Deathstrike Sharpshooter Guide: Swift vs Spec, Atro T Skill

Deathstrike Sharpshooter Guide

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Why you should play this build
• Build Context and History
• Why Swift over Spec?
• T Skill Choice - Drill vs Lock-On
• Ark Passive Tree & Build
• Calculations for Elixirs and Ring stats
• Skills & Tripods & Runes
• Mana considerations
• Moving Slash
• Claymore Mine vs Arrow wave
• Claymore AP Down Discussion
• Engravings
• Rotation and Skill Prio & How to Atro
• Mordum G3 Specific Adjustments
• Closing Thoughts
• Additional T skill discussion
• Guardian Raid and Extreme Thaemine

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Introduction

Hi guys im vanillasalt!!

I get a lot of messages from you guys on discord with questions about sharpshooter

so I thought I’d make a guide to share with you what I know. I love this class and

spend a lot of time theorycrafting for it.

Feel free to message me on discord (@vanillasalt) if you have any questions after

reading this!

My youtube where I post ss videos

Gate 3 Mordum video you can watch https://youtu.be/Dqd5ucVn9Hc

My character and gear: https://uwuowo.mathi.moe/character/NAE/Vanillasalt

Why you should play this build

Crit swift is stronger than crit spec by about 1-2%. It also has an incredible amount

of benefits:

*you are able to fit two snipes in 1 atro with a lvl 10 snipe cd

In my opinion, there isn’t much of a reason you should play Spec.

Ever since Lvl 3 T Skill, Crit Swift is the highest performing deathstrike sharpshooter build, and is the one I recommend to you if you have hands since it requires you to make use of its high uptime. But even if you don’t have hands, I recommend you to use this build due to comfort and the tools available to help you learn to play.

If you have a sharpshooter, you should give this build a try. The only reason it’s not the most popular build is because most of us copied KR users who didn’t have dps meter.

However, it should be the default recommended build. I’m trying to be more vocal about it and is why I’m writing this guide for you. It’s gaining popularity in the west as more and more top sharpshooters swap over, and I hope you do too.

Remember, both sharpshooter builds require you to have uptime to get damage off, and spec deathstrike doesn’t play like a traditional spec class and is not “burstier” than the swift variant - all it does is shift the damage distribution of your skills. I recommend swift for all sharpshooter players - new or experienced.

Build Context and History

This build was originally proposed in T3 due to how bad Keen Blunt was on sharpshooter because of the ridiculously high crit damage tripods. Back then, Keen blunt was about an 11% engraving whereas things like Cursed Doll was 16%.

The objective was to find an engraving to replace Keen Blunt, and it turns out with around 1480 swiftness, you could cap out raid captain if you ate a 5% movespeed feast. A capped raid captain gave 18% outgoing damage in T3, which was an amazing alternative. Since then, not much has changed, and this concept remains the same in T4.

Some additional shifts in the build are made to attempt to keep a high crit rate, as deathstrike sharpshooter has always been a class where you wanted near 100% crit. These changes are discussed in the guide later on.

Why Swift over Spec?

On top of maxing out the raid captain engraving, putting points into swift is a better investment than spec.

On sharpshooter, our T skill is a large portion of our damage. Unlike some other classes though, spec does not increase T skill damage in any way. In fact, spec only increases the silverhawk assault (Z) bird damage, and does not increase any other skill, such as snipe, hawkshot, etc… practically our whole kit.

Putting points into swift gives cooldown reduction, which increases all of our skill’s dps because we get significantly more casts of them in a fight. This very importantly affects our top hitting skills - T skill and snipe, very effectively, since it is easy to cast them off cooldown in any raid in lost ark.

Just to help put it into perspective - at around 1490 swift, we get 32% cdr.

The DPS increase from that cdr can be calculated as:

= 1.47 which results in a 47% dps increase of skills like snipe and T skill, and any other skill we are consistently able to cast off cooldown.

This benefit is the ceiling, and naturally in some raids it will not reach this point due to how the boss phases. On the contrary, you may be able to fit in a second cast of a skill due to this cdr, right before the boss phases.

