Specter - Condi DPS

A condition DPS build for Specter. Gaining a defensive shroud similar to Necromancer as well as a powerful ranged weapon in Scepter, Specter can feel much safer to play than other Thief specialisations. It deals great damage, which can be enhanced even further if it is able to pre-cast its venoms (particularly relevant in fractals). At the same time, it provides some incidental group boons whenever it 虹吸s and it always has access to powerful single-target barrier, enabling it to act as a support in emergencies.

As a torment-focused class, it prefers stationary targets, but the simple rotation and ability to deal almost all its damage from range means that it is able to maintain damage very easily even on mobile encounters.

As a Thief, it has excellent out-of-combat utility for speeding up fractals and raids.

Food

• 芦笋肉串
• 盘装泡菜煎饼 if using Spear
  • 芫荽与熏肉薄饼 is slightly higher damage, but more expensive

Utility

• 剧毒调谐水晶
  • 大师调谐水晶 or similar for a cheaper alternative, it should also be stronger if using 盘装牛肉仁当

Weapon Variants

The nature of initiative means that you rarely use more than one weapon, so there are a number of options for the second set:

• If you own Janthir Wilds, Spear is the strongest weapon, though it is needs to be in melee range, and is significantly more complicated to use. It is worth keeping Scepter/Dagger in the second set to give you a strong ranged option when necessary.
• You can bring an offhand Pistol in addition to the dagger to have more CC available on swap. As entering and exiting Shadow Shroud counts as a weapon swap, you will still gain the benefits of 超级厄运法印.

Utility Variants

There are three strong contenders for the third utility slot:

• 撒播蒺藜 - Has the highest theoretical DPS, but requires the target to remain inside the AoE for 10 seconds, and ramps up slower. It also becomes less efficient in phased encounters, unlike the other two options.
• 准备千针万箭 - The cooldown starts as soon as the trap is placed, allowing it to be precast before the fight or new phase, though the arming time makes it vulnerable to your target moving away from it.
• 鳞爪毒液 - The lowest damage option, but also doesn't require your target to stand inside an AoE for 5/10 seconds. The boonstrip present at the start of many encounters also removes venom stacks, but it can be precast during split phases as long as your allies don't waste it attacking an invulnerable boss. The instant cast time and fact that it has the same cooldown as 蜘蛛毒液 also makes it much less disruptive to your rotation than other options.

• If will be of no benefit, you can take for a little bit more damage.
• For a ~4% DPS loss, you can take to offer some extra healing/barrier to your subgroup.

Scepter Rotation

If you're using a pistol offhand, ignore any weapon swaps below. It is also optimal to skip the Post-Shroud section in this case.

As the third skill is variable, just ignore any skill casts that you don't have.

Opener

1. If possible, precast 准备千针万箭 such that you can immediately trigger it and place it a second time.
2. 蜘蛛毒液, 鳞爪毒液 and 千针万箭. These are all instant cast, so can be used during the cast time of step 2. Make sure you're within range of allies for the venoms!
3. 悲伤法池
4. 暮光连技 x2
5. 准备千针万箭 if it's available.
6. 暮光连技
7. 进入暗影帷幕
8. Grasping Shadows
9. Eternal Night
10. 离开暗影帷幕
11. Weapon Swap
12. 暮光连技 x2
13. 虹吸

Rest of the Rotation

The rest of the rotation has no strict skill order:

• You should enter Shadow Shroud as soon as it becomes available, and use one of the shroud loops below.
• If using 阿奇姆古物, use 思维冲击 off cooldown while in Shadow Shroud.
• Use 虹吸, 悲伤法池, 蜘蛛毒液, 鳞爪毒液, 准备千针万箭 and 同仇敌忾 off cooldown.
  • Triggering 千针万箭 can be delayed if necessary, as the cooldown is only gated by preparing it.
  • As 同仇敌忾 lasts for 24 seconds, it may be worth saving until the next phase of a boss if the current phase is about to end.
• Spam 暮光连技 to use up all your initiative.
• Try to finish autoattack chains if possible. Unusually, you have a lot of grace time between the chain skills to use other skills without cancelling the chain.
• If you have no other skills to cast, you can use to gain access to . The cast time is very long though, so be sure you won't have to delay other skills in order to finish it.
• Weapon Swap, and will all trigger and . These have a 9- and an 8-second internal cooldown respectively, so if you are able to track these cooldowns you can squeeze extra damage out of the rotation.
  • If using two on-swap sigils, weapon swap immediately after exiting shroud.
  • Otherwise just Weapon Swap off cooldown and hope for the best, being sure that you have less than 9 initiative to prevent wasting the effect of in case it triggers.

