User:Masel/Builds/Specter
Scepter + Dagger Condition Specter [edit]
Criterion | Rating |
---|---|
Burst Damage | 5/5 |
Sustained Damage | 5/5 |
Utility Options | 4/5 |
Survivability | 4/5 |
Difficulty | 2/5 |
Condition Specter has a simple-to-learn rotation and is lots of fun to play in open world and instanced content. It can provide itself with good amounts of all essential offensive boons: Quickness, Alacrity, Might and Fury. It excels when you can precast Prepare Thousand Needles and has great burst damage in instanced content for a condition build due to Spider Venom and Skale Venom. It always provides a good uptime on Fury, Vigor, Swiftness and 10 Stacks of Might around it and can further be altered to provide Alacrity with smaller tweaks.
Link to the DPS Build in the Build Editor:
Playstyle & Skills[edit]
Skill Type | Skills | |||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Steal & Good Stolen Skills |
| |||||
Shroud Skills |
| |||||
Scepter + Pistol |
| |||||
| ||||||
| ||||||
Utility |
| |||||
|
Thieves are – together with Revenants – the only profession in the game with a resource bar that determines how often you can use skills. On this profession, skills have different Initiative costs, but no internal cooldown. You regenerate 1 Initiative per second, but there are other ways to increase the inflow. Since skills have no internal cooldown, this often means that the skill that does the most damage per cast and initiative spent is repeated (like Twilight Combo on this build), making most rotations on Thief relatively simple to understand.
Rotation Concept[edit]
You can find my most recent rotation showcase here. Damage Log
Rotation Flow[edit]
Section | Notes |
---|---|
General Stuff |
Careful:This build scales with the number of conditions on the enemy. For guidance on setting up the training area, see my guide for it
|
Opener |
|
Section 1: Outside of Shadow Shroud |
|
Section 2: Shadow Shroud |
|
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage |
|
Utility Skills[edit]
Skill Choice | Notes |
---|---|
Well of Gloom | Cheap and strong heal that also heals allies and allows you to Shadowstep. For a more pasive inflow of healing, you can use Signet of Malice. |
Prepare Thousand Needles | This skill is strong damage via Immobile, Bleeding and Poisoned on the secondary cast Thousand Needles. You can precast this up to 5 minutes prior to combat starting, allowing you to reset the cooldown (the cooldown ticks down after the first cast). Unfortunately, this also means that losing the precast will decrease the burst damage of this build noticeably on some encounters. On highly mobile encounters, use Devourer Venom instead. |
Spider Venom | Like the next two skills, this is a Venom skill that applies Poisoned for each stack of its effect. The venom effects are applied to yourself and up to 4 nearby allies. The conditions applied by allies count for your damage and use your stats! This leads to a massive difference in damage dealt per cast between solo and group gameplay. You can use any kind of friendly NPC to apply more stacks in solo gameplay, including summons like the thieves from Thieves Guild. |
Skale Venom | This applies four stacks of Torment and Vulnerability per ally it is applied to, leading to massive burst damage when used in groups, especially when combined with Spider Venom. |
Basilisk Venom | Applies a Stun on cast. Since it is a Venom skill, this gets shared with 4 nearby allies too, making it one of the strongest CC skills in the game. |
Gear & Traits[edit]
For gear, you can freely mix pieces of Viper's and Ritualist's. Each piece of Viper's gives you a slightly higher damage output than Ritualist's (~6-7% damage difference for a full set), but comes at the cost of more difficult Alacrity coverage and less bulky Shadow Shrouds - the size of Shadow Shrouds is equal to 69% of your Vitality. If you can't afford two sets, my recommendation is to use Ritualist's Armor and Trinkets as the base variant and use Abomination Weapons. That will get you right between the two builds in terms of stats and provide a good allrounder setup of all kinds of PvE.
Important Stats (descending in Importance):
- ~93% Torment Duration
- 100% Poisoned Duration
- Maximize Condition Damage
Since the vast majority of damage comes from Torment and Poisoned, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.
Deadly Arts | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Trickery | ||||||
Specter | ||||||
- For a budget variant, simply replace all armor pieces of Viper's with rare/exotic Ritualist's.
- Ascended gear is always ideal, but exotic gear is fine for everything aside from higher-tier fractals.
Open World Build[edit]
You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.
Link to the Open World Build on the Editor
Increasing Survivability[edit]
- For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
- The gear can stay the same as for instanced content, but the more pieces of Ritualist's you have, the easier maintaining the Boons listed below becomes and the bulkier your Shadow Shroud becomes, as it scales with Vitality. The bulkier shroud allows you to outlast damage better. The difference is very noticeable!
- Use Skelk Venom. It is the strongest self-heal you have available. It also heals allies, similar to the other venom skills.
- Alternate between Shadow Shroud and your weapons. Always use Skelk Venom shortly after exiting shroud, as it will not heal you inside of shroud.
- Stay in shroud long enough to build up a good uptime on Alacrity. I recommend staying in there for 4x Grasping Shadows. With Quickness up, you will apply Alacrity faster, allowing you to make shroud loops shorter for better uptime on Lead Attacks.
- Use Dawn's Repose for area Barrier application in shroud. This negates a good chunk of incoming damage and makes your shroud last longer. It also applies barreir to allies, which is always great to have!
- Use the survivability food and utility item listed above for -10% damage taken and 150 Toughness!
Boon Coverage[edit]
- This build shares all boons listed below aside from Quickness in an area around it, making it a great choice for group gameplay in open world.
- To cover a partial uptime on self-Quickness, we'll make use of Haste.
- Might and Fury are covered by Thrill of the Crime, Bountiful Theft and Haste.
- Additionally, swap out Strength of Shadows for Shadestep and Quick Pockets for Sleight of Hand. This will allow you to cover Alacrity in an area and makes all other beneficial effects of your Shroud skills apply in an area too. Sleight of Hand reduces the cooldown of Siphon, improving inflow of Shadow Force and Boon coverage.
- Condition Specter has no useful source of Protection on itself. Therefore, using Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge and Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge will massively increase your surviviability in solo gameplay.
- These give for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from Stability, Resistance and Resolution on entering combat every 30 seconds.
Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects[edit]
- For condition cleanses, make use of Grasping Shadows frequently.
- If you need additional cleanses, replace any utility skill with Well of Silence or slap on another Dagger with a Superior Sigil of Purity (e.g. Claws of the Desert for …).
- Haste is a Stun break with a short cooldown.
- Mind Shock applies Stability in an area around you.