Swift is already a better secondary stat to invest in for sharpshooters for damage based on the discussion above, but it goes on to provide even more amazing quality of life for your gameplay:

• Lower spacebar cooldown: Remember that in lost ark, spacebar is damage. A significantly lower spacebar cooldown means you’re able to greed more skills and dodge with spacebar. You can tank more patterns with spacebar instead of having to walk to dodge and lose a cast of a skill. If you’re new to a fight, this is also much more forgiving in prog.
• Faster attack speed: sharpshooter has many skills to cast, and getting your skills off faster often leads to a damage increase when the boss is soon to phase. Additionally, the sooner you cast your skills, the sooner you’re getting value out of the cdr. You’ll also be less frequently interrupted out of your skills since they come out faster.
• Faster move speed: I’d rather be max move speed than a slow turtle - getting to the safe spot faster means you’re charging snipe sooner.
• 1 free moving slash: Because of the additional cdr and cast speed, often times during your rotation you’ll be able to use moving slash for free without interrupting your chain of silverhawk assault -> silverhawk assault in the buff window. Having this free status immune skill on a 4 second cooldown might actually be borderline imbalanced in this game, but you didn’t hear that from me.

These are perhaps the first things you’ll love about this build - you’ll feel more fluid and free to cast. You’ll have more tools to deal with each situation, which directly results in an uptime and dps gain as you get comfortable using your tools to greed more casts.

T Skill Choice - Drill vs Lock-On

Before we talk about the rest of the build and skills, we must discuss the T skill.

When sharpshooter first came to T4, drill was the obvious choice. This was because Lock-On was difficult to use since it previously dashed a fixed distance, often putting you in danger. It was previously an impractical skill to use.

This is no longer the case, as of the fast-snipe balance patch! Thanks to Littlekoi for finding this out for us.

Since the balance patch, you are able to pick anywhere in range to dash to, and even use it in place if you’re already in a safe spot! It is now a very good and practical skill to use.

Ever since then, lock-on is the better performing T skill on deathstrike sharpshooter.

How is it better?

One Lock-on cast does a little less than half the damage of one drill cast. However, the cooldown on Lock-on is much less than half the cooldown of drill.

The exact dps difference between lock-on and drill is the same regardless if you’re playing spec of swift sharpshooter:

Lock-on does 7.5% more dps than drill on any deathstrike sharpshooter build.

In addition to doing more damage, Lock-on is a fantastic mobility tool - it’s a dash that can go farther than your spacebar. It can dash through the boss - so cool!! Lock-on also has push immune.

Lock-on is so incredible - you can use it to tank patterns that require push immunity. You can use it to reposition to a safe spot to charge snipe sooner. You can use lock-on in place regardless of boss pattern, knowing that you won’t accidentally get knocked out of it and lose a T skill, like you can for drill.

Lock-on also auto tracks the boss - you don’t have to wait for a safe pattern to land the skill, like you do for drill. Rest assured that lock-on will hit even if the boss dashes. You can pre-cast lock-on for more uptime if the boss is coming back from a phase, and it will hit even if the boss freshly appears.

The only thing you need to be careful of is that the boss does not become untargetable in the next 3 seconds.

There are so many qualitative upsides to lock-on, and on top of all of those, it does significantly more dps than drill. There is no reason to run drill ever since that balance patch.

Let’s verify the claims I made for both swift and spec. (You can skip this if you don’t care).

CDR sources:

• T skill cooldown release potential lvl 4 = 0.08
• Lock-on lvl 3 “task force” node = 0.45
• Swift sharpshooter build (1490 swift) = 0.3199
• Spec sharpshooter build (77 swift) = 0.0165

So for swift sharpshooter:

• Lock-on: Base(50 seconds) Task force(1 - 0.45) Swift stat(1 - 0.3199) * T cooldown( (1 - 0.08) = 17.2 seconds
• Drill: Base(65 seconds) Swift stat(1 - 0.3199) T cooldown(1 - 0.08) = 40.6 seconds

These cooldown values are exactly correct - you may test them in game using the settings described.

Now remember that one lock-on does about half the damage of one drill (a little bit less).

So, to get similar damage, we need to cast 2 lock-ons.

Lock-on’s cooldown is 17.2 seconds, so to get two lock-ons, it would take 34.4 seconds.

Now we can compare the dps of each T skill:

DPS increase of using lock on over drill from the CDR = 40.6 / 34.4 = 1.18 = 18%

Similarly, with spec build, we can do the same calculation:

Lock-on: Base 50s (1 - 0.45) (1 - 0.0165) * (1 - 0.08) = 24.88 seconds

Drill: Base 65s (1 - 0.0165) (1 - 0.08) = 58.81 seconds

DPS increase lock on over drill from the CDR = 58.81 / (24.88*2) = 1.18 = 18%

And we are not surprised to see no change in the result since the above sources of cdr are multiplicative and not additive.

