Welcome to the Wand/Dagger PvP build guide! The Wand / Dagger weapon combination is primarily a support build that revolves around mixing ranged and melee playstyles to ensure you can be anywhere on the battlefield.
Unlike a more traditional Support or DPS build, you need to keep close watch on both allies and enemies alike to make the best use of your Swift Healing, Cursed Nightmare, Shadow Escape, Fountain of Life and Blessed Barrier abilities. Knowing when and where to use these skills for maximum value makes the difference between a good support and a great one.
Wand / Dagger PvP Build
If you're interested in PvE, check out our Wand / Dagger PvE Build Guide!
- Has Stealth
- Hybrid DPS
- High AoE DPS
- High Crit Healing
- Low Mobility
- Weak to Stun
- High Mana Cost
Skill Builds
- The goal for this build is to sleep as many people as each fight allows and deal as much AOE damage as possible. When players start getting more geared, this playstyle falls off.
Active Skills
- The block we use is Block Blade. The stealth gained on a rolling perfect block is invaluable, and you should be rolling often to upkeep Lequirus's Thorny Edge passive.
DPS Skills
- Touch of Despair, Decaying Touch and Curse Explosion are your primary AOE damage skills.
Utility Skills
- Karmic Haze is your go to for spreading your Curses.
- Phantom Smokescreen is your survival tool after you engage, ensuring you Evade most skills in the game.
- Shadow Strike is used to apply Silence and Bind, as well as proc your Shadow Walker passive.
- Camouflage Cloak is your primary tool for engaging in fights, but can also be used to save yourself from a bad situation.
- Cursed Nightmare is used in combination with Karmic Haze and your other damaging Curse skills to set up your bombs using Curse Explosion.
- Enchanting Time and Blessed Barrier are used to buff yourself before dumping your Curses for increased DOT.
Support Skills
- Swift Healing and Clay's Salvation are your only source of self sustain.
Passive Skills
- Assassin's Instincts, Wrathful Edge and Full of Corruption are all passives used to boost your damage.
- Assassination Stance is used in combination with Phantom Smokescreen to have stealth up much more often.
- Shadow Walker is a massive survival tool that you need to keep active at all times.
- Assassin's Step gives us quite a lot of mobility, which is great for your playstyle.
- Wraith's Beckon increases the duration of all Curses, making it a must have.
- Devotion and Emptiness helps boost our healing when we need to use it.
- The goal for this build is to be a utility machine, providing Healing, Shields, Increased Defenses, and the ability to stop enemy engagements. Best played in ZvZ combat with a full party.
Active Skills
- The block we use is Block Blade. The stealth gained on a rolling perfect block is invaluable, and you should be rolling often to upkeep Lequirus's Thorny Edge passive.
DPS Skills
- Touch of Despair and Corrupted Magic Circle are your only sources of damage in this playstyle, and are more used to stack Full of Corruption to increase your Healing and Shields.
Utility Skills
- Karmic Haze and Cursed Nightmare are your primary tool to either engage an enemy group or help your group to disengage.
- Camouflage Cloak and Phantom Smokescreen are used to get you out of tough situations. Camouflage Cloak should also be used when engaging fights with your AOE sleep combo.
- Shadow Strike is a valuable mobility skill that Roots and Silences a target. Use it to peel for your party or to get a quick engagement with the enemy and return with Shadow Escape. It also procs Shadow Walker, giving you even more defenses.
Support Skills
- Swift Healing, Clay's Salvation, and Fountain of Life are your primary sources of Healing, and also stack the passive Selfless Soul.
- Invincile Wall and Blessed Barrier are fantastic damage mitigation tools and should be used before you engage when possible. Also, consider saving Blessed Barrier for when one of your party members gets in a sticky situation.
Passive Skills
- Selfless Soul, Full of Corruption, Devotion and Emptiness and Assassin's Instincts are all skills used to increase the power of your Healing and Shields.
- Shadow Walker and Assassination Stance are key survival tools for this build.
- Assassin's Step keeps you mobile throughout the fight.
