From Blade’s character thread:
Every turn, Blade consumes 1 Red AP and deals 380 damage to a random enemy. When Blade’s team falls below 7 Red AP, this power transforms back into The Hunger.
Think HT green, without the countdown and the diminishing damage every turn. Happens at the start of every turn, I’ve had plenty of trouble getting HB’s red off because he kept eating my red AP whenever I got exactly 9.
Probably the damage is too little at that level, causing you to not see any noticeable effect.
The power works like this, when you match red enough to trigger bloodlust you see the animation and the power goes from The Hunger to Bloodlust (at the end of your turn, just after you got the red AP). Then at the start of your turn the passive is triggered, you lose one red AP and do the damage. It is really confusing, because you see the animation at the end of your turn, when the power is not really doing anything, just changing from one to the other. Then when the turn starts you do the damage but no animation or banner is triggered, you just see the damage appearing on top of your enemy. When you have less than the 7AP the power reverts back, also at the end of the turn (I think), and you see a banner pop up with ‘The hunger’ name.
I was using him with PH, and all the time after the third red match blood lust would kick in and in the turn I would use PH’s red it removed 1 red (8 then) for doing 1k damage, forcing me to match another red to being able to fire PH’s red. Reaaaally annoying.
So everything I said in my OP was correct. It DOES flash the animation at the END of YOUR turn, and other than the animation, it does absolutely NOTHING at that point. Ha!
And then as you discussed, at the START of your NEXT TURN, that’s when the damage should occur.
Very, very very very confusing!!!
It’s a very weird power, because it doesn’t activate unless there are a lot of red on the board, but in order to make it stronger, you must match red, thus removing the thing that makes it activate. So basically I think you just have to play and not really worry about whether or not it activates, and if it happens to activate, then just be happy.
Just to address some of the points you’ve made here, from what I’ve observed with my 1/1/2 Blade.
*The strike tiles that his red ability creates are on random colors, not specifically red like his 3 variant.
*His red ability activates whenever you have at least 9 red AP collected, no matter what the board looks like.
*More red in your stock doesn’t make it stronger like it would for Torch’s green ability. It just makes the damage last longer, draining you of 1 red each turn until you’re at 6 or less.
Blood Lust is all about matching Red whenever possible. However if there’s a lot on the board at the start you may want to hold off and make some free strikes. But otherwise, managing 10+ red tiles on the board is too much of a pain and it’s much better to turn that Red AP into 600 damage/AP (for a powered up 1/1/1, or y’know, 3000/AP at level 270) by trying to match red as much as possible and stay over 8 in reserve.
Otherwise you just ignore the loaner and get frustrated that he keeps draining your red AP when you need it most.