EDIT: Warning: This guide is now out of date. Much of this is still relevant, but some has changed. Use at your own risk. I may revisit it in the future. -Volp

TOC
1. Introduction
2. Why Choose Ego Blades
3. Powers (Subsections)
----a. ID Blade discussion
----b. Blade powers
----c. Core Powers
----d. Secondary "Take these" powers
----e. Tertiary powers to think about
----f. Avoid me
----g. Ego weaponry
4. Stats

1. Introduction
So I've had a few PM requests asking for help with builds and whatnot, and since I usually give the same advice, I thought I'd post it here to give some newer players some ideas on how to build an Ego blade character.

This mini-guide is not meant to tell you what to do. Towards that end, I will not be posting a build. There are many TK builds out there and I think some players get lost looking through them, and perhaps don't understand why certain decisions are made, or which ones are the truly important ones in terms of building a decent hero. I aim to give an aspiring blade character a working understanding of the critical stat choices, power choices, and perhaps most importantly, general guidelines about what to avoid.

2. Why Choose Ego Blades
You should choose Ego Blades if you are looking for a fun, engaging melee powerset that provides high damage while generally not gimping yourself for survival. TK Blades builds have a great deal of flexibility in terms of role, and can easily switch gears to increase survivability or increase damage. You are not completely "stuck" in melee.

3. Power Selection
I originally was planning to run through stating decisions before going through power selection, but I realized that the reason that certain stating decisions are made is because of special scaling that this set takes advantage of. Therefore, I will discuss powers first.

You have 14 powers to choose from (excluding travel). Instead of listing the levels to take each power at, lets instead talk about "core" powers and move out from there.

a. ID Blades
Your TK blades hero is a TK blades hero because, well, he/she depends for damage in large part on Ego Blade attacks. Ego blade attacks are able to take advantage of a special buff called ID blades. ID blades give a TK blades character their distinctive Double Blades graphic and increases damage on Ego Blades attacks by ~15%. This damage scales moderately well with the Ego stat.

This buff is an important buff to consider when building your character, but should not override other damage concerns (for example, shadow form buffs all damage by more than Ego form will buff blade damage).

There are three ways to acquire the ID blades buff, and they DO NOT STACK*, so anytime you have any of these three buffs overlapping, one of them is wasted. The three methods for getting ID blades are the (1) Incisive Wit Proc, which is an advantage on our energy builder, Kinetic darts, (2) Ego surge offensive clicky power and (3) Ego form offensive passive.

*Incisive wit and Ego surge offer an additional SEPARATE buff to paranormal damage. Ego surge can be advantaged for an additional SEPARATE buff to critical rating. The ID blade activation itself does not stack in any way between the three methods. This is what I mean when I say they don't stack.

Because of this, it is generally regarded among those of us who have spent time tinkering with this build that Ego Form is quite excessive and wasteful. You will see a better damage increase from Shadow form, and, in fact, when in Ego form, you will do barely more damage than if you had no passive or a defensive passive.

Thus, we will depend on Incisive wit and Ego surge for ID blade activation

b. Blade powers
We have four blade powers. I'll be real brief here, because more on each later.

Ego Weaponry
Ego Blade Frenzy -- AOE
Ego Blade Breach
Ego Annihilation

3 powers are single target, one is AOE. Taking frenzy is thus a no-brainer. The bottom line on the other three is that you will really only use one. EBB will outperform the other two in 90% of cases (because of raw damage and its debuff). Weaponry is lackluster, but cheap on energy. Annihilation is a big fat PITA to optimize. More on all of this later

c. The Core Powers
These powers define what I think it means to be a TK blades character. They will control 70-80% of all damage you do in most fights in the game. You should be taking all three.

1. Kinetic Darts with Incisive wit advantage -- Our energy builder can be advantaged to give a proc that increases paranormal damage by ~40% AND activates ID blades. The paranormal buff lasts for ~8 sec and the ID blade buff lasts for ~12 seconds. This is incredibly important for overall DPS. Incisive wit should be your FIRST TWO advantage points. Yea. Its damn good.

2. Ego Blade Frenzy (EBF) -- Rank 3. This Power allows you to maintain a shortrange frontal cone. It is buffed by ID blades and by paranormal damage buffs. I find myself maintaining this almost every time it is off CD. A full maintain at rank 3 will kill all henchmen it connects with. Quite valuable.