- Wraith's Beckon increases the duration of all your Curses, but we mostly take it to extend the duration of Cursed Nightmare.
Alternatives
- Consider replacing Corrupted Magic Circle with Enchanting Time to get extra Healing and Shield strength from the increased Skill Damage Boost. Take off Range ▲ to fit in the Enchanting Time skill specialization.
- The goal for this build is to play as a hybrid support/DPS with the ability to engage, Heal, Shield, or assassinate targets. You MUST play around your team as getting caught usually means death.
Active Skills
- The block we use is Block Blade. The stealth gained on a rolling perfect block is invaluable, and you should be rolling often to upkeep Lequirus's Thorny Edge passive.
DPS Skills
- Cleaving Moonlight and Thunderclouds Bombing are our primary burst tools, use them while the enemy is under the effect of Ankle Strike.
Utility Skills
- We take Touch of Despair mostly to apply the 10% increased Base Damage taken, although it also applies a small DOT.
- Lightning Infusion is used to massively increase the damage of Thunderclouds Bombing and also apply Endurance Reduction to the enemy.
- Camouflage Cloak allows us to stealth engage fights and escape sticky situations.
- Cursed Nightmare is a great tool for completely shutting down a member of the enemy team, and should be used to stop someone engaging your backline so you can kill the other two members of his team.
- We take Shadow Strike to help reposition in fights while applying Silence and Root to enemy players. It also serves to proc our Shadow Walker passive.
Support Skills
- Invincile Wall and Blessed Barrier are and excellent way to mitigate damage, and should be used to protect allies that are dove on.
- Fountain of Life and Swift Healing are the healing skills utilized to keep ourselves and our allies topped up.
Passive Skills
- Shadow Walker is invaluable to increase survivability and should be kept active at all times.
- Assassin's Instincts, Noble Revival, Saint's Oath, Selfless Soul and Devotion and Emptiness are all used to increase our Healing capabilities as we fill the support role in arena.
- Wraith's Beckon is mostly taken to extend the duration of our Cursed Nightmare.
- We take Wrathful Edge to increase our burst potential when you need to dive onto targets.
Skill Prioritization
- Use Quality Marind Ore to craft Quality Active Skill Growth Book and Quality Passive Skill Growth Book.
- Use Rare Marind Ore to craft Rare Active Skill Growth Book and Rare Passive Skill Growth Book.
- Prioritize getting all these skills to blue first before getting them to purple. These are universal skills you will always use. Upgrade the rest of your skills as you play the game.
PvP Gameplay and Skill Rotation
General AoE
- Engage with Camouflage Cloak
- Cursed Nightmare
- Touch of Despair
- Decaying Touch
- Karmic Haze
- Curse Explosion
- he main goal of this DPS rotation is to spread as many of your Curses over as many targets as possible. Ideally, you would stack Touch of Despair 4 times on the enemy before using Karmic Haze. However, this takes quite a bit of time, and people are more likely to run away before you have a chance to spread them with Karmic Haze.
With that in mind, aim to have at least two stacks of Touch of Despair on your target. This can be made easy with the Curse specialization.
Fast AoE Burst Rotation
- Engage with Camouflage Cloak
- Touch of Despair
- Decaying Touch
- Karmic Haze
- Curse Explosion
- This combo is for shorter burst windows. You lose the guaranteed crit from Cursed Nightmare but gain the benefit of not having to wait for the target to fall asleep, so it's good to use in a pinch.
Fast Sleep
- Engage with Camouflage Cloak
- Cursed Nightmare
- Karmic Haze
- This is a very simple combo. Make sure your location is safe before you cast and you know where to safely reposition afterward.
- Always target a Wand / Longbow or SnS user with Cursed Nightmare, because they don't usually stack Evasions, so it's more likely your Sleep and Karmic Haze would not miss on them.
- After you cast Cursed Nightmare on a target, you must use Karmic Haze on that same target to spread Sleep.
- Note: The tooltip for Karmic Haze is incorrect and you can spread any DoT or Sleep to as many targets within skill's AoE radius.
