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A complete guide on how to play as a Blair character in The First Descendant, including his class skills, role, and everything you should know.
Blair Character (Class) Overview
Blair is a damage-over-time character, who has the potential to maximize critical hit damage through his passives and other abilities. Aesthetically, he is a flame-based character, and his playstyle is a bit like that of a wizard with a gun. Overall, Blair’s potential damage ranking is lower than that of other descendants in a game that often prioritizes DPS and burning through enemy bosses as quickly as possible.
Blair Character (Class) Features in The First Descendant:
- Role: DoT Dealer
- Feature: Blair doesn’t mind being surrounded by the blazing gaze of his enemies. Whether “blazing” is a figurative or literal term is of no concern to him.
- Battle Concept: Swallowing flames gives him energy. He can spurt flames himself, and it feels comfortable enough for him in the blazing fire.
- Pros: Critical Hit and DoT damage
- Cons: Less Specialized, weaker than others
- Passive Skill: Pitmaster
- Active Skills: Blaze Up, Extinguish, Burn Taste
- Ultimate Ability: Deadly Cuisine
- How to Unlock: Can be purchased or crafted
In The First Descendant, characters are your classes, and each possesses unique skills, passives, and ultimate abilities. At the start of the game you’ll have to choose a single starting Descendant to play with. However, as you progress, you can unlock more characters by research and crafting them.
The First Descendant class system is similar to games like Destiny 2 and Warframe. First, you will have three standard abilities with cooldowns based on their power. Additionally, you can also use multiple guns and accessories to develop your build. Finally, each class has its pros and cons and optimal usage. In this First Descendant guide, we will describe how to play the Blair character, how to unlock him, and who would enjoy this class playstyle.
Should you play Blair in The First Descendant?
If you enjoy the challenge of putting together a build that seeks to maximize the most damage and critical hits you can produce, then Blair could be just the character for you. He isn’t a beginner character, and players who don’t like keeping track of ability cooldowns or complex rotations may struggle with him. However, with the right modules, rotation, and player execution, Blair could be effective and fun.
Who is Blair? – Story
Blair started out as a military cook for Headquarters, and was often out in the field keeping the soldiers fed. One day while out at an operation site a rampaging Colossus wielding fire set the entire campsite ablaze. In an attempt to save ingredients, Blair ran into a nearby storeroom but was unable to get out in time. Though the flames hadn’t yet touched the building, the heat was intense.
The ingredients in his arms started to burn and he collapsed due to the intense heat and acrid smoke. When he regained consciousness shortly after, Blair discovered intense flames rising from his hands. Following the incident with his Arche, he immediately began training diligently to become a Descendant. Though he now uses his skills in combat, he still retains a love of cooking and enjoys making things for his teammates.
How to Play Blair – Character Gameplay
An effective Blair build will play into the character’s strength, maximizing the potential for critical hit damage from their passive skill Pitmaster. Blair seeks to apply the burning status effect, increasing his critical hit rate and damage. The bonuses for burning status affect stack, meaning the more burning targets, the bigger your buff. However, he doesn’t have anything to boost survivability, so players must always be strategic and aware of the battlefield.
The best way to play Blair in The First Descendant is to focus on using Burn and creating Flame Zones to maximize the potential of your Critical Hit Rate and Critical Hit Damage. Critical Hit damage increases when you inflict Burn, while your Critical Hit Rate increases based on the number of Flame Zones you create. Playing Blair effectively in various situations will require practice and player skills.
Area Damage and Single-Target Damage: Blair’s abilities focus more on area-of-effect damage than single targets. You want to start combat off by creating a fiery explosion near as many as possible in a four-meter radius with Blaze up. You can use Burn Taste for single-target fire damage and beam a target down. For the best AOE, stack up to three times burning, then use Deadly Cuisine, but it has a massive cooldown.
Movement and Speed: Blair has fairly average speed in The First Descendant. Moreover, none of his abilities increase his movement speed in any way. He’s not a slow character, but if you want to play fast and nimble, Blair might not be for you.
