Wrathful Blades Ash | Red Crit Bladestorm + Melee Platform | One shot levelcap

by ninjase — last updated 2 months ago

Distraction and subterfuge become lethal weapons with Ash Prime. Featuring altered mod polarities for greater customization.

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ITEM RANK

60 / 60

Orokin Reactor

APPLY CONDITIONALS

ENERGY: 150
HEALTH: 555
SHIELD: 465
SPRINT SPEED: 1.2

DURATION: 100%
EFFICIENCY: 100%
RANGE: 100%
STRENGTH: 100%

ARMOR: 185
Damage Reduction: 38.1%
EFFECTIVE HIT POINTS: 1,517

Guide

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Ash Prime builds

Builds by ninjase

Wrathful Blades Ash | Red Crit Bladestorm + Melee Platform | One shot levelcap

UPDATE 2025
Bladestorm has now been completely reworked into an 'exalted' and requires mods on the [Shadow Clones] weapon, and now scales with a number of melee mods and Smoke Screens duration has been buffed. Empty arcane slot is for Arcane Crepuscular

INTRODUCTION

This is a general use/endurance levelcap build focusing on using both Bladestorm and melee weapons. Wrathful Advance gives flat critical chance boost to Bladestorm and Melee Weapons. For example at 388% final strength this gives a 388% flat cc boost to Bladestorm which sets its final critical chance to 399%, nearly guaranteed tier 4 red crits. This allows Bladestorm to deal between 20 to 30 million damage per initial hit WITHOUT any priming which means you can ONE-SHOT every single non-boss attenuated enemy in the game up to levelcap. The strongest enemies in the game are Drekar Manic Bombard which has a health of 30 million while levelcap Thrax have 25.5 million EHP. For day to day use in base steel path up to EDA/ETA, where the maximum HP reaches only about 10 million this is obviously overkill so you can reduce the strength a bit.

BUILD VARIANT 1 GENERAL
The first build as shown above is the general day to day build where at max combo and wrathful active you will be dealing approximately 10 million true damage without much build-up which is enough to one-shot pretty much every enemy encountered below level 500 without priming. I opt to run the new reworked teleport augment [Teleport Rush] to mix up gameplay a bit, get some finishers and [Extend] invisibility and also gain 30% parkour buff, but this is completely optional and you could run [Rolling Guard], [Augur Message] or [Augur Secrets] instead.

BUILD VARIANT 2 ONE-SHOT LEVELCAP
This variant is an extreme overkill Endurance variant that has been min-maxed with strength to allow Bladestorm to ONE-SHOT levelcap enemies WITHOUT priming (including Thrax), and also with maximum priming on an unarmored enemy will allow you to hit over 800 million final damage ,which means you should be able to one-shot a demolyst too with priming.

BLADESTORM BUILD
This is the highest possible dps for general use across all factions and will be able to one-shot every faction to levelcap including Thrax without priming. To maximise DPS against armored grineer, swap [Primed Fever Strike] for [Primed Smite Grineer] since elementals are affected by armor. To simply achieve the highest number possible, swap [Berserker Fury] for Primed Smite, Crescendo for Melee Exposure and use an encumber primer + armor strip.

Bladestorm Spreadsheet Calculator: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Y5KZzZPAQQSu1bIsZvgYq5vvN6ExxaELE8BciEDEFJM/edit?gid=1211136520#gid=1211136520

ALTERNATE BUILDS

Beginner's Non-helminth: https://overframe.gg/build/268417/
Savage Silence Bladestorm variant: https://overframe.gg/build/815642/
Pure Gun Platform (Eclipse/Roar/Xata's): https://overframe.gg/build/243714/
Marked for Death Fatal Teleport Nuke: https://overframe.gg/build/250058/
Hybrid Roar-based Bladestorm: https://overframe.gg/build/279313/