The dmg difference between 2x lock on casts vs 1 drill cast is 9.72% in favour of drill.

However, the dmg difference resulting from the much lower cdr is 18% in favour of lock-on.

The result is that lock-on is better by 1.18 / 1.0972 = 1.0754 = 7.5%

Conclusion: Regardless if you’re spec or swift, you should use lock-on for the same reasons. Please swap now if you aren’t using it already!

If you see a sharpshooter using Drill still, kindly share this with them. This is an incredible reason to take lock-on, and even if lock-on did the same dps as drill, I would still recommend you to take it due to the numerous qualitative Upsides of using this amazing T skill.

Ark Passive Tree & Build

You can check my character at https://uwuowo.mathi.moe/character/NAE/Vanillasalt

However, sometimes I’m on my awakening-swap or chaos pages so I’ve included screenshots below.

I use a swift pet. But since we’re a stat-split class, you can use a crit pet with the same result, just make sure to adjust your stats for the difference. Ideally, we want around 1480 swift, and the rest in crit.

Your move speed will result in: 25.5% from swift stat, 5% from feast, and 9% from yearning, bringing to you ~40%. Make sure you’re always eating attack speed/movespeed feast in order to cap your raid captain.

Elixir: Master set

On sharpshooter, we want to get as close to 100% crit rate as we can. It’s almost always worth it to go for crit rate where available due to our massive crit damage tripods. You will need to add your crit rate up yourself, but I’ve included an example of how to do it in the table below.

Some levers you can pull:

• Critical vs Master: both elixir sets are worth around 11.5% - 12% on sharpshooter.
• Most of you should use master set to help get close to crit rate cap. I use master elixir on my sharpshooter.
• Keen sense vs Limit break: It is very close to damage neutral to swap between these nodes - use keen sense when you don’t have crit syns, or if you don’t have many nodes of adrenaline, or lack crit rate rings, bracelet, etc.

Source Crit Rate

Crit Main Stat 36.29

Master set elixir 7

Adrenaline 1 node 15.5

Zealous Smite x2 24

Crit rate ring mid 0.95

Crit rate ring mid 0.95

Total: 84.69

Optional - Keen Sense (x2) 4% or 8%

Optional - Bracelet 3.4%~

Optional - Crit Syn 10%

Optional - High crit rate rings, more nodes of adrenaline

If you aren’t that invested and only reach 90% crit rate it’s fine, don’t give up swift stat for more crit since you will lose more damage from giving up raid captain.

Feel comfortable walking into the raid with 90-100% crit.

You should adjust your page depending on how many crit syns you have since you never want to overcap on crit. Your first adjustment should be keen sense.

This build functions perfectly well on lower investment as well. In the above table, I would prefer to go 2x Keen Sense and end up with a 92.69% crit rate.

Calculations for Elixirs and Ring stats

Here are some calculations you may be curious about on sharpshooter:

vanilla deathstrike sharpshooter calc

click this^^

It answers questions like:

• Master vs Critical Elixir set
• Additional vs Crit Damage elixir pants
• Should I prefer high crit rate or crit damage on my rings?
• Limit Break vs Keen sense
• How good is a Crit Syn vs just a regular 6% synergy?
• How much better is Raid Captain than Keen Blunt?

Please take a look, and feel free to make a copy to adjust values to your liking.

Skills & Tripods & Runes

Use these skills and runes. Last DMG Gem on Silverhawk DMG.

Mana considerations

Leave atomic arrow at lvl 4! We do not want to increase this to lvl 7 due to its greatly increased mana cost. It gives barely any extra dmg.

If your support is really bad, equip a third focus on charged shot. Swap Legendary Focus to charged shot and purple Focus to sharpshooter if you do this.

If you play with a static bard, you need to ask them to put on mana T skill node. Unfortunately, smilegate decided bard should give the least mana so you will oom in high uptime fights without this.

You will always need to eat mana food. The green mana food is very cheap for your reclear raids.

You can craft these in your stronghold:

Moving Slash

Moving slash’s third row tripod gives full Status Ailment Immunity during the entire cast of moving slash. Completely broken, abuse whenever you’re about to get stunned.

Additionally, as a funny thing that sometimes happens, you roll a 30% chance to “evade” or gain dodge status. In lost ark, this counts as you not being hit by the attack. You won’t take damage and you won’t be knocked down.

