Welcome to Marvel’s Midnight Suns best blade guide. In this guide you will find the best cards of the Blade, the best decks and how to play. If you want to be a blader in Marvel’s Midnight Suns, our guide is waiting for you.
Many of the effects in Midnight Suns calculate damage as a percentage of a hero’s Offence stat, commonly 50% or 100%. As a shorthand, I will write this as [X%]. Note that all modifiers to this stat apply, such as from Strengthened or mission cards.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Best Blade Builds & Cards
My analysis of each character follows. I have applied the following template to each:
Name: The character’s name. If you needed me to explain this to you, you may be beyond help as far as the guide goes.
TL;DR: A simple summary of the hero’s effectiveness. For those of you who don’t want to read my endless text, and yet are still willing to take my word as gold for some reason.
Passive: The hero’s passive effect. Note that I’ll only be including the max friendship effect, as I have been reliably informed that friendship is magic.
Combo: The character’s effect when they lead a combo.
Cards: The character’s cards listed in order Attacks-Skills-Heroics, then in alphabetical order. Note that every character bar Hunter has ten cards total – four common cards available from the start, three rares, two epics, and one legendary unlockable through their challenge once they hit max friendship. I will only be running analysis of the upgraded version of each card, because really, who cares what the un-upgraded version does? Note that I have described the card in each entry – this isn’t because I assume people can’t read cards, but rather because damage is usually based on a hero’s Offence stat, so their actual damage isn’t necessarily obvious from a screenshot.
Recommended Builds: The set of cards I recommend you run as standard in a character’s deck. If you really want to be sweaty about it you can tailor each character’s deck for each mission – drafting in Stun effects for missions you need to bypass Protect and so on – but realistically this is far from necessary. Most characters have clear winners and losers as far as cards go, and the game really isn’t hard enough to need this amount of min/maxing. That said, if it makes you feel good, go for it.
Where appropriate I’ve provided multiple sets of options for heroes (because I’m nice like that), but this isn’t possible for every hero, either because they’re very one-dimensional in what they do or just because a lot of their cards are kinda bad. For heroes with only one build listed, their alternate build should be considered to be the ‘Hardcore’ build. This entails opening the deck-builder, closing your eyes, and clicking cards at random while screaming at the top of your lungs.
Blade
Slashes people with a sword, shoots them with guns, stabs them with stakes, his name is BLADE… and yet he only has a chance to cause Bleed. And only if he likes you. This threatens my suspension of disbelief far more than the game being about superhumans fighting demons.
Marvel’s Midnight Suns Blade Guide
TL;DR – Quite possibly the single worst hero in the game. His cards mostly revolve around the Bleed status, which is unfortunate because that status is garbage. On the bright side, though, he does look pretty cool.
Passive – 25% chance of causing 1 Bleed when damaging enemies. This could be 100% and he would still be garbage. Not only is Bleed delayed damage when you want to kill things before they rip your face off, it’s also pretty lackluster numbers-wise. Treat this as a chance to trigger his cards’ secondary effects instead.
Combo – Deals [50%] bonus damage to Bleeding targets. Considering the base damage of Combo cards, adding two sets of [50%] really isn’t much, let alone with the qualifier that it has to be bleeding too. Really not great.
Blade Cards
Deals [50%] damage, with a [100%] bonus if the target has Bleed.
Overall one of the weakest Quick attacks in the game (although still better than Captain America’s) – a target will only have Bleed if you already burned a card play giving it Bleed, making the Quick effect less beneficial. Nonetheless, at the end of the day it’s still Quick, so it’s still a useful card for cleaning up minions and generating Heroism. The winner of 2022’s coveted ‘Most Obviously Lethal “Non-Lethal” Move In A Video Game’ award.
Deals [50%] damage, deals all Bleed damage on the target immediately, and gains Strengthened on kill.
Like several of Blade’s other cards, this could actually be really strong if the game worked differently – it overcomes the main weakness of Bleed, being its delay, while also giving a source of Strengthened. Unfortunately that still means you’re spending two card plays – once to apply Bleed, once to consume it – and that assumes you don’t need to play a support card to guarantee the Bleed, too. If you can get a Quick mod on this it’s actually pretty great, but otherwise don’t bother with it.
Deals [100%] damage, plus an additional [150%] if the target took damage this turn.
Unlike Blade’s other cards, this one is really quite good. The damage numbers on it are substantial, albeit contingent on the target already taking damage – quite achievable without card plays via Environmental attacks, AoE, or a good old fashioned shove – and there’s no around with unimpressive status effects. If you’re trying to make Blade into an actual carry you’ll want to take Reaper, but if you’re living in the real world run this so he might be able to kill something on occasion.
Deals [50%] damage with Chain 3.
Like most Chain cards, this just kinda sucks. Freedom to target multiple enemies or a single target is nice in theory, but not when you’re limited to 150% Offence as damage with no additional effects – Relentless will outperform this in virtually every situation, with Strike only ever becoming good if you’ve removed all your Quick cards from your deck for some reason. The main reason you’d run this is in combination with Make ‘Em Bleed to apply Bleed to multiple enemies, thus getting the Glaive damage boost – in other words, to burn three card plays on killing a handful of enemies. There are better ways to do this.
Draw 2 Blade cards, and give the next 3 Blade cards played a guaranteed Bleed effect.