Bosses and Ultimates: Blair needs to consistently keep his stacks of burning applied to bosses. You want to rotate between Blaze Up and Burn Taste and use Extinguish when you are low on MP or need a defensive boost. For burst damage, during the damage phase, consume those stacks with Deadly Cuisine. Monitor your cooldowns and primarily use Blaze Up because it comes up so frequently.
Defenses and Survival Tips: Unfortunately, Blair lacks skills that boost defenses directly. His best defense is offense; in that regard, he has a skill that will help replenish his MP. This comes at a cost to his damage, but it can come in handy if you’re in a tight spot or need to reset your attack strategy.
How to Unlock Blair in The First Descendant?
To unlock Blair in The First Descendant, you must either purchase him from the store, or research him. Moreover, if you choose to purchase Blair he will cost 600 Caliber, which is the premium currency. Otherwise, to craft Blair, you will need:
- Blair Enhanced Cells
- Ceramic Composite x408
- Hellion x303
- Anode Ion Particle x26
- Blair Enhanced Cell Blueprint
- 200,000 Gold
- Blair Stabilizer
- Compound Coating Material x239
- Carbon Crystal x554
- Crystal Biogel x39
- Blair Stabilizer Blueprint x1
- 200,000 Gold
- Blair Spiral Catalyst
- Repton x422
- Semiconstant Plasma x290
- Balanced Plasma Battery x44
- Blair Spiral Catalyst Blueprint x1
- Blair Code
Finally, in order to craft Blair you must speak to Anais in the Albion Mountains area. She will grant you access to the Research Institute, where you can choose to craft several additional descendant characters.
Blair Passive and Active Skills
In the First Descendant, all characters have one passive skill, along with three active skills and an ultimate to choose from. When you play as the Blair character in the First Descendant, it is to understand the basics of his class and available skills.
- Passive skills: Passive buffs and bonuses are automatically applied or under certain conditions.
- Active and Ultimate skills: These are activated by a player (effects on demand) and vary by character. Each character has unique skills to match their role and playstyle.
Passive Skill
Pitmaster – When attacking enemies inflicted with burn, it increases firearm and skill critical hit damage. Increases Critical Hit Rate based on the number of Flame Zones created on the battlefield.
- Usage – the main goal of your character and build is to maintain one or more burning stacks on a target to increase your overall damage. Critical means a multiplier from the base damage, so this is burst damage. Memorize the signs for burning targets and focus them when possible.
Active Skills
Blaze Up – Spews fire and creates a flame zone on the ground. Enemies that enter the Flame Zone receive continuous damage and are inflicted with Burn.
- Usage – area-based spell in four meters over 12 seconds. With a roughly 12-second cooldown, you can maintain this in your primary target area, so feel free to cast this frequently to trigger burning.
Extinguish – Retrieves the Flame Zones created on the battlefield and recovers MP in proportion to the amount retrieved. On retrieval, gains Taste of Aggression for a certain period of time. Taste of Aggression increases Firearm ATK and Skill Power. Flame Zones summoned earlier are retrieved first.
- Usage – this skill is your primary source for MP or resource sustain. You can consume the flames around the area and boost your resource recovery and damage. This is good to use for burning a few remaining targets when large pools of flame zones are nearby.
Burn Taste – Emits flames forward. Inflict continuous damage and burn enemies near the fire.
- Usage – your skill to trigger an automatic burning status effect; however, it has a longer cooldown and smaller radius than Blaze Up. Use this in rotation with Blaze Up to maintain high uptime on burning.
Ultimate Skill
Deadly Cuisine – Fires a Giant Fireball forward. On explosion, the Giant Fireball inflicts AOE damage to nearby enemies and splits into multiple Small Fireballs, which create additional explosions. Small Fireballs deal AOE damage to enemies near the explosion site, inflicting Burn and creating a Flame Zone.
- Usage – this is your massive area-based damage with a long cooldown. Buff up with Extinguish and blast out Deadly Cuisine for huge damage.
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