3. Ego Blade Breach (EBB) -- Rank 3. This is a single target, spammable, chargeable blade attack. When I have alot of energy to burn and am waiting for frenzy, I "TAP" this power over and over for massive, fast, single target damage. Charging, I believe, does less DPS than chain-taps, but also takes less energy. You will use this all the time. It also stacks a damage increasing debuff on enemies, making them take more blade damage. This buff stacks to 3. Try to take at level 20. At the very least you'll have it by 26. If you have chosen Ego weaponry as a power, you will likely find that EBB entirely replaces it in use (PVP possibly excepted).

d. Secondary Powers
I consider these powers pretty integral to decent blades build. They are however, much more "debatable" than the three above.

4. An offensive passive -- Take Shadow Form (Rank to 3). This passive increases all your paranormal damage (including blade attacks). It scales from END, and, if you have shadow form slotted, END will give more overall DPS increase than EGO (ignoring superstats for a second). This solidly makes it a better choice than Ego form.

5. A defensive passive for soloing. The defensive passive debate is had all over the place on these forums. Inform yourself and choose. I chose regen, if you care. I can see a choice of all but lightning reflexes. You choose whether or not you want to rank your passive.

6. An active defense clicky. I took resurgence. You may want to choose one that goes with the passive you picked. Or you may just take resurgence regardless. Which one is debatable. Having one is not too debatable.

7. A shield power. You probably want to take either TK shield (despite inc nerf), Force shield (with force sheath adv) or Energy shield with laser knight adv (be careful here). I don't have very strong feelings one way or another, which one you take is up to personal discretion.

8. A self heal -- I'll focus on two here, but you may find that another fits your playstyle. Bottom line is that you should take SOME form of self heal, even, imo, if you have resurgence. Ego sprites (with Slave mentality advantage) was the clear winner until the PTS nerf. I still think I'm keeping it. It was nerfed in 3 ways -- 1 was a vastly OP bug that allowed infinite stacking, the other was in the form of a cap on total targets (5, and justified, I think) and the third was in a 50% reduction in healed damage (I still think its a fine skill) for general use. Boutiful Chi is the other good option. Be careful in taking a channeled heal.

9. A strong, single target hold -- aoe holds are great, but you want a hold that works well once charged and ready to go. Ego hold seems to me to be an obvious choice, and can be charged while moving.

3. Powers Continued

e. Finishing your power-set -- Tertiary Powers

Damn! 9 powers down. I've long decided that TK blade builds are actually quite crowded. Lets look at some other options. Feel free to post any additions to this list.

-- TK Eruption -- This power just BARELY didn't make it into my recommended / secondary list, though I recommend it. It is a great way to burn a full END bar and probably kill everything around you. Also leaves a 17% damage buff on you, which can be advantages to last longer. Great power.

--Ego Surge w/ Nimble Mind adv -- Ego surge gives you a clicky that grants ID blades, a paranormal damage buff, and with nimble mind a big crit rate increase. Currently, it goes on 30 second CD every time incisive wit procs. I believe this is a bug, but am not sure, given that its not corrected or commented on yet. I pop this at the start of every big fight for a nice damage boost while waiting for wit procs. Highly recommended. Great power.

-- Ego storm -- a great close AOE you can move around while maintaining. It also holds your enemies. A very common choice in TK blade builds, esp ones with END superstatted. It is an END hog, though. Recommended. Its advantage, malevolent manifestation, turns it into a toggle. Great great aoe. If you are END statted, you can run the toggle and continue to do your normal blade attacks, for very high dmg output.

-- Thunderbolt Lunge w/ Essence Assault adv -- A great power to close gaps and kill the pesky travel powers. If you have any thoughts of PVP, you want to take this. Recommended.

-- Sonic devices -- A nasty charged EBB or frenzy. I like it, but perhaps a more questionable choice.

-- Ego annihilation -- If ranked to three AND you have 3 stacks of EBB AND the target is sub 25%, this power will outperform EBB. However, super villans seem too die to fast to get more than one shot with this in. Will it see use in endgame legendary or cosmics? Maybe. Who knows. Even with master villians, it doesn't really work well. It may find some use if advantaged with Mindful inversion. Discussion in a post below. Right now, if you take it, you may find that there is never really a good time to use it, making it wasteful. Questionable power overall.

-- Ego Blast -- Many take this as their first power instead of Ego Weaponry. I personally don't like it, but will nonetheless give it a fair hearing here, in terms of its merits: it is a charged ranged power that many like to fully charge to blast out a henchman early or one running. I can't really criticize it as redundant, because there's nothing else in a typical TK build that would cover it. It also has a chance (not too bad of a chance if fully charged) to hold the target. I don't take it because I find I'd rather close to melee / save END then spend time charging this. It is, however, a decent power choice if a ranged attack is what you want or if you want an attack to pair with frenzy while you level toward getting EBB.