This dodge rate lingers a little longer after you’re finished dashing with moving slash as well. The duration can be clearly seen by a moving slash buff icon that appears above your mana bar, if you’re curious.

You can evade just-guards, lethal damage, knock ups, electrocutes, freezes. Funny thing if it happens, saves you some pots sometimes. Unreliable to use consistently due to its 30% chance of proccing, but go for it as your last resort I suppose.

One practical use is if you’re scared of a just-guard in prog, you can use moving slash into attempting to guard with G - if the 30% chance rolls, you will dodge the guard entirely. If it doesn’t, you will still attempt to guard. Downside is that if you do roll the 30%, your character will be stuck finishing the guard animation anyways, so I wouldn’t recommend this if you’re already familiar with the guard timings.

Claymore Mine vs Arrow wave

We pick claymore mine over arrow wave in every situation because it is generally a better skill. Even though claymore isn’t affected by hit master due to its frontal attack, the DPS of the skills is the same. If you land even one frontal on claymore, it is better than arrow wave. Having paralysis immune on claymore is also amazing.

Claymore Mine Arrow wave

Lower CD, but same DPS without Frontal Attack

Higher CD, but same DPS

74 Stagger (81.4 Stagger if Frontal) Low stagger

1 Point Destruction No Destro

Paralysis Immune No Para Immune

Short animation lock Higher animation lock

HAS OPTIONAL ATTACK-POWER DOWN! WTF?!

What about Bladestorm?

With high cd gem investment, we don’t have enough animation time to reliably make good use of this skill. You’ll often find yourself skipping this skill in order to not delay your next snipe, so I don’t recommend running it, since you would have likely been able to get the claymore off instead.

Claymore AP Down Discussion

Sharpshooter is one of the very few classes (alongside Aero & Bard) that have AP down available to them as a practical utility for the team:

If we choose this tripod in the first row, here is what we give up: in the breakdown, claymore goes from an 8% skill to around 5-6%. That means you lose around 2-3% damage.

In return, for nearly 50-60% of the raid, the boss deals 35% reduced damage to your entire raid.

This is the same effect as bard’s heavenly tune AP down that has become popular.

Good news for you: It stacks with bard. Additively. (The good way).

If you have a bard apply this with you, it will result in 35% + 35% = 70% reduced damage for your entire raid. Words cannot describe how good this is. The boss only dealing 30% of its intended damage is a hilarious sight to see - things that were supposed to one-shot just tickle instead. Think about it this way - it’s literally a raid-wide godsent law when both effects are applied.

(Update: as of the KR Kazeros Patch, the KR’s have finally caught on to how broken this is, and it no longer stacks with other AP down sources. Now, the highest dmg reduction effect applies. It is still a good tool to run, especially when you don’t have a bard. Even with a bard, you can still consider this since there is a slight downtime in their AP down effect, and they may also sometimes miss the boss with their heavenly tune.)

AP down is so strong as a form or DR in this game because it works for your entire raid and can be applied to grabs retroactively, and having this skill as a DPS is completely broken. You’re able save your teammates after they get grabbed, which is oftentimes the difference in whether a pull is reset or not.

I wouldn’t run this in reclears, however, in serious content, this is invaluable to the team so make sure to run it. This level of utility sets you aside from just another DPS class.

Engravings

Run these engravings.

If you want to use Relic EP, prefer to replace either hit master or cursed doll, your choice.

Rotation and Skill Prio & How to Atro

Sharpshooter has a skill prio but you should deviate if you aren’t in range to hit a specific skill, or need to para immune or dodge something.

Prefer to cast your skills in this order:

• Snipe = T Skill > Charged Shot = Hawkshot > Sharpshooter => Claymore
• Snipe is by far your best skill, so you must cast it off cooldown. Recover your hawk gauge using [moving slash + hawkshot] or [moving slash + deadly slash] pairings to keep the Last Rush buff up, so that you can Snipe off cooldown.
• Generally use Lock on T skill off cd, and use it to dodge if you need to. It’s okay to drift your lock-on by 1-2 seconds to save it to dodge, if you gain casts elsewhere in your skills.
• If you’re in melee range, you should prefer to Charged Shot before you Snipe, if you’re certain you won’t lose the Snipe cast as a result. Doing this will lead to more Charge Shot casts overall because it’s cooldown is lower than Snipes. If you cast Charge Shot after Snipe, it’s lower cooldown isn’t effectively used and gets “covered” by Snipe. Overall, this isn’t a big deal so worry about this with low prio.

