Marvel RivalsMarvel Rivals Blade Character Guide

Blade, a human-vampire hybrid who dedicated his life to ridding the world of vampires. Often referred to as the "Daywalker," Eric Brooks combines his supernatural powers and senses with a mastery of martial arts.

He's a hybrid Duelist who can frontline, flank, poke, and melee. Applying anti-heal, or more specifically, healing reduction, is the core of his kit. With two dash charges, he can inflict 7 straight seconds of reduced healing. That's pretty much a guaranteed kill on even the highest HP Vanguards.

Depending on your preference, he can be played with his team as a pseudo tank, or on coordinated dive attacks with an ally, where he initiates with anti-heal and slow debuff.

Find out where Blade ranks in our Marvel Rivals tier list.

TLDR

As

• Watch for enemy players to walk into your team and counter their enemy approach with Daywalker Dash by inflicting healing reduction and slow.
• Go on flanks and look for 1v1 opportunities. Blade's lifesteal and sword combos give him the upper hand in duels.
• Combo your ult with an ally's CC ult or ability, such as Emma Frost's ultimate. When the enemy can't escape, you are safe to fully charge your ult and inflict max damage.

Against

• Disengage when anti-healed. Position near cover or allies with damage mitigation abilities who can keep you alive.
• Stay out of Dash range. His dash goes deceptively far (15m) and is his most powerful tool.
• Keep the fight in groups. Blade wants to get you in a 1v1 where he has the advantage. He is easiest to kill in grouped up team-fights because of his low sustain.

Strengths

Burst Damage

Shotgun (crit), Dash, body shot will KO 275HP heroes. At mid range, headshots two-taps 300HP heroes, and his ult deals a massive 550 damage in just 2 seconds. The damage, combined with healing reduction, even allows Blade to kill through many defensive ultimates.

Healing Reduction

Blade gets two charges of Daywalker Dash, and his ultimate also inflicts the anti-healing effect. Between the three abilities, he can chain together 11 seconds of healing reduction. Proper use and timing of his healing reduction debuff will be vital to your success as a Blade player.

Versatile Kit

Few heroes can claim to match Balde when it comes to both melee and poke lethality. He has a large health pool and, with lifesteal, can brawl on the frontlines. Against melee enemies, he can easily outrange them, and against poke enemies, he can counter them by diving.

Weaknesses

Low Survivability

Anytime you pop Bloodline Awakening, you receive 40% reduced healing in exchange for 36% life steal. In a 1v1 melee range, you won't be dealing damage and won't be generating lifesteal. Meanwhile, you are in a state of healing reduction, so your Strategists won't be able to keep you alive.

Limited Optimal Shotgun range

Too close, and the projectiles don't explode. Too far, and the fall of damage becomes severe, plus travel time makes aiming less consistent. Blade needs to constantly monitor his distance to his target. Too far, can't hit them with the anti-heal dash, but after dashing, you're too close to get max damage with the shotgun.

Long Ult Start Up

Blade can be stunned out of his ult while channeling. During the startup animation, enemies can also use escape abilities to dodge your dash after healing his voiceline activation. While he can activate his ult immediately, the distance of the dash and AoE of the slashes is more than doubled after charging.

Primary Fire: Ancestral Sword

Tips for Ancestral Sword

Combo with Dash and Awakening

• On its own, Ancestral Sword is not very threatening. But when combined with Dash and Bloodline Awakening, the damage over time greatly increases because of the stacked attack speed buffs.

When to Sword

• Anytime you are in melee range, you should be using the sword, and any time you are outside of melee range, you should be using the Shotgun.
• Sounds like obvious advice, but consider the Shotgun deals reduced damage at melee range (see below), and that players often tunnel on planning to dash in with sword when they could be firing Shotgun in the meantime.

Alternate Primary Fire: Hunter's Shotgun

Tips for Hunter's Shotgun

Use outside of 8 meters

• At less than 8 meters, Blade's Shotgun slugs will not explode and deal less than half damage.

Poke Pressure and combo starter

• Shotgun is great for spamming at range to deal damage and build ult charge.
• Always start a combo with one shot, Dash in, then swap to the sword to finish off the target.

Secondary Fire: Scarlet Shroud

Tips for Scarlet Shroud

Become Unstoppable

• During the first few frames, Scarlet Shroud blocks all stuns such as Freeze, Strange's Ult, and Phoenix Stun, and Emma Frost Grab.
• The window is tight, but with a bit of practice, you can reliably counter stuns on reaction.

Significant Damage reduction

• Blade can use Shroud to survive direct hits from both Iron Man and Scarlet Witch Ults.
• Being resourced-based with a short 3-second cooldown means Blade is very good at surviving against any burst damage ability.