PLAYSTYLE

Tap 1 to activate Wrathful Advance and keep active. Can also use this for mobility if you prefer.
Cast 2 to go invisible and recast as necessary
Cast 3 if augment is equipped to finisher enemies and refresh invisibility duration without it running out. If you cast 3 while Bladestorm is active you will join in and make it finish faster.
OPTIONAL: Prime enemies with multiple statuses and viral status to maximise bladestorm damage (can be manually or via companion e.g. Dirgia, Hound, Panzer)
Tap 4, move your cursor around to select enemies (they will glow), then tap 4 again to initiate bladestorm which will send clones to stab them.
Help kills with melee or guns

Video of OLD 2024 Bladestorm in Levelcap:

Video of OLD 2023 Bladestorm:

BUILD SPECIFICS

Duration
High duration helps the uptime of smokescreen and wrathful advance so you don't have to recast as often. You can add more duration in if you prefer (e.g. [Primed Continuity], Archon Shards).

Efficiency
Negative efficiency can be sustainable now because Smokescreen now lasts much longer and can even be renewed by casting 3 (which costs 39 energy at 45% efficiency), while Bladestorm costs 9.3 energy per mark while invisible and is a guaranteed one-shot. With 500 energy you could mark approximately 53 enemies before running draining the whole energy bar which is more enemies than can usually spawn in a room.

You will want to have some source of energy production to help with sustain:
1. [Equilibrium]: This converts health orbs (50 health) into energy (55 energy per orb). Every Eximius kill guarantees 2 health orb drops which equates to 110 energy. Diriga/Hound/Panzer with [Synth Deconstruct] can passively prime enemies and make 25% of kills drop health orbs. This means if you mark 20 companion primed enemies and spend 192 energy total to kill them, you will get on average 5 health orbs back which equates to 275 energy. If two of those 20 enemies contains an eximus you will refund a total of 495 energy which is over double what you spent.
2. Grimoire with Xata Invocation: Can give passive energy regen up to 10 energy / second
3. [Energy Nexus]: for missions with sparse enemies or long periods of downtime in between engaging enemies, you could consider running Energy Nexus instead of or in addition to Equilibrium for passive 3 energy/second.
4. Archon Stretch: Diriga with Arc Coil or Hounds with electric modded can proc this for free passive 2 energy/second
5. Zenurik: Wellspring can give 5 energy/second [Regen]

Range
Bladestorm has a very high base range of 50m which is enough to cover a very large room. You will most likely not need over 70 to 100 range in most tilesets. If you want to Bladestorm in openworld then you may want to increase range to over 200% by adding [Overextended] and dropping [Narrow Minded] for [Primed Continuity].

Strength
Strength is needed for Bladestorm damage and the crit chance boost from Wrathful advance

Flexible Options

[Brief Respite] is optional over Steel Charge, helps with more shield gating to help with break through damage. Use your shuriken for on demand shield regen.
[Rolling Guard] is completely optional for most content considering you will spend nearly 100% of your time invisible, however it is still very good to get rid of sudden random cold, toxin, electric or slash procs from AOE or the environment. This becomes more important in high level endurance, although can be replaced entirely by just using Vazarin Protectice Sling.
Seeking Shuriken is optional to bring to boss fights, sister fights, cascade and disruption mode for the armor strip.
Primed Sure footed is optional. Can use handspring, vigilante pursuit, power drift, particularly if you run Unairu Poise.

Arcanes

Arcane Crepuscular: while invisible adds 30% strength and flat +3 CD which boosts all weapons and is a huge buff to Bladestorm (which has a low base crit dmg)
Molt Augmented : boosts strength by 60% after 250 kills, which increases bladestorm damage further and boosts wrathful advance
Arcane Trickery: While it has a low chance of 15% and only activates on kill (and not bleed DoT), at the rate at which this build one-shots enemies, you'll find that Trickery is consistently activating every 10-20 kills, or roughly every 5-10 seconds. This provides pretty much permanent invisibility which can NOT be dispelled by nullifiers or acolytes, unlike smoke screen. If for some reason you don't have trickery active, use smokescreen as a buffer. If you want to go this route you could drop duration a bit e.g. change Narrow Minded and Stretch for Primed Continuity + Streamline
Arcane [Fury] and Blade Charger both significantly increase bladestorm damage. Use Fury on a melee focused ash loadout and Arcane Blade Charger if you plan on using your primary weapon more.
Molt Efficiency gives more duration
Arcane Energize is great for energy [Regen] since silence costs nearly 100 energy and spamming bladestorm can wear out energy quite fast. Emergence Dissipate may be able to replace this depending on what happens with it.