Opener + atro example: https://youtu.be/Dqd5ucVn9Hc

Example opener and explanation:

Skill (opener in order) Reason

Atomic Synergy

Z Apply Last Rush Buff

Moving slash Stacking Adren

Deadly slash Stacking Adren

Charged Shot Using this in melee range before snipe

Snipe (Atro RIGHT before this hits) We will get another Snipe in atro this way

Z Re-apply buff, and want to use it before we hawk shot so we don’t overfill gauge

Lock-on T skill Following skill prio

Hawkshot Recovering Gauge and following skill

prio

Moving slash Recovering Gauge pairing, can delay if you want to use another DPS skill

Atomic Re-apply syn

Sharpshooter Following skill prio

Claymore Mine Following skill prio

Awakening + Z (optional) Good to fit awakening here after you’ve dumped all your skills

Snipe Fits in atro!

You should only use Awakening following the example above. It’s a dps loss to awaken when the majority of your skills are up. If you don’t have enough time in the above example you can consider skipping claymore mine.

Mordum G3 Specific Adjustments

Mordum G3 is a trixion fight that allows you to make full use of CDR. Generally speaking, when you can make use of CDR nodes on sharpshooter, they are typically better than the alternatives.

For Mordum G3 only, I take 1 node of Unlimited Magick instead of Zealous Smite. I make up the crit using 2x Keen sense and bring a crit syn.

You may need to have high nodes of adren or high crit on your bracelet to do this, since you still want to maintain near 90-100% crit.

Your mileage may vary if you’re lower investment so only consider this if you can maintain the crit.

Closing Thoughts

I hope I’ve given enough reason for the majority of you to swap to this swift variant. I would recommend this build for everyone, since it gives you the tools to maximize your uptime and do more damage if you’re experienced with this game. If you’re not experienced with the fight, it gives you a severely less punishing kit while you prog and learn.

Everyone should be playing it, as there’s not much reason to play spec these days. I suspect the reason is because this info is just not very well known, and I hope to change that with this guide.

Sharpshooter’s performance is in an amazing spot currently, and I think this swift variant is extremely enjoyable to play.

Here is some of the feedback from experienced and new ss’s alike after they swapped to the build:

From Mr Cobra from EU

From someone else almost main swapping off ss because of how miserable being slow was:

Take care, and thanks for reading! Feel free to dm me, im happy to answer questions.

If there’s enough interest, maybe I can do some vod review as well.

Additional T skill discussion {#additional-t-skill-discussion}

You may come to me and say that you should still take Drill in recrears because of burst and atro or something. But this isn’t the case in most up to date raids in lost ark, since lock-on is that much better.

How much of your T skill would need to be under atro to make taking Drill worth it?

For this case we will have to split the T skill comparison into distinct events. We can still accurately represent this in the timeline by adding 3 events of lock-on per drill cast: each cast of lock on, and the 18% gained afterwards from lock-on’s additional cdr benefit.

A Lock-on cast is considered to do 45.57% of one drill cast.

Drill

Lock-on

1.3 (atro) 0.4557 * 1.3 = 0.5924 (atro)

0.4557

0.18

1.3 (atro) 0.4557 * 1.3 = 0.5924 (atro)

0.4557

0.18

1.3 (atro) 0.4557 * 1.3 = 0.5924 (atro)

0.4557

0.18

Total: 3.9 Total: 3.6843

1 0.4557

0.4557

0.18

1 0.4557

0.4557

0.18

Total: 5.9 Total: 5.86

By 5 casts of drill, lock on would catch up and continue to overtake for the rest of the fight.

Remember this is the case for both swift and spec, which means that for most of the relevant raids in lost ark, you will do more dmg with lock on.

Swap to lock-on. If you don’t think the 6 second diff matters, then downgrade your snipe cd by 2 levels and come tell me it’s the same.

Guardian Raid and Extreme Thaemine {#guardian-raid-and-extreme-thaemine}

For completeness I want to mention that for raids that reset your skills in some mech gimmick, it follows that drill will perform better. Lock-on’s strength comes from its low cooldown, but having your cooldowns reset benefits drill much more than lock-on.

In the time of writing this guide, Skolakia and Drextalas are the relevant guardians, and both of these reset the cooldown of your skills during some part of the fight.

In the upcoming extreme thaemine raid, your cooldowns will be reset by successfully performing a guard.

If you happen to care about reaching max performance in this type of content, make sure to equip drill and its relevant T skill node.

Closing callouts from examples and screenshots

[End of content]