Meh. Guaranteed Bleed is nice for activating Blade’s other effects, but usually not worth burning a card play for; the main reason you’ll want to play this is to draw Quick Strike for cleaning up minions. The worst part is that because it draws cards you can’t even hope for a Free modifier to make it usable. Poor Blade.
Every enemy with Bleed gains 2 Marked and restores [100%] health to Blade.
Once again, in another world this could be a fantastic card. Marked is a really useful status effect, and the built-in heal could also be nice for topping up. Unfortunately, once again, there just aren’t enough ways of reliably applying Bleed without burning through card plays – you’re looking at spending one on Make ‘Em Bleed, one on your Bleed applicator of choice, and then hoping Marked lets you clean up everything else on the map. Plus both utility cards become useless unless you have both available to you. Once again, worth using if you’re struggling to make Blade into a strong hero, avoid otherwise.
Deals [50%] damage with Chain 4, drawing a card for each kill.
Great. One more swing than Strike, and instead of generating Heroism it costs an absurd 3. Whoopee.
In all seriousness though, this isn’t too bad of a card if you can manage to trigger it without spending a card play – say, via The Hunger – and there’s plenty of minions around. Unfortunately those circumstances are extremely rare, and any kind of card play cost makes this kind of Heroism expenditure laughable. Hard pass.
Deals [200%] damage to all enemies in an area and applies Bleed. If any of the targets already had Bleed, deals an additional [200%].
At least Blade’s Legendary is pretty good. The AoE size is nothing to write home about, but 200% Offence in an area is nothing to be sniffed at, and it also has guaranteed Bleed to ensure that anything left alive can be cleaned up with his other abilities. It’s generally not worth trying to manipulate events to get the bonus damage – this card is better suited to being a Bleed applicator than Bleed beneficiary – but if you happen to have already set up a The Hunger group this is a pretty fantastic follow-up. If this wasn’t Legendary and didn’t Exhaust, Blade might actually be playable.
Deals [250%] damage, with an additional [200%] if the target has Block.
The damage numbers on Savage are actually pretty high, making it situationally very useful – 450% offence is a pretty damn big hit (unless your name is Hunter, in which case it’s a normal hit). Unfortunately there are usually only 1-2 enemies with Block on any given mission, and without Block you’re spending 2 Heroism on dealing moderate damage to a single target. Pretty lacklustre, all the more so because this is about as close as Blade gets to utility.
Deals [225%] damage and has Lifesteal.
Not completely terrible, really… as far as Blade cards go, at least. Granted it’s essentially just Savage but with lifesteal instead of anti-Block, but realistically you’re far more likely to need to heal in a mission than to beat down a blocker with Blade specifically. Having said that, The Hunger’s healing does make the lifesteal entirely redundant, so if you’re running a Blade carry build you really shouldn’t use this. If you’re not, it’s probably the best Heroic you’re going to get outside of Glaive.
Blade Best Builds
As I’ve alluded to in my card analysis, there are really two ways you can go about building Blade. The first is to set him up to apply Bleed as reliably as possible, then using The Hunger and Reaper to cash in on that Bleed. The second is to accept that there is no way of doing the first method in a way that doesn’t suck, then build him as damage control – take the best cards you can for having Blade do what little he can with absolutely no support whatsoever.
I strongly recommend taking the latter approach, and never using Blade unless you’re forced to by either a story mission or a very nice general mission reward. For those of you who are dead set on using him, though, I’ve included a suggested build for the former as well. Good luck to those guys, I guess.
Recommended Teammates: Doctor Strange’s damage boosts can make Strike and Daywalker actually worth playing, and the additional card play from Agamotto’s Gaze can make The Hunger combos easier to pull off. The real answer, though, is whoever’s left behind at base.
Blade Carry Build
This is about the best you’re going to get to with a Blade carry build. Two copies of Make ’em Bleed are necessary to ensure you draw the requisite cards for the combo, and also to generate Heroism since the build only runs one copy of Quick Strike. Daywalker and/or Glaive can then apply Bleed to as many enemies as possible. This is followed up by The Hunger to Mark those enemies, and finally, Reaper (or Glaive) can be used to clean up the Marked targets.
It’s clunky and awkward, but so is Blade. As far as mods go, +1 Chain on Daywalker goes a long way, and additional Blade-specific card draw on Reaper is very useful. Don’t bother giving Reaper Quick, because its damage is laughable without Bleed (which you won’t be applying without hitting the target). You may want to run a single copy of Strike instead of Quick Strike, relying on allies for Quick attacks for Heroism and giving you an additional option to apply Bleed (and clean up stray minions at the same time).
Realistic Blade Build
This is a far more realistic build which accepts that Blade will never be the star of the show, instead focussing on doing as much as he can with the garbage he has available. Relentless can be used for its chunky damage to finish off stragglers left alive by other heroes – a Quick modified Relentless is extremely valuable for him – while Stake is used to allow Blade to soak some damage. Make ’em Bleed is useless in this build, but still marginally more useful than The Hunger because it at least generates some Heroism and can pick you up a Quick Strike or two.
Aside from Quick on Relentless and the usual card draw or Heroism generation on Quick Strike, your card mods should either generate additional Redraws (to help you find other heroes’ cards), card draw, or have beneficial redraw effects (because you’ll usually want to get rid of them ASAP).