Focus
Madurai gives free 40% ability strength and 50% cast speed, and is meta for Cascade
Naramon can be useful for maintaining bladestorm combo without Melee Crescendo
Zenurik would be the go to more energy economy and slow blast (for disruption)
Unairu gives free knockdown resistance and full shield/armor strip.
Vazarin is best for endurance runs where you might need more consistent i-frames (e.g. energy drain conduit and enemy toxin weapons disruption).

Archon Shards

Azure Energy Max : At least ONE TAUFORGED shard is needed to hit 500 energy max for doulbing Violet Melee Crit damage bonus. You can add more if you prefer more max energy.
Violet Melee Crit Damage shard: Boosts both Bladestorm and your melee weapon further, you could add between 2 to 4 of these up to preference ( I prefer 2)
Flexibe e.g. Crimson Duration : Put the remainder of free shard slots into duration as this improves uptime of both Wrathful Advance and Smokescreen, up to preference (I prefer 2), or into strength, parkour velocity etc

WEAPONS

Passive and Finisher Melees
The weapon classes that deal the highest finisher damage includes Hammers and Rapiers (32x back finisher multiplier) followed by Scythes (x14 multi).

Fragor Prime: https://overframe.gg/build/342417/

Weapons with useful passives are mostly mobility boosting weapons:

Praedos: 20% sprint, 20% slide, 30% parkour velocity
Ruvox: up to 60% movement speed, extra mid air jump
Okina Prime: 20% sprint, 20% parkour, 30% movement speed
Anku: 20% sprint, 20% parkour, 20% movement speed
Innodem: 30% sprint, 10% movement speed, 60% finisher damage, 20 combo on finisher, stun enemies in 10m on finisher: https://overframe.gg/build/382516/

Slash Based Melees
Slash based heavy attack melees have forced slash on heavy to take advantage of [Ash]'s passive, and teleport finishers can help stack crescendo to make permanent x12 heavies e.g. Sepfahn or Glaive Prime and doing x12 heavy attacks.

Glaive Prime x12 heavy explosion spam: https://overframe.gg/build/616095/
Syam x12 heavy waves spam: https://overframe.gg/build/728725/
Corufell x12 heavy spam wave (uses same build as syam): https://overframe.gg/build/728725/
Qaussus x12 heavy feathers spam: https://overframe.gg/build/494400/

Sepfahn x12 heavy build for disruption: https://overframe.gg/build/294520/sepfahn/sepfahn-red-crit-x12-heavy-attack-one-shot-steel-path/
Praedos x12 heavy (Use Melee Crescendo and add reflex coil): https://overframe.gg/build/315105/
Innodem x12 heavy: https://overframe.gg/build/328180/innodem/the-finishing-touch-finisher-based-hybrid-combo-x12-heavy/

Primer
A primer is OPTIONAL to maximise damage, by applying status effects to boost [Condition Overload], applying viral procs to boost health damage, or applying corrosive procs to strip armor (effective for the elemental component of damage). This can be either via a dedicated AOE primer weapon or a companion e.g. Diriga, Panzer, Hound, but your companion should ideally be able to use Tenacious Bond too.
Diriga: https://overframe.gg/build/541464/
Panzer: https://overframe.gg/build/220091/
Hound: https://overframe.gg/build/540825/

Cedo Primer: https://overframe.gg/build/320186/
Kuva Nukor Primer: https://overframe.gg/build/235421/kuva-nukor/kuva-nukor-primer/
Epitaph Primer: https://overframe.gg/build/235422/epitaph/epitaph-primer/