s not my problem. You’re not going to turn this into a synergies debate.

Your third point ironically IS THE EXAMPLE of lacking vision. If Kabam wants to play the class specific game than what you do is update the ability around the class (which I think I already mentioned anyway) give him blanket immunities or another obvious answer would be to add a cleanse, or once again just let him regen some of the damage back. Also Blade doesn’t even purify debuffs (maybe I said that by mistake) he reduces DURATION which is his danger sense ability. And you guys can cap all you want but this isn’t just a skill based ability. The serpent for example reduces the time that bleeds tick. This is also just a repackaged version of the “Why Blade suddenly can’t reduce AAR anymore” see the real answer is “Because Kabam doesn’t like AAR reduction” but we’re all going to sit here and act like it’s a “Skill issue” while my 6 star archangel continues to collect DUST.

oh and one more thing… Blade is the first mystic champion in the game to have a torment debuff. But I guess we just don’t care because it doesn’t line up with our asinine “buT tHat’S noT hOw THe cLasS wORks” argument.

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944425#Comment_2944425

A human being with feelings while engaging in an argument online. WELL COLOR ME SHOCKED!

Also I have a question for everyone here. Why did Kabam’s first Blade SF infographic say

”This variant has easy access to Atrophy, Degen, AND a sense for danger”

🤨 Now in hindsight we all know that the Blade’s new and improved danger sense features an attack rating boost (which is lower than skill Blade. I guess attack rating is also a skill ability) Atrophy, and an additional boost to denying unlockables and true strike esc abilities. But let's be real here 😏 the average person didn’t read that headline and think that the danger sense ability would largely just be the atrophy debuff while nerfing the damage in the kit. Regardless of if you believed that he would have the regen ability (I actually didn’t) or if you thought he would have the AAR. What we don’t have to do is sit here and lie and act like I dreamed up a boogeyman version of Blade just because I actually watched the dang livestream.

hungryhungrybbq

It's a Blade thread, but I've seen several instances of DGuilly hate lol.. all good, more for me :)

Thats a pretty solid time even for the small ones haha

hungryhungrybbq

What's funny, is she's actually a short form champ imo - I use her for war attack, crazy fast with Recoil, but she surprised even me (already a fan) in the Abyss challenge.. did about 75% of the fights with her and used SH, Thanos, DKG for just a handful.. Vision for none 😅

But I think it's the same thing yeah.. on their own the usefulness will vary, but they'll (SF champs) probably make a really cool team

Capricious

https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/comment/2944422#Comment_2944422

I don’t want buffed blade actually my rank 7 4 star is doing just fine. What I want is for Kabam to actually follow through on what THEY say for once. The description was ENHANCED by Isophyne, bleed becoming degen is an enhancement the degen was advertised front and center. Atrophy and power steal are usually mystic abilities again we’re looking good, sitting pretty. Kabam reveals on the live stream HEY GUYS WE KEPT THE REGEN AND MADE IT BETTER! “OMG!!! Wow and they didn’t even show the full spotlight yet! Wow this is definitely a win!”

…And then the spotlight comes out and shockingly the only few seconds of information that was not revealed were the nerfs to the character. And btw I’ll just tack this on so that it’s not just coming across as me crying over a childhood hero. The fact that Star lord’s gun lost utility is absolutely ridiculous. I don’t want to hear that **** about “What skill champions are supposed to do” in 2026 literally while a tech champion is coming out and getting ready to wreak havoc on defense. If Kabam was going to remove these portions of the kit than they should have just said so during the livestream. They should have told us flat out “This is essentially the entite deep dive guys. There is nothing else that we added on. There will be a synergy coming out later on that you can look forward to” instead they pull the rug out at the last second.