Tier 3 Esoteric Skill Enhancement Wardancer Build Guide

Welcome to the Tier 3 Esoteric Skill Enhancement Wardancer Build Guide! This build revolves around consistently generating Esoteric Orbs and using them to unleash powerful Esoteric Skills against your enemies.

Esoteric Skill Enhancement Wardancer can inflict reliable amounts of Stagger and Destruction, but her Counter is often unavailable. The Class Engraving increases the damage of your Esoteric Skills with each Esoteric Orb that you have.

Want a simpler and more robust playstyle? Check out our First Intention guide.

Builds

Raids

Chaos Dungeons

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

• Azure Dragon Supreme Fist, Rising Fire Dragon, Blast Formation, and Spiral Impact are your Esoteric Skills.
• Roar of Courage is your main Synergy (Weakness Exposure) skill. Additionally, it provides +20% Crit Rate for 6 seconds, but only to yourself.
• Wind's Whisper is a self-buff skill.
• Sky Shattering Blow is your Counter skill. Besides that, it serves as a secondary Synergy skill, and a meter generation skill.
• Energy Combustion is your most important meter generator. Make sure it is always active!
• Ultimate Skill: Fist of Dominance is your Awakening. It is preferred over Ultimate Skill: Flash Rage Blow thanks to its damage reduction effect.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Wind's Whisper

• Purify - Allows you to cleanse your debuffs.

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.

• Roar of Courage, Leaping Dragon, Wind's Whisper, and Esoteric Skill: Blast Formation are your main ways to deal with large packs of lesser monsters.
• Esoteric skill: Azure Dragon Supreme Fist and Sweeping Kick can both deal with Elite monsters on their own.
• Esoteric skill: Azure Dragon Supreme Fist is your primary way of dealing with the Boss on the 2nd Floor.
• Sky Shattering Blow serves as a quick mobility option. It can also easily break crystals on the 3rd Floor.
• Ultimate Skill: Fist of Dominance is your Awakening. It is preferred over Ultimate Skill: Flash Rage Blow thanks to its wider area of effect.

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.
• Esoteric Skill Enhancement increases the damage of your Esoteric Skills.

Gameplay & Skill Rotation

Esoteric Skill Enhancement Wardancer constantly generates Esoteric Orbs, allowing her to use powerful Esoteric Skills.

Thanks to the Class Engraving, each Esoteric Orb you possess when casting an Esoteric Skill increases the skill's damage by +8/10/12%, regardless of how many orbs the skill consumes.

All attacks with a Back Attack affix receive +10% Crit Rate and +5% Damage when they land on the target's back-side indicator. It is important to position yourself accordingly as much as possible in order to take advantage of this.

This build focuses on strategically utilizing the Crit Rate buff from Roar of Courage and the Attack Power buff from Wind's Whisper to empower your strongest Esoteric Skills.

Other than that, you should be constantly generating Esoteric Orbs using Energy Combustion.

Wardancer Identity

Basic Rotations

Opening Rotation

• Using skills in this specific order is recommended for the general flow of your rotation. However, in order to maximize damage output, it's recommended for each Esoteric Skill to be used while in possession of a specific number of Esoteric Orbs:
  • Esoteric Skill: Blast Formation - 2 Orbs
  • Esoteric skill: Azure Dragon Supreme Fist - 3 Orbs
  • Esoteric Skill: Rising Fire Dragon - 3 Orbs
  • Esoteric Skill: Spiral Impact - 1 Orb

Standard Damage Rotation

• Using skills in this specific order is recommended for the general flow of your rotation. However, in order to maximize damage output, it's recommended for each Esoteric Skill to be used while in possession of a specific number of Esoteric Orbs:
  • Esoteric Skill: Blast Formation - 4 Orbs
  • Esoteric skill: Azure Dragon Supreme Fist - 4 Orbs
  • Esoteric Skill: Rising Fire Dragon - 4 Orbs
  • Esoteric Skill: Spiral Impact - 2 Orbs
• Try your best to maintain your Synergy using Sky Shattering Blow, even if you aren't planning to attack immediately after.

Stagger Check Rotation

• Using skills in this specific order is recommended for most stagger checks. However, each check can vary in duration, so you may need to readjust depending on the situation and your party's composition. 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 Specialization and Swiftness.

• Specialization is the primary stat. It directly increases the damage of your Esoteric Skills, as well as your meter generation.
• Swiftness is a secondary stat. It offers a small boost in cooldown reduction, as well as attack and movement speed.

Gear Set

Hallucination Set

This set is optimal thanks to the combination of Damage and Crit Rate that it provides, on top of not requiring any active maintenance beyond initial activation.

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 there are some that 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

• 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.
• Keen Blunt Weapon synergizes well with your gear set and various Crit Rate buffs.
• Raid Captain synergizes well with your Swiftness substat and Movement Speed buffs.
• Adrenaline provides an additional source of Crit Rate and Attack Power. It is fairly easy to upkeep.
• Esoteric Skill Enhancement increases your Esoteric Skills' damage based on the amount of Esoteric Orbs you have, as well as granting you an extra Esoteric Orb.

Level 1 and 2 Engravings

• Esoteric Skill Enhancement increases your Esoteric Skills' damage based on the amount of Esoteric Orbs you have, as well as granting you an extra Esoteric Orb. This engraving is quite efficient at level 1, instead allowing you to run Cursed Doll at level 3 for an Attack Power increase, at the cost of -25% healing.

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 Specialization and Swiftness. 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