Lost Ark Deathblade PvE Guide (Builds, Engravings, and Tips) (2024)

Deathblade Class Guide – Lost Ark

More of a Rogue than an assassin, Deathblade is a highly mobile, melee, damage dealing class that can do both consistent and burst damage.

They are unique as they are one the few classes that utilize many charge-based skills.

Their identity allows them to enter a powered-up state where they gain extra speed, damage, and reduced cooldowns before delivering a powerful strike with your Blade Surge. Depending on the build you choose, you can maintain those buffs indefinitely or sacrifice that to go all-in on your Blade Surge.

So if you’re looking for – a class that looks badass while cutting through the battlefield then Deathblade is for you.

Note that this article focuses on PvE. To learn about PVP, check out our Deathblade PVP guide by the #1 Deathblade from RU.

If you’re looking to level this class, we recommedn you to read our Deathblade leveling guide.

Comparisons to other classes

Compared to the other assassin classes, Deathblade is the only one that utilizes many charge skills. This creates a completely different feel to playing the class than something like Shadow Hunter who uses instantaneous normal skills.

Compared to Shadow Hunter, Deathblade has much more mobility to get around and dodge attacks but their skills have longer animations than Shadow Hunters.

When looking at Deathblade next to Reaper. Reaper has more mobility but Deathblade is much more forgiving due to having superior health and defense stats than Reaper.

In order to check how well Deathblade performs in current meta, please check out our PvP and PvE tier list for Lost Ark.

Class Mechanics

Deathblades identity is her Death Orb Meter. You generate Death Orb Meter by landing your abilities on enemies. There are three Death Orbs and once all of your Death Orbs are filled, you can enter Arts mode which gives many buffs like attack speed, movement speed, damage, and cooldown reduction until Arts mode runs out.

While in Arts mode, you can activate your identity again in order to use Blade Surge. Blade Surge is a single hit that does a massive amount of damage but immediately ends your Arts mode and its buffs.

PvE

Deathblades are a class that revolves around landing their skills so they can generate their Death Orbs as quickly as possible and enter Death Trance.

They are a high mobility class that utilizes charge skills to deal massive amounts of damage over time with their Remaining Energy build or massive burst with their Surge build.

PvP

Deathblade is an aggressive melee class that uses its super armor, high damage, crowd control, and mobility to overwhelm its opponents.

It’s important to be decisive with your engages when your cooldowns are up as a Deathblade because of how hard it is to contest their abilities as well as continue her combos through multiple enemies because of her push immunity.

Once you engage as a Deathblade, you can continue your combo or easily disengage with one of your many mobility skills.

It’s important to keep an eye on your cooldowns before engaging because overcommitting without the proper defensive skills to back yourself up will get you caught.

Core Abilities

Surprise Attack

Knock up and mobility skill all in one. The knock up effect is left behind after the dash and is delayed so its most useful for baiting opponents or punishing over aggression.

Upper Slash

Crowd control, damage, and push immunity skill. Can be used as part as combos as well as a counter engage to your opponent if you can predict them well enough.

Moonlight Sonic

Your main damage skill. Use as part of your combos and is extremely devastating when your opponent does not have a roll.

Maelstrom

Movement and attack speed buff that also grants you paralysis immunity. Very important buff that you should always activate before going in to engage.

Awakening Abilities

Flash Blink

Dashes through your target and does damage after a short delay. Flash Blink is your primary awakening for both Remaining Energy and Surge builds. It is a quick awakening that generates you a lot of orbs while putting you in a position for a back attack.

Blade Assault

Attacks your foe with a flurry of attacks. Blade Assault is a hold skill and requires you to stay still for a long period of time. This makes Blade Assault much harder to use than Flash Blink even though Blade Assault does a lot of damage.

Advanced Class Engravings

Every Lost Ark class has access to engravings that will focus your playstyle in one particular direction. For Deathblade you will choose between Remaining Energy and Surge.

Remaining Energy

• This is a Deatblade class engraving that allows you to keep your buff from Death Trance for 30s after you use your Blade Surge. The buff gives a bonus to attack speed, movement speed, and attack power.
• Remaining Energy is a build about consistent damage. The playstyle revolves around generating orbs to get your buff from Arts mode and then using that buff to generate more orbs and repeat the process.

