Black Powder

This article is about the skill. For the item required in the crafting of Quip, see Black Powder (item).

Fire a black-powder shot, blinding your target and nearby foes with smoke. — In-game description

Black Powder

Profession

Thief (skill list)

Weapon

Off hand pistol

Game link

API

13113

“

0.5½  6  

Black Powder

Fire a black-powder shot, blinding your target and nearby foes with smoke.

 Damage: 92 (0.25)^?

 Blindness (2s): Next outgoing attack misses.

 Number of Targets: 5

 Pulses: 3

 Duration: 4 seconds

 Interval: 2 seconds

 Radius: 180

 Combo Field: Smoke

 Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile

 Range: 900

 Unblockable

— In-game description

Related traits

Deadly Arts

• Exposed Weakness — Deal increased strike damage to your target for each unique condition on them.

Critical Strikes

• Deadly Aim — Your pistol and harpoon gun attacks now pierce and have increased strike damage.

Shadow Arts

• Cloaked in Shadow — Gaining stealth blinds nearby foes. Blinding a foe siphons health from them.

Acrobatics

• Assassin's Reward — Heal yourself whenever you use a skill that uses initiative. Heal yourself for each point of initiative spent.

Trickery

• Lead Attacks — Increases all damage dealt per initiative spent. Steal gains reduced recharge time.

Notes

• The attack occurs in two phases:

1. Creates a point-blank area of effect smoke cloud which blinds enemies in the area when created and then pulsing blind once per 2 seconds while the field lasts.
2. The projectile attack occurs after the smoke cloud is created, meaning it becomes a combo attack and blinds its target (unless another combo field was placed prior to smoke field, in which case the projectile will combo with that field).

• This is one of the few skills that can combo with itself.
• Multiple instances of this skill stack, so you can lay down multiple Black Powder fields and have each of them apply Blindness on enemies.

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
October 18, 2022	Corrected this skill's tooltip to remove an unintentional stealth skill fact.
October 26, 2021	The blinding effect from this skill is now based off of an attack and will no longer directly apply through evading. The field portion of this skill is now unblockable.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: Increased the radius of the area of blinding and the smoke field around the thief from 120 to 180. Updated the description of this skill.
September 09, 2014	Increased the interval between pulses to 2 seconds. Reduced the duration of blind to 2 seconds.
July 01, 2014	Fixed a bug that prevented the bullet fired from this skill from bouncing when traited with Ricochet.
April 15, 2014	Added a radius skill fact (120).
May 28, 2013	No longer fires its projectile backward while moving. The field can still be generated.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Black Powder has been added to the game.