In this Lost Ark build guide, I want to introduce one of these classes: Deathblade. Deathblade has two viable raid builds, centered around each of their Classes Engravings, Remaining Energy and Surge. This guide will focus on the Surge Deathblade.

Gameplay

Deathblade has an Identity Gauge called Death Orb Meter, which can be recharged by using any skill.

It divided your meter into 3 Death Orbs. As long as 1 Death Orbs is filled, you can enter Death Trance state. This immediately reduces the cooldown of all skills and grants you a new big damage skill, Surge skill. Once used, Death Trance state ends.

Typically, Deathblade gameplay focuses on getting Death Orb Meter as quickly as possible, unleashing Surge ability, and then repeating the same process again.

But Surge Zero changes everything. Surge Zero replaces Surge skill, providing a steady damage boost and introducing buff stacking buffs during Death Trance. These stacks will allow Deathblade to restore Death Orbs once Surge Zero is used.

Because you can reacquire Death Orbs, your gameplay mainly revolves around stacking buffs on your multi-attack skills before unleashing Surge Zero for maximum nuke. With instant Death Orbs regeneration, your skills continue to have low cooldowns. This helps buff stacking loops, allowing you to use Surge Zero again relatively quickly.

But regardless of Class Engraving, Deathblade relies heavily on your powerful hitting skills like Soul Absorber, Blitz Rush and Surge Zero. This means that you need to invest more Lost Ark Gold to improve your strike skills to ensure the stable damage of Deathblade.

It’s extremely painful when a Deathblade misses their big Death Orb Meter buff skill or Surge stack generator. Because your abilities take longer to regenerate, your damage cycle will slow down, which will cause your overall damage uptime to be significantly reduced.

Raid Skill

Wind Cut and Spincutter are Surge’s primary stack builders as they are multi-attack skills.

Soul Absorber and Void Strike are the two highest Death Orb Meter generators that deal high damage to enemies. And Blitz Rush is another high damage skill.

Earth Cleaver is your counter skill. It can also be used to generate several Surge stacks.

Dark Axel is a great repositioning tool, as High Axel allows you to jump over bosses to counterattack.

Maelstrom will buff Death Orb Meter for a short time and provide attack speed buffs to party members.

Finally, Flash Blink is more practical than Blade Assault. It generates a decent amount of Death Orb Meters and has much faster animation times. Flash Blink also allows you to gradually switch bosses for repositioning.

It’s important to note that Dark Charge and Charge Enhancement Skill Tree nodes in Blitz are interchangeable depending on your preference. Dark Charge gives you two additional Surge stacks, while Charge Enhancement slightly increases the damage output of the skill.

Skill Rotation

At the beginning of the battle, you will start by spawning 3 Death Orbs. This will start your entire skill rotation. After that, you’d better focus on accumulating 20 buff stacks during Death Trance before using Surge Zero. Each stack increases Surge Zero damage exponentially.

It’s important to note that skills with a 0.4 second cooldown accumulate stacks with each hit, so use Wind Cut and Spincutter often.

If you don’t have high enough Specialization stats to fill your Death Orb Meter. Then you can also maximize your meter by adding skills like Soul Absorber and Blitz Rush until you can.

Use Surge Zero at 20 stacks of Surge to regain 3 Death Orbs. This is your hardest hitting skill, so be sure to counterattack. Just use it preemptively so it starts stacking up when Death Trance is activated.

Surge Zero serves as your major source of damage output, so make sure you counterattack with it to gain +10% Crit Rate, Open Weakness and Master of Ambush.

If you have to release Surge Zero early due to boss mechanics or difficult situations, then level 17 is your best “save point.” Because it refunds 2 Death Orbs, making it easier to spawn only 1 Death Orb with Void Strike when you have high Specialization stats.

Ideally, you can always hit Surge Zero with a 20 stack. But if you have a free counter, it’s recommended that you unleash it with 17 stacks and then miss the window.

Stats Priority

Surge Deathblades gives priority to high Specialization and Crit of necklaces and bracelets. Surge Zero’s damage changes with Specialization. It also increases the cooldown reduction effect of Death Trance and increases the generation of the skill’s Death Orb Meter.

Depending on rolls, Bracelet can provide beneficial effects to yourself or your teammates. However, it is important to note that Bracelet should not be your priority for optimization, as it will be more effective to optimize other gear first. And if your Lost Ark Gold budget is not sufficient, optimizing Bracelet first will put a lot of burden on you. So slowly build up a main stat and a sub-stat, and everything else is extra!

Engravings

Class Engraving gives Surge Deathblade a powerful advantage that can change the play style significantly. Battle Engravings are used to increase damage. Here I will discuss some recommended Engravings for this build.

First off, Surge is the core of this build, maxing it out increases the damage of your Surge ability, up to 20 stacks.

Next, Master of Ambush synergies with Deathblades as it can counterattack with Spincutter’s Open Weakness debuff.

Adrenaline provides an easy source of critical hit chance for Deathblades, as their abilities have low cooldowns to maintain buffs.

If you want to get up to 58% critical hit chance, Keen Blunt Weapon is a good choice at the end of the game. Because its effect is almost the same as Cursed Doll, but the upper and lower damage limits are higher.

Cursed Doll can easily increase the attack power of a build, but at the cost of a 25% healing penalty. But the healing penalty is only a punishment for players who are inexperienced and unfamiliar with boss mechanics.

Grudge increases the damage you deal to enemies, while also increasing the damage you take. This Engraving is an efficient way to increase damage without specific positioning and is worth the penalty.

Summary

Activate Death Trance immediately when Wind Cut activates, as 2-4 layers can be stacked from the start. But remember not to overlap skills too quickly, as there is a 0.4 second cooldown between stack generation.

Finally, Surge Zero is your hardest ability to hit, so be sure to use it to counterattack and don’t miss it! Hope you have a great day!