BPSR: Skyward (Aerial) Wind Knight Comprehensive Guide
- Video Version of This Guide
- Intro
- Skills
- Class Resources
- Key Buffs
- Skill Tree
- Rotation
- Gear and Stats
- Imagines
- Modules
- Updates
- Footnote
Video Version of This Guide
Intro
The Skyward (Aerial) Wind Knight is a melee dps with a unique mechanic where you stay in the air half the time during combat. While in the air you can avoid a lot of gound based patterns and boss attacks. The class has great AOE damage and respectable single target damage, but it lacks any sort of interrupt or mob grouping abilities.
This class uses strength gear, which is the same type of gear both tank classes use. If you also want to play tank along side this class without too much min maxing on the tank, then you would only need to farm a tank weapon and be good to go.
This class is not the top dps class, if you want to play a top dps class I recommend you play Marksman (Bow) instead.
Skills
Basic Attack (Left click)
- Advance Priority: no need to upgrade
- Bascially never use this skill with proper rotation.
Skyfall
- Advance Priority: 3
- Main skill to generate Sharp stacks and to proc Chasing Step.
Typhoon Cleave
- Advance Priority: no need to upgrade
- Used for regenerate Courage, not used for damage.
Falcon Toss
- Advance Priority: 4
- Generally not used in regular rotation, only use once per Wind Fury when Azure Sever is available.
Instant Edge
- Advance Priority: 1
- This is one of the main damage source for the class, consumes Sharp stacks on cast, and consumes Chasing Step Stack on hit.
- This skill is also how you recharge Sharp Impact.
- During Wind Fury this skill will generate Tornado on hit.
- This skill is used to proc Instant Edge Combo.
Galeform
- Advance Priority: 2
- Used to activate Galeform Buff, has 2 charges with 30s CD.
- Upgrading this skill increases the damage that it buffs, which affects all damage sources, thus upgrade priority 2.
Sharp Impact
- Advance Priority: 4
- The skill’s damage is negligible, used to activate the 15s Wind Fury buff.
- When casting this skill while standing on the ground, your character will first teleport directly above your target and then crash down, this initial part of teleporting above the target has quite a long animation, but it can be skipped entirely by doing a jump before casting the skill. This jump cancel tech is incorporated as part of the rotation.
Class Resources
Courage
- Naturally recharges 3 per second.
- With Galeform Buff active, it recharges additionally 7 per second.
- When Galeform Buff is under Wind Fury, the additional 7 per second rechange changes to 10 per second.
- Galeform recharge ticks and natural recharge ticks are independent.
Sharp
- Each stack lasts 10 seconds, when it times out you will lose 1 stack, and when this happens it will still charge Sharp Impact by 5%.
- Each stack gives +5% attack, and for Aerial Wind Knight, having any stack will automatically give the max stack amount of attack bonus. This means (assuming all Sharp cap nodes are activated so Sharp cap is 6) having only 1 stack of Sharp will give
5% x 6 = 30%Attack bonus. - Due to this mechanism, you want to always keep 1 stack of Sharp. And DOT damages (i.e. tornado ticks) are calculated based on the time of the tick and not at the time of the initial tornado’s creation, if you are unable to keep at least 1 stack of Sharp, your on field tornados’ damage will suffer.
Chasing Step
| 1 Stack | 2 Stacks |
|---|---|
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- This buff is triggered when Skyfall crits, can stack up to 2 times.
- When a stack is consumed by Instant Edge it refunds 1 Sharp.
- When a stack is consumed by Instant Edge it doubles the amount of Sharp Impact charge.
- A normal 3 Sharp Instant Edge charges 15% of Sharp Impact, with this buff it will charge 30%.
- This is one of the main resource to speed up Sharp Impact charge, more will be explained in the Rotation section.
Key Buffs
Wind Fury
- 15 second buff triggered by Sharp Impact, increase damage dealt by 15%
- Increase Courage regen from Galeform Buff.
- Falcon Toss becomes Azure Sever for 1 cast during the buff.
- Instant Edge and Azure Sever will generate Tornado during the buff.
- If Instant Edge is casted while standing on the ground it will perform 2 hits and both hits will each gerenate 1 Tornado.
Galeform Buff
- 15 second buff that increase Courage regen and attack (via strength conversion), when activated the Courage bar will have a green outline around it.
- When this buff expires, it will trigger a secondary buff Wind and Thunder. Galeform has to expire for this to trigger, if it gets refreshed before the buff expire it will not trigger until the new Galeform expires.
Wind and Thunder
- 8 second buff that +12% Strength. You don’t need to pay too much attention to this buff, just know that exists and play your rotation normally. You can see it in the buff bar as such:
Skill Tree
Key Nodes
Tornado
The in game description of tornado is very lacking, I’ll explain in details how tornado actually works.