These combos are best used while the enemy is distracted. You are not that durable and any amount of focusing by the enemy party can easily shut you down. Make use of Camouflage Cloak when possible for the safest engage.
- Blessed Barrier
- Invincile Wall
- Fountain of Life
- Clay's Salvation
- [Swift Healing
- This isn’t a rotation as much as it is a use order of skills to use keep you and your party at full Health.
- You may not have all these skills equipped depending on your party role. However, use the order of skills to help you determine how much healing you can provide. This ensures you use the right ability for the right situation to manage resources.
- When someone is at death's door, use this skillset from top to bottom (except for Vampiric Contract as it's a passive) to fully heal anyone in the game. Lastly, with tools like Fountain of Life and Clay's Salvation you are also more than capable of healing your entire party as well.
Engage/Dive
- Lightning Infusion
- Shadow Strike
- Ankle Strike
- Cleaving Moonlight
- Lightning Infusion
- Thunderclouds Bombing
This is your only burst damage rotation. It's best used on mages due to the Silence from Shadow Strike. Avoid using this on Bow users as Lightning Infusion repeatedly procs the passive Devoted Shield.
The rest of your gameplay revolves around using Cursed Nightmare on problematic targets like Greatsword users while providing our team with healing and shields when necessary. See the Healing tab for more info.
Tips
In small and large scale PvP, your focus is keeping those around you alive while looking for opportunities to get mass amounts of damage on large groups with your skills.
- Most of your time should be spent with a Dagger in your main hand to make use of the Master of Evasion Mastery.
- On pushes, make sure to Dodge Roll to gain the Base Damage effect from Lequirus's Thorny Edge, then pre-cast Invincile Wall to shield your team.
- After engaging with Camouflage Cloak, make use of Block Blade's Roll to proc Shadow Walker. Also, consider using Phantom Smokescreen after engageing to keep yourself safe while using your other Healing Cooldowns.
- When not engaging, stay near your party to best make use of Invincile Wall and Clay's Salvation.
- Consider Shadow Escape as both an offensive and defensive tool. Use it to save a teammate being dove on or as an escape to reposition yourself while upkeeping Shadow Walker.
Stat Priorities
Use the following stat priority when following the Wand / Dagger PvP Build.
- Primary Stat
- Perception and Strength
- Secondary Stat
- Wisdom and Dexterity
You have 49 Stat Points you can freely allocate to any of the 4 primary Stats. Once you put 20 points into an individual Stat, it takes 2 points to increase the Stat by 1. I advise not putting more than 20 points unless absolutely necessary.
You get bonuses for every 10 Stat Points you invest from 30 to 60. You invest your points based on acquiring these bonuses.
Consider Stat Points as a way to fine-tune your secondary stats, such as Attack Speed, Crit Chance, Evasion, HP, Hit Rate, and even CC Chance.
Early Game Gear
Our Stats are limited with Green Gear, so aim for 30 Strength and 30 Perception. The extra stats you focus on include Hit Chance and Melee Evasion to improve our PvP effectiveness. The focus on these two stats in particular is to increase your HP and Hit Chance respectively.
Mid Game Gear
After moving to Blue Gear, you get access to more Stat Points as well as more Evasion and Hit Chance. The stats you aim for here is 30 Strength, 30 Dexterity, 19 Wisdom and 30 Perception. The points towards Dexterity increase Crit Chance as well as bump all of your Evasion stats.
Late Game Gear
The end goal for our builds is to reach the 60 Perception Stat milestone in order to stack as much Hit Chance and Buff Duration as possible. You also reach the 30 Wisdom milestone for the extra Mana and Cooldown Speed.
Gear Progression
Acquiring Gear pieces and upgrading them is incredibly expensive and time-consuming. If you enjoy both PvE and PvP content, just use these sets for PvE as well.
If you're interested in PvE Gear Progression, check out our Wand / Dagger PvE Build Guide!
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear
This gear set is designed to get you to important stat breakpoints and ensure you have enough Health, Hit, and Evasion to be effective in fights. This is the gear set you should look to build first while you slowly collect blue/purple gear for the late game.
