User:Masel/Builds/Specter

Scepter + Dagger Condition  Specter

Build Stats

Criterion	Value
Burst Damage	~41,4k
Sustained Damage	~40,2k
Effective Range (1200 = Maximum)	733
Actions Per Minute (APM)	53
Share of Forced Movement or Stealth Skills	7%
Bar Swaps per Minute (BPM)	11
# of Skills Used	11
Damage Log Link	Link

Condition Specter has a simple-to-learn rotation and is lots of fun to play in open world and instanced content. It can deal most of its damage from range and has great burst damage in instanced content for a condition build, making it suitable for all kinds of encounters. 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. In solo gameplay, it can provide itself with good amounts of all essential boons:  Quickness,  Alacrity,  Might,  Fury and  Protection.

Link to the DPS Build in the Build Editor:

Build

Playstyle & Skills

Skill Type	Skills
Steal & Shroud
Shroud Skills
Scepter + Pistol
Utility

  Shadow Shroud

• Specter's main specialization mechanic is   Shadow Shroud: this will function as an effective second health bar, with the restriction that you cannot be healed when shrouded (with a few exceptions).
• You shroud will be depleted passively and will shield you from incoming damage to your health bar while it is active. Any damage you take will be applied to your shroud value instead.
• This makes specter fairly resilient by default, since you constantly generate   Shadow Shroud, the main resource required to maintain your shroud.
• Like all Thieves, Speceter has Initiative costs, but no internal cooldown on its weapon skills. 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

You can find my most recent rotation showcase here.
Damage Log

Rotation Notes

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 I chose utility skills that reduce the reliance on allies since it makes benching quicker and more reliable:   Well of Sorrow,   Caltrops and   Thousand Needles. Due to   Rot Wallow Venom, this build will always scale with allies a little bit. Note that you can freely swap the following skills in and out as you like:   Thousand Needles - suited for stationary fights   Well of Sorrow - suited for stationary fights   Caltrops - suited for stationary fights   Spider Venom - suited for mobile fights / more consistent range   Skale Venom - suited for mobile fights / more consistent range   Devourer Venom - suited for mobile fights / more consistent range The rotation for this build is very simple and consists of two main sections, one inside and one outside of   Shadow Shroud.
Opener	For maximum burst damage, precast   Prepare Thousand Needles. The cooldown from Preparations ticks down after their first cast, allowing you to cast another instance right away if you can precast it 30 seconds before combat starts. Many bosses allow you to precast this, at least on the first try Start outside of   Shadow Shroud.
Section 1: Outside of   Shadow Shroud	Use you utility skills. If you use Venoms, use them after combat starts, as they get stripped on engage. Spend all your initiative on   Twilight Combo, as it is the strongest damage skill on your weapons. While doing that, use your utility skills of choice. You generate   Shadow Shroud via two means: using   Siphon and by applying  Torment.   Siphon grants you two initiative on cast and does nice damage, so prioritize it! If a utility skill comes on cooldown around the same time as shroud, you can delay shroud a little.
Section 2:   Shadow Shroud	Inside   Shadow Shroud, the concept is to stay inside for a particular number of casts of   Grasping Shadows while using   Eternal Night on cooldown. In general, you want to stay inside Shroud for two casts of   Grasping Shadows, not more. The reason is that the damage bonus from  Lead Attacks stays consistently high with shorter Shroud loops. BUT: since you spend all your Initiative prior to entering the first loop inside Shroud, you will have enough stacks of  Lead Attacks to stay inside for three casts of   Grasping Shadows. If you want to provide  Alacrity, you can use  Shadestep and freely extend the Shroud loops to provide more and more  Alacrity.
CC Skills for Breakbar Damage	Basilisk Venom should be taken and prioritized whenever CC is needed.   Mind Shock (also free  Stability for you).   Dawn's Repose for  Fear. Immobilized via  Panic Strike and   Thousand Needles

Rotation Flow

DPS - Condition Specter (Masel) - Rotation Flow

Section	Skills
Opener
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud
Enter Shadow Shroud
Exit Shadow Shroud

Utility Skills

Utility Skills

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.
Spider Venom   Skale Venom   Devourer Venom	Suited for mobile fights, Venom skills are very bursty, as 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.
Thousand Needles   Well of Gloom   Caltrops	Ground AoE skills for more stationary fights. If you can precast   Thousand Needles, it will increase your burst damage.
Basilisk Venom   Thieves Guild	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. Triple summon for more damage.

Gear & Traits

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):

1. ~93%  Torment Duration
2. 100%  Poisoned Duration
3. Maximize Condition Damage

Since the vast majority of damage comes from  Torment and  Poisoned, it is important to reach 100% condition duration on them.