--Telepathic Reverberation -- An innante passive power (no need to slot) form the TP set. It allows you to get energy back when you are damaging enemies (with TELEPATHY SKILLS) that are also held. It may have some limited interest to people building a TK blades character who also dip into TP. In particular, since Ego Storm has a chance you hold targets, you can end up gaining end back while channeling it. Note carefully that the only skills you will likely have that are effected by it are Ego Storm, Sprites, and Ego blast. It is very likely NOT worth it if you don't have storm. Questionable for general builds, but may be just right if you find yourself storming all the time.

--Nanobot swarm -- Lowers CD on all skills when clicked. This could be great for Resurgence or Ego surge. Limited use for sure, and I would make sure that the ego surge CD thing is taken before you take this skill. It would have great use if you are disciplined about it and you had Ego surge at rank 2 w/ nimble mind. This means that you could focus a lot less on dex but still be able to tap into high Ego (nimble mind would give you crits). Limited use.

Someone fill me in on TK wave. Never tried it.

f. Avoid
-- TK Maelstrom -- I prefer ego storm to this power, but take a look if you like. Note that it doesn't scale with Shadow form.

-- TK Choke -- You really get the darth vader feel with this one. The power has far too long a CD. Does not scale with shadow form.

-- TK Wave -- A rather lackluster power, and not great returns on damage as you gear / level up. Certainly gives the jedi feel, so maybe that's for some people. Doesn't scale with shadow form.

-- Telekinesis the power. There are threads and threads on this. There are all kinds of things wrong with it. Even if it worked perfectly, it doesn't really seem to "fit". Despite our set being called telekinesis, it is probably more accurately called "psionic blades".

g. One more power. Buyer Beware.
-- Ego Weaponry. Ego weaponry is in fact OPTIONAL, and in my opinion not recommended. When you get to level 5, you can retcon out of it and take EBF as your "level 1" power. This frees up a power slot. Once you have EBB / EBA you will likely never hit this again. Before EBB stacks are built up, it is ALWAYS better to EBB than to use weaponry. The one use of weaponry is in PVP, because its easier to use while moving than EBB, and you can take crippling challenge to break shields.

4. Stats, SuperStats, and You
There are a variety of ways to superstat your character. Lets just narrow down on what you MIGHT focus on.

Ego -- Increases crit damage. Seperately scales ID blade damage. A big contender for one of your two choices as superstat.

END -- Increases energy pool (allowing faster energy building and thus MORE attacks in less time -- this is a DPS increase that is separate from its superstat bonus). Seperately scales shadow form damage. This scaling is better than the scaling that Ego offers ID blade attacks. This is the best DPS stat for ego blades chars, when in shadow form.

Con -- Increases survivability. Not much to say on it, but its a BIG deal. If superstatted and geared for, can double your HP.

Dex -- Increases crit chance. We don't want to superstat this, because you get more DPS benefit from Ego or End and more survivability from Con. This is a great choice of a stat to gear for, however.

Thus there are a few build choice (copied from another thread, my post)

1. End / Ego + Dex with incisive wit and Shadow form is bar none the best DPS spec one could make for Ego Blades. This build compromises survivability to excel at DPS. This build loses much of its effectiveness when out of shadowform; it is undeniably built around that offensive.

2. Con / Ego + Dex -- takes advantage of Ego scaling and supplements with dex for great crits. A high damage build with MUCH higher survivability than End / Ego. It doesn't fully optimize shadow form, but it probably our best DPS build while in defensive passive (I can't be sure of this, and even have a hunch that Con / End edges it out in all cases). Be careful about End, some skills are too costly to use with this build.

3. Con / End -- A great, survivable, damage build. Incredibly flexible. To crit, you need to supplement with BOTH dex and Ego. In fact, because the bonus to damage resulting from superstating so greatly overshadows all other bonuses, it may be advisable for a Con / End build to simply forgo crits (dex / ego) in favor of just stacking their Supers. This would allow such a build to dip into other tertiary stats (rec?) without feeling like they are pulling away from their crit. Alternatively they could gear con / end exclusively and probably exceed the DPS of their Con / Ego + dex cousin. This build would suffer the most in terms of DPS outside of shadow form. However, it's "exclusive" gear/talent stating efficiency, combined with the dps bonus from End may in fact pull it ahead of Con / Ego, or rival con Ego even outside of shadow form. I am very nearly decided on Con / End because of these reasons. Also note that (by way of general forum perusing) Con / End is the most popular build.

