Tier 3 Death Strike Sharpshooter Build Guide

Welcome to the Death Strike Build Guide! This build revolves around utilizing your Hawk to get incredibly consistent bursts of high damage. Thanks to Death Strike you become a little bit unethical and utilize the burst of your Hawk to self-buff and unleash your multiple big hitters.

Outside of that, this build provides great Stagger to the party. The main things to watch out for are his lack of range as his playstyle revolves around staying close to the boss and not being able to utilize your Hawk outside of damage. If you can master that then this becomes a great non-directional class that can excel in all content.

Want a more relaxed and simple playstyle? Check out our Loyal Companion guide.

Builds

Raids

Chaos Dungeons

Need some tips for general content? Check out our Guardian Raids and Abyssal Dungeons guides.

• Snipe, Sharpshooter, Charged Shot, and Arrow Wave are your damage skills.
• Hawk Shot is both a high damage skill and a meter generation skill.
• Deadly Slash and Moving Slash are your meter generation skills.
• Atomic Arrow is your Synergy from Damage Amplification.
• Deadly Slash is also your Counter.
• Fenrir's Messenger is your Awakening. It is used to generate max meter at the start of raids to have a comfortable start.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Arrow Wave can be swapped for Blade Storm, using Silver Master, Lightning Blade, Blade Dance, and Galewind.

• This is used for Specialization builds to fit in an extra Last Rush (X) and maintain a similar damage output to Swiftness builds.
• Wealth - Can be used alternatively for more comfortable meter generation.

Moving Slash

• Purify - Can be used for utility if you have your meter generation under control.

Sharpshooter

• Overwhelm - Can be used if you are struggling with Stagger and can handle the increased mana usage.

Check the Rune Guide for more details on Runes and how to obtain them.

This build is optimized and meant to be used only in Chaos Dungeons. For Ebony Cube please use a Raid build.

• Snipe, Hawk Shot, and Arrow Wave are your best skills for clearing elites.
• Arrow Shower, Claymore Mine, Blade Storm, and Charged Shot are your best mob clearing skills.
• Moving Slash is your mobility skill.
• Golden Eye is your Awakening. It does a huge amount of damage in a wide area of effect, great for bosses or mobs.

Recommended Engraving Setup

While you can freely experiment with any engravings you want for this content, here's a recommended setup, based on the Engraving Support system:

• Preemptive Strike causes your attacks to deal immense amounts of damage to monsters that you haven't attacked yet, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Contender is a stacking Attack Power effect that increases in strength once you kill a monster, making it ideal for Chaos Dungeons.
• Raid Captain provides damage based on your Bonus Movement Speed, synergizing well with the Buff Nodes scattered throughout Chaos Dungeons.
• Cursed Doll increases your damage with essentially no drawback in Chaos Dungeons.
• Loyal Companion will increase your Hawk's power as well as your own allowing for a smooth Chaos Dungeon experience. Remember to not use Last Rush (X) with this build!

Gameplay & Skill Rotation

Death Strike allows you to get significantly increased meter generation to play around the massive debuff provided by Last Rush (X) for a pseudo-burst rotation.

Using his identity Last Rush (X) with Death Strike will provide.

• 30% Increased Damage to the Boss
• 12% Increased Damage while Hawk is NOT Summoned

This build focuses around Last Rush (X) to deal massive bursts of damage. Your tripods on Snipe and Hawk Shot like Solo Performance will further increase your damage when the Hawk is not summoned.

Sharpshooter Identity

The core concept of this build is to generate meter, using Summon Silverhawk (Z), instantly casting Wings of Storm (Z) for minor bonus damage, then using Last Rush (X) to apply your Death Strike debuff to the boss. The Hawk must land and does provide some decent damage itself. While the debuff is ticking you will send in some heavily buffed damage skills and use some meter generation skills to build up your meter and then repeat. This results in a playstyle of a bunch of mini-bursts dealing quite significant damage.

Basic Rotations

Standard Damage Rotation

• This rotation follows a simple core principle, you are mainly trying to keep 100% uptime on the debuff provided by Last Rush (X). You first apply the debuff, fit in some damage skills, and then use two meter generation skills to generate more meter for another Last Rush (X) to keep the debuff going. It is a bit confusing at first but if you understand this core principle it will become obvious on how your rotation will adapt to slightly different raid scenarios.
• Last Rush (X) assumes you are using Summon Silverhawk (Z) then Wings of Storm (Z) anytime it is available as it has no animation and it just gives free bonus damage to the rotation. Never hold a rotation if Wings of Storm (Z) is not available.
• Try your best to maintain your Synergy using Atomic Arrow, even if you aren't planning to attack immediately after.

