Tier 3 Perfect Suppression Shadowhunter Build Guide

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

• Cruel Cutter, Grind Chain and Spinning Weapon are your Spender skills. They consume 20% of the Shadowburst Meter with their Encroachment Release tripods, but in return deal much more damage.
  • In this setup, Spinning Weapon and Grind Chain are your Conviction and Judgement triggers. Be aware of the internal 30 seconds cooldown of these runes.
• Demonic Clone is one of your main Shadowburst Meter generators.
• Rising Claw is your Counter skill and generates a bit of Shadowburst meter. It also provides Destruction.
• Piercing Thorn is your 4th most damaging skill (after the 3 spenders), it doesn't generate meter.
• Howl is your Synergy skill, generates good amounts of Shadowburst Meter and it also provides Destruction.
• Decimate is your 5th most damaging skill, and it also generates a bit of Shadowburst meter.
• Gate of Eruption is your Awakening skill. It generates good amounts of Shadowburst Meter, but its animation is long (if the enemy moves out, it doesn't generate). You need to cast it during the Conviction + Judgement effect to reduce its cooldown even further.

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

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

• Demonic Slash is your mobility skill, as well as a Move Speed self-buff through its Nimble Movement tripod. It deals Destruction.
• Cruel Cutter and Demolition are your two Shadowburst Meter spenders. They also deal the most damage.
• Thrust Impact and Sharpened Cut are secondary damage skills. The first moves you back a little, the second moves you forward.
• Decimate is another damage filler skill, but also generates a bit of Shadowburst Meter.
• Howl is your main Shadowburst meter generator, as well as your main Synergy skill.
• Rising Claw is your Counter skill, it also deals Destruction.
• Gate of Eruption is your Awakening skill. It generates a lot of Shadowburst meter, as long as the enemy stays inside its zone.

Alternative Skill, Tripod, and Rune Options

Rising Claw and Howl can be replaced with Slasher and Demon's Grip.

• This provides you with a ranged and faster meter generator, giving more meter per second but reducing your meter generated per skill. This also forces you to take another Synergy skill (Slasher) to maintain good uptime.
• This also lowers your overall Destruction and Stagger.
• Additionally, you need to move your Bleed rune to Slasher and your Conviction rune to Demonic Slash.

Demonic Slash

• You can take the Chain Charge tripod. This gives you two charges which makes easier to maintain Nimble Movement up, but causes you to use more mana and doesn't allow you to move through the boss.

Rising Claw

• You can take the Weak Point Detection tripod if you are running a setup without Adrenaline.

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.

• Grind Chain is your main skill to clear lesser monsters. It has big radius and can be casted pretty often.
• Cruel Cutter is your main damage skill to take down the Boss in the second floor.
• Piercing Thorn, Howl, Decimate and Demonic Clone are good skills to clear lesser monsters and also Elites.
• Demon's Grip is used to generate Shadowburst Meter for Cruel Cutter.
• Demonic Slash is used to move around and quickly destroy third floor's crystals.
• Gate of Eruption is your Awakening. You use it to activate Dominion's set effect for lower cooldowns.

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.
• Perfect Suppression increases your damage as well as your meter generation.

You need to keep track of your Conviction and Judgement internal cooldown (30s) and your Awakening cooldown, and trigger both together to maintain high uptime on the set effects.

Basic Rotations

Standard Rotation

• Since you need to cast your Awakening to activate Dominion's effect, and you need to do it during the Conviction and Judgment window for the reduced cooldown, you need to track your Awakening's cooldown and Judgment's internal cooldown of 30 seconds.
• If your Awakening cooldown is less than 30s, you can switch the order of Spinning Weapon and Grind Chain to prevent triggering Conviction (and by consequence Judgment) until your Awakening is ready.
• Remember to keep your Damage Amplification Synergy applied at all times. Be careful of not getting Howl's animation canceled, since it lacks Paralysis Immunity.
• Avoid using your spenders with less than 20% Shadowburst Meter, as they lose too much damage. Unless you need to trigger Conviction and Judgment.

Stagger Check Rotation

• Stagger checks vary in length so you may need to cast more skills apart from the recommended ones here. Remember to use a Whirlwind Grenade if required for faster stagger.

Positional damage is your main goal so you need to chase the enemy's back all the time to benefit from the +10% Crit Rate and +5% Damage bonus, as well as from the relic set positional boost.

Basic Rotations

Standard Rotation

• This rotation assumes you start with some Shadowburst meter. You can use Gate of Eruption at the start of the fight for this, and then maintain your gauge with your normal generators.
• Use Demonic Slash at the start of the rotation to apply your Damage Amplification Synergy and your Nimble Movement self-buff.
• Proc Conviction and Judgement with Rising ClawCruel Cutter.
• Unload the rest of your damage skills, ideally in the listed order to keep cooldowns aligned.
• Avoid using your spenders with less than 20% Shadowburst Meter, as they lose too much damage.

Stagger Check Rotation

• Stagger checks vary in length so you may need to cast more skills apart from the recommended ones here. Remember to use a Whirlwind Grenade if required for faster stagger.

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

Swiftness is the primary stat. It's used in all your accessories to reduce your Awakening's cooldown so you can have maximum Dominion uptime.
Crit is a secondary stat. It provides damage consistency.

Swiftness helps to reduce cooldowns while also providing damage through move speed for Raid Captain.
Crit provides damage consistency and allows you to have better damage per cycle.

4 pieces Dominion Set

This set is an alternative option that changes the playstyle. It also requires you to cast Awakening, but this time you need to cast it every time it is available because its buff only lasts for 2 minutes. It provides Damage, Cooldown Reduction to your skills and Awakening, and also awakening charges.

2 pieces Nightmare Set

You need 2 pieces of Nightmare in this setup, to help with Mana usage and to get a bit more damage.

Entropy Set

This provides you with Damage, Crit Rate, Crit Damage and most importantly, a huge boost to positional damage skills.

Engraving Explanations

Core Engravings

• Perfect Suppression grants damage to Normal Skills as well as increases your Shadowburst meter generation. It's usually used at level 1 except in Crit setups, in which you pick it at level 3 to drop Adrenaline to level 1.
• Ambush Master provides a huge boost to positional damage.
• 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.
• Raid Captain is a pretty good option since we gain Move Speed from Nimble Movement and Swiftness.

Add-on Engravings (Pick 1)

• 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 an alternative in setups with >82% Crit Rate, having even higher potential with Crit Synergies.
• Adrenaline provides an additional source of Crit Rate and Attack Power. It is fairly easy to upkeep. Typically used at level 3 except in <1200 Crit setups.

Level 1 and 2 Engravings

• Adrenaline should only be dropped to Level 1 when you're running a setup with >1200 Crit (or >1350 at level 2), as to avoid being too close to maximum Crit Rate.
• Perfect Suppression is a very good Level 1 option in every other accessory setup. It's the ideal level 2 engraving, but this requires a 9/9 Ability Stone.

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Master.

The recommended Elixir Set for this build is Critical.