Included for completeness only (not recommended):
(4). Dex / XXX really doesn't optimize this framework. Dex should not be superstatted. If you see anyone with a Dex build (probably Dex / Ego) ask why it is that they want the build (probably big DPS #s; don't care about survive) and then explain why End / Ego + dex would blow it out of the park. If the reason for dex ego is simply to SEE the big crits (but not actually maximize DPS) then you are dealing with a lost cause and ought to give up. I actually do expect that there are many out there who simply get all excited by the crits themselves and won't listen to reason about why Dex isn't a great Superstat (for this framework).

Conclusion
TK Blades is beastly.

There you have it. Bump me if you like me :).

This thread is getting long. If you have a quick question but don't feel like reading the thread (although theres great stuff in the posts!) feel free to just ask, and someone will help you out. I won't bite your head off even if its already answered.

Changelog:
9/16/09: Fixed some spelling, added ego blast, added some minor clarification on advantages.
9/16/09 (late): More grammar / spelling. Added TK the power to the avoid list.
9/17/09: Added Nanobot swarm and TP Reverb to possible powers list.
9/20/09: Toned down emphasis on con. Removed error in Nanobot swarm's effect. After deliberation, moved ego surge from secondary to tertiary.
9/21/09: Fixed spelling / grammar. Added Wave to avoid list.

Wow, nice guide! The why on each topic/choice given through out really helps cut through the confusion.

This helped me some with my Munitions/Ego Blade build. Thanks.

tag, thanks for the info

I've loved TK blades since open beta, respecced after the END -> EGO blade damage to a CON/END build. In fact, my build is very very similar to what you have listed above, and I'm loving it.

Anyway, pre-respec I had some energy problems (I was CON/DEX + end, don't ask me why) so I took TK wave early on for the Ego Leech debuff and subsequent energy return. That turned out not to matter with the current build. But TK Wave is perfectly acceptable for the way I use it - a way to buy myself time to hit Resurgence. It has an excellent chance of knockback even with a tap, but the 20 second cooldown isn't very friendly. Since I use it as an escape of sorts, I often want it twice in a row.

The only other benefit is the cone knockback rather than the 360 degree knockback of TK Eruption; melee mobs will come straight back in, so if I back up two steps after using TK Wave, then I'm usually in a good position to Frenzy.

tl;dr -- TK Wave is mediocre, situationally decent as an escape

in pretty much all cases you advise taking powers to rank 3 rather than taking their unique advantages (focusing on damage). In this particular case, however, wouldn't mindful inversion end up being much more valuable than rank 3?

Mm, tasty tasty guide.

The only powers I specifically recommend to take to rank 3 are Frenzy and EBB. Both of them have sub-optimal unique advantages (a 1 second hold and shield-stunning). I do recommend Wit, Nimble Mind, Slave Mentality, and situationally crippling advantage on EW just to name a few. I don't think I really have some rank 3 bias.

Perhaps more to your question is this: Is a rank 2 mindful inverted Annihilation really going to see use over Rank 3 EBB? Lets consider that EBB is CLEARLY the better choice before the 3 stacks of debuff are up. Lets also consider that you will probably blow at least 1, possibly 2 frenzies in the time you are putting up the debuffs (and doing other things like getting sprites up / possibly buffing with TK Erupt). Now we have to ask: what mob is still alive, much less above 25% after you do all that? Not even super villans, I think. Though it does depend. Probably legendaries and cosmics are, though you also probably have a group, and in a group they too drop pretty quickly.

The jury is really still out on annihilation. You need long fights to evaluate it in relation to EBB and I suspect that if it -does- come out as better than Rank 3 EBB, it will only be the case that it is better as Rank 3 Annihilation on sub 25% bosses, once all debuffs / buffs are up. I don't really have any way to test this (perhaps the highest level dummies have enough hp? I'm not sure).

Annihilation is super situational. As such it is not "recommended" in the sense that everyone should take it, especially since my build has only left you with 4 flexible powers, and many might consider thunderbolt lunge / ego storm / TK erupt as not so flexible, leaving you down to 1 more power. Annihilation may turn out to work for some builds, though. I'd like to see some more data before I get behind it or against it. There is an opportunity cost associated with taking this particular single target power over more versitle powers. That being said, in a situation where annihilation is called for (1% of the game? Less? Who knows.) then you will probably see a dps increase.