Surge

• The Surge class engraving changes the way Death Blade works. Now when Deathblades can enter Death Trance even with one orb is filled.
• Additionally, you generate Surge stacks while in Death Trance. When you activate Blade Surge, you will gain back orbs depending on how many stacks you generated during Death Trance.
• Surge is a fun high risk, high reward build that is very punishing if you miss or lose your flow. However, the damage is extremely high if you can pull it off.

Build

Remaining Energy Build

• Soul Absorber
  • 3-1-2
  • Main skill to fill up your orbs so you can activate your identity as quickly as possible.
• Moonlight Sonic
  • 1-2-2
  • Great area of effect, damage, and is good at filling up orbs. One of your all around best skills so make sure to land it.
• Blitz Rush
  • 3-2-1
  • Main high damage and dps skill when you’re not in Arts mode.
• Void Strike
  • 3-1-1
  • Main orb generation skill after Soul Absorber.
• Earth Cleaver
  • 3-3-2
  • Your counter. With the right tripod set up, this skill has multiple hits that can counter making it much easier to land.
• Spin Cutter
  • 2-3-1
  • Main mobility skill that also is your party synergy skill increasing back and front attacks.
• Dark Axel
  • 1-1-2
  • Another great mobility skill that passes through bosses. This makes it much easier to set up back attacks.
• Maelstrom
  • 2-1-0
  • Great buff skill that grants attack speed and movement speed buff to yourself and party members.

Stat Priority

• Prioritize Specialization.
• Specialization should be on every accessory with Crit being your substat on your necklace.

Runes

• Wealth runes are very important on your three main orb generation skills.
• Galewind runes help smooth out your gameplay on your main dps skills.
• Rest of the rune choices are flexible.

Engravings

• Remaining Energy 3 and Super Charge 3 are core to your damage and speed at which the class plays.
• Master of Ambush 3 provides high bonus damage especially with how easy it is to line up back attacks because of Dark Axel.
• Adrenaline 1 is an efficient level 1 engraving that Deathblade has no issue maintaining.
• Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great skills once you are an advanced player and can slot them in.

Gems

• Soul Absorber, Moonlight Sonic, Blitz Rush, and Void Strike will use both damage and cooldown gems.
• The rest of your skills are utility skills that can just use cooldown gems.

Surge Build

• Soul Absorber
  • 3-1-2
  • Main skill to fill up your orbs so you can activate your identity as quickly as possible.
• Wind Cut
  • 3-3-2
  • Main skill to generate Surge stacks.
• Blitz Rush
  • 3-2-2
  • Additional DPS skill but remember most of your DPS is locked behind hitting Surge.
• Void Strike
  • 3-1-1
  • Your second main Surge stacking skill after Wind Cut.
• Earth Cleaver
  • 3-3-2
  • Your counter. With the right tripod set up, this skill has multiple hits that can counter making it much easier to land.
• Spin Cutter
  • 2-3-1
  • This skill is more used to generating Surge stacks than movement when compared to Remaining Energy.
• Dark Axel
  • 1-1-2
  • Another great mobility skill that passes through bosses. This makes it much easier to set up back attacks.
• Maelstrom
  • 2-1-0
  • Great buff skill that grants attack speed and movement speed buff to yourself and party members.

Stat Priority

• Prioritize Specialization.
• Specialization should be on every accessory with Crit being your substat on your necklace.

Runes

• Galewind Runes on your long animation skills for smoother gameplay.
• Because Surge refunds your orbs as long as you generate enough stacks, Wealth runes aren’t as important as they are for Remaining Energy build.

Engravings

• Surge 3 is required for this build.
• Adrenaline 3 and Master of Ambush 3 are great additional engravings to increase your DPS without any penalties.
• Grudge and Cursed Doll lvl 3 make great engravings once you are an advanced player and can slot them in.

Gems

• Blade Surge is your most important skill to get both cooldown and damage gems for.
• Your second most important skills to get both cooldown and damage gems are Soul Absorber, Blitz Rush, and Void Strike.
• The rest of your skills can use only cooldown gems.

Thanks for reading! For more articles and guides, check out the rest of our Lost Ark blog.