Stagger Check Rotation

• Simply follow this rotation to do great Stagger. Remember you can also use a Whirlwind Grenade if you have one equipped!

Tripods and Gems

Tripod Levelling

Increasing the level of Tripods greatly enhances their effectiveness. You may only increase the level of 18 tripods at a time. Some of them cannot be leveled at all, or are left at level 1 - these tripods are omitted from the table, even if they are used. Here are the main tripods you should look out for in order to maximize this build's potential.

Tripods written in bold text are your highest priority, make sure to level them first!

For more information on where to obtain Tripod Amulets and how to use them, check out our Skill Tree System Guide.

Gems

Gems are another significant aspect of your build, as they directly impact the damage and cooldowns of your skills. You can equip up to 11 gems at a time. Here are the ones you should focus on in order to maximize this build's potential, listed according to their priority.

For more information on where to obtain gems and how to use them, check out our Gem System Guide.

Stat Priority

This build utilizes Crit and Swiftness, with Specialization as an alternative option.

• Crit is the primary stat. It is our highest damage gain by increasing our Crit Rate and working with our Crit Damage tripods.
• Swiftness is a secondary stat. It helps by making the rotation more fluid by giving Attack and Movement speed and reducing cooldown reduction, this is the standard option most go for.
• Specialization is a secondary stat. It makes the build harder by not having the Attack and Movement speed from Swiftness but easier by helping you with more fluid meter generation, for some players this is easier but requires more uses of Last Rush (X) to be efficient.

Gear Set

Hallucination Set

Due to our exceptionally high Crit Damage scaling this set becomes the best for giving us a large amount of Crit Rate resulting in the highest damage increase.

Salvation Set

This set is an alternative option for situations where we have too much Crit Rate either from using Adrenaline level three or having two Crit Synergies causing us to go over 100% on Crit Rate.

The name of your set will change every time you acquire a higher tier of gear, but the set effect will remain the same. Look for your set's keyword when recrafting it to find it more easily (e.g Entropy, Hallucination etc).

Check out the Gear Progression Guide for step by step instructions and early game gearing.

If you are interested in Sidereal Weapons, click here for more details.

Engravings

Engravings are a core part of your build. Typically, most engravings will be used at level 3, but some can be used at level 1 or 2 in addition to the others, after reaching item level 1540 and unlocking Ancient Accessories.

Engraving Explanations

Core Engravings

• Death Strike grants significant increase damage to our build and much needed meter generation to upkeep our debuff.
• Grudge increases damage done while also increasing damage received. The engraving is a highly effective damage increase without needing specific positioning, making it worthwhile even with the penalty.
• Hit Master since nearly all of our damage is non-directional this engraving becomes very efficient in any build.

Add-on Engravings (Pick 2)

• Cursed Doll is a significant Attack Power increase at the cost of 25% healing. The healing penalty can be punishing for inexperienced players who are not familiar with boss mechanics, but it becomes easy to overcome with time.
• Keen Blunt Weapon is a good option later in the game once our build has sufficient Crit Rate using Hallucination Set, it can also be ran early on it is just slightly less efficient. This engraving loses a lot of efficiency due to the high Crit Damage in our build however there are not many other good options.
• Adrenaline this is only ran at level three in early builds or builds using Salvation Set due to the stat and Crit Rate sources we have early game being slightly lackluster.

Level 1 and 2 Engravings

• Adrenaline provides an additional source of Crit Rate and Attack Power. It is fairly easy to upkeep. It is used for the highest damage potential.
• Ether Predator is the best damage increase only when you are using a Salvation Set that is using Adrenaline level three.

Check out the Engraving Guide for more details.

Bracelet

Bracelets provide beneficial effects to yourself or to your party members depending on the rolls they have.

The primary goal is to get the main stats used by this build Crit and Swiftness or Specialization. After that you should be aiming for Special Rolls to get more damage. Please note that this system is heavily reliant on RNG, and you should not expect to get much more beyond your main stats early on.

Check out the Bracelet Guide for more details.

Elixir

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Critical.

Check out the Elixir Guide for more details and general stat recommendations.

Card Sets

Cards are an endgame system that helps maximize your character's damage. Here are the recommended card sets for this build.

• Deep Dive is used early on as it is fairly easy to obtain.
• Light of Salvation is the standard endgame option, but it can take a long time to acquire 30-piece Awakening.
• Kazeros's Legion Commanders is used as an alternative to Light of Salvation, in content where enemies have a weakness to Dark Damage.

Check out the Card Guide for more details on how to obtain cards and interact with them.

End Game Damage Card Set