Normal Shroud Loop

Most of the time when you enter shroud, you want to do the following loop:

1. Grasping Shadows
2. Eternal Night
3. Haunt Shot until Grasping Shadows is off cooldown
4. Grasping Shadows

Use if it comes off cooldown between steps 1 and 4.

Short Shroud Loop

Sometimes you may end up going into shroud just before your utility skills come off cooldown. In this case, do a much shorter loop:

1. Grasping Shadows
2. Eternal Night

Spear Rotation

Spear is more complicated than other thief weapons as it employed a combo system where skills 2 and 3 each have three sub-skills that are classified as Lead Attacks, Follow Ups or Finishers. These flow together in order, with the active skills changing depending on where you are in the chain, and you can switch between 2 and 3 for different effects.

Additional complexity is added by your stealth attack, and skills 4 and 5, all gaining bonuses if they are used after a Finisher:

• regenerates 4 initiative
• grants a 10-second damage buff
• blocks additional attacks

If this isn't enough, will also count as a Lead Attack in this case, which means the next combo will skip the normal Lead Attack.

Rotation Explanation

The buff from is strong enough that we want to get it as soon as possible, but as it needs to follow a finisher (and cannot follow a stealth attack), we first do a basic combo of ⇒ ⇒ .

Your strongest weapon skill is as not only does it do great damage, it regenerates enough initiative to maintain a rotation without ever having to rely on autoattacks. Specter lacks a convenient way to access though, so must rely on (the Finisher' on skill 3). Hence your highest damage combo looks like ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ (though the first time round we replace with ). This combo is slightly shorter than the duration of , so the rotation has to be padded.

The best way of doing this is to use shroud skills. ⇒ is all that's needed to make the loop long enough to again. The cooldown of is too long to use every loop, so a non-stealth combo is used every other time instead.

To maximise the use of and/or , you can adjust the position of the Shadow Shroud section so that you enter it every ~10s rather than in a fixed position in the loop. This won't break your combo chains, but it does make it harder to track where you are in the loop. This is a moderate DPS gain over the looping rotation below.

Opener

3. (if you precast it), and
6. All Venom skills as soon as you're in combat - many encounters remove these as part of the boon strip at the start of the fight, but in some fractals this isn't the case and they can be cast earlier.
11. Weapon Swap (only if using two spears with doom/geomancy sigils)
15. ⇒ ⇒
16. ⇒ ⇒
17. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒

Loop

When your target is above 90% health, is stronger than .

1. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒ x3 ⇒ ⇒
2. Weapon Swap (only if using two spears with doom/geomancy sigils)
3. ⇒ ⇒
4. ⇒ ⇒
5. ⇒ ⇒ ⇒
6. Return to start of loop

• Use and your utilities off cooldown. You can do this without interrupting your combos, but be aware that the pulsing damage from will reveal you if you are stealthed. The cooldown starts when you place the trap though, so you have flexibility when you activate it.

Utility

CC

• can provide more reliable CC on encounters with extra targets (equivalent to 3 basilisk venom hits), or you want to pull targets together
• Mind Shock
• , if bringing offhand pistol

Support

All your Scepter skills and can be used with an allied target to provide them barrier and . This is a DPS loss, but can be used to save people if a healer isn't going to (particularly helpful on the tank).

General Tips

• Almost all your damage on Scepter can be done at range, but Eternal Night and Mind Shock are both melee range. If you are not in range to use them, either delay or skip them during the shroud loop.
• While in Shadow Shroud, incoming damage is absorbed by your Shadow Force rather than your health. If you believe an incoming attack will kick you out before finishing the full Shroud loop, it may be worth doing a shorter one instead.
• Avoid staying for too long in Shadow Shroud as the DPS from Haunt Shot is worse than that of Scepter, and you need to spend initiative to maintain stacks of .
• If there is nothing to attack, you can target allies with Scepter skills to buff them with barrier, and apply stacks of venom via just before a new phase starts.

• You could run a second Scepter or Dagger with a 超级地能法印 and a 超级大地法印. By aligning your shroud and weapon swaps, this allows you to benefit fully from both on-swap sigils.
  • If running Spear you can do the same with two Spears.

Non-SotO/JW Gear

望族古物 is the best relic for players that don't own Secrets of the Obscure or Janthir Wilds, which necessitates switching some gear to Sinister stats:

亚西斯面罩

ViperHead

维瑞塔肩铠

SinisterShoulders

亚西斯伪装衣

ViperChest

亚西斯拳套

ViperHands

ViperLegs

ViperFeet

ViperBackpiece

SinisterAccessory

SinisterAccessory

ViperAmulet

ViperRing

ViperRing

ViperScepter

Sigil

ViperDagger

• You could run a second Scepter or Dagger with a instead of the . By aligning your shroud and weapon swaps, this allows you to benefit fully from both.