- Each tornado will stay on the field for 3 seconds, doing 1 tick of damage (per target) per second. Each tick of damage is 350% of attack, which means for a single target assuming every tick hits, 1 tornado has a motion value of 1050%.
- After the 08/28 class balance update, the patch note says each tornado will have it’s damage lowered by 20% after each hit, damage can be lowered till as low as 40% of attack. This means the MV of each tornado can go from 1050% to 40% if it hits enough enemies (non-single target scenario).
- But what’s actually implemented in the game is not the same as the patch note, the amount lowered per hit is actually 40%, not 20%. We don’t know if this will get fixed and follow the patch note or if they will just adjust the description to match what’s implemented.
- There can only be 3 tornados on the field at any given time, skills will not trigger more tornados nor refresh existing tornados when there are already 3 tornados on field.
- Tornado damage does not scale with any skill level nor with Melee DMG nor with Expertise Skill DMG.
- Tornado is one of the main damage sources. Skills that trigger tornados is explained under Wind Fury.
Instant Edge Combo Node
After the 08/28 class balance update this node changed from fixed 15% chance to the same chance as your lucky hit proc, which is your luck percentage. And the damage will be Instant Edge’s damage (with all its applicable multiplier) x Lucky Hit DMG multiplier. On my character with 4pc Lv60 class gear + Lv70 weapon, this multiplier is about 100%, which means whenever this procs Instant Edge does 2x damage.
| Old | New |
|---|---|
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Azure Sever Node
Enables Azure Sever, gain 3 stack of Sharp on hit, see Falcon Toss and Wind Fury.
Chasing Step Node
Enables Chasing Step
Gain 1 stack of Sharp when Chasing Step is consumed.
Sharp Impact Node
Air Dance Strike
- Buffs Courage regen from Galeform.
- Grants 3 Sharp when Sharp Impact hits.
Typhoon: Sharp Impact
- The game does not explain this properly, this node will make Sharp Impact do an additional hit, and that additional hit will grant 3 more Sharp on top of the 3 from Air Dance Strike.
- The main purpose of taking this node is to have 6 Sharp right away after each Sharp Impact.
Wind Fury Node
Enables Wind Fury.
Enable double recharge for Instant Edge with Chasing Step.
Skilltree Build
Recommended Build
Blue highlights the core of the build, at level 60 gear (70 weapon), you want take the yellow path for tornado damage increase. Even though tornado damage is nerfed on 08/28 class balance update, it is still the highest damage contributor.
Other Builds
There are some quite “out there” builds for the class, I won’t recommend them here because those build go against the devs’ idea of this class (you build stats that the game does not recommend), and you would have to invest in different (gold) imagines. If these “out there” builds are too strong and catches the devs’ attention they will be balanced and nerfed just like the tornado meta. I’d like to avoid having people come to me and say they got scammed after investing in imagines that now become useless for the class because they followed my guide to build an “out there” build and the devs nerf it. With that being said, if you are still interested you can contact me and I can explain these other builds to you privately.
Rotation
Rotation for the recommended build is actually very simple.
- Use all available imagines, then Galeform.
- Jump cancel into Sharp Impact (note: gives 6 Sharp from these nodes).
- Ground Instant Edge, then 3x Skyfall.
- Air Instant Edge into ground Instant Edge.
- Azure Sever, then do 1-2x Skyfall until 6 stacks of Sharp (note: Azure Sever gives 3 Sharp, from this node).
- Air Instant Edge into ground Instant Edge.
As long as you get 2 Chasing Step procs out of the total 5 Skyfalls from step 3 and step 5, your Sharp Impact will be recharged by the end of step 6, and you can repeat the rotation from step 1 or 2 again. This is why you only need around 40% crit rate (2 / 5 = 0.4) to be able to play this rotation smoothly.
Courage Management and Other Nuances
The are some nuances on Courage management, namely when to use Galeform and ult (Typhoon Cleave). First of all you should remember these three numbers: 35, 70 and 105, these are amounts of the Courage needed to perform 1x, 2x and 3x Skyfall.
- Let’s say you are currently at step 2 of the rotation, and your Courage is greater than 105, then you know you can rotate until the end of step 3; and if in step 3 you got two Chasing Step procs from the 3x Skyfall, then you know you only have to do one Skyfall in step 5, which is 35 courage. At this time you can check if you have 35 courage while executing step 4, and decide if you need to use Galeform before step 5. The mindset here is to delay using Galeform enough so that you don’t cap out on Courage. When you are lucky (getting two Chasing Step procs), you can generally delay more, since you don’t have to do all five Skyfall. When you are unlucky (getting zero Chasing Step procs out of all five Skyfall), then you will most likely need to rely on ult to recover in order to not break rotation completely.
