Overview

Following on from our Spellslinger Class Guide, here we provide you with all the information you need to maximise your damage output. The primary purpose of this build is for maximum damage in a PvE environment. However, I will caveat this build on the basis that to only take Assault skills as a Spellslinger (or any class for that matter) will see your survivability significantly reduced. In a basic PvE environment, it’s fine to load up on damage skills but in Raids and PvP you might need to swap out two skills to ensure you can last a reasonable length of time. If you’ve a pocket healer looking after you, all the better.

Lastly, the order of Assault skills from highest to lowest damage is the following:

Rapid Fire > True Shot > Wild Barrage > Charged Shot-C4 > Arcane Missiles > Ignite > Assassinate > Flame Burst > Quick Draw > Charged Shot-C3 > Charged Shot-C2 > Charged Shot-C1 > Chill

Full Interactive Spellslinger DPS Build

Skills

Quick Draw

Quick Draw is your bread and butter skill. It triggers many of your primary AMP’s and has a reasonably sized telegraph. It’s hard to miss with, can be used repeatedly and does reasonable damage. Never Spell Surge Quick Draw.

Charged Shot

Charged Shot is a stationary-until-tiered attack. It has 4 charges, with the fourth charge the most powerful. Its telegraph is narrow but considering you can move with it when it’s tiered, it isn’t too hard to hit with. Better still, it deals massive damage. Always Spell Surge Charge Shot as this reduces its charge time significantly.​

Wild Barrage

This run and gun is great for PvE and PvP. Firing bullets rapidly in a large cone, it’s hard to miss with and it deals massive damage when Spell Surged. The fact you can use the skill while moving also makes it invaluable in telegraph heavy encounters. Always Spell Surge Wild Barrage.

Flame Burst

Flame Burst will only trigger when you critically hit your opponent and similarly to Ignite, it’s capable of passing through opponents. Due to the rate of fire of Wild Barrage, you’ll tend to find that you trigger a Flame Burst after it. However, to maximise your damage you should try to ensure your target has Ignite on them before you use Flame Burst, to utilise the Tier 8 upgrade.

Assassinate

You should only ever use Assassinate when your target is below 30% HP to maximise its damage. However, it’s possible on long duration fights to simply throw down both Assassinates in the knowledge that the enemy might be above 30% HP for a while longer. Your Assassinate will deal less damage, but because it quickly re-charges it’s a free DPS bump. Never Spell Surge Assassinate.

Gate

The perfect escape tool (while also breaking Interrupt Armor), Gate stuns any enemies you pass through while also creating distance. Try to ensure you only use Gate when you’ve drawn aggro or to escape. If you’re seriously under pressure, you’ll need it.

Void Slip

As a healer in both dungeons and PvP you'll be focussed. At that point, you'll want to Void Slip and heal up or reposition so you can heal your party out of the radius of fire.

Phase Shift

Phase Shift when used provides you with an Interrupt Armor and 50% deflect chance. It isn't mandatory on a DPS build, but it does help survivability lots in PvP and PvE. Please Note that Phase Shift can be removed at any time for Ignite.

Tiers

There are actually a couple of Tier options with this build dependant on your personal preference. The first is as seen in the image above and to maximise Charged Shot. The purpose of this is to provide the highest burst possible. On top of that, your Tier 8 Quick Draw provides additional Assault Power and Tier 4 of Assassinate offers 3 charges.

AMPs

As you might expect, almost all of the Spellslingers available points should be spent in the Assault tree, with only a handful scattered through Hybrid Assault/Support and Utility. The purpose here is to maximise your damage through increasing your attributes, obtaining Empower (buff) and reducing your cooldowns.

Assault

  • Assault Power III - Increases Assault Power by 7.5% (total)
  • Strikethrough III - Increases Strikethrough chance by 3% (total)
  • Armor Pierce III - Increases Armor Pierce by 6% (total)
  • Critical Surge - Landing a critical hit generates Spell Power
  • Trigger Fingers - Using Quick Draw reduces your cooldowns by 0.5%
  • Deadly Chain - Landing physical/magical attacks grants 1 stack of Empowerment based on damage type. Increases physical/magical damage by 4.5% (total)
  • Surge Damage - Using a Spell Surged ability grants Empower. Increases damage dealt by 10%
  • Assassinate - Unlocks the ability
  • Gunslinger - Using an ability with a cooldown grants Empower. Increases critical hit chance by 3.5% per stack.

 Hybrid A/S

  • Critical Hit III - Increases critical hit chance by 6% (total)
  • Critical Hit Severity III - Increases critical hit severity by 12% (total)
  • Power Surge - While Spell Surging, increases Assault and Support Power by 8.6% of maximum.

Utility

  • Cooldowns III - Increases cooldown reduction by 15% (total)
  • Dash Regen I - Increases dash regen by 7% (total)

Rotation

People can number crunch the perfect rotation all they wish against target dummies but in reality, in a PvE setting, it just isn’t possible. You’ll have to move, you might get interrupted or you might miss. The key thing to remember is to only Spell Surge the skills listed above and if none of those skills are available, turn off your Spell Surge and wait for them to come back online. Be aware that you should always use Flame Burst the moment it becomes available, thus it will be missing from this rotation.  

  1. Quick Draw x5 (Obtain your Empowers and AMP bonuses)
  2. Charged Shot (Surged, as well as a Power/Crit Gadget if you have it)
  3. Ignite (Surged)
  4. Wild Barrage (Surged)
  5. x3 Assassinates.
  6. Utilise Flame Burst every time it becomes available.
  7. Repeat stages 1 to 5.

Variables

It must be said that even in PvE environments, there's still a need to remain alive and to interrupt your targets. As a result and depending on your preference, I'd simply recommend that you remove Ignite and use Arcane Shock as a ranged Interrupt Armor. In addition, if you feel you can cope without Void Slip, you can remove that and replace it with Rapid Fire or Ignite (if you've already removed Ignite for Arcane Shock). 


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Last Updated: Mar 18, 2016

About The Author

Lewis is a long standing journalist, who freelances to a variety of outlets.

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