ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

I have just read that very knowledgeable players think that Arcane Blade is a very strong champ. Can someone explain the logic behind it? How do you survive with it on insane? Doesn't it lack defensive abilities and mobility and is just a glass-cannon? What am I missing?

I am not expecting any long answer. Just 2-3 sentences how this champ actually survives.

i am not an elite player, but i can say, AB hits like a truck, when RNG is favorable.
2 source of guaranteed on hit, and 2 sources of very powerful chance on hits.

as for survivability, if AM has the aegis tree, which can be very powerful when combined with the light tree off an escort.
then add vitality talent from another escort, and you heal quite fast, with a lot of shields.

other than that, you have conveyance tree, with targeted teleport (lvl4 phasedoor), the earth tree, with unbreakable cover/obstacle, moodslide, which pushes some of the enemies away for whatever reason.

and then there is the good old rush.

The defense comes from damage shields (Spell/Aegis plus Celestial/Light from an escort) and teleports. The goal is to kill things before they have a chance to break through your damage shield, and teleport away if you can't finish the fight before then. Healing during a fight will also create a damage shield once you've invested in the Aegis talents.

It's not an easy class to play effectively though, especially during the early game.

arcane blade is getting nerfed into uselessness next patch so anything said now won't apply in 1.5

e: well bathe in light is still around but their damage is halved now, which sucks

thanks for all the responses. I probably still need to learn a lot, because aegis alone doesn't really cut it for me to keep me alive.

the trick with aegis is that all the skills in there synergise with each other really well. Arcane Reconstruction can critical, and benefits from heal mod+, so if you have high crit mult/healmod then that will fully heal you, and then the 3rd skill will give you a massive damage shield further strengthened by 2nd and 4th. and then bathe in light can also crit and extend your shield for even longer, which basically makes you invincible on any difficulty below madness

ster wrote:bathe in light can also crit and extend your shield for even longer, which basically makes you invincible on any difficulty below madness

This is exactly the sort of hyperbole that leads to questions like the OP had.

tabs wrote:

ster wrote:bathe in light can also crit and extend your shield for even longer, which basically makes you invincible on any difficulty below madness

This is exactly the sort of hyperbole that leads to questions like the OP had.

That is not hyperbole. The maximum burst damage you can really take in insane is about 2k barring really awful high peak situations, and AB gets about 10k shielding from reconstruction aegis BiL.