not to hijack the thread, but I'm rolling up my first blademaster... any tips for training them up?
Blademaster Training
Moved.
well which skills do you want to train? Your stances you can master my spamming the stance spell. Crit strike/onslaught while hunting or if your really dedicated find an invoker with mana shield. Your anats are a bit harder to train, but Im sure you can find mobs that present challenges that are of the appropriate body type. Any specifics you need help with?
They're actually quite simple to train, just time consuming.
those are the little pointers I'm looking for: like stances go up by casting, not by sparring
Except deathweaver. That'll go up through use.
really? that's odd since deathweaver is the only stance that is a spell, the others are listed as skills.
Wait until you get them. The selection is under skills, but once you select, each stance is a spell. You cast them to drop into them. So, for DKs out there, you DO have reason to silence a blademaster if he's about to lose stance.
gotcha. obviously I know zilch about these guys.
As did I until I came back and decided to rank up Marrin. Know the class pretty damned well now. 
Stay at 30 and master anats on pcs.
any other oddities a player should be warned about? (Like only one stance improving with use.)
Stay at 30 and master anats on pcs.
Are they strong enough to not get raped at 30?
master your defances first, then just ask people to spar with you, use crap weapons and demon talismens.
and watch sparring with monks, no matter how much I gimp my offense with a monk I still beat people like a red-headed step child, and I aint gonna wield a weapon dangit! You get twelve bajillion defenses I want mine too
Get your hr to -20 and blind yourself. No more issues. 
Are they strong enough to not get raped at 30?
Based on how well you grasp the class and how well you understand your eq and how to balance it, they can seriously rape at 25-35
Here's some specific questions:
Do crit strikes add affects to mobs, just PCs, or some of both?
Does predict work against mobs?
Deathstrike? Why?
Both, yes, why not?
deathstrike doesn't work on mobs but crit strikes do. predict and vigil work against mobs and I don't know about spellkill