[SHIFT]: Daywalker Dash (Gun)

Tips for Daywalker Dash (Gun)

Focus Vanguards

• Boop enemy Vanguards into your team, (anti), then when it ends, use the 2nd Dash to CC them in again. Zero chance they survive 7 seconds of CC and healing reduction.

Bait and Punish

• Daywalker Dash is best used against enemies who are already walking into your team's territory. Wait for a dive, or for the enemy Vanguard to push forward, then punish their approach with movement and healing debuffs.

[SHIFT]: Daywalker Dash (Sword)

Tips for Daywalker Dash (Gun)

Tips for Daywalker Dash (Sword)

Pair with Bloodline Awakening

• Think of Daywalker Dash into melee like Wolverine's Vicious and Berserk Claw, with Phoenix Team-Up. Use it to hard engage and minimize your risk of dying.

Target Shield Tanks

• Go after shield Tanks since they can't block melee. Watch out for Emma's Diamond Form, but after she's used it, go feast on her blood. Both the slow and anti are great counters because Emma players often overextend during Diamond and can be caught out after the ability ends.

Decent damage over time

• The damage per second is not very high, so it's more for pressure and coordinated attacks with allies.
• You don't always need to get the kill; just staying on your target will force their retreat.

[E]: Bloodline Awakening

Tips for Bloodline Awakening

Keep your sword out

• Sword primary fire greatly benefits from the attack speed buffs, which stack up to a 100% bonus.

Increase your uptime

• Instead of waiting for ally healing while mashing, "need healing," take full advantage of Blade's ability to heal himself and stay in the fight for longer.

Save for hard engages

• If you are not fully, 100% committing to the fight, don't use Bloodline Awakening. Hold onto it until you are in position and there is a clear enemy target who can't easily escape your attack.

Ultimate [Q]: Thousand-Fold Slash

Tips for Thousand-Fold Slash

Counters defensive healing ults

• Confirmed to kill through Rocket and Invisible Woman's ult by himself. For other defensive ults, you'll likely need another teammate to help with damage.
• • Even Ultron can be killed during his ult in the air if you use the Ult to dash into Ultron, then SHIFT to dash back and finish him off.
  • Mantis ult can survive Blade, because the Bonus Health is too rapid. Also, she can sleep him while channeling or during his follow-up attacks.

Pair with Bloodline Awakening

• When used during Bloodline Awakening, all damage done from your ult converts into 36% lifesteal. When hitting 2 enemies, Blade lifesteals healing faster than even Luna's ult can heal.

Don't get countered

• Blade can be stunned out of his ult while channeling.
• During the startup animation, enemies can use escape abilities to dodge your dash.

Team-up Ability [Passive]: New Moon

Tips for New Moon

Enemies can see the AoE shroud

• They can’t See Blade, but it's not like Psylocke, where they have no idea where you are standing. The Dark Realm's AoE is like a big beacon saying, “Blade is in here.”
• Good against hitscans because exact targeting and tracking are difficult for the enemy. AoE and splash damage are still easy for the enemy to land on Blade in the Dark Realm.

Best used Defensively

• When a fight has broken out into a scramble, Lunar Force will greatly reduce the amount of damage you take as enemies won’t be able to directly target you.
• Use against enemy flankers to start healing yourself, and to buy time for your team to assist.

Swift Strike Targeting

• Targeting distance is very short. Only expect to take advantage of it when using New Moon in close range combat.

Team Comp Synergies

Example of a team comp built around Blade

• Vanguards: Groot, Emma Frost
• Duelists: Blade
• Strategists: Luna Snow, Mantis, Adam Warlock

Hero Synergies

Vanguard: Groot

Anytime Blade can use Daywalker Dash and Groot can Wall off the same enemy, your team should get the kill. Healing reduction combined with breaking the enemy LoS is an extremely consistent method of securing an early pick.

Blade is also quite tanky, so he can position up next to Groot without fear of an instant death. He can also dash over Groot walls if he gets cut off, so they aren't a hindrance to him.

We mentioned on of Blade's weaknesses is that prepared enemies can escape his ult. Imprison the enemy team in Groot's ult, and slice through them all. The combo will deal over 600 damage and healing reduction. Even with a Strategist ult, most enemies won't be able to survive.

Strategists: Mantis

During Blade's most crucial moments, he can barely be healed and instead has lifesteal to sustain him. Because of this, Mantis is the most consistent Strategist to pair with the human-vampire. Throw 16 seconds of damage Boost on Blade, and watch him slice through the frontline, or flank around the side to delete enemy backlines.

Anytime Blade inflicts healing reduction, Mantis' own damage is great for following up and securing the elim. Also, Mantis' Team-Up with Groot pairs perfectly with Blade to give the stacked up frontline additional healing.