Praxic Blade BuddiesChecked — links and guide are done

Use this for 99% of the content in the game. You can solo pretty much the hardest thing in it without much trouble, up to and including a solo Ultimate Conquest Lightblade.

It’s the same two buddies as Getaway Artist, except you’re swinging a lightsaber instead of shooting. The difference that matters is the armor.

It also plays a lot less into Strand than the other Getaway Artist builds do. There’s no Strand gun and no Unraveling Orbs here.

How it plays

Eat your grenade for the Arc Soul, Rift for Hellion, then just start swinging.

Combat Meditation is why that holds up. Every sword hit hands back grenade and class energy, and those are the two abilities doing your damage.

The Arc Soul jolts under Facet of Dominance, so everything near you ends up Arc debuffed. Killing those gives you Bolt Charge through Dielectric, Flashover amplifies you once it maxes, and Defibrillating Blast gives you max stacks for stunning a Champion.

Your Strand all comes off Arcane Needle. Needle severs, To Shreds unravels whatever you keep hitting and drops Woven Mail when a severed target dies, and Horde Shuttle spawns Threadlings off the unravelled ones. Photonic Flare then blinds off Arc kills on severed targets, which your sword is doing anyway.

Staying alive is Healing Rift, Devour, Restoration off Facet of Purpose under Song of Flame, and the Woven Mail. Being amplified helps too, and Flashover is what hands it to you. Facet of Protection sits on top of all that and it’s basically always on.

Why the gear

Praxic Blade — Kinetic slot, and two things read it there. Wrecker only pays out on Kinetic damage, and Elemental Siphon only counts Kinetic final blows.

Getaway Artist — hold the grenade, don’t throw it. The Arc Soul is your damage floor and it’s also what applies the jolt that starts the Bolt Charge loop.

Techsec two-piece — Wrecker, a big increase to Kinetic damage against shields, overshields and constructs.

Sage Protector two-piece — Combat Meditation, sword hits return grenade and class energy. The four-piece adds Blade Focus and pays more, but you’d drop Techsec for it, and Wrecker is worth more here imo.

Artifact — Tablet of Ruin. Same one as Getaway Artist Buddies, set up almost the opposite way: no Unraveling Orbs, no Vile Weave, nothing that needs a Strand gun.

Encrypted Data Disk — the alternative, and a different Episode’s Artifact, so you run one or the other and give up the whole Bolt Charge and Strand chain for it. Kinetic Synthesis feeds the sword ammo bricks off its own damage, and Sword Storm Combo summons penumbral blades off three light attacks into a heavy. Riposte makes guarding stun Unstoppables, and Press The Advantage adds the guard resistance to do it with. Armorsmith turns a broken shield into damage resistance, Blinding Jolts blinds off final blows on targets your Arc Soul jolted, and Sniper’s Meditation stacks damage on the A499.

Sublimation and the Refurbished A499 — flexible. Nothing in the build reads either slot, though Sniper’s Meditation reads the A499 if you take the Encrypted Data Disk set.

The spread

200 Grenade. Both buddies scale off it, there are four Grenade Mods and a Minor fitted for it, and Combat Meditation hands the stat back to you every swing.

Class, higher than you’d normally put it on a sword build. Healing Rift is your Hellion button, your Powerful Attraction trigger and your heal, all on one cooldown.

Super after that, topped up by two Dynamo mods off the Rift. Health is the dump stat and the tunings say so outright, three separate pieces trade it away.