Gear

Armor	Prefix	Rune
Head	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Shoulders	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Chest	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Gloves	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Legs	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Boots	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Rune of the Trapper
Trinket	Prefix
Amulet	Viper's or Ritualist's
Ring 1	Viper's or Ritualist's
Ring 2	Viper's or Ritualist's
Accessory 1	Viper's or Ritualist's
Accessory 2	Viper's or Ritualist's
Backpack	Viper's or Ritualist's
Weapon	Prefix	Sigil
Scepter (Main Hand)	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Sigil of Torment
Dagger (Off Hand)	Viper's or Ritualist's	Superior Sigil of Doom
Purpose	Item Type	Source
Damage	Ascended Food	Cilantro and Cured Meat Flatbread
Damage	Non-Ascended Food (Ideal here)	Meaty Asparagus Skewer
Survivability	Ascended Food	Peppered Cured Meat Flatbread
Survivability	Non-Ascended Food	Oysters Gnashblade
Damage	Utility	Toxic Tuning Crystal
Survivability	Utility	Potion Of Karka Toughness
Damage	Relic	Relic of the Fractal

Traits

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

You can find my most recent open world build showcase here.

Link to the Open World Build on the Editor

Increasing Survivability

• For OW, it can make sense to make a build more forgiving, so that you can sustain on your own.
• First, note that  Specter is designed to excel in situations where you can have at least one an ally tethered to you. That is why it is strongest when you're not alone. You can use summons to become your tethered ally as well, such as  Thieves Guild or relics like Relic of the Privateer.
•  Specter applies sizeable barrier that scales with  Healing Power and shroud that scales with  Vitality, so it has strong natural synergies with Ritualist's and Celestial gear. You can mix and match Viper's, Ritualist's and Celestial as you prefer in a 1-to-1 fashion.
• Change traits to the following:

Traits

Deadly Arts
Trickery
Specter

• Also change your utility skills to the following:

Utility Skills

Default Skill	Notes
Well of Gloom	Damage and  Relic of the Chronomancer uptime.
Well of Sorrow	Damage and  Relic of the Chronomancer uptime.
Well of Bounty	Boons and  Relic of the Chronomancer uptime.
Option 1:   Haste Option 2:   Caltrops	Additional  Quickness uptime, required for full coverage with less then 50 % boon duration Additional AoE damage, stronger than using   Haste in general, but can cause drops in  Quickness uptime.
Thieves Guild	Decoys that take aggro away from you and benefit from your tethers.

• Alternate between   Shadow Shroud and your weapons. Always try to use   Well of Gloom shortly after exiting shroud, as it will not heal you inside of shroud.
•   Shadow Sap applies Barrier,  Might and  Protection for 3 initiative, making it a great survivability tool to weave in occasionally.
• Using your Wells will heal you through   Traversing Dusk and apply  Resistance for a good uptime.
•   Siphon is your most loaded skill and should be prioritized at all times.  Sleight of Hand reduces the cooldown of   Siphon by another 20%, making it around 10 seconds with  Alacrity up. This means more Shadow Force, more Boons, almost full  Slow uptime, a Daze, initiative,  Vulnerability ... you see why this is important.
• 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 barrier to allies, which is always great to have!

Boon Coverage

Boon &  Vulnerability Coverage

Boon	Sources / Notes
General Notes	Using the Ritualist's or Celestial gear pieces grants up to ~42% Boon Duration, allowing you to maintain all essential boons on yourself more easily. Use Relic of the Chronomancer for  Quickness coverage.
Quickness	Covered by   Haste and Relic of the Chronomancer with   Well of Gloom,   Well of Sorrow and   Well of Bounty.
Might	Covered by   Haste,   Well of Bounty and   Siphon via  Thrill of the Crime
Fury	Covered by   Haste,   Well of Bounty and   Siphon via  Thrill of the Crime
Alacrity	Covered by  Shadestep when using skills inside of Shroud.
Protection	Can be covered by weaving in a few casts of  Shadow Sap in your rotation.
Resistance	Traversing Dusk grants  Resistance on every Well you cast, allowing you to ignore all non-damaging condition on you for the duration.
Vulnerability	Even the Odds can cover 10 stacks, but this is optional.
Jade Tech Offensive Overcharge   Jade Tech Defensive Overcharge	Jade Protocols give for 150 additional Toughness, Vitality, Condition Damage and Power as well as all boons aside from  Stability,  Resistance and  Resolution for 10 seconds on entering combat, once every 30 seconds. They make covering boons on yourself a lot easier!

Dealing with Incoming Conditions and Control effects

• For condition cleanses, make use of   Grasping Shadows frequently.
• If you need additional cleanses, you can swap to  Hungering Darkness, which will cleanse a condition off of you once per second and heal you for it.
•   Haste has the nice side-effect that is is also a Stun break with a short cooldown. With enough boon duration (40-50%), you can save this without dropping  Quickness uptime.
•   Mind Shock and   Well of Bounty apply  Stability in an area around you. This way, you have one source outside and one source inside of shroud, allowing you to have it up for most of the rotation.