With this gear, aim for 30 Strength and 30 Perception.
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Mid Game Gear
For mid-game, you are slowly phasing out your green gear for blues, even replacing some of the story blues with better options. Keep in mind that an item with traits is better than an untraited item in most cases. Don't be afraid to hold on to your greens if you can't afford traiting your blues.
With this build setup, you should be able to hit 30 Strength, 30 Dexterity, 19 Wisdom and 30 Perception.
Transcendental/Mother Nature
Pure Evasion
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear No Rune Synergies or Resonance
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear With Rune Synergies and Resonance
For end-game, this gear takes a LONG time to get. Don't be discouraged by this though, just take your time. The easiest items to get are the weapons Lequirus' Grip and Lequirus' Thorny Edge, which you can farm from the same dungeon. Your stat spread for this gear is 31 Strength, 38 Dexterity, 40 Wisdom and 60 Perception. With proper Rune Synergy, your Stats should be 40 Strength, 40 Dexterity, 40 Wisdom and 60 Perception.
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear No Rune Synergies or Resonance
Due to the rather high difficulty of acquiring the Breath of Mother Nature Hat and Resonance of Mother Nature Boots, this build elects to sub in alternatives that holds our Stat breakpoints while also not sacrificing any resistances.
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear No Rune Synergies or Resonance
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear With Rune Synergies and Resonance
For end-game, this gear takes a LONG time to get. Don't be discouraged by this though, just take your time. The goal is to stack as much Ranged Evasion and Magic Evasion as possible while reaching the 60 Perception breakpoint, making us incredibly durable to the majority of DPS builds when combined with Shadow Walker. Thanks to the addition of Tevent's Cuneiform Bone this build is capable of outputting a LOT of damage alongside its normal support and control capabilities. However, considering it's an Archboss weapon you won't acquire it for a long time unless you are lucky or prepared to spend Lucent.
Your stat spread for this gear is 31 Strength, 31 Dexterity, 30 Wisdom and 60 Perception. When accounting for perfect Rune Synergy, your Stats should be 32 Strength, 36 Dexterity, 40 Wisdom and 60 Perception.
Wand / Dagger PvP Build Gear No Rune Synergies or Resonance
This alternative gearset reaches the same Stat breakpoints as above, but due to the lack of Tevent's Cuneiform Bone it doesn't pack quite the same punch. We also take the liberty of subbing out Reaper's Footsteps for Reflection Breakthrough Leather Boots due the difficulty in acquiring them.
Your stat spread for this gear is 30 Strength, 30 Dexterity, 37 Wisdom and 60 Perception.
Guardians
Guardians are special transformations that add offensive or defensive buffs or attacks to your character for 30 seconds. These are the recommended Guardians for the Wand / Dagger PvP Build.
- For PvP, use Lady Knight Kamarshea as your primary Guardian of choice. Not only does it provide a massive HP shield based on your max mana, it also gives you CDR for all of your abilities as long as the shield lasts. This is invaluable when you need to keep yourself alive as long as possible for big pushes in large scale fights.
- An alternative Guardian you can use is Pale Nemesis Hartach. The idea behind this choice is to use Guardian when you stealth into their backline using Camouflage Cloak, get a quick kill, and use the Guardian's ability to re-stealth. Then, you can either look for another kill or leave back to the safety of your group.
Summary
- Wand / Dagger is a Support build that mixes melee and ranged play-styles.
- Combine a mixture of survivability and damage with skills such as Thunderclouds Bombing and Swift Healing to both deal damage and keep people alive.
- Play next to your tank so it's easier to keep him alive.
- Position yourself safely and make use of ranged AoE such as Corrupted Magic Circle and Karmic Haze combined with Touch of Despair.
- Focus on durability, Strength, and Perception for your gear, with traits that increase Health, Evasion, Damage, Buff Duration, and Skill Damage Resistance.
- This build needs Mana Regen to perform well, and best-in-slot gear is gated behind Arch Bosses so it can take a long time to acquire.
Credits
Written by Nymphellas
Reviewed by Yaen and Dredscythe