- On step 5, you can mix up the order of Azure Sever and Skyfall depending on the amount of Courage you have and the amount time left on Galeform Buff.
- If your Courage is about to reach 130 cap, then you want to use Skyfall to reach 3x Sharp stacks first, then use Azure Sever. This will avoid wasting Courage.
- If Galeform Buff is about to end then you want to use Azure Sever first so that its damage gets buffed.
- If there’s currently no Galeform Buff active, and your Courage is low, then you can use Galeform, then use Azure Sever, then Skyfall to fill up the remaining Sharp stacks. Doing so ensures Azure Sever’s damage is buffed and enough time to regen Courage for Skyfall.
- If there’s already 3 tornados on the field, you can use Skyfall > Azure Sever > Skyfall to avoid Azure Sever’s tornado not being generate due to on field tornado cap (explained in tornado section).
There are many many more scenarios, as you play more you will start to get a feel for what you need to do.
Gear and Stats
Stats
Crit
We need 40% crit rate to be able to perform rotation as explained in the Rotation section. Once 40% is reached, stacking more crit doesn’t provide as much value as other stats such as haste.
Haste
The purpose of stacking haste is to get higher attack speed, each percent of haste gives us 1.6% attack speed. But since raw haste value to haste percent conversion has diminishing return, and attack speed percent increase is linear, it’s always better to build straight attack speed if possible.
Direct attack speed percent increase sources:
- Gear purple line
- Modules
We want to reach at least 20% attack speed, this will allow us to comfortably finish 1 rotation within 15s Wind Fury duration, thus maintaining 100% uptime Wind Fury uptime.
Personally I’d recommend building attack speed over 20%, since we currently still have times where Courage caps out, higher attack speed will allow us to convert the wasted Courage into damage. Though it is expected there to be a point where attack speed is too high and resource generation cannot keep up, I currently do not know where that point is yet.
For reference my character with Lv60 gear is at 25% attack speed, with up coming Lv80 gear it’s expected to be higher.
Luck
With the 08/28 class balance update, luck will now somewhat scale, see Instant Edge Combo.
Currently I don’t have enough data to tell if there’s any min / max breakpoints or sweet spot to reach, so for now I’d just recommend getting 6 piece class set gear and don’t go out of your way to build luck.
Lv60 Gear & Gems
- Get 6 piece class gear
- Reach 40% Crit
- Reach 20% Attack Speed
- Slot your gems and reforge your 3rd sub stat on gear based on what stat you are missing, if you have both 40% crit and 20% attack speed then I’d recommended going for haste for more attack speed.
Lv80 Gear & Gems
- Get 4 piece class gear
- TODO: update crit, AS targets
Imagines
Whale Imagines
| lv5 Muku | lv5 Goblin King |
|---|---|
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F2P / Low Spender Imagines
| lv(0-3) Muku | lv5 Muku Scout |
|---|---|
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- Muku Scout greatly outperforms Storm Goblin Warrior, as long as rotation is properly executed Muku Scout’s buff will have 100% uptime.
- Muku Scout’s description is not very accurate, but basically you just need to do damage at least 10 times per 5 seconds to maintain the buff, which is easily achiveable with my recommended stats and rotation.
Modules
My recommendation sorted by priority.
- Strength
- Elite Damage
- Agility
- Gives flat physical attack, agility and physical damage increase. Agility also increase haste for this class.
- Attack Speed
- Higher priority if your attack speed is lower than 20%
Not recommended:
- Crit
- Crit mod gives you hp and Lv6 gives 12% crit damage, assuming you have Muku Chief Lv3 (19% crit dmg) and a 45% crit rate, then the actual increase of this mod would only be
((150 + 19 + 12) / (150 + 19) - 1) * 45% = 3.2%a 3.2% increase. If your crit rate is lower or Muku Chief level is higher then the increase would be even lower.
- Crit mod gives you hp and Lv6 gives 12% crit damage, assuming you have Muku Chief Lv3 (19% crit dmg) and a 45% crit rate, then the actual increase of this mod would only be
Although this is sorted by priority, if you get can 3 level 6s lower priority ones it’s still better than getting level 5s high priority ones. Focus on getting 2 level 6 first, then follow the priority list if you can afford to choose, last try to go for 666 or 665 as an end goal.
Updates
- 09/02/25 Update module recommendations.
- 09/02/25 Added link to youtube version of this guide.
Footnote
This guide is written by Snow, I will try to keep it up to date as new content gets unlocked and new things about Skyward (Aerial) Wind Knight